Guild Wars 2

Money tips:

1. Buy harvesting tools. Harvest everything you see.
2. Focus on completing your dailies at low levels (below 35).
3. Don’t craft, sell your crafting materials. Later in the game you can think about crafting (35+).
4. Sell everything on the trade post that you can (right click an item). Only sell items to vendors if you can’t get a better price on the trade post. Don’t bother with salvaging until you hit level 35+.
5. Sell things that don’t have a large supply a few copper below the lowest seller. Sell things that have a lot of supply for as much as the highest buyer will give you
6. At level 35 run Ascalon Catacombs (AC) for money. Spend the Ascalonian tears to buy gear and salvage the gear for rare materials to sell.
7. Check the price of dyes before using them. Sell the expensive ones and use a similarly-colored cheap one for yourself.
8. Stay alive. If you die you lose money on the repair bill.

Leveling Tips:

1. Join a guild for XP bonuses.
2. Always hunt with food XP bonuses.
3. Complete dailies until level 35.
4. Do AC with XP boosters at level 35+.
5. Get gear every 5-10 levels. Use karma to buy trinkets and earned money to buy armor and weapons from the tradepost. Keeping up on this is cheap.
6. Stay alive. If you die, you aren’t killing things.

Karma tips (since it was brought up):

1. Do dailies for Karma jugs and save them
2. Use them with karma boosters, guild banners, ice cream and the outmanned wvw bonus for up to 7,875 Karma instead of 4,500. (Thanks Esplen.)

Enjoying it Tips:

1. Build Vitality and and Toughness at low levels. Worry about Power later.
2. Read your skills’ tool tips and practice using them on easier mobs before running into the thick of it.
3. Play with other people (your guild or your boyfriend and his friends).
4. Stay alive, dying sucks. Run away to fight another day.
5. Try different professions until one clicks.
6. Don’t give up on a profession until after level 20ish.

Survivable Professions (without need for a specific build):

1. Guardian = melee, great survivability
2. Warrior = melee/ranged, decent survivability
3. Necromancer = spellcaster, good survivability using death shroud (just don’t use minions), great survivability once you get elites (lvl 30)
4. Ranger = melee/ranged, decent survivability (but nobody will want to play with you in difficult end game content)

Other professions (that you will specifically have to build for survivability):

1. Mesmer = The most difficult profession at low levels. Suffer through it until you can get some elites. Even at higher levels it is still one of the least survivable professions.
2. Thief = Can only survive by using stealth and dodging. Has poor heals.
3. Engineer = Pretty much the gimp profession, skip it for now.
4. Elementalist = Great survivability when built for it but low survivability for the first 30 levels.

Some of this is probably just common sense but some of it may be helpful.

Lol… always complete your daily. You don’t have to go that far out of your way to finish it, and it gives you 10% of your level upon completion (not including each achievement giving you experience). Additionally, you get a jug of karma (4,500 without using any boosts) and a Mystic Coin (~15s on TP).

Never played a mes, but very familiar with ranger.

Have you un-locked all the ranger weapon skills yet?? If not, I strongly suggest doing this, as rangers have access to a lot different weapons that you might find more suitable to your play style. Also, do not forget your underwater weapons – you need to un-lock those skills as well,

I always preferred longbow with greatsword as my second weapon while leveling. I never used shortbow very much until I started doing dungeons after I hit lvl 80. Axe/warhorn or axe/torch are also good second weapon sets.

There are 41 pets for you to charm in the game with many different strengths and weakness and functionality to match your play style and situation. Most are very easy to find in the starter cities (no combat required) and in the various starter maps (lvl 1-15). Then the rest are in mid-level maps, Going out to find them all will level your ranger to around 50, if you fully explore/complete each map you visit. One pet is in a lvl 80 map, so you won’t complete the set until you can survive there.

The key to surviving with a ranger is to max the damage from your longbow. This means staying at max range from the mobs when opening attacks. Use all the skills to slow or knockback the mobs as they advance and kite. When they get in melee range, swap to your greatsword to finish them off.

Also, pull individual mobs from groups 1 or 2 at time and avoid aggro’ing too many at once. Use the terrain to your advantage, and plan your tactics beforehand with an escape route in mind. All this will help you to deal with the more difficult content yet to come .

I like an abundance of clone options, e.g. cloning when dodging, which probably explains why my DPS isn’t as high as it could be, but I feel like I can take on a crazy number of mobs at the same time and just condition-’em-down while an army of me laughs at ’em.

When showing off I even like to do a /sit mid-combat and watch a phantom (specced for more HP) chissel down the mobs while they’re running after my clones.

After trying every combination I settled on greatsword / staff, and since then I had no trouble juggling three or four mobs two or three levels higher than me (when still leveling), and I’m not even close to using my shatters efficiently. At 80 the survivability of my mesmer is excellent.

Blink is a great lifesaver too, and awesome too because it’s a little bugged so you can landsurf after you blink (the animation doesn’t engage unless you change movement)

Edit: and one more thing someone probably mentioned: keeping your gear at level is very important for a mesmer. Since I don’t craft and so got a ton of cash to spent I upgraded him every five levels to greens. Three levels would be better, it really makes a big difference.