Guild Wars 2

Edit: the wiki explains how to get max agony resistance, you can pick the bits of that which are practical for you https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Agony_Resistance.

1. Attune your rings, then you can add craftable agony infusions to them (remember to take your versatile infusions out first, or they’ll be destroyed when you attune) https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Attuned_equipment.

2. The exotic crafters backpack has a slot for agony, which may be worth using. Generally no, otherwise.

3. Weapons and armour, but rarely and at high levels. You’ll need another way to get to them.

4. Not clear what you’re asking here, but ascended is expensive.

5. Craft one of these https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elegant_Weaponsmith%27s_Backpack (or armour equivalent) and put an infusion in it for the moment.

6. I’m assuming you mean using the slots for AR vs +stat infusions. That’s normal.

6.5 I don’t know.

Amulets you can get 10 laurels cheaper if you buy them in WvW with some badges of honour, and accessories are cheaper if you buy them with guild commendations, though those are also time limited and require joining a guild running missions.

Get fractal mastery, and go around to the left as you enter the Mistlock Observatory- there’s a MAST-ER604 golem which will teleport you to an area where you can buy infusion extractors, +7 infusions and craftable infusions.

You get the carapace gloves from the achievement for completing the episode for the first time, so you can’t repeat it – however, you can repeat some of the other episodes to get extra armour parts.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Carapace_armor has links for each box which explain exactly how you get it. For gloves, you either get extras from playing the Silverwastes, or buy them for 1k bandit crests.

What armour are you looking for dyes for? Different materials take the dye differently, so you may be better off with different dyes depending on the underlying fabric choice.

What’s your budget? There are really dark blacks which are incredibly expensive, and then there are cheaper versions which are a bit off colour, and similarly for white.

Dulfy has a nice gallery showing dyes of various hues and how they look on a selection of armour – this might be useful for deciding what kind of red/green you’re looking for.
http://dulfy.net/2013/12/24/gw2-dye-gallery/

Do you have a specific build in mind, and do your level 80 items have corresponding stats and sigils/runes? If not, it’s probably worth replacing them too.

Least effort would just be buying items on the trading post. Rares are usually 30-40 silver each, and if you replace them later you can salvage them for ecto. Greens would be even cheaper if you really don’t have gold, and still an improvement on your level 40-60 items. Add in some sigils and runes from the trading post and you’re probably fine.

The problem with karma gear is you can’t get any runes out that you put in because you can’t salvage it. If you’re going to be using cheap(ish) runes it’s fine.

CoF P1+2 can be run in less than an hour each day, and would give you a full set of armour in 10-11 days. The paths are quite easy, and mostly consist of following the person in front, so you should be OK if you join all welcome or nondescript groups and say you’re new and ask if that’s OK (or will at least result in you getting kicked at the start if it isn’t).

Check DnT’s ranger guide for up to date build and weapon information for dungeons and GW2 dungeons for handy walkthroughs.

Make sure you start WvW maps as soon as possible, and then continue them as you complete other maps, so you can take the best advantage of your server being different colours, or taking points like Stonemist Keep.

If you’re trying to complete the story achievements and it doesn’t work, make sure that you’re doing them on a character which has already completed the episode. You should have yellow buff icons with a crown shape for each achievement possible in the instance when you start it.

For the last instance, you can use challenge motes once you’ve killed enemies with achievements to reset the achievement and summon the enemy back if you failed.

Are you doing this on a character which has previously completed this episode of the Living Story? You should be able to see a yellow buff with a crown icon for each achievement you can get in the instance, which will go away if you fail.

You can then restart the fight once you’ve killed the NPC using a challenge mote that is quite close by. It will summon the NPC for you to fight again.

The Silverwastes is a new zone for everyone, whether they have episode 5 of the living story or not. You will always be able to access this, as would someone starting in a few months time.

If you’ve logged in this week you’ll have access to the episode 5 story content, which is a series of instances within the Silverwastes and other zones, as soon as you hit level 80.

You buy runes and sigils (along with pretty much everything else you might want) on the trading post. Look for scales icons in cities in the game, or press o (but you’ll have to go to an NPC with the scales icon to collect them). Use the filters for upgrade components, and search for “minor” ones (these are the cheapest, also all that you’ll be able to apply to your equipment at low levels).

