Overwhelmed... To say the least.

So I got Guild Wars Prophecies, Factions, and Nightfall last June. I really didn't get started playing the game until this month, however, and to say the VERY least, I am quite overwhelmed by the game. I feel kind of... Isolated. I'm doing the Prophecies campaign, and am confused about the game progression, crafting system, and trading system, as well as the overall layout of the game. I am also having trouble figuring out how to work my build and take full advantage of my skills and attributes. Can someone help me get a grip of things a little better?

I'd be happy to help, What is your profession sir?

You might want to look at pvx wiki:
http://www.gwpvx.com/PvX_wiki

and gww:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page

You won't find many other people in most outpost because most players finished playing trough the game.

Kamadan is the trade outpost (nightfall) where you can easily find other players.

Don't even waste time looking at PVXwiki yet, as you've just started out, it'll be basically useless for you. That's for later on when you have more skills unlocked and available.

The GW wiki is a good resource for pretty much anything.

What particular questions do you have?

Well, first off, I'm glad you bought the game, you will enjoy it once you get the hang of it.
Let's start off where you did, game progression. If you are playing Proph(ecies), you start in Pre-Searing, which happens to be a vibrant community lately. After you complete the primary quests in pre-searing, you watch the searing happen, and you are in post-searing, which is where the real game begins. Think of "Pre" as a tutorial. After that you will follow primary quests and missions until you reach main towns and areas that will lead you to the end of Proph. Now, unfortunately Proph can be skipped, meaning you do not have to complete the missions in a linear fashion to complete the game.
I do suggest doing the missions and primary quests in a linear fashion(the primaries can be skipped, but those have to be done in a linear fashion). After you get to Lion's Arch(the capital of Kryta, also a moderate trading hub) you can obtain quests to get to the other continents.
In Factions you can level quick if you want to, but I do suggest completing Proph, than Factions, than Nightfall in that order to get the most out of the game. Nightfall does have "Heroes" though.
They are basically customizable henchmen that are yours. No doubt if you are in post, you have had henchmen following you around helping you kill monsters.
That's enough about game progression :-)

Crafting system is sort of underrated. You craft armor, which is a necessity. Generally money + common materials = armor. Better armor(higher levels) will require more money and more materials. At later levels, some will also require rare materials(which are more rare than common materials, but are ultimately not that rare). You can also craft weapons, which I think is really cool. Enemies will drop "trophies" some collectors will collect(hence the name) these trophies and in exchange will give you a weapon. Some also do this for armor pieces.

As for the trading system, I would avoid trading until you get on your feet as you are at a higher risk of being scammed. Basically, people trade money+a few specific items that are costly to make/create for weapons with rare modifications and/or low requirements and/or rare skins.

As for the isolated feeling, that could be a problem easily solved my changing districts. In the top left corner(by default) while in an outpost you can change districts. I do suggest American districts. Those are by far generally the most populated. But even in American districts some towns will be empty.

Now I am assuming you are not level 20 yet, so you won't have your full attributes or access to skills, but when you do progress later in the game, your build will matter. In early game, it doesn't matter much. You can usually auto attack the enemies while your henchmen do most of the work. When do you progress later though, there is a wiki for builds:
http://www.gwpvx.com/PvX_wiki
PvX is PvE or PvP. You want PvE. Stick to the right side of the main page.

And there is a wiki, actually two, about guild wars. I do suggest the official wiki. I find the layout more pleasing and I am used to it now. The link is:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page
You can access the wiki in game by F11(I believe it is) or using the "emote" /wiki.
for example, type in /wiki armor and hit enter and the wiki page about armor will come up.

Now I know that covers a lot of information, but there is more out there.
Guild wars is a vibrant world with a lot of information in it and about it.
The wiki is an amazing resource.

And another thing, join a guild. You will no doubt see them recruiting in the major towns, those in Proph would be: Ascalon City(I think? do people still go there?), Lion's Arch, Droknar's Forge and Temple of the Ages.

