Danikat.8537

I didn't realise this was still going. I don't have time to edit articles right now, but I've added one to the suggestions list and will try to remember to check back in a couple of weeks when I'll have more time.

It was mentioned earlier in the thread that someone managed to do it in about 430 hours. Not a new player, but on a new account, so that's likely a lower estimate. I think these cover this is the most important thing for new players to know: It's easy for new players to see mastery points as some sort of overall rank or score and think they need as many as possible as soon as possible, but the reality is each mastery does a specific thing and you only need the ones you're actually going to use, and as a general rule masteries get less useful as you go up the tracks. If you don't do raids or Fractals you don't need those mastery tracks at all, the final tier of the Exalted Lore mastery is only used to craft auric weapons, the final tier of the Inner Nyos mastery just gives you more kryptis essence from Convergences, and so on. There's a lot which new players could safely ignore until they want a new optional goal to aim for. I know the other concern will be that other players might judge you based on your mastery points (like some people used to do with achievement points) but I've very rarely seen that happen. If it does it's likely to be well intentioned - like checking if a player with very few mastery points has done that part of the game before and knows what to expect, or it will be a misinformed individual/group who don't understand how masteries work (or are just looking for an excuse to exclude people) and it's best to ignore them.

Is it odd that I don't actually know how many Mastery Points I have? I know it's not the maximum, I'm missing some from Icebrood Saga, End of Dragons and Secrets of the Obscure, but I don't know what my current total is. I do agree that how long an account has existed and/or how many total hours it's got are not a good measure of how long it would take a new player to get mastery points. They only come from specific places so most players will likely spend a lot of time on things which will never award mastery points, or repeating things after they've gotten the points. Also the earliest players will have had a few years before mastery points even existed (although some achievements did retroactively award core mastery points). I was going to say it's maybe a bit misleading that the number shows next to your name like other games post-max level progression systems, when masteries are not necessarily reflective of how much you've done. But then my other MMO, Elder Scrolls Online, has the opposite problem. Their champion points come from XP so they are nominally reflective of how much time you've spent, but most of mine have come from doing crafting quests (especially master writs) on an alt, so they're not reflective of how much of the game I've played and which areas I can be trusted to know what I'm doing. I'm not sure there is a good way to get a numerical display for how experienced players are.

As far as I know no one here works for Google so I'm not sure what you expect us to do about their search engine. It's a known problem that it's gotten worse at providing relevant results recently (on all topics, I'm not just talking about GW2 searches), but it's something only Google can solve. Here's some articles on the topic: https://mashable.com/article/google-search-low-quality-research https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/google-search-is-losing-the-fight-with-seo-spam-study-says/ https://theconversation.com/is-google-getting-worse-increased-advertising-and-algorithm-changes-may-make-it-harder-to-find-what-youre-looking-for-166966 If you want build guides these are the recommended sites I know of: https://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki For all areas of the game. I think they use a voting system to rank builds. https://snowcrows.com/ Snow Crows is a guild, and I think only guild members publish builds and write guides for their site, but they're generally considered to give good advice. You could also join a guild and ask them for advice or tell us what kind of build you want and we can help. As for the rest I think it's important to know GW2 is not a game you can blindly rush through and expect to succeed. Being a good player means not just pushing a lot of buttons very quickly (although that's often important) but paying attention to what the game is telling you and responding to it. If you try to rush through everything without reading or listening you are, as you've found, going to end up lost and confused because you missed all the instructions along the way.

There's quite a few minis which aren't based on things in the game, like the various dogs (and possibly cats) from the festivals. There's minis of several different dog breeds but as far as I know all the full size dogs (except the ones in LA for April Fools) are Krytan Drakehounds or Basenji. There's also a panda, the hippo already mentioned, the Spooky Moa, Mini Angry Gift and several more. That doesn't mean they'll make any mini that's requested, even some based on things which are in the game and which players have asked for didn't get made. But it does mean someone at Anet could make a mini penguin without needing to wait until they're in the game.

