Thursday, April 12, 2012

New GW player looking for some advice (a.k.a. Level 20, now what?)

[:1]Quick background: I'm playing a Elementalist/Monk that started in Factions. I hit level 20 shortly after arriving in Kaireng Center. Since then I've done a few more side quests, traveled to Nightfall to get heroes, bought EotN last night and got the first 3 heroes there as well, and now I'm rather overwhelmed with choices for what to do next. My goal is to build a good 7H team and eventually complete 30+ HoM points. No guild yet, just one friend who just bought the game too (but hasn't been able to play yet). I will level a Necro through Prophecies with him, but then go back to my Elementalist.

I've read enough about the game that the actual mechanics aren't really a problem at all and I have a pretty good idea of what skills I need to get and how to use them. What I can't seem to find is info on the more intangible things, like how to prioritize. Basically I'm still using AR 15 armor, a crap weapon, the /bonus offhand, haven't finished weh no su, and have no elite skills yet (I have the Signet of Capture from the quest though). I'm going to run out of plat fast if I try to do everything, but I'm not sure what will help the most at this point. I have enough collector items to get AR 60 canthan robe and leggings, but wasn't sure if it was worth using them since the items can't take insignias.

Another thing I'm struggling with is deciding what to do with all the crap I pick up. I know about identifying white items to increase the sale value, but beyond that I haven't really been able to tell what items should be vendored, salvaged with a plain kit, or salvaged with an expert kit.

Any advice on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.|||Now that you've arrived on the "main island", things start to get more difficult. The first thing you should do is to save enough gold and materials so that you can buy a full AR 60 armor set for your character, it will help a lot. You may have enough gold for it already, and if you don't, it won't take long to save up.

You can quite safely sell most of the stuff that you find, just look out for any expensive insignias or mods. You can check their prices at the Rune Trader and you'll learn soon enough which ones are worth keeping and which ones you can just merch.

The quests in and around Kaineng City have pretty nice rewards (well, better than the quests in Prophecies anyway), so you could start by playing (some of) those. In addition to gold and experience they give you Imperial Commendations that you can trade for Superior Salvage Kits for example. (I would forget the normal and expert salvage kits if I was you, they're just annoying to use)

Did you remember to play the quest on the "noob island" that gives you the extra skill points?|||Hopefully you didn`t die yet, I like to prioritize Survivor above all else. But it`s not an easy title until you have enough practice in the game.

Regardless, 60 armor is your goal now. You can get a cheap one in Kaineng. Next, I would just do the storylines, all of them, and cap elite skills as you go. You don`t need to get them all, just the ones that are on your way. You can get more later. I would also add some runes into it, vitae mostly, but I would also add one for your element and your primary.

/bonus weapons are fine, I still use them in hard mode. My heroes are unruned with /bonus weapons. Equipping them will make your job easier though, but that can get expensive.

The storyline is your goal (after the armor) because it helps progress your protector titles, and unlocks outposts further into the games. These outposts will make it easier to get skill hunter, skills, heroes, and perhaps vanquish and/or carto if you plan to do that. Make sure you carry the relevant storybooks, and get the master reward for the missions (if still going for survivor, masters can be risky on some missions, so you can skip that for later if there`s a risk).

EotN generally is higher difficulty, lower experience, but also has some good heroes are some awesome PvE-only skills. If you`re up for the challenge, that would be your priority to make the rest of the game easier, with Nightfall next. However, I would get a few heroes, and then do missions in the right order (Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall) because it`s your first time through.

Additional reading:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Kind_of_a_Big_Deal

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guide...uments_rewards|||Quote:






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Now that you've arrived on the "main island", things start to get more difficult. The first thing you should do is to save enough gold and materials so that you can buy a full AR 60 armor set for your character, it will help a lot. You may have enough gold for it already, and if you don't, it won't take long to save up.




I have about 11k now, plus I'll probably sell off a stack of victory tokens today since I don't really care about the mask. Is it worth it to get the AR collector stuff or should I suck it up and spend to get all five pieces crafted?


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In addition to gold and experience they give you Imperial Commendations that you can trade for Superior Salvage Kits for example. (I would forget the normal and expert salvage kits if I was you, they're just annoying to use)




Ah good, that's definitely what I needed to know. I have about 15 commendations in the bank that I wasn't sure what to do with yet, so at least kits won't be an issue again for a while.


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Did you remember to play the quest on the "noob island" that gives you the extra skill points?




I did lots of quests that gave skill points... or do you mean the ones that give 15 attribute points? I did An Unwelcome Guest, but have not done the other one yet.




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Hopefully you didn`t die yet, I like to prioritize Survivor above all else. But it`s not an easy title until you have enough practice in the game.




Haha, that ship has long since sailed unfortunately. I die a lot, probably because my AR is so low. I figure I will work on that once I get my team squared away with decent gear and all their skills.

Thanks to both of you for the help.|||60AR armors are all the same, except for cosmetics. The elite versions can be added to the HoM, but frankly, I would advise to get a normal armor first so you can get to the elite ones.

As for survivor, what I am doing now on chars that died is that I don't turn in any quest (except main ones) and books, I just keep hoarding them until I have enough XP across everything to get the title. So if I die, I don't lose all my XP.

Also, remember to have fun.|||Alaris, I find it extremely contraproductive to pressurize a complete newcomer to become a survivor on their very first character ever. Rightnow, this person here needs to learn to play the game, not to obsess about their health bar.

It may be that you personally were so 1337 that you got that title straight on your first toon ever, but normal people die on their first few characters. That's normal and healthy.



