[n00b] How to have a fine start in Guild Wars?

Hello everyone. I'm kinda "new" to GW (I bought the game some years ago but stopped playing for a while, i didnt advance a lot back then though) so I was wondering how should I start in GW once again.

I have a level 20 Wa/Mo from Nightfall campaign (from back then when I used to play GW), actually finishing Nightfall and playing a bit of EotN, no elite skills and noob heroes skills and equipment (lol), without knowledge about farming, running, PvP and noobish PvE skill.

Questing at level 20 has become quite a problem, since I dont damage mobs like I used to and I dont know if its "normal" to do around 5-15 damage to environment mobs lvl 20+ (for example, Jotuns @ EotN), also the fact that I die A LOT, i easily reach -60% death debuff while questing/rep. farming and that sucks since I should be a tank

Regarding economy and equipment, i dont know what kind of equipment is suitable for a Warrior, even less how to make money (even though I have already read the post on how to make money in GW), how to get new armors like those cool-looking ones: Primeval, Ancient, Vabbian, etc.

I want to learn how to play, overall gaming, so I was wondering too if there is a guild out there I could join or anyone who could help me in-game, any tips will do fine too, anything.

So main question is ¿Which campaign should I finish first? Taking all points above in mind. I have heard Nightfall is the easiest, while Factions is the most challenging one. Also wondering: ¿Do you guys have any tips for me and my in-game problems? (Damage problem/supposition is one of the most confusing ones)

I might start a new role-playing character to clear a bit all this confusion...

I just want to have a pleasant experience at GW before joining GW2

Thank you in advance

my honest opinion would be to start a new char in either NF or Factions.
Also I advise making a Ritualist or a Mesmer. These two classes have two of the most uses and ability to join teams with other people.

I suggest these if you are looking to get into the end game content of guild wars earlier rather than later. I think Factions is the quickest to progress to level 20 and it is fairly easy to get through

Recommend finish Nightfall, get all heroes. You can get some maximum armor of some kind. Get heroes basically set up. Should do fine.

http://www.gwpvx.com/Main_Page has good build suggestions for your character and heroes.

http://www.guildwiki.org/Main_Page much information about armor, skills, weapons, anything in the game.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page and the official wiki too!

You do not need the world's best weapon to win, just a good one and that is not hard to come by. If warrior assign your attribute points (which you can change any time in a city or outpost) so that you support your weapon, your armor, and your shield.

A warrior is a solid character but it needs support from healers, casters, and other damage dealers. You most certainly should not be hitting 60% DP. If you die that much, something is bad wrong somewhere.

One of the biggest things I failed to understand when I first started was the significance of runes & insignia for armor - mine and my heroes. I found the Wiki information confusing at the time. Now it all makes "perfect sense" to me, but for whatever reason, I could not wrap my mind around it back then.

Runes & insignia offer additional (and important) bonuses to your character and to your heroes. You can obtain runes and insignia either by buying them from a Rune Trader, or by finding them on (otherwise useless) pieces of armor dropped by foes from which you then use a salvage kit to retrieve the runes & insignia.

You can only use runes & insignia specific to your primary profession, or those designated for "all" professions. So as a Warrior, you can't actually use any of the Monk runes for example - but you can use any rune/insignia listed under the "All" tab at the Rune Trader.

You can boost your health, your energy, your armor rating, etc. through use of runes/insignia. They work for heroes the same way they work for you.

When it comes to weapons, be sure that you are meeting the requirement for the weapon. For example, you may have an axe that says it does 6-28 damage with a requirement of 9 strength. That means you need to make sure that in the attribute screen ("K" on your keyboard in-game) you have put 9 pips into the Strength attribute. Otherwise, you're going to do much less than max damage. So you want your weapons and shields or foci to have a requirement you meet with points in your attribute panel.

You may want to take a look at PvXWiki as well. This can help you understand working builds (combination of skills/attributes) that others successfully use in-game, to get an idea of what works well together and why. Usually they also list what runes/insignia you might want to use with the build, and what weapon stats work best with it. You'll notice when looking at those that the attributes assignment may say something like:

Strength 12 + 1 + 3
What that means is that they've poured 12 pips into strength and then added additional pips by using headgear with a +1 to strength native attribute (stacking) and +3 strength rune (non-stacking) to that headgear.

