New to Guild Wars 2 and looking for some basic information on PvE progression? Returning player looking for general PvE advice? This guide will offer a summary of information and advice to help you with your PvE adventure.
- GW2 players refer to elite specializations as an extension of character class, and I will do the same throughout this guide. Elite specs were added by the expansions and are additional skill trees which you unlock by doing content after reaching level 80. See the list of elite specs for more information.
- Always sell gear on the Trading Post. You need at least 72 hours ingame before the Trading Post will become available to you for buying/selling most items (some cheap materials can be purchased prior to the 72 hour minimum being reached).
- You can freely access Lions Arch at any time by opening clicking "Enter PvP lobby" in the PvP menu, then travelling to the Lions Arch Portal waypoint and travelling through the portal.
- LFG is an acronym for "Looking for group". GW2 offers a handy system (which is called LFG) which allows players to find and advertise groups, which other players can then freely join. You will be using LFG regularly in GW2 PvE to find groups for dungeons, fractals, dailies, worldbosses, raids, and meta farms. See the wiki page for more info.
If you purchased either of the Guild Wars 2 expansions you should have recieved a level 80 boost (one per expansion purchased). The level 80 boost will set a character's level to 80, outfit your character in full exotic gear, and take your character to the Silverwastes so you can test things out. You can then choose to apply the boost, which will consume it permanently, or undo it - restoring the boost to your inventory for use on a different character.
When you first start playing Guild Wars 2 it's good to start leveling a character without using your level boost. This will allow you to get a feel for the game's mechanics and explore the game world naturally as part of the main story progression. Combat is a bit more difficult once you reach level 80 content, working up to it is generally easier for new players.
You can choose whatever classes you want for your first few characters, but some classes are a bit easier to play. It's recommended to use your level boost on a class which is easy to play and has a good power-DPS build that you can use to clear content. Great starting classes include:
- Warrior: A flexible class with a generally easy playstyle, great for all content.
- Ranger: A high damage DPS class which is fairly safe if you manage your pet well. Great for raids.
- Guardian: A tank which steamrolls open world content, is great in fractals, and is OK for raids.
- Elementalist: A high damage glass cannon with a high skill ceiling, great for raids. (Nerfed pretty hard in the July 10 update)
If you purchased the Path of Fire expansion you will be able to acquire and use mounts. Mounts are creatures which are primarily used for mobility, but also offer some basic combat engagement skills. You don't need to do it immediately, but you should at some point tackle the first chapter of the Path of Fire expansion using one of your level-80-boosted characters so you can unlock the raptor for all characters on your account. Unlocking the raptor will make getting from place to place much faster.
Similarly, if you purchased Heart of Thorns you can do the first chapter and unlock the Glider Basics mastery to unlock the glider. The glider isn't very useful outside of the Heart of Thorns expansion zones when compared to how useful mounts are outside of the Path of Fire expansion zones, so I wouldn't recommend starting Heart of Thorns just to unlock the glider when just starting out.
Leveling in Guild Wars 2 is fairly straightforward - do renown hearts (basically GW2 quests), events, and your personal story. Experience gain is most efficient when the goal of an event and a renown heart coincide, so make sure you capitalize on these moments when they occur. You also get a good amount of experience for exploring maps and gathering resources. You'll unlock a new chapter of your personal story every 10 levels, but you don't need to do it immediately. Each chapter of the personal story provides a lot of experience and rewards, including gear which is relevant to your character.
Focusing on zones which are around your level will make for the smoothest leveling experience. Guild Wars 2 will dynamically reduce your level while you're in a lower level area. The experience you gain while your level has been reduced will be comparable to what you would recieve at your real level, but it is still slightly less efficient than playing level-appropriate content. Playing in areas higher level than your character will make kill speed slower and may lead to deaths, no matter how well you play, and should be avoided.
You can also level up through WvW, optimally through a squad found in LFG, which is easiest to find during peak hours. There's also the option of doing solo-queue in PvP, which will reward you with tomes of knowledge through the reward track. The PvP option is most effective if you are already familiar with Guild Wars combat and mechanics.
Once you've reached level 35 you can start doing dungeons in explorable mode. You will get around one level per explorable dungeon path you complete so it can be the fastest way to level if completed with a group that knows what they're doing. If you're doing PUGs through LFG you're going to get a party that knows what they're doing maybe 50% of the time, and will be waiting ~5 minutes to get a full party. Dungeons are more challenging than open world content - while leveling with them is faster than leveling in the open world in theory, it's often slower in practice.
