Guild Wars 2

It’s definitely easier to do it alone, since you have more control over what’s going on and you can take your time with the fight.

It’s been a while since I did it but I seem to remember I just focused on keeping the golemites close to the golem by trying to get them all attacking me and then standing on top of it. Maybe not the most elegant approach but it worked.

I do sometimes wish it was possible to sell them, or at least gift them to people. I’ve got 68 (from birthdays, not black lion chests) and I think I’ve used 2 since they came out.

You’ll get a 1-time use skin which can be applied to any matching weapon without using a transmutation charge.

When you use it the skin will also be unlocked in your wardrobe which will allow you to use it as many times as you like, but you’ll have to use a transmutation charge.

(It’s exactly the same if you get it directly from a chest – the skin isn’t unlocked in the wardrobe until you apply it the first time, or choose to save it in the wardrobe – basically they want to make sure you can’t unlock it in your wardrobe and then sell it on.)

You can’t hide them completely but if you open the Options menu and change the drop-down for the Content Guide to Hide Events and Personal Story it will just show you map completion stuff. Events will still appear in the text below the Content Guide, but only when you’re in range of them.

(Alternatively you can just look at the map to see what you need to do, but some things, like some POIs can be hard to spot.)

I think it’s better this way. It means if you’re looking for a squad you can be sure all the ones listed are looking for people to join, you don’t have to sort through loads of full squads or squads on full maps to find ones you can actually join. (Those do still come up, but not nearly as often as if every single squad was listed.)

And as mentioned it allows pre-existing groups to use the squad UI to coordinate without having random extra people joining in.

The LFG tool will only list squads which have manually created a listing. So yes it’s entirely possible to have ‘hidden’ squads.

There are a variety of reasons someone might make a squad and not list them in the LFG tool, including:

• For some open-world events the convention is to have separate ‘taxi’ squads for bringing people into the map (listed in LFG) and for organising people (not listed) – the idea is that everyone will join the taxi squad, get into the map and then leave that squad and join the one for the job they want to do. (For example which path they’re on in Dragon’s Stand.)
• There may already be enough people doing the activity that they don’t need to look for more (even if the squad isn’t full), but they do want to use the squad UI to coordinate.
• It may be a private group, like a guild doing a guild mission or friends playing together, again they want the squad UI but don’t want extra people joining.

Frisco.4105:

I got the same for Boons and Conditions. Why not call them the simple Bufs and Debuffs?
I was confused and found it silly for a while but I’m used to it now.

In this case I think it’s because the names were carried over from GW1 which had several different types of buffs and debuffs, each with their own effects. Boons and conditions were just two of those.

In GW2 they simplified the system a lot – for example in GW1 necromancers had very few skills that caused conditions, instead they cast hexes which had similar kinds of effects (but with some key differences). Skills that cured conditions wouldn’t affect hexes and vice versa. In GW2 it was all condensed down into 1 set of buffs and 1 set of debuffs, but I guess they wanted some continuity (or thought GW1 players would be more familiar with those terms).

Oh I didn’t get the mini from the free chest, I got 4 Wintersday gifts with some random stuff in and a green dye. (And I didn’t buy any chests because of the aforementioned dislike of paid RNG.)

That’s why I’m happy it’s tradable.

Thank you for (finally) making the Mini Infinirarium tradable!

This mini has been bugging me since the very first Wintersday, because it’s only ever been available from RNG boxes which had to be bought with gems (I’m including the Guaranteed Wardrobe Unlock in that because you can only get them from Black Lion Chests).

So it was a very nice surprise to log in today and find that with the introduction of the Winter in Summer box it’s now been made tradable, meaning people who refuse to gamble with gems or get unlucky now have an alternative way of getting it.

It was also a nice surprise to realise that (unless I’ve missed something) everything in the boxes is tradable.

I agree that this would be helpful. I don’t mind the waypoints being gone, but it’d be nice if they didn’t show up on the map as ones you could teleport to.

I like to keep materials in storage “just in case” but that means “just in case I need to sell a bunch of stuff to make some gold” as much as “just in case I need to craft something with them”.

