Many of you have asked me for advice on how to level or advance quickly in Guild Wars 2. While a traditional leveling guide is not really appropriate for a game with so many different avenues for advancement, I will share with you my favorite ways to progress and how I feel you can get the most out of your GW2 leveling experience.
1. Do every Dynamic Event you see
Dynamic Events give copious amounts of experience. Sometimes they will also chain into other events which can lead into large, and difficult, zone-wide events. The loot and experience from these larger events can be extraordinarily good. They are also enjoyable. The story of a zone is often found in the events, and not the heart quests. Go out of your way to find them, do them, and repeat them if possible.
2. Do the Hearts
Yes, you still need to do the hearts throughout the zone, but not just because they give experience themselves. By doing the hearts you are ensuring that you’re exploring most of the zone. By doing so you gain exploration experience as well as experience for killing different types of monsters that day. Hearts also give money — perhaps their best quality.
3. Kill Monsters
Don’t fall into the habit of just running from heart to heart, event to event, and ignoring all the monsters. I recommend you kill everything. A friend of mine reminded me of this little detail, and not only did my experience increase but the amount of crafting materials I obtained doubled.
4. Craft with a strategy in mind
You gain a ton of experience from crafting. This is something you should definitely be doing while you level, but since you gain so much experience why not wait and do it when you need it? Some levels are easier than others. Why craft at low levels when the experience is even faster than it is later on? I suggest saving your crafting until about level 60. This will allow you to accumulate a lot of materials (especially if you follow my advice above) and allow you to gain a significant leap ahead — not that you necessarily want or need a leap, but if you come across a zone you dislike or simply want to boost to the next area this can be the best way.
5. World vs. World
Do you like getting experience for killing other players? Unlike past games, you really can level quickly by doing nothing but WvW. I gained five levels in one night, in my mid 50’s, by defending one tower. If you take points, especially big keeps, you’ll get above 10,000 experience per event. I highly recommend you participate during the first hour of a new matchup because you have a good chance of taking keeps. It feels good to get a level and not even realize it.
Have tips of your own? Feel free to share them.
Hearts are also very useful for the gear you can buy from them once you completed the quest. This way you will be always up to date with your equip.
Maybe it’s best to avoid the temptation of rushing leveling since the major content lies in the regions prior to level 80 and it’s a better experience to do those somewhat under leveled as the open world content is comparatively easy (compared to dungeons). There’s a minor advantage in WvW, of course, but that really doesn’t amount to much. I reckon one will quickly run out of things to do at level 80 until Arenanet have the time to add some more high level content, as they did for Guild Wars 1.
A very comprehensive and detailed guide. A must read.
Even at 50’s I can finish a level just by exploring…the towns.
I think I’ll take some times off leveling and try to find the jumping puzzles. The big cave in Lion’s Gate was just fantastic. I passed through the labyrinth, the trapped corridor, but I was not (yet) able to climb to the exit.
Mobs gain bonus xp the longer they live
Find an area people don’t go, kill all mobs esp yellows, gain lots of xp.
Eg: I was killing mobs that gave 50 xp + 500 bonus xp, each!
Here’s another tip.
Getting 100% completion for a zone will give you 10% of your level. Use that information how you see fit. Some people think 10% in their 70s is better than 10% at level 20.
Also check every vendors there are all sorts of cool shit including XP fruit that will give you extra XP for each mob you kill in the next 10 minutes. These are normally pretty cheap also.
You left out “Do your personal story”. I don’t give a flying fig for mine and I haven’t touched it since I was level 30, but Mrs Bhagpuss has been doing all of hers, which is largely why she’s 10 levels higher than me.
@Bhagpuss: I was going back and forth with whether or not to include a point on the personal story. They give a ton of exp, but they also send you all over the map and, quite frankly, can be a bit boring at times. I’ve let mine lapse up to 20 levels before, and I think it still gave great experience. Overall, I’d say do it. It’s better to just get it done than to hit high 70’s or 80 and have to go back and sit through it.
I thought I read that the XP progression was linear,in other words, it takes just as much XP to go from level 1 to 2 as it does to go from 79 to 80. Is that not the case?
I heard from someone that the normalization of exp starts somewhere mid-level range.
What I’ve heard is that “time to level” should be fairly equal between say level 21 to 22 and 79 to 80, but that doesn’t mean the amount of XP needs to be identical.
Heh that map highlights how tacked on Asura and Sylvari were. Human, Charr and Norn all get distinct areas from 1-70 at least – Sylvari and Asura get their own starting zone, a shared 15-25 zone and are then funnelled into the human areas.
That’s not true at all, the story takes you in and out of all races zones, and even if you ignore the story the norn area filters into the char and human areas and the charr area filters into the norn and into ebonhawk human/charr area
I find it so crazy that this post is even necessary. I am levelling to fast, yet still see people post about not being able to go to the next zone due to be too low. So yes its necesary, yet sad too. Just play the game, and don’t rush and levels will come. Love that a sub-free MMO is teaching people how to play their own way without worring about levels.
I agree with coppertop. I am leveling at a nice pace. Seems to me like GW2 nailed the leveling speed.
As someone who is lvl 80 and at 95% completion, xp normalisation is a myth. Every level takes roughly the same amount of time, due to increasing exp rewards, but as a lvl 70, leveling in a lvl 15 zone is time/xp inefficient
Doing personal stories can easily be skipped if you’re looking to level quicker, as they can take quite a lot of time that can be better spent doing plenty of other quests. I do recommend picking up the food from vendors that increases the amount of exp you gain for a short time since it’s pretty cheap.