Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone,

So I used to play wow quit roughly 18 months ago now and have jumped on the GW2 bandwagon this week. Ive managed to get to level 20 on my warrior just cruising around doing hearts/personal story and helping a few world bosses? May not have been world bosses but, as Im struggling to find info anywhere else haha.

What I am trying to find out is there anywhere that can show me what I can be doing around my level? like are dungeons for 80’s only? Pvp the same? leave till 80? when watching the previews for GW2 there was pretty epic massive dragon battles and such with plenty of people helping out.. I struggle to find 2 other players to help me take down oversized worms.. I’m not complaining or anything I am just genuinely curious as to if I am just too new to have experienced these things and to expect them later in the game or don’t get my hopes up? I really enjoy the game how it is just looking to work all aspects of it.

I know this game obviously doesn’t have the same amount of players roaming as WoW does , which is half why I made the switch ( not into being on at a certain time of night 3 times a week raiding) but I do hope to find some sort of group interaction in the game eventually. I am a Norn warrior too on Sea of Sorrows. Not sure if area’s have different populations? like if another area would be more crowded?

Thanks for any comments left.

Check wiki (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Main_Page) for any maps you’ve visited to see what events are there. The dragon battles are level 50, 65, and 80 events so you’ve got a ways to go there. 4 of the racial starting zones (Metrica/Asura, Caledon/Sylvari, Queensdale/Human, Wayfarer/Norn) have big meta-events with world bosses that draw a lot of people to them when the timer is on so you can definitely jump into those now. The rewards will be better at higher levels though. The first dungeon opens at level 30 (you won’t get notified about it unless you keep up with your personal story, but you can still do it) but it may not be easy to find a group to do the story mode. An active guild could help, though, if you join one.

sPvP (small group matches) uses a different version of your character that is always at level 80 with full skills, traits, etc. so you can do that at any time. WvW upscales your PvE character to 80 but a sub-80 will be weaker. You can still try it out though and maybe join in any big groups running around. Both are accessed from the top menu bar, or in fort marriner in lion’s arch.

Best advice I can give is find a guild that is recruiting (and open to low level players) and find people with similar schedules that will tag along from time to time. PvE is almost entirely solo friendly but a traveling buddy can help you find a groove and point out interesting stuff to do.

Dungeons start at level 30 (Ascalon Catacombs story mode, 35 for explorable), and a new dungeon is unlocked every 10 levels. When you reach the apropiate level, you’ll receive a letter with the dungeon introduction and location in your mail. It might be hard to find groups for dungeons if you’re just the right level, though, since they’re easier to do at 80, lots of PuGs only want 80’s on their groups, but can be done, specially with guild or friend groups.

All starting areas have big bosses at level 15, but with level 80’s doing them all the time they can get over rather quickly so you might probably miss them if you’re not there already. The big dragons you see in the preview are the Shatterer (level 50), and Tequatl the Sunless (level 65), plus you also fight the Claw of Jormag at level 80 (ice based dragon). Here you can see a list of events with a bonus chest attached to it, I’m sure you’ll find LOTS of people on any of those when they’re active:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bonus_chest#Bonus_Chest

Medium level areas can get lonely depending on your server, but sometimes if you can’t do an event you can just call on map chat and sometimes people will come to aid you, it’s a good idea also to link the closest uncontested waypoint when you do it (while typing, hit shift and click on it on your map). In my experience, though, at least on yak’s bend where I play, while there are fewer players in lower level areas, I usually find more than I did (for example) in lower level areas in WoW while leveling an alt, not sure how it is now that they merge the areas when they become empty.

As for PvP, you can jump in right now. There are two kinds of PvP, there’s sPvP (equivalent to WoW battlegrounds), when you go there you and your gear are leveled up to the level cap, and all skills and traits are unlocked, so whether you go in at level 2 or 80, there’s no difference, nobody has an advantage of gear or level there. When you get there you show up at a lobby, which is also a great place to do things like trying different builds when 80 (there are NPCs you can fight there).

The other form of PvP is WvW, which is basically a big on-going weekly battle between 3 different servers. You’re upleveled to 80, but your gear and skills unlocked remain the same, so you are at a disadvantage there if you fight 1 on 1 against a true level 80 (but not to the point of WoW where you couldn’t even touch it). However, if you stay with the groups you can still help. Usually it’s a good idea to look for the commander icons if you get there (blue square icon) and try to get to them, usually there are groups you can join.

Also, don’t be afraid to ask anything in game, so far I’ve found the community rather helpful (might be my server, though). Also, if you’re curious about anything, you can also type in game /wiki anything, it’ll load up a browser window with a GW2 wiki search of that.

Thanks guys , So just as the dungeons are released to me doesn’t necessarily mean jump in and have a crack as I may be more of a hindrance haha , Ill continue roaming around and levelling up doing so. Would I be right in saying some of the starting areas would be more populated than others? I just had a quick roam in Queensdale starting area and found 10x more other people running around.

Anything in particular that new players should put attention into while levelling to learn/ make the most of the game? Ide hate to smakitten to 80 and still have no clue what I am doing..

Sparks.6908:

Anything in particular that new players should put attention into while levelling to learn/ make the most of the game? Ide hate to smakitten to 80 and still have no clue what I am doing..

Any time you die, examine why and try to figure out what you could have done differently. This could be changing utilties, weapons and traits. You might become very comfortable with a certain setup and you could probably get with with 90+% of things you encounter but you should get used to the idea that there are times when you have to switch to something else. Read all the skill descriptions(carefully!) so you can at least be aware of all the capabilities of the class even if you don’t have all of them slotted in at the same time. Same with traits. Reading them on the wiki might be a better approach since that can provide additional details missing from the in game descriptions.

Just signed up for the game, this article was very helpful for me as well!

You are a little low level for the big dragon fights and stuff. Here is a link to a website that shows all the major boss events that alot of people flock to http://us.gw2stuff.com/

You can choose your server to check the events happening.

One more thing, if there’s something you want to know in the game. Say how something works you type /wiki whatyouwanttolookup. For example, since you’re a Warrior, and you wanted to look up a skill. You could type /wiki For Great Justice or /wiki Mending.

Welcome to the community.

Dungeons have two modes, story and explorable. You need to finish story mode in order to unlock explorables. Or if the party leader has finished story he can start it even if you haven’t. There isn’t really any need to run story mode more than once other than to help others finish it so it is hard to find players to fill a story mode group. Explorables are kinda like heroic dungeons in WoW. They are the ones you want to be running many times to get tokens off of bosses to trade in for gear. Explorables have different paths to choose from that result in different fights/bosses. You can only choose one path per run.

Running dungeons at their minimum level should not be a hindrance. The issue is that it takes time to learn the encounters in each dungeon and there is no good way to learn them without dying a lot. Since there is a level scaling in this game, all players get scaled down to whatever level the dungeon is. Being higher level helps by giving you skills and stats to work with, but they have to be just as careful. Dungeons groups can be across servers, so use the LFG site www.gw2lfg.com and find a group to invite/join.