Guild Wars 2

Greetings, i’m levelling my first character through pvp and at the moment i raked up 29 tomes (almost 30) of knowledge; i also have a boost scroll to level up to 20 immediatly.

Now, since i’ve no clue what’s outside the two areas next to my home city (i’m an Asura), i also have no clue what’s outside this little region, thus no experience about dungeons and wvw, also very limited knowledge about jumping puzzles and world bosses.

I’ve heard people suggest to level up to 30 then rush to dungeons, others say it’s better to go to the edge of the mists and stick with a commander if there’s any.

So the question is: should i go into dungeons(if yes, please add/link a quick guide)? Or should i go into the edge of the mists? Or is it better for me to stick for pvp until i can 20-80 (i’m doing fine there) ?
Also, bonus question, how much does it cost to pick up a full set of the lowest cost level 80 exotic gear? (for example, berserker and a condi one, with sigils and runes included)

Thanks in advance

Well it all depends on what you want to do, do you want to gain gold? Reach level 80 with that character? Looking for something fun to do?

tl;dr My advice is: Run dungeons daily, level up in EotM or if you want gear keep doing PvP for reward tracks (try and do the tracks for CoF, CoE or Arah). Then for gear either buy them off with dungeon tokens (mainly armor) or get them from the reward tracks (mainly weapons). end tl;dr

First off do use that level 20 scroll, there’s no reason to waste time leveling 20 levels if you have that.

Secondly, you can do a mix of both. Do run the first dungeon (Ascalon Catacombs) daily and any fast ones you unlock later. Each time you complete an explorable path you’ll gain 70% experience towards the next character level, as well as some gold and dungeon tokens. If you need some help with it just whisper me, I wasn’t able to find an updated guide but here’s one: http://dulfy.net/2012/09/08/gw2-ascalonian-catacombs-explorable-mode-dungeon-guide/

From there you can go back to EotM for karma train leveling or go back to PvP and work in different paths (since you can gain transmutation charges and even more dungeon tokens/gear from them).

Now regarding gear, the dungeon tokens are a cheap way to gain exotic gear, sadly for berserker gear you have to wait until you can run CoF, CoE or Arah (level 75+ dungeons). Do note that WvW and Karma armor are not salvageable, so if you’re thinking on placing expensive runes on them (which you might later salvage) please refrain to do so. Here’s kitteneful site that shows you how to acquire gear: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Equipment_acquisition_by_stats#Dungeons

With tokens try to buy the least expensive options, some armor costs 180 tokens while the more “expensive” ones can be picked on the final reward of the track. Don’t bother wasting tokens on weapons, you’ll get many of those while completing the track.

Also the fire elemental (it’s on the first asura map) is very easy to do and provides you with 2 guaranteed rare weapons, which can be salvaged to ectos, here’s kitteneful tool for world bosses and their respective waypoints: http://dulfy.net/2014/04/23/event-timer/

Best of luck.

You might want to check Dulfy, you will find alot of useful information.
http://dulfy.net/2012/09/16/gw2-jumping-puzzles-guides-guild-wars-2/
Like JPs. I suggest you if you wanna try them start with Easy ones, and to make it more fun find their location (Dulfy indicates it) but don’t look at the way they are done, rather try to find it by yourself

I wouldn’t do Dungeons until like level 70, only then i would start with the story modes and then progressively get into the explorable paths and later try the most difficult paths such as Arah’s p1-4 and Twilight’s AE. That’s how you Iit, but you could perfectly start them once you get lvl high enough (tho other than the story mode it could be too hard for you). You can find all the basic information you need regarding Dungeons here: http://gw2dungeons.net/

Also a good way to check on builds and a description about how to use them, be them for Dungeons or any other part of the game, would be here:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki
Tho i would suggest you to try your own combinations of traits/utilities/weapons and learn by yourself what works the best and why, and what lacks in performance for some reason.

Also i wouldn’t rush to 80, just take your time and enjoy the game, before you notice it you will be 80. Save the tomes for later when you decide to lvl a new character or something : )

As for the lv80 exotic set, it isn’t expensive. Well trinkets could be, for Berserker at least. Im saying it isn’t expensive but im not really sure how much it would be and i can’t check since im not in game atm, but you could get them for karma/dungeon tokens too, or from drops. When buying them with gold, usually Berserker will be more expensive than condi (well, would depend on which kind of condi set you are looking for). As for sigils and runes it all depends which ones you want, you would need 6runes and at least 4sigils, its easy to check on tp.

