Guild Wars 2

Ksooo.. I started playing GW2 made a human warrior, all I did was follow the story line until about level 5 where it said that the recommended level for the instance was like level 8. So now im confused as to what im supposed to do, killing centaurs that are level 6 dont give that much exp and I get destroyed by them in a 1v2, 1v1s are alright. What are some things I could do to level up? Im completely new to the game and have no idea what to do
thanks

Welcome to GW2!

Firstly, don’t do only your personal story. In between story missions, you can level by doing map completion and events. Complete all hearts, and unlock all points of interest, vistas, and skill points. In addition, do any events (the orange quests) along the way- they reward a good amount of experience.

Also, get gathering tools and harvest everything. Harvesting here gives you additional exp and grants credit towards your daily achievement, which also gives exp upon completion.

Regarding fighting, do you move around and dodge a lot in combat, or do you stay still?

Broadly speaking there are 3 kinds of activities in this game which replace the traditional quests from other games: your Personal Story, Renown Hearts and Dynamic Events. It sounds like you’ve just been doing the story and ignoring the other two when you really need to be doing a bit of each (at the very least hearts and events).

You’ll have done one renown heart already, just after you finished the introduction, because you have to for your story to progress but I recommend you look for others on your map (yellow heart symbols), and do them. Then do any dynamic events (orange symbols) you see starting up along the way.

More detailed description copied from another post I made recently:

1) Personal Story

• Personal story quests are shown in green in the list of activities on the top right of the screen and use green star shaped map markers. They also have their own tab on the Hero panel which will summarise the story so far and remind you what you need to do next.
• They’re fairly standard story quests, all of them (except the introduction and the very last part) are instanced and intended for 1 person to do alone but you can bring a group if you want to.
• You won’t be able to level purely by doing your story, but it can help give you an idea of where to go next.

2) Renown Hearts (aka Heart Quests)

• These use yellow heart shaped markers both on the map and on the list in the top right corner of the screen. The icon is hollow at first and then filled when you’ve completed it.
• They are the most similar to traditional MMO side-quests. An NPC will ask you to do things like kill enemies in the local area, gather objects or help with other tasks nearby.
• Unlike traditional quests you don’t have to speak to the NPC to start them (although if you do you can get some more insight into why these things need doing and a bit of info on the area you’re in) or to get your reward after you’ve finished (it’s mailed to you) and you can do whichever of the activities you want in any order you want.
• Once you’ve finished the heart quest the NPC becomes a karma vendor who will sell you useful items.
• In lower level areas there are a lot of heart quests, but they’re intended to ease new players into the way GW2 works so they get much rarer later on, level 80 areas have none. Instead they have…

3) Dynamic Events

• These show up in orange on the map and on the list in the top-right corner.
• Like the other two the actual activities will be familiar from quests in other games. ‘Kill these guys’, ‘defend this’, ‘collect 10 rats’ etc.
• Unlike regular quests dynamic events will start, continue and finish regardless of whether you or anyone else is around to help. If someone says they need your help because centaurs are attacking their town it means it’s happening right now and if someone doesn’t help the centaurs will take over and/or destroy the town.
• You can drop in and drop out of an event at any time and you’ll be rewarded for your participation automatically as long as you’re on the map when it ends. So if you find out that’s half-way through you can join in, you can join in right away, no need to wait for it to restart, and if you don’t want to see it through to the end you can leave at any time.
• You’ll want to get into the habit of doing them whenever you see them because they’re one of the best sources of money (including karma), experience and loot in the game, especially at lower levels.
• When one ends stick around and listen to the NPCs, it will give you some more of the story but also quite often events chain together – when one ends another related one will start up soon after.

Welcome to the game!

Leveling can be a little slow at the start as you don’t have all your weapon skills, utilities, or traits unlocked just yet. Instead of grinding through mobs (as the exp gain, like you said, is slow) keep an eye out for events that happen on the map; they give good exp for completing them plus exp for killing the mobs involved.

As you’re a human, your starting area is Queensdale. This is a very active starting zone, so ask around in map chat (using “/m <message>” without the quotes) if you need.

And for an overview of how events work in game, here is the wiki page: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Events

Whoa. Double ninja’ed :P

Also make sure to talk to scouts around the map (NPCs with spyglasses above them). They will point you in the direction of renown hearts and “open up” the map for you. You can tell the level of the renown heart by the number after it; i.e. Help Brenda Fight Off Bandits (2) – that would be a level 2 area (I made up the quest name, BTW).

Oh man, there is so much to do in GW2!!!
First you should go to Lions Arch where the Wintersday events are happening. (PM me ingame and I’ll be able to show you how to go there). Also, from Lions Arch you can teleport to any home instance which is a good way to unlock different areas on the map. For example, you can teleport to the Norn’s homeland named Hoelbrak and from there you can go to Wayfarer Foothills and check out what events you can do there.

PM me if you want to learn the basics ingame – Weasley