Guild Wars 2

Look for humanoid mobs that drop material bags and salvage items in areas roughly between lvl 40-60, like dredge (Dregdehaunt & Timberline), grawl (Timberline), flame legion (Iron Marches), centaurs (Harathi), nightmare court (Sparkfly Fen). Those should drop t4 materials, including rugged leather, and linen. The explorable paths of Twilight Arbor (lvl 55) and Sorrow’s Embrace (lvl 65) are another place where you get a good amount of material bags of the appropriate level range.

AKuKage.4827:

Even after reaching level 80 I still feel like a beginner in this magnificent world

To be honest, as a fresh 80 you still are a beginner . There’s a huge world still waiting for you to explore.

Personally, I go with rare lvl 80 equipment for new characters until I have figured out what build/stat set I really want to use with them. For open world, low-level dungeons, or even low-level fractals, rares (yellow) are a decent starting point as long as you don’t have abundant resources (which will come by itself if you keep playing).

Have you played all the way through your personal story yet? The later chapters can be a good source for some lvl 80 equipment pieces, too. The final instance inside the ruined city or Arah actually rewards you with an exotic level helmet (with berserker/full direct damage stats).

Try to see more of the world. There is no need to do 100% map exploration right now, but just opening up all the maps (and preferably a variety of waypoints on each) and checking out the different events you come across will broaden your knowledge of the game and what your character’s able/how to use your skills and traits. There are a lot of event chains all over the world that are both entertaining, give you insights into the story and lore of this game world, and allow you to amass resources and currency towards whatever equipment you are ultimately going for.

Don’t forget to harvest whatever resources you come across, either to put them towards leveling crafters of your own, or selling them at the trading post. Low-level common resources like ore or wood are decently valuable in this game.

Of course there’s dungeons and fractals for 5-man instanced content. Starting out, you will find them a step up from the casual open world, as they generally force you into dodging, using your full trait and utility setup, and paying attention to the encounter mechanics where most open-world encounters can be auto-attacked to death. They are a lot of fun though if you enjoy that kind of content, and a good source for currency for further equipment (exotic armor and weapons via dungeon tokens, and ascended rings via fractal relics).

Around the Orr maps, you will also find temples to the human gods. Whenever these temples are controlled by the pact (there’s event chains around each of these temples) they are another source of exotic armor and trinkets, this time traded for karma.

If you have access to the Heart of Thorns expansion, you may want to play the introductory instance of the expansion now, since it unlocks your masteries that your experience will now flow into. The HoT maps themselves are a step up in difficulty, both in navigation (due to being mostly multi-layered) as well as in mob and event encounters. Dive in if you feel like it, but don’t hesitate to go back to core Tyria first if you feel your grasp of the game and its combat system isn’t quite up to the challenge yet.

And of course, there’s always alternate characters. This game is awesome in that most stuff you do/gain in-game is account bound, and it’s really up to you what character to take into what content. No need to take a thief to gain dungeon tokens for their armor if you’d much rather take the ele that doesn’t need those tokens, since both can profit from them.

Most of all: Have fun! And if you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

When you need MPs the only option is this crap or pull out the credit card to get gold for all the stupid collections.

You can currently spend 49 mastery points on pact Tyria mastery lines.

• 30 points come from playing the personal story (22 points) and the season 2 storyline (8 points).
• Fractals provide 14, 11 of which you need for the fractals mastery line and can safely skip if you don’t play fractals.
• 14 points are available through boss kills: 5 from the Silverwastes legendaries, 5 from Triple Trouble, 2 from Tequatl, one from the Karka Queen, and one from the Skritt Queen in Dry Top
• 5 points are available through collections: Ambrite Weapons, Ascended Accoutrement, Bioluminescense, Fractal Master and the spoon collection (none of these being exactly “pull out the credit card to get gold” material)
• 8 points are available from the season 2 story achievements, with some chapters being easier to earn than others)
• the remaining 11 points range from getting one character to lvl 80, earning 100% world exploration, two jps (Silverwastes and Hidden Garden), the dive master, the karka hunt in LA and other odds and ends

This comes down to a total of 80 Pact Tyria mastery points available, of which you can at most spend 49. Compared to the HoT masteries, Pact Tyria gives you a huge selection. I know I have neither collected those golden badges, nor finished the dive master achievement, nor even tried Tripple Trouble even once, but without those points I’m already well into 50+ Pact Tyria mastery points. Don’t hit your head against specific achievements, I’m sure there’s others you can do much easier to gain all the points you need.

What is your favorite part in the HoT Personal Story? (Spoiler tags please!)
Rata Novus! I usually love everything asura-related, and exploring this ancient, ruined asuran city was just great.

What Specialization have you tried so far? Which is your favorite? What one will you try next?
So far I’ve fully unlocked druid, tempest, and chronomancer (3x). I’ve really fallen in love with the chrono (one of the reasons why I unlocked it on three characters already, the other being the fact that mesmer #2 and #3 were already at 210+ hero points and only needed four extra challenges each ), replacing the “standard” mesmer as my favourite class hands down.

What is your favorite event or map in HoT?
I haven’t really been in Dragon’s Stand yet (except for my ranger passing by while playing the story), but I enjoy all three maps I’ve been to so far. I have one full exploration each of VB and AB, and am closing in on my first full TD exploration, with several other characters already on the way to full exploration, too.

The vertical maps really make exploration a lot more enjoyable for me, since there’s something new to explore, another connection or shortcut, or a stunning view, with pretty much every character I play through the areas. You don’t just walk everywhere, you have to combine gliding, jumping, updrafts and more to really find your way around, and there’s different ways to get to pretty much any place on these maps.

Are there any other areas you are excited by? PvP? Fractals? WvW? Guild Halls? Masteries? Raids?
I’m really enjoying fractals a lot more since the change. Due to the maps being fixed to the levels and the ability to play as many or as few fractals as you feel like, I can much easier fit them into my busy real life schedule, and it’s often faster to find friends to play with, too (at least in my casual guild with a lot of older people with more or less limited play time).

I’m also enjoying the different collections and achievements that came with the expansion. For example, I really enjoyed doing the first collection for the Leaf of Kudzu, not because I want to build the precursor, but simply because I enjoyed traveling around Tyria (and the mists), collecting pretty flowers. I’ve actually put all those flowers onto an alt and intend to keep them for my personal enjoyment .

What are you most looking forward to now?
Everything .

No, really, there’s nothing specific I’m looking forward to. I tend to play this game in a “let’s see what will happen today” kind of way, with only a very rough idea of what I want to play, and going with whatever fun turns up. Last weekend for example, I set out to harvest 25 nodes of soft wood (to craft a spiritwood plank), and ended up with all kinds of goodies towards collections (I stumbled upon the Draitor event in Kessex purely by accident ), achievements (jumped into an empty AB map a guildie was commenting on to get the last challenge win I was missing), lots of map boni and different map currencies, map exploration, a good chunk of pact tyria and HoT mastery experience just from playing, and more.

