Introduction to Guild Wars

Overview

This guide is intended to provide a broad overview of Guild Wars for new players wishing to learn more about the game or deciding whether or not to buy it, and for returning players wishing to brush up on core game mechanics.

Introduction

This guide is intended to get new players started with Guild Wars. If you haven’t purchased Guild Wars yet, please consider a few unique points that may influence your decision to buy & play the game:

• No monthly fee. Guild Wars accounts do not require a monthly fee, but do not follow the standard free-to-play, pay-to-win model. The game is supported by a cash shop which features costumes and early unlockables, but the core game experience is in no way hindered if you choose not to pay.
• All explorable areas and missions are fully instanced to the player’s party. This means that though you are able to play most content with friends, you will only encounter other players in towns and cities.
• Levels and character stats have low caps. The maximum character level in Guild Wars is 20, and weapons & armor are often “maxed out” very early in the game.
• Players are limited to eight (8) skills at a given time that can be selected from a primary & secondary profession and freely changed in any town or city.
• Guild Wars does not have a traditional crafting system, though players are able to “craft” certain items by exchanging crafting materials to a vendor.
• Guild Wars does not feature a Broker or Auction House. Players wishing to buy or sell items or services must do so using local chat or a limited Looking For Group tool in a town or city.
• The game features only one playable race (human), though other non-playable races may be prominently featured.
• The world of Guild Wars is divided into three campaigns, and each is able to be purchased and played independent of the others. Characters created in one campaign will be able to travel to lands from another campaign available on the same account. Certain classes may not be available without a specific campaign. A single expansion is available separately that can be used with any campaign and adds dungeons and an additional storyline.
• Guild Wars features separate PVP and PVE. Though PVE (“roleplaying”) characters can participate in PVP, players may also opt to create a PVP-only character that starts with maximum stats & level but cannot be used for PVE.
• Guild Wars features a mercenary system, allowing the player to form complete parties with a wide variety of NPCs. This means that many player parties may consist mostly of NPCs.

I’ve written this guide for people who are generally familiar with MMOs and their mechanics, and will refer to Guild Wars-specific content using only general terms that do not require previous knowledge of the game. I will try and address any expectations this audience might have, and encourage you to leave a comment below if anything crucial is not covered.

If you’re looking for a guide to getting started with Guild Wars instead of a high-level overview of game functions and mechanics, please see my other guide: Prophecies (Part 1): Getting Started.

Campaigns / Expansions (Which Should I Buy?)

Guild Wars is divided into three campaigns and a single “expansion.” To play, players will need at least one of the campaigns, and may choose based on aesthetic style, available classes, or relative length.

In general, Prophecies (the original campaign) is the longest and slowest of the three campaigns. Players will generally learn skills and earn money very slowly, not reaching the level cap until about 2/3 through the campaign. Factions can be a very quick campaign to play through, and has the Assassin and Ritualist classes exclusively. Nightfall exclusively features the Dervish and Paragon classes, and introduces new, customizable mercenaries and can quickly become overwhelming for new players.

Casual players would do well to begin with Prophecies, but must be prepared for gameplay at a slower pace than may be expected. Prophecies is designed for sustained gameplay at lower levels and can be more forgiving as players learn to effectively play their chosen class. More experienced players may opt instead for Factions, which is heavy on tutorials but very swiftly paced. After the initial tutorial area, Factions characters quickly progress to a complicated, maze-like city requiring max-level 8-person parties (consisting of humans or NPCs). For reference, Prophecies characters may not form parties of this size until 3/4 through the campaign. Nightfall should be absolutely avoided by any solo players new to the series, casual or experienced, as it requires significant knowledge of core game mechanics.

Beyond the three initial campaigns, Guild Wars has a single expansion called Guild Wars: Eye of the North which is set six years from the end of the original campaign. Eye of the North (EOTN) is accessible from any campaign after reaching both level 10 and any campaign’s capitol city.

The easiest way to unlock the complete Guild Wars experience on Steam is to buy the Guild Wars Trilogy, which features all three campaigns, and then the separate Eye of the North expansion. ArenaNet, the company behind Guild Wars, began selling something called the “Guild Wars Complete Collection” in February of 2019[www.guildwars2.com] which contains all of the above content, but it is not (yet) available on Steam.

