Once you’ve chosen a crafting discipline, you can immediately begin crafting provided you have the necessary components. To do so, walk up to the appropriate crafting station and interact with it using the default [F] key. This will bring up the main crafting window which has a number of different tabs and interactions. We’ll take a look at each of these views below, along with some basic notes and tips for each.

To find any such areas, open your map [M] and any crafting areas will be clearly marked with the icons shown here to the right. To make it easier to see the crafting icons on the map, you can also click on the small eye shaped icon found on the bottom left corner of the map. This will bring up a list of display options that can be toggled, with a category dedicated to crafting.

In major cities, don’t forget that you can toggle between the different “layers” of the city on the map. To do so, click on any of the various layers for that particular map on the bottom right corner.

Once you’ve located the NPC trainers, interact with them using the default [F] key, and begin a conversation. As shown below, each one will provide you with some basic information about what that discipline is able to produce, types of materials you will need, and other important info specific to that discipline.

Newly created characters in Guild Wars 2 are able to begin crafting immediately following the brief intro instance for each race, though you may want to wait until you’ve got at least a few levels under your belt before diving in. As you’ll learn in this guide, this is due to needing some materials to craft with, and enough coin to purchase various components from NPC crafting vendors.