Guild Wars 2 - 1-80 Leveling Guide! (how I do it)

This is how I usually go about leveling but with a brand new players experience in mind. When you finally hit 80, focus the rest of the personal story for gear. Be sure to do your dailies as soon as you have the waypoints. 2 gold a day can pay for your crafting!! Hope this helps!!

Crafting:

Character Creation:

Map Completion:

Trading Post:

Dailies/Daily Login:

Dungeons:

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[nicholegacha]

me:
has been playing guildwars for over 4 years

also me:
watching this video

[gnomeyg]

After playing WoW for years the feeling of having no friggin clue what the heck is going on in GW is really refreshing.

[rkt]

Some things I want to point out:

The character shown in the video is of the Revenant profession and is only available with the Heart of Thorns expansion

Free to play players (No expansions)
- not allowed to enter the main cities until level 10
- not allowed to enter lion's arch until level 35

Players with Heart of Thorns:
- if you join a guild with guild boosts you can get a free 10% exp boost that helps a lot (there are also exp boosts for crafting, pvp, wvw etc)

Personally, I recommend skipping most hearts unless they are short and quick, because a lot of hearts take ages to complete and give the same amount of exp so going for vistas, hero points and points of interests instead will save you a lot of time. You can come back later at level 80 with much better gear to complete the hearts faster for map completion.

I'd also avoid using scouts (telescope icon NPCs) to show the location of new places because discovering them yourself also gives exp.

If you don't have the Path of Fire expansion and mounts, the buff 'Swiftness' is your best friend. It makes travelling across maps much faster and enjoyable, so use skills that give you swiftness as much as possible.

Warrior's greastword skill #3 and #5 and utility skill 'Bull's Charge', and Thief's shortbow skill #5 are fantastic skills to help you travel around even faster

Killing mobs with yellow names grant extra bonus exp compared to killing mobs with red names so you should kill basically everything in your way :)

Good video, I'll definitely share it with my friends who want to try the game for the first time :)

[mandeepgrewal]

I enjoyed exploring and making it a mission to get 100% map completion. got to lv 80 in 3 days just by doing that. It helped me understand the pre's and most popular world events per map.

[madpanda]

From someone who have 5000 hours in game and 18 max level characters.. great guide!

[Alice_Sprinkles]

6:33 LMAO "Avoid Southsun Cove". That is some good advice, the enemies hit pretty hard there. This is a really helpful video! Especially the part about unlocking Lion's Arch early on so you can go there whenever. The part at 12:59 is good too. I remember as I was reaching higher levels, only buying armor for my character every like three to five levels. There's things that you can equip at like every single level, it'd be a waste of your hard-earned money to spend it on things at every level and not wait a bit.
Thank you for making this!

[urfaes]

Good advice. As someone that has leveled each class to 80, most of them the challenging long way, one piece of advice I have is: during your map completion segments, look for sparsely traveled patches in zones. You'll notice when you kill mobs, it gives you an XP reward and, frequently, bonus XP rewards. Bonus XP is time dependent; the longer a mob is alive, the more valuable it becomes. There will be instances where your bonus XP is 150% on top of the regular XP reward. Couple that with foods from the store or one that you crafted, and both are multiplied by 10% or so.

[patchup]

Nice Guide. I 100% agree that your first character should never be rushed. The way the game is designed, lower level zones are still highly trafficked by veteran players. Many World Bosses are in the lower level areas. Player levels are adjusted down to fit the level of the zone so you will not feel too overpowered.

I also suggest asking to group for events or even join a squad. You simply get more credit for kills this way. Sometimes a group will have a commander or mentor leading it. A commander will be someone with a chevron or a cat-face icon on the map. A mentor will have an apple icon. Some maps will have event "trains" which will almost always be a huge zerg of players.

[jasonx]

Should always mention to set up the game options to AoE looting. Explain that u can save space by sending all materials to your bank instantly. Explaining to keep a salvage kit handy to salvage items for materials. Set AoE to snap target enemies to enable quicker and easier casting. Explain that this game gives a ton of loot in which if you see storage on sale take advantage to buy storage upgrades. Explain that the storage is shared across all characters and if you plan to make another character to save weapons or gear for that character as u level up your first character. If you dont craft your own food there are certain low level areas to buy cheap food/utilities that will increase exp gain 20% as you fight. Also doing achievements as you level will grant special skins and PERMANENT boosts across all characters. Karma, exp, gold, etc.

[vsoundelend]

Or you can buy the game at launch in 2012 or whenever it launched, quit the game for 7+ years, login back, open all the birthday presents and have enough level boosts and exp boosts to level a dozen new characters. :P

[grgn]

First time ive seen one of your videos, i bought the game back in 2013 and kinda stopped for some reason after playing gw1 for a long time. This video has helped me get back into the game. Also your voice and pacing is pretty good. You deliver the information in a clear manner and you keep it condensed without leaving out too much. Good job!

[JeraldJamesCapao]

Thank you! I started like 3 weeks ago and I am enjoying the game so far! I'm currently lvl 60. I am leveling slowly since I am reading all NPC texts and storylines. Sadly I didn't had the chance to do dungeons yet.

[grayhill]

Thank you for this guide. Just took my first dip into the game, and this is exactly the kind of information I was looking for.

[VisualRift]

I’m newer to guild wars 2 and so far I’m loving it and live stream it each day. I say that because everyone that comes in to the live stream are very nice to me and helpful. Personally I like to just get to level 80 and then do the story mission because I don’t like to be interrupted sort of speak with having to do the story and then I can’t continue the story because I need to level up even more.

[zachnightingale]

Heh. About the lack of direction. I remember when I first started playing the game, I got to about level 10 and just stayed up all night wandering around Divinity's Reach. It was surreal at first, and I fell in love with the world there. But at that time I was still very new to the game so I had no idea what to do and I got a little lost.

Still, I had fallen in love with the game, and after that little bump of bewilderness I made it back into the 'level grind'. I've been played for about two years now. Heres to another two.

[queenC]

Where were u when i needed u the MOST?😭 I’ve been playing this game for like a year now and I’ve bought all the expansions and I still have no idea what im doing most of the time... I just wander around and hope theres an event happening or do dungeons if i feel like it... That’s all....

[catnippppp]

Just switched over from Bless this morning. The timing of this video👌

[Charliebfan]

Thank you a million times for this! I've had this game for a long time and just haven't played because I found it a bit confusing. This has been a HUGE help!

[CheckeredFedora]

Thanks for this! I just came back to GW2 after a few years. I like the game a lot, but I've definitely hit a wall leveling around level 25.

[Rhanoss]

I love your content! You‘re my favorite youtuber for GW2 vids! :) Please keep them coming, they‘ve been immensely helpful for a new player!!