Classes / Professions

Guild Wars features 10 different classes or professions, catering to many different playstyles. Though six of the main, “core” classes may be created on any campaign, Factions and Nightfall each have two classes unique to their respective campaigns.

Early in the game, characters are asked to select a secondary profession. A secondary profession can be any other class available on that campaign, and can later be switched to any other single secondary class. Once a secondary profession has been unlocked, a player can select it and any corresponding skills at any time when in a town or outpost. Players will additionally have access to three of the four trait lines available for their secondary class; the remaining trait line is reserved for those who use that class as their primary profession.

Though each class has one or more primary weapon type, any class can equip any weapon as necessary. Armor, however, is restricted and exclusive to your primary class type.

New players may want to shy away from certain difficult classes for their first character. Mesmers, Ritualists, and Dervishes particularly can be very complicated classes to play effectively, and may be frustrating for new players unless they are willing to invest extra time to truly understand their mechanics and roles in a party. Likewise, Necromancers and Monks may initially appear straightforward, but require a steep learning curve to play well in any human party.

Warriors, Elementalists, and Rangers are excellent classes to start with for your very first character. These classes are typically the most straightforward to understand in terms of skills and attributes, include self-healing skills, and will give the player the opportunity to become comfortable with various core game mechanics like conditions, party effects, and energy management.

Game Modes and Mechanics

Each campaign features a complete primary storyline unique to that campaign. Each story revolves around you, the hero, and your interaction with other characters and factions. Stories are typically mission-driven, allowing you to play or replay scripted events in a specific sequence. Primary and side quests lead players from one location to another and can be used to unlock skills and attribute points.

As characters level up, they earn Attribute Points that can be used to increase attributes in one of four class-specific trait lines (five for Warriors & Elementalists), and three additional trait lines for their secondary profession (four for Any/W or Any/E). Standard traits like strength, vitality, and intelligence are manipulated exclusively through weapons and armor, and their effectiveness is frequently based on an attribute point requirement (eg. “Requires 4 Fire Magic”). Each attribute level requires progressively more points than the last, and by level 20 a character will have enough points to “max out” two trait lines. These trait lines may be further increased using upgrade items worn on armor or weapons.

Game missions have primary & secondary objectives, and reward experience and gold upon completion. Missions are initiated from specific towns or outposts and can be repeated at any time. Completing a mission frequently teleports the player to a new, sometimes previously inaccessible, location. Quests are available from objects and NPCs as in standard MMOs and are often not repeatable. Quests can reward skills, weapons, and consumables, as well as experience and gold and may be completed in towns or other explorable areas. For the most part, quests are an optional game component and do not need to be completed to progress the story.

Missions also include separate, optional “bonus” objectives that reward extra gold and experience. These challenge objectives are sometimes as simple as completing the mission in a certain amount of time or killing an extra boss, or may sometimes require solving complicated puzzles or protecting key NPCs.

Guild Wars uses a free map-travel system to allow players to teleport quickly to any previously visited town or outpost. Towns and outposts are separated by instanced, explorable areas populated by appropriately-leveled enemies and NPCs. Killing an enemy in an instanced zone will remove that enemy permanently while in the same zone, allowing these areas to be fully “cleared,” though revisiting an explorable area will reset its spawns.

Players earn weapons from defeating enemies and collecting quest rewards. Armor is “crafted” by exchanging a specific quantity of materials and gold to certain NPCs. Some weapons and all armor may be upgraded using salvaged items from certain enemy drops or purchased from vendors. Gear may also be earned by trading other enemy drops with special “collector” vendors, frequently in the same explorable areas as the enemies which drop the item they require.

Weapons may be optionally bound to a given character (“customized”) and as such will receive a permanent 20% base damage increase. Most weapons and armor may also be dyed. There are four grades of weapons which imply item rarity, all of which share the same base statistics. Common “white gear” is not upgradeable, but any other rarity (blue, purple, and gold) may be freely upgraded.

When a player dies in Guild Wars, they must wait for their party to resurrect them or for their entire party to be defeated. In missions, party death means mission failure, and all players will be moved to that mission’s starting outpost to retry or change loadouts. In explorable areas, defeated parties are returned to the nearest “Resurrection Shrine” in the same zone.

