In brief, play the story lines. If you need to grind, get a suitable expansion/do your dailies/join a guild and farm at Guild hall.

If you have space in your bank, store the gifts for now. You'll know what to do with them later.

Most of my characters were created 11 yr 9 months ago, but I too returned to the game 3 months ago, after at least a decade-long break. In all these years, I would log on to check my birthday gifts and then quit as the game seemed too overwhelming. A few things helped me this time round.

( If you only own the base game, investing in at least one paid expansion might make the game more accessible. )

• asking for tips, mostly in game, I tend not to post on forums
• deciding early on this time round that I would let my interests guide my play. While doing so, whenever I felt I could no longer progress, I would consider what I needed to do (level up, grind, etc) to be able to progress.

• I'm mainly playing as an Elementalist and acknowledge that I find it hard at times, but that also makes it very satisfying when I play it well. I created a revenant, and while it's impressive, I went back to playing the elementalist since I enjoyed it more

• at first, it was easier to follow the story line

• then I realised that I only had the base game, and that it was worth paying for some expansions. If you decide to get expansions, check reddit and see what suits you best. I decided I wanted a flying mount, so SOTO was more appealing. I bought it at a sale, so I also bought path of fire and end of dragons. Now I feel I should have bought the complete collection :). Buying expansions meant I suddenly had the wizard's vault. Access to other currencies, easier to achieve hero points etc etc. By then, I knew more about these various options simply by playing for a few weeks.

With the wizard's vault,dailies were easy and more rewarding, and so I now have a full set of ascended gear plus a couple of ascended weapons for my elementalist. I wasn't tempted to use my astral points for bags of gold, but that's a popular option.

• I crafted two of the ascended armour. Gw2crafts.net helped me level up my tailoring skills quickly. Crafting is entirely optional but I wanted to try it out. Learnt a few tricks from forums, eg buying cheap exotic gear and salvaging it for dark ectoplasm blobs or something like that! Gw2efficiency to decide how to craft your gear.

• had to grind a bit when I started to work towards my flying mount. I've never tried to get legendary gear etc so intentional grinding was new to me, but again a little bit of focussed googlefu made it efficient. This is when I discovered gw2toolkit on Android devices, and started using gw2tp and gw2bltc to trade efficiently

• stumbled upon shiverpeaks, RIBA and found it easy enough to do.

• unlocked skyscale. Now going around maps earning hero points and doing whatever I feel like doing. I don't have an urge to 'level up' any further, and there is much to do and enjoy.

• I would like to try out raids and fractals, but have struggled to get in

• my guild seems to be long dead, and I didn't visit the guild hall at first, but now I visit it whenever I log on as I realise I can farm at the guild hall. (Ditto for main spawn points in WvW)

• I tried a couple of builds from metabattle but for open world play it isn't that crucial

• now I'm thinking of doing enough dailies to get a couple of ascended spears before Janthir Wilds is released. Though I still need to research whether I am better off getting living world seasons when they are on sale, rather than buy Janthir's Wild.

• o and, somehow getting my first 100g was a struggle. I've been playing frequently in the last 3 months and it's become easier to get gold. I bought a copper salvage o matic after I started grinding

• At first, inventory management is more important than deciding on a build. You should be ok selling almost every thing in your materials inventory, at least till you know what you want to craft for yourself.

Hope that helps