Guild Wars 2

Dear Anet,

please do something about ectos.

it’s getting out of hand, i mean, it’s ok if you want to get a single item, but crafting to gear alts is just not worth it these days (and crafting as a gold source is a joke)

during the past week i got a truckload of vendor blues-greens and only a handful of rares/exotics. using the mystic kit + my lousy luck 2/3 of that handful (mostly rares) became only mithril and sigils

i know we can “farm rares” or “turn off your brain and grind orr” or “gear in MF gear and be that guy” but, can’t we like, get more sources of ectos?

it’s hard to score good drops with non MF gear, and to make it worse it often ends up in one of those “yay yellow text on my chest loot — wait it’s a stupid tonic” situations

maybe, i don’t know, trade tokens/kidneys for ectos or something? or, make an offer to zomorros of idk, wine+badges+tokens+skill points and get ectos?

There already is a MF recipe that yields ectos from mats you get by the truckload.

Really? think i need to search some harder then lol

I wasn’t able to find the recipe with a quick google search. Feel free to Pm it to me if you don’t want to post it here for all to see, but I have never heard of such a thing.

I have an idea. An actual non-sarcastic one. Add ectos as a reward for completion of high-level zones. It’s not really farmable, it helps to equip alts (since your alts will be of level anyway, typically – not in my case, but mostly).

Since the big issue isn’t that it’s too hard to get ectos (it’s that it’s too expensive to support multiple chars for the average player) players should be rewarded with that chance while they work hard to be afforded it. And some players don’t even have alts – they have multiple mains. Ouch.

The current system of crafting top-tier equipment is only viable for players who play a very specific way. Everyone should be given equal opportunity. Similar to the “should PvEers be forced to WvW for what is historically a PvE completion achievement” issue. (100% map completion). Leave that comparison as it is, I’m not trying to change the topic.

I was able to save up and get armor and good weapons and rings for my necro. Just save up, as a jeweller, I knew I would need ectos to make my rings, as well as which orbs and orichalcum. I saved up all the items and made my own jewelry, and bought my armor with gold from events and playing the storyline. I still have ~ 2g left over. and i NEVER farm, i play the game for fun, not for cash.

My main, a Necro, has the full set of the Mad King Armour bought mostly from the TP. One part of it, the head I think, was a present from my BF. He also helped out with the gold for the rest. My Necro is the only char that has proper armour, but the other are, except for my Ele, below lvl 20. I tried farming a few times, but it’s too boring and I can’t do it longer than 10 or 20 minutes, which makes it pretty much pointkless to even start with.

Casual players can always do dungeons and fractals. A lot of gold can be made, especially since they introduced those bag of wondrous goods that can contain gold, karma and the dungeon tokens as well. If you are not intrested in the dungeon armour, you can either keep the tokens to get the armour with another char or get the cheapest armour and salvage it for ectos.

Also when pushing crafting disciplines you eventually craft rares. Instead of selling them, you can salvage them to get ectos. When I pushed tailor to 400 on my Necro, I got 10-15 ectos out of the rares I crafted to get to 400. Of course it costs a lot, since the fine mats you need are kitten expensive, but ectos are still worth more than the few coins vendors or TP would give you for the item.

But to be hones, I wouldn’t mind if completing Orr areas, or Frostgorge or other 80 or 70-80 or such areas (except that Karka thing) would reward you with…10 or so ectos. There aren’t THAT many lvl 70+ areas, so they can’t be ‘farmed’. They can be completed multiple times with different characters. But it takes time to get to those areas and it takes time to clear them and it would be nice to have a chance for ectos and not a guaranteed drop. So instead of 40 wood logs you get 10 ectos or so. Maybe.

The mystic kit only has a 25% chance of getting rare materials, don’t complain when you know the chances aren’t great. Personally I always use a black lion kit or on the occasions that I have none and the gem conversion rate is terrible I’ll just sell them.

The notion that only one out of four items disenchanted by mystic will drop ectos is incorrect. The 25% chance refers to something else.

I for one would not be happy if they introduced ectos as a map completion reward since I just finished the high level areas.

Technically the problem isn’t that there isn’t enough supply, but more that there is too much demand since the Ancient Karka precursor boom (more people now working on legendaries) and since they introduced the ascended back pieces (300 ectos for an infused one). You could argue that not enough supply is the same as too much demand, but it makes more sense for Anet to change the latter since I imagine changing drop rates is more likely to have unpredictable repercussions.

Zid.4196:

The notion that only one out of four items disenchanted by mystic will drop ectos is incorrect. The 25% chance refers to something else.

Correct.

The 25% refers to the difference between dropping T6 materials instead of T5 materials (on high items).

Ecto certainly doesn’t only drop 25% of the time, at least not in my experience.

Flax.4980:

I for one would not be happy if they introduced ectos as a map completion reward since I just finished the high level areas.

Technically the problem isn’t that there isn’t enough supply, but more that there is too much demand since the Ancient Karka precursor boom (more people now working on legendaries) and since they introduced the ascended back pieces (300 ectos for an infused one). You could argue that not enough supply is the same as too much demand, but it makes more sense for Anet to change the latter since I imagine changing drop rates is more likely to have unpredictable repercussions.

I don’t have time to link all the details (about to leave for work), but if you check the volume of buy orders for ectos on gw2spidy, you’ll notice that there hasn’t been a massive shift in demand since the release of ascended gear. There was a rise in demand about a week prior to the lost shores patch, but it’s been pretty constant since then.

Flax.4980:

I for one would not be happy if they introduced ectos as a map completion reward since I just finished the high level areas.

Nope, I get that changing rewards is frustrating when you’ve already redeemed but you dodged the point. It’s not about farming ectos, it’s about equipping your characters. I won’t assume but usually characters/players with 100% map completion have max armour. The added reward would only help you equip alts, which is currently very hard to do for the average player.

The fact you could only milk each area once per character gives incentive to use them toward that character. Unless you wanna go naked and sell your rewards which is of course up to you… and welcome

For the last month or so I have been in the process of gearing my main in full exotics, and I too was horrified at the rising cost of ectos (and that was when they had went up to 20 s, which seems a steal compared to the 35 they are now).
So, after a bit of luck (2 Black Lion salvage kits in subsequent nights of finishing dailies).. I hit on an idea. I have several crafters at 400 so I headed to some of the better farming areas and collected T5 mats. I then proceeded to craft rares to salvage.
This worked very well… if anyone has some spare Black Lion Kits, and a 400 level crafter, I highly recommend it. I just finished my last piece of gear today; it actually didn’t take all that long.

hint: Karka drop both shells and potent (occasionally powerful) blood.