Guild Wars 2 Tips & Tricks

The first Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend Event is on its way and hundreds of thousands of gamers are faced with the Guild Wars universe, perhaps, for the first time. We thought it would be helpful to compile a list of beginner’s Tips and Tricks to help you make your first steps in the world of Tyria just a bit more comfortable. If you think we missed something, please feel free to share it with us in the comment section bellow and we will add it to our ever growing list in the main post.

We have separated the tips and tricks into several categories:

• General
• Skills and Combat
• Crafting and Gathering
• Guild


 

General Tips
1. Save the rare weapon/armor skins you get from your personal story because you can sell it for several golds on the auction house (thanks tentenhun)
2. Auto Loot Option: Check Auto Loot in General Options / Interactions. You can open General Options window by pressing F11.
3. If you have problem to see your friends in the same place on the map, when you are in the same group, you are probably on an overflow server. This is a new technology that allows you to play while you are in a queue.
   

   When a map or a world you want to log into is at capacity limit, the game will ask you if you want to play on an overflow server – so you can actually play while you are in a queue. Once space opens on your world, the game will ask you if you want to join your friends on your world. And you keep all the progress you made while you were playing on the overflow server.

4. How to know if you are on the overflow server? Press N, if it shows you WvW status you are not on an overflow server.
5. When you hold ALT key the NPCs’ names will appear.
6. Crtl+alt shows the name of all characters nearby. (thanks Oleg)
7. If you press N you can see how your world is doing in WvW
8. You can draw and make marks (double click) on the mini map.
   You can also do this by holding shift and draw on mini-map
9. To take screenshot without the UI, you have to hold down Shift while taking the screenshot. This action will not remove the UI from the screen, but it will not appear on the screenshot.
10. You can buy additional inventory space (leather bags) at any basic merchant. Leather bag has 4 slots or craft them. When you reach 100 armorsmithing you can make 8 slot bags.
11. Repair vendor is marked as red broken shield on the map.
    
12. To link an item into chat so others can see its details – Shift+click the item
13. You can access your mail anywhere in the game. Just click on the mailbox icon in the upper-left corner. Don’t forget to click on the Take All button in the mail body to take your rewards.
    
14. You can access Trading post (auction house) anywhere in the game by right clicking the item you want to sell and choosing to sell at Trading post. If you want to buy something or to collect money you have to visit the Trading post.

 

Skills and Combat
15. Your skill trainers are marked on the map as a red book
16. Auto-Attacking: CTRL + Right click any skill on your bar to set it to auto-attack. It means that this skill will repeat continuously until you defeat the mob. It is recommended to set a skill with no cooldown as auto-attacking skill. In your General Options window (F11) you can turn off Auto-Attacking on target change.
    
17. There is no skill/loot stealing. You get your xp and your own loot, as long as you did some damage to the mob.
18. Double click movement keys (WASD) to dodge and evade attacks.
19. You have 5 skills: 3 for main hand and 2 for offhand. You will also get profession skills (4 more slots on the right), you use skill points to buy those
20. Your profession skills 7, 8, 9, 10 (slots on the right) unlock at 5th, 10th, 20th and 30th level.
21. You can cast most of your skills while you are moving.
22. Vendor who sells skill points is marked on the map as blue arrow
23. Ctrl+t – marks your target. (thanks Oleg)
24. At level 7 you can switch your weapons while you are in combat by pressing ‘.
25. You will unlock your firs trait when you reach level 11. And u have to buy the 10 silver book

 

Crafting and Gathering
26. Deposit Collectibles option: Right click on your crafting materials will give you the option Deposit Collectibles. This option will place the material in the crafting material storage (in your bank, there is a tab on the left). You don’t need to take materials from the bank when you want to craft something. (thanks Jagerlich)
27. You can’t steal mining nodes or trees from anyone since they all have separate spawns for each person.
28. You cannot craft when your bags are full.
29. Alt+dragging the item stack will open the split dialog panel (thanks Oleg)
30. Locations of the Crafting trainers and disciplines descriptions can be found here
31. You will gain great xp while you are crafting
32. Banks are shared between characters
33. Any basic merchant can sell you gathering tools.
34. Before you can gather anything you have to equip the tools. Remember to buy the right tool! The cheap tools can not gather the higher level resources.

 

Guild
35. You can access Guild Panel by pressing “G”
36. You can have emblem on your chest / back if your guild buys Guild Armorer Contract, it’s the 4th one on the list. Thanks to rc22cub and DockD on reddit for the tip.