Curse

Pyros Akali · Jul 28, 2011, 10:59 AM // 10:59

So you've probably seen half a dozen of HoM guides by now, including the one on wiki and so on. So why another? Well this guide focuses on the brand new player, the guy who doesn't have 300ectos to drop on stuff to quickly get points and doesn't know where to start. It's mostly how to get started on the HoM collection easily, more easily than I did at least. It's aimed at players who want to get it done fast and do not care so much about spending hours "learning" the game. And before people come and be all like "but you should enjoy the game, it's a wonderful experience, smell the flowers and dance in the grass while basking in the sun", a lot of people have fun doing things efficiently and quickly. There's plenty of time to do that once you're done with your primary objective.

So first, I'll assume you have trilogy and eotn. You need all of them to get your HoM(well I assume you could skip factions but I haven't looked into it and it seems pointless since trilogy is worth as much as any of the stand-alone campaigns).

What profession do I pick?

The profession is mostly a personnal choice and everything can work easily. It's better to play something you like, since you're gonna have to play it for a while, but assuming you don't care at all, I'd recommend a Ritualist. The rit heroes come kinda late and ritualists are monsters when it comes to tackling on pve content. This also doubles as a very good farming class which you'll probably need to do if you want HoM. They don't get access to prophecies armor however, so that's one thing to note, but shouldn't be much of an issue to get what you need for 30points. If you want 50 chances are you're going to want to make an alt anyway.

Ok what now, I picked x, where do I begin?

The goal is to complete every campaigns, with bonus for the missions. For some of the harder ones, you might want to just get a normal reward and come back later for bonus(it's very easy once you have a strong team of heroes). What I recommend is that you start in Factions. It's not a big deal if you do Prophecies or Nightfall(like if you want to play Paragon or Dervish), but for the matter at hands, it's not as optimal. Once in Factions, do the quests as you find them. You'll level very quickly in there. As you near 20, start skipping secondary quests and focus on the primary quests, and in general that's what you will do from then on for every campaign to unlock content faster.

Do make sure to always fill your group with henchmen(preferably ranged ones), and loot everything. Buy 2bags with runes of holding asap, as well as a belt pouch. Also buy identification and salvage kits, salvage everything that's made out of iron, stone or plant fibers(mostly trophies). Everything else you should be fine to vendor but it doesn't hurt to salvage until you have 250 of that material, especially for cloth/leather to buy armor with early on. Identify everything magical you find too to increase the value. If you find an armor drop and it's magical, ID it and check the Rune Trader to see what the runes on it are worth. Sometimes you might get lucky and get a very expensive rune(for example a Windwalker's Insignia is worth ~3k and you can find it on blue colored lvl 1 armor drops). In this case, buy an expert salvage kit and salvage the rune, then sell it. Once you hit 20 or slightly before, you should only buy expert salvage kits. Check the wiki for collectors trading for armor, but generally it's not a huge deal to upgrade your armor until you can buy the final one(try to get an upgrade inbetween though otherwise it'll be tough).

Another big starting trick is you can get about 50k worth of gold for every new account. First go to the Zaishen islands. There's a few ways to go about that, but for example talk to one of the Zaishen recruiters and he'll send you to Embark Beach or make a PvP character. Then map to Great Temple of Balthazar. Talk to Tolkano and register your account. Then talk to High Priest Zhang and he'll give you 50points. Go back to Tolkano and buy Zaishen keys. Then sell those keys(4.5 to 5k each). Drop the money in your zaishen vault, and pick up on your main character

Your goal here in Factions is to progress enough to get acces to Maishan Hills. This is done by completing the primary mission in Boreas Seabed, which teleports you to Zos Shivros Channel. From there exit into Boras Seabed(the explorable zone), run to Mount Qinkai, then to Breaker Hollow, then through Archipelagos until you reach Maishan Hills. In there your goal is to cap Discord off Sessk, Woe Spreader . Make sure you have a necromancer sub profession(you can do that after you become Weh no Su, which you have at that point) and a signet of capture. Now I know what people will say, what, discord, but it's so outdated etc etc. The thing is Discord is really nice because it works off very similar bars(so less skill hunting and less money spent), and you get 2 necromancers very early and a 3rd about 25% into Nightfall. That means you can get your 3discords easily compared to better other builds and it won't cost as much to skill them plus a lot of the skills are Factions rit skills which can all be learnt from Kaineng.

Once accomplished, unlock the other campaigns for quick boat travel and potentially skill training. Also unlock Eye of the North this will unlock all the EotN skills you might need, and also give your first heroes. See http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Campaign_travel for help.

