Part 1: Tutorial and Introduction

Regardless of your choice of your personal story, as a human, your tutorial level will start you with a quest to protect the people of Shaemoor. Directly in front of you as you start out is Corporal Beirne, he has a green quest icon, and is calling out for your assistance. He will request that you head to the Inn, which is a simple enough beginner task. Just continue south and run to the large green star on your mini map.

I don’t recommend deviating from this goal, because there’s not a lot of value in Guild Wars 2 to grinding mobs. There are plenty of level 1 centaurs that are attacking the village, however they yield approximately 2 exp per kill, and you need 2,000 exp to hit level 2. Also, because you’re in the tutorial level, they do not count as kills towards your achievements. Along the way, however, do be sure to talk to villagers and tell them to go to the inn for their safety. You will be rewarded with 2 Karma points for each villager that you send to the inn.

Upon your arrival at the inn, you will be requested to speak with Sergeant Walters, who will ask you to go to the garrison. Upon reaching the garrison, you’ll be asked to hold off attackers until the garrison doors open. This is another example of a quest that you’ll be seeing frequently in your travels in Guild Wars 2. Once that’s complete, head into the Garrison and you’ll be asked to hold off attackers from the other side. The last attacker is the leader of these centaurs, Champion Modniir High Sage, and he will eventually start to run away, and summon the final boss for the tutorial level.

The Earth Elemental Hands is one of the more difficult of the tutorial bosses. The trick to being successful is to stay out of the red circles on the ground, as the boss attacks will do massive damage if you’re caught in one of those. Also, be sure to take advantage of the fact that there is an NPC healer nearby that will give you substantial HP regeneration while standing near him.

Defeating the hands will take you out to the actual game world, and should give you enough experience to get you to level 2. Once out in the game world, speak with Watchman Rebec to get the next piece of your quest.

Part 2: Let’s Get Started!

Watchman Rebec is a Scout NPC which means that he will show you part of the game world, and unlock portions of your map to assist you in finding people who require your assistance. In this case, he will uncover a portion of your map and show you 5 residents of Shaemoor who need your help. Doing tasks for these citizens, filling hearts, gaining karma, whatever you want to call it, is the core of the PvE experience in Guild Wars 2. This supplemented by random world events which will pop up from time to time and should always be done, as they provide excellent experience and additional karma.

Don’t worry if you miss out on scouts in the game, as you have this awesome map here to help guide you through Queensdale. (Click for the full size version):

The numbers on the map represent my recommended path through the renown heart quests. Feel free to adjust your route as you see fit. As I indicated earlier, I recommend that you do all dynamic events that appear in your area, and that will help you from being underleveled.

1. Farmer Diah should be your first stop, as this is the level 2 karma NPC. You can help her out by watering her corn, feeding cattle, or defending her fields from wurms. Like all karma NPC’s you can assist them by doing any combination of their tasks. Personally, for Farmer Diah I like to feed her cows, but if you get bored with that, by all means go ahead and stomp wurm mounds or water the corn, the choice is yours.

Completing that first heart will unlock the first unique piece of your story quest, and from here the choice is yours whether to stay out and complete more hearts or to get right into the story quest. I like to stay out in the field and complete the 5 hearts out in Shaemoor fields before heading to Divinity’s Reach for the story quest.

2. Fishermen Travis and Justin. These two pretty much would like you to do battle with the drakes and skales in the area, and there’s nothing too difficult here. Unlike Farmer Diah, these two will want you to do more combat related activities. Even checking the traps will typically spawn a mob for you to kill.

3. Head north across the river to assist Foreman Flannum. Here you again have a pretty wide variety of tasks. I find it easiest to run back and forth plugging leaks and killing elementals.

4. Heading west from here, you’ll stumble across Farmer Eda, who’s having a bit of trouble with some spiders and bats in her orchard. One note about Farmer Eda before you leave, she sells a unique Chef recipe for those of you working on your cooking skill, and also sells cooking ingredients. Many cooking ingredients are found on karma vendors all across the world, so it’s vitally important as a chef to complete as many of these hearts as you can.