When a character dies, they will incur a -15% death penalty (up to a maximum of -60%) which reduces all stats by that amount. Death penalty can be removed gradually by using consumables, simply defeating enemies, or by returning to a non-combat town or outpost. Death penalties will carry between explorable areas unless the player visits a town or outpost, where death penalties are automatically reset. Players may also earn morale boosts which counteract death penalty and improve stats by defeating bosses or using consumables.

Many towns and outposts in Guild Wars have specialty NPC vendors called “traders” that will buy and sell certain items based on supply & demand. These traders’ prices fluctuate in real-time depending on the demand for an item and its supply from other players. For example, if many players are buying Black Dye but few players are selling it, the prices for that item can increase substantially. On the other hand, if Blue Dye is so common that few players are buying it, the prices for that item can quickly decrease.

As a rule, traders will sell items for more than they buy them for. Because they coexist with the player economy, players will frequently sell items for slightly more than a trader will pay, but for less than it would cost to purchase the same item. In this system, traders actually do a good deal to maintain economic stability in the game.

Each campaign has unique “elite missions” intended for group play. Like regular missions, party death in an elite mission will cause that mission to be abandoned and the party to be returned to the starting outpost. Most elite missions require a modest fee for entry, and are designed for groups of 8-12 players. These missions also include primary objectives which need to completed which may or may not include auxiliary quests inside the mission instance. Completing a mission rewards each player with gold, experience, and an end chest frequently containing rare items.

The Eye of the North expansion includes more than a dozen new dungeons which are easier and can be managed by either full player groups or single players with mercenaries.

Completing any Guild Wars campaign will unlock a “Hard Mode” variation of all content in that campaign. This elite gameplay mode features tougher enemies, better drops, and better enemy AI. Certain items may only drop from enemies in Hard Mode, and explorable areas can be fully “vanquished” for experience, gold, and sometimes allied faction points. Completing Eye of the North dungeons also unlocks a Hard Mode variant of that dungeon. Once Hard Mode has been unlocked for a given campaign, it will become available to all level 20 characters on the same account, regardless of whether or not they’ve completed that campaign.

Skills

Guild Wars characters use a set of no more than eight (8) skills, known as a “build.” A build can be any combination of skills from that character’s primary & secondary class, and includes that character’s current attribute point allocation. Builds may be saved locally to disk, and freely changed in towns and outposts, meaning that a player can experiment with new skills or attributes without risk of permanently or irreversably altering their character. With hundreds of skills to choose from and secondary class versatility, two players with custom builds are almost always different.

Each of the six “core” classes have more than 100 skills available to them across the game. Classes exclusive to Factions or Nightfall have at least 70 skills each, with an additional 50 skills available to all classes. With secondary professions, a single character could unlock more than 200 skills at a given time across all campaigns and expansions.

Skills may be unlocked by completing certain quests or by purchasing them from a skill vendor. Once a skill is unlocked, it will be available immediately to any PVP-only character or to any customizable mercenary across the entire account. Skills differ by campaign, and are sometimes exclusive to a given campaign. Players earn skill points each time they level up, and can use these points to purchase from a skill vendor’s limited selection. Generally, the further a charcter progresses in a campaign, more skills become available for purchase. After purchasing (and thus unlocking) any skill, it will become available for purchase from all skill vendors in that campaign by other characters on the same account. Players may instead choose to purchase a skill-unlock pack from the game’s cash shop which can make later skills available from vendors earlier in the game.

In addition to regular skills, Guild Wars features dozens of poweful Elite Skills for each class. Each character can earn these skills by defeating bosses that carry a given skill and using a special skill to “capture” it. Characters may equip a single Elite Skill at a time. Unlike the regular campaigns, which require the player to manually capture skills from bosses, in Eye of the North characters may receive class-ambiguous Elite Skills by completing certain quests.

Players frequently share their successful builds with other players, and have the option to share their builds in-game or online using a special text code that allows any other player to easily load or save a given build. Because a Guild Wars player’s skillbar is intended to be constantly adapting to meet the current challenges, players will often share and perfect builds that are particularly well suited to a given situation. For example, a build that includes crippling skills, slowdown hexes, and knockdowns might be recommended specifically for a mission that requires the player to disable a fast-moving target, whereas the same skills would be less effective for other situations.