It's almost impossible to mess things up in this game. The worst mistake you could make in this situation is to buy/craft the wrong thing, and then it just means you need to do it again. (Or salvage something you need, which again just means you need another one.) If I was you I'd get a cheap set of exotics which are 'good enough' and use them while you work on what you actually want to use. I assume you've done similar in other MMOs where you can't skip straight to best-in-slot end-game gear and need to work your way up to it. The difference here is it can just mean buying it. 1) Open the Trading Post to the buy tab and select 'armor'. 2) Click the cog icon next to the search bar 3) Click on the first 'attributes' box and select Healing Power (leave the other two blank) 4) Change 'rarity' to exotic 5) Change the minimum level to 80 6) Sort the results by price and buy the cheapest item for each slot That's likely to be Zho's armour and a full set will cost you about 2g 20s (less if you place buy orders and wait). You can do the same with trinkets and weapons. For a back item you'll need to remove the exotic requirement as there are no tradable exotic back items, but you could get a rare or masterwork one. If you go for a masterwork back item then in total it will probably cost about 4g, depending on which weapons you get. No it won't be the last set of equipment you'll ever need for that character, but it doesn't need to be, it's their first set, and it will be enough to get by until you're able to get the final end-game set, which is what you've been aiming for so far.

The weapons it gave you are exotics, they're the 2nd best tier in the game, but widely available. If you don't care about the rarity the quickest and cheapest way to get another weapon to try out is to find an NPC Weaponsmith. There's one (called Wolfborn) right next to the level 80 boost NPC in Silverwastes, and they're in every town. They only sell basic weapons, but it's enough to try out the skills and see if you like using it. The quickest way to get ones with better stats is to buy them from the Trading Post (note: the 3rd tab - the one which looks like this, not the gem store which only sells skins, and is much more expensive). There are many other places to get them, including as drops from enemies and buying them from NPC vendors for map currencies, but if you want something immediately the Trading Post is probably your best bet. As a very quick guide you should look for weapons with a level requirement of level 80, but they don't need to be exotic. There are 6 tiers of equipment in this game: Common (white) Fine (blue) Masterwork (green) Rare (yellow) Exotic (orange) Ascended / Legendary (pink / purple) The stats do get better as you go up the tiers, but for now it won't make a huge difference if you use a lower tier. It's important to know that item stats in this game are fairly simple: all items with the same level requirement and rarity are equally good, and also important to know skins are valuable to a lot of players so they can make a huge difference in item price. Do not feel like you need to spend as much as you can afford to get something "better", it's probably not any better. For example the Crystalline Blade is a level 80 exotic sword which costs 35-41 silver on the Trading Post. The Stygian Blade is a level 80 exotic sword which costs 167 - 340 gold. These items are identical. The only difference is the skin (and personally I think the Crystalline Blade looks better soo, but the Stygian Blade is new).

Build guides are designed to show you the ideal - the absolute final, best-in-slot version of a build, either because they're aimed at people who are ready for that or because they assume you'll know the game and your character well enough to adjust it for your circumstances, like getting exotics with the same stat combinations instead of jumping straight from random levelling drops to ascended. It's true a lot of build guides say not to bother with exotics, but that's because they're aimed at people who are ready for end-game activities, who will almost certainly have a set of exotics already and the means to get ascended relatively easily. If you're not at that point yet then it's absolutely worth getting exotics first, even ones which don't have the perfect stat combination for your final end-game build. Having said that the Wizard's Vault gives you an easy way to get some ascended pieces: 1) You can buy 1 weapon and 3 armour pieces per season 2) Buy laurels and use them to get ascended trinkets. You can't get Harrier's stats, but you can get a substitute to last you until you're able to get Harrier's. I think it's also worth bearing in mind that focusing exclusively on healing in instanced areas is funnelling yourself into a very small part of the game in a way that isn't intended. This isn't one of those MMOs where once you reach the level cap you're done with open world and the focus is on an extensive progression of instanced areas for small groups. There's a total of 7 raid wings, 14 strike missions and 22 Fractals (although those are repeated with slightly different mechanics across 100 levels, but you only really need a healer for the higher levels). There's also 8 dungeons with 3-4 paths each, but those don't need a deadicated healer. If that's all you want to do then that's fine, but I think it's important to understand that a big part of the reason you're having trouble is you're trying to force the game to be something it's not. It's the MMO equivalent of someone trying to play an RPG like a shooter and getting annoyed they can't carry multiple versions of every weapon and swap between all of them in combat. GW2 is primarily an open-world game, it's not designed for you to hit level 80 and instantly jump into end-game instances and ignore the rest of the open-world. It is designed to let you ignore PvE and just play PvP, but if you want to play PvE you'll need to play all of it, not just the few hardest bits.

