Guild Wars 2

I’ve already read “So You Hit 80: A Quick Endgame Handbook”, but that was more of a what-to-do. What I need to know is, with 40K karma and 5g (I don’t feel a strong need to buy my last training manual), what weapons and armor should I be looking to outfit myself with in the short-term?

I will probably slowly work toward the best stuff available, but for a person newly arrived at 80, can I just look on Black Lion, or do I need to visit special vendors? I’ve heard about cultural items. I’ve also heard that there are items that can be bought only with skill points. How do these things fit in?

Thanks for your replies.

(There are fewer good guides out there for GW2 than any other game I’ve played. I guess you all are too busy playing to write.)

It’s probably a good idea to get your last training manual first but that’s just my opinion…

If you leveled your crafting, you can craft exotics but you’ll need to buy recipes from your master crafter. otherwise you can buy gear (including exotics) on the TP – this usually ends up the cheaper route.

there are cultural and dungeon armors out there but you’re getting those mostly for the skin (for transmuting) unless they have the stats you want. You can find cultural armor vendors in each capital city and dungeon vendors in LA. To get dungeon gear, you have to run dungeons in explorable mode for tokens.

i could be wrong but the only gear to require skill points are legendaries through the mystic forge??

Top-level exotics can be acquired a few different ways:
1. Dungeon rewards – Browse the dungeon gear reward merchants by the WvW portals in Lion’s Arch. Find a set and run the dungeon (Or dungeons, if there are two with the same stat set you want) and earn tokens to save up for your gear.
2. Crafting – You can craft many stat sets quite easily with whatever armor/weapon/jewelry crafts you have.
3. Purchasing – You can get crafted gear and similar gears by outright buying them. There is, however, about a 15% price increase from buying the raw materials to make them.
4. WvWvW – You get badges in WvW from some player kills which can be spent on gear. There is, however, only one stat set and the badges will take you some time to get enough of for an entire set.
5. Karma Rewards – There are some merchants strewn about (I know of two or three in Orr?) who sell exotic gears with a few different stat sets for karma. The armor pieces cost 42k karma a piece. One easy way to get karma is by doing WvW with a small group and running supply camps (You get around 100 karma every time you take a camp, not to mention dolyaks and sentry flags along the way… It adds up very fast).

Not sure if I missed anything.

I think one of the biggies is getting a Power/Vitality/Toughness set of armour. It’s probably the best all-rounder armour, and can only be gotten through certain very specific channels: Dungeons, Orrian Temple Karma Vendors & WvWvW.
I’m working towards a couple of sets myself through mixing all three.

A handy tip is that if you save all of your karma and do all events on your way to Orr as well as your story quests, by the time you get to the Cathedral of Eternal Radiance / Temple of Lyssa, you should have enough for 2 pieces.

IMHO, when you first reached 80 on your first character, purchasing level 78 exotic armor/weapons is the best choice. They are cheap and the stats are pretty close comparing to level 80 exotic (if lucky, you can buy the whole set of level 78 exotic for the price of 1 level 80 exotic.) With level 78 exotic gears, it will help you farm better/faster in Orr/dungeons/WvW. It is cheap so you can test out your build, you don’t have to worry about breaking your bank on testing out gears/build. You can slowly work toward crafting for your character. With plenty of mats, good build (after researched and tested) that fits your play style, now you can craft your own set of weapons/armor to go with your build!!!!

I recommend you take a look at http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_weapon it explains how you can save yourself alot of money on obtaining exotic quality items.

Wasabee, that sounds like great advice. And Lethalvriend, I’m off to check that out right now.

@Wasabee
Thanks for this tip! I am lvl 77 and will start checking out lvl 78 exotics on the TP.

Be wary of Mystic Weapon costs; they’re not as cheap as it would first appear. 50 skillpoints is a LOT of skillpoints, basically another 50 levels for someone who already has their explorer’s star.
I used 200 of mine to buy the Bloodstone Shard, and getting together a further 50 each time I want a new weapon is not trivial.
In the time it takes to grind out another 50 levels (probably 3 days if you’re really going for it, doing nothing else except grinding out XP), you could hit loads of Orichalcum / Ancient Wood nodes and gain enough karma to potentially buy another one or more pieces of Orrian karma vendor gear.
This is even before taking into account the Mystic Coin cost, 30 for a normal weapon, 50 for a sword. I had the maximum Mystic Coins of 93 when I bought my Mystic Rifle yesterday. In theory that gives me enough coins for 2 more normals or just one sword.

Mystic weapons are far from “Cheap”.