Guild Wars 2

So admittedly, I’m not very good at market analysis or playing the tp. But I’ve noticed that food and cooking ingredient prices have skyrocketed since the latest update. The food I rely on heavily for my WvW build has gone up from 3s to around 15-20s per serving. Even the cheaper versions are likewise over 10s a pop, and that’s the price of crafting it, not buying it outright. I play WvW almost exclusively and make a paltry 1g-2g per hour (guaranteed greens from rank chests, maybe 1 rare out of every 10 ranks, haven’t seen an exotic drop in a month or so). Having to pay 40s/hour in food costs brings that income waaaay down.

I guess what I’m asking is, are these prices here to stay? Or are they a temporary effect from the new content that was just released? WvWers are the crowd that arguably need food buffs the most, but are the least likely to be able to afford it. And until Anet can find a way to give us a reward structure comparable to PvE, we’re stuck in a bad place for maintaining any semblance of wealth when a large chunk of our income goes to simply staying alive in addition to having to build upgrades and what not.

Since the pavilion offers almost no cooking materials (only a few random account bound ones that I’ve found, and certainly nothing to collect) and everyone’s probably looking for their own unique edge of a certain kind (whether it’s food to just make farming more efficient or to get you through a specific gauntlet challenge) I’d think the effects on both supply and demand would be temporary and might return at least a bit once people go back to their normal routines.

It depends on what happens when the Queen’s Gauntlet ends.

Right now, everyone is either there or champ farming in Queensdale/Frostgorge. That means that ingredients that were normally being farmed are now being ignored by the farmers. If the farmers return to their old routes after QG (unlikley with the new champ trains) then you can expect prices to return to normal.

The more likely scenario is that with the new farming routes you can expect prices to continue to climb as the supply of ingredients dwindles.

what food are you talking about. Maybe it use the same item as the arena food.

I also notice the trend of really rich people buy out the entire supply. Some of them success, like the atherized recipe. Some fail like the representation token.

Many item are unstable right now. People keep buying them out at high price, I don’t know why. Maybe people are anticipating new patch.

I wouldn’t say most Herbs are ever “farmed”. Even with guesting, there’s limited supplies hourly. Though I think the biggest limiter here is just character movement speed. Node “Farming” could probably compensate price spikes like these if Anet ever came up with a really intuitive & skill based “Mount” system for Open-world scouting. And that’s pretty much ALWAYS been their Mantra anyway: “If we’re going to add something to this game from standard MMO’s, we’re going to make sure it serves a real purpose that fits our game”. We can probably argue how often they actually execute on that promise, but we know the intent will atleast be there…. And when they add player housing, they could add GARDENING along with it

I’ve kinda given up on herbing myself even though I’ve got Perma swiftness & long distance leaps on TWO different weapon sets… I generally enjoy the mechanics of it but the RNG nature of the nodes just KILLS my will to do it every single day. There’s nothing worse IMO than rushing through every inch of Timberline & Dredgehaunt with only 8 Rosemaries to show for it and 50 godkittened THYME and BEETS. Some of these stupid low-demand ingreds just plain need to be taken OUT of the mid-level Node Tables….

The food in question is Orrian Meat and Truffle Stew, which has rosemary and sage as the obvious high-price culprits. Those ingredients are both used in the much more popular Lemongrass Poultry Soup recipe.

However, LPS has been in high demand for quite some time now. After the initial price spike as people discovered the joys of reduced condition duration, the price stayed pretty reasonable until the new update.

I’ve noticed this trend on other foods as well, even the ones that don’t require those ridiculously expensive herbs. Seems like just about all food is spiking right now.

Endurance regen food is in huge demand for the Queen’s Gauntlet, so it makes sense that the stew in particular would be hit hard right now.

Obviously orrian tuffle is in demand now. It is popular for the last boss in queens’ gauntlet.

It might come back down. Presumely people no longer need it for liadri

Ah, ok that makes sense. I haven’t done much of the new content so I didn’t realize other people had a sudden need for endurance recharge.

Well, hopefully it comes back down to much more manageable price after the event is over.

It sounds like you use some very specific food in WvW, which isn’t uncommon, but if you did want alternative inexpensive food you can buy Zhaitaffy still and purchase food with it, making level 80 food incredibly inexpensive.

I know there is at least one food that you can buy that’s equivalent to the Veggie Pizza I used with my Necromancer, only its far less expensive to buy with Zhaitaffy than it is straight-up on the TP.

Cooking ingredients are going up sharply due to people farming in other areas. Look at ore and wood prices. I’d be curious how profitable gathering runs would be.

laokoko.7403:

Obviously orrian tuffle is in demand now. It is popular for the last boss in queens’ gauntlet.

It might come back down. Presumely people no longer need it for liadri

This guy has the right of it. Though I suspect it will never go back to quite where it used to be as chances are some will have discovered its usefulness from using it for these fights and will begin using it in other facets of the game thus resulting in a larger number of buyers in the market.

I’ll be bummed if the orrian truffle and meat stew stays expensive because it was such a good fit for my no-stealth thief build, but I’ve already started experimenting with other foods (thanks for the Zhaitaffy info!) and adjusting my playstyle accordingly. Haven’t noticed much of a decline so far even in 1vX situations, so this whole price skyrocketing thing may have actually saved me money in the long run by ditching a food I don’t really need.

Thanks for the advice, all!