While leveling and getting achievements, you will likely unlock several writs of experience, and one or two Tomes of Knowledge. You can save these for when you hit level 75+, and use them for your last few levels leading up to level 80. While most experience gain is percentage based, it's still generally most efficient to use these just before you reach level 80.
Buying a good +power two-hand weapon (preferably a greatsword, but it depends on your class) from the trading post every 10 levels starting ~level 22 can make leveling smoother. You may also want to fill holes in your equipment every once in awhile with cheap +power fine/masterwork gear when below level 50 or rare gear when above level 50. The investment shouldn't be more than a gold or two leveling from 1-80 and can make things a lot easier. Note that advancing the personal story will give you a lot of good leveled gear, so try to purchase gear from the TP only after completing a chapter from it if you still need it.
While leveling, feel free to travel to new regions of Tyria via Lion's Arch if you get bored of the scenery. Also don't forget to gather valuable resource nodes that you encounter as you're exploring. If you gather and sell Iron, Platinum, and Wood (except green wood) as you level you should have almost enough gold by the time you hit level 80 to buy an exotic weapon and a full set of exotic level 80 berserker armor.
So you've hit level 80, now what? Well, the road to level 80 is more of a prologue to the content of Guild Wars 2 than anything else, so there's actually quite a bit to do. Below is a brief summary of all of the different activites you can do once you've hit level 80 and the general requirements you should aim to fulfill before tackling them.
- Worldbosses: Worldbosses spawn in the world throughout the day. These are incredibly strong boss monsters which are usually tackled by groups of 20-200+ players. Participating in a worldboss event (aka a Guild World Event) provides good loot, experience, karma, and high level crafting materials. One of the best worldbosses to tackle daily is Tequatl the Sunless. It's an epic but usually short battle which provides a lot of rewards. Worldboss rewards are most valuable once you've hit level 80, but you can do them earlier if you're in the area. (see also: bounties and bloodstone-crazed creatures)
- Fractals: Mini-dungeons which help you work up to ascended gear. Doing the dailies is a great source of currency. It's good to have full exotic gear before tackling T1 fractals, but you can do them earlier. You'll need to get ascended trinkets and enhance them with agony infusions to work up to T2-T3 fractals, and full ascended gear with good infusions to clear T4 fractals.
- Raids: Challenging 10 player squad-based encounters. Raids are the most challenging content in GW2. You need to have a minimum of full exotic gear and a build from Snowcrows before tackling your first raid. Note: full ascended gear is preferred for raids as it provides ~10% more DPS. Practice your rotation until you've memorized it and use arcdps to assess your performance. Join a guild with raid training sessions to get started, as most PUGs will want kill proof (KP) to show you've completed the raid successfully before.
Need some GW2 monies? Don't know how to get it? Below is a list of a number of farming methods and general advice for filling your coffers with gold in GW2.
Learning to use the trading post efficiently in GW2 will make building up gold in Guild Wars 2 much easier for you. Here are some general tips and tricks to making the most out of your transactions:
- Avoid "Buy Instantly" unless the highest order price is very close to the lowest listing price. Instead, make an order 1 copper more than the highest order price. You may also try matching or offering less than the highest order price if the quantity ordered at that price is very low relative to the supply.
- When selling, avoid "Sell Instantly" unless the highest order price is very close to the lowest listing price. Instead, make a listing 1 copper less than the lowest listing price. You may also try matching or listing more than the lowest listing price if the quantity listed at that price is very low relative to the supply.
- When selling low-volume goods, such as exotic armor/weapons you are generally better off selling instantly or selling at a price considerably lower than the lowest sell listing. If someone undercuts your sell price before your item is sold, it may sit on the TP idefinitely, requiring you to cancel the listing, causing a loss of 5% of the gold value of the listing.
- Certain items can't be sold on the trading post effectively due to there being little-no demand for them. The most notable items are most minor and major sigils (there are some exceptions).
- Sell all of your materials unless you need them to level crafting on one of your characters. It's almost always best to just sell materials unless they correspond to the materials required for a GW2Crafts leveling guide for the profession you're leveling. (you may want to hold onto your ectos, but that's up to you)
- Don't sell Level 68+ Rares or Exotics on the trading post unless they are worth more than the current market price of a glob of ectoplasm.
