Guild Wars 2

What are your opinions on spending karma to make gold using these jewelry boxes?

Absolutely do not buy them. They are a trap to suck away all your karma for very little gold return. That karma may have accumulated naturally just playing the game but what happens when you want to make a legendary (or two)? You have to consciously farm back 1 million karma.

Thanks for the warning. I thought that maybe using some karma buffs you could actually get a pretty good bank for your buck just with all the karma they give back.

You can get ~50% karma back with each throw in before using karma boosters. If you stack karma boosts, you can get a large majority of your karma back and keep recycling it. You’ll get most of your money from Unidentified Objects and the rest from Lodestones. With 1.7 million karma (counting all the karma I used after opening boxes) I got 8g + assorted lodestones.

It’s not that much money, but there’s not much else to spend it on.

So for 1.7 million karma (months of active play worth of karma), you got an hour of cof farming’s worth of gold. Seems legit.

Jabberwock.9014:

So for 1.7 million karma (months of active play worth of karma), you got an hour of cof farming’s worth of gold. Seems legit.

Actually, it was about 1 months worth of play.

Jabberwock.9014:

Absolutely do not buy them. They are a trap to suck away all your karma for very little gold return. That karma may have accumulated naturally just playing the game but what happens when you want to make a legendary (or two)? You have to consciously farm back 1 million karma.

Except if you buy them often enough you get more than enough obsidian shards, I’m currently working on my 3rd stack of them…

Adam.4103:

Jabberwock.9014:

Absolutely do not buy them. They are a trap to suck away all your karma for very little gold return. That karma may have accumulated naturally just playing the game but what happens when you want to make a legendary (or two)? You have to consciously farm back 1 million karma.

Except if you buy them often enough you get more than enough obsidian shards, I’m currently working on my 3rd stack of them…

Yeah this is the same for me, as well…. :/

For some of us, there’s really nothing else to spend karma on. I stopped buying obsidian shards after getting my 77 clovers, and it looks like maybe I should have stopped sooner. In the meantime, yes, I’m buying boxes. The gold return is not great (less than 1g per 100k karma spent) but at least it’s something. And the occasional lodestone or minipet isn’t a terrible thing, either.

Just wait, if you don’t need gold urgently then keep your karma, in the future karma could me more valuable.

Don’t know what people here are talking about, i got about 40gold per 1mio karma
multiple times now. Very profitable imho.

I have to agree with Crovax about this. I have also been averaging about 40g per million karma. With 1 million karma I got about 25g from Unidentified Objects alone, then the rest of the money you make depends on what lodestones you get.

Just get autohotkey or some other automation software or this will kill your mouse and the finger that clicks it.

Jabberwock.9014:

Absolutely do not buy them. They are a trap to suck away all your karma for very little gold return. That karma may have accumulated naturally just playing the game but what happens when you want to make a legendary (or two)? You have to consciously farm back 1 million karma.

Obviously you would only spend the karma if you have no intention of using it. Unless you PvE 100%, karma is not that hard to come by. The boxes were intended for players with tons of karma that had nothing to spend it on, WvW players. For one in this game, something is working as intended.

One million karma gets me about 50g if I’m lucky with lodestones. Just make sure you’re using a booster when you’re using the karma jugs or whatever they’re called. I’ve never made 50g on one run of CoF. Could you please share your secrets with me?

Do not spend your karma. It’s really difficult to accumulate when you need it, but very easy when you don’t even think about it.

The gold/karma rate is so pathetic that you’re better off just saving it and hoping for more karma-currency purchases later on.

Heck, you may even want to consider using the karma for obsidian shards and trying your hand at clover gambling.

I spent 1.2 million karma, recycle the karma from the boxes using karma food and buffs and bought more boxes and repeated the process until there was nothing left. I got about 25g from it all 15g fro unidentified objects and the rest from lodestones. I guess I am not so lucky, but it’s still better than having karma just sitting there doing nothing. Plus it is so easy to accumulate now compared to the first few months after release. I remember grinding out events for days and weeks to get enough to pay for my first exotic karma gear set. Now all I have to do is complete some dailies and monthlies.

Undean.9704:

I have to agree with Crovax about this. I have also been averaging about 40g per million karma. With 1 million karma I got about 25g from Unidentified Objects alone, then the rest of the money you make depends on what lodestones you get.