Misaka: 11k is plenty for your set of Kaineng City armor. I would get that straight away; only if you had left Shingjea Island with almost no money in your pockets, you should go for the collector armor now.

After that, it's somewhat up to you. Since you state that building an effective 7H team is one of your top priorities, I would suggest that you move over to Nightfall to be able to recruit more heroes. Nightfall is harder than Factions though, so if it becomes overwhelming, you can always head back to the earlier chapters.

My own salvaging habits are as follows:

- pick up everything, identify everything.

- if I run low on some material that I may need in the future (for instance, iron, wood, cloth, tanned hides), then I salvage the appropriate white junk drops, and the highly salvageable ones as well. I do that with a normal salvage kit. This gives more cloth than an expert salvage kit would give.

- if there's a rune or inscription, I check the rune trader. If the inscription or rune is valuable, I extract it with an expert salvage kit and sell it. Otherwise, I just sell the entire item to the merchant.

- I generally ignore weapon mods, unless I need them myself for my heroes or my characters.|||@Lytha: my first chars each died plenty of times... But survivor is easier to get now. Anyway, I wanted to give the info, and let him make his choice. Agreed that it takes practice and knowledge to pull it off on the first try.

The advice to not turn in quests or books for rewards until you have enough for survivor is still a good advice. If he starts collecting quests done (but not turned in) now, he'll be able to spike survivor easily later.|||Quote:






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I have about 11k now, plus I'll probably sell off a stack of victory tokens today since I don't really care about the mask. Is it worth it to get the AR collector stuff or should I suck it up and spend to get all five pieces crafted?




Craft all 5 pieces. IMO armor is the only thing in game worth spending money on early (at least before you're obscenely rich ). What might be a burden are the materials. Check the wiki for Elementalist armors and see which ones require what materials. As you play, do a wiki search on stuff you find and see what materials they salvage into. It's a bit time consuming upfront, but after a while you'll get used to the patterns.


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I did lots of quests that gave skill points... or do you mean the ones that give 15 attribute points? I did An Unwelcome Guest, but have not done the other one yet.




Make sure you do that one. At level 20, you should have 200 attribute points total.


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Haha, that ship has long since sailed unfortunately. I die a lot, probably because my AR is so low. I figure I will work on that once I get my team squared away with decent gear and all their skills.




Get yourself some armor first. To build a decent hero team, you'll need to spend some money on skills and skill cap signets. Don't be afraid to take henchmen before you have decent hero builds. A henchman is better than a hero with a bad skill bar. Prophecies and Factions are completely doable with just henchmen.

For builds in general (yours and heroes'), check out PvXwiki. Some here might turn their nose up at PvX, but it's a good place to start. Once you're comfortable with what works, then you can put together your own. My suggestion for hero first priority is a Minion Master. With a decent MM hero, the difficulty goes way down for most areas.

Also, consider joining a guild. A good guild can provide assistance in game. There are some guilds hosted on this site at the bottom of the main forum page, if you're interested.

-T|||I'll recommend PvX too for general PvE team builds... but make sure you take a look at the builds and understand why they work. You need to learn this so that if you need to adapt your builds, you know how.

For example, minion master builds are generally good in normal mode and hard mode, I rarely go anywhere without a minion master. But... there are places that have foes that don't drop a corpse. Golems, elementals... You need to bring a different frontline there. Likewise, most PvE team builds I know of don't bring interrupt skills, so it might get complicated against teams with lots of rez (e.g. Vloxen, or generally any EotN charr), or teams with powerful AoE spells (e.g. djinns with searing flames in NF, those spiders in endgame NF with meteor showers). Likewise, caster-heavy teams will have a harder time against anti-caster builds (e.g. mesmers), or physical-heavy builds against anti-physical builds (e.g. blinds, snares, etc).

So my advice about PvX is to borrow, steal, learn... but also experiment especially in normal mode. Start with a fairly good team build, then try to switch one hero for something else... some good roles to learn are minion master, spirit spammer, interrupter/shutdown, frontline, heal/prot, nuker, support (via KD or blinds, elementalists are good at that)... Not that you have to learn all these roles, rather, you need to know how to include these functions in your team.

Learn to flag your heroes, at least to spread them enough to avoid getting wiped by AoE's.

It's also usually good to learn to play a balanced team, even if some team builds are somewhat more efficient and safe. Also, learn to make hybrids, builds that do two functions. These are especially important in small-team areas.|||Quote:






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60AR armors are all the same, except for cosmetics. The elite versions can be added to the HoM, but frankly, I would advise to get a normal armor first so you can get to the elite ones.




Yeah, my concern was about not being able to put insignias on them. Definitely can't afford to be buying elite-anything yet, but it sounds like the consensus here is to spend the money to get crafted. Not exactly sure which insignias to use actually but I was leaning towards Survivor on chest/legs and Blessed on the others. I have no idea of the prices right now so that may change my mind. I did check the material trader and silk appears to be cheapest right now, although I do have an awful lot of tanned hide from salvage that I could convert to leather squares.

For weapon, if I want to end up with an air staff that's 40% HCT and 20% enchantment duration, do I need to start with base that already has the "Aptitude not Attitude" inscription on it? I'm assuming that's going to be very expensive. :/ I can make due with a wand and the bonus offhand in the meantime I guess.



As far as builds go, I'm aiming for a spiritway setup based on Jeydra's posts over at GW Guru and PvX. Unfortunately it appears that I don't yet have access to any zones where the elites I need are found. When capturing elite skills for my heroes, will I be able to snag Necro, Mesmer, and Ritualist ones without actually having those as my own secondary?

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