lvling questions

I am very new to GW and GW2 looks so exciting I was interested in playing GW until 2 comes along.

I have some concerns from the trial though. I found already I am being forced to group to complete some quests in the intial starter area for Prophecies. Forced to group not because they are hard, but because you literally are required to have another player as stated in the quest text. I really hate this kind of mechanic, just hate it. I want to lvl and quest on my own terms. I prefer open ended, but I can handle a few quests if they are kil based.

I need to know if I can ignore these group quests or if I can level by simply running around killing monsters. Do I have to do quests (I know there are main ones I probably have to do, but in general) to level, is killing monsters viable or terrible exp? Etc. Just trying to understand how the games works.

Right now I am playing a Monk and so far I love the play style, just a pity to spoil it with stupid quests. I am also hoping GW2 does not employ these same lame quest mechanics to force groups.

I am not anti-group just don't want my progression to be at its mercy.

Thanks.

You don't have to do every single quest. You're only starting off so some quest might involve you to party up with someone or a henchman to get some skills. The only quest that you do need to focus on is the "primary quest." The primary quest will take you through the story line. Most importantly Guild Wars is based on a group game, which you will need to make builds that will benifit your party. But that's later on in the game. Most of the time if you don't want to use henchman, you can start off in Night Fall and get heroes. You can make your own hero builds and the computer will just control them. You can also control you heroes by microing. Hope this helped. If you have any question feel free to PM me.

There are only a couple of quests that you need to party up with another player where you are. One takes about 30 seconds to do (to get rez signet). The other involves going into the Northlands, which requires 1 person to open the gate and another to go through it, many people skip that quest. Those are the only quests that I can think of that you'll need another person to complete. Once you go to the acadamy, you'll need to fill out your party (AI henchmen will become available) to have any success getting around.

For leveling purposes, completing quests is faster than just running around killin' stuff.

Thanks for the fast replies. I was also wondering in what ways this game is an MMO? I mean do you only interact in small groups at a time? Not a bad thing, just asking.

Also I see the henchmen thing a lot in posts - what is that - are you saying you MUST have AI party members like old style RPGs in order to play the game or replace them with real players? What if you have henchmen then you want to party how does that work? What if everyone in your party has henchmen and then you all decide to group, which henchmen stay and which go away etc.

Sorry for the barrage, but this is really confusing. Is there most of the group content at end game levels, or is it still common to get leveling groups?

Questions are no problems on Guru's hands.
1. It has MMO attributes (Online playing)

2. You don't have to use henchmen at all. Typically when some one says to use henchmen it means whatever is their going against is really easy to beat (do). Henchmen are like replacement players, sometimes weaker or stronger. For example, a monk with no elite and stupid skills like Fire Storm is healing the team. Then you might want to drop that monk for a henchmen. Most of the time however, players will always be better than henchmen.

Henchmen are not teammates, think as them of filler. Add them to your team or kick them as you please. You will use Henchmen for most of the game. Like traveling from point A to B doesn't require 8 people. Some missions can easily be completed with just henchmen.

If you need any help, just PM me in game (Zodiac Ele)

Henchmen are found in every town and outpost. Just click on them to add them to your party. Fill out your party to the max number it will let you. Your party size limit will increase from 2 to 4 to 6 then 8 as you progress. If you want to add real people to your party then you'll have to click on a henchman and kick him from the group to make room. I pretty much have the same playstyle as you, I've done all 3 campaigns with nothing but henchmen and later heroes. Heroes are just henchmen but you get to equip them and set them up just like a character. You select their skills and have some minimal control on how they act. You get heroes in Nightfall and Eye of the North. Henchmen are an absolute must if you're not going to play with other players, at least until you become one of those uber-players that can survive anything with the right build. Play around with what combo of henchmen work for you and welcome to Guild Wars. Enjoy!

Thanks for all the offers of help and replies. I don't know why but this game is oddly addicting, it is kind of like Diablo 2 with more depth.

