tips and tricks for new players?

[Tietoso]

hi, im currently playing like 3 mmo's (rift,wow gw2) and currently downloading star wars, i wanted to know if there are any tips and tricks u guys can give me for gw2, i heard that u should save your crafting stuff to finish leveling to 80, is that still a thing?
also im playing a warrior and a mage, what proffesions should i pick for them?

[Meledelion]

First tip: Learn the terminology of the game and use it. Mage = Elementalist

2. Yes that's still a thing, however since the introduction of ascended weapons you need insane amounts of cash to max out weapon crafting professions (weaponsmith, artificer, huntsman) so stay away from those. Check gw2crafts.net for the cheapest one to max

3. Professions don't give any advantage (aside from artificer which has special potions that are soulbound on craft but that really isn't worth it)

4. When you hit a lvl gap (the next zone is lvl 20 and you're lvl 18) just go in there and try to do w/e you can. With proper dodges levels become close to meaningless.

5. Save your personal story for once you're a bit higher level (40+) so that you can just chain loads after another.

6. Get assassin's gear if you can (precision+critical damage) or berserkers (power + critical damage) FOR LEVELING

7. Don't use defensive weapons/builds ever! DPS>all

[Svifnymr]

The personal story is broken into 10 level brackets, they take you exploring a bit, but they don't really pace well with your level/xp gain. So it's easiest, IMO, to simply save them until you're at the end of each bracket. So do the 1-10 when you hit level 10, do level 11-20 when you're level 20, that sort of thing. It'll be faster and more fluid.

Don't feel confined to the zones in a linear sense. You get XP from nearly everything, so feel free to zoom your map out, pick a totally different zone that's in your level range, and just go there to adventure. You can skip to the human starting area or the Charr area or whatever and you'll still be gaining power, so don't worry about thinking the game is telling you what to do.

Crafting gives XP, there's no real reason to save it for later that I know of. You can switch between crafting without losing progress on the now inactive crafts, though it does cost coin.

[Meledelion]

Crafting gives XP, there's no real reason to save it for later that I know of. You can switch between crafting without losing progress on the now inactive crafts, though it does cost coin.

This is wrong.

You'll get 10lvls regardless of what level you're at for leveling a crafting profession to max. Since you need (slightly) more xp the higher your level is it's better to save crafting for when you're a higher level. The best "value" would be to craft if your toon is lvl 70 if you're only maxing one craft or 60 if you're maxing 2 (and so on).

[Karizee]

• Check the trading post for the price on Training Manuals before buying from the training vendor, they are often cheaper. (as an aside, do NOT purchase a training manual to reset your traits).
  
  
• Use the gear icon on your inventory to deposit all mats & pets to a tab in your bank from anywhere in the world. You can then go to the bank to withdraw to sell or to a crafting station to use. (get an invisible bag to put items in that you do not want to go to your bank or show up on a vendor sell list - very handy for mini-pets)
  
  
• If you are dying a lot, get some gear with Toughness/Vitality. As you learn to avoid and mitigate damage you can exchange those pieces out for something better suited to your build/playstyle. PVT gear is pretty much a must have for all new WvW players.
  
  
• Do map completion in the high level zones for 2 free exotics per zone.
  
  
• Keep your mailbox as clear as possible since you can only see 10 non-game mails at a time.
  
  
• Think of hearts like bread crumb quests, they draw you into an area but it's the dynamic events that is the real meat of the open world part of the game. Talk to all named NPCs, many of them will trigger dynamic events.
  
  
• Easy gold for beginners http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q5ZrSBOKxw
  
  
• WvW - join your server's Teamspeak to join in the overall strategy.
  
  
• You will have lots of questions, there's a lot to learn! Don't be shy about asking in mapchat for help with a champ or skill point, people are pretty friendly.

[Achaman]

only one i can think of is that other than giving you ten levels crafting is pretty pointless as it costs you more money than you can get from it

[barackopala]

only one i can think of is that other than giving you ten levels crafting is pretty pointless as it costs you more money than you can get from it

But you're still leveling from it.

[lawow74]

1)You can make 8-slot bags to pad out your inventory very easily with Tailoring, Leatherworking and Armorsmithing.

2)You can enter the Borderlands at any time by pressing B and choosing which to travel to. This is always free, and can be used to easily get to Lion's Arch from anywhere in the game, and through there any of the racial cities, without paying a single copper in map travel costs.

3)Most of the Master Craftsmen also sell all types of salvage kits and harvesting tools.

