Guild Wars 2

So, I have a friend who during the first weeks of the game, learned a neat trick on the trading post to make gold. Basically what he did was a test which ending up netting him 900 gold.

The method of doing it was like this:

He would put out Buy orders of 30s for exotic armors that were level 70 and then he would purchase mystic forge stones from the gem store. Mystic forge stones act a substitute for some items in the mystic forge.
Now, he only did this with armor as it is random as to what type of item you will get, however if you put 3 armor pieces you will get an armor piece back, and since armor is desired by every class, you would always make money. If you tried this with weapons, you might get a trident or speargun which is much less desirable.

So after you put the items in the MF there is a high chance of getting a level 80 exotic back, so what he did was sell these exotics for 5-10g, thus netting him large sums of profit, and he did this for days until he reached 900g and above.

Now that the explanation is out the way, let’s go on to the test he did. Basically, he purchased 300 level 80 rare greatswords, and 200 level 80 exotic greatswords, and took them to the mystic forge.

Now you might say he is crazy, but he heard about how people were having issues getting the precursor and wanted to do a large scale test, to see the results. He’s got everything he could possibly want(commander,precursors, etc.) So what else could he possibly need the gold for anyways?!

So after putting all of the swords in, he didn’t get a single Dawn or Dusk back. Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but after putting 500 greatswords in the Mystic Forge, and not getting a precursor back, I think I would have probably quit the game if I did not have back-up gold and various luxuries as he does.

With that out of the way, I would also like to bring up another subject. I’ve been doing some digging around, and it turns out a few of the people who made legendary, in particular technically the first legendary. These players were alpha testers, or closed beta testers.

So they knew before the game even launched, on how to get the precursors.
The only thing arena-net changed was how to get the “gifts” so that was the only thing they didn’t know about.

With that said, I would like to leave you all with the following attachment of a Image I found while scouring the internet, where a single person has multiple precursors in their inventory through god knows what type of method.
I hope through this thread everyone gains a bit more knowledge about the chances of getting one of these precursors(Extremely, Extremely, Extremely Hard) and rather than wasting their time throwing weapons in the forge, just spend months saving their gold as the price gradually goes up for them over time!

P.S Here is the link to thread where an alpha tester breaks NDA, and explains that he knew how to get the weapon before everyone else.
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/68802-long-awaited-the-bifrost-real-world-first-since-239/
He edited out to say he only played during BWE3, but if you read down you can still see the quoted post where he says he was an alpha tester.

Well, looks like after I save up enough gold to throw in another 28 exotic greatswords, I’ll be done with going for this weapon.

The very fact someone has 8 Dawns and 6 Dusks in the inventory is enough for me to call it quits on trying to get this weapon. I’d love to farm my eyes out to get components or something to put together and get the precursor, but the devs disagree, and belive it’s fun/joyous to gamble with the Mystic Forge.

I’ll just stick with a fancy looking exotic, until the prices become realistic and I can purchase one.

“I’d love to farm my eyes out to get (…) something to (…) get precursor.”

Farm money, buy precursor.

Cisza.9540:

“I’d love to farm my eyes out to get (…) something to (…) get precursor.”

Farm money, buy precursor.

Nice work leaving out the components part of my post. I’ve already said If I don’t get it on my next attempt, i’ll just to do that, farm gold and purchase it when the price stabilizes.

Personally I believe Alpha testers should be prohibited from playing a game until a few months after release, to prevent them from profiting of previous knowledge; because let’s be honest its gold hoarders like these that drive up prices; manipulate and break the economy. In real life that’s the way it works on the stock market. Your not allowed to participate if you have previous knowledge that might give you an unfair advantage over others.

OmniPotentes.4817:

Personally I believe Alpha testers should be prohibited from playing a game until a few months after release, to prevent them from profiting of previous knowledge; because let’s be honest its gold hoarders like these that drive up prices; manipulate and break the economy. In real life that’s the way it works on the stock market. Your not allowed to participate if you have previous knowledge that might give you an unfair advantage over others.

Well, I disagree about them not being able to play for a few months. They were the ones who tested the game for arenanet, and without them we wouldn’t be able to play the game as smooth as it is right now.

