So you’ve left the newbie areas, and your ready to become an intermediate player at Guild Wars! Excellent. Now its time to slap on your best armor (you can afford) and start questing in the real world of Guild Wars!
What items do I need?
When moving to seared Ascalon you’ll start out with the short straw. Unlike pre-searing you no longer are the cool guy on the block, you’re the low man on the totem. How do you climb out of having the disadvantage? First, you’re going to need money to arm yourself. Then your going to need to know what to buy!
What to do with items you have or find
You will find many drops as you’re adventuring, and you probably have stuff from pre-seared Ascalon still. Pre-searing stuff:
Post searing stuff will be of higher quality. You can salvage most stuff if you find it useless, the materials will sell. For instance you can find a scimitar with damage 2-7, but few will buy it. They will buy your iron if you salvage it down and get iron. If you have an expert salvage kit (Fort Ranik has them) you can sometimes get steel ingots. Those you can offload for 200gp – 250gp as opposed to the standard 10gp for standard iron.
Some stuff in post searing that you can use:
How do I sell stuff to players, what is it worth?
First, its important to realize that low district numbers have become “where you go” to sell. If you jump to district 1 (and can get in) or district 2 and un-mute the “trade” channel you will understand what I mean.
Second, the ease of selling items goes from high to low:
What doesn’t sell? Usually anything with “vampire” in the name. It’s a high maintenance item.
Costs of stuff
What do I usually get for prices?
That’s a little breakdown of some stuff. If you have collectors items in the beginning of the game you may get 10gp for them if a player is really in need. Later on you can fetch 100+ gold for rare collector items (ebon spider legs, jawbones, wings, etc.)
The Fur Square
Fur squares are one of the most popular things in the game, many armor types need them (esp. warriors). As you encounter Charr on missions you will sometimes find Charr hides. Keep these!! You can trade 4 Charr hides into the collect in Ascalon City (near the merchant) and get 1 Fur. You can also take your chances and use an expert salvage kit on a Charr hide to get Fur. You’ll better off collecting 4 when battling Charr (if your lucky). I usually can come out of a mission with 4 to 6 of these little guys. Fur is very key.
If you find a fur square, and nobody is looking for one you can sell it to the rare material trader. If they are offering less then 250gp hold out, and come back later. Traders have a dynamic pricing system and it will rise. This is especially true for Friday, and Saturday nights. Hold rare items till the weekend to get a better price.
Henchmen
If you’re friends are offline, you can always take henchmen on adventures. Click on them and add them t your party. You can have one of each to your maximum party size. The best combo I’ve had is: fighter, mage, healer, and yourself. That combo work swell for the new folks.
Attribute Assignment
You’re new, you have lots of attributes, and you don’t know what to do with them? Specialize, don’t distribute evenly. New elementalists can usually put there points in energy storage, fire, and air and have a good powerful character. A new mesmer will do well with domination, illusion (or inspiration), and fast casting. A Fighter is good with sword, strength, and tactics. Necro with soul reaping, blood and death. Monk with healing, divinity, and smiting prayers. Ranger with marksmanship, wilderness survival, and expertise.
I take 3 attributes from my primary and 2 from my secondary. Some people prefer 3 from primary and 1 from secondary (others have 0 in secondary). The less you spread, the more powerful your specialized skills will become. You can’t master them all!
You can divert from this path I suggested for above attributes, but you’re going to have to deal with less cool skills now, and more down the road. Guild Wars skills tend to focus you in fire, swords, healing, blood and the like. Other skills get better with time.
If at first you don’t succeed you can always deducted them and put them elsewhere later.
Want more info? Buy Prima’s Guide to Guildwars. They will break down the pro’s and con’s to many of the primary/secondary mixtures.
Happy Hunting!
CodeMonkey
- Money: If you don’t have guild members to trick you out, your going to have to suffer for awhile and get some money. How? Adventuring! Talk to anyone with a “!” over their head and collect up some quests. Only a few will be available for now, but as you complete them and return to talk to the NPC’s you’ll get more advanced quests. Some NPC’s will be outside of Ascalon City, so don’t expect to get all your quests in the city walls. Go out, complete quests, and gather some cash. Sell things you don’t need, or try some player to player trading (more on that later).
- Collectable items: When you head out you’ll find collectors that will trade your “random junk” for cool stuff. Don’t worry about the armor they have, start by getting a good weapon if they offer one. There is a collector outside (near Ambassador Zaine) that has a good war hammer for warriors, and some other stuff. You need to give him 5 gargoyle skulls. So first thing you do is do not salvage collectables until you know you don’t need them. As you adventure you’ll find collectors and stuff they want. Try to collect key items for collectors that have stuff you really need. If you end up finding something better, then you’re in luck. Otherwise, try to collect what you want if you cannot afford to buy a cooler item from another player.
