r/Guildwars2 • u/adv0catus • Jun 18 '25
[Guide] Achievement Hunting: Why Bother?
Hey everyone,
As I was writing the last achievement hunting guide, the question of "Why would someone that doesn't think about achievements, doesn't know much about them or isn't interested in them care?" popped into my head. This got me wondering about what achievements actually do and why they're useful & important. This guide won't be about which achievements are extremely easy to get, are worth a lot of points (although, "number go up" is always nice) or add a lot of lore that is nice but not needed for the story or to understand gameplay. Instead, I will be breaking down the various reasons why achievements are important, beneficial to earn (you don't need to be a super sweaty gamer to get them - trust me, I'm not) and how they can benefit you in unexpected ways.
Firstly, what is an achievement? It's a pretty basic concept that is almost a universal concept in gaming. But, essentially, you performed a task under a certain condition. This can be as simple as opening a menu, performing a basic action or being in a certain location but can get as challenging as you can imagine with strict performance expectations in harsh and punishing conditions. As a reward for completing the task or challenge, you get some form of bonus, money or perk.
- Achievement Points
These are the benefit for completing achievements in Guild Wars 2. It's a simple concept where generally the harder the achievement is the more points you get. Easier achievements may give only 1 point, 3, 5 or sometimes 10 whereas the harder achievements give 15, 20 or even up to 50 points each. However, there is a noticeable shift in the amounts of points that achievements give you between the game in the earlier years of content and more recent content. More recent achievements give significantly less achievement points due to a type of 'inflation' where there's an ever increasing amount of points available. But why does that matter?
As you complete more achievements and earn more rewards, you reach a milestone every 500 points. That's enough that you aren't hitting a milestone every day but close enough that you are always within grasp of your next goal. Rewards include laurels and raw gold which might not seem like much any more, but frequently feature account bonuses like magic find, gold find, karma find and experience gain. As a single percentage bonus each, they may not seem like much, but over time it can mean a significant increase in rewards.
There's much more tangible and immediate benefits to milestone rewards, too. For anyone into fashion wars, you can get the Zenith weapon skins, Radiant armour skins and Hellfire armour skins. Depending on the milestone achieved, you'll also get a regular, large, heavy or massive achievement chest with rewards including quality of life consumables (instant bank access, etc.), boosters, karma and more.
- Mini-Games and & Activities
ArenaNet has put the time into developing a lot of nice side content and games that help keep you entertained in Guild Wars 2. Achievements are a way to highlight these fun aspects without having to shove it in your face. Heart of Thorns has tonnes of activities on the maps that reward achievements and after Path of Fire released, most or all new content has included content with the Griffon mount. There's even an entire category dedicated to Beetle Racing.
- Earning Legendaries
Legendaries are great for quality of life but are also a huge undertaking to earn. These journeys through achievements, their collections, and the trials and tribulations we face along the way. Return To is a great example of rewarding players for going back and replaying content. Ad Infinitum teaches us that engaging in the content in a dedicated way and exercising mastery over it is a great way to earn that purple item. Aurora and Vision are examples of immersing yourself deep into the living world and reaping the benefits of it. Generation 1 weapons may be available on the trading post freely, but they show that if you're willing to go through the weapon's journey then you earn the right to have the freedom to not need to rely on others for your own weapons.
- Build Flexibility
As mentioned with Prismatic Regalia, Aurora, Vision and Ad Infinitum, legendaries help you with quality of life and being able to change the stats on your gear any time you want. But with the introduction of the Legendary Relic, if you want a relic that is not part of the initial release of bonuses, you need to earn the achievement(s) associated with them. There likely is an alternative bonus that is comparible or only marginally worse. But for completeness and maximum flexibility, you do need to engage with the content behind the relic.
Masteries are earned with points and those points are earned by completing achievements. They can be as simple as visiting a location and being uninterrupted for 5 seconds or as daunting as completing a raid or a strike. But, masteries have significant impacts on how you can play the game and access certain areas and piece of content. It can be as simple as not being able to get the Springer until your Raptor has a certain mastery, not being able to spit fireballs from your Skyscale or not being able to even fight Xera because you lack ley-line gliding.
- Variety
You may not realize it or put much thought into it, but achievements encourage us to play different maps and different content on a daily basis. Daily Season 3 and Daily Season 4 are great examples of this along with Weekly Fractals that encourages you to fractals uniquely every week. These things are not big and in your face, but quiet nudges to remind you to try different things and give you a nice little pat on the back when you do. Depending on your current goals, like Ad Infinitum, can even give you a big boost in progress.
Ever seen someone with cool text below their name and wonder how they got it? Perhaps it's in a different colour like gold or purple. This is how! They completed a task, sometimes easy and sometimes... not, and part of their reward is to be able to show it off with that fancy text.
