Guild Wars 2

Greetings,

I’ve recently gotten back into GW2 and I need help getting to the usual.

So far, I’ve upgraded my rev class to 80, and now working on the main story, but there are new features I don’t know how to use.

Since I’m lvl 80 now, I don’t really understand how the mastery system works. I’ve received one earlier for completing a part of the story, but I don’t really know its use. Both of them are locked, but for Central Tyria I have 18 and heart of maguuma I have none.

Next thing, I’ve already completed the main storyline with another character a long time ago, and I don’t really feel like doing it again for my current main. Is there a way to get to the HoT story line?

One last thing, I heard there’s a new story to GW, Rising Flames? Is that for free or is that a DLC that needs to be purchased?

Anyways, I’d appreciate any help I can get from this, again, thank you !

Here is the wiki article explaining the mastery system.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mastery

You don’t have to complete the core game personal story to start the HoT story line. Just open your story journal from your hero panel and select the Heart of Thorns story. You will start the story in the Silversastes and then continue on to the HoT maps.

Rising Flames is episode 2 of living world season 3. All you have to do is log in when an episode is active and before the next one and it unlocks for free.

Here’s the Wiki article on the Story Journal and how the different Stories are accessed:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Story_Journal

Good luck.

- GW2 Living Story is the content added to the game on a regular basis. The season 1 was all one time content so you can’t access it. But season 2 and 3 you can access it when you want. If you log in the game even 1 sec, you will unlock the current episode. If you never log in during one episode then you won’t have access to it and you need to pay gem (from cash or in-game gold) to get it. But they usually cost 2-3$ each if you missed them. So if you log in now you will have Rising Flames for free, but you probably lack the episode 1.

- The mastery system work this way. It’s divided between Tyria and Magguma. You can work on your Tyria masteries when in Tyria (base game) and you Magguma masteries when in Magguma (expansion/living story). You only need to go into your mastery menu and select which mastery you want to train. The game select one automatically you can change it if you prefer a particular mastery first. From that point every time you gain xp in the game from whatever source you will fill your mastery xp bar. Once you reach the amount of xp needed for that mastery you then need to spend Mastery Points to unlock it and be able to use it. If you don’t have the points you can still select another mastery and train that one until you have enough mastery points to unlock your first trained mastery.

- If you go into your hero panel/achievement, you can see green or orange star. The orange one mean that there is achievement in there you can complete you earn a Tyria Mastery point and the green one is for Magguma Mastery Point. You have more Mastery Point in-game that you need to unlock every mastery. So you can choose to ignore some mastery point that you find boring or too difficult to get.

Thank you guys so much for the help. This community makes the game a ton better

I, too, am returning after a year. I had started a guild, but it only reached level 2. It appears that favor is required to build it further, but how can it generate favor if it doesn’t have access to guild missions?

How/where can you get mastery points in/for Tyria mastery lines?

Here is a list of central Tyria mastery points you can earn as well as the ones for HoT.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mastery_point_unlocks

Note the mastery points related to the core personal story, marked as “Hero” can only be done once per account (just like all mastery points). For example if you do one of the options for “A Friend Indeed” you can’t do it again on another character selecting a different option and get an additional mastery point. I mention that as it has confused a few people.

You can do some guild missions like Guild Bounty and some PvP ones to earn favor from the start. I wasn’t sure so I checked my personal bank guild and they are unlocked. Just go to the guild mission panel and select for example “Guild Bounty” and launch it. It shows the ones you have unlocked. As you earn more favor you can unlock more guild missions.

