Guild Wars 2

Please forgive my ignorance, but I am having some difficulty understanding a few things.

1. I have a level 56 Guardian and purchased a skin. I put in on him and the armor transfused with the skin, in essence the way I understand it, the skin became the armor.

2. Now I have better armor and wanted to upgrade, but my skin is bound to the armor it was on and I need to transmute them off. (this is what I was told I need to do)

A. My understanding is I have to buy some kind of transmutation charge to do this. What kind of skin is this?? I have to spend more money because the skin is now the armor stats I was currently wearing if I want to change it? Aren’t skins just covers for your armor?

B. I don’t know how to transmute, I read some information but its still unclear, so the way I understand it is…..(see number 3)

3. I have five pieces of armor, so I need(have to pay for) five transmutation pieces to get the skin back that I already paid(real money) for so I don’t have the level 56 armor stats forever attached to the skin?

I mentioned all the above because it sounds like they are double dipping money wise with this. Pay for the skin, then you have to pay to take the stuff off if you want to change the stats. Am I not understanding the process correctly? Any help and responses would be appreciated, thanks!

So skins for many people are endgame. While I see no reason why my level 1 shouldn’t look good, many people avoid skinning until their characters have endgame armor. (Level 80 exotics). So the wardrobe was introduced, and when you add a skin to your wardrobe by using it, you can – use it as many times on as many characters as you want with the price of Trans charges. This is a far better system than it used to be, where if you just wanted say the helm skin on multiple characters you would have to buy the entire armor set over and over and use transmutation crystals or stones to transfer it to other armors.

Transmutation charges are easiest to get with real money. However, you can get 1 for each completed map. So essentially, you can farm them without paying real money.

When you want to skin a new armor set, you equip the armor and go into your hero panel and to the wardrobe. From there you can apply the skins using those charges you bought or farmed.

A good way to avoid spending too much of these while leveling is to buy an “outfit” which can be applied to as many characters as you want and it doesn’t cost a single charge. The ancestral outfit and assassin’s are the latest, but come Halloween you’ll have access to the executioners, witch, mad king, and bloody prince. You can also buy the pirate or chef outfit. These are all good alternatives to skinning before 80.

The gem store armor skins have only one free application. After that it costs one transmutation charge for each piece. You can get one charge by mapping a city or complete a regular map and get a charge or a black lion key.

With the new wardrobe system, while it has it’s advantages, it did make transmutation for lower levels more expensive. Since leveling is so fast and you will be changing armors at least every 10 levels, it’s better now not to use the transmutations. Either use whatever look is available for that level or buy and use a costume.

If you have other character slots you can map a city, delete and remap. Or your other permanent characters can also map the cities to get charges.

Thanks very much for your responses, while not what I wished to hear, your explanations make perfect sense and give me the answers I was looking for, thanks again!