Confused and overwhelmed

Hi Everybody,I bought GW2 when it was first released and played for about a year. I have a level 80, 60, and 3 other alts all created on day 1. Logging in after 8-9 years is a little overwhelming. I have birthday gifts for every year since then and am running out of inventory space instantly. Is there a way to get more space, or am I forced to pay money to extend my bank? I only have 9 gold on my character. Also, I'm confused as where to go and what to do, I don't really remember where I left off. Any help would be appreciated.

I would suggest you pick one of the alts or make a new one if you have a free character spot and just play the game from the start a little bit. It will come back to you.You should not be required to extend storage if you are fairly new. There are sure ways to clean up inventory: sell junk, salvage useless equipment, deposit materials in material storage or sell them if you need some cash. Also 18 slot bags should be relatively cheap on TP.

Well 1 you dont have to open them all they can just stay in your mail.2 how big bags do you have, you can buy up to 20 slots for not to much money.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bag

best in my oppinion is to take your level 80 and do some daily t1 fractals until you get the currency to buy 20 slots from fractal vendor.

I currently only have 10-12 slot bags. I'll check out t1 fractals, 20 slot bags would be a big improvement for me.

Also, when I played Tarnished Coast was a big WvW server. Is it still active during NA primetime?

Bank space extension is only for GemsYour Bag space you have bag slots along the left side of your inventory and the bags in those slots determine the number of spaces for items, You can get them many ways but quickest is to buy the ones with the most spaces within your budget on the TP. The game has a lot of Junk/useless items that just take up space so remember to empty those out frequently, Most are labelled trophy and you can type /wiki in game to check anything if your not sure if you should throw it away or not.

I completely understand feeling lost, for a new players there's a lot to learn and get used to. I'd suggest just starting a new character and doing the personal story. Maybe check out a beginners guide on youtube too?

How to clear some space with Birthday gifts

• If you've got any you haven't removed from the mail or haven't opened you can leave them as they are for now so they'll take up less space.
• Bag of Spirit Shards: Just use these right away and they'll go into the wallet, no need to keep them in the bank.
• Birthday Card: Double click it to get karma. There's no other use so no reason to save them.
• Mini Queen Jennah: Right-click one and select 'add to wardrobe' (it might say something like unlock or store instead, I can't remember the exact wording). That will enable all your characters to use it whenever you want via the Minis tab in the Hero panel, or you can just ignore it. Any others can safely be deleted.
• Birthday Finisher: Like the mini you can store this in the wardrobe (just double click it) and then it will be available for all your characters to use, there's no reason to keep it in your inventory.
• Dye Packs: You might want to save these until you know which dyes you want, but you could use the Wiki to see which colours are available and choose either the ones you like best or the most expensive. You can't sell the dyes but if you want to have lots unlocked it makes sense to use the dye packs for expensive ones so you don't need to buy them.
• Birthday Boosters: If you put them in the bank they'll stack. You can then remove the whole stack for a character to hold onto if you need the bank space. (Alternatively you can use them and the effect will stack duration up to a maximum of 7 days, so each character could use 7 boosters, but you might want to hold onto them until you know which characters you'll be playing.)
• Experience scrolls: These will stack with others of the same type. For some reason the level 20 scrolls from the 1st and 2nd birthday gifts won't stack together, so you'll have 2 stacks of 20, but even so if you combine all the ones from your different characters in the bank they'll only take up 6 slots instead of however many you've got now (and they can go into a character's inventory once they're stacked, to free up bank space.)
• Teleport to Friend: Like the boosters these will stack so you can condense them down to just 1 inventory slot in total.

If you haven't yet opened them I'd keep the Anniversary Backpack and Weapon Pack Combo, Devoted Anniversary Achievement Box, Victorious Anniversary Achievement Box and Dedicated Anniversary Achievement Box as they are for now, because each one will give you several new items to deal with. Just don't lose or delete them (including deleting a character holding one) because you'll have to go through customer support to get them back.

You could open the Anniversary Backpack and Mail Carrier Pack because that gives you just two items: the mail carrier can be used right away to unlock it (like the mini pet and finisher) and you can choose a backpack skin to unlock now. If you've gotten up to the 8th birthday gift then you'll have enough backpack unlocks to get all of them so it doesn't really matter which one you choose.

How to get more space quickly and cheaply

Option 1: Buy new bags from the Trading Post. Each character can have up to 5 bags (and starts with 1 by default). You can buy 8, 10, 12, 15, 18 or 20 slot bags from the Trading Post. The bigger bags are more expensive so it's up to you to decide how much it's worth spending for the space you'll get.

Option 2: Pick an existing character you're not likely to use much, or if you have a spare character slot create a new one and use their inventory as extra storage space. New characters start off with 20 slots instantly, and space for 4 more bags so you can store between 20 and 100 items on one character.

How to familarise yourself with the game again

Pick your lowest level character or create a new one and play from the begining. Take your time and explore the world, and pay attention to the pop-ups you get whenever you gain a level as these are designed to explain different features of the game and the options available to you. Don't delete your other characters, especially the level 80, whenever you feel ready you can switch to playing on them so you don't have to start over from scratch entirely, but a new character will make it easier to learn the game because you'll be introduced to systems gradually rather than hit with everything at once and no direction.

Welcome back to the game! As well as the excellent suggestions above, do you have a PvE guild? I strongly recommend one that advertises itself as doing dungeons, fractals, world boss events. If you see the ads mention dungeons, they are a new-person oriented guild. If you are on NA, there are guilds that often run Tyria meta events. I have seen recruitment ads for them as well. I can think of one guild in particular that advertises triple trouble in many maps when they are about to squad up for it. This type of world event gives mastery points, which you will need for quality-of-life improvements such as autoloot.

I think the mastery system came in with the Heart of Thorns expansion, and you possibly want to focus on the Tyria ones - these are here: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Central_Tyria_mastery_tracks

I strongly recommend the Pact Commander one first. While the fractal ones are important if you do a lot of fractals and want to progress, autoloot makes life just so much easier in the PvE game modes.