Guild Wars 2

Stave_sl said:

Ok this game is weird so far. I made a warrior and am running around just slashing shit over and over. Where do I get new gear and weapons and stuff?

Click to expand...

The game doesnt have quest chains/hubs to level, that's a pretty big step away for people expecting to be led by the nose (no offense, that's just how it is). For gear you have straight drops, then vendors selling crap gear for copper/silver but usually you get better stuff cheaper on the trading post, and every heart area you finish has a npc nearby that sells some items for karma.

If you feel underleveled just hang in an area you liked and do some more events there, explore grey spots on the map because often there's a something hidden you dont see on the map, or go to another equal-level area through the city Lions Arch (reachable through the pvp area or from every racial city through a portal).

Mist_sl said:

Thieves are not gimped. They can basically murder anyone in 1v1. They can be bad at PvE if you don't know what you're doing, and playing a thief in WvW has a pretty high skill cap.

Warriors are easy to play, have massive amounts of room for error in PvE and WvW (less so in sPvP) and do a lot of damage.

Click to expand...

No, they aren't gimped, but they are average. You can work hard to be able to solo kill from a class that levels far slower than any other, or you can play an easy mode class that levels fast and is competitive without parlor tricks in WvW.

I have an 80 Thief. He's fun to screw around with, but leveling him was a pain, and the return isn't what it should be.

I wouldn't recommend one. I doubt Mist plays one.

At release/after, thieves were beasts in spvp and WvW. Obviously things can have changed.
Two basic builds at the time for WvW. the instant gib build. and the perma stealth build. not the same build, and you couldn't do both at the same time.
Good wvw utilities. with daggerstorm or whatever it was called. trip, and scorpion wire.


I would probably agree my thief is pretty soft leveling.

Dagger elems are effectively elemental rogues. A fairly similar playstyle.
And warriors are just beast. so yeah. easy mode. dw axes. greatsword and guns are very strong.




First time through, gear can be sparse.

As noted, at this point, the trading post will be flooded with lowbie gear. you can buy what you want at a very cheap price.
Pick all crafting nodes, even ones you don't need for your crafting profession. sell everything on the trading post. this is great exp, and the cash you should get from this, will pay for upgrades.

Karma venders are very spread out. the problem here is you don't know where to go, to get the item you want. You can use a wiki to find out this. And your first play through, karma will be tight..
... personally I have like 2m karma and no idea what to spend it on.

Yeah I'll just have to get more into it. I literally did the first field I think, and just now realize I am supposed to go to the capital looking city or something? I want to try a greatsword, because I always love those, and this sword and horn just looks dumb. But what can I say, I am only level 3. I think I'm gonna go with a warrior for my first class though. As much as I like stealth and love solo 1v1 gank gameplay like rogues used to be in WoW, I just don't feel like fighting with the game. I just want a fun class I can enjoy and maybe do some faceroll PVP with without having to min/max or theorycraft like a mofo.

I don't want to invest a ton of time into the game other than just enjoying my way through it. TBH, I have waaaay too many games to play right now, and am still enjoying FFXIV, and am debating on resubbing to WoW to mess around with over the winter. Also BF4 comes out soon which will surely take up a huge part of my time, and I am wanting to do a D3 runthrough with the wife, and that doesn't even include the upcoming badass AAA games coming out soon like the new Batman, NFS Rivals, Ass Creed BF, Southpark, CoD Ghosts, etc. And then there's the ginormous backlog across 3 platforms. Fuck sometimes I wish I could go Sean-mode.

Caliane_sl said:

Karma venders are very spread out. the problem here is you don't know where to go, to get the item you want. You can use a wiki to find out this. And your first play through, karma will be tight..
... personally I have like 2m karma and no idea what to spend it on.

Click to expand...

I wouldnt worry about spending karma and just buy the things that are decent upgrades, no need to get every +1 power item though. You might want to start getting stingy with karma in the 50s or so, because you might want to buy alot of stuff once you reach 80, but otherwise karma has never been an issue for me.

Stave_sl said:

Yeah I'll just have to get more into it. I literally did the first field I think, and just now realize I am supposed to go to the capital looking city or something? I want to try a greatsword, because I always love those, and this sword and horn just looks dumb.

...

I don't want to invest a ton of time into the game other than just enjoying my way through it.

Click to expand...

Just buy a greatsword for your level for a few coppers once you find a Black Lion trader npc (you can buy it at any time, but only pick it up at those npcs). And dont feel pushed to do anything specific while leveling, that's really not how GW2 works. Hell there are people in Queensdale that leveled from 1-80 without leaving the zone (not recommended for sane people though). The personal story quests only happen every few levels, they are not meant to be done back to back. instead view them as the occasional breadcrumb quest to a new zone (I didnt finish it on any character but my first for example, its strictly optional).

