How Solo-able is it?

While i have no qualms about partying with others, for the most part ive gone through all 3 campaigns plus the eotn expansion on my own...just heroes and henchmen...in normal mode as well as hard mode. So its definitely doable from a solo standpoint. You just need to get more familiar with the game mechanics and skills. Everyone goes through the tough early period regardless of who says otherwise.

There are some missions that are difficult to solo (Dzagonur Bastion in nightfall for example...especially in hardmode if you want the bonus) unless you use gimic builds (btw nothing wrong with that, i use it nowadays all the time)...but none are impossible to solo.

If you have access to heroes, use them over henchmen (as mentioned youll need to get heroes skills...which is the drawback) especially if you feel you want more hands on control of your party. You can pick which skills a hero has, what weapons they use, upgrade their armor with runes/inscriptions and micromanage which skills they use, when they use it and on whom they use it on.

Have faith and keep at it. Youll get used to it all and love it.

I firmly believe that you should take MOX at the minimum, he is max lvl and will make the earlier parts of the game easier/quicker without having to rely solely on underlvld hench. Also this will not disrupt the chronology of the game, nor will it allow you to simply roll through every area.

Before you run up on a group of enemies, hold down the control button to see how many are out there and what profession. The control key will "light up" any enemies around you. Sometimes they stand on each other so it'll be a bigger group than it first appears.

If you need to, stay back out of aggro range and watch them move to see if a group will peel off, leaving you with a smaller group to deal with and subsequently pull with your bow. Although I usually run a ritualist, she always has a bow equiped in one of her weapon slots just for pulling enemies. Like someone said, I'm not using the bow for damage, just to pull.

If you see a healer, that will probably (at least at this point) be your main focus. Since you have your enemies highlighted with the control key, keep the control key held down then left click on the monk (or whoever), and then control-c. That will 'ping' the target and your henchmen will attack them.

Another thing you can do is ambush. I do this a lot. Set up (flag) my heros so they're not standing together, then run out and hit the closet target by equipping your bow and hitting control-c for auto attack, then run away and you should pull the enemy behind you and follow you into your ambush.

Also you can use the tab key to tab through enemies.

You are missing some key elements to playing the game which are hurting you and frustrating you, but you're still at that learning stage so don't give up. A popular saying in GW is that it's all tutorial until you're level 20. Even then, a lot of people still haven't picked up the nuances, I know I didn't.

Also, if you can afford it, I would purchase the skill unlock packs through the GW store. I'm the type of person who likes to go straight to fun when I'm playing a game and frustration isn't fun.

Have you joined a guild yet? It might be a good idea to join one that doesn't mind helping new people. Although you want to solo the game, playing with other people once in a while, especially skilled people, will help your experience be more fun and less frustrating.

If you need help, PM me at Laraja Mikalazodo.

You need a friend for a mission in eotn in the shiverpeaks somewhere, forgot where. But it has to do with a wurm and setting barrels to weaken it or something.

Other than that, can't remember a time when I NEEDED a friend to help me.

That mission was Heart of the Shiverpeaks. It was a challenge to do it alone, yes...

Another missions that was challenging to solo was The Eternal Grove (Factions).

Well I finally managed to complete the Shiverpeak Stragglers quest using mainly keyboard controls. I pick up henchmen from Yak's Bend, I usually take one of each profession with me but ordinarily it's either the fighter or the brawler that splits off from the group and attacks anything in range.

Anyway, I equipped my bow but for some reason even though I have 4 slots to equip weapons I can only ever equip one (F1) with either my sword or a bow so I can't really swap between the weapons quickly without going into my inventory first. The ranged weapons are much better to pick off the enemy and get them to follow you to your group but once they are there I have to waste time equipping my sword/shield again to melee fight.

Anyway, by clearing the road first and getting all my henchmen to focus on one enemy at a time, I found it much easier to deal with enemies and was able to get all the stragglers back to YB safely.

I have read about using heroes before but it means I would have to create a new character in of the other campaigns and then go through that for a few levels till I get to the point where I can quick-travel by map back to the Prophecies campaign. I know having heroes would help me enormously but I just wish I could do it with my current character rather than starting from scratch.

I'm also tempted to buy the skill packs as some of you have mentioned, the skills I have unlocked at the moment are all sword-based as that is the weapon I use most often.

What I don't understand is how you can keep your henchmen spread out or get them to stay behind a distance so you can pull enemies. My henchmen just seem to follow quite close at all times and then the moment they spot an enemy, they just run off and attack it. Perhaps I need to bite the bullet and start another campaign and get some heroes.

I still haven't bought EOTN but I do have Nightfall and Factions, do you think I should get EOTN or concentrate on the others? Actually I just read on the GW site that you can buy mercenary heroes, does that mean I can buy a mercenary hero pack and then use them instead of henchmen? That would mean I could keep my current character and still do the prophecies campaign but with heroes instead of henchmen. This might be a better way to go.

Decisions, decisions...

You wouldn't need to make a new character to get heroes. You can hop over to Elona (Nightfall) and pick a few up easily, once you get to Lion's Arch, which you're not very far from. The problem with heroes as a new player is lacking the skill unlocks or build knowledge to set them up effectively. That's where making a new character to unlock skills could be useful, or purchasing the skill unlock pack if you wanted to do that.

It's been a while since I've played with henchman, but on your compass you should have a little flag icon which will allow you to park all of them so that they don't follow you if you don't want them to. With heroes, you can control the placement of them as a group, or up to 3 of them individually. Just don't forget to unflag them. There have been times that I've parked mine somewhere to move them around a corner for line of sight, for example, and then ran off into the next fight without them.

Thanks Dalinia, I think I'll pop on over to Nightfall once I get to LA and get some heroes, I'm planning on getting the skill unlock packs anyway. Although having said that, I am really tempted to just completely start over with a new character as I can't remember simple little things like what certain items do in your inventory or about crafting items etc.

I didn't know about the little flag icon as it doesn't mention that in the original manual that came with the game. But that could come in really useful for telling my henchmen/heroes to stay put while I go and pull small groups of enemies apart and run back to the henchmen for them to help me deal with them.

I'd also like to apologize for completely hijacking this thread for my own end. I can imagine all my questions becoming really annoying but seeing as the game doesn't really provide a good in-depth tutorial and I don't want to annoy fellow players while in-game with all my pesky noob questions, I thought this would be the better alternative. It's a shame you can't get all this information in-game (like with the Civlopedia in Civ 5) as it would save having to read up on it via a forum or GW-Wiki and then going back into the game.

I really appreciate everyone's help and patience with me.

This thread might be helping some other new people, too, so I don't think you're highjacking the thread. It seems that there's an influx of new players due to GW2. They want to see what it's about and they purchase GW first, which makes sense.

Popping over to Nightfall or Eye of the North for heros is a VERY good idea. My first character I played thorugh most of Prophecies before breaking down and buying Eye of the North and getting heros. I wished I had done it sooner. You can pick upp three heros, Vekk (elementalist), Ogden Stonehealer (healer) and Gwen (mesmer) right away. Three very helpful professions and all of them level 20. You'll get MOX (Dervish) too, when you get to Lion's Arch. Just remember to equipment them properly and give them good weapons. Buying those skill unlock packs will go a long way to making them useful as you'll have elite skills to give them.

Good luck!