I thought I should revisit my old thread where I listed off all kinds of semi-random tips and tricks I had picked up along the way, and reissue based on HoT.

GW2 was my first MMO, and I remember how completely overwhelming this game was. I have had a lot of wonderful help along the way, and if anything, I just wanted to try and share some of my experiences and help others along the way.

These aren't intended to be tips on how to make the optimal character builds or earn lots of gold.

These are most Quality of Life (QoL) things that I have found useful and wanted to consolidate in one place.

Your experiences may vary …

Maybe the best tip of all … /wiki [topic] in the chat window will open the wiki in your browser. Wiki is not 100% end all be all resource, but it sure is a great place to start for help with nearly any topic in the game.

If you are brand new to the game, you may enjoy playing through your character's Personal Story (just through the first chapter until you receive a Black Lion Chest Key as the reward). That serves as a nice little tutorial and intro to Tyria.

Gear
You will probably outlevel your gear pretty quickly, but you also get lots of armor and weapons as loot drops and rewards. I would not worry much at all about gear until I reach max level 80. Then the real fun starts!

Gathering
I would definitely buy a set of the gathering tools (pick, axe, sickle). Even if you have no interest in crafting, it's easy XP just to harvest stuff and you can always sell materials.

Loot
Here's pretty much how I handle all the loot I pick up:
Crafting materials - wood, ore, foodstuffs = deposit collectible (Inventory menu/gear icon/deposit collectibles). You get a slot that holds 250 of each item in your character's bank. Once bank slot is full … (see below)
Junk (gray color item) = sell to vendor (interact with vendor, find the sell item tab, click on Sell Junk).
Basic armor/weapons (white color item) = use if it is better than your current gear; otherwise, sell to vendor or on Trading Post (see below).
Armor/weapons (blue color item) = use if it is better than your current gear; otherwise, salvage to gain luck (see below).
Armor/weapons (green color item) = same as blue.
Armor/weapons (yellow color item) = these are rares so you probably won't find any of these for a while. Once you do, sell on Trading Post.
There are more tiers above yellow that are available at the highest levels.

Bank Slot Full = sell on Trading Post. You can access your personal bank from any crafting station or any of the bank merchants in any city.

Trading Post
Click O to open the Gem Store/Trading Post.
There is a tab for selling your stuff.
Compare the price for lowest current buyer against the vendor price. Most times, I just sell at lowest buyer unless it is really expensive (like worth more than 1 Gold).
You get charged a listing fee (a % of the sale price) and then you get our proceeds when the item sells, which is usually instantly.
You have to go to a Trading Post merchant to pick up your coin. These merchants can be found in any city and any starter level zone.
I normally leave the coin in there for a while (kind of a safety deposit box).

Salvage to Gain Luck
There is a stat called Magic Find which mysteriously impacts the chance to find better loot.
Salvaging blue and green items yields Essences of Luck, which you double-click to gain permanent increase to your Luck, which, in turn, boosts your Magic Find rating.
I use Mystic Salvage Kit for salvaging yellows; Black Lion Salvage Kit on exotics if you want to guarantee extracting the attached rune/sigil from the item.

Crafing
Totally optional.

Useful for using the materials you find to craft your own gear, some leveling.

I would definitely recommend checking for an online guide if you are going to get serious about crafting.

There are eight crafting disciplines - each character can learn all of them, but can only have 2 active at once. In other words, it costs you a few coin to change to a third crafting profession and switch back to one that you dropped.

You do gain XP from crafting.

Not necessarily a great way to make money (again, check a guide if this is your ambition for crafting).

Personally, I like having the weapon and armor disciplines that fit with the class I am using on that character. For guardian, that would be armorsmith (for heavy armor) and weaponsmith (for most of the guardian weapons - there are a few weapons that guardian uses but are made by artificer or huntsman).

Cooking is fun but the materials fill up your bank quickly. I'd make this my last choice if I was going to start over.

Jewelry is useful for every class since everyone has slots for two earrings, two rings, and one amulet.

Artificer is good for making potions and a few weapons.

Gem Store
Obviously, Arena Net is counting on players spending real $$ in the gem store to help support their incredible game.

Items I have invested in and think are worth considering for anyone:
The full set of unbreakable gathering tools (but only buy these as a full set and when they are on sale). This is just for convenience so you never run out of picks just when you find a rich ore vein and you never have to worry about having one a tool that isn't high enough level for the node you are gathering from. NOTE: The Watchwork Mining Pick is the best of these since it is the only one that gives bonus materials for using it.

The Salvage O Matic - the cost is about the same as buying and using fine salvage kits. Again, this is mostly a convenience and not necessarily about making the most coin in the game. Like the tools, the salvage tool is account bound. (NOTE: A good alternative is to use Mystic Forge to create a Mystic Salvage Kit. This gives 250 charges so you won't use it up too quickly).

Weapon and armor skins are of course all in the eye of the beholder.

Miniatures are fun but again, purely optional.

The bank slot expansions have been very useful for a hoarder like me.

Also, the expanded collection slot (increase from 250 to 500 to 750, and so on).

Always use food and XP buffs. Don't forget about the buffs from the NPC bartender in the BLE Guild Hall!!!

Explore starter level zone and home city. Always unlock waypoints (WP) in the area, do skill points (SP), and heart quests. If you also find Points of Interest (POI) and Vistas along the way, you might have 100% completion of a map before you know it, which also yields some nice rewards at low level.

Go to Lion's Arch, explore there and use the gates to explore all of the other starter cities and zones. You can get to Lion's Arch from a portal near the central WP in our guild hall, too.

Jumping Puzzles (JP) - As someone with very limited JP skills, I found these very challenging. But, as time has gone by, I have enjoyed them more and more. If you are good at these, huzzah! But if you are not, there is a very short one in Lion's Arch that is great for practicing in a safe area (Urmaug's near the Lion Shadow Inn). And I am never shy about accepting the help of a friendly mesmer who will portal me to the end of a JP. A very nice service that good folk often provide.

For open world exploration - always grab WP's of each area you are in even if you are only passing through and not working on finding POI's or doing events. The more WP's you have unlocked, the quicker you can get to specific places later on. In particular, WP's that are used for things like guild missions, world bosses, and dungeons are great to have unlocked.

Looking for Group (LFG) Tool
In the Contacts ( Y ) panel, there is a Looking For Group (LFG) tool. Lots of filters for what you are looking to do (open world, dungeons, etc). If you are trying to find a group, be sure to check the descriptions and join parties that you are comfortable with. If the party is advertising 'zerker gear', 'speed run', then join if you meet those requirements and pass if you don't. Conversely, when using the LFG tool to find others for your own party, be sure to add any qualifiers that you desire (e.g. 'experienced only', '1st time thru', 'will be watching cutscenes'). This helps ensure that others know what kind of party you want, too.