Regarding if you should keep lvlng with PvP or try something else, its entirely up to you, but could be smart to try new things, get to know them decently enough, and then choose the one that you like the most, or alternate between them according with what you feel like doing that day : )

Ty alot for the replies!
Currently i have approx 40 gold and i decided to level up a thief.
I checked eotm but there was barely anybody, so i guess i’ll keep it for a later date.
Instead, i think i’ll probably finish the reward track (i’m almost at the end ;3) and i’ll consume my tomes, then i’ll do dungeons and map exploration as this character has absolutely none.

Since i’ll be level 50, it should be a breeze.

I’ll avoid picking an answer for a little time so more people can reply (especially about my gold amount, to know if it’s enough).

Leveling in EotM is very effective if you just want levels/karma/bags, yet equally as effective in killing your leveling experience. I advise against that.
I suggest that you start 100% exploring the map, from your starting areas to midgame to Orr/Frostgorge, depending on your preferences. This is the best way to see everything the devs made for you. In my opinion, it would be a waste of money to have a world full of landscapes, activities and people and run around the same map as a part of a mindless blob instead of exploring everything.
40 gold is a nice amount, probably enough to help you level your crafting and purchase the stuff you want for your thief and then some.

Ascimator.6735:

Leveling in EotM is very effective if you just want levels/karma/bags, yet equally as effective in killing your leveling experience. I advise against that.
I suggest that you start 100% exploring the map, from your starting areas to midgame to Orr/Frostgorge, depending on your preferences. This is the best way to see everything the devs made for you. In my opinion, it would be a waste of money to have a world full of landscapes, activities and people and run around the same map as a part of a mindless blob instead of exploring everything

I totally agree with this.

I’ll avoid picking an answer for a little time so more people can reply (especially about my gold amount, to know if it’s enough).

If the gold amount is enough for what, full exotic set? Its more than enough. You can get one for like 6g from WvW i believe. At the same time, could happen that 40g isn’t even enough for the runes and or/sigils, again it will depend on which ones you want.

There is nothing obligatory in the game. You can do what you want and that’s the beauty of the game.

- PvP : If you prefer doing pvp, there is great reward with the reward track and a correct amount of gold so you can just keep level up that way.

- EOTM : Its probably the fastest way to level up a character while playing the game. Crafting is faster, but some could argue that its not really playing the game. Not everybody love doing EOTM, personally I find it boring, but that’s just my opinion. It create new map when the first is full, so if you didn’t see anyone its probably because it was a new map, waiting a bit and ppl will start to flow in. Also ppl stick together in a major blob there, so spot the commander tag moving around in the map.

- Map Completion : Map completion is needed if you want to craft a legendary, otherwise only do it if you want. You could simply unlock the wp to move faster around the world and not complete the quest if you don’t like it. For me my first map completion was nice to do, exploring this world for the first time. But not everybody like that.

- Dungeon : They are an old group content that a big part of the community run for a long time now. This made them a difficult content to try out for new players. You can totally start doing dungeon around level 30-35, but a lot of ppl don’t want to carry ppl so low level with no experience. But there is way to ask ppl some help to show you how to play in dungeon and take their time. If you just join any group, that could be a unpleasant experience because player level 80 with at least a bit of experience is the norm in dungeon and ppl like speed and efficiency in their dungeon. Running with guildmate will help a lot and there is a guild that specifically help new player to learn dungeons. If you don’t want any stress, leveling to 80 before going into dungeon will help a lot. No need to rush into them.

- Exotic Armor and weapons if you want to buy it directly in the TP will cost between 10 and 35 gold depending on which stats you want. The most valuable and popular stats will cost you more. You can buy an armor and weapons with dungeon token, which is usually view as one of the best way to gear you in exotic even if it take more time.

