Returning player: Game is REALLY overwhelming

I played vanilla back for a good year after the game was released. Really enjoyed it. Easy to get into, could log in, do some stuff, log out and still felt like you accomplished some advancement. I'm sure that's still the case, but now some things are happening that have me overwhelmed (badly, and all this stuff is of course my opinion and should be taken as such):

• There are way too many currencies in this game and I have no idea what to do with it all.
• There are so many items (boosts and boxes and so many different salvaging tools and sooooo many crafting items, tokens to use for gear, etc)
• There are so many things happening around you that you don't know what's best to partake in.
• I have so much crap in my inventory and I don't know what's useful, what isn't, what I should keep, what I should just toss, what I should use, what I should give to an alt or what I should sell. Inventory management is an absolute nightmare, but I guess that's by design to facilitate people buying extra bag slots. It didn't used to be that way. Bank space is really, really limited. I guess that's to facilitate people buying bank slots. But for it to be this limited? Jeez...
• I skipped Heart of Thorns and just bought both expansions and dived in. We have to gain tons of exp, AND gain mastery points to be able to spend both. Took me a moment to figure that out.

I'm trying to get back involved in it, but I am struggling to find a "Step 1: Do this" plan. I need any suggestions and help I can get. Plus the new elite specializations are totally alien to me and I have no idea how to use them. I wish there was a central site like Icy-veins for WoW, but for GW2 where you can legit find EVERYTHING explained to you and told what build is the best, etc, to pursue.

I am not trying to be negative or bash the game, but for returning players, such as myself and my 2 friends, this is just extremely overwhelming to sort.

Thanks for any guidance or advice.

Then I am going to give you an answer from my opinion.This is an MMO with 2 expansion and 2 full seasons of updates and more. Every MMO that have lived on will be a little to much for new players and those who haven't played for years.

If you feel that the game is too much for you, have you tried playing from level 1 and going through the story from A-Z?Don't rush thing, read what the items do, store storable items and read upp on wiki use text command /wiki "desired item, skill or whatever name" (minus the " ")

This game is very easy to get a grip on, as long as you don't rush through everything and don't read.

The eaziest way to get around is to do your personal story all the way to the expansion. it will get you though the maps and masteries related to complete then. After that is like "what item is that sir?" "how do i get it mr wikki? OH"

I think that rushing to get the gliding and mounts is a problem for new players. I really wish they had given new players a path to get mounts without having to jump into advanced content before really getting into the beginner content. Most of us have had years to get through the content and learn the game. As it is new players really need to be mentored through shortcuts to get gliding and mounts then encouraged to jump back to the start of the game. Maybe ANet needs to setup a formal mentor registry system to rewards vets for helping new players and pairing new players up with registered mentors to get them through their first steps.

I think the best advice I could give you would be to start a new character and take everything one step at a time.I just returned to the game two days ago myself, I'm getting the hang of it again now but it did feel very overwhelming, I had lots of items in my inventory and bank I forgot everything about. I turned to the wiki and searched for each of these items to see what use they had, and I'm remembering/rediscovering menus and features, little by little. Hang in there.But yeah, best advice I can think of would be to start over on a new character, if you haven't played since before Heart of Thorns was released. Or to take your time with all this content, old and new. There is indeed quite a bit of it so you might aswell not just try to rush everything, you'll be OK eventually no worries.

Like you, I had a long time away from the game - though for me it was around 3 years.

I had my mesmer sitting around 67, and when I logged back in I had no clue what I was doing.

So I rolled a necro and played from scratch as a "new" player to get back into the swing of it. Once I was back at 67, I swapped to my Mesmer, confident I knew enough about what the game was about again. I was right.

