Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone, I’m brand new to GW2 and loving the game so far. I had a couple questions and hope i’m posting this in the right spot. First, I’m a warrior and I picked armorsmith for my crafting skill, what is the best way to level it? So far all the recipes I have show ingredients I haven’t seen. Second, in regards to armor and crafting, is crafting superior or should I rely on drops? (guess that one should have went first) anyways thanks everyone and I hope to see you online! Also feel free to post any new player help you think will be useful, i’m always ready for help

Hi! Welcome to wonderful world of GW2!

To level crafting professions, you want to craft armor parts for your crafting level and then craft the available runes… then use the discover option and combine them for new recipes. If you run out of options, try just crafting anything that gives you xp (preferably the orange ones if they are available) until the next group of recipes are unlocked. If you don’t have the materials, just explore, kill stuff, do events, and you will get gear that you can salvage for materials… or sometimes you will get the materials themselves. You can also select “deposit all materials” to send them straight into your storage bank and you can use them for crafting without needing to withdraw them.

Edit- Sorry, forgot to mention gathering wood, food and metal.

Welcome to GW2! While crafting does give a good amount of exp, it costs a good amount of gold, so I wouldn’t dabble in it at the start. The game pre-expansion maps are easy enough that you won’t need the highest possible quality of gear, and buying equipment from level-appropriate heart vendors should be enough, along with random drops. I suggest gathering everything you see (mining/trees/plants) and selling/salvaging any piece of equipment that you get but can’t use. Having max crafting is really only useful when you hit 80 and start looking at ascended quality gear, so you can put it off until then.

For crafting I’d recommend watching a Youtube guide explaining it as it can be a little difficult to explain and I think a visual would help a lot more. No need to watch a lengthy one, just a quick and easy video should do the trick.

My advice is to save your L80 Boost until you have leveled one or two characters to 80 naturally.

If you have already used it, I suggest you park that character and level one or two characters naturally, so you can take advantage of the tutorial tips and the level-up rewards.

If you are interested in story, I suggest you do the Core Tyria Personal Story first, save up Gold (or use cash) to purchase Living World Season Two and play that next, then play the Heart of Thorns Story, and then use Gold (or cash) to acquire the Living World Season 3 Episodes you will need to unlock.

Welcome to Tyria, and good luck.

Yea my first character I got by with drops and heart karma vendor items.

To power level your crafting skills, I would strongly suggest looking at a crafting guide like http://gw2crafts.net. That site will auto calculate the cheapest way to get from 0 to 400 and 400 to 500 for you. The materials will be found out in the world as you progress from level 1 to level 80, which each material found in its corresponding level map – i.e., mithril and orichalcum are going to be found in level 80 maps, not a level 30 map.

Personally, I suggest just leveling your first character to 60-70 before bothering with the crafting. This will give you enough time to gather most of the materials you’ll need to max your crafting out. Once you do start to craft, make sure you get the crafting booster from the bartender in the guild hall – it will cut your leveling time quite substantially.

Edit: I have maxed all 9 crafting professions – yes, even scribe – using this method.

Crafting guides work well if you want to quickly level your crafting like what the above poster has linked.

Tbh, I didn’t bother crafting anything until I was lvl 80. What randomly drops, plus what you get from the personal story and from leveling should get you through just fine.