Check the wiki (search sigil and rune) for what they do.

To apply them open the equipment screen, double click the sigil/rune, then click on the item you want to apply it to.

Make sure your gear is reasonably up to date for your level, and put some cheap runes on your armour (I generally go for minor ones giving +10 to power) and sigils on your weapon. Putting a minor sigil of bloodlust on the main weapon you’re using to kill things and one of your underwater weapons. This gives you power buffs when you kill things, so will help with killing enemies before they kill you.

This might not be the case for you, but I found my characters I was levelling tended to go through periods of dying horribly when I just hadn’t updated their equipment in a while.

2/3) If you just want to play the previous episodes, anyone who has them unlocked can take you through them. You won’t get the rewards, but you’ll see the story.

KurisuX.7340:

I solo’d the main quest-line with Elementalist and Ranger, though I gotta admit, the achievements will be hard to solo. Those Mordrem don’t play. Not even sure how I will beat the final guy without the boon breaker…. -_- Could have sworn he was invincible.

Fragile and the other blue-icon effects don’t count as buffs – the achievement is for not transferring any of your own (orange-icon) buffs to the vortexes.

Which dungeons do you want skins from? Some are easy to learn, others are sold regularly, others can be more painful. PvP reward tracks are a possible fall back if you don’t mind that – hot join doesn’t really include teamwork.

p1/2/3 = Running the explorable path of the dungeon which is that option in the conversation to pick a path.
fw or fwd/up/ae or aetherpath The path names for Twilight Arbour, used instead of numbers for some reason.
exp = Experienced – this is vague, but at minimum have run the path before, know the usual places to stack and any encounter mechanics.
zerk/fz = Please wear berzerker (power/precision/ferocity) gear. Usually also assumes a build which is dps oriented and reasonably close to the meta-build.
Xk Ap+ = Have at least X achievement points, used as a screen to avoid really new players.
gearcheck = ping gear on joining, used in zerk groups to check you read the lfg message and are actually using zerk gear.
full run = Doing all paths of the explorable dungeon.

That covers the most common terms, is there anything else you’ve seen and don’t understand?

If you’re new to dungeons, join groups which are either all welcome or no details specified and say you’re new and check if that’s OK. This generally means people will be nicer and will know to explain encounters where you don’t just kill the enemies. Most explorable dungeons are run at level 80 for speed – if you’re below that, try story mode first.

Check out the dungeon forums/Noob guild there, they are friendly to new people who want to learn.

If you click skins for different slots in the bank preview menu, you should be able to view them together as an outfit.

If you preview dyes from the tradepost, these will show up on your previewed outfit, however there are only 4 dye slots shared among all pieces, so this sometimes ends up looking weird if the dye channels don’t match up, or the fabrics take dye differently.

Thanks – I really like your version. Unfortunately the Guild Archmage Mantle isn’t available in game (along with the rest of the Guild- armour, I’m not sure why) but I’ll keep an eye out for your it being introduced, and go for those gloves if I get the Trickster set.

I wanted a look similar to the male whispers light armour, but on my female elementalist – swirly robes that cover most skin but are figure hugging.

I’m quite happy with the legs and headpiece, less sure about the shoulders-top-gloves combination – the current one sort of balances out, but it’s hard finding something simple and covering enough to go with the rest of the outfit.

Please ignore the dyes – the colour channels in the various parts don’t match up, so I just went for options which didn’t look awful (abyss/blue shade/dust/black cherry). Once I get the pieces I’d like to see if paler colours work, to contrast with her skin-tone.

Parts list:
Glorious Crown
Devout Mantle
Seer Coat/Trickster Coat (has slashes in the fabric along the elbow)
Wrappings of the Lich
Trappings of the Lich
Apprentice Shoes
Krytan staff

No, unfortunately you’re stuck with skins of the correct armour weight for your profession, so your necromancer could only use light armour skins.

I’m not a fashion expert, but did spend some time looking for a non-trenchcoat look for my thief. Glorious brigandine chest/priory historical trousers are both figure hugging and have a banded pattern that might work as robot-looking.