To answer your points:

1. Currencies. Yes, there's a lot. But many of them have one specific use. The only ones you really need to worry about are coins and karma. Any others you can familiarise yourself with as you obtain them/need them.
2. Yep, there's a lot. But for general PVE play you don't need to worry about any of them. Clear your bags, carry some salvage gear with you and forget most of it
3. You'd have this same issue if you were a new player I guess. Forget about the dynamic events popping upin each area. Go to a map, hit a scout for a breakdown of what's around, and focus on the renown hearts. These are your basic quests.
4. Sell trash, salvage or trade away gear you're not using. Be very strict with yourself about what you keep. Remember you can deposit crafting material straight into your material storage using the cog icon in your inventory. Inventory management isn't actually that bad.
5. There's your big problem. You skipped a MAJOR content update and lost out on some combat rework information and world-building. Go back to your main personal story and finish that (if you haven't already), then do the Living World season 1 video recap, then Living World Season 2. THEN you can go into Heart of Thorns. Then season 3. Then Path of Fire. Then season 4.

Thank you everyone for the extremely helpful advice. It has been very informative, and I will take my down time at work to really study and see what's on the up and up. So am I correct in assuming that these Fractals are basically like WoW Mythic+ dungeons?

Also: If anyone wants to message me online, feel free, though I may ask you for some tips, etc.

I don't know much about WoW Mythic, but the Fractals are basically little one-off "mini" dungeons, some have events from Tyria's history etc (there's one where you're Charr raiding Ascalon, for example). They're not part of the main story, just an aside.

@"Martimus.6027" said:Thank you everyone for the extremely helpful advice. It has been very informative, and I will take my down time at work to really study and see what's on the up and up. So am I correct in assuming that these Fractals are basically like WoW Mythic+ dungeons?

Also: If anyone wants to message me online, feel free, though I may ask you for some tips, etc.

Kind of, they are for players which are done with the generell story/open world content since you need more asc gear the higher you get in those. You can dive in those once you are feeling a little more confident since they are good to make money and are more challenging then the open world. As others i would recomend you to do the Stroy in chronical order instead of just jumping in randomly.As for builds, they may not be optimal for open world, but the builds of sc for raids and fractals are pretty good and can be used in open world: https://snowcrows.com/ . If you think that you will be to much of a classcanon you can of course switch some stuff around, but their builds can be a good base to get a general idea of the new especs.To the loot: Well of course you will get more loot and more need of more bagslots. But the regular players had more then enough time to build towards those bagslots, so many actual have at least 1 char ~160 slots and some more bankslots^^. Just save up some money to buy more slots if you are in need of more space, and maybe save some money to buy the infinte salvage tool, since you save a lot of slots with this.

@Xantaria.8726 said:

@"Martimus.6027" said:Thank you everyone for the extremely helpful advice. It has been very informative, and I will take my down time at work to really study and see what's on the up and up. So am I correct in assuming that these Fractals are basically like WoW Mythic+ dungeons?

Also: If anyone wants to message me online, feel free, though I may ask you for some tips, etc.

Oh my goodness, thank you SO MUCH!!!! This is precisely what I needed to see!! Thank you so so much. That site is really making me more confident on my Elementalist :D

I'll second (or third or 523th) that it is a good idea to start a new character to get familiar with the game again. Once you have those basics back, you can start exploring all the stuff they added since the base game.

Also use that time to re-familiarize yourself with skills, traits, stats etc. So that you're familiar with all the core stuff once you hit 80. Also try out ALL weapons, many times to get used to all of them. That way, once you're 80 and start looking at the "Elite Specializations" they don't feel quite as overwhelming.

Everything that has been added after you left is level 80 content, so you're not missing anything until you've potentially leveled back to 80 anyways.

Regarding masteries: I understand that it is very tempted to jump right in and grind them for all they're worth. But I'd honestly recommend against it. I'd recommend playing through the core game first, and then look at the expansions (masteries).

That said, I know no one is going to follow that anyways. So what you actually need:

• Start HoT story, do the first mission, get through, get to the first HoT map (VB), do the first quest there, get the xp killing stuff in the North-East corner and doing the frog events. That will unlock the "Basic Glider".
• Now start the PoF story, go through the first story step, which will give you the Raptor mount.
• Now go back to the Core game, and continue whatever you where doing.

Those two will be enough for everything you need outside of the expansions anyways.