It's possible to buy the jacket and then apply the skin to the jacket you already have using the wardrobe. Any time you bind an item to your account (which for vendors like that often means just buying the item, because it will be account bound on acquire) the skin is unlocked in the wardrobe and can then be applied to any other item of the same type. Once the skin is unlocked in the wardrobe you can't lose it, so you can safely salvage, sell, mystic forge, whatever the jacket itself if you don't have another character who can use it.

I agree there will probably be some type of legendary in the next expansion but I don't think it's possible to say what it will be yet. We hardly know anything about the next expansion. We know it's coming later this year and that it will use the same format as SotO with subsequent releases classed as part of the expansion rather than semi-standalone Living World episodes. We've seen one screenshot of a landscape, but with no info about what or where it is. As far as I know that's it so far. We can assume it will include some things which are always included, like new open-world maps and a new storyline, some type of instanced PvE, new masteries (which may or may not function outside the new maps), and some sort of new combat mechanics for each profession, but even then I don't think we can predict what those will be in any more detail, just that there will be something which fits into that (very general) category. Without knowing more about it I think it's impossible to predict what type of legendary they'll include.

Right at the top of the page, next to the notification icon and the button for your profile there's a button called + Create. If you click it you get a choice between 'Topic' and 'File Download'. For some reason you have to add it once as a file and once as a screenshot for it to work. (I think because the forum is supposed to have a seperate image gallery this is intended for other file types, where the screenshot would be an example of what's in the file.) Once you've added a file you can use the 'Other Media' button in the bottom right corner of the reply window to inset them into posts.

Mastery points are nothing to do with elite specs. To unlock an elite specialisation you need hero points, which come from hero challenges in open-world maps (or from WvW). You'll almost certainly have encountered some of these in core Tryia maps as you were levelling your characters, but those only give 1 hero point each. The ones in expansion maps give 10 points each, so they're a much better choice. You can use hero points from any expansion to unlock any elite spec (this is different to mastery points, which are expansion-specific) and you don't need to do anything in advance to start earning them, you just need to find them in the maps. Sometimes you'll see hero point trains advertised in LFG - they'll lead you around the challenges in an expansion and help you unlock them (some, especially in HoT are very difficult to do alone).

Sure if you've already found the bank and are standing right beside it like in those screenshots you shared of other games then a sign post on a building helps confirm you've already found the right place (although in the last two I'm not sure what tells you that's a bank, but maybe that's because I've never played those games). But if you're round a corner (like in most of your GW2 screenshots) the fact that there's a sign on the building isn't going to help you. I don't see how that's any different between games. I play Elder Scrolls Online too and I find the bank and other important services exactly the same way I do in all games (and in real life for that matter) - by looking at the map. (Although I don't go to Vivec City if I can help it because while it's better than in TESIII it's still a mess.) I don't think adding signs all over the city pointing you to all the difference services would achieve much. It would be a lot of visual clutter and it would still be quicker to open the map and look for the icon showing where it is than follow a series of sign posts that will eventually lead you there.

