Guide for new/returning players trying to get the most out of the HoM before GW2

I made this guide cause the regular guide for the HoM is for people who had time to endlesly grind away. This guide is for those who don't have that time anymore and still want to get as much out of it as possible.

First of all welcome (back) to the wonderfull world of Tyria. If you are reading this you are propably a new or returning player who knows bout the Hall of Monuments and the rewards it gives for GuildWars 2.

If you need this guide as a returning player depends, If you have be gone for 3 years or more, yes you need it, if your close to the release of Guildwars 2, you need it. If you still have some time, and have a lot of recent experience the regular HoM guide is more suitable for you.

Just to be complete, for those who don't know it yet. As a reward for dedication, people who have played guildwars can get rewards in guildwars 2 through the hall of monuments. This hall wich is an landmark in both guildwars and guildwars 2 will be used to store your accomplishments in GuildWars 1 and reward them in GuildWars 2.

The rewardsystem is accountwide. but you can visit hom.guildwars2.com, fill in any of your characternames and see what you got.

This guide is made for people who own all three campaigns AND the expansion Eye of the North (though as long as you have Eye of the north and any campaign, you will find good tips).

The total amount of points you can gather are 50 points. the last 20 however only reward a title (Champion of the Gods) in GuildWars2. The common notation of the amount of points is therefore x/50. For example 50/50 means you hit the max. 30/50 means you have all rewards (except the titles).

The rewards you'll unlock in GW2 differs from miniatures that look great to armor, weapons and pets who help you fight. A great misconception with some people aiming for points is that those items will make you definitly a better player in GW2. This is not true!! I have read the mmo-manifesto of arena net and played guildwars for many years and they don't give some people significantly more change at being succesfull then others. The amount of benefit from those items is unknown. clearly they will give some benefit, but it is my expectation that it won't make a difference.

I'm writing this 49 days before the release of GuildWars 2. As you might have guessed from the first introduction of this guide you can forget bout getting 50/50 (all rewards AND all titles) and new players can also forget bout 30/50 (all rewards without the titles). The reward is for dedication and it is too late to show it fully.

This doesn't mean you should give up here. Just by playing GuildWars you get a lot of important rewards. First of all you have a change to see the world of Tyria how it was before GuildWars2. Though this is an old game. It tell's you a lot bout how the makers think and how nice the world and it's population of players is. Beside that you will find out a lot bout the lore and history of the world your playing in. I got 39/50 (never could be bothered with those titles) and I got it because it was fun playing (and it still is).

Besides that having bought the game and the expansion Eye of the North means you have succesfully linked your account and therefore you are rewarded with 3/50 points. This means you'll get 3 armour pieces in GW2 (the level, light, medium or heavy depends on the class you are going to play). Besides that you can also reserve your charactername for GuildWars 2.

For the rest it means you need to be both realistic and optimistic. set your goals accordingly and you can succeed.

So first of all lets fill in some easy points.
1: getting to your hall of monuments. to get there you need to be level 10 and have unlocked the port town of the campaign you started in. There you can get a quest to get to EotN (Eye of the North) , afterwich you'll end up in boreal station with two heroes. add them to your party and further fill your party with henchman and continue following the quests for Eye of the North you meet a few worms. though they are easy to kill they aren't hostile and can be left alone, after that it is killing 2-3 mobs and you find yourself in the outpost Eye of the north (don't worry too much bout the level of your foes, both your heroes and your henchman are level 20 and besides that you are buffed with an envirmental effect while you re out there that makes you simular to lvl 20).

As said you are in the outpost, to the north you see a portal, enter it and you are in your personal hall of monuments.

Now you can start filling but wait. let me take some time to explain how the hall works.
there are 5 stages (monuments) after one you see a glim sight of a statue. here you can display titles (this one is called the monument of honor), as a returning player you might want to check what you can add (check all your characters). The other monuments can not be used. After following your main EotN quest inside the hall of monuments you get your first tapestry. the other 3 are gained by playing through the main story line of EotN.

The other monuments are.
Devotion: here you can display miniatures.
Fellowship: here you can display heroes and animal companions
Resilience: het you can display your elite armor sets
Valor: here you can display certain high level weapons.

