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Just getting into Guild Wars

S

Space_Coyote

Gawd
Joined
Feb 2, 2007
Messages
932
Or rather I will be when it gets here from Amazon ($36.99 for the trilogy). I’ve been playing WoW on and off since it came out, but I haven’t played in 6 months. I am missing the character progression, and adventuring/PvPing with other people. Inspired by the new GW2 trailers I wondered what I’d been missing when the original was big. A 30 min run of the trial and some PvP videos were enough to convince me to order.

I’ve read some of the Guildwiki, and it’s very informative. I was hoping I might get some first-hand advice though from the trusty [H].

Professions are like classes in WoW, but you can have a primary and secondary? So I can be a Warrior, but have healing talents (Monk?) too, kinda like TQ? I see there is the option to create a roleplaying character or PvP. PvE can also PvP, but PvP gives you an instant level 20 character? I’m a little confused by this, can someone explain a little more please? I assume there are different builds for PvP and PvE, is it easy to switch between them?

20 is the cap right? So what do the expansions offer in the way of character development? Should I start out with Nightfall as suggested in another thread here? What is a good profession/class to start getting my feet wet with? Any other tips for a newbie?
 
PvE is what you actually play the PvE game with, or PvP if you chose.

PvP are level 20 characters that cannot do anything but PvP. You unlock skills for them by playing your PvE character and getting those skills, or you can do Arenas for points.

I haven't played in a couple years, so things have changed drastically. The "newbie" class was Warrior/Monk, because it's pretty easy and powerful.
 
When you make a character, it's either a PvE character or a PvP character.

PvP characters are level 20 with access to all the end game gear. This sounds like a lot to a WOW player, but it's really not. It's trivial to do this in PvE (level 20 takes no time at all, and end game gear is a simple visit to the vendor). The difference maker in your gear will ultimately be the enchantments (runes and other upgrades). These upgrades for your PvP character will need to be unlocked. There's 3 ways to unlock them for PvP: Through use of faction (like honor), unlock through PvE (when your PvE character finds an upgrade it's unlocked for your PvP character forever), or you can buy the PvP unlock pack.

Of course in PvE, there's the green gear and ever lasting search for 'perfect' enchantments as well as the overall plot / expansive content to keep you busy. The cap is 20. The only reason to do PvE is personal enjoyment, unlocking more stuff for PvP, getting skill points, getting gear for your PvE character, and various other random unlocks (titles, achievements, etc.).

Yes you can choose a primary and a secondary class. The primary class determines what armor you wear and what runes you can apply to those armors (so a warrior primary can have 12+4 in axe mastery while a warrior secondary cannot). It also determines your MP pool (again, Warriors have 20 base mana with 2 'pips' of regen while caster classes have 30 base mana with 4 'pips' of regen).

In general, PvE can be played casually. It fits the role very well and I found it to be enjoyable overall. In order to enjoy PvP, you'll have to find a guild that PvP's consistently. There is a learning curve of course, but you can join random Arenas to overcome this and learn about the game. Curiously enough, the Guild Wars random Arenas is setup like the WOW 'esport' Arenas. Except, the Guild Wars arenas are larger and more varied than the 3 or 4 that WOW has.

Should I start out with Nightfall as suggested in another thread here? What is a good profession/class to start getting my feet wet with? Any other tips for a newbie?
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I played Guild Wars since release. I stopped before the first expansion (Factions), and recently started again last spring. At that time, Factions, Nightfall, and Eye of the North were all out. When you start a character, it can either be: Prophecies, Factions, or Nightfall. Prophecies being the original one. Eye of the North is a true 'expansion' in that, it's solely geared for level 20 characters. As far as the three campaigns go, you can use the same character to complete every single one. There are points in the plot where you can visit the other continents and start questing there. After finishing them all, my impressions are: Prophecy being the very first one had some tedious missions / quests. Overall, it's probably the longest one, but it's the original after all. Factions went the opposite direction and was geared towards an incredibly fast leveling progression. The overall campaign is the shortest and probably the least enjoyable to me. Nightfall seemed to be the most balanced of the three in terms of tediousness / length / content. One important note is that Nightfall introduced Heroes. Heroes are henchmen that you can customize (skills and gear etc.) as well as control to a certain extent (think pets in WOW). For this reason, starting as a Nightfall character just to grab some heroes is not a bad idea as was mentioned in another thread. Alternatively, you can simply visit the Eye of the North as soon as you can (you can do this relatively early in any of hte campaigns - don't have to be level 20) just to grab the 3 heroes that it offers you at the start (you can only have max of 3 heroes active anyway).
 
