back after 5 years and completely lost

So I randomly looked at an ad in my email about the latest GW2 update and thought why not try it out again. After a bit of password forgetting and support kindly resetting I logged in to realize that I have no idea what I should do.

While checking through the characters I had previously made, I used one of the level boosters to boost my elementalist to level 30 and realized that I was going to run out of inventory room by just leveling up. So now I'm trying to figure out a plan to get back on top of my items and gear and make sure I don't throw out anything that is good to hold onto for later content.

I had made 5 characters five years ago and so now I have 5 characters all with 5 birthday presents and very little inventory space and am trying to figure out the first thing I should do to straighten all this out. The last thing I had been doing was training in crafting food but I can barely remember why I was worried about that and I assume that the game has probably moved on from low level crafting being something I need to be worrying about immediately.

Any suggestions about what steps I should take would be helpful and also please let me know if there is any reason not to just boost all my characters to 50 with the boost from their 5th birthday presents.

I will send you some containers to help with inventory space :)

@WarpedBob.4157 said:Any suggestions about what steps I should take would be helpful and also please let me know if there is any reason not to just boost all my characters to 50 with the boost from their 5th birthday presents.

Two reasons: 1: As you are allready noticing, you lack the experience. in other games you have an so called end game. In GW2 you have no such thing , but while levelling you unlock new things to do and they are presented to you in a friendly way. I actually would suggest deleting one of your characters and level it up from level 1. Just so you can experience the full game again.

@WarpedBob.4157 said:While checking through the characters I had previously made, I used one of the level boosters to boost my elementalist to level 30 and realized that I was going to run out of inventory room by just leveling up. So now I'm trying to figure out a plan to get back on top of my items and gear and make sure I don't throw out anything that is good to hold onto for later content.

Thanks to @Omnicron.2467 you have more then enough inventory space.To give some tips when it comes to managing it.1: go to the vender and hit the sell trash button2: rightclick everything. If it says to add it to the wallet do so. If it says to store it in the material storage, do so. You actually have a button on the top right corner to storage all materials immediatly, but for the first time, just checking manually would be good.3: richtclick everything and check the price on the black lion trading company. Anything white, blue and green below 5s is not worth selling. Anything yellow (rare) below 35s is not worth selling and anything orange (exotic) below 1g is not worth selling at all. Also check the price of the rune or sigil on superior as it happens it is worth more then the item.4: Get some salvage kits. You'll need two types.4a: A few basic salvage kits. in time you might want to buy the copper fed salvage kit on the gemstore that does the same thing.4b: A mystic salvage kit. You need a fine salvage kit, a journey man salvage kit, a masters salvage kit and 3 mystic forge stones. You need to put these items in the mystic forge in lions arch.(the salvage kits can be bought from the generic vendor. The mystic forge stones have to be earned overtime, but you likely have a bunch in your inventory or bank somewhere, if not use master's salvage kits. If you have any black lion salvage kits, save them for exotic gear)5: now you got the salvage kits and got rid of anything valuable, rightclick the basic salvage kit and choose 'salvage all blue and green'. No use the mystic salvage kit and do the same for rare. Manually salvage any exotics.6: now again deposit all materials to your bank space.7: you likely have some runes and sigils now. Check if they are usable for your gear and better what you have now.8: sell any excess runes and sigil's to the merchant. You should have a clean inventory now.

@WarpedBob.4157 said:The last thing I had been doing was training in crafting food but I can barely remember why I was worried about that and I assume that the game has probably moved on from low level crafting being something I need to be worrying about immediately.

Food is important, but not really needed when levelling. There is also a lot on sale from the gemstore and wintersday (next week) also drops tons of them. I would not be too much fuzzed about it right now. There are excellent crafting guides to level it later on. I really recommend them cause it is the most efficient way on time and money and you need the max level crafting the most anyways.

@WarpedBob.4157 said:So I randomly looked at an ad in my email about the latest GW2 update and thought why not try it out again. After a bit of password forgetting and support kindly resetting I logged in to realize that I have no idea what I should do.

Welcome back!

I would recommend to first focus on your main character. (Or make one character your main) This makes it easier to focus since there has been so many content added to the game since the launch. Continue your personal story and finish the main story line. If you are already very familiar with your character, you could use the level boost items, but I generally recommend against it because it usually gets you only lost more. When high enough level, you could also use LFG (party search) and join a few groups who go for the world bosses. These give decent loot and are quite nice to play a few times.

At max level (80) everything is open and what you like is very personal. You could continue the story with Living World season 2 or go for one of the expansions:

1. Heart of Thorns will give you the Maguuma Jungle to explore and for instance the Gliding mastery
2. Path of Fire gives you the Crystal Desert with a number of mounts you can obtain.

In both of the expansions you can learn new account-based masteries (Beyond Level 80 character progression) or maybe just try something else like crafting professions, World vs World (Massive PvP) or Structured PvP (5 vs 5 fast-paced PvP)

Thanks for the advice and the items.

I'm getting back into things and I realized part of my problem was that my first main was an engineer and when that was getting a little tedious my second character was a mesmer. So I think I got a little overwhelmed with how complicated the first two classes I started with were. Hopefully this time around since youtube and online guides have improved I'll be able to stick with it and not get overwhelmed.

I agree with most of the advice given so far except for deleting a character, unless you absolutely have to. If you delete a char you won't get their birthday gifts going forward and I personally am sorry I ever deleted a char. If you have the money/gems, buy another char slot. However, I think you are fine with the ones you have for now, without either deleting or adding. Play with what/whom you have.

If you're going to get HoT (Heart of Thorns) or PoF (Path of Fire) expansions, read up on the stories, lore, and changes like Elite Specializations. HoT was not my favorite as far as maps but I absolutely LOVE gliding, and it makes the central Tyria maps easier and quicker to get through. Mounts, which came with PoF, are also fun and useful.

Don't rush the leveling (except you'd have to have one at Level 80 to use HoT or PoF maps and features), and I wouldn't level up all your chars with boosts; manually level at least one or two to get more of a feel for the game world. Finally, concentrate on what you enjoy, be it crafting or fighting or exploring or getting collections. There's no hurry and no end.

I fully agree on the not deleting characters tip. Give you chars some love from time to time or else you may find yourself in this situation: