50 Newbie Tips for Guild Wars 2
#GuildWars2 #GW2 @GuildWars2

If you played this last weekend's beta you may know a lot of these but maybe you don't know all of these. And if you weren't in the beta I can guarantee that these are all things you'll be glad to know before having your first Gulid Wars 2 experience. Note that, as this is beta, some of these tips may change for future Beta Weekends.

1. You can click on your minimap to 'ping' a spot and can also draw on it in order to communicate things to your party. Actual time before someone used this to draw a penis? About .05 seconds.

2. You can teleport to ANY bind point you've unlocked from anywhere, even ones inside instanced areas. No need to port to the city gate and run in-you can just port straight to where you need to go in the city. This is one of the big reasons there are no mounts in the game.

3. If you right click on crafting materials in your inventory you can send them straight to your bank. Your bank has a separate, larger storage area for crafting materials and it automatically organizes them for you. A small amount of glee at this fact is no cause for alarm.

4. You can also right click items in your inventory and list them straight to the auction house. Go ahead and have some more glee. I'll wait.

5. On your Hero window there's a little dye-dropper icon above your gear slots. You can click this anytime to adjust your look. Your dreams of strutting around in pink, brown and lime green can be realized at anytime.

6. You have RP style town clothes. Click the top hat icon above your character on the Hero panel to switch to them. These can be dyed also. Be sure and change back before you get into any fights. Unless you're REALLY hardcore.

7. You can unlock new dye colors by finding dye seeds (loot drops). These can be turned into a dye merchant who will give you a receipt. Come back 24 real time hours later and you get a new random dye color. Some are common, some are not.

8. You can experiment at no risk to discover new crafting recipes. Just drag and drop items into the crafting window and the game will hint at how many possible recipes you can discover with those items. There are rumored to be over 4,000 crafting recipes. Go ahead and try and make garlic fish cake. It might just be there.

9. There are many unique crafting ingredients and recipes that can only be purchased from karma vendors that you've completed heart tasks for.

10. Some items that are listed as crafting ingredients (particularly gems and crystals) can also be used by anyone as equipment upgrades. Be sure and read the item text before selling it. Most equipment has upgrade slots available.

11. If you salvage old gear that has a full upgrade slot you have a chance of getting the upgrade back. The better your salvage kit the better the chance.

12. RANGERS: You can tame any 'juvenile' non-hostile creature you come across. You can have two pets with you at any time-one out and active, the other in reserve. You can swap between them at any time by clicking the curved arrow swap icon next to your pet portrait. The inactive pet will heal up once it's swapped out so this is a good thing to do when your pet goes down in combat. You also have a separate pair of pets available for underwater.

13. Different weapons/attunements etc. can have a drastic impact on how your character plays. Trying out a class and just not feeling the love? Try a different weapon.

14. Talk to the guys marked on your map with a telescope icon. Even if you don't bother listening to what they say the will still mark all of an area's heart quests and skill points for you. Each scout marks a different set of hearts.

15. Mouse over hearts on your map and it will tell you their recommended level. This can give you a good feel for what area you should be heading to next.

16. There is a gate in your home city to Lion's Arch. From Lion's Arch you can port to any other racial home city. If you need a change of scenery or feel underleveled for the content available just hop to a different racial area for your level and lend a hand.

17. The most reliable way to get into WvWvW is NOT to go 'Into the Mists' and to try to use the gate there to enter the Eternal Battlegrounds. Instead, go to Lion's Arch and use the gates there. There's a gate for each team and it will port you to your team's stronghold.

18. The glowing square on the wall of the WvW fortresses is a gate that allows you to enter a fortress your team controls even when the gate is closed and the fortress is under siege. Attempting to sneak past the sieging army is another matter.

19. In WvW ALWAYS try to have some supply with you. You can get supply from fortresses you control (supply caches have a barrel icon) or you can get it by killing supply caravan dolyaks. Supply is used for building siege equipment and no single player can carry enough to build one on their own. There is little more frustrating than a half built battering ram at the door of the fortress you're trying to take because not enough people were carrying supply.

20. Yes, your ranged attacks can hit ground targets from fortress walls. Yes, those ground targets can hit you as well.

21. Double tap in a direction to dodge. This is important. If you find you're dying a lot it's quite possibly because you're not dodging. Dodge can be rebound to a single key press.