I agree. I like outfits for things that don't look like armour, and some of them also make sense as one-piece sets (like the various wedding dresses), but a lot look like they could be split into seperate pieces and it would be nice to mix and match them. Even the 'one piece' outfits like dresses could work, we have some armour skins which hide other slots, like the Dry Bones Hood which hides any shoulder armour you're wearing, or simply cover them like medium armour with a long coat and tall boots which can almost entirely hide your trousers. I do like having the option to quickly swap into something that doesn't look like armour for situations where my armour would look out of place so I think there's a place for outfits, but it would be nice to have the skins available as armour too.

I don't think it looks like pre-searing either, but I do think it could be somewhere near modern-day Ascalon. As far as I remember Ascalon doesn't have pine trees, and the colour scheme is slightly off for the existing Ascalon maps, but it could be somewhere near there. The fact that they shared the screenshot makes me think we're expected to recognise the area, so it's not somewhere totally unknown (like one of the land masses in the far west on the world map) and it looks like the temperate parts of northern Tyria, but I think it could be either side of the Shiverpeaks because it looks a bit like Drizzlewood Coast too.

It is all races. For some reason because the 'default' for medium armour is long coats even skins like the sanctified armour which has a wide gap between the top and bottom pieces are different on medium armour professions to heavy or light ones. The skirt from the sanctified armour is part of the medium chest piece, and if a medium armoured character wears just the leg armour they're instead wearing a pair of shorts (which I assume is under the skirt on heavy and light armoured characters, but I haven't tried to check). Sometimes that can be good, sometimes it's annoying depending on what you want to combine it with. For example someone used the rift hunter's armour to add a sporran to the 'kilt' from the gem store, but that only works on medium armoured characters because the parts hanging down from the belt are attached to the chest piece. The ideal of course would be for all characters to have both options.

No, that's exactly what I mean. I know a lot of people think other people's characters look bad, and that no one could like the way they look. I suspect that's not the case and want to ask players what they think of their own characters. You seem to think I'm expecting a lot of no votes, especially from people with ugly/messy characters. I'm not. I'm genuinely curious about what the answers will be (otherwise I wouldn't have asked) but I expect the vast majority of players, no matter how their characters look, will vote yes. I am expecting more "I don't care" votes, even in this game. (In others I've seen people describe it as "I don't care what colour pixels show me where my skills are firing from", like their character is nothing more than a position marker.) (BTW that's my Christmas tree. Ornaments range from a beautiful clear and silver bauble and a hand made glass snowflake to various odds and ends from our first Christmas together when we had a budget of about £30 for the tree and decorations, including one we nicknamed 'kitten tribble' and I love all of them. Colours are "as many as possible". It's also too big for the room.)

I have a few characters I'm levelling manually who are in that awkward phase where it's not worth changing all the skins because they swap equipment so often, so I only change something if it looks really bad on them, and then usually to a Hall of Monuments skin just because it's free to apply. They have a colour scheme to tie it together, but it's definitely not the look I want for them long-term. But once I take the time to put a costume together I do like it. My characters are very variable (I sometimes think some people would be surprised to find they're all played by the same person) because they each have their own personality and priorities and I let them take the lead on what they wear, but I like that it suits them even if it's not something I'd wear myself. (Even if I wasn't stuck in a world where clothing choice is more driven by factors like "it's warm today so I can't wear too much, and it's going to get dirty so it must be easy to clean, but I also need protection from the random freaking hail storms because it's spring".) I don't think anyone would say it directly, but as I said it seems to be an underlying assumption. Look at all the people in the topic about the new cosmetic inspect option claiming people will steal other player's styles because they don't know how to make their characters look good on their own. The way some people talk about other players characters, especially complaints about them being "too shiny" or a mess of infusions/dyes/whatever seem to assume the people doing it didn't mean to make their character look like that, they were trying for something 'better' and got it wrong because they don't understand how to make their character look good, rather than simply having different tastes or different priorities to the person complaining. Those discussions always made me wonder if that's ever true, if there's people who throw a bunch of shiny skins and effects or whatever on their character and don't like how it looks, but can't work out why or how to improve it. (I have to admit I've had times when I look at a character and think "Really? You like that?" although I tend to default to assuming they do and I just don't understand why. That would be a "yes". Unless you're using amazing in a literal sense where it could also mean "I'm amazed you're willing to be seen like that" in which case I think you've found the first use for the 'other' option. 😄

