"Re-newbie" guide to experience the GW1 story before GW2 requested

Okay, I decided to give GW another go. But I'm more than a little confused about how to actually start doing it.

Back in 2006, I played a bit, and reached some ways in the Prophecies campaign (it was somewhere after the jungle bit I think?), but that account is now lost to me and I have a fresh new Collection account with all the campaigns - but with no characters and nothing unlocked.

I'd like to play through the main story, especially EOTN, as smoothly and painlessly, without any sort of grinding, and without needing to spend any time "LFG"ing for PUGs (so I assume this means soloing it out with heroes and henchmen).

How would I best accomplish that with a blank slate? Should I just start with Prophecies again (there's probably quite a bit that I've forgotten about the plot...), or should I go with something else to get heroes (though unskilled) fast?

Should I go for any sort of particular hero mix?
My initial thought was to simply make every hero a X/R and get a pet for everyone, either for seriously beastmastering it or doing IWAY.

What kind of role is best handled by a human in the party? Tank, DPS, Healer, Control, Necromancer...? What role does the AI really suck at, or what role could I play that best supports the team as a whole?

I probably won't be buying anything from the cash store to help me out either - if it'd come to that, I'd probably not bother (well, if I really get into the game and 9 euros could solve all my problems that'd require hours upon hours of grinding, maybe).


Thanks for the advice!

http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

You can start there looking for a few builds and trying what suits you.

For me, I personally LOVE the 7 hero support. I find I can handle almost everything with it.
http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build%3ATe...Player_Support
With that, I find I can be any role at all. DPS, Tanking, support, heals, crowd control, whatever you want, which is like a breath of fresh air for someone who used to be confined to Discordway *shudder*

As for the storyline and such, if you like watching the cutscenes, listening to the dialogue, etc, then go for it. If you just want to kill stuff, then it doesn't detract from it imo, but you don't know why you are killing what you are killing, or doing what you are doing.

Heroes, start with Nightfall straight out. Once you get to level 10, take the EotN quest you can get and you end up with 3 more heroes at the start of it (Gwen, Vekk, Ogden).

If you can spare the cash, then it's easiest to buy the skill packs from the in-game store, otherwise you have to run around capping everything you need for the hero skills, which can be a major pain in the butt if you don't have the money and/or areas that the skill is needed from. Especially if you don't have a decent team to start off with, it can be hard getting to the area to get the skills to make your team better!

Any other questions or if there's something I haven't answered, feel free to pm me either here or in-game (Lana Darkess/Kayler Coldheart)

I'm going to respectfully disagree with Lana.

First of all, be very wary of GW wikis hosted on Wikia. That team build is probably fine, and you can certainly still read Wikia wikis for reference, but it was mostly abandoned by the community and is thus vulnerable to outdated/unverified information.
New unofficial wiki is here: http://www.guildwiki.org
New PvX (builds) is here: http://www.gwpvx.com

Secondly, if immersing yourself in the lore is your goal, by all means start in Prophecies. Starting in Nightfall for heroes does you little service because you don't have many skills unlocked for them. And skill packs are not necessary. In Prophecies you get a number of free skill quests, and you can start temporary alts in the other campaigns (which is a good idea anyway, so you can experience their tutorial area quests) to get even more skills for cheap/free.
I have skilled a main account and an alt account this way, and it is not that bad.

Once you get out of Pre, use henchmen to get to LA, then hop over to Nightfall and Eye of the North to grab a few heroes. Then carry on with Prophecies. Sub-par heroes will do fine to the Desert, and by then you'll probably have cobbled together some builds that will get you through.

I would advise against the /R on everybody idea, though. If you're going to have a dedicated Beast Master, that's one thing. But a monk with a pet -- more specifically a monk with a dead pet -- is a monk that can't do its job properly.

Ok, thanks, though that still left me very undecisive about my class / secondary profession and what roles AI can handle / what does a human handle best.

I definitely won't be running around capping skills except in very limited cases (elite skill for me for example), I just want to play the missions and the story, really, without it being a chore. And no, I probably will never buy skill packs.

Do you really get more skills out of Prophecies than you'd get by going to see class trainers in Nightfall?

I assumed EotN would be the most relevant to my interests when it comes to prepping up for GW2, so getting to there fast is also a consideration (so Factions...?)

