Newbie questions from Toontown refugee

Hi folks.

My first post. I've been playing Toontown for a few months now. In fact the wife and kids are now playing it so much I can't often get on, so I got myself a copy of Guild Wars at Christmas. I'm getting on OK, have just about got my head round the differences and similarities between the two games, and have got my Ranger/Mesmer up to Level 10 so far. I'm not into the guild battle side of things, (and am not in a Guild), and am just doing what I believe is termed "PvE".

Just wanted to clarify a few things though. Primarily, where is it all leading. I'm doing the tasks, killing monsters etc., picking up items and learning or buying skills as I go, moving on to the next guy with the exclamation point over his head, and so on, and thus uncovering more of the map. Is the ultimate goal to have done every task and been everywhere in Tyria (until the next chapter comes out), or is there more to it than that? I understand I will get to the highest level at 20, so further character development can't be the main aim.

And the items I find along the way (which I never seem to have enough room for, in spite of having found the rune of holding), are just there for me to sell to earn money for better armour, skills, and crafting, etc? In fact I've given up picking most of them up as most are so common and seem to be worth little at the merchants, or they seem to be intended for warriors, monks etc. I know I could trade items with other characters directly but I'm not sure of the point of doing this since most monsters drop cash like confetti, so I prefer to avoid taking the risk of being scammed - if I need more cash I just go and make another Charr squeal. I presume as I proceed to other areas greater amounts of cash will be required. And the only function of dyes seems to be to change your character's clothing colour. Is all this correct?

Then my last area of uncertainty is in battle, having come from a turn-based environment, this all happens a lot faster, in some cases faster than my reasonably new PC can cope with. Other players in missions and quests seem quite intolerant of me if I am slow to arrive at the mission or fall behind the group, or shoot at the wrong monster either because the PC was playing up or the connection was slow or I hadn't cottoned-on to what I was supposed to be doing. And sometimes you join a team and other members start logging out halfway round leaving you stranded. If it wasn't you that led the mission you can't even have a go at finishing it yourself as you don't have the map arrow. Is all this normal? I have ended up doing many of the tasks with all henchmen to avoid such problems as it will be a while before I have got to grips with the various battle strategies. For the moment, "if it's red, it's close, and it moves, shoot it," is my motto.

Apart from the above little bits of confusion, I'm enjoying it a lot. I just have to try and keep the family off this one...!

Welcome to the game! I am not to skilled in Guild Wars yet but theirs much to do! It has an excellent story line with the Missions that you must complete. Theirs 24 in all youll see them they are the big Shield Crests each mission has a primary goal and a secondary goal each worth 1000Exp. If your shield has one sword going thru that means you completed mission but not bonus crossed swords means you did both. Its the best way to meet new people and enjoy the story. Basically your here to have fun meet people unlock new skills and then maybe graduate to PVP or find yourself a good guild good luck with the game feel free to send Beastly Amazon a tell Ill try my best to help.

let's see if we can answer a few of these for you.

there is a basic storyline attached to all of the quests and missions. some will criticize it for all of its holes, but it is there nonetheless. it may seem like just randomly talking to the people with exclamation points and killing monsters, but it should all tie together somehow. when i first started playing, i was caught up with the story. let the story lead you through, and completing that should be the main point of your first character.

it takes a while to figure out what is worth holding on to and what isn't. most thing that you will find now won't be worth it. regardless, my general rule is to pick everything up that you can. even if the merchant buys it for chump change, it eventually adds up. you may not notice it at first, but saving up little by little does add up in the end. like i said, i generally pick everything up that i can. i sell what i don't need to the merchant. some things are worth holding onto, like crafting materials and such, but sell everything else. and yes, dye is just to change the color of clothing and weaponry.

there are a lot of people with very little to no patience in this game. you shouldn't have to party strictly with henchmen, but in your situation, that is what you may have to do. if you ever meet nice people in game or on these forums, ask them if you can add them to your friends list. partying with real, friendly, and competent people is always a lot more fun.

i hope that helped.
welcome to the forums and to the game.

