Guild Wars 2

Lately I’ve been looking for better uses for karma- sure they added Orrian jewelry boxes, but I lost my interest in them after I realized it would just give me 10 mini priests of Balthazar, more obby shards (really?) and a bunch of junk items. Maybe I’m just unlucky but I actually haven’t gotten any lodestones from it.

I’ve always been skeptical of putting greens into the mystic forge because I wasn’t sure if it was just a waste of the items’ merchant-able value, but apparently forging 4 greens, looking to get a rare isn’t actually THAT bad. It’s something I’ve lately been doing with a mystic forge conduit in dungeon runs to make inventory space :P

Here’s my test: I looked up karma vendors that offer lvl 70-80 green armor/weapons, and then sat next to them with my conduit and forged their greens. From the 30k karma I spent testing, I got 5 rares, and salvaged for 7 ectos. Also got 4 major runes which I could’ve either sold on the TP (aren’t as bad to sell as I expected either) or forged them as well for a chance a superior rune which could be worth a couple gold.

I don’t know about you, but the chance of getting some ectos from karma is far more attractive to me than getting more useless shards.

So my question is this: Am I safe to do this or am I going to hear I’m exploiting when I do this in ridiculously massive quantities? (Still unsure what exploits are in this game with the recent snowflake fiasco).

I just bought over 100k worth of Karma in green hammers and ended up with just one Rare.

And it didn’t even salvage into Ectos…

Zommoros is too much of a kitten for this to count as an exploit, if you ask me.

Your rate seems to be wayyyyyyyy off o_O

What can I say, Zommoros hates me. When I combine greens I rarely get a yellow. When I combine yellows, I rarely get an exotic. And when I do get an exotic it is a crafted version which is worth a lot less than a proper named exotic.

This isn’t any sort of exploit, but you got very lucky. You’ll need to buy 16 greens on average per rare, which means you should only expect to get a couple rares for 30,000 karma- which is a much worse conversion than buying the jewelry boxes.

Lets say you invest 500,000 karma:
The cheapest lvl80 green item is 924 karma per item. This gets you mere 541 green items, on overage the mystic toilet will reward you with only 33.5 rare items (when throwing any green back into the toilet). If you choose to sell those rares on the TP (or to salvage them and sell the ectos, theres not much of a difference), you may expect about 8.5 gold from this.

Well, that still about twice as much as if you would go for Lost Orian Jewelery Boxes, but its still far from profitable.

You are using game mechanics provided by ANet and you’re doing it in correct way. That’s not an exploit.
I’d advise you to look closer into similar mechanics cos you can make nice money of it.

there is much better legal way to spend karma and gain gold than buy greens for karma ,throw them to M toilet and salvage rares for ectos…
I know one way that can turn 9500karma in to 3.5g nett profit

And how do you do that?

Hes lying. There is no way to turn 9,500 karma in to 3.5g net profit. If he meant 95000 karma then he may be telling the truth.

Either way, please share. By your estimates I could earn roughly 400g off my Karma Reserves

I see it as a gray area.

As we learned from the chili pepper popper exploit, ANet does not want karma turning into gold from merchants. IE creating more gold.

Throw 4 pieces of karma armor into the toilet and it spits out 1 piece of armor that has a merchant value that can now be sold to a merchant = technically an exploit.

Salvage the result from the toilet and the mats have a merchant value that can now be sold to a merchant = technically an exploit.

BUT, the players put either the result or the mats on the TP and it just shifts existing gold in the economy around = technically NOT an exploit.

It is a gray area. Partly why I hate multiple currencies in ANY game that you could get banned from if you figure out how to get the most desired currency from the others.

Ravion Hawk.4736:

I see it as a gray area.

ANet does not want karma turning into gold from merchants. IE creating more gold.

Oh yea, because Lost Orrian Boxes are totally an exploit right? Please stop spreading lies.

An exploit is if you take advantage of bugs and mistakes in the software to profit. I believe chili peppers were seriously underpriced due to a mistake, hence people took advantage of it to convert karma → Gold at ridiculously high rates.

Converting karma to gold isn’t an exploit.

Converting karma to gold using recipes/mats that are not priced correctly, and humongously profitable due to it, is an exploit.

Then take the highest amount you can get from a merchant from one Orrian Box and use that as the “acceptable” merchant gain from Karma to Gold conversion.

IE. One Orrian Box gives you items that when totaled together and sold to a merchant 10 silver, then the creation of 10 silver into the economy for the Karma cost of 4550 (I think that is the Karma cost) is deemed acceptable by ANet’s standards. Don’t go over it.