I’ve never bothered to buy the storage expanders because there’s very few materials I want more than 250 of so it’s not a problem to keep the extras in my bank. I think the only times I’ve needed lots of several different materials I was making a legendary and then I could take my time collecting them because I needed to do lots of other stuff too.

Most of them are just there in case I need them. And then periodically I’ll need more gold quickly and then I sell off all the extras. I have an arbitrary minimum for each material – 50 for cooking materials, 10 for rare materials I don’t use often, 25 for gem stores etc. and if I have anything over that I’ll sell it off.

I’m sure I could make a lot more gold if I bothered to keep track of prices and sell things when the price goes up instead of whenever I want the gold but I can’t be bothered doing that.

You won’t actually miss any part of the game by using the boost. You will still be able to play in all the zones and do your personal story (which normally unlocks every 10 levels). The game uses a down-scaling system which means if you’re above the recommended level for the zone you’re in your stats are reduced, you’ll still be more powerful than a character of that level because you’ll have more skills to choose from, more traits and because level 80 equipment gives points in 3 stats instead of the 1-2 at lower levels. But it means you won’t just 1-shot everything, you can still play properly.

While you’re down scaled XP and drops are scaled up to your level – so you’ll also be getting much the same rewards as if you were playing in level 80 zones.

What you will miss out on is learning the game. The process of leveling up is designed to gradually introduce mechanics, game modes and other options (including via notifications when you level up which tell you how various things work). At level 80 the game becomes much more open – there are a lot of things you can do but nothing you have to do or any set order to do them in. That confuses a lot of people who immediately boost their first character because the game isn’t giving them any direction and they don’t know what’s available and what they want to do.

I’d also add that levelling up is pretty quick in this game compared to most and does not require grinding, at least not in the conventional sense. You’ll actually level faster by exploring maps and doing Dynamic Events (orange text/icons, like quests but you don’t have to start them, just join in when you see one) and your story than you would if you picked a spot and stood there killing things. Some GW2 players call doing events to level up grinding, but in every other game I’ve played that’s considered simply playing the game.

Overall I’d recommend not using the boost right away – try levelling normally to get to grips with the game, you might find it very different from ones you’ve played before in some key ways and it’d be helpful to get used to how it works before you start thinking about level 80 activities.

And then the boost will be there whenever you want it. When you feel confident making your own way through the game you can skip to 80 and then just do whatever you want without worrying about being the right level. Or you can use it on a 2nd character to have more options.

I’m glad they were able to help you.

I’ve been fortunate to rarely need to contact Customer Service, but every time I have they’ve been helpful. Even when it was something that’s probably a pain for them to deal with, like when I forgot the password for my free account and couldn’t use the account recovery process because I didn’t have a key, but didn’t want to just start a new one.

I like them.

I haven’t bought this one yet but I may well get it. I have the panda hat and use it on a regular basis, and I’ve considered buying some of the others but thought they were a bit too similar to the panda hat.

Of course they don’t suit all my characters, and even the ones who do use them don’t wear them all the time, but that’s true of any skin.

Overall I think the best goal for Anet to aim for is a wide variety of skins – serious ones, silly ones, glowy ones with particle effects and plain ones, revealing armour and fully covered, symmetrical and asymmetrical…and so on. They’re never going to be able to make one style of armour that everyone likes and which suits everyone’s characters so the nearest they can come to making everyone happy is to let them choose.

In case you’re not already aware your server only matters for WvW.

In PvE and structured PvP all maps are shared across servers, the only restriction is which region (NA or EU) you’re in. So unless you’re planning to play WvW and specifically want to play with people on JQ there is absolutely no reason to wait for space – you can pick any other server and still play with people on that one.

If you really want that server then as Inculpatus said you need to wait for the WvW reset, which happens every Friday. Server population is entirely based on participation in WvW and only updates periodically, usually when the matches are reset. Time of day has nothing to do with it.

I don’t really think about it to be honest. I usually remember what I’ve been working on and what’s on my ‘to-do list’ so when I log in I just pick whatever I feel like doing at the time.