The stacking/non-stacking thing can be kind of confusing as well. An inherent +1 modifier on a piece of armor (one without any runes or insignia) will stack with a rune added to that piece of armor (or worn on another piece of armor in the same outfit). A +1, +2 or +3 attribute modifier from a rune will NOT stack with another rune of the same attribute, but will stack with the inherent +1 attribute modifier inherent in the armor.

So basically, you could have this setup:
+1 inherent strength modifier and a +3 rune strength modifier on a headpiece, and that would give you a total of +4 to strength (and a -75 to health).

But you could NOT have this setup:
+1 inherent strength modifier and a +3 rune strength modifier on a headpiece, PLUS a +3 rune strength modifier on a chest piece. The two runes will not stack with each other, though the negative impact on your health DOES stack.

Hopefully I haven't made that too terribly confusing.

Welcome back to Guildwars
I got 2 basic advices for you:
1. Do not delete any of your older chars. They recieve birthday gifts that increase in value the older they get. They can be sold for anything from 1k up to several 100 k.
2. Use the wiki and look up elite skills. Check up what location they are in, and go capture those you can find in available areas. Also elite skills that you do not use yourself can be great for heroes. Once you have captured a elite skill it is available for all heroes on all chars. That means, even if you start a new char you can immediately equip your new heroes with them.
Good luck in the game

An axe with q9 Strength? That would be some rare axe right there..

The idea is correct though, you need to meet the reqs..

Also, what I failed to understand until a very very long time in my playing is the significance of armor. I would be playing with non max armor and getting damaged an aweful lot. Make sure you have a set of max armor (for you this is 80). This will greatly reduce the damage taken and you should die less.

tl;dr : start new... the lore is rich, not repetitive or boring... story line has absolutely terrible voice acting but if you can get passed that, you'll be golden.

*laughing* You can tell I don't play a warrior, huh?

Well, as long as we're tearing Gizzy a new one....
Points not pips.

But again, the idea is right. You want to meet the requirements, but don't spread your attribute points too thin. The game almost encourages that in the beginning, but if you've got points in everything, you're doing the "Jack of all trades but a master of none" thing, and you won't be very effective because of it.

Another newbie here:
What do you mean by "Max Armor"? What does the "80" mean?

Max armor refers to armor with the maximum armor rating available for an specific profession. 80 is the max armor rating for Paragon and Warriors.

Thank you very much!

LOL I used "pips" because "points" is misleading in this instance, especially in talking to a completely new player given that it actually takes 97 points to get to a rank of 12 in an attribute. Didn't want to hear about the OP desperately trying to pour just 12 points into an attribute and not being able to, especially since "12" isn't one of the exponential increases in cost for a rank increase.

Not that "I" would have been confused by such a thing when I first started. *whistling innocently*

Unless you are trying to get something really expensive, like Obsidian armor, or rare equipment, the easiest way to make money is to simply play the game. You get gold as a reward for many quests/missions. Also, while playing, be sure to pick up all of your drops - you'll need to learn what is worth keeping, what is worth trying to sell to others, and what is just sold to the merchant.

and I think I was playing for 4 years before I learned that you can id white drops for a increase in merch value - worth doing in later areas ^^

The main key to making money in GW is very simple but it is amazing how many people fail at it.

1) Play the game, do quests/missions/dungeons.
2) Don't spend money! Don't buy skins/mini/tonics/consumables! Just use what drops.

If you do this, and pick up every drop, then merch anything that isn't usable, remember to id everything, then you will quickly begin to amass some money. The real hard part comes once you have 100K in storage and feel the pull to spend it on something.

Making 1-5K on a mission or quest may not sound like much compared to power farming but it does add up. Just do 2-3 quests and 2-3 missions each time you log in and you will find the money adding up quickly.

