Some more beginner questions

I looked through the manual and still have the following questions:

1)When I installed GW GOTY, the sub-title was Eye of the North. I was installing GOTY so that's Prophecies, right? It looked like I was installing Eye of the North, but I'm guessing the installation screen was advertising the newest add-on – Eye of the North?

2)How does the monetary system work? In WoW, the smallest unit is copper. Above that is silver and then gold.

3)I was reading about attribute points in the manual. If I increase marksmanship from 1 to 3, is that effective immediately? So my marksmanship is better as soon as I increase it to 3 or do I have to talk to a trainer or someone before the change will take effect? This concept is different from what I'm used to so I want to be sure I'm doing it right.

4)I was reading about skill points in the manual, but where do I see how many skill points I have so I'll know when I can learn a new skill?

5)The only heal target skill I've found is for monks. Suppose I want to be a warrior / ranger. Is there a heal target skill I can learn? I think I would need it to heal my pet. I suppose I would learn it from a ranger trainer, right?

6)Will I be able to upgrade to bigger pets as I reach higher levels?

7)Are there rideable mounts in GW so eventually I would be able to ride my pet as in WoW?

8)Are there flying mounts in GW as in WoW?

Thanks a lot.

1. The first screen you see when you start up is (as far as I know) always going to be the latest campaign/expansion. Regardless if you have it already or not.

2. Smallest unit is gold, 1000 gold = 1 platinum.

3. When you add your attributes they'll go into effect immediately. If you're unhappy with your attributes, you can change them in towns.

4. You will gain skill points by leveling or by completing the bonus objectives in missions. You will gain extra skills through either quests or by buying them from trainers.

5. All classes have a form of a self heal. Warriors: Healing Signet, Lion's Comfort; Rangers: Troll Unguent, Heal as One, Companionship; Elementalists: Aura of Restoration, Glyph of Restoration, Ether Renewal; Necromancer: Life Steal skills; Mesmer: Ether Feast; Monks have a whole line dedicated to healing.

6. Yes, you can talk to an npc that will take your pet away from you so that you can capture a new one. Every pet is pretty much the same.

7. There are no mounts in GW. (unless you count the junudu worms in Nightfall)

8. There are no mounts in GW. (unless you count the junudu worms in Nightfall)

Here's another great source for information: http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Main_Page

If you have more questions or need help, you can message me in-game.

EDIT: FIRST =D

Just to clarify, monks and ritualists (a factions profession) are the only professions that can heal other party members and allies. Also, press H to open up your "hero panel". From there you can see how many skill points you have. It's right above the experience bar on the righthand side.

1)I don't understand

2)1000 gold = 1 platinum

3)It changes as soon as you allocate the points. You can also change the points around as much as you like for free.

4)Press "h" and next to your experience bar there should be a number.

5)Ranger have specific skills to heal their pets. Look up Beast Mastery skills on GuildWiki

6)A pet will level up with you and depending on how you raise him he will evolve in different ways. But since you are new to GW, don't worry about this at the moment. You can change pet at any time, simple bring your current one to a Pet Tamer

7)No mounts, the closest thing you will find is the Junundu Worm in the Desolation (an area in Nightfall)

8)As I said, no mounts in GW. We have Map travel (which is much better in my opinion).

6) Your pet will level up as it gains experience, and it will also get larger. There are other pets that you can tame later in game (after getting rid of current pet ) but most of them start at a low level.

First of all, welcome to GW.

1)I believe the intro screen and title are basically for the newest chapter/expansion. Remember you are using the server to play the game, not your computer, so all character information and items are saved on the server. I think...

2) Smallest is 1g (gold), next is 1p (platinum, 1p = 1000g.) As you get into trading higher amounts, as in over 100p, you have to trade in items like ectoplasm (get into that when you get there)

3) When you put up the attribute points, it becomes immediately effective (check out the damage amounts on skills as you increase attribute points) By the way, hit the purge button on your head to forget about how other MMORPGs operate, this game is much different in many ways.

4) In regards to skills, if you are in the beginner area in Prophecies, there is a very limited amount of skills you can learn before going to "Post-searing" You will get access to many more skills in post-searing. OOH you were talking about skill points. Sorry, you get skill points for doing certain quests and for leveling up. You also get skill points for completing cooperative missions in post-searing. Unless you buy all skills that you possible can, you only have to worry about skill points early on, soon you will have plenty of skill points available to operate easily (unless you are going for Skill Hunter title - dont worry about that now.)

5) I believe you can have access to Troll Urugent in pre-searing as a ranger primary (Self heal regeneration), and warrior has Heal Signet as a self heal. Try to find all the trainers that are available and get free skills (Free skills dont cost you a skill point). Explore all of pre-searing and do all side quests for experience. When you go to post-searing you will be given side quests that gives free skills, take advantage of this and get the free skills. Only buy skills that you NEED. Skills get very expensive if you buy lots. So when you get out of presering, dont go on a sending spree on skills, you can probably get them for free with certain quests.

