What order to play the campaign + Heroes

Hello, I recently purchased Guild Wars Trilogy and EOTN. I've been told I can run the entire game solo with 7 heroes but only if I unlock it with Nightfall+EOTN. I was just wondering if it's worth it to play through Nightfall and EOTN just to unlock it instead of playing through it continuously (Prophecies+Factions+Nightfall+EOTN).

Is prophecies+factions soloable with just henchmen? Thanks

Yes, all of the game can be done with just Henchmen - especially in Normal Mode.

However, here's something you could consider. You could start in whatever Campaign floats your boat - for me it's usually a matter of how I want my character to look. But, then again, you should start in Prophecies to do Pre-Searing, at least once.
Once you get to the port city for the campaign - Lion's Arch (Prophecies), Kaineng Center (Factions) or Consulate Docks (Nightfall, although Kamadan is the port) - you can then do a few small quests to travel to Nightfall and/or EotN to pick up a few Heroes if you want. You don't need to then finish Nightfall or EotN - you only need to do enough to pick up the Heroes you want, and then go back to what you were doing - your choice. (You can check the wikis for info on where various Heroes are found and what it takes to acquire them.)

And, of course, you can (I believe) purchase and use Mercenary Hero slots anytime. Also, if you have all the Campaigns + EotN, you can pick up M.O.X. outside a port city, if you don't mind having a big ugly pseudo-dervish blocking your view.

http://www.guildwiki.org/Hero

Edit - as noted below, don't be in a big rush to get Heroes. They need to be properly outfitted with Runes, Insignias, weapons and skill bars to be effective. In many cases a Henchman is better than a poorly equipped Hero.

Prophecies in normal mode is definitely soloable with just henchmen. I'm a noob, and I did 100% exploration and all the missions plus the bonuses. Didn't try Prophecies HM though, and I'm currently playing through Factions using the heroes from EotN so I can't say how it is with henchmen. Also, Sorrow's Furnace can be done with henchmen too.

Most people here will say to get heroes as soon as possible so you can move faster through the game, but bear in mind that you will have to spend some nice cash to enchant their armor, and you would need to research what skills to put on their skill bars. With henchmen you wouldn't have to worry as much, and you can at least play for a while for fun, before deciding to go deeper into the game mechanics.

Don't forget to do a /bonus in chat. You probably have access to the bonus weapons and maybe even an awesome imp.

First to explain what a hero is. When you unlock a hero has poor skills, poor weapons and poor armor. To really use it you need access to skills, weapons and armor upgrades. The skills however are for normal mode the most important part and for hero's you only need to have unlocked the skills on your account.

But when it is your first character, you don't have those skills yet, and to make matters worse, you can't buy them yet. Example:
- If you are a mesmer/ele, and your hero a necro, you need necroskills. But you have to buy them for yourself in order to be able to use them on hero's. But you can buy only mesmer and ele skills. unless you became ascended.

So my advise is: Start anywhere you want, work your way to the port town using henchman (and in nightfall bring maybe one hero). Then go to factions and became weh no su (ascended) wich happens after two mission on the mainland. Then you can change your secondairy profession and actually buy skills for your hero's.

But then there is also the problem of money so after that it might very well be needed to play a bit more. Just to give you an idea of the amount of money involved to run around with 7 hero's with a full skillbar:

Unlocking all secondairy professions so you can buy skills:
8*500 gold = 4k
7*8 skills (each skill cost 1k plus a skillpoint) = 56k
Total 60k to get hero's that can help you through the first parts of the game. (but a lot of better skills can be found further on in game).

So my advise is to take it easy, specially cause you prolly also want to have some decent armor for yourself. The 7 hero's are only introduced bout 6 months ago, and before that, people could very well play the game in normal mode with 3 hero's and 4 henchman. And last, the henchman are still there and are pretty good.

Thanks guys. This is a good response. Originally, I thought all I needed was to just finish Nightfall+EOTN and I'll auto-unlock the heroes I needed (which came with all the skills and everything) to blast through the game. But I realize this is not the case. I'll just decide go at my own pace then. Thanks again for the great responses.

Yeah, i would do eotn>NF.

If you are interested in earning in game gear for gw2 (via your Hall of Monuments) then this guide might help you get started

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guide...uments_rewards

I would definitely do EotN/NF first, the heroes really speed up things, although as stated above, it is perfectly doable with henchmen.

But if you are looking for 'speed' rather than just going through the campaigns at a slower pace, i'd recommend getting the heroes 100% just because you can micro-manage them, and they can be abit/alot more effective than henchmen.

+ if you are gona go for 50/50 HoM then you may as well get them ASAP, because you'd have to get them for the heroes armour sooner or later anyway.

your 1st time thru should be done in order imo. some of the appeal in pve is the build up from what happens in pre-searing. plus the storyline of the other campaigns aren't nearly as compelling.

start in prophecies and then go in order with one exception. after getting to lions arch, you might as well go to elona and do the quest for the initial batch of heros. that should be more than enough extra help to get thru the rest of prophecies and factions. you'll get a bunch more going thru nightfall and eotn after that.