@"Martimus.6027" said:Thank you everyone for the extremely helpful advice. It has been very informative, and I will take my down time at work to really study and see what's on the up and up. So am I correct in assuming that these Fractals are basically like WoW Mythic+ dungeons?

Also: If anyone wants to message me online, feel free, though I may ask you for some tips, etc.

Well, if you played "Vanilla" GW2 for a year, Fractals were around back then. It's pretty much smaller sized dungeons with slightly different mechanics.Do Tier 1 ones (which have no specific requirements) and learn the rest as you go.

I'd like to also point out that salvage tools remain identical to what existed before when you played (with the addition of Ascended ones, which you shouldn't have had contact with if you don't know what fractals are), new player experience, depending on when you played is either the same, or improved. When the game launched you had no guidance outside the personal story, and it was awesome, now you have a more guided (and limited) experience especially at the starting levels (for example now you unlock weapon skills at specific levels, when before i would grind the "tutorial" mission to unlock all the skills on the starter weapon. Although now you keep the unlock when you change weapons, which can be both a pro or a con, depending on your experience.

As someone that played GW2 since the beginning (minus a 6 month hiatus during season 1) the game is much improved in a lot of aspects.I'd agree that they went overboard with some currencies (for example unbound vs volatile magic), but they have their reasons.

Finally, back tot ruly on-topic. When you're returning, especially after a long break, it's best to approach any game like you're starting it fresh. Even in single-player games, but especially on-line ones. Mechanics change, systems change, even you change, and the approach you were taking 3 years ago, might not be the same as what you want to do now, or even, especially RPGs and strategy games, remembering your original strategy might be impossible, so it's always better to just take it easy, start all over, and when you're re-acquainted with the game, then maybe you can go back to your original characters.

Thanks everybody. You guys are an awesome community. If I posted this stuff on the WoW forums, I would get trolled and cursed out and belittled. I think I'll stick with GW2 for a good while.

The main story lines will take you across all the zones. So that will be a good way to familiarize with every zone. Also will reward you with mastery points after milestones in the story.

They are getting better at putting in-game details on items. like Whether you need to keep them around or just sell it.

There is a chat command within the game that will open your browser directly to the wiki page for any item. Simply open chat, type /wiki , then Shift-click on the item, and press Enter to complete the chat command.

Most of the new currencies are tied to a specific map or npc faction to spend them in. Think of them like other games reputation grinds. For instance in HoT maps there are masteries tied to race factions. Get those masteries unlocked and use the maps currency at the npc whose language you can now understand.

Don't try to do everything at once. I had like 9 level 80s and I left just before heart of thorns, I just came back under 2 months ago and was quite overwhelmed. So I picked a specific sequence of things to do. I decided revenant was new, boosted it to 80, went and unlocked raptor mount and then over the next 2 weeks I simply did core tyria map completion, worked on personal story, worked on a little bit of PoF story and hero points to slowly unlock elite specs. After a while you just start to click and set your own goals for the day or week.

With that in mind, the achievement menu can be considered this games quest log. Pick something you want and just go for it. Or work on a few of them at once over time (keeps your sanity in check). The wiki is your best friend with this game and I generally keep an open page to it 99% of my playtime. Type any item, achievement, currency etc. And find out if it's worth saving.

Start at level one if you want, and just acclimate yourself to the general gameplay and mechanics. I did that 9 times without any free boosts we have these days so I said screw that and just played the game to bring back my skills. Now I have like 13 80s or so and still unlocking e-specs on most of them, running fractals, and building to raid at some point. It will come to you.

Best advice, don't worry too much. Just do whatever feels right, before long you'll be logging in knowing exactly what your plans and goals each day are.

Welcome back and GL-have fun.

Not to worry, OP...

There are 10,000 things to do, but only a small handful of essentials.

