=============================================================================== GUILD WARS FAQ Created By: the Nightblade Started: 5/12/04 Last Update: 6/21/05 Version: 0.21 =============================================================================== Hello and welcome to my FAQ for Guild Wars, a so called "CORPG" (Competitive Online Role-Playing Game) by ArenaNet. My ultimate goal is making this guide as complete as possible. Enjoy :) ************Spoiler Warning************ Even though Guild Wars is arguably lacking in the story department, this FAQ contains many spoilers, and even looking as far as the Table of Contents might ruin potential surprises for you. You have been warned. ************Spoiler Warning************ ------------ Legal notice ------------ This document is Copyright 2005 Ziko "the Nightblade" Baroud. It may only be used for private use, as a reference guide. And this, as a whole or any part of it, may never be publicly distributed electronically or in print without my written permission. This guide may only be used post on the sites listed below. Please email me at tNB((((DOT))))FAQ(@)gmail(((DOT)))com to enquire about gaining permission to use this document on any other website. All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders. List of allowed sites: http://www.gamefaqs.com (latest version can always be found here) http://neoseeker.com http://www.cheathappens.com http://1up.com http://www.supercheats.com ----------------------------- Table of contents tip: Throughout this FAQ I used the exact same title names as I used in the table of contents, this means that you can select a the complete chapter name (including the numbers) and use the find options(CTRL+F in most browsers) to go right to the chapter you want. ----------------------------- 1. Version history 1.1 Coming soon to a version near you 2. Introduction 2.1 Game Concepts 2.1 ArenaNet 3. Basics 3.1 On screen display 3.2 Controls & Commands 3.3 Chat commands 3.4 Basic Mechanics 4. Characters 4.1 Brief Profession summary 4.2 Skill Types 4.3 Skill Legend 5. Story Walkthrough 5.1 New character walkthrough 5.2 Post Searing Ascalon 5.3 Escape over the Shiverpeaks 5.4 Start of a new life in Kryta 5.5 Into the Maguuma Jungle 6. Exploring the World 5.1 Skill Trainers 5.2 Towns 5.3 Explorable areas 5.4 Outposts 5.5 Competitive areas 7. Quest Database 7.1 Pre-searing Ascalon 7.2 Ascalon 7.3 Northern Shiverpeaks 7.4 East Kryta 7.5 Maguuma I. FAQ II. Useful Links III. Special Thanks To IV. Contact information +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 1. Version history +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ V 0.12~ 6/21/05 : Completed walkthrough and quests up to Druid's Outlook, : corrected some minor errors. Added more to Basics. V 0.12~ rev 1 : My current progress is not yet ready to be compiled into a new version, so in this small update the only thing changed is the list of sites allowed to use this guide. V 0.12~ 6/05/05 : Fixed many small errors, changed some section names, added basic mechanics, moved conditions to status in the basic mechanics. First version submitted to neoseeker.com and cheathappens.com V 0.11~ 6/02/05 : First compilation to be contributed to gamefaqs.com, Walkthrough and Quest Database complete up to Lion's Arch. V 0.10~ 6/02/05 : First and final compilations before being published. %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% *1.1 coming soon to a version near you* %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% Right now the Mission Areas and Quests are on the top of my to-do list, so that's what most of the upcoming updates will contain. -Skill trainers. -Remember what other sections I had planned for the Roman numbered sections. -Expand the game mechanics section. -More information about explorable areas and missions in general. -NPC lists. -Redo controls (in my defense, half of that was written over a year ago). -Redo profession outlines/summaries. -Items section. -Redo the Experience section of the game mechanics. -Skills, builds, and strategies are something for a more distant future. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 2. Introduction +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ As I noted before, this game is, as ArenaNet calls it, a CORPG, a Competitive Online Role Playing Game. A nice blend between MMORPGs and Action oriented games. This game was designed to be fun from the start to forever. I'm sure everyone knows what a MMORPG is, the term dates was born nearly 10 years ago with game such as Nexus TK(Nexon) and Ultimate Online(EA), even though many people would say Meridian 59(3DO) was the first true MMORPG. However, in all those 10 years, very few online RPG games have strayed far from the concept that emerged so long ago. And even though many developers have done a great job improving and polishing that concept, innovations were few and far between. This is where ANet came in, who decided that even though they were making an online RPG, all the cliches usually tied with this type of game should be dropped before they even started the conceptual design phase of the basic game mechanics. By eliminating various elements that MMORPG gamers might find tedious or annoying. This is done to give the best experience possible. The intention was to not only create a fun game, but a game where people could compete with each other in a way where time played or luck wasn't the decisive factor, yet still stay true to the nature of "Story-driven RPGs" where the player is led through an interesting story and to have a lot of depth when creating characters. All while being online. Optional expansion packs will be released to broaden the GW world. The world will continue to change over the years, and will hopefully keep you experience refreshed and enjoyable. There is a reason some games are only fun for a week, and some games(Diablo, StarCraft, Half-Life) are still being played years after their release. Anet tried to capture that as much as possible, thus Guild Wars was born. %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% *2.1 Game Concepts* %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% The game itself can be divided into two major categories: Cooperative and Competitive. Both of these offer the player a small variety of different "modes" or ways to engage in these activities. It's important to remember that While "PvP Only" character are obviously restricted to the competitive areas only, "Full Roleplaying" characters are able to experience the entire game, including PvP. As a RPing character, you fight your way through the story by completing various quests and mission. You can also chose to just go out into the world and explore a bit, for whatever reason. While traditional quests are usually discovered, and accomplished in the various cities, outposts, and "Explorable areas", special "Mission quests" that serve to advance the storyline are accomplished in areas that you can't reach by walking about the wilderness - they are entered through a pre-mission outpost, which, on the other hand, are typically accessible from explorable areas. Also, whenever you head into an explore able area or mission area, you and your party get their own private instance of the area you're in. In the case of explorable areas, monsters are spawned once at specific places, and won't respawn while you remain in that area. Sometimes spawns are somewhat random, meaning monsters can be in different places each time you go to a certain area, and sometimes a random boss from a list of several different possible boss monsters for that location is spawned, meaning you might have to play a certain mission or go to a certain explorable area multiple times if you are looking for a specific boss monster. Quest-related monsters, bosses, NPCs, and objects also appear in the explorable areas if you are on certain quests. As ArenaNet says: "Success in Guild Wars is always the result of player skill, not time spent playing or the size of one's guild". What this means is that almost always, a player who is good at the game but not yet has access to all the skills, runes, and upgrade components will still be able to easily defeat a player who is not as good yet has access to all skills, runes, and upgrade components. Instead of "Get your class' ultimate gear, click target, make some tea" style duels, you're going to have to use real skill and learn to be able to make quick decisions, and above all: the right decisions, in the heat of combat. %-%-%-%-%-%-%-% *2.2 ArenaNet * %-%-%-%-%-%-%-% This is the team that brought us Guild Wars. They have a lot of experience creating games, and it shows. ArenaNet is an independent subsidiary of NCsoft. You might know NCsoft for making games like Lineage1&2 and City of Heroes. ANet was founded in March 2000 by, as they say it better than I can: "key members of the creative teams behind Blizzard's game series Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo, as well as the Battle.net gaming network". Their web site (www.arena.net) is worth checking out if you want to learn more. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 3. Basics +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ The game is easy to learn, yet hard to master. Getting the basics down as early as possible is vital in order to be a valuable asset to your party instead of just a burden. %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% *3.1 On screen display* %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% Most of this can be configured, moved, and resized, but this is what it probably looks like when you first start the game. The sizes are a bit off but bear with me on this. |=========================================================| | 1 | [ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ2ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ] ----3--- - o x| |_____________| ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ /ŻŻŻŻŻ\ | | | | | | | 4 | | |,-----xp----, \_____/ | | ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ | | | | ____________| | YOU |____________| | ARE |______5_____| | PROBABLY |______Ż_____| |__ HERE Ż | | 6| | |ŻŻ |ŻŻŻŻŻŻHPŻŻ7ŻŻŻŻŻ|ŻŻŻ7ŻŻMPŻŻŻŻŻŻ| | | ____ |ŻŻŻ|ŻŻŻ|ŻŻŻ|ŻŻŻ|9ŻŻ|ŻŻŻ|ŻŻŻ|ŻŻŻ| 8 | ||menu| | | | | | | | | | ()()()() | |=========================================================| 1 : Effects monitor. This area will show you everything currently effecting your character. This includes: Enchantments, Hexes, Conditions, Death Penalty/Morale boost, and also skills that have a lasting effect on you, suck as stances or preparations, but also others. If you are in a public area, you can select different districts from the drop down box that will appear in this area. 2 : Target display, this shows your targets name and remaining HP. If your target uses a skill, it will appear below this bar. If your target is a neutral or friendly player, a trade button appears to the right of this. 3 : This information is only drawn if you launch the game with the "-perfs" command line parameter. To do this, right click your shortcut to GW and click properties, then enter -perfs after the quotation marks, it should look something like: "C:\Guild Wars\Gw.exe" -perfs Tri: Keeps track of the number of polygons currently drawn by your 3D accelerator. FPS: frames per second, how many times a new wonderful picture is presented on your screen per second. Bytes/sec: Network traffic monitor, how much data you're downloading per second. This is usually from people moving, fighting, and whatnot. But sometimes you're streaming some other data as well. - o x : Standard windows buttons, minimize, windowed mode, and close. xp : This transparent bar shows your level and progress towards your next level or if you're already lvl 20: your progress towards you next skill point. 4 : Radar/compass, in PvE, yellow dots/triangles are NPCs, green dots are you and your party, red dots are cannon fodder. A compass appears around this. You can click on it to signal and draw on it to draw white lines. In outposts and cities, light blue dots. The small white circle around your character represents the area in which monsters will become aggressive towards you. 5 : Party window, displays party members and their HP, your status is also displayed there in case you don't have time to look down. 6 : This button makes a larger chat window appear, where you can see a history Which you can scroll though. The tilde button(~) also activates this. 7 : Health, and Energy bars. Arrows left of MP/energy mean they're slowly degenerating, while arrows on the right side mean they're regenerating. The effect of each arrow is 2 per second for health, and 0.66 per second for energy. The space above this is reserved for displaying the current spells with and upkeep you have active, which go at the cost of 1 energy regen arrow. Double click the icons to turn those enchantments off. More about "upkeep" can be found in the Skill Legend section. Menu: "Start menu" opens various windows: From top to bottom: Customize, Inventory, Attributes, Skills, Map Travel, Quest Log, Friends, Guild, LogOut. From the customize menu, you can toggle almost every aspect of the UI on or off, you'll also be able to move and resize everything separately. The rest is fairly self-explanatory. 8 : Your equipped skills, click the buttons or press 1-8 to use them. 9 : These bubbles show your "weapon sets", by default you can toggle between them with the F1-4 keys. To activate these you might have to go to manually enable more by going to your inventory screen and pressing the "Weapon Sets" button. ___________ ___/3.1.1 Menus\______________________________________________________________ Below is a list of all the ingame menus and their functions, with their default key in brackets. --------- Customize --------- This menu allows you to resize and toggle every aspect of your Interface (explained above), and even allows you to hide certain elements completely. -------- Hero [H] -------- At the top, you'll see your name(in case you forgot it), your classes, your level, skill points, rank and fame. You can mouse-over the numbers in the last 4 area for some quick info, or just continue reading. Your level will never change after you get it to 20, more on that in the Basic Mechanics section, under Experience. You will get a skill point for every mission you complete, certain quests, and also every time you fill your experience bar, even if you are lvl 20, more on this can also be found in the Experience section in Basic Mechanics. You get Fame for winning matches in the "Tomb of Primeval Kings" which is the every-ongoing tournament in this game. For each match you win, you will gain fame depending on how many consecutive wins you've got so far, which will reset if you warp back to the entrance of the tombs or if you team loses. The first win gets you 1 fame 2nd win: 2 fame 3rd win: 3 fame 4th win: 4 fame 5th win: 6 fame 6th win: 8 fame 7th win: 12 fame 8th win: 16 fame 9th win: 20 fame 10th win: 24 fame 11th win: 28 fame 12th win: 32 fame 13th win: 36 fame 14th win: 40 fame 15th win: 40 fame every win after that: also 40 fame. This means that if you win 10 times in 1 run, you'll have gotten 96 fame! Your rank will increase at certain fame levels. If you have rank 3 or higher, you'll be able to use the /fame or /rank command, which at that point will make you conjure up a very nice deer hologram. At rank 6 or higher, this will turn into a howling wolf. There is also a bear, rumor is that this is at rank 9 or even higher. Can anyone confirm this? The fame requirements for the ranks are: 25 fame: rank 1 75: rank 2 180: rank 3 360: rank 4 600: rank 5 1000: rank 6 After this, you will need close to or at least 1000 fame for each rank, I'm not sure what the highest rank or its requirement is. Rank and fame is account based, so