*Play it your way* is really the motto for this game. I hung out in wayfarers for several levels because I like the zone, a friend of mine is leveling like a fiend in the current living story map Mad King's labyrinth, while another did WvW for leveling (you are weaker then 80s there despite being upscaled, but in the zerg a body is a body). Usually the daily involves going to some region like Kryta (pretty much all human zones), Shiverpeaks and so on, I tend to let that guide where I play that day because the daily is a nice xp boost and you'll need the laurels for top tier items at 80.

I didn't touch the story line until I was L74, and I leveled to 80 like complete gangbusters. Granted, I did have 100% xp boost, but it was still much faster than anything else I did up to that point.

What is with the Clock Tower jumping puzzle making your char super glitchy after a few runs? Also, fuck that jp in it's ass.

Mist_sl said:

You should probably do the personal storyline. If you do it at appropriate levels, it gives you over half a level for free every other level.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I am a storyline whore, I will have to do the storyline, that's a given.

Stave_sl said:

Yeah, I am a storyline whore, I will have to do the storyline, that's a given.

Click to expand...

Some of the parts are pretty hard if you don't have a good class/skills to solo veterans, anything that summons minions is really helpful at that point.

Clock tower is fucking awesome, best not-grindy-but-challenging content so many people seem to ask for.

I should probably just take more time to read up on this game. I didn't follow it at ALL before launch, and even before this. I figured it would flop, didn't like what I saw, and was stuck on Tera at the time. So I had 0 interest in it, and 0 intent to buy it, so I never read shit about it. I literally know nothing about this game, other than "there are no quests" "there is pvp" "there are events" "theres supposedly no tanks/healers but not sure much about this" and that's about it. I think what is confusing me the most is, what am I able to do besides helping fill hearts/exploring to level up? As in what other options do I have like PVP and stuff? Or are there instances/dungeons or something? I am unsure how to even get into pvp or dungeons. Maybe it's in town, I haven't had time to get on yet today to head there. I am probably sounding like a broken record here, and I am sure my best way of figuring this question out is just playing and doing stuff, I am just not used to this style of gameplay yet, and am at work so I can't play right now which is why I am asking questions here.

Funny story, last night I talked to some ghost dude with a pumpkin icon thinking I'd get some Halloween quest, and he teleported me to some graveyard zone that I didn't want to go to. I ran around and didn't know if I was questing or what but all my abilities and armor and weapons were gone and I found the mad king and tried to attack him and got attacked by some ghost and it hit me for like 3k killing me so I figured I was in some high level zone where I don't belong because obviously I don't have 3k hp's. Then I became a ghost so I was like wtf how do I get my body back and ran around for like 10 minutes trying to get out, and then I realized this was like some PVP area and the ghosts were other players, and now I was a ghost. So once I figured that out it was kinda cool and I chased people around trying to kill them. I got some chest at the end, and some gear, but cant even use it, and it took me like 20 minutes to figure out how to leave, finally I found some obscure button by my minimap. Normally I am not a noob at MMO's but this game seems rather unexplanatory. Now I don't know but did I gain exp from that pvp thing? I am assuming it is like some sort of battleground. I did read the GW2 starters guide on their website but it is pretty worthless. I'm sure as time goes this won't be so foreign to me, but for now, I haven't been this lost feeling since original EQ when I ran into Qeynos sewers at like level 2, got killed by a shark, and spent hours trying to figure out how the fuck to get my body back.

/wiki ingame brings up the wiki

Instances start at lvl 30 with Ascalonian catacombs with next one every 10 levels, each has story mode and then you have 3+ explorable paths, all dungeons give roughly the same rewards and their specific tokens which can be exchanged for lvl 80 exotic gear. You can enter explorable mode right away if a party member who did story enters first. A lot of people are reluctant to run with low levels, because even though they get leveled down to your level, the gear still makes pretty big difference, but otherwise it's great source of XP and gold.

Then there is crafting, you get 7 levels total (doesn't matter what lvl you are) for getting to 400, then you can raise it to 500 for another 3 levels, but it costs an arm and leg. Generally not advisable for first character unless it's cooking and you follow a guide. Sell the crafting materials on AH to get some cash for decent bags.

GW2 is split into PvE+WvW where you have one set of gear and skills, then sPvP+"activities" where you have another set of gear, you don't get XP or gold and all gear is cosmetic. Yeah, they never tell you that. You can enter PvP by clicking the swords in the menu bar and gonig to the mists and you can leave through the portal to Lion's Arch. Good way to differentiate stuff is the color of your xp bar, though eventually you should know what you are doing. If you find haunted doors, the Mad King's labyrinth is probably the best way to level right now, just follow the zerg (look for a blue arrow on the map - that's commander tag) and tag the event objectives so you get xp and some decent gear.

