If you’re finding yourself underleveled:
Try to get 100% completion in some of the cities - they do give you XP for each item you discover, and you’ll get some XP when you 100% it. And since the cities are safe zones, there aren’t any mobs to keep you from completing the zone.
Also, if you can, try to participate in the Tuesday evening WvW mild rampage. I did just a little bit of WvW and crafting here and there on my Mesmer and I way outleveled the world, and ended up only doing about half of the 50 to 75 zones before I hit 80.
I think this is not related to luck, at least not entirely or rather in a different way. :) ANet is still having issues with DEs getting stuck, etc. It’s getting better and different zones are affected more than others. What probably happened is that on the days when you were leveling those 2 characters, your zones’ DEs were bugged more than usual (long time since server restart, etc.) thus spawning less events around you.
A lot of DEs are chained to each other, so if one of them gets stuck, a whole bunch of them stops from appearing. Sometimes you can see stuck events (escorts are very obvious), sometimes you can’t - it’s just something didn’t happen between the events, something didn’t trigger right and the whole chain is stuck. I can see it sometimes when I am doing a familiar chain and all of a sudden it stops.
It’s unfortunate and, as Murbella mentioned, it doesn’t happen THAT often at lower levels (I guess all those beta events helped) but ANet seems to be working on it and I see improvements.
There are more stuck events at higher levels but their impact is less severe as you move around more, do different stuff more, get more dailies/map completions under your belt, craft more, dabble in WvW and dungeons, etc.
Khoram
4383
No, there’s been no chest in the Norn zone events since day 1 of headstart. It sucks, but, eh. I’ve done the human zone event several times, and to be honest, the loot ain’t that great anyway. Certainly no better than stuff I’m already crafting for myself (though I suppose there probably is some minuscule chance to get a rare item).
Yeah, the norn starter zone final event has no chest, and is pointless other than the first time you do it for fun. You can even see where the chest is SUPPOSED to be in all likelihood, but there’s nothing there.
Specifically regarding chests that do spawn but you can’t loot, try relogging. Some of them are bugged client side.
The chest code is pretty wonky anyway. I’ve logged out near an end event superchest I’d looted, logged back in much later with nothing happening and found a chest there for me to loot :)
Cool, I’ll try that, thanks. Was very frustrating to not be able to loot the chest after investing all the time. I assume you can do a dynamic event over an over and still get the chest each time?
Angrycoder : I’ve had almost the exact opposite issue since I began playing. My character pretty much consistantly plays with his level artificially decreased because I’ve outleveled content. I’ve done all my story quests, but have barely participated in crafting (gained maybe 3 levels in armorsmithing making some boots or something) and really only kill random mobs when running around gathering resources. I have gather a metric shitton of resources though, so the dribble of XP I get from that has compounded pretty nicely over 17 levels. I do participate in every event I can find, especially the darker “group events” that seem to require more people and often have multiple steps that lead to a boss fight. While the end reward on those can be iffy (see my previous post), the XP is always good.
You say you’ve fully explored your starting area, do you mean the entire 1-15 area, or just the initial newbie quest zone. With the Norn for example there is Hoelbrok (the city) which gave me nearly three entire levels worth of XP early on just from uncovering all the map points. Then there is the area you start in, the moot and the surrounding forest, the river, the shrines and the caves. If you fully explore that you should be moving northward and uncovering all the havens and forts. A lot of that content is leveled for people just emerging from the tutorial phase (the area where you start out) and is perfect for making the transition.
Honestly I’ve been higher level than the content around me 90% of the game so far without even trying. I’m not sure how anyone can be too low level to progress prior to level 20 without having missed something somewhere.
Timex
4387
Are you talking about the frozen maw chest, where the shaman guy ultimately turns into a big elemental and you have to kill him while ice tornados fly around?
Because that DOES have a big chest at the end. I’ve gotten it before, even when I just happened to walk into the fight half-way through it.
Another time, I came in right before the guy died, and while there was obviously a chest for other folks (they were all mobbed around where it spawns), there was none for me.
Nope, the corrupted ice mini-dragonish thing (a corrupted wolf or griffon of some kind maybe) at the north, level 16ish. The shaman is a shorter chain, and that chest works and is AMAZING for the level. I usually pick up a couple greens, which for a new player is pretty great.
Miramon
4389
Yeah, I really don’t understand being underleveled. In the low levels by the time I finished a zone I was ready for the next. In the mid levels it was possible for me to finish a zone without being overleveled for the next higher, but I could just go on to another zone of either the same level or somewhat overlapping higher. Not once did I feel like I had to grind anything to level, as there were always worthwhile hearts, DEs, and exploration points to find at my level.
The only content difficulty problems I had were with story missions, which are poorly balanced and which also seem to assume you are going to run around in circles like an idiot for half an hour while your useless NPCs are incapacitated around you – somewhat similar to the dungeons, really, in that it’s hard to go head to head with some of the encounters, but have to use kiting and a lot of dodging to last out the combat.
