When can FIVE of us play togethor?

Couple of VERY noob questions I'm afraid.

1) Five of us bought the Guild Wars Trilogy pack off of Steam in order to play togethor. After getting it we discovered that it only allows four people to play in a team? But later you can have six per team? How long/far into the game do you have to get before you can form larger teams? Is it in the original game, or one of the additional campaigns?

2) I noticed there's additional classes in some of the additional campaigns (Factions? NightFall?)? How do you make use of those when you've already got a long developed character from the original game?

3) If a group of you are made up of people at different levels, because a couple have played far more, does this mess up gameplay, (a) difficulty wise? (b) the higher level people doing missions again they've already done?

1. In the Original game, if you mean Prophecies, your party size increases to six as soon as you leave Ascalon area.

2. You have 8 character slots, so you can create new characters in the other campaigns and get a different viewpoint on the storyline. You can also take any character to the other campaigns to complete the entire storyline with a single character.

3. If you want to help friends through the game, then you will need to redo some missions and quests. This won't spoil the game for them if you don't tell them what will happen in the storyline.

I don't know what campaign you've started, so I'll have to explain them all.

In Factions you'll have 4 man groups to start with. This increases to 6 on the areas on Shing Jea Island past Seitung Harbor. This further increases to 8 when you reach the mainland.

In Nightfall, you start with 4. This upgrades to 8 on the more advanced parts of Istan. I'm pretty sure there aren't any 6 man areas.

In Prophecies, you start with 2 in pre-searing. This upgrades to 4 at post-searing, 6 at the northern shiverpeaks, and 8 at the southern shiverpeaks.

If you want an Assassin or Ritualist as a primary profession, you must start that character in Factions. This is because they are a part of the Canthan culture that would not be found elsewhere. If you want either of them as a secondary profession (for any character) you can change it later. The same applies for Paragons and Dervishes in Nightfall.

It depends on what you mean by different levels. A difference of a few is of little to no matter. Having a level 20 character play with you in the low level areas will pretty much kill the difficulty. I don't recommend doing that, even if you are stuck. In regard to b), this is no issue, i.e, the game won't crash or make you fail the quest or something like that. They'll be able to help, but they won't get credit of any kind because they don't actually have the quest.

1) I think the earliest place for 6 party members are "Yak's bend" in Prophecies (the start of the snowy mountains on the map), Zen Daijun mission in Factions (still on the starter island) and the southern villages of Nightfall starter isle. The rest of the content, the vaaaast majority, is 8 player party zone.

2) To "use" a later added profession (Assassin, Ritualist, Paragon, Dervish) as a primary, you need to start a character of that profession. That means starting a characet in Factions/Nightfall. To use them as a secondary proseffion, you need to "ascend" and gain access to the appropriate profession changer.

3) a) Lower party level certainly means less power in the party, so if a character is too low in level, they'll be a bit of a liability (hint: bring protective spirit and similar skills). However, all characters will reach the maximum lvl 20 quite soon, in a matter of days, and then you stay at that level for most of the game.
b) higher level players won't mess up anything. You can even bring characters from other campaigns to early missions, and while they won't get the rewards for the missions, they will help you do the mission.

Thanks!

So how far through "Factions" do you have to get until you increase to 6/8? A significant amount of gameplay? Or just a few/several hours?

If you can have a team of 6/8, and only 5 of you play, does that affect difficulty? ie: Do creatures adjust their difficutly accordingly?

Difficulty will stay the same no matter how many people you are.

Oh! So you mean 8 people would find it easier than 5 for example, because the difficulty of the creatures is the same?

8 would technically be easier than 5, but your looking at it the wrong way around. The enemies difficulties are designed to fight a party of 8, if you bring 5 people it will just make it far more difficult for you.

In factions you get a party of 6 at normally around lvl 11-12, in Seitung Harbour. If its your first time playing id say it would take maybe 5-6 hours playtime to get there, would be around 30-40 mins for someone who knew the way without having to think about it

Thanks... So you're suggesting us aiming to play as a group of 5 through as much of the game as possible is daft? Particularly where the game is designed to have teams of 8? So we'd be best taking three other folk (strangers) with us in those areas?

