Guild Wars 2

Okay so I came from WoW and I was used to chain quests and quests being with your level… I also am used to grinding for pvp gear. I am not looking for a game to compare to Wow just looking for some insight on how this game works. I have no clue what im doing im underleveled pvp gear is just handed to you. Some plz help lmao Im the biggest GW2 noob in the world. I feel atm this game is 20gbs of confusion

I think all new games feel like that at first, and in some ways it can be worse if you’ve played similar games before and expect to know what you’re doing.

But you can’t be worse than me. It took me a few minutes just to work out how to move and attack and the controls are pretty standard.

I wouldn’t say forget everything you’ve learned from other games because there are similarities, but whenever you encounter something new try to remember that this is a different game and it might work differently so you’re looking out for that instead of trying to approach it just like WoW or whatever other game it reminds you of and getting stuck when it doesn’t work.

In particular this game doesn’t have conventional quest chains, you can’t just stick to doing quests or you will be underlevelled a lot of the time. Luckily it’s replaced with almost everything giving you experience points. Gathering crafting materials, crafting, exploring the map, anything you do as part of heart quests…it will all add up.

But most importantly you want to be doing any dynamic events that start up near you. These are the things that show up in orange on the map and on the task list on the top right of your screen. They’re like conventional quests – kill this, protect that, fetch 10 rats etc. but with the difference that they will start and carry on whether anyone is around to help or not. So you might find you come in to them in the middle, but that’s ok, you can hop in and out whenever and especially if you get the gold reward they give a lot of experience.

This game works by enjoying it.
Believe me,if you’ll explore every kitten thing,fight every mob you’ll randomly find on your way you’ll level up faster than any try-hard player.
Seek out vistas,look at them as they’re friggin’ beautiful,go around,fight a giant frog,cause why not?

And pick an Asura,i like Asurans.

Just play the game. It gets better when you stop trying to compare it to other games. Its really not all that hard to pick up.

I’ll touch on PvP because nobody addressed this part.

There’s two separate PvP modes in this game: WvW (World vs World) and SPVP ( structured PvP ).

The first one pits servers against each other in a week-long battle to conquer towers and castles. When joined from the WvW tab, your character will be scaled to level 80, but you’ll retain your traits, skills and gear. Upleveled characters aren’t too easy to kill, but they are nowhere near the strenght of a fully equipped/traits level 80. My personal suggestion would be to reach level 30-40 before trying out WvW, and sticking to a zerg untill you get confident about your build and class.

The second one fully grants you max stat gear, level and traits because we like our pvp to be a skill-based even ground, where the good player excels for his ability to play and not his +200 points to awesomeness. As you may have noticed, armors and weapons don’t have stats in PvP: that’s because all of your stats are condensed into your amulet. You can buy different amulets with different combinations of stats for free. There’s two main modes to play there: hotjoins and tournaments. Hotjoins are more casual friendly, feature autobalance and aren’t to be taken too seriously, as most are 8 vs 8 when the maps are balanced around 5 vs 5. Tournaments are ranked, feature a leaderboard and are to be taken more seriously.

That is all for now, if you have any other question please be specific about it.

the hearts on your maps in explorable areas take the place of traditional quest chains. Each heart has a recommended level for it and completing it will give you some experience and some gold. The best way to level up in this game is to explore maps, do the hearts, the dynamic events, points of interest and gather everything. Even if you don’t craft you can sell the materials on the trading post. Good luck and have fun.

This might help too: GW2 vs WoW Combat Mechanics.

Something you gotta get used to right away is that unlike WOW, this game begins at level 1. Do not think you have to race to max level before the game opens up, it’s there right from the start. Every zone has its own story going on and thanks to the feature that adjusts your level down to match the area if you miss one, you can always go back and enjoy them.

Also unlike WOW, there’s lots of cool things to find on maps besides flight paths. Vistas, waypoints, points of interests, caves, jumping puzzles etc. Exploring underwater is also well worth it, lots of stuff going on under the sea and in lakes and it all looks simply amazing and unique.

