At the half way mark, my elementalist is sitting at a comfortable level 40. Last night as I was running around trying to get my daily done, I embraced a few facts about the character. While it may have been alright for my guardian to romp around Tyria wearing gear 10 levels lower than her, if I want to stay alive on my elementalist, my best bet is to upgrade her gear every 5 levels or so. Not a big deal at this stage of the game, gear is barely a silver per piece. So when I realized I was wearing level 18-24 gear at 39, I went and upgraded every single piece.
It made a huge difference in my ability to survive, which in turn makes a difference in my attitude as I play. Dying over and over again is not really fun.
I haven’t been quite as dedicated with my crafting this round as I was with my guardian. I’ve chosen to go the artificer / huntsman rout because an artificer is what I need to create the legendary staff I want one day, and huntsman was next on my list of “crafts I want to have maxed” – I have plans to max each of the crafts (slowly). With the guardian I made sure not to move on to the next zone until I was finished with the tier I was crafting, but this time I haven’t bothered to do that. Maybe I should. Actually now that I think about it, that was a much smarter way of completing things since I personally have more than enough time to farm components.
I really want to get into some dungeons, but I’m not sure where people go to look for a group. I also have no idea what a lot of the abbreviations I see in Lion’s Arch stand for. Fractals are another event I’d like to get into but finding a group for that has also proven to be difficult during my play times. I’m sure I’ll get to experience all of these things before too long!
Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself! (Also, this weekend will be filled with Neverwinter beta goodness, so expect a few posts about that in the upcoming days)
At level 40 there are two dungeons available to you — Ascalon Catacombs (level 30) and Caudecus’ Manor (level 40). I probably mis-spelled those, oh well.
The easiest way to find groups is to go to the dungeon entrance. Since toning down the difficulty you can almost always find people looking to fill groups for dungeons, especially AC.
I first did AC with my Guardian shortly after release, and it made me somewhat dubious of GW2 dungeons. It was painful, but doable. I then did Caudecus’ manor and after wiping a dozen times or so, we finally zerged our way through it. It was a miserable experience and I have yet to touch another dungeon with my Guardian (he’s now level 80).
When my Mesmer was in the mid 30s I decided to give AC a try. It had been months since I did it with my Guardian, so maybe it would be better? Thankfully it was, the only trouble we had was when one player went afk for 15 minutes and the rest of us tried to tackle the Troll boss. It didn’t go well. Other than that, we essentially did great. The hood I got for finishing the dungeon looks great compared to the silly headdress my Mesmer had been wearing. Well worth transmuting. Now that my Mesmer is 41, I’m contemplating Caudecus’ Manor, but the trauma of my last visit is still pretty strong.