The poll is anonymous. I've tried to keep the options neutral, feel free to add more detail in a comment if you wish. I've been meaning to make this poll for a while but the recent announcement of the cosmetic inspect feature reminded me to actually do it. There seems to be an assumption among some players that most GW2 players do not know how to make their character look good. They try but accidentally make them too shiny, or too plain or use too many/not enough colours, or whatever aesthetic the person commenting doesn't like because they don't know any better. I've often suspected that's not the case because when I can (usually in town, sometimes in down time between events) I like to take the time to look at other people's characters and see what they've done with them. At the risk of sounding creepy I have a folder of screenshots of characters I really like. One thing I always notice is that most of them, both the ones I like and the ones I don't have a clear theme, it looks intentional even if I think the end result is a bit of a mess (or "oh another..."). One I found especially interesting is how many people doing the Icebrood Saga story dressed their character like a member of the Crystal Bloom. But I've never asked, because asking individual people "do you like that look?" would be pretty rude, even if I mean it as a compliment because I do like it, and I kept forgetting to ask en masse via a poll until now.

It's still not much compared to getting top tier equipment in many other games. In a lot of games if you didn't have the equivalent of ascended you could not survive in a lot of level 80 areas, especially things like raids and strikes. Ascended is nice to have and does produce bigger numbers, but if someone is unable to complete some part of the game it's very unlikely upgrading to ascended versions of the same things they're already using (same stat combinations, same build etc.) will make a difference. (Unless of course it's high level Fractals and they're dying because of agony.) What I suspect makes a bigger difference for some people, especially some new players, is that the cost and/or time required to get ascended gives them more of an incentive to make sure they're getting the right pieces, so they think about their build and what stats they actually need instead of just using whatever they can get. For some people it might be the first time they've had a complete build. (Although I'm sure there's also people who thought about that long before and got a full set of matching exotics, and people who just equipped whatever ascended items they could get first/cheapest without worrying about the stats.) That's definitely how it worked with me getting my first set of exotics at level 80 (ascended didn't exist then). Until then I didn't even know what some stats did, including fairly important ones like precision. I thought I knew, so I never looked it up until I was researching available combinations and deciding which would be best for me.

Bear in mind this has only happened to the OP once and no one else has claimed it's a common occurance. A crazy coincidence happening a few times in a pool of hundreds of thousands of people over the course of more than a decade isn't that surprising. (I mean we now know super rare black lion chest drops have a 0.3% drop rate and there's at least a few hundred of each in the game.) It's less surprising when you consider the OP's account name starts with Shawn, which is a fairly common name. There's 16 accounts that start with Shawn just among the minority of players who have visited the forum. So it's not hard to believe someone wanted to mail another Shawn and got the wrong one. (Signed someone with an unoriginal username who has often been mixed up with other people using the same one.)

I don't think it really adds anything to the game, we've always had the option to ask players what skins they're using or look it up. But maybe it was relatively quick to do and ties into some of the other work they mentioned. I'm glad it's cosmetic only though.

I would love it to be east of Ascalon, I've been curious about what's out there since I first started GW1 and not only have we never gone in that direction, as far as I know it's never even been talked about, so it's a total mystery at the moment. I agree it could be almost anywhere temperate though. Likely on the continent of Tyria, but impossible to say where exactly. I hope it's somewhere new though, somewhere we've never been in GW1 or GW2, rather than returning to a location from GW1. The full world map shows a lot of unexplored land. Including 2 new continents and an island or penninsula to the west, and a huge chunk of land east of Tyria and Elona. We don't know how far south Cantha goes either. So there's a lot of possibilities.

I haven't even looked at what's required yet. I assume I've made some progress just by playing SotO but I don't know what exactly. I'm intending to do it sometime, but I've had too much else going on both in-game and in real life to put any time into it yet.