Just a few remaining questions regarding equipment:
1) Where should i purchase the equipment? In the trading post i see alot of berserker weapons going for around 6g each(i plan to go zerk as it’s quite needed in pve), otherwise i have no clue how many dungeons i would have to run to get them through tokens or other ways to obtain them.
2) Do the runes/sigils actually cost more than the other gear? :O

ButterOfDeath.2873:

Just a few remaining questions regarding equipment:
1) Where should i purchase the equipment? In the trading post i see alot of berserker weapons going for around 6g each(i plan to go zerk as it’s quite needed in pve), otherwise i have no clue how many dungeons i would have to run to get them through tokens or other ways to obtain them.
2) Do the runes/sigils actually cost more than the other gear? :O

1) It takes a week to get a complete dungeon set from tokens, depending on how fast you can complete a reward track this may be shortened (tracks provide 240 dungeon tokens, 3 weapons and 1 armor piece).

2) Possibly, depending on the runes/sigils that you want. For example scholar runes will probably consume all of your available gold, still there are some other options that are still “optimal”, ruby orbs are the cheapest one, flame legion runes work for some professions and you get a +7% damage if the target is burning.

Force sigils are great, might be a good investment.

ghost.3208:

ButterOfDeath.2873:

Just a few remaining questions regarding equipment:
1) Where should i purchase the equipment? In the trading post i see alot of berserker weapons going for around 6g each(i plan to go zerk as it’s quite needed in pve), otherwise i have no clue how many dungeons i would have to run to get them through tokens or other ways to obtain them.
2) Do the runes/sigils actually cost more than the other gear? :O

1) It takes a week to get a complete dungeon set from tokens, depending on how fast you can complete a reward track this may be shortened (tracks provide 240 dungeon tokens, 3 weapons and 1 armor piece).

2) Possibly, depending on the runes/sigils that you want. For example scholar runes will probably consume all of your available gold, still there are some other options that are still “optimal”, ruby orbs are the cheapest one, flame legion runes work for some professions and you get a +7% damage if the target is burning.

Force sigils are great, might be a good investment.

Flame legion runes on thief! #yolo !
Jokes aside, it’s good to know there are cheap alternatives.

By the way, aside the outpost and tokens (excluding random drops) is there any other way to get exotic gear? If no i’ll probably do a mix of both options.

Another easy way to get berserker or any other exotic weapons is WvW. You will need to amass some badges of honor but they are quite easy to get if you run with a zerg. The WvW vendor will sell you weps etc for a price of 1g+some tokens(dont remember the exact number)

GoD Obelisk.3057:

Another easy way to get berserker or any other exotic weapons is WvW. You will need to amass some badges of honor but they are quite easy to get if you run with a zerg. The WvW vendor will sell you weps etc for a price of 1g+some tokens(dont remember the exact number)

Lovely!
Basically anything i’ll do will net me the items i want, isn’t it just sweet?

Ty alot for the answers, will keep it open for a little (i believe accepting an answer closes the thread). ;D

Yes mostly. Things get tricky when you want certain skins and believe me you will want them to obtain a specific look etc. When you get to that point you will maybe want to do specific things.

I was about to start a similar thread, so I’m glad I saw this. I’m a new player who just hit 80, so I’m wondering what the best way to gear up is.

Is there any catch-22 in this game such that you need to already be (somewhat) geared to run the instances (dungeons) that earn you your gear? From the posts above it looks like dungeons, primarily CoF/CoE/Arah, are the preferred source of armor. But based on past MMO experience I wouldn’t think that a fresh 80 in assorted leveling drops, some of them massively out of date (my rings are rare level 47 and 53 drops from some of the first world bosses after the new dailies alerted me to the existence of world bosses…), would be particularly welcome in any group. What would be a sensible threshold for a character to be considered dungeon-ready in this game? And do I understand correctly that completion of story mode is not required to participate in an exploration mode dungeon, as long as the group leader has completed story mode? I’d like to complete the story modes, but I gather those don’t happen much these days.

Should I be spending laurels and/or mystic coins to gear up? I notice that the laurel vendor has ascended amulets and rings; is that why people obsess over laurel acquisition rates, or are they saving/using laurels on other things entirely? It seems odd that I can apparently get a best in slot amulet or ring literally ten minutes after hitting 80. And according to the wiki, I could spend a bit of gold on the TP to get orichalcum greatsword blades and hilts and spend some mystic coins to get the http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Claymore. Or would it be nuts to burn 20 mystic coins to save 3-4g, which appears to be the price difference between the blades/hilts and the cheapest exotic berserker stat greatsword on the TP? From browsing the wiki I get the sense that the primary use for mystic coins is for those agony resistance infusions for ascended gear. Which is a non-issue for a new 80 like me, but mystic coin acquisition rate is even slower than laurels (I think – looks like 20/month, unless I’m missing something) so perhaps I ought not to spend them lightly.