I like the rest of the outfit, though, will be back in a day or two with some looks I’m stuck on.

Consume them. They aren’t generally used in crafting (there’s the odd special case, like low level artificers can refine them, and I think some special items like Mawdrey need them but it’ll be easy to get hold of the essences later).

Edit: looking at the wiki that’s all they’re used for – see http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Essence_of_Luck. The wiki links what you can make with items, so is a good thing to check if you’re not sure what to do with something.

Keep an eye on your movement speed buffs. For long jumps where you can’t overshoot they’re useful, but for short jumps to small platforms they can make things worse.

Dulfy has a list of jumping puzzles in order of difficulty at http://dulfy.net/2012/09/16/gw2-jumping-puzzles-guides-guild-wars-2/, doing some of the easier ones might help with practice.

Check if you have teleports or leaps on your class. These can sometimes make jumps easier.

If your world is green in WvW, go do the green EB Keep Vista. It’s an annoying JP, and even worse to do when green is trying to take their keep back. None of the other vistas in WvW are anywhere near as bad.

The items you get as level up awards generally can’t be salvaged or sold. Items from karma or WvW vendors also can’t be salvaged, though karma vendor items at least can be put in the mystic forge.

These items are probably soul bound (check the text when you hover over them) so you couldn’t send them to someone else, or bank them for a different character either.

Check whether the loot is soul bound or account bound – either would prevent you from selling it on the trading post.

You unlock weapon swap when you hit lvl 15, at which point you get slots for a second set of weapons and the key will work.

Check your starter city – the gathering tools were removed from merchants in very low level areas as part of the September patch, but they’re still in the city and most areas once you get past lvl 10 or so. Crafting merchants in the city (icon like tailor, armoursmith etc) will sell gathering tools and salvage kits, and are often easier to find that the merchants which are actually useful vs those selling beer.

Just press b for WvW and go to Lion’s Arch/map a key to go to PvP, then you can do it at any level – the buttons are just hidden (and may unhide once you get there once).

Looks fixed – went from 95 weapon smith to 400, which took the character from lvl 24 to lvl 30.

Can you try in a higher level area (30+) and see if it works? I hit this bug on my warrior (also 80+ and previously able to buy traits) and now think it might have been caused by downscaling, but am not somewhere I can check at the moment.

Edit: Checking other players posts, the downscaling sounds like the problem, going to somewhere else should fix it.

If you’re limited to one extra character I’d suggest waiting until after the patch hits – that way you can see how the changes actually play out, rather than peoples’ predictions.

Of the three, I’ve only played ranger to 80. The pet is great for open world PvE, but can be a pain anywhere AoE heavy (it tends to run through them and die) and has chunk of your DPS. The sword auto-attack chain is also deeply annoying – the leap-strikes root you, preventing dodging. There are ways around this (switch auto-attack off, evades from sword/dagger), but it’s still quite painful. Frost Spirit also seems to have been nerfed/bugfixed recently (link) , reducing their utility in dungeons.

Unless you really like the idea of the ranger class, I’d go with engineer or thief as more generally useful.

There are some nice back pieces available from the laurel vendor for 25 laurels + 15 gold, the skins for desert rose, lightning catcher and sun catcher are on the TP for 20-40 gold.

There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to search for them beyond http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Back_item.

Check http://dulfy.net/2014/04/17/gw2-fashion-collector-title-guide/ ? I haven’t tried it, but it looks useful.

Yes. You also get a few gems in some of the chests you get for getting certain numbers of Achievement Points (check the tracker in the achievements panel, it tells you what you get when).

1) Do map completion (get all points of interest, vistas, skill challenges and hearts in a zone). Starter cities give them and are quick to complete if you want some in a hurry, though you may want to save them until level 80 – you go through gear quickly while levelling.

2) You can always buy gems with IG gold if you don’t want to spend cash.

I’m assuming that means you don’t have enough gold to buy one on the TP. You can get cheap ones from WvW, but they aren’t salvageable so any sigils you put in them are stuck.