One thing to bear in mind is that a lot of activities in this game don’t need to be done all in one go and others can be quite quick – for example whilst you have to complete a story instance for your progress to be saved a lot of the instances only take 10 minutes or so (and that’s allowing time to listed to all the dialogue, speak to NPCs, read options etc. – not rushing through it). So it doesn’t matter if you don’t have time to complete it all, you can do a bit and then come back to it later.

I rarely get more than an hour or two and often have no idea how long I’ll have before I’m interrupted, but that’s one of the things I like about GW2. Of course I won’t commit to a dungeon run or whatever if I’m not sure I’ll have time, but there’s a lot of stuff you can do, or at least make progress towards in a short time.

tigirius.9014:

Faaris.8013:

Sorry, but even people on fixed incomes (majority?) benefit from planning their expenses on a monthly basis. Please consider putting away X Euro/Dollar per month for gaming, so next time you will be able to buy the item when it shows up.

You can also get gems with ingame gold. There’s something wrong when you have to wait for your paycheck to buy an ingame item, and it’s not ArenaNet’s business model.

It really is their business model because making skins unavailable after 30 days doesn’t help anyone. Even when I was able to work it was a problem because of paydays.

For example: In another title, Elder Scrolls Online, it takes whole months before it disappears. It takes them a very long time before the items disappear. It’s still a problem there as well.

The items that disappear for real currency should never disappear. It does nothing to benefit the sales of the items when the majority as you said in your statement have fixed incomes.

Additionally as a second example, Elder Scrolls Online offers a subscription with endless gatherer storage and with monthly currency for the store. This allows for the building up of currency so that items can be purchased when they are available. No such subscription exists in this title which makes it more difficult for players.

If they had something like the subscription that ESO offers here in GW2 then you could make the arguments you made but that is not offered.

Elder Scrolls Online also does a lot of special offers where items are only available for a few days. The most recent example is the mushroom house which was sold from the 15th – 19th June inclusive – just 5 days. They didn’t even announce the price in advance and there’s no way to convert gold into crowns (their gems) so the only option was to save up an unknown amount in advance, or spend real money.

It’s actually a fairly standard tactic in games because for every person who is living pay check to pay check and needs to wait for the money to come in there’s someone with more money than sense, or who has planned ahead and has the money saved up.

Having said that I think you’ve got the answer in your post – if the subscription system works for you then you can use the same method here – every month when you get paid you buy gems, however many you want. Then you save them until something you want to buy comes along.

(Or alternatively just set the money aside and use it to buy gems when something is released, or if there’s nothing in the gem store that month you can use it in ESO to buy extra crowns or on whatever else you want that month.)

Mashugana.2843:

I’m returning after a very long break. I’m going to level a new character to get the feel of the game again. I seem to remember that I could buy some starter armor/enhancements that made leveling a little easier – or am i thinking of another game?

I think I used a speed proc thingie just to help me get around faster and then + power thinngies to make it a little easier as I level. I think I buy level 0 gear, put in the speed and power thingies, and go have fun. That right?

There are many upgrade components you can apply to your equipment to add extra stats or effects. The most common are Runes for armour and Sigils for weapons, but there’s also gem stones and Talismans/Marks/Seals/Medallions/Crests (same thing but the name changes as you go through the higher level versions).

You can buy or find many variations of all of those. Low level runes are very cheap on the Trading Post. And you don’t need to buy special gear to put them in – any equipment can hold at least 1 upgrade. (There is no level 0 gear at all, since characters start at level 1, so you might be thinking of another game there.)

Personally I never bother buying upgrades for new characters because you’ll be changing your equipment all the time anyway as you level up. But the option is certainly there if you want it and I’m sure some people do it.

Mashugana.2843:

Any other quality of life things they may have added? I remember exploring and getting extra XP from creatures no one had killed in a while – I think there were xp boosts – not sure what is still around.

You do still get an XP bonus for killing enemies that haven’t been killed recently – that’s mainly passive animal with yellow names since most people ignore them. There are also XP boosts – you can buy boosters in the gem store but you’ll also get various versions in-game.