Keep in mind that everything you put into your hall will be bound to that character. Miniatures can be traded to other players, but they can't put them into their hall anymore. So when buying miniatures from other players make sure you check if they are "unded" (undedicated in the hall of monuments).

For now we put our first tapestry in the monument of fellowship (if the hall is a clock and you "enter" at 6 'o clock then this monument is at 10 'o clock).

Now you've done that lets get you some easy points.
Step 1: (only if you own all campaigns) go to either Kamadan, Lion's arch or Kaineng center and exit the town. you will see a robot with wich you can interact. It will say "you are the one" and you will get a hero called M.O.X. This is the only hero that is already equiped with elite armor. So with that hero in your party and the tapestry at the Fellowship monument you can add him to your hall of monuments. Your total points will now be 4/50 and you still did nothing.

Step 2: create a pvp-only ranger. This ranger will already have the wolf pet at level 20. but you can't add it to the hall yet. so for now travel to the zaishen menagery grounds (located in the battle islands where you pvp-only ranger will be), talk to Emryd the trainer and she will say "Thank you! I've added the level 20 evolved Elder Wolf to your collection and expanded your collection to include all evolutions. To visit them, go to the training yard and talk to Wynn, the Training Captain.". For now we leave it, but we will return later.

Step 3: both the game as the HoM items cost a lot of gold. So it's nice to have a little bit to start with. Go (on your pvp-only ranger) back to the great temple of blathasar (again in the battle islands where you already are) and talk to Tolkano. Choose to register your account and select the name of your pvp-only character. Now talk to High Priest Zangh (up the first set of stairs) and ask him any question. Now return to Tolkano and buy a Zaishen key with Tournament points. Repeat this last step 10 times. You will now have 10 zaishen keys. Go to American district 1 and press "p". In this window you should see a reasonable amount of people saying sdomething like: "WTB zkeys, x.xk each" Translated this mean Want to buy Zaishen Keys x platinum and x gold each (where x is a number). Though it is impossible to predict the market in the next few weeks, I helped someone today he and he got 5.5k each for his keys (so a total of 55 platinum). check the full list and go for the highest bidder first. make sure you trade your 10 keys for 10 times the amount of money the buyer is offering for each of them. You can do this trick only ones so make sure you spent your "fortune" wisely. For character development you need 20k for max level armor, max level weapons, skills, unlocking secundairy proffessions etc. (to be able to play the game reasonable optimum, atleast for the purpose of this guide)

Step 4: get to level 20 on your normal character (not the pvp-only one. I'm not going to deep into this but the best place to level from 10 to 20 is in factions in the kaineng center area. You also need to follow the main questline of factions through the first two missions on the mainland (if you didn't start in factions you are already in the mainland). After this you can unlock other secundairy professions at the profession changer in the great temple of balthasar.

Step 5: Remember the level 20 wolf in your zaishen menagerie, time to pick it up. make sure your primairy or secundairy profession is ranger, make sure you have the skill "charm animal active and no heroes in your party, go to the zaishen menagerie go into the den, talk to the guy there and aks him to show you a level 20 wolf. select the wolf and use charm animal to make him yours. Now go to the HoM and put him next your lonely M.O.X. statue.

Step 6: find a guild. first of all many active guilds will also be active in GW2 so you can already make friends. Secondly a helpfull guild is very nice. Thridly, though you should never beg or ask for this, I expect that people with the right character are going through their bag and if you are in their eyes a promising and nice person they might give you some leftovers. e.g. someone who only need to fill his monument of devotion and he needs 7 more miniatures of any kind for it. he has however only 2 of them and no money to buy the others. in such a situation they might be willing to give it to you for free cause it's useless to them anyways. (if one does such a thing I would definitly consider joining his/her guild in Guildwars 2)

Step 7: finish factions campaign. It is the easiest and it offers a free extra HoM point
Finishing factions offers 1 statue that rewards 2 points if it is the first so after this you have 7/50 points.