As for tips, experiment with all the weapons you can use early on and unlock all the skills. Underwater too. Always carry gathering tools, you get XP from gathering. Pay attention to the NPC’s as well. Besides the hearts/quests all zones have tons of events going on that you can trigger or sometimes just come across as they are happening. There are a lot of chain events that have multiple parts. If a NPC asks you for help with something or you wander across an escort in progress, it pays to stick around or to follow them back home when the job is done. More often than not there will be more missions to follow and these are some of the best parts of the game I reckon. Sometimes they might end with something that will be beyond you to solo but they repeat so you can always finish them another time with other players helping.

Guildwars2guru.com is a good forum site with great class discussion. A lot less whining and complaining going on there. I’m sure as an ex-WOW player you’ll be familiar with the tone of posts that the official site gets.

So yeah, take your time and enjoy the ride. Look and listen! There’s a lot going on.

I have not read all the above as it’s quite long (and I’m at work and lazy to read :P), but my recommendation would be to drop the “WoW mindset” from the start.

1) There is no need to rush to 80… enjoy your time…explore, fight, socialize!
2) When you get to 80 you’ll feel like GW2 is a big grind… it might be if you’re up for that, but it doesn’t necessarily mean what it will be. You can enjoy the game even without the best gear there is
3) Learn what and when do dodge…probably the most important thing

emperor.9625:

Exploring underwater is also well worth it, lots of stuff going on under the sea and in lakes and it all looks simply amazing and unique.

This is really good advice for anyone. I’ve found that so few games allow underwater exploration that I often forget it’s an option, I start thinking of lakes as inaccessible areas to go around and it’s only when I see a waypoint or vista or something in the middle that it reminds me.

emperor.9625:

Sometimes they might end with something that will be beyond you to solo but they repeat so you can always finish them another time with other players helping.

Alternatively if this happens try announcing the event in map chat and see if anyone wants to come along. Especially if it’s part of a chain or involves a champion a lot of people will want to go and if they’re about they’re likely to come and help.

Sometimes even if I’m not sticking around to do it I’ll call out events I see just in case anyone is interested.

First of all welcome to Guild Wars 2. In some ways, this game is less spoonfed than WoW. It gives you a bit more freedom.

So here’s what you need to know.

Heart “quests” are what get you into areas where dynamic events start. Dynamic events replace quests. There’s also a personal story (the green text in the quest area of your screen), that has no equivalent in WoW.

Use the heart quests and gathering and exploring to find dynamic events. If you see creatures that are higher than you are, go back a bit and stay in the areas you can do. Look for events. They spawn randomly. You can even go to other starting areas other than the one you started in, pretty much right away.

You start near your capital city and inside that city there’s a gate to Lion’s Arch which allows you to take a gate to other starting cities. So you can explore many low level areas.

The point is, you can stay in the earlier zones and keep leveling without ever moving on. You don’t finish a quest hub in this game.

Hope this helps.

And never be afraid of staying in one zone too long and overlevelling. I know in WoW, after you outlevel something you stop getting xp and there’s no point in really doing stuff in low level areas. This game has an auto leveling system that will always keep you at the area’s level+1 so that you still get xp and money from doing everything, but you won’t be one shotting everything.

All the above is great advice, one extra thing I will suggest.

Look for Dynamic Events around the same area as Hearts. Often there will be events around that let you both complete the event and the heart at the same time!

Look for NPC’s that run up to you and ask for your help, or sometimes they will be standing around with a round orange starburst type symbol over their heads. Talk to them and they will either start an event or point out where one is currently under way.

And some events tend to run in a chain. Once you finish one, the NPCs may sometimes talk a little bit and then start another event. The best way to tell if an event doesn’t lead to more is when the NPC turns into a merchant vendor.

I used to play WoW for 3 years, and this game is pretty similar in a lot of ways.

