So, you downloaded the game, made a character, chose your profession (more or less randomly), read some info here and there, and now you ask yourself: “what should I do now?” In this page I’ll give you an overview of the possible things to do in game.
Guild Wars 2 is an MMO with an horizontal progression, meaning that you will not have to farm your gear endlessly: once you obtain a good gear (ascended or even exotic), you are done. Stop. Do something else.
For this reason, there is no rush to level up as fast as you can; just enjoy the exploration, sooner or later you’ll reach the end game and that question “what should I do?” would probably arise.
The game is focused on the exploration: there are 33 maps available for free, full of hidden caves, jumping puzzles, dynamic events, world bosses and NPCs living their life. A special mention to the NPCs of Guild Wars 2: they can help you during a dynamic event, they can be killed by enemies, can be resurrected by players, can stop you while you’re going East and ask you to help them with something at West (often you start to walk towards a village and after half an hour you realize that you ended up to the opposite direction!). They will never ask you to read wall of text and to click “accept” at the end. Even the less important of them has a couple of dubbed lines. If you like exploring, you will probably find this living world amazing (especially if you come from MMOs where the NPCs are simple placeholders, standing night and day, sunny or raining, like poles).
Map Completion
Since we talked about the exploration, a long but relaxing activity is the map completion. When you visit all the points of interest, vistas, waypoints and complete all the renown hearts and hero challenges of a map, you will receive a reward, with a chance of a Black Lion Key. Completing all the maps of the five regions of Tyria (Ascalon, Kryta, Shiverpeak Mountains, Maguuma Jungle and Ruins of Orr) will grant you the title “Been there. Done that.” plus an icon (a yellow star) close to your character’s name (the other players will be able to see it, but you won’t). While the title is account bound and can be displayed on every character of your account, the star is only visible on the character that actually discovered all the zones.
The map completion is not something important to do; you should do it only if you like it. The 2 Gifts of Exploration received as reward can be useful for core players, to craft legendary weapons, but they are basically worthless for casual players with a F2P account (however, don’t discard them… in case you decide to upgrade your account).
If you miss some point, you can check the Interactive world map (at the bottom of the page). A common missing location is the Chantry of Secret, an instance with 1 single POI, accessible from Bloodtide Coast.
Southsun Cove, Dry Top and Silverwastes are not required for the world completion, but in case you want to complete them as well, there is tricky point of interest in Dry Top. Normally it would require to complete a very long jumping puzzle, but it can be skipped in the following way:
Daily
Also Guild Wars 2 has a daily. It has several daily quests actually, but only one real “Daily”. Every day the game selects 4 quests for each game mode (PvE, WvW and PvP), for a total of 12 quests. Completing 3 among these 12 quests will complete the Daily Completionist achievement, that rewards 10 Achievement Points (AP) and 2 gold coins. While the AP earned from the daily is capped at 15,000 (which means slightly more than 4 years to catch up with the veteran players) the gold will be always rewarded.
Also the Daily quest is not mandatory, obviously. The 2 gold coins are not bad, but if you don’t even know how to spend your money as F2P user, then you can skip it. The AP is also important if you care about achievement points, but it useless per se. The 12 random daily quests are quite generic, like “do some dynamic event on that map”, “gather something on that other map”, “play one PvP match”. They should be seen as a suggestion to start playing “something”, if you don’t know what to do when you log-in.
Personal Story
If you want to know what’s the main story of the game, why Tyrians are worried about the Undead and if dragons really exist, you may find interesting to follow the personal story of your character. Every 10 levels of your character, one new chapter is unlocked, for a total of eight chapters.
Players have mixed feeling about the personal story: some of them find it beautiful (eventhough the beginning is a bit slow), others find it boring (especially if compared with the stories in the expansions). The first three chapters focus on the character’s rise and depend on the race and on the choices made during the character’s creation. All along the personal story the player will have to take some decision: while they determine what’s the following instance (“do you want to defend your camp or attack the enemy’s outpost?”), the final outcome won’t change, so don’t be too worried to take wrong decisions (although the NPCs present in your home instance will change).
The personal story can be played together with other players; only the player who started the instance will be able to take decisions, but the others can help in the fights and can decide if keep the same outcome also for their personal story or play it by themselves.
The player will receive some reward for completing each chapter of the personal story, like weapons, armor or boosters, in addition to experience and coins.
Dungeons
Dungeons are instanced group contents for 5 players maximum. There are 8 dungeons in total, starting from level 30, each with two modes: a story mode and an explorable mode. The first one contains dialogues and cutscenes with members of the Destiny’s Edge (that probably you won’t understand if you didn’t play the personal story), while the other one is a more difficult mode that requires few additional character’s levels and more coordination with the group. It’s split in 3 or 4 paths, with a final boss each. Only one path per run can be completed.
