Getting Started

Introduction

Welcome to the world of soloing Guild Wars! Below you'll find a list of recommendations on how to best enjoy your solo experience. As a forewarning - soloing the game is a pretty difficult task, but a very fun experience! Guild Wars while being originally designed for player group play surprisingly plays quite well when you're solo. Not having access to heros / henchmen and only having access to 8 skills yourself makes the game feel like a decently difficult RPG.

Before starting it's important to define your goals of the playthrough. Is your goal to beat one of the campaigns? Do you want to go for GWAMM solo? Identifying what goal you have is important to deciding what path to take.

It's also important to note, read through the below and then start your playthrough! It's a lot more fun to approach challenges from scratch (missions, etc) without prior knowledge and use the guides when you get stuck!

Picking a Ruleset

It's important to note that you do NOT have to follow the same rules other solo players do. There are many different ways to play the game and thus, many different ways to solo! The one and only required rule is that you may not use Heroes, Henchmen or Players for any content, the whole point of the challenge is to complete it on your own to the best of your ability! For some content Heroes / Hench are required, in these cases you should do your best to limit their usage. You can do this by setting them to passive, removing their weapons, removing their skills and attributes. Below are popular considerations to think of when creating your ruleset.

• Fresh Account
  • Starting with a fresh account used just for a solo character is a good way to allow storage access & prevent account titles affecting your account (if you wish to go for a full solo GWAMM)
• Storage Access
  • Removing storage access makes the game play similar to Runescape's Ultimate Ironman
• Account Titles
  • If you plan to go for solo GWAMM you can decide to either allow existing account titles to count (Such as Kurzick, Luxon or Zaishen) or optionally not allow for them and instead come up with other concessions
• Bonus Allowed
  • If you wish the earlier levels to be easier, you can allow /bonus
• Consumables Allowed
  • Generally consumables aren't needed for non-hardmode content however they do make the challenge easier, and often more fun for some
• PVE Skills Allowed
  • PVE skills are all generally very strong and are good filler skills to help problem solve while you solo. Some opt to only not allow EOTN ones since the sunspear ones are profession based
• Campaign Locked
  • Locking yourself to one campaign prevents access to other campaign skills which can increase difficulty.
• Single Profession Locked
  • Locking yourself to a single profession prevents you from using other professions to solve problems.
• Buying from vendors
  • Allowing buying from vendors (such as material & rune vendors) prevents the need for farming materials for armor, weapons, etc
• Selling to vendors
  • Allowing selling to vendors gives you a decent money maker should you need a way to get money
• No Teleporting
  • Not allowing teleporting requires you to pre-plan before leaving an area
• Collectors
  • Rules like "Collector first" are a good way to make you have to hunt for your gear
• LDOA
  • If you're going for GWAMM you should decide if you wish to include LDOA as part of that.
• Primary Profession Priority
  • You may optionally decide to require your builds to be mainly built out of your primary profession. This type of rule prevents you from running something like running a full Mesmer build, or full pet build, or Spirit build (Known to be very strong in most scenarios) instead of using your Primary Profession's Skills
• Cross Campaign Character
  • If you decide on picking one of the campaign specific professions (Assassin, Ritualist, Paragon or Dervish) You may decide to start your run with a 'ferry' to Prophecies with some initially unlocked skills
• Hardcore
  • If your character dies even once, you delete the character and start over from scratch

Example rulesets

First Playthrough Easy Ruleset

• No Heroes, No Hench, No Player Interactions
• Storage is allowed (or not optionally if using existing account)
• /bonus is allowed
• All campaigns, travel, etc are allowed
• PVE Skills are allowed
• Consumables are allowed

First Playthrough Recommended Ruleset

• No Heroes, No Hench, No Player Interactions
• Storage is allowed (or not optionally if using existing account)
• Items are obtained by collectors & quests first when possible (Armor, bags, etc)
• Buying from vendors (Rune, material, etc) is not allowed outside of usual merchant items(ID Kits, etc)
• Selling to vendors is allowed
• All campaigns, travel, etc are allowed
• PVE Skills are allowed
• Consumables are allowed if the materials are self farmed
• Builds consist mainly of primary profession when possible

Player-specific Rulesets

• Shade's Ruleset (Assassin Solo)
  • Shade's Original ruleset

• Nao's Ruleset (Mesmer Solo GWAMM)
  • no hench, no hero, no other player, no cons, no PvE-only skill from EoTN.