PVP

Guild Wars features a rich and superbly balanced PVP system. Certain skills have special PVP-only variations to prevent over-powerful PVE skills from unfairly dominating a PVP environment. Though each campaign features unique low-level PVP arenas, they all share a common “core” PVP component.

With the exception of the campaign-specific arenas, all characters must be level 20 to partipate in PVP. Most characters will be competing with easily attainable gear with maximum stats, meaning that ideally no player will have a statistical advantage over another player of the same class, and victory becomes a question of sheer skill. PVP characters may still augment their gear with various upgrades, but these are provided for free to PVP-only characters, meaning every character will have the same opportunities. PVE characters participating in PVP may need to pay for the same upgrades, but this is because the upgrades will work for both PVP and PVE elements of the game.

Players earn one type of alternate currency called “faction” for participating in PVP. Various types of faction may be spent to purchase skills, customizable mercenaries, or unique gear skins. Spending any kind of faction will typically help to increase that player’s guild rank.

There are many types of PVP in Guild Wars, ranging from simple arena-type and capture-the-flag battles to mini-missions and a massive, continuous tournament. One PVP mode called “Codex Arena” uses a fixed set of skills & attributes for each class which rotate weekly, making Guild Wars PVP both challenging and immediately accessible.

Guild Wars also includes an “Observer Mode” (default key “B”) which allows players to view pre-recorded PVP matches from top Guild Battles and Tournament games. This special mode, which allows players to follow any character from any team, can be used to observe the strategies and builds of top players.

Guilds

Guilds are official, player-run groups of players and are represented with a guild [tag]. Guilds may be part of an alliance with other guilds, and may purchase a “Guild Hall” and various amenities for its members, including convenient storage access and merchants. Guild Halls can be traveled to from anywhere in the game and provide a comfortable space for its members to congregate and hone their skills in PVP Guild Battles. Players identify their guilds with guild tags or unique guild capes.

In Guild Wars, guilds are allied with one faction or another from the Factions campaign. Members can spend their personal faction to improve their guild’s ranking. Highly-ranked guilds can temporarily “rent” towns in Factions, bestowing their members with exclusive access to unique merchants and areas restricted to the current owners.

Players may only join a single guild per account, but may guest in another guild if desired. Multiple guilds can also choose to form an alliance, providing members of all allied guilds a unique, private chat channel and direct access to any allied Guild Hall.

Mercenaries (Heroes & Henchmen)

Guild Wars uses a mercenary system, allowing the player to “hire” NPC party members known as “henchmen” so that the player is always able to play in a full party. In Guild Wars: Nightfall and Eye of the North the game introduces customizable, permanent henchmen called “heroes.” Because the game content was designed to be experience with a full party, these computer-controlled mercenaries are necessary anytime a player does not have a full human party. Solo players will otherwise find adventuring difficult and will become quickly outnumbered.

In every town or outpost, typically near the exits to an explorable area, are a line of available henchmen. These henchmen are usually the recommended level for the content beyond, and can be “hired” by simply inviting them to your party, either directly or using the Party window (default key: P). There is no direct fee to hire henchmen, but they are invisibly allocated some gold and drops that would otherwise be assigned to the player.

For example, if a player with four henchmen picks up 10 gold from the ground, they may only receive 2 gold while the other 8 gold is evenly divided among the henchmen. They receive item drops in the same manner, although item drops received by henchmen are simply not visible to the player. They do not, however, share quest or mission rewards which are always given entirely to each player.

Henchmen come with their own skills, armor, and weapons, and do not need to be managed directly. Henchmen will automatically follow the player in combat, and will attack anything hostile within range. Players may flag henchmen to a specific location using the game map, though they may get stuck on terrain or other obstacles if they are flagged too far away. It is important to note while flagging that henchmen (and heroes) will not execute any action until they reach their destination, meaning that you should use care when flagging henchmen as they will effectively be unavailable while moving to their flagged location.

Heroes are permanent, customizable henchmen that require regular player maintenance. They are unlocked through completing key missions or quests in Nightfall and Eye of the North, and at least three heroes of each class (except for Mesmer, which only has two) are available. Though newly unlocked heroes start with basic skills, it is the player’s responsiblity to manually assign them new skills & attribute points as they level up alongside the player. A hero’s armor will automatically scale with their level, but players will need to manually equip them with level-appropriate weapons.