if you have 200 fame and rank 3 on 1 character, you will have that on all of them. The bar below this will display your total number of experience points acquired with your character. When the bar is completely colored green, you will gain a new level or a skill point if you are already lvl 20. If you hold your mouse over this area, you will be told how much more exp you will need to fill up the bar. More on experience can be found in the Experience section under Game Mechanics. Everything below this is to keep track of attribute related information. You can get up to 170 attribute points by leveling up. The first 9 levels will get you 5 points each, the next 5 will give you 10, and the 5 after that 15. The remaining 30 points can be obtained through 2 quests(15 points each) after ascending. By positioning your mouse on top of the points box you can see your total number of attribute points. Your attribute refund points allow you to lower your attributes by 1 level at any time. Doing this will give you back all of the attribute points you spend to raise it for the level you took away. Feel free to use this as much as you want, it will not have any long-term negative effects. You will get a new attribute refund point for every 250 experience points you gain, through any means, even after you reach lvl 20! Below this are you actual attributes and their levels, to learn more about what each attribute does scroll down to the "characters" chapter of this guide, or mouse-over the name of the attribute in the menu. The arrows allow you to increase or decrease that attribute as long as you have enough attribute points, and the number on the arrow will tell you how many attribute points you will lose or gain. The requirements in attribute points for each level, followed by the total number of attribute points required for that level: | Level | Points | Total | |------------------------| | 1 | 1 | 1 | | 2 | 2 | 3 | | 3 | 3 | 6 | | 4 | 4 | 10 | | 5 | 5 | 15 | | 6 | 6 | 21 | | 7 | 7 | 28 | | 8 | 9 | 37 | | 9 | 11 | 48 | | 10 | 13 | 61 | | 11 | 16 | 77 | | 12 | 20 | 97 | The normal cap for an attribute level is 12, but if the attribute is of your primary profession, you'll be able to use a headgear to raise 1 attribute 1 more level. There are also runes which can give 1, 2, or 3 to an attribute, but the +2 and +3 ones come at a penalty. These runes do not stack, and the limit is 1 per armor piece. This allows you to get an attribute to 16. Aside from a couple of temporary skills that raise it a bit, and weapon upgrades which have a small(max of 20%) chance of raising it by 1 for skills of a certain attribute, 16 is the highest. ------------- Inventory [I] ------------- You can see your gold and platinum in the top left corner, the grey bar stands for platinum, which is the same as 1K (1 000) gold. You can also toggle the "Weapons Sets" from this menu. Below are spots for your Backpack, Belt Pouch, and two bags. You start off with the backpack, which has 20 spaces for items. You can get Belt Pouches pouch from a collectors in the newbie area, or any merchant after that. These have 5 Slots. You can buy bags from any merchant after the searing as well, these start out with 5 slots but both can be upgraded to 10 slots by using a rune of holding. ------------------- Inventory Bags [F9] ------------------- This is the only way to open all 4 item containers at once, and will also not display a paper doll and current equipment on your character. ---------- Skills [K] ---------- This is a list of all your currently known skills. When in a non-hostile area, such as mission ready-areas or outposts, you can drag skills to your bar of currently equipped skills. For more information about skills, check the "Skill Types" and "Skill Legend" sections in the "Characters" chapter. ------------- Quest Log [L] ------------- Used to keep track of the Quests and/or Mission you are currently on. By selecting a quest on the list, in certain areas, a green arrow on the radar will tell you in which direction your goal or the area with your goal is, but trying to walk there in a straight line isn't always best. The arrow will become a green star shaped marker when you get close to your target, this green star will also appear on the travel and area maps. If neither of these appears, it's because the place you are in has no advise on where to go for you, try going to the area where you got the quest and maybe explore around there a little, or just check the quests section of this guide. If something goes wrong during a quest, like by an important NPC dying or if you lose a quest item, try going back to the last NPC you spoke to and asking him about the quest, you might get another one of that item or the NPC might be revived by this. If all fails, go to a city or outpost and Abandon the quest, you can always get the quest again by talking to the NPC you obtained it from -------------- Map Travel [M] -------------- This will bring up the World Map, which is mainly used to track your current position and warp around to outposts, cities, missions, and competitive areas around the world. After the newbie area, you can zoom in and out with the left mouse, and move the focus while zoomed in by holding the right mouse. You can warp to places by clicking on a marker, which will bring up a small information box, with buttons to travel to that area and cancel. You can select a specific district to warp to from a drop down box. You can warp to a location quicker by simple double clicking the marker. While zoomed out, gold pins are cities, white pins are missions, red pins are competitive areas, and the green pin is your Guild Hall if you have one. While zoomed in, Cities appear as a large white circle with the symbol of a tower or maybe a shield with crenels, and have a golden broader. Outpost appear as a small white golden bordered circle. Competitive areas have a black symbol on a white marker with a red border. Mission areas appear as shields, a sword with the handle on the top left of this shield means the mission has been completed and a sword with the handle on the top right means the bonus objective has been completed. Your Guild Hall is a white icon with a green border. The tiny white vortexes are the barrier gateways that separate explorable areas. ------------ Map Area [U] ------------ This will display a smaller version of the World Map, which can be resized and scrolled around in at will with the left mouse button. In explorable and missions areas, a trail of red dots will show you which path you've bee traveling. ----------- Friends [N] ----------- This will help you track the whether or not your friends, or anyone for that matter, are online. This menu also doubles as the place for your Ignore list, which will block out private messages from the people you add. You can remove people by through the menu that appears when you click the head icon next to their name. --------- Guild [G] --------- This menu has 2 tabs, I'll start with the first one: Guild Roster. This shows the Leader, Officers, and normal Members of the guild, and the box below that shows the people who are being Invited to the Guild. Many of the functions available to you are used by clicking the little head shaped button next to your name or the name of someone else in the Guild. Guild Leaders can invite people to the guild, kick people, promote people to Officer, and promote people to Guild Leader. But they can't leave the guild unless they are the only member left in it. Guild Officers can do anything Guild Leaders can do, except promote people to leader, of course. They can also leave the guild at will. The only think Normal Members can do from this menu is leave the Guild. On this tab you can also see the current Rank your guild has on the ladder, and the rating of your guild. Both of these are only changed by doing Guild VS Guild matches from the Guild Hall, which you can get from the Cathan Ferry Captain in the southwest of Lions Arch, which in turn requires you to have a Celestial Sigil. Celestial Sigils can be won if you reach the Hall of Heroes in the Tombs of Primeval Kings(A PvP tournament) or by buying one from another player or NPC. The Guild Status tab displays the current guild Announcement, as well as a log of recent member changes and Guild vs Guild results. --------- Party [P] --------- This will actually de-activate the party menu normally placed on the right side of the screen. When in mission, explorable area, or competitive area, this will allow you to keep track of the HP of your allies, as well as select them quickly. When in an outpost, city, or ready-area for a mission or competitive area, you will be able to invite people to your party through this window, or join an existing party. You can type the name of the person you want to invite in the box that appears here, or select them in the world itself. If you want to quickly invite someone who just send a chat message, click on his name in the chat log, then select the name in the whisper box that appears, now you can cut(ctrl+x) or copy(ctrl+c) that name, and paste it into the box in the party menu. This works with public chat messages as well as private messages. Finally, if someone is requesting to join your party, you will see the name of that person an area below that, to accept the invitation just click the name followed by the accept button. As a party leader, you can kick anyone out of the party while still in the outpost, but this is not possible if you go into a hostile area. --------------- Score Chart [O] --------------- This is only available in competitive areas. This will show you(in great detail) the combined health of every member of every team in the same area as you in the form of a graph, color coded by team. You are also able to see a graph of the combined death penalty of each team. This is very important, and you probably want to have a person in your team keeping track of this chart, to improve your overall decision making. This will also help you see if any nearly vanquished teams still have members scattered around, and if their graph suddenly rises after you think you've won, it probably means that a run-away is rezzing his team members, and that you need to kill him ASAP. ------------- Options [F11] ------------- Here's you'll find all the media and other technical client side settings that don't directly affect the game world. In the top section you're able to select a language(English, Korean, French, German, Italian, Spanish, or Bork! Bork! Bork!(this last one is a joke language based on the Swedish chef from the muppets). Below that you can select a Chat filter level, with normal and maximum some offensive words will be replaced by "----" in the chat, with the filter on none all of these words will be displayed normally. The Graphics Options are all fairly self explanatory, Anti-Aliasing is a rendering technique that makes everything smoother, and "post-process effects" is a collection of rendering techniques that will result in making everything more pretty looking. Finally, Control Setup is where you can re-map most of the controls in this game and the number below it is the "build"(version) of the client you're currently using. %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% *3.2 Keyboard & Mouse * %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% All of these(except mouse) can be configured through the options menu, but I'll list the default controls for the sake of completeness: ___________ ___/3.2.1 Mouse\______________________________________________________________ Left Mouse Button: Move/Select/action/attack. Clicking a non hostile NPC will make you talk to it, clicking a monster will make you attack it normally, clicking an interactive object in the game world will make your character walk up to it and press/activate/open it. Clicking on the ground will make you move to that location. Right Mouse Button: Holding this will allow you to rotate the camera. Middle/3rd/mouse wheel: Holding this down while moving your mouse allows you to zoom in and out, you can scroll up and down to make you zoom in and out. ______________ _________________/3.2.2 Keyboard\_____________________________________________ These controls can a bit strange and sometimes awkward, they might or might not be good for you at all. If the latter is true, you can complete re-configure these keys in the options menu. ---Movement W/A/S/D or arrow keys: As you can probably guess, these will allow you to move or to be more precise, move forward and backward. Left/right or A/D will rotate your character, but while if you're holing your right mouse button these keys will make your strafe. Q and E: Strafe left and right, it might be a little hard to adapt at first. But you're going to want to do this as soon as possible. R: Run forward automatically, canceled by up/down, clicking on any ground or pressing R again. X: Make a 180 degree turn with the camera and also makes you face that way. ---Functions Spacebar: "Do it" key, will perform the default action on the target you have selected, such as attacking or following. 1-8: Pressing these numbers will make you use the skill equipped to that slot on your target. If you try using a skill that only works on allies with an enemy selected, you will automatically use it on yourself. Escape: Cancel current action. Enter: Start chat input. ~: Open full chat window. Ctrl: Quick chat, explained below. Also shows enemies/players in town. Z: Reverses the camera, directional movement still acts as if your camera was facing forward. Backspace: Will allow you to reply to the last person that send you a message. ---Selection F: Select your own character. F1 - F8: Select party member according to the list on the right side of your screen. Shift: If you hold shift while clicking something you will only select, and not preform an action on your target(such as attacking or talking). Ctrl: Shows hostile monsters and players. Also used for quick chat. Alt: Shows interactive object, NPCs, and signs. C: Will select the hostile closest to you. V: Target nearest friendly. TAB: Will cycle forward in selection, also works with Shift, Ctrl, and Alt. Shift+Tab: Cycle backwards in selection, also works with Shift, Ctrl, and Alt. [ and ]: Same as TAB and Shift+Tab respectively. T: Select the "called" target, if someone in your party used quick chat to attack or select an enemy, pressing T will make you select the same target. ---Windows H: Displays character info and attributes. K: Displays your skill library. I: Shows your inventory. L: Brings up the quest log. M: Shows you the world map. U: Shows a smaller map of the world that you can re-size or scroll around in. N: Opens your friend list. G: Brings up the guild menu. P: Hides the party list. O: In PvP, this gives you the Score charts. F5: Opens Backpack F6: Opens Belt Pouch F7: Opens Bag 1 F8: Opens Bag 2 F9: Opens backpack+pouch+bags F11: Makes your options screen come up. F12: Gives you a "Log out [yes/no]" dialog. alt+f4: Logs you out without asking. Ctrl+shift+H: Hides your entire interface. %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% *3.3 Chat commands* %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% ______________ _/3.3.1 channels\______________________________________________________________ Public: ! or shift+1 by default Send a message to everyone in the area, this is useful for taunting your opponents in the arenas... I'm not trying to give you any ideas or anything. Guild: @ or shift+2 by default Very self explanatory, sends a message to all your online guild members. Party: # or shift+3 by default Typing this will send a message to only your party members. Trade: $ or shift+4 by default This channel is off by default, people use this channel instead of the public one to sell, buy, or trade items. Private: "Character Name [tab] message Typing this will send a private message to the person you want to annoy, no matter where he is in the world, as long as he's online. After you press ", you can just type the name or sometimes use the up-down arrows to select the name of a person you previously whispered. Alternate ways of sending people a private message are pressing Backspace after they message you, or clicking on their name in the chat window. ____________ ________________/3.3.2 emotes\_________________________________________________ There are plenty of emotes, also known as actions, to be preformed in this game I misplaced my full list, so here are the ones I remember off the top of my head for now. Your character will perform an animation and a white message to clarify this will appear in the public channel. /point [your name here] points. /wave [your name here] waves. /cheer [your name here] cheers. /jump [your name here] jumps. /bow [your name here] bows. /moan [your name here] moans. /roar [your name here] roars. /salute [your name here] salutes. /laugh [your name here] laughs heartily. /beckon. [your name here] beckons. /dance [your name here] starts dancing. /sit or /afk No message, you'll just sit. /kneel [your name here] kneels. /fistshake [your name here] shakes a fist angrily. /shoo [your name here] shoos you away. /yes [your name here] says, "yes." /no [your name here] says, "no." /doh [your name here] smacks his head. Doh! /agree [your name here] agrees. /bowhead [your name here] bows (his/her) head. /sigh [your name here] sighs. /bored [your name here] is bored. /yawn [your name here] yawns. /pout [your name here] pouts. /ponder [your name here] ponders the situation. /clap [your name here] claps. /cough [your name here] coughs. /congrats or /grats [your name here] offers congratulations. /chest [your name here] butts chests with you. /goteam [your name here] cheers wildly, "Go team!" /highfive [your name here] says, "High five!" /pickme [your name here] says, "Pick me!" /help [your name here] requests help! /catchbreath or /breath [your name here] stops to catch (his/her) breath. /guitar [your name here] plays a mean air guitar. /violin [your name here] plays the violin sadly. /drums [your name here] plays the drums. /flute [your name here] plays the flute. /flex [your name here] flexes. /taunt or /rude [your name here] taunts you. /doubletake [your name here] does a double take. /attention [your name here] comes to attention! /sorry [your name here] apologizes. /boo [your name here] scares you! /ready [your name here] is ready for action. /fame or rank Makes you do a gesture and conjures up a shiny deer head, very fancy but requires you to have at least a rank of 3, which requires 180 fame. /rock or /paper or /scissors [your name here] plays rock, paper, scissors. the end of the animation will differ depending on which command you used. Other commands that don't fit in anywhere else: /hp displays your current/max health and energy /age displays how many hours and minutes you've used this character, and how long ago you made it /deaths shows how many times you've died /preorder if you pre-ordered the game, this command will place all pre-order items you have available on your account into your inventory, if there is enough space. /petname or /namepet This command, followed by a name of a maximum of 12 characters, allows you to change the name of your pet, if you have one. ________________ ______________________________/3.3.3 quick chat\_______________________________ Very useful feature, but it can still be annoying if abused, so don't! Quick chat is preformed by holding down CTRL while you input a command. Here are all the possibilities: Ctrl + double click a monster, monster name, or monster health bar [your character name]: I'm attacking [monster name]! Ctrl + 1-8 [your character name]: I'm using [skill name]{ on [target name]}! Ctrl + double click on allied NPC or player, name, or health bar. [your character name]: I'm following [name of person you're stalking]! Ctrl + spacebar this depends on what you have selected and what you are doing. It displays your current action. If you have selected something you will start preforming the action as if you just pressed the spacebar by itself(such as attacking or following a target" On dead bodies this shows a message about that what you have selected is dead. Ctrl + shift + click As you know, holding shift enables you to select hostile creatures without attacking, holding ctrl while clicking sends a quick message about this. Ctrl + shift + spacebar Will let your team know what you're selecting, without automatically performing the default action on it. Ctrl + click on an enchantment, condition, hex, or other effect. See the on screen display, this will let your team know that the effect you clicked on is active on you. Ctrl + click on HP or energy. Will let your team know your current and max HP/Energy. Ctrl+clicking on your HP bar while you're dead lets your team know about your unfortunate condition, if you think they can't tell by your empty HP bar in the party window. Ctrl + click on experience bar. Will let your team know your level, and how far you are towards getting your next level in the form of a percentage. Ctrl + click on weapon bubbles. Will tell your team exactly what your weapon and off-hand item are. After you use this to mark or "call" a target, all of your party members will be able to quickly select that target by clicking the target icon next to your name in the party menu, or by pressing the "Priority Target" key, which is "T" by default. Henchmen also respond to some of these commands, by giving priority to the target you called. KillerTruffle from the gamefaqs forum pointed out that Alesia(the healer hench) will also give priority to resurrecting you if you give the "I'm dead" quick chat command. %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% *3.4 Basic Mechanics* %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% ____________ _/3.4.1 Status\________________________________________________________________ Health: ------- This red bar symbolizes your life force. More often than not, getting hit by an attack or skill will cause you to lose a number of health points. The main factor in determining your health is your level, every time you gain a new experience level, your max health will increase by 20 points. The formula is 80+(lvl*20), which means that since you start at level one, you start with 100 health points. From there you gain 19 new experience levels, which puts you at 480 base health at level 20. Certain skills allow you to get a certain number of health regeneration arrows, each of these arrows symbolizes a health gain of 2 health per second. These arrows appear on the right side of your health number. Certain hexes and conditions that can affect you will give you a certain number of degeneration arrows instead, each of theses arrows, like with regeneration, symbolize a loss of 2 health per second. These arrows appear on the left side of your health number. When your health reaches 0, you die. Energy: ------- The blue bar represents your energy supply, which is required by almost every skill in this game. Everyone has a base energy of 20, although most armor in the game will increase this. Casters(all classes except rangers and warriors) get certain off-hand items for most of their attributes which will also increase your energy supply. The regular energy total with armor included for each class is below, followed by their energy totals with other armor sets between the parentheses. Warrior : 20 (Gladiator set: 28) Ranger : 25 (Druid set: 32) Elementalist : 30 (they don't have armor that changes their max energy) Monk : 30 (Ascetic(tattoo) set: 38; Judge set: 26) Mesmer : 30 (Enchanter set: 37; Rogue set: 26) Necromancer : 30 (Scar(tattoo) set: 37) The reason some of these differ 1 point is because certain sets also have a headgear item which gives an extra point of energy, but it's far more beneficial to take headgear which gives a +1 to an attribute in most cases. The arrows to the right of the max energy number symbolize energy regeneration. The base if 2 for all classes, but with their armor on, warriors still have 2, rangers have 3, and the 4 other classes(the "casters") have 4, Each arrow is good for 0.66 energy per second. Some spells might cause your energy to degenerate slowly by taking away regen arrows, if it falls below 0 you will slowly lose energy at the rate of 3 per second for each arrow on the left of the number. Death: ------ In this game, death is not always the end. In fact, if your brought a monk or the healer henchman along, you will probably be resurrected before too long. Non-monks will only be able to rez once per "game" normally, using a skill called Resurrection Signet. This skill does recharge every time you kill a boss, however, so it's likely that you'll be able to use this multiple times. If your entire team dies in an explorable area: don't worry, you will be resurrected automatically at the nearest resurrection shrine. If your entire team dies in a mission: do worry, because you don't get a second chance at a mission short from having to return to the mission ready area and starting the entire thing over. Except for in the training area, every time you die you get a death penalty of 15%. Death Penalty & Moral Boost: ---------------------------- When you die, you get temporarily weakened by a death penalty of 15%, this DP means that your health and energy are lowered by that percentage. Dying once or twice in your journey somewhere won't hurt much, although you have to be a little more careful, the same basic strategies that get you though a mission will still be possible with a DP. However, if this DP becomes larger than 30, it's a definite signal that you rethink your strategy, or try a different approach all together. The highest death penalty you can get is 60%, if you get this in the Tombs of Primeval Kings or a Guild vs Guild match, reaching that % will prevent you from resurrecting automatically every 2 minutes. In PvE, you slowly recover from this penalty by killing monsters, killing a boss will instantly recover 2%, and will even give you a morale boos if you don't have a death penalty. A morale boost is the opposite of death penalty, it gives you extra health and energy, up to a limit of 10%. In some missions, doing certain objective related tasks gives you a small boost of 2% towards your DP recovery or morale boost as well. In PvP, you recover that DP a little bit by killing enemies, in the tombs you can get a morale boost of 10% instantly(or recover 10% DP) by killing the enemy Ghostly Hero. In GvG, holding the flag stand for 2 minutes will give you a moral boost of 10% as well. You can keep track of your death penalty/morale boost through the icon in the effects monitor area of your UI. Conditions: ----------- Conditions are negative side-effects caused by some skills. Conditions are never hexes, and hexes are never conditions, they are 2 completely different effects. Now, a brief run-down of all conditions in the game, and the effect you are under while suffering from that condition: Bleeding : 3 arrows of health degeneration. Blind : 90% chance to miss with all "attacks". Burning : 7 arrows of health degeneration. Crippled : 50% slower movement speed. Dazed : slower cast speed, additionally causes your spells to get interrupted by all normal hits. Deep Wound : 20% lower max health, also lowers benefit from healing by that percentage. Diseased : 4 arrows of health degeneration, this condition spreads to anyone (even party members) as soon as they come close enough to you. Poison : 4 arrows of health degeneration. Weakness : 66% damage penalty for all attacks. Master Nightfall informed me that this damage penalty is only for the base damage for attacks, and is applied before armor. Conditions will appear in the effects monitor area of your UI. Experience: ----------- This one is probably more complicated than all of the above combined, but since I want this version submitted by the end of the day, I'll keep it as short as possible and expand on it later. By default, you'll find a transparent bar somewhere in the top left area of your UI, this bar will slowly fill up and be colored green as you gain experience points. Every time you level up, you will gain 20 extra max health points. Every time you level up, you get a skill point. Every time you level up until lvl 10, you will gain 5 Attribute points. Every time you level up from 11 to 15 you will receive 10 Attribute points. And for the next 5 levels, until lvl 20, you will get 15 Attribute points. The highest level you can reach is 20. At this point you will no longer get attribute points of health from leveling up. However, you can still continue to gain experience points, and you will also keep filling up that bar, and every time that bar fills, you will still get an extra additional point. Reaching lvl 2 from lvl 1 takes 2 000 experience points, and every level after that you will have to gain the same amount experience points as you had to get for your previous level, plus an extra 600. EG, to get each level, starting at 0% in your exp bar, you'll need this many more experience points: lvl 2: 2 000 lvl 3: 2 600 lvl 4: 3 200 ... lvl 19: 12 200 lvl 20: 12 800 After this, each time you fill your exp bar, you'll need to get that much exp once more with an additional 600 exp again to fill it up again. That makes the formula for exp to the next level: 2 000 + (A - 1)*600, where A is the amount of times you filled up your exp bar already. Keep in mind that for the sake of this formula, you didn't have to fill up your exp bar to reach lvl 1. The most exp you'll ever need to level up is (the following information was gathered by Tarrant from gwonline.net) To get experience from killing monsters, you have to be on the hostile list for that monster, you get on this list either by using a skill on it, attacking it, having it in your aggro range(that circular gray area on your radar), or by using a skill on an ally that's on the hostile list of that monster already. (source of information for this last paragraph: gwonline.net) +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 4. Characters +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ An important part of any RPG are its characters, Guild Wars is no exception. Before you even start you have to make what could be the single most important decision in the entire game: your primary profession. Early on in the newbie area, you'll obtain a secondary profession. Your secondary class gives you access to all of the skills of that class, and all but one of the attributes of that class. This is because each class has 1 attribute that is only available to your character if that class is your primary one; furthermore, you can still only wear armor of your primary class. Armour available to your profession not only affects your Armour Level(which modifies the damage you take from most skills), but also determines your energy regeneration and your maximum energy. The final difference is what runes you'll be able to take: because you can only use runes of your primary class, with the exception of the Vigor runes, which add health to any class. Even though every class combination has builds that make them viable for both PvE and PvP(Although Some classes being better suited to certain PvE areas then others), you'll have to think carefully about what exactly it is you want to do in combat. Obviously, a warrior/elementalist can't use spells as its main damage source because of the lacking energy supply(unless you are willing to get creative with some of the late game abilities). You should also note that there are also less obvious situations where different class combinations can either make you very good or very bad at