Guild Wars 2

Hey so I bought gw2 like 2-3+ years ago and never got past 30. Came back recently and have leveled my Mesmer up into the 40s, but I had birthday boosters up to level 20 so I made a warrior too. On my Mesmer I’ve been 100%ing maps the entire time I think I’ve only jumped in a dungeon once. My question is mainly: am I going to have to 100% everything on every character or can I do It on my Mesmer and just level my warrior other ways? What kind of effect is that going to have on my warrior if I decide to main that instead of my Mesmer in the future?

You can level your character in any way you desire. No one way is the only way preferred. It’s best, though, to level, more or less, naturally (sans instant Level Boosts) so that you learn how to play that Profession.

You will hit L80 long before you 100% every map in the game (on a particular character), just so you know.

Welcome return, and good luck.

I mean I think someone was telling me legendaries and other stuff are gated behind 100%ing all of the maps? Is it something most people do on every character or just once or twice?

One component of a legendary is the Gift of Exploration. Each time one of your characters does full world completion (ie all the pois, wps, hps, hearts, and vistas in all the core maps — wvw and HoT maps don’t count, nor do Silverwastes or Dry Top) you get two of the Gifts, account bound. So do it once, you can make two legendaries.

This is not the same as area completions — those rely on unfogging all the white-name areas of the maps, including those spots that contain none of the world completion things, but are only achieves, not needed for legendaries unless a precursor collection item happens to be in one of them.

Check Lulle’s sticky at the top of this forum section for a very handy guide to efficient map completion. You do need gliding to make full use of it.

Core map conpletion is only needed for the old legendaries. The newer ones only require you to clear each HoT map.

Note that you do not need Legendary gear. Ascended is equally good. Legendaries are flashier and allow stat swapping on the fly, but are otherwise the same statwise.

As stated above, it’s recommended you level up conventionally on your first toon to learn the basics. Everything you do will grant XP, so don’t worry about it. The levelling up experience is a great part of the game for new players, and there is plenty to explore and discover.

Welcome to GW2.

Thanks guys I will continue to do everything on my Mesmer then and not worry about it so much on my warrior.

I’m probably going to do everything I can on the base game before buying the expansion and getting a boost. Thanks for your help.

Not exploring on your warrior might be annoying sometimes, because if you want to go to a place and don’t have the nearest waypoint unlocked you’ll have to run there. But unlocking everything just in case you need it later on seems rather counter-intuitive, especially since it’s very rare that you’ll have a time limit to do it.

And a lot of things are account-wide so you could always switch back to your mesmer if you didn’t want to take your warrior into an area.

I’ve got some level 80 characters who have 100% map completion or close to it and some who have less than 50%. Occasionally I do find myself thinking it would be so much easier to just switch characters, for example when I needed to go to the east side of Fireheart Rise for some reason on a character who hadn’t been to Ascalon at all – that meant using the asura gate to the Black Citadel, going across Diessa Plateau to Wayfarer Foothills, round the corner to Frostgorge Sound and then up and into Fireheart Rise, and then all the way across the map.

But the only thing I wouldn’t try to do on a character who was missing most of the map is guild missions, because those are time sensitive. If you need to run across 3 maps to get there you’re probably going to miss it.