And here's a link to the wiki about the list of proph missions & primary quests:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_...ecies_missions

You should attempt to follow that as best you can. Notable areas:
Ascalon City, post-searing, your first look at post searing ascalon. Pretty dismal, but the scenery gets better.
Lion's Arch, as previously stated, you can access the other continents that house the Factions and Nightfall campaigns.
Temple of the Ages, a big hub of high end PvE.
The Crystal Desert, you can obtain elite skills here.
Droknar's Forge, you first time, if you follow the proph storyline, you can get craftable max armor rating armor.
Ember Light Camp, the skill trainer here has all of the skills in the prophecies campaign that you can buy.

Well go from there. You'll have fun once you get the hang of it.

Warrior/Ranger. When I joined someone recommended this build for me.

Thank you so very much. I really do appreciate the time you put into laying this out for me. No, I am not level 20 yet, I am level 13 and at the mission directly after Borlis Pass. In case I want to start fresh (Since I haven't played in a while and am pretty much lost in the game's storyline etc.) If I wanted to start again from pre-searing, what would be a good class for starter PvE?

They all have their ups and downs.
Warriors - Bulky and in your face. Can hit hard but also have high levels of health and armor.
Necromancer - Focuses on death and degeneration. Can raise minions which can be fun, also has amazing energy management.
Mesmer - Disruption and high damage.
Elementalist - Make lots of stuff go boom.
Monk - Make sure your teammates don't die, can do decent damage but I do not suggest it.
Rangers - Kind of underrated, get's a pet and can do decent damage from afar.

In total there are 10 professions and I have one of each.
My main is a monk because I don't trust other monks most of the time.

Since you may end up playing by yourself a bit with henchmen/heroes due to not many people being in the lower level zones, I would suggest not playing a monk, as you'd be best off dealing lots of damage. Also... elementalists really do not have very many good end-game PvE builds at the moment, so I wouldn't recommend them; they are still viable to play though if you prefer that type of profession. Rangers are probably the worst off.

Warriors are quite decent these days and not too hard to use. Necromancers are very, very powerful in PvE and so are mesmers...

So overall I'd suggest you choose between a warrior, necromancer, or mesmer - whichever one looks more fun =)

You already have a Warrior and that's good. They're a generally safe profession for beginners and it will teach you to manage your aggro circle. Later on, I would suggest your try the Necromancer and/or Mesmer since they both have builds that can be very powerful in PvE. Elementalists are ok, but they're generally not as efficient as the 2, which I previously mentioned, since their damage scales down rather quickly when they face foes with high armor ratings. Monks should be the last caster profession that you try since they have a very important role in the party and they should be player either by a hero/henchman or a player who knows what he/she is doing. Rangers are kind-of an average class; their damage output isn't particularly impressive but they can be fun to play, especially since you can use your pet in combat and attack foes from a range that's even larger than the casting range of a spell-caster.

But the most useful thing for you to do right now is find a guild that has some friendly veterans (and there are lots of them). The "Community & Guild Connections" part of the Guru forums is a good start

Yeah, just start by beating the campaigns. This can be done all with one character, but I find it's more fun to play campaign specific classes for beating each campaign.

As for builds, until you've gotten all the main outposts in all campaigns, just use whatever skills you think would work best together and for you, keep experimenting, half the fun of playing this game is messing with builds

That's because the bulk of the playerbase is years ahead of you and off playing the endgame content. Eventually you'll reach more populated areas.

The main plot follows a series of primary quests (press L to view your quest log; primaries are at the top) and missions (town has a special icon, press the "begin mission" button in the party menu). In addition to that, there are numerous optional side quests and areas, including "elite" areas which offer extra challenge, added story, and special loot. Completing the game once opens up hard mode, which allows you to redo everything at a higher difficulty level; and also opens up vanquishing, which is clearing an area of all monsters on hard mode difficulty.

Character progression is simple. Everything before level 20 is just training. Getting to lvl 20 is relatively fast an easy (although slower in Prophecies than the other chapters). Each character has access to 2 quests that give 15 attribute points each. You should do these as soon as they are available. Skills are available from a number of sources, several of which effectively bypass the old restriction imposed by limited inventories at early trainers. Around the time you reach level 20, you will find quests that allow you to change your secondary profession at will. Beyond that, titles are available. A few titles drive certain skills, but they are otherwise just for show.