certain things. You'll want to take a secondary class that compliments what you want to do with your primary class best, because it's usually not a good idea to make a character that has multiple tasks, unless one of those tasks requires very little energy and/or time. %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% *4.1 Brief Profession summary * %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% _____________ _/4.1.1 Warrior\______________________________________________________________ ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ Master of close combat, the only class that can unlock the full potential of melee weapons. Also have access to the "Tactics" attribute and line of skills, which are mainly used in defense or as utilities to increase your effectiveness in combat, and allows you to use some of the better shields. All 3 weapons are, of course, meant to get up close and deal some damage, although the weapons have different means of accomplishing that goal. For example: Hammers have higher damage and several knock-down skills, but attack relatively slow and are two-handed. Primary warriors get access to the Strength attribute, which not only gives you some armor penetration, but also allows you to maximize the effects of strength attribute skills, and allows you to use shields that require strength instead of tactics. Their armor doesn't give them any extra energy regeneration, limiting them to only 2 arrows, but the Armor Level(damage modifier) is matched by none. -Attributes- Swordsmanship: Increases damage output and with swords. Also increases the effectiveness of Swordsmanship skills. Axe Mastery: Increases damage output with axes. Also increases the effectiveness of Axe Mastery skills. Hammer Mastery: Increases damage output with hammers. Also increases the effectiveness of Hammer Mastery skills. Tactics: Increases the effectiveness of Tactics skills. Strength(primary class only): Increases the effectiveness of Strength skills. Additionally, Each level of this attribute will give you 1% armor penetration. Master Nightfall pointed out that the armor penetration gained from this attribute might only work with skills. ____________ __________________/4.1.2 Ranger\______________________________________________ ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ Even though they don't cost energy and have a long range, bows attack slowly and don't have the natural damage to compensate for it. Instead, rangers will be able to boost their damage with various preparations they can add to their normal attacks to suit their current needs, and also have a wide array of attack skills which they can spam to further increase their damage out-put. Furthermore, rangers also have a lot of defensive and utility skill, allowing them to deal with a lot of different situations, making this class very versatile. Some rangers will also dabble in beast mastery, which allows them to send an animal into battle to act as a source of damage or even as just a distraction. But keep in mind that if you have marksmanship, expertise, and wilderness survival, your beast mastery will not be high enough to make it worth it to waste a skill slot with charm animal(the skill that makes you take an animal into combat). Primary Rangers also get access to the Expertise attribute, which not only has some useful skills associated with it, but can potentially cut the cost of most Ranger skills(and a very small number of skills from other classes) in half! This allows primary rangers to use ranger skills many times more effectively than any other class could. In fact, without expertise, Rangers will feel a huge lack in the energy department. Their armor provides moderate defense against physical attacks, but exceptional protection against elemental damage. Their energy supply is right between warriors and casters, with 3 arrows, but their expertise attribute makes up for that. -Attributes- Beast Mastery: Increases the effectiveness of Beast Mastery skills. Additionally, it increases the damage and critical chance of your Animal companion. Wilderness Survival: Increases the effectiveness of Wilderness Survival skills. Marksmanship: Increases damage output and critical chance with bows. Also increases the effectiveness of Marksmanship skills. Expertise(primary class only): Increases the effectiveness of Expertise skills. __________ ___________________________________/4.1.3 Monk\_______________________________ ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ Monks are, in all honesty, the backbone of almost any team in this game. It is usually the task of the monks, with their powerful healing and protection spells, to keep teams alive in combat. Monks can also go the way of Smiting, which allows them to deal damage instead of healing their team. Primary Monks get the benefit of Divine Favor, which makes their healing even more powerful, and gives them access to many useful skills. Their armor gives them 4 energy regeneration arrows, like all casters. Their max energy is also average for all casters, although they have the option to sacrifice max energy in exchange for extra physical defense, or vice versa. -Attributes- Healing Prayers: Increases the effectiveness of Healing Prayers skills. Smiting Prayers: Increases the effectiveness of Smiting Prayers skills. Protection Prayers: Increases the effectiveness of Protection Prayers skills. Divine Favor(primary class only): Increases the effectiveness of Divine Favor skills. Additionally, every time you cast a spell on an ally, they will be healed 3 points for each level of Divine Favor. _________________ _________________________________________________/4.1.4 Necromancer\__________ ŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻŻ Necromancers revolve around causing massive death and decay to their enemies. Necromancers also have the ability to exploit corpses for various tasks, such as create life-recovering pools or creating undead minions to do their bidding. Some Necromancers will also use spells that sap their own health in order to achieve something. Whether it be damaging or weakening enemies or boosting the power of allies. Primary Necromancers have access to the Soul Reaping attribute. This attribute does not have any skills linked to it, but in situations with enemies dying all around you, having a high rank in this attribute will provide a very nice energy supply for the Necromancer. Their armor provides Necromancer with 4 energy regeneration arrows, their actual supply of energy varies from set to set, but is usually around the same as other casters, as is their defense. -Attributes- Blood Magic: Increases the effectiveness of Blood Magic skills. Death Magic: Increases the effectiveness of Death Magic skills. Curses: Increases the effectiveness of Curses skills. Soul Reaping(primary class only): Whenever something or someone dies near you, you get 1 energy for each level of Soul Reaping. ______________________________________________________________________________ ____________ _/4.1.5 Mesmer\_______________________________________________________________ Mesmers are all about controlling the flow of battle, usually dealing indirect damage through hexes, or using hexes to prevent people or monsters from using skills or preventing them from attacking altogether. As a Mesmer, you have to anticipate what enemies might throw at you, then build your character in a way so it is able to respond to those situations. Although their attributes all share a theme, they serve many different purposes, as even within the same attribute, different skills allow you to deal with completely different situations. These things make Mesmers a lot of things, but not straight-forward, meaning they are hard to learn and master, thus not making them the best choice for new players. Although you might still want to use Mesmer as a secondary, for their utility spells, which can be useful in many situations. Primary Mesmers have access to the Fast Casting attribute, which allows them to (surprise) cast spells faster. There is no simple increase with each level, as the decrease varies with each level in this attribute, and even varies depending on what the base casting time is. Still, the change in casting speed is very noticeable, even without putting a lot of points into the attribute. Mesmer armor, like all caster armor, gives them 4 arrows of energy regen. Their average energy bonus from armor is also the same as other casters, although they can sacrifice defense for more energy, or vice versa. -Attributes- Illusion Magic: Increases the effectiveness of Illusion Magic skills. Domination Magic: Increases the effectiveness of Domination Magic skills. Inspiration Magic: Increases the effectiveness of Inspiration Magic skills. Fast Casting(primary class only): Each level in this attribute will reduce casting time for spells. This attribute only has 1 skill linked to it. ______________________________________________________________________________ __________________ _________________/4.1.6 Elementalist\_________________________________________ Elementalists are the guys that cast spells which usually have one thing in common: causing a lot of damage, with some utility spells on the side. Each element has a slightly different approach, though, Air magic spells usually revolve around doing maximal damage against a single target, Water magic often slowing targets down, and Fire magic provides players with a lot of area of effect spells. Earth magic, though, has the most powerful defensive spells an Elementalist has access to, but also provides some unique ways to damage opponents. Primary Elementalists get access to the Energy Storage attribute, which doesn't give them more energy that other classes without using Ether Renewal or Ether Prodigy, but it does allow them to cast multiple high-energy spells quickly one after the other without having to wait for their energy to recover in between. Elementalist armor also gives 4 energy regeneration arrows, and all of their armor sets give the same average energy bonus. Each set, however, gives them additional defense from a specific element. But keep in mind that the only way to significantly increase the number of spells you can cast in long fights, you need Glyphs, attunement spells, or ether prodigy/renewal. -Attributes- Air Magic: Increases the effectiveness of Air Magic skills. Earth Magic: Increases the effectiveness of Earth Magic skills. Fire Magic: Increases the effectiveness of Fire Magic skills. Water Magic: Increases the effectiveness of Water Magic skills. Energy Storage: Each level of Energy Storage gives you 3 extra energy points. Also Increases the effectiveness of Energy Storage skills. %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% *4.2 Skill Types* %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% There are many different kinds of skills, all with their own specific rules. The skill types also come into play with certain other skills, which might only affect skills of certain types. ------- Skills: ------- Almost every skill is considered a skill, the only exception is in most cases, signets aren't affected or don't trigger skills that affect or are triggered by "skills". Spells always fall under the skills category. But far from all skills fall under the spells category, as you'll see below. This is important when it comes to spells such as backfire, which is only triggered by spells, not by all skills. -------- Signets: -------- Signets all have 1 thing in common: they don't cost anything to use. Other than that, signets usually aren't considered "skills" when it comes to spells such as blackout or diversion. -------------- Attack Skills: -------------- This is more of a family, very few skills are actually attack skills, but many other skills fall under the attack skill category. Spells such as diversion, which target skills, are also triggered by attack skills. Spells such as Judge's Insight, which affect attacks, are triggered by attack skills as well. But spells such as backfire, which only target spells, are not triggered by attack skills. -------------- Melee Attacks: -------------- All rules from attack skills apply, additionally, these skills can only be used with a sword, axe, or hammer equipped. -------------- Sword Attacks: -------------- All rules from attack skills apply, additionally, these skills can only be used with a sword equipped. ------------ Axe Attacks: ------------ All rules from attack skills apply, additionally, these skills can only be used with an axe equipped. --------------- Hammer Attacks: --------------- All rules from attack skills apply, additionally, these skills can only be used with a (guess what), hammer equipped. ------------ Bow Attacks: ------------ All rules from attack skills apply, additionally, these skills can only be used with a (surprise surprise), bow equipped. ------------ Sword Skill: ------------ These 2 skills can only be used with a sword, but don't count as an attack. These skills are not attacks. ------- Spells: ------- Everyone reading this should know what a spell is. All spells(unless specified otherwise) have exactly the same range. A lot of spells are to cause direct damage, but the vast majority serve many other purposes. All spells cost energy and have a casting time and casting animation, even if it's a very short one. Not all spells have a recharge time, although most do. ------------------- Enchantment Spells: ------------------- Everything that affects spells, also affects enchantments being cast. There are, however, many skills that will only affect enchantments. Enchantments always provide some kind of beneficial effect for the person it's cast on. Some enchantments can only be cast on other allies, while some can only be cast on yourself. Most of them can be cast on both. ----------- Hex Spells: ----------- Hex Spells are very much like enchantments, but skills that are only triggered by enchantments are, of course, not triggered by hexes, and vice versa. The difference is that hexes are always negative, and can only be cast on your enemies. -------- Stances: -------- When you activate a stance skill, you immediately gain the benefit from it until it runs out. You can only ever have one stance active at a time, if you try using a new stance with another one still active, the first one will end. ------------- Preparations: ------------- Preparations add some kind of benefit to all of your attacks, including attack skills. You can only have 1 preparation active at any time, if you try activating a 2nd preparations with another one still being active, the 1st one will cancel. ------- Shouts: ------- There are many different types of shouts, some boost allies around you, while some have a negative effect on enemies around you. Other shouts will add some kind of positive effect on only your pet. These are never spells or enchantments, but are still skills. ------- Glyphs: ------- Glyphs are utility spells used exclusively by Elementalists. All Glyphs have 2 distinctive thing in common: they only affect the next spell that you cast, and none of them are tied to an attribute, making them effective with all elements, or even no element at all(except for Glyph of Elemental Power). ------------ Pet Attacks: ------------ These skills will add something to the next attack of your pet, activating a pet attack will not trigger anything triggered by an attack activate on you. --------------- Nature Rituals: --------------- These skills are not spells, but they will summon a spirit at your current position. These spirits will have a specific effect on everything and everyone in its range, even enemies. Many of these effects are very powerful, and can change the entire flow of the game. All of these rituals can be instantly ended by killing the spirit. ------ Traps: ------ These skills