Guild Wars 2

Hi Guys,

My girlfriend and I recently purchased this game because we were looking to try an MMO that is different from other things on the market. (We used to play WoW.) We have a problem though, we feel completely lost. We don’t understand this game at all. looking at a skill seems complicated. Some of them do all these different effects that I really don’t understand. My girlfriend is playing an elementalist and she feels like she is not doing anything when using her skills (although we both admit everything looks beautiful including the skills of course). Our other MAJOR problem is questing. We are trying to do quests together but our personal stories pull us apart and are dragging us all over the map. This seems silly, but how do we level up together? Is there anyone who can like link me to a guide on how to play with a friend or something that will help simplify the game a bit so we can both figure it out? There seems to be a lot we can do all at once. Our inventories are full of crafting items and what not and various other things, but we have no clue what to do with the stuff. We can’t figure out where to sell our junk or buy armor upgrades, bag upgrades, etc… We are lost…

We like Sylvari as a race so we chose that. Any tips on what we can do to ease ourselves into the game and what we can do together would be appreciated.

I chose a Necromancer and she chose an Elementalist so maybe those are not noob-proof classes or maybe Sylvari is a difficult starting race? The game itself didn’t seem difficult in terms of combat I guess (we made it to level 5) but the feeling of no where to go having no matching quests, inventories full of strange things, traits (?), and various other things have us completely lost!

Race doesn’t really matter all that much.

I take it you have looked at the wiki to learn about your profession/weapons/skills and traits.

Check out the following two threads.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/OMG-If-you-only-knew-this-tips-for-new-players

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/New-Player-Outreach-Resources-Events-FAQs/first

Hope those and the wiki can provide some additional guidance.

If you don’t plan on crafting, then sell those items on the trading post. Trade up to larger bags/boxes for inventory, use the “Deposit All Collectibles” under options (Gear in Inventory window) to send crafting materials to your bank/collection tab to empty your inventory in the field.

Easiest thing to do with unwanted items is to either salvage them with a salvage kit or sell them via the Trading Post. Note that the TP will take a nonrefundable 5% on posting the item for sale and another 10% when sold. You can post and item for sale or put in an order for an item from anywhere – O key – but you need to be at a TP rep to pick up items or coin. Note that not all items on the TP are, once you factor in the 15% cut, are more profitable than selling to a local vendor or unlocked Heart contact.

As for salvage kits and salvaging. First Blue and Green items (if you turn on show rarity or mouse hover over them) could give you “Essence of Luck” which you click on to increase your account’s Magic Find, which increases the chance of getting a higher rarity from a drop, besides you usual raw materials. Higher level salvage kits provide a better chance of recovering upgrades from an item that has one.

Check out the sections on the forum about the classes you are running. Ask there I’m sure those that hang about those sections can point you to a player guide or three.

Unlike other MMOs, assuming you played any, the trick here is moving, timing and dodging rather than sit and pound on and take a pounding and hope you survive.

Your Personal Story is totally optional don’t feel the need to follow it religiously. The game will automatically level you down to areas and content and this includes the Personal Story.

Hope this provides at least a starting point for you two. Feel free to ask for help, everyone is a newb at the beginning. Also feel free to ask for help in game (/map in chat). You aren’t penalized if others come along to help. This game is very co-op friendly.

Welcome to GW2!

If you haven’t already, I HIGHLY recommend giving this thread a read: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/GW2-Combat-system-101-Guide/first It explains the mechanics of GW2’s combat system (and how they differ from traditional MMOs like WoW) very well.

Regarding questing, you can indeed play with each other. If you are partied (select a player and right-click their portrait, or right-click their name in chat, and invite them to your party), you will be able to do story quests together. As long as you are in the same map, when one person starts a story quest, the other will be given a prompt to join.

Another thing to note about leveling up together is the sharing of credit for kills and events and the downscaling system. In GW2, there is no kill stealing- everyone who helps kill a mob gets full credit, exp, and loot. If you participate in an event together, you also get credit and rewards. There is also no node stealing- everyone has their own copy of a resource node to gather. Also, when you are in an area below your level, your level will be scaled downwards to match the area while rewards and exp are scaled up to match your level, making it so you can level anywhere and still have it be relevant.

