New Players Guide

Hello you guys,

We are four players, that just started playing a few months ago.We have already finished or main campaign and looked into some dungeons, wvw etc.

Now we are in the story of "Heart of Thorns" and (no offense) its a bit tedious.Do we HAVE to play through it? Should we gear up before that? (Still have our lvl 80 gear)What would you guys suggest. Thank you in advance!

If you don't have exotic or ascended gear with same stat combos and runes, you definitely need to gear up. Hot is a big jump in difficulty from the core story. Also, a suggestion, look on LFG or for commanders running meta events. The HoT metas are still some of the most popular to run.

...And watch out for pocket raptors! ?

Whether you play through it is entirely up to you. You have access to all the areas and all the masteries without having to do the storyline. The storyline does give you a few skins and some free weapons, but you can play whatever you want to play. Like the poster above me, I'd suggest getting level 80 exotic equipment, at least. (it'll help and it's not overly expensive)

Just beware that Heart of Thorns doesn't follow the "main campaign", Living World Season 2 does. If you skip it, there will be a huge difficulty jump. You need to make sure to purchase and play the Living World seasons to avoid sudden shifts.

And yes your characters should be running full exotics and decent builds for all max-level content.

I'll just give a bit of advice, if you haven't played all seven story dungeons with four people, make sure you can at least handle that before continuing. The story modes of the dungeons are part of the Personal Story, and some of the easiest content in the game, so they make a good training ground for your party to get up to speed and learn the game mechanics beyond what the Personal Story (which is basically a tutorial) offers.

Starting with about halfway through LS2 and from HoT onward both story and open-world difficulty is similar.

@HardReset.9304 said:Do we HAVE to play through it? Should we gear up before that? (Still have our lvl 80 gear)

Not at all. The only thing that requires HoT story completion is the Caladbolg quest. In terms of gold value that is roughly 30-40g which isn't really that huge of a deal. The skins are unique though so if you want those then yes you will have to do the story.