Do people successfully open the Temple of Grenth with any regularity? Looks like I could get 2-3 pieces of gear there with karma. But so far I’ve only gotten as far as Straits of Devastation and seen two attempts at Balthazar, one successful, so I don’t have a good sense of whether the temple karma vendors should be considered plausibly available or not, or to what extent that varies from temple to temple.

First of all let me start by saying mystic coins are somewhat expendable, you can always buy them on tp. Secondly, to run dungeons for now get the best gear you possibly can that is masterwork or rare from tp. Rare because you can always salvage it once done for globs of ecroplasm and make moat of your money back. Now getting gear with karma is not a bad option either but if you plan on going for a legendary at some point you will need a lot of karma so you may wanna think about it. When I first hit 80 I did dungeons in greens. I would hold off on arah and maybe even coe till you are decked in somewhat decent armor. And another thing is depending on class there you might even wanna start out with a different stat than berserker since you will be learning still and berserker provides very little room for error. Sorrows Embrace or Ascalonian catacombs are easier dungeons so to speak and can provide you with stats left me knights and soldiers which might be good armor sets to learn your class in more depth. If you have more questions can always ping me in game.

Sorry for all the typos, typing on phone.

There is not really a threahold for gearing up for dungeon. Some of them are not particular easy or smooth without good gear (mostly HotW, CoE and Arah), try to avoid those until you have a exotic armor. But for the others, no big problem. You can buy a complete exotic armor for about 5 gold. You could also do 3-4 runs of CoF (easiest dungeon) to get a complete set of rare armor level 70.

Exotic Armor : Several ways to get that. Dungeon Token is my favorite. You learn dungeon and get gold/loots. It will take between 20-23 paths to get your armor, or about 35 paths for armor + weapons. If you run for exemple CoF path 1 and 2 everyday (between 30-45min with pugs) that will take you a bit more than 2 weeks. You can buy that armor + weapons from the TP. This will be faster but a waste of gold in my opinion. You can have everything for between 10-40 gold depending on what you choose and do you order or buy directly. You can craft it as this will level up your crafting anyway so if you plan to create an ascended armor anyway, the additional cost of your exotic armor won’t be lost. You can buy an full exotic armor with 252k of karma at a temple, but keep in mind that you can’t salvage it latter if you want to change armor and karma is needed in large quantity if you want to have a legendary weapon. Finally, you can have armor + weapons for about 8.5 gold and 1400 badge of honor, but again you can’t salvage it.

Amulet : Go strait for the ascended. The cheapest is in WvW and you can buy it anytime

Rings : Go strait for the ascended. Really really cheap if you want to do fractals. If you dislike it, you can buy them with laurels, but only if you don’t want to do fractals as the price is not comparable.

Accessories : If you are in a guild that do guild mission on a regular basis, that’s the best way to get them ascended right away. It will take a month. If you don’t have a guild for that or don’t care about guild missions, you could craft or buy exotic on the TP. Ascended with laurel + glob are really expensive, but there is some collection and living story stuff that give you some but not much good PvE stats on those. Maybe exotic accessories would be better as you figure out what next for you.

Back Item : You can craft really cheap exotic back item, its probably the best step for new players. Ascended back item are usually a moderately hard item to get for new players. Some can cost several hundred gold to craft, the cheapest would be Mawdrey. It can take a long time to craft but most of the stuff you need to some little crafting everyday and some questing so its probably the back item that most casual or new player prefer.

Thanks! For some reason I thought mystic coins were account bound, but you’re right, they’re easily available on the TP. Good to know.

Legendaries are a non-issue for me, since from what I’ve read those require 100% map completion, and map completion includes WvW which I have zero interest in. Literally my only concern about legendaries is that if I somehow got a precursor in the near future, I don’t yet have enough gold pay the posting fee to post it on the TP at the prices I saw.

