1. Getting Started - Shorra/gw2-faq GitHub Wiki
You are new to the Guild Wars 2 MMO, this is perhaps your first MMO you've ever played or maybe you've come from FF14, WoW or more!
No matter your scenario, this is a new experience and you may have a lot of questions and some things may get overwhelming and those of us that are Veterans understand your pain and that's why we are here to make your Path through Tyria a less painful one.
This page contains several important game concept explanations and we hope this will help you for the future! đ
And remember Guild Wars 2 Wiki is your best friend for the journey. đšī¸
1. Leveling up
â ī¸ It is highly recommended NOT to use a character booster as soon as you start the game. â ī¸
It is better if you level up at least one character legitimately so that you understand the main mechanics of the game and feel more comfortable with doing end-game content.
The best way to get experience while leveling up is by exploring the map, viewing vistas, completing hero points, "hearts" and events. You will find out quick enough speed running through the story is not possible.
The game does a very good job at keeping you active in story instances and world completion. From time to time your level may be too low to continue and thus doing Map Completion and Events around the map is required in order to get the experience or level to move fowards.
"Hearts" are basically NPCs, that give you quests, and after completion become vendors.
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Events give you experience, coins (
), karma 
and a wide variety of rewards from loot bags, weapons, armor to crafting materials.
2. Gearing up đĻž
Throughout the game you will come across plentiful selection of armor , weapons and trinkets.
You shouldn't have to worry about any of it until you have reached max level, before hand your rule of thumb should be the rarity more so that stats. This is because higher rarity give better stats overall so throughout your story you will be rewarded better gear along the way and receiving Exotic Gear when reaching the end of your personal story.
Before level 80
As mentioned in our quick introduction to gearing up, it does not really matter what gear to use. It is better to use the gear with Power stats as that will give you more damage when fighting enemies, but again the rarity is more important.
You can buy low-level gear from vendors all over the world of Tyria, usually coming from "heart" vendors that you have unlocked in order to level up. You can also purchase items from the Trading Post however we wouldn't recommend you do.
After level 80
It's time to select what build you would like to play and what gear stats you'd need for it. All gear will have roughly 3, 4 or 9 stats in it, with different combination of:
| Command | Info |
|---|---|
| * +Power | Increases Physical Damage dealt |
| * +Precision | Increases Critical Chance |
| * +Toughness | Increases Armor |
| * +Vitality | Increases Health Pool |
| * +Ferocity | Increases Critical Damage Dealt |
| * +Healing Power | Increases all outgoing heals |
| * +Condition Damage | Increases the Condition Damage dealt |
| * +Concentration | Increases Boon Duration |
| * +Expertise | Increases Condition Duration |
There are several predefined types of gear with their prefixes, and you'll only see the reference to the gear prefixes, like Berserker stats (Power, Precision, Ferocity), Viper (Power, Precision, Condition Damage, Expertise) stats and so on.
Is all stats the same at any given level? For any given level, attributes and defence ratings are not the same UNLESS they are the same rarity:
The higher rarity > the higher stats.
The stats between ascended and legendary equipment are the same. The only perks to legendaries is that you can change stats and skin freely without requiring transmutation charges or the Mystic Forge. 𤊠Plus Legendaries just look better in general leaving a trail of your footstep such as molten lava, purple crystal ect.
3. Daily login reward
As you log in more and more hours into the world of Guild Wars, you'll notice that you can receive rewards for logging in once a day, now whilst those rewards by nature don't give much in terms of loot, the more often you log in, the more you get.
You can recieve items such as Mystic Coins, Tier 6 Materials, Laurels and the last chest will always give you a permanent 2% Gold find. And with a little bit of knowledge this can be crucial to turning your daily login into gold.
4. Gold, karma, laurels and map currencies
Gold, karma and map currencies are account base, this means that it is shared between all your character.
You need gold to buy any things from vendors, Trading post, to use waypoints and also you can convert gold into gems and back. There are a lot of different ways to farm gold, so check the page "Getting gold"
You can get skins and some specific materials from vendors for Karma, but better don't spend karma whenever you get it, it's better to save it and buy any valuable things like ascended materials or recipes.
Map currencies
While coins are the main currency of Tyria, there are a lot of different currencies that you receive by doing specific events on specific maps or inside dungeons, fractals, strikes, pvp and wvw or by doing guild events. These currencies let you buy some unique ingredients, recipes or gear (even ascended gear) that are not available on TP.
Laurels - TBD
More details in the Currencies section.
5. Combat basics
It's quite a big topic but here's a very good detailed video explanation
6. Underwater Combat
Guild Wars 2 has been said to have the best underwater combat of any MMO's, though when other MMO's have a terrible underwater combat, it does not mean that Guild Wars 2 is without faults.
To play underwater you need an additional armor piece Aqua Breather, Aquatic weapons and set specific underwater utility skills. So don't forget to prepare this before you get in the water.
7. What are gw2 servers/worlds?
Guild Wars has two megaservers: Europe and North America which consists of many servers inside them.
The server you select or are automatically put in when you started the game influences only the possibility to play WvW (World versus World), a game mode that basically comes down to war between servers.
Outside of WvW, All other gamemodes can be played with other players regardless of the server you are in.
In regards to Megaserver, The main restriction is that you can't play with people on the other megaserver, thus it is not recommended that you swap servers based on your timezone and guild. You will not be able to join any gameplay if you are on NA and your friends or guild are on EU.