On all servers. Names carry over. I’ll add you to my friends and anyone who wants can add me -Ike Witt.
I hit a couple different personal stories that are like that.
Specifically:
[spoiler]The Norn quest where I defend some guys hut against a couple waves of different ranged dps elementals (scheduled for level eleven, I think.) NPC’s were all dead by the middle of the first wave. I did it as a Guardian. Ended up dieing so many times, my character was nude before I gave up.
The Charr quest (I did it as an Engineer level 19) getting some treasure from a ghost filled post office, with Tribune whats-his-face as a companion. The Tribune generated ZERO aggro, so I always got mobbed by the spawns.[/spoiler]
Are these personal stories all intended to be soloable? A couple fights are a royal pain due to zerg swarm.
I was reading on some other forum; that particular Norn quest seems to be in serious need of balancing (I did it myself, and finally just bull-headed my way through it at level 20, only dying 2 or 3 times).
I’m playing a Sylvari Mesmer and had a similar problem with one of the quests there (level 9 or so) where my two NPC companions get themselves killed in short order. After several tries where I was this close to completing it without dying, I finally managed it. In this case, I think it was simply a matter of knowing how to play my character, but the Norn one is simply ‘bugged’ at this point.
If they could “teach” the NPC’s to Dodge as part of their routines, or get the hell out of AOE, that would be a big help.
I’m starting to feel the hate for the personal story missions. I rolled a Norn over the weekend and hit the point where you’re defending the guy’s hut from the swarm of elementals who all immediately spam you with ranged attacks. I was dead in less than 2 seconds and died about 5 more times completing it (the NPCs didn’t last very long either).
Then there was the next quest series after that, where I had to fight my way through a dredge hideout and kill the foreman. That wasn’t so bad. However, once you kill the foreman, you have to bring his gun back as a trophy. Picking up his gun forces you to use it in combat, and waves of dredge spawn as soon as you pick it up, so you don’t even have a chance to read your new ability tooltips. Don’t bother, by the way, the abilities are all garbage. 5-second cooldown for no damage and applying debuffs and hoping your NPCs can kill the dredge before you bite it (spoiler: they can’t). Garbage, garbage mission.
The later skillbooks (@41, 61?) come with a free trait respec, which is nice.
Have been clearing (& grinding up crafting loot in) the starting maps on my main character. There may be a loot bug - every once in a while, I’d get something almost level-appropriate from low level mobs. For example, the level 36+ greatsword my warrior is using dropped off a level 6 mob…which was a nice surprise, since it was a 50 point increase to the base damage compared to the one I was using, even if it’s still under-level.
I’m not sure that’s a bug. You get downranked so the content remains somewhat dangerous to you, and as such you gain experience as if you were level-appropriate. It made sense to me to find level-appropriate loot, otherwise you’d continue to level but be unable to upgrade gear.
But it’s rare. 95+% of drops are exactly what you’d expect them to be. And if they weren’t, you wouldn’t be able to get the low-level rare crafting components (which is what I was actually trying for - that section where you need 8 to discover each recipe is a bear.)
Getting level-appropriate awards from the map completion achievement, or even the boss chests would certainly make sense though. But sometimes those are laughably lower tier.
Can you talk more about this?
The game wiki is still kinda weak.
My crafting recipe list is kinda lame, I imagine.
I recommend using the forge in LA every once in a while to see what you get. Usually it is useless but sometimes it is handy.
Most of the recipes are obvious once you know how it works.
For example:
A weaponsmith starts with the ability to make a bunch of components and “mighty (weak)” versions of weapons unlocked (which only take 1 of those rare components.)
To make a better version of the weapon, you need to include one of the enhancement items. I think there are 3 unlocked to begin with, more show up automatically as you level up your crafting.
