Newbie and just hit lvl 80.

[Ted.2156]

Hello, I just started playing a couple weeks back and just hit 80 and just about to blow up the bone ship in the story .  I have a few questions I was curious about. 

 

What is the ideal order to do the story in to get the most coherent flowing story line? 

 

Will I need to buy each expansion separately or can they be purchased as a bundle?  

 

Are there any must have gem shop items I should look into possibly purchasing? 

 

 

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

From the Wiki (link above):  https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Story_Journal

From the buy.guildwars2.com website:  https://buy.guildwars2.com/en-us/collection?tab=0

You might consider becoming more familiar with the game before purchasing items from the Gem Store.

 

Welcome to Tyria, and good luck. 

[TonySu.7942]

Yes, after the core story this is the order:

1- Living Story Season 1.

2- Living Story Season 2.

3- Heart of Thorns Story - Expansion

4- Living Story Season 3.

5- Path of Fire story- Expansion

6- Living Story Season 4.

7- Ice Brood Saga Story

8- End of Dragons Story. Expansion

- If you are on Steam you can buy the whole bundle at around $100 which is all 3 expansions plus all the living stories, which is quite a lot of content, and the complete package.

- On the GW2 buy web site on the post above, you can 1. buy all 3 expansions as a bundle and 2. in the gem store, you can get the Living Story Season 2,3 and 4 and the Icebrood Saga.  The Season 1 is free.

 

Edited September 27, 2022 by TonySu.7942

[Embered.5089]

You should play the story in the order that it's in your story journal to get the most coherent story. The exceptions include Living World Season 1. Currently, it's being remade. Originally, it was made to be played in real time, so the remake is merely a playable summary. It does hit on some big points, but many small details are missing. There's also the Scarlet's War "movie" cutscene, which was originally made to be a video recap of Living World Season 1 for the players who didn't get to play it in real time. Now that the season is being remade, Scarlet's War episode is the last one in the story journal. It hasn't changed except for its position in the story journal panel, and might be good to watch after playing through all of Living World Season 1, once the last episode of it is remade. It'll be out soon, but play through your personal story slowly xD Besides for Living World Season 1, everything's already in order in your story panel.

There are expansion bundles. See the store for them. Heart of Thorns will always come free with Path of Fire. Sometimes, there are discounts.

The expansions do NOT include the Living World seasons. These are episodes in between expansions. ArenaNet said that they might do something about this later, but for now, you have to purchase all of the in-between-expansion episodes with gems. Living World Season 1 is the only season that's free. Gems can be "bought" with in-game gold, so technically, you can still get the episodes "for free". There's a gemstore item bundle for getting all in-between episodes at once.

As for other gemstore items, they're all optional and won't majorly affect your gameplay. However, once you're familiar with the game, I'd recommend the Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic. It acts like an unlimited Basic Salvage Kit. These should be used to salvage all unwanted gray(junk)/white(common)/blue(fine)/green(masterwork) gear. Anything higher tier should be salvaged with its corresponding salvage kit, easily matched by color of name (yellow/orange/reddish pink). For yellows (rares), Master Salvage Kits work if you cannot make Mystic Salvage Kits yet. For exotics (orange), use Master or Mystic, or Black Lion ONLY if you get them for free. Do NOT buy Black Lion Salvage Kits. They're exotic (orange) tier, but incredibly expensive and not worth buying. If you don't have them, just use Master/Mystic (yellow). For ascended (reddish pink), use Ascended Salvage Tools/Kits, purchasable in the Fractal lobby. This was a side rant; the only gemstore item in this paragraph is the Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic.

Other gemstore items that you may consider are teleports (world bosses, zone teleports, recharging teleport to friend), VIP passes (pick only one), unbreakable harvesting tools (per character but can be swapped around with shared inventory slots), shared inventory slots, bank slots, and bag slots (per character).

Good luck and have fun!

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

lots of good advice....

one littel add on for the VIP passes:

1) Armistice Bastion is great for the WvW NPCs and a few test golems... perfect for WvWvWers (basically your large scale 3 way server battles.)