Again, I spent 1.7m karma and got ~8g back from unid objects.

I’m not complaining, I’m just stating that you might be overstating the amount you made.

I’m also not saying that this is a bad method of using excess karma (I still have 1m karma on my main), but I want players who use this method to be informed.

As for the OP and all people who are unsure of whether or not they should buy boxes…

What are you going to spend your karma on?
If you know the answer to that, then you don’t need to buy boxes (or, perhaps, you do).

If you don’t know the answer to that, think about boxes as a (free) stock. It’s something you’re holding onto and it gets more value (more karma) as you adventure. You can cash out whenever you want, or hold it in case new usages for it come available.

kitten y analogy, but I just woke up. :3

Esplen.3940:

Undean.9704:

I have to agree with Crovax about this. I have also been averaging about 40g per million karma. With 1 million karma I got about 25g from Unidentified Objects alone, then the rest of the money you make depends on what lodestones you get.

Again, I spent 1.7m karma and got ~8g back from unid objects.

I’m not complaining, I’m just stating that you might be overstating the amount you made.

I’m also not saying that this is a bad method of using excess karma (I still have 1m karma on my main), but I want players who use this method to be informed.

As for the OP and all people who are unsure of whether or not they should buy boxes…

What are you going to spend your karma on?
If you know the answer to that, then you don’t need to buy boxes (or, perhaps, you do).

If you don’t know the answer to that, think about boxes as a (free) stock. It’s something you’re holding onto and it gets more value (more karma) as you adventure. You can cash out whenever you want, or hold it in case new usages for it come available.

kitten y analogy, but I just woke up.

You were sitting on 95% karma buffs, right? Otherwise you’re not doing it right.

Last time I counted, the profit was about four-five silver per box, plus/minus rng. Not much for the 4k karma spent.

edit: why is a number for “four-five” censored?

AntiGw.9367:

Last time I counted, the profit was about four-five silver per box, plus/minus rng. Not much for the 4k karma spent.

edit: why is a number for “four-five” censored?

four-five s ilver

four and five are 1337speak for a and s

fourfive s is an inappropriate word.

They’re really going over the top with their kitttenfilter.

I doubt they’ve added new words to their filter, they just need to make a filter that checks against a list of words that are considered bad, then add a parser that will take out spaces and convert all iterations to the same case (upper/lower/1337speak). It’s a simple program that introductory courses typically cover (the ideals, that is, not the actual code for a swear filter).

A few problems with the swear filter are that the word f’in comes before f’ing, which means if you type f’ing, it’ll appear as —-—-g ingame. Also, some unintentional words are swear, such as ingame the word “aids” is considered a swear word, possibly for it’s reference to the STD. This means that you cannot type “That guy aids others!” without getting swear filtered (luckily it’s an optional filter). Additionally, the word Aids is not considered an inappropriate word during character creation, so you can potentially have a name that has -’s in it while typing with a swear filter on.

And no, this isn’t the QA team’s fault. There’s only so much that any team can test before a product goes live. Additionally, these are such specific cases that it’s unfair to blame either QA or the dev team’s.

The reason why you shouldn’t blame dev team’s for this is that you’ll typically have multiple dev teams working on different parts of a project instead of having one guy who knows how everything works and can accommodate it perfectly. (Now if they had the same guy write all of the swear filter/inappropriate code for both the website and ingame [which requires a lot more programming effort and actually hinders the pipeline], then you’d see a lot more consistency. Good luck ever funding that and having it released in a realistic time-frame.)

With that, let’s end this discussion about the swear filter. It’s off-topic and meaningless.

Yes, I’d suggest to go all out with Orrian boxes. Don’t waste your karma on obsidian shards, keep buying those boxes and you’ll have more than enough, unless you already have every other component of your legendary. With 900k karma, I made about 50 gold (~15 from the unidentifieds), I was probably on the lucky side, I was able to get about 940 boxes. Use every karma boosting option available. With the addition of achievement rewards, you should get even more karma now.

I bought 199 yesterday, and got 3 lodestones >> 2 crystals and 1 onyx |-_-|

A lot of junk and some nice karma vials.

I don’t quite understand about Karma boost and trade in. Do you have 95% karma boost on while buying the boxes?? They would refund your karma?