I also similarly came back from a long break that I took sometime right after HoT released. At the time I was disappointed with the new content and kind of habituated to the old one that I rarely found any incentive to explore (or re-explore rather, since I managed to attain world completion twice and that in and of itself was a real struggle for me because of time/effort investment, plus I suck at jumps and struggled with a few HPs that shall not be mentioned here) and so I found it all rather bleached of any reason or purpose, and most of the maps and regions such as the lowbie leveling zones seemed kind of dull and lackluster in comparison to how it used to be. Seeming just to add salt to the wound, the new content as I perceived it then felt kind of ridiculous and not something I would ever find myself doing. I mean gliding, what’s the point? And masteries, just how exactly does that help me? The only thing I remember that piqued my interest at the time (and I guess the main reason I eventually caved and decided that I really ought to upgrade once I did return from haitus, as it made me realize it really would be necessary if I wanted to be taken seriously in groups, for example my inability to attain the cap on AR without access to a stable income or attuned equipment which actually felt like a significant handicap believe me) was the elite specializations for the classes, especially Berserker as the warrior upgrade since it was touted at the time that theoretically it would double your dps output, which I didnt really believe at the time. I am glad I transitioned to the new content now, actually. It’s actually more exhaustive and time-intensive then I would have believed possible, and though I might still retain qualms about the majority of it there is no doubt that the devs succeeded in what they had intended to do at least. By that I mean, the new content actually expands the end-game experience in a way that I previously would not have thought possible, at the same time it’s actually more challenging in more ways than I can name. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not as I am frustrated occasionally with some of the mobs including a handful of champs/vets as well as the occasional adventure that is nearly impossible for me to compete for gold without multiple failed attempts despite it being perceived by most ppl as an easy one to achieve gold in, but I guess the bottom line is that it’s challenging and if nothing else introduces various mechanics that carefully conceal some brilliantly devised time sinks that you really won’t identify as such until much later. Another point on which I feel that I’m obligated to share concerns the new legendaries. Just a little background on the subject at hand: while I suppose that I consider myself as technically having six legendaries (the case of Eternity subsists as ever on shaky ground, I would say), I haven’t used two of their respective skins in what feels like years. Maybe it’s just me but I could never wrap my head around any of the newer generation of legendary weps.. I mean most of them looked kinda lame or unappealing to me and still do. I mean who needs the aquatic wep anyway? But then I saw Eureka, and while this was at least a month since I was learning the ropes all over again with the new HoT content, it gave me that extra push again that I sorely needed to start getting my feet wet. I’m still currently working on getting my hands on it atm if nothing but for that stunning aesthetics (I mean I could craft a dozen ascended maces instead in the matter of minutes if I wanted to honestly) but i have to say for the first time in so long it feels like a step in the right direction, since they actually came out with a skin that appealed to me. I mean you might have a different experience with all this, but it’s one point of view. Most people I know are also going towards that legendary backpiece, though I’m honestly relieved I’m not one of them. I mean it just seems like a trumped-up version of the shiny fractal capacitor, who cares if you can cycle through the stats on it? Aside from my colorful and jaded opinion though, the new mechanics introduced actually mesh well with the content and the areas of interest as well. I have to admit that my preconception of gliding was actually misplaced; I mean it’s enjoyable when you’re not forced to jump through hoops mid-flight or something which thankfully doesn’t happen all too often, plus it actually serves some purpose other than the scenic view and relatively leisure comfort (I mean when you don’t have mobs sniping at you and occasionally incapacitating you) which like I said works well with the new content introduced as well.

Ok, it wouldn’t let me include this in my main post so I’ll just tack on to it here. I also had some tips I wanted to share that I would have wanted someone to share with me when I was kinda fresh and new to the scene and still trying to figure out HoT content as I went along when I similarly returned from my break as well, I’ll add on more to this later once I figure out what exactly I wanted to say. Anyway I think the first thing you ought to do is figure out how old your account really is, what I mean by that is that you have a char who is at least three years of age since their inception, then you are in luck since you would be able to receive one of those Teleport to friend things that can help you traverse unknown areas or navigate to previously undiscovered regions, the downside of course is that they are very hard to acquire otherwise so I would suggest that you hang onto them. I would recommend also that you look at the regions or areas of interest that currently serve as hotspots for various reasons, in this case it would be Auric basin and the DS meta map in particular as they are both useful in exp grind and farm and AB at least plays a pivotal part in the current gold-making schema, which as usual involves an exploit in some game mechanic or another. I would honestly expect it to be nerfed sometime soon since almost everyone is aware of it by now, but check it out since its more lucrative as it is now then most other meta chains on the new maps. The thing about the MM functionality on Auric basin is that it allows you to also join other maps that are close to completion in the culminating meta event, which rewards a large chunk of mastery exp as well. I just coincidentally figured that out as well while I was playing around with it but for such a short duration as it is, if you successfully manage to complete it more than once its actually better exp farm than even DS, even if your total is like 4% participation at the end you should still get the same exp for meta completion. The chest farm is as usual tedious and mind-numbing as grinds usually are, I tried it once or twice but honestly i have other equally mind-numbing ways of farming gold that generate even more profit for me. You can see the impact of this on the economy too, ecto prices are consistently dropping and then rising up again to a stable level, and to some extension I guess dust prices are as well since they’re correlated to each other.

The second piece of advise would be to be aware of what currencies and items are offered in each map region so that you can decide which one you want to focus more of your attention towards, as that can save you a lot of time and effort in the long run. Most of the new ascended mats specific to each zone are largely only used for legendary crafting, though I might be wrong. For instance, noxious pods in DS drop not only crystalline ore, but also various other currencies found only in other regions. In contrast the relevant containers in other Maguuma areas only drop region-specific ascended mats, which actually places more importance on DS if you want to opt for a more balanced approach at the start. However, the understandably demanding amounts of each mats for legendary crafting in particular would eventually force you to start tackling each region individually, and keep in mind that VB is a special case because no vendors in that region currently sell any of the container keys you would need to acquire the mats. Therefore event grinding is basically a necessity there, so be aware of this special case. Also the hero’s chests that drop from each region after succesfull completion of their pertinent metas offer an additional supply of these aforementioned container tools that should not be forgotten either. With MM as it stands currently, joining other instances of the same map region should generally reset all the chests/containers as well, though not sure if this was intended. Similarly the region-specific nodes in Bloodstone fen will also reset when using this method, though the daily cap would still be in effect of course. Also be aware of DR that persists when farming the same region of a map or just the map as a whole. When attempting meta chains from my understanding they count as a chain of individual events which can rack up DR quite quickly. Thankfully this for the most part is character-based so you should be able to make use of this fact for specific chains such as the one in Bloodstone fen. That’s enough for now