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you know that space bar people in wow love to just randomly tap to jump around for hours on end, say goodbye to that and say goodbye to having a completely open world, I played gw for a good 6 months when it first came out so if they changed this ignore this but there were invisible walls everywhere.
That said it was a good game when I played and for no monthly fee it can't be beat. I quit around the time the original hard guild started going inactive and me and 2 other join the wow hard guild on stormscale at the time.
 
Actually, that goes for anyone -- hit me up if you're still playing this game.
 
Damn, now I'm craving to play Guild Wars again. I don't have all of the expansions though so bleh.
 
Thanks for the feedback. I just checked my order, and it isnt even scheduled to ship until the 10th (estimated delivery on the 17th). I guess I should've given the prime a free trial, gah!

I was reading about dungeons, but I didn't see where people grouped up like in WoW. Does this happen, and is there any raiding?
 
Space_Coyote said:
Thanks for the feedback. I just checked my order, and it isnt even scheduled to ship until the 10th (estimated delivery on the 17th). I guess I should've given the prime a free trial, gah!

I was reading about dungeons, but I didn't see where people grouped up like in WoW. Does this happen, and is there any raiding?
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There are instances that drive the main story line. I can't remember what they're called. A lot of them are fairly easy, and doable with the CPU henchmen. Some are pretty difficult and require teammates, but I never had issue with finding groups when I played.
 
The missions are the instances that drive the story lines for each campaign. The dungeons are mostly in the EOTN expansion, and are what I would call end-game content - they are about the most difficult things you can do solo.

I recommended doing Nightfall first for the heroes because they make the missions in the earlier storylines much easier. Henchmen are pretty good groupmates; once you understand what they do, you can rely on them to always do that. But you can't give henchmen any gear or skills - what they come with is what they will always have.

Heroes, on the other hand, are customizable by the player - you can give them armor and weapons and skills. Heroes can be far superior to a human in certain ways - for example, a hero set up with interrupt skills can pick out which monsters from a crowd of 20 or 30 are in the process of casting a spell (there's just no way a human could do that effectively).

Knowing how a hero behaves with any given skill is a bit of an art form. Power in Guild Wars comes from synergy of skills, not gear. Each mission and dungeon is like a puzzle in which you need to figure out which set of skills for yourself and your heroes/henchmen will work together in the most effective manner. Eventually, when you've collected enough skills, the PvXWiki has builds for yourself, heroes and henchmen that are extremely effective, but in the beginning PvXWiki will only confuse because you don't have any of that stuff.

Anyway, once you've gotten a good set of heroes from Nightfall, it makes the storyline missions in Prophecies and Factions much easier to complete, which is why I recommend doing Nightfall, Prophecies and Factions in that order.
 
I'm not sure if any one mentioned this yet, but when you first install Guild Wars I would recommend using the command line option -image to download and install all known game files and updates, this will cut down on the annoyingness of loading screens in-game (make sure to remove -image from the command line once everything has completed). My in-game character is Dying Is For Noobs if, when you get the game, you need any assistance.

Also, if you're itching to get playing, why not cancel the Amazon order since it doesn't ship until the 10th, as it doesn't include Eye of the North, and the digital download edition that gentoo linked to does.
 