2) Mistic Sanctuary is great for Fractal NPC's, and for returning to previous map when you're done. (basically your 5-person dungeeon crawl ladder, 100 levels).

3) all the other VIP passes lack both WvW and Fractal NPCs, so if you don't want the special funstionally unique to the first two passes i mentioned, then any will do, which leaves the choice to scenery if that matters to you.

[Embered.5089]

2 minutes ago, Forgotten Legend.9281 said:

lots of good advice....

one littel add on for the VIP passes:

1) Armistice Bastion is great for the WvW NPCs and a few test golems... perfect for WvWvWers (basically your large scale 3 way server battles.)

2) Mistic Sanctuary is great for Fractal NPC's, and for returning to previous map when you're done. (basically your 5-person dungeeon crawl ladder, 100 levels).

3) all the other VIP passes lack both WvW and Fractal NPCs, so if you don't want the special funstionally unique to the first two passes i mentioned, then any will do, which leaves the choice to scenery if that matters to you.

I think that the Royal Terrace Pass is the best due to efficiency of space. All crafting tables are near-immediately next to each other, and the whole space is small and thus everything is near everything. It's also in the same map as Divinity's Reach, which is the most active racial city. Scenery is not the only difference, though in the end, it's all preference.

[Maltyrius.2961]

For early gem items I’d recommend:

 

1. World boss teleporter 

2 A salvage-o-matic ( lots written about the optimal one to choose - can’t say I have that worked out to nth decimal - I use the runic one)

[The Boz.2038]

The boss teleporter is meh and expensive. The copper-fed salvage-o-matic is absolute top tier #1 best investment early on. Followed by the much pricier glyphed-out permanent gathering tools. For passes, Mistlock is objectively, provably the best, and features the most unique crowd.

[squeegee.4320]

Others already posted the correct story order and how to buy it. All you need from the gem store is the Copper Fed Salvage-o-Matic and more character slots.

[Ted.2156]

Thank you everyone for the assistance and information.  I'm not rushing my play through so will look into buying the stories as I get to them at this time.

[stormemperor.3745]

12 hours ago, Ted.2156 said:

Hello, I just started playing a couple weeks back and just hit 80 and just about to blow up the bone ship in the story .  I have a few questions I was curious about. 

 

What is the ideal order to do the story in to get the most coherent flowing story line? 

 

Will I need to buy each expansion separately or can they be purchased as a bundle?  

 

Are there any must have gem shop items I should look into possibly purchasing? 

 

 

Discounted bundle might be available starting next month.

 

For gemstore stuff. You can't go wrong with these; Wait for discount

1- Character Slot

2- Copper fed (best qol)

3- Snowflake gobbler (extremely useful if you ever get into wvw)

4- Shared inventory 3-5x (unnecassary now but useful in long term)

5- Infinite Tools - Kinda luxury. You won't be gathering 24/7. Consider it as qol. Also you need 3x shared inventory slots if you want to use it on different characters.

6- Anything else luxury not quite worth for new players.

[phaserBanks.7386]

If you're really into the story elements of the game like some suggested it would be best to go through the expansions in order. Without giving much away, there is a very dramatic ending in one of those that is most impactful if you follow the story in linear fashion. There are those who don't care for the story at all and just play to max out in all the achievements so the order doesn't matter. The game itself can be enjoyed any way you play it so have fun.

[casualkenny.9817]

I think no one has mentioned it yet.

 

There's something that sounds like "storage expander". What it does is increase the max stack size in your materials storage ONLY, by 250 per expander .

 

Do note that this does not affect stack size anywhere else except in the materials storage, thee place where all your mats go to when you click "deposit". 

 

Buying 1x expander can help with inventory management (ie each material can be stored up to 500 before you can't deposit anymore of that), so that you won't suddenly hit a max stack in your storage halfway through doing most content. 

 

It is less useful to ppl who liquidate their mats often, though, so it depends on your gaming style