A fresh start in Guild Wars 2

[Triptych]

Hi GW2 players,

I played and enjoyed GW2 back when it first launched (well, maybe a month or two after launch actually), but haven't logged in for a long long time.

I'd like to check it out again, but I'm not very enthusiastic about going back to my original characters. I can't recall them very well, but I think I had a warrior that got close to the level cap, plus a few others --- thief, guardian, engineer maybe --- in their 20s or 30s. So yeah, it's been so long that I've completely lost any sort of connection to them. Can barely remember the first thing about their playstyle mechanics, or their special stories, or the lore behind the maps and the NPCs etc. No idea what server I was playing on.

So I was considering deleting them all and starting over fresh.

I recall seeing that a lot of stuff is now account-wide, rather than tied to a character .. so this should be manageable, right? I can retain any stuff that I "unlocked" back in the day? Such as inventory space or bank slots or whatever it was called? And all of those cabbages and mint leaves and logs that I collected will still be available to a new character?

If anyone has any tips or suggestions or warnings, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

[Karizee]

Before you do any deleting, make sure to take your characters into the Heart of the Mists to unlock any skins for your wardrobe. (it may be only one you need to do this with, not sure)

Also take your characters to the new NPC by the bank, the Black Lion Armor trader fella to convert your town clothes to tonics or outfits. (this you need to do with all characters that had any town clothing)

Put everything else that's not soulbound in your bank since you keep all that. Yes, you keep all your bank and character slots. May as well salvage anything soulbound for the skins + mats.

All your currencies (gold, dungeon tokens, guild commendations, laurels) all stay in your account wallet so you don't need to worry about those.

[worprz]

Yeah basically everything Karizee said you might want to do. Plus WvW experience is shared now (you have to log onto every character for the system to count everything you have done) so you might want to log onto all of your characters, it might be the same thing for gold, but I don't really remember.

Also one thing you might want to consider is that any new character has to unlock traits. If the character was made before the feature patch you don't have to worry about this. Basically you unlock traits from doing personal story, killing an open world boss or exploring the world. Each one has a certain thing you need to do before you can unlock it though.

[Triptych]

Fantastic, thanks Karizee and worprz, that's exactly the kind of thing I was wondering about. Appreciate you taking the time to list it out.

I quite like the sound of that 'unlocking traits' stuff --- even though it's tempting to get it all for free on my old characters without having to lift a finger, I do enjoy having extra goals that I can pursue in game to increase my power, and those requirements don't sound too arduous.

[zed zebes]

Yeah, what they said. Before deleting and starting over, go through each character and make sure you register all the account-wide stuff. This includes your gold, laurels, karma, world v world XP, and skins.

I will note that they changed how traits work since you last played and all your new characters will be getting traits at a slower pace and via gold/skill points or via completing certain tasks.