Step 8: Visit the animal trainer in the zaishen menagery to release your pet. Travel in factions to House Zu Heltzer and take the quest Beak of darkness (if you choose the luxon side of the story line you might need to unlock a few extra outposts for this). After this quest you can charm the black moa animal companion. If you have trouble with the quest Beak of darkness you can also tema up with someone who already did it and the animal will be walking in the explorable area Ferndale (close to the entrance to Fort Aspenwood). Put this animal in your HoM as you did with the black wolf and you'll have 8/50 points.

Step 9: play and finish the main story line of Eye of the North.
it rewards the tapestry's so you can unlock the other statues and it tells you bout the wakening of the GW2 dragons. so a absolute must in preparation for gw2. Make sure you bring a hero's handbook (Gedrel of Ascalon in the Eye of the North outpost gives them) and keep it with you all the time you do things in Eye of the north.

When playing both the campaign and the expansion keep all salvagable materials and put them in your chest

So far for a new player you have spent bout 3 weeks. returning players might have skipped a few steps cause they already did it or have gone quicker. time to inspect your chest and your characters bags, look out for valuable items (ask your guild if you wanna know the value) ands specially look out for birthday presents or miniatures. unpack all your birthday presents. get for each pet (or tonic) in it a good pricecheck. Sell all tonics to other players in Kamadan. For the miniatures it is a difficult situation. check your HoM calculator on the gw2 site carefully and use the feature to predict what would happen if you add a miniature, keep in mind there are different ones (the colour of the names can differ). If you can get an extra HoM point, do so. If not sell it to other players for a good market price.
Use the money form selling your stuff to buy HoM points.

Step 10: You should have enough money to get the following two items:
a: an miniature
b: an elite armor set (use the salvagable materials you gathered or sell those and buy the ones you need for your armor). The cheapest sets are Asuran, Ebon vanguard and norn elite armor sets. They cost max 65k if you have to buy materials. The downside is that you need to be lvl 5 at the asuran, ebon vanguard and norn title track. If you give the hero's handbook to either the gedrel of ascalon in eotn outpost (ebon vanguard), Tyr the Skaald in Gunnar's hold (norn) or Lexx in Rata sum (asura) you get 20.000 repurtation points (Lexx gives asura points, Tyr gives norn points and Gdrel Ebon vanguard points). You need 26.000 points but you also got some for doing the main quest line, so in the end you need only to farm a little bit to get those points to unlock the armor trader.

put them all in your HoM. To remind you, before this you had 8/50 points now you should have 10/50

This ends the main part of this guide. if you get enough time left you can do one of the following.

a: Get 2 cloth's of the brotherhood from other players. They cost (at the moment) bout 5k each. This way you can add two eye of the north hero's to your hall making the total of statues 5 wich rewards 2 points.

b: you might want to get 4 more titles. Some easy ones are the eternal guardian of Factions where you need to do all missions with bonus or master reward. but also the elite area's like sorrows furnace (end of prophecy's it can also reward the unique miniature black moa chick if you prepared for that) Fissure of Woe, The deep and Urgoz are within your grasp if you have an active guild that do those things on a regular basis.

d: get a good farming build and go make lots and lots of money to buy miniatures, destroyer weapons or even an extra elite set.

e: or simply play the other two campaigns and enjoy the beauty of the world of Tyra.

So far the guide. please let me know what you think of it. comments, corrections (I will have my usual amount of spelling and grammar error's),suggestions, etc are very welcome. I close down with the message that I hope to see you all in GW2

Good stuff...there are a couple tid-bits in there that you mentioned that may be able to help me get my 30/50 before August 28th.

Maybe if you get a second you could look at the HoM calculator and plug my IGN: Renowned Spartan - let me know if you see anything easy/obvious I should be pursuing to get from 23/50 (last time I checked?) PS: I just bought an armbrace so that should help out a little for the weapons portion.

Yeah I see a few things that are reasonable easy considering the things you already done.
First of all you did all three campaigns so you should be able to get all the things needed for the black moa chick. it takes roughly two hours to get the materials and to hatch it but the result is an unique miniature wich gives 1 more point. See http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Black_Moa_Chick for instructions. (for the sorrow's furnace quest you might want to find some help from someone who already did it once. Then you can skip the first 4 quests and go directly to the final assault part where you finish the boss and hatch the moa chick.) It also rewards another title statue, but that changes nothing directly (though all statues help).
Keep in mind however that you need acces to the luxon area's to do this

Secondly you should be able to do succesfully the challenge mission Dajkah Inlet in factions. By getting two stolen sunspear armor's you can outfit two more heroes from nightfall and put them on display that gives another two point and could be done within an hour (see the wiki on how to do the challenge mission quickly enough).