Hell Avenger.7021:

I don’t quite understand about Karma boost and trade in. Do you have 95% karma boost on while buying the boxes?? They would refund your karma?

No, you use the vials you acquire trough the boxes to “refill” the karma spent.

I did this one time, i was with 70% boost i think, i used 700k Karma and with all the karma vials from the boxes, i “refilled” 450k.

Am I interpreting it correctly that the next update will feature a common bank in which karma can be stored and shared across characters? If so, I would hold off on buying boxes just for a bit, since karma would no longer be locked on characters that can’t/won’t use it.

The shared wallet just makes it more important to have at least on character with the karmic infusion on an ascended necklace – to do the liquid karma drinking for your entire account .

Hell Avenger.7021:

I don’t quite understand about Karma boost and trade in. Do you have 95% karma boost on while buying the boxes?? They would refund your karma?

What you do is…

You buy all the boxes that you can with your Karma, say 1 million.
You open them all.
Most of them will have Karma storage items in them, in various types.
Then you take all your Karma boosts, ice cream, banners, booster, the whole works!
Then you use up all the Karma vials, you will recover… like… 800,000 Karma.

Then you do it all again: buy boxes, open them, open the Karma vials, this time leaving you with like… 640,000 Karma.
Then you do it all again, this time leaving you with like… 500,000 Karma.
Then you do it all again, this time leaving you with like… 400,000 Karma.
Then you do it all again, this time leaving you with like… 320,000 Karma.
And so on and so forth till you have less than 42k Karma (the price of a box)…

That way you will use up all your Karma, and convert it all to items that you can sell for gold.

If you have extra karma and use the Mystic Forge (a lot), I recommend buying a couple of Level 80 GOLD WvW weapons from one of the vendors. It’s around ~20-46k karma, and could save you some money if you are addicted to the forge.

Although, I like to stockpile my karma, and would never use it for boxes or even the above I mentioned.

I made around 20g off 1m karma using a karma infusion, icecream and every single karma buff (woo NSP temple zergs) last month. Once I get my monthly I’m blowing my ~70 karma jugs and 100+ karma drinks from minigames and buying orrian boxes utilizing buffs. Already have 250 obsidian shards and 77 clovers along with full exotic gear, not that much worth spending it on tbh.

Absolutely not worth it. 40g for 1 mil if you’re lucky? That’s nothing. Think how long it takes to accumulate 1 mil karma. Chances are you will get 100% world completion and play 2 months of hardcore WvW and get close to 1 mil – maybe. Trade that just for 40g? It’s like trading legendaries for exotics – silly. What if they introduce a new way to use karma in a month or two, you will tear your robes and weep. Hasn’t a dev mentioned they are looking for ways to make karma useful again? Pretty sure they did say that.

I’m sitting at 3+ million karma and not going to waste it on a couple of gold coins.

zerospin.8604:

Absolutely not worth it. 40g for 1 mil if you’re lucky? That’s nothing. Think how long it takes to accumulate 1 mil karma. Chances are you will get 100% world completion and play 2 months of hardcore WvW and get close to 1 mil – maybe. Trade that just for 40g? It’s like trading legendaries for exotics – silly. What if they introduce a new way to use karma in a month or two, you will tear your robes and weep. Hasn’t a dev mentioned they are looking for ways to make karma useful again? Pretty sure they did say that.

I’m sitting at 3+ million karma and not going to waste it on a couple of gold coins.

I made 1mil in under two months because I love aspect racing and save my jugs. It really isn’t that difficult at all.

@ the 95% karma guy, how do you achieve this?

50% karma booster
15% Karma infusion
10% karma booster
5% 24h guild karma boost.
8% 10 achievement karma boost?

= 88% and the last two are pretty hard to come by for a lot of people. So please enlighten me.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

@ the 95% karma guy, how do you achieve this?

50% karma booster
15% Karma infusion
10% karma booster
5% 24h guild karma boost.
8% 10 achievement karma boost?

= 88% and the last two are pretty hard to come by for a lot of people. So please enlighten me.

50% Booster
15% Infusion
15% Guild Boost
10% Karma Banner
5% Ice Cream
x% Achievement Point
95%.

If you do nothing but WvW, 1m karma is really no big deal.