Guild Wars 2

The limitation is with Windows, not the mouse. Windows only recognizes 5 logical mouse buttons: left, right, middle, left-side, right-side (I’m not 100% sure, but I think Windows XP might not recognize the side buttons and only uses 3 logical buttons). Additional buttons won’t get picked up by Windows unless you use your mouse’s custom drivers to map the additional buttons to specific keystrokes.

So to answer your question: when shopping for a mouse, make sure it includes software that allows you to remap mouse buttons to keystrokes and/or macros.

Guru3D.com is the best source to get SweetFX.

Version 1.4 was just released a few days ago:
http://www.guru3d.com/files_details/sweetfx_shader_suite_download.html

I haven’t tested it out yet, but if you run into problems here’s the link to 1.3 which I have been running for almost 6 months without issue:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=368880

Quick tip: remember to disable anti-aliasing in-game, otherwise SweetFX’s improved AA won’t kick in.

Magic Find percentages from equipment (and other sources) are added together. So 10% + 20% = 30%.

However, keep in mind that 100% Magic Find does not mean you’ll get something 100% of the time. From the GW2 wiki page on Magic Find:

“Everytime you kill a monster you roll on a number of tables, inside these tables are different rarity categories. Magic find increases the chances you will get higher categories. For example if there is a 1 in 10 category, and you have 200% magic find you will have 3/10 chances to get that category. This improves not just the rarity of the items you get but can also improve your chances at getting trophies and rare crafting materials like lodestones.”

With that in mind, yes it does make sense to increase your Magic Find over 100% if you want to maximize your loot from monster kills. But also keep in mind:

“Magic find is applied when a foe dies; it does not apply to loot from chests, items created in the Mystic Forge, or random drops from gathering. "

Last night I had a key drop from some random dredge in Diessa Plateau. Also got one from a map completion a few weeks back. But those are the only keys I’ve received outside of a story quest reward since launch. So I can confirm the keys do still drop; they’re just extremely rare.

Glitch is correct. You should still have your guild upgrades on the original server. If your guild bank is now empty, that means your leader took everything with him when he transferred. If you transfer to a new server, you’ll need to earn influence and unlock your upgrades again on that server (but you’ll never loose the upgrades and influence from your original server).

P.S. I believe mail is cross-server. So while you can’t access the guild bank on a different server from your own, someone on that server could pull an item out and mail it to you.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Since everyone makes different decisions, you’ll can’t be sure that you’ll be able to do things along with friends

You don’t have to be on the same step, or even doing the same storyline. If you’re standing near a party member when they enter a personal story instance you’ll get a dialog box asking if you’d like to join them in their story.

There’s two types of PvP — structured PvP (playing in the 8×8 or 5×5 team matches) and World vs. World (one massive free-for-all on a set of four huge maps).

In sPvP all of your equipment has fixed stats, and your PvE performance does not play any factor at all. In fact, you can buy any sPvP gear for free in the Heart of the Mists from various vendors. Everyone gets the same building blocks; what matters is how you put the blocks together. The Mystic Forge in sPvP will only give different appearances — the stats will still be the same as your started gear. Also, you do not use accessories, rings or back items in sPvP — only an amulet (and there’s an amulet vendor in the Heart of the Mists that gives you free PvP amulets).

In World vs. World, your character is auto-leveled to 80 but you still use your PvE equipment. So in this case, what you do in PvE definitely matters. And even though everyone is auto-leveled to 80, those players who are REALLY level 80 and have actual level 80 gear have an advantage.

Each sPvP rank takes longer and longer to level up, so as you’ve noticed you’ll start to slow down a bit as you progress. There’s no real trick to leveling up faster other than winning matches. You can also find PvP Glory Boosters in the gem store or as random rewards occasionally in PvE from completing your daily achievements. These will help a bit, but again winning matches will help a lot more. Keep in mind there’s no real game-play benefit to a higher sPvP rank — you just get better looking gear and bragging rights. So don’t feel pressured to rank up quickly.

