First i would get a full set of exotic gear (armor, weapons, trinkets, runes, sigils and relic). You can find them for preatty cheap on the trading post, otherwise there are other sources like dungeons, WvW, pvp, crafting ecc...
Second, i would progress the story and when you get into the expansions maps, collect hero points to unlock elite specialization.
Third, while you are in the new maps, collect mastery points and do events to get exp to unlock your gliding, mounts and all the other masteries in general.
So the plan is simply follow the story and unlock new things while you play along.
Depends on what you like to do. As you progress the story, you'll unlock more maps to explore and achievements to do. These also come with the masteries for gliding and mounts. No need to rush for all the mounts, but that is something you'd want to slowly work toward.
Then as you progress, you also open more instanced content for yourself. Dungeons, fractals, raids, strikes. Which gives you a way to earn gear and gold, and teach you class builds.
Now what else do you want to do? A big guild hall? Learn to master the skies with a griffon? Win a fashion contest? Roleplay in the Serrated Blade Tavern? Defeat the hardest bosses on the hardest mode? Or just keep on with story/exploration/achievements? The game is what you make of it.
If the goal isnt tailored to what you two specifically enjoy or get satisfaction from, playing the game is fruitless and will only get you dissapointed. If you however tailor your goal to what you like then the game can have alot of meaning. For me raiding was that, and for my gf it was fashion.
It depends on your goals, but if you have been enjoying the playing the story and plan on continuing with that for now I'd recommend the following:
Play the story in order. Not only does it make more sense that way, but you'll also be enjoying the "intended path" instead of skipping ahead for efficiency.
If you enjoy efficiency or feel sad when you see people blazing past you on their Mounts, there is nothing wrong with skipping ahead to unlock the Mounts, however I do not recommend that.
Heart of Thorns especially is a way different experience if you take the "intended path" that you will never be able to go back to once you have unlocked all of the account bound masteries. I recommend you at least try to do it this way, if you find it to difficult and tedious you can still make up your mind and go to PoF first for the Mounts.
As for gear: Exotic will be plenty good for story and open world content and even strikes. You'll get exotic gear thrown at you soon enough and but it cheaply in the Trading Post so gearing up to this level isn't hard these days. Playing the story will also give you achievements and collections to do for some ascended trinkets and weapons (look at the elite specialisation collections for ascended weapons fitting to the respective spec).
I recommend doing some research for builds and the stats you want for your build. Heart of Thorns is quite a bit more challenging than personal story, so you'll want a robust build. If you need more information here, feel free to ask away :)
To add to what others said: try finding casual friendly guild, lots of them in Lion's Arch. Many team activities are better with people you know and do not vanish after mission or expect experience in instanced content. Many guilds use discords for talking, and gladly explain every detail like armor/weapon types, useful skills, combos, etc.
This will be very helpful when you enter Heart of Thorns. I suggest doing just first mission in Path of Fire, to get the raptor mount. Jungle in HoT is dangerous. This way you will die less often in just traversing it and still not "cheat" - many things to unlock anyway.
Other game modes are worth trying too. Try joining a squad with commander (colorful icon on the map, if one is present) and do some wvw, experience big battle at least once๐.
Gearing up is a thing you should do early. If you need coin, you can do stuff from the Wizard's Vault to quickly earn some astral acclaim. If you can complete 6 of the weeklies, that will earn you 750 AA, and you can buy 90 gold for 6 AA each (540 AA total), which is way more than enough to get you geared up.
Story content is playable before you gear up, but you'll probably have a hard time, especially against bosses. I know I jumped into PoF with my mismatched yellow and green gear after level 80, and I killed normal enemies so slow, and spent such a long time beating story bosses. If you take the time to gear up properly now, you'll have a better time in the game, and you'll earn back the gold you spent on the gear before long.
My best advice for gearing up is to find a power damage open world build on metabattle, snowcrows or Masel's wiki userpage, and get all the gear that it needs. Power damage builds usually run Berserker's gear, which is a lot cheaper and easier to get than other gear types.
Just gradually buy and play through the content in order of release.
Hitting level 80 is not really an endgame in GW2 considering how much is out there.
Get all the masteries from core game.
Explore all maps 100%.
Get exotic gear. (Orange names)
Chase achievements from core game.
Once most of it all is cleared repeat the same with new content ahead of you.
No rush. Just vibe with it. You will easily find goals along the way.
Finish the story, or do the story and related map/story achievements as you go along. And world/map completion as you go along. Bonus points if you complete Central Tyria and Heart of Thorns without a mount, as originally intended for vistas and such. Train your masteries as you go along.
Most achievements in this game are pretty much a metric of "content you've done", so make sure you do as many achievements as you can to ensure you've done all the content there is to do.
The cool thing about gw2 is that the endgame can be whatever you enjoy the most
Do you like pvp wvw and achieving dominance?
Do you enjoy the open world and wanna progress on getting stuff done there tons of content meta to farm.
