HoM 30/50 How long for a GW newbie?

I've looked at the excellent sticky above on efficiently getting 30 points. I'm just curious as to peoples opinions. How long do you think it will take someone who is effectively a GW newbie to get to 30? I play a couple of hours a day on average and maybe twice that on weekends. I know there are a lot of variables to consider, just curious about a ballpark figure.

EDIT: I have all 3 campaigns and EotN

It wont take you too long, about as long as it takes to play and complete all campaigns.

The longest part will be the weapons, you need 11. You can use War in Kryta (that is available after you complete prophecies and parts of Eye of the North) to get enough weapons you will have to complete bounties and trade the rewards for the weapons, You should plan on at least 7 months for the weapons, less if you have RL friends or family that can help. They will also be the cheapest because all it takes is time. Destroyer weapons require around 20k, less if you have some of the supplies, Tormentor weapons run around 160k but you will really need around 22 ectos at 7+k for the required item needed.

The elite armor will be around 60-75k ea plus supplies just make sure one of them is kurzick or luxon from factions. Use the ones that require the cheapest and you will be ok.

The next is heroes. You can get M.O.X for free plus any animal, Imperial phoenix and black Moa as you play. You can buy a hero armor for around 5-10k, or since you will need some titles anyway, use the gold Z coins for HM missions and trade them for a black widow.

The next one is statues, you will get 3 for completing the campaigns. You will also get 3 for achieving master/bonus for your regular first time play through. Then you can do them again on HM which since you will be doing them as a daily bounty, you will be with other players and they will be easy. For a total of 7 titles. You then use the rewards to get you spider.

The last one is mini pets. Minis are given for birthdays. You can save this one for last simply because you will have to buy almost all of them. Every year around Chinese New Year (January) the game gives you one, plus you get one on the date a character, not account, was created. You need one green, one gold (which you will get next Jan), one purple, and 26 at least whites and any other. Some go cheap some not.

There you go not hard at all. it may seem like a lot but the weapon bounty and the HM bounty can be done at the same time.

If you were to start today with nothing and GW2 doesn't come out until next year you will complete it in time.

This is harder to "ballpark" than you might realise. As well as time, much also depends on the newbie's willingness and ability to learn the game, and how much patience they have for some tasks like vanquishing and farming.

I can only offer my own experience, which doesn't necessarily relate all that well since I started in 2008 and didn't get into the game properly until 2009. The HoM calculator only came out last year, and at that stage it turned out I was 24/50, but it only took me another week or so to get to 30/50 from there. So once some actual goals were put in front of me, the process sped up considerably.

You can probably speed things up further by joining a friendly guild who can also help you along a bit (I usually play by myself). It's not as daunting as it looks, just go for whatever you decide is easiest for you to achieve based on your own play style, and you'll probably find yourself reaching 30 in a few months or so.

Good luck.

I firstly bought GW just for the HoM but I fell in love with the game, I started playing almost 8 months ago, so I know about be a newbie :P

From scratch to 30/50 took me about 5~6 months, and not knowing anyone (so no one running and giving me things) and playing 2~3 hours per day and not playing hard core, I just finished all the campaigns did the WiK and HotN quests, some PvP for the lulz.

The things that helped me the most was:
Do the daily Zmission, Zvanquish (after full circle you'll get 8 titles), with the Zvq you'll certainly get Legendary Spearmarshal.
Hero armors and pets are also easy and with a bit of effort will cost you 0 gold for it.

Sell the coins you get from the Zquests and buy Zkeys, soon you'll get 200 keys giving you 3 more points.

I'm gonna go ahead and echo some of the other people who have posted, it all depends on how quickly you "pick up" the game and how you decide to spend your time.

I got a huge chunk of my HoM the day it came out due to a lot of the points being obtainable by money. You can either go for the campaign titles (time consuming but cheap) or first invest time learning a farm/speed clear, and then using the money earned to buy your way quickly to 30/50. It all depends on what you can do without getting bored (I hate title hunting with a passion) and how well you do it.

I'm a pretty hardcore soloist, obviously I'll still use henchmen and heroes though. Also, I'm not a big fan of chat channel buying and selling. Grinding doesn't bother me...too much.

EDIT: It's also funny considering I don't know what quite a lot of those abbreviations and things you're talking about even are :P Lots to learn.

some threads you might want to check out:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/q...highlight=hall

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/w...highlight=hall

(and the sticky at the top of this forum)

'nother quick question is it possible to be "blocked" from any of the point earning things? Is there any point in gameplay which any become unavailable?

I'll offer my own experience which is probably closer to what you're looking for. I started playing 25days ago, started from scratch(technically I had an old account so I might get some of the HoM minis from the birthday presents I have on that, but haven't opened them yet). I'm currently only 8/50, however there's like 5 or so points I could get very fast that I haven't bothered with(dedicating heroes that I already have the armor for+getting more easy armor, black moa/imperial phoenix, finishing my normal mode mission titles etc). I expect to hit 30 within the next month or so. I play a lot, but everything has been done entirely solo without any external help.

