lvling questions

I am very new to GW and GW2 looks so exciting I was interested in playing GW until 2 comes along.

I have some concerns from the trial though. I found already I am being forced to group to complete some quests in the intial starter area for Prophecies. Forced to group not because they are hard, but because you literally are required to have another player as stated in the quest text. I really hate this kind of mechanic, just hate it. I want to lvl and quest on my own terms. I prefer open ended, but I can handle a few quests if they are kil based.

I need to know if I can ignore these group quests or if I can level by simply running around killing monsters. Do I have to do quests (I know there are main ones I probably have to do, but in general) to level, is killing monsters viable or terrible exp? Etc. Just trying to understand how the games works.

Right now I am playing a Monk and so far I love the play style, just a pity to spoil it with stupid quests. I am also hoping GW2 does not employ these same lame quest mechanics to force groups.

I am not anti-group just don't want my progression to be at its mercy.

Thanks.

You don't have to do every single quest. You're only starting off so some quest might involve you to party up with someone or a henchman to get some skills. The only quest that you do need to focus on is the "primary quest." The primary quest will take you through the story line. Most importantly Guild Wars is based on a group game, which you will need to make builds that will benifit your party. But that's later on in the game. Most of the time if you don't want to use henchman, you can start off in Night Fall and get heroes. You can make your own hero builds and the computer will just control them. You can also control you heroes by microing. Hope this helped. If you have any question feel free to PM me.

There are only a couple of quests that you need to party up with another player where you are. One takes about 30 seconds to do (to get rez signet). The other involves going into the Northlands, which requires 1 person to open the gate and another to go through it, many people skip that quest. Those are the only quests that I can think of that you'll need another person to complete. Once you go to the acadamy, you'll need to fill out your party (AI henchmen will become available) to have any success getting around.

For leveling purposes, completing quests is faster than just running around killin' stuff.

Thanks for the fast replies. I was also wondering in what ways this game is an MMO? I mean do you only interact in small groups at a time? Not a bad thing, just asking.

Also I see the henchmen thing a lot in posts - what is that - are you saying you MUST have AI party members like old style RPGs in order to play the game or replace them with real players? What if you have henchmen then you want to party how does that work? What if everyone in your party has henchmen and then you all decide to group, which henchmen stay and which go away etc.

Sorry for the barrage, but this is really confusing. Is there most of the group content at end game levels, or is it still common to get leveling groups?

Questions are no problems on Guru's hands.
1. It has MMO attributes (Online playing)

2. You don't have to use henchmen at all. Typically when some one says to use henchmen it means whatever is their going against is really easy to beat (do). Henchmen are like replacement players, sometimes weaker or stronger. For example, a monk with no elite and stupid skills like Fire Storm is healing the team. Then you might want to drop that monk for a henchmen. Most of the time however, players will always be better than henchmen.

Henchmen are not teammates, think as them of filler. Add them to your team or kick them as you please. You will use Henchmen for most of the game. Like traveling from point A to B doesn't require 8 people. Some missions can easily be completed with just henchmen.

If you need any help, just PM me in game (Zodiac Ele)

Henchmen are found in every town and outpost. Just click on them to add them to your party. Fill out your party to the max number it will let you. Your party size limit will increase from 2 to 4 to 6 then 8 as you progress. If you want to add real people to your party then you'll have to click on a henchman and kick him from the group to make room. I pretty much have the same playstyle as you, I've done all 3 campaigns with nothing but henchmen and later heroes. Heroes are just henchmen but you get to equip them and set them up just like a character. You select their skills and have some minimal control on how they act. You get heroes in Nightfall and Eye of the North. Henchmen are an absolute must if you're not going to play with other players, at least until you become one of those uber-players that can survive anything with the right build. Play around with what combo of henchmen work for you and welcome to Guild Wars. Enjoy!

Thanks for all the offers of help and replies. I don't know why but this game is oddly addicting, it is kind of like Diablo 2 with more depth.

I changed form my Monk to a Mesmer - and I have to say I totally love it. Can solo some crazy stuff, I was lvl 2 and went and soloed the bandit camp 4 mobs at a time - crazy fun.

I loved that qhen I did the lockbox quest I actually had to carry it back to Ashford lol - so cool.

Anyways, time to see what compliments a mesmer, just to plan ahead, was thinking monk, but not sure.

Xukiza,

sounds like you are still in presearing, it is lovely there but it is just a training area, the game gets more interesting when you go to post searing.

if you mean what class for secondary, monk is useful for the rez (when your hench die) but later in the game you will be able to change your secondary to suit your team build, the choice is not irrevocable.