Regarding your inventory, if you open your inventory window, you’ll see a gear icon in the upper-right corner. Click that, and then click “Deposit All Collectibles” to send all crafting mats to your bank. Your bank, by the way, has two tabs (one for general storage, one which stores up to 250 of every material and is where the Deposit All mats go), is shared by all characters on your account, and can be accessed in the main city. You can buy bigger bags (8 slot bags are good right now) on the Trading Post, which is marked on your map by a gold coin with scales on it. (You can also access the Trading Post anytime via the lion button on the menu bar in the upper-left, but you must visit a Trading Post NPC to pick up purchases.) You can sell junk to any merchant NPC, marked by a small pile of gold coins icon on your map, and you can also buy gathering tools and salvage kits to salvage unwanted gear and items marked “Salvage Item” with. As for armor, you can use drops, buy gear off the Trading Post, or buy them from some heart nPCs after you finish their hearts. I recommend the first and last options.

As for your girlfriend: I myself have mained an elementalist since launch, and I can attest to the fact that it is one of the most difficult classes to start out with. However, it is a very strong and IMO a very fun class once you master it. I have soloed many group events, champions, and dungeon bosses as an elementalist, and have both anchored inexperienced groups with defensive support and wrecked enemies by drastically boosting my groups’ attack power while putting out heavy sustained damage of my own.

Playing an elementalist, as one person put it, is about being a master of 2+2=5. Alone, your skills won’t do much- in order to get the most out of elementalist, you must chain your skills together across attunements and perform combos. In addition, elementalist relies heavily upon active survivability- it is the class with the lowest armor and HP pool, but it also has a vast array of slows/snares/stuns, self-heals, defensive boons, protective shields, evasive power, invulnerabilities, and other active defenses. To stay alive on an elementalist, you must stay constantly in motion, keeping just out of reach and dodging attacks, while changing attunements to access skills to adapt to the situation at hand. Played and built properly, an elementalist can survive as much as a warrior or guardian.

Here are two videos of myself soloing strong enemies as an elementalist.
-The first is my second elementalist at level 12, soloing a veteran four levels higher than her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubm6k-AX2U8
-The second is myself soloing a champion at level 80: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hcf9PwSVP7Y

I hope that made things a little clearer. If you’re on an NA server, feel free to add me. I’ll be glad to answer questions and run with you two in-game. Welcome again!

Both above answers are awesome.

But to keep it a bit simpler, when you both play in the same starting zone, explore that zone together. Do the hearts, visit the vista’s and so on. Try an event when you run into one.
There is no real rush to level to be honest, unless you want to start doing specific dungeons (they unlock as you level) and such.

When you have an item you want to learn about, type /wiki (itemname) without the(). You’ll be taken to a wiki page about that item (works with almost anything in game)

I believe this game has a lot of types of players, I myself am a casual player, I don’t do pvp or wvw, I’ve only been in 2 dungeons and still I have spent many hours playing and learning while I play.
When I start a new character now, I find myself starting to clear all the starter zones first while I gain some levels. From your home instance, The Grove, you can travel to Lions Arch and from there to all other home instances and their starting zones.
No matter what level you are and it makes for a nice switch in pace if you are stuck about what to do.

It really doesn’t matter what you do, just make sure you have fun doing it.

Considering the title of the topic, i would suggest you guys to check out the MARA guild on GH.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Considering the title of the topic, i would suggest you guys to check out the MARA guild on GH.

+1 to this, Guilds can be a great source of knowledge and socializing makes every MMO better.
Which server are you on by the way?
Remember to stop and smell the roses, Gw2 has some beautiful scenery that can be easily missed! Also welcome to the game Protagonize and Wife.

Necro isn’t hard to start out with. Elementalist is very hard to master, new player or not, so it isn’t exactly for everyone.

You can join each other’s personal stories as well. It won’t progress your own story, but you get to play together. The other person just has to be in the same party and on the same map, and then accept the instance invitation when the person with the story triggers it.

There’s too much to say to teach the game in full, but some of the links already posted contain much of the most important stuff. Depositing collectibles saves your inv space; carry Crude Salvage Kits as far as possible and break down everything that neither of you wants to use – the remaining materials you can deposit into collectibles. Once the collectibles reach a stack of 250 or you reach a bank or crafting station, withdraw them and sell them on the trading post by right clicking if you’re not intending to craft with them.

Aside from the personal story, GW2 doesn’t have much by the way of traditional quests that you might be used to. The replacement are the dynamic events (orange circles/stars on map) and hearts, which you can start doing even without talking to the ‘quest originator NPC’.

And don’t feel obliged to follow hearts everywhere either. Going off the beaten track sometimes, you might discover a jumping puzzle by chance. There are four jumping puzzles in the Sylvari starting area. ;-)

GW2 is about cooperation, exploration and helping NPCs in need.

The above posts are all really good. Having played the original Guild Wars as my first MMO years ago and also having played WoW a bit, there were a lot of aspects of the mechanics of GW2 that were intuitive to me and it’s a reality check to hear what it’s like coming into the game fresh. If you know WoW, I’ll add by comparing some of the mechanics to show the differences (some of this has been posted above in some form or other).