will (surprise) place a "trap" at your current position. After placing a trap, the Ranger will display a very distinctive effect around him, letting friends and foes alike know what just happened at the Ranger's location. The trap itself, however, is completely invisible. As you probably guessed, traps are usually triggered when an enemy comes into the range of its effect, all traps have an area of effect, meaning they can hit multiple targets. %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% *4.3 Skill Legend * %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% Beside the name and effect of the skill, to make skills easier to read and manage, most of them share several other properties, which are explained in this section. Skill Name : Every skill has a name, as you might have guessed, this is purely cosmetic. Skill Type : All the skill types are covered in the previous section, and as you can read there, they are quite important. Description : Without this, you'll be lost, aside from the name, this is the only property that isn't consistent between any skills, if a skill does damage, this is where you'll see it, but then from here you'll also be able to learn if it's a projectile or instant hit spell, or if it has some sort of other unique effect, which is very common, as no 2 skills are exactly the same. Energy Cost : Most skills, but not all, have an energy cost. Although energy recharges very quickly, energy management and energy sufficiency is very important, both when choosing your skills and when using them. 5 Energy could be considered cheap, while more than 10 is somewhat expensive and could cause energy problems. Activation Time : Many skills, especially spells, have a slight delay before it is activated. During this time, you will be unable to move or perform any other action, but you can que up other skills so that they will begin activating as soon as your current skill is done. If your skill is interrupted by movement, you will not gain back the energy spend. If your skill is interrupted by an enemy, you will have to wait for it to recharge normally before you can use it again, and you will also still lose the energy cost of it. While an activation time under 1 second is almost instant, you should be careful with spells that take longer than 3 seconds to cast. Recharge Time : This is the cool-down time in seconds that you will have to wait for before you can use the same skill again. This can actually severely limit the usefulness of a skill, so pay attention to this. A skill that seems too good to be true at first, might not be so good when you notice it takes 30 seconds or longer to re-use, which is an eternity in battle. Attribute : Almost all skills are aligned to an attribute, and the power or effectiveness of that skill is usually entirely dependant on the level of that attribute. Energy Upkeep : Some enchantments used by monks will have a penalty of 1 energy regeneration arrow for the monk, for as long as he keeps it active. These enchantments will not expire after a pre-defined time, but can still be removed by an enemy. The enchantment can also be canceled by the monk at any time by clicking the icon in the "upkeep" area of your screen. The enchantments will also be canceled if the monk runs out of energy or moves too far from the target. Health Sacrifice : Some necromancer spells require you to sacrifice a certain percentage of health, which is calculated by using your max health. Although this is actually specified in the description of the spells, my manual lists it as a separate property, so here you go. Elite Skill : Some skills are "elite". These skills are often relatively more powerful than other skills, but you can only have one of these equipped at any time. This means it's always wise to pay extra attention to which elite skill you equip, to get the most benefit from their power. Elite skills can be identified by their gold border, and the confirmation of the skill being elite can be found in the skill description. Adrenaline Cost : Many warrior skills require adrenaline to use instead of energy. These skills are favorable to warriors because of their lower energy supply. Hitting an enemy with an attack adds 1 point of adrenaline to all of your adrenaline skills until they are "charged". Using an adrenaline skill will drain the adrenaline for that skill, but will leave other adrenaline skills charged, unless the skill you used specifically says it will drain adrenaline for all of your other skills as well. Also: if you use an adrenaline based attack skill and it misses or gets blocked, you will lose 1 notch of adrenaline charge for all of your adrenaline skills. Getting hit 5-7 times will give you a notch of adrenaline charge as well. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 5. Story Walkthrough +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ So you've chosen to make a full RPing character, eh? Well, good for you, because the world of Guild Wars is filled to the rim with hard missions and interesting quests, and you're going to need to unlock those skills sooner or later anyway... In this part of the guide, I will try to document how to properly bring each mission and primary quest to a successful end, I will also occasionally point out some of the more beneficial side-quests and locations to visit. %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% *5.1 New character walkthrough* %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% So, you've chosen your profession, appearance and name. And after watching the ominous intro movie, you're ready to jump right into action. Thankfully, that is exactly what the game wants you to do, after you get yourself familiar with walking around and I don't know what else, talk to the Town Cryer to get your first quest! On your radar, you'll see a green marker appear to the north, so walk across the bridge towards it. Talk to Sir Tydus, accept the reward, and the next quest. Now, you'll see an arrow pointing west on the radar, keep walking towards it and then walk outside of the city though the portal. Keep in mind that if you're ever not sure what to do, you can talk to Sir Tydus to get some advice on what to do next. You will now get your own instance of the explorable area "Lakeside County". This area will be filled with monsters and NPCs to reflect which quests you are on or which you have completed, and monsters you kill won't respawn until you change areas. Before you, you'll see 2 NPCs: one to reflect your class and a little girl called Gwen. First, talk to Gwen and agree to help her, you'll now get the "Gwen's Flute" quest. Now talk to the other NPC, which will give you a simple test depending on your class. More details about these quests can be found in the Quests section of this guide, but unless you're really desperate for something to read you might as well just go down the road and do what the quest objective says. If the objective for the quest doesn't require you to go down to the river, to the south, so anyway, because you'll find Gwen's Broken Flute down there. Walk back north towards the town, and talk to Gwen and the other NPC there to accept the rewards for your 2 quests. Gwen will offer to follow you, even though right now all she'll do is annoy you, giving her a new flute and some flowers will make her heal you if you get close to dying, which might come in handy. Now you have a some choices: -Talk to Haversdan, who has takes the place of the trainer you got your first 2 quests from, to get the "Further Adventures" quest which will continue the regular chain of events in the newbie area. -Do the "Adventure with an Alley" quest, read more about this in the quest section of this guide. -Go back into the City, and get a couple of quests. Keep in mind most quests from the city won't be available until you complete some more important tasks. -Go back into the city, and talk to Armin Saberlin to receive a quest to take a secondary profession upon yourself. -Find the first trainer of your first profession, to learn more skills. -All of the above. Eventually, it's best to do all of them, in any order, but I suggest first taking the "Further Adventures" quest to avoid getting lost, although you might also want to take the "Bandit Raid" and "Poor Tenant" quests from Ascalon City. So follow the road south west, or go up the hill west of the road if you're on the Bandit Raid quest. Either way, talk Devona, who is at the other end of the quest arrow if you have "Further Adventures" selected in your log. She will give you the "Unsettling Rumors" quest, which makes you go to the nearby Abbey. Don't forget to complete the Poor Tenant quest while you're there. When there, ask Mareek about the quest, to get the next objective: Press M to open your world map, then warp back to the city by either clicking it then pressing Travel, enter, or space. Or you can just double click the city marker. Talking to Armin will complete the quest and give you the next "A Second Profession" quest. If you want to, you can test out each of the 5 remaining professions before finally settling on one, or you can just go straight to the one you want. Keep talking to Armin or scroll down to the quests section if you want more information. Your Current options are: -Complete "A Second Profession" -Learn more skills for your first class, you can do this by either asking Armin Saberlin where to learn more skills for your class. Or preferably: going outside of the city, then talking to Haversdan again and taking the "A new [your class] Trainer" quest, which is the preferred way because you get some free exp. -Do the "Adventure with an Alley" quest, read more about this in the quest section of this guide. -Do some of the other minor quests you can get from NPCs in and around the city for some easy experience. Again, check the quests section of this guide if you need help finding specific quests. -All of the above! First, I suggest just getting the second profession over with. When you complete it, return to Armin Saberlin to accept your reward and get the "The Path to Glory" quest. All you have to do to complete this is to talk to Sir Tydus, who is right next to you! After accepting the reward, you get the ability to leave the newbie area. -----WARNING----- Going to the academy means you'll leave the newbie area and proceed to the first real part of the story, you will _never_ be able to return to this area. If you leave already, you will miss a LOT of free skills and experience points, making the next part far harder than it has to be, and also means that you will have to use valuable skill points on skills that you could have gotten for free! ---END WARNING--- So what should you do before going to the academy? -Do the 2-3 skill quests for your primary profession to get a bunch of free skills. -Do the 1-2 remaining skill quests for your secondary profession to get more free skills. -Do to "Adventure With an Ally" quest to get the Resurrection Signet skill for free. -Do as many of the remaining quests as you like, I advise at least doing the "Tithe for Ashford Abbey" quest, because it nets you a free skill point. And also doing the "Charr in the Catacombs" quest because it gives you an easy 100 gold. For the remaining quests: remember that easy exp is good exp, if you are new to the game, you'll probably want to get to about lvl 5-8 before leaving, because this will not only make it easier to win the little PvP match you'll be subjected to after entering the Academy, but it will also make the first part of the game many times easier. Also, don't forget that all items that you get from the quests here sell for 10 gold each. This may not seem like a lot, but it adds up quickly! When you tire of the newbie area, go back to Ascalon City and talk to Tydus. A count down will appear on the screen, and when it gets to 0:00 you will be warped to a small PvP area, 9 out of 10 newbies suggest to just try your best and have fun, as it doesn't matter if you win or lose. After that small PvP encounter you will once again warped to a new area, don't worry, there will be plenty of time for PvP later, because now you have orders to exterminate a small number of Grawl led by... a Charr! If you've done some of the other quests before this, you'll know a thing or 2 about how fierce the Charr can be, but with the 4 of you, he should go down easily. After completing this easy task, sit back and enjoy the small cut-scene that follows... %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% *5.2 Post Searing Ascalon * %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% Fast forward 2 years... Welcome to the wasteland of what used to be the lush green lands of Ascalon, The great searing made sure everyone agreed once and for all: the days of peace in Ascalon are over. Some time has passed since you entered the academy, and you are now a full-fledged elite soldier in the army of Ascalon. Although you have the option to roam the wastes or help the citizens of Ascalon with their every-day problems, chances are that if you're reading this you're more interested in advancing the story, and making a real difference in this ruined world. The first thing you need to do here(unless one of your party members decided to be a pain in your ass by walking into Ascalon City while still in the party) is to talk to Captain Osiric and accept "The Krytan Ambassador". Then warp to Ascalon city (unless you want to keep your party intact), and find Warmaster Tydus towards the north. Tydus will give you a small quest to deliver a message to an Ambassador from Kryta, who is offering to help Ascalon. However, Ascalon isn't the happy peaceful place it used to be, so it's wise to get 1 or more party members, depending on how far you want to go and how confident you are in your own abilities. Luckily, since there aren't always real people who are on the same quest you are and are also willing to party, you can take henchmen along with you. You'll find these henchmen by following the quest arrow. In other outposts, you can find them easily by looking for the big banners near them or by holding CTRL to make their names appear in green, if you're close enough. Usually, these henchmen are conveniently placed near an exit into and explorable area. In any case, when you're done putting together your party, head out into Old Ascalon, the post-apocalyptic wasteland versions of Lakeside County and Green Hills County. Your next objective is to go southwest to Ambassador Zain, who is having a conversation with Prince Rurik. But if you're not interested in the story, just rudely cut in by talking to Zain and accepting your quest reward. For more information about the optional quests you can get around here, check the quest section of this guide. I strongly advise that no matter what your classes are, to at least do the first 3 skill quests available to both your classes. But it's probably best to save the ones from Piken Square and Serenity Temple until later. Also don't forget to do the skill quest from Zain, who will offer 1 skill for each of your 2 classes. When you're done running around, exploring, getting skills, and helping the people of Ascalon with their troubles, go back to Ascalon city and talk to Warmaster Tydus, who has a very important task for you. Accept it then run towards the quest marker, to your very first real mission: The Great Northern Wall! Here, talk to Squire Zachery for your reward and a bit of info, form a party, then enter the mission! ________________________________________ _/5.2.1 Mission 1: The Great Northern Wall\___________________________________ Scout for Bonfaaz Burntfur's Charr forces. -Objective- Search north of the Wall to find the Charr army. -Objective- Report your findings to captain Calhaan. You start off on top of the wall, talk to Calhaan, who will open the gate on the bottom