Welcome to GW and gl

Check the Campfire section mesmer sub forum for information on that profession including good secondaries. You don't really need to use skills from your secondary yet. By the time you get into skill builds that require both you will be able to swap.

You are not required to party with other real players (except for a few missions where you need to split the party). The difficulty level increases when you leave the nice, pretty tutorial area and you will want to bring the Henchmen along when you leave town. You will find them standing near the exit in each outpost and town. Their levels go up as you move from area to area.

Glad you are enjoying the game. And, yes, it is addicting.

Mesmer isn't always an easy choice but it sounds as though your doing well enough so why worry, it was my first class too.

The game makes you take human help in 2 places both in the start area, after that there are some places that are a lot easier with more than one human player.
Usually because splitting the party is a help on the mission, so one player for each half.

Choose your secondary class carefully, try out all the classes before settling on one, as you will be stuck with it for some time.

Currently, you still seem to stay in "Presearing Ascalon", that is the tutorial section of Prophecies. This is mostly solo or 2 persons. It's only the first 5% of the whole game, probably less.

Once you leave that area, you are able to play in groups with 4, later 6 and even later 8 team members. If you like to play alone, ignore humans and fill your group up to 4, 6 or 8 with henchmen or heroes (you get heroes from Nightfall or EOTN). Don't try to solo it - Gild Wars is a team oriented game. You will only succeed with a team of multiple professions. The areas are designed for teams of the corresponding maximum team size. If you like to play alone, fill your team with henchmen.

But let me tell you, you are missing a great part of the fun if you always play alone. I started like you, but I found a nice guild and playing together with them is really fun. My guild also helped me through the final missions of my starting campaign, which would be very frustrating if I tried alone.

New player here, just completed pre-searing for the first time.

I had some of the same questions you do as well. I'm very wary of PUGs, since I always seem to find people who take the game very, very seriously. I figure if I get some content under my belt, I can go looking for a guild a little later.

So I kept looking for these henchmen that are referenced everywhere. Eventually I found a mention in the Wiki that there are no henchmen available for pre-searing questing. When you take the quest to go fight the Char (with big red warnings in the quest text that you can't come back), you'll be assigned four henchmen automatically. Then, when you arrive in post-searing Ascalon, they'll continue with you.

I skipped the "party with someone" quest that gives you the resurrection signet, and was happy to find that they are available for sale from a vendor upon arriving at post-searing Ascalon.

I never found the second party-required quest that everyone is mentioning above. Odd, because I spent a lot of time exploring to make sure I'd gotten every quest to the point of wandering the couple of areas that have no quest npcs in them.

I should have been more specific but I always try not to spoil surprises, but its not that much of a secret.

1 is when you team up to get the res signet takes all of 1 minute
2 is to get through the gate to the charr where someone has to pull the lever.

Yes you can. Pre-searing is basically a tutorial section, and doing the 2 group quests merely shows you how to form a party. You can skip them if you want (I usually do) - a rez signet can be gotten from a skill traineer in post-searing.
It is faster to get XP by doing quests, but then again, there's no hurry. Play whichever way you want. Then again, there are Primary Quests and Missions that you must do to progress the story/game.
The henchmen are NPCs you can use to fill your party. They don't form a permanent part of your game, you just add them to a party if needed. If you want to join up with someone who also has henchmen with them, you simply kick some of the henchmen.

Guild Wars is designed to be a "group" game, rather than a "solo" game. In pre-searing, most of the content can be done solo, but when you leave pre and go to post (the main game, btw), you will normally want to have a full group. You can use the Henchmen to fill the group rather than humans.

I am new also and this is my first ever internet game im also an old fart so thats probably 3 strikes against me lol. but regarding your fear of finding people who take the game too seriously I have gotten help a few times already when i ask for this help i just tell everyone up front that im super new and suck at the game. so far I have only been helped by super nice folks that have been more then patient and helpful. I highly recommend asking for help as i have learned a ton from these people and had a blast one of them even gave me a new weapon that kicks butt. i believe I may find some of these people who are too in to the game at latter harder parts of the game but in the early parts I have found nothing but great people. As a side note i would like to thank the GW community for putting up with my newbi questions and for offering all their help.

Great info - thanks.

I can see where the mesmer would have problems, but at lvl 6 still in pre-searing it's certainly the class that feels most natural to me. I tihnk once I realize I can use henchmen to heal or w/e I might gravitate to another class. I want to at least play though pre-searing once to get a feel for the game before finally settling on a class to take all the way. I took Monk with my mesmer for now.

