Guild Wars 2

Hi, I am completely new to GW2 and to be honest my experience in game so far has been a bit daunting, it seems like there are some key elements I may be missing, so far I have just been following my story quests and clearing quest hubs / empty hearts and trying to locate all vistas ETC

However I am 100% clueless when it comes to PvP, I have tried to join wvw but it was always empty and I had no idea what to do, I even got whooped by the NPC’s there(A wolf killed me.. lol) but didn’t see any other players.

I am only level 10 right now but the skills and abilities seem pretty lacking for my profession(Thief) and I dont know where to upgrade my weapons or gear(So far vendors have had worse gear then I have looted)

Basically I just need an overview of what I should be doing in game, daily quests? Dungeons? How do I get into a pvp situation?

TLDR What do you do when you log in daily? What should the goals of a new player be? What pitfalls should I try to avoid? How do I hop into pvp ??

Thanks!!

I found that running around a zone doing random stuff actually works fairly well.
Pay attention to the orange markers for Dynamic Events, they’re usually the most fun and give good experience/loot. Also buy the cheapest gathering tools and mine/chop/gather every node you find on your path.

I’m not very familiar with the Thief, only have a low-level alt, but I think the shortbow has good abilities for attacking multiple mobs, use that in dynamic events when lots of players are competing for the kills. Keep it as the 2nd weapon set always.
For single targets, just experiment with the various weapon combos you can make. Practice dodging, it’s vital to staying alive and winning fights.

In general, I can tell you that most classes feel a bit underwhelming at low levels, but that improves by level 30 when you get an elite skill and at 40, most classes really start to roll.

The starter zones are the best place to fool around testing everything. Once you hit the level 15-25 zones, things get serious.

EDIT: The daily achievement gives good experience and karma, look on your hero screen (H) under Achievements, the top one is the daily. It’s worth going a bit out of your way to complete this every day that you’re playing.

I’m no PvP’er, so can’t help you with that. I do hear that while you get leveled to 80, you still lack powerful traits of higher level characters, making you weaker than most.

I would suggest not WvWing until you’re at least level 30 so that you have access to more skills.

Crafting can actually be really good exp, but you probably won’t be able to mass level from it right now. I remember on one character I was like level 69 and had a crafting session and came out level 76 or something. I would suggest to harvest nodes you see. Rich mine veins are nice cause they give you more materials.

I suggest spending 10 silver to buy the trait book as soon as you can. You can find them at class trainers in towns. Their icon should be a book.

What I would do on leveling characters is to generally do the story missions until the story missions are higher level than me. Then I would go to a zone in my level range and 100% complete it by getting all the points of interests/waypoints/vistas/hearts/skill point challenges. Then after that I would go back to my story. Then again once the story mission was higher than me I would go to a different zone and 100% complete that.

Events are a pretty good way to get experience. Not only that but often you can complete an event and get credit for a nearby heart quest at the same time. This is really the best way to complete hearts.

If you find blue or green rarity items you won’t use just sell them at a vendor (or alternatively salvage them, but I don’t really do that except on white rarity gear). It’s not worth the time to try to sell them on the trade post and often you’ll actually make less money because of the listing fee.

I strongly suggest you put your thief aside and create another character such as guardian or warrior to begin with.. Even 295 hours + of gametime … being a thief in PVE can be challenging ..

You will have a blast leveling a warrio or guardian and will feel immortal .. once you get used to how things work then also level your thief,

I have 5 characters and i am leveling them all at once.. there is no point in rushing to reach lvl 80

WvW once you spawn the first thing u wanna do is type in chat … Were should i go .. usually there will be guilds or commanders that will tell you were to meet em and then you just follow the group…

Also you can chat looking for group in WvW and someone may pick you up.

This game is awesome and as time comes you will get used to it .. make sure to buy each crafting piece and equipe it and gather everything u see : )

cheers

Ren.7539:

I strongly suggest you put your thief aside and create another character such as guardian or warrior to begin with.. Even 295 hours + of gametime … being a thief in PVE can be challenging ..

You will have a blast leveling a warrio or guardian and will feel immortal .. once you get used to how things work then also level your thief,

I have 5 characters and i am leveling them all at once.. there is no point in rushing to reach lvl 80

^^ This. Thief is a tough one to start on. I would add that a ranger also has very good survivability, and you will have a pet to take some heat. Its a great class for exploring the world and learning the game. Play on of these other classes for 10-20+ levels until you learn the game some more, then try that thief.

