The War of the Dragon VI

I finally took a character past level thirty today. I’ve had a bad case of alt-itice and I’ve managed to level three or four different classes to level thirty or thereabout. As such I’ve managed to make sure I’ve delved quite a bit into each different crafting profession and about half the classes. Here then are my tips for playing Guild Wars 2:

Yes, I admit that picture was cool enough to make me want to make a Mesmer

Oh the places you'll go...

1. When crafting always use discovery. If at all possible use the crafting list as little as possible. By which I mean to say, if you have weaponsmithing, only use the crafting list to make ore into bars and change bars into crafting materials for weapons, and do not make any weapons. Not only does making weapons usually take a blue rare piece, the weapon you do make, is usually garbage.
2. Even if you have a case of alt-itice like I do, make sure to do the quests in each races starting area. Not only will that enable you to pick and choose quests, it will mean that you are likely to have much more materials for your two crafting classes. It will make leveling a lot simpler and easier, and what is more, efficient since you’re not searching every nook and cranny for some experience. Five starting areas translates to anywhere from level 15 – 20 or thereabout.
3. Tip #2 translates to later leveling guides, as well. Before you do anything make sure to travel to your races capital city and then to the Lion’s Arch Asura gate. From there you can take a gate to any of the other races Capital Cities. Which means you have just opened up waypoints to every conceivable leveling area from 1-30.
4. Which translates well to the next tip, don’t become set into one leveling path. Not only are there different ways to get from level 1 – 80 on the PVE side, there are different ways to PVP. If there is one thing that Guild Wars 2, excels at its giving you experience. You get experience for exploring, for completion, daily events, monthly events, for reviving people and NPC’s, for crafting, and just about everything else you can think of.
5. Plan, and if you don’t know, ask. The Guild Wars 2 community is enormously helpful; this won’t be the first time you hear this and it won’t be the last. I don’t know if there’s something in the water but people will help you if you ask. I’ve seen people in a zone get together to kill a zone boss, I’ve seen people ask easy questions and hard questions and get answers for them both. I can’t say it enough, plan how you want your character to develop and then follow that plan, it’s easy to see how simple things are in Guild Wars 2 and think, it’s going to be a cake walk, it’s not. Not only aren’t there the normal advantages of over leveling because of dynamic leveling, Guild Wars 2 developers are proud of how hard parts of the game are, so don’t expect that to change in the near future, if at all.
6. Work with others. I am a soloer, always will be always have been, but Guild Wars 2 allows you to move along with a single person or a group and gain the same level of experience you would have without any of the irritations of parties. Etiquette says you should wait to leave until the quest chain is over but there’s no rule set in stone. When all else fails follow the Guild Wars 2 Golden Rule: ‘Do to others what you would have them do to you’.