Thirdly, if you trade the ambrace for the tormented weapon you get a third extra point (but you knew that already )

So getting to 27 should be easy for you.

Awesome, thanks for the help. From the looks of it, sounds like the last three might be a grind fest but who knows. Appreciate the help again -

Spartan

true to some level. If you look closely, you only need one elite armor to get another two points. I don't know if you can get the asuran, norn or ebon vanguard armour, but farming enough points for it isn't too hard (just a few EoTN vanguishes) those elite sets cost only bout 60k then. wich is rather cheap. Then you can either farm money for a War in Kryta oppressor weapon or do war in kryta and get one yourself.
I think that it should be doable to get to 30/50 in your case.

yea, i was thinking about just purchasing the elite canthan armor..would that count for elite sets? should be easily attainable


edit: just bought elite granite citadel to put me at 25/50

I'm looking at my PvP only Ranger, I've done the first few quests (winning CTF etc), at this point I don't have a pet. I'm under the assumption that I don't get the pet until I acquire the Charm Animal type ability, I've see the woman at the Menagerie and she has nothing for me.
Assuming that I'm right about the skill where do I get it; I haven't found a skill trainer yet?

You should already have the skill "Charm Animal". press k, look under beast mastery to put it in your skillbar.

If it isn't there no problem. just wait till your main PvE-character can change the secundairy profession. one of the skills that are unlocked then is 100% sure Charm Animal. So return to the pvp-only toon then and you should be able to put it into your skillbar then. if the skill is on your skillbar you have the wolf with you (on a pvp-character).

Wait what? Unless you've been playing a different game than I have... or if you already have most of the materials, by current prices this would cost at least 50k+ for just the diamonds and plat crafting cost alone.... + another 20k or so for the remaining mats if you haven't been salvaging iron/granite.....

Looking for best way to get to 30. I'm at 20 right now. I have 20k plat and 33 ectoplasms to spend atm.

http://hom.guildwars2.com/en/#page=details&details=AMIAAAAwLGCAAAAAAgBAAgCAUAAA AAAAfOIAQAAAAAA&todo=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAA

First of all, don't post your ingame name it is a security question and therefor part of your login. you can post the url to your HoM page without showing your name. I've reported your post to the admins to help you out with editing your post but you might get there before them.

- edit - Xilo changed his post by removing his name, for those who want to look at his HoM, pls click this url
-end of edit -

note: If you had runs to primeval armor or in prophecy's to make shortcuts these steps won't work as efficient cause your missing important parts of the game cause your rushed ahead of things.

I see that you have finished factions, but you didn't get the black moa pet. The black moa can be captured in factions at lvl20 (ready to go in the HoM) in Ferndale after you did the quest beak of darkness (you can bypass the quest by teaming up with someone who already did it in the past).

That gives you 21/50 for free. Cause your now only need one more you could get your 10th companion (either an heroarmor in nightfall or the black widow or the imperial phoenix (it's at the end of factions, can give you a free run to bypass shiro if you pm me here). keep in mind that the phoenix is lvl 5 so either need to be brought during regular play to lvl up or be deathleveled. The black widow is lvl 20 when you get it but in UW, for a small fee people are running that too (10-15k). So then your at 22/50

-note - you need to have access to Dahjkai inlet to to use hero armor, its a short walk form the sunspear sanctuary and the first one should be easy to get.

Then, given the time we have left I would recommend to get 3 more pve titles. 2 can be done by getting all master/bonus rewards in factions and prophecy's, if you didn't skip parts in prophecy's that should be doable.

Next thing is getting a unique miniature. So far you shouldn't have spent more then 15k on skills and maybe one hero armor. the things you did means you have that back from drops. So you should still have 20k at least!.