I’ll throw in another vote for elementalist. I actually love playing my ele, but compared to my warrior she feels like her armor is made out of tissue paper. It’s a very strategic and tactical class. You really need to have a strong understanding of all your various skills between your four attunements, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of each weapon. You also need to swallow your pride and not be ashamed to run away when things start to look dicey. When I just want to kick back and shred anything that looks at my funny, I play my warrior. But when I want to play a thinking man’s game and really pick and choose my battles and tactics, I play my elementalist.

Actually, your character level isn’t as important as the level range of the maps you’re playing on. For example, if you’re level 66 but only playing on a level 45 – 55 map then level 50 armor is just fine. But if you’re playing on a level 60 – 70 map, or doing level 60+ dungeons, then it’s definitely time for an update.

You’ve got a few options for upgrading your gear:

- craft the gear yourself
- use drops from monsters
- use gear from karma merchants
- buy your gear from the trading post

What to do depends on your available resources. Crafting can take a lot of materials, but if you complete several maps from each level range you’ll be doing okay. If you play at a faster pace, you may not have enough materials and may need to purchase your gear so you don’t go broke buying crafting materials.

Remember that you don’t have to grind for a specific fine crafting material (like full venom sacs). Instead, trade in the materials you don’t need and use your profits to buy the materials you do need. Or better yet, find a buddy to swap materials with so you avoid the trading post fees. I play at a pretty slow place, and I’ve never been able to acquire all the crafting materials first-hand — I use the trading post to sell what I don’t need and buy what I do, and I’ve always been able to keep up with my tailoring and artificing just fine.

All of the above.

Purchase tools and salvage kits as needed, keeping in mind that you can sometimes find these from karma vendors too.

You should be able to get good enough gear between monster drops, karma vendors and crafting. If you do buy something from the trading post, keep in mind you’ll be swapping out gear about every 5 to 10 levels, so don’t spend a lot of money on the high quality (and expensive) gear.

At level 11 you’re going to need 10 silver to buy your first training manual and unlock the use of traits. Plan and save accordingly.

When you start crafting, you may need to purchase a few extra materials from the trading post. Only do so if it won’t cause you to go broke and not be able to afford your training manual. In my opinion, being able to use traits is a higher priority than crafting gear.

Actually, I’m still pretty much following this at the higher levels too. My general priority is:

1. training manuals
2. salvage kits and crafting tools
3. crafting materials
4. gear (that I can’t craft for myself)

Gems never expire.

I recently moved to Tarnished Coast, and am really enjoying the community there. Very friendly and helpful folks. A good sized population. Easy to get into a dungeon groups. May not be in the top tier of WvW, but still competitive. It’s also the unofficial role-playing server, if you like to kick back in a tavern and do a little in-character banter between adventures.

Only downside is the server is almost always full, so it can be tricky to transfer in. But once you’re there, you’ll have a blast.

Just an FYI — what you pulled from your collectibles tab in your bank is not the Golem Banker, that would be the golem mini-pet. The mini-pet just follows you around. The golem banker provides access to your bank from anywhere in the world. The banker is only available for 5 days, but you’ll always have the mini-pet. Also, the banker was only available to those who purchased the deluxe edition. The golem mini-pet is one of the rewards from the Guild Wars 1 Hall of Monuments achievements.

Just wanted to make sure you really have what you think you’re supposed to have.

Tyr.2489:

@Max
While this makes sense it is still frustrating for a small guild that faces losing everything.

Oh yeah, I certainly won’t debate that. One of the guilds I belong to is in the exact same boat, and that was the first thing that came up when we started talking about moving servers. Especially when some of our members used their one-time influence boosters from the deluxe edition to help us get started — we won’t be able to do that again on the new server. But, to take the “glass half full” view on it — at least we don’t have that much influence to lose in the first place.

P.S. Make sure you empty out the guild vault before you move. You won’t actually lose anything, but if everyone transfers then your items will be “stuck” on your old server until someone transfers back to get them, then transfers again to your new server (which could be up to a 2 weeks ordeal now that transfers are on a 7-day cooldown). So make sure your asuran mover golems check all the closets before you move out of the house!