PvP:

There are 3 PvPs – sPvP, tPvP, and WvW.

sPvP is the one where you click on the PvP icon at the top of the screen and click ‘Go To Heart of the Mists’. Here, you choose a match to join from the guy standing on the plinth to the left of the entrance.

Everyone has the same gear here, and is made to be an eSports type mode, where only skill matters.

Then there is tPvP, basically the same as Arenas in WoW… not much different there.

Then there is WvW (it’s actually WvWvW but no one calls it that.) WvW is where 3 servers are pitted against each other on a huge map and it’s a whole load of fun when you get your head around it. It’s pretty complicated as it’s like an entirely new game mode, but this video explains a lot: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/2528296

It’s made by some devs. Anyway, the gear for WvW is carried in from the PvE world. So, you get what gear you want by grinding dungeons etc. in the PvE world, then when you go to WvW, you have the same stats.

Note: You can go to WvW when you are level 1, as well as sPvP, but with WvW as you are level 1 you won’t have the same stats as the level 80s, so even though you are levelled up you will be much weaker.

Levelling Up/Quests:

There are 4 main aspects to levelling up: Story Quests, Dynamic Events, Hearts and Exploration/Gathering etc.

Story Quests: These are your story quests. They are always in the Top Right of your screen, and have the level of the question in brackets. They give you a good deal of XP, so make sure to do them when you’re the right level. You can see how to get there by following the Green Swirl on the map.

Dynamic Events: These turn up on the map when you are near them. They occur all over Tyria (the name of the world in Guild Wars) and give a great deal of XP. They’re all pretty simple and very self-explanatory. Big orange circle on the map signifying where they are.

Hearts: You see these everywhere, and they are gold-outlined Hearts on the map. When completed, they become solid Gold, and there is then a person who will sell you something in exchange for Karma points once the heart is completed. These will make up the majority of your Levelling XP.

Exploration/Gathering: Exploration and Gathering are highly rewarded in this game. Not only do you get XP for doing them both, but when you get 100% in an area, you get big rewards, and map completion means even bigger rewards and a title (‘Been There, Done That.’) Also, when you gather things you will need to buy Axes, Pickaxes and Sickles from a vendor (stack of coins on minimap). If your axe/pickaxe/sickle is too bad, then you will not get the ore or whatever it is you’re gathering.

Note: You can deposit these gathered materials at any time by clicking the cog in the inventory, and clicking “deposit all collectibles.”

Dungeons:

Dungeons in Guild Wars have two different modes: Story and Explorable.

Story mode is, quite predictably, the story mode, where you will be talked through the story behind why the dungeon is there etc.

Explorable mode is a mode where you have different paths to go down in a dungeon. All of the paths are different to the Story mode paths, and when you complete them you get 60 tokens per path. These tokens can be exchanged for Exotic armor. You can view this armor at the Port Marriner waypoint in Lion’s Arch.

Major Note: Find a friendly guild on your server and I’m sure they’ll be happy to answer any questions you have.

General Notes:

Lion’s Arch is like World of Warcraft’s Dalaran (or at least when I played… basically where most people go.)

This game, at least to me, seems to have a lot more depth than World of Warcraft in the combat. There are huge amounts of combo fields and loads of stuff, but that’s all just something you learn in time so don’t worry about it.

Your daily achievement is something that you should aim to complete. It’s normally really easy but tedious, but when you complete it you get some nice rewards (Money, XP, a Mystic Coin (used for crafting legendary weapons), and Karma (a currency which is not gold, and can only be used at vendors.)

P.S. don’t use your Karma jugs when you get them unless you need to. Save them up in your bank and open them all when you have a Karma booster activated, as well as all the Karma boosting items that you can find (Guild Banners in Lion’s Arch). This way you’ll get up to about 70% more Karma from each jug!

Have fun.

N.B. the stuff I’ve said is all pretty generalised, so make sure to get in contact with a guildy or someone who is happy to help at will.