4)Any crafting station doubles as a way to access your personal bank.

5)When respec'ing traits, you can speed up the spending of points by selecting an Adept/Master/Grandmaster trait in a trait line to slot. The game will ask if you wish to spend those points, simply choose yes.

6)Going to the Heart of the Mists will put you into PvP mode, where you'll be levelled to 80 and have access to all your trait points and skills, as well as be able to get and equip PvP versions of most types of equipment. This is a good way to experiment with builds and act as a way to save a character build for later reference.

7)Typing /wiki will bring up the official site wiki in-game.

8)Feel free to explore the whole world, not just your race's starting areas. In fact, it can be a good way to help boost your levels early on so you don't get outpaced by the zone content.

9)Take advantage of Living Story events, they can often be an excellent source of XP.

10)The daily and monthly categories are good sources of XP as well as laurels and other rewards. Don't feel forced into doing them, but take advantage of them if you can.

11)Transmutation Stones are good for more than just looks. They can also be used to move sigils and runes to a new piece of equipment by transmuting the old with it and choosing the old rune/sigil instead of one you might not like on the new.

12)Take a peek and see what something sells for on the TP before you salvage. Sometimes people will pay a good deal of cash for an item to be used as a vanity piece, and certainly anything rare or better quality can often sell for more than its breakdown components do.

13)If you tire of playing by yourself and just want some easy, mindless XP and loot, join up with the champion farming train that's usually running in Queensdale. IME those doing it will usually be helpful in explaining the server rotation and telling you where it's currently at if you ask in /map.

[Svifnymr]

This is wrong.

Whoops, guess I messed that up. I don't think it's a huge difference then, but usually prefer to have the crafting boost earlier on since the higher level you are the more options are opened up on the world scale. (Though I generally take a couple dump crafting skills to level up with plentiful early stuff, then switch to actual useful crafts after to level to 400.)

Separate from that:
As mentioned, typing /wiki brings up the wiki. Any phrase after /wiki will run a search on the wiki for that. ("/wiki dungeon" will bring up the wiki and search for "dungeon")

As mentioned, doing the daily/monthly is a good boost of XP. Even after completing the minimum though, the categories themselves still award bonus xp for completion.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, and another commonly asked new player thing:
You mail to other players, there is no "trade" function to hand things off.
You cannot mail to your alts, the bank space is shared between all on your account and you can transfer items between alts via that.

[Deleted]

My 5 cents:

There is no such thing as a mage and DO NOT mistake elementalist for one. Ele is like a shaman.

So, first things first, learn how not to take into consideration popular opinions that you find in forums, in regards to ANY aspect of the game! They are all written by people who are more happy talking/arguing/trashing (about) the game than playing the game.

Second. Read the official descriptions of the classes from the official gw2 page. They are spot on, in describing what theme you ll encounter in class mechanics.

Third. Pick a class and learn at least 50% of the game before trying another one. Unless you just don't like the class.

Fourth. Nothing you can craft can make a profit in TP (auction house). Remember! This is an economy regulated by consumers and every rational being understands that they know nothing about economics. Which leads us to the 5th point.

Fifth. Sell what you find, salvage what you craft. The only exceptions to the rule are things that you need (e.g. ectoplasms for a weapon you want to craft, blues and greens you 'll want to salvage for magic find, since they killed this type of gear).

Sixth. Helping you with the above, I suggest googling "Dulfy gw2". Her portal/site will lead you to several galleries of weapons and their recipes, among several other guides for the game.

Seventh. Do not try to save money by not using waypoints, like Fencers. It's in the kindest of words, silly. Finishing the smallest and quickest dungeon will net you enough money to cross the map 20 to 25 times.

Eighth. I have in my bookmarks about 4 useful sites containing info about World Bosses and their timers, respawn times and locations of the most valuable gathering materials and full, updated guides for 3 or 4 classes. If someone can verify, posting them will not be taken as advertising let me know so I can post for all to see.

Ninth. Do not look for guilds through common means. The average guild is full of miserable, failures in life that are in the guild for every benefit other than socialization. If you don't have friends playing already, spent some time making and wait till you know them enough to call them buddies to ask them becoming reference for entering their guilds. Or just make your own.

Tenth. You like theorycrafting? Go into the heart of the mists. The second button on the top left of your screen, counting from right to left. Respecing is for free there.

Eleventh. Check a guide for jumping puzzles. They are not as rewarding as they are fun, but you ll usually get yourself into seeing beautiful vistas you'd otherwise miss.

