Returning player with specific questions (long read)

[Wandering Minstrel.7645]

My wife and I have been jonesing for a "new" MMO experience and although we both played at launch and level capped multiple characters, we left long ago (Path of Fire, 2017) and are now eager to come back, particularly in light of the new expansion. We have specific questions:

 

1) The journey is the reward, we don't want to come back to our old characters or jumpstart new ones to 80, we want to create new characters and start from scratch, experiencing everything fresh. This is a problem in games that have account-wide resources, I don't want a bunch of mats or gear available at the start. Do we have to create new accounts, or can we just choose a different server to play on (I forget the server model)?

 

2) I don't recall the monetization model. What's the best way to enter the game with access to 100% of the available content? Can I buy a bundle that includes everything? Should I just purchase every expansion since Path of Fire? Cost is not so much an issue (well, it's always an issue, but not a big barrier), I don't mind buying a full package if the cost is not exorbitant. What do you recommend?

 

3) Is it possible to start new characters in a different area to minimize repeating old content, or are we required to start with the Centaur invasion and live out of Lion's Arch, and other places like that which I still recall vaguely? Any way to vary up the experience a bit?

 

4) I enjoy crafting, but I'm not interested in entering markets that are flooded and offer no opportunities for making currency. Is the market so saturated that there's no real point to a new character taking up crafting, or are there still good opportunities to make some coin crafting? In most MMOs, this comes down to consumables as gear is usually best obtained elsewhere. What's the story here?

 

Thank you so much for reading up to this point. Any insights or suggestions are very much appreciated. I remember GW2 as having one of the best communities of any MMO I played, so I thought this long read might not be *too* out of place. I really look forward to playing again and would love to have some input from the community.

 

Thanks!

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

Those are some specific questions indeed. I will try to answer them as good as possible and skip the stereotype answers. Going a little into detail as well. Some things might be an overkill, but this may at least help you remember what you have experienced. So you can decide what you want to go for this time ...   

1 hour ago, Wandering Minstrel.7645 said:

1) The journey is the reward, we don't want to come back to our old characters or jumpstart new ones to 80, we want to create new characters and start from scratch, experiencing everything fresh. This is a problem in games that have account-wide resources, I don't want a bunch of mats or gear available at the start. Do we have to create new accounts, or can we just choose a different server to play on (I forget the server model)?

You can delete characters and items, but a lot of things will not disappear. This includes the Masteries you have unlocked last time, crafting recipes unlocked and literally every single achievement/title. If you really want a fresh start, new account is the way :S.

1 hour ago, Wandering Minstrel.7645 said:

2) I don't recall the monetization model. What's the best way to enter the game with access to 100% of the available content? Can I buy a bundle that includes everything? Should I just purchase every expansion since Path of Fire? Cost is not so much an issue (well, it's always an issue, but not a big barrier), I don't mind buying a full package if the cost is not exorbitant. What do you recommend?

Content consists of:
- Core Guildwars 2 game with the personal story and the re-occuring anual festivals
- Heart of Thorns, Path of Fire and End of Dragons expansions
- Living World seasons 2,3,4 and 5 (= Icebrood Saga)

Core Guildwars 2 is included in every single expansion and in every multi-expansion bundle. So the only issue will be the Living World. That can only be unlocked via the Gemstore:
- Living World Season 2 Complete Pack = 1280 GEMS
- Living World Season 3 Complete Pack = 960 GEMS
- Living World Season 4 Complete Pack = 960 GEMS
- The Icebrood Saga Complete Pack = 960 GEMS
TOTAL = 4,160 GEMS

If you purchase the Ultimate Collection, you are set with 4,000 GEMS. So you only miss 160 more to unlock the entire Living World. That is imo the smothest option to unlock the entire story-content on a single account. The freebies/bonus-items you get with the Ultimate versions are also worth a lot of GEMS, if you would unlock them directly. You can do the math with purchasing the cheapest version and purchase 4,000 GMES directly. You mostly end up with the same price, but miss the bonus items.

What is Living World? Linking story between the expansions. Part of the Lore. They come with extra maps, achievements, Masteries and items. In addition many have unique quest-lines that tell a new story. 

Is Living World still played by the community? Yes. Although the content is rather old, it is part of the daily rotations. So when the maps are part of the rotations, they become highly populated by players. Want to play on your own? Skip those days! Want to get achievements done? Revisit those maps when they are part of the daily-rotation. 