The most coherent lead-in to the North story is Prophecies (the two share the same map). You could probably mostly follow along if you go as far as the Crystal Desert, but then you'd want to Ascend and do your attribute quests in the Southern Shiverpeaks (there are also some loose ends about people you meet in the jungle tied up there).
Relevant to GW2, you'll also want to do War in Kryta and Hearts of the North, which require completing Prophecies or North to start.

Hard to give specific profession recommendations because it's mostly a matter of personal choice.

Playing a healer with heroes is kind of annoying, as you want to stay in the back and therefore have to flag them around a lot. Saying that, though, if you really wanted to play a monk you could go smite and do fine.

Melee hero AI kind of sucks, so if you like melee you could go that route. But full caster teams are also very good, so don't feel like you need to be the tank/in-the-face role if you don't want to.

You mentioned necro -- although they've improved human MMs with the minion panel, MM is still best handled by heroes. You could go curses or something, though.

Current meta seems to be assassins, ritualists, and mesmers... Sins still fill a lot of tank/DPS roles and do a lot of farming/SCs (though that's not your focus). Spirit-spamming rits also do some solo farming and handle the story content quite well. The mesmer update made them very powerful, also.

You could go Factions if you were interested in doing an assassin or ritualist. The leveling is very fast with the generous quest rewards.
However, if you went with Prophecies to get a full lore refresher, ranger, elementalist, and necro make competent spirit-spammers.

As for skills, they're different for each campaign (except for the handful of core skills). So yes, you could easily buy a number of skills in NF and Factions, but they would not be the same as the ones offered in the Prophecies quests. And the cost would add up. When you're starting out and have nothing, those free skill quests are very valuable. Once you get your feet under you and can make it to mainland Factions and Nightfall, you'll better be able to handle the cost of the skills there.

Okay, thanks.
Based on that I'll stick to my usual preference and do a Warrior, I figure I can perhaps do something like AOE + Watch Yourselves (or whatever it was, +100 armor for the team).

Any secondary prof. suggestions? I know the henchmen in prophecies don't have condition removal...do I get enough healing? So that'd be Monk (assuming it gets something early on) and Necro (Plague Touch?)
Or would Ranger work for that?

I figure I might need self-heals too, early on...

By the way, should I get all the "free" unlocks that the secondary prof. trainers give in pre before picking a secondary? Does getting a secondary make you unable to get those free unlocks?

an aoe warrior combined with "save yourself" is a nice pick indeed. Every profession can play the game almost with equally ease (or un-ease ).

A few words of warning though...
1: Eye of the North (EotN) is the most gorgeous area in the game in my opinion and brings the best content. but it is an expansion. it was brought out after the other 3 campaigns. where those 3 campaigns are "stand alone" EotN is made to be challenging for people who have been playing the game for several years and through the 3 campaigns. Although access is given at lvl 10, it is challenging with a steep learning curve if you venture there too early and lack enough experience and unlocks. The best moment to seriously do the main story line there is whenever you have finished one campaign.

2: In my opinion prophecy's is a very nice campaign and if playing as preparation for gw2 (lorewise) it's a good plan to play it to the end. but to make your life easier I would suggest to play to the capital (lion's arch) and then also start nightfall and factions. the reason is that both campaigns have some very nice bonusses. first off all, factions can be used to get to lvl 20 very quickly (just grab all quests in kaineng city - the factions capital), start with the quest "the search for a Cure", then start the follow up seak out brother tosai but never finish it till your lvl20, do all the other quests instead).

beside the same outpost kaineng city gives access to ton's of very usefull skills AND max lvl armor.

In nightfall you get early access to some heroes to help you. Same goes for the first few quests in Eye of the North (I know i said to not go there, but the first few quests are ok till you unlocked your hall of monuments and Gwen). it also gives access to even more heroes and some very nice skills.

3: A word of warning bout heroes. Heroes CAN! be much better then henchman. BUT!!! when you unlock them they are totally crap and you are much better of with henchman. the reason is that their default skills are rubbish and you have to outfit them with skills, weapons and armor upgrades. My advise is to only start with 2 heroes, work to optimise them and then add more and repeat till you have a good balanced team. the links above can help you on the way. but starting a good hero team on a new account take time and effort.

4: like said, the best moment to start Eye of the north is when you finnished atleast one campaign. My advise would be factions (though start in prophecy's for the story cause the early part relates a lot to gw2). the reason is that it is the shortest campaign. if you can do that your ready to do Eye of the north too, and you have two other campaigns in progress as well. Some people like to finish one campagin before the other. I like however to mix them and change whenever i get bored of the scenery.