Or just play it safe with what the OP asked. If you are asking yourself if it is an exploit, then don’t do it.

How could this be considered an exploit? The problem with “priced correctly” is that the economy isn’t flat while karma acquisition is. He’s not adding gold into the economy, as him selling any ectos is actually shaving 15% OUT of the economy as only already existing gold from other players is used. In addition, if enough people deem this karma useage as ‘profitable’, then an influx of ectos would drive the price down cutting on that value.

Look at the current numbers, though. He’s spending ~4k karma for a 1 in 3 chance of a rare for once again a chance at ectos. That’s an average of ~12s current circulation profit per 4k karma… not that much better than just NPCing items you get. Now, of course, this is all RNG gods here, so you can pull much more or much less, but I find that to be perfectly fair and balanced on pricing.

If this is considered an exploit it would be very strange.

It’s not a terrible return on karma but it’s not like this is some great deal you’re getting here either. I would classify it as “vaguely worthwhile”.

I mean I considered doing this in the past and decided I’d just bank a few stacks of 250 obby shards for random stuff in the future instead.

Karma is considered another currency.

If you can buy greens with gold, you might as well buy them with Karma. You pay a fair price for a green that you end up investing in a chance to get something better.

No exploit as there is no guaranteed success and you are not buying an undervalued item.

Drawing Guy.3701:

How could this be considered an exploit?

If all you are doing is selling on the TP then you are just shifting gold from player to player.

It is when you sell to a merchant that gold gets created. It is the sudden injection of gold into the economy from merchants that ANet would deem an exploit.

Ravion Hawk.4736:

Drawing Guy.3701:

How could this be considered an exploit?

If all you are doing is selling on the TP then you are just shifting gold from player to player.

It is when you sell to a merchant that gold gets created. It is the sudden injection of gold into the economy from merchants that ANet would deem an exploit.

No no no. No.

The Snowflake exploit did not inject gold into the economy through vendors. It let players create ectos out of mithril, but at no point was gold being created (In fact, I imagine quite a bit of gold was sunk because of the TP transactions).

What made it an exploit was that the reason the recipe was wildly profitable was because it required 1 ecto to craft, whereas all equivalent recipes required 5 (or 3?) ectos. The reason why it was an exploit was because there was a bug in the system that wasn’t supposed to exist, and players took advantage of it.

So, how’s he supposed to know there isn’t a bug in the system that’s letting him get more rares than what’s intended? Like how were those ppl supposed to know the jeweler recipe was a bug?

Olfinbedwere.5049:

So, how’s he supposed to know there isn’t a bug in the system that’s letting him get more rares than what’s intended? Like how were those ppl supposed to know the jeweler recipe was a bug?

You compare it to other similar recipes/items. Oh man, other recipes takes 3 ectos but this makes 1? Oh man, normal green items cost 900 karma but this one costs 9 karma?

Easy research that takes a few minutes to do.

Better to just buy them off the trading post. It was better for money when ectos were at 40s, but it can probably still make you some money, although it might not be any better than just farming cof as far as time investment.

My greatest way of turning karma into money is thus

Theory 1: is to buy level 60ish greens. Combine 2 of these with 2 level 75-80’s and you will get either a green or a rare at level 80. From dungeoning you will get greens naturally. So you’re spending karma to double your chances at a rare. I usually only pay 700-800 karma for the green.

Combining greens take about 6 silver and gives you a chance at 30-120 silver. (Is good). Using karma greens will halve it to 3 silver + the karma (2100). This is then translated to a karma to copper ratio of a little more than 10 to 1. If you then consider that the 2100 karma equal to half of the worth you get, then 2100 karma could be equal to 15-60 silver. That’s better than 1 to 1! However, it relies very heavily on lucky.

The other method (This is considerably less researched) is to purchase exotics from temples. Thats about 80,000 karma for an exotic. 4 of them being 320,000. Now combining these will guarantee an exotic. On average the exotics I get are around 2-3 gold. This would mean you’re going 10-1 karma to copper. With ofc the chance at a precursor which would mean you make a huge profit and also, screw you.

After getting a ton of greens this evening I have revised my strategy.

Where X is the number of level ~80 greens you have, the number of karma bought greens you need = (X – 1)*2

Which means that the 2100 karma (forget my previous maths) is now equal to ~5 silver. Which means that 2100 KA = 3/4 of the profit of that combining (minus the additional level 80 green you need to start. This puts the KA:Co ratio to a possible 1:3 ratio!

EDIT: That is assuming that you can find a karma bought green over level 60 for 700 karma. So far I’ve found one for 800.