One thing which might be new (depending on when you left) is level up rewards – each time you reach a new level you get a pop-up with some items and some info on the game. The items can’t be sold or salvaged but they’re often useful, and the information can be helpful too.

This bothers me too, I have a male charr, sylvari and norn and I want to be able to show off their fur patterns/bioluminescence/tattoos but it’s extremely difficult to find armour that allows you to do that.

Oddly enough heavy armour has the most revealing options for males. Medium you can just about manage 1 mostly bare arm but with light armour the most you can do is hide the mask and gloves so their face and hands are showing (and invisible shoes if you can afford them). It’s disappointing.

I don’t want anything “sexy” – a t-shirt or sleeveless vest and maybe shorts would be perfect. Just something that doesn’t totally cover the character.

Haleydawn.3764:

I’m more inclined to think of these wings being included in the GWU as an oversight. They shouldn’t be in there. They removed the mini clockheart because it was an achievement reward.

But the mini clockheart is from an achievement which can still be completed.

The tequatl wings came from doing a bunch of dailies during a 2-week special event in 2013. It’s been impossible to get them ever since.

I think it would be a good idea to have another way to get these items. I’d prefer something that doesn’t involve 2 layers of RNG, but it’d be better than nothing.

I never understood why some things were left out when Season 1 rewards were added to the laurel vendor. That would be a better solution IMO. (Although they could also be included in the guaranteed wardrobe unlock so people might get lucky and get them ‘free’.)

Of course the best solution would be to bring back Season 1 and the missing festival stuff like the Mad Memories scavenger hunt, but that’s unlikely to happen.

All PvE maps are shared between all servers in a region. As long as he picks another European server he will be able to play with you anywhere outside of WvW.

If you add each other to your in-game friends list there is a high probability you will always be put into the same copy of the map automatically, but if not you can meet up by following these steps:

1) Verify that you are in the same location in the game world. If one of you is in the Black Citadel and the other is in Plains of Ashford this won’t work.
2) Form a part by right-clicking the other person’s name in chat or in your friends list and selecting “Invite to Party”.
3) One person needs to right-click the other person’s portrait in the party menu and select “Join in [map name]”.

That will move you to their copy of the map, and then you should be able to see each other in the game world and play together.

One thing to consider is that the equipment you get from the level 80 boost is identical to crafted level 80 exotics, and the only difference from exotics you can get in other places like the ones bought with karma in Orr is the skin.

So once you’ve levelled to 79 you may well find you have other options to get exotic equipment – which give you a wider range of stats to choose from – and you can use the boost to level a 2nd character to 80 to give you more options for playing high level content.

Haleydawn.3764:

It’s a “one pay wall” package.

Pay one price, get the current game.

Yes but they could do something like Elder Scrolls Online did.

They offered the expansion + the core game for full price (same price the base game had been at release) and then just the expansion on it’s own for a discounted price.

So if you’re a new player you just pay once and get the full current game* but if you’re an existing player you don’t feel like you’re being charged twice for the stuff you’ve already got.

*Minus DLC in ESO/Living Story in GW2.

I think it would be more accurate to say HoT is more complicated than the core game.

The enemies don’t necessarily do more damage or have more health (although some may well do). The big difference is that there’s a greater variety of combat mechanics coming into play. You will almost certainly need to fight a Smokescale differently to how you’d fight a mob of Pocket Raptors or a group of Mordrem. You can’t have your 1 standard rotation which is how you go through every single fight virtually on auto-pilot, because what works well against one enemy is totally useless against another.

It’s the same with navigating the maps. You can’t pick a destination and go in an essentially straight line there, then move on to the next one. You have to go around (and over and under) a whole variety of obstacles. Some areas might only be accessible once certain events have been completed.

Personally I find it more interesting. In a lot of ways it reminds me of Zelda games, which I really enjoy. But I know some people find it frustrating because it doesn’t match how they want to be playing.

We don’t know.

The only thing that’s been officially announced about the next expansion is that there is one.

There has been lots of rumours and discussion and speculation and some leaks of random screenshots which may or may not be true. But absolutely nothing official beyond the fact that an expansion is being worked on.

