Guild Wars 2

Ive been looking forward to Guild Wars 2 for a long long time, as I really enjoyed playing the original Guild Wars and GW2 looked to be all that and more. When the game launched, I sunk a good 30 hours into it in the first weekend, but since then have only bumped that up to 40 hours total.

I always see screenshots and videos around the net of Guild Wars 2 and it makes me want to come back and enjoy it, but every time I log in to my toon, I end up aimlessly wandering around, doing a couple dynamic events, getting bored, and logging off for another month.

My level is too low to continue with my personal story and Im not yet level 30, so I can’t go to any dungeons, so I ask of you, GW2 community; what should I do in Guild Wars 2? What do YOU do when you’re playing? I know its unspecific and probably a long shot, but I was hoping to get a couple ideas of things to do next time I log into the world of Tyria.

I think it depends on why you’re playing and what you want out of it. I love exploring so while I’m exploring I do events. I never played GW1 so exploring Ascalon and discovering the back story is really fun for me. It’s like the big lost history thing for me. I love doing map completion too. It kind of goes a long with exploring. Having a buddy to explore with is a big plus. I just like the world.

What did you do in GW1? What kept you playing? Are you part of an active guild? If you honestly want to keep playing GW2 you’ll need to find stuff you actually like to do. It may be that GW2 just isn’t for you right now I guess :/

To be honest, wandering around is a lot of wha I do. Some days it feels aimless and I get bored, some days I get really caught up in it for hours.

For suggestions… you could look up a jumping puzzle in your area. Head over to it through whatever events and terrain are in the way, and work your way through it. It’s a change of pace (and there are achievements, haha).
Resolve to explore a new map. Find somewhere of your level or lower that you’ve never been, and run around. There are cool scenic things to discover sometimes.
Pick up some crafting? Cooking ended up being on of my major drives to explore (for new ingredients) haha.

If nothing else, Lost Shores should give you some new things to poke around in soon.

There is a little less hand holding in GW2 than other MMOs, since a lot of the content is dynamic they can’t point you to it all the time since it’s not there all the time. What I tend to do it go for the vistas, points of interest and renown hearts and then along the way you will get caught up in the events that are happening around you. You can hunt for the jump puzzles too, gathering and crafting if you feel like it, and there are the WvWvW and PvP mini games. Everything gives you XP!

Don’t forget that you can go to all of the low level areas and still get XP since you will get de-leveled automatically. So you can go to the other races start zones and collect all the skill points etc. from there. You should be ready for your next story mission in no time.

If you’re not driven to level to get to the next story section or you don’t enjoy the combat enough to wander around completing maps, perhaps one idea would be to start another character of a different class. Maybe that would spark your interest more.

One word – Guild

Getting a guild or at least a group of friends you can regularly group with would be ideal and helps break the boredom days that we all get occasionally. For me if i can’t get groups going I’ll take the time to hunt down some lore, go see some sights and try to get that perfect screenie from a vista, gather for my crafting, or work on an alt. I think my altaholism has been what’s saved me from many bored days, because I have about 12 so far and I’m going different directions with each so its never a dull moment. Also, if pvp is something you’re interested in, go for it, sometimes I get caught up for hours at night in matches, and if not, try it anyway you might find you like it. Spvp, after losing my taste for wvw, has by far been one of the best pvp experiences I think I have ever had. And I get my kitten kicked all the time lol. It’s just plain fun. Lastly, if you do find a guild, you can always stay busy by helping others level their characters through tough spots you have already done. Lending your expertise is always rewarding, for me anyway. If you’re ever in SoR server look me up, I got a spot in my guild if you want it.

This game is a lot more fun when playing in a group. A guild is a good way to be sure you can usually play in a group, but there are other ways to do that.

But there are other ways to level, for example:

1. Craft
2. Map completion (partial or full)
3. Go searching for Vistas (and find fun stuff to do along the way).
4. Follow cascading-event chains (where one quest leads to another and another).

I find it best to try to get 10+ levels ahead of my personal story, so that it’s unlikely I’ll have to pause in the middle of an interesting plot development.

Gonna go ahead and comment without reading the others first.

Dungeons. Just dungeons. I too quickly get bored of explore and usually only have the path to the dungeon explored. Crafting is a good way to level up, but it’s only worth bothering with jeweller, maybe cooking if you’re getting desperate. Exploring is pretty much solo play, occasionally seeing another person with minimal to no interaction, but dungeons are completely different. I know you said you weren’t level 30 yet but as soon as you can, do dungeons! (Technically you can do it whenever so long as you’re in a party capable of starting it, but it’d be pretty hard). Also your level will skyrocket once you get into them, I don’t know what happened from level 60-80 haha.

Nice post.
I read trough the replies since I started yesterday, whitout knowing anybody that plays the game. Untill now I just love the way it looks an moves but I started to wonder wat to do next.
More replies means more ideas

I spend most of my time exploring, which is mostly because that’s what I like to do in any game, but it seems to be greatly encouraged in this one.

I use the Points of Interest, Vistas, Hearts etc. to guide me around the map and keep track of where I’ve been but when I’m going between them I always hold down ctrl+alt so I can keep a look out for anything worth checking out and even if I just think the scenery is interesting I’ll detour to go and see what’s over there. I’ll also stop or detour for any dynamic events nearby.

If I don’t find many detours then I’m checking off points on my map, completing hearts and consequently levelling faster. But more often than not I’m doing a mix of everything as and when it comes up.

For example the other day I started in the bottom corner of one map and was heading towards a POI I needed when I found a cave mouth. I went in and found a rich silver vein, a different POI which I had intended to get later and an ettin who kicked off an event chain. When that chain ended I found myself near another exit to the cave, which lead me to lots of harvesting nodes and as I worked my way through them I found my way over to another cave, which turned out to be the start of a jump puzzle. It took me a couple of attempts to do the puzzle and I got some nice loot from the monsters along the way. When I finished it I found myself near some diving goggles and a vista. I couldn’t do both at the same time because they were on different ledges so I had to get the vista, jump down, stop to complete a skill point event and pick up a few more harvesting nodes, then back-track to get the diving goggles. On my way out this time I stopped to revive someone who had failed the skill point challenge, helped them finish it, detoured briefly to explore what proved to be a fairly small spider cave and then headed off to finally get that POI I’d been going for in the first place.

All in all that took me about 2 hours, so I had to stop for the night having only achieved one thing I set out to do, but also having had a great time and gained a lot of nice loot.

Oh, it’s often worth hanging around after a DE finishes too and watch what the NPCs involved say and do. There’s often another event that will start up following it, but they rarely go straight from one to the other, there’s usually something that needs to happen in between.

Also someone else has probably said this but don’t forget about crafting. Even if you don’t want to focus on crafting or sink a lot of money into it it’s well worth harvesting materials and then taking some time when you’re in town to see what you can craft with them just for the XP.