Guild Wars 2

Hi!

I played GW2 an year ago, got a L80 thief and all. I loved the game, but never really experienced it to its full potential – mostly events, personal story, PvP, WvWvW and some crafting. Never got to dungeons, don’t know most currencies, etc. To sum it up: I never learned much 1 year ago and whatever I knew is long forgotten.

Now I’m returning and my plan is to level a new character and experience everything GW2 offers before max level. I don’t want to powerlevel, I just want to be entertained (and from what I remember leveling is quite fun) and get the hang of this game.
Any advices?

PS: since I’m already asking and it’s on topic, can you list the most important currencies and their uses?

I think you already answered your own question eh, if you want to explore and have fun, do just that! It really is a beautiful world to explore!

As for currencies, well…
For now you should look at gold first and foremost. That’s what you need to buy new stuff. Then there’s Karma, which you can use to get equipment and consumables from the ‘heart’ vendors which you unlock after finishing their quest in the world map. They can be useful actually, if you don’t have the money or luck with drops.
Finally, laurels will be something you want to save up until you hit lv80 and think about getting top tier gear for your character. You get those from daily log in rewards.

Those will be your most important resources during your leveling.

Well, off I go then!

But before I go: is it worth running dungeons before max level? Cause I read a sticky in the “fractals and dungeons” section regarding downscaling and gear and it says that a L35 toon running a dungeon wearing L35 gear will perform better than a L50 wearing the same L35 gear.
Also, does the gear I get on lower level dungeons (if that’s even how it works, I wouldn’t know) scale back to my real level?

Thanks!

There’s 2 parts to dungeons, story and explorable. I suggest you do the story instance as soon as you’re allowed, because they are good experience givers and people in story are rather mellow.

The explorable version you can do before you’re level 80, but i’d advise against it. They are significantly harder and the people who run them are often much less forgiving to less experienced players. Also, the tokens you gain from explorable are really mostly used to get max level armor and weapons.

As for the scaling, that’s something people like to spout nowadays, but it’s a fallacy. A maxed out character will always do better than a low level character, maybe not in raw stats, but because they have more tools at their disposal.

However, you should indeed always try to keep your gear up to date. Like every 5-10 levels, get something new, especially for squishy classes. You don’t need rare or exotic stuff while leveling. Get cheap fine or masterwork pieces so you can keep updating it longer.

Finally, drops you get in dungeons I believe scale to your actual level mostly. The reward you get for finishing the story dungeon, however, is the level of dungeon.