As a result we don’t know what it will cost or when it will be released or what packages they may offer or any of that. It’s possible Anet haven’t even decided yet.

What helps me a lot with any map, and especially with this one, is to take my time to explore it and learn landmarks and where things actually are in relation to each other rather than where they appear to be on the mini-map.

When people in my guild were “complaining”/bragging that they’d finished the whole story on the first night I was still just 1/2 way up the slope, poking into corners and learning where things are in relation to each other.

But on the 2nd day when they were trying to do achievements and complaining that places were impossible to reach I was finding it fairly easy to get around because I remembered the layout. (I have no sense of direction but a good visual memory, which is weird, but means I can find my way to places I’ve been before, but not navigate to new places and I can’t give directions to anyone else.)

For example the transition from the lowest level to the middle level is a ramp with destroyers on it. I can’t see it on the map and I’m not sure exactly where it is other than somewhere in the bottom right corner, but I know what it looks like so when I get near it I can find it easily.

Overall the map is a spiral, it just keeps going up and right. You can actually walk all the way up without ever using lava vents or updrafts or the oakheart skill. You need those things to get to some specific spots, including some where achievement-related items are. But you can do the whole story and get at least close to most places just by walking there.

And as someone else said I often find it easiest to go up to the top (start from the waypoint by the mercenary camp and go up to the top of the volcano/start of the jumping puzzle) and then glide to wherever I’m going. That way you can go in more of a straight line.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

If they did have names in other alphabets how would everyone else who doesn’t use that alphabet type that name in chat or into friend’s/ban list search line?

That would be the other problem. You could still right-click people’s names to select them but it would be a lot more limited.

I was going to add knowing how to say them in voice chat, but that’s a problem already.

I think you’re approaching the game backwards. To me stats and equipment are just the tools you need to play the game – the point of playing and the ultimate reward is to have fun doing it.

So if I find I’ve already got the best equipment in the game, or at least good enough that I can do everything without needing to upgrade it that’s great, because it means I can just do whatever I want to have fun instead of what the developers have decided I am required to do next in order to progress.

Yes this does mean there’s much less incentive to keep repeating the same content over and over again because you’re not forced to grind tokens or pray for the drop you need, but I see that as a good thing too. It means if and when things stop being fun (whether that’s a specific area or the game as a whole) I can move on to something else. And if I’m still enjoying doing it then I don’t need that extra incentive to force me to do it again, because it’s fun.

Having said that there are lots of other rewards on offer. GW2 uses “horizontal progression” meaning you can reach the top tier quickly but then you can work on different things like new stat combinations/builds or customising how your character looks. A lot of content offers unique skins and items like minis or backpacks, plus items with additional functionality like the Season 3 ascended trinkets which allow you to change the stat combination cheaply and easily so you can switch builds around more easily.

Oh that’s a tough question! I love mini pets and I’ve got literally hundreds of them (aiming to have them all eventually). I love the novelty of them so it’s really hard to choose between them. There’s also ones I like because of my memories of the content I had to play to get them (like Liadri and the WvW dolyak) or because they’re based on things/characters I really like.

But I think some of my favourites would be:

• Helmed Moa Racer – It’s a tiny moa in a hat, what’s not to love?
• Angry Chest – because of The Luggage.
• Tiger Spirit – This one was really fun to get, and it looks cool.
• Polar Bear – My first mini. Also I was a mini collector in GW1 as well where this was the super rare, impossible drop so even though the GW2 version is pretty common it’s still special to me.

5 has always been the default. As Tanner said if you’ve got 9 you must have purchased extra slots at some point. (I think a lot of people did early on when the gold to gems exchange was quite cheap, even though gold was harder to come by, and people were trying out different professions a lot.)

You only get an extra character slots with HoT if you buy the Deluxe Version. If you buy the standard version you only get the expansion content.

(The exception is free accounts, which start with just 2 character slots and get 3 more if they upgrade to a paid account.)

But once you’ve got a slot it’s permanent. Deleting the character in it will not delete the slot, even if it’s an ‘extra’ one – its just the character who will be gone. The slot can then be re-used to make a new character.