It’s a consumable that gives a one hour “buff”. Whenever you perform a finisher in PvP (i.e. you’re standing next to a downed foe and click the “Finish Them!!!” icon that pops up), a celestial cow will drop on them.

You can get other kinds of finishers as PvP rewards (they match your PvP rank — Rabbit Finisher, Deer Finisher, etc). So you might want to get a few of those first and see if you find them entertaining enough to buy the cow version.

My best advice for a new player is to take it slow and enjoy the ride. This game is (at least in the PvE parts) about exploration and discovery, and there’s an amazing world here to experience. To each their own, but I personally think it would be a shame to race through everything to try to reach an “end game” that doesn’t actually exist.

Safe travels, and enjoy the journey!

You don’t transfer guilds. Your guild exists on every server, and has a separate influence pool (and set of upgrades) on each.

Actually, the asura will freely acknowledge that the Six Gods are a part of the Eternal Alchemy. Just as everything else in the universe is. They’ll even acknowledge that the Six are extremely powerful entities who shaped the face of Tyria. But the Eternal Alchemy doesn’t try to define a single being — it’s a theory of how all beings interrelate to each other. A bit ironic that the race who appears the most aloof and stand-offish actually has the most refined concept of “we’re all in this together”.

We won’t know for sure until the update releases, but can take some semi-educated guesses. Other town clothing outfits are bound to your account, not to a specific character, so the clothing costumes will probably be tradable between all your characters. The weapons are referred to as “skins”, and most skins are typically single use items. And I seriously doubt the holiday content will be made for level 80 characters — that would exclude a lot of the population. Guild Wars 1 holiday events had very low level requirements.

Yes, you can. It’s 10 copper per crafting level to switch back (40 silver at level 400).

I used a combination of several sets:

- Student head piece, gloves and boots (tier 2 crafted armor)
- Embroidered chest piece (tier 1 crafted armor)
- Apprentice leggings (from any basic armor merchant)

Also, technically Student shoulders, but I hide the shoulder armor.

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m116/ryanbradyco/gw016_zpsac6d82b3.jpg

http://i102.photobucket.com/albums/m116/ryanbradyco/gw001_zpse0705f25.jpg

I believe its just karma-bought items that are like this — crafted or loot-dropped soulbound items can still be salvaged.

You could initially salvage the karma items, but people with karma coming out their ears were just buying the items in bulk to salvage them down into runes and materials to sell, which wasn’t the intent.

Well, that’s the thing… the greatsword spin attack is not a single hit. It’s a blender on the puree settting. When you see an enemy coming at you with a sword twice his size, you know you’re going to have to be ready to dodge at a moment’s notice if you want to risk melee combat, or just snare him and engage at range. Ain’t no shame in a warrior using a rifle.

There’s a couple ways you can do it.

If you press CTRL+Mouse Button 2 on one of your skill buttons, you’ll set it to auto-attack. By defeault, skill 1 is set up this way, but you can change it if you want, or completely disable it.

GW2 supports both “soft targeting” and “hard targeting”. If you swing your sword without anything targeted, and an enemy happens to be standing in front of you, you’ll hit him for full damage (soft targeting). Many players do this when fighting large groups of weaker enemies — just start swinging, shooting or casting spells at an area and you’ll hit whatever is there. You can also “hard target” a specific enemy using the TAB key. This will make SOME of your skills focus on that enemy, but there are some skills that always require manual targeting. This is especially true for helpful spells — you cannot target specific allies with skills; you have to target an area that your allies are in. Many offensive area-of-effect spells work the same way.

In general, you should be the level that is recommended for the story. When your story takes you to a new area, wander around a bit and look for scouts (a telescope icon on your map) who will point out renoun tasks (hearts) in the area, and keep your eye out for dynamic events along the way. Also, when my next story step points me toward a new map, I like to finish up the current one before moving on. Sometimes I’ll be several levels over my next story step before I reach it, but I quickly catch up. That’s just my personal preference, but I figure “as long as I’m here, I may as well wrap up everything before I go.”

