Tips

This page is a collection of tips submitted by players. There is no guarantee that the information it provides here is up-to-date or 100 percent accurate.

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Level-up

• The Experience the player gets from exploring, killing mobs, completing events or completing a storystep scales with the characters level, therefore even completing events that are lower than the characters level is useful.
• Stay in areas just below current level and remember there are similar low level starter areas for each playable race. Every character has 1 Waypoint unlocked in each starter area.
• Work on the character's personal story. Every 10 levels a new chapter is unlocked.
• Explore the Maps that are appropriate for the characters level:
  • Complete Renown Hearts.
    • Scouts will show the player unfinished renown hearts in the area.
  • Participate in dynamic events.
  • Watch Vistas.
  • Gather from Resource nodes, materials gathered can later be used in Crafting.
• Crafting awards experience (in addition to crafting experience) and allows the player to gain 10 level, when training from crafting level 0-400.
• Summoned allies may increase effective DPS and distract hostile NPCs.
• Join a guild that has access to a Guild Hall. Nathan the Bartender offers  Guild XP Gain that provides a 3-10% experience boost (depending on how far the Guild Tavern is upgraded).
• Use experience boosters:
  • Food: Most Food provides the Nourishment effect, that provides at least 10% more experience. Halloween food provides 15% instead.
  • Utilities: Most Utility items provide the  Enhancement effect, that provides 10% more experience. There is one exception however, Powerful Potion of Slaying Scarlet's Armies provides 15% more experience for 60 minutes.
  • Lucky Fireworks: Fireworks provide  New Year's Gift, which provides 5% more experience from kills and can be stacked to last up to 2 hours.
  • Boosters: Experience Booster (masterwork) provides 50% for 1 laurel.
• World versus World and PvP can be played with a higher level character to farm Tome of Knowledge.
• Kill yellow creatures in the open world. Yellow creatures are often ignored by players, and therefore will have a higher amount of bonus experience available.

Mastery Level-up

• Raising the accounts mastery level requires the player to collect Mastery Points and Experience.
  • In Central Tyria, Mastery Points can be obtained from Mastery Insights or by completing specific Achievements.
  • In the Heart of Maguuma, Mastery Points can be obtained from Mastery Insights (Heart of Thorns) or by completing specific achievements. (Requires Heart of Thorns)
  • In the Crystal Desert, Mastery Points can be obtained from Mastery Insights (Path of Fire) or by completing specific achievements. (Requires Path of Fire)
  • In Cantha, Mastery Points can be obtained from Mastery Insights (End of Dragons) or by completing specific achievements. (Requires End of Dragons)
  • In the Horn of Maguuma, Mastery Points can be obtained from Mastery Insights (Secrets of the Obscure) or by completing specific achievements. (Requires Secrets of the Obscure)
• Experience received on a level 80 character in the corresponding area is automatically put towards an available Mastery track.
  • While in Central Tyria, experience received will be put towards Central Tyria Mastery Tracks.
  • While in the Heart of Maguuma, experience received will be put towards Heart of Thorns Mastery Tracks.
  • While in the Crystal Desert, experience received will be put towards Path of Fire Mastery Tracks.
  • While in Cantha, experience received will be put towards End of Dragons Mastery Tracks.
  • While in the Horn of Maguuma, experience received will be put towards Secrets of the Obscure Mastery Tracks.
• Experience received can be increased by the same means as on non level 80 characters.
• There are more Mastery Insights available than actually needed, enabling the player to avoid difficult ones.
• Adventures, such as the Griffon Expert in Path of Fire or Bugs in Branches in Verdant Brink (Heart of Thorns), can be repeated daily for experience and a chest per tier, as well as a first time (lifetime) bonus per tier (usually including a mastery point).

