As I mostly play single-player games, there’s little of the “If I knew then what I know now” kind of posts. Because you can always just start again with a new campaign and a new character; tabula rasa-like. Those posts are just called “player guides”.

Not so with MMOs, where there is no saving, re-loading, or starting from scratch (unless you make a brand new account). So I got to thinking about the grind involved in getting up and running with multiple characters in Guild Wars 2 specifically and how I would have minimized that going in to initial character creation. Below are my thoughts. Probably not popular opinion as they are pragmatic, rather than “experience the story the way it rolled out”.

Character Creation

Pick a good class that you think you’ll enjoy playing. I main as a Ranger (Soul Beast), which is a class that wears exclusively medium armor. Good crafting disciplines to pick up for a Ranger are Leatherworker (the craft that makes medium armor), and Huntsman (the craft that makes bows). If I had chosen a class that wore heavy armor, then I would have chosen Armorsmith and Weaponsmith as my crafting disciplines.

Level your character to 80, the maximum character level. This is where the game truly begins as you access the mastery trees that give your characters enhanced skills and abilities. Masteries are shared by all the characters on your account.

Make sure to try a variety of content – not just story chapters and open world map completion – when leveling, because when you hit level 80, you’ll be leaving F2P territory and buying at least one expansion pack. Better know whether you like the game enough to spend money, or not.

Before you do, find a good CORE build for your class on Metabattle or Snowcrows. You’ll want to avoid builds that use elite specs (for Ranger the three elite specs are: Soul Beast, Druid, and Untamed. Every class has three). Find a build that uses BERSERKER gear, Runes of the Scholar, and Might infusions (you don’t need to get WvW infusions if you aren’t doing WvW or PvP).

Level up your armor crafting for that class: Armorsmith (heavy), Leatherworker (medium), or Tailor (light) crafting disciplines should be maxed out (level 500).

Making the Most Out of Less

Crafting in Guild Wars 2 gets expensive fast. A good set of exotic armor can cost 5-8 gold coins a piece, and there are 6 pieces of armor for each character. Seven if you count the aquabreather (and you should as there is great underwater content in GW2 if you’re ready for it). Ascended armor (the maximum possible stats) costs much more, and is also time-gated as certain components can only be crafted once per day. Or, you can buy those components for 3-8 gold coins a pop at the Trading Post…

If you’re going to play more than one character, you can see how crafting armor and weapons is going to eat up a huge amount of time and energy.

This is where the beauty of legendary gear comes into play. Legendary gear is much more complicated to craft than ascended, but unlike all other gear in Guild Wars 2, you can change the stats, runes/sigils, and even the appearance of your gear at will, free of cost. Additionally – and this is the big sell – legendary gear can be shared by all the characters on your account.

The caveat to that last point: Obviously, as classes are bound to armor weights in Guild Wars 2, only classes that wear medium armor will be able to share legendary medium armor. Only classes that use greatswords will be able to share and equip legendary greatswords.

Awesome, right? Right.

Here’s the catch: it takes six characters to make a full set of legendary armor. Aquabreathers aren’t included. Each character will have to do map completion in certain areas of the game, depending on which set of legendary armor you decide to craft. If you wanted to be able to outfit all current and future characters on your account, you would need 18 level 80 characters.

And it will take months…

But at the end of the grind, you’ll never have to craft a piece of armor again. All those materials you used to spend on crafting mats can now be turned into gold.

In the meantime, you don’t want to be stuck only doing one thing over and over again. JUST grinding for gear sucks all the fun out of a game, even knowing what an overall quality of life improvement the gear will be.

This is where that core build with the ascended Berserker gear comes in. Ascended armor is just as good – stats wise – as legendary. If you are happy crafting ascended gear for all your characters, there’s no need to read further. But if you want the freedom and QoL offered by legendary, I think a little methodology improves the process a great deal.

You’ll need six characters to complete your first set of legendary armor. So… five more than the one you’ve already trained and equipped. Make five more that use the same armor weight as the first. Given that my first character is a Ranger (medium armor), my other choices would be Engineer or Thief. Each class has three elite specializations, so creating two of each will still allow you to have six unique characters down the road.

Why all the same armor weight? Because ascended gear is bound to the account, not to the character. Find CORE power builds for each character using the same gear: Berserker, Might infusions, Runes of the Scholar. As you level up each character to 80, you can swap off the armor and the ascended trinkets. Until level 80, you’ll have three sets of twin characters, as far as builds go. But you’ll use the ascended gear you handed down to the next character to train that characters elite spec (while using the core build).

You’ll also use those six characters to do map completion for your legendary armor.

If you’re willing to do with some repetition, you can get all of that done with one set of ascended armor, one set of ascended trinkets (or invest in exotics for each character… about 30 gold coins per character for a set of exotic trinkets with the right stats), and will even be able to share some weapons.

If you do World Boss events, you’ll occasionally get a box of ascended weapons or armor, from which you’ll get to choose ONE. As you can change the stats on ascended weapons and armor, this will greatly speed up getting your initial set together.