I guess a word on the relationship of the different chapters is in order. Prophecies, Factions, and Nightfall are "h" shaped. Native characters progress through the plot from beginning to end. Characters from another campaign arrive by boat partway through the plot at around the point that native characters are hitting level 20. (Once you have access to the boat, you can travel between campaigns at any time.) Eye of the North is 100% level 20 content.

Give the crafter some cash and raw materials, and out pops the desired item. (Get raw materials (1) directly from drops, (2) from salvaging junk drops, (3) from rare material crafters, (4) from the material/rare material trader, or (5) from other players.)

Armor crafters in pre-level 20 areas offer armor with increasing AL the further you get. Eventually you reach crafters who offer "max armor." (In prophecies, this is at Droknor's Forge.) After that, some towns may have a crafter who offers "prestige armor," which is more expensive max armor with a different, fancier look.

Weapon crafters follow the same trend of non-max items in low level areas, working up to max items in level 20 areas. On top of this, the type of magical properties on the goods they offer vary from crafter to crafter. (ex: One crafter will offer a sword with "+15% damage while health is over 50%" while another will offer an otherwise identical sword with "+15% damage while enchanted.")

I suspect that you will probably also want to learn about the rune/insignia system and the weapon mod system.

You might also want to look into collectors, who give you items in exchange for a some pile of icky monster parts. (ex: Find the right collector and he'll give you a nice axe in exchange for 5 heket tongues, or whatever.)

Put stuff in the box (or not -- blank offers are allowed), hit "submit offer," review the other person's offer, hit "accept" (or "cancel" or "change offer").

Or were you asking about the trader NPCs? Trader NPCs buy and sell fungible goods (materials, rare materials, runes, dyes, etc) at market driven prices. Their supply comes from what players sell to them, and the price fluctuates with supply. They also sink gold out of the game by taking a spread between their buy and sell prices.

See my response to the first issue.

Making good builds rests on a foundation of understanding the game mechanics. Someone can just hand you a good build, but you won't know how to use it, or why it's good, or when it's not appropriate, or how to adapt it to special circumstances. Work on learning the mechanics (the damage equations, how armor works, how critical hits work, etc) as well as the execution-level skills of playing the game (kiting, pulling, abusing the monster AI, etc) before worrying about builds. If you finish the game with a terrible build but learn stuff during the process, you've done well. (FYI: Don't feel inferior if it takes awhile to learn. No one -- literally no one -- had what would qualify today as a good build until Factions had been out for over 6 months. It took us that long to really figure the game out. Heck, there's some ancient posts by Ensign recommending Mending wammos for PvP...)

If you want specific feedback, you can post builds here... and watch them get torn to shreds. Most people will give useful comments on why just about every aspect of your build is bad, and why certain alternatives are better. If you understand the "why" part, fantastic; if you don't, make a mental note of it and come back to it when you're farther along in the learning process.

I'd generally avoid PvX because the results of its vetting system represent a consensus of idiots. Asking PvX to rate or revise a build is kind of like asking a bunch of teabaggers to vote on where Obama was born. The end result is that most of the the "great" builds on PvX tend to be unusually bad variants on builds that were mediocre to start with. (That's something you have to be wary of on these forums as well (Grenth knows we certainly have our share of idiots), but at least forums empower you to make somewhat informed judgments on whom to listen to by encouraging people to back up their assertions with reasoned explanations and making past comments searchable.)

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Let me follow up on this. While Nilator's summary is correct for most of the normal mode storyline, things do change late game and in hard mode. I suppose you should be aware of these things, even though they are not relevant to you now, and won't be for a long time.

This is pretty much a constant. (Note, however, that warriors do not have any innate health benefit over other classes -- just a large armor bonus.)

Additionally, warriors have access to an amazing skill called "Save Yourselves!" which allows them to greatly reduce the damage the rest of the team receives.

Degeneration turns hopelessly weak by level 20 and should be ignored as a damage dealing option. Minions are indeed fun, and remain strong throughout the entire game (except, of course, places where the monsters don't leave usable corpses). Where the necro really shines, though, is its ability to team up with physical damage dealers to produce large amounts of armor-ignoring damage. (See my comment below on elementalists for an explanation of why this matters.) Curses and, to a lesser extent, Blood both offer this sort of "force multiplication" builds.