Like henchmen, heroes will invisibly take portions of gold & loot, but otherwise can be somewhat controlled by the player. Each hero in a player’s party may be freely switched between different combat stances: Passive, Attack, and Guard. A Passive hero will take no offensive action but may still execute defensive skills like healing or wards. Heroes set to Attack will behave like henchmen, automatically attacking anything in range. The Guard stance orders the hero to behave passively until attacked, or until the player attacks.

Regardless of their stance, heroes’ skills may be controlled directly by the player. The player can force the hero to select any given target, execute any given skill, or prevent that hero from using one or more skills as needed. Players may also individually flag the first three heroes in their party to specific, separate locations if desired, otherwise heroes will obey the party flag if present.

Due to the incredible amount of control that may be exercised over heroes and the high level of maintenance they require, they are often overwhelming to new or casual players.

Mercenary heroes are a special type of hero that players can unlock after purchasing one or more Mercenary Hero Slots from the game’s cash shop. Mercenary Heroes are armor-identical copies of a player’s character that can then be used by other characters on that account. Mercenary heroes function the same as regular heroes, and will need weapons and skills manually assigned to them.

Guild Wars 1 or 2?

Many players new to the franchise will have to decide whether to play Guild Wars 1 or 2. They are two very different games and each will be better suited to different players.

In general, Guild Wars 1 may better suit single, “solo,” players, or groups of friends wishing to play together. All of the main game content is “soloable” in parties of NPCs, and new players may have difficulty finding other people to play with at early levels. The instanced zones and huge number of cities make it possible to not even see another player during much of the game content. Guild Wars 2 is a more standard MMO in that sense, where all players are almost always present in the same zone and can see and interact with each other. Guild Wars 2 features cooperative combat, meaning that people can play together without being in the same group and fight the same enemies without penalty.

Guild Wars 1 features an impressive catalogue of quests and missions, while its sequel omits quests entirely in favor of dynamic, repeating events that happen in the game world. Guild Wars 2 does feature a personal, instanced storyline, though unlike its predecessor these primary quests are not repeatable. Both games feature segregated standard PVP and PVE, though the sequel also adds a massive PvPvE game mode where different servers can compete against each other for server-wide benefits and ranking.

Though characters in both games use a limited skill bar (8 skills for GW1, 10 for GW2), Guild Wars 1 features multi-classing and has hundreds of available skills. Because of this, much of Guild Wars 1 can feel more strategy-oriented where a player’s skills may be changed between zones to meet the challenges of a given area or mission. The classes in Guild Wars 2 are much more streamlined, with only a couple dozen skills available by endgame.

While Guild Wars 1 uses a more traditional party structure (frontline, midline, backline), its sequel has taken strides to eliminate the need for “the holy trinity” of Tank-Healer-DPS, making all classes mutually self-sufficient. The latter has been both praised and criticized for this, as although a party may consist of any combination of classes, skill variety & specialization suffers as every class is now essentially a DPS class. In parties, each player frequently finds themselves without a specific role, turning most combat into a mindless free-for-all.

In terms of development, no future updates are planned for Guild Wars 1 though it does have many different events & daily activities that have been automated. Guild Wars 2 features frequent major content updates, though many updates may feature content that is only available for a limited duration. Users who are not constantly active in the latter game are penalized for missed content by design, in that they may not have access to limited-availability quests, resources, or gear.

In my opinion, the difference between the two games is like the difference between checkers and chess. One can require significant strategy, research, and variety, while the other can be picked up and succeeded at much more easily.

Tips & Tricks

There are many tips and tricks new players can use to become more proficient with Guild Wars. If you’re playing Guild Wars for the first time, please review this list as even if you don’t remember everything, it will be helpful for you to know the types of things that are available to you.