5. Head south to Cassie who’s having a bit of bandit trouble. Once you reach Cassie, it’s best to continue south and into the Bandithaunt Caverns. These caverns provide the best area for completing her tasks.
Once those are complete, it’s time to use a waypoint back closer to Divinity’s Reach to wrap up some loose ends with the story quest. You should be somewhere around level 5. Working on the class quest will get you to right around level 6.

6. Once back out in Queensdale, head to Shaemoor Garrison, to assist the Seraph. Run through the garrison to the back door. Head up the steps to pick up the vista for some easy exp, and then continue south out to the field with the centaurs. The easiest way to complete this heart is to just kill the centaurs. While the catapults are annoying, they take a while to kill unless you’re in a pack of people. Also be sure to commune with the place of power for an easy skill point, and some quick experience.

7. Continue south to the Altar Brook Trading Post, there you’ll get the Level 7 heart quest. Inside the trading post are rolled up papers near barrels, straighten these for some easy credit towards completing this heart. Also, kill any rats that you see in the vicinity. Instead of waiting for rats to respawn, head south to complete the rest of the heart quest. Destroying stakes and death markers on the road is the fastest way to complete this heart quest.

8. Head south to Claypool. The heart quest in Claypool is extremely easy. You have the choice of training with militia in swords, rifles, or shields. The rifle training is the easiest, simply grab a rifle, wait for the order to fire, and then fire your weapon. The sword and shield each require a bit more timing, but fill the heart faster in exchange. The shield is probably the best combination of time/skill, if you want to try your hand at this, grab a shield and stand in near the drill sergeant. When he faces you and starts his movement, put up your shield and block the strike. If you’re having difficulty, feel free to jump back over on the rifle and fire on command.

9. East of Claypool is a heart quest to help the Seraph protect the town from centaurs. The easiest way to do this is to travel from camp to camp killing the centaurs and destroying the centaur items at each specific camp. Be mindful of wandering bands of centaurs, as you can easily have 6 or 7 on you in a hurry.

10. I take the waypoint back to the garrison and head east to the lumber mill. In this area there are quite a few wasps, kill these and destroy nearby nests to complete Laborer Cardy’s heart quest. If you run out of wasps, head south to the caves and kill skritt.

By this point I was well into level 9 and decided that it would be good to go work on some more of my class quest, which took me up to level 10.

11. If you took a break to work on your class quest, take the waypoint back to Ojon’s Lumber mill, and head east towards the hunting lodge. If you have a group, check inside the lodge for Lodgemaster Carthage, he will occasionally be up with a dynamic event quest, but it will require a group of people to complete. Working on the dynamic event will also complete the heart quest for you. If you’re solo then just work on Hunter Block’s heart quest. The easiest way to complete this is to focus on killing all of the Forest Boars that you see, while taking care to avoid the Veteran Dire Boars, which are killable, but really not worth the effort. Also take the time to reset traps and resurrect fallen hunters as you come across them.

12. Northeast of the lodge is a heart quest to Assist Fisherman Will and the fishermen of Beetletun. Head that way and be prepared to do some of your first underwater adventuring. The easiest way to do this is to aggro Hard Shelled Crabs, then run to a crab trap and trap the crab. Killing skale and aggressive fish will also fill the heart quest, and when there are no crabs nearby, feel free to kill them, but bear in mind that at this point in the game our underwater skills are seriously lacking, and while it may be a good idea to at least unlock a few skills for your underwater weapon, you will be killing at a fairly slow rate.

13. Head Southeast to the Shire of Beetletun. This is a pretty easy heart quest, run around the town killing rats, and cleaning graffiti off of the walls. Also be sure to look under trees for wasp nests, as destroying those will also help to complete the heart quest. Also within the Shire is an easy vista for some extra experience, and a fairly easy skill quest.

