Guild Wars 2: How To GET STARTED At Level 80 (2023 Guide)

so you're level 80. now you're probably a bit confused after all guild wars 2 has a lot of systems and no doubt it'll be overwhelming even if you are familiar with other mmos like what are these stats do where do i get gear what is all of this useless stuff in my inventory you ask as your eyes glaze over fear not for in this video i'll break things down to a level that should be easier to digest i'll cover basic things like gearing build craft joining events inventory management and more specifically uh this video is going to be targeted towards new or returning players who are basically hopping straight into end of dragons but a lot of what i'll talk about should be helpful to you if you've just hit level 80 for the first time so let's talk about it first thing you want to do is select the story you want to play you do this by hitting h and going down to the story journal then selecting a story and hitting play pretty simple you can play any expansion you choose in any order you like you can pause one and go back later if you're new and you're interested in the story i'd always suggest playing through in chronological order but if you're just interested in playing the content then i'd highly recommend jumping straight into end of dragons because to be honest uh end of dragons is without a doubt the most beginner friendly package arenanet have produced so once you've selected a story to journey on you just follow the green star on the top right of the screen it'll tell you the next step now you can more or less play through the expansion stories as is without a hitch so feel free to do that first at your own pace before diving into any of the other stuff i talk about here but you'll definitely run into some things you might not understand so let's run through some basics so if you see an npc with the sparkly circle icon you can talk to them to initiate an event if you see an orange circle on the map that's an active event if you see a red circle that's a proper group event same sort of thing but you'll need to make sure you have enough players around to help you out these hearts on the map are your more standard quests in guild wars 2 except you don't need to pick them up or hand them in you just get in range of them read the quest on the top right and do whatever it says to complete them make sure you check the heart npc afterwards to see if they're selling anything you might like completing these events will give you nice xp towards your masteries as well as give you map currency and other bonuses speaking of masteries let's quickly talk about this as a max level character your xp will now go towards your masteries which are basically account wide perks in this menu here you'll see all the masteries in the game and select which one you'd like to train but it's important to note that you can only earn xp for these masteries in the expansion they're attached to for example you can only earn xp for end of dragon's masteries by playing in end of dragon's maps as another example as well through end of dragons you'll immediately get access to gliding as well as a couple of the first mounts which you'll unlock through heart quests in the second map you'll only have the basic version of these though so if you'd like to upgrade your gliding you'll have to earn xp in the heart of thorns maps and for mounts the path of fire maps note that you also need mastery points to then unlock the mastery once you've filled the xp bar these are scattered around maps and can also be earned from achievements which you can access by hitting h and then going down to the achievements tab if you don't spend your points though or you aren't actively training another mastery your xp is gonna immediately vanish into the ether so ensure that you're using your points and that you've got something currently training you'll get heaps of these with time so don't panic too much about them to join in on larger scale group content you'll more than likely need to use the lfg tool which you can access on the contacts and lfg page this is where you'll find groups for both instanced and open world content in the game it's divided up into expansions and activities you can open these tabs to go more in depth check every now and then to see if there's a group running the meta on your map that no that is not mark zuckerberg and his friends having a little barbecue the meta is just short for the meta event which is a long multi-stage map-wide event that requires large-scale coordination these are always fun events that reward big xp and map currency so don't be afraid to hop in by the way as well if you join a group and you see the players are grayed out despite being in the same map right click the commander which is the one with the little diamond icon and click join in and whatever the map is called this will put you in there instance of the map and then you can just follow the commander tag around if you're unsure where to go from there so inventory management this is a big thing that i get asked about a lot so you're probably looking at all the loots you've collected and thinking what the hell is all of this let's run through how to clean this up first you just open all your loot bags these are the main drops you'll get which contain everything else and you can search open in your inventory to find all these you can then right click use all then right click on your salvage kit and salvage all rares and under this is basically just gonna convert all of your equipment into craftable materials you can get salvage kits from a lot of the basic vendors or you can buy an infinite one from the cash shop you're gonna get a lot of all right but uh let's take care of that so then in the top right of your inventory you can click deposit all materials then find a vendor and hit sell junk so this is going to get rid of most of the