Chase whatever you are in the mood for at the moment. You can either overwhelm yourself worrying about it, or you can just have fun doing and look up one day and realize you've caught up without trying. Luckily there are no-CP campaigns in PVP so just get to CP160 and have fun.

Personally; I came back after a break a few months ago and I grabbed bargain bin gear sets that would just have to do for a while; and just had fun. With patience oh guild mates and a couple strangers along the way; I had some other things I wanted just tagging along naturally. Realized maybe last week when soloing a world boss that damn near one shot me when I first came back, trying to get a gear piece I wanted to drop.

Welcome to vet level (soon). Lol.

Don't feel stressed or overwealmed...there's a lot to do, but not too much shifts from the mechanics you've learned thus far. I can offer a few tips that might help:


Champion points

At vet you start earning these...They're earned via earning xp, so you can keep on playing whatever content you like. If you're earning xp, you're working toward your next champion point. The game currently allows you to spend 600 CPs (you can earn as many as you can over that).

Don't stress about earning these all at once...it's a loooong road. It can take a year or more. But the algorhytm is set so that early points come fast, then slow over time. Point 1 takes 30,000 xp to earn. Number 600 takes a million or so. One CP milestone is 160. That's the highest gear in the game can go, so once you hit 160 you can build and wear the strongest armor available. If you play about an hour a day, you'll hit 160 within a month. Fastermif you play more/harder.

As you earn CPs, you can spend each in the champion point tree. NOTE: CPs are by account, not character. So if your vet earns 20 CPs, every character on the account, even those who are NOT VET can spend on themselves. That's right...your vet will make all other/future toons stronger.

The CP tree can be daunting at first. So where should you spend? As is often the case, out of the 60ish available passives, a few are the best. Don't freak out...just focus on the following list until you hone the character and decide their end game role. In reds, spend on hardy and elemental defender...this mitigates incoming magic and stam damage. In blue, spend on increased physical or magical damage depending on the character. In green, focus on resource recovery and making skills cheaper...for both, either stam or magic depending on the toon. A lot of expert builds work toward 100 points each in these five, so spending here will hold you over for a long time.


Enlightenment

Once you become vet, you'll start earning daily enlightenment...which the game will of course never explain, lol. This is a tool that helps you catch up on Champion Points...let's cover it.

Each day the game will give you an "allowance" to earn approx. 400,000 xp at 4 times the normal rate. If a monster is worth 1,000 xp normally, it's worth 4,000 when enlightened. A quest worth 10,000 becomes worth 40,000. You get your 400k daily allowance whether you log in or not, and your account will store up to 12 days (4 million-ish) worth. So players who can't play as much or go on vacation can come back and catch up to their friends. You can see how much enlightenment you have on your toon's character sheet (once vet). Your xp bar will also change slightly to include a shaded portion, representing unspent enlightenment.

There's not much else to say except that enlightenment is basically free xp. TIP: it's A LOT of xp, and all of it funnels into skill lines or abilities for leveling. You know all those millions of xp you earned fighting to fifty? Yeah...you'll earn that much in six days of enlightenment, lol. So don't stress if xp-based skill lines or abilities aren't leveled - at vet, enlightenment will help level things super fast.


What to do

Daily craft writs: if you haven't learned how to do these, it's a good idea you start. These are the best free source of gold tempers for armor and enchantments. Vet gear can be spendy. If you want to run gold, that's 8 tempers per piece. Eight gold tempers will run you $60,000-$100,000 in guild stores depending...so daily writs can be worth the 5 minute investment.

Undaunted: if you haven't, you can start normal level undaunted dailies and daily delves. Completing these repeatable quests levels the undaunted skill line, which takes for-ev-ER but has some handy passives and abilities. You can probably hack normal level event w/o champion points. Vet runs require for most players 100-400 champion points, depending on the dungeon in question, player skill, build, etc.

Wrap up the main storyline? If you haven't finished the prophet's story, this is a good place to focus on. Not a lot of content refers to it, but the DLCs technically take place afterward and sometimes make reference.

DLCs: wrothgar, gold coast and hew's Bane are solo zones that each contain an independent main storyline that you can handle at any level. There are a ton of skill points in these quests. Each zone also has world boss and delve dailies. Go, explore, have a blast.

Craglorn: craglorn is a bit odd now. It used to be a 4 person zone, but now it has a main story that is solo, and the delves are solo. But there are some repeatables and sections that are still designed for four. The game will advise you when you step into a group area....feel free to go explore. There are 18 delves, so a great place to get some sky shards if you need them.

Trials: The game's 12 person trials require a LOT of CPs to play on vet. The expert players at these usually suggest starting at 300. However, normal mode is way more forgiving and there are many, many laid back guilds who will run these with lower level players. This can be a good way to learn these dungeons, practice, and earn some achievements.

...And all the stuff you never did: obviously the massive number of faction and area quests are still out there if you didn't complete them already (and there's no way you have, or you'd be vet five times over, lol)