You don't need to take strangers, if with that you mean people you don't know, you can just take henchmen with you to fill the party (and/or heroes from nightfall later), which are computer-controlled characters .
You can take them almost everywhere.

Aha!!!! And how do you choose these henchmen? So we have a party of us five friends, and need either 1 or 3 henchmen... How do we choose them/get them?

ps: Apologies for the nooooooob questions again!

Everyone was a beginner once, there's no "noob" questions, only noobs answering them *ahem*. The henchmen are located in most outposts next to the exits from that outpost, they're clearly labeled as warrior/healer/brawler etc. henchmen, and their names are on green text if you hold the Alt-key to show all the NPC's around. You can add them to your party by selecting them and pressing the invite button on your party window. You can also add them to the team with the party search function on your party window so you don't have to get close to them to select them.

Also, when you unlock your first heroes when progressing through the Nightfall/Eye of the North campaigns the heroes will have their own drop-down menu on the party window where you can select them, as they never physically show up in outposts (except as non-invitable NPC's on some occasions).

Newb, not noob.....there is a difference. Newbs are new players that have questions about how to play the game, while noobs are players who are idiots (regardless of how long they have been playing).

You might want to have a look at the GW wiki, http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page
I'd advise against reading too far ahead in terms of the missions (wouldn't want to spoil the storylines for you), but it's a rich source of info on gameplay and mechanics etc.

Make sure you have 1-2 healers with you. If you have 5 people playing and are in the 6 man sections you will have 1 slot open for a hero/hench. If all 5 of you pick Warrior, Assass, Elementalist, etc. and none pick Monk or Ritualist you won't have much access to healing. The one hench may be able to handle it, but it won't be easy for some things. And again, when you reach the 8 man areas you will want 2 healers. The hench can fill in for those if you and your friends do not want to play as one.

To reach 6 man teams in Prophecies you have to complete (if you are doing the game in story mode) 4 missions. At the end of the 4th mission you end up in a city where the party size increases to 6. To reach 8 man areas (again going in order of the story) you would need to complete another 14 missions (which is 18 total of the 25).

For Factions, you only need to complete 1 mission, the second mission has a party size of 6, and after that mission you head to the mainland which jumps to 8 for the rest of the game.

For Nightfall, you have to complete 2 missions, and the 3rd mission gives you a team of 8.

There are regions where a city will give you a larger party size though. For example, the Temple of Ages in Prophecies is around the region of mission 10-12, but allows for a team of 8 instead of 6. You can't do any of the missions with 8 in this region, but you can for quests, as well as for accessing the Underworld and Fissure of Woe.

All very helpful!

Our fifth member hasn't kicked off yet, but the other four of us are:-
Ranger/Necro
Ranger/Monk
Elementalist/Warrior
Warrior/Dervish

Either you all started in NF, or one of you (W/D) has reached ascention and changed secondary to Dervish. If you are all in NF, the last person would want to make sure to start there, or you will have to wait to meet up with them. I highly suggest you either split into 2 groups (2 and 3 per team) until you reach the 6/8 man zones so you can fill in with a hero healer or hench. And a quick note, since you are new..... the R/N should not be dealing with many spells, just some utility, and the E/W should not be using melee weapons to do damage. The R/N will have an easier time with it, but the E/W trying to use a Sword/Axe/Hammer will die a lot due to the lower armor they have.

On a side note here... I assume it makes sense to play the three campaigns in order? Or could we all (five) jump stright into one of the latter ones?

You don't HAVE to. But, at the end of Nightfall there are some spoilers for Factions and Prophecies

So... Given someone has said the difficulty doesn't adjust in the game according to team member etc?! If you go straight into NightFall for example, you're obviously all going to be far far lower levels? Surely it must adjust the creatures then!?