Guild Wars 2

I just realised this last night (slow I know) but this has made the most difference for me:

Hold control highlights all enemies and yellows (including collectables) in the direction you are looking.

Especially useful when visibility is low, like underwater, and you can’t quite see all those Krait hanging around….

This is an awesome thread.

GW2 is my first MMO so I’m still learning the basics (terms, acronyms, gameplay) so this helps a lot.

ClausLars.1724:

SoulTrain.2157:

i dunno if this has been mentioned, but i just recently tried it and found it really helpful which is making a easy to get to hotkey for “show all enemies” on the map.

I didn’t even know that was an option. Do you just map it from the options menu?

How? I miss this soooo much!

What they said above. It doesn’t show them on the minimap, but on your screen all mobs, critters and nodes will have their names above their heads, showing you where they’re at. Just press and hold CTRL

Blarrg.8305:

What they said above. It doesn’t show them on the minimap, but on your screen all mobs, critters and nodes will have their names above their heads, showing you where they’re at. Just press and hold CTRL

Foo. I was hoping I could get dots on the map. Hate coming around a corner into a mob.

Thanks, This helped me out tremendously.

Teror.8940:

Corvax.1675:

I found this out today: if you hold the right mouse button (as for turning), you can actually move by holding the left button as well.

Be careful with this in combat. If you left click anywhere while attacking, they you will have your target de-selected. Makes it not fun to try and focus another player or mob. I only realized this today, and am going to have to force myself to stop using both mouse buttons to move forward any longer.

I wish there was some kind of option to not let a left-mouse-click deselct your current target, unless you were clicking on another.

check off ‘auto promote target’ or something to that effect, kind of like sticky targeting.

Other things:

teleporting around a city is free

travel cost scales with level (so if you have to just get something off a vendor, or farm mats, use a lower level toon ;P)

those white ‘salvage mats’ give you crafting mats when you salvage them (I used to vendor them in beta -.-)

better salvage kits give you a chance to get the ‘enchantment’ runes off green and higher quality items. Blues and whites are best crude salvaged, or vendored if you do not need the mats (check the TP prices on the mats vs the item vendor price)

don’t sell things on TP for 1c over the vendor cost… you lose money (15% total tax)

to upgrade your bags, simply drag the new bigger bag over the smaller bag, stuff inside will auto-transfer

make sure you read the descriptions for crafting mats… some ‘cooking’ mats are used in artificing, and even huntsman, and so on.

you can have a food buff and a ‘other’ buff simultaneously (e.g. chef and artificing or huntsman consumables). the buff icons are different. Food persists through death, elixirs (and sharpening stones iirc) do not

black lion chests are mostly useless, unless you want free gathering tools and have lots of gems to waste.

runes can be combined at the mystic forge (4x same rune = next level rune), or create new ones. not sure if there’s defined recipes for these… must be.

you can respec your traits at your trainer for a modest price (no need to rebuy the manual)

for dynamic events, try to use as much aoe as possible to tag all the mobs for more chances of loot.

ctrl-T (or ctrl-left click, i think) assigns the ‘focus target’ (red circle) to any target (including friendlies). To assist, press T.

Jayne.9251:

For pet users. You can target a mob using ranged weapon and be JUST out of a range and your pets will attack. This is particularly useful with mass mobs to ensure your pet gets the agro first, and not you.

Or you can do it the normal way where you click the mob and press f1 (default for pet attack)……

Here is 2 neat tips if no one has said it yet:
1. Go to options and click the mouse. There’s a thing that say “Walk” on it. You can walk in the game! It’s unassigned though just put any key on there. [I put Z. This helps me with like DE’s with the bull/cow thing walking slow.]

2. You can buff NPC’s to walk/run faster. [Elemenstist lightning/Air skill for example]
:3

>> 33. you don’t need to be there when an event ends in order to get credit for it..

But you do need to be in the same zone. Leaving the zone cancels your participation.

Excellent thread; thanks a lot! I even learned a few new things, heh.

I’ve taken the liberty to put nearly all these tips in the GW2 wiki. I’ve even put a few of my own in there. I also categorized them all, and merged a few here and there. I plan to go through and improve the English of all these tips in the near future.
Take a look: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tips

Let me add one that I can see has not been added yet.

- Once you start playing the game or on a new character. Immediately go do some sPvP, and get some glory. The bronze chests are likely to contain bags and you are also likely to get bags on Glory level up. This is an easy way to get 4, 8-10 slot, bags quickly.

- Also you can deposit money in your bank. Use it to save silver so that you have a nice cache for when you need to buy your first trait book.

- Complete city map exploration 100%, as this sometimes earns you transmutation stones that you should save and use later when you have a nice set of “good-looking” gear that you don’t want to part with.

Thank you for the tips!

I’m level 80 with 250+ hours and there are some things here that I did not know. hahahaha

How to get the best screenshot result? Mine is too dark compare to others player

I believe if you do CTRL + Shift + H you’ll get high rez without any game mechanics clutter to do a brighter more vibrant screen shot.

