So I've been playing regularly since release

I only have one character and I've never finished the personal story. Had world completion years ago, just have no interest in the personal story. I hate being 'locked in' to something like that. Yeah that means I've never been to Dry Top, Silver Wastes, etc.If I purchase the expansions, do I have to play through the story to unlock the map areas?

Dry Top and Silverwastes you can access right now without any story. Just get to the portal in.

For the LS3 and LS4 maps, and the new LS5 prologue, you do have to do the initial story step once on one character. Which, since you only have one, means this next part isn't as useful to you: you can then farm up some map currency and buy a portal scroll from a vendor. Also a tome, into which you can jam all the scrolls for that season. With that, you can hop to the map for free any time, with any character, no need to scroll the map around to find the wp and pay wp fees.

You do not have to do the whole story. Only enough to access the map once.

That's all for LS, but does slightly apply to both HoT and PoF. You can get into both if you join guilds that have halls in them. Travel to the guild hall, exit into the map, you unlock a wp that you can then use (hint: in Lost Precipice, you are in the nw corner of the Verdant Brink map so the entry wp is waaaaay over to the east). You must own the expansions to be able to get into the LS3 and 4 maps. But you can get to all the expansion maps once you get to the first one. If you want gliders or mounts, you will have to do the first step of HoT and PoF. Again, you needn't do any more story than that (except if you want griffon, you have to finish PoF before you can collect that, and Skyscale I'm not sure if there's a story bar to it other than having to do enough of LS4Ch6 to unlock it, be that to the skyscale hatchlings part or the end, I don't know).

@Donari.5237 said:Dry Top and Silverwastes you can access right now without any story. Just get to the portal in.

For the LS3 and LS4 maps, and the new LS5 prologue, you do have to do the initial story step once on one character. Which, since you only have one, means this next part isn't as useful to you: you can then farm up some map currency and buy a portal scroll from a vendor. Also a tome, into which you can jam all the scrolls for that season. With that, you can hop to the map for free any time, with any character, no need to scroll the map around to find the wp and pay wp fees.

You do not have to do the whole story. Only enough to access the map once.

That's all for LS, but does slightly apply to both HoT and PoF. You can get into both if you join guilds that have halls in them. Travel to the guild hall, exit into the map, you unlock a wp that you can then use (hint: in Lost Precipice, you are in the nw corner of the Verdant Brink map so the entry wp is waaaaay over to the east). You must own the expansions to be able to get into the LS3 and 4 maps. But you can get to all the expansion maps once you get to the first one. If you want gliders or mounts, you will have to do the first step of HoT and PoF. Again, you needn't do any more story than that (except if you want griffon, you have to finish PoF before you can collect that, and Skyscale I'm not sure if there's a story bar to it other than having to do enough of LS4Ch6 to unlock it, be that to the skyscale hatchlings part or the end, I don't know).

Cool, thanks. Didn't know I could get to Silver Wastes and such yet. Spend most of my time harvesting the plat and hard wood. I've made a few small fortunes. I'm mostly a market player, I like economics.

i usually just port to friend...i am with you. I hate personal story

I think you can walk into Verdant Brink (1st HoT map) as well, but the entrance isn't easy to find because it's in a small cave behind the amber fort in Silverwastes. You may need to train gliding to get from there to Auric Basin (it would certainly be easier if you did) but I think from there you can walk into Tangled Depths and Dragon's Stand without doing the story, although again the entrances aren't easy to find or get to (especially for Dragon's Stand).

For PoF you either need to do the story or join a guild with Windswept Haven as their guild hall, or buy the deluxe edition and use the Lily of the Elon pass.

@Danikat.8537 said:I think you can walk into Verdant Brink (1st HoT map) as well, but the entrance isn't easy to find because it's in a small cave behind the amber fort in Silverwastes....

I seem to remember that you have to do the first parts of the story of HoT on at least one character, until you get to Verdant Brink, otherwise the portal in SW is blocked.

I have been playing since beta, absolutely hated the pve, I only did pvp and wvw since the start, might have done a dungeon for skin. I think it was 2 years ago when pof was released, I was bored in pvp and I had bought the expansion for mirage. Anyway I played the pof story and I was kinda dumbstruck, I mean the ambient music and the voice dialogue just clicked with me, heck knows why I was hooked to the audio so much. Anyway after a while I got into the story aspect of gw2, I completed the pof story (the best story out of the expansions), then decided to complete the personal story then finally got around to killing mordey. I still hate pve but I am still in love with only the living story :) I am just happy at how much effort they put into it, why put it to waste :+1:

@Danikat.8537 said:For PoF you either need to do the story or join a guild with Windswept Haven as their guild hall, or buy the deluxe edition and use the Lily of the Elon pass.The Lily of Elon pass is gated. You need to play the first instance of the PoF story (the one that unlocks the raptor mount) at least once on the account to use it.