• YOU DO NOT NEED TO GRIND. Too many new players seem obsessed with grinding. While it can be rewarding at later levels, it is just a waste of time at the beginning of the game.
• You may use the “/bonus” command in any town or outpost to give your current character any additional items unlocked with your current licenses. These items can include free, max-stat weapons, items, or summoning stones. Items you do not need may be safely deleted, as you can re-acquire any of these items at a later time by using the /bonus command again.
• Hold down the CTRL key to highlight players & enemies, and the ALT key to highlight NPCs and landmarks. Both keys will allow you to see and target the names of players, objects, and enemies through walls or terrain.
• Most quests are optional. With the exception of primary quests, nearly all quests are optional. The game can be completed without much trouble doing only the primary quests and missions, with the exception of quests in early Prophecies that reward skills.
• When available, always use a full party of henchmen. With the exception of a character in Ascalon at the beginning of the game, mercenary henchmen are always available.
• Be sure and add henchmen with a variety of character classes. A balanced party is necessary to succeed in Guild Wars. All parties should include at least one designated healer and one or more DPS classes. Healer henchmen are almost always indicated as “Healer Henchman” or “Protector Henchman.”
• Pick up everything. Your main source of income in the game outside of quest & mission rewards is profit from selling miscellaneous weapons and other drops. There may also be collector NPCs that will give you something decent for those five Gargoyle Skulls you picked up along the way.
• Make the one-time investment in bags. Early in the game, you can often exchange various tokens or cash for bags & belt pouches. Purchasing a “Rune of Holding” from any merchant can double your bag size, which will be well worth saving you the time of running to a merchant every few minutes.
• Buy identification kits and identify everything. Although only some items may be marked as “Unidentified,” all items may be identified for increased vendor value. With few exceptions, the addiitonal value at the very least covers the costs of the identification kits.
• Use the F9 key to quickly open all bags.
• Pay attention to enemy group formations. All effective parties will need to be able to quickly identify the biggest threats in a group. Generally, focus on monks or ritualists first, spike down elementalists or assassins, then necomancers, mesmers & paragons, warriors & dervishes, and finally rangers. It will take some time to learn which enemies are which, but learning enemy formations is hugely critical to later success.
• Use the C key (default) to target the enemy closest to you. You can then use the spacebar to perform the default action on that target.
• Use the F10 key for quick links to the game’s comprehensive wiki. You’ll see links for each quest you have, all of your skills, and the locations you visit. You can also use the “/wiki SEARCH TERM” command to quickly search the wiki from in-game.
• Upgrade your personal storage to include crafting storage. For 50 gold, a Xunlai Agent will enable a storage space exclusively for crafting materials that can store a maximum of 250 of each material.
• You can mix up to four dyes. When dying your armor, you can add up to three additional colors to create the perfect armor color. Don’t have an orange dye? Just mix red and yellow!
• Sell items to the correct vendor. Certain items may be more valuable when sold to a specific vendor instead of the general merchant. Guild Wars has unique traders for dyes, runes, scrolls, and crafting materials that will frequently offer a higher price than the merchant.
• Always carry a longbow, regardless of class. Longbows are the ideal weapon for safely pulling enemies from a distance. Effective pulling is an essential technique for any player.
• Blue “minor” runes are often more valuable than their purple or gold counterparts. Purple (“major”) and gold (“superior”) runes are indeed more powerful, but can carry heavy health penalties. Because of this, players often prefer “minor” runes, meaning that salvaging that minor component and selling it to a Rune Trader is an easy way to make money very early in the game.
• If you die in combat, you can switch to another character’s point of view. For example, if you’re waiting for a healer to revive you, you can click on the healer’s name in the party window to switch to their “camera” and see what they’re doing. This is especially helpful for new players who may want to observe their own party’s more successful tactics.
• NPCs and monsters can level up. Just like the player character, any creature participating in battle will gain experience when an enemy dies. Henchmen that have levelled up will retain their level bonus between explorable areas, but it will be reset when visiting any town or outpost. Heroes retain experience permanently, and enemy levels reset when revisiting a given zone.
• Adding runes to your headpiece can give you bonus increases. Many headpieces will include the text “Item’s attribute +1” in their descriptions. This means that adding a minor, major, or superior rune to your headpiece will give you an extra +1 to the matching stat.

Questions & Answers

Have questions? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll add them here.

Because Guild Wars uses instanced areas, players can go for hours at a time without seeing another player. Even in towns where you can see other players, you might be surprised to see only one or two other people. Aside from mission outposts which are generally more populated, most players congregate in one of the three capital cities or elite mission outposts.

Quests are available in each campaign’s capital city (Lion’s Arch, Kaineng City, Kamadan) that will unlock travel to other campaigns. Travel from the Nightfall campaign to Prophecies is a notable exception, as players will need to reach level 17 or the rank of Sunspear Captain before being able to unlock that travel quest on their own. This page[wiki.guildwars.com] lists the quests required to unlock travel from one campaign to another.