Their difficulty doesn’t scale with the number of players in party, but remains the same. While the story mode can be completed in two (or even alone, if you are level 80), the explorable mode requires a group. Players can leave and join during a run, making possible to keep the progress until there is at least one player inside.
The explorable mode can be launched only if the story mode has been already completed with that character (the progression is not account bound, since it’s treated as personal story), but the other 4 players can enter even if they didn’t complete it.
After the game launch, dungeons have been discontinued in favor of fractals (mini dungeons, each with its own story and environment), but they can be still played, mainly for the skins or achievements. Unlike other MMOs, dungeons in GW2 don’t give loot like armor or weapons: they give tokens (100 if it’s the first time you complete a path in that day, 20 if you repeated it). Each dungeons has its own tokens, that can be spent to buy the piece of exotic gear of your choice (there is no dice to roll in GW2, bless ArenaNet).
Here the list of the dungeons, with their requirements. The entrance to Citadel of Flame, Crucible of Eternity and The Ruined City of Arah can become contested. In that case, if no one of your group members already opened the instance, you must complete the event in progress to secure the area first.
If you want to run a dungeon, you can open LFG (Looking For Group) and look under the corresponding tab, before teleporting to the entrance and wait. Since it’s old content and the rewards are not so valuable, there aren’t many players waiting for a group. Some tips if you are a first timer:
– “p1” (or p2, p3) means “path 1”. If you open the Hero Panel and look under the tab Dungeons (General), you’ll see the objectives for each dungeon: they are listed in order, story mode, path 1, path 2, path 3.
– “exp” in LFG doesn’t mean “explorable” but “experienced”. Don’t join these groups if it’s your first time, as they want players of level 80 to complete the path quickly.
– if they are looking for a specific profession, it means that they want to skip part of the dungeon, so they want someone who already knows very well what to do.
– join without problems groups with “all welcome” and in general any group in queue for the story mode.
Fractals
Fractals of the Mists is an array of 100 mini-dungeons divided in 4 groups (tier) of 25 each. They are not unique, but 22 (currently) repeated at different levels of difficulty (being tier 1 the easiest and tier 4 the most difficult). The entrance to the Mistlock Observatory (the main hub) is located a bit south of the Fort Marriner Waypoint [&BDAEAAA=] in Lion’s Arch.
Unlike dungeons, fractals at tier 1 have weaker enemies but unique mechanics and design. Higher tiers have stronger enemies and additional mechanics. The personal reward level is an account-wide stat that keeps track of the player’s progress. Every time you complete a fractal on a scale higher (or equal) than your personal level, a new fractal can be launched by your account. Like for the dungeons, if someone else already opened a fractal, players can join without any restriction. However, another requirement should be checked, before jumping into a new fractal: the agony resistance.
Agony is a unique effect present only in fractals from the scale 20 onwards. It reduces the healings and deals a percentage of your maximum health as damage every 3 seconds. The amount of damage inflicted increases with the difficulty scale of the fractal. To greatly reduce the effects of the agony, players must socket Agony Resistance into the infusion slots of their ascended equipment.
Starting from level 26, random Mistlock Instabilities are added to the foes inside the fractals. These instabilities bring various effects on the party, like additional foes, increased damage taken when you play far from the group, conditions or empowered enemies.
Fractals are relatively fast to complete and offer good rewards. Increased personal levels and higher difficulty levels offer increased loot; some items starts to drop after a certain level or drop more frequently. They are a good way to buy ascended rings, but also other ascended gear. It’s also possible to buy 20 Slot Bags with 150 Fractal Relics, that can be farmed within a week.
If you want to play fractals, you can open LFG and look under Fractal – Initiate (this is the tier 1, from scale 1 to 25). If you are in Lion’s Arch, a pop-up window will be displayed when you join a group and someone is already inside the hub, otherwise you must interact with the portal. If you were already inside the hub when you joined the group, you probably have to go back to Lion’s Arch to enter the same instance of your group. Some tips:
– “rec” means “recommended”: every day, one random fractal is chosen as recommended one for tier 1, 2 and 3. It will award greater rewards, so it’s literally recommended to play it!
– “daily” or “daily t1” means that the group wants to play 3 daily fractals (or 4 if they are “daily + rec”). Like the recommended one, also the daily fractals (random) offer better rewards. Specifically: a Pristine Fractal Relic and some +1 Agony Infusions.
– there are no waypoints inside fractals: if someone dies, the other players should go out of combat, when possible, to allow the defeated ones to respawn.