Looking through the achievements, collections, wardrobe, and characters, there’s a lot more days like that ahead of me, and I’m really looking forward to it .

Ronin.7381:

I need 300 Dust to craft, along with Auric Silver (which can be traded so bleh), in order to get 10 ingots.

If you go raid the chests under Tarir, you’ll find not only Auric Dust, but also Slivers and even full ingots in there. I think I’ve got a good handful from only five successful Tarir events already. I seem to average at least one from the five huge chests alone.

HtFde.3856:

GW2 lacks one thing before all others: Ingame voice … map typing just doesn’t cut it and oh so many people seem to be allergic to TS never mind the cost issue for a 100 people TS server

Can you honestly imagine what ingame voice would be like on european megaservers??? The pure thought of that makes me want to run away screaming . I honestly don’t think voice communication would be all that great for this kind of event anyway … anytime more than a few people can talk at the same time voice tends to be more distracting than helpful for me.

Kraggy.4169:

Ayrilana.1396:

Kraggy.4169:

TexZero.7910:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

TexZero.7910:

Celtic Lady.3729:

Lord Cody.5237:

Guild Wars 2 is a mmo

This means nothing other than massively multiple players are all playing the same game. Doesn’t mean they’re all doing the same things at the same time in the same place.

It does however mean if you want a single player experience you’re better off alt-f4’ing and playing the legendary game of Solitaire instead.

So, you’re saying those looking for a multiplayer experience would be better off trying Poker or Go Fish?

It’s more logical than coming on a forum to complain that a game built upon playing with a large number of people is somehow, not upto your standards of playing solo.

Honestly, it’s pretty sad how many players do not fundamentally realize that MMO’s at their core are about co-operative play. This includes the open world. If it was meant to be a single player experience you’d be in instances scaled for exactly 1 person.

Except you’re posting on a forum of a game that before the exansion WAS JUST THAT TYPE OF GAME, where instances were side-issues and totally avoidable if you chose and group event were likewise.

HOT changed GW2 into a group-or-die game where simply progressing one’s character by unlocking skills is no longer doable without HAVING to ‘group up’, GW2 pre-HOT WAS NOT LIKE THAT!

ANET took our money without ever telling us they were changing it from a solo-friendly, group optional game, to a solo-hostile 1990s group-or-die one.

GW2 after HOT is really GW3, a throwback to the last century’s idea of what ‘playing other people’ means.

You can still progress your character (unlocking elite spec) without needing anyone.

Unlocking and capping are two different things, I have it unlocked, I’m nowhere near capping it and need HPs only doable with groups, either to do the challenge itself or simply to unlock access to the challenge in the first place.

Sounds like an interesting challenge: Unlock your elite spec in HoT only → do 25 HoT hero challenges.

I’ve actually got a lvl 80 ranger who has done nothing beyond unlocking all core tyria waypoints (to see how long it would take → slightly less than 10 hours) and full core personal story (again to see the length → again around 10 hours, although that was just before the latest story revision, so I’d expect it to take a bit longer nowadays). I might just take her into HoT next weekend to see how far I’ll get with her druid spec playing solo. Does showing up at hero points others are calling out in map chat count as “solo”?

Faab.8049:

1. Scale event chains based on number of people contributing to event (so outside certain radius, no effect on difficulty)

Actually from what I’ve seen, the meta event chains already do scale very well, and you need way less than the full map population for success. The problem isn’t too few people, but rather people not looking at what they’re doing and doing more bad than good for the events.

For example, as long as people mostly cluster around the main pact encampment in VB and leave most outlying rally points to die off, there’s no way VB will reach a t4 night, even if there’s literally nothing else to do on the map except defend camps and gather supplies. Same with night bosses, people even have shouting matches on map chap which boss to do first, without realizing that it goes much smoother if they split up and tackle the bosses simultaneously in smaller groups.

Just the other day, a friend and I defended and supplied one of the outlying pale reaver camps by ourselves through a full night cycle. There really isn’t need for many people, they just have to learn to spread out, do every part of the metas, and pay attention to the event mechanics at hand, instead of blindly clustering to the tags like moths to the light.

Kraggy.4169:

Rasimir.6239:

So far, I’ve played my mesmer through the introductory chapter of the story to unlock masteries.

That’s not true, you CAN’T play the story on its own because you don’t get enough XP to even unlock the first gate simply from the story, let alone the other stuff you claim to have accessed playing only the story.

My first level 80 to play Torn from the Sky is parked because that gives you only 63% of the XP needed to unlock the gate to carry on the story and I have no desire to do the ‘meta grind’ for XP.

Sorry, by chapter I meant just the tutorial instance and the “torn from the sky” story episode. The rest of the experience came from running to Tarir, participating in the guild hall claiming, and doing a couple of hero points around the place.

Now to your post above, I still fail to see all those mastery and experience gates. My main account (not this one) is at 39 HoT mastery points spent, with 3-4 in all lines, and I’ve yet to start thinking about farming experience. I have however finished the story on one character and brought four or five more into VB (one full exploration), with two of them having unlocked a good part of AB, too (again one full exploration, last hp with the help of a friendly mesmer), and as such have found that just exploring the maps, experience came in abundantly. And if there was a place I really couldn’t get to with my current kitten nal of masteries (or even just my knowledge of the area at that time), then I’d just come back later and try again.

I’m not big on meta events either. I only play them when I have more-than-average game time (which usually is on the weekends), and only if I stumble upon them. I’ve been in a few Tarir defences and some VB cycles, but haven’t even started on DS yet (aside from sending my ranger through the story instances).

Maybe our definition of exploration is just different … I was thinking more about late 80s/early 90s games (both single player and muds), stuff like early Ultima titles, Bard’s Tale, Wizardry and so on, where you were still drawing your own maps because there was no internet to look them up nor in-game auto-maps . I know a sizeable number of people in game today who, upon release of new content, head over to Dulfy, grab their guide on how to get the goodies of said content, and won’t find their way around on their own even after they’ve “finished” said content. That’s not so easy with HoT, and I find myself enjoying this immensely.

Half the fun of playing this kind of game to me is figuring things out on my own, and HoT is giving me a lot of that, while still making it easy to progress without going out of my way. Maybe it’s really an altoholic-thing that’s giving me all these xp flows, but whatever it is, it’s working for me.

Careful, Winter, or that ego might one day inflate to the point where it’s flying away with your Charr .