1 hour ago, Wandering Minstrel.7645 said:

3) Is it possible to start new characters in a different area to minimize repeating old content, or are we required to start with the Centaur invasion and live out of Lion's Arch, and other places like that which I still recall vaguely? Any way to vary up the experience a bit?

Story of the core-game is quite repetitive. You pick different paths depending on your race and the character creation-options, as well as which order you join and some special story-decisions. But that only applies for the Personal Story (the Lion's Arch, fighting the undead story-arc). 

Yet you are not forced to replay that story again. GW2 is designed so you can freely decide the content you want to play. If a character is level 80, you can jump right into any of the expansions or Living World. You are not required to play any of the pieces in chronological order. The Expansions are written in a way, where they barely break the immersion if you play them out of order.

There is however one important thing I have to remind you of:
If you decide to skip the personal story, avoid using the level 80 character booster from the gemstore. By using this item you skip the entire leveling process and miss the opportunity to get used to your character. There is a significant difficulty spike between the core game and Expansions/Living World. This applies for both new players and returners. You need a proper understanding of your character and its capabilities, else you spend most of the time sprinkeling the lawn.

1 hour ago, Wandering Minstrel.7645 said:

4) I enjoy crafting, but I'm not interested in entering markets that are flooded and offer no opportunities for making currency. Is the market so saturated that there's no real point to a new character taking up crafting, or are there still good opportunities to make some coin crafting? In most MMOs, this comes down to consumables as gear is usually best obtained elsewhere. What's the story here?

Especially the entry-levels of crafting are of no interest. That applies for gear-crafting. With the current expansion going on, ware are in a weird situation where food crafting beyond a certain stage actually becomes profitable. 

In addition, the Jewelcrafter, a dead-end crafter we had since launch turned out to be THE craft profession of End of Dragons. With plenty of unique recipes and crafts that sell for a good price. 

Then there is level 80 gear crafting, which can be a decent option in many situations. Nowadays you can purchase almost every gear from the market, but certain stat-combinations are extremely expensive. Crafting them on your own is often a lot cheaper. 

Certain professions have unique recipes which are used across multiple aspects of the game. Which means there is a constant demand. So you can make money with these for sure.

Last but not least, there is ascended crafting for armor and weapon-disciplines of level 500. This kind of gear has the highest possible stats in the game, can be freely exchanged between characters. In addition the stats of this gear can be freely changed with very low costs.

tl&dr; Crafting is definitely a thing in GW2. There are options to make money and there are several options to benefit from the crafting on a personal level. 

Edited March 15, 2022 by HnRkLnXqZ.1870

[Wandering Minstrel.7645]

@HnRkLnXqZ.1870, thank you so much for the extremely informative answer! It was very helpful.

We are going to make new accounts and buy the Ultimate edition, probably skip the personal story but level up all the way in order to get to know the systems, etc. 

Looks like the community here is as good as I remember it. Many thanks, friend.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

If you left at/after Path of Fire release, you would probably not need to purchase Living World Season Two or Season Three.  Check your Story Journal before making any purchases.

The Wiki (link above) is a great resource for all things Guild Wars 2 and may answer many of your future questions.

Welcome return and good luck.

[Goettel.4389]

@HnRkLnXqZ's answer is spot on. Just as small addition: you can buy gems with gold earned in the game, so that 160 gems needed to get all the living story would be a nice goal to set, and a pretty easy one to achieve.

Welcome back and have fun!

[Veprovina.4876]

16 hours ago, Wandering Minstrel.7645 said:

3) Is it possible to start new characters in a different area to minimize repeating old content, or are we required to start with the Centaur invasion and live out of Lion's Arch, and other places like that which I still recall vaguely? Any way to vary up the experience a bit?

You can go to any starting zone from the get go, after you finished the tutorial which is based on your race. After that, you're free to level in any races starting zone and go explore from there, doing hearts and stuff. All the starting waypoints are always unlocked.

 

So you can vary your leveling experience that way. If you start as Humans, you're always gonna have that Centaur invasion tutorial, but after that, you don't have to level in Queensdale. Go to Maguuma, level in the Asura or Sylvari starting areas, or Ascalon where Charr are, go to Norn Shiverpeaks. The world is your oyster. 🙂 

 

But the personal story will always take you first part to your chosen race/background story parts, then they all coalesce into picking an order you wanna work with, then gets pretty linear from there. So you can pick a different order, and get different story instances. There's quite a lot of paths to choose, not that they make any difference to the story, but they do offer variety in leveling, as you do story missions.

