HoT coz those were the first elite specs and the longest in game.

I’d recommend PoF first as I feel the mount masteries have the biggest impact on how we play overall!

Hot Specs were so much more accessible than PoF and EoD specs, simple but still had great decision making and trade offs. Compare DH and Tempest to FB and Weaver

HoT for my boy the Scrapper 😁

I would love you to do a Material Guide, like what type of creatures can drop what type of material/lodestone. Guild Wars 2 is really easy to understand but since there is no bestiary many people don't know this

True

always something new to learn!

Just came back after 8 year and Holy crap I am overwhelmed. Specifically with the 250 skyscale dragon mats

Start doing the Seasons of the Dragons achievement. The episode for each respective map will give you 250 of that currency.

@@caseyreed1106 yes, you can farm for skyscale by completing the "Return To" achievements, all of them give exactly 250 of each map currency, it's easier than never for you to get your skyscale ;)

Easiest map competition for transmutation charges is cities. Complete all racial cities and lion's arch for easy pve charges. I recommend having all alts at least map complete the cities for a quick influx of charges when your new. If you also black lion key farm I recommend completing city maps each week as well as going for the key of you are getting low on charges.

Isn't 1 charge for each map?

@@flyrow3712 yeah. That's why I said city maps on key farms. 6 charges on a character you delete and redo weekly. It's not a lot of charges but especially with mounts can be done faster than other maps. Not saying it's a great way to get them but it's an easily overlooked part of key farms that can get you charges almost renewable. I have even seen people recreate a character a couple times in a day to farm charges from city completes. That person particularly hated pvp and wvw however

@@strange-universe when you're key farming you are not doing it from map complete. Your hitting story lvl 10. And since it's weekly reset some grab the lvl 40 one as well. There are a few other story steps that can net keys weekly. Completing cities means you get the 1-4 keys you are doing the weekly for as well as 6 charges a week as well. Easy to build a supply with only slightly more effort than normal key runs

@@Teraphas Haha seems he really hated pvp and wvw. I just do the daily WvW, it gives me chests and those 1 help me load charges.

that's a really good idea, but I think while new players might get overwhelmed, there are some who sees them as longevity and content ahead of them.

@@TobiNano Make it a toggle in the options menu then. By default there are already a bunch of silly things in the game, such as double tap to dodge.

Truly a comment I can wholeheartedly understand. The feeling of logging into a game you haven't played in a while, and seeing a bunch of meaningless currencies, and random gear that has no relevance is the fasted track to Alt- F4ing . I literally went through this same thing last year when i picked up the game again, and I would like to offer some legendary advice. It's going to sound ludicrous, but I promise, it will fix the problem instantly. START FROM SCRATCH!!!!!! Sell/ Salvage whatever gear you have. Clean out your inventory and DECLUTTER! If you don't know what something is, and it seems valuable, just keep it in a separate bank tab, and you can then look them up 1 by 1 when you have downtime. Like WP said, type /wiki in the chat and then Shift Click the item, which links it to the chat. That will pull up the GW2 wiki page that will show you if it is indeed an important item or not. Seriously though, delete/ salvage it ALL, and then look up a build on MetaBattle that you like, check what stats it uses and then simply start grinding for the ascended set of that gear set. Deleting all the shit that makes you confused enough to close the game is a fantastic way to reset your GW2 experience and you will get the magic of rediscovering the game again.

That was a more recent(last year or two) addition to the game. Started off just showing one currency and then updated again to show multiple. So when it first started for example pof only showed the trade contracts. But then they added the keys and the mosaic pieces as well. It's been very nice since all related currencies started showing

Note: all your videos get me pumped, but the really really needed and detailed discussions about reward systems/ endgame goals/ and long term account progression is what keeps me in love with such a great game

NEVER use laurels for ascended trinkets... Laurels are extremly precious, you use them only if you feel you really need them or want to buy something from the gemstore and you don't have money. You get your first set from doing few days of daily fractals and seasons of dragons achievment(the first 4 lw3 achievments are enough to buy bag amulet and 2 earings and if you don't get rings from T1 fractal, 1 ring costs only 10 pristines aka 10 dailies so 3-4 days if you do everything(+ are unlucky because you may very drop the ring you want) and it can be done in yellow gear) then the next ones you'll get them passively from doing daily fractals and things you will know about(daily fractals after a point drop regularily ascended items).... Laurels have extremly high gold value(so it has gem values as well), can be used to get a portion of the clovers you'd need for a legendary personnally I used few to buy ascended recipes(weapons/armor) I was able to craft right away and was needed to get to T4 fractals... Do not buy amulet infusion, you can get a great one free(the otter infusion) from doing drizzlewood coast and champion content, wich can be farmed without a flying mounts and not much farm in few weeks(weapons box and few drizzlecoast metas). Also as a side note I went Berserker(then Zojja) for my first set and I don't recommend it. I think that for open world and progression you'd want to aim for a more versatile build, probably armor set geared toward generating movement speed and stats put in bit of sustain/survivability for example a witchdoctor set wich is also good in group content and does maybe 20-30% less damage than a full condi build but will feel better and may even save you time solo, generally speaking unless organised content, 4 stats affixes > 3 stats affixes because principally you get more stats overall but also because you don't make tradeoffs.