WvW Level-up

• World Experience is separate from normal experience and can only be earned in WvW.
• For new players WvW can be overwhelming and confusing, therefore:
  • Ask questions in /team or /map chat.
  • Join the servers WvW Teamspeak or Discord, most servers don't require the player to talk, listening is enough.
  • Join and follow the public zerg.
  • Use a WvW optimized build and gear.
    • Most servers provide information on builds and gear in their Teamspeak or Discord server.
    • Player created websites like MetaBattle also offer information on builds and gear used in WvW.
  • Servers occasionally host WvW beginner raids, where they explain WvW and even class mechanics.
• In WvW almost anything rewards the player with World Experience, a list can be seen here.
• Spend World Ability Points to buy WXP upgrades that provide additional bonuses in WvW.
• Use Guild WXP Gain and WXP Boosters or WXP Mini-Boosters to maximize World Experience gain.
• Purchase WxP Enrichment from a Laurel Merchant (WvW).
  • This merchant also offers other WvW Infusions that provide additional stat bonuses while in WvW.
• Ley-Energy Matter Converter and Karmic Converter occasionally offer Box of WvW Supplies which have a chance to grant the player up to 25,000 World Experience.

Get Rich

• Completing four Wizard's Vault dailies unlocks the daily chest, which rewards the player with 2 and 10Achievement Points upon clicking it.
  • 10 are only received if the player hasn't reached the cap of 15,000 for daily and now-defunct monthly achievements combined.

For new players

• Get equipment from personal story and loot drops rather than buying from weaponsmiths or armorsmiths.
  • If the player struggles with keeping his equipment close to his level or completing content, consider buying from the Trading Post.
• Gather from resource nodes as often as the player can, gathered materials can later be used to craft armor and weapons or sold if not needed.
• Beginning at level 15, World bosses appear on a regular schedule in different areas of Tyria. Defeating them awards the player with experience and sometimes unique drops. A interactive schedule can be found here event timer.

For experienced players

• All maps provide Map bonus rewards, that can yield a significant income for players. Current profits for a full rotation can be found here.
• Raids and Fractals of the Mists reward the player with gold and expensive materials, they can be completed either weekly (raids) or daily.
  • Raids and certain Fractals may require the player to run a specific build, role or extensive knowledge of a mechanic. Guides can be found on the specific wiki pages or from other resources.
• Certain Meta event's such as the Battle in Tarir event in Auric Basin or the Sunspear Uprising and the Palawadan, Jewel of Istan (meta event) in the Domain of Istan are getting farmed by the community. They often reward the player with rare or exotic gear that can be salvaged for Globs of Ectoplasm or sold on the Trading Post. They also reward significant amounts of masterwork or lower rarity gear that can be salvaged for materials.
• Many players also use the Trading Post to gain gold.
  • Flipping items: Buying or ordering items for a low price and then selling them for a higher price.
    • This method might take a long time and does sometimes lead to loss of gold due to the unpredictable nature of the Trading Post
  • Material Promotion: Certain crafting materials can be promoted using the Mystic Forge. Some of the recipes yield materials that can be sold for profit. A list of available recipes can be found here.
    • There are several player created resources available that list the average profit of some of the recipes based on the current Trading Post prices, such as:
      • Egg Baron Material Promotion Sheet
      • gw2efficency
  • Salvaging items: Players salvage certain items to either receive the Sigil, Rune or crafting materials.

Get Karma

Karma can be obtained by different means, but it almost always is a passive way of farming (either by farming it together with Gold or World Experience):

PvE

• All Dynamic events reward the player with karma.
• Karma gain is influenced by several modifiers, such as Minty Breath, Winter's Blessing, Wintersday Food and Utilities, Guild banners and Guild Karma Bonus.
  • These modifiers do not influence karma gained from Karma consumables.
• Certain Maps that where introduced during Living World offer Karmic Retribution, which makes foes drop various karma consumables depending on the level of Karmic Retribution.
  • Some of maps that offer Karmic Retribution are being farmed by the community (i.e. Domain of Istan), allowing players to gather large amounts of karma in short time.
• Completing Renown Hearts awards the player with karma depending on the level of the renown heart.
• During Wintersday karma can be farmed by completing the Donation Drive achievement.

WvW

• WvW offers several events that rewards the player with karma ranging from 0 to 1,700 karma as seen here.
  • Some servers organize a special karma raid on WvW reset, where they specifically participate in aforementioned events.

Get Exotic Equipment

• Exotic equipment can be crafted, dropped or bought on the Trading Post. A list of all available attribute combinations and ways to get them can be found here.
  • For most Attribute combinations that are used in Meta builds, it is cheaper to buy them on the Trading Post instead of crafting them.
    • Some of those attribute combinations, can also be acquired from the Dungeon Merchant using dungeon currencies.
  • Certain Attribute combinations that were introduced with Living World and Expansions can only be crafted or bought from renown heart vendors, because they are account-bound. Those include:
    • Celestial, Commander's, Crusader, Marauder, Minstrel's, Nomad's, Plaguedoctor's, Seraph, Sinister, Vigilant, Viper's, Wanderer's and Zealot's.