Twelfth. This right here is a cardinal rule for enjoying the game. DO NOT attempt to be the first at everything. More specifically, don't do it when it comes to new content. Even if the bugs are not keeping you from experiencing part of the content, people will be.

Thirteenth. Don't let your ego keep you away from reading guides and watching others play. It will take you time to pick up on the workings of the game and these contain some of the best advise to help you push through. For example, I thought that the skills in my bar would follow me for as long as I have the build. WRONG! Even with a certain build, certain situations require certain skills. Thanks to daphoenix I was taught this soon enough to become effective in dungeons and pvp and not that sorry bum the group is carrying with them but he himself doesn't realize it.

There's way more than that but it's actually so much, it justifies paying someone to tutor you. If you have other, very specific questions send a pm (even at a later time) and I ll guide you through.

[c0da]

hi, im currently playing like 3 mmo's (rift,wow gw2) and currently downloading star wars, i wanted to know if there are any tips and tricks u guys can give me for gw2, i heard that u should save your crafting stuff to finish leveling to 80, is that still a thing?
also im playing a warrior and a mage, what proffesions should i pick for them?

This is easily my favorite tip to give new players. Play on high population servers, I would recommend Blackgate, Tarnished Coast, Jade Quarry or Sanctum of Rall. There are some medium population servers like Crystal Desert or Yak's Bend that might also be good. But do not roll on a low populated servers, if you do that you will quit the game in a week. The game especially leveling is way better on a higher population server, just like any MMO. So stick to the ones I recommended unless you have friends in the other servers.

Second piece of advice is just do heart quests and make sure you buy a couple of bags. Use the "compact" function in the bag options so you don't have to keep going back to the city.

And yes, save crafting till the end. It is a total waste to do it in the lower levels.

[lawow74]

Seventh. Do not try to save money by not using waypoints, like Fencers. It's in the kindest of words, silly. Finishing the smallest and quickest dungeon will net you enough money to cross the map 20 to 25 times.

Fencers didn't say that, I did. And what I said was it saves money to travel to Lion's Arch that way, instead of paying to map there or to the other capital cities. Unless you're just desperate for time, an extra thirty seconds to bounce through a BG and Lion's Arch is worth it, IMO. If others don't feel that way, feel free to pay and jump on over. But it's a tip for those who do want to.

[Deleted]

Fencers didn't say that, I did. And what I said was it saves money to travel to Lion's Arch that way, instead of paying to map there or to the other capital cities. Unless you're just desperate for time, an extra thirty seconds to bounce through a BG and Lion's Arch is worth it, IMO. If others don't feel that way, feel free to pay and jump on over. But it's a tip for those who do want to.

Oh no, I specifically remember her saying that and even admitting to going as far as asking her friends to pay the costs when they asked her to travel long distances for a dungeon or events and such.

As for considering this as a tip, it is at the very least arguable whether it is to your benefit.

[Deleted]

So where is the 'in place' for world pve events and such? iv just hit level 80 and I see very few people around the high level zones, is there anywhere I should be to farm fast karma/events/elites etc?

[Valeron]

wherever the living story is that is where you will find most of the pve players at this point

starting tomorrow that will most likely be at Kessex Hills

[Karizee]

So where is the 'in place' for world pve events and such? iv just hit level 80 and I see very few people around the high level zones, is there anywhere I should be to farm fast karma/events/elites etc?

Meta events: http://us.gw2stuff.com/
You will see the most activity right after daily reset for the extra chest.

The Frostgorge/Queensdale champ trains run pretty much 24/7. But dungeons and fractals are the best source if you've got a good group.

[Meledelion]

I farmed 80k karma maxing out the inquisition thingy it's important to note that it took about 10 min*80 = 800 min or 13h20min

It's a pitty they decided to completely remove karma as a reward from dungeons and I don't get why they did that either.

[Valeron]

the total karma change in general seems puzzling to me

what they really needed to do was figure out more and better ways to spend the karma

[Meledelion]

Just toning down karma gain a bit would've been fine. I had like 15mil karma or so after I used my potions before the change. Which in all honesty is a bit overkill

[lawow74]

Oh no, I specifically remember her saying that and even admitting to going as far as asking her friends to pay the costs when they asked her to travel long distances for a dungeon or events and such.

As for considering this as a tip, it is at the very least arguable whether it is to your benefit.

I was referring to this thread. And it is a tip, whether you choose to take advantage of it or not.