Hunter's Insight – A Guild Wars 2 Blog

Hall of Monument Guides

July 25, 2012 at 6:30 pm | Posted in Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, mmorpg, PvE | 7 Comments
Tags: Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, MMO, mmorpg

The Arenanet Blog just posted a guide from John Stumme, the live team lead on the original Guild Wars. It’s a little late. The Hall of Monuments Calculator was released in October 2010 and I posted my own guide a few days later.

Here’s are some screenshots of the revealed rewards from the video.

To explain the HoM, go ahead and watch this video or read the paragraph below.

Briefly, the Hall of Monuments in Guild Wars was built to reward players of the original game with in game items in the sequel. You complete titles, collect minis, craft weapons and armour sets, and outfit your heroes with elite armour. Then you add these things to the monument for points, and keep track of your progress on the calculator. The calculator tells us what we’ve acquired for Guild Wars 2.

Unfortunately though, a month before Guild Wars 2 launches is not the best time to be starting out in Guild Wars solely for the purpose of getting Guild Wars 2 swag. It is a time intensive process and requires a lot of cash to buy things from players, crafting materials, and general items you need for progression.

Stumme writes his for brand new players but even then I can’t recommend getting into Guild Wars out of the blue. Even the most hardcore players would only be able to acquire a few points before launch.

That isn’t to say you’d have to stop once Guild Wars 2 launches, you can continue accruing points until Guild Wars retires, but I can’t imagine many will feel too motivated to continue after this month.

Getting to the guide itself, I find most of the advice pretty straight-forward and our guides agree on most points. However, one thing Stumme suggests, that I just plain think is a bad idea, are the cartographer titles. I actually put them on my list of things to avoid, and Stumme doesn’t even mention the easiest way to go about doing them, with the texmod add-on.

That isn’t to say my guide is perfect. Looking back I’d change a few things. I wouldn’t recommend the Zaishen PvP title that grants 3 points. It’s time intensive or expensive depending on how you go about getting it. I’d also focus more on hero armours, buying more weapons, and I’d reconsider the Vanquisher titles so that you have more cash on hand to buy things.

So to conclude, here’s a list of useful guides.

The Easy 30 – My own guide linked at the top. It’s nearly 2 years old now so it’s a little dated. Designed only to get you to 30 points in the HoM. When I wrote my guide it was directed at players who had finished campaigns and had money at hand, veterans of the game.

John Stumme’s Guide to the Hall of Monuments – Very up to date and with the perspective of Arenanet’s own Guild Wars Live Team lead. Directed at brand new players. Solid advice but doesn’t go into depth.

Guild Wars Wiki Guide to Earning Hall of Monuments Rewards – Very well referenced and linked. Lots of alternative methods. Brief with little commentary.

How to: Easily collect 30 points in Hall of Monuments – Nicely organized and presented. A short but useful FAQ. One of the better guides, could go deeper.

The Road to 50 – Massively has a series of articles penned by Rubi Bayer that thoroughly details various methods for filling your HoM. Like my guide it was released within days of the calculator so it’s possible it might be a little outdated. It’s also quite long and the majority of it is directed at getting all 50 points. There is one article that addresses that problem however.

Comprehensive Hall of Monuments Guide – I’m not overly familiar with this guide but I can attest to the quality of the forums. Guild Wars 2 Guru is the fan forum you want to go to (at least before official forums open up) for Guild Wars 2. There are a lot of good player tips, tips from devs, explanations on how things work, etc. Also goes into depth past 30 points.

Ten Ton Hammer’s A Complete Guide to the Hall of Monuments – What I like about this guide is that it starts with the very basics, just unlocking the monuments where you’ll be adding things. Great for beginners.