(Just make sure you remove any items you want to keep from the character first, because anything they have equipped or in their inventory will be gone forever when they’re deleted, and if it’s one you’ve not played since 2012 they might have unique items or skins which aren’t in your wardrobe yet.)

I’m guessing the OP means using different alphabets? At the moment we’re limited to the Latin alphabet, with some ‘special’ characters like accents on letters. But you can’t use Cyrillic or Arabic or Japanese or any other alphabet.

(Oh and the Chinese version allows Chinese characters obviously, but that’s entirely separate.)

Unfortunately that’s unlikely to happen unless they add full support for different alphabets – allowing players to write in them in chat, have the NPC dialogue, menus etc. use them and so on. And they’ve said they’re not planning to do that because it’d be too much work for the benefits it’d bring.

Has anyone seen the new Wonder Woman movie yet? (Don’t worry, no spoilers in my post.)

There’s a scene in it where I found myself thinking there was no way for her to know it but what she really wanted was to be in an RPG instead of a movie. The way she was reacting to WWI was pretty much how I play RPGs, including this one. Fortunately in a game it’s not a problem if you spend 100 hours, or 500 hours or 1000 hours saving the world.

Kelly.7019:

I could go “top to bottom” instead, but that would put 20 spaces of the starter back pack above then my 6 rows of gear and stuff. then more empty spaces. This just seems worse imo, for organizing.

Is it not possible to move the starter backpack further down? I know that still wouldn’t be ideal but it would enable you to put your stuff right at the top and then have all the loot appear under it.

We’ve got outfits that look like heavy armour and ones that look like light armour and in those cases people have said part of the appeal is the ability to put it on characters who can’t wear the actual armour. For example if I want a ‘battlemage’ type character I can make an elementalist (or mesmer/necro) and put them in the Ceremonial Plated outfit or the Royal Guard outfit or something like that.

I think it makes sense to have outfits that look like medium armour for exactly the same reason. Sure if I want my ranger or engineer in a long coat I’ve got tons of options but if I want the same look on my mesmer? Maybe I could find a skirt that’s sort-of similar and dye it to look like part of the top…but this outfit is a far better option.

I think there are advantages and disadvantages to both.

The old style was great for showing the characters clearly and enabling me to focus on the conversation. I often need to play with the sound turned off so I can’t actually listen to the dialogue and I’m slightly dyslexic so I read slowly. All of which means stopping the action and presenting the dialogue clearly in the middle of the screen with minimal distractions was great for allowing me to follow the conversation.

But it was useless for showing what was going on. If anything happened during a conversation you wouldn’t see it. There’s numerous points where someone says something like “Oh no! What’s that? What’s happening?” and I’m there thinking “I don’t know, all I see is you calmly standing there.”

Also depending on where they put the change-overs you’d often get either someone just standing there doing nothing long after their part in the conversation is over or someone entering too early and “giving away” what’s going to happen. I can’t remember where it comes up but one of those times when an NPC reacts to something unexpected is ruined because several seconds earlier the person they were speaking to is replaced with a risen, which makes it obvious that risen have broken into your camp and are about to threaten you with death and corruption before attacking (because that’s all they ever do).

The new version is almost the polar opposite of that. All those problems are gone because the dialogue and the action are interwoven. It means you don’t have to stop what you’re doing because someone is speaking, there are far more opportunities for NPCs to react to things that happen or to space out conversations more realistically instead of having to cramp it together into a cut scene.

The problem is I’m often too busy fighting or trying to find where I’m going to pay attention to what’s being said so I have to wait until both the conversation and the fight is over and then scroll back through the chat box and re-read it, which pulls me out of the action far more than a cut-scene ever did.

The other problem is that if anyone is behind the camera or too far in front or off to one side I may not even know they were speaking until my character replies because the dialogue boxes don’t appear, either the sound is off or the directional sound has made the dialogue too quiet to hear and with 2 guilds chattering away I may not immediately notice grey text in the chat box.

I agree that it’s best to level at least 1 character naturally before using the boost because you’ll learn a lot about the game that way.