I do plan to mix soldiers armor with berserker; I’ve read the latter is demanded in dungeons, but extra vit/toughness certainly helps in the open world, and is just as good as berserker for those world boss dailies we often see, since apparently world bosses are immune to crits. Medium term goal would be to have a full set of berserker, with about half a set of soldiers gear for swapping. My main character is a warrior, if that matters.

Crafting gear is not on the table for new players. The crafting system in this game is terrible. There’s no way a new player will be able to craft anything useful until long after hitting 80. If ever – I’ve enjoyed crafting in other MMOs but I’m not entirely sure it’s worth the bother in this game. I guess I’ll see what the TP has for back pieces. My current t2 crafted (+4 power +3 precision, woo!) is obviously inadequate. I was thinking of going with the green back piece from near the end of the level 80 personal story (if the wiki is accurate), but I’m not sure I’ll get that far either thanks to that Mouth of Zhaitan in Estate of Decay…

I am interested in doing fractals, but my sense of the GW2 endgame is that fractals are a step beyond the regular dungeons, so presumably exotic rings or ascended via laurels would be the way to go to start with.

Didn’t know guild missions existed or had relevance for gear – thanks! I need to find a real guild (i.e. not my personal extra bank space guild) anyway for dungeons.

My advice is to not waste laurels with ascended rings, specially if you have some kind of interest towards Fractals. If you end up doing those often later on, they will drop like crazy.

The biggest question is, what are you going to do when you’ve powerlevelled to 80 and missed the best part of the game?

Similar question but different leveling path. I am new to the game as well. I have a lvl 44 ranger (and an 18 elementalist I am tinkering with). I have only quested in all the starter zones (did storyline quests, some crafting). Where to next? Have not done any dungeons. Not sure how easy it will be for a ranger (not a huntard – I do know how to play the class in a group lol) who is not lvl 80 to get into a group. But I am not sure what the best path is. I do not mind the journey of questing, esp. a new game. Should I quest all the 15-25 zones, etc or just complete zone totally now (e.g., my racial zone) and later complete all the others for points, bonuses, etc? What is the "normal’ path for a newbie? Thanx

LadyHawk.5319:

Similar question but different leveling path. I am new to the game as well. I have a lvl 44 ranger (and an 18 elementalist I am tinkering with). I have only quested in all the starter zones (did storyline quests, some crafting). Where to next? Have not done any dungeons. Not sure how easy it will be for a ranger (not a huntard – I do know how to play the class in a group lol) who is not lvl 80 to get into a group. But I am not sure what the best path is. I do not mind the journey of questing, esp. a new game. Should I quest all the 15-25 zones, etc or just complete zone totally now (e.g., my racial zone) and later complete all the others for points, bonuses, etc? What is the "normal’ path for a newbie? Thanx

Don’t overthink it. There is good or bad answer there. You can complete all started zone, explore and only do quest that looks fun, do pvp, do EotM, craft, etc Those are all equally good answer to level up. Some are quicker, but that shouldn’t be an issue for you until your 3rd or 4th character when you may want to optimize you leveling of alts. Until then, do what you prefer to enjoy the game while levelin up your character. There is normal path for a newbie, there several different path.

For dungeon it depend. Either contact the dungeon mentor guild (a sticky in dungeon forum if I remember) or ask a guildmate of yours to show you dungeon. If you don’t want or can’t do neither then you should maybe wait until you are level 80 before going into dungeon.

There is no “normal path” as far as I’m aware – since everything you do pretty much can give you XP, people have different ways of leveling.

Completing a zone gives you rewards (two zone level appropriate pieces of gear, a transmutation charge OR a black lion chest key and some crafting mats), which is nice. It’s also fine if you get tired of the place and go wander around the other races’ starting zones instead, sometimes a change of scenery is fun.

For dungeons you can try running story mode – it’s easier than explorable (which is what most people run for gold/tokens) but a bump above open world so you’ll start getting an idea how it goes. Just be careful to either join a group that says “all welcome” or make your own and say you’re under level 80, as some people prefer running with 80s only to make it faster. That way you’ll weed out impatient people/jerks and be able to have a nice time.

Cool. Thank you for the guidance!

jackaljag.8637:

There is no “normal path” as far as I’m aware – since everything you do pretty much can give you XP, people have different ways of leveling.