There are several ways to directly remove death penalty: using consumables, killing bosses, or just killing normal foes. In PVE, players will lose 1% death penalty for every 75 EXP earned. Bosses will reward a +2% boost, and killing bosses with no death penalty can actually give a morale boost up to +10%. In PVP, players remove 2% death penalty for every living teammate after killing an enemy.

Looking at your quest log (default key: “L”) during a mission will show your current objective(s). If you’re having trouble figuring out where to go, you can see maps and get tips from the Guild Wars wiki[wiki.guildwars.com] (external link), or use the F10 key during the mission for a direct link. Please note that the wiki typically includes spoilers, so use at your own discretion.

Besides unlocking Hard Mode for that campaign, Prophecies, Factions, and Eye of the North include free expansion storylines that take place after the events of the main story. These storylines take the form of quests that address new situations and events that have arisen since completing that campaign. Some players also work to achieve titles, faction for their guild, or try to earn elite armor. Of course revisiting dungeons is popular, as well as continuing your adventure in the other campaigns.

Common (white) items typically do not include modifiers or upgrades. Blue items are also considered common, but often have low-range modifications. Purple items are uncommon and include mid-range modifications, while gold items are rare and typically have maxed modifications. There are two other rarity levels: green items (unique) usually have maximum stats and modifiers and often drop from bosses or dungeon chests. Red items are PVP rewards and are “crafted” by PVP players. Armor is only available in white & blue rarities.

Drops labeled “Salvage item” may be refined into crafting material using a salvage kit. Salvage items may be sold as-is instead of salvaged, though the crafting material they refine into is often worth more than the salvage item itself. Blue, purple, and gold salvage items contain upgrade components, which are sometimes very valuable. Salvage kits may be purchased from nearly all merchants, and are available in three varieties: Basic, Expert, and Perfect. Basic kits may not be used to salvage upgrade components. Expert kits or above must be used to recover a specific component, but have a chance to destroy the original salvage item. Perfect kits eliminate the risk for item destruction, but are prohibitively expensive for regular use. Upgrade components recovered from salvage items may be sold to a Rune Trader, often for a high price.

For crafting materials, be on the lookout for Feathers, Granite Slabs, Iron Ingots, Piles of Glittering Dust, and Plant Fibers. Each of these items can usually sell (in stacks of 10) to a “Crafting Material Trader” for a couple hundred gold. Also, be on the lookout for anything labeled “Radiant“, “Survivor“, “Minor Rune of…”, “…of Vitae” or “…of Vigor“. These prefixes and suffixes will be on various salvage items, so buy an Expert Salvage Kit and salvage the corresponding component to sell to a “Rune Trader.”

Many new players struggle with the slower pace of Guild Wars, especially early in the game. New players need to understand that unless they are doing a timed mission, there is no rush. Enemy groups should be encountered carefully, one-at-a-time. Rushing into multiple groups and careless aggro is a huge point of frustration for new players. Players should slow down and carefully evaluate enemies before engaging. Beyond that, new players need to quickly learn that they must pick up everything. That useless trash enemies are dropping is your number one source of income in the game. On a related point, just because the stats on a weapon you just picked up are better than the one you have doesn’t mean you should switch: if the new weapon has any kind of requirement (eg. “Requires 3 Fire Magic”) and you don’t meet said requirement then in practice it may perform less damage than what you’re already using.

Lastly, new players are often obsessed with multiclassing, trying to master two classes before they even understand the basics of one. For example, many players choose Elementalist or Monk as their secondary profession; Elementalist skills are too expensive to be pracitcal and healing is always better left to a designated healer. At the beginning of the game, players simply cannot afford to be wasting attribute points in secondary trait lines and should promptly replace their free secondary skills with ones appropriate for their class as soon as they are able.

Purely cosmetic & ease-of-access items. Guild Wars does not offer any gameplay-enhancing items like mounts or exclusive skills through its shop, but does provide account management tools like name changes, extra storage space, and a pet unlock pack that saves the user the trouble of physically capturing each type of charmable animal in the game. You can view the types of items that are available on the Guild Wars Website[guildwars.com] (external link).