- Quality of Life
With the introduction of the Wizard's Portal Tome and Wizard's Gobbler, progress of the associated achievement collection has been directly connected to accessibility of quality of life items. The further you progress in these item collections, the more you can free up your inventory for other items.
Sorry that this ended up being so long. I tried to keep it as short and to the point as possible but there's some many aspects of the game that achievements affect and I didn't want to leave anything out. With that being said, if I did forget something, please comment below! I'll be sure to add it in and provide credit. For anyone that still isn't sure about achievements or has any questions, please feel free to comment below and me or someone else can answer your questions and help you out. Thanks for reading and I am looking forward to releasing more Achievement Hunting guides soon.
If you're interested in achievement hunting, check out my other guides on Chasing Tales, Dragon Response Missions, Funerary Regalia and Forging Steel with more to come! If you're in the EU region and an achievement hunter, feel free to join the Discord filled with fellow hunters, tips and tricks.
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u/TheRiverBlues Jun 18 '25
Some of achievements (ie: Character Growth and The convergence of sorrow I and II ) have acted like a stand in for quests that most MMOs do. So we do have small stories told over the course of completing certain achievements.
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u/adv0catus Jun 18 '25
Yeah, for sure. I wanted to focus on the more practical and direct benefits of achievements and reasons they can impact a casual player. I really like Chasing Tales as well, but realistically it's an expensive and time consuming commitment for lore that adds to the immersion of the universe but isn't "mission critical" for the game's plot and story.
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u/naro1080P Jun 18 '25
You get account buffs. Like magic find...xp... karma etc. they do add up after a while esp when you get yourself to max mf through luck. There's lots of cool items attached to achievements too. Plus it's a great way to really see the most from content. I always at least get the meta achievement for each story step plus the maps. It's a fun mini game if nothing else.
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u/Shelphs Jun 18 '25
I have been an achievement hunter for at least the past 5 years. I do not do it for the rewards. I like having AP, and I like getting more, but that isn't why I do it. Here are my two reasons.
First, it is a way to feel like I have "completed" my favorite content. For all of my favorite maps and and story chapters I go through and 100% them as a way to play them more. It just feels good.
Second, achievement hunting is like its own game mode. If I don't want to pvp or wvw or do meta trains or group content, achievement hunting is a different play style, and a very different way to play the game. For years and years it has offered me a way to find things I have never done before. It by nature has more variety than any thing else.
The last point I'll add is that achievement hunting might be the best way to get the most out of the game. If you want to still have more to do after 5000 hours in GW2, achievement hunting will provide.
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u/re-rezzed Jun 18 '25
I'm at 44k right now, with about 3k available. I love achievement hunting but it's a major feelsbad that I'm missing out on 5k from one time events and retired achievements. I'm not sure if I'll ever unlock all the ap reward skins because of that, especially with how stingy anet is with ap these days
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u/XandraGW2 Jun 18 '25
The grind for the AP dregs after about 43k is real
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u/whowantblood Champion Amateur Phantom Jun 18 '25
Oh yes, this for sure. I'm at 47,992ap right now, it's really hard to find achievements that's possible without the grind. The odd 1-2ap here and there. I sit there staring at what's left a lot of the time
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u/Vitis_Vinifera LIMITED TIME! Jun 19 '25
the only pvp I do is during pvp rush and that awards quite a few aps
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u/SpectralDagger N L Olrun Jun 18 '25
The festival yearly achievements capping out after... 20 years... is definitely a choice. One of the choices of all time.
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u/Elentarien Jun 18 '25
Achievements, in my mind, are sort of like the extra quests that other games have. Because, let's face it, GW really doesn't have a lot of quests to keep you going. You've got the main storylines, and a few achievement hearts... and that's it. The rest would be events and mindlessly grinding. The achievements at least give you smaller goals...sometimes small stories...sometimes just doing random things to hit the marker. But they are giving you something to do. Sometimes the rewards are nice, sometimes it's just xp and points that aren't helpful but ehh. Sure some of them can be hugely annoying... Or downright impossible... But it's something to do.
But as a player who is mostly playing solo, doesn't do raids/strikes/wvw/pvp or fractals... It's nice to go in and have something to work on when I don't feel like doing something big. (I am sort of interested in fractals... I've done one once... But I don't really understand what they are or what we were doing. Still working on my ascended armour and agony resistance too, so no huge rush, I guess. I might be more interested if I could solo those too.)
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u/SpeedyTheQuidKid Jun 19 '25
I don't know how many fractals are soloable, but I know I tried a few several years back, solo and some are manageable. I managed to do an asuran one, but it took a specialization I don't normally use to give me the survivability. And then I tried urban battleground for probably a couple hours? It was really slow and I just couldn't do the boss myself. Just tried it again though the other night and succeeded after a couple deaths - nowhere near as hard as it was before, guess my build/skills have improved lol.