Well so far my cup of tea. hope you enjoy this game as much as I did (and still do)

I've done something similar to you. I started 3-4 months ago. I've put about 500-600 hours in since.

You will have a hard time finding groups for most things in normal mode, beyond a few key missions. This is especially true in prophecies. As a result of this, you will spend a lot of time soloing with H/H (Heroes and Henchmen). Heroes are like henchmen you can configure. They have access to all the skills you've unlocked for your account. Early on, this means they're kind of crappy. As you go through the game and learn more skills, they become considerably better.

All 3 of the main campaigns are roughly segregated. There's some mild cross-over, but they're definitely not serial. As a result, there's no reason to play Prophecies first (beyond the skill quests).

There's a type of skill in this game called an elite skill (it has a yellow border). You generally learn them by capturing them from enemy bosses with a Signet of Capture. They're usually a lot better than an equivalent non-elite counterpart. You will find that a lot of builds are based around whatever the elite is. You won't have a chance to pick up an elite skill in prophecies until extremely late in the campaign.

Were it me, and I had to do over what I did, if you didn't care about the LDoA Title (Legendary Defender of Ascalon) for HoM purposes, I would start an Assassin in Factions. The reason multi-fold. Factions is the quickest leveling (Within the first few hours, you'll be level 20). It has the quickest access to skills. As an assassin, you have a lot of your useful skills front-loaded, and a skill trainer in the capital city that has 99% of your factions skills to train. You will also unlock access to the Ritualist, which is a strong hero class. H/H seem easier to manage as a melee class, as they'll hang in the back while you're getting focused-fired. Assassins also make decent farmers, and your AC and energy gen allow you to use odd builds for certain situations you may need to spec out of your main class.

The only bad part of Factions is that it sort of throws you in the deep end. Starting in Prophecies, it wasn't really all that hard till you get to the Desert. In Factions, once you get off Shing Jea, the difficulty ramps up. It may be easier to put it on hold and move on. If you want at this point, you could go to EoTN or Nightfall to pick up more Heroes (You'll only have M.O.X. at this point unless you bought merc heroes).

Nightfall is easier than Factions, though I found it a lot more tedious. The areas seemed larger, and the groups in them were always astoundingly large. Normal-Mode Nightfall just seemed to be about packing as much AoE damage together as you could and running forward.

EoTN gets to be harder as you go on (as it was meant for people who were already leveled up and geared up). So, if you go that route, you may just want to grab the first heroes and then head to one of the other campaigns until later.

Once you have some skills and heroes, you'll find that Prophecies is a lot faster. The Prophecies map is a lot larger, and includes smaller group compliments, which seems to drag the areas out (for me at least).

All 3 campaigns have sections in the beginning where it's meant for local players. You can still access them as a "foreign" character, but you won't get the XP/Skill Point bonuses for completing them. From a story perspective though, you're not required to create a character from each campaign to experience these if you don't want too (The exception to this being Pre-Searing Ascalon. The only way to experience that is to create a prophecies character. But since you had one already, I'm sure you've got that down).

So, skills. There's a limit to the number of skills you can learn with a character at any given time (You can earn more skill points, infinitum). As a result, if you want to unlock skills for heroes, you may wish to create additional characters. Most of the campaigns have some quests you can do to learn non-elite skills for that character's current classes. These quests are only available to "local" characters from that campaign. In Factions and Nightfall these are confined to the starting island, so you can crank through them pretty quickly (and in Nightfall you have hero skill trainers to speed up acquisition). In Prophecies, the quests range through 3/4 of the story and are quite long and extensive. You'll have to manage your time to see if it's worth creating Prophecies characters, or bring in foreign characters to buy the skills to unlock (or buy the unlock pack in the store).

I will say, if you're going for HoM points, if you want to get the Legendary Skill Hunter title, you will probably want to save the skill points on your "main" character for capturing elites. Use "alts" to unlock the others.

Finally, the guild wars wiki ( http://wiki.guildwars.com ) is an astoundingly useful resource. It's especially true for missions, as more often than not the mission is bugged in some way. I found in the end, I could save myself a lot of annoyance and mission restarts by looking at the "notes" at the end of a mission before I started it to home in on the "bugs" section. This seemed especially true in Nightfall where both missions and quests, people would get stuck on parts, randomly teleported for no reason, didn't respond if you did things in a certain order, or what-have-you.

The reason I have suggested Prophecies is because the OP's focus seems to be getting a refresher for GW2. They may not even want to do all three campaigns before heading to North.