- Salvage all other items. Salvage Rares/Exotics with Mystic Salvage Kits, and salvage basic/fine/masterwork items with Basic Salvage Kits or the Copper-fed Salvage-o-matic. This flow chart is a great overview of when to salvage/sell.
Every day (resetting at 5PM PST) you will get a number of daily goals, usually referred to as "dailies". Your dailies will appear in the upper-right corner of your screen in a section labeled "Daily". You can click a daily to read more about the requirements to fulfill it. Completing a daily achievement will reward you with items, and completing 3 daily achievements will reward you with 2g. You can usually do your dailies fairly quickly (10-30 minutes), assuming you're on level 80 character and have the requisite waypoints.
Buy 30 deeply discounted keys from BUY-4373 in the mistlock observatory every day, using them on the fractal encryptions you earn from doing daily fractals. Once you've earned the recursive resourcing mastery, it becomes worth it to buy fractal encryptions from the TP. The liquid gold value of a fractal encryption is 50 silver if you have the recursive resourcing mastery, so you'll be earning 4-9 silver per encryption.
Note that buying deeply discounted keys requires 1 fractal relic per key. You can get fractal relics from completing fractals, opening fractal encryptions, and completing the jumping course in the mistlock observatory.
Most resource nodes can be used by each character on an account and will reset a few hours after gathering. Gathering profit margins are higher if you use gathering tools with unlimited uses. Parking alts near respawning nodes can increase efficiecy of gathering. The big advantage of gathering is it's relaxing and doesn't require anything other than gathering tools, time, and access to the zone(s) where the resource nodes can be found. You don't have to only gather static nodes, certain regions spawn a sufficient density of nodes to be worth farming ad hoc, so you don't have to run the same routes over and over again if it starts getting boring. ;)
- Mining: Mining iron and platinum ore can yield 15g/hr or more. GW2Efficiency has routes for finding static "rich" nodes here.
- Logging: Gathering seasoned, ancient, hard, or elder wood logs can yield 10g/hr or more.
- Harvesting: Gathering seaweed, flax, spinach, and butternut squash can yield 10g/hr or more. GW2Efficiency has routes for static nodes here.
A bag opener is a character which you keep at a specific level to open bags. Many bags yield leveled equipment, and equipment yields different materials when salvaged based on its level. You can find the most optimal level for a opening bags on loltools (it's level 49 as of 7/8/2018).
The general process is to transfer all containers which can yield leveled loot to your bag opener and open them there. This especially applies to Silverwastes and Istan Meta farming, but also applies to containers acquired from worldbosses and other events.
Use LFG to find a squad doing "SW Farm", "SW RIBA", or "SW Breach". Join the squad, then join their instance by right-clicking on a player icon in the squad and choosing "Join in the silverwastes" (this assumes you aren't already in their instance, which you generally won't be). The Silverwastes farm is broken into 4 stages: Foothold, Breach, Vinewrath, and Time Out. Below is an outline of these stages:
- Foothold: you will first fortify and then defend the four pact forts in the silverwastes (red, amber, indigo, and blue). You can rotate between the forts to maximize event rewards, but it's generally best to just stick with fortifying and defending a single fort.
- Breach: a hole will open up in each fort, within which you will fight mordremoth's champions. Indigo has two champions (silver and gold), where all other forst have one.
- Vinewrath: join one of the three lanes (north, central, or south) and protect a siege carrier golem as it breaks down the vines blocking off the Vinewrath Tangle. Once a lane has cleared all of the barriers players will be able to enter and defeat one of Vinewrath's champions. The skills you should take and how you clear the fight will depend on the lane, so be sure to read up on the wiki about the champion you'll be fighting.
- Center lane: You will be fighting the Champion Mordrem Mangler. Be sure to bring condition cleanses. If you're a guardian or a mesmer, bring reflect skills to protect other players when he starts spinnigng around. You'll need to move into and stay in the white triangle directly in front of him when he moves close to Vinewrath, else you will be CC'd for ~20 seconds and will most likely die.
- North lane: You will be fighting the Champion Mordrem Dark Wing. Destroying triggerblossom buds will create a place where you can stand when the Dark Wing runs close to Vinewrath and uses his screaming attack to turn the ground to lava. You must be standing on one of these buds or dodge when he uses this attack, else you will be immediately downed.