I do find the mesmer a little low on the DPS side right now, but very hard to kill. Also what is a good level to leave pre-searing as I have the quest open but have not been to most of the explorable areas.

I can't believe it took me this long to find this game, I am deeply excited to play GW2 now, knowing there will be many improvements. I can see grouping being fun also, if there are lots of groups looking to do quests etc.

I do plan to search for a guild once I know my main class for sure. They all seem fun in their own way, except the warrior, which sounds kind of boring for me.

To put my enjoyment in perspective, I am choosing to spend my time playing this game over the FFXIV beta right now. If it continues to become a better game as I progress then it might be a real winner.

Good level to leave pre-searing would be around 7.

But try to complete most of the quests, it'll give you more gold and xp, as well as skills.

Oh, and welcome to the game and Guru!

why not have one of each

some of us are still there at level 20 :P

7 is a perfectly acceptable level to leave, you will have to grind to get higher anyhow if you have done all the quests.

you have to be lucky but being prepared to ask in outposts helps.

It's still the best game there is

I've been playing my mesmer for two years now. If i may share one insight with you - take a necromancer secondary now. You will be able to switch secondary class later in the game and up to this moment, in Prophecies, secondary necromancer on a mesmer primairy (fast casting), especially while playing only with henchmen, is deadly useful.
Somewhere around an outpost called Fisherman's Haven you'll get a necromancer skill that creates two undead minions from a single corpse. You're not aiming to become a minion master - a character specialised in raising and controlling an army of undead - yet even 4-5 of them will be a GREAT help for an unexperienced player, as a raw meat shield, of course. Especially that mesmer is quite difficult class to master and having several more minions helps mitigating a lot of damage still dealing some, which may be very handful when playing with henchmen and with Prophecies-only skills, even in normal mode.

The Mesmer can be extremely fun to play, and it was also my first class in GW. Just a hint though, once you leave pre-searing, you'll be facing much tougher opponents, which will require the use of henchmen. You'll quickly discover the meaning of the word "squishy" since the GW AI is a little more clever than what you may have encountered in other games. Be prepared to be singled out for special attention by mobs, especially if you're a little too close to the action. Don't let this stand in your way of pursuing the class though. Mesmers are capable of raining on an enemy's parade like nobody's business, but they do require a lot of experience to excel at. I'm sure many would disagree, but it is, in my opinion, the trickiest of all the classes to master. Very rewarding though, once you do.

PM me if you'd like a grouping buddy now and then. I play through the various campaigns, from pre-searing upwards and I don't care in the least if you know what your doing or not, so no worries about making rookie mistakes. I'm just in it for the laughs.

Sounds good, I really appreciate the offers to PM people with questions or for groups etc. It makes a huge difference. What I think would be really awesome is if anyone knows a guild recruiting some Ultima Online poster child still recovery from lame WoW clones since. GW is much cooler and really does have a different feel. Having played Aion and other games I was initially really worried about it being NCSoft, but it seems ArenaNet have a good handle on it.

I'm all about pushing the envelope, so I want to know the fastest way to exp solo (with Henchmen or w/e), and I want to push classes to their limits to see what they can pull off etc. So I plan to leave pre-searing at 7 after I round out some quests. I will pick up necro and go from there. Just have to work out how to drop the monk secondary I picked up - I'm guessing that will come after I get out of pre-searing?

Any guilds taking GW converts let me know, otherwise I will let you guys know how my exploits go and if I have questions. Nice to see such an active and friendly community in a game.

Cheers.

Eye of the North and Factions gives out experience like they don't care. The average time for an experienced player to reach level 20 is 5 hours. The average time for a rich player to reach level 20 is 1 hour.

Can't go wrong with the Mesmer class. Necro is pretty easy to, until you get to end-game because monsters eat Minions like skittles, eat them one at a time or in a mob.

Monk class can be kind of difficult, simply because the team survivability rests mostly in your hands. But that doesn't mean avoid the monk, if your good at healing by all means pick up this class. A good monk makes a world of difference.

ArenaNet (Anet) is vastly different from NCsoft, (thank god almighty!) and I wouldn't place them in the same category of that company. With the first announcement of Aion everyone was like *cool* but the announcement of grind everyone was like *Grrr*. If anything, ArenaNet should break off from NCsoft and be completely independent.