Get Ascended Equipment

• Ascended equipment can be crafted, dropped or bought from various vendors, some Attribute combinations can only be acquired if the player owns a certain Living World episode or Expansion. A full list of attribute combinations and how to get them can be found here.
  • Ascended trinkets are the easiest part of Ascended equipment to get, they can be bought from various vendors, most commonly by using Pristine Fractal Relics, Laurels or Guild Commendations.
  • Most attribute combinations can be easiest acquired by crafting them, although this can be expensive.
    • Only Ascended armor, Ascended weapons and Ascended back items can be crafted.
  • Ascended equipment can also be dropped in Fractals of the Mists, however it is purely based on chance.
  • Raids are the most consistent way to get Ascended equipment from (besides crafting), since it can be bought from the Basic Magnetite Exchange Operative using Magnetite Shards in the Lion's Arch Aerodrome.
    • Most Raid encounters additionally provide a small chance to drop Ascended weapons, Ascended trinkets, Ascended back items or Ascended armor.
• If the player owns Ascended armor or Ascended weapons with attribute combinations that he doesn't want to use, the attributes can be change the Mystic Forge recipes that can be found here.

Get more / larger bags

• Inventory Bags can be bought on the Trading Post, from Vendors or crafted.
  • Especially smaller bags can be bought on the Trading Post relatively cheap compared to crafting them and it is therefore advised to buy them there.
  • Some achievements reward the player with bags.
  • During some Festivals vendors offer festival themed bags, like Halloween Pail during Halloween and Large Wintersday Gift during Wintersday, that often are cheaper compared to their normal counterparts.
  • Fractals of the Mists players can buy 20 Slot bags from BUY-4373 using Fractal Relics and Gold.
  • WvW players can buy 20 slot bags from the Outfitter using Badges of Honor.
• Path of Fire introduced larger bags (up to 32-slot).
  • These bags need to be crafted, are account-bound and in general relatively expensive.
  • A list of recipes can be found here.
• The Gem Store offers Bag Slot Expansions that can be bought for Gems, each character can buy up to 5 of those expansions.

Level 2nd Character

If you have one high-level character then leveling up of another is easier.

• Use previously acquired consumables
  • Experience Scroll (1st and 2nd birthday) increase to level 20.
  • Experience Scroll (3rd birthday) increase to level 30.
  • Experience Scroll (4th birthday) increase to level 40.
  • Experience Scroll (5th birthday) increase to level 50.
  • Tome of Knowledge and Tome of Mentorship (+1 level).
  • Writ of Experience (+5% of a level).
• Ineffable equipment is account bound when crafted, is of Exotic rarity, and has stats boosted by 6 levels above the required level.

Drops and Vendors

Drops

• The Mystic Forge is a unique mechanism that can take several combinations of items to produce new ones. Throwing four items of the same rarity will usually produce a new item of the same, or greater, rarity, and higher level than the average of the combined items.
  • See the Mystic Forge page for a more in-depth list of recipes.
• Jute drops reliably from bandits and skritt. It is also easily salvageable from low level cloth gear.
• If you get an exotic drop (or higher, or an item you are not familiar with), always check the price on the trading post first before considering using or deconstructing it. You might be lucky and got a valuable legendary precursor weapon drop.

Vendors

• The price in the lower right-hand corner of an item's tool-tip is what a vendor will pay for it.
  • Items that are not Account Bound or Soulbound can be sold at the Trading Post, usually for some profit.
• The "Sell Junk" button located at the bottom of a vendors sell tab will automatically sell all useless , AJunk rarity, non-salvageable items that are not in Invisible bags.
• When on a vendors sell tab, right-clicking an item in the inventory and selecting "Sell" will also sell the item.
• Vendors that have a Sell tab also have a Buyback tab, just in case you sell something you didn't mean to. This tab is shared across venders in an area, but limited to a certain number of items, and is cleared if you leave the zone.