For the OP, remeber that you shouldn't be "tanking" in GW. A war is there to dish out damage, not to be a wall that takes a pounding till it falls down. Make sure your build works well with your Heroes builds. Don't be rushed into pushing ahead before your party is set. Do some pulling and flaging and you can clear any mob without dying.

First of all thank you for all your answers to my questions, i really do appreciate it.

I am going to list some facts and some new questions regarding your answers guys:

1.- I've read every tip you gave me and all those have been really useful... specially those on equipment and answers to my doubts about damage, I've already rised my swordsmanship attribute to that of the sword I'm using in order to make full damage, however I still hit Jotuns for 10-20 damage lol (autoattacks, not skills) so I guess that it is just "ok".

2.- About the older characters and BD presents you were rights, I played with all my old characters (7 characters out of several more slots) and I found some miniature creatures, including a golden Shiro Tagachi's mini (How much is worth that one?)

3.- I dont have any problems regarding elites FOR MY HEROES, since pvp unlocks are avaiable for them, not for the main character though, since I got the pvp pack (all skills, all weapons, runes, etc) it's not a problem to make their builds, except for equipment -There's the main problem with my heroes-

4.- A friend told me that if I collected every drop i get outside outposts (explorable areas), @ EotN campaign to be precise, I could make 700k in a week, that encouraged me to keep farming and questing there... However I want to confirm if it wasnt just an exageration or a way to scam me (he told he would help me in exchange for that golden Shiro mini). If he was right: ¿Are there any ones to farm @ Nightfall, which would be those and which builds would be convenient for the job?

And ¿What is power farming?

One of the questions I've come with recently (and that has been bugging me lots): ¿How to know if my weapon/armor setup is good? Is there any equipment preference for specific roles chararacters? Like runners, farmers, etc.

5.- Right now my character is a sword user, and some people told me that sword warriors are mostly used as tanks. I'm not using it as tank but I'd like to deal more damage, ¿Should I keep using sword, or is there any important difference with using other weapons like axes or hammers?

6.- I found a 3rd party program at some forums, named "Mapping Out" ¿Is it legit to use it or is it forbidden? as well as "KSMod"

7.- I've come across, while farming, with different coloured weapon/equipment ¿Is there any important difference between them? (Purples, Golden, Green, Light Blue, etc.) ¿Which ones are worth the most?

Thank you in advance once again and I hope this isn't becoming annoying for you lol

I'll reply to some of it.
Mini pets, look in the PC section of Ventari forum here on Guru. There you will find my minipet and tonic PC guide. Prices might have dropped a bit since my last update, but it still gives you a good idea of the value. Gz on the shiro
Drops: Earning 700k in a week from just collecting drops is way exaggerated, but its still a good income. But. After doing a random mission/playing for 1h you can fill your bag with random drops. Merchant might offer 1k for it all. If you ID it, the value might increase to 1500g. It isnt a lot by itself, but its like freebies if you just pick up stuff that drops when you play normally. For rarity: Blue is the least rare, then purple and gold, green are unique items. Greens cannot be upgraded and you cannot salvage mods from them. Only drops from bosses and some endgame chests and dungeon chests.Look at what mods you get that you can salvage off. Your heroes will love you if you give them a handful of those blue insignias and runes that yield extra health and energy, like radiant, vitae etc. And then a minor rune for their main attribute, like a heal monk should have a minor divine favor and a minor healing rune. For yourself a good start would be a minor sword and strength rune.
Power farming:Basically it is repetitive killing of the same monsters in an area which gives drops that are above average. Some can be solofarmed like the vaettir in EOTN, others require team like UWSC, Underworld Speed Clear and DOA, Domain of Anguish in Nightfall. Those farms usually require a special build with elite skill and some of the special pve skills from EOTN, like Pain Inverter, You move like a Dwarf etc. I wouldn,t advise you to try this right now, since its quite unforgiving for newbies. The vaettir kill you quick if you make mistakes, and the farmer teams won,t take you in if you do not have the required skills.
Play the game, especially prophecies, near the end of Prophecies you can cap the sword elite 100 blades which is very popular since its a strong skill. Then you can start researching wiki and the farmer forums here on wiki and see what´s required to make a farmer skillset.