That said, I’d enjoy it even more if you’d be around for longer than a single Bloomhunger fight out of three fractals . I probably won’t have enough time for serious fractals before next weekend though … let’s hope you’ll still be playing by then .

Do infused rings drop more matrices than non-infused? I’ve only ever salvaged the non-infused so far, since I don’t have all that many infused rings to begin with (I actually only finished my 500th fractal for fractal frequenter quiet a bit into the expansion, only got to around 400 before).

Glad to hear you enjoyed yourself! I’ll keep that in mind to bug you again next time I try to fill a group … and give a certain person a good telling-to so he won’t rage-quit on us again .

Pandaman.4758:

Thing is we still have people on 64-bit client and 8+ GB of RAM reporting crashes, so address limitations isn’t the only cause of this issue.

Read the 64-bit Client Beta FAQ linked in a sticky thread at the top of this forum:

Gaile Gray.6029:

What are the benefits over the 32-bit client?
64-bit applications have a significantly higher limit on how much memory they are able to use compared to 32-bit applications. Due to this, the main benefit is significantly less “out of memory” crashes.

Nowhere did ANet claim that the 64 bit client won’t crash, all they said is that a certain kind of crash will happen significantly less often than they happen on the 32 bit client. For me personally, this has proven to be true. While I had out-of-memory crashes about once an hour in the HoT maps on the 32 bit client, and could almost predict the point of meta events where my client would crash, I haven’t had a single one of those since I switched to the 64 bit client (Win7 with 8GB memory), in fact, I’ve rarely crashed at all since the switch.

Now if they’d come up with a beta login server that wouldn’t be so fickle in keeping connection … a girl can dream, right?

Daddicus.6128:

Rasimir.6239:

What level masteries are you on? With just two points (basic gliding and mushroom jumping) you can already explore the vast majority of the new maps just fine, the rest really is just bonus and niche use.

I’ve got those two, but I’m currently mastery-gated in AB. Get your facts straight before posting.

Oh, don’t worry, I have my facts straight. In fact, on my secondary account (this one) I have exactly two HoT mastery points spent, one each for gliding and mushroom jumping. So far, I’ve played my mesmer through the introductory instance of the story to unlock masteries, run her through VB and into Tarir to join my guild in liberating our guild hall, done a couple of hero points around Tarir to help out a guildie, and ran down to the beginning of Tangled Depths to open up the Nuhoch mastery line just in case I accidentally get too much experience and would rather put it there than into more advanced gliding .

And from that experience I can tell you that you can explore the vast majority of the new maps just fine without farming masteries. I won’t be able to check many of the finer details though, since just running through those maps, opening up waypoints and some stray hero points, pois and vistas that crossed my path, I’ve already gotten so much experience that I’ll pretty soon have filled my bar for updraft, and I guess once I start exploring earnestly, nuhoch wallows won’t be far behind .

spoj.9672:

Got a new amulet from Sabetha.

Nice, congrats .

I still haven’t been inside that raid, I guess I’m just too casual. I actually had been looking forward to it, but now that it’s here and I hear guildies talk about it, I’m getting flashbacks to bad pug groups in other MMOs I played and the wipefest those groups were before I found a decent guild for raiding, and I’m not sure I really want to go there again.

I did however finally advance my fractal level again this weekend, getting a group for 54-56 (my second group for 50+ fractals only), so I’m now at an awesome reward level 57 … let’s see how many weeks it’ll take to get a group for 57-59 . If anyone’s in need for a slow-reflex still-learning chronomancer for their fractal group (EU, currently at 89 ar I think), don’t hesitate to say so .

On the other hand, I’ve actually run a surprising (especially for me ) amount of lower-level fractals since the update, finishing my 1-20 and 21-50 achievements and even the 2nd level backpiece collection (which puts me at 48 dailies in just over five weeks). For casual old me with not much uninterrupted time on my hands, the fractal changes have really been extremely helpful to playing more regularly, and I’m enjoying myself immensely.

Btw, what’s the consensus of collecting stabilizing matrices? I need about 96 more to even craft that 2nd level backpiece, and I’m not that much in a hurry that I want to pay the ridiculous prices they ask for on the tp. I have already salvaged most of my extra rings though, might have a handfull more to salvage after I take inentory of all my characters and their jewellery, but certainly not the 30+ it looks like it would take to get 96 matrices from salvaging. Oh, and I’m pretty much out of fractal relics, both regular and pristine, after getting all the bits for the backpiece collections, too .

malachi.7503:

so if I understand this scaling principle correctly, if I want drops for tier 4 leathers, I should make cast of characters to get to that level range. That even if i get bags that are supposed to drop that tier of mats, scaling makes it scale up to my lvl range automatically . so at lvl 80 I’m in essence cutting my own hands off because i’ve reduced my chances of getting lower tier mats.

Not quite. The regular material bags that drop off dredge, flame legion, grawl, and similar enemies, have a fixed material tier attached, so the t4 variety of those spits out rugged leather and linen regardless of the level of your character.

The equipment bags like champion bags and bags of gear, as well as the bags you get as personal story rewards or from material converters like princess or mawdrey II, on the other hand, do scale to the level of the character opening them (as do the equipment pieces that drop from jumping puzzle chests), so opening those on a lower level character can be helpful if you’re after lower-level materials.

Your level does have an influence. The equipment you drop in any zone of the game is scaled in favor of your character level, not the area level. That means that at level 55 in a lvl 50-60 area (e.g. Timberline Falls), you’ll drop equipment that salvages into rugged leather (almost) exclusively, while at level 80, the majority of equipment you drop will be around lvl 80, thus salvaging into thick leather.

That said, you still get area level drops, but due to the nature of the random number generator, you need a large selection of drops to get a reasonable chance of dropping something that salvages into rugged leather, especially if you’re on a cloth or plate wearing class (drop chances are slightly skewed in favor of equipment types you can actually use on your character).

There are however other drops in those areas that are independant of your character level, namely bag drops (e.g. from flame legion charr in the iron marches) and salvagable pelts (from different kinds of furry animals). I’ve recently done some map exploration in both Timberline Falls and Iron Marches, mostly on a (lvl 80) thief, and did get some rugged leather sections (although I didn’t pay attention to how many, nor what amount came from salvagable equipment vs. bags).

