Some questions regarding Items, Trading and PvP

I'm a WoW veteran who has quit and recently joined Guild Wars. So far I am really anjoying it. I bought factions because of what I read about the PvP aspects of it. I'm currently leveling up a Ranger/Necromancer (11) and will be looking for a guild shortly, but here are my questions for now.

1) What "colour" are the best/worst items?

So far I have looted White, Light Blue and Purple. The Blue and Purple were labled as "unidentified" and when I identified them, they were given attributes. At this point I suppose I have to use my common sence to determine if something is valuable enough to sell. Which brings me to my next question.

2) What is the best way to sell an item?

Is there any kind of auction house system like in wow and swg or do I just stand in a public area and advertise? And if this is the case...

3) Is there any way I can show an item to other people or do I have to list the stats?

For example, I currently have a "Serpent Axe of Shelter" (purple) 5-13 slashing damage (requires 5 axe mastery) damage +14% (while health is above 50%) Armor +6 (vs physical attacks) value 22g

Typing all of the seems like a like a lot of work.

4) PvP. Should I wait until lvl 20 before I start looking to pvp?

While I do have many other questions regarding pvp, I won't bother you all with them at this point. I'll save them for a rainy day

Finally, I must say that I'm really impressed with the GW community. From what I have seen so far it is much much better than wow. I'm glad I have ended up playing GW

-Seven Deadly Shots

1: From crap to good: White, Blue, Purple, Gold / Green.

2: Spam it in busy towns in the trade chat, OR use the auction system on this website

3: Open a trade window with him, put it in and submit, jus't dont hit accept

4: Get lvl 20 first, play it a lot. You will REALLY need to practice.

Cool, Thankyou

So what do you think is a good way to develop my PvP skills? PvP is what i am interested in, I rolled a PvE character so i could learn my profession and get some better gear.

Is it just a case of joining a guild and doing some PvP with them, or is there some kind of free for all PvP area? I've heard of something called Battle isles, is that what this is?

Thanks

-Seven Deadly Shots

only one correction to Aera

greens range from blue to gold quality, the majority being in the gold range


Just play though the full PvE game first...pick Factions if you are in a hurry and acutally do the guide/missions/quests till you get the hange of it. By the time your ready for the battle isle you'll be able to find it.

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Battle_Isles

read up

You'll start in Random arenas which is where the server groups you with 3 random players. After getting 5 consecutive wins in random arena you'll unlock team arenas which is where you get to select your team mates. Which is slightly more challenging since the quality of teams your facing is much better. Same as with Random after you get 5 consecutive wins you'll unlock Heros Ascent which is thee daddy of pvp on the battle isles.

http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Heroes%..._%28Mission%29

I think there's an arena in shing jea but i think you need to be under level 10 to get in...

I prophecies there was an arena with max lvl 15 as well. Not sure about factions. There are plenty of areas where you can get in without having a guild. You can use Random Arenas (RA) which is 4v4 in random teams, Team Arenas(TA) which is 4v4 in self-chosen teams, and finally Heroes Ascent(HA) which is 8v8 with self-chosen teams. Guild versus Guild(GvG) is also 8v8 in self-chosen teams, but is majorly different from HA because: GvG features a penalty for losing and a reward for winning. HA only has the reward for winning. Therefore you'll see a lot of so called 'gimmick' teams in HA. I consider GvG the most entertaining form of PvP and many others with me. HA can be quite good at times, but it suffers from 'rank discrimination' (you'll notice) and TOO MUCH gimmick teams.
I congratulate you with your convert to GW. Keep in mind the game doesn't end at lvl 20. It STARTS at lvl 20. That's a mistake WoW-converts tend to make, which is a shame because GW is such a great game.

1) White are common items, blue are magical, purple are uncommon, gold are rare, and Greens are unique. There isn't a market for whites, blues, and purples. But some mods on them (Bowstrings) can be expert salvaged from the blues & purples that you can make a few gold from, otherwise, they're merchant food. Most people are looking for max damage weapons, so if somethings's not max it's best to save your time and sell it to the merchant. Check out the price Ventari's sell forum here to get get an idea about what items are worth

2) No auction house in game, but there's one here.

3) When advertising, listing the stats is something you need to do, but you can shorten up the description a bit: Turn "Serpent Axe of Shelter" (purple) 5-13 slashing damage (requires 5 axe mastery) damage +14% (while health is above 50%) Armor +6 (vs physical attacks) value 22g" into "Purple Serp. Axe of Shelter, Dam 5-13 (req 5 axe) damage 15^50, Armor +6 vs phys."

4) No, you don't have to wait to level 20 to play PvP, you can create a level 20 PvP player right off the bat. But, you won't have much in the way of skills, runes, and weapons upgrades to choose from. Unlocking skills, runes, and weapons mods (making them available for PvP character creation) can be done through PvE or through trading Balthazar faction gained in PvP for unlocking them. Most would advise unlocking things through PvE until you've got enough stuff open to make a viable PvP character. There's an Arena in Yaks Bend (Prophecies) for level 11-15 PvE characters, where you can get a good feel for it.

