Getting Ready for Guild Wars: The Plan

Alright, I think I'm caught up now. After some bootstrapping, I've gotten my Monk out of Cantha and up to level 20 in Nightfall. I figured that although Factions would have been faster to run through, Nightfall had better elites plus I could pick up at least a few heroes. Although they'll be some to get in GW:EN, I figured a few more to mix and match parties with couldn't hurt. I'm rethinking playing a Monk because it raises the difficulty level. You have to handle the healing and direct your AI hordes at the same time. But I haven't changed my mind yet.

Here's how all my characters stand at the moment:

Name	Sausaletus Rex	Milanous Regina	Regina Pirouettae	Milanus Rex	Sausaletta Regina	Oreon Rex
Profession	Warrior	Elementalist	Ranger	Assassin	Monk	Dervish
Prophesies Progress	Completed	Completed	Completed	Maguuma	Kryta	Kryta
Factions Progress	Jade Sea	Completed	Jade Sea	Completed	Kaineng	Kaineng
Nightfall Progress	Kourna	Completed	Completed	Desolation	Vabbi	Completed
Experience Points	1424k	1875k	1383k	912k	157k	745k
Skill Points	157	228	198	147	35	117
Spare Points	3	28	28	35	13	4

Yeah, I crapped out at the Jade Sea when it came to Factions, really. I ran through Prophesies with everyone but the expansion characters. And Nightfall my characers are split between the ones I wanted to get to the end game and the ones left strewn haphazardly through the campaign. But Factions? Everyone except the Sin who was my first run through and Milly who's my little grinder, yes she is. They're all stuck somewhere around Unwaking Waters, depending on how far they had to go to get all their elites. It'll probably be a lot easier to finish off with Heroes but, at the time, those last few missions were just a royal pain in the ass.

Between them, though, I have about 75k in cash on hand (And more than enough skill points to pick up all the new skills. Unless you have to buy the PvE only ones, too, which will suck. It's, as I suspected, the money that's going to be the sticking point.). I have a few items I could liquidate still. There's some runes I've been saving for heroes, a stack of crafting goods or two, and I've still got a metric ton of minotaur horns taking up space. But most of the stuff I could sell are greens and other weapons. I mostly save them for my Heroes these days and selling them means figuring out the market and standing around in town hoping I get a deal. None of the ones I'd move are all that spectaclar so it's not really worth the effort to me.

I was hoping one of my birthday gifts would turn out to be a burst of awesome - I lucked out the first time around and got an undead Rurik, one of the golds. I'd never sell it but, at the time, it was worth quite a bit. But, nope, all commons. A pair of Jungle Trolls, a Harpy, and an Imp. No secret coded bonus from my days as a tester after all, I guess - it was my namesake that got the gold the last time around.

Oh well, money's not that hard to come by, really. I'm a bit rusty to be doing some DoA trapping or an Underworld run at the moment but GW:EN is all lv20 content so I should pick up enough to cover it all.

Beyond sampling the game my goal - since there's no elites to hunt and I doubt the storyline extends all the way to the conclusion - is to unlock as many of the skills this weekend as I can. It all stays unlocked even after the preview's over and since I'll probably pick up this expansion at some point, that's time and money I'll save in the future. Since my skill points are all spread out, it's probably a pipe dream, but it gives me something to shoot for.

At the moment, I'm trying to decide whether I should call it a night and get a good night's rest or if I should try and stay up to be there at the opening bell - which will be the middle of the fucking night where I'm at. At the moment, sleep is winning out since I have shit to do tomorrow.