As you level, you can always go back to lower level stuff and it will downscale you so it will be almost as challenging as your current level stuff. There is no color coding for how much higher level the baddies are relative to you – they’re all red, so make sure you know that you’re in the area set for your level.

The skills work together much more than in WoW – they have to because you can only use a fixed number of them at any time (which you can change once you are out of combat). You unlock these in two different ways: your weapon skills (the five on the left side) unlock automatically as you fight and you should unlock those relatively fast. Some skills are chains, meaning you get slightly different attacks depending on if you’ve successfully hit previously and haven’t used another skil. The second set of skills (the five on the right side) are unlocked with skill points as you gain them. For now, realizing you aren’t comfortable with all the types of buffs and boons, just go off the word description and pick those that interest you. The wikis will give you all you need to know on buffs and boons but that’s a dry read.

The game is all about exploring and interacting with the world, not so much as the WoW quest chains. You can partially do a heart quest, move to another area, and come back and resume the original heart quest at any time. Very little is locked to you except for dungeons – you may get obliterated quickly in a much higher level but nothing is keeping you from going there (pay attention to the sentries, and actually, to all the NPC in-game, as they almost always have relevent information to the area that you are in).

I’m on Devona’s Rest in the US – look for me in the friends section under my login name here and I’d be happy to help! But whichever server you are on, finding a good guild helps a lot. Just go into the chat window and key /m then ask about guilds – you’re sure to get a response OR if you are helped by friendly player you can click on their name and key in /w in chat and ask about their guild.

Welcome to Guild Wars – it’s easily the best MMO I’ve played.

Your personal story depends on the choices you made just after designing your character. Eventually all personal stories come together, and being the same race that might happen sooner for you. You’ll also eventually have to choose an Order to join, so choose the same one to stay together. If you really want to do the story together now, one of you can remake your character with the choices that the other made.

All the posts above have mentioned awesome ideas to start you out with.
If you have any pressing problems in game, you could of course also try to ask for help in map chat. If no one seems to answer you, you could try to find a suitable guild under https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/guilds/lfguild by stating where you’re playing at and what you’re looking for – the guilds who answer you (people mostly seem to contact you directly in game for that) should be able to help you out a lot
Also, doing stuff with other people is usually more enjoyable than doing stuff alone.

Actually there IS a colour coding. Past a certain point where the game designers believe it to be impossible for you to kill something, the level is colour coded purple. Not the name, the level. Then it follows the usual colour progression.

The colors follow a different progression from WoW, btw. From lowest to highest they go

White
Blue
Green
Yellow
Orange
Pink/Purple (not sure whether Pink Ascended should go before or after Purple Legendary).

The game is pretty different, it’s not the linear questing from most MMO’s. You have to explore and see what’s happening in the world, with the addition of your Personal Story.

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone. The GW2 community seems to be amazing. I was worried I would get replies like “Lol, Newb” but to my surprise I am getting all kinds of help. I am very thankful to all of your replies. Perhaps we will cross paths in game!

Thanks!

protagonize.9705:

… Some of them do all these different effects that I really don’t understand.

It will come with experience, browsing the gw wiki and the forum.

Our other MAJOR problem is questing. We are trying to do quests together but our personal stories pull us apart and are dragging us all over the map. This seems silly, but how do we level up together?

I would suggest following one story for a while, then the other. Also, pick the same path, Vigil, Order or Priory by the time you get near level 30 – that way the quests beyond level 30-40 will be the same. But maybe you’ll like experiencing the other stories.

Our inventories are full of crafting items and what not and various other things, but we have no clue what to do with the stuff.

Use the cog icon in the upper right part of the inventory window to mave crafting items (collectable they are called) into a special bank area that stores these materials. You can then access or use these materials from a bank, or use them for crafting at a crafting workbench.

We can’t figure out where to sell our junk or buy armor upgrades, bag upgrades, etc… We are lost…

Merchants, scattered around. Also the hearts-npc’s with the purple dot in their heart will not only sell their karma-things, but usually buy any goods you want to sell. In general, every npc that sells something will also buy all the stuff from you.

Armor can be bought in you home-instance, or your home town. Some hearts-npc are karma vendors with gear they seel for karma. I’s mainly stick to gear you find, as is usual in RPG’s.

I chose a Necromancer and she chose an Elementalist so maybe those are not noob-proof classes or maybe Sylvari is a difficult starting race?

Necromancer is are very, very survivable class to play. Experiment with every weapon you find and unlock all it’s weapon skills whenever you find a new weapon.