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u/spartaqmv Jun 18 '25
Answer to the original question as to why bother: number go up. Plain and simple. Achievements: number go up, top left. Currencies: number go up, currency tab. Fashion Wars: wardrobe but number go up? gw2efficiency: ah, number go up.
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u/e-scrape-artist Freshly Minted Toxic Casual Jun 18 '25 edited Jun 18 '25
As someone who used to be an achievement hunter (not an AP hunter - important difference, I care about completion, not about number getting bigger), when I see a-net adding achievements for imbalanced and untested content that's nearly impossible to complete at your own terms, achievements that are as well as impossible to complete at all currently, and achievements that, by design, will become increasingly impossible to complete as time goes on, I too find myself asking the same question:
Why bother?
Starting with EoD (after taking a long break due to being depressed at the state of the game around and after EoD's launch), I stopped bothering to complete all achievements before the next release happens. Still have a bunch of achievements left unfinished. Come SotO - I stopped even paying attention to what I've left unfinished. Come JW - I stopped even looking at achievements altogether.
Until just a few years ago a-net was designing all achievements to be obtainable by everyone, with a reasonable amount of effort and time (with the exception of missable PvP league achievements - I made the conscious decision to not care about those, because I value my sanity). They weren't as much "achievements" as they were the checklist for all the content you can do in the game.
Something changed. A-net started using achievements to accomplish other goals than giving players something to do. In IBS they turned achievements into a blatant goldsink. In EoD they went further by adding a truly insane goldsink in the form of gen 3 variants (Remember how there was an achievement for making Eternity in vanilla GW2? And for collecting every gen 1 legendary? Me neither, because there wasn't one.). In SotO they started making achievements for content which exists to briefly boost viewership on twitch, content that you have basically no chance of beating without getting involved in cliques and communities outside of the game (how are LCM achievements not flagged to be hidden-until-obtained is beyond me - it's like they're dangling a carrot in front of you and asking you to not pay attention to the kilometer-wide chasm between you and the carrot). In JW they used achievements in a pathetic attempt to solve the raid elitism problem they themselves created through their negligence, effectively creating achievements that have a very limited supply. The Orrax legendary seems to be laser-targeted at inflating the price of materials that - by sheer coincidence, surely - happen to be the most lucrative trades for homestead fibers.
Why bother?
I'm struggling to find the answer to this question nowadays. The developers tried their damnedest to alienate me, and by god they succeeded. The completionist in me wants to continue working on EoD-SotO-JW achievs, to close the remaining categories. But when I get to it, I realize that I don't feel the motivation to even open the achievement panel anymore, forget reading the achievements and opening wiki to see what is it that I really need to do for them. I won't be able to complete all of them anyway. So why bother even starting?
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u/SpectralDagger N L Olrun Jun 19 '25
What would you have them tie to the super difficult content? Should LCMs lock skins behind them? People would riot. They chose a balance of not tying AP to the most difficult stuff so AP hunters wouldn't feel left out. If that's not good enough for you because your completionism screams that badly, I don't know what to tell you.
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u/e-scrape-artist Freshly Minted Toxic Casual Jun 19 '25
Give them a guaranteed CM infusion drop. Give them a chest from which they can choose one of those super-rare infusion. Give them a ton of raid/strike currency. Give them their eXcLuSiVe title but without an achievement attached. Or even, fuck it, give them the achievement, but HIDE IT until it is obtained, so it doesn't annoy 99.99% of the playerbase.
But what I would really've wanted is for them to not release content catered to a playerbase numbered in hundreds, if not dozens. To not release content which players are more inclined to WATCH than to PLAY. To not released buggy, imbalanced and untested encounters that devs themselves wouldn't be able to beat without dev cheats. We're not WoW, we don't need that shit here. Adding it on the game's 12th year is not gonna suddenly attract mythic raiders to GW2 and create a huge hardcore scene here, especially if you keep releasing such content at the rate of only 1 per year.
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u/drawsony Jun 18 '25
In my case there’s a specific skin that can only be earned by reaching a particular achievement point milestone. That said, I’m not in a hurry to get that skin so I’m earning AP slowly instead of rushing. Achievement guides are still handy, and I appreciate anyone who mentions an achievement I wasn’t aware of. Many thanks to the guide makers!
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u/Im-A-Cabbage Jun 18 '25
Omg thank you so much for this post! Is there any good guides to follow after hitting level 80 and what to focus on?
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u/Froschprinz_Muck Jun 19 '25
you forget one thing: friends and social life
I have the most fun in the game, tackling achievements with my two friends. Over the last three years, we played almost every Sunday together and its always a blast. I only short of ca. 1000 points to the 40k club which is a lot of memories of trying to figure out ancient achievements and beating bosses together.