crap in there for any exotic equipment you get uh keep it if it's a stat combo you want if not then sell it on the trading post this is the easiest way to clean up all of your bags all the materials will be in your material bank to access later you'll get a lot of random outliers trophies you can just delete or sell at a vendor for the most part as they usually just for collection achievements anything else you're uncertain of you can look up on the wiki or throw into your bank you can also craft or buy specific bags that organize the loot for you so that it doesn't look like my mess of an inventory but yeah i hope that helps so now i'm going to talk about progression but before i do i want to address a popular question why why do i need to gear up or optimize my build or properly learn my skills does it all actually matter the answer is of course yes it does matter but how all of this impacts you really depends on what kind of content you want to play with the gear that you got from the boost you'll be able to get through the whole end of dragon story just fine there's no real fail state things will just take you a bit longer but you might notice you might find that some enemies are taking too long to kill or they're killing you too fast or you can't seem to sustain yourself or your boons aren't lasting very long and you can't heal your friends as much as you might like you may get the false impression that this is just how the game is designed in reality though more likely it's just because you're not running the right stats or traits to complement your build like i said you'll be able to get through the campaign just fine but this will definitely cause a lot of difficulty and frustration if you try to get into instance group content you get a false sense of security because content in guild wars 2 isn't gated by any sort of item level or role requirement but make no mistake you will need some sort of functional build for end game and often for the open world as well if you're flying solo in general you really need to alter the way your brain thinks about progression the best way i can describe it is that it's like a moba there's no item level in a moba every match you're basically a blank slate that's you right now you're a blank slate and you can technically play the game perhaps even win but as you face more challenging foes how you build your character combined with your skill and game knowledge will make all of the difference like mobas guild wars 2 has quite a high skill ceiling and the main progression for me at least is knowing that i can always improve with every encounter through better usage of my skills positioning or through more effective build craft you'll definitely gain an enhanced appreciation for the game and likely enjoy the whole thing even more as you begin to understand and experiment with these systems even long after the gearing and build craft phase you'll still have basically infinite progression through improving your personal skill so with that let's talk about unlocking your elite spec around maps you'll find these hero points which are used to unlock your elite specialization or i just describe them as subclasses you spend these points in this panel here in the spec of your choosing ideally you'd want to train one at a time to get full access to that spec skills and traits asap but know that you aren't locked in you'll also get plenty of hero points so you'll be able to unlock all of this eventually to activate your spec you need to go down into the build panel this is where a lot of the build craft happens here you'll see three slots each with selective passive trait options you can use your own intuition here to come up with a build yourself or the biggest galaxy brain move of all google anyway the uh bottom slot is where you slot in your elite spec so just click the big hexagon and pop that bad boy in you'll now have access to your elite spec weapon utilities traits and your specs unique mechanic so another quick thing as well utility skills are the ones to the right of your hp you can swap them on the fly with this little tab so end of dragon specifically will introduce you to a lot of the combat systems once you've hit this training area it'll teach you about combo fields cc and dodge rolls i won't go too much into it because you can learn all about that here but here's a few tips that they don't teach you so if you hover over your skills you'll see that some have a combo field and some have a combo finisher you can use a finisher into a field to grant certain effects there's a lot of effects there here's a table showing the different combinations but just have a play around with them you also have skills with the words defiance break in the tool tip now any of these count as crowd control which aside from their usual effects you can also use on enemies that have this blue bar underneath them this is sort of like a posture or stance break once you break it you'll stun the enemy and deal more damage to them for a short period some skills obviously have higher defiance break than others so work out which best suits your needs and play style it's always recommended to have at least one or two hard cc skills on your build one other thing that i forgot to mention but i'm gonna talk about it now is action camera so if you look at my footage you'll see that i've got like a different camera set up i've got a little crosshair i'm not using the usual tab targeting thing if you want to do this too you basically just go into your control options and then scroll down in your keybinds until you see toggle action cam you want to put this on a key that's pretty easily accessible because you want to be able to turn it off to access your inventory and that sort of thing veterans will absolutely scoff at me for using this but this single-handedly revitalized my guild wars 2 experience and i've never looked back i