If you want a “fool-proof” way of gaining your leather, there are a few more ways to get it:

• if you have (a lot of) karma to spare, find a karma merchant that sells leather armor of the level that salvages into rugged leather. Mystic forge 4 identical pieces of that armor into one piece of (most of the time) salvageable equipment of the same armor type
• collect bags of (masterwork or regular) gear, e.g. from the silverwastes, and open that on an alt of the appropriate level, for yet more equipment of that level to salvage into rugged leather and other materials of that tier. This works with champ bags, pvp reward bags/chests and jumping puzzle chest, too, depending on how much time you want to spend, but the gear bags usually give you the most pieces of equipment (thus biggest chance to actually get something that salvages to leather)
• run the Twilight Arbor (lvl 55) and Sorrow’s Embrace (lvl 65) dungeon explorable paths. The nightmare court, dredge, and inquest mobs in those dungeons drop bags that again have a chance of dropping rugged leather, so most of the time each path will give you a few sections. In addition, you can trade in rare (not exotic) lvl 55/65 gear for tokens from those dungeons at the dungeon vendor in Lion’s Arch for more salvaging materials

Overall, make sure not to concentrate on leather only too much, but rather take everything and check for its value. The equipment tier that salvages into rugged leather also salvages into linen, platinum, and hard wood. If in the end you’ve got a surplus of one of those materials, consider selling it on the tp and buying the missing leather with the money you got that way.

Happy hunting!

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

winterchillz.2564:

cough I’ve been running fractals and dungeons daily cough You know there’s always a spot for you cough

Playing with you means having to deal with Charr. That’s a very big tradeoff, not sure if it’s worth it. :^)

Well, I can always bring my charr ranger to match his charr warrior/guardian. On the other hand, my asura like big Charr … it’s so easy to snuggle into their furry back and let them carry you around instead having to walk by yourself .

Winter, I have to admit I haven’t been on a lot the last few days, but I’d love to run with you on the weekend . Btw, if you’re looking for fractals and can’t get a hold of me (or need to fill more spaces), you might want to ask Anna, too, she’s totally into running fractals all day since the expansion hit .

Nah, just too many of the more reasonable people busy playing the game instead of sitting on the doorstep of that raid .

That said, I haven’t done any fractal since last weekend … I did try to pug some mid-level (21-50) fractals then, and got by far the worst pugs I’ve encountered since the expansion hits. I’m starting to dread going to higher levels (I’m still only at fractal level 54) because my guild absolutely isn’t ready for it yet, and if I get pugs like the ones from last weekend I’ll probably ragequit then and there.

I haven’t done a dungeon in ages though … not because I don’t like them any more, but rather because I’m still busy with all the new toys this expansion has given me. For an avid open world explorer like me, the new maps are a dream come true .

Manasa Devi.7958:

There’s hardly anything new worth playing and hardly any reward worth biting the bullet for and tackling the unfun stuff anyway.

Define “worth playing” and “fun”, please.

To me, pretty much all of HoT is fun and worth playing at one time or another. At times I don’t feel like specific content, I don’t play it, but there’ll always be another day when that content actually appeals to me.

As for adventures, being in my mid-40s and having been diagnosed as having considerably “less than age-appropriate” reflexes some 30 years ago already, most do not come easy to me. Just like jps were a huge learning curve for me in the original GW2. But there are days when I feel like challenging myself, and I’m sure I’ll eventually get good enough at enough of them to pad out my mastery point count. I’m looking forward to that day, no matter how far in the future that is .

And yes, it’ll probably be pretty far off … like that coddler’s cove jp, that literally took me a year and a half to beat, and there’s still days when I can’t do it now, but every time I reach that chest it’s a really good feeling of having accomplished something that for me, personally, is and will always be a huge challenge.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

HtFde.3856:

Do you happen to have a link where ANet said (whenever, actually) that you HAVE TO DO Adventures to complete your masteries

What ANET have done says more than anything they say.

It takes 114 mastery points to unlock the HoT masteries. There are 129 points available.

Just a short correction: There’s actually 133 mastery points available, so that leaves 19 spare points, not 15.

Or, if you don’t count the raid (2 tiers/4 points), that’s 112 mastery points needed out of 129, leaving 17 spare points.

HtFde.3856:

Rasimir.6239:

The other day, my 12-year-old on her fresh-to-80 mesmer, proudly told me: Mom, thanks to these pocket raptors, I have finally learned how to dodge well .

Personally, I’d love to have a miniature pack of pocket raptors . They’re adorable (and, as others said, easily counterable on every class).

Ponders … whould it actually make sense to create a mini that might be 3 pixel high?

Well, they should at least be larger than my mini mosquito … which, admittedly, you hardly ever see because it’s so tiny .

Kraggy.4169:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

So, ArenaNet spent time and resources designing content, that they knew, beforehand, no one would play? So, in order to waste more resources, they designed, again, more content they knew, beforehand, many would complain about? This is your take on it?

Seems a bit strange to me, to do all that work they knew, beforehand, would be wasted. Hmm.

Not at all .. they designed HOT for the vocal minority that say they want 1990s group-or-die over world content then implemented Masteries in such a way everyone else who doesn’t particularly care for that type of game has to endure it or give up and they know most won’t give up due to their addiction.

Have you played those games back in the 90s? I have … and believe me, HoT is nothing like those games. I doesn’t even come up to most of today’s “harder” games in that respect.

But you’re right in one aspect: it does give off faint vibes of the exploration and discovery we had to do in games back in the 80s and 90s, which may in fact be why I enjoy HoT so much. Finally a game where the focus is on getting to know my way around the new content rather than just grabbing a guide and going off to farm the latest shiny.

The other day, my 12-year-old on her fresh-to-80 mesmer, proudly told me: Mom, thanks to these pocket raptors, I have finally learned how to dodge well .

Personally, I’d love to have a miniature pack of pocket raptors . They’re adorable (and, as others said, easily counterable on every class).

Basically, the higher the fractal level, the higher the number of relics you get. Check out the list of fractal levels , try all the fractal levels appropriate for your ar and possibly a few above (I think I did a level 40 with 40 ar just fine, but you need to be aware of when the agony will strike to prepare for it), then decide which ones for you work best and are easiest puggable.

Also try to go for the dailies, since they reward pristine relics, which you can trade in for 15 fractal relics per one pristine.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Simple fact about MMOs: Happy players are too busy enjoying the game to complain. Unhappy players post on the forums.

Edit: Please note the exceptions are white knights and trolls. They have their own agenda.

And people stuck at work trying to get their HoT fix without access to their game . Sadly, these forums don’t give me that these days . I wonder, if I were to block the ten worst “HoT sucks” posters that turn up in every one of these threads, would I have much left to read?

Anyway, except for the decline of WvW, which is disappointing (although I personally enjoy the new borderlands more than eb, but I’ve never been an eb person), I’m still having a blast in pretty much every aspect of HoT. But then I’ve never been a reward-focused person, but an avid explorer and collector of fun, surprising, or amazing moments .

Wolfeng.3784:

TI don’t enjoy my time in the jungle, its stressful, it’s on the clock, I just want to explore the place, but to do that I need to level my masteries first.

