Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, my friend an I are new to Guild Wars, and we’ve come to the point where we don’t lvl up anymore in our home area unless we grind for HOURS. Neither of us can go on to our personal stories unless we help each other.

We’re trying to do quests in another starting area. How do we start one? I can’t find any character to talk to in game that will prompt us to start them???

Go to the city connected to your starting zone. Take the purple asura gate to lions’ arch. take another asura gate (they’re all in one hub) to another city. From that city, go to the attached starting zone.

There are 5 starter zones, with level 1-15 content, one for each race. You can probably do fine just by exploring two of them and hopping back and forth to keep up with the content, but obviously you can go through all of them if you want.

You won’t get “quests” in another starting zone, not the kind that are prompted. Your personal story is the only questline you’ll really follow like that, and you only get the one (with some branching paths of course). Dynamic events that NPCs can sometimes point you to will always stay within the same zone. Exploration is really up to you to do at your own pace.

cpg.7140:

Go to the city connected to your starting zone. Take the purple asura gate to lions’ arch. take another asura gate (they’re all in one hub) to another city. From that city, go to the attached starting zone.

There are 5 starter zones, with level 1-15 content, one for each race. You can probably do fine just by exploring two of them and hopping back and forth to keep up with the content, but obviously you can go through all of them if you want.

We got to the other areas…We just don’t know where to go once there to start that area’s starting quests. Can’t find a person to talk to start the quests.

You don’t start quests, since in GW2 there’s no such thing. If you’re looking for levels, then cpg’s advice is good, just roam and explore, do events that you find since they give good experience. If you completely map a zone, you should have gained around 3 levels.

Right, just go to any renown heart (yellow heart) and do the things they ask. Go whereever you want. You only get directed to a little bit in the very beginning, to kick you off, but otherwise exploration is very much self-directed.

You can talk to scouts (telescope icon) to get a feel for what matters in each area and they’ll show you nearby hearts on the map. But that’s not really direction so much as context.

Once you get near the hearts, you will see the directions for completing it on the right hand of your screen. Follow those instructions until the bar at the bottom of the info fills up. The heart will then change from empty to “colored in”, which means it is complete. If you go back to the heart NPC after you’re done, you can buy stuff from them with karma points, or sell stuff to them (i.e. trophies from kills).

I know it takes a while to get the hang of it. Keep asking questions! Look in the stickies above for more info as well and read through a few pages of the forums.

The important point here is that outside of the Personal Story GW2 doesn’t have quests.

There are renowned hearts (yellow heart symbol) which give you tasks to do in return for gold, karma and XP. You don’t need to talk to an NPC to start them, as soon as you’re in the area a pop-up on screen will tell you what to do. (You can also talk to the NPC for more information.)

But what you really want to be doing is Dynamic Events. These show up on screen and on the map in orange and they give more XP, more gold/loot and possibly more karma (I’ve never kept track of that). They function a lot like quests, but they start and continue whether you (or anyone else) are participating or not. You can drop in and out at any point and will be rewarded for your participation, so don’t worry if it’s already part way through. But do stick around or follow the NPCs afterwards because often there will be another one following it.

Also pretty much everything else gives XP too – exploring the map (including cities), gathering crafting materials, crafting. Killing random monsters too but you should never be at a point where your only option for XP is to kill random enemies and if you are doing that then you’re probably missing out on something better.

Danikat.8537:

The important point here is that outside of the Personal Story GW2 doesn’t have quests.

There are renowned hearts (yellow heart symbol) which give you tasks to do in return for gold, karma and XP. You don’t need to talk to an NPC to start them, as soon as you’re in the area a pop-up on screen will tell you what to do. (You can also talk to the NPC for more information.)

But what you really want to be doing is Dynamic Events. These show up on screen and on the map in orange and they give more XP, more gold/loot and possibly more karma (I’ve never kept track of that). They function a lot like quests, but they start and continue whether you (or anyone else) are participating or not. You can drop in and out at any point and will be rewarded for your participation, so don’t worry if it’s already part way through. But do stick around or follow the NPCs afterwards because often there will be another one following it.

Also pretty much everything else gives XP too – exploring the map (including cities), gathering crafting materials, crafting. Killing random monsters too but you should never be at a point where your only option for XP is to kill random enemies and if you are doing that then you’re probably missing out on something better.

Is there any “sure way” to find dynamic events? Or are they COMPLETELY random? I’ve done one or two but never really understood how they came to be.

There are a variety of ways they can start. Some are on a timer, some are triggered by a player talking to a particular NPC (who will have an orange star burst over their head), some follow on from other events or something else happening in the area and some seem to be completely random. In some cases it’s a mix of things – after the event ends a timer starts and at the end of it an NPC becomes a trigger to re-start the event, then it stays like that until a player starts up.

If there’s a specific event you want to see you can look it up on the wiki and see how it starts. For some of the more popular timed ones (like the world bosses) there are websites that track when they will be up.

But for most of them it’s effectively random because it’d be virtually impossible to keep track of everything going on in the zone in order to know when one is going to start. The best option is to keep a look out and ask in map chat if any events are up, or going to be starting soon.

Eventually, after you’ve played the game a while, you’ll learn where the dynamic events are, when they are likely to start etc.
That will be the time for you to quit playing because the game’s finished.

Treat GW2 like the real world – just go out and explore – see what happens and where it takes you.

If you want real adventure though – go into WvW at prime time and ask in map chat what to do.

Every dynamic event has a trigger. Sometimes it is a certain amount of time that must have passed since the last time, sometimes you need to talk to someone. sometime a certain other event has to be done successfully or even not successfully. sometimes it is even random (a window of time it starts randomly in).

For many important events people found out the specific trigger. And there are even websites that track them down.

Important events are world events, but also nowadays a lot of events that involves killing a champion.

The best way is to not worry bout that now. Just walk around, kill stuff, do renown hearts. skillchallenges. watch vista’s and unlock points of interest and waypoints. All give experience. If you see an event on the way, then please do it. Events are there to make your experience of an area different each time you go there, so best is to let yourself be surprised.

If you want to level more then you can also gather raw materials and craft armor, weapons, food, jewels, etc. both the gathering as the crafting will also give you experience and you will level up.

Maybe this will help:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Explorable_area

There is a table on this page that links to the wiki page for ALL exploitable areas in the game that is broken down by suggested level and grouped by Tyrian geographic areas that lots of Achievements specify (i.e. Krytan Killer – Kill 50 enemies in Kryta).

Just click on the area name in that table and just about EVERY piece of information about that zone is available. A nice map, list of NPCs,, renown hearts, event chains in the zone, etc. VERY useful page (even for those that are familiar with most zones).

Also, keep in mind that as long as you are not dead or in combat, you can use the PvP or WvW icons in the upper left to travel to PvP areas….and then to Lions Arch free of charge. From there you can reach any of the 5 race cities.