reading through the posts here is not encouraging me to purchase it I’m afraid.
Well, what do you expect a few days into the expansion? I know I wouldn’t be posting if I had access to my game atm, I would be out in Maguuma enjoying myself instead
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You should at least gain experience for killing foes in fractals, so choosing fractal levels with many foes might be a way to go.
Other than that, all the “regular” ways to gain experience should work. Map-unfogging and -exploration on alts, playing personal story missions, killing foes left, right, and center, doing events, dungeons (should be around 60k per dungeon path on a level 80 plus whatever you kill inside), world bosses, champ trains, harvesting, and so on.
The best advice probably is to ignore your xp bar and just do a multitude of activities you enjoy to make time pass faster
. And don’t forget to bring your harvesting tools, those xp from picking flowers and berries at the roadside do add up.
Oh, and please don’t tell me you don’t grind, exploration is done with one character once, do something with several characters to get the xp needed to unlock mastery becomes grinding.
Well, I don’t grind. In fact, I refuse to, been there, done that in other games until they sucked all the fun of playing out of it.
I just like to change things up, play around with a bunch of different characters, and go after a bunch of different playstyles. Maybe I’m just one of those people that’re bored easily and find it hard to focus . But this game is perfect for that.
Go here, do a couple of events, harvest some crafting materials, enjoy the view. Go there with another character, check out that vista over there and the jp on the other side. Grab a third character, do some WvW or sPvP. Hop onto a fourth and play a dungeon/fractal or two.
Time flies when you’re having fun, and even though I don’t have a lot of play time (with family, job, and real life in general) I have plenty of lvl 80s, several with 100% core Tyria completion, and many of the others above 60%, and I’ve never specifically gone for completion except for rare cases of finishing up an almost-completed map.
Yet, I still see the world through different eyes when I’m on a different character. Even in old maps, the experience is almost never the same. There’s often events or characters I haven’t noticed before (or forgotten about), hidden paths and places I’ve missed on the previous characters and lots more.
I fully expect HoT to be the same once I take more characters through the maps seriously, but for now, I’m casually enjoying the maps and story on my main ranger. There’s so much to see and do, I have yet to be seriously stalled by missing masteries.
You are entitled to say “I don’t enjoy that kind of content”, but wanting to have the cake and eat it, too? The story is part of the whole, taking out anything requiring character/account progression tied to the expansion would be like reworking the original personal story so you could play it at level 2 all the way to the Gates of Arah, no character progression required for story progression. Is that really what you want?
I keep seeing this “people wont want to help out with old content” but the champions from the new Hero Point challenges seem to drop some good loot once a day if you’ve already unlocked it for you character. Am i wrong about that?
Seems like a really good incentive for helping out people who don’t have it already.If that is true, that is a step in the right direction. The biggest problem with doing old content (i.e. Orr, Living Story) the don’t make it rewarding for people who have already done it.
Yes it is. The hero challenge champ events give champion bags, map currency, experience, and map event participation once a day. The hero point itself is kind of the icing of the cake for first-time participation
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I’m fully expecting “hero point champ trains” to be a thing in the future.
Right…
What’s going to be the motivation to do these hero point champ trains, when people have nothing to put their hero points into? (i.e. they finish their specialization)?
???
Correct me if I’m wrong, but we were just talking about those champ events giving champion bags, map currency, experience, and map event participation once a day, right? If that’s not enough motivation for you, don’t do them, but many of these are quick and easy to do with a few players, and I fully expect people working on map rewards to take advantage of them.
I keep seeing this “people wont want to help out with old content” but the champions from the new Hero Point challenges seem to drop some good loot once a day if you’ve already unlocked it for you character. Am i wrong about that?
Seems like a really good incentive for helping out people who don’t have it already.If that is true, that is a step in the right direction. The biggest problem with doing old content (i.e. Orr, Living Story) the don’t make it rewarding for people who have already done it.
Yes it is. The hero challenge champ events give champion bags, map currency, experience, and map event participation once a day. The hero point itself is kind of the icing of the cake for first-time participation .
I’m fully expecting “hero point champ trains” to be a thing in the future.
And it’s a shame too – I feel like this would have had the best story so far – just that I can’t seem to play it in one go.
