Who gives the invites to BDL?
Gods I hope so. Taomist is a Warrior, my first character levelled beyond five, and she’s stuck at the crafting table due to being completely unable to complete an early storyline quest. I’ve outlevelled it by far, and still can’t do it. It’s two mobs, MUST kill one before the other will die, and nothing I do can finish it, it’s ridiculous.
But that’s ok; picked up a Guardian out of frustration and haven’t put her down since. 
That would be Tao Lynn, if you see her out and about on Jade Quarry.
I haven’t played in a few days, but I think you’re pretty far ahead of us on NP. It might make more sense for all of us to relocate over to TC unless they have particular ties to the server (I know Ike Witt is in a rather large and active Guild here, so I wouldn’t expect him to go anywhere, for example)
I think anyone in the Guild can send an invitation. It’s just a matter of them reading this thread and then remembering when they’re next online. Several of us have now done the first step…
I completed all five starting zones yesterday. (They finally fixed the bugged skill challenge in Metrica.) That got me up to level 41. I really love how I can progress without skipping zones.
I bought myself a set of Magic Find armor from the trading post. I think I’m at about +12% now. It’s made a noticeable difference in the number of green items I’m finding. The loss of stats more useful for combat isn’t too noticeable to me. Maybe because I’m always down-leveled.
One problem I have is that there isn’t nearly enough drops for my Leatherworking. I’ve been salvaging everything that produces leather. And even with doing all starter zones, I’ve found enough leather to get my skill up to about 40. It’s disappointing that either I need to grind for mats or go to the trading post.
wonderlust, I haven’t seen you in game at any time I’m in game.
Really? Don’t have to be on same server? So how does that work if you want to group or whatever?
As usual, I have my typical MMO problem - I’d like to play with you guys, but I have a group of friends I’ve played with for many years now, and we’re never on the exact same server.
How do I get an invite?
Definitely don’t have to be on the same server. See above for BDL’s clumsy attempts at building a guild bank.
Grouping works in theory, but mostly not, currently. Here’s what I figured out with a friend over the weekend. First send your buddy a whisper. Then right-click their name to start a party. Then go to the same zone. If at least one of you is on the “overflow” server the other should get an option to “join” by right-clicking the party portrait. Voila! You’re playing together.
The trick is getting the “overflow” server. Eventually, this is supposed to work no matter what. But it doesn’t right now.
For an invite, look for one of us in this thread in game. My username is Pleonast dot some number. Send a whisper and we can invite. Unless you’re on late you’ll have better luck with Suburban.
Are you trying to level by grinding known recipes or are you discovering? My problem hasn’t been finding enough leather, it’s been having enough animal parts (claws, fangs, etc) to make the various insignia for discoveries. Discoveries give you about a billion more exp than making known items, in case you didn’t know – I rarely ever have to discover more than a single set for myself before leveling enough to create the next set of insignia (well ok, maybe a set and a half to two sets, depending on crits – waiting till late in the week when the server has a large +crafting crit bonus helps).
I’m definitely not grinding known recipes. I think I have plenty of parts, but maybe I don’t have the right ones. It’s definitely leather I’m short on. Is there a good online crafting guide?
I started off with this massive thread, memorized what I could, and then fumbled around on my own after that, because it’s so huge it causes my browser to freeze for about 5 minutes while it loads.
This is a great place to start.
As far as leather, I think it’s cheapest to buy starter armors for pennies and then salvage them. Also, there’s an area in the 15ish range of Queensdale to the southwest along the border mountains where centaurs drop a lot of leather or bags of crafting items that sometimes include leather.
Sorry Pleonast, I haven’t been in the game much, as I’m trying to get my motivation back after leaving a guild. Thanks for watching for me, though.
Are you salvaging? If you played all starting zones and only found leather to last till lvl 40 then it seems to me you are only using leather you found in bags etc. Buy the cheapest Salvaging Kit - the better ones are only interesting for items lvl70+ and start to salvage at least every Leather-armor that drops instead of selling them to the Merchant. If you plan on eventually leveling an Armorsmith or a Tailor i would salvage everything. Blues and Greens you can still sell, but everything with an sell-price below 25 copper or so i would salvage.
Grouping cross-server works flawlessly for Dungeons. As long as every Party-member is on the correct map for the Dungeon (e.g. Plains of Ashford for Ascalonian Catacombs) everybody gets an invite for the Dungeon, regardless of their server. Open-world grouping is not possible atm - only if you happen to find a map with an overflow, which is becoming quite rare as the population is spreading.
Oops, I meant southeast. Also, I’ve received guild invitations upon signing in, in the past, so it’s not necessary for the recipient to be online when inviting.
Thanks for the crafting links, everyone. Mustardseed, yep, I’m salvaging all the medium armor and hides that I get. (Well, I trading post the Green ones.) I’ll try to get farther, but crafting is low priority for me. If nothing else, it’ll give me something to do after I’ve completed all the zones.
I figured out how to send an invite to someone offline. But I need to know the full user name (name.number) to do it. (wonderlust, you’ve got an invite waiting for you when you log in next.)
I purchased a couple of rounds of drinks for the city, giving the guild 200 more influence and getting enough for the guild stash. I can’t research start the final research process, though, assumedly because I’m not an officer.
Thanks! I started the build order for it. It’ll be done Tuesday Night.
I just discovered that you can sell stuff on the trading post from anywhere. Or buy. But you can’t pick up any profits you make or items you buy until you find a physical trading post NPC.
I’m just realizing how huge the map is. I have one character, a level 44 Human Ranger. My /age is 63 hours, so I’ve got a fair amount of play in. On this map, I’ve only explored the area in the yellow rectangle. Theoretically, for each starting area, one can get that much play time in, plus the high level areas - there’s hundreds and hundreds of hours here, for $60, no recurring fee. To read the official forums, Arenanet is worse than Hitler…
Heh. We need to have a “Downfall” episode made.
Nerd rage on MMO forums seems to be the standard, not the exception.
It’s not just MMOs, either. The Elder Scrolls forums are just as bad.
So far I’m having a blast with GW2. I’m pissed off because I have to stop playing to go to an appointment right now. I even have a (low-level) elementalist character, and I’ve never before enjoyed playing casters. This just might be the game that lasts me the rest of my life. My only complaint is that the Charr area is just too laggy for me to play, so I haven’t been able to explore that yet.
People who are happy with the game don’t post, period. They might talk about the game with their friends and such, recommending it and sharing adventures, but once they hit a bug or their favorite exploit gets nerfed, then they have a reason to post on the official forums full of rage because of that injustice done to them personally.
I pity the people who need to read through all that crap as a job.