of the stairs for your, where you might have to find some devourers. Follow the trail northwest, across a small bridge. Here you can go down a slope and fight your way past some devourers, or follow the road and fight some Grawl. But neither way has any significant advantage. Fight your way past some more minor monsters until the road, after a small gate takes you west. When this road circles north you can either follow it up a hill, where you'll see 2 wreckages(hold alt) or you can take a small to the southeast of the hill. First off, kill the devourers and open the 2 wrecks, one will hold and item called "Kilnn Testibrie's Crest". Make sure you pick it up and save it, then head east to that passage next to the hill, and go down it. You'll find another wreck containing "Kilnn Testibrie's Cuisse", save this as well. North of here you'll see some monsters fighting amongst each other. Kill them all as you see fit, then instead of following the normal road, go north into a small passage that takes you under a bridge. Talk to the ghost Kilnn Testibrie along this passage. -Objective- *BONUS* Recover the four pieces of Kilnn Testibrie's armor and return them to his tomb. Continue following the passage, and along the way pick up the 3rd piece of armor: his Pauldron. Keep following the road southwest until you see a wreckage on a hill to the left of the road, this contains the last armor piece: his Greaves. Now, run all the way back to the ghost, give him the 4 armor pieces, and receive your 1,000 Experience points! -Goal completed- *BONUS* Recover the four pieces of Kilnn Testibrie's armor and return them to his tomb. Now run back, again, to where you found the last armor piece, but now just follow the road, killing the Charr boss along the way, until a small cut-scene begins. -Goal Completed- Search north of the Wall to find the Charr army. -Objective- ADDED: Find a new way back. Run to the wall. As soon as it ends, start running south, and don't stop for anything! You will take a huge shortcut back to the wall, thanks to some doors that mysteriously open. -Goal Completed- ADDED: Find a new way back. Run to the wall. -Objective- Report your finding to Captain Calhaan. I'll assume you remember where he is. Congratulations on completing your first mission! ___________________________ _/5.2.2 Mission 2: Fort Ranik\_________________________________________________ Retake the Great Northern Wall. -Objective- Push back the invading Charr army. The majority of this mission just involves you killing everything in your path as you fight your way back to the wall, there are very few branches in the road, so I'll just point out the interesting things along the way. Early on in the mission, to the west, you'll find Gurn Blanston, who will give you the "Deliver a Message to My Wife" quest. This is completely optional, of course. If you keep Armin Saberlin alive until the gateway you come, he will give you the bonus objective of this mission, although you can still complete the objective and get the 1,000 experience even if he dies or if you don't talk to him. -Objective- *BONUS* Rescue Deeter Saberlin from his Charr imprisonment. After this gate, you'll soon see 2 passages leading north, take the west one. After a while, at a boss, the road will lead you east, up on the hills on both sides of the roads there will be Charr attacking you, it's not very important to kill them right now, but you can if you really want to. After that road takes you north a small bit, you will see it branch off up to a hill to the southeast, go up here for the bonus! You'll come across 2 Charr Overseers guarding a prison. If for some reason, like half your party leaving, it becomes too hard to kill them, try luring them apart a little bit, so their area heal doesn't heal both of them while they infuse each other with health. -Goal Completed- *BONUS* Rescue Deeter Saberlin from his Charr imprisonment. After this, you can go north or south. Back north will be faster, but south will give you some extra loot, it's up to you. Either way, you'll eventually come across a large open area with lots of broken catapults, many Charr, and on the north end: the wall. The most important thing here is to stay together and NOT attack Charr when there are more than 4 near each other. Take along any spare parts you see laying around, but keep in mind: drop them before combat! After talking to the siegemaster you will get some new objectives. -Objective- ADDED: Locate the RESTRAINING BOLT and return it to Siegemaster Lormar. -Objective- ADDED: Locate the ARMING CRANK and return it to Siegemaster Lormar. -Objective- ADDED: Locate the RELEASE LEVER and return it to Siegemaster Lormar. When you've done all that, activate the lever twice to launch some kind of large flaming explosive object towards a huge group of Charr. Up ahead is another trebuchet, but to kill anything with this one you'll have to lure the Charr towards the target area, which is usually too much trouble, and there's a chance you'll kill a team-mate on accident. To complete the mission, you have to kill the Boss on top of the wall. ____________________________________________________ _/5.2.3 Intermission: Frontier Gate & Eastern Frontier\________________________ Well well, you've done the first two missions, and now you've been granted a short break, as you might have noticed because the area you appear in is an outpost rather than a mission area. Of course, if you want to, you can just pick up the "Ruins of Surmia" quest from Warmaster Riga, this will lead you straight to the next mission. However, if you take a short trip back to Ascalon City, you'll notice many new quests were made available since you went off to defend the wall. First off, of course, I advise doing all the skill quests you've missed before going to the first mission. Then, this would be the ideal time to check out Piken Square. And if Monk, Elementalist, or Mesmer is either of your 2 classes, you should check out the Serenity Temple outpost as well. Serenity Temple only has quests for those 3 classes, so unless you're set on completing "The Troublesome Artifact" quest, there isn't much reason to go all the way out there. Also, if you're taking the long route to complete the "Frontier Gate Fugitives" quest or just want to explore everything, it's also a good idea to stop at the Temple. If you do plan on going there, for any reasons, do pick up the "The Trouble Artifact" quest, then warp back to the Frontier Gate and head out into the Eastern Frontier and complete that quest, as it will lead you straight to the Serenity Temple! When you're done with that, or decide to not go to the temple, you'll probably still want check out Piken Square. As it hosts the most rewarding and fun quests in this entire area. It also has skill quests for Necromancer, Warrior, and Ranger, so you'll want to go there anyway if you have one of those classes. And if that isn't enough to convince you, about half-way there you will come across a quest that gives skills for ALL 6 classes. To get there, first go back to Ascalon City and take the "Recruits for Hollis" quest from Warmaster Tydus. This will lead you through Old Ascalon, and to the gate to The Breach, where Piken Square is located. After getting the reward from Hollis, accept the "Supplies for the Duke" and "Barradin's Stand" quests. First off, complete Barradin's Stand, as this will lead you straight to Piken Square. Next, complete Supplies for the Duke to get your 2 skills. When you're done with those, and if you're a Warrior, Necromancer, or Ranger, do the remaining skill quests obtainable from Piken Square. Regardless of your class, I advise doing the Duke's Daughter series of quests, if you're around lvl 8-12 you should be able to complete them successfully. In any case, as always, check the quests section of this guide if you need help in any of those quests, or are looking for some more quests that are available around Ascalon at this point. When you're all done, head back to the Frontier Gate, take the Ruins of Surmia quest, then exit into the Eastern Frontier and set off towards the north. You'll come across a lot of Grawl along the way, but usually you can save a lot of time by just running past them. ________________________________ _/5.2.4 Mission 3: Ruins of Surmia\____________________________________________ Rescue the soldiers taken prisoner by the Charr -Objective- Safeguard Prince Rurik's life. -Objective- Free all the Ascalon captives. -Objective- Get to the obelisks inside the ruined academy. The largest part of this mission involves you following Prince Rurik, as you rescue prisoners held by the Charr. The fighting itself isn't too hard, as long as you are careful enough to not attack 2 patrols close to each other, and watch out for Devourers hiding in the ground who will ambush you when you get close, especially near bosses. Eventually Prince Rurik and the former prisoner Erol will stop at a bridge near Surmia, where you'll get a new objective. -Objective- ADDED: Cross the ravine and open the drawbridge for Rurik and Erol. You can actually do this many ways, but you'll probably want the bonus, so go down the hill across the tar river south of you. Follow the road east a little while holding ALT to find the NPC you need to talk to. -Objective- *BONUS* Extinguish the Flame Temple by defeating the Flame Keepers. Stay need the NPC for a little while, and you'll see a group of Charr carrying some kind of torch with them. You need to follow these without them seeing you, so stay at a safe distance. After a while, they will pass through a gate, this is your que to run in and kill everything. You will find the 4 Flame Keepers deep in the temple, at a large torch. -Goal Completed- *BONUS* Extinguish the Flame Temple by defeating the Flame Keepers. Now, go out of the temple through the 2nd gate, north of the Flame Keepers. Follow the trail of wreckages and sludge east, to the Historical Monument of Surmia. Keep following the road east until you get to a lever, open it to have Rurik re-join you. -Goal Completed- ADDED: Cross the ravine and open the drawbridge for Rurik and Erol. Continue following him until you get to a large door, where you will have to defend Rurik as he works towards opening it. There will be 3 mage NPCs positioned at the 3 entrances to this area, who will help you hold off the Charr waves, but you will have to do most of the work. __________________________________________________ _/5.2.5 Mission 4: Nolani Academy of the Arcane Arts\__________________________ Return Prince Rurik south of the Wall to safety. -Objective- Sneak out and ambush the Charr forces besieging the academy. -Objective- Return to the Nolani Academy to rendezvous with the prince. -Objective- Defend Prince Rurik on the way back to the capital city of Rin You can speed up this mission by using the lever inside of the Academy, this will open the doors and let in 20 and some odd Charr, but this will make you miss the bonus and most likely get you killed. Instead, go northeast, outside of the academy back entrance. Along the way, keep an eye out for a route leading further east, into an area with some of those giant blue crystals. In a small passage to the very southeast of this area, you'll find Watchman Pramas, who will drop a book which you have to pick up and carry. -Objective- *BONUS* Return the Tome of the Fallen. Remember that holding this book will make it impossible for you to attack, and even though you can use spells and other non-attack skills while holding it, all of the bonuses from the wand, focus, or staff you have equipped will be rendered useless, so drop the book when going into a fight. After coming down from the wall, look east, where you'll find a small passage into the rocks, go in there. Alternately, you can also go into the passage you see when the brick road bends west. Either way, keep going west/southwest until you come to a grave site flooded with ghosts, slowly fight your way past them until you get to the object where you can place the book, which will cause all of the remaining hostile ghost to disappear, and will give you a new ghost that you have to talk to. -Goal Completed- *BONUS* Return the Tome of the Fallen. Go back to the brick road, and follow it north towards the academy, or go north through the cliffs if you prefer sniping the Charr from a safe(er) distance. Either way, kill them all! -Goal Completed- Sneak out and ambush the Charr forces besieging the academy. -Goal Completed- Return to the Nolani Academy to rendezvous with the prince. -Objective- ADDED: Take Stormcaller to Horn Hill. Follow the Prince south, and a after a couple of small fights and cut scenes, you'll find that Rin is being torched by the Charr. -Objective- ADDED: Save Rin. The rest of this is just following Rurik again, and killing the Charr. %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% *5.3 Escape over the Shiverpeaks* %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% _______________________________________________ _/5.3.1 Intermission: Yak's Bend & Alpine Tableau\_____________________________ Here's a brief rundown of the quests you can take at this point: -1 skill quest for each of your classes -1 skill quest for all classes, called "Helping the Dwarves", this will lead to 3 quests in the Iron Horse Mine, and doing all 4 of these is somewhat time consuming, but the reward is alright, and it gives you an excuse to kill lots of dwarves. -Do the "Shiverpeak Stragglers" quest, followed by "Oswalt's Epitaph". -"The Missing Artisan", which will lead you to an NPC which can craft rare materials out of basic materials for you, this ends in roughly the same area as "Oswalt's Epitaph", so you might want to do both at the same time. -When you're ready to move on, get "The Way is Blocked" and "The Road to Borlis Pass" quests, which will lead you to.... Borlis Pass! ____________________________ _/5.3.2 Mission 5: Borlis Pass\________________________________________________ Negotiate passage to Grooble's Gulch and shelter for the Ascalon refugees. -Objective- Ignite all the storm beacons to light the way through the storm. -Objective- Find out what happened to Price Rurik's negotiations with Dwarf king Jalis Ironhammer. First off, talk to Hayden, he'll give you a torch which you have to use to light 7 beacons. The first one is right next to you, and you can find all of them by simply holding ALT and looking after each beacon you light. After the 4th, there will be 2 torches very close to each other, and I've seen many people walk right by one of them, so keep an eye out here. When you're done, Tolis will open the gate for you. -Goal Completed- Ignite all the storm beacons to light the way through the storm. -Objective- ADDED: Bring an end to the siege of Krok's Hollow. Destroy the ballistae and the forces outside the gates. -Objective- ADDED: Break through the locked gate into Maladar's Fort. Along the way, you have to use the Dwarven Powder Kegs to blow up a gate, there are plenty of them around, just hold ALT to find a station. -Goal completed- ADDED: Break through the locked gate into Maladar's Fort. Keep following the trail of monsters around the cliff, until you come to a gate blocking your way south. You can just go through this, but instead, grab another Powder Keg and go down the passage southeast of the gate, towards Rornak Stonesledge, who will give you the bonus objective. -Objective- *BONUS* Kill the ice drake. First off, go south of Rornak and drop the Keg, which will create an avalanche, opening the cave. The Dryders in the cave like to cause massive health degeneration on a large portion of your party. Unless you're the only one taking much damage, it's best to back off a bit if you get hurt to much, because your monk(s) might have trouble keeping up. Killing the drake doesn't require any specific tactics, so