As you level up your characters, do as much map completion and harvesting as you can stomach. Update your gear every 5-10 levels (sub lvl 80 gear is fairly cheap and you’ll get lots of drops). Then switch to that good ascended gear at level 80, do the map completion for the legendary armor, and start training the elite spec of your choice.

Choosing a Path

If you clicked the link to legendary armor above (or just here), you’ll know there is more than one set, therefore more than one way to get your gear. By far the easiest in time, effort, and material costs is the Obsidian Armor obtained entirely through open world play via the Strangers of the Obscure expansion pack.

SoTO is NOT my favorite Guild Wars 2 expansion. Not by a long shot. So be warned that you might not like being stuck there for months on end grinding for gear. Still, there are compelling reasons for purchasing SoTo before any of the other expansions.

Obsidian Armor is the most impressive feature of SoTO. Unlike the other sets of armor, you don’t have to do any competitive play or set foot in a single raid or dungeon. It’s all open world, and the only time you’ll rely on other players to further your cause is during metas (map-wide group events), world boss events, or convergences (a giant brawl of 35-50 players against the demon horde). With few exceptions, most of those are always well-attended and successful.

Also, Obsidian Armor requires far less in time and effort than the other sets. Each piece requires a Gift of Condensed Might OR Magic; not both. And map completion for each character is only three maps. I ticked off map completion in just over an hour for one of my characters already today.

It’s a much faster path to legendary armor than the others, but all the content (other than rift hunting) is restricted to the three maps involved, none of which are my favorites.

On the plus side, all you need those five other characters for is map completion for the armor set. Once they’re finished with that, you can use those characters to explore the rest of Tyria at your leisure. Work on your elite specs. Unlock some of the Living World stories. If you haven’t had enough of it yet, do Central Tyria map completion and start thinking about legendary weapons… world bosses, the OTHER expansion packs… There’s always tons to do and tons of people doing it.

The other great feature SoTO has going for it is the quick acquisition of the Skyscale flying mount. There is much debate about which mount is the best mount, with Griffon and Warclaw aficionados holding firm, but as far as general versatility goes you can’t beat the Skyscale.

Mounts (along with all the other skills you’ll acquire in Strangers of the Obscure) are mastery track items, which means once you have them, all the characters on your account can use them. Including all your new, low level characters. Having a skyscale at level 5 makes leveling up much faster.

Unpopular Opinion

If all the above didn’t steal enough joy out of Guild Wars 2 to make it seem less like an exciting MMORPG and more like an exercise in combat accounting, let me hit you with one more truth: it’s faster if you craft the legendary armor for your first six characters LAST.

This isn’t some weird carrot-and-stick thing whereby you tease yourself with the promise of the armor you *really* wanted at the end; it’s just pragmatism. If you start with the legendary armor to match the weight of your first six characters, then you wont’ be able to use that set of ascended berserker gear for the NEXT six.

On the other hand, crafting a set of legendary armor is a huge grind. Especially the first time around as there are additional collections that need to be completed in order to unlock the armor itself (precursors). Not to mention the cost and time of unlocking character slots and leveling everyone up to 80. It’s quite possible the thought of doing more than one set back-to-back will cause you to rip out your hair and eat your own lips. This is ill-advised.

In which case, by all means, craft the armor for your first six characters. Then either do another set of ascended gear following the same pattern for the next six characters when you’re ready, or stay pat with six.

You can also do SoTO map completion with exotic gear. Inner Nayos can get dicey, but it’s doable. This post is really about what I find to be the most direct route to a goal, but definitely not the *only* path.

The End Result

This part should be obvious. Whether you do one set of legendary armor or all three (and you can always go back for the other two), at the end you’ll have at least six characters spread across at least three classes, each with a unique elite specialization (or two if you want). And you’ll have a skyscale to get you to the places you couldn’t otherwise go.

Elite Specs require expansions packs, which is another reason I recommended core builds to start. If you committed to legendary armor, you’re invested in Guild Wars 2. You’ll probably want Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire at least. Without elite specs, you could conceivably wind up with 9 sets of twin characters as there are 9 core classes. But even then you can try different builds. Make one a power build and the other more reliant on condition damage.

If you’re fully committed and want to play all the elite specs available, you’ll need 18 characters for the legendary armor. There are three elite specs per class, which make 27 elite specs. You can either create 9 more characters, or you can simply double up and train 9 characters in two elite specs a piece. There are enough hero points on the collected maps to do it.

There’s also every chance you’ll find your main. That one class you just get more than the others. The one that you enjoy playing the most. Outfitted with legendary gear and a flying mount, you’re free to start off with Living World Season 1 and work your way all the way through to Janthir. Or to get into competitive play in WvW and PvP, with the ability to change your build instantly to suit your situation (roaming, zerg, etc.)

The point is that you’ll be well-suited to do whatever you want to do, and you’ll be able to fine tune it all at will.