What level masteries are you on? With just two points (basic gliding and mushroom jumping) you can already explore the vast majority of the new maps just fine, the rest really is just bonus and niche use. My secondary account actually hasn’t done next to nothing in the new maps yet (3 mastery points spent total, 2 on HoT and 1 on fractals), and still I’ve walked into Tarir just fine to join in the claiming of our guild hall, as well as help a guildie with some hero point champs on the second map.

If you’re relatively new to the jungle and the meta event chains, forget about those chains and the meta timers. Explore the maps whichever way is open to you (depending on map status as much as masteries), try to uncover points, but don’t stress over it if you don’t find access to that poi or vista above or below you. Join events if they cross your way, but leave them if they seem to be above your head.

Once you have aquainted yourself with the maps, that’s the point at which you might want to start to worry about the meta events and try to familiarize yourself with the different event chains, outpost chains in VB, pillar chains in AB, lane chains in TD. When you’re finally at the point where you are familiar with both maps and event chains, that’s the point where you can start worrying about achievements and optimizing resource gain (both materials and currencies). You’ll most likely have gained a good amount of mastery experience and mastery points by then, too, making it easier for you to do those events and achievements.

It’s a new world for all of us, and each of us has to learn their way around. Learning does take every person out of their comfort zone, one more, the other less, but don’t let that hold you off. Accept that you’ll have to learn your way around the new content to comfortably do stuff like 100% exploration, successful meta event participation, or even personal story, and don’t stress yourself over the finer details until you feel you’re past your learning phase. Just because others have gone ahead of you on the learning curve doesn’t mean you have to optimize your gameplay the way they do. Learn the content, and you’ll find that the masteries are the least of your worries.

Leamas.5803:

It’s not the MPs that’s the issue for me, I almost consider them to be part of map completion, so it’s a foregon conclusion that I will do them…it’s that massive amount of XP once needs to actually unlock them and the only way to make decent XP in the new maps is events. Killing mobs is so chinsy for XP it’s hardly worth the effort, even with boosters. Can make more XP off a node of ore than you can from a whole pack of pocket raptors…which is arguably WAY more annoying. :P

Actually the trick here is neither events nor killing. If you’ve got more than one character at level 80, the trick is map exploration. Unfogging the map, discovering waypoints, pois, and vistas, does give a generous amount of experience, more so if you happen to have boosters (wvw daily chests, opened on your exploration character, are a good source of experience boosts if you don’t have any others at hand).

That said, the most painless method really is to just do a good mix of whatever and don’t pay attention to your mastery bar. Play events, kill whatever comes your way, don’t forget to harvest all the nodes you pass, it all adds up. Any adventures and hero point champions you haven’t done that day are another puzzle piece that adds a decent amount of experience.

The “trick” about the mastery system, as with many other game mechanics in GW2, seems to be to not concentrate on one thing only, and beeline for that thing with avoiding as much of the rest of the game as possible, but instead to just loosely set a goal and play along with whatever crosses your path. Experience comes by itself, just try to see the world from different views, set out towards a goal but don’t hesitate to smell the flowers as you go and deviate from your path any chance you get. The awesome thing about experience in this game is that you get it from pretty much anything you do. The later masteries aren’t time-crucial, enjoy the world around you the way you can see it now, and you’ll have enough time to test out what abilities the next mastery offers you once the experience comes in naturally.

Factions being the only GW1 campaign I ever completed, to me it actually felt smaller. A big part in that was the fact that things were pretty linear with next to no exploration involved. Even the more convoluted maps around Kaineng only had two or max three paths you could go, and you’d soon memorize the way and the mobs wandering the streets.

HoT maps, on the other hand, are like a cross between a maze and a jiggsaw puzzle, with surprising twists and turns and lots of ways to get from a to z. I love exploring them, and finding new, unexpected places, paths, and shortcuts, which to me makes exploring HoT seem ever so much deeper than factions ever used to do. Plus you have respawn and maps changing depending on event progress and time of day, which to me makes things a lot more challenging than the instanced GW1 maps where I knew once I’d cleared out a part of the map nothing would bother me there until I restarted the instance.

To me, in terms of fun and time spent exploring and playing, one HoT map can easily make up for a dozend factions maps. With factions, I went through a map once for story/questing (sometimes two or three times if quests were chained so that you had to go back again and again), and once more for vanquishing and cartography, but that was pretty much it. HoT maps make me come back again and again, to map-complete, to play events, for adventures, hero points, whatever. I guess the non-linear gameplay of GW2 just suits me a lot better than linear GW1.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

the unnecessary complexity of navigating and finding things in HoT maps

Who says it’s unnecessary? I love the new HoT maps especially because they are complex and 3-dimensional, and you can’t just glance at a map and go wherever you please. These maps really make me explore and learn the ways, and I’m having so much more fun than I ever had with MMO maps before. These maps look like they’ll keep me busy for a long time, learning to navigate them, trying to figure out how to deal with the mops on my different characters, and finally collecting the goodies I want for whatever goal I find (disclaimer: I don’t have a whole lot of game time, so this might take me a while longer than people who can play for several hours a day).

I’m starting to slowly memorize paths, find shortcuts, and hidden nooks and crannies, and overall get more comfortable with moving around the maps. They are complex and maze-like, and that’s absolutely why I’m enjoying myself. Don’t take that away!

P.S.: to the poster above me: there’s a fairly straight path to the start of the jp in Verdant Brink that’s accessible any time of the meta cycle, no need to wait for choppers at the end of the night.

Swift.1930:

Fengzhou.9853:

You CAN design a map and give the aura of danger and challenge without going overkill on the cheese. One shot mechanics aren’t skill testers, it’s lazy design.

This was something that confused me as well. I tried blocking, dodging, blinding, flying away with a glider… nothing worked. Am I missing something? What kind of attack should completely down random people from full health?

Actually, evade/invulnerability does help against the axemaster’s insta-down, but it’s very tricky to time with the axemaster. I’ve managed on my mesmer with both sword 2 (blurred frenzy – evade) and shatter 4 (distortion – invul), but you need to keep a close eye on the timer in your buff bar and pull whatever defence you have the exact second the buff runs out.

Back to the main topic: I guess I’m one of the “has too much rl but still enjoys challenging content” kind of casuals. Mid-40s with kids, husband, and fulltime job, I often only get to play for short stretches of time or have to leave in the middle of the action (the high point was healing an end-level challenge mode raid in another game with a crying toddler on my lap in the later part of the fight because my youngest had woken from a bad dream … incidentally that was the first time we ever succeeded in that raid ).