– you may find very experienced players for a “rec”, since these fractals are useful also at higher levels. It shouldn’t be a problem, since there aren’t many elitists in fractals t1, compared to the dungeons. However, if they want to run a fractal that requires more agony resistance than your level, ask if they are fine. Usually they have no problem to carry someone.
World Boss
If you prefer PvE content in open world, rather than in instance, in group, you can follow the event timer on the wiki or type “/wiki et” in the game chat to see where the next world boss spawns and go to slay it. All of them drop a chest that can be looted once per day per character, with a random exotic gear inside. Two world bosses, Tequatl the Sunless and the Triple Trouble meta, have a very low chance to drop an ascended gear. These events still attract many players and are a good way to enjoy some big fight together with other players. The tip here, is to don’t wait the last minute to change map, since you risk to be put into a new map, with not enough players to win the fight (especially against hard bosses).
Structured PvP
From the PvP panel is possible to enter the PvP lobby, where the players can interact with merchants, try their skills against training dummy (actually golem) or sparr (and spectate) with other players. From the same PvP panel is also possible to put your character in queue for an unranked or ranked match, and enroll your party for a tournament.
Structured PvP is played in istanced arenas, 5v5 during a normal season. There are also 3v3 and 2v2 mini-seasons, but only in ranked PvP. The maps for 5v5 battles can be Stronghold or Conquest. In Conquest, there are 3 captures points in each map that can be conquered standing within the point’s area with no other enemy inside. The number of players doesn’t affect the speed to claim it. 1 point is gained every 2 seconds per location captured, while 5 points are awarded for each player killed. The first team to reach 500 points wins. There are also other secondary objectives, different for each map:
- Battle of Kyhlo: a trebuchet that can be used by players to deal large amount of damage.
- Forest of Nifhel: two NPCs, Svanir and Chieftain Utahein, that reward 25 points to the player’s team that killed them.
- Legacy of the Foefire: a Guild Lord is placed in each team’s base and rewards 150 points when killed.
- Skyhammer: a powerful cannon deals a large amount of damage to a targeted area. To control the cannon, players must claim a fourth capture point.
- Spirit Watch: an orb spawns from time to time and awards 30 points to the team that brings it to an owned capture point, or 15 points if the orb is brought inside an enemy capture point.
- Temple of the Silent Storm: meditations that require channeling and offer effects that increase a team score from kills, double a team’s points gained from captured points, and gain control of all capture points to the player’s team.
Strongholds have no capture points, but they have a Lord for each team that can be killed to gain the victory (or, like in Conquest, the first team to score 500 points wins).
The attributes, runes and sigils from a character’s PvE equipment are not used in sPvP. Instead, equipment attributes are normalized, and players can select one single rune and trinket from a drop-down menu. This build is maintained separately from the player’s normal PvE build, and is automatically applied whenever a character enters the PvP lobby. This allows new or undergeared players to be on the same playing field with veteran players, since the rune, sigil and amulet can be chosen freely.
The matches can be played ranked or unranked. The matchmaking algorithm is Glicko2 matchmaking rating (MMR), both in unranked and ranked. The only difference between these two modes, is that the personal score is hidden to everyone (player included) in unranked, while is visible for the player (but not for the opponents) in ranked mode.
If you like PvP, this can be a good way to earn some valuable currency to buy ascended trinkets and gear, unlocking finishers and gain some gold or title. Elite Specializations are often far superior than core ones in PvE, but for some professions the core builds are definitely a solid choice in PvP, so you won’t be necessarily weaker than core accounts. I suggest to start playing some unranked match first, until you learn the objectives of the different maps and then, when you reach at least rank 20, you can play ranked. Despite what many players believe, also in unranked you are paired with people of your same level, but many of them often act like they belong to a much higher tier, thus making the mode even more toxic than the ranked one, where everyone knows to belong to the same level.
World versus World
Like PvP, also WvW is a game mode completely separated from the normal open world environment, and it’s the only game mode where the server of your character matters. Players from three different worlds (which can involve several servers, grouped together) fight each other in matches one week long, split into 2-hour time slices called Skirmishes.
Points (War Score) are gained for conquering and holding different objectives: Camps, Towers, Keeps, and one Castle per map. Some of them, like Camps, can be easily conquered by a single player, whereas others, like Keeps and Castles, require a coordination effort and so called “zerg vs zerg” fights. Objectives are defended by a limited number of NPCs that can (and should) be helped by the players of the same world. Other objectives are Monuments: these locations don’t reward war score, but provide buffs when held.
Eventhough the War Score determines the winning world, the players gain World Experience (WXP, that increases the player’s WvW rank, but not the character’s level in PvE) and rewards (WvW Claim Tickets) regardless of the outcome. It’s a mix of passive rewards due to the participation and rewards as drops and loot for active gameplay like killing other players and capturing objectives.