So if you want a better sword, you need to make 3 items:
a sword hilt
a sword blade
an enhancement item - the “mighty” one uses a wood dowel and 3 weak blood.
then you go to the discovery tab. You double-click the 3 items, and the “craft item” button should be clickable. Click it, and it will get permanently added to your known recipes, you get a huge xp boost (it’s something like 10x the xp you’d get for simply crafting one once you know the recipe), and you get a better version of the sword.
There are some special cases, though.
Metal bars + dust will make sharpening stones, which give a temp xp boost.
Armor, leather & tailor can make special bag types.
There are also hidden recipes that use insanely rare drop items like “silver doubloons” or “onyx silver” shards. I don’t know what those make yet.
I haven’t mucked about with the mystic forge yet, though I understand you spend skill points to upgrade materials at a loss (so something like 250 copper can become 120 iron.) Holding off on that till I’m happy with my skill variety.
OK, thanks.
I noticed that the next step up from Mighty(weak) is Mighty(Master), which needs like eight of those lower tier critter parts. I gots plenty of the weak poison, but I use up all of my “tiny claws” and scales.
But the stuff made from Mighty(master), I think, is for level 20 characters. (And I think level 75 skill in crafting.)
It’s been a lot of work. 
Right. But my character’s hit 41…so I really needed to pick up those rare, low level mats to catch up. Currently around 140…and run out of the 2nd tier of materials. Bah! Could be worse though. I remember one game that required drops that could ONLY be gotten by characters below level 10 for the level 40 equipment.
Switched to playing a human warrior and having a lot less personal story woes, maybe partly because of the heavier armor. I want to be in melee range anyways, so if they rush me I just whirlwind them. As long as the enemies aren’t exploding zombies it tends to work, though there also seems to be less fights where I get totally overwhelmed by enemy numbers like my veggie elf elementalist. Haven’t really even needed to use my 6 second invulnerability skill.
I gotta say they’ve gotten the feel of the combat right, especially for melee. Swinging a huge 2h sword around feels just the right kind of massive, and turning into a whirling maelstrom of axes is something I don’t get tired of.
One thing that somebody in our guild pointed out to us- When you are doing your personal story line, your equipment has to be top of the line. Every 5 levels you should do a once over of your armour and weapons. Make sure they are level appropriate or better.
By that token, when you fill in a heart you should always talk to the person with the heart because they are karma merchants after the quest. They often have decent armor, upgrades and bulk food items. It wasn’t until I was level 43 that I realized you can upgrade your rebreather, and it came from a karma merchant.
I browsed through the Guild menu but didn’t see anything (other than just a mention in the text) about a Guild Bank. Have I overlooked it, or has it not been implemented yet?
I’ve chosen Chef as my profession, and probably won’t choose an armor- or sword-maker as my second, so I’ve ended up with a lot of low-level mats that perhaps others can use. Ditto for leather and mail armor, which seems ludicrous to sell for like 20 copper; I’d rather donate it if someone can use it.
I haven’t actually done it in my tiny guild, but the way I understood it you can build a 50 slot guild bank with 500+1000 influence.
It’s there in the Architecture section; they call it “Guild Stash”. But the cost is 1000 influence, which seems pretty high for a small guild.
Have you found Cooking to be difficult to level? I’ve got tons of carrots, and onions, and other things I’ve harvested, but I don’t seem to be able to find a wide enough variety of ingredients to create any new recipes…am I missing something obvious?
It does take a while to build up that variety, yeah…
Animals occasionally drop meat, moas and raptors drop poultry meat. Those bags that humanoids carry can have any kind of crafting collectible in it.
Every zone has a “farm” where there will be 5-8 batches of some ingredient in a bunch (23 hours to refresh, though jumping from overflow to main should allow you to get them again.
There’s karma vendors all over the place in town that sell a list of ingredients for 3 karma each.
The master chef sells bulk ingredients, as do a fair number of heart vendors. Once you’re in tier 2+ areas, you can find clams underwater (clam meat & chance of pearl.)
re: buying in bulk.
Here’s a googledoc that lists known vendors: