Guild Wars 2

I’m at level 23 right now after 2 days and i’ve heard of people getting 60+ in 2 days.

How do they do it?

Crafting. Going 1-400 in a profession nets around 10 levels in experience and can be done in as little as 30 minutes. It’s not cheap, but it’s fast.

Not much point in leveling that fast IMO. You miss/outgrow most of the content

The people who blaze to 80 in a matter of days are the people who get burned out and whine about there being no content, when in fact, by powerleveling, they blew by it all. Or they’re the people who don’t learn their class and get wiped over and over, and choose to blame the game.

If this is your first character, take your time. Explore the world, find events, and learn how to play your class. Find friends to level with. The leveling process is part of the endgame in GW2.

If you’ve already explored the game and already have a character at 80, then yeah, crafting, when done properly, is the fastest way of leveling. Look up some guides and be prepared to spend a lot of gold.

This game isn’t meant for speed leveling. It’s not slow, either, there’s no curve after the first few levels. Going from 79 to 80 takes no more time than going from 19 to 20. They only put levels in the game at all because alpha testers got wierded out by not having them. The whole thing’s designed not to care so much about level, though level does gate you to a few things like dungeons or zones.

I agree with Falunel that you should take your time on your first character. I don’t agree so much about speeding up the second one. After all, while some skills you learn translate across profession (dodging, combo fields, basic game play), you’ll still be much more effective if you’ve learned all the abilities, gained all the skill points you can, and understand which utility skill combinations do you the most good.

A few levels here or there, sure. My second 80 got five levels from crafting by accident when I got into the zen of making rings and necklaces. She was in her 60’s, though, so I’d learned how to play her already.

Crafting, if you have the gold.

Falunel.7645:

The people who blaze to 80 in a matter of days are the people who get burned out and whine about there being no content, when in fact, by powerleveling, they blew by it all. Or they’re the people who don’t learn their class and get wiped over and over, and choose to blame the game.

If this is your first character, take your time. Explore the world, find events, and learn how to play your class. Find friends to level with. The leveling process is part of the endgame in GW2.

If you’ve already explored the game and already have a character at 80, then yeah, crafting, when done properly, is the fastest way of leveling. Look up some guides and be prepared to spend a lot of gold.

Or they are people who rolled an engineer as a ranged class…I mean only being able to equip rifles and pistols CLEARLY means range…right. Anyway, some people rolled engineers as a range class, take months to get to 80, get gear and find out that the class is not on par with others…so maybe, just maybe they “power level” other classes because they have seen the journey already and are ready for end game.

People are not getting bored because of how they level, they are getting bored because the game is boring.

IMO, don’t spend the gold on crafting…esp if you are spending real money to get the gold.

This game is not about end game, its about the journey. Take your time leveling your character and enjoy it, because once you get to 80 everything is down hill and the game becomes more monotonous and less fun. Get your 60 bucks worth by leveling, then move on.

I second the above opinions on taking your time to master the basics (dodging, control, etc) and enjoy the story, as the most of the game content for higher level requires (i.e. dungeons, jumping puzzles) your mastery of basics.

I’ve seen quite a few level 80 players rage quiting (especially at WvW) because they can’t dodge, skill combo or even rally themselves from downed status effectively (some of them just button mashing), end up dying a lot & getting nearly bankrupt from repairs.

It is possible to level quickly without crafting by planning the most “XP efficient” way of doing things, for example killing enemies which count towards both a heart and a DE whilst using an XP booster.

But however you do it you’ll miss a lot of the game. GW2 was never intended to be all about the end-game. I think that’s what they meant by “the whole game is end-game”, you shouldn’t be trying to power through the levelling process so you can go on to do something completely different, you should be taking your time and enjoying the world, then when you get to 80 going to different areas and doing the bits you haven’t done yet.

I agree it’s best not to rush through the game – certainly not on your first character. It does take time to learn to play each profession well and it is worth taking time to try out a few different builds on the way to see which you like best.

Having said that, there is a place for speed levelling when you’re running alts, especially if you’re trying to collect a level 80 of each profession, or you decide you want a particular character for a specific role where there are advantages to being level 80 (maybe you decide you want a mesmer for WvW or a guardian for dungeons etc) You can make a game of this in itself.

It’s still important to learn to play each character, but you might not need the full 80 levels to do this, so boosting 20 levels with crafting is not the end of the world. There is a very useful guide on Guild Wars Insider now which shows how to level the Chef crafting skill on the cheap – it costs about 2 gold and 1200 karma for the materials. Picking up some the items can be an amusing scavenger hunt and it takes about half an hour. It’s a cheap way to get an extra 10 levels quickly if you need them.

Always run using food and a maintenance oil or sharpening stone (+10% exp each) and use XP boosters from the black lion chests or gem store if you like. Hearts and events are probably the most efficient source of XP in the open world, and this is at its most efficient if you hit an event which also helps you complete the local heart. Make sure to gather all materials as you go because these will give XP and count towards the daily achievement. It is worth running the storyline as well, especially in the lower levels as these give about 20% of a level in XP for each installment.

To sum up, I’ll repeat the advice at the top – in most cases, it is best to take your time and enjoy the game at a steady pace. The game is tuned to work best for those players who do a bit of everything – hearts, exploring, catch events as they happen and gather materials and craft as you go along. This is largely why following this approach actually maximises your XP gain.

The whole game is the end-game. In GW1 you would spend the majority of the game at level cap still working through all the campaigns, material and achievements. I suspect Anet are aiming for something similar with GW2 and we will see some of this in the January to March updates.

CelestialWyrm.8572:

Crafting. Going 1-400 in a profession nets around 10 levels in experience and can be done in as little as 30 minutes. It’s not cheap, but it’s fast.