As far as leveling goes, you can grind to your heart's content, but the game is definitely at its best when you just wander around the world, doing hearts and quest that pop up, read random signs and talk to NPCs, you can trigger a LOT of events that way. Enjoy a game that put some effort into its world instead of being a Disneyland ride. You also get some decent rewards for exploring 100% of a zone, with guaranteed greens and mats. Always carry a salvage kit and salvage blues/greens you find, you get essences to boost your account wide magic find and materials which are usually worth a bit more than the gear. You can use the cheapest one.

What you found was a Halloween mini-game called Lunatic Inquisition. It's a pvp game for fun. You play as villagers trying to survive until the timer is out. If you get killed at any point you get turned into a ghost. The ghosts job is to kill all the villagers before the timer is up. Lunatic inquisition is one of the seasonal activities. There are a couple of other activities called Sanctum Sprint, Keg Brawl, Southsun Survival, and Crab Toss. The rewards you get for these activites are generally some coin, karma, and some items. But they do not give you any levelling xp.

As for pvp in the game, there are two types. There is World VS World(WvW) and Strucutured pvp(Spvp). WvW is the eternal battleground and the borderlands. In these areas you are auto-leveled to 80, but you still only have the retained skills of your current level. With the WvW season 1 going on, this is actually a pretty good area to level in, if you want. As a sub-80 character you will probably still be thrashed by a real level 80 character, I would recommend finding where the zerg is and riding the karma/xp train for a bit.

Spvp is 5 or 8 person team vs team pvp. When you enter this area, you are auto-leveled to 80 and given all the skills and access to all of the traits for the class you are playing. You will want to make sure that you have the appropriate sigils and runes that you want to be using along with ensuring your traits are setup how you want. This is a great place to try out new builds in that you can re-trait for free and try different stat/gear layouts. The games are team vs teams in various maps that will reward you with glory. Glory is used to level up your spvp rank (from 1 to 80); and leveling up ranks takes a long time in the last half. Spvp really has no effect on the rest of the game other than giving you different finishers based on your rank.

Also just wanted to toss in some sites that are useful in the later levels when you want to do world bosses, crafting, and harvesting:
Home - GW2 StuffGreat tracking site for world boss events.
ACCGs for Guild Wars 2Very helpful when you want to level up a craft in one sitting.
Guild Wars 2 Resource Maps BETATracks all of the high end nodes for you

Guzrog_sl said:

A lot of people herald it but quite frankly I hated leveling in GW2. I've certainly attempted it a number of times since release. Highest I ever got was 25 before I crafted to 80, then quit. There are instanced dungeons but they aren't until roughly level 25 or 30, which takes a while just doing hearts and events. Loot is garbage and they can be a bit tedious for risk vs. reward. You do get XP from everything so feel free to gather, explore, do hearts (essentially quests in a given area.) Personal story is not bad but if you aren't the right level/class they can be a pain in the ass. Most are boring imo, at least up to 40ish.

sPVP (instanced/bgs) is basically like "another version" of your character. You get Glory which is like honor, but you don't get EXP towards leveling from doing it. World vs. World gets you exp for leveling but to me its a chore if you aren't with a guild/crew. YMMV. Another big thing I'm not a fan of is the fact you can arguably unlock all of the skills you want by level 25-30. I like a bit of a carrot. Also make sure you're dodging. Enemies telegraph its just not as obvious as Tera.

I wanted to love this game so bad, and it is so beautiful but it just doesn't hook me no matter what I try. Hopefully the info I provided helps a bit, and I hope the game hooks you!

Click to expand...

I have to agree, the longer I play the game the more I think the entire leveling business is just pointless obstacle. Why is the game telling me I can't do this yet, but happily downscales my lvl 80 character ? You don't really feel like you are getting stronger and thanks to the way it's stretched out over the 80 levels, I just end up trying to skip parts with event farms or just logging the alt at the end of an instance.

Funny how opinions differ. For me, pve-wise exploring the outdoor areas and just looking for hidden stuff was a blast. Instances are okayish but nothing new, kill a few trash packs, a boss, trash, another boss. Fun but predictable. The outdoor areas (until you've done them a few times) really drew me in, I always got sidetracked while passing through and suddenly I'm at the other end of the zone. Wish they would get off their asses and actually add more complete zones, so far we've only gotten like half an outdoor map in one year (southsun).

all the hidden shit in the game is the best part for sure, unlike WoW where many caves had the exactly same design/pathing. How all the little stories and lore collaborate is one of my favorite parts. I make it a point to talk to all NPC's for the first time ever.