• Serial_Experiments Ruleset (Elementalist Solo GWAMM)
  • Playing solo — meaning no heroes, henchmen, or help from other players. This includes no trading with other players. I am using the Rune Trader, Material Trader, and Collectors. Every consumable and every skill is allowed as long as I acquire it on my own.

Picking a Profession

Once you've decided on your ruleset you then need to decide what Profession you're going to play. The important thing here is to pick what you think you will enjoy. Consider that each mission in the solo environment, especially when new to it, takes upwards of 2+ hours per attempt. This means missions like Thunderhead Keep, or Naphui Quarter, or Eternal Grove etc could take you days or even weeks of attempts depending on your playtime. Because of this you will want to be on a profession you enjoy. Below the professions are listed from relative ease of completing tasks solo listed from easy, to hardest when using mainly skills from their primary profession. Note this is a 'generalized' opinion, many factors including which expansion you start in, and your ruleset will change how hard each of these actually are and others may have different opinions

Easiest is at the top of this list

• Mesmer - Wastrels are some of the highest AOE Damage in the game, Diversion + every interrupt you can think of. Mesmer go BRRRR
• Ritualist - SOS simplifies a lot of content with how strong it is
• Ranger - Pets allow you to avoid taking damage directly and can be quite strong
• Elementalist - High energy Pool + 4 energy pips, Second Wind proven to be very powerful sustainability
• Dervish - Large access to sustainability, Grenths Aura is one of the best skills in the game + access to Vow of Strength & Silence, and Avatars. Only downside is it's melee but skills are so strong it counters that mostly
• Necromancer - Blood magic is very strong sustain, access to minions for main 'snowball' opportunities when corpses are available. Struggles in some places depending on campaign start due to lack of damage in early skills
• Assassin - Very strong defense with Shadow Arts skills, being melee single target primarily damage can suffer vs other professions but things like Shroud of Distress, Flashing Blades, etc make it a very strong class
• Monk - Smiting prayers are okay damage but suffers vs other casters in terms of raw damage output, access to Spellbreaker + 55 / 605 builds etc make survivability strong
• Warrior - Very tanky due to Defy / Endure Pain & Dolyak signet + max armor rating, struggles due to adrenaline costs of skills requiring you to be in a fight longer than other professions, being melee, and there being a wide amount of anti-melee mobs in the game
• Paragon - Similar problems to warrior, a lot of skills are adrenaline based so require charging, many skills not 'built' for solo since paragon is made to be a "party support" class. Benefit over warrior is spear has range.

Hardest is at the bottom of this list

Picking a Campaign

Once you've picked your Profession the final choice you need to make is what Campaign to start in. Depending on your profession you may 'start' in either Factions or Nightfall because of the choice. Note that some have opted to doing this, unlocking the initial basic skills then ferrying to Ascalon as part of their challenge so if that interests you, that is an option! Generally for new players it's best to start with a core profession in Prophecies, it has a slower pace which will work you into a solo playthrough. On a fresh, non LDOA character early Ascalon is decently difficult and with a leveled up LDOA character as you approach Kryta you'll start to feel the difficulty ramp up. Do note that if you are over-leveled in an area, it will become harder (or not possible outside bosses) to remove your Death Penalty as it's only removed on EXP gain. In terms of difficulty, Factions & Nightfall both have many more knowledge checks in them to complete. That said you should pick which campaign to start in depending on how it aligns with your goals, so picking any of them is fine at the end of the day!

Game Mechanics

Albeit not needing to start your journey, a glimpse into the intricacies of Guild Wars game mechanics can shed some light on difficult situations and help circumvent them, feel free to check out Helpful Tactics or ask in our Discord.