Guild Wars 2

What is the most fun and balanced in EXP to level? If it’s PvP or gathering, how do I then obtain gear?

Just do 100% completion on every map before you leave.

You`ll level fast , have plenty of cash and Karma.
Also you will be well on your way to 100% map completion award.
GW2 is more about the content to 80 their is loads of it.

Completing the maps is very worthwhile, as the poster above said.

The best thing really is to do a mixture of everything. Complete the maps, do every event you come across, gather every node, do some crafting with what you gather (cooking is good for easy xp) and if you feel like a change hop into WvW for a bit.

I do some crafting early just from whatever mats I can find, to cut down on the low-level grinding (not enough build flexibility early on for it to be worth it). After that it’s exploration all the way, but don’t sprint through the exploration; take the time and get a taste for the different DE chains in various areas.

If you’re following your personal story, the story takes you to new zones at a high enough rate for natural exploring to be a valid leveling tactic, in my experience.

Plus, for the higher level zones the 100% rewards are pretty valuable.

Still, if someone wanted to “speedrun” the game (like with an alt), I wonder what the most time-efficient way of leveling is?

I imagine following a unapposed zerg in WvW would be pretty fast, but sadly you can’t really rely on that.

good ways to level up are…

1) doing WVW with group

2) crafting

3) 100% completetion of maps

best one is combination of all imo

The game was built around dynamic events, events are the key

Kana.6793:

Completing the maps is very worthwhile, as the poster above said.

The best thing really is to do a mixture of everything. Complete the maps, do every event you come across, gather every node, do some crafting with what you gather (cooking is good for easy xp) and if you feel like a change hop into WvW for a bit.

This. I leveled to 80 even without any PvP. And if you keep crafting leveled to the resources you’re gathering, it won’t even cost you much. For crafting, just make sure you focus on Discovery rather than grinding out crafting combinations. The big XP is from Discovery and you can get usable gear if you craft while you map out level-appropriate zones.

The best leveling for me happens in WvW. There needs to be a few things in place but with a little patience you can go up levels pretty quickly.

If a map is being dominated wait till your servers prime time comes up. Look for a map that’s starting to take back the area or look for a commander with a lot of followers.

All things going well you can take back an area relatively quickly and jump a number of levels in the process.

With my newest character (Human Guardian) I visited the bottom half of the Norn 1-15 Map followed by all of the Human 1-15 Map which got him to 15.

Now, at level 22, I am in the Human Map 15-25 (Kessex Hills). That should get him to 25 easily.

Next will be Human 25-35 (Gendarran Fields).

With this guy I am less interested in Map Completion and more interested in levels. Visiting every Map with my Warrior (now at 80) meant that by the time he got to Maps at about 50+ his level was so much higher than the mobs things became a bit too easy.

If you are too much above the Map level you will not learn as much. Don’t explore every map as you level up. When you have completed a max level 25 map, assuming you are level 25ish go onto a level 25+ map not another 15-25 map. You will have to think a lot more about how your build is going, choose your skills more carefully, have gear at char level not map level, dodge more and so on. Map completion can be interesting but you can go back for that at level 80, the rewards are OK but not wonderful for map completion when you are above map level.

So, complete the map you are on then go to the next level map assuming your level is high enough. If you are not a high enough level for thje next Map do some Events, they give more XP than going to a another Map of your level so faster.

If you get to about level 40 and you are a bit bored go to the Ascalonian Dungeon. Loads of XP there but get the best gear for your level. I find some groups only want high level players but there plenty of groups at a lower level too.

For rewards worth having try to do your Personal Story on level rather than go back to a level 10 PS thing at level 20 or whatever. If you fail get a couple more levels then try again. XP from the PS is good too.

Hey everybody!
I see a lot off good advice allready, so not much to add
But i would like to comment on Thord’s post. He is right! I play the same way. I know that i’m not that high in level as some off you are, but i follow my char’s race area’s. This means that i keep in the lvl 15-25 ‘till i have reached lvl 25 (what was very easely since i can’t run pass any gathering point and allwasy help out others in events or when they have problems with a few mobs too much). Then, after i’m lvl 25, i look for the next map for my race that is for the next level group (in Thords example, i would go to Gendarran Fields). That way i keep at least the starter area’s for my alts that will be other races.
And i never had problems meeting the level cap off an area before i did map completion