Level 80 help needed - can I skip to an expansion without getting spoilers?

[CountZero.2586]

Hi everyone,

So I'll start by saying that I play GW2 mainly for the story, which is one of the best from any game I've played.

Now I've just reached Level 80 and am halfway through my level 80 Personal Story. But now I've hit a roadblock.

So I've been playing on the main Tyria map and my experience bar has gotten full. As far as I can work out, I can now transfer this bar to Mastery Points. HOWEVER I can't start training Masteries unless I play one of the expansions.

Now I understand the expansions are supposed to be a couple of seasons ahead of the initial Personal Story. Won't I be hitting spoilers if I go straight to them? And if I dont play the expansion, what happens to my full experience bar? Can I transfer it off to something without starting one of the expansions?

Any help would be much appreciated!

[BunjiKugashira.9754]

Entering any of the expansion areas to unlock the Mastery System requires playing the first story instance of that expansion. There is no way around minor spoilers. The only upside to your situation is, that these initial story instances usually don't give too much information about what's going on. They only show you the problems you're facing in that expansion without hinting at a possible solution. If you really want to avoid spoilers, ask a friend to form a party with you and complete the story for you, while you cover your eyes and ears. ;) You can switch back to your personal story at any time.

Without the Mastery System you won't be able to use your exp. Any exp gained at that point vanishes into a void. The same is true if you have the Mastery System unlocked, but don't have enough Mastery Points. After you have all Masteries, your exp will be turned into a spirit shard once the bar is full. So in a sense your exp is no longer wasted, but gets turned into something that has almost no value.

[Steve The Cynic.3217]

That's not exactly correct. Spirit Shards have a very specific set of uses, and if you are pursuing the things they are useful for (mostly Legendary gear), they are essential, but there are other sources that give them more easily than filling an XP bar. (Example: doing your daily mission trio gives you three SSes AND two gold, but is in no way sufficient for filling an XP bar.)

If you aren't interested in what SSes are good for, however, they are of NO value at all.

[SlippyCheeze.5483]

@"Steve The Cynic.3217" said:If you aren't interested in what SSes are good for, however, they are of NO value at all.

Not quite true: they can be used to create money, in a clicking-intensive process using the magic forge. The profit comes from the fact that this is annoyingly click-heavy, though, be warned. https://gw2efficiency.com/currencies/spirit-shards gives you the details based on current market prices. (Don't forget your real world profit will likely be lower than indicated...)

@"CountZero.2586" said:So I'll start by saying that I play GW2 mainly for the story, which is one of the best from any game I've played.Now I've just reached Level 80 and am halfway through my level 80 Personal Story. But now I've hit a roadblock.

So I've been playing on the main Tyria map and my experience bar has gotten full. As far as I can work out, I can now transfer this bar to Mastery Points. HOWEVER I can't start training Masteries unless I play one of the expansions.

I'd strongly suggest you simply ignore that, and complete the story first. While there is some small "loss of value" in the XP that isn't being spent on masteries, they are sufficiently easy to fill during normal play that you will not really lose anything of significant value.

You absolutely would get spoilers in starting the HoT or PoF story to unlock masteries. I advise that you just ignore the XP bar at this stage. (...or think of it like any other game, eg WoW, where you have hit max level, and all the XP just ... goes away, doing nothing.)

[Urud.4925]

I don't know if there's some confusion, but, you can train your new masteries (belonging to HoT and PoF) only if you play on those maps. If you still want to play in Central Tyria (and the personal story belongs to this area) you won't train the HoT/PoF masteries anyway. To train another mastery, you must assign your red mastery points. If you can't, because you don't have them enough, you should find a way to collect them. But in Central Tyria, not in HoT/PoF. They have different mastery points.

Sorry if you already knew it, it was just to avoid any confusion. If you are already lv 80, completing the personal story wouldn't take much (a couple of days maybe). Just complete it without worrying about exp bar and mastery points. You'll get a lot of exp in the new areas and few days of delay really don't mean anything.

[STIHL.2489]

Don't worry about fill the EXP bar post 80th, you will get a Spirit Shard for it, and just keep on going with it.

Finish your story at your own pace, there is no rush to run off to any expansion.

If you missed LW1, don't forget to stop off in Lions Arch, to collect your reward and watch the cut scene.