It seems like the gameplay changes every 10 levels or so, more or less. 1-10 is gravy-sauce. I think 10-20 maybe the hardest ones, because you don’t have many trait or skill points yet.

I’m new as well…thanks to everyone who posted these great suggestions! Coming from another MMO that does things way way differently, this world is a bit strange and (like the OP said) daunting. But it’s a beautiful world with so many awesome possibilities. Can’t wait to get home tonight and log in!

Regarding finding gear, you have 2 options. You can either craft your own gear (which tends to be better than the drops you normally get) or you can purchase from the trading post (the scale symbols on your map indicates a trading post).

The benefits to crafting is you also get a good amount of exp from it and you can craft gear that is tailored to the stats you want. The bad thing about crafting is finding all the rare components needed, the rare ones can get expensive if you buy them from the trading post.

At low levels, the prices for gear are quite cheap on the trading post and you should be able to afford a full set of upgrades every 10-15 levels. Early on, it should be easy to find gear with the stats you want, though the market does fluctuate.

Thanks everyone for the responses!!! These tips have helped me get some more enjoyment and also have given me some goals to work for,

DEAR GOD YOU WERE RIGHT…. just made a warrior and its level 2 and hits harder then the thief at level 14….. YIKES!!! Deff chose the wrong class for a beginner

Sorry to double post, but quick question, I have about 900 karma on my Thief, is there anything I can do with it or purchase that I could give to my new character?(Warrior)

They are both the same race. Thanks!

Karma is soulbound (bound to a certain character). You could try purchasing cooking materials from heart vendors or karma vendors in the city, perhaps. Either way, you get 4500 karma a day from doing daily achievements, so don’t stress.

Recipies are also not soulbound, so if you find a suitable one at a karma vendor it is an option.

If you want to get into pvp, you wont have to worry about your pve level or skills or traits, since when you get to the pvp map, you will have all skills unlocked and all70 trait points available to use as you see fit. And the thief class is one of the better pvp classes, or so ive read. As far as wvw, like other posters have said, you should at least wait until 30 so you can have a full utility skillset going.
Also, try not to get dependent on waypoints for travel. The cost per waypoint goes up as your level increases, and can be a big gold drain if you arent careful about it.

As for the thief/warrior preference, they both have their upsides(only two classes ive leveled to 80) and can be very fun once you put in some time to unlock skills.

When I started playing, my goals were to get 100% completion on my starter zone. That took up a good amount of time. There’s also a nice reward at the end when you do. If you go this route and complete your starter zone, you can hop to a level +15 zone or another race’s starter zone and repeat.

One thing I picked up as a beginner is to sell junk to vendors. There’s a button for it at the lower corner. Also, deposit all your collectables in your inventory. There’s a button in the inventory window to do this. Inventory space usually gets filled quickly during play time.

If you plan to craft as a way to level then I would suggest waiting until around 60 to work on it. Reasoning is that by the time you’re that level hopefully you’ll have a nice stash of craft mats in your Collectibles, provided you haven’t been selling them for quick coin. So its less you have to buy and waste coin on.

My next reason is that the exp you gain is percentage base. For example at level 10 if you were to discover a recipe and it gave you 5% which was 15exp as opposed to at 60 and you discovered that same recipe you would still get 5% but the exp would be 150 instead. The exp gain scales to your level. Now the numbers I threw out aren’t real and I just used easy rounded numbers.

If you’re in a rush to reach 80 then the last 20 or so levels might take the longest simply from the fact that you need to accumulate more exp to level just once.

However if you’re in no rush to hit 80 and don’t mind spending a bit of coin here and there, leveling you’re crafting as you go is great as a way to boost you up that level or 2 that you needed for your personal story.

As for class go with what you like. I started this game as a newbie a week after launch, never played GW1, all I knew about the game were the names of races and a sketchy idea of what professions there were. I chose a necromancer as my starter and I don’t regret it once. I became a minion master with my stats and traits primarily in Power/Toughness/Vitality. Its all in how you play any class.

Also 1 piece of advice no matter what class you are kiting and knowing when to dodge are some of the most important skills to have. Doesn’t matter if you’re a guardian with tough and vit out of the wazoo, doing those 2 things will keep you alive longer so you can keep fighting and prevent prolonging fights that don’t need to be prolonged because everyone dieing and the boss reset or you are downed and people try to revive you but die in the process.