really enjoy it i find it really easy to place aoes and use movement skills and that sort of thing so if you want to use that highly recommend it now understanding stats can be a bit confusing for new players there's all these stats with different names you'll look up a build guide and see it needs berserker's gear but what does that really mean if you go into your skill panel on the right you'll see your stat sheet simply hover over them and you'll see what each of those stats mean in terms of gear gear can have a lot of different stat combinations which are just given a name like berserker or diviner if you've boosted you'll be equipped with full celestial gear which is basically a stat set that has a bit of everything this is awesome for some classes most notably the ones that benefit from all these stats during moment-to-moment combat but if you're wanting to specialize more for example if you're going for a glass cannon build and you want pure damage you'll run something like berserkers which only has power precision and ferocity stats which if you look on the stats page are stats that enhance raw damage crit chance and crit damage there's also similar gear to this like assassins which has the same stats except higher on the precision rather than the power there's a lot of these stat combinations so take your time to figure out which one you're going for you want to initially aim to get full exotic gear which is the orange rarity another gearing thing that i haven't mentioned that's really important is uh runes basically you can slot these into your gear to create your own sort of set bonus uh they are very strong very powerful usually i end up buying these off the trading post there are other methods of getting these uh some of the dungeons off of them you can get them as drops you can craft them as well sigils are another extra little thing that you can equip to your weapons they include proc effects but they can also include stuff like up just a flat bonus five percent damage so where does one get this gear guild wars 2 doesn't function like other mmos in the sense there's no one simple path forward at level 80 you have access to basically all content in the game and they all run in parallel rather than as stepping stones to each other there are a lot of activities that reward exotic gear in fact pretty much all of them do but here's some reliable methods that i usually use so one excellent spot if you have heart of thorns is a verdunt brink this is the first heart of thorns map and this vendor right at the first waypoint sells bladed gear boxes for the map currency called airship parts which you can collect around the map or do events for keep in mind though that you actually need the it's a law mastery to be able to trade with this vendor so you'll need to farm events for a while to build up enough xp to get this if you don't have a heart of thorns though you can also directly earn exotic gear through the pvp reward tracks world versus world reward tracks and even old-school dungeons by using the dungeon currency at this vendor in lion's arch as well as countless other expansion vendors who sell gear for map currency it's a bit awkward to be honest but like almost everything awards exotic gear in some shape or form so pick whichever method suits you this also only covers armor though you'll also need weapons and trinkets which are a little bit more challenging to come by and for those i don't really have a simple answer you can get some bits and pieces through your elite spec collection in the achievements tab of course though there is a surefire way of getting these exact pieces which is through crafting but for that you'll need to get to at least level 400 in one of the crafting disciplines and that's a whole can of worms i won't open up today if you'd like another straightforward way of getting exotic gear though just like a one-stop shop for all of it or to fill out some missing slots you're better off buying it from the trading post first of all the trading post is indicated by the little scale icon the easiest one to find is in lions arch right here but there's also trading posts in every major city you can sort by armor weapons accessories anything you want then you can hit the cog wheel and filter from i don't know let's say level 80 to level 80 and then you can also filter by the stats you want to fully gear up in a popular stat combo like berserkers can be quite costly if you're a new player it'll run you around 10 to 20 gold probably a bit more and with the newer stat combinations they're a lot more expensive so with that let's talk about gold right so gold is the primary currency in guild wars 2 and you'll need it to buy things on the trading post you can spend it here on gear food materials skins and more you'll also need it for unlocking mounts and all sorts of other things you can even use it to exchange into gems to purchase stuff on the cash shop so how might a new player get gold my first recommendation for golds would be dailies as an mmo player that term might make you recoil but uh hear me out right these are simple easy tasks that'll take you no longer than 10 minutes and it'll net you an easy two gold per day just head over to the achievements tab under daily just click that first daily tab completing any three of these will get you that two gold they range from open world stuff to pvp to world versus world if you're on a new character and you don't have much of the map unfold then they might take a little bit longer but if you have the waypoints near the locations listed then it's a breeze so another method of daily gold is fractal dungeons which is the first instance content that i'm going to introduce you to today this is the main five-man instance pve content for guild wars 2. there are 21 unique dungeons divided into four tiers with increasing difficulty in the form of modifiers but if you're a new