Excellent, that's been a great help. Glad I found these superb forums!

I always pick up everything that drops as well, moving items from character storage to account storage to make room before setting out. I also bring salvage kits and break down loot into more stackable piles if space is running out.

Look on GWonline for the materials requirements for armor, especially for the droknar's forge armor. Then collect those materials via salvaging the appropriate loot so that you have enough when you get there and don't have to lay out a bunch of cash for the common materials.

Finding a good, friendly guild would be helpful as well as they would be more caring and tolerant of those still learning the game. Of course I highly recommend our Guild! (see profile at left for in game names and forum).

Looks like most of your basic questions have already been covered, but I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus suggesting you start considering looking for a guild. A good guild is a wonderful resource for learning about the game, belonging to one can make it a lot easier to find good teammates. GW is a lot of fun even playing alone; playing with a good guild ramps things up even higher. Take a look in the Guild forum here, and see if you see any guilds that are recruiting new players.

Curious - what is your internet access like? DSL? Cable? Dial-up (I hope not!).

What's your computer RAM?

When I first got GW my computer's RAM was 256 and it was fine for pre-searing but it was not too good for post-searing. I barely could move in Post-Searing and like you I often pop late after entering a new zone (in pre-searing too).

I despaired at this until I decided to upgrade my RAM to 1GB. Game runs beautifully now

So you may want to look at that option.

I play on two or three different machines, all 2.6gHz or faster, 256MB memory, 512K ADSL connection; might have to think about a memory upgrade. The only slowness I experience is arriving at an outpost (especially a busy one, where it takes a while to fill out all the characters and give me an active cursor), loading up a new area or starting a mission (I get there and it's a case of "where'd everyone go", if I'm lucky I can just catch a line of green dots disappearing off my map and hare after them), and in a bigger battle with lots of Charr or Stone Elementals where I end up taking lots of hits because my machine won't let me turn around or draw my arrows quickly enough. Other than that it runs fine. Not enough memory maybe?

Sounds like either a case of not enough memory, not good enough video card or a combo of both. You really should have ~512MB ram to play the game as a base with a "decent" video card as well. What Video Card do you have? Of course, 1+GB of decent ram definately does make a difference.. well, it did for me when I went from 512MB to 1GB.

Not sure of the exact spec of the screens but two are less than a year old and one is less than 2. Although I know from trying to install another game recently and failing, that they don't support "pixel shaders". Hey ho, more expense...

Don't support pixel shader's eh? (OMG, when I wrote that I just got reminded of Maxwell Smart! hehehe!) .. Sounds like old video cards - I was getting similar to what you stated on another comp I occassionally user.. it had an on-boards video card and 256 MB Ram and would take ages loading up towns and would get chuggy and jerky in battles.. Thing's jumping around and such. Problems fixed on that comp as I upgradedboth it's ram and got it a semi-decent video card.

Do you need to have all your comp's able to run GW? If not, just upgrade your best comp with some new ram and a new vidoe card and you should be right to go. If you need em all... then yep, gonna be expensive...

You could try running the game at a higher system priority. That may cut back on your memory needs.

Also, do you have anything running in the background? If so I recommend locating a copy of End-It-All. A free utility that shuts down majority of the programs running in the background freeing up more memory for GW.

These are not guaranteed to work but maybe make the game playable by just spending money on a vid card now and memory at a later date.

OK thanks will have a look at that. Will probably upgrade at least one of the PCs soon though.

IMPORTANT

you have 3 choices as to what graphics you have.

onboard chip (not a card)
AGP
PCI-EXPRESS


if onboard graphics chip and you have an AGP/PCI-EXPRESS slot you are in good shape.

pick the correct version and you are good to go.

if onboard graphics chip without either AGP/PCI-EXPRESS you can still use a pci regular version to good effect.

PCI IS VERY OLD AND NOT INTERCHANGEABLE WITH PCI-EXPRESS

make sure you know what you have so you know what to get.