I’ve adjusted my playstyle and expectations to fit my life. This being an MMO, not a single player game, I know that I can’t just log in and say “I’ll do a-b-c today”, since a) a lot of things can’t easily be soloed, especially with my time constraints, and I don’t know if there’ll be people around the precise moment I want them to, and b) the living, evolving world means that the world is not at every moment in the place I want it to be.

Instead, I try to go into the game with an open mindset. I know the things I’d like to do and just see what’s available/possible, and go with that. For example, yesterday I logged onto my ranger, with plans of maybe going into wvw to try to get one of the easy (soloable) dailies done, when I noticed mapchat in Verdant Brink calling out for people to help with the bottom left hero point. Since he didn’t have that yet I jumped over, and right after joined another group for the golem hp, too.

Some days, I get stuff done I didn’t prepare to tackle just yet (my ranger already has his elite spec filled, so map exploration of the new zones is a long-term goal for him), other days I don’t because the stars don’t align with my playing times and the mega servers I find myself in. Some days I log into VB and find myself in an early morning low population map with nothing much to do, so I go to another map and/or another character. Other days I log in right into a Tarir defense (I’ve actually gotten five successful defenses by now, and only one of them was on a weekend where I had enough game time to play a whole meta cycle).

If you don’t have a lot and/or stable game times, don’t set your mind on some narrow, specific tasks you want to do. Go with the flow, be flexible, change your plans depending on what (and who) you find in game. You won’t always find your playtime packed to the rim with exciting, reward-heavy stuff, but you’ll get towards your goals step by step. I’ve been playing this way for three years now, enjoying my time and “working” towards my goals on the side, and I’ve gotten a surprising amount of stuff done, while still having fun.

And I love the new maps, because they do challenge me to think about what I’m doing in-game. I’ve been in the HoT maps on four characters for now (zerker ranger, rabid/sinister mesmer, zerker ele, celestial ele), and while some of my characters have a sharp spike in their deaths count (especially the ranger who was the first into the new maps), I really enjoy the feeling of progression, learning the maps, learning the types of enemies, and feeling progressively “better” against the new content.

Don’t hate on the new maps because you don’t rule them straight out of the entrance portal. Take your time to learn the new maps and enemies (something that may well take you days, I know I’m still learning and I’ve spent a lot of my game time in HoT since release), then find a set of small goals, explore a bit of a map, join a couple of events, and who knows, you’ll find your bigger goals suddenly right in front of you without the frustration of always only looking at that bigger goal.

Laurelinde.4395:

I hadn’t realised I needed to gold a lot of them for max mastery.

You don’t as long as you get all of the non-adventure mastery points. There are 129 mastery points in HoT (excluding the 4 from raids), and you need 112 for max mastery (again excluding raids, with raids it’s currently 114 of 133).

There are 15 adventures (5 per zone), which each give 2 mastery points, one each for silver and gold participation. If you have all non-adventure, non-raid mastery points this means 13 silver adventures or a corresponding mix of silver and gold.

Notsoperky.2348:

That’s a perfect description of what is wrong with mastery points for Tyria.

5 characters of 5 different races, then choose 3 different orders to 40..just to get some mastery points. 22 mastery points tied behind that….no wonder I’m so short of points.

Story achievements are a complete pain to do, so that’s another 8 I’ll never see.

Now I understand why out of the 66 ‘available’ I am so woefully short. Guess my next job will be rolling characters in each race and enduring the personal story for each of them to 30, 3 to 40, and choose one to finish the whole boring yawn fest on.

Don’t see this as a job, give the stories a chance.

First of, if you haven’t done any story (if you have, you should already have at least 7 of those 22 points), it’s a breeze going through the story on an equipped lvl 80, and you have some decent loot on the way. The lootbags alone that you get from a full story run have a good chance of unidentified dyes, and the low-level crafting bags also give a batch of rare crafting mats (like soft wood, iron, and wool from the t2 ones). Add to that a couple of black lion chest keys, some karma skins (if you’re into wardrobe filling), and even a free exotic Arah headpiece for the final mission.

Even if you do the story on new characters, the fact that each arch is now set at one level instead of spread over a level range means you get a whole story chapter at once and can take in the story much better than before. There are several chapters giving lore background or simply funny little stories among the racial stories.You’ll be able to meet characters that turn up again in later story missions, as far in as a lvl 80 mission with characters originally introduced in a lvl 10 one.

Personally, the more I’ve seen of this game’s personal story, the more I’ve become interested in it, to the point of making characters for the sole purpose of checking out (or refreshing my memory on) other story branches of all the five races. Try it, it may not be as bad as you think .

There was a thread about core Tyria mastery points just yesterday, including several suggestions as to where to get them.

Which t7 mats are you short on? You may have to stop feeding mawdrey/princess/the star of gratitude for a while if you don’t gather enough daily for all you need.

Kraggy.4169:

Rasimir.6239:

Kraggy.4169:

If HOT MPs can be got simply from killing things it’s good enough for Tyrian ones too.

Where in HoT do you gain mastery points from killing things??? I see a lot of points from story steps&achievements, strongboxes, mastery insights, and adventures, but I’m missing where killing stuff allows you to gain mastery points.

Most of that stuff comes from killing things, many of the Tyria ones come from non-combat stuff like collecting stuff that aren’t mob drops.

???

Where in HoT do you find all those mastery points for killing things?

• 14 mastery points are given during one play-through of the HoT storyline
• 4 points can be gained doing all story achievements
• 23 points are gained from channeling mastery points across the maps
• 20 points can be gotten from opening hidden strongboxes
• 30 points are gated by adventures (15 each for silver and gold participation)

That leaves 38 points not accounted for, most of which are achieved by finishing events or event chains in the new maps as well as all kinds of explorer achievements (jps, diving goggles, etc.). In fact looking through the list it seems to me that there’s less kill-based achievements in HoT giving mastery points than world bosses in core Tyria (although you could legitimately claim that meta events like the octovine battle in Tarir are comparable to world bosses like the Karka Queen).

Core Tyria masteries currently require a total of 49 mastery points out of 66 available.

22 mastery points can be earned simply by playing the personal story. You need to take 5 characters (of 5 different races) to the end of the level 30 story, three of them (or three different orders) through the level 40 story, and just one all the way to the end. That’s enough points for the whole pact commander line (19 points) and even leaves you to skip one race’s story if you don’t care for it.

Fractals of the Mists achievements offer 14 mastery points. 11 points are needed for the complete fractal mastery track, allowing people interested in fractals to get their points right inside the content and people that don’t like fractals can easily ignore those points since they won’t have any use for the fractal masteries anyway.

That leaves the legendary track (19 points). 8 points can be had from the season 2 story if you have that unlocked (which many players do, especially if you are interested in the game’s stories), plus 8 more from the story achievements (which are admittedly pretty difficult for many players). A few points here and there come by naturally (like getting a character to level 80 or 100% map completion, which you need for a legendary anyway).