player you'll start in tier 1. so what you want to do is you can either check the daily fractals tab under achievements or you can visit the fractals portal in lions arch you'll see a list of all the dungeons and some will have a purple marker next to them these are the fractals that have been randomly selected as the dailies for today you'll want to go into your lfg tool then under fractals of the mists click initiate scales 1 to 25 to see the groups that are currently looking for players if there's nobody there it's probably because all the groups are already filled or you're playing during dead hours like me because you live in the upside down but that's okay you'll create your own group right so you just list your group through the lfg just state that you're doing dailies and maybe that you're new as well and then you can just jump straight in and then inside the fractal lobby you can go to this console and you can change which fractal dungeon you're going to be doing if you've never done fractals before then you'll only have access to a limited number of these i think you only have access to like one but anyone in your party can pull the whole group into the fractals that they've unlocked so just tell the group you're new and ask someone else if they can start them basically if you want to start them yourself you need to increase your personal fractal level by completing fractals that are higher than your current personal fractal level this sounds really complicated but basically you're just going to unlock all the fractals by working your way through them this is why you'd ideally join someone else because they've probably got them unlocked but you'll unlock them all as you do daily fractals anyway once the fractal island is selected and you've got the whole group inside the lobby you hop into the central portal and you can start your run at tier 1 these are simple enough but feel free to ask for help if you're a bit lost as some of the mechanics in these dungeons are a little less straightforward than what you might be used to in other mmorpgs ideally you want to do all of the daily fractals that you can so once you've completed the daily fractal you get a chest and inside that chest is a fractal encryption key you can use these to crack open the fractal encryptions that you get from any successful fractal run you'll get valuable trophy items from this that you can sell to any vendor these can range from 20 to 60 silver per piece if you've opened them all up and you've got more fractal encryptions left over you can buy discounted keys from this vendor to open up more and make a small profit or you can sell the remaining fractal encryptions directly on the trading post for about 25 silver each in higher tiers you'll get more boxes and more keys but you'll need ascended gear for that as well as other stuff which i'll cover in part two so that's two basic sources of gold to get you started you can also sell mystic coins on the trading post which come from login rewards as well as globs of ectoplasm they come from salvaging gear but i'd advise hoarding these if you intend on crafting legendary gear at some point you can find all of this in your material bank which you can get access to from any normal bank it's just the second tab down another great way to earn gold is just from any of the events that you've been doing you can just sell all that unidentified gear directly on the trading post instead of salvaging it there are many other methods of earning gold like farming meta events like the ones i mentioned earlier but some are more rewarding than others and you kind of just have to learn which ones are the good ones the drizzlewood coast and dragonfall meta events in particular can be really rewarding as well as the heart of thorns meta events but i i won't go too much into those basically you just join a squad in these maps through the lfg you gotta go to their map and join their instance and then listen to the commander you'll get a lot of loot from these events so just sell it all on the trading post basically this video is already way longer than i intended but i i hope this wasn't too much of an information overload uh in part two i'll cover the deeper end game systems like how to get into higher tiers of fractals i'll also talk about getting into 10 man content like strikes and raids and talk about the different roles you can build for i think i'll also talk about longer term goals like legendaries and collecting cool skins and that sort of thing be sure to stick around if you're interested in that but um for now i just want to say thank you all for such a positive reception to the last couple of videos i've wanted to make guild wars 2 stuff for ages and it's just nice seeing all of you enjoying the content that i'm making in my free time if you're new to the game welcome feel free to ask questions in the comments below i do read every single one i hope you're enjoying guild wars 2 and as always i'll catch you later you

Channel: Bloom

Views: 113,808

Keywords: Guild, Wars, guardian, Willbender, wooden, potatoes, review, impressions, gameplay, end, dragons, expansion, build, alacrity, condi, Condition, dps, benchmarks, guild wars 2, beginner, guide, walkthrough, level, level 80, bladesworn, virtuoso, elite spec, inventory, management

Id: 6_mFKiGW-GI

Length: 20min 7sec (1207 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 25 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Blessed by thy YouTube Chapters:

Intro, Stories, The Basics, Masteries, LFG Tool, Inventory Management, Understanding Progression, Elite Specs/Traits, Stats/Gearing, Gear Acqusition, Farming Gold, Fractal Dungeons, other gold acquisition methods.

Awesome work.

[u/Taiwunai]

thats really helpful. thank you =)

[u/Gong_the_Hawkeye]

Ah, Mistward leggins. I see you're a man of culture as well.

[u/Darensthings]

Great Guide man! keep at it <3