Another tip: if you find a particular step too difficult, level up enough that you can get the next tier of gear, then come back. For example, if you’re doing a level 14 story step and having trouble, level up to 15 and either craft or buy level 15 armor, jewelry and weapons. Even with the down-leveling, better gear still makes a difference — especially if you socket some gems or runes in it.

There’s no real trick to it – do events together. As the wiki says, the amount of influence you get from events and personal storylines scales up dramatically with every additional guild member who joins in.

My wife and I have the exact same problem — I consistently get about 4 – 5x the number of dyes she does.

Obviously, the problem is that husbands are OP and need to be nerfed.

I use keybinds for my attack skills and healing skill, plus weapon swap. The rest of my utility skills and the “profession mechanics” (F1 – F4), I click. If I only played one or two professions, I could probably keybind everything. But I play quite a few different characters, and to be perfectly honest I can’t remember what every “button” does on every character without seeing an icon with it.

It’s to encourage exploring the world rather than just blipping from place to place.

I’d actually prefer the opposite — having one or two major waypoints in each map — that are next to large towns, forts or significant settlements — which can be freely traveled between. Sort of like “outposts” from GW1. Traveling to an “outpost” would be free; traveling to a minor waypoint would cost coin.

What’s the most delicious flavor of ice cream?

They’re all good, and “the best” is entirely a matter of taste. Read up a little on each profession (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/) and race (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/races/), and try a few combinations that appeal to you.

It’s a combination of B and C… each skill or trait is on its own timer, but that timer resets on either map entry or slotting, whichever is most recent (i.e. if you slot a skill the timer starts right then, but when you enter a new map all the timers reset).

I see what you’re getting at — you’d rather have one condition cured more often, instead of three conditions cured at the same time. You could force this by simply firing off any skills with a passive condition cure as soon as you enter a new map. Then you’ll stagger the timers as they recharge.

I have a 24" 1920×1080 monitor and sit a little over 2 feet from my screen. I’m not experiencing any problems, so I guess a 75 degree FOV is within my comfort zone. The only time I ever got motion sickness from playing a game was back in the ’90s when I played Doom for the first time. I could only play for about 20 – 30 minutes in one sitting. I thought it had more to do with the frame rate, but when the speaker in those videos you linked made a brief mention of people playing Quake on a 19" CRT (which is what I had), that made me wonder.

So, something I’m not clear on — do the dimensions of your monitor affect the field of view angle? If I were to play on monitor with a 4:3 aspect ratio, I’m assuming that would have a more narrow FOV than a 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio monitor, correct? If so, is the dizziness/nausia problem more of an issue for people playing on more “square” aspect ratios (even something as subtle as 16:10 vs. 16:9)?

Also, for those suffering from dizziness or nausia, would moving your monitor further back and/or zooming the in-game camera further out help?

I’m not trying to brush off or belittle the issue with any of my questions — just trying to understand.

Yep, just copy your existing game folder to the new computer — either over the network or via flash drive — and then run the GW2.exe file.

Aww, how cute — your charr is dressing up for Halloween.

I like Guild Wars 2 Codex: http://en.gw2codex.com/

Guilds persist across all worlds. BUT, their influence and unlocked features are world specific.

So if you transfer to a new world, you will still be in your guild (and still the leader). But you will be back at 0 influence with no unlocked features.

Yep, that means you contributed to a combo. Everyone who contributes to a combo — either initiating or finishing — will see those hearts.

Well, Lion’s Arch considers itself a separate kingdom from Kryta. It has its own separate rulers, laws and military. It is also not primarily a human settlement. Many humans among the Lion Guard do feel conflicted about the treaty. On one hand, they respect the authority of their nation, but on the other they still feel an obligation to protect their fellow humans. Many of the non-humans aren’t quite as conflicted here. They have no racial attachment to Kryta, and simply shrug and say “Let the Krytans take care of Kryta.” Some of them may even be passively rooting for the centaurs, hoping that they’ll knock out one of their competing races in the humans.

