Sorry. It was late and you’re right, the iPad didn’t do me any favors.
What I was getting at was that I have not played with expansions or seasons or anything much since the base core game release. I remember briefly playing with you during a story line set of updates and I felt completely lost and at least partially gated. I remember some sort of big vertical city (tree?) place with lots of ramps, lanterns, crisscrossing bridges, and teleportation things just to get to this tier of that instanced content. It was crazy confusing trying to jump in.
So I am tentative on trying to jump back in. However I get the impression from your article and some forum posts that if I log in or update before the end of July, I get some sort of account content that maybe I might want (for now or later). However, it is all Greek to me. I have no idea what “season 1” is.
Maybe I am just asking the wrong questions because I AM that far out of things. I remember very good things about GW2. One of which was that, of all MMOs, it was very kind to play groups with differing levels of commitment.
Anyway, may I also toss a suggestion into the suggestion box for a pre-whatever GW2 is about to do refresher course stream? =)
Season 1 was a bunch of world events with almost no lingering impact - kind of like holidays, except a little more elaborate. If you want a recap of the story (most of which I don’t recall actually being presented to me while it was happening), go to your journal and activate the “season 1 recap” mission, which will direct you to an NPC in Lion’s Arch for a cutscene and a few voiced recaps on the brand new NPCs they for some reason expect you to care about in later story.
Season 2 was a series of 8 or so story chapters that as they happened unlocked the new zones of Dry Top and the Silverwastes. You can buy access to those for gems - you don’t need them to get into the new zones, I don’t think, though. They have some decent rewards and if you get enough (all?) of the associated achievements you can get an ascended gear piece. Back slot, I think.
If you buy Heart of Thorns, the prologue mission starts in the Silverwastes (and comes right after the last season 2 mission, I believe, though I haven’t completed them) and will take you into the new expansion zones from there. I think you have to do at least the first couple to unlock those zones and open up the mastery system, both for the new zones and the separate tracks for the old zones. If you’re 80, your experience now goes towards mastery training instead of skill (“hero”) points, which unlocks categories for you to then spend mastery points on -if- you’ve opened masteries up by doing HoT story for a couple missions. You get the points various ways - achievements, map points, etc.
On the 26th, they’ll be starting Living World Season 3 which I -believe- will be another set of story missions and new content, etc along the lines of season 2. You have to have Heart of Thorns access to play them but last I heard you could add them to your account just by logging in while they’re the current mission, whether or not you have the expansion.
I kinda like them. Well, Taimi, mostly, and that only because season 2 had some special interactions with her for asura characters, and I’m super-easy to please as far as characterization goes. <.<
Following up on this, but the LFG system usually looks empty only because it works so well—advertise yourself, and you usually get a party invite pretty darned fast.
They seem fine as far as I’ve interacted with them. It’s just that a) they weren’t present at all in the original story missions and b) Season 1 did an absolutely terrible job of introducing them or indeed telling story at all. I played most of it and I had no idea who these people were going into Season 2. I certainly don’t remember being told like 90% of what the recap cutscene recaps.
If you are back after a long absence and don’t want to mess around with choosing new skills, etc. There is an NPC in the Silverwastes, Quartermaster Criswell, that will give you a default ‘survivable’ build for your profession. He also answers some ‘what’s going on?’ questions.
The HoT zones are indeed tough for the solo wanderer, and making progress pretty much demands an organized map. If you use the LFG tool (“Y” command by default) you’ll see that people advertise the maps doing the ‘meta’ and you can usually get yourself into one. It takes some practice with the rhythm of each of the zones to learn when using LFG will be most successful. For example, there is usually no coordination right after the meta event recycles and increasing desperation to catch up near the end so you are better off looking for a map 1/3 through the startup phase. The wiki’s timer ("/wiki ET" in chat) can be very helpful in visualizing this.
Jumped back in the past few days to try and catch up for season 3 and this seems especially true in the newer content – most of central Tyria was soloable outside of dungeons (and even preferable for personal story). Having to traverse the Silverwastes without a good waypoint network multiple times in a night and clear the bandits blocking the tunnels to continue Season 2 was grating.
I logged in last night, picked up the season, looked around confused for a bit, logged back out. I have no recollection of how to play Tempest, so I think I might level boost my Revenant. Absolutely love how they decided to implement the boost, it’s well thought out and exponentially better than what WoW tried to do with theirs. Maybe I’ll boost my Necro! Or Guardian! Who knows, but I can try them all!
For the last couple of nights I have just chased the PvE dailies as a means of opening up the world for fast travel. Now up to level 21 on my Guardian. I have yet to choose a crafting profession and have about 30 hero points to spend, with the first specialty opened up.
Is there any particular crafting I should pursue as a human guardian? Does it really matter, or just choose anything? Thinking of just grabbing cooking or potions as they are bound to be useful. Obviously keeping in mind medium or light armor professions are not really worth the time if I want the profession to be of use to the actual class I am playing.
Also, is there any re-speccing during leveling. It seems at level 80 you can switch specialisations around, but is that on account of having earned so many hero points by that stage to have unlocked them all anyway?