Supply is the main resource in WvW maps: it allows to repair gates and walls, purchase traps and build siege weapons (the player’s damage against gates and doors is very limited, therefore siege weapons are strategic in opening the enemy’s defenses).
Unlike sPvP, WvW uses the player’s equipment, so entering at a low level or with a particularly bad gear is not recommended. However you don’t have to fear to be mocked for this! The names of the players from other worlds are not shown: their world and rank title is displayed instead (and their Guild Tag, if they have it). They will see your name if you whisper to them though.
If you want to enter one of the 5 WvW maps, you can open the World vs World panel that appears once one of your characters reaches level 60. You can travel from a map to another one using the Asura gates at the spawning location or simply clicking on the other waypoints. WvW maps can hold a limited number of players, so you might have to wait a bit in queue; the only exception is the map Edge of the Mists, where a new instance is opened when the map reaches the maximum number of players.
World versus World is an interesting game mode, at least to try, if you never did it. There are very experienced players (even more than in PvP) but also many players that only want to complete the daily quests to gain few rewards. Defeated players don’t lose anything in the end, but with a poor gear and without a mount could be difficult to play alone as roamer. It might be better for F2P users to play together with other players, even if not in squad.
Jumping Puzzle
Jumping puzzles are open world puzzles with platforming elements that require the player to find the correct route to the final chest (the reward) at the end of it. The reward for solving the puzzle resets every day, but it’s often possible to leave a character on that spot for the following day (although the loot is not so important to waste a character for this). The first time you complete a jumping puzzle, you will also earn 10 Achievement Points.
Mounts and gliders are disabled around the area, so F2P accounts are not in such a big disadvantage. However it’s often possible to find shortcuts to at least reduce the length of a jumping puzzle (JP) using a mount. Some JP also allows to glide. One of the 4 daily PvE quests can include a jumping puzzle; in this case is often possible to find kind players at the end of the JP (usually mesmers), willing to teleport players directly nearby the final chest: F2P users cannot send any coin throught mail, but be sure to at least say “thank you” in /say chat 🙂
Achievement
Completionists may be interested in completing achievements all around Tyria. They can be earned both for easy and difficult accomplishments, in all the game modes. Sometimes they also unlock a title, for the whole account. Achievement points (AP) are in fact account-based and as such, you can use the profession you find most suitable for the task (unless the tooltip explicitly mentions a specific profession). Some achievements can be repeated few times to earn additional AP, while others are locked behind some prerequisite.
Players also get achievement rewards for obtaining enough achievement points for the tier. This is the only way to obtain laurels for F2P for example. In game, players can see the AP of other players in the same guild, party or when they look for the player’s name in Contacts. Outside the game, it’s possible to compare the AP on the game’s leaderboard.
Activity
Activities are mini-games designed to fit in with the local area. The Crab Toss, Sanctum Sprint, Southsun Survival and Keg Brawl are competitive and instanced PvE content, but they provide an identical challenge to characters of all levels, since weapon skills are replaced with specific abilities for each activity. They are usually quite fun and are periodically scheduled as Daily achievement.
Collection
The game provides a wide collection of items, skins, trinkets, miniatures, finishers, dyes, junk… alcoholic drinks and even cats! They often require long scavenger hunts, but can also give you nice rewards, or just a “simple” smile.
Skins
I should have probably put this paragraph at the beginning and not at the end, since skins are basically the true end-game content for many GW2’s players. F2P accounts have less choices to change the appearance of their characters, since the access to the trading post is limited to only useful items, but they still have some options.
Skins can be unlocked buying gears with dungeon tokens, map-specific currency, PvP and WvW currency (shards and skirsmish tickets), achievements, karma or simply gold, like the cultural armor and weapons, specific for your race.
All the skins are initially locked, and are unlocked for the whole account performing any action that binds the item or otherwise removes it from the economy, like salvaging it or upgrading it.
The preview of all the skins in game can be seen from a Bank, while the wardrobe inside the hero panel will let you apply (and see) the skins that you already unlocked. It’s also possible to preview every item linked in chat, using the right click. To apply a skin to a piece of armor, a weapon or a back item, you need Trasmutation Charges. They can be easily earned as reward in PvP or WvW, from some rewards tracks, but also from PvE, like fully exploring any capital city. If you only play PvE though, be careful not to waste them just to see how a skin looks like. Outfits don’t require trasmutation charges instead, but they must be usually acquired using gems.
Dyes can also be used to customize a character. Basic dyes are already available for everyone, while additional ones can be unlocked for any character on the account. Unlike skins, dyes can be always freely applied at no cost.