22. The glowing green star on your map is your personal story questline. Recommended level for it is listed next to it in your quest log on the upper right of the screen. Your story quest will lead you to new areas as you progress in it.

23. Explore. There are hidden things all over the place, including hidden jumping puzzles that have treasure rewards. Some of these are keyboard smashingly hard. Many of them also have veteran level mobs that are placed in such a way as to make strafing and dodging very difficult. Bring a friend.

24. Once you hit level 7 you can equip a second weapon set and swap between them at will. Generally it's a good idea to have one of these be ranged and one melee. Not necessarily, though. Whatever floats your boat. Weapon swapping effectively during combat is one of those things that separates the pros from the noobs.

25. You can send stuff to any character at any time through mail. There are no mailboxes. It can all be done from anywhere.

26. The mail you receive from completing heart tasks has money attached to it. This is easy to miss.

27. The medal you receive when completing events also shows the xp, money and karma you received. Loot rewards are generally only from drops, story quests or major achievements.

28. If you find yourself in an event with one of the mega-bosses be sure and stick around afterwards to get your share of loot from the treasure chest they drop.

29. There is a high-res screenshot option that you can assign a key to (default is unbound). High res screenshots automatically hide your UI.

30. If you're taking a normal screenshot you can use Cntrl+Shift+H to hide your UI.

31. Want to get your character out of the screenshot? Zoom all the way in and type /sleep.

32. In game money can be used to purchase gems for the gem store. Real money gems can be sold to other players for in-game money. Prices fluctuate and are determined entirely by supply and demand on your server. (Note: In beta you can't actually spend real money in the cash shop. 2000 gems were provided for free to each player during beta. You still needed a valid credit card to claim them, however.)

33. Your character name can have multiple words with spaces, as long as it's under the 19 character limit. This makes it easy to do variations on your preferred name should it already be taken. 'Drizzt' not available? Try 'Masterchief Drizzt'.

34. Everyone participating in a fight gets credit. Always feel free to jump in and lend a hand to someone. People that need rezzed are marked on your map and minimap. If they are named 'Masterchief Drizzt' it's probably for the best to just leave them dead.

35. You can buy or craft bags that have sorting rules attached to them. For example, you can have a 'Do Not Sell' bag and anything you put in it will not be listed on the sell tab at vendors.

36. Respawning from a bindpoint when you're killed costs no money. If you're flat broke and absolutely have to port somewhere, try getting yourself killed. Be creative. There are many opportunities for spectacular death.

37. Dodging uses up endurance. Your endurance bar is in the lower right just above your utility skills. Be smart about dodging or you won't be able to when you really need to.

38. You'll often come across items on the ground that can be picked up. Doing so will give you new skills on your hot bar. These vary wildly depending on what you picked up.

39. Learn to watch opponent animations. These will indicate to you when you might want to think about dodging or stunning.

40. Events scale to the number of players in the area. If many of those players are downed it's going to make it very difficult for everyone else. Rez your co-heroes!

41. You don't need to visit a class trainer until level 10. Your class trainer will unlock your traits for you. After level 10 you will receive another trait point every level. Be sure and use these. They make a HUGE difference to your character strength.

42. Your utility skills can easily be changed whenever you're out of combat. Just click the little up arrow on the top of the skill on your utility bar.

43. Stick around after completing an event. Often there will be a follow up event that triggers a minute later.

44. Many different events can occur in the same area. Revisiting an area may provide a completely different experience. Events also can have long pass/fail event chains and you may come across them in many different stages. The further into the game you go the more complex these event chains get.

45. Feel free to bring friends on your story quest, even if they're the same class. If they're on the same stage of the quest they'll get the option to accept the quest results to complete their own quest as well.

46. Pay attention to the event text on your quest tracker. You can spend a lot of time fighting endless enemies if you don't realize you're actually supposed to be defending the worker at the top of the hill who's currently laying dead in a bush.

47. It's a good idea to rebind your 6-10 abilities to keys that are easier for you to hit.

48. Don't neglect your underwater weapon. It's worth the time to spend the effort committing fishicide to unlock your weapon skills. You'll be happy you did when you run across that veteran drake.

49. Your story decisions you make during character creation determine what your personal story quest lines will be. If you're making a second character of the same race be sure and make different decisions if you want to have a completely different storylines.

50. Since events are location based you never know just where you'll find one. Don't wait until you have a reason to go look in that cave-the reason to go there may very well be in the cave. Go look! There are adventures to be had!

Reply · Report Post