8 hidden features every Guild Wars 2 player should know

Guild Wars 2 is an expansive game and that also means a lot of features. Sometimes the game will not tell you about these features, mostly because they're small quality-of-life improvements. That's why I am here though, to tell you about 8 awesome little details that are going to make your Guild Wars 2 experience a lot better.

Let's jump into it!

Pinging items

Sometimes you want to show an item or a location to another player. This can be done by pinging it in the chat. To ping something simply hold down ctrl while you click on an item from your inventory or a place on the world map and it will immediately be posted in your current chat channel. Maybe you want to add some additional information in which case you should be using shift rather than ctrl, since that will only put the item or location in the chat, allowing you to write the rest of the message.

AoE loot

One thing you will be doing over and over in this game is looting dead enemies. In order to make that more swift and enjoyable, the game has a magic setting called AoE Loot On Interact. Every time you click the loot button, the game will automatically loot multiple enemies around you at the same time. This is basically a beginner version of Autolooting that you unlock later in the game through masteries in PvE and abilities in WvW.

/wiki

One of the most powerful tools you will find attached to the game is the /wiki command.

It does one simple thing: It opens and searches the Guild Wars 2 Wiki for you.

To use it type /wiki in your chat box and then whatever you want to search for, be it an NPC name, a location, or even an item. Typing is not much fun though, it's too much effort for my liking. Instead, you can use your newly found pinging skills.

Type /wiki in chat and then hold shift while clicking an item or location and press Enter. Magically the Guild Wars 2 Wiki will open and browse to the correct page. It's dark magic, but it's good dark magic.

Personal waypoints

If you have friends in the game that you want to show where to go, or you just want to remember a special place on the map, then you can place a Personal Waypoint, not to be confused with the waypoints that can teleport you, this one is just marker on the map. This is done by holding alt while clicking on either the minimap or the world map.

If you get tired of looking at it, you simply hold down alt again and click on your Personal Waypoint. This will make it disappear.

Deposit all

If you have just been playing for a little while, you probably know the feeling of having your inventory being filled very quickly. And in most other games that would mean you have to take a trip to a vendor to clear it all out. Not this time.

Simply go to your inventory and click the Deposit all-button that you find at the top right of your inventory. This will send all crafting materials from your inventory to your material storage in the bank. To retrieve crafting materials again simply go pick them up from your material storage in the bank, not that you really need to do that since crafting will automatically take things from your material storage.

On a completely new account, you can store up to 250 of each material.

Don't double-tap to evade

You have most likely already encountered jumping puzzles in the game and there is one setting, that can make that experience a lot worse: Double-Tap to Evade.

This setting makes you dodge if you quickly double-tap any of your movement buttons, usually W, A, S, and D. And if you're like me and many other players you will probably try to slowly cross a ledge at some point by slowly tapping away on one of those movement buttons. Sadly if you do this too quickly, you will now dodge off the ledge and die.

It's a simple fix and a huge quality of life improvement, to simply turn this setting off.

You're welcome.

Mass salvage

Probably the most repetitive task in this game is the constant management of your inventory, among that, salvaging. It can be quite tedious, but there are ways to speed this process up.

If you right-click a salvage kit, then you will get a list of options to salvage specific rarities or even entire stacks of items. Time to recycle all those items in your inventory, no excuses this time!

Quickly open reward chests

Of course, I have saved the best feature for last. And I know this is the best because it's the one I get asked most about while streaming over on twitch.tv/rediche. You should definitely drop me a follow there.

People ask me "How do you open your chests without them popping up?" and I tell them, you right-click.

If you right-click a bouncing chest above your minimap it will immediately put the contents in your inventory, unless it has a choice to be made, in which case it will still pop up. It does save you quite a lot of time in the long run though, which is why you gotta start doing it.

Conclusion

And there we go! 8 great small features that Guild Wars 2 will never teach you, but that will make your experience in the game a lot better in the long run.

I am Rediche and I stream over on twitch.tv/rediche every Monday, Thursday, and Friday.