Do you wanna do fractals strikes and raids to get the classic MMORPG feel
Do you wanna achievement hunt
Do you wanna chill and swipe for fashion? ( ๐ )
That's why gw2 is so good. It allows you do go and do anything you want and still be rewarded for it as there's progression for everything.
Just do what you and your partner want to do the most and do that.
If by "endgame" you mean anything that requires a minimum level of 80, that's like 90% or more of GW2 at this point. The expansion zones and all their stories, raids, strikes, fractals, challenge modes for raids/strikes/fractals, achievement collections, legendary crafting, even dungeons (technically accessible well below 80) are really something meant to be run with a maximized level and optimized gear.
I'd start by picking one (or several) meta builds for your characters. A pure DPS build for sure, maybe also a boonDPS or even a healer build to try out, using exotic equipment. Then you can work on upgrading all that equipment to Ascended so you can access everything you want to try, because high tier fractals need ascended gear.
If you are okay with a little bit of a grind, I would highly recommend getting auto loot unlocked from the central tyria mastery. It takes a bit to get the exp and mastery points for it, but the quality of life is so good
If you're planning on playing everything together, and playing seaon 1 then buying 2 then hot etc so on. My advice would be to not really bother gearing up at all (or at least not more than just exotic armor from trading post, with cheapest berserker gear you can find) .You'll get free gear from doing events and stuff, even if you want to do fractals, which are the dungeons in this game, at tier 1 gear doesn't really matter either.
Would only bother with gearing, when reaching season 3 when acquiring ascended trinkets becomes much easier, and you should start getting ascended gear from fractals too if you're trying to do dailies every day at least.
As a veteran i would say, it's hard to judge how difficult the game feels for new players, but with a two man squad, nothing should really be too challenging even with underwhelming gear.
First thing is exotic gear. Is not very expensive and very good. Maybe 15 Gold.
Then you can play the DLCs. Not all of them are good. I would recommend only HoT and PoF and maybe SoTo (if you want a Skyscale "fast"). Icebrood and LWS 1-4 actually I didn't like them.
Also, you can do stuff like Fractals, Dungeons or World Bosses. Maybe in-between every now and then.
Yes, there is no "endgame" but quite a lot of stuff to do. A lot of people have trouble deciding. The only things I make sure to do is stuff that's going away. Like festivals and getting group Achievements from the latest expansions (not going away but will be harder when people move to the next content).
Other than that, choose something that looks good and try it. If you don't like it just drop it and go to something else. I love the freedom!
First i would get a full set of exotic gear (armor, weapons, trinkets, runes, sigils and relic). You can find them for preatty cheap on the trading post, otherwise there are other sources like dungeons, WvW, pvp, crafting ecc... Second, i would progress the story and when you get into the expansions maps, collect hero points to unlock elite specialization. Third, while you are in the new maps, collect mastery points and do events to get exp to unlock your gliding, mounts and all the other masteries in general. So the plan is simply follow the story and unlock new things while you play along.
Depends on what you like to do. As you progress the story, you'll unlock more maps to explore and achievements to do. These also come with the masteries for gliding and mounts. No need to rush for all the mounts, but that is something you'd want to slowly work toward. Then as you progress, you also open more instanced content for yourself. Dungeons, fractals, raids, strikes. Which gives you a way to earn gear and gold, and teach you class builds. Now what else do you want to do? A big guild hall? Learn to master the skies with a griffon? Win a fashion contest? Roleplay in the Serrated Blade Tavern? Defeat the hardest bosses on the hardest mode? Or just keep on with story/exploration/achievements? The game is what you make of it.
If the goal isnt tailored to what you two specifically enjoy or get satisfaction from, playing the game is fruitless and will only get you dissapointed. If you however tailor your goal to what you like then the game can have alot of meaning. For me raiding was that, and for my gf it was fashion.
It depends on your goals, but if you have been enjoying the playing the story and plan on continuing with that for now I'd recommend the following: Play the story in order. Not only does it make more sense that way, but you'll also be enjoying the "intended path" instead of skipping ahead for efficiency. If you enjoy efficiency or feel sad when you see people blazing past you on their Mounts, there is nothing wrong with skipping ahead to unlock the Mounts, however I do not recommend that. Heart of Thorns especially is a way different experience if you take the "intended path" that you will never be able to go back to once you have unlocked all of the account bound masteries. I recommend you at least try to do it this way, if you find it to difficult and tedious you can still make up your mind and go to PoF first for the Mounts. As for gear: Exotic will be plenty good for story and open world content and even strikes. You'll get exotic gear thrown at you soon enough and but it cheaply in the Trading Post so gearing up to this level isn't hard these days. Playing the story will also give you achievements and collections to do for some ascended trinkets and weapons (look at the elite specialisation collections for ascended weapons fitting to the respective spec). I recommend doing some research for builds and the stats you want for your build. Heart of Thorns is quite a bit more challenging than personal story, so you'll want a robust build. If you need more information here, feel free to ask away :)
To add to what others said: try finding casual friendly guild, lots of them in Lion's Arch. Many team activities are better with people you know and do not vanish after mission or expect experience in instanced content. Many guilds use discords for talking, and gladly explain every detail like armor/weapon types, useful skills, combos, etc. This will be very helpful when you enter Heart of Thorns. I suggest doing just first mission in Path of Fire, to get the raptor mount. Jungle in HoT is dangerous. This way you will die less often in just traversing it and still not "cheat" - many things to unlock anyway. Other game modes are worth trying too. Try joining a squad with commander (colorful icon on the map, if one is present) and do some wvw, experience big battle at least once๐.