14. After completing this heart quest, head south to aid the Beetletun farmers. If the Battle for Beetletun dynamic event is going on, it is a good time to kill two birds with one stone. If it’s not going on, then you may have to head south to the other side of the road to find enough centaurs to kill to complete the heart quest.

15. After completing this heart quest, head east to help the monastery brewers. I find that the easiest way to do this is to go and sample the brew, and while that is on cool down, run out to the fields within the monastery and kill grubs.
If you’re not level 14 at this point, the remaining heart quests are going to be difficult. All remaining heart quests are level 14+. If you have a bit of a level gap here, there are a few things that you can do to get you through this gap.

• Find someone to group with to knock out the remaining heart quests.
• You can go walking around looking for dynamic events around your level, such as the Battle for Beetletun.
• You can explore Divinity’s Reach, discovering waypoints and points of interest, then take the Lion’s Arch portal and repeat, and then portal to another city and do the same until you’ve gained enough experience from discovery.
• Take up a trade skill since you get experience for leveling a tradeskill.
• PvP.

For me, I decided that leveling a tradeskill would probably be the easiest, since I hadn’t sold any of my materials that I had gotten since level 1. Leveling my cooking to just 51, I was able to complete nearly all of level 13.

Once you hit level 14, use the Krytan Waypoint (just north of the monastery). If Charice is up, you will see her when you port in, it may be worth doing her escort quest if you’re short on experience, even though she takes you all the way back to Beetletun. If you decide not to do her quest, or she’s not up, head south to the west exit of the monastery. There you may find Sister Brenda, if you do, take her escort quest, as she requests to be escorted into the swamp, and that is where we’re headed.

16. If you picked up the escort quest, you’ll travel all the way through the swamp to the exit of the zone in the south. Be sure to pick up the waypoint while you’re there, and then head back north to help Historian Garrod investigate Godslost Swamp. The easiest way to complete this quest is to find the glowing green portals to the underworld, kill the minions and then destroy the portal. Be careful for Veteran Aataxe’s which will sometimes spawn after a portal is destroyed, their charge attack can kill you very quickly if you’re not careful. The Tortured Spirits can be spoken to as you’re heading to and from portals.

17. From there head east past the Orlaf Escarpments and then south to the final heart quest in the zone, where you will help Krug unite the Ettins. To the east of Veteran Krug is a camp of centaurs. There are several spawns near the edge of the camp, and then a band of centaurs that run around the center of the camp. The easiest way is to start with those on the edge, and then try to pull stragglers from that group that run around the center. If you’ve got some friends in the area, you’ll be able to handle that group that runs around the center, and should be able to commune with the place of power for your skill point.

That completes my guide to Queensdale, there are way too many variables to say specifically what level you’ll be, but I would expect that you should be at least level 15, and possibly as high as 17 or 18. If you’re at the low end of the level spectrum, feel free to go back and complete any missing waypoints, vistas, and points of interest in this area. Because of the automatic de-leveling of characters, feel free to visit any other starting zone to complete other heart quests. Assuming you’re comfortable with your level, at this point, I’d recommend finishing up your class quest in this area, and then taking the waypoint to Swamplost Haven, and heading south into Kessex Hills.

Last weekend we finally got a chance to take Guild Wars 2 for a spin and in turn talk about it! We love when near-to-release games drop the NDA because we finally are able to get our hands on the game and then discuss it with the community at large. Guild Wars 2 is not like any MMORPG released on the market. Sure you have fireballs, swords, and dragons, but the way you play the game is entirely different. You are no longer competing against other players for quest objectives. No longer are you strung out going from quest hub to quest hub doing a laundry list of inane things.

In Guild Wars 2, you are no longer playing a meta game of quests, you begin living in the world. Arenanet has created a game that moves. No matter where you are, the game could be doing something entirely different each time you visit the same place. With all that being said, let’s take a dive into what we loved about Guild Wars 2.

