Guild Wars 2

Is there a decent (& cheaper) alternative to Abyss or Black dye that looks better than the starter Ebony dye?

TIP: Tarnished Silver Dye is a nice cheaper alternative to White dye

Charcoal is passable on Medium, good on cloth, washed out on Heavy.

Iron looks quite black at least on Heavy armour. I like it as a nice black alternative until one day when abyss drops.

Oh, and Fog is a decent white alternative as well.

Iron looks like a dark blue on medium armor.

I’ve used Iron on my medium armor for a while now and haven’t picked up on any blue hue with the color. It has been my go to cheapo-black for a while now.

midnight ice looks very black on my heavy armor. it looks better and better as i increase lvl and armor lvl). but im only 25,i have no ideea how will look at 80. anyway,its glossy so it tend to take the color of surroundings.
its not a cheap dye,but its 1g cheaper then black i think.

http://pendiongaming.com/gw2/dyesearch.php

This site allows you to type in the RGB or html/css code for a dye and it will give you the closest matches (measured four different ways). For example, for #123456, the tool suggests:

1. Lab: Royal or Country Blue
2. HSL: Blue Shade or Sapphire
3. YUV: Afternoon or Ocean
4. RGB: Royal Blue or Regal

Mileage will vary, depending on the armor, material, and location of the dye.

Midnight Ice is the best looking black in game. I use it on all my characters, cloth to heavy.

There is Midnight Ice and Midnight Fire, both very Black. Midnight Ice has a very slight Bluish Hue, Midnight Fire has a Reddish Hue.

Note, how it looks depends on the gear it is on. I bought Midnight Fire at some low level for medium armor and it looked dark brown. Midnight Ice looked grey black on the same armor. It didn’t look deep black until i got to the level of Noble armor and above. Even then some high level armor still looks greyish. I have no idea if Abyss fixes that.

I used Blue Ice on my medium armor instead of White Dye.

Ice dyes look great for white, Iron looks decent for black. The blackest dyes I’ve actually found are Midnight Fire/Ice, fire being the cheapest.

I use Sapphire Blue and Midnight Fire on my Ele and this is how it turned out.

The best Black dye I have found so far is Pitch dye. Its really dark in the player screen (H)
But some what silvery in bright Light

I typically use Pitch for black and Icing for White. It’s close enough for my purposes.

Honestly, I think that Black/Abyss and White/Celestial are a little too vibrant for my characters. The colors don’t feel real.

I personally use Midnight Emerald and Ancient Silver/White Gold.
those are not pure black and white but I really like the look

Iron is a good black on leather armor. Fog is a great metal color, somewhat like tin, on heavy armor, definately beating out steel and gunmetal for that metal effect. It does not look white imo on any armor type.

“Iron” and “Icing” are two dyes I found that do the trick. Unfortunately, they’re still not as vibrant as the real deal.

There’s also “Illumination” that actually looks better than “Gold”, it seems. Way shinier.

Nothing looks better than the Abyss black and Celestial white dyes. If you are going to spend any money on dye at all, but all you want is Abyss and Celestial, I would just save up for them. (Celestial white looks amazing). I found both Silver and Ancient Silver within minutes of eachother. Though they look great if you are going for that look, Celestial white is still head over heels better =D

I use Pitch instead of Black/Abyss. It looks dark enough on my light armor.

As for the White/Celestial, I’d go with some of the Ice dyes since they seem like a decent alternative.

I use midnight yew.

Plenty of choices for white. For black, you go up to a mid level gray, and then suddenly jump to an extreme black. There’s some very dark reds, blues, and so on, but they’re still obvious hues.

I prefer Midnight Sky on my leather armor. Looks black with a cobalt tint.

I lucked into Midnight Ice early with my thief and it looks awesome, but of course it only works with a cool pallet so the highlights are shades of teal. Midnight Rust is also a decent mahogany brown that works well on my Ranger.

Part of the problem is inconsistency, that colors that look great on leathers or cloth might look horrid on scale, even within armor sets there are inconsistency, like Midnight Ice looks like a shiny dark teal on the leather jacket, but pretty much solid black on the Anonymity Hood.

try Starry Night with Midnight Ice

It’s what I use along with gold and looks awesome.

I used Pitch on my light armour for a while, before I came across ‘Oil Slick’.

Oil Slick is a better black on light armour.

iirc, I use Black Cherry for black on leather(not 100% on the name) and Frost for white on cloth.