Prophecies introduces NPCs met in North, they take place on the same map (as does GW2), and doing War in Kryta and Hearts of the North further links GW1 to GW2. And in order for a newbie to get through WiK, infusion would be really helpful, which will require getting to the last few missions in Prophecies one way or another.

And this is another reason why I don't suggest starting in NF. Everybody always says, "Do Nightfall so you get heroes right away," not mentioning all the annoying little quests you have to complete to actually recruit them. Foreigners land in Kamadan and -boom- you can snap all those heroes up pretty quickly.

I've personally always mixed and matched campaigns to suit my purposes. I like the look of Prophecies characters and have started a number of mine there. Unlike Factions and Nightfall, the Primary Quests are optional so I can just run from mission to mission if I like. It really doesn't take that long to get from Ascalon to LA even playing through. Hop over to Nightfall to grab some heroes (2 monks, a warrior, a dervish, and either the ranger or elementalist [ETA: and Olias]), then hop over to Factions to get max armor and do the piss-easy runaround quests in Kaineng to level to 20. If I want, I can even do the two missions there and Ascend. From that point, the rest of Prophecies is a snap. (The only downside is how long I have to wait for the rest of my attribute points. I will admit that kind of sucks, compared to the other campaigns.)

I do agree that starting in Factions is viable for the purpose if the OP has a specific interest in assassin or ritualist, doesn't mind the steeper learning curve, and doesn't care about missing out on certain lore relevant to GW2 (though they could start another character in Pre, certainly).

Ok, I can see that. I guess I viewed the other two as being meaningful for GW2, but I guess in a more tangential way.

My concern was more to do with, I started playing under the premise of "it will make sense in order." and it totally did. What I found out, much to my frustration, was that the game (and the skills) has changed a lot since Prophecies released. As a result, I felt that classes and such are balanced around a certain premise on builds and such that if you start "cold" in proph with H/H and such, then proph is pretty difficult and lengthy (as I'm sure it was meant to be at the time.) If you come back to it with all the powers from the future campaigns (which seem to have some power creep), then a lot of proph is less painful.

It seems by the time you get off the starter islands in Factions/Nightfall you have a strong basis for a character. But in Proph, you really don't see that till you're on the Fire Islands. I guess if you hopped over once you hit Lion's Arch and cherry picked a few things it wouldn't be a huge deal. I personally went all the way through Proph before I hit Factions, which I played through fully (well, up to Winds of Change), before going to Nightfall. In hindsight, it felt very much like an uphill battle.

Since GW2 is (probably?) out in a few months, if he/she were to do what I did, it's unlikely they would complete all the campaign's stories before then, baring not having a job.

Maybe I'm just projecting too much.

Are all the elites (or, at least the useful ones) in Factions/Nightfall available in EoTN? I had capped all of them before I hit EoTN, so I guess I never really looked at it.

I totally agree with you. I think they're all meaningful and worth playing. My concern is that if the OP only focuses on one of the other campaigns, he might not get back to Prophecies before North and some things won't be as cohesive.

My thoughts were that he should do most of Prophecies (for GW2 lore) and probably Factions as well so he can do Winds of Change if he cares about the continuation of the story of one of the characters he meets in Hearts of the North.

If he has time, he can do Nightfall before GW2 comes out, or wait until they expand GW2 with that relevant content.

You are absolutely right in this. And that's why I play my Prophecies characters the way I do (cherrypicking armor, skills, heroes, etc. from the other campaigns). The problem with it is as you say, the campaigns make more sense in order, and if you're new and jumping around the stories get a little jumbled in your head. But that's why I suggest going back to Prophecies as soon as you're outfitted.

Don't think I was belittling your suggestions with my post. You made excellent points, I was just countering with my preferred alternative based on the North/GW2-centric focus I sensed from the OP.

Not all, but quite a number of useful elites from each campaign are available in North (Barrage [subjective], Word of Healing, Searing Flames, Assassin's Promise), but several meta elites aren't available there -- Signet of Spirits, Shadow Form, and Panic! most notably off the top of my head.

I'd just like to mini-necro a bit to say thank you for the very insightful and intelligent advise given. I don't indeed mind hopping to cherry pick from LA, though I have to say that even during vanilla Prophecies times, just getting through certain areas seemed very challenging at the time - though I'm sure Henchmen have at least gotten better since then.

I did play a bit of Factions at one point and remember being at level 20 almost instantly.

One of the big things about your origin campaign is that you can only get your "extra" attribute points from that campaign. Is Factions the easiest for this?