Bag Management

Primary article: bag

• Deposit All Materials — Instantly transfer to your account vault all items that have a reserved space in the Material Storage tab there.
• Compact — Move all items to the first available space in inventory.
• Options
  • Show / Hide Rarity — Display a colored border around items depending on their quality.
  • Show / Hide New Item Highlights - Icons of items newly acquired in a character's inventory will glow when first added or when their stack is increased. The glow will be brighter first, fade to a dimmer glow, and persist until either cursor passes over the item or the inventory panel is closed.
  • Show / Hide Bags — Present the storage area as individual bags, or combine all slots into a single group.
  • Embed / Separate Shared Bag - When "Hide Bags" is turned on, this will control whether or not the shared bag is kept separate or not.
• Deposit All Materials and Compact will not affect items in some bags with special features.
• To split a stack, drag the stack to another slot while holding down the Alt key.
• Bags can be moved around via drag and drop to organize the inventory easily.

Gathering, Crafting, Salvaging and Recipes

Gathering

• Gathering tools should be bought as soon as possible; they cost a few coppers each and allow to loot from resource nodes.
• There are Unlimited Gathering Tools available from the Gem Store. Several of these come with Glyphs which grant additional materials or other bonuses.
• Glyphs are also available from the Trading Post and can be slotted into any Gathering tool available in the game.
• Most resource nodes are redistributed when changing to a different character on the same map or changing the map instance, allowing the player to gather from them again.

Crafting

• Any crafting station functions as a bank.
• A single character can learn all available Crafting disciplines, however only 2 can be active at a time. It is possible to acquire Additional Crafting Licenses from the Gem Store, to increase this cap.
  • Switching between crafting disciplines costs between 10  and 50  depending on the level of the target discipline (10  per level). All recipes and level are saved.
    • It is often best to have different characters, maxing two disciplines per character to avoid this fee. Create 5 characters if access to the Scribe discipline is desired.
• When starting to craft, make sure to discover recipes that your materials allow before mass-producing one item.
• When a refinement is new to a crafting level, it generates a lot of experience, whereas in later stages this experience is minimal. At that point discoveries will progress the discipline's level a lot faster than refinement will.

Salvaging

• It is not possible to salvage GAscended equipment with regular Salvage Kits, they require an Ascended Salvage Kit.
• HLegendary rarity items can't be salvaged regardless of the Salvage Kit used.
  • The only exception to this is the Gift of Fortune, which can be salvaged by any Salvage Kit and yields all items that were used in it's creation.
• It is usually more profitable to salvage BBasic, CFine and DMasterwork items, instead of selling them directly to a Merchant or via Trading Post.
  • Refer to the Trading Post for more information on which materials are worth the most and least.

Recipes

• Recipes are unlocked account-wide and can be acquired automatically, by discovery or by using Recipe sheets. Mystic Forge recipes do not need to be learned or discovered.
• Most recipes can be bought on the Trading Post or from Karma Vendors.
  • Certain recipes are Account Bound and can only be acquired from vendors or achievements.

Chat, emotes, and chat commands

• Type in /wiki to open the Guild Wars 2 Wiki Main Page.
  • The wiki can also be searched, by typing /wiki <search-term>to browse directly to the article. For example: /wiki condition damage will bring up the article Condition Damage.
    • Note that many Guild Wars 2 wiki articles are case sensitive.
  • Alternatively, by typing /wiki and then linking an Item, Point of Interest or Waypoint by clicking said elements while pressing Shift,a player can search the wiki using the Chat link format.
• Type /age to see the account and character playtime.
• By /kneel in front of certain statues and idols a player can receive various effects.
• Emotes can be synchronized with others by typing the desired emote followed by a space and an asterisk ( *). For example /dance *. See emote for more info.
• Emotes can be directed at the current target by adding a space and an at sign ( @) at the end of it. Ex. /point @.
• Bugs can be reported using the /bug command.

Farming

• Usually the player doesn't need to be nearby when an event ends in order to get credit for it. However, they do need to be in the same zone. Leaving the zone cancels participation, even if it was a disconnect or client crash.
• Certain NPCs may turn into karma vendors or regular vendors after finishing their event, just like renown heart NPCs turn into karma vendors.
• Farming is subjected to diminishing returns. This means farming the same monsters or events will start to generate less and less items as time goes on. This is due an anti-farm code. See also Anti-farm code on the Guild Wars (1) wiki for more information.
• For dynamic events, it is advised to use as much area of effect damage as possible. Damaging multiple enemies sufficiently will allow for more chances of loot.
• There are a number of elaborate and specific farming guides out there. If you need something, there's a good chance someone will has written a guide about it.