You could also make do with a rare weapon for now, and run Citadel of Flame path 1 for tokens to get an exotic one – these are salvageable, and CoF p1 is the easiest dungeon in the game, so you might have less of a problem with being kicked for being unfamiliar with the path – if you read a guide/watch a video and mention that, it might also help. Make sure you have a waypoint nearby and aren’t joining zerk/exp/Xk AP groups. P2 is also easy and popular.

If you’re keen on dungeons, check out the Noob guild in the dungeon forum – you can find a mentor there to teach you dungeon specifics.

I had a similar problem levelling up an elementalist alt, and getting level 20 armour really helped. Grabbing a minor sigil of bloodlust for your weapon also helps with killing things before they kill you, and the conjure lightning hammer skill has an AoE blind as the third attack in the auto-attack chain, which is very useful if fighting groups of monsters.

Check out the Noob guild in the dungeons forum, if you want to run dungeons – that gives you a list of people willing to mentor at various skill levels, which is probably the quickest way to get up to speed.

Otherwise, look at gw2dungeons/the wiki/youtube for whichever dungeon you want to run. There isn’t a strict progression, there is a set of easy-ish, commonly run dungeons – Citadel of Flame P1 is the easiest, then look at CoF p2, Twilight Arbor Forward/Up, Ascalonian Catacombs. Rewards are daily, so it’s worth getting good at a path or two – the two CoF paths give you two gold and 120 dungeon tokens (which can go towards getting you full exotic zerk gear), and are doable in ~30 mins for both.

Exotic zerk gear and DnT build is ideal, but not required (unless you join specific groups). If you have a dps build and what gear you can afford you’ll probably be fine in
PuGs without requirements.

You can get groups using the lfg tool, but avoid any ones with requirements other than level 80 until you’re familiar with the dungeon. People are usually OK if you say you’re new at the start, and will sometimes tell you what you need to do at non-obvious steps, otherwise you can get through most sections by following the group.

Edit: lfg terms that aren’t obvious
exp = experienced – you know the dungeon path and your class well.
fz/zerk = full berserker – by which they generally mean DnT build or reasonable approximation, and full exotics with zerker stats and appropriate runes and sigils
3k AP+ = this one’s relatively obvious as more than 3000 Achievement Points, what is less obvious is why it is being asked for. AP are sometimes used as a general indicator of how long you’ve been playing the game, with the home that this will correspond to your skill and experience with dungeons.

World completion and explorer completion are different for some reason. There are areas of maps with no PoIs, hearts, vistas or skill challenges, e.g. Windrock Maze and Lamia Mire in Plains of Ashford. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Plains_of_Ashford. You need to have been to these areas for the explorer achievement but not world completion.

Checking through the various areas with nothing in them and trying to match them to fuzzy areas on your map is probably the easiest way to find which ones you’re missing.

Draknar.5748:

Inside WvW areas you can buy ascended rings for less laurels, but also needs badges I believe. This might be the best way to go especially if you like WvW.

You get a 10 laurel discount on each item in exchange for paying 250 badges of honour per item. If you like/can tolerate running around with the zerg in Edge of the Mists for an evening or two, this is a great deal.

It’s also worth noting that you can’t salvage WvW or karma gear, so you won’t be able to get the upgrades out of it cost-effectively if you decide you want to change them.

Getting gear from dungeons, WvW or karma is also fixed cost independent of the stats, whereas buying from the TP the more popular stat combinations are more expensive. Karma vendor armour may also have runes you want already in it (mostly if you want soldier’s stats and Melandru runes).

I’d be interested in trying this out – I’ve got a charr warrior and am EU-based.

Dungeons sound ideal for RP here – instancing solves the problem of non-RPers, and it gives you a traditional dungeon crawl with creatures to slay, puzzles to solve and plot NPCs to ignore. Though trying to type and dodge at the same time may be interesting.

I don’t play necros, so can’t answer those questions, but

2) Check out the guild recruitment forums, or post in LFG mentioning whether you’re on EU or NA servers. There are plenty of PvE guilds looking for new members.
3) You don’t need to spend real life money at all. You use money to buy gems, which buy new skins and convenience tools – however, you can also use gold from the game to buy gems.
4) Ranger is also very good in solo open world, but suffers everywhere else.
6) Look through https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/OMG-If-you-only-knew-this-tips-for-new-players/first – this has a bunch of tips that are useful, though the trait information is out of date.

