Haven't played since Vanilla, overwhelmed.

[DaddyBoJangles.6012]

Returning from this game since Vanilla. Did a few seasons of Living World before I left. Made a Legendary Item and ran some Fractals but thats about it. Just curious as a returning player is there anything to do in the Vanilla version of the game before I move onto the expansion content? 

[Cuks.8241]

You can safely move to expansions unless you want to refresh story. 

[ASP.8093]

Story progression:

The Season 2 Living World story bridges into the Heart of Thorns story very nicely, but isn't mandatory in terms of any gear or character abilities.

(The full progression is: Core Tyria > Season 1 (originally designed as open-world stuff, only partly replayable at the moment) > Season 2 > HoT > Season 3 > PoF > Season 4 > Icebrood Season > EoD. Basically just follow the story order in your story tab.)

Expect a bit of a difficulty spike as you hit HoT, it's often considered some of the hardest parts of the game.

Also, if map completion in HoT / Season 3 is proving too time-consuming, set it aside and come back after you've got some mounts from PoF/S4.

 

Elite specializations:

Your characters with substantial map completion will probably already have a bunch of spare Hero Points you can plow into unlocking elite specs. If not, the expansions give 10 points per hero point instead of 1, so feel free to just move forward.

Do not feel obligated to unlock your elite specializations in their release order. You've got a Guardian and Firebrand sounds cooler than Dragonhunter to you? Go open up Firebrand first!

(You can use the PvP Lobby to "test out" the elite specs real quick before committing your points to them, if you don't know what you want.)

 

Swag:

Makes sure you go through all your characters and open any birthday presents that are sitting around, you can get a lot of premium dyes from that (account-bound, so you can't sell them, but you can unlock hundreds of gold worth of nice dyes).

Also, since you did Fractals it the past: there was a big Infusion rework. Some of your characters may have +5 stat infusions (those are the ones that say "+5 [stat], +[5/7/9] Agony Resistance") in various armor slots. Those are now quite valuable. I won't go through all the nitty-gritty of how to upgrade them to best-in-slot +5/+9 infusions here, but just make a point not to trash them for now, okay?

Also, if you need to update your gear, note that any ascended weapons or armor you have can be stat-changed using a fairly inexpensive Mystic Forge recipe.

Edited May 9, 2022 by ASP.8093

[DaddyBoJangles.6012]

Thank you! I appreciate all of the information