I got the digital download. The initial load takes about 15 minutes. Each new area is then loaded onto your PC as you go ranging from 5 seconds to ~2 minutes loading each time you visit a new area.
 
gentoo said:
Would there be any reason not to buy the digital download edition over a physical copy from Amazon besides the obvious price difference and physical copy reasons?
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The price difference has been quite a lot in the past, but I see at the moment that when you go to the official site, you can get the Guild Wars Trilogy and Eye Of The North for $50 total. That's a good deal, within a few dollars of the Amazon prices. I guess they noticed how far they were being undersold.

The thing is, even the DVDs only have the downloader on it; it still downloads the zones as you enter them, so the direct download is literally exactly the same as the DVD release. If you want the whole thing downloaded in one shot, use the -image commandline on a shortcut of GW.exe as Willycapz57 mentioned (all the commandline arguments are here).
 
Honestly though, I like that feature. Gets you ingame faster. *shrug*

So I forgot to mention, this week is finals week. I'll be in game pretty rarely but should pick up at the end of this week.
 
I picked up the trial last night and while I'm waiting for my RMA'd RAM (going from 6GB to 1GB sucks) to get back to me so I've been stomping around a little in Ascalon. First trial character is a warrior named Marcus Sepurcius that I might go monk with just to get my feet wet. I was looking at the assassin builds a week ago when GW2 was being discussed about around here. Feel free to add/party with me if you see me.
 
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I’m a sucker for having physical copy, unless it’s a smokin’ deal or something. I did cancel the Amazon order though, since the egg has it for the same price and I’ll get it faster. I figure I can just pick up EotN next year for $15 or less if I’m still into the series.
 
evilsofa said:
The price difference has been quite a lot in the past, but I see at the moment that when you go to the official site, you can get the Guild Wars Trilogy and Eye Of The North for $50 total. That's a good deal, within a few dollars of the Amazon prices. I guess they noticed how far they were being undersold.

The thing is, even the DVDs only have the downloader on it; it still downloads the zones as you enter them, so the direct download is literally exactly the same as the DVD release. If you want the whole thing downloaded in one shot, use the -image commandline on a shortcut of GW.exe as Willycapz57 mentioned (all the commandline arguments are here).
Click to expand...

The physical copies actually do have the game assets as they were at the time of release. Since, obviously, much has likely changed since then, it will save you a fair bit of downloading, but not bypass the download/update entirely. As for the -image option, I generally keep 2 shortcuts for it on my desktop. One which launches the game normally, and the other which updated the image.

 
PvE gets boring pretty fast, I had fun playing with friends but got bored with it by the time I reached the desert. The missions just get too repetitive and then once your level 20 there's not much to look forward to unless you enjoy rare weapons that dont even give better stats than standard ones you can buy any where.
But the main PVP is pretty good. I definitely got my moneys worth playing HA/HOH/GVG/TA until the competitive community declined
 
eon said:
PvE gets boring pretty fast, I had fun playing with friends but got bored with it by the time I reached the desert. The missions just get too repetitive and then once your level 20 there's not much to look forward to unless you enjoy rare weapons that dont even give better stats than standard ones you can buy any where.
But the main PVP is pretty good. I definitely got my moneys worth playing HA/HOH/GVG/TA until the competitive community declined
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I have to disagree. The OP purchased the Triolgy which is a HUGE amount --- I MEAN HUGE amount of PvE content that only gets better as you move up.

Like the OP said -- if he starts in Nightfall, he'll get the absolute best PvE experience GW1 has to offer, which is a pretty awesome experience.
 
Note these were all from the Nightfall Xpack, hence the African theme.

Here are some cool shots from Factions, the second one.

http://www.cineris.org/blog/category/games/guild-wars/

Some favorites:

gw895.jpg

gw818.jpg

gw811.jpg
 
don't worry at all about your class.. start up the game and make what sounds fun... max level (its only gonna take you like a day or 2 lol) and then find yourself a guild. from there ask the guild questions especially as to what kind of builds they could use in their guild. . . then make another character that fits what they want you to be... your not going to find yourself playing just one character for sure.... when I played i used 4 different characters and played just as much on one as the next . . . thats whats great about the game is you don't have to spend hours on end maxing level... and at the same time after you max level there is a ton of stuff to work towards. . . it was a great game back when I used to play it. .. and gw2 is starting to look amazing.
 