The game starts off which a special tutorial instance that gets the player off and running. Each race begins their personal story and Guild Wars 2 tosses you into action right away. If you’re curious what the Human Ranger goes through, take a look at our first installment of Rangers in Queensdale that we released earlier in the week. We’ve got a full video of the beginning and end of that experience while we go over some of the basics of GW2.

We won’t go on and explain how skills work, or what to do when your health reaches zero since we’ve covered that already. Instead, lets take a dive into what you see as soon as you finish the tutorial and get into the open world.

We started off at the entrance of our racial capitol facing a vista of a small village. Down the path we immediately see a player with a Telescope icon above his head. These NPCs, once you talk to them, tell you the story and what’s going on in the nearby area. You’ll be shown a map that will slowly reveal key nearby areas where you can go and find objectives to complete for experience and coin.

These areas are represented by yellow Hearts on your map. Hearts are static objectives that you can complete only once similar to Warhammer’s Public Quests and each map has a ton of them. Hearts are a way for Arenanet provide players objectives and goals so that you never feel lost or without something to do. They provide a good source of experience and money. If you’re strictly going to level via PVE, it’ll be necessary to hit all of them up as you progress through a map.

So after talking to the Telescope guy, we notice that our personal story is telling us to assist some of the farmers in the area. We immediately head off and begin our journey. Running down the road we come across a Waypoint. In Guild Wars 2, waypoints are littered throughout the world allowing you to fast travel to them instantly, once you’ve unlocked them, for a small fee.

This is one of the newer conveniences given to us in Guild Wars 2. Finished with an Event and you want to head back to town? Click a waypoint on your map and you’re there. Want to meet up with friends on the other side of the world? Bam, you’re there. Stuck at the bottom of a deep cavern and want to get back to the surface? No problem at all. Waypoints also serve as a graveyard. If you happen to die, you can select any waypoint to be resurrected at. You will never have to summer long travel times anymore.

Also, just to point out, each of the racial cities are connected to each other via Asura Portals. You can quickly meet up with friends if you’re both starting off as different races.

Walking across a bridge, the vista of Queensdale opens before our eyes and we see our first Heart just a short distance away. As we arrived to assist the farmer, we noticed that there are waves of bandits raiding the farm! Our first event! As you’ve already heard, GW2 has dynamic events that spawn throughout the world, and this is one of them. The objective was to defeat waves of bandits. The great thing about the event is that by completing the event we also gain credit with the Heart’s objectives. Once we finished the event, it turns out that we killed two birds with one stone. We collect a ton of experience, kharma, and money and the first leg of our personal story was complete.

It’s hard to really explain how awesome it is to just stumble onto an event and team up with a bunch of other players to complete it. You can get a feel for this in the video above. It really feels like an impromptu raid and the best thing is that they scale to the number of people in the area. One issue we came across is that the scaling is a bit unbalanced. Sometimes there are just too many NPCs and it’s impossible to defend yourself as they swarm around you.

Once you complete the first part of the personal story, it asked us to visit an inn all the way to the northern portion of the main city. One of the biggest complaints we had read was that they were forced to walk all the way back to town, then through a giant city to get to the next leg of the plotline. Remember those Waypoints? Use them! Waypoints are already unlocked in the city. No walking here buddy!

A good pro-tip here would be to stop by a weapon vendor and pick up some additional weapons. Our suggestion is to pick up a Greatsword if your profession allows it. Early on (as you can see in our video), the Greatsword does amazing damage and really helps tackle events faster.

The story elements are all located in their own personal instances. In ours, we had to defeat some nasty bandits that were laid up in the Inn. You are able to complete them solo, but nothing is preventing you from bring your friends with you.

You can watch us run through the next three Hearts and explore the rest of Queensdale in our video above. We fight Drakes, Elementals and some devious spiders. In Part 3 we’ll show you the rest of the initial story quest line and watch an Escort Event gone wrong as a lady in white turns on us in the end!