Guild Wars 2

Hi community,

I’m just a couple weeks into this game and really enjoying myself. I’m up to level 40 as a thief and have found no shortage of fun things to do. I’m also very pleased with the character that I’ve chosen.

The problem is that I’m leveling too fast. Not too fast in the sense that I want it to take 6 months to hit max level like back in old school EQ. But fast in that I get halfway through a zone before I’m 5-10 levels overcapped. I’m an insane completionist and having all my xx/xx’s checked off on the map is important.

I’m even-level with my story and currently halfway through a 35-45 zone. Crafting skills are at-or-above-level. So with all the stuff I’ve done, I still haven’t touched PvP, WvW or dungeons.

Does anyone have suggestions as to things I absolutely should not miss on the way to level cap?

Are there tangible benefits to leaving my map unfinished and coming back at level cap to finish them? (ie. a currency gained at cap that replaces experience?)

Should I even try to do the lower level dungeons? All I’ve seen in LFG is speed run requests.

Is 40 a good time to look for a guild? I know what I want for the most part, but not sure if anyone takes sub-max level characters. Admittedly, I have not looked into this much at all.

Anything else you guys think I should make sure and do along the way to cap? I hate the thought of missing something awesome, or something that will drastically impede me at cap, because I didn’t do it as a lower level.

Don’t get me wrong, the fact that every thing my toon does gives me a crapload of xp is great. I haven’t even touched XP boosts and still feel like I’m going too fast. I just want to make sure I don’t have any regrets when the inevitable becomes and I move into endgame.

Thanks for any insight.

There isn’t anything you can miss, and you can be overlevl for the story it’s fine.

You’ve noticed the map downlevels you for certain areas, this is to keep those areas challenging and not forgotten just because you’re level 80.

You wont miss anything for levelling quickly

Also, you can join a guild at any time. depends on what you’re after and what the guilds after.
I joined a guild shortly after starting the game. I’ve now joined another, and I’m only level 38.

but, I repeat, you won’t miss anything. Only thing miss-able is the living story, as that is monthly updates.

oh man, I remember those days. I too felt like I was leveling too fast

and no, there are no benefits to coming back at a higher level to score your map completion. you ideally want to complete them as early as possible as the rewards are scaled to the level of the map, not to your character’s level. but of course if you map complete every map you go through, you’ll be way over leveled, so the equipment you get will always be under your level. so I’d suggest doing that only for some of the maps

honestly, the best time to look for a guild is like lv 10.
unless you like to figure everything out by yourself, of course
anyway, never too early, never too late

anyway, for the real question
the only thing that you can really miss is the challenge of being at a lower level (and the accompanying feeling from besting things several levels higher). So I would suggest you try exploring areas that are a few levels higher than you. In fact I recently made a new elementalist (ele is basically my main) specifically because I missed that. (err… the other meaning of missed. I wanted to experience it again.)

anything else you can still do at max level. I still spend loads of time doing events I haven’t done and exploring places I haven’t been on my level capped characters

Don’t do dungeons at low levels. Your speed will be slow, and you’ll get too much xp that you’ll speed through the mid-levels.

The early levels (1-15) you don’t have a fully functional character yet, and loot is crap that is worth nothing anyway. If you want to skip through these with levelling books, crafting and whatnot go ahead.

The mid levels (15-79), make sure you spend as much time in the open world as possible. You want to get blue-green drops from random mobs now while doing hearts as they will salvage to the highest-priced materials, especially linen. Do NOT skip through this phase.

The late phase (80) all drops will now be based on either level 80 or zone level. At this point, you can do anything, but world exploration will earn you LESS than at lower levels because so many people are at level 80 that the level 80 disassembled materials are worth very little, with the exception of silk. At the same time, because scaling isn’t fully efficient, a downscaled level 80 character will always be more powerful than a character of the correct level for an area. Thus dungeons can be run at the fastest posisble speeds.

Ideally at level 80 you have all the important waypoints for dungeon opening and world bosses, several maps completed and at least one waypoint on every map. If not, get those as soon as possible. Full world completion is optional.