In regards to healing your pet, use Comfort Pet to heal him. That skill resurrects him and heals him when hes alive. Dont worry about him dying, just res him back.

6) Pets grow as they level up, however you will have access to different looking pets. In presearing you can have Moa bird, Melandru stalker, Wart hog, Wolf, and Bear (dont bother capping a bear its a pain). I think thats all available now. Later you can have many other kinds of pets if you want to change, but when you turn your hi level pet in to the tamer, the new pet again begins at lvl 5.

7) No mounts, but there is map travel, as im sure you know by now. Just in case you dont, hit "M" and just click on the city on the map that you have previously been to and instantly travel there.

8) Again no mounts. Teleporting is better than time flying anyway, haha.

Wow so many people are faster than I am in posting.

U get "comfort animal" in the pet acquiring quest. That'll heal ur pet.

My 2cents:

1.) Did you buy the Game of the Year Edition or the Platinum Edition? The Platinum edition has Prophecies and EotN combined. Otherwise it's as said above.

2.) As said - gold, then platinum. 1000g = 1p (= 1k). You'll often see people quoting prices as so many "k" - it's the same as platinum, 1000g.

3.) Changes in attributes take effect immediately. But, you can only change them in towns/outposts.

4.) Press "H" (the default key) to view your "Hero" panel. It gives your skill points there.

5.) Only monks have skills to heal others (in pre-searing). But you can get skills to heal yourself. Comfort Animal is used to heal/rez your pet.

6.) I'm not sure what you mean by "upgrade". You can get different pets later on, and you can get some pets that start off at higher levels or are "elder" or "dire", but essentially, all pets are the same, once they get to level20 (other than their "evolution"). If you get a Melandru's Stalker now, for example, you can keep it throughout the whole game without needing to upgrade it. More here: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Pets

7 & 8) No mounts.

back to the healing thing. monks, ritualists, AND paragons can heal themselves and other allies, not just monks ans rits

If you wanna get really technical, so can Dervs. I just listed monks and rits because those are the professions that can make an entire build devoted to good healing.

Also, to address concerns about question 7 and 8.
In Guild Wars, you can travel from town to town instantly by openning the map (the m key) to teleport to any town you've been to. So there really is no need for mounts since in Guild Wars there is very little travel time.

Actually, technically rangers can too via the [skill]Healing Spring[/skill] skill, however Monks and Ritualists are the only ones with multiple skills to do it.

*edit* oh ya, Rangers also get several skills to heal their pet and/or themselves depending on various circumstances

That answered every question. So I already have the skill to heal my pet. I didn't know "comfort animal" did that.

Now I have a related question. Currently I'm a ranger and I've been trying out 3 elementalist skills. What I like about ranger / elementalist is that I have quick access to several weapons because I equip my bow and the ranger / elementalist weapon skills are on the skill bar. In other games I often play as a warrior / ranger. So when I see an enemy I use my bow first. Then I quickly to change to my sword if he gets too close to me. Would that work in GW? I would want quick access to both weapons - bow and sword/hammer/axe/etc. It looks to me like I would have to go to my inventory and exchange my bow for my melee weapon or vice versa. Is there not a shortcut key I can assign to the weapon I want so I can access it faster?

Also, how do I get rid of that window in the bottom right? It lists info about my party, but if there's no-one in my party, the window has no purpose. I move it into the bottom right corner as far as I can to get it out of the way. There is no x in the top right.

Yes, but not very well, as you'd be splitting attribute points and skillbar space to be less than optimal at both weapons.

Also, in your inventory window (default I), there is a button just above your bags titled 'Weapon Slots'. Click on that and activate weapons slots 2-4. By default, your weapon slots are bound to key F(x) where (x) is the slot number. For example, if you wanted to switch to the third weapon slot, you'd press F3.

The question about weapon swapping hotkeys was already answered, I'll elaborate on some other points.

First of all, if you want to use a sword for anything else than tickling your opponent you must invest some attribute points in Sword Mastery. This skill line is only available for primary or secondary warriors.

Second, the idea of switching between bow and sword is a bad one, unlearn it as soon as possible. While the tactic might work in a game that is primarily balanced for soloing, GW is a team based game where each team member specializes on a particular task. Leave swashbuckling to warriors (and your pet) and don't let monsters get close up and personal. Rangers are experts of mobility control, use it to your advantage.