good luck :) -Goal Completed- *BONUS* Kill the ice drake. Now go back to the gate you passed earlier, flip the switch and head east through it. You'll finally be near Krok Hollow, keep following the path, killing all the engineers along the way, to trigger a somewhat lengthy cut-scene. -Goal Completed- Find out what happened to Price Rurik's negotiations with Dwarf king Jalis Ironhammer. -Goal Completed- ADDED: Bring an end to the siege of Krok's Hollow. Destroy the ballistae and the forces outside the gates. -Objective- ADDED Light the magical signal beacons. You will be given a blue torch, which you simply have to use to (surprise) light some beacons at the end of the road, this will finish the mission. _______________________________ _/5.3.3 Mission 6: The Frost Gate\_____________________________________________ Open the Frost Gate -Objective- Destroy the ballistae to secure safe passage for Rurik and the Ascalon refugees. -Objective- Retrieve the Gear Lever from the Dwarven fort to open the Frost Gate. First off, check the ground for the dark strip that goes through the mission, this is the road you'll want to follow through the majority of the mission. As you go south, you'll have to kill an engineer in order to allow Rurik to go on and to open a gate so you can go on yourself. After that gate, there are multiple ways to go on. It's safest to wait for the patrol to pass, then go right(west), kill the enemies, then go left(south), then left again(east) across the bridge, then when it's safe, go south and follow the path to another bridge with a 2nd engineer you have to kill, then go back east across the bridge and go past the opened gate. Go into the cave ahead, and if you see multiple groups of monsters fighting each other, take advantage of it by killing the side that's currently winning. When the cave splits in 2 routes, go east to find Rornak Stonesledge, captured once again. Talk to him to get the bonus objective. -Objective- *BONUS* Steal the Stone Summit's secret plans for a powerful siege weapon. Go west, out of the cave, but instead of going over the bridge, look north to find a secret passage, which you have to go down for the bonus. Near the end of this path, you will come across several somewhat large groups of dwarves that have actually banded together to form a _very_ large group of dwarves. Still, if you're careful and fast enough, you should be able to take out all of them before the 3 Dolyak Riders decide to work together, along with the 10 or so other dwarves, which will likely render this part almost impossible. When you do manage to get past these, Rornak will walk up to the ballista and repair it, allowing you to use the lever to fire it at a gate up ahead. Now return to the bridge you ignore earlier, and cross it, kill everything in sight, then watch or skip the cutscene that follows. -Goal Completed- Destroy the ballistae to secure safe passage for Rurik and the Ascalon refugees. -Objective- Retrieve the Gear Lever from the Dwarven fort to open the Frost Gate. Instead go back to where you just had that big fight, and head through that gate that you opened with the ballista. On the other end of this path, you'll find a chest with the secret plans. Now, head all the way back, across the bridge, to Rornak, who is still waiting at that ballista. -Goal Completed- *BONUS* Steal the Stone Summit's secret plans for a powerful siege weapon. Now, finally head back to where the cutscene was and go south, where you'll find a Gear lever. Pick up this item and use it on the mechanism next to it, this will set into motion a device that opens the gate ahead of you. Kill everything and pass through the gate. -Goal Completed- Retrieve the Gear Lever from the Dwarven fort to open the Frost Gate. -Objective- ADDED: Activate the three Frost Gate Lever Mechanisms before the Stone Summit overwhelms Rurik. You have 2 options here: -Quickly activate each mechanism one after the other without attacking anything, this will make legions of Stone Summit attack you, and will probably get you killed, but the mission will still be completed if you wait a short while. -Kill everything you see, then activate 1 mechanism, then kill every new Dwarf that appears, then move to the next mechanism, repeat. The 1st way is obviously faster, but more risky, as the Dwarven forces might be too much to handle when trying to get to the next mechanism. If one of your party members DOES decide to activate a mechanism before killing all the dwarves currently near you, quickly call him or her some insulting nems (such as "idiot" or "your stupidness will get us all killed") then pick up the lever, and activate the remaining mechanism(s). This will finish the mission even though your entire party got slaughtered. Either way, mission complete! ______________________________________________________________ _/5.3.4 Intermission: Beacon's Perch & the last stretch to Kryta\______________ There aren't a whole lot of things you can do at this point, so I'll just use a small list. -If you haven't done so already, go back to the Frost Gate mission area, and exit into Anvil rock, then no northwest to find an outpost where you can buy some skills from an NPC. -Ask some lvl 20 friends to take you to Draknor's Forge, though Lornar's Pass, which will allow you to skip a huge portion of the game... if you really want to miss all the skills and skill points from the quests and missions, and you want to get to Lion's Arch and Denravi sooner or later anyway. -Do the Hungry Devourer quest for some skills, followed by the next quest for even more skills. -Start the "To Kryta" line of quests, to get on with the story of the game. Check the Quests section of this guide if you need help with those. _______________________________ _/5.3.5 Mission 7: Gates of Kryta\_____________________________________________ Secure a safe place for your people to settle. -Objective- Make contact with the local authorities at Lion's Arch. I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it: it's very easy to get overwhelmed if you don't think before running into battle. If you see multiple patrols, stay back and study them for a while, wait for the best opportunity to attack, pick a situation where you'll fight the least enemies possible. Later on in the game, patrols will often be backed up by invisible enemies that ambush you when you get close or attack members of their patrol. Although at this point you don't yet have to worry about that. In any way, at the start of the mission, hold ALT to find an NPC called "Oink", a small hog. Clicking him will make him follow you. Keep following the path through the swamp until you get gate of Lion's Arch. -Goal Completed- Make contact with the local authorities at Lion's Arch. -Objective- Head south across the beach to find Justiciar Hablion. Head southeast towards Orrian Historian McClain, he will tank Oink and give you the bonus objective. -Objective- *BONUS* Find and return the Tome to the Historian. Just a word of warning, doing this bonus quest will make you encounter several groups of extremely lethal lvl 17 Smoke Phantoms, which like nothing more than ripping you a new one, and they probably will if your party is below lvl 15ish, and even then it will be very hard. So unless you're sure you can handle it, you might want to skip the bay part of this mission and just go east past the bridges instead. Go out of the gate, the fastest way on with the mission is to just head east, towards those bridges, but you can also go over the south rim of the beach past the Lightning Drakes, which may give you a lot of rare drops. But before you go to the white mantle there, if you want to do the bonus, head down to the sea-level and wade north into the narrow bay. At the end of this bay you'll find a ship wreck, with a chest, which, as you probably guessed, contains the Orrian Text. But this will also make those Smoke Phantoms pop out... well don't say I didn't warn you, they're tough, don't try it with henchmen unless you're lvl 20. Bring this text back to the Historian. -Goal Completed- *BONUS* Find and return the Tome to the Historian. After this, or if you skip it, go to Hablion east of those bridges. -Goal Completed- Head south across the beach to find Justiciar Hablion. -Objective- Help Justiciar Hablion clear the swamp of undead. You're almost done with the mission, so try your best not to die! Stay out of the swamp water at all costs, and kill all of the monsters on your radar BEFORE aggroing the boss at the end. %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% *5.4 Start of a new life in Kryta * %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% Congratulations and welcome to Lion's Arch, the 2nd major city in this game. The refugees from Ascalon have already settled in and started building a small village in the cliffs north of Lion's Arch. Don't just kick back and relax just yet, though, because there's trouble at the horizon. You currently have an outstanding offer from the Lion's Arch to join the ranks of the White Mantle, which I'm sure you've learned about by now. You pursue this, which will lead to the next missions, by accepting the "Report to the White Mantle" quest from Armen the Guide. There are 3 other useful quests available inside Lion's Arch at this time: - "Orrian Excavation", this is the start of a series of quests that leads to the Signet of Capture skill, which allows you to capture skills that are impossible to get otherwise from bosses. - "The Weaver of Nebo", this quest will lead you to an Artisan that can make linnen for you if you need some, and is right on the way to "The Hot Springs Murder" which gives you a free skill for both of your classes and leads you to the Bergen Hot Springs outpost. - "Merchant's Plea" will lead you to the Ascalon settlement, where you'll be able to learn certain skills. Then there's the "Villainy of Galrath", I suggest leaving this quest alone for a while, as it is probably too hard for you at this point, but if you want a good challenge then by all means go for it :). I suggest taking all of them, then heading out of Lion's Arc to pick up "Duties of a Lionguard". Complete that quest, pick up Bandit Trouble, then head further north to complete "Merchant's Plea" and do "The Last Hog" for some free skills. If you're doing The Weaver of Nebo, pick up "The Hot Springs Murder" in Nebo Village. While you're here, you might as well complete the "Orrian Excavation" and "The Weaver of Nebo", as they take very little time. And after doing the 2nd one, it's only a short distance southeast to find the "Bergen Hot Springs" outpost, where you can find armor that's actually more powerful than the ones you found way back in Ascalon, this is also the most popular starting point for journeys to the Temple of Ages, but you probably won't want to go there until much later in the game. As for the Orrian Excavation, if you're heading there from the Ascalon Settlement, it's easiest to travel over the beach, as the fields are swarmed with nasty and time consuming Gypsy Ettins. When you're done, Warp back to Lion's Arch and get your reward from Malaquire, who will also give you a new quest and a Signet of Capture! As you could read, a Signet of Capture allows you to steal skills from bosses. As you haven't been told, they are not in infinite supply. Every time you want to capture a new skill, you'll have to get a new Signet of Capture. The first couple are free, but from there on they will cost skill points and gold! So use them with caution, as you don't want to waste skill points :) The Beetletun outpost is just a short distance west from Nebo Village(north- west of the Bergen Hot Springs outpost), but you can also get there very easily after the next mission. When you're done with all that you might wish to do, take the "Report to the White Mantle" quest and head west towards the next mission: D'Alessio Seaboard. ___________________________________ _/5.4.1 Mission 8: D'Alessio Seaboard\_________________________________________ Lend aid to the White Mantle in their fight against the undead -Objective- Hurry to the Temple of Tolerance. -Objective- Discuss the undead menace with Confessor Dorian. Simply fight your along the road until you get to Hakewood. -Objective- ADDED: Clear out the undead from the village of Hakewood. It's almost impossible to save every single villager here, but since you're one of those heroic types, at least try. The guy you do need to save here is Benji Makala, who appears to be a figure of great significance at least for the duration of this mission. Talk to him after killing all of the undead in the village. Recognizing your altruistic nature for saving as many villagers as you could (you DID try save those villagers, didn't you?) and cleaning the village of undead, he will assume that you are fully prepared and willing to perform a ritual for him. -Goal Completed- ADDED: Clear out the undead from the village of Hakewood. -Objective- *BONUS* Deliver the village's offering intact to the statue of Melandru. If you failed to save Benji, you'll have to take the loser exit in the west of the village, but since you're obviously a winner, go talk to Gate Guard Makala. (Recognize that name? no? It's the same last name as Benji, try to pay at least a little bit of attention to your surroundings!) He'll gladly let you through since you saved the village(Or at least his brother Benji...). -Objective- Hurry to the Temple of Tolerance. Simple follow the road in the swamp west, and if your lack of short term memory caused you to forget this: swamp water is _bad_, do not stay in swamp wanter for extended periods of time, and never ever fight while standing in swamp water. Fortunately, the swampy area here is relatively short, and when you emerge, you'll walk straight into the offer for Melandru for the bonus objective. That's not even the end of the good news: the pedestal where you have to place the offering is right across the bridge from where you got it! Unfortunately, the good news ends right about here, as the bridge was destroyed for some obscure reason *cough*plot device*cough*. This means you'll be lugging around the offering for quite a while. Be warned that if you drop the offering, you can not pick it back up! To still be able to complete the bonus objective if you die while holding the offering or if you drop it, you will have to run all the way back to where you got it to get a new one, because the offering will magically re-appear intact if you there if you manage to break it. Two more things: as with most objects carried in this fashion, the carrier of the object will be unable to attack monsters, and will also be the prime target for monsters, so chose your carrier wisely. With that in mind, take the offering(if you haven't already) and use the nearby lever to get through the gate, which would have blocked you access to the offer if you didn't save Benji. Follow the road and trail of monsters south towards the temple of tolerance. -Goal Completed- Hurry to the Temple of Tolerance. -Objective- ADDED: Protect Confessor Dorian from the undead. The undead are sieging the temple of tolerance! However, not only does the shrine in the middle make it very hard for them to kill you, they will also gladly stand in the fountain themselves, which will make them even more handicapped in their futile attempts to win this battle. -Goal Completed- Discuss the undead menace with Confessor Dorian. -Goal Completed- ADDED: Protect Confessor Dorian from the undead. -Objective- ADDED: Head to the southwest. Locate Dinas and the Scepter of Orr. Head northwest outside of the temple area, then go north from the road until you see a small passage into the cliffs, head into it then go east until you finally reach the pedestal to place the offering you've hopefully be carrying around. Don't worry if you broke it, you'll