Character

This article is about the mechanical aspects of the player's character. For the lore aspects, see Pact Commander.

A character is a customized avatar of the player in the game. Once created, the player uses the character to participate and progress through any of the three major game modes: Player versus Environment, Structured PvP, and World versus World. The number of characters on an account is limited by the number of slots available for character creation. Each character is the main protagonist in the continuous story of the game.

Many features and game mechanics are available simultaneously for all characters on the account, while some are tracked separately for each character – see the Character-based unlocks section below.

Creation

Primary article: Character creation

Players are guided through a 10-step character creation process where they determine their character's characteristics: race, gender, profession, physical appearance, initial biography, and name. Players can later change some aspects of the character through means of purchasing a Total Makeover Kit, a Name Change Contract or Identity Repair Kit from the Gem Store. Race or profession cannot be changed by any means. Some physical appearances are exclusively available through a makeover.

Hero panel

Once created, information about the character can be accessed through the Hero panel. This panel also allows further customization through the character's choice of dye and equipment obtained while playing the game.

Leveling up

Primary article: Level rewards

Visual effect of a character leveling up

Characters advance through the game by leveling up. Each new character starts at level 1, and is rewarded experience for participating in various activities and completing objectives. When a character accumulates enough experience, they will gain a level and receive level rewards up to the maximum level 80. Depending on a level, rewards unlock new skills and mechanics, providing various game tips and guidance, increase character's attributes, grant hero points, and unlock equipment of higher rarity.

Almost every in-game activity provides experience (including, but not limited to):

• Participating in events
• Completing personal story objectives
• Completing Character Adventure Guide achievements
• Exploring: Discovering new areas, landmarks and completing hero challenges
• Gathering crafting materials from resource nodes
• Killing monsters
• Reviving allies
• Crafting
• Participating in mini game activities
• Completing Dungeon runs
• Consuming Writ of Experience and Tome of Knowledge

Upon leveling up, a character is fully healed and has their profession mechanic resource replenished, if applicable (e.g., adrenaline for warriors or life force for necromancers). If a character is in combat they will also damage and launch nearby foes with the Level Up contextual skill, activated automatically.

At the level 80, experience becomes an account-wide system shared by all maximum level characters, and is put towards training available Mastery tracks. The initial leveling up process serves as an extended tutorial of the game, and much of the endgame content is designed specifically for level 80 characters.

Dynamic level adjustment

Each explorable zone and game mode is balanced and designed for characters of a specific level range. Dynamic level adjustment is a game mechanic that automatically scales a character's base attributes to match the effective level of the current area. Level-based unlocks like skill slots and traits are retained.

• In PvE, characters are only scaled down when in areas with a lower effective level; they are not scaled up when in higher-level areas.
• In both World versus World and Fractals of the Mists, characters are always scaled up to level 80, but skills and traits that are locked remain so.
• In Structured PvP, characters are scaled up to level 80. Additionally, all skills and traits are unlocked, and the character is given a separate set of PvP-specific max-level equipment.

Exploring high level areas

The game discourages players from bringing characters into areas that are more than 10 levels above the current character level. To indicate that, levels of zones, NPC enemies, Renown Hearts, and dynamic events more than 10 levels higher than the character are displayed in purple.

NPC detect lower level player characters from a much greater distance than they would detect a character of equal level, and if they are hostile they will rush to the character. Combined with the combat difficulties listed below, this makes even basic exploration of higher level zones extremely dangerous.

Characters more than 10 levels below the area level cannot do any of the following:

• Deal full damage. Characters seven or more levels below their target will deal only glancing blows.
• Inflict conditions. Enemies will display an Immune message instead.
• Rally off foe deaths. Lower level downed characters have to be healed, or revived after being defeated.

Lower level characters can still technically do the following, even though it is generally not recommended:

• Inflict control effects.
• Deal enough damage to get loot and to receive credit for events.
• Complete non-combat renown hearts.
• Complete hero challenges.