Third, there are very few elementalist skills that a ranger will find useful because of the shallow energy pool and 3 pips of regeneration vs. the 4 pips of caster professions. Don't go around as a R/E casting Flares and Firestorms, just don't

Outside cities you can close the party roster with the 'P' hotkey. Inside cities it cannot be closed because it contains important buttons for different tasks.

Tmakinen and Kale are correct. BTW a pip of Energy is the little arrow of energy regeneration, i.e. your ranger has 3 pips of energy regen.

In the arrangement you have currently, R/E, it works fine in beginner areas since when you cast it mostly takes out the bad guys. However when you get to harder areas, nuking with the elementalist skills will quickly drain your energy. You'd want to mostly use the 2ary elementalist line for weapon buffs to enhance your damage, but not to be a nuker (bombing with spells).

BTW when i made my ranger i made him R/E and I did fine, but i usually had exclusively ranger skills or maybe only one elementalist skill on my bar. Keep in mind that if you have a secondary professions you dont need to bring skills from that profession.

If you are switching weapons out, try to stay with weapons that match well with your "build" (the set up of skills that you are bringing to the fight). So if you are poisoning, bring a bow that increases poison time, etc. For the beginning try to stick with one weapon type that you have points in. If you have points in marksmanship, you will do significantly more damage to enemies in melee range than you will with a melee weapon. Soon you will have to worry about weapon requirements too. Have fun.

A few things: some people have mentioned Junundu (Nightfall), but I don't see anyone mentioning the OTHER combat "mount": Siege Devourer (Eye of the North). It has a big speed boost that you can keep up constantly.

Also, as a ranger, while you want to not have stuff in your face, you can shoot your bow in melee range when needed, unlike in WoW, so there is no reason for weapon switching from a bow to a sword even if you could swap effectively.

And about your secondary, try to either keep your skills from secondary either to support for your build based on your primary (only thing with ele that comes to mind is Conjure Frost/Fire/Lightning) or a build that heavily uses your Primary attribute (unfortunately, R/E is not good for this, as rangers don't have enough energy for an ele's energy hungry skillset)

Oh, and welcome to GW. Hopefully you will find your stay at least as fun as WoW (if you enjoy it) or much more (if it chased you away ).

That was a lot of info. Quite a bit went over my head. WoW was my first MMORPG. I only played the 10-day free trial. I thought it looked amazing. I thought the city of Ironforge was spectacular, but I couldn't justify the monthly fee. I asked about weapon swapping because I was thinking of starting over. I think I will be a Warrior with ranger as a secondary profession. I actually like both about equal, but from the description in the manual it sounds like the warrior's primary attribute is more important to a warrior than the ranger's primary attribute is to a ranger. I might be wrong, but I need to pick something.

Kale, you said "Yes, but not very well, as you'd be splitting attribute points and skillbar space to be less than optimal at both weapons." Yes you'd be less than optimal with either, but decent with both. Isn't that better in the long run? Isn't that the whole idea with getting a secondary profession?

theblackmage, it might not be necessary to swap weapons, but I would want to be able to do it simply because I like both styles. So if the swapping is clumsy then I will decide on which weapon to use before I leave for a quest, and then I'll stick with that weapon until I finish the quest. Next time I could use the other weapon.

I think if I split my points between swordsmanship and marksmanship it would result in a well rounded character. I can always adjust if necessary. If I'm going to use the sword for a while, I could increase swordsmanship. If I'm going to use the bow, I could increase marksmanship.

I think this sounds reasonable, but I'll wait to see if anyone says I've got it wrong.

Locutus, hey have fun with the game. Play around with different builds, fighting styles and skill sets. You dont need to do cookie cutter builds, find a build that you like and are effective with. This game is so flexible and balanced there is no BEST build.

In regards to expertise as a primary for rangers, some consider it the most powerful primary attribute in the game. Right now you wont see much benefit from it, but later in the game when you can put more points into expertise, you can do stuff that no other class can do. In regards to using mostly exclusively bow on your character now, you can get away with using sword at your current level, however later when you fight harder monsters, that lower armor level (lower than warrior) will hurt, and you might want to keep your distance a bit more.

But yea, definitely try out warrior, its also a fun class. Also keep the ranger, just use another character slot and make 2 characters. Ranger gets a bit more fun later when you can stand-off more when you have a bigger party. When you go out alone in presearing, and you seem like you are fighting everything hand-to-hand, it seems logical that you might as well bring a sword. Anyways, have fun again.

Personally, I think you can do whatever the hell you want, so I'm not going to try to tell you you should or shouldn't do anything.

To answer your question - as Kale said, in your Inventory window (default key is "I"), you can enable up to 4 weapons slots. You can switch weapons using either the function keys, or by clicking on them with the mouse. When I play my warrior I have a longbow in one of the slots (F4) to use for pulling - but only for pulling, not for attacking/damaging.