I could see myself doing the starting area skill caps for each class I need, at least every time I get a hero that corresponds to that class.

Playing pre-Lions Arch Prophecies again (with an alt), that might happen if I could get a lot of important skills by doing so that I can't get from the other campaigns' starting areas. Is that the case?

Thanks again!

They have. Henchmen have gotten several skill updates here and there over the past few years. If you don't over-aggro, you shouldn't have a problem getting to Lion's Arch.

I think the community consensus is that Factions is the fastest campaign in just about every way. You can reach level 20 before you even get off newbie island, and both of the attribute quests are right there.
While Nightfall attribute quests happen early on as well, there's a bit of grind to get to a certain Sunspear rank to complete the quests, which a few people aren't wild about. But Prophecies takes the cake for ridiculously out of the way attribute quests, which don't happen until the Crystal Desert and later. That said, for Normal Mode, having all 200 points isn't much of a big deal (I didn't notice my elementalist didn't have all her points until I wanted to use a very precise farming build on her -- and she had already started doing some HM content).

I believe once you've progressed past the Ascalon area, all skill quests give Prophecies-specific skills. In Pre-Searing, you get the same core starter skills that are acquired much easier in the other campaigns' profession tutorials, and I think around Post-Searing Ascalon you have a second chance for those skills, plus a few others. However, in other campaigns, you have access to skill trainers that you can easily buy skills from for cheap with temp alts.

Consult the Skill Quests page to cross-reference skills and the best way to obtain them.

Actually, There is 35 nonelite core skills per profession and anywhere from 23-29 nonelite prophecies skills based on profession. This means that there is anywhere from 58-63 nonelite skills per profession available in prophecies.

You generally get anywhere from 39-43 skills for free for your primary profession for characters made in prophecies. (You would also get skills for your secondary profession but since you can change your secondary professions(eventually) it's best to just talk about your primary profession.)

This means that you'll get most of the core and prophecies skills from the free skill quests if your character was created in prophecies.

While all of that is true, skill quests are a massively time inefficient way of getting skills. You can farm the money needed to buy the skills in no more than 1/20th of the time it would take to unlock via skill quests.

Ok here is my 2 cents as a new struggling player getting the hang of GW and now 3 campaings beaten in.

Story wise just go with the developers intended cycle: Prophecies first followed by Factions, Nighfall, EoTN and finally GW: Beyond*

(*this is a free update that will trigger while completing EoTN).

Now if you want to make your life easier and getting HoM poinst while having fun (as in not getting killed so often) I recommend a less orthodox path.

Ideally choose beforehand a Meta Game Build (this should include a 7 hero team with their skill sets). This build is just a guide so that you know what skills to buy and or cap and which profession and secondary and which heroes to get.

I chose this Meta Game Build http://www.reddit.com/r/GuildWars/co...eroes_address/ and can vouch for it.

So I re rolled and started a new character in Nightfall (I went with a Dervish/Ritualist), but If you want to keep it as logical as possible start in prophecies an travel to Elona (Nightfall) as soon as it becomes an option (in Lion's Arch outpost). I chose Nightfall because I had already played Prophecies all the way to the final missions ( and got stuck there) so I already knew the story.

So I played trough Nightfall with a quick detour to EotN (when it became available) to get Gwen, Odgen and Vekk don't worry about the other heroes in EoTN since you'll need a better team to get them.

So back to Nightfall, you'll eventually get the choice to go back to Prophecies or Factions. So either steady the course and beat nightfall or if your build requires skills that can be obtained in another campaign, travel there.

In my case I played Nightfall all the way until I got Norgu (as required by the build I linked earlier), then switched to Factions to get missing skills for my character and heroes and ended up beating the campaign without even realizing it.

After that I went back to EotN to get Livia (Xandra is nice too) and some missing skills.

Now back to Prophecies, beat it (with an almost complete team it was fairly easy and even got the protector title).

Finally went back to Nightfall and beat it too.

Now I'm on EotN, dungeons are still quite difficult but its usually better to take a different specialized team and skill set to tackle those so I'm staying clear of them.

I realize it is a very convoluted way of playing but to tell you the truth the game never got stale. I was meeting new characters and plots and twists and many of the "henchmen" have stories that connect all the campaigns together. so it was more like I was doing one "save my homeland" mission but kept getting sidetracked to save some of my heroes/henchmen homelands as well. Since all this was played fairly close together I had no trouble keeping up with the plots.