Combat and abilities

• "Melee Attack Assist" will prohibit the player from walking through enemies, which makes it easier to stay in melee range. For some fights and experienced players, turning this off can be beneficial.
• The very first skill on the players skill bar is the default auto-attack. This means the character will use the skill on cooldown when an enemy is in range. Most skills can be designated as your auto-attack, but will still respect their individual cooldowns before activating again. A characters auto-attack skill can be changed by holding Ctrl and right-clicking another skills icon.
• Skills have a maximum range, that can be seen in the skill description, if an enemy is out of range a red bar will be visible below the skills icon.
• During WvW or difficult boss fights and events, most players will not revive defeated players. It is expected that defeated players teleport to the nearest Waypoint. There are several reasons for this:
  • Reviving from the Defeated state is long and prevents at least one player from dealing damage or healing others.
  • In PvE certain foes will focus reviving players, which can result in the reviving player being downed/defeated themself.
  • In Raids defeated players can only be revived while out of combat.
  • In WvW defeated players can only be revived while out of combat.
• Holding down the Ctrl key + clicking an enemy will call them out to the group, putting a targeting crosshair over their head. If someone else calls a target, pressing T will target that enemy. This feature is usable even without a group and in squads.
• In WvW fights, focusing on defeating downed enemies can both ensure that a downed ally will rally and that these enemies will not; provided the player does not get downed themself in the process.

User interface and keybindings

• When playing on a foreign client the player can instantly translate any game-text into English by pressing the right-hand Ctrl key.
• The mouse turning speed can be adjusted with the slider in the General Options.
• There are no mail boxes. The player can send items away with a right-click, and collect them through the mail icon in the top left of the UI.
• The player can sell items, browse the Trading Post, and buy items from anywhere by pressing the O key. Items and can be picked up from any Black Lion Trader.
• By holding Alt and click any spot on the map the player can place a personal waypoint. Alt-clicking it will remove it.
• By hold Shift and clicking on the map the player can ping points for teammates or draw lines on the minimap by dragging the cursor while holding the Right Mouse Button and Shift.
  • Holding Shift and the Left Mouse Button allows the player to choose from different ping symbols using a radial menu.
• The player can turn the default double tapping of movement keys to dodge off by deselecting "Double-Tap to Evade" in the General Options.
• Holding down the Ctrl key highlights all enemies (including friendly and neutral enemies, and gather nodes) in the direction the player is facing.
• It is suggested to turn on "Autoloot: Quick Interact" in the General Options. This will skip the loot window when looting items, and will place all the items directly into the inventory (unless the inventory is full, which will trigger a loot window).
  • Selecting "AoE Loot On Interact" and "Autoloot: Quick Interact" in General Options the player can loot several foes by only pressing the F key once.

Exploring

• Lion's Arch provides travel to all racial capitals, by using the associated asura gate located near Coriolis Plaza.
  • Heart of the Mists is accessed by opening the PvP window (clicking in the menu bar), then clicking "Go to the Heart of the Mists."
    • The player can assign a shortcut key to open this window in the Control Options under User Interface.
  • World versus World is accessed by opening the WvW window (shortcut key B or clicking in the menu bar) and selecting Eternal Battlegrounds or one of the borderlands. Note that these maps often have a queue for entry.
• Exploring a zone in full may lead the player to special areas that they otherwise would have missed. Often these areas include jumping puzzles, achievements, and events.
• Finishing any non-city zone (100% completion in that zone) rewards the with 2 pieces of equipment, crafting materials, and a Transmutation Charge or a Black Lion Chest Key, scaled to meet the maximum level of the zone. Note that this equipment disregards the players profession.

Miscellaneous

• The player can edit their own music into the game and have it play during different times as explained here.
• The higher the players level, the more expensive waypoints are. Waypoints also come with a base travel fee (as high as 1 39 at level 80).
• The player can reset its traits, any time they are out of combat, for free in the Hero Panel.
• A character can walk (instead of run) in Guild Wars 2, by assigning a key to "Walk" in the Control Options under Movement.
• NPCs are usually affected by boons the player inflicts on them, such as swiftness to improve their movement speed.

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