@@nathanielnizard2163 Also made a huge assumption there that people have living world. People are very uneasy about buying it. And a lot of people also like to play things in order. Rather than have to learn very specific things, go to specific story locations and look it all up. Its a lot more straight forward to just spend the currency. Chances are most people have the laurels purely through logging in (especially returning players) and dont realise they can have trinkets . The value of laurels can be written off, its only a minor amount. Youll get more when you need them. Im just saying this is probably the most simple method to get yourself equipped on a core account that doesnt require grinding. People in my scenario probably wont be be making legendaries any time soon and laurels arent usually what holds you back.

@@_Banjo_ I came back after 8 years too you know and I don't even log in for daily rewards, I'm a filthy casual. LW content is something that pays for itself is you buy it with gold, and if people do things in order they absolutely don't need 1% extra stats at the cost of plundering their own laurels ^^'. People buy rings from fractal vendor(or drop them in fractal) and buy the rest from lw3 or lw4 vendors, I recommend lw3 because content is easier and seasons of dragons achievments faster to achieve. BTW doing seasons of dragons achievments give enough map currency to buy 1,5 trinket per zone and enough mystic coins worth of gold to convert for the next chapter xd... (+ mastery lines, mastery points, access to new maps/raids/collections). After doing several zones you also get an ascended weapon, a 32 slot bag, something like 200 mystic coins, an end of dragon precursor(it will be huge in few monthes whatever you keep it or sell it, like hundreds of gold huge) and a legendary amulet. And the best part, is that you can do it in order. Also strictly nobody does things in order in this game, have you ever seen somebody walking without mount in HoT content? The game is horizontal and extremly rarely rewards for completing stuffs, you get an ascended amulet or other jewelry at the end of icebrood and an ascended weapon quest at the end of HoT, that's pretty much it and it's underwhelming. As for the story, living world stories are also better xd.

I have a very similar experience and can relate to this completely. I have been signing into my account every few months or so for the past 4 years and still see stuff in my inventory I am like "I have no idea how to properly deal with this". I also have that constant blinking message at the top telling me I am wearing gear that has no stats on it. I do not know what stats to select to properly min/max and therefore I can't really just jump back in and play because the character is underpowered because all the trinkets/rings/amulets etc are empty. The inventory management in GW2 is a mess, and the things they have done to change it over the years may be good if you are actively playing when they come out, but jumping in after and trying to work out how to set up gathering tools, sigils, runes etc. and working out what items to add to account or what to keep is just not fun.

Icebood Saga. Eternal Ice is about 10 times easier to generate piles of compared to LW S3 currency. You do have to play enough of the story to unlock the merchants though.

You gotta check. I burned myself making this assumption recently: chattering skulls for example should be vendored! Not concentrated and tp'd :(

@@gartner654 there are some exceptions, but it applies to the vast majority of cases.

You also get transmutation charges with daily log-in rewards

Yeah, the currency bloat in mmos is a major obstacle for me getting into new games. Even with GW2 I find myself not playing as much because of the currency bloat. I get that it encourages people to say and farm new content, but the drawback for me is rigidity. I have limited time each week, so I have to make decisions about what currency I want to farm based on what I want out of the game. The problem is if my goal changes the next week then any content I had been doing feels wasted. I become paralyzed by having to pick an activity and stick with it, which just makes the game feel more like a job.

I’d be interested to see how WP approaches the subject, but Vallun has some good pvp guides on KZfaq and written versions on GuildJen, if you want to check something out right now. If you want to dig a little deeper, I’d recommend taking a look at twitch. Streamers are great for answering more specific questions you might have, and just watching a top player’s POV will teach you a lot.

Yes too soon but I wouldnt say that, sure maybe for gear but not for skins or to convert to gold, best thing that you can buy with guild commendations is Divine Lucky Envelope cost 1 guild commendation sells for about 1g30s-1g50s each (Divine Lucky Envelope you can buy during lunar new year)

I honestly think this should be brought up more. The attaining of this most important currency for fashion wars is incredibly skewed. I don't mind it as a resource but the pve attainability is very bad, even if you consider rerolling alts (already a terrible design) one of the ways.

pVp and wVw drop them faster, but just pVe and time gets you 'enough' for most players. As long as you're a little bit sensible, so don't use any

When you get to the point where you start crafting legendaries. You probably have a basic understading of currencies. Then you can go and aquire those. This a new player guide remember. They should not have to worry about currencies for legendaries starting out.

There is currency exchange between some currencies. But not all. (I think there shouldn't be exchange between all currencies, for two major reasons, 1 the prestige of certain rewards would be lowered, 2 all material gains would need to be balanced against each other, which would exponentially increase the complexity of adding new currencies to the game. There is a reason that currency exchange is a buissness of its own here in the real world ;) )

Yeah, pro's and cons here. Maybe it should have an automatic valuation system like the current gems/gold exchange, based on supply and demand. I would like to see at least map currencies supported so you can trade excess currencies for one map for map currencies you're low at. But I also understand that this could degrade the prestige of some items a bit as you can no longer say that you earned them in a specific map.

ditto, I was going to add a comment that I wished Anet grouped the currencies better for players to better grasp what they all do/come from!

I get the idea, but one thing that having the multitude of currency helps with is player spread, that is players of all types are doing all content to get these currencies. If there was a trade to core, then vets wouldn't bother with the off-meta/less efficient maps. So we wouldn't be around to help the newer players, or to make the game feel more alive in those maps.

@@cjb110 that's actually a really good point, never thought of it that way

@@cjb110 i do think the "Return To" series has been a great hit and if they had some kind of "Return To" system where each week or 2 they rotated a map or cluster of maps and gave rewards of some type it could revitalize things as well though. What those would be, no idea.