If you really want to unlock all of the central Tyria mastery tracks, you probably will have to go out of the way on the last few points, just like in Maguuma, but there are sufficient points achievable to give you room for leaving out the really bad ones.

Kraggy.4169:

If HOT MPs can be got simply from killing things it’s good enough for Tyrian ones too.

Where in HoT do you gain mastery points from killing things??? I see a lot of points from story steps&achievements, strongboxes, mastery insights, and adventures, but I’m missing where killing stuff allows you to gain mastery points.

martin.8271:

I decided to go and buy some updated gear

What you’ve got now is almost exactly what my ranger is wearing (“almost” because I’ve got a berserker’s long bow instead of an assassin’s one, so a very minor bit of power instead of precision). He was the first character I took into the new areas, and the first to do the story.

It did take some adjusting and learning. The first time I encountered mushrooms I was dead before I knew what hit me (there were several at the time, no idea which types or sizes though ). Smokescales puzzled me because I didn’t take the time to actually read their ability description. Same with the froggies that evade all ranged attacks. Some of the mordrem guard took a while to distinguish themselves and their abilities. I tried countering things, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

It was (and in some cases still is, I haven’t explored much of the later two maps yet) a learning curve, and sometimes a pretty steep one as a bunch of new enemy types and abilities crashed on me at once, preferably in the middle of an already hectic group event. But after a (pretty short) while, things began to make sense, and my ranger began to be his old self again.

Try out different pet, different utilities, maybe even different weapon types for the threats you encounter. First time I ran into the pack of pocket raptors right down the slope from the starting waypoint they had me down in no time. By now I can safely pull two or three packs of these little beasts and get out on top (not counting a couple of downed states in the process ). It really is all a matter of practice and getting used to the abilities and weaknesses of the new mobs.

Just a couple of days ago, my 12-year-old, who hasn’t been playing for long and only got her first 80 after HoT hit, told me: “Mom, I think I have found out how and when to dodge now, thanks to those pocket raptors” . She’s playing a mesmer in mostly leveling equipment (plus a pair on ascended healing power boots she dropped somewhere in wvw ). If she can do this, I’m sure you can, too. Don’t give up, the new maps are awesome once you’ve learned how the new enemies work (and don’t mind so much that you’ll still get killed or kill yourself regularly ).

As always, just play 50 to unlock 51, then 51 to unlock 52 and so on . Nothing changed (other than fractals 50 now actually advances your reward level unlike before).

adormtil.1605:

I do not see the issue if people like to jump and to puzzles to get mastery points they have that option. If people want to do fractals to have enough points they should do that. If they want to do events to get masteries they should do that. They should not have to do all of them.

I guess this is the point where we have to agree to disagree. I don’t think anyone should be able to max all their masteries by just playing a very narrow part of the possible gameplay available, because max masteries to me should mean at least dabbling in all parts of the game and mastering several of them.

Alexander.6250:

For example I don’t have a problem with evading enemies. But those hylek just ’evade almost every ranged attack just by standing there. I think that is a very cheap way too lenghten fights and compensate for their artificial stupidity.

You mean the hyleks that specifically state in their ability description: evades ranged attacks? You simply don’t range them, just as you don’t melee a smokescale right inside its smoke field. Get in close to the hylek, and it’ll fall in just a few hits. Or just put something reflecting in its path, it’ll shoot itself to death with its own projectile attack before you know it (works wonders on snipers, too, btw ).

The great thing about this game is that, for general PvE, pretty much each class has the options to spec into pretty much every role: melee damage, range damage, self reliance, slow playstyle, fast-paced playstyle, single target damage, aoe damage, offensive group buffing, defensive group buffing, direct damage, condition (dot) damage, …

It’s all a question of weapon sets, utility skills and traits you choose, and you are free to switch them on the fly and without cost (in the case of equipment switch to other stuff you’re carrying of course ) whenever you are out of combat.

Your ultimate choice really should mostly depend on which character and what playstyle suits you most, as the classes, while being able to pretty much do everything respectably, play vastly different due to different class mechanics.

Whether you can engage groups of enemies on your own and survive also depends a lot more on your understanding of your class and abilities than the gear you carry around. Sure, my elementalist will do considerably more damage in her beserker gear (full offensive stat set with power, precision and ferocity) than in her soldier’s gear (offensive power plus devensive toughness and vitality stats), but whether she’ll survive a situation or not depends a lot more on choosing the best weapon set and utility skills for a given situation and knowing how to utilize the skills available. The only difference between the two sets mostly is the time it takes to kill stuff .

This game is pretty easy to get into, but surprisingly deep mechanic-wise if you enjoy that kind of thing. You can micro-manage or not depending on the situation and your personal needs. For example, I do have at least two armor sets and most if not all available weapon types on most of my characters, but I often don’t bother re-equipping unless I notice that a situation really calls for going optimal in one way or the other.

Just go with whatever class and race looks most promising to you, and get a feel for the game first. You still have four more character slots to try other combinations later. For example, I really didn’t want to play asura at the start, but at some point, they became my favourite race by far (to the point where more than half of my 80s are asura these days ). I also didn’t mesh with the mesmer class at first, but tried again occasionally when creating new characters, and by now it’s my favourite class (with 3 at 80 and 3 more leveling ).

You really can’t go wrong in this game. Changing builds is quick and easy, getting new equipment is rather painless, too, and if everything fails even maxing a new character is nowhere near as much of a problem as in other MMOs. Pretty much all of the stuff needed when switching alts (including achievements and top-tier equipment) is account-bound anyway, making it very easy to play several characters to top level.

The poi is inside the adventure area. The npc in question is the one that guards the entrance to the adventure. Just turn north from the central Tarir waypoint, then head northwest to the stairs connecting the inner north and west gates. The entrance to the adventure is inside the connecting corridor.

Hekela.1846:

MadCat.9172:

Shards drop in 50+

You’ve confirmed that? You’ve had a drop?

I had one the other night playing 51-53 (not sure on which of the three though ).

adormtil.1605:

So what about all those people who don’t like story, or different races, or fractals, or whatever else the mastery points are gated behind? Do you honestly expect ANet to give out mastery points like candy, so everyone can skip all of them they don’t like?

Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,Yes,yes,.
That is what I want. Why do you have a problem with that?

I don’t have a problem with you wanting that, but I do see a fine line between enough and too many mastery points.

It’s a bit like the daily iterations we’ve had in this game: at one point dailies were so easy to do, most people got theirs done without even thinking about it in the course of their regular gameplay. That way, pretty much everyone got their daily rewards by default, which made some people rejoice for getting the rewards, while taking the sense of achievement away from others that don’t feel they achieved anything until they went off their beaten path for it.

