Guild Wars 2 Diary #5 : Tips For Gaining Experience

So it’s come to this: a showdown between Two-blade Pete and you. After weeks of hunting him down, of thwarting his plans, of using a Mesmer to infiltrate his base and of losing friends, he’s finally going to get his comeuppance. It’d be too much to describe Two-blade Pete as anything other than a local thug, but it’s best not to underestimate him. He has his fingers in a little bit of everything and even by springing an ambush; things aren’t going to be as easy as perhaps they could be.  There’s only one thing that’s certain, however – today Two-blade Pete is going down.

Open Sesame

Just a quick note before we start talking about the game this week: that glitch I mentioned a few weeks ago, the glitch that causes a black screen and later a crash instead of the character select screen, has been happening more frequently lately, and no longer just on the second load of the day. It’s a pretty frustrating problem and one that the developers seem to be doing very little to fix – actually they’re making it worse. If others are having this problem and want to share their attempts to fix it, I’d love to hear them so jump in the comments below and let’s get this thing fixed.

Guild Wars 2 Weekly Reviews - Gameplay Video Episode #5

Finding the Level

You may remember last week that I was a little worried by the idea of going from mission to mission and being met each time with “you should be a higher level to do this mission.” It happened again this week. As you may remember, our good friend Quinn has been killed and it’s time to get revenge. It’ll have to wait though, because we’re only level 8 and need to be level 10 – it’s a big difference at this stage in the game. So it means venturing out into the wider world once more and helping those who need help. Levelling up was fairly easy, and I thought this might be a good point to offer some hints and tips for getting experience as quickly as possible.

Tips for Gaining Experience in Guild Wars 2 

So you’ve found yourself in a similar position to me: you want to continue with the story but you’re likely to be destroyed if you even try it. Annoyingly, you’ve followed every quest, helped as many people as you can and you’re still not a high enough level to successfully compete with the AI enemies in the story areas. It’s very frustrating. What can you do?

Fight to Survive!

Well, the most obvious thing to do is to take part in the renown heart quests. These quests have you doing things for people around the world. The key to getting the most out of these quests is to remember to talk to scouts. Whenever you see a scout (marked out on the map as a telescope), talk with them and they’ll show you points of interest in the local area. Then it’s just a case of actually getting there. Along your way, be sure to fight whatever you come across, trigger the waypoint markers/Vistas and watch out for any random events.

Destroy Everything You Come Across For Kill Goal

Killing enemy creatures is fairly useless in terms of experience, and it seems to go down the more you fight the same creatures time and time again. With that said, it’s worth noting that you’ll get quite a bit of experience for the daily kill goals, so destroying everything you come across is well worth it so long as you’re aiming for that kill goal. Waypoint markers are useful and add a bit of experience to your total. If you’re not getting them, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice. Similarly, Vistas are easy to trigger, look nice and count towards both your experience and your overall completion level, so they’re worth going out of your way to trigger. Random events can sometimes be quite difficult; the key is to gang up with as many people as possible. They can also take quite a long time and distract from what you were doing, but it’s usually more than worth it.

Guess not everyone has to run around for experience...

Renown Heart Quests - Renown System

The renown heart quests are sometimes frustratingly dull, but there are a few things you can do to speed up the process. There’s usually one thing you can do which increases the bar at a faster rate than the others, so that’s what you can focus on. Cleaning up Beetletun is dull as anything, but cleaning the graffiti will be quicker than killing rats. Trapping crabs for the fisherman will be quicker and easier than killing the dangerous fish.

Breaking the Blade

So you’ve managed to increase your level in Guild Wars 2 and are ready to take on that devil Two-blade Pete. Step carefully, because it isn’t going to be as easy as sneaking up on him and cutting his head off. Pete will never do his own dirty work if he can send others to do it instead, but he’ll be close by, and if you last long enough you might just find he’ll pop out to try his luck. One thing is for certain, only one of you will be leaving this place alive. Thankfully, you’ve got a little bit of help from the local law enforcement, and they want Pete dead as much as you do.

In this instance, you must defend yourself for as long as you can until Pete shows up. There’ll be a couple of waves of fairly easy bandits, a little time for your health to regenerate, and a couple more bandits. I can’t stress how simple this part of the level is, and if you were under-experienced, you may be tricked into thinking things are going to be easier than they actually are. When Doc Howler shows up though, still sore after you beat her attempts at poisoning the water supply, things take a turn for the worse. She can poison, she can hit multiple times for high amounts, and the chances are you’re going to end up taking multiple attempts at finishing her off. When you finally do, Pete pops up, and he’s ready to finish you off in the same way he finished off Quinn.

It's harder than it looks.

It’s not going to happen though – Two-blade Pete is easier than Doc Howler (perhaps because of her poison moves) and you have a little help from Logan Thackeray as well. He has a strange move that lets him get out of harm’s way, but it doesn’t do much good. Keep fighting and it won’t be long before he’s executed for his crimes.

Conclusion

Another week, more time focussed on levelling up. It was worth it though, if only to get a little closure on the Two-blade Pete story. From here, the world is likely to open up somewhat, and quests are going to take us to many different locations. Of course, once we’ve done everything and seen everything, there’s no reason we can’t begin again and see how the game would have differed had we saved Quinn and let countless people die from the poisoned water supply, but for now we much move on and try not to think of that rumour that he was cut in two. Not a pleasant way to go.