Overwhelmed returning player

Hey all, just looking for some advice of where to start after a long break. I have played since release and have a lvl 80 warrior and was pretty experienced back when I used to play (ascended weapons, fractals, dungeons, etc). I'm returning after about 5 years. I just bought both expansions. I logged on and quickly realized this is not the same game I left years ago and have no idea where to even begin again. Any tips to get back into this massive game would be greatly appreciated!

You should probably start with the story. Working your way through that will give you some direction and you'll naturally see much of what the open world has to offer with the expansions this way. You'll also progress new skills like gliding and mounts!

You can also pick back up with fractals. Higher levels are gated by agony resistance which requires ascended gear. So you may need to upgrade to get to the top levels, depending where you left off.

@"Davey.1489" said:Hey all, just looking for some advice of where to start after a long break. I have played since release and have a lvl 80 warrior and was pretty experienced back when I used to play (ascended weapons, fractals, dungeons, etc). I'm returning after about 5 years. I just bought both expansions. I logged on and quickly realized this is not the same game I left years ago and have no idea where to even begin again. Any tips to get back into this massive game would be greatly appreciated!

Do you have any of Living World Season up to Icebrood Saga?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World#Season_2 (There is a large chronological list of every LW and what place they have with main story line from core, HoT and PoF.)

Did you leave before Mastery where introduce as a post-level 80 progression path?

Here you can see what you need to do to unlock each Mastery for core, HoT, PoF and Icebrood. In the first section of wiki. Mastery are shared on account, so you can switch between all level 80 characters to work on your Mastery.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mastery

I've created a series of recaps for returning players not long ago that should help people get started, mostly focusing on big picture stuff like overhauls and new features/mechanics/types of content. You can pick the last expansion you have played as the starting point. Hope it helps.

Do the content that you enjoy and you won't get bored. If you like the story and have completed the base game and living world season 2 story (if you have access to it), you could start with the HoT expansion story. The mounts and easy hero points you can get from the early stages of the PoF story and maps can be very useful in Maguuma though, if you find the difficulty of the HoT maps too hard early on. So if you don't care about doing the story in order you may want to do early parts of the PoF story before starting the HoT story.