Man I really want to start back up, but there's just no point in trying to PvP with just prophecies.
 
Alright. I just went for the trilogy. I've got two guys right now. A warrior/monk and a newly started assassin. I wanted to start in Nightfall but I couldn't choose an assassin. Is there a way to travel to the Nightfall area so I can start there as soon as possible? My toons names are Marcus Sepurcius and Gnaeus Lusius.
 
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gentoo said:
Alright. I just went for the trilogy. I've got two guys right now. A warrior/monk and a newly started assassin. I wanted to start in Nightfall but I couldn't choose an assassin. Is there a way to travel to the Nightfall area so I can start there as soon as possible? My toons names are Marcus Sepurcius and Gnaeus Lusius.
Click to expand...

In each campaign, when you start a character, you start on an island and then move to the mainland. Once a character moves to the mainland, amongst all the other quests that become available, you'll find two quests that allow your character to move to the first mainland city of each of the other two campaigns. See:

http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Travel_quest#Interconnecting_Quests

Seriously, the guildwiki covers EVERYTHING about the game. I struggle to find even the most minute detail not covered by the guildwiki. Click on the Discussions tab for even more information and detail about every entry.
 
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Rofl-Mic-Lofl said:
Man I really want to start back up, but there's just no point in trying to PvP with just prophecies.
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I'm at the same spot. I bought Prophecies way back when it came out. Kinda looking for a new game because I'm starting to get tired of the grind in Aion.
 
gentoo said:
Alright. I just went for the trilogy. I've got two guys right now. A warrior/monk and a newly started assassin. I wanted to start in Nightfall but I couldn't choose an assassin. Is there a way to travel to the Nightfall area so I can start there as soon as possible? My toons names are Marcus Sepurcius and Gnaeus Lusius.
Click to expand...

Added -- my name is Psylion Lowind. Will PM you ingame if I see you on.
 
evilsofa said:
In each campaign, when you start a character, you start on an island and then move to the mainland. Once a character moves to the mainland, amongst all the other quests that become available, you'll find two quests that allow your character to move to the first mainland city of each of the other two campaigns. See:

http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Travel_quest#Interconnecting_Quests

Seriously, the guildwiki covers EVERYTHING about the game. I struggle to find even the most minute detail not covered by the guildwiki. Click on the Discussions tab for even more information and detail about every entry.
Click to expand...

Bingo. Thanks for the tip on the wiki. I'll be handbooking this in a tab while playing for sure.

bass_ec said:
Added -- my name is Psylion Lowind. Will PM you ingame if I see you on.
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Cool. I added you as well. I should be on later tonight maybe 8ish or sooner central time.
 
Are guilds worth getting into in this game? If so, anyone know a guild cool enough for me to join?
 
gentoo said:
Are guilds worth getting into in this game? If so, anyone know a guild cool enough for me to join?
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Depends on the kind of play you are after. If you want a lot of PVP action or some of the guild v guild battles then yeah. For me I just run the guild with friends to wander around and have fun. They all got sucked in to WoW so I did the whole game + most of EoTN on my own (not finished that one) There are a lot of guilds who are just there to play and have fun, others for serious play and such. If you plan to play the game a good amount for a while then yeah, joining one can be fun.

I enjoyed the game as it was so easy to just log in for a short while, play, actually accomplish something and log out.

I cannot wait for GW2.
 
gentoo said:
Are guilds worth getting into in this game? If so, anyone know a guild cool enough for me to join?
Click to expand...

If you find one, let me know. I've been looking for one as well.

PS sorry I havent been on recently. Finals just wrapped up so I should be on more now!
 