 

I finished the story about 2-3 times myself, and still haven't seen all the paths available. It's not much, but it's different. Couple that with leveling in a zone that you didn't start in, and you got yourself a fresh new leveling experience!

 

As for making Lion's Arch your base of operations, there's several to choose from if you don't mind buyng gems:

Lounge - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W)

 

Each one of theese has the basic necesities, neatly spread close for your convenience, and some even have specialist vendors.

 

The best "value" for PvE is Mistlock Sanctuary, and Armistice Bastion for WvW, but both have the exact same basic ameneties, except they have added vendors. So you can buy Armistice Bastion if you like it and play PvE, it's not locked into a game mode.

 

Mistlock Sanctuary is unique cause it has Fractal vendors and direct access to fractals without having to go to Lion's Arch. Also, Mistlock Sanctuary has that ball game that's a mechanic in certain fractals, special skill that will launch you around at the target area and you can glide upwards.

 

Armistice Bastion has WvW vendors, training Golems (that work on WvW balance), unique skill that teleports you to different sections instantaniously, and it will display a Team chat from WvW. Pressing M in it will also pull up the WvW map, so you can see who owns what etc.

 

Both Armistice Bastion and Mistlock Sanctuary have the ability to return you to the place you came from directly. That's why i singled them out. It's important because otherwise you need to teleport to a city, and waypoint from there. And i'm not sure all the lounges have the ability to teleport you directly to where you were, i might be wrong, but it's a useful feature to have, so check which ones can do it on the wiki.

 

They're not on sale all the time, so you'll have to wait for the rotation to come to the Gem Store, but buying a lounge is very convenient, plus gets you a fun new place to hang out at. There's also fun stuff you can do in each, Armistice bastion has Golems and you can fight other players, and if you jump in the mystic forge, it'll turn you into one of the WvW items. You can even be a catmander! 😛 Mistlock has that game and movement abilities i mentioned.

 

So if you're tired of Lion's Arch, you don't really have to be there.

 

There's also a few areas available at lvl 80 that can be considered lounges, but those are kind of spoilers, won't do you any good before max level and need to be upgraded heavily to have even crafting stations. But lounges are better if you're after that convenience factor. And of course, any race's city has all the crafting stations and most vendors, as well as your home instance, so you can do your business there as well. They're kinda big and clunky to get around in though.

16 hours ago, Wandering Minstrel.7645 said:

4) I enjoy crafting, but I'm not interested in entering markets that are flooded and offer no opportunities for making currency. Is the market so saturated that there's no real point to a new character taking up crafting, or are there still good opportunities to make some coin crafting? In most MMOs, this comes down to consumables as gear is usually best obtained elsewhere. What's the story here?

Crafting is not "just" for selling stuff. I mean, sure, you can craft certain things, but most lucrative and really only worthwile stuff to make is "specialist items". And you'll only have access to those recipes when you obtain them and have lvl 400 or 500 in that profession. So don't worry about making coin while crafting while leveling because you won't be able to make anything worthwhile until you max it anyway. 

 

It's worth it to max your crafting disciplines, like, 90% of stuff in this game has to be crafted, and if you want legendaries, you'll require lvl 500 crafting disciplines. So definitely level crafting (perferably with guides to not waste more gold that you need to), but don't stress about it when leveling, it's kind of an endgame experience. 

 

So yeah, crafting is extremely useful, and some stuff you can only get by crafting, but there's no money making opportunities until you max it, and max your character level. Plus, you'll often need several disciplines, so that means either alt characters (cause each can only have 2 by default), or buying gemstore crafting licences to increase how many crafting disciplines your main character has (this can go up to 4 i think). 

 

I reeaaallly wouldn't stress about crafting until you're in the endgame and have found useful crafting recipes that sell well on TP.

And if gold is a concern, you know you can just buy gold with gems directly right? It's an option.

 

Here's a handy site to calculate the gem/gold conversion, and how much $ that is. So you can decide, do you want to grind hours maybe days to get that amount, or maybe just skip it and get gems.

 

Currencies - Gems - gw2efficiency

 

Also, welcome back to Tyria, and good luck on your journey!

[Kaltyn of Torbins Deep.294]

Before you buy the expansions or the ultimate bundle, play the free version.  You've got to get from 0 to 80 anyway, so why not do it for free.  You might find that you want to go back to your previous accounts.  While there is a lot of content 0-80, there are a lot of people that feel the game really doesn't begin until after you hit 80.  Just a thought to keep your options open.