I would suggest farming the items needed for the black moa chick (unique green miniature). It will cost you bout everything you have, but beside a unique miniature, you will also get the statue for eternal conquerer of sorrow's furnace. the last one gives the 5 title statue (wich gives 3! points so thats a total of 4 getting you to 26/50 without spending any of those ecto's)
to get to the final area of sorrow's furnace you need to do either of the next two things:
a: do 4 timetaking long and hard quests to open up the final area
b: team up with someone who did it in the past (depending on the time you won't to do it, I could help you out, pm me to discuss that if needed).

So far so good. You now have 26 points, no money and 33 ecto's. Now the harder part. the rest is going to cost you money or time. You might buy 9 more miniatures but it only rewards one more point and it will be hard to find cheap ones you don't have yet. So 33 ecto's at the current rate is 214k.

That gives you enough money to buy an opressor weapon (100k). Cause it's your 5th statue you get a bonus point for that netting you at 28/50 points.

So you have roughly 114k left.

Depending on how far you got on the ebon vanguard and norn title track you might want to farm those to get both the ebon and norn title track at lvl 5 to get those elite armor sets. they cost 65k on materials and money each (less if you have the mats), but the last 16k shouldn't be too much of a problem to get together.
Cause I suspect you finished the eye of the north campaign you could farm the points (vanguish in hm or farm veattirs if your the right profession), or repeat the main missions in eotn in normal mode (3 to 4 times) to fill hero's books for the points needed.

That would get you in at 30/50. Doable in time? yes, but it is going to be tight. So you might have to be happy with less.

Lets see:

I haven't done any of Prophecies. I skipped to the Ring of Fire area and finished all of that though and I'm close to the all master/bonus rewards across 2 characters for Factions and Nightfall (apart from having to do all of Prophecies...).

I'm close to Rank 5 Dwarves. Norn and Ebon Vanguard are Rank 3.

Wouldn't it be easier to do the War in Kryta stuff to trade in for an Oppressor weapon?

Any help with runs would be awesome.

Well instead of the title for prophecy's you can get the title for nightfall. it would also reward 2 titles (you didn't add and maybe didn't do the title for doing the last mission of nightfall yet), so not needing sorrow's furnace.

For the rest it doesn't change a lot except time. And yeah you could do WiK for the opressor weapon. I didn't added it cause I didn't know how far into the bonus/master rewards you are. but if you are very close to that that is a good alternative. That means you can buy the unique miniature for bout 60k. although if you ran to the fireislands you have done the mission thunderhead keep so you have opened the outpost camp rankor, from there it is a short run to Deldrimor War Camp outpost (the staging outpost for sorrow's furnace).

Ah. Forgot to turn in the Nightfall title for completing the mission. I'm also 1 bonus mission away from getting the Cantha title (6 for Elona). So with that and Sorrows Furnance, that be an easy 3 points.

Already have Deldrimor War Camp outpost as well.

Excellent in depth and well explained intro.

Step 2 and 5 are probably redundant if you're going for a rare pet which you probably will when going for 30/50.
Crafting cost for destroyer weapon is a lot higher than 30k even if you have a lot of materials.

Thank you, I made this guide a few weeks ago and your the first (experienced player giving fundamented feedback). Wich is ok, it's not written for experienced people, but still I apreciate your feedback.
due to the one sided remark bout the destroyer weapon by Torabo I didn't change that part yet, but you gave it in a good way so gonna check the right price tomorrow and change it then. I knew the price was higher then when i got my destroyer weapon, but didn't realise it went up this far and for the rest I got one tormented and farmed WiK for the rest.

Bout the rare pet. You are partly right. When I wrote this I didn't realise that the black moa is so easy (and I know bout running for the widow, but I wanted a running free guide). But then again, any rare pet statue is different from the animal companion statue, and this way it is very easy to get it, saving the time of getting a hero statue. Besides that, I don't expect people starting out fresh right now to be able to get to 30/50 when playing casual (3-4 hours/day). My goal was and is to let them see how to get the easy points done.

So first thing tomorrow (I'm european and it's way past my bedtime) is to correct the destroyer weapon price, look at the rare animal (black moa), and tidy up spelling (yip even to my standards it's rather bad but I made it cause I couldn't sleep and it was kinda late^^).

Huh...Sweet! Thanks for the guide! Helpful for me as a returning guildwars player. Thanks!