Additionally, damage is scaled by the level difference. A low level character will receive much more damage even with the same amount of the armor attribute as an appropriately leveled character. On top of this, all hits received will be critical hits. Similar holds true for outgoing damage. In addition to all hits being glancing blows as noted above, damage is further scaled down.

Character age

• A character's age can be displayed using the chat command "/age".
• Each character in an account receives a Birthday Gift for each year since its creation.
• If the Hero (achievements) category was not yet received on the one-year anniversary of the creation of the oldest character then talk to the Birthday Vendor to get it.

Home instance

Every character has their own home instance. This is an instanced area which varies depending on race and changes as the character levels and completes various objectives in game.

Character-based unlocks

While many aspects of the game are unlocked account-wide once completed or acquired, there are a few notable exceptions which can not be transferred to other characters:

• Some Gem Store upgrades:
  • Bag Slot Expansions, Equipment Template Expansions, Build Template Expansions, as well as any waypoint unlocks, like Waypoint Unlock Box.
• Story progress and associated repayable content:
  • Core, expansion, and living world episodes story progress are bound to the character that started it.
  • Dungeons — Explorable mode can only be started by the characters that have completed the story mode.
  • Raven Sanctum — instance can only be accessed by characters that have completed The Invitation story.
  • Forging Steel — instance can only be created by characters that have done the story.
• Some achievements and associated collections:
  • Character Adventure Guide experience-granting tutorial achievements are earned separately by each character.
  • Most Living World Season 2 achievements can only be completed on a second playthrough on the same character.
  • Knight of the Thorn — can only be started by characters that have completed the Heart of Thorns story.
  • Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire backpack collections can only be progressed by characters that have started a particular story path.
• Map completion and exploration:
• Crafting discipline level
• Soulbound items and equipment.
• Fishing lures and bait are equipped per character.
• Jade Bot equipment are equipped per character.
• Birthday Gifts
• Super Adventure Box skills during Super Adventure Festival.

Notes

• Paid-for Accounts include five character slots to start with; you can purchase Character Slot Expansions from the Gem Store.
• Free-to-play accounts only have two character slots. The other three are locked.
• Names are reserved for your account for 24 hours after deleting the character.
• The race of a character does not impact the character's stats, such as power or vitality. Races do have access to different racial skills and early personal story chapters.

Player chatter

• When a character gains a level they will occasionally say one of the following lines, depending on their race and gender:

Race	Gender
	Male	Female
Asura	I'd like to thank my krewe, and my college professors. I'd like to thank my krewe, and my college instructors. That's more like it.	Look out, genius on the rise. Can I get any better? Indeed, I can! That's right. I'm the best.
Charr	When you're hot, you're hot. Time for a promotion.	Moving out. I did it. I advance yet again. I cover myself with glory. I'm good. Practice makes perfect.
Human	I just keep getting better and better! The gods smile on me! I'm so good, it hurts.	Like fine wine, I just keep getting better. Congratulations to me! Progress makes perfect. Welcome to the big time. Population: me. Kicking tail and taking name.
Norn	Bow to me in my progress! By the power of me, ha ha! Experience makes me strong. Greatness. I am becoming greatness!	Hold up. The glory is all mine.
Sylvari	Look at my talent grow! This calls for celebration. I only get better and better. A world of possibilities awaits. Where one path ends, another one begins.	That put me in an adventurous mood! I'm on my way to greener fields.

Trivia

• The character's voice is determined by the combination of gender and race:
  • The asura female is voiced by Colleen O'Shaughnessey.
  • The asura male is voiced by Steve Staley.
  • The charr female was previously voiced by Kate Miller, and is now voiced by Mara Junot starting from 2019, first appearing in War Eternal.
  • The charr male was previously voiced by Ron Yuan, and is now voiced by Lex Lang starting from 2016, first appearing in Living World Season 3.
  • The human female is voiced by April Stewart.
  • The human male is voiced by Nolan North.
  • The norn female is voiced by Claudia Christian.
  • The norn male is voiced by Matthew Mercer.
  • The sylvari female is voiced by Jennifer Hale.
  • The sylvari male is voiced by Brandon Bales.