Alright I got a few heroes, but how do I skill them and where do I get more?

At this point of time, you should have a very small choice, and not many options for skills. What you want to aim at, for an easy starting team to do normal missions with, is 2mesmers(you have Gwen already, the second one will be Norgu about halfway through Nightfall) and 3 necros running discord. Other than that it's a matter of taste since you'll probably be able to 6man everything with those anyway. For the mesmers, aim for this build Panic Mesmer but replace Panic with Energy Surge(because Panic can only be capped at the end of Prophecies, while ES can be capped in various places including in Vabbi which is where you're headed next). For the necros, Discordway . You should have the money to buy the skills, if there's some you can't buy due to location, don't bother, they'll run fine without complete bars for the time being, and better than henchmen.

To unlock 2 of your 3 necros(the 3rd comes during the Nightfall primary quests), you'll have to do a few quests. For Livia, Finding the Bloodstone , use the precedent mission button to find out how to get there, but you should have Knowledgeable Asura already if you unlocked EotN, so it's only a matter of running through a few zones and doing a couple of missions. For Olias, get All for One and One for Justice and complete it, it's very easy. Olias will come underleveled but it shouldn't be a problem for now and he'll catch up quickly.

If you want, you could also unlock Xandra via The Norn Tournament(note that you only need to defeat Xandra in the 2nd round, not actually beat the tournament) at that point, for a first ritualist. I'm not entirely sure but I believe similarly to the Discord cap, you could cap Signet of Spirits or Soul Twisting from the Kurzick zones once you have access to House Zu Helter, which is at the same point of the primary storyline of the Factions campaign. You could then use a SoGM build but with Soul Twisting as your elite(in my opinion a better choice even when you can use SoGM) or a SoS Channeling Ritualist which are both very useful setups.

Don't bother with runes or weapons just yet(you can /bonus in an outpost for some free weapons though, some of which might be better than the starting weapons of heroes especially the nightfall ones), in fact you probably won't have to bother for a very long time. If you do find a good weapon though just give it to your heroes.

Ok so you should have a bunch of not very skilled heroes. Now head to Nightfall, and start working on the primary there. Fill up your group with henchmen, mostly DPS henchmen, and just work your way through it. Along the way you'll get Master of Secrets and Norgu so make sure to equip them with the correct skills. Also when you hit Vabbi, try to go cap Energy surge asap. Do watch out for the boss using it however, he's pretty hard for an unprepared group. I recommend you focus on kill the adds one by one first, generally killing the same one over and over(they get rezed) until they're out of rez. Spread out your team too if you can. If you wipe it's ok you can try a few more times and it should get easier as you kill more adds. Also remember to bring a Signet of Capture and have mesmer as your sub.

From then on, you should have a decent team and should be breezing through content. When you get to the end of Nightfall, pick up Razzah and gear him as a spirit spammer to make things even easier. Then head to Prophecies to unlock all the places you need to get all your last skills. Finally just finish Factions and EotN. If you're not happy with your hero team, look into the various threads and meta builds on PvX and change it to whatever you feel like, by now you should know what to do.

Ok I beat the game, what about my HoM points?

Yes yes, now you still need to get the points. There's plenty of guides that explain how and what to get.

I recommend this guide Guide for filling HoM that has mostly up to date values on stuff you'll have to buy.

If you don't know where to start for farming money, look into Farming builds and especially Feather builds, they're easy consistent money and can be done by every classes. If you want some better farming, look into ectos farming, but you'll need solid builds and a bit of practice to get it right so you won't make much money at first(probably will lose some even).

A few notes: You can get hero armor yourself, especially for your EotN heroes by using Glint's Challenge Afk Farming (look into the later posts for discord builds that don't need mercs). For the Nightfall heroes, you can look into various mission guides to do them yourself, but since they're not very expensive it might not be worth it.

For armors, remember the Luxon/Kurzick and Vabbian give one point each but also count in the total armor, so you can remove the cost of a normal armor(about 50k) from them to gauge their value. You can also save a bit of gold on Vabbian if you're lucky with salvages. Make sure to salvage Geodes and Djinn Essences, as well as Jewelled and Ruby daggers(put a Measure for measure inscription on those if you can).

For weapons, you can get almost two Oppressor weapons from doing the War in Kryta and Hearts of the North questlines. You'll have to run Wanted quests a few days to get enough to finish the 2nd, but that's money you don't have to pay if you want a break from farming(plus it has lore that leads to GW2). Avoid Tormented weapons; if you do get enough materials to make one from running DoA then do so, but don't farm for it specifically it's barely worth it money wise(and even less time wise).