Mesmers have fantastic disruption, which becomes more important as monsters become more potent. This is why mesmers tend to be disfavored in early areas of the game. Their damage is not as spectacular as many people think that it is (it's showy, and that leads to cognitive bias), but it is respectable, and also armor-ignoring. (Again, see the elementalist comment.)

This is true for most of the game in normal mode. Then things go bad. The problem with elementalists is that almost every spell they have is armor-sensitive, while monster armor climbs steadily through the campaign, and then jumps up a whole bunch more in hard mode. As monster levels go from 20 to 30, armor-sensitive damage falls 41%. Ouch.

There's a few things you can do to try to work around this. Mostly they involve air magic, cracked armor, and class-independent PvE-only skills.

Also, one very specific ele build turns out to be a far stronger healer than any monk.

This is pretty much the case throughout.

Yes, rangers are the red-headed stepchild of the GW classes. Hopefully a future update will improve them. For now, it's their sad fate to not do anything better than another class can do it.

Yes, so a quick overview of the other 4:

Assassins and Dervishes are, for PvE purposes, basically warriors with more complicated skillsets. For starting out, use a warrior instead. (Thanks to the dual class system, Assassins and Dervishes also have access to "Save Yourselves" by going A/W and D/W.)

Ritualists are an odd-duck profession. One line is a combination of stationary attack summons and force-multipliers. One line is a combination of stationary attack summons and passive defense summons. And one line is more or less raw redbarup healing. They are reasonably good in any of these roles, though the stationary attack summons and passive defense summons tend to predominate.

Paragons are high-armor ranged attackers (which is somewhat silly because they rarely get hit). Their damage is not very good compared to warriors/assassins/dervishes. They offer a huge menu of party buffs, most of which are pretty weak. Their one claim to fame is that they can go P/W and use "Save Yourselves" to better effect than any other class, including primary warriors.

Also on the top left corner there is a box with the server you are in, change it to American if you arent there already, most of the players are there.

You can also go to our Campfire section and read the stickied basics threads in each profession's sub forum. They cover such things as the usefulness of different secondaries.

To add to all the helpful remarks, don't worry so much about the build yet, play around a bit and see what works well for you. At this point, you will not be capping any Elite Skills yet (and there isn't any for you to cap at this point either). Just basically enjoy the game, die a little and don't get too stress over dying.

Read the wiki before you start on a mission and that can help a lot. If you are okay with using texmods, you can download the texmod program and go to wiki and look for in game mission maps. This will save you a lot of time when you are doing missions because it gives you the specific directions to take. I remember my first few missions had me running around in circles because I had no idea how to get from one side to the other.... That was a waste of time and good thing I was playing alone... the henchmen did not laugh or jeer at me... :P

Guru has been a great help for me too. Whenever I have any questions over the game, this place usually has an answer. I also google information and read a couple of different ones if one does not give me the answer I can understand.

Every profession can work, Im a Ranger, apparently that stinks, but it has not stopped me from doing much of anything I wanted to do. Liking a profession has a lot to do with making it work.

The key and joy of this game is build synergy. Skills used so the sum is much greater than the parts..and this figures into skill selection, hench choices, hero builds later and so on. Working on this is an endless process, it is fun, and plotting to beat situations is very rewarding.

Take any absolute statement with a grain of salt. "Degen is worthless at endgame" No, it is situational, as many things are.

I started almost three years ago.. finished proph solo with Hench only. Learned a lot. It does help to study the Wiki mission pages.

Don't be tempted to shortcut at this time. You won't learn the game hiring runners or cheesing missions. Don't just blindly use pvx wiki builds.. study them.. find out what makes them work. Adapt other people's ideas to the skills and style of play you have.

Good Luck.

Wow. Thanks for the advice, everyone! You are all truly a great help. One things for sure, this is the best community out of any MMORPG I have ever played.