How about front-loading those masteries if you’re so intent on doing the story in one go? I’ve done a bunch of exploration, gathering, events that I came across etc., and have not met much in the way of mastery gates yet (except for the latest one when I actually had to level a whole level of a tree I hadn’t touched before).
Explore the map, check out the event chains and adventures, pick up some hero and mastery points, unlock a level or two in the masteries available to you. Then do the story, until it leads you into the next map, take a break to explore this new map, rinse and repeat. Or even explore all the maps (and unlock all of the level 1+2 masteries to be on the safe side) before you start the story.
If you can’t get what you want right away, check out other stuff that keeps you occupied and amused until you can get to your original goal .
The thing is you don’t HAVE to farm same events over and over, hell it’s not even faster. Just explore the jungle, you don’t have to max mastery in a week. Play the game regularly and leveling while enjoying, don’t let level be your goal.
I can’t allow level not to be my goal, because the developers don’t allow me the luxury of not allowing the level to be my goal. I.e: For 2,5 years i’ve been doing nothing but grinding in gw2, to get this, to get that and that stuff, problem is i want to enjoy the story, actually that’s what made me buy Hot, yet i cannot enjoy the story because i am forced to grind, and trust me i tried exploring i tried everything, the fastest way to get xp are the events and even so i a kick in the balls. I mean it’s like you want to go out to play with your friends but your grounded, and you won’t be allowed out until you do what you have to do, does that feel funny to you?
I have to admit I’m having a hard time understanding this. For three years, I have played this game, and have yet to find anything forcing me to grind. What is it you are trying to go after, how, and why?
Did it ever occur to you, that by looking for the “fastest way to get xp”, you’re missing out on a lot of additional experience sources, making things go subjectively (if not even objectively) much slower than they could?
I hate grinding, and actually quit my previous mmo mostly because it was either grind or drag down your raid group. I even hate farming. Still, there are days in GW2 when for example I want to craft something and find I don’t have enough iron ore for it. If I go out to farm the iron, I can guarantee you that I’ll be bored out of my mind and give up a minute into the process.
What I do is choose an alt that looks fun to play, take them into a map that offers the resource I look for (iron nodes in my example), and proceed to do everything that crosses my path. Map exploration, fighting, resource harvesting, events I stumble upon, and so on. In the end I have my iron, it’s realistically maybe taken twice as much time as going exclusively for the iron, but practically it didn’t feel half as long plus I’ve stockpiled a bunch of character/mastery experience, cleared some map%, and hoarded some miscelaneous materials that may keep me from farming them later when I need them. It’s a full-out win in my book.
With mastery experience and the HoT story, I’m pretty much doing things the same way. I am just now at a point where I need to advance a specific mastery, but I was 80% through another mastery path at that point and wanted to finish that first, so I decided to go back to the previous map and just explore around. I’ve found a bunch of events, some hero and mastery points, a fun adventure, and ever so many pretty or intriguing places all over the map. I’m having a blast, and fully expect to at some point realize I’m half-way through the next mastery rank because the one I need for story is already done and I missed it .
Try to loose that “must-earn-xp-now” tunnel view, and enjoy the scenery. You know the saying “time flies when you’re having fun”, and it very much is right for this game. As a bonus, the xp will come anyway, and before you know it you’ll have more than enough and can still say: I had a great time getting here.
I feel like a kid on christmas day: so many new toys, I really don’t know what to play with first.
Since I got off work Friday afternoon, I’ve taken my first character through the new story all the way to the third map, played a couple of other characters into the first expansion map, did a bunch of fractals with different friends, registered our guild at the guild initiative and checked out what to do to claim our guildhall, unlocked 7 of 8 elite specs (18 hp missing for the last one) and their respective weapon collections, played a few rounds of Mad King’s labyrinth, unlocked some of the new collections, found a new pet for my ranger, and did a ton of other things.
I love navigating the new maps, and how they open up whenever you gain a new mastery. I love figuring out how to get to places, and what to do there. I love jumping and flying, even if it means having to try a bunch of times before I get the jumps right or hit the correct updrafts. I love the feeling that there’s sooo much yet to discover, and that there’s new stuff around every corner.