I changed form my Monk to a Mesmer - and I have to say I totally love it. Can solo some crazy stuff, I was lvl 2 and went and soloed the bandit camp 4 mobs at a time - crazy fun.

I loved that qhen I did the lockbox quest I actually had to carry it back to Ashford lol - so cool.

Anyways, time to see what compliments a mesmer, just to plan ahead, was thinking monk, but not sure.

Xukiza,

sounds like you are still in presearing, it is lovely there but it is just a training area, the game gets more interesting when you go to post searing.

if you mean what class for secondary, monk is useful for the rez (when your hench die) but later in the game you will be able to change your secondary to suit your team build, the choice is not irrevocable.

Welcome to GW and gl

Check the Campfire section mesmer sub forum for information on that profession including good secondaries. You don't really need to use skills from your secondary yet. By the time you get into skill builds that require both you will be able to swap.

You are not required to party with other real players (except for a few missions where you need to split the party). The difficulty level increases when you leave the nice, pretty tutorial area and you will want to bring the Henchmen along when you leave town. You will find them standing near the exit in each outpost and town. Their levels go up as you move from area to area.

Glad you are enjoying the game. And, yes, it is addicting.

Mesmer isn't always an easy choice but it sounds as though your doing well enough so why worry, it was my first class too.

The game makes you take human help in 2 places both in the start area, after that there are some places that are a lot easier with more than one human player.
Usually because splitting the party is a help on the mission, so one player for each half.

Choose your secondary class carefully, try out all the classes before settling on one, as you will be stuck with it for some time.

Currently, you still seem to stay in "Presearing Ascalon", that is the tutorial section of Prophecies. This is mostly solo or 2 persons. It's only the first 5% of the whole game, probably less.

Once you leave that area, you are able to play in groups with 4, later 6 and even later 8 team members. If you like to play alone, ignore humans and fill your group up to 4, 6 or 8 with henchmen or heroes (you get heroes from Nightfall or EOTN). Don't try to solo it - Gild Wars is a team oriented game. You will only succeed with a team of multiple professions. The areas are designed for teams of the corresponding maximum team size. If you like to play alone, fill your team with henchmen.

But let me tell you, you are missing a great part of the fun if you always play alone. I started like you, but I found a nice guild and playing together with them is really fun. My guild also helped me through the final missions of my starting campaign, which would be very frustrating if I tried alone.

New player here, just completed pre-searing for the first time.

I had some of the same questions you do as well. I'm very wary of PUGs, since I always seem to find people who take the game very, very seriously. I figure if I get some content under my belt, I can go looking for a guild a little later.

So I kept looking for these henchmen that are referenced everywhere. Eventually I found a mention in the Wiki that there are no henchmen available for pre-searing questing. When you take the quest to go fight the Char (with big red warnings in the quest text that you can't come back), you'll be assigned four henchmen automatically. Then, when you arrive in post-searing Ascalon, they'll continue with you.

I skipped the "party with someone" quest that gives you the resurrection signet, and was happy to find that they are available for sale from a vendor upon arriving at post-searing Ascalon.

I never found the second party-required quest that everyone is mentioning above. Odd, because I spent a lot of time exploring to make sure I'd gotten every quest to the point of wandering the couple of areas that have no quest npcs in them.

I should have been more specific but I always try not to spoil surprises, but its not that much of a secret.

1 is when you team up to get the res signet takes all of 1 minute
2 is to get through the gate to the charr where someone has to pull the lever.

Yes you can. Pre-searing is basically a tutorial section, and doing the 2 group quests merely shows you how to form a party. You can skip them if you want (I usually do) - a rez signet can be gotten from a skill traineer in post-searing.
It is faster to get XP by doing quests, but then again, there's no hurry. Play whichever way you want. Then again, there are Primary Quests and Missions that you must do to progress the story/game.
The henchmen are NPCs you can use to fill your party. They don't form a permanent part of your game, you just add them to a party if needed. If you want to join up with someone who also has henchmen with them, you simply kick some of the henchmen.