This is, of course, not how guildies who started playing 13 years ago at release experienced the game, but I’m no purist. I want to try at least a little bit of everything, and neither GW2 nor I are getting any younger. Best to get up to speed first, then tool around at my leisure.

Final QoL Observations

If you are a fan of great kilts and want to go the whole nine yards, then you’ll be happy to know there are legendary trinkets. Some are available via open world stories, and some are only available via fractals or competitive play.

Aside from the back item, they have no cosmetic features but they do have the same stat changing and account-wide benefits as armor and weapons.

There are also legendary runes and sigils so you don’t have to buy different sets for each character’s every build.

More importantly, there are shared inventory slots. As you might have guessed, these are slots that contain items available to all your characters all the time. Not everything works in a shared inventory slot (anything a character has to equip, for example), but there are some great QoL items available in the gem store that will make your Guild Wars 2 experience a far better place.

I only have five shared inventory slots, and here’s how I use mine: A Copper Fed Salvage-O-Matic (which eats unwanted gear and turns it into materials), a Silver Fed Salvage-O-Matic (which does the same thing slightly better for more money. I use it on exotics), a pass to the Mistlock Sanctuary (a central location for merchants, banks, trading post and all crafting stations), a World Boss Portal Device (notifies you when most world boss events are going to take place with the option to fast travel to them for free), and a Ley-Infused Loadstone (a device that provides a notification when the Ley-Infused Anomaly can be hunted for valuable cash prizes.)

I would also highly recommend investing in at least one set of unbreakable/eternal harvesting tools. They’re usually available for 2,700 gems a set in the Trading Post under one form or another. Get a set with glyphs, and I would hold out for a set that has the volatile and/or unbound magic glyph included.

F2P Sounds A Lot Like Money

Gold pieces (in-game currency) for this and gems (store currency) for that! Sounds like a free to play game starts getting expensive real quick-like. And it’s true. It can.

But it doesn’t have to.

The bad news is that the expansion packs must be purchased with gold hard money. At around $30 per, that can add up. I managed to get a good bundle that included all the expacs (but not the other stories you purchase in-game) through Steam for around $100. A big investment, but I knew I was going to play a lot.

Everything else? Well, anything you can buy with gems you can essentially get for free because you can swap gold pieces for gems on the currency exchange tab of the Black Lion Trading Post.

Oh, sure. It isn’t easy. But once you have all your essential needs met (see all the above), wealth accrual in GW2 can happen pretty fast. Consider that it takes 50 Gobs of Ectoplasm to make one Amalagamated Essence. It takes 12 Amalgamated Essences to make one Gift of Expertise, and you need a Gift of Expertise for each piece of legendary armor you craft.

50 Gobs of Ectoplasm will set you back around 16 gold pieces. Multiply that by 72 and it adds up quickly.

Once you don’t need to craft for yourself anymore, your materials storage becomes a treasure trove easily liquidated into gold pieces via the trading post, and then to gems if you wish. (Yet another reason to ramp up to legendary equipment as fast as possible.) You can use those gems to buy rare skins, Black Lion chest keys, mounts, fishing equipment, expansion upgrades, character slots…

Find a good gold mine or two. Fractals and WvW are both rich in rewards.

And yes… you’ll probably still want to buy gems now and then. You might even buy gems to convert to gold while you’re getting up to speed. Still, some legendary weapons can be sold. And those can be crafted without spending a dime. A legendary can bring in from 1,600-2,900 gold pieces.

How much of your wallet is sucked up by ArenaNet is really a battle you wage with patience. I… often lose. But it’s possible! For people with, you know, fortitude.

Final Thoughts

This is pretty much how I wish I’d gone about things. I didn’t foresee clumping characters together by armor class, so I created new characters by how fun the class seemed at the time and whether I’d tried anything like it or not. I’m pretty much locked into doing all three armor sets to outfit the first six, which is fine. I planned on doing the full run of Obsidian Armor anyhow.

Also, sticking to a set of core builds with similar stats and identical armor/rune requirements didn’t occur to me until way too late in the game to make the most of it. I would have had to do three sets of armor, of course, given how I created my characters. But trinkets I could use for all of them, and probably some weapons as well.

As it is, I’m working on my second set. Just starting, really. I still have a couple of characters to level up. But I do have one set of Berserker gear and trinkets – finally – that I can pass around to some of my characters as I work on the second and third sets of legendary.

By the time my third set of characters level up, they should be able to step right into the good stuff.

Pro Tip: Want a quick and dirty way to level up your characters? Once you have your skyscale unlocked, swig a heroic booster and fly around every map you can access, from low level to high. High all the waypoints and vistas. Try for as many of the POIs as you can. Stop for hero challenges as you want. Can’t find something? Move on to the next map. It’s not pretty, but it’s fast. And you’ll have a very open Central Tyria accessible to your character when finished.

I find it takes around three heroic boosters (two hour duration a pop) to get me from level 15 or 20 to level 80. I don’t bother with a booster before then. The leveling is very quick.