When you do come to use it there’s 2 totally different ways I think you could use it well:
1) Boost a profession you really enjoy playing, so you’ve got 2 options for level 80 content.
2) Boost a profession you don’t enjoy playing in open-world PvE (which is the majority of levelling content) but would find useful for some level 80 stuff, like raids or Fractals or maybe WvW.

I suspect most people go with option 1. There is no ‘best’ profession, it depends on what you enjoy playing and what you want to do. I went with option 2, because I wanted one of each profession at level 80 but I find Warriors boring to play so it was unlikely I’d ever finish levelling one.

It is also possible to use the boost on a character who is already level 80, which obviously doesn’t level them up but does give all the items and equipment, so if you decide you just want to get rid of it you have that option.

Here’s a few other things which may be helpful to know:

• In PvP all characters are always level 80 with all skills and traits unlocked and your equipment does not affect your stats, therefore there is no need to boost a character for PvP.
• Although you cannot get another Level 80 Boost you can get Tomes of Knowledge from various places (in particular login rewards, PvP and WvW) which award 1 level each, so you can level additional characters without playing them if you want to. (I like to keep at least 80 Tomes just in case I want another level 80 at short notice.)
• You don’t get XP from PvP and WvW but you do get tomes so you can level a character by playing those modes if you want to.

It depends on what I’m doing and what mood I’m in.

I never think about it in the same terms as the OP, I don’t think about what the reward will be (unless I do need XP or karma and I’m actively working on getting it). It’s literally just – do I want to do this event?

Sometimes I’m too focused on what I’m already doing, or I’ve been zig-zagging across the area and seen that event 5 times this evening, or I know it’s going to take forever and drag me 1/2 way across the map and I don’t want that. Other times I decide I do want to do it.

I found the simplest way to do it was to put one character in Iron Marches and do a circuit of the lakes once or twice a day.

You won’t get coral orbs like you will in the higher level maps, but the map itself is easy to navigate which makes the run quick and simple and the enemies are easy to escape or kill. I didn’t count for my first 2 Manganese (because I was experimenting with different options) but it took me 58 nodes to get the last 8 I needed which would have been about 15 runs, I think it took me about 9 days.

Which was fine for me because while I was doing that I was working on all the other stuff I needed for that tier.

It’s the armoured one. Same one the set made when it was originally released.

I can’t remember ever being put off a game by which version of DX it used. Or even checking which versions it used.

I wasn’t aware they’d intended to add Polearms.

I have wondered what they’re going to do once they run out of weapons to add with elite specs. Warrior is going to end up being able to use all of them long before the other professions so they’ll either have to give them something else or invent new weapons.

But I didn’t know they were already planning a new one. Where have you seen this?

For now I recommend sticking with exotic equipment. Ascended equipment is either a very rare drop in specific areas (some of which require you to already have some ascended equipment to play), or it comes from long, complicated or expensive achievements or needs to be crafted, which is also expensive and time-gated. It’s designed to be a long-term goal.

Before you start working on that it’d be well worth finding out which areas of the game you’re going to focus on, how you’re going to play your character and therefore what build and stat combination you need. Otherwise you risk spending all that time and money making something that’s not even any good for you and you’ll have to spend more to change it.

Exotic is fine for the vast majority of things (and your equipment quality doesn’t matter at all in PvP) so it’s not like you’ll be handicapped while you’re deciding.

1) Most of the time, especially if you mainly play open-world PvE, it is just a minor annoyance. But in certain situations like raids, long meta-events and for some people/groups dungeons it adds an extra element of risk to encounters because you can’t simply attack, die, revive, attack, die and repeat until the enemy is dead. If you keep doing that you’ll end up with broken equipment and therefore reduced stats.

Think of it as a long-term death penalty.

2) It’s a gold sink. Something which isn’t fun on it’s own but makes the game as a whole far more enjoyable by curbing the rampant inflation that would otherwise occur as a result of the gold constantly being added to the game whenever an enemy is killed, an event is completed, an item is sold to a merchant and so-on. (Same reason the TP has fees.)

It also serves the secondary purpose of making some people think twice about using a waypoint, encouraging them to actually travel through the game world instead which means they might encounter things they would otherwise miss.