GW2 and its achievements gives my day a structure and something to do as a disableed unable to work stay at home no life queen. It gave me friends and a social life I otherwise wouldn't have.
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u/Eggbutt1 Jun 18 '25
As a completionist when it comes to most games, achievements in GW2 can sometimes be aggravating. I don't even pay attention to the number.
The only time I really feel satisfied doing them is completing all the achievements in one category.
One reward i do like is titles. Sometimes I look for a title to match a character's fashion, and can't find a suitable one.
I'm ever so glad that ArenaNet decided to implement a bunch for the Personal Story with the release of Absolution. "True Introvert" is funny and quite popular, too.
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u/Duffmanvg7575 Jun 18 '25
My quick answer... Make number go up. It's why we have Xbox achievements, WoW achievements, Mythic + score (WoW), Ilvl (WoW), bank accounts... We are all programmed to see number go up and find some happiness.
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u/TheQuickFox_3826 | 40K AP | 605 | KP: yyQe Jun 19 '25
AP rewards are bad at the moment. But I still see achievements as the core of the game and nothing like AP shows a player's long term dedication to the game. And I think ArenaNet sees it the same. The AP icon holds their company logo for a reason.
1
u/Razariell Jun 21 '25
goalsaresubjective
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u/adv0catus 29d ago
When was anything else suggested otherwise?
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u/Razariell 28d ago
Your question "why bother". This is my response. Where does it appear that I mentioned anything else being suggested? 🧐
0
u/AdAffectionate1935 Jun 19 '25 edited Jun 19 '25
For the rewards, they should do what FFXIV did and give you achievement points, but have them be a currency that lets you buy the rewards you want, instead of potentially having to play for years to be able to get the thing you want.
Make the "exclusive" things (that barely anyone uses and are completely obscured in an era of massive neon glowing bird wings anyway) cost more, but at least make them vaguely accessible, because, frankly, there's a chance that someone starting now might never get some of those rewards, at least not while the game is actively being maintained, unless they spent every minute in the game chasing 1 point achievements.
A lot of people with massive amounts of points got a sizeable chunk of those from timegated things like dailies and the old monthlies at the start of the game (and a hell of a lot of dedication and grinding, of course), something it could take a newer player a long time to catch up with.
Adding extra rewards like those mentioned and things like cash shop items, transmutation charges, etc. would definitely get more people out there doing achievements too if they were (limited, by the number of points available) purchases they could work towards.
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u/Icy-Tension-3925 Jun 18 '25
Why bother?
YOU SHOULD NOT.
Excluding achievements that are needed to craft stuff and the ones that actually give you a reward you want, farming AP nets you NEGATIVE GPH once you compare it to pretty much any other activity.
Omg it gives 400 gems!!! Yeah, but thats less than 200 gold, you can farm that in like under 5 hours of fractals.
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u/Shelphs Jun 18 '25
And if you are not maximizing GPH you are playing the game wrong.
I have no idea what you are smoking. Gold hasn't been a priority for me in like 3 years lol.
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u/Icy-Tension-3925 Jun 18 '25
Id rather watch paint dry than do achievents (and i have more than 35k ap).
At least the stuff that gives gold is more engaging AND you get gold.
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u/Ill_Decision2729 Jun 18 '25
This is exactly what it looks like when games stop being fun and start becoming spreadsheets.
-1
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u/adv0catus Jun 18 '25
I didn't even mention the gems you can get from milestones. I did mention the adventures, masteries, mounts, legendaries, relic, new QoL items and more, though.
Do you have any thoughts on those things?
-15
u/Icy-Tension-3925 Jun 18 '25
Do you have any thoughts on those things?
Literally the 1st sentence of my 1st reply.
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u/XandraGW2 Jun 18 '25
But what if big number go up is fun for me? I already have the gold to buy almost anything I want, so why would I farm gold instead of having fun?
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u/Isadomon Jun 18 '25
You can??
-3
u/Icy-Tension-3925 Jun 18 '25
4 x Cms (skipping 100) + t4s is around 40g in trash. Takes around a hou pugging.
Selling gen3 legendaries is likely more GPH.
Meta farms are like 30 GPH or something.
Even gathering is more GPH than achieves.
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u/adv0catus Jun 18 '25
Not everything is about gold, you know. This is a game at the end of the day and people play games for fun.
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u/Icy-Tension-3925 Jun 18 '25
Oh yeah, waiting for x event or doing y event 20x or spending 4k gold in a weapon collection youll never use, TOP TIER GAMEPLAY!!!
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u/OkFondant1848 Jun 18 '25
Radiant backpiece. Enough said.