Some extra advice, hopefully it will help:

1) Don't plan for the future until you leave pre-searing. You will understand this when you get there - the experience teaches just *how* different Guild Wars is (and I don't want to say any spoilers). Besides the event itself, once in Post Searing press M (map), click to zoom out and check its size. That's the game map without Factions, Nightfall, dungeons and endgame zones, it's just Prophecies and Eye of the North landmass. Exploring it is important part of the game.

2) The PvE game is about the story. The story is contained within the primary quests and missions, but all other quests will give you tonne of extra lore and information. Skipping them in order to rush forward will just make you not see the content - you will reach level 20 soon enough and you will also reach endgame soon enough, but the endgame in Guild Wars is just another thing to do, not a replacement for the story.

Rushing to level 20 too early may spoil you the challenge in the missions, and the key part of Guild Wars is that in the missions, failure *is* an option - party wipe or failure of a defensive goal means that you get kicked out of the instance and must restart the mission. The game, when not rushed and not decked out with stuff from alts and other campaigns, can be ferociously difficult in some spots, and that's the source of the sense of accomplishment; levels and gear are not the point of the game and are very, very easy to obtain. As an exception, don't be afraid about asking for help with the Desert missions - these can be unduly cruel to the new players.

Do watch the cut scenes and read dialogues - they are very important for fun. The game is much more like multiplayer Baldur's Gate than either Diablo or Ultima.

I'm skipping the endgame description, as you will know about it by the time you get through the story.

3) PvP part of Guild Wars is strictly arena PvP. However, the two high-end modes, Heroes Ascent and Guild vs Guild, are still my favourite source of online multiplayer combat fun - the strategy involved in GvG is surprisingly complex and deep. Press B in game for Observe mode, and watch some matches. However, the easiest way to understand what's actually going on is to find some commented matches on Youtube, like this one, and read the rules on the Wiki. Unfortunately, to get into this, you will need to surmount the really nasty learning curve, as well as a difficulty of finding a PvP guild that's willing to train new players. Note also that going slowly through the PvE campaign does help with the learning curve. However, if you're at all interested in this, it doesn't hurt to create a PvP-only character and try out the low-end PvP.

Great replies, I decide not to wait until the last minutes of my trial and went ahead and bought the trilogy. I couldn't find EotN in the store, so I will buy that later from the online store.

Excited to get started and make a few new toons and get a feel for other classes. Going to start over tonight with the full game set.

Sounds like a good night's fun to me.

If you get as caught up with the game as many of us here did don't expect to get much sleep.

Concerning the Mesmer I played 2 characters in the beginning Mesmer and Necro.

I found myself struggling with the Mesmer about half way through the game so played Necro took that character right through the game.

Went back to Mesmer and breezed through what had been a struggle before.
Its all down to experience and I guess I was a better player by then.

Point it don't give up and delete a character until you have run out of character slots and your really sure you hate playing it.

This is a really good thread. I actually bookmarked it and emailed it to some friends.

Mesmer is more of a PvP class to my taste. They are just as incredibly fun in PvE as well. Don't worry the only 2 party required quests that I can think of at the top of my head are in Pre-Searing and they aren't important at all. This whole game can be beaten with just hechmen and heroes if you want to. Though of course this doesn't apply to most of the elite dungeons which requires a very coordinated team of real players.

This game is more focused on storyline and contents more than grinding. The max level is only 20. You can reach level 20 by only completing 1/4 of the storyline in Nightfall/Factions or 1/2 of Prophecies. Though it's really suggested that you don't skip the cutscenes because it'll help you understand the lore of GW. It'll really help understanding GW2 as well. Besides, the storyline of GW is great! I have to admit, GW is one of the few MMORPGs out there that has a great storyline.

If you're making your new toons on Prophecies, I suggest you do all the quests in Pre-Searing just to unlock those skills for your account and for your character to start off. Otherwise, you'll end up buying them from skill trainers in Post-Searing. In Nightfall/Faction, do the beginning quests because they offer skills as well. After that, no side-quests give you anymore skills so you don't have to do them if you don't want to. Free skills is always nice.

What's great about this game is that you can readjust your attributes whenever you want in Town. Halfway through any of the campaign, you will encounter the main storyline quest that allows you to freely change secondary whenever you want so you are not stuck with it. That means you don't have to keep making multiple of the same class for different builds as in other games.

EDIT: One more thing. Use Ctrl + Space to force your henchmen and heroes to concentrate their attacks on one target.

Rest assured, there are lots of "old farts" playing GW.