Davez.4861:

How to get the best screenshot result? Mine is too dark compare to others player

One option is to use a program like IrfanView to adjust color balance/gamma/brightness.

Jayne.9251:

I believe if you do CTRL + Shift + H you’ll get high rez without any game mechanics clutter to do a brighter more vibrant screen shot.

Oh, I didn’t know that! Thanks!

So, I’m at level 80, played around 200 hours and knew everything of the list… but yesterday … god, I’m such an idiot, I’m walking the walk of shame. But maybe, there is someone out there who didn’t noticed it too…

When fighting underwater… you can set your 7 – 9 skills. BAM!

I always thougt you just can’t use your 7 – 9 skills underwater, since my out-of-water skills vanished and the slots were just blank. And yesterday… I had to wait a moment under water and I thought “hey, let be funny and just click the little arrows over the skill slots, MAYBE there is one skill to use” … ha ha… god, I can’t believe it. Now, fighting underwater is SO much easier as an Ele, since I can use my shields and everything else…

This thread is excellent. Goes to show that there’s always something you don’t know and someone else knows!

I have a little tip too. Most mice nowadays have forward/backward thumb buttons on the side, and I use these for running (forward) and dodging (backward) – helps me a lot in my gameplay.

These buttons are extremely accessible and thus should be assigned – in the key assignment screen they are called Mouse 4 & 5.

these are great! gonna pass these on to some newb friends…

Niji.8034:

When fighting underwater… you can set your 7 – 9 skills. BAM!

I always thougt you just can’t use your 7 – 9 skills underwater, since my out-of-water skills vanished and the slots were just blank. And yesterday… I had to wait a moment

Thanks for this tip! I’ve about 300 hrs played and was full sure I could not assign the 7-9 skills underwater. I could have sworn I tried doing it before and it would not let me. Cant wait to try this when I get home from work.

~B

bullets.4768:

Niji.8034:

When fighting underwater… you can set your 7 – 9 skills. BAM!

I always thougt you just can’t use your 7 – 9 skills underwater, since my out-of-water skills vanished and the slots were just blank. And yesterday… I had to wait a moment

Thanks for this tip! I’ve about 300 hrs played and was full sure I could not assign the 7-9 skills underwater. I could have sworn I tried doing it before and it would not let me. Cant wait to try this when I get home from work.

~B

Yay, I could really help someone! I’m happy xD

Re Underwater skills …

Not all work underwater.
I play a ranger and my Healing Spring and traps are blanked out from the selection while underwater.

bri.2359:

Re Underwater skills …

Not all work underwater.
I play a ranger and my Healing Spring and traps are blanked out from the selection while underwater.

No, not all, thats right.
As an Elementalist, I can’t summon my elementals for example. But I would say, about the half of the skills can be used under water.

haha i’ve only recently discovered that as well and i was post lvl 80 and always always dreaded fighting underwater cause i couldn’t survive. made all the difference even with just a handful of utilities available! so now, idon’t mind underwater fighting and it can be quite enjoyable / challenging lol

No harm in tryin’! I wish everyone best of luck, a Happy Halloween and a Merry Christmas!

Karaad.7930:

No harm in tryin’! I wish everyone best of luck, a Happy Halloween and a Merry Christmas!

mmmh, I’m just guessing, but I think you replied the wrong thread?

You should post it here xD:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Hi-people-I-would-like-to-give-away-Dawn/page/6

Super useful, thanks!

Great list of tips :P some i didn’t know until now

Fantastic thread. I got GW2 last week and it has been an amazing adventure so far; this list provides a wealth of points that’ll help me get even more out of the experience!

My advice- even if you don’t intend to do a lot of crafting, it’s a good idea to level up some crafting disciplines early on. If you don’t, you may find yourself in a situation where the place you want to be only gives crafting materials too high-level for you to use, which is frustrating.

Awesome thread and great list. I learned a few handy things from it!

Most of the list I knew alrdy but I have to say that I played in beta’s and in gw1 since 2005
So I am also aware of the wiki’s and such

I didn’t know it was possible to edit music hoewever

Niji.8034:

bri.2359:

Re Underwater skills …

Not all work underwater.
I play a ranger and my Healing Spring and traps are blanked out from the selection while underwater.

No, not all, thats right.
As an Elementalist, I can’t summon my elementals for example. But I would say, about the half of the skills can be used under water.

If you look at your skills, you will see that some of them have a water drop with a red x over it, in the upper right corner. the skills that do not have this are the ones you can use underwater.

I have not found out a way to assign these without going underwater tho.

Save Black Lion keys to open Black Lion chests during special seasonal/holiday events, when you have a chance to get extremely rare items. Don’t jump the gun though and wait to open them until event items have actually been implemented as chest drops.

Here’s something people might wanna know about.

Let’s say you have a friend/relative/person that you want to play with, but they’re in a different World than you, and neither of you can/want to transfer.
Join a party with them, be in the same area, right-click their name/picture in the Party thing, and click Join. Ta-da! You’re now playing in the same world with the person! :D
You can even change areas and still be in the same World as your group.