This was probably the first weekend in ages that I haven’t really checked forums or other games at all, because I was too busy trying to do everything at once . I even got up extra early this morning (horay for the end of daylight savings time) to get to work at 6:15 so that I may go home early this afternoon to keep on playing. Now if only time would pass as quickly at the office as it does when roaming the jungles …
If you’ve got dedicated guild scribes, that’s how it should work … for now I’m afraid most people will just hoard the scribe materials and try to level their own scribes as soon as their guilds have unlocked the scribing stations .
Focussing on healing only in this game has the downside of not tagging any kills, which in turn means you miss out on a lot of experience and potentially event participation (if the point of an event is to repell enemies that you won’t harm while healing others).
Try a staff ele concentrating on water and earth attunement (and water, earth and arcane traits) if you want to heal and protect fellow players in group content, but don’t hesitate to switch to fire occasionally to burn those nasties coming your way, too .
Btw, you may want to take a look at the wiki page about combos to expand your healing and protection abilities. The ele has access to lots of combo fields and finishers for healing, regeneration, protection and others that you can take advantage of.
I jumped into fractals 34 on my favourite asura last night with some guildies that I’d never played instanced content with before. It was surprisingly pleasant (despite the fact that I had to change my armor set for the final fractal because I forgot to bring repair canisters ). More importantly though, I got my first ascended armor drop from fractals, a raider’s shoulder chest. Only two more armor pieces missing and I’ve got enough ar for fractals 40 .
I know it’s still too early although I’m scared to know how much of those hero challenges I’ll be able to do without getting either of the first glider and/or the jumping one.. :/
Guess more WubWubing for me
You should be able to get the first levels of gliding and mushroom jumping pretty easily if you play through the jungle (which you’ll have to do for the new hero points anyway). Fractal mastery can only be earned outside the jungle (and outside WvW if I understand the latest dev posts correctly), so it won’t interfere.
Personally, I’m trying to keep myself from reading all of those “400 hero points???” threads all over the place, but they’re a bit like a train wreck, horrifying yet hard to keep your eyes off .
Honestly I expected to have to do content inside the expansion one way or another for the elite specs, as it seemed unlikely they’d let people pretty much “spoil” that part of the new stuff by grinding it out exclusively in old content. I’m just happy that my core Tyria hero points will allow me to get a headstart. They could’ve just invented a new kind of “elite hero point” to make sure people unlock their elite specs in the new maps instead.
Mostly my dilemma will now be which characters to take through the jungle … I’d love to play my charr ranger and sylvari ele, since I’ve played all story on those two and enjoy the characters, but on the other hand I’m mostly interested in the chronomancer from the technical side of things.
Then again, one of my max-level mesmers (my favourite asura <3) is on my alt account, so likely to have to wait, the other asura mesmer is a more recent character with not much in terms of equipment or map exploration, and the third mesmer, the one with full map exploration and full ascended, is unfortunately my only human, a race I really don’t enjoy playing.
Not to mention those other 10 (11 if I manage to level my sylvari thief from 76 to 80 by Friday) max-level characters lurking in the shadows, looking at me with accusing eyes … why did anyone ever want an expansion, when all it brings is so many goodies to play with, you simply can’t decide what to do first???
On the positive and on-topic note, the number of serious, damage-oriented and dungeon/fractal interested players in my guild seems to finally go up. We actually had a number of relaxed but focussed dungeon runs lately where it wouldn’t take us an hour per dungeon path . And the best thing is, some of those players are even new to dungeons and will be interested in running them quite a bit, despite less gold rewards, so I may be getting to finish my dungeoneer collection after all .
(edited by Rasimir.6239)
I’m not sure how you can mix up the engi and the ele-icon, but if there were issues, then that’s nice too.
Try to see the game through my eyes, and you’ll see how easy it is . Maybe I should consider getting a larger monitor after all … not that mine is all that small, but my eyes are getting more lousy every year
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As for fractal leaderboards coming later, I try to be optimistic and hope that it’s just a matter of weeks. After all the work they went through to implement that legendary back item, the optimist in me can’t see them ditching that. Maybe I should stop reading forums to preserve that optimism though .