My leveling/gearing plan pre-crafting.

[Welys]

Edit: ignore

[Sera]

Questing is dirt simple and zero challenge even with very bad gear (I still had some lv20ish pieces of gear when I hit 49 on my VG). Don't worry about any gear until close to 49 (49/59/69 you craft gold gear), just take what you get while questing. You can purchase vendor purple gear pieces starting 45?46ish. You get your gold main hand quest at 35 (lv37 weapon though), and the lv41 gold offhand is the day 3 login reward. As soon as you get those weapons (37/41) take them to +4 or +8 if you have the currency/mats to do so. Try not to blow too many resources on rerolls; though even if you do, all of the enhancements are transferable to your new weapons forever so there's no downside to making your first gold's +8. I'd recommend not spending your ausgyth points on anything other than depleted/argent phlogiston (and buy that weekly red asap! Don't miss a week of that.)

I can't stress enough too: never solo if you can avoid it. Grouping gives you an XP bonus for everything worth doing. The only things you need to solo are your initial story mode run through dungeons, 4 emperors daily and your 10 guild quests (afk'ing hotsprings doesn't count ). That said, I basically soloed 1-49 other than dungeon groups and had no problems (GS/VG/OC to 49, SS/BM to 40, SM for CBT3?), it's just faster if you group.

Also if you wait on using your DF easy/hard daily runs instead of doing them right at 20/30 you might be able to get a mentoring run for imperial merit (currency) which you'll need tons of to buy mats for refining and crafting your gold weapons/armor at 49. Having a guildmate that's lower level makes that group a ton easier than spamming for a lowbie and waiting forever...

I can't stress enough, gear doesn't matter at all until you start to do Expert shrine (previously know as God mode: 1*, 2*, 3*) and maybe misty 45 though by then you should have both your main and offhand gold's so that'll make it easier. p.s. no one should solo Deserted Shrine 30 or 40, it's a 5 man instance for a reason. You could do it, but why? There's no benefit other than guaranteeing you get all the loot (the loot doesn't mater because you'll buy/craft better at 49).

Save all of your Ascension Essence until Sunday night! The higher level you are the more XP you get out of them and there's a weekly limit on how many you can use. Reset is midnight Sunday/early AM Monday hence why you burn your limit on Sunday night.

blarg, maybe too much info above. sorry