- Buy a bag or two: You are going to be collecting a lot of stuff. There is a merchant near the material trader in Ascalon city that will sell you a bag for 100. If you don’t have a belt pouch yet, get that too. You can get one belt pouch, and two bags for a total of 300gp. Very good to have.
- 50 bucks for your vault: Talk with the storage NPC in Acalon so you have access to your vault. For 50gp you’ll have a place to store stuff you find and may/may-not need. The vault is shared with all characters you create, so you can stash stuff here for other characters you have. And the storage area is available in all towns (so you will always have access to your crap).
- Collect Materials you need: You can always hoard materials, but you really want to hoard those that are important to you. A fighter wants iron, steel, hides, etc. Talk to the armor NPC and figure out what you want to buy, and start collecting that stuff.
- Build armor: Get the best armor you can in Ascalon city. NOTE: There are two armor folks, one is the cheaper Wal*Mart brand, the other is better. Buy what you can, but shoot for the 150gp armor pieces. It will pay off in the future against the Charr. If you have options for fire protection over something else you may want to go with it because the Charr monsters use fire based attacks. Energy based armor is also clutch for casters.
What to do with items you have or find
You will find many drops as you’re adventuring, and you probably have stuff from pre-seared Ascalon still. Pre-searing stuff:
- Worn Belts: Keep ‘em, you can salvage them to hide squares. Very useful for many armors, many friends armors, or to sell to players for 10gp each.
- Collectors items: Most are useless. Spider legs, enchanted stones, etc. You can salvage them to raw materials, sell them for 3gp each, or give them away.
- Old armor: If you have your original newbie armor and you get something better, toss it in the trash. If its stuff you got from pre-searing collectors then salvage it down to raw materials.
- Old weapons: “Starter” weapons are useless if you find something better. Trash them. Otherwise salvage your weapons after you find something better.
Post searing stuff will be of higher quality. You can salvage most stuff if you find it useless, the materials will sell. For instance you can find a scimitar with damage 2-7, but few will buy it. They will buy your iron if you salvage it down and get iron. If you have an expert salvage kit (Fort Ranik has them) you can sometimes get steel ingots. Those you can offload for 200gp – 250gp as opposed to the standard 10gp for standard iron.
Some stuff in post searing that you can use:
- Grawl Necklaces: You can get plant fibers by salvaging them, or give them to a collector to get stuff. Or sell them for 3gp each.
- Weak swords: Salvage to iron or give to buddies that have a weaker one.
- axes/hammers: Like swords but less popular to users. With an expert salvage kit I can usually get steel from axes and hammers fairly easily.
- Wands and Staffs: A lot of the earlier wands and staffs are very weak in power, and usually useless to most players. Salvage ‘em or sell them to the NPC trader.
- Purple Items: At this point in time a purple item may be valuable to you if its of your professions, otherwise you can attempt to salvage the upgrade items and sell them to players, or sell the item itself to players (or real cheap to the NPC’s).
- Artifacts, Icons, Chakrams, and energy items: There are many items that you will find that are for your “offhand” (if your not a hammer wielder, or bow person). Like Fire Artifacts +3 energy. If you have the requirements to use it (attributes meet what the items says) and it is better then what you have then use it. You probably have a +3 energy item by now, so keep an eye out for +4, +5, and +6 ones. Or find a guild mate with a good one that they no longer need.
- Shields: If you use a shield keep an eye out for high armor ones (6, 7, 8 by this point). If you have no care for a shield sell or salvage it for iron/wood/bone.
How do I sell stuff to players, what is it worth?
First, its important to realize that low district numbers have become “where you go” to sell. If you jump to district 1 (and can get in) or district 2 and un-mute the “trade” channel you will understand what I mean.
Second, the ease of selling items goes from high to low:
- Crafing Materials: You can usually get at least 10gp per common crafting item. If a player wants less then they’re trying to take you for a ride, they’re cheap, or they’re new to the game.
- Rare Crafting materials: These items can be sold to the rare item trader, or you can simply use them for a quote before selling to real players. Watch out, if someone wants to buy steel for 150gp from you, that npc material trader may give you more (like 200+). Get the best deal, and don’t trust the players quote until you know you cannot get a better deal from the artificial intelligence!
- Fortitude Upgrade Items: You have just used an expert salvage kit on a sword of fortitude and received a +20hp fortitude upgrade item. That sucker will sell very quickly. For fortitude items at or over 20hp will sell for roughly 2,500gp.