I do appreciate the general maxim that absolute statements are usually wrong; you just happened to pick a poor example that happens to be right. I'm afraid that "degen is worthless" really is the rare example of an absolute statement that is true. Even at max degen, you're still only doing 20 DPS, which is downright awful compared to good direct damage options.
The only non-terrible degen skill I can think of is Well of Suffering, which can be situationally useful against very large, poorly-balled mobs because of its huge AoE.

If you care to look at it historically, degen wasn't always weak. What happened is that we've had 6 years of power creep for direct damage, but the degen cap has stayed at -10. The end result is that degen is largely worthless in PvE.

All of this, however, is probably too much too fast for OP. So, I'm going to lay off specific issues like this one for the time being.

With this I wholeheartedly agree.

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Glad to be of assistance.

A little something concerning money, if you feel like you can afford it, you can most of the time skip 1 armor level. What I mean by that is for exemple : get ascalon, skip second ascalon armor, grab borlis, then Lion's Arch, then skip jungle armor, wait untill desert.

And, if you want a certain weapon, look for collectors. If you're looking for specific stats, You'll find few weapon to your liking in the game in general. And buying is more focussed on fancy weapons. People sell random max weapons for 1-2k sometime tought, if you find one that suits you, this can help. (If you want to rush the best gear)

A little more advice about your skills, coming form someone thats only been playing a few weeks myself:

Prophecies has a good deal of quests that gets you skills. That coupled with the trainers should give you a bit to work with.


As a warrior you have two main resources, Energy and Adrenaline. Warriors especially need to mind their energy because it doesnt regen very fast. If you have a couple of 10 energy Ranger skills in there, you are most likely going to spend a fair amount of time waiting for energy. Its good to balance some adrenaline skills too (but not too many, since that resource is limited as well). Basically you need to manage your resources.

And youll come to a point where you will also want to specialize a bit. Putting points into sword, axe AND hammer is a waste of time. Pick one and go with it. It costs nothing to 'respec' so dont worry if you get a different weapon down the road.

Your skills are more effective based on which attribute they fall under, and being a jack of all trades will give you a master of none. If you are using ranger skills you are probably only going to use two warrior attribute lines (weapon specific, strength, or tactics) and one Ranger line. Read your skills and experiment too. Its fun playing around with things and finding something that works for you.

I thought so. I put all of my attribute points for weapons under swordsmanship, since that is my weapon of choice. Now if only I could actually find a good weapon somewhere.

Don't worry too much about that, getting "good" weapons isn't really much of an issue - the quest rewards you get along the way in Prophecies should be good enough.

But you could also just ask in an outpost if anyone have a weapon, pretty sure someone will give you a max weapon.

Btw.

Not sure if you have the special versions of the game but you could try to type

/bonus

to see if you have any bonus items you can use.

Well, don't buy into the rarity thing. Stats and mods are all that matter. Most proph golds and purples are an unimaginable level of terribad.

A properly statted blue is far better than some gold junk with a ludicrous inherent mod. A max dam inscribable blue NF/EotN weapon is way better than a huge majority of Gold proph/faction items.

Best advice I can give is to just take your time. Don't rush things. Do every quest and level your character up before trying to push to far into the game with only missions. While you are not meant to reach level 20 quickly in Prophicies you can do so and still enjoy the game a great deal.

If you try and move to quickly or get runs from other players you can wind up being to low a level for the location your at and with far to few skills since many are quest rewards in Proph.

Do quests to unlock skills and then purchase those you can't get for free at a skill trader.
Upgrade armor as often as possible via collectors and only use crafters for max armor if possible. This will save you a good bit of money.
Buy an inscribable max weapon, require 9 or 10. Don't worry about mods or skins. Then you can pick up mods from drops or from other players as you go. (inscriptions don't drop in Proph but can be purchased from other players).

If your going to ask players in game for help don't just spam "I need Help". Ask for exactly what you need, "Help with quest X/mission Y/Finding NPC Z".

In the beginning of the game, I felt overwhelmed too. Started playing right around end of 2007. Had a couple of cool friends from outside my alliance who were willing to answer all my nub questions through PM. It's funny how even to this day I find myself posting a question about the game on alliance chat. My last question was "Would it be theoretically possible to max Lucky Title Track if I afk on 9 rings for the whole event?"