- South lane: You will be fighting the Champion Mordrem Beekeeper. If the bees start following you, stand behind the beehive and it will absorb them. When the Beekeeper goes to stand close to Vinewrath you must get behind the beehive as fast as possible, else Vinewrath will fire giant purple lasers that will most likely down you. It's best to bring stability skills to use when standing behind the beehive, else the adds may knock you out of the area.
- Time out: Once you've defeated vinewrath successfully, this event will start, causing a lull in the battle for the Silverwastes. During this time, you should open the chests in the vinewrath tangle and can also head to the tangled labyrinth to open nightmare pods, which contain bags of gear. Most groups will also do a "chest run" during this time, which usually involves following another player as they go around the Silverwastes using shovels to uncover lost bandit chests, which you can open with bandit skeleton keys. You should try to acquire a bunch of keys (50+) earlier on in the event cycle from merchants (they cost 5 bandit crests each) so you can loot all the chests your squad uncovers.
Note: You need to have Living World Season 4 Chapter 1: Daybreak unlocked in order to travel to Istan. See this wiki page for more info.
The Istan Meta is a bit more straightforward than farming silverwastes. Like silverwastes, you'll join a squad through LFG, then fight powerful bosses. More information on the Istan Meta will be added to this guide in the near future.
Once you've actually built up a decent stockpile of gold you can flip or salvage items from the TP for profit. You can also craft and sell legendaries, though this is only accessible once you've built up a big stockpile of gold. See GW2Profits and GW2Efficiency for stats.
Note: Be careful when flipping items on the TP. If the volume of items that are sold each day is low you may get undercut by other sellers before you can make a sale, causing a loss if you choose to relist your item for a lower price (listing fee is 5%). Making a listing considerably lower than the current listing but high enough to still earn a profit is recommended to avoid this situation.
If you don't like spending real-world money on games, you may have already dismised this option. However, it may be a much better use of your time to use real money to buy game currency, especially when getting started. As of writing this guide the exchange rate is $1 = 14.6g.
Most of this information comes from the following wiki pages:
- Most exotic gear can be purchased from the Trading Post. A full set of berserker armor costs about 10g, and a full set of berserker trinkets (except back piece) costs about 13g. A full set of berserker weapons will cost 5-8g, depending on what you're getting. A total set of berserker gear should be around 30g, so a few hours of farming should get you covered.
- Doing dungeons is the one of the best ways to get exotic armor/weapons. You'll generally want to do Citadel of the Flame for Berserker gear for your starter power build.
- You can also get exotic armor with several different affixes from Heart of Thorns airship parts vendors, airship cargos, and story rewards.
- Both exotic armor and trinkets can be acquired by spending Karma at the karma merchants in the Ruins of Orr, though you may not be able to get the exact affixes you want.
- There's also crafting, of course, but that can also be very expensive. It can cost up to 100g to make a full set of armor, depending on the affix chosen.
The most important ascended gear items to acquire are trinkets and weapon. You don't really need a full set of ascended armor unless you want to push T4 fractals or do raids regularly.
You can change the prefix on an ascended weapon/armor using this mystic forge recipe.
- Ascended equipment can be found as a drop from fractals, worldbosses, and raids.
- If you need a Greatsword, Sword, Dagger, Shield, or Scepter you can complete the Heart of Thorns story and reforge Caladbolg.
- A number of ascended weapons can be acquired by completing a specialization collection for your class.
- Stat-selectable ascended trinkets can be purchased from BUY-2046 PFR.
- You can buy a stat-selectable amulet from a laurel merchant for 30 laurels.
- You can craft ascended weapons, armor, and trinkets directly, or craft grandmaster marks and purchase them from BLING-9009 in the Mistlock Observatory.
- Living World Season 3 provides a number of "Unbound Magic trinkets", which are the easiest ascended trinkets to acquire by far. If you don't have it unlocked yet, getting Chapter 3: A Crack in the Ice is the most efficient.
- Ascended gear can be purchased from Scholar Glenna using currency earned from completing raids.
There are a number of resources out there for GW2 information. Below are a few resources which you may find helpful:
- The Official Guild Wars 2 Wiki - Great general source of information.
- GW2Efficiency - Fantastic for tracking worldboss timers and determining efficient farming routes (among other things).
- GW2Crafts - Helps with leveling crafting professions.
- So You Want To Gear a Character - Covers gearing a character in great detail. Used as a reference for the Getting Gear sections of this guide.
- Snowcrows - The definitive source for Raid builds.
- Metabattle - Site with builds for all content.
- GW2TacO - Overlay which provides a bunch of useful info, including timers.