This.
and dont expect to lolstomp everyone if you level this way, since you wont get much skills as you usually get from exploration and normal playthrough

Actually, I agree with Raideen. There really isn’t enough substantial end-game content to justify rushing through the game. One of the most fun parts is leveling your character and exploring all the zones, working through your personal story, etc… At level 80, I mean sure there’s still WvW and sPvP, but mostly you’ll just be farming gold (running AC 1, 2, 3 / CoF 1, 2) or farming Fractal of the Mists to get ascended gear.

Whatever your goal is at 80, you can be sure it’s going to cost you a lot of gold (Legendary, T3 Cultural Armor, 20 slot bags, dyes, etc… are all about how much gold you’ve accumulated). Either that, or endlessly farming the same dungeon over and over (I’m looking at you Fractal of the Mists).

I’m not saying it’s not worth playing once you hit the level cap, and I’m not trying to be all doom and gloom. But there’s certainly no reason to rush through the game your first time around. I think skipping dozens of levels with crafting is more of an alt thing. Besides, it is far easier to make gold at level 80 than as a lowbie (especially if you’re too low to run AC Explorable), and also by then you’ll have a ton of karma and waypoints / hearts completed all across the map, allowing you to buy some much needed Chef crafting materials (which can only be bought from specific vendors in specific zones after you’ve completed specific hearts with a certain amount of karma). And even though Chef is just one of the 8 crafting professions, it is one of the cheapest if you have access to everything I mentioned before (which you can easily have once your first character gets to the level cap).

When you do finally level yourself some alts, if you decide to level with crafting, I would definitely recommend Artifice and Chef. They are by far the cheapest 2 to level (not that there’s any reason to limit yourself to 2), and I personally max them on all of my alts. The trick to Artifice is to craft potions to gain crafting experience, not weapons. You can then sell the potions back to a vendor for a significant amount of what you paid for the materials.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to go on and on…
TL;DR – No need to rush. Enjoy the game, play through, experience the journey.

And as always, good luck, and may your adventures be epic (and profitable).

Hi,

Speed level in GW2 ruins the game. Enjoy your time without rush… you’ll have plenty of fun, much more then who’s running to level cap.

Have a nice time!

All is said before, but i would strongly press the point about relaxing!
This is a game that plays from lvl 1 to 80, and it is not like WoW has become, a rat race to the level cap and then start grinding (and yes, i DID play WoW for many years, and yes, it WAS a good game, now it is just a grindfest and there A LOT of elitist players that don’t know the word Community anymore)
So if this is your first char, take your time, see the world Anet created and enjoy your journey to lvl 80. And even with an alt, if you take another race, with another background, you get a new feeling (well, at least in the beginning area’s).

Keira Ferland.5619:

I’m at level 23 right now after 2 days and i’ve heard of people getting 60+ in 2 days.

How do they do it?

Keep in mind that some may exaggerate the speed of their leveling. From talking to guildies, I found that it takes from 70 to 120 hours of play time to level to 80. You can check out your progress using ‘/age’ in the chat window. I took about 115 hours for my first toon. I spent time enjoying content along the way. In other words’ you aren’t saving much time power leveling, and you miss out.

Yeah dont rush, the game upto level 80 is really easy tbh and when you get to 80, its still easy, so you might aswell take your time.

Food + potion/tuning crystal/sharpening stone/maintenance oil + map completion + daily. That can go extremely quickly and of course you’ll want offensive stats but that assumes you are familiar enough with the game to survive with those stats.

I don’t usually keep track of how fast I level. The one time I did was around 36 minutes per level for 5 levels. So 60+ in 2 days is doable but that would be a lot of time spent playing in those two days. They could also stack on the exp booster, guild banner, guild upgrade and WvW bonus. That comes to a total of +85%.

The passive creatures with yellow names(before you attack them) can have up to a 250% bonus.

Gathering wood/ore/cooking ingredients will also boost your leveling speed. Each item harvested actually gives more exp than the base exp for a kill.

I have leveled 3 characters to 80 now, and can complete it in around 30 hours. It may not be the fastest but what I usually do is the following.

Complete starter zone, do your story as level allows, crafting at certain level ranges(craft from 20-30 and 70-80), zone completeing each zone that your personal story send you to.

That usually has me zone complete 3-4 zones, get to about 50-60 range on personal story, have cooking 400, by far cheapest and easiest to level, along with jewel crafting if this is your first character.

Actually, the fastest way to get to 80 is to go into the Heart of the Mists. Instant level 80 character that you can build any way you like, and a bunch of areas to try out different skills.

My husband leveled his 5th 80 mostly with crafting, but that’s just because he’s done all of the areas and most of the events and didn’t want to do them again just so he could try out his idea for a build. It’s not a great way to level unless you’ve already played through the game a bit. You don’t get karma, you’re a little short on skill points, you don’t make any money, and you don’t learn the nuances of the class. It’s also mind numbingly tedious.

Things that folks don’t take into account when they’re trying to level fast:

• Exploration and zone completion give significant XP
• Harvesting crafting materials gives significant XP
• Killing creatures that have been alive for a while gives significant bonus XP
• You can have both a food and a potion on, and the XP bonuses from them add up if you kill lots of things

GW2 rewards you for going off the beaten path instead of sitting in one place and grinding out XP. Move around, talk to some NPCs, detour for events (heck, talking to NPCs often starts events), poke your nose into caves and uncover the map. Kill creatures even if they aren’t hostile. Odds are folks have ignored them and they’ll give you nice bonus XP. Make sure your weapons are the best you can afford and close to your actual level, especially if you’re playing in an area where you’re downscaled. Armor you can let get old, but having shoddy weapons really slows you down.