The biggest problem as a new player is money. With that said, because you're probably going to want to get vanquishing titles for everything+carto(they're easy titles, just time consuming), you'll make a bunch of money, so you shouldn't need to farm too much. Also once you have a decent base, you can level any new character very quickly if you need a specific farmer: for example a ritualist can solo ectos very easily, and if you have hard mode unlocked and some gold, you can get 40/40weaps, final armor and lvl 20 in a few hours only, only problem would be skill points but you can use tomes or stars of transcendence to learn the very basic bar to farm with.

Overall I'd say for 30/50, you're probably looking at 300 to 400hours of gameplay. Depending on how you use the hours you might cut that though, I assume if you have high tolerance for farming, going straight rit and farming ectos asap then buying everything might be faster than farming titles.


As for your last question, no you can't be blocked from anything. Even Survivor doesn't have to be done on a new character. Well the only thing I can think of is Kurzick/Luxon armor, you can only buy those if you don't play Dervish/Paragon, but as I said leveling a new character takes only a few hours, and you could just buy it with that character instead. HoM is account based not character based, so it doesn't matter which character gets what.

There is 1 title that can only be earned in prophecies, legendary defender of ascalon. The title can only be earned by reaching lvl 20 in the proph starting (aka pre) area and is unavailable if you leave.

Remember that the HoM is ACCOUNT BASED. You can always make a new character and achieve what you may have missed earlier.

i got to 30 in less than 6 months, it really depends on how much you want it. joining a good guild helps aswell, they can teach you some basic farms to get the money for expensive items

I got it a little under a year through casual play, before WIK and before the ingredients for vabbian armor and destroyer weapons shot through the roof.

I have been working on this on a 2nd (and 3rd) account...while I have gotten a lot of minis (whites mostly)...I was able to do the moa quest for the mini moa and was around during the new year and got a celestial mini--my other accounts are at 17 and 18--none have even finished a chapter yet (...been using them for nic gifts), but I think they will have plenty of time to get to 30 in the next year (I only play them basically on mondays). I dont plan on doing the longer termed stuff with them (no carto, no sweets or drunkard--cant afford that, no fow armor etc)...but getting each chapter finished with bonus/masters, getting a set or 2 of armor (eye armor is the cheapest--and you can use the books to get enough points for them), a hero armor or two as well....should put me there (and anyone else).

A dedicated player who knows the game well and has support from friends/a guild would take a few months. Starting completely from scratch, as a new player with no contacts is completely different. As a guestimate (as others have said it depends mainly on your willpower and dedication) for a newbie I'd say 8 months. Factoring in stuff like gearing up heroes, farming money for armour/weapons/skills and maintaining your real life.

....but more importantly, you can't "miss" anything. Or, rather, there is precisely one title that you can "miss" (LDoA), and it's simple enough to get on an alt now if you're so inclined. Totally not necessary however, and you almost certainly won't need it to get to 30/50.

Survivor used to be the one stumbling block that you could "miss", and it really screwed over a lot of old time players who made their main character a year before the title was introduced, but they've since fixed that so it's attainable by any character at any time, if you get the required ~1.3 mil xp.

I bought the game 42 days ago (thanks /age) and am nearly halfway through the 30 point HoM and a bit more just soloing with H/H. I think I've been in two PUGs, and both were headache inducing. A lot of the tasks have synergies, and some are just really trivial to do with 7 heroes... I hate to imagine what it was like when it was 3 heroes. :P

Some examples: the money you get from Legendary Guardian (and their respective books) can be then used to fund armors. If you really wanted to push it, the books can be saved, and then spammed for Legendary Survivor as well (and likely grab you an EOTN faction statue too, which can fuel some silly skills to complete other tasks quickly).

VQing your favourite luxon/kurzick place a bajillion times (roughly 17 from scratch; less 1 or 2 if you spend the faction you get from the campaign wisely) gives you the money and the materials to get both the armor and put you close enough to the lvl 4 faction statue

Quick question: if I had 4 armors on one character, and 1 armor on another, all of which are dedicated, would it still count as a "full display"? I've settled for an ugly assassin kurzick armor set and it would be a kick in the pants if I could have gotten it on a warrior

I've been filling my hom very causually (meaning that sometimes it took several weeks between the times I played) during the last 6 months or so, and I've gotten 26 points so far, and I'm not really far away from the rest of the points either.
I should add that I had like 500k and about 100 zkeys to draw from before I began, which obviously have made things easier (zaishen elite is a fantastically easy farm for causual players, it only takes about 20mins for a decent team and you earn 6k balthazar factions).

The most important thing though, is that you have a good teambuild. Personally I don't like pvx all too much (my own teambuild works better ) but it can point you in the right direction. http://www.gwpvx.com/PvX_wiki

As you've pointed out, the hom is account based. The only thing is that the armors have to be different, meaning that 2 elite kurz armors will just count as 1 in the reward calculator.
Check the wiki for details: http://www.guildwiki.org/Monument_of_Resilience