[Guide]
Since this caught some interest elsewhere, I decided to give some insight to my small project "from zero 2 hero": Starting a fresh char, on a completely new account, with no outside assistance and finish 100 CM (alive :D) as quickly as possible.
After roughly 100 hours gametime within 10 days I had beaten all 3 fractal CMs
Disclaimer:
I finished the project around steam release, so some things might've changed since then and my memory might trick me in certain details. Of course I had a deeper understanding of all fractals and CMs prior to this, so this guidance will not apply to actual new players
Stipulations/Limitations: no Gold transfer from any other account; no help/carrying from guild/FL; no money/shop payments, other than purchasing Hot/Pof (no LS3, 4 or IBS; no EoD); different WvW server; just PUGs
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Leveling:
When you purchase HoT/PoF you get a free level 80 boost with celestial gear, so I did not have to level a new char. Solid class options for that gear: Cele-Brand, Alac-Mirage, maybe Tempest and Condi-Alac-Ren → I chose the latter and went for Rune of the Traveler, which is pretty cheap and effective for a condi support.
Weapons:
I decided to start with Shortbow only and got Axe and Mace one or two days later to save some early gold; fortunately leveling the Renegade traitline also gives a free Cele-Shortbow. This way you start pretty decently geared.
Gamemodes:
I mostly enjoy Fractals, WvW and sPvP, so I decided to play these parallely — in retrospect: If you really want to play efficiently, maybe skip the PvP part, since its return in gold is pretty limited and getting the first Byzantium chest needs quite some time (you cannot just participate in ranked on a new account with pvp level 0). In the end Pvp yielded 1 ascended armor piece and a trinket.
Cele-Renegade might not be optimal for Zerg-WvW, but you tag just fine, contribute a bit with boon strips and stability, are quite durable and can roam quite well.
Planning ahead:
Getting (close) to 150 AR: If you have the full fractal mastery you get 20 AR from Mistlock Singularity and the Tear of Alba combined. I think I ended up with 146 in the end, which is just enough to survive the hard AR checks in the last CMs (mostly Altars in 98CM — most other AR checks in 99/100 can even be dodged/avoided, like don't eat Ai's whirl f.e.).
So: 146 - 20 = 126 → 14 slots for +9 Infusions would be needed.
6 from armor (requires Armor Smith and a bunch of Gamemode-Currency)
1 from Exotic Backpack you learn by leveling any crafting profession to 400 [*]
2 from Accessories — that's where I spent my Pristine Fractal Relics and PvP shards
6 from Rings (Cele-Rings even drop in fractals, fully upgrading them requires Masteries again)
I decided, that I won't get ascended Weapons, since I'd need 3 of them and I didn't want to level another 2 professions (you'd even need Huntsman 400 for Guerrilla Arc)
This approach gives 1 flex slot (or full AR, even after losing the Mistlock effect), since you'll have room for 15 infusions
[*] Since I didn't purchase LS3, nor wanted to play the whole HoT campaign, I wouldn't have had an easy access to an ascended backpack. Since Backpacks offer low stats anyways and infusing/attuning them for an additional slot is quite expensive, I settled for the lvl 78 exotic.
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My planning made a few things mandatory:
Getting Core Tyria Masteries (XP and MP to spend — luckily doing Fractals offers some MP)
Unlocking the full Rev traitline
leveling Armor Smith to 500[*]. Doing so early allows you to refine Ascended materials earlier — which saves some gold
Zerging in WvW (holy cow, doing WvW with no masteries is quite the task — no autoloot, no mount, limited gliding etc.)
Earning some gold: Silverwastes has decent gold/hour and fit well for 2 more reasons: Core Mastery XP and easy to follow with just a Raptor.
Reaching level 20 in Pvp to start ranked games
[*] you need it for the Grandmaster Marks, which are required to purchase Wvw, Pvp (wtf?) and Fractal Ascended gear
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Where to start with AR?
you can't level a profession to 500 on your first 2 days — unless you want to grind really hard for gold; but 400 Armor Smithing is a good starting point for the backpack https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elegant_Armorsmith%27s_Backpack
Then there's an exotic ring with a single infusion slot you'll receive for some basic T1 fractal achievement (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Agony_Resistance_Study_Supplies)
You probably won't have access to level 9 infusions right away, so calculate with maybe 14 AR from these 2 slots — basically enough for all T1 fractals.
While it makes sense to climb the ranks as quickly as possible, so you get more daily rewards, it can be hard to find groups for fractals, that are not in the daily rotation.[*]
The sooner you can start also finishing T2 dailies, the better — you'll have a pretty decent chance for a random Ascended Ring from 6 daily chests (8-10% per chest).
Even if your first ring doesn't have the optimal stats: With the Agony Channeler Mastery you can attune it for ~18 AR — which allows you to finish quite a bit of the T2 fractals already.