Distribution of mastery points require ArenaNet to make a similar decision: do they want them to be so plentyful that everyone will just get them playing whatever they like, or are they restricted to make people go for specific tasks if they want to max out everything? Where is the sweet spot that makes achievers still feel like they achieved something, while allowing explorers to skip the more complex adventures and killers to not worry about story?

Personally, I wouldn’t mind a few more points available, to give me a bit more freedom to skip adventures and the harder achievements (my reflexes on those things clearly show me that I’m way past the perfect age for that kind of gameplay ), but I can see why ArenaNet won’t want that. Whether I’ll manage eventually to gather enough points for all masteries only time will tell (currently I only have a little over 40 of the Maguuma ones).

Despite the fact that I don’t even know if I’ll ever gather enough mastery points, I still like the way the system is set up. It challenges me to try and learn content that doesn’t come naturally to me (like that drone race adventure everybody claims is so easy … I have yet to finish it even once ). Even if it’s like the coddler’s cove jp that literally took me a year to get done, it’s a goal to go for. Experience to fill the mastery bar already is a by-product of regular gameplay, don’t make mastery points the same or there’s no need to have them anyway.

Mine dropped from one of the scouts somewhere on the map. It’s random, just like the other “drops from mob type in Maguuma maps” items in the other specialisation collections. There’s a bunch of Tengu northeast of the eastwatch waypoint though that’re easier to reach than the ones near Westwatch, maybe try those if you’re set on farming the item now.

There’s a good chunk of Maguuma mastery points tied to story completion and story achievements. People who don’t like to play story still have to do it if they want to max out their Maguuma masteries.

There’s also a ton of core Tyria mastery points tied to personal story completion (including 3 points per race and 1 point per order, so you’ll have to do story on 5 characters to level 30, on 3 of them to level 40 and on one to the very end at minimum), as well as living story season 2 including all achievements.

There’s also a good chunk of mastery points gated behind fractal achievements. There are quite a few people in this game who don’t want to play fractals at all though.

So what about all those people who don’t like story, or different races, or fractals, or whatever else the mastery points are gated behind? Do you honestly expect ANet to give out mastery points like candy, so everyone can skip all of them they don’t like?

And even if you skip all of the adventures now, just get silver in a single one (there are some really easy and painless ones), and as long as you get all non-adventure mastery points you’ll be able to unlock every Maguuma mastery except for a single lvl 6 one.

Disclaimer: I’m not good at adventures at all, nor at many of the other achievements. I’m currently sitting at a little over 40 Maguuma mastery points and have no clue if I’ll ever reach 112 or not, but it’s a form of progression that’s variable enough that I don’t mind if a few of the top-end masteries will eventually be locked behind mastery points that’ll be hard to earn for me and make me go out of my way to play stuff I’m not comfortable with.

West of Kessex Hills, you will find the Brisban Wildlands, another level 15-25 zone, that you can explore. There’s also the Caledon Forest and the Metrica Province south of Kessex/Brisban that give you even more things to do.

You can also try to work your way west and north from Kessex and Queensdale toward the north-eastern edge of the Gendarran Fields to find the portal to Snowden Drifts (15-25), which again leads to Wayfarer Foothills (1-15) and beyond that the Diessa Plateau (1-15). Just keep to the south of Gendarran and stay near the roads if you’re not yet well into the 20s, since it’s a 25-35 zone.

Once you have access to Lion’s Arch (non-pay-for-free or level 30+ I think) you can use the asura portals that connect LA to all the racial starting cities for a more convenient access to the other starter zones.

Aside from access, you may also want to take another look at your way of playing. Unfogging the map (all of it, waypoints, pois, vistas, hearts, hero points) gives a good chunk of experience, as does harvesting all the ore, logs, and plants you find along the way. Make sure to always have enough gathering tools with you. Food and utility buffs (which you can craft yourself from the materials you gather) also give a small boost to experience gain.

Once you’ve fully completed Queensdale and Kessex, you should actually be way beyond level 18. Check the map and don’t be afraid to go into territory a few levels above your head. As long as you are closer than 5 levels below the enemy you won’t be drastically weaker.

Eneldiar.9670:

For me, to spend all that time having to do masteries in HoT that only affects me in HoT areas just seems kinda silly.

It does go further than HoT if you include cosmetics in your view of things. Personally, I’ve got a few skins I’d love to have that specifically require masteries to achieve (namely the Bo staff skin and the Lightbringer’s pack ), so to me progressing in those masteries brings me closer to aquiring skills that allow me to put together those skins.

One of the stated goals of the mastery system was specifically to allow for horizontal progression that wouldn’t mess with parts of the game outside the expansion, so all end results that you can take back to core Tyria are cosmetic only. You only grow “stronger” (or more versatile) in the expansion areas, but that expands your cosmetic options for the whole game.

There’s an HoT map timer over at Dulfy that comes in handy until you’ve memorized the map event rotations.

Other than that, just participate in whatever events you come across, slowly explore the maps, and do the HoT story. You’ll soon find that experience is not so much of a problem after all, and you’ll quickly be blocked by missing mastery points rather than experience to fill your mastery bars. The first story play-through will give you a good boost to those points, as will the mastery insights and strongboxes (5 per map across the first three maps) you come across while exploring the maps.

As for locked adventures, check the icon of each. If you are on the same map as the adventure and the adventure is closed, the icon will have a small padlock at the lower right side that’s gone once the adventure is active.

What part of the story are you on, and which events have you done so far? 7 mastery points spent in the jungle means you’ve either got 3 levels in one mastery track and one in another, or two levels in two tracks and one in a 3rd. Either way, you shouldn’t be far from continuing your story, especially if you’ve done all the events several times already.

Start by checking your achievement tabs for HoT and its personal story: Have you finished the outpost achievements for Verdant Brink? Have you done most of the mastery insights in the map? How about the adventures?

Once you’ve done most of that and grow tired of the Verdant Brink meta, do the same for the Auric Basin. Check the achievement tab for available meta event branches, mastery insights, adventures etc, check the map completion interface for hero points and other interesting stuff. Once you’ve done a good portion of both maps (with possibly a little side trip into the Tangled Depth to unlock access to the Nuhoch mastery line), you should have aquired way more experience than needed for the mastery tracks you actually need for your story.

Absconditus.6804:

I would hope they are aware of the issue by now.

I’m sure they are, since there’s an extensive thread over in the bugs forum that’s hard to miss .

Characters with 100% core Tyria completion don’t seem to get map completion rewards on the non-core maps atm. Hopefully, ANet will be able to fix that soon.