Completing a zone gives you rewards (two zone level appropriate pieces of gear, a transmutation charge OR a black lion chest key and some crafting mats), which is nice. It’s also fine if you get tired of the place and go wander around the other races’ starting zones instead, sometimes a change of scenery is fun.

For dungeons you can try running story mode – it’s easier than explorable (which is what most people run for gold/tokens) but a bump above open world so you’ll start getting an idea how it goes. Just be careful to either join a group that says “all welcome” or make your own and say you’re under level 80, as some people prefer running with 80s only to make it faster. That way you’ll weed out impatient people/jerks and be able to have a nice time.

If that helps, this is what i did. Exploring the map. Wanted to do Dungeons but i didn’t feel comfortable with that idea being a newbie, so decided to get some experience on my own. Later on tried the story modes of each one and eventually at some point i went for the explorable paths, and then with the practice you end up getting used to it. Try to join to a friendly guild who can show you some of the teamwork content, it always helps

LadyHawk.5319:

Similar question but different leveling path. I am new to the game as well. I have a lvl 44 ranger (and an 18 elementalist I am tinkering with). I have only quested in all the starter zones (did storyline quests, some crafting). Where to next? Have not done any dungeons. Not sure how easy it will be for a ranger (not a huntard – I do know how to play the class in a group lol) who is not lvl 80 to get into a group. But I am not sure what the best path is. I do not mind the journey of questing, esp. a new game. Should I quest all the 15-25 zones, etc or just complete zone totally now (e.g., my racial zone) and later complete all the others for points, bonuses, etc? What is the "normal’ path for a newbie? Thanx

For your first character i would highly suggest the “normal path” being exploring the world. Not just for exp but GW2 is a very nice looking game you will come across some very breathtaking sights and if luck even some easter eggs. Some of the events are fun to do and you can make some friends doing such stuff. But thats not all, doing that will help you learn some very important mechanics of PvE that is how to dodge, when to dodge, how to best use your skills, how to kite, learn some attacks from mobs that are propagated throughout the game etc etc. These skills really come in handy late game and if someone powerlevels they will often miss out on them. Then there is your personal story which can be engaging. And crafting is upto you, i would recommend following a guide if you have the money for it so as to optimize your level output. If you need a change of pace you can always try story mode of lower level dungeons. Start with AC and move up from there. But doing all of this you will hit 80 soon enough. Once you are there a whole lot of possibilities open up. If you need in game help you can always ping me.

Worblehat.8697:

Thanks!….
but I’m not sure I’ll get that far either thanks to that Mouth of Zhaitan in Estate of Decay…
.

Np, you are welcome. Post to lfg if you are having trouble with a story mission and as ive told others if im online you can ping me and ill come help you out

LadyHawk.5319:

Similar question but different leveling path. I am new to the game as well. I have a lvl 44 ranger (and an 18 elementalist I am tinkering with). I have only quested in all the starter zones (did storyline quests, some crafting). Where to next? Have not done any dungeons. Not sure how easy it will be for a ranger (not a huntard – I do know how to play the class in a group lol) who is not lvl 80 to get into a group. But I am not sure what the best path is. I do not mind the journey of questing, esp. a new game. Should I quest all the 15-25 zones, etc or just complete zone totally now (e.g., my racial zone) and later complete all the others for points, bonuses, etc? What is the "normal’ path for a newbie? Thanx

For what it’s worth, my leveling path was driven entirely by the wiki (or traits panel, if you prefer that interface). Look at the traits, figure out which ones you want, and which ones happen to be near-ish to traits you want. That determines what zone to focus on in a given level range. For my warrior, that meant Gendarran Fields and Harathi Hinterlands; an initial look at my guardian suggests more of a focus on the Ascalon zones. No idea what a ranger would prefer. Any zone in your level range will give a trait for 100% completion, at least. People often call out the event champions that give the other traits, so keep an eye on map chat.

A quick detour to Kessex Hills to hit the bandit cave in Earthlord’s Gap would be worthwhile as well – that’s the lowest level method of trait acquisition. There’s also a trait in Diessa Plateau, but it’s very involved. Pretty neat if there are enough people to complete it, but not something one can count on happening.