Guild Wars is designed to be a "group" game, rather than a "solo" game. In pre-searing, most of the content can be done solo, but when you leave pre and go to post (the main game, btw), you will normally want to have a full group. You can use the Henchmen to fill the group rather than humans.

I am new also and this is my first ever internet game im also an old fart so thats probably 3 strikes against me lol. but regarding your fear of finding people who take the game too seriously I have gotten help a few times already when i ask for this help i just tell everyone up front that im super new and suck at the game. so far I have only been helped by super nice folks that have been more then patient and helpful. I highly recommend asking for help as i have learned a ton from these people and had a blast one of them even gave me a new weapon that kicks butt. i believe I may find some of these people who are too in to the game at latter harder parts of the game but in the early parts I have found nothing but great people. As a side note i would like to thank the GW community for putting up with my newbi questions and for offering all their help.

Great info - thanks.

I can see where the mesmer would have problems, but at lvl 6 still in pre-searing it's certainly the class that feels most natural to me. I tihnk once I realize I can use henchmen to heal or w/e I might gravitate to another class. I want to at least play though pre-searing once to get a feel for the game before finally settling on a class to take all the way. I took Monk with my mesmer for now.

I do find the mesmer a little low on the DPS side right now, but very hard to kill. Also what is a good level to leave pre-searing as I have the quest open but have not been to most of the explorable areas.

I can't believe it took me this long to find this game, I am deeply excited to play GW2 now, knowing there will be many improvements. I can see grouping being fun also, if there are lots of groups looking to do quests etc.

I do plan to search for a guild once I know my main class for sure. They all seem fun in their own way, except the warrior, which sounds kind of boring for me.

To put my enjoyment in perspective, I am choosing to spend my time playing this game over the FFXIV beta right now. If it continues to become a better game as I progress then it might be a real winner.

Good level to leave pre-searing would be around 7.

But try to complete most of the quests, it'll give you more gold and xp, as well as skills.

Oh, and welcome to the game and Guru!

why not have one of each

some of us are still there at level 20 :P

7 is a perfectly acceptable level to leave, you will have to grind to get higher anyhow if you have done all the quests.

you have to be lucky but being prepared to ask in outposts helps.

It's still the best game there is

I've been playing my mesmer for two years now. If i may share one insight with you - take a necromancer secondary now. You will be able to switch secondary class later in the game and up to this moment, in Prophecies, secondary necromancer on a mesmer primairy (fast casting), especially while playing only with henchmen, is deadly useful.
Somewhere around an outpost called Fisherman's Haven you'll get a necromancer skill that creates two undead minions from a single corpse. You're not aiming to become a minion master - a character specialised in raising and controlling an army of undead - yet even 4-5 of them will be a GREAT help for an unexperienced player, as a raw meat shield, of course. Especially that mesmer is quite difficult class to master and having several more minions helps mitigating a lot of damage still dealing some, which may be very handful when playing with henchmen and with Prophecies-only skills, even in normal mode.

The Mesmer can be extremely fun to play, and it was also my first class in GW. Just a hint though, once you leave pre-searing, you'll be facing much tougher opponents, which will require the use of henchmen. You'll quickly discover the meaning of the word "squishy" since the GW AI is a little more clever than what you may have encountered in other games. Be prepared to be singled out for special attention by mobs, especially if you're a little too close to the action. Don't let this stand in your way of pursuing the class though. Mesmers are capable of raining on an enemy's parade like nobody's business, but they do require a lot of experience to excel at. I'm sure many would disagree, but it is, in my opinion, the trickiest of all the classes to master. Very rewarding though, once you do.

PM me if you'd like a grouping buddy now and then. I play through the various campaigns, from pre-searing upwards and I don't care in the least if you know what your doing or not, so no worries about making rookie mistakes. I'm just in it for the laughs.