Guides/Legendaries
Map completion: a gold star, two Gifts of Exploration, and why anyone bothers
What counts toward completing a map, why only core Tyria feeds world completion, and how one completion turns into one legendary weapon.
On this page
The icons in the corner of your map are a completion counter. Filling it on every core map is world completion, one of the longest solo goals in the game.
The reason people do it is specific: the Gift of Exploration.
What counts
Each map holds five kinds of marker:
- Renown Hearts, NPC tasks that fill from anything you do in the area
- Waypoints for fast travel
- Points of Interest, landmarks that tick as you walk past
- Vistas, viewpoints you have to climb to
- Hero challenges, the skill points
Close all of them and the map counts as complete and pays out a chest.
🔴 Only core Tyria feeds world completion
This is the part that catches people: expansion maps do not count.
You need all six cities and 25 core zones. Southsun Cove and the Maguuma Wastes zones are excluded, despite belonging to the old world.
Heart of Thorns, Path of Fire, End of Dragons and the rest have their own completion and their own rewards, and none of it moves the gold star.
What world completion pays
Once per character:
- 2 × Gift of Exploration
- a gold star beside your character name
- the Been There, Done That achievement and title
What the gift is for
The Gift of Exploration goes into first-generation legendary weapons. Each of those needs two gifts, so one full world completion equals one legendary (where a legendary starts).
And here the detail bites: the reward belongs to the character. Complete the world on a second character and you receive two more gifts.
Players chasing several legendaries therefore complete the world several times on different characters. The gift cannot be bought and cannot be traded.
How long it takes
20 to 40 hours for a first pass, depending on how carefully you move.
Later runs go faster because you know where the vistas hide. With mounts and a glider the difference is enormous, which is why doing this before 80 makes no sense at all.
How to do it efficiently
Mounts first. The raptor and springer halve the time. The skyscale and griffon cut it further.
Ignore the order. Close whichever maps suit your level rather than working through numbers. The experience feeds masteries either way.
Watch the hearts. Renown Hearts fill from any activity in the zone, gathering included. They close in the background while you run between vistas.
Vistas are puzzles. Half of them are about finding the way up. If you are stuck for five minutes, there is almost always an unremarkable ledge off to one side.
Is it worth it for a newcomer
For the star, no. For a legendary, yes, without hurrying.
The sensible approach is to close maps as you pass through them while levelling and farming. A few months of ordinary play later, half the world turns out to be done, and only the tail is left.