I’d suggest asking in the class forums, or at least changing the title of your post so that the relevant people will see it. Levelling the wrong class isn’t a major issue, as it’ll not take much time to get the other to level 80 as well compared to getting a legendary (the usual guide is 1 hour per level, with some people talking of up to 5 levels in an hour with boosters).

I’ve got a warrior I’m happy with, and can survive in dungeons in zerk gear (most of the time) despite not being skilled. The GS dps rotation is simple, so I can concentrate on trying to learn the encounters. I’m also levelling a guardian, since the skills look interesting and I can share any ascended armour and some weapons between the two.

However, endgame in GW2 is mostly about aesthetics, so why play a class you don’t like the animations of? If you find yourself dying too much, you can adjust gear to have more defensive stats, to give you more room to make mistakes while learning what to do.

Do story mode, read the gw2dungeon guide so you have a rough idea of where to run and how to kill stuff, then open your own instance and start a LFG of “P1 Casual run, all welcome” or something similar.

I’ve tried this to learn CoF P1 (recommended as the easiest dungeon), the group filled up very quickly and everyone else seemed to know what they were doing, so I just followed them – reading the guide is mostly a backup in case you get a group who are all new too, and to avoid looking too inexperienced.

Check out this post – it answers a lot of your questions https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/The-Basics-of-WvW-guide-and-more

The point of WvW is fun and trying to work with others on your server beat the other servers your server has been matched up against. Think large group PvP.

WvW is a lot easier to do at level 80 – before then you’ll be weaker than anyone who is level 80. See https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Low-Level-WvW-Tips#post877152 for tips of WvW while low level.

Roaming means running around the map by yourself or in a small group, trying to take objectives for your server – these are the coloured icons like camps, towers and so on. You may also fight players representing the other servers, though will need to avoid large groups.

The other main option is to run with a zerg, a large group usually lead by a commander (blue shield/dorrito icon), which can take larger objectives like the castles. This is easier to do if you’re not sure what you’re doing in WvW or are low level – just follow the icon and listen to the commander.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Everyone should post their songs and poems. ^^

The perils of making a ranger because you think (some of) the pets are cute.

There once was an asura called Dana,
who decided to train as a ranger.
Her pet she taught,
and beside it she fought,
but it never saw AoE danger.

The story mode of dungeons is also a good place to start, if you haven’t done it already. It seems to be more relaxed than the explorable paths – probably because people only have to run it once to unlock explorable mode, so don’t care as much if it takes a bit longer.

There’s a community site for Fissure of Woe at http://fow.guildlaunch.com which includes a number of active guilds, so you may have more luck checking over them and seeing if one fits, or popping into WvW and asking around – which also gives you the ability to get to know guild members a bit before applying.

However, if you’re not interested in WvW you may as well look at guilds across EU, since you can play with any of them and numbers are quite low on FoW.

Each race gets 3 sets of racial armour for each armour weight group, which for Sylvari looks like leaves – so if you want to look like sylvari from the art, you’d probably want to get hold of that.

Otherwise each armour set seems to look similar on human/norn/sylvari, and then charr/asura have the same set of armour for male and female characters.

Azura ranger feels like it would fit – I can imagine one of them being in to fossils and figuring out how to recalibrate the aethervolt flux matrix of their <fill in weapon here> to take advantage of one. Or a sylvari guardian/warrior/ranger with a big weapon, to show it off better and have a strength-of-nature feel – plus it seems like it might go nicely with autumn colours.

Edit: and an unrelated question – is it possible to change the lip colour of characters during creation? I’ve tried making human females with mid to dark skin tones, but they ended up looking like they were wearing pale pink lipstick. This was not the look I was going for.

I’d be happy to help gather data if it’s doable by a noob (currently working on gear to get started with dungeons).

I’d like a student invite please. I’m EU based, started playing a few months ago and would like to try out dungeons, starting with story-mode/some of the easier explorable paths, and working up from there.