just have to waste a lot of time getting it again, because it'll respawn. Send someone with sprint or another speed up skill. When the offering carrier clicks the pedestal, you complete the bonus! -Goal Completed- *BONUS* Deliver the village's offering intact to the statue of Melandru. Head back out of the cliffs towards the road. Now you can either go south towards the beach, if you want to get some loot, in this beach are a couple of high level monsters and bosses for you to fight, and on the east end of the beach is a small swampy area with some loot. When you want to finish this mission, follow that road west towards Dinas. Kill the monsters and then speak with Dinas. -Goal Completed- ADDED: Head to the southwest. Locate Dinas and the Scepter of Orr. _______________________________ _/5.4.2 Mission 9: Divinity Coast\____________________________________________ In addition to 1K experience, the bonus objective of this mission also nets your party 3 platinum, meaning that if you do this with 6 people, each member will get 500 gold. Administer the Test of the Chosen. -Objective- Retrieve the Eye of Janthir from Justiciar Hablion in the upper courtyard of Shaemoor. -Objective- Deliver the Eye to the coastal city Loamhurts. First off, make your way to Shaemoor. This means just following the road and killing everything stupid enough to stand in your way. When in Shaemoor, go north and talk to Justiciar Hablion. -Objective- ADDED: Cleanse yourself in the Fountain of Truth on the hill to the southeast. Yes, as you probably managed to deduce from the objective, go southeast through the previously closed gate. Then go up the hill using the stairs, or up the path around it if you prefer. Either way, kill everything you see then step in the fountain. -Goal Completed- ADDED: Cleanse yourself in the Fountain of Truth on the hill to the southeast. Then, go talk to Justiciar Hablion to get the eye to follow you. -Goal Completed- Retrieve the Eye of Janthir from Justiciar Hablion in the upper courtyard of Shaemoor. -Objective- Deliver the Eye to the coastal city Loamhurts. To complete the BONUS objective of this mission, you have to find a certain number of chosen. When you get near an NPC that's a chosen, a light will shine on him or her and he/she will cheer. If the NPC is not a chosen, he/she will be knocked down by the light. The first chosen is right in this town, down the stairs to the northwest, where you also have to go through the gate. Don't bother to go near all the villagers along the road up ahead, none of them are chosen. But if you want some loot, head northeast down into the river to find some lightning drakes. This is usually a waste of time and might ruin your bonus, so you probably don't want to do this. When you get to the bridge across the large river, make sure your party is ready then run across quickly. At the other end will be some villagers being attacked by Tengu, saving those villagers is the most important thing in this entire mission if you want to complete the bonus, so make sure your monk heals him and you quickly killed the Tengu. When you save him, talk to him to get the bonus objective. -Objective- BONUS: Find and escort all the chosen to Loamhurts. Now, instead of following the road, head directly south to find the 3rd chosen. You might not have to fight the monsters there, so try not to unless they're close to or attacking the villager. Only 2 villagers left, head back north to the road, then go up the hill along the road to the west, where you have to kill a boss. Now follow the road a little bit, then go off the road and south into the passage in the cliffs as soon as possible. If you see some Tengu attacking some merchants, you've gone too far. Don't worry about the merchants, you can save them if you really want to but... your time is far to valuable, of course. As you make your way through the off-road passage, you'll find the 4th. From there go northwest back to the road. Follow the road west to the next villager, killing all of the Tengu along the way. Once again, feel free to let the merchants die, they will keep the Tengu busy for a while before they decide to attack the villager, who is the 5th and last chosen! From that location, head west then north into the swamp, and keep following that road until you get to Loamhurts. All you have to worry about from this point on is not letting the chosen die, although I'm not entirely sure if they can die from the poisonous water since they all have healing signet, I wouldn't try to find out. When you get all of the chosen into the town, talk to the White Mantle knight, then -Goal Completed- BONUS: Find and escort all the chosen to Loamhurts. To complete the mission, take the eye to the altar left from your position. %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% *5.5 Into the Maguuma Jungle* %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 6. Exploring the World +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% *5.1 Skill Trainers * %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% The information in this area might or might not be moved to the outposts/cities sections when they get completed. Here, I will list which skills trainers will gives that can't be gotten from quests. Ascalon City has a skill trainer as well, but he only gives skills that you could also have gotten from quests in the newbie area, although there are some exceptions like Empathy for secondary Mesmers -------------------- Grendich Courthouse: -------------------- Directions can be found in the walkthrough after the 2nd mission, and in several quests from Piken Square. Trainer name: Taltosh Warrior: Disrupting Chop; Wary Stance Ranger: Kindle Arrows; Predator's Pounce Elementalist: Enervating Charge; Immolate; Phoenix Monk: Judge's Insight; Restore Life Mesmer: Epidemic; Physical Resistance Necromancer: Enfeebling Blood ----------- Yak's Bend: ----------- You get here after the 4th mission. This trainer will also give skills from skill quests you can get for free around Ascalon. Trainer name: Captain Osric Warrior: Hamstring Ranger: Called Shot; Lightning Reflexes Elementalist: Fireball; Ice Spikes Monk: Smite Mesmer: Phantom Pain Necromancer: Shadow of Fear --------------- Ice Tooth Cave: --------------- Trainer name: Marna Warrior: Distracting Blow; Dolyak Signet Ranger: Melandru's Assault; Revive Animal Elementalist: Blurred Vision; Stoning Monk: Holy Strike; Succor Mesmer: Drain Enchantment Necromancer: Mark of Subversion ------------ Lion's Arch: ------------ Trainer name: Firstwatch Sergio [Skills] This trainer only sells skills that you can get for free in the quests in and around the Shiverpeaks, with the exception of: Elementalist: Conjure Flame ----------------------------------------- North Kryta Province(Ascalon Settlement): ----------------------------------------- Trainer name: Captain Greywind Warrior: "I will avenge you"; Desperation Blow Ranger: Apply Poison; Healing Spring Elementalist: Armor of Mist; Meteor Shower; Ward Against Melee Monk: Holy Wrath; Signet of Devotion Mesmer: Mantra of Concentration; Shame Necromancer: Plague Sending; Taste of Death ---------- Beetletun: ---------- Trainer name: Ephaz [Skills] Warrior: Belly Smash; Galrath Slash Ranger: none Elementalist: Armor of Frost; Lightning touch Monk: Essence Bond; Life Bond Mesmer: Arcane Echo; Cry of Frustration Necromancer: Malign Intervention; Rigor Mortis; Touch of Agony +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ 7. Quest Database +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Everything in this section should be self-explanatory, I've tried to mark primary quests with a "=-=" instead of a "---" whenever I could, but this might not be 100% accurate as certain quests change into primary quests when they near completion, especially in the case of skill quests. If you have anything to correct or add, just drop me a line at the address you can find at the bottom of this document. %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% *7.1 Pre-searing Ascalon* %-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-% Although many of these quests might seem like a waste of time, completing quests is by far the best way to get experience points, so try to enjoy it :). If you do all of the quests available to your class, you should be around lvl 6-8 by the time you leave this area, meaning you'll have a huge advantage in the next portion of the game. Also, even though many of the weapons and off-hand items obtained from these quests might seem weak and useless, they actually sell for a very nice 20 gold each, which adds up to a nice little fortune by the time you're done. ------------- Ascalon City: ------------- ---Message from a Friend: Obtained from: Town Cryer Reward: 100 Experience; 10 Gold Objective: Go to the town square in Ascalon City. Talk to sir Tydus. Comment: You can't miss him, he's right across the bridge you start at. =-=War Preparations: Obtained from: Sir Tydus Reward: 250 Experience Objective: Go out the gate to Lakeside County to find a trainer Comment: Follow the green arrow on the radar, you can't miss it! Objective: Talk to [trainer] to learn basic [class] skills. Comment: Scroll down to the quest from the name of the trainer you are supposed to visit to read how to complete this, you'll get some exp from this right away. =-=A Second Profession: Obtained from: Armin Saberlin Reward: 250 Experience Objective: To take Warrior as your second profession, follow the road northwest from town, continue along the road as it turns to Green Hills County, and talk to Warmaster Grast. Objective: To take Monk as your second profession, follow the road southwest from town, enter Ashford Abbey, and talk to Brother Mhenlo. Objective: To take Elementalist as your second profession, follow the road southwest from town, continue past Ashford up into Wizard's folly, and talk to Elementalist Aziure. Objective: To take Necromancer as your second profession, follow the road southwest from town, pass through Ashford Abbey into the catacombs, and talk to Mistress Munne. Objective: To take Mesmer as your second profession, follow the road northwest from town to the theatre, and talk to Lady Althea. Objective: To take Ranger as your second profession, follow the road southwest from town. Turn south at the bridge and follow the signs to Regent Valley. Talk to Master Ranger Nente. Comment: When you chose one of the 6 professions presented to you, the quest objective will change to reflect the way to get to the trainer of the profession you selected. You can change this any time you want until actually having 2 classes by talking to Armin Saberlin again. It is possible to do the quest that trainer gives you without changing into the quest, so it's possible to do all 5 with 1 character. =-=The Path to Glory: Obtained from: Armin Saberlin Reward: 100 Experience Objective: Go to Ascalon City to speak to Sir Tydus Comment: This Quest tells you how to end your time in the newbie area, and gives you some easy exp. ---Trouble in the Woods: Obtained from: Town Cryer Reward: 500 Experience; War Hammer(Blunt Dmg: 6-9, Two-handed) Objective: Go to Lakeside County and follow the road to Ashford. Talk to Devona about the Grawl threat. Objective: Go with Devona and destroy the Grawl threatening Ashford. Comment: Follow Devona over the bridge and just kill everything you see. You might see a Charr boss there, but the pansy will run away at the mere sight of your mightyness. Objective: See Devona for your reward. ---Bandit Raid: Obtained from: Baron Egan Reward: 250 Experience; Protective Icon(Energy +3); Tall Shield(Armor: 4) Objective: Recover the Ashford strongbox from the bandits. Comment: Along this quests there will be large groups of enemies that might overwhelm you, so if your level is still low and you don't have many skills yet, try not to attract more than 3 at once. When the strongbox comes into sight, don't get too confident, take out the bandits in small bursts and don't be afraid to back off a bit if too many decide to attack you. When you're done pick up the box and go into silly running mode. Objective: Return the strongbox to Devona in Ashford. Comment: You should know where Devona is by now... but if not, the arrow on your radar should make this easy anyway. ---Poor Tenant: Obtained from: Namar Reward: 500 Experience; Protective Icon(Energy +3) Objective: Follow the road southwest from town to Ashford. Find Miller Upton and ask him to help Namar. Comment: Easy exp just for talking to someone? Guess again! Because Upton has a problem of his own. Objective: Use the honeycomb to lure the three bee swarms across the bridge. Comment: Actually, all you have to do is pick up the honeycomb and any bee that comes into range will follow you, if you have trouble finding the swarms hold down ALT and scroll out as far as possible. When all 3 are following you just walk across the nearby bridge, and when the quest updates, drop the honeycomb. Objective: Return to Miller Upton for your reward. ---The Poison Devourer: Obtained from: Bardon Egan Reward: 250 Experience; Protective Icon(Energy +3) Objective: Cross the river and destroy the plague devourer to get a poisonous stinger. Comment: You'll find this guy inside the devourer cave, to save walking time, do this at the same time as The Worm Problem quest. Objective: Deliver the poisonous stinger to Brother Mhenlo in Ashford Abbey. ---The Wayward Wizard: Obtained from: Sandre Elek Reward: 250 Experience; Smiting Staff(Energy +3, Light Dmg: 2-4, Two-handed) Objective: Talk to Ralena Stormbringer in Foible's Fair to learn Orion's whereabouts. Comment: The next time you visit Foible's Fiar(in Wizard's Folly south of Ashford), talk to Relena to advance the quest. Objective: Find Orion in Wizard's Folly and convince him to come home. Comment: You can go over the mountain or fight your way past the bears of the greener areas of Wizard's Folly. Either way, just head in the general direction of the quest arrow. Objective: Return to Sandre Elek for your reward. ---Charr at the Gate: Obtained from: Prince Rurik Reward: 200 Experience; Long Sword(Slashing Damage: 5-7) Objective: Follow Rurik and help him defeat the Charr Comment: This will trigger as soon as you exit Ascalon City, so be prepare for an easy fight. Since a guard, a healer, and the prince himself join you in your fight, the Charr should fall easily. Objective: Return to Prince Rurik for your reward. ---Charr in the Catacombs: Obtained from: Prince Rurik Reward: 250 Experience; 100 Gold Objective: Find out if the Charr Ranger is using the catacombs. Speak to Brother Mhenlo in Ashford Abbey. Comment: Just do this the next time you end up in the Abbey, I also suggest doing this quest at the same time as The Prize Moa Bird. Objective: Ask Necromancer Munne if she has any information on the Charr. Comment: Follow the quest arrow into the Catacombs. Objective: Seek out Oberan the Reviled deep within the catacombs. Ask him about the Charr Ranger. Comment: Oberan is also the 3rd necromancer trainer, so every necromancer should do this quest. Go into the catacombs through the normal way, keep going until you pass the bridge and find yourself into a rectangular room with some skeletons. There is an exit to the north at the start of the room, but go to the far end and look at the north wall for a 2nd exit, go into it. Fight your way past the spiders until you see a stone corridor in front of you, to the west, this corridor leads to Oberan but if you also have the Prize Moa Bird quest go into the passage south first to complete that. When you've done it come back here and go into the stone corridor and follow it until you get to Oberan. Objective: Return to Rurik in Ascalon City and show him the sharp Charr tooth. Comment: Just warp back to the city when you're done down there, talking to Rurik finally e