For third party programs: Be very careful. Some of them contain keyloggers and spyware that can be used to steal your account, others are forbidden by anet and can get you banned (loose your account). A few are accepted, like Texmod that can help you mapping. Check in the questions and answers section. I have played for 5 years and got GWAMM title without using any. So you do not have to use them.

Hope this helps

Actually, if you want to do full damage, you need at least 12 weapon mastery in the respective attribute.
If you look here you will notice that your weapon damage increases:
- from rank 9 to rank 10 by 7.0%
- from rank 10 to rank 11 by 7.6%
- from rank 11 to rank 12 by 8.3%
- from rank 12 to rank 13 by 3.5%
- from rank 13 to rank 14 by 3.7%
- from rank 14 to rank 15 by 3.8%
- from rank 15 to rank 16 by 3.9%
So it's very useful to increase your swordsmanship to 12 or even higher, just keep in mind that you will get a much lower increase above rank 12 than below rank 12.

For a minipet price check, this is a good place to start. Most prices are probably even lower than the ones currently displayed.

Regarding hero weapons, I think most people just give their unused green weapons to their heroes but, since you're new, that's not applicable to you. Maybe you could research the green weapons that have the stats that you like and either farm them or buy them from other players.
This is probably the only time when the old, un-official wiki is actually helpful. Go here, choose the profession for which you want to find a green weapon, then click on "Unique items quick reference" below the title "Related Articles" on the bottom. When you do find a green that you like, scroll down and look if it has a "Collector / Weaponsmith counterpart" that is either cheaper or easier to get.

I wouldn't put too much faith in what your "friend" said (and I wouldn't give him your minipet either). It is possible to get a large amount of money if you farming SOLO, without heroes nor henchmen, for many hours per day and you really should be picking every item that drops for you, in any place. But I only farm Vaettirs and I have no advice for farming in Elona.

There's no such thing as "power farming," maybe you meant "power leveling" (which means getting to level 20 fast by paying another player to help you) or "power trading" (which means buying items at low prices and selling them at high prices; this takes a long time and is only profitable if you already have a high amount of wealth so that you can power trade expensive items).

Whoever told you that sword users are tanks is stupid. A tank can wield a sword, axe, or spear and still be equally useful. There are only 2 Tactics skills that require the user to wield a sword and could be used for tanking but they're really not that great. And swords can deal a lot of damage through Dragon Slash or Hundred Blades. I recommend you switch between using a sword and an axe and see which one you like best (since it really depends on what build you're using and which area you're doing). Hammers are a bit more complicated to use, maybe you should try them when you feel like you understand the sword and axe builds really well.

Mapping Out seems legit. I never used it though, I just open Firefox and look on the wiki.
KSMod seems only useful if you have multiple accounts and want to open them (2 or more) at once. If that applies to you then go ahead.

If you get a light-blue that has a value of over 50 gold then I'd recommend you identify it (in order to raise its value) and then sell it to the merchant.
Purples sometimes have good mods or good stats but, usually, they don't; always identify these and then probably sell it to the merchant.
Golds are the most rare types of weapons; always identify them and then either sell them to the Merchant, salvage their mods, or keep them.
Greens always have the highest stats; never identify them, just use them or sell them to the Merchant.

Even green items increase in merchant value when you ID them.

The farming in GW is rarely as good as your friend mentioned. Maybe if you did it 24/7 you could bank that much but unless you get extremely lucky with a rare drop your looking at a much lower number.

If you spend 1 hour a day playing, playing as in killing things not working on builds or chatting, then you should be able to earn between 50 and 100k a week. But you will have to maximize your time. That means finding areas with large numbers of monsters, high enough in level to give good drops but easy enough that you can kill them quickly and repeatedly.

As for the colours of the items. The stats are all that matter if you are using it yourself. If your going to sell it then it should be gold/max/require 9 or lower and have perfect mods. Anything else will take longer to sell then it would for you to earn more money playing so just salvage what you need, equip to a hero or merch the item.