Returning Player - Ironman / GWAMM

Hello everyone. New to the site and returning to the game after ~15 years away. I’m also on a fresh account so I felt would be a great opportunity to try something different. When I played originally I did not get any further than just beating each of the campaigns on normal. This time, I’m looking to do it ALL, Ironman style.

I decided to roll warrior. For my first 100 hours I picked up LDOA (Ironman style this was quite time consuming), and then proceeded to beat prophecies. I complete every quest, every mission bonus, and explore all maps along the way. Interestingly, I got 100% tyria map explored before even mapping the last mission zone! This leads me to believe there is something like 101-103% available map, quite a bit of room for error really. I’m happy I was able to do this without any tools/addons.

I also finished up elite gladiators, just before moving onto Cantha.

My next goals are to work through the Factions story and zones and farm up enough faction (planning to start with Kurzick) for "Save Yourselves!". I know some Ironman accounts do not allow use of any PVE skills. I plan to allow it because I feel like not allowing it limits the game experience.

Below are a few screenshots & my ruleset. I plan to make multiple Ironman characters and use them for each other's hero mercenaries instead of using heros, once I have heros unlocked. I will probably bring all of them through LDOA as well. I'm thinking Ranger next. Let me know if anyone wants to join!

PS: I am in Baklawa's Iron Man Guild if anyone wants to join us

Update:
Just beat factions (Kurzick side). By FAR the biggest hurdle was mastery of Eternal Grove. Now I need to complete Luxon maps, quests and the Luxon only mission. Will then farm more Kurzick to get up to 5 second “Save Yourselves!”.

After that I’m thinking I will try to farm enough XP for Legendary Survivor while capping all Prophecies & Factions skills.

Then we go to Elona. As soon as I start unlocking hero’s I plan to begin leveling iron alts to use as mercenary hero’s.

I’ll add some screenshots with my next update.

Quote from Baklawa

You can use pvp charrs for mercs and give them nice amors with silver/gold zaishen coins

Good to know! Thank you. Perhaps I'll do that for several of them.

EDIT: more of a complete update

- Rank 3 survivor is a relief, now I can get more serious with farming UW & FoW. Obsidian armor is primary goal right now.

- Farming Kurzick when the bonus is active

- Will do the equivalent Nightfall titles after obsidian armor is done.

- Then EoTN

- Then everything on HM

Been grinding like mad! Obsidian armor and "people know me" complete with only Prophecies & Factions done.

Next up:

Kurzick Rank 5 for maximum duration SY

Nightfall cartographer, missions, and elite skills will put me to 15 max titles

EotN and building out heros

I'm finding my gold gain is way out pacing my XP in terms of the pace in which I can cap elite skills. Time to start using XP scrolls I guess? Got Nightfall missions, map, and quests all 100% but need to cap all elites there still. Hero's are gearing up nicely!

Edit: I decided to finally toggle HM on, should have done it sooner. It’s not as big a jump in difficulty as I expected. Now I’m able to work on reputation & better xp while capping nightfall elites. Hope to have a title update really soon

Congrats to Mion Blume on Obsidian armor!

Pretty happy with this update

I now have 100% of map, missions, quests, elite skills for Prophecies, Factions, and Nightfall. This puts me to 15 titles, have not stepped foot into EOTN yet. This marks the point where I have gotten further than ever before back in the early 2000s when I used to play, so everything from here is going to feel new.

Next up:

Prophecies, Factions, Nightfall HM missions

I also need to farm 1 more level of Kurzick for max "save yourselves" when its double reward week. Open to suggestions on what is most efficient, still trying different things to figure that out. Is faction pvp even possible? I've been doing Altrumm Ruins.

Quote from PredatorNoa

Quote from Adinay

Just beat factions (Kurzick side). By FAR the biggest hurdle was mastery of Eternal Grove.

How did you got it done with Henchies? Only tried it one time yet but failed the mission pretty hard because I couldn't save all Trees.

There’s a few YouTube videos out there. It took me trying a few different strategies and IIRC 10+ attempts. Some of it is actually luck, and a lot of it is practice and timing. Having the ideal henchman lineup helps too. Search YouTube and watch what they do and who they use. I did it on warrior which might be worse because of all the running you do back and forth.

Decided to do HM missions and vanquish each campaign and decided to do Nightfall first so I can also finish sunspear and lightbringer titles, then Cantha & Tyria HM Missions & vanquish before moving into EOTN for everything that remains for GWAMM.

Finished Nightfall HM Missions and vanquished Desolation first. Missions were surprisingly not bad for my first time in hard mode. Alkali Pan was tough though and glad to be done with wurm form zones.

I feel like I'm on track to finish both reputation titles before all zones are vanquished, so that will be nice to have no additional grind there.

Considering switching from sword and board to scythe. I've been sword and board since the beginning though but have been getting some nice sythe drops tempting me!

NF Vanquishing, Spearmarshal & Lightbringer done. FINALLY a change of scenery. I don't plan on coming back to NF for anything other than maybe to farm some Tormented weapons. Setting sail to Cantha to do HM missions, Vanquishing, and get from rank 4 -> 5 Kurzick.

Still planning on saving HM on my favorite continent for last; core Tyria and then EOTN.

I need to take the time to learn how all the Zaishen challenges and rewards work, I feel like I should be doing those. Open to suggestions - this is my first character back to the game in 15 years.

May take a break before next title update to farm some better skins and/or min-max heros too, although they are pretty well geared at this point just by popping every chest along the way.

Here's the build I've been using for basically all of HM.

Finally got 100 points Amatz Basin done. In doing so, learned how to more effectively farm kurzick there. Will come back to it perhaps after all vanquishing is done and books turned in if I want to increase the title more. Will definately farm it hard next bonus week. Now onto hm missions & vanquishing. Also still farming nm DOA on the side for tormented staves for heros. Will prob knock out Urgoz too for the first time.

Annnd one more update. My first FoW HM clear. It actually was not bad at all after doing nm DOA so much, learning to pull and flag better. Just takes some time.

Tormented staff DoA farm is finally done for heros to all match

That was a pain but it taught me more about the game than any other end game area so far, and I never even attempted on HM.

Still need some more BIS mods, not quite perfect yet but getting there.

Next up; Factions & Prophecies Vanquishing and HM missions which will put me to 25 titles. Still have not started EOTN or GW Beyond.

Side projects; Urgoz clear, Kurzick Faction, Zaishen Challenges. I have my sights set on the Envoy sword. Undecided on shield skin.

Cantha Zanquishing done, now just Tyria left. Started with a little caravan to the S/W out of TotA.

Another long run out of the way. Going to try to do one of these every day or so while incorporating the Zaishen vanquishes. Once I get 3 in my quest log in the northern shiverpeaks / ascalon area I'll do that long run.