For pets, use Zaishen Menagerie Death Leveling to get them to level 20 quickly(about 15mins). If you don't want a full HoM, the quickest is the phoenix, you only need to go do the last mission of Factions again, which takes about 1minute, then you can charm a phoenix in the divine path.

Also remember you only need 30points for all the actual item rewards, past that it only gets you titles.

Final advice: When in doubt, check the wiki http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Main_Page . Chances are, it has your answer.

Prestige · Jul 28, 2011, 04:31 PM // 16:31

That was helpfull, Thanks

.

*Cheers*

Funky Snapple · Jul 29, 2011, 12:21 PM // 12:21

Thank you for this helpful guide for the new and impatient!

Taho · Jul 31, 2011, 02:23 PM // 14:23

Thanks, Pyros. Got a 20 Derv progressing through the NF campaign, so I'll probably stick with that, but also try to incorporate some of your tips.

Pyros Akali · Jul 31, 2011, 03:45 PM // 15:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Taho

Thanks, Pyros. Got a 20 Derv progressing through the NF campaign, so I'll probably stick with that, but also try to incorporate some of your tips.

Yeah my main is a Derv too, and it worked alright, but I had quite a bit of trouble near the end of NF due to a lack of skills on the heroes and so on. Most of the tips can be applied to any character really, even though I'd consider other builds if you finish NF since you'd have more heroes available at that point incluidng a ritualist. Discord has the merit of being easy to run and buy, and being good enough for vanquishes, it's just not that great for "hard" content such as DoA/UW(then again don't really need to do those for 30points HoM).

Taho · Aug 01, 2011, 01:45 PM // 13:45

Yeah, it's kind of strange. All level 20 henchmen have an elite skill, but a fresh 20 with newly recruited heroes has no elite skills. Almost better to run henchmen until you start getting access to some elite skills.

Smarf · Aug 02, 2011, 09:24 PM // 21:24

As a fellow impatient new player, I followed a similar approach when chasing:

I started in factions as well, but blew past shing jea to reach KC at level 12 with just henchmen and starter armor. From there, I went straight to EOTN where I was less useless thanks to Journey to the North. I did the fairly easy quests with henchmen to level, progressing the prim quest line at the same time before returning to factions to ascend and what not. It's a little more efficient, since I find the factions secondary quests involve a lot of pointless fedexing.

Also, another benefit of starting a factions profession first is that most, if not all, of your regular skills for a half-decent build are sitting at michiko, rather than in the gates of torment/emberlight.

Pyros Akali · Aug 02, 2011, 10:33 PM // 22:33

I leveled a new char, a ritualist, and yeah you can skip all secondary quests directly and get to kaineng fine, which then lets you switch campaigns. I went to eotn cause it was double faction, but to be honest I think it would have been kinda tough with henchmen and without having an elite skill(I unlocked SoS with an elite book at lvl 2) and even harder if I wasn't playing a ritualist. You could however just farm for a bit, especially right outside boreas station on the static worms since they don't attack unless you melee them(and even then they don't do much). I'll update the guide slightly later for the early levels, but I feel especially as a ritualist you want to keep doing factions until you can cap SoS(which takes a while since you need to Befriend Kurzicks apparently). I only spent a bit of time doing the first few quests in Kamadan to get Sunspear rank6(you kinda get it just doing the normal quests) which lets you add Vampirism as one of your spirits.

Also on professions, even starting a normal profession you'll have access to a lot of skills right away once you reach Kaineng which is very fast, compared to reaching Lion's Arch or finishing Istan to get access to Kaineng. On that, I kinda hated playing a Dervish since you have to keep progressing through NF to get access to all your skill, with a lot of the best ones stuck on the trainer in gate of torment.

Finder · Aug 04, 2011, 01:30 AM // 01:30

Pyros, you are a good to us impatient HoM hunters!

nuclear_herring · Aug 04, 2011, 05:02 AM // 05:02

Another point to mention is that Ritualists are good for Zaishen Elite farming as well. For an investment of about 25 minutes a day you can farm 6k Balthazar faction. 5k can be swapped for a zaishen key, and you need to collect 200 keys to gain the Zaishen Supporter title (3 points for a PvP title).
By the time you get your ritualist to HzH they will have access to wanderlust & the other spirits need for zaishen elite, so that shouldn't take any extra effort.