There is also a PvP arena in Ascalon. I was playing there for the first time yesterday!

White means its basic, not magic in any way.
Blue means it's a common magic weapon, usually being highly salvageable or precious, or a +dmg mod. Grips/hilts/bow strings/whatever sometimes show up, but more then not they don't.
Purple is just like blue except that it's uncommon and will be better.
Gold means it's rare, and it's the most valuable color. More often than not they will have at least one hilt/grip/string/whatever.
Green just means it's unique, so it only drops from a specific boss, and has fixed stats. All prophecies greens have max stats, and most canthan ones do too, but there are some canthan ones that have half/min stats.

It is important never to compare the value of a gold item to a green item. Although a green item is max, it is much more common, cannot be dyed, cannot be modded, salvaged, and many more things. Read some stickies in the price check forum for a more in-depth guide.

There are no auction places on GW, so just use the one on GW Guru. It saves forever spamming WTS... Just a tip if you're selling on GW Guru - Add the thread to you favourites. It saves you having to go through all the pages looking for your thread.

Abbreviate as much as you can. Most people will know what you mean. If they dont then they usually won't be able to afford it .

You can make a PvP character, which starts at level 20. This may not be a good idea because you might want to get experience and skills in a PvE character first.

Just beware; sometimes Ascalon and Yak's arenas can be fun when it's a fair fight. But like in WoW--hubby plays it, so I hear these things--you have totally twinked-out characters. These are folks who get "run," have elite skills, max armor and weapons, rub it in your face when you die, tell you you're a noob, and brag that they are good and you are bad.

Axe to grind? Ya, I suppose I do, after all this time. Lower-level arenas give you a feel, but since it is most times like I describe above, I'd advise you to go into them just to add some % to your uncovered map for "cartography" title... and wait for level 20 arena to really have fun.

Thanks for the replies everyone

I'm taking your advice and lvling to 20 before getting into PvP. Looks like it shouldn't take too long which is nice, unlike WoW. I've gotten to lvl 13 in good time with little effort

Thanks to Nestaron for inftoducing me to http://gw.gamewikis.org. It's a great source of information and has answered a lot of my questions about the specifics of PvP

I have a couple of more questions about items...

1) Are there specific items that "bind" to your character. As in, once you loot the item or equip it, then you can no longer sell/transfer it to another character?

2) Is there any kind of mail system in game?

3) What do people mean when they refer to max damage? I saw someone on the trade forum say that an item wasn't worth much because it wasn't max damage.

-Seven Deadly Shots

1) Only items you intentionaly customize at a Weaponsmith(costs 10g) to get +20% unconditional damage on(can't be equiped by another charactar, but can be traded and salvaged, can't be salavaged if it's a collector item though, or a green, but only because all collectors/greens can't be salvaged). That, and items created on a PvP only charactar(can't be traded/salvaged or equiped by another charactar).

2) No. The closest thing to send in-game messages over delay to real players would be the guild announcment feature, which is only usable by Officers and the Leader of said guild. For transfering items and gold among charactars, you can just use the Storage, as it's global between charactars.

3) As you likely already know, there is no 'uberloot' in terms of stats in GuildWars. Swords are capped at being 15-22 damage, axes are capped at 6-28 damage, and so on. The same way that +% damage modifiers are capped, such as "+% above 50% life" can't go higher than +15% damage, and "+% below 50% life" can't go higher than +20% damage.

Basically, don't expect any item to go outside of the maximum minumum, or the maximum maximum damage for its type.

If you choose to customize your weapon (which will give your weapon +20% damage), only that character can use that weapon. It can be sold, however, no one else will be able to use it. Also, armor is customized for each character.
People will usually only buy max damage weapons.
Swords 15-22
Axes 6-28
Hammers 19-35
Bows 15-28
Staves/Rods 11-22
Foci +12 Energy
And, with the introduction of Nightfall, the 3rd addition to the GW series,
Spears 14-27
Scythes 9-41

Good luck.

That's brilliant, thanks Zui and Shadowfox1125 (and anyone else who replies while I type this). I didn't realise that all weapons were capped like that, I like it

I think I know everything that I need to know for now, thanks everyone for all the replies

-Seven Deadly Shots

One thing to remeber about selling stuff in GW - max stat items are easily and cheaply attainable from weapon crafters. You pay for rarity of skin/color. As far as effecticve goes, there is no difference in a crafter weapon (5k for max) plus its mods than a perfect gold ultra rare skin weapon with the same mods. Of course, some mods are quite expensive, though less than perfect ones are quite cheap (and the difference between a +29hp and +30hp hilt may be 50 times the cost simple because they both drop quite frequently but only one has any market value)

Add in that PvP characters get to choose thier exact items and they are from unlocks (easy to unlock max mods with faction) there is little PvP reason to hunt for them.