- Dye’s: Check with the dye trader before selling to a human. Certain dye’s are better then others. Black dye will get you about a grand easy. Yellow will get you 50-100gp usually, and blue dye is like 500gp. Check before you sell.
- Runes: Some runes are better then others (for selling). Minor runes sell well, again you can check the rune trader. The top sellers are: vigor, swordsmanship, marksmanship, healing, energy storage, and fire. You can spend a lot of time trying to sell these to players, it gets frustrating. Easier to save them for guild mates, or just sell them for what you can get (unless they’re the ones mentioned). Check the trader for a quote to make sure you’re not getting ripped off!
- Energy Items: There is always someone looking for energy items +5 or better, you just have to find them. Or salvage them and use the raw materials to trade to players.
- Other upgrade items: Sword, Staff, and Bow upgrades may sell, axe and hammers are harder because nobody seems to use them. Upgrade items can be hard to sell if they’re unpopular, and a standard trader may or may not give you more then 10gp for them. Try guild mates first if they’re around your level (high level characters will surely have better then you).
- Colored Items: There is always someone looking for colored items (purple & gold). However they are usually looking for a specific item, but if you have it you’ll be able to fetch a good price (500gp+).
What doesn’t sell? Usually anything with “vampire” in the name. It’s a high maintenance item.
Costs of stuff
What do I usually get for prices?
- Common Crafting items: 10gp – 12gp each (12gp for those that desperately need it NOW).
- Rare Crafting Items: 150gp+ (leather squares are usually cheaper). Steel ingots can get 250gp. Silk is also cheap (50gp – 100gp depending on who needs it). Fur Squares: 250gp to 300gp. I usually start 300gp, if I cannot get a buyer I’ll lower it a little.
- Fortitude Items: +20 can get you 2,500gp or a little less. +25 can fetch you 4K to 5K for swords and bows (little less for axes and hammers unless you find someone that can use it).
- Enchantment Advantages: depending on the percentages (10% are common) I will sell from 100gp to 200gp.
- Damage items: For “max damage items” such as bows (28 dmg), and such can fetch 500-1000gp without too much complaint. Fire swords are from 900gp to 1500gp. Anything that deals up to 18 damage can fetch 300-600gp. Lower then 15 is pretty common and may be hard to sell at all (without other magical properties to make it desirable).
- dye: Variable depending highly on what the trader is giving for prices. I usually undercut the dye trader by 20 to 50 gold. People want a deal, not a 5gp discount.
That’s a little breakdown of some stuff. If you have collectors items in the beginning of the game you may get 10gp for them if a player is really in need. Later on you can fetch 100+ gold for rare collector items (ebon spider legs, jawbones, wings, etc.)
The Fur Square
Fur squares are one of the most popular things in the game, many armor types need them (esp. warriors). As you encounter Charr on missions you will sometimes find Charr hides. Keep these!! You can trade 4 Charr hides into the collect in Ascalon City (near the merchant) and get 1 Fur. You can also take your chances and use an expert salvage kit on a Charr hide to get Fur. You’ll better off collecting 4 when battling Charr (if your lucky). I usually can come out of a mission with 4 to 6 of these little guys. Fur is very key.
If you find a fur square, and nobody is looking for one you can sell it to the rare material trader. If they are offering less then 250gp hold out, and come back later. Traders have a dynamic pricing system and it will rise. This is especially true for Friday, and Saturday nights. Hold rare items till the weekend to get a better price.
Henchmen
If you’re friends are offline, you can always take henchmen on adventures. Click on them and add them t your party. You can have one of each to your maximum party size. The best combo I’ve had is: fighter, mage, healer, and yourself. That combo work swell for the new folks.
Attribute Assignment
You’re new, you have lots of attributes, and you don’t know what to do with them? Specialize, don’t distribute evenly. New elementalists can usually put there points in energy storage, fire, and air and have a good powerful character. A new mesmer will do well with domination, illusion (or inspiration), and fast casting. A Fighter is good with sword, strength, and tactics. Necro with soul reaping, blood and death. Monk with healing, divinity, and smiting prayers. Ranger with marksmanship, wilderness survival, and expertise.
I take 3 attributes from my primary and 2 from my secondary. Some people prefer 3 from primary and 1 from secondary (others have 0 in secondary). The less you spread, the more powerful your specialized skills will become. You can’t master them all!
You can divert from this path I suggested for above attributes, but you’re going to have to deal with less cool skills now, and more down the road. Guild Wars skills tend to focus you in fire, swords, healing, blood and the like. Other skills get better with time.
If at first you don’t succeed you can always deducted them and put them elsewhere later.
Want more info? Buy Prima’s Guide to Guildwars. They will break down the pro’s and con’s to many of the primary/secondary mixtures.
Happy Hunting!
CodeMonkey