Ripskin said:
Depends on the kind of play you are after. If you want a lot of PVP action or some of the guild v guild battles then yeah. For me I just run the guild with friends to wander around and have fun. They all got sucked in to WoW so I did the whole game + most of EoTN on my own (not finished that one) There are a lot of guilds who are just there to play and have fun, others for serious play and such. If you plan to play the game a good amount for a while then yeah, joining one can be fun.

I enjoyed the game as it was so easy to just log in for a short while, play, actually accomplish something and log out.

I cannot wait for GW2.
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Yeah, that's essentially what I'm doing at this point. Playing a bunch just to access all of the ports then I'm going to focus on finishing Cantha and move to Elona. I'll probably hit up one of the advertisers in local and see if I can find a quality PVE guild that's willing to accept a noob.

bass_ec said:
If you find one, let me know. I've been looking for one as well.

PS sorry I havent been on recently. Finals just wrapped up so I should be on more now!
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For sure, I'll let you know what I come across. I've been mostly taking my assassin through Cantha and right now I'm working my way through Kaineng Center getting face rolled by all the mobs. I have my lv20 henchmen and MOX (need to do his quest) but if I even try to get near any of the mobs while they're fighting I tend to get raped. I've got my HP buffed a bit with a rune or two and a dagger handle of fortitude but meh. I'm lv18 at the moment which probably explains that but I hope to hit 20 soon.
 
gentoo said:
Yeah, that's essentially what I'm doing at this point. Playing a bunch just to access all of the ports then I'm going to focus on finishing Cantha and move to Elona. I'll probably hit up one of the advertisers in local and see if I can find a quality PVE guild that's willing to accept a noob.


For sure, I'll let you know what I come across. I've been mostly taking my assassin through Cantha and right now I'm working my way through Kaineng Center getting face rolled by all the mobs. I have my lv20 henchmen and MOX (need to do his quest) but if I even try to get near any of the mobs while they're fighting I tend to get raped. I've got my HP buffed a bit with a rune or two and a dagger handle of fortitude but meh. I'm lv18 at the moment which probably explains that but I hope to hit 20 soon.
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You might want to consider a ranger assasin, try the crit barrage build. The afflicted explosions suck for low-armor mele class like the assasin (funny thing they did with making factions the toughest for an asasin seeing as you get them in factions). being able to stand back from the action helped my sin plow through that part. I forget all the places you can get barrage so it may be hard to get it rolling.
 
gentoo said:
What do the 12+1+1, etc. mean on the PvX builds site?

http://pvx.wikia.com/wiki/Build:A/W_PvE_Dagger_Spammer

I know AP's cap out at 12 but I don't understand the additional point except maybe headgear that will add +1 to a certain attribute.
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Yeah. 12+1+1 means 12 from attribute points, 1 from headgear, and 1 from a minor rune.

There are three types of runes. Minor runes give +1. Major runes give +2 but also -35 health. Superior runes give +3 but -75 health. You can buy runes from a rune trader or identify/salvage them from armor drops.

For the particular build you're looking at, it means you need a +1 dagger mastery headgear, a minor dagger mastery rune, and a minor critical strikes rune.
 
eggrolls said:
Yeah. 12+1+1 means 12 from attribute points, 1 from headgear, and 1 from a minor rune.

There are three types of runes. Minor runes give +1. Major runes give +2 but also -35 health. Superior runes give +3 but -75 health. You can buy runes from a rune trader or identify/salvage them from armor drops.

For the particular build you're looking at, it means you need a +1 dagger mastery headgear, a minor dagger mastery rune, and a minor critical strikes rune.
Click to expand...

Thanks!
 
I think one of my biggest problems in playing as an assassin is that I keep trying to view GW's aggro system as like WoW's which is completely wrong. From what I've read GW's aggro works logically, targeting the easiest foe first with hopes of taking them out. Makes sense. Now, I was wondering how I would go about dropping aggro as I can't seem to find much on the subject and I find myself tanking from time to time. I would eventually like to drop my reliance on the self-healing shadow arts skills.
 
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