1) Get HoT, PoF, and LWS3.2) Get the following masteries in HoT: basic gliding, updraft mastery, and bouncing mushrooms.3) Get the following mysteries in PoF: Raptor level 3, Springer level 3, and Skimmer level 3.4) Choose a meta build (or slightly off-meta build for the kind of play you want to do)https://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki5) Run hero point groups in either HoT or PoF to fully unlock the elite specialization required for that build.6) Buy a full set of exotic (orange) equipment apropriate for your build.7) Jump in at the entry level of the game-mode you want to explore and start having fun in it.8) Continue fleshing out your masteries.9) Farm a full set of ascended trinkets in LWS3.10) Slowly accumulate the gold you need to get grandmaster tradeskills and to craft full ascended gear.

@"Fallesafe.5932" said:Not to worry, OP...

There are 10,000 things to do, but only a small handful of essentials.

1) Get HoT, PoF, and LWS3.2) Get the following masteries in HoT: basic gliding, updraft mastery, and bouncing mushrooms.3) Get the following mysteries in PoF: Raptor level 3, Springer level 3, and Skimmer level 3.4) Choose a meta build (or slightly off-meta build for the kind of play you want to do)https://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki5)Run hero point groups in either HoT or PoF to fully unlock the elite specialization required for that build.6) Buy a full set of exotic (orange) equipment apropriate for your build.7) Jump in at the entry level of the game-mode you want to explore and start having fun in it.8) Continue fleshing out your masteries.9) Farm a full set of ascended trinkets in LWS3.10) Slowly accumulate the gold you need to get grandmaster tradeskills and to craft full ascended gear.

Wait, what??

I thought you could only get the hero points just that once from the map spot?

I AM struggling to get hero points and unlock stuff. Is this how it's done now??

@Martimus.6027 said:

@"Fallesafe.5932" said:Not to worry, OP...

There are 10,000 things to do, but only a small handful of essentials.

1) Get HoT, PoF, and LWS3.2) Get the following masteries in HoT: basic gliding, updraft mastery, and bouncing mushrooms.3) Get the following mysteries in PoF: Raptor level 3, Springer level 3, and Skimmer level 3.4) Choose a meta build (or slightly off-meta build for the kind of play you want to do)

https://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki

5)

Run hero point groups

in either HoT or PoF to fully unlock the elite specialization required for that build.6) Buy a full set of exotic (orange) equipment apropriate for your build.7) Jump in at the entry level of the game-mode you want to explore and start having fun in it.8) Continue fleshing out your masteries.9) Farm a full set of ascended trinkets in LWS3.10) Slowly accumulate the gold you need to get grandmaster tradeskills and to craft full ascended gear.

what he meant is under LFG panel, there are GROUP of ppl take you to ALL hero point within the Map for FREE, all you need to do is follow them and get free HP for that map. Once they clear that map, they will move on to the next. This way you can get 300HP within few hrs of play. Typically these group run are in HoT/PoF maps.

of course if you choose too, you can always farm Hero point the old fashion way by yourself but its not efficient.

@weaponwh.9810 said:

@Martimus.6027 said:

@"Fallesafe.5932" said:Not to worry, OP...

There are 10,000 things to do, but only a small handful of essentials.

1) Get HoT, PoF, and LWS3.2) Get the following masteries in HoT: basic gliding, updraft mastery, and bouncing mushrooms.3) Get the following mysteries in PoF: Raptor level 3, Springer level 3, and Skimmer level 3.4) Choose a meta build (or slightly off-meta build for the kind of play you want to do)

https://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki

5)

Run hero point groups

in either HoT or PoF to fully unlock the elite specialization required for that build.6) Buy a full set of exotic (orange) equipment apropriate for your build.7) Jump in at the entry level of the game-mode you want to explore and start having fun in it.8) Continue fleshing out your masteries.9) Farm a full set of ascended trinkets in LWS3.10) Slowly accumulate the gold you need to get grandmaster tradeskills and to craft full ascended gear.

Oh, ok! Thank you for clarifying that for me. That sounds perfect :)

A note about the "HeroPoint Train" They often/usually require you to have a bunch of masteries already (for mobility reasons). So it might be hard to follow the train in HoT for example without "Gliding Updraft", "Bouncing Mushrooms", etc.