I believe the general armor merchants in the capital cities sell armor that is the same style as the starting armor. I’m not sure if its the same for all professions, and at all level ranges, but the few times I’ve looked there it was the starting armor style.

More specifically, the forums will replace swear words with “kitten”.

I understand your desire, Bradley, but I respectfully disagree.

Necromancers, Elementalists and Guardians can all be very strong healers. They just aren’t exclusively healers — they are “support”, which is much more than just healing.

My wife plays a healer in many other MMOs, but will quickly admit that it can be really boring during easy battles since she has nothing to do when things are going smoothly. Here, she plays an elementalist. When things are going smooth, she attunes to fire or air and has fun blasting away at our enemies. When I (as a warrior) start to get overwhelmed, she attunes to water, freezes the enemies to slow them down while I back off, throws down some healing spells to help me recover, attunes to earth or air to blind our target while I move back into position, then attunes back to fire to blast away at them again. Healing is one type of support, but support is much more powerful than just healing. It’s healing when you need it, debuffing or crowd control when you need it, and damage when you need it.

An exclusive healer just wouldn’t fit into GW2’s combat system. It would also fly in the face of the current group dymanic where any combination of professions can work great together. If you introduce a dedicated healer, then every dungeon group is going to be spamming “LFG healer” rather than just taking a group of any 5 professions and being ready to roll.

In addition to getting a better view with jumping puzzles, I’d simply like to have a first-person view so I can take screenshots without my character in them. I love taking screenshots of the landscape, but when my character is posing in every picture it makes my screenshot collection look like a set of summer vacation photos.

ArenaNet has stated on many occassions that they love Halloween. I can’t imagine us not getting some sort of festivities with goofy mini-games. Perhaps we’ll even get to see how the ol’ Mad King has been holding up over the past two and a half centuries.

Besides the mouse scroll wheel, you can also use Page Up and Page Down to zoom in and out. If using those keys still isn’t smooth, it may be a performance issue with your PC. Zooming is quite smooth for me, but as with all things PC-related: “your milage may vary”.

Correct. Crafting was designed as another source of experience and gear, not as a means to earn money. The way to make money off it is to sell the materials you don’t need — that’s why everyone has all the gathering disciplines. There’s a few niches that can potentially earn you a little coin, but by and large you’re not going to make money off crafting.

Yes, on some motherboards only one of the PCI Express slots is running at full speed. Even though you can put a graphics card in the others, they may only be running at x8 or even x1 (i.e. only 1/16th of the speed!). Best to check your motherboard manual and make sure you’re using the right slot. It’s also possible that if you don’t seat your card firmly (not all the pins are making contact) it will still operate, but at a lower speed.

First off, welcome to Guild Wars 2!

If you’re just getting started, and especially if this is your first MMO, I would not recommend jumping straight into WvW. Get your bearings with the cooperative PvE content first. Start playing through your character’s personal storyline, explore the world a bit, and do some dynamic events to learn the various weapons and fighting styles for your profession.

For a warrior, ranged combat is best when going against a group in WvW. If your with a big group who’s all fighting at range, and you’re the one person running out in front, who do you think the enemy team is going to target? Soften them up with your bow or rifle, then switch to melee to take down specific targets, or when someone tries to close in on you. If you don’t like how a warrior feels in ranged combat, you might prefer a thief or ranger.

Running around on your own, as you’ve seen, can be quite dangerous. If you can find a group to run around with, you’ll have strength in numbers.

For some general information around WvW and how things operate there, check out the wiki article: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_versus_World.

Good luck and safe journeys!

Seek out skill challenges in other low-level maps. Some of those challenges are as simple as walking up to an object and using it. Its a very easy way to catch a few extra points!

No, but you will earn tons more than there are skills to spend them on. Even when you hit the level cap, you’ll still earn a skill point whenever you earn what would be another level’s worth of XP.

I’ve never seen a hard limit mentioned, but I know of someone who has 13.

Guild Wars 1 allowed you to purchase up to 26 character slots (on top of the ones you receive with each campaign), so I would imagine GW2 would probably allow at least that many as well.