In fact, it might not even matter what area you’re in, so clicking Join might just swap you over to the other person’s world right then and there. However, I’ve yet to actually test this, so it might be necessary to be in the same area.

This is how I was able to play with my brother and some friends. I’m on Borlis Pass, but he’s on Jade Quarry (he also wants me to transfer over, but I’m stubborn and I wanna stay on my World :c). I can’t just automatically play on Jade Quarry, but we can play together if we make a Party and one of us Joins the other.

It’s what we did so we could go into Ascent to Madness and attempt the Clock Tower in the same instance. I didn’t have to keep Joining each time we moved to a different area, either. Just not sure if you have to be in the same area on the initial Join to the other person’s World or not.

Leviticus Lo.6178:

Here’s something people might wanna know about.

Let’s say you have a friend/relative/person that you want to play with, but they’re in a different World than you, and neither of you can/want to transfer.
Join a party with them, be in the same area, right-click their name/picture in the Party thing, and click Join. Ta-da! You’re now playing in the same world with the person!
You can even change areas and still be in the same World as your group.

In fact, it might not even matter what area you’re in, so clicking Join might just swap you over to the other person’s world right then and there. However, I’ve yet to actually test this, so it might be necessary to be in the same area.

This is how I was able to play with my brother and some friends. I’m on Borlis Pass, but he’s on Jade Quarry (he also wants me to transfer over, but I’m stubborn and I wanna stay on my World :c). I can’t just automatically play on Jade Quarry, but we can play together if we make a Party and one of us Joins the other.

It’s what we did so we could go into Ascent to Madness and attempt the Clock Tower in the same instance. I didn’t have to keep Joining each time we moved to a different area, either. Just not sure if you have to be in the same area on the initial Join to the other person’s World or not.

I haven’t tested this myself, but I believe this technique only works if the two servers are in the same region (e.g. US and US, or EU and EU). If you are on a US server and are attempting to join your friend on an EU server, it won’t let you.

a lot of players missing out on the WvW-bonusses without knowing:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/my-friend-get-s-no-WvW-bonuses-why/first#post641116
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Bugged-World-Bonuses/first

this means less health, less crafting sucess, less gathering nodes, less gold, …
Seems very few realize this :-/

12. Don’t buy violet weapons from vendor in the Mists, it has no dps (its probably for WvWvW). Buy exotic orange weapons.

Steady Weapons (or the Violet Weapons) are used for DPS testing as they all do the same amount of damage.

Thank you for this post, My husband and I have just started playing first time to online game. Cheers!

I may have missed it in the list, but every new player I’ve met has wanted to know how to split a stack of items.

Alt-drag the item while in your inventory. You’ll get a popup window that automatically splits it as close to 50-50 as it can, but you can type a different amount in.

I tried making a Norn named Altdrag Splitstack but someone else beat me to it Still, he’s the name our guild invokes whenever someone new asks how to do this.

Minimap/map party support icons

-Holding shift then clicking on the minimap or map will cause a temporary red circle to appear on party member’s maps
-Holding shift then clicking and dragging on the minimap or map will cause a white line to appear to party members
-Holding alt and then clicking on the minimap or map will cause a ‘personal waypoint’ marker to appear on map. This will stay on the map until you click on it to remove. It acts similar to the story green star icon.

Particularly useful in places like Orr:

If you run up a cliff or part of a mountain — areas that require you to jump to get to — mobs will stop chasing you. It provides a quick solution if you have too much agro. This doesn’t work 100% of the time, mind you, some mobs apparently can climb .. but have found this works on the bulk of them in Orr and elsewhere.

Another helpful tip for your utility slots
(7,8,9) It’s easier to assign them to Z,X,C, respectively, that way you don’t have to click to take your fingers off of WASD area or bother moving the cursor to those slots, it helps in both PvE and PvP just takes a bit of practice to get used to.

Hoping this thread gets stickied, but if not, going to link it here because this is a fabulous resource to see what all the different in-game armour looks like:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Complete-armour-gallery/first#post832382

Well if you want better bags just do a coplue Pvp in the Structured one (lvl 5 will do) and get some gold chest you’ll get at least 2 or 3 8 slots bags this helps a lot at the beginning

this is a great list, I learned a few things. These may be commonly known, but maybe they aren’t.

You can bind a key to sink in water. you cannot sink from the surface, but once in water, its fantastic.

You can also bind a key to do an instant 180 turn. very handy.

when in a chat, going to a map or an item and holding Shift and clicking the item or a POI/Waypoint will let you link it. It seemed everyone but me knew that when I started.

Thank you very much for this, I am a new player to MMORPG’s and any type of video game in general (newer than the SNES at least). I still don’t understand most of it, but this will be a great help to me. Once agian, thank you.

~Notte

Holy poo poo.
It feels like every day there is a thread about not getting something in the mail from a player or the trading post or the gem store, whatever.

Can we put a big, neon sign up for folks to see that the _/10 counter in their mail means that they cannot have more than 10 messages at a time, and that if they are not receiving things in the mail that they think they should a good first step is to delete old messages?