3) They fixed this with Season 3. I have no idea why they didn’t update season 2.

(Ok forum and cooking doesn’t mix. I’ll have to come back to 4, 5 & 6.)

“There are no culinary applications for bloodstone dust. None.” – Chef Robertus

I make new characters on a regular basis and I very rarely have a hard time coming up with names. I think what helps is that I very rarely make characters with 1-word names, and I tend to use non-english words.

For example my most recent was a charr engineer called Altaica Firesmith. It took me about 1 minute to come up with that name: the character had tiger stripes so I went to the Wikipedia page for tigers, picked a species name I liked the sound of and threw a charr-appropriate last name on it. Another one I often use is Uncia Snowfur, which is the same idea. (Panthera uncia is the Latin name for snow leopards.)

If you really want a one-word name it is trickier, but it can be done. A little while ago I made a new asura and a new sylvari and because they’re permanent characters I spent a lot more time thinking up names for them, which involved making characters with several possible names to see if it was available and how it looked in chat. The names I settled on are Aurhedyn (gold seed) and Ambage (a Latin word for a long, rambling explanation) and I must have tired 5 variations of each and they were all available.

But if you’re using common real-life names, or names from popular culture you’re almost certainly going to find they’re taken. Or even unpopular culture. I’ve never actually met another person who’s played Legend of Kyrandia but every variant I could find on Zanthia, Mystic Zanthia, Zanthia the Alchemist etc. was taken.

(On the other hand back in GW1 I got Alleria Wildrunner, and re-used it in GW2, which is close enough to the original that people often don’t notice it’s changed. And now I feel like it suits the character so well I wouldn’t change it even if I could.)

I always level my permanent characters by actually playing them. I only use tomes and scrolls on temporary characters I make to fulfil 1 purpose and delete (at the moment this is usually playing story instances my permanent characters didn’t do).

This is partially because I think if I’m planning to play them long-term I should be prepared to play them at least enough to level up, and partially just because I actually like open-world PvE so I enjoy getting to re-play it.

Regardless of how I’m levelling them I never buy equipment from the TP until the character is level 80 (and even then I’m more likely to get it from vendors in-game or craft it myself). Buying it from the TP seems like a waste of money when perfectly good equipment comes free and I’m going to out-level it soon. No you won’t have a matching set or full runes/sigils, but you don’t need them either if you’re just doing PvE.

I’ve never understood why they didn’t keep it to a multiple of 9 so people can have sets of each profession, or a multiple of 5 for sets of each race (I’m not sure which is more common).

I’ve also seen some people suggest 90 should be the cap, so it’s possible to make 1 of each race/gender/profession combination.

ProtoGunner.4953:

There’s always people who exaggerate. Oh, the excessiveness of humankind. Where doest thou lead us? Take a chill pill and delete some of your chars, really. I am sure you have some you didn’t see or remember for ages anyways.

There are definitely people who have purchased the maximum number of character slots. That’s how we were able to find out there was a maximum, at first people thought it might be infinite.

And like someone else mentioned early on gold – gem prices were much cheaper so a character slot was about 2g. Of course 2g was harder to come by at launch, but it was still pretty easy to get character slots with gold if you prioritised it.

I think quite a few people play both GW2 and Elder Scrolls Online, or have played it previously.

I thought the personalities were an interesting idea at first, but I don’t use them myself. Well, I use the assassin one on one alt because I got it free and thought I might as well. I’ve tried to find a character to use the free Heroic one as well but it just looks silly and over-acted on all my characters.

It’s the same problem with all the others. I thought the scholar one would be perfect for my sorcerer, but it basically just means you’re holding an open book all the time, which looks a bit silly (especially when running).

But I can imagine role-players might like them. Especially if they did come with new emotes as I know several people have asked for new ones over the years.

I was disappointed she never got added to the home instance for characters who did that storyline.

I didn’t know she appeared in the Vigil’s invading Orr story until after my human character had done it. So I picked the Whisper’s plan on her and never saw Deborah.

It would be nice to see her again. Either in the story or simply in your home instance.