But of course you can always invite a friend to the story missions – something I didn’t realize for quite a number of levels. As a thief with poor aoe skills who constantly had to deal with huge swarms of foes, I wound up delaying doing the story missions until I was overlevel for them. Of course, I was capped back down to the level when I entered the instance, but I had my higher level skills and traits and so on still working for me, so things were at least a little easier from that point of view.
I’ve wound up underleveled on a number of characters, until maybe level 30 where things tend to become more consistent. Some of the zones are a little thin on XP, and if you don’t get a good run of DEs you can find yourself 1 or 2 levels under. Other zones are just fine.
I usually sort it out by hopping over to another zone and picking up some XP, usually focusing on skill points, since getting the bonus skill points is extremely useful at low level.
Sepiche
4391
Yeah I think this is the key. If you just get a little unlucky it’s not too hard to go through a few areas at low level and just keep missing events which are a not inconsequential amount of experience.
Timex
4392
As others have pointed out, if you really get “stuck”, the easiest way to level up real fast at low levels is to craft junk… cooking, especially, is great for this.
What you want to do is jump back and forth between different crafting professions. For instance, switch to tailoring, and just use up all the Jute fiber stuff to make bolts of Jute… do this until you don’t get xp from refining the materials any more, then swap to another crafting profession.
You get tons of xp, not just from crafting, but from DISCOVERY of new recipes. This is why cooking is so good. You can discover a bazillion recipes, especially if you’re like me and constantly harvest everything. Cooking discovery is actuall kind of fun, for some odd reason.
Discovery in other professions is less interesting, and much easier… For instance, make a bunch of bronze, and then make a dagger blade and a hilt, and then slap in one inscription… that’s one recipe. Repeat for all the other inscriptions… the first time you make it, you basically get double XP for it. This is good for both advancing the crafting profession, and leveling up. Then just do the same for all the other item types you can make, until you stop getting XP for them because you’ve advanced too far in the craft… swap to a different profession with different materials, and repeat.
You’ll easily get a huge amount of xp this way, and the crafted items are actually quite good.
Derbain
4393
I’m a little confused by the idea of getting “stuck” or being underleveled. There are more level 1-15 zones than any other level range in the game. You can gain entire levels at those levels just by exploring the various racial cities and Lion’s Arch. As several people have pointed out, crafting can give silly amounts of exp.
Also, don’t forget to harvest as you’re out adventuring in the world. Harvesting a single node is usually worth more than killing a single creature.
But even without the crafting and the harvesting, there is a ludicrous amount of level appropriate content at every level range in this game, with the exception of level 80, which has pretty much one zone and a small portion of two others.
Because the game never even hints that if you’re a few levels behind your hearts you should craft or travel to another starting zone (or provides any info on how to get to one).
Pretty sure the actual reason the tiny number of people with this issue do complain is because everything else in the game spoils them with its ease of use.
In other games, when you “get stuck”, your entire list of options to overcome this can be boiled down to “kill whatever’s around, then when it respawns kill it again”. It’s not like GW2 never tells you that these other activities exist, it points them out and suggests that you should give them a try.
KevinC
4396
The standard MMO since WoW is also based on quest hubs and breadcrumb quests to the next hub. That’s really not the case here, and can throw some people off when they expect something like that to happen.
I don’t feel i should have to do another race’s starter area. That doesn’t mean i didn’t do it, multiple times, but i feel it is a quest progression flaw that this situation occurs.
Imagine if you were playing wow and you ran out of quests your level to do as a human and had to go to the gnome starter area.
My new Mesmer is in the Asura starting zone and I’m outleveling the content without even trying. Are you sure you’re doing the story missions as well? Not finding enough content to level especially at the start when you gain large chunks of XP just by wandering around just does not compute.
I will say that WoW does a better job with breadcrumbs to new areas, but frankly I appreciate the freedom to make my own choice in GW2 much better. With WoW I was often left thinking “Ok, done that, now what? Ah, I’m supposed to go here next…” whereas with GW2 I just create my own journey.
Yes, i’m 100% positive. I’ve had it happen a few times getting to 20. One of the times was when i was playing 100% of the time coop with my friend and she ran in to the exact same issue, except worse than me because unlike me, she didn’t obsessively harvest.
But then i’ve had characters that experience similar to you, even in the same starter area. As stated, the problem with putting such a huge focus on random events is that they are random. There isn’t enough static content to level up, not nearly. You MUST do a healthy amount of random events to stay anywhere near current and if you aren’t lucky, you might not see enough of these through natural play.
If you’ve played more than a few characters, you will have certainly experienced this. Whether you care about going to another race’s starter area is another question though.
Derbain
4400
It’s not really a flaw though. It’s a conscious design decision. The majority of characters will not experience this issue, and for those that do encounter it, there is a plethora of options available to them. Heck, I think it’s probably a good thing, because it helps push people out of the “on rails” mentality that they’re used to.
Besides, when you make it to Orr, you don’t even have the reputation hearts to guide you. It’s all event based content there.