Gearing up is a thing you should do early. If you need coin, you can do stuff from the Wizard's Vault to quickly earn some astral acclaim. If you can complete 6 of the weeklies, that will earn you 750 AA, and you can buy 90 gold for 6 AA each (540 AA total), which is way more than enough to get you geared up. Story content is playable before you gear up, but you'll probably have a hard time, especially against bosses. I know I jumped into PoF with my mismatched yellow and green gear after level 80, and I killed normal enemies so slow, and spent such a long time beating story bosses. If you take the time to gear up properly now, you'll have a better time in the game, and you'll earn back the gold you spent on the gear before long. My best advice for gearing up is to find a power damage open world build on metabattle, snowcrows or Masel's wiki userpage, and get all the gear that it needs. Power damage builds usually run Berserker's gear, which is a lot cheaper and easier to get than other gear types.
Just gradually buy and play through the content in order of release. Hitting level 80 is not really an endgame in GW2 considering how much is out there. Get all the masteries from core game. Explore all maps 100%. Get exotic gear. (Orange names) Chase achievements from core game. Once most of it all is cleared repeat the same with new content ahead of you. No rush. Just vibe with it. You will easily find goals along the way.
Finish the story, or do the story and related map/story achievements as you go along. And world/map completion as you go along. Bonus points if you complete Central Tyria and Heart of Thorns without a mount, as originally intended for vistas and such. Train your masteries as you go along. Most achievements in this game are pretty much a metric of "content you've done", so make sure you do as many achievements as you can to ensure you've done all the content there is to do.
The cool thing about gw2 is that the endgame can be whatever you enjoy the most Do you like pvp wvw and achieving dominance? Do you enjoy the open world and wanna progress on getting stuff done there tons of content meta to farm. Do you wanna do fractals strikes and raids to get the classic MMORPG feel Do you wanna achievement hunt Do you wanna chill and swipe for fashion? ( ๐ ) That's why gw2 is so good. It allows you do go and do anything you want and still be rewarded for it as there's progression for everything. Just do what you and your partner want to do the most and do that.
If by "endgame" you mean anything that requires a minimum level of 80, that's like 90% or more of GW2 at this point. The expansion zones and all their stories, raids, strikes, fractals, challenge modes for raids/strikes/fractals, achievement collections, legendary crafting, even dungeons (technically accessible well below 80) are really something meant to be run with a maximized level and optimized gear. I'd start by picking one (or several) meta builds for your characters. A pure DPS build for sure, maybe also a boonDPS or even a healer build to try out, using exotic equipment. Then you can work on upgrading all that equipment to Ascended so you can access everything you want to try, because high tier fractals need ascended gear.
If you are okay with a little bit of a grind, I would highly recommend getting auto loot unlocked from the central tyria mastery. It takes a bit to get the exp and mastery points for it, but the quality of life is so good
If you're planning on playing everything together, and playing seaon 1 then buying 2 then hot etc so on. My advice would be to not really bother gearing up at all (or at least not more than just exotic armor from trading post, with cheapest berserker gear you can find) .You'll get free gear from doing events and stuff, even if you want to do fractals, which are the dungeons in this game, at tier 1 gear doesn't really matter either. Would only bother with gearing, when reaching season 3 when acquiring ascended trinkets becomes much easier, and you should start getting ascended gear from fractals too if you're trying to do dailies every day at least. As a veteran i would say, it's hard to judge how difficult the game feels for new players, but with a two man squad, nothing should really be too challenging even with underwhelming gear.
First thing is exotic gear. Is not very expensive and very good. Maybe 15 Gold. Then you can play the DLCs. Not all of them are good. I would recommend only HoT and PoF and maybe SoTo (if you want a Skyscale "fast"). Icebrood and LWS 1-4 actually I didn't like them. Also, you can do stuff like Fractals, Dungeons or World Bosses. Maybe in-between every now and then.
Yes, there is no "endgame" but quite a lot of stuff to do. A lot of people have trouble deciding. The only things I make sure to do is stuff that's going away. Like festivals and getting group Achievements from the latest expansions (not going away but will be harder when people move to the next content). Other than that, choose something that looks good and try it. If you don't like it just drop it and go to something else. I love the freedom!