I'd recommend doing it the old fashioned way first time at least.

Also, there is 200 hero points in Tyria, they're slower to get, but if you're going to re-learn stuff anyways might as well pick them up. That way you're almost done unlocking when you go to HoT or PoF. (and if you pick up the basic gliding and basic raptor mount, it's pretty quick).

Long list of stuff I learned while just playing though maps as I didn’t start with the story. Highlighting what I found helpful and important in overall game play.

I started this game after HOT had been out for a while so there was already a lot to do. I started as free to play and leveled a thief by just completing maps. Got it to about level 60 and started trying out WvW and PvP.

Pvp was really helpful in trying out new builds and weapons because of the amulet system. There are practice golems and npcs in the pvp area (heart of mists). As long as you are level 2, you can bring a character there and it will scale you to level 80 and you will have access to all skills, utilities, and traits regardless of if you have them unlocked in normal pve or not. You can then play around with them with the golems and npcs. I also used them in actual pvp matches, but that is just if you enjoy pvp.

Hero points:Unlocking specializations you can go a few different ways to get hero points. I’d suggest doing hero point trains in HOT. There are trains very often there that also generally bring you to all the way points and some masteries. POF doesn’t have them as often because POF hero points are much much easier than HOT hero points. I would not advise trying to solo the HOT ones.

You can also do map complete of central tyria on one of your characters. This is slower, but much safer and easier. I only did about 65-70% of central tyria before moving on to HOT because I wanted masteries.

Lastly, you can buy hero points with testimonies of heroics that you earn in wvw. I only suggest doing this if you have done the other methods at least once for the experience. This is just a fast way of unlocking some on a new toon if you like wvw.

Masteries:The most useful ones to get first in my opinion are:

• HOT mastery: gliding (I’d go through to lean techniques).
• POF mastery: raptor just because it’s needed to get to springer. Tier 3 of raptor mastery is nice when you don’t have griffin. Go through tier 3 of Springer mastery. The springer is the most useful of the mounts other than griffin. It makes it so you don’t really need bouncing mushroom from HOT. Griffin requires a special collection, POF story completion, and 250 gold. So go for springer first.

The other HOT masteries aren’t used as majorlyfor general gameplay and can be unlocked as you get them. POF masteries are fairly easy to get and you can max out those as you go, but focus on springer as it is the most useful. Jackal tier 4 mastery is also very useful.

Currencies:Gold (coin) is the most important one. Karma is important. I’ve mainly only used it for crafting, but I’m sure it has other uses. There are a bunch of dungeon currencies that you can basically ignore unless you want to craft generation 1 legendaries or buy dungeon armor/weapon skins.

HOT Currencies are good to haveAirship parts used to buy stuff in verdant brinkLump of aurilium used to buy stuff in auric basinLey line crystals used to buy stuff in tangled depths

Keys: there are different types of key currencies that are map specific and used to open up treasure chest type items. Mainly in expansions. These are good to have. Examples include:

• crow bars open airship cargoes in verdant brink
• Exalted keys opens exalted chests in auric basin
• Chak acid opens crystallized supply caches in tangled depths
• Machetes open noxious pods in dragonstand
• Bandit skeleton keys open lost bandit chests in silverwastes
• Traders keys open different trade caches and chests in POF and living works season 4 maps.

Living season currencies:-unbound magic: earned in living world season 3 maps (between HOT and POF story line). Very useful in my opinion as you can trade it in for crafting mats, trinkets, and gear.-volatile magic: earned in living world season 4 maps (post POF story line). Can also trade it in for crafting mats and other stuff. I like it for crafting material shipments.

Inventory management:Rewards in this game consist of boxes that contain other boxes that contain bags that contain other bags. In the end it usually ends up being fine (blue) and masterwork (green) quality gear. I generally salvage these for mats. When you salvage these you will get tons of masterwork sigils. I honestly either vendor those or trash them. Sometimes you get rare (yellow) or exotic (orange) quality gear. You can either keep these for your own use, salvage them for globs of ectoplasm, or sell them on the trading post. Depends on what you want.

