Started Dervish, How do I grab Ritualist?

As the topic says, I started as a Dervish in Nightfall and now have to pick my secondary profession. I wanna grab Ritualist, How do I go about that? There are no "Expert Ritualists" in the area.

Ritualist is a factions profession, you'll have to wait till you ascend, which you can do either by completing hunted, or I'm pretty sure you can do the desert missions or the closer to the stars quest to ascend too. For now I'd just get something that you need skills for.

How long would ascending take?
Also what does that even mean?

Erm, for Nightfall it just depends on your pace of play, if you're only just choosing your secondary profession now though it may be some time, but it's part of the main story line, so it's not like you can miss it. That's unless you got ferried to Lions Arch or Kaineng, then you could ascend like a factions or prophecies char, http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ascension <-- that should help you.

Ascending is just what they called it originally, and there's been equivilents to it in Factions and Nightfall. Basically it's just getting past a certain point in the story to be able to switch secondary professions. In Nightfall, it's much less up front and official, in that you have to beat the quest Hunted, which is one of the first quests once you get off Istan.

I'd take Warrior as a secondary for now, as you'll probably use it somewhere down the line, continue playing til you beat Hunted, then head to Factions.

However the annoying part is i'm fairly sure to even get to where you can change secondaries in factions it requires you to beat a good chunk of story.

"Ascension" is originally a Prophecies term for "hey, you can change your secondary now." In Factions it's called "Weh No Su." There are some lore-related things to it, blessing of the gods, etc. But mainly it allows you to change your secondary and access some elite areas.

For Nightfall characters, after choosing your secondary profession, the quest Hunted! (which opens up allowing you to change your secondary) takes place after 3 more missions and their 14 associated primary quests. It's actually pretty quick.

Conversely, you could catch a "ferry" to Consulate Docks and go to Factions, where it'd only be 2 missions and 3 primary quests to "Weh no Su," but for a newbie the difficulty level would be very high -- not recommended.
As for Ascending in the Crystal Desert in Prophecies, that's only recommended if you're trying to play through a Legendary Survivor and need the 50k experience. Otherwise, it'd be a long trek or hiring a lot of runners.

My advice is to hang in there with Nightfall. It'll happen before you know it.


Not necessary. If I recall correctly, you can pick any profession from the profession changers in Factions and Nightfall -- no need to go to their respective campaigns. Or you can just go to the profession changer in Great Temple of Balthazar. He definitely offers them all.

Ah, Thanks for clearing that up for me guys.
Been a great help combined with the Wiki.

Much love. <3

As an additional note...after your character is ascended, you will still need to find a Profession Changer and pay 500g to change your secondary to Ritualist. If you go the native route, after completing Hunted you will either need to complete the quest Building the Base: Prisoners of War (available from Dunkoro in the Command Post just outside the Sunspear Sanctuary), or map travel to the Great Temple of Balthazar to access the Profession Changer there.

Factions has the (slight) advantage in that after completing the Weh no Su quest to ascend, the town you end up in has a profession changer NPC already there. And a skill trainer to provide unlocked Rit skills for purchase.

Also...changing secondary professions will only give you a limited selection of "starter" ritualist skills. Unless you have purchased the skill unlock packs from the in-game store (allowing you to just purchase a tome from other players to learn skills), you may still need to travel around and learn/unlock/capture the Rit skills you want.