Guild Wars 2

Just out of curiosity how long has it taken other people to get past the first area and level up remotely fast I keep finding myself just speeding through things with an hour later going by and only gained maybe 1 level or 2 and now still low level in starting areas , is leveling broken at all or is there something I can do to level up quicker and get through areas fast

Follow the story line, if you can’t because your too low in level then you go do some hearts or wvw. Also leveling isnt broken it’s just a pain to get into it in the start.

My advice is not to rush leveling. Take time to explore what GW2 has to offer, and it does offer up content even for low to mid levels.

GW2 gives XP for almost everything you do: explore a new place, get to a vista, place of interest, gathering, crafting, extra XP for killing new mobs. And when you run out of place to explore or quests to do in your starting area, consider visiting other races’ starting area, via the Asura gates found in Lions Arch, which can be reached via an Asura gate in your race’s capital city.

It depends. It took me close to 300 hours to get my main character to level 80 and I can often spend hours doing things that get me little/no XP.

But when I want to rush through a temporary character to try something out I can get 10 levels in about an hour or two.

This game is a little confusing at first because on the one hand levelling takes relatively little XP (79-80 is the same as 1-2) and everything you do will give you at least some XP, but on the other hand it’s very obvious the developers didn’t want players to rush levelling and you get a lot more out of the game if you just take your time and enjoy the process. Honestly I’ve found it goes fastest when I just stop thinking about what level I am and instead focus on what I’m doing.

But if you want to level quickly and don’t want to pay out for a bunch of materials to level through crafting the fastest way is to use your personal story and the hearts as pointers on where to go and then do everything you come across. Do all the hearts but also do all the dynamic events, gather crafting materials, uncover new map areas, get POIs and vistas (you can skip the animations to save time if you want), fight enemies etc.

Leveling sure isn’t broken. GW2 as being said gives experience for bout anything. from doing hearts, dynamic events, but also just picking up some blueberries.
On itself I think this is a very good system cause it gives you the freedom to play the game how you want it and like it. However, they also wanted the leveling system to be rewarding. Meaning that you really like it when you gained a level and are happy, instead of thinking after a day of playing; ‘hmmm I made 10 level’s today’.

This means you need to do more then 1 activity. At the start of a character I usually do the following:

a: do you story-line till level 3
b: do the starter area of your race for the bit’s level 1-5 (mostly this is a rather clear and enclosed bit of the map). get all the hearts done there, skillpoints , PoI’s, waypoints and watch Vista’s.
c: Go to your hometown and explore it fully (all vista’s, PoI’s and waypoints).
d: Go to Lion’s arch and do the samething.
e: Go to another races home town and do the same thing
f: Go to this races starter area and get the level 1-5 part fully explored.
g: repeat this for all 5 races.
h: start doing your personal story further.
i: you should be level 15 now. Finish your own starter map and 1-2 other start maps.
j: you should be (if you followed your story too) level 25 now. and move to a level15-25 map.

I personally never do a map that has a maximum level thats above me. The reason for this is that I don’t like watching where I go (and wander of in parts of the map thats way too high for me).

Xp is tuned too low, esp now that events are notvas frequent or quick.

If you just follow the zones, you’ll be behind.

I agree with Mercury. I find you level a lot faster when more exploring is involved than trying to quest only. The thing with GW2 is that you need to get out of the leveling/questing mindset and just enjoy the game. Explore, fight, play. If you focus on those things, your levels will go up almost without you realizing.

Tanner:

1) Do every Dynamic Event you see. Some zones can be a hit or miss since you might be accidentally moving through when they’re on their cool down cycles. However this is where a lot of your +xp comes from.

2) Do every Heart vendor series of tasks when you’re level appropriate. There’s a nice chunk of +xp for finishing these.

3) Every so often, catch up on your Personal Story instanced quest line. These are you highest +xp gains. I normally like to save them up and do 2-3 in a row, but do them however you please.

4) Crafting is worth tons of +xp. It has always been my opinion that your experience point curve in the 1-15 zones is a bit off. If you don’t craft, you’re always going to end up being under leveled for your current content. Yet after taking a couple of crafting classes (such as the ones that makes your weapons and armor), you’ll get a huge influx of +xp to help to get back to where you should be.

5) Even after everything that I’ve described, sometimes I’m still a bit under leveled by the time that I finish up my 1-15 starter zone. To deal with this, I then take the Asuran Gate portal (aka the purple Stargate things) to the gate hub in Lion’s Arch. At the hub, I can easily take a gate to another of the starting cities. I live the city and run through its associated 1-15 zone. While in that zone, I hunt down every Skill Point located on the map. Then I leave the zone and repeat the process until I’ve gained all of the 1-15 Skill Points. By the time that you’re done with this, you should be around 20th level (after gaining +xp from finding Waypoints and completely Hearts along the way). This is a great starting point to go back to your racially associated 15-25 zone.

Guild Wars 2 is about a lot more than just hitting 80, it is about the journey do not rush or feel like you have to rush you wont miss much and will regret it later on, do hearts, save karma, run story mode dungeons, collect gear, craft, explore the maps, just really have fun, get a guild who is either level focused or nice enough to lend a hand etc.

now that is very hypocritical of me as i hate having to level so personally i rush the leveling then go back and enjoy the story and everything from start to finish, however i have decided to re-roll from my Asura Mesmer to a Charr Mesmer mainly due to dye’s and gear not being visible which really bugs me especially if i put in the time to get it on my Asura so this time i WILL be taking my time and going slow, enjoying and exploring everything i actually enjoyed exploring the maps while leveling on my asura anyway the experience at the end was a nice lure and was a VERY nice break from the repetitive quests of other MMOs, gw2’s leveling in my opinion is ace.

Use the social aspect of the game. Group with other people. Either with friends or random people in the same area. Whatever you do, you’ll do much much faster in a group and with more fun. You’ll be amazed how fast you will level. Doing higher level hearts wont be much of a problem either…
But you’ll probably forget about caring what level you are after a while; because what you do in this game at lower levels is not that different than what you do at higher levels. The only difference for me is that there are more dungeon options at level 80. Which I love doing by the way.
Story and the world in this game is amazing; but playing single gets really boring after a while imho.