Salvage kits: I personally invested some gems into getting a copper fed salvage o matic that I put in one of the shared slots I got for purchasing the expansions. I think it’s about 800 gems, but it is definitely nice. Before I got that I used the masterwork salvage kits. I only use the more expensive ones (mystic or black lion) on rare or exotic gear. Salvaging often will help keep your bags clear.

Bags: since you are new you are probably low on gold. Once you accumulate some you can buy some 15 slot bags for about a gold each. That should help. Or you can level up a crafting profession and craft some bags. I still don’t have 20 slot bags because I’m fine with the 15/18 slots ones that I bought for cheap or crafted. If you are going to buy extra slots I’d prioritize bank slots over bag slots unless you are the type to have 1 main character.

Crafting mats: just make a habit of using the deposit materials button every time you salvage. It will take a while for your material storage to fill up as it has a capacity of 250 for each type. When certain types fill up you can sell it or store it in your inventory.

Ascended/legendary crafting mats:Ascended mats will start clogging your inventory after you fill up your material storage. These have a pink outline and include stuff like bloodstone dust and dragonite ore. I used to save all this cause I thought it was important. It is only really important for crafting ascended gear. So if you aren’t doing that you can delete them. Legendary mats include stuff like obsidian shards and mystic clovers and have a purple outline. These aren’t needed until you want to start crafting legendaries. You probably won’t have any mystic clovers until then anyway. But I’d keep all of your obsidian shards.

Events:Its fine to just focus on renown hearts for map completion in core tyria, HOT, and POF. Random events often spawn near them that will help complete those quests.

Meta events:These are important maps events that occur throughout the world. These usually require larger groups and can generally be found in the looking for group function. You can ignore these if you want to, but you may eventually want to start participating in them as they have several benefits:

• some masteries are locked behind them
• Achievements
• Better loot
• Collections
• They can also be pretty fun

Ones that I think are good include (not an all inclusive lists just ones that I have liked doing):-Octovine: auric basin meta event.-Chak gerent: tangled depths meta event

• dragonstand meta event
• Tequatl: sparkly fen event
• Triple Trouble: bloodtide coast event
• Palawadan, great hall, Akili events: domain of Istan events that are great for gold farming.
• RIBA (Red, indigo, blue, amber): silverwastes events.

Builds:I have found metabattle.com to be a good starting point for builds.

The thing I like about gw2 is there is a lot to do and many things to work towards. I’d start by map completing, getting hero points, unlocking the useful masteries, and accumulating some gold. Then branch out. You can start with the story if you want, but it’s not required to start that way. I actually only started doing that when I wanted the griffin and to max out masteries as I don’t enjoy story as much.

A note about the "HeroPoint Train" They often/usually require you to have a bunch of masteries already (for mobility reasons). So it might be hard to follow the train in HoT for example without "Gliding Updraft", "Bouncing Mushrooms", etc.

I'd recommend doing it the old fashioned way first time at least.

Also, there is 200 hero points in Tyria, they're slower to get, but if you're going to re-learn stuff anyways might as well pick them up. That way you're almost done unlocking when you go to HoT or PoF. (and if you pick up the basic gliding and basic raptor mount, it's pretty quick).

My suggestion is friend a guy named Vayne, and join his guild Wardens of Destiny. While I may have had a falling out with the man personally he is an excellent teacher and he will get you up to speed.

@Oldirtbeard.9834 said:My suggestion is friend a guy named Vayne, and join his guild Wardens of Destiny. While I may have had a falling out with the man personally he is an excellent teacher and he will get you up to speed.

I thought you left this game mate wasent starwars your new home?

@Linken.6345 said:

@Oldirtbeard.9834 said:My suggestion is friend a guy named Vayne, and join his guild Wardens of Destiny. While I may have had a falling out with the man personally he is an excellent teacher and he will get you up to speed.

That was ESO, I just came to the conclusion that even if Power Reaper becomes META in Raids that there's a reason I kissed games like WoW behind.