AR-slots from WvW: regarding the 10 day goal, this is a long term investment. You need to finish the weekly PiP-streak twice, to gain the required 2x350 Skirmish tickets (that's the timegated portion) and 2 Stacks of Memories of Battle, which is money gated (~50g per stack, I did not have 500 Memories after 10 days of WvW, so I had to purchase some) — so WvW Armor is not the cheapest solution; probably crafting Ascended Gear is the better idea, but I'm not sure, how wise that is — I never directly crafted ascended gear iirc, and I have neither thought that thru, nor tested it. At least Celestial Inscriptions should be timegated, due to the refined quartz you need, and I'm not sure, if you can purchase all the recipes deliberatly (some might be locked behind Pact Supply Network Agent luck, or locked behind HoT masteries, like Viper stats).
Random Loot: I actually had some mild luck (ascended armor chest from WvW zerging in the first week) and some incredible luck (another Armor chest, and a precursor within 20 minutes, 2nd week of WvW). FWIW: I neither used the second chest nor did I sell the precursor (Dagger) for the sake of the experiment's validity :-D receiving 1 ascended drop within the first 10 days though, seems reasonable — be it WvW, lucky T3 daily chest, Tequatl, whatever your prefered grind is :)
Accessories: You'll need 100 Pristine relics (~1 pristine per daily/rec chest) for a stat selectable Accessory. Accessories can also drop, but it's highly unlikely, since you won't be doing T4 dailies for the most time. If you manage to finish t2 dailies quickly and can start T3s on day 6 or so, you'll have the 100 pristines just in time.
I bought the other via PvP, iirc. Alternatively you can join an active guild, which does guild missions; Laurels are too slow
If you plan to use LS3 — like winterberry farm — note, that you need episode 1 as well, to be able to gather that energy stuff — unless they've changed that.
[*]If you wanted to chose the optimal day to start running fractals from level 0, to climb to T2 as quickly as possible I'd suggest the #5 of the daily rotation (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists#Tier_N_Fractals), consisting of Snowblind, Solid Ocean & Nightmare, since it has 2 rather high level fractals (20 & 23), level 20 gives you the afforementioned ring and they are all relatively quick ones. Bonus points for snowblind being the lowest T2 fractal ("requiring" 20 AR), which is NOT Aquatic Ruins ;) — so maybe you can convince the one or the other party to do t2 snwoblind instead of t1~
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Climbing the fractal ranks:
You'll not even see the LFGs of the higher tiers, before you didn't reach the highest level minus 5 on your current tier (reach level 20 on tier 1, level 45 in tier 2, 70 on tier 3). To reach a new level though, you need to finish any fractal at or above your current level. To climb the ranks efficiently, you should watch out for a favorable selection of dailies, because fractal levels, that are not in the daily rotation, are not ran that often (groups tend to fill really slowly).
So the best approach — as touched shortly above — is to have a selection of dailies, which are all relatively high in your current tier, and are quick to run in the best case.
Example: Aetherblade, Chaos and Nightmare are a possible lineup for dailies (every 15 days). They are coincidentaly(?) also the highest T4 fractals, other than Observatory and Sunqua, while also being relatively quick fractals.
So if you wanted to go from personal level 70 to 98 within a single day, with the lowest amount of effort regarding LFG-time, you should chose that day, and finish these 3 dailies over and over again.
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lastly Gold:
Gold will be important for
Leveling your crafting profession (I recommend only going for 1 → your needed armor class). Reaching level 500 should be in the realm of 60 gold, if you resell your stuff. correct me, if I'm wrong
Grandmaster Marks: I think you need 20 for a full set, thats 120-140 gold, if you crafted all 6 pieces (1 Pvp season/byzantium grants you 3 free Marks)
Agony Resistance: 14-15 +9 Infusions — hard to say, how many you'd need to buy in the end, maybe 6? The rest can be upgraded @ vendor, so maybe 50-60 gold?
eventually Memories of battle
random stuff like Runes, Weapons, sigils, Raptor, buff-food, gold for the Armor pieces, Exotic Amulet, Recipes, some 15 slot bags: 20 gold?
So you'd need ~250-300 Gold in total — if you average that out, that's 3 gold/h, given the 100h goal → that should be doable, since most things you need to do anyways, also yield gold and 3g/h is not that high.
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Alternatives (in case you don't want to do PvP or WvW):
if you're into raiding or strikes, they should be able to provide 1, or 2 pieces as well;
LS3 or IBS give easier access to trinkets and better gold farm — note however, that you'll be limited by the amount of mounts you have access to, so following modern meta trains could be hard
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tl;dr
Priortize these 3 things
Core Masteries!
Early Gold for early Crafting!
Try to run full T2 dailies and recs not later than day 5
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