What I do think they should have done is change the way you got legendaries completely, but I suppose they left it this way to reward the alpha testers for testing out the game.

What I believe should have happen was the exclusion of legendary till official launch. I have no idea how giving select few even a smidgen of idea how to get the most desired item in the game advanced info would be a good idea.

Also during the Karma exploiter scandal, although many of those exploiters were banned, however their accounts were given back to them on a “good faith” system. Anet expect these exploiter to have learned their lesson and will delete their ill gotten goods themselves. That is totally asinine and these exploiters should have had their account wiped clean forcibly. Now, it creates an environment where the wealthy can control the market just from pure manipulation.

Raiz.7402:

With that said, I would like to leave you all with the following attachment of a Image I found while scouring the internet, where a single person has multiple precursors in their inventory through god knows what type of method.

This indeed does not look very “normal”… If there is one person posting this picture there are for sure more similar out there… So all in all econonmy is already out of balance one month after release… wow…

Yea, in the real world, we have the SEC doing moderation. Granted, they are not the best at it. I know many would say that this is a game and we should not compare it to real life, but when everything in this game is designed to nickle and dime you to death it does take away significantly from the fun factor.

Wouldn’t this be counted as exploiting? You’re using a common recipe over and over again and making unheard of amounts of gold. It’s supposed to be random with rares and exotics..

Looks like Anet loves letting heavy exploiters get away. I can understand not punishing people who made one weapon with exploit by mistake, but if they abused it like this, they should definatly be perm banned.

Why am i not surpised?!?! The endless grinding is what has kept me from playing GW2 now for weeks.

@RavenDeBlade So you are mad because you have to grind for something that was designed specifically so you have to grind (should you choose to) to achieve it?

no he’s mad because he has to grind exponential amounts more than the others

1) When did your friend do this test?
2) How many exotics came out of putting 300 rares into the Forge?

This trick no longer works because recently the 3 item + 1 stone now have greater chance to return lvl 76 and lvl 78 item instead of lvl 80 extoics. But, you can gamble with it because it still return lvl 80 sometimes but the chance is greatly reduced compare to before.

lackofcheese.5617:

1) When did your friend do this test?
2) How many exotics came out of putting 300 rares into the Forge?

1) 3 Weeks ago
2) He only got 10 exotics out of it

I’m not surprised your friend didn’t get a precursor. From what I’ve read on this forum and on guru, the chance seems to be 0.2% from rares and 1% from exotics. This means 500 attempts (2000 rares) or 100 attempts (400 exotics) depending on which route you take to guarantee that you get one precursor.

Your friend put in 300 rares (75 attempts) and 200 exotics (50 attempts). So really, he only gave himself a 15% chance to get a precursor when he combined his rares and a 50% chance of getting it when combining his exotics. So overall, he only had a 65% chance of getting a precursor. Maybe a little more if the weapons he got out of it were used for further attempts.

I hope my math is correct.

Mada.5319:

I’m not surprised your friend didn’t get a precursor. From what I’ve read on this forum and on guru, the chance seems to be 0.2% from rares and 1% from exotics. This means 500 attempts (2000 rares) or 100 attempts (400 exotics) depending on which route you take to guarantee that you get one precursor.

Your friend put in 300 rares (75 attempts) and 200 exotics (50 attempts). So really, he only gave himself a 15% chance to get a precursor when he combined his rares and a 50% chance of getting it when combining his exotics. So overall, he only had a 65% chance of getting a precursor. Maybe a little more if the weapons he got out of it were used for further attempts.

I hope my math is correct.

I am not a statistician so I can’t fully comment, but I am certain that your formula for calculation is wrong. There is no cumulative chance of success based on the number tries. I believe we might need a Normal Distribution curve to calculate the chance.
Again, I am not a statistician so I might be totally wrong on the right statistic formula, I hope a statistician can compile this data and give us a more valid chance as well as graphs.

Raiz.7402:

lackofcheese.5617:

1) When did your friend do this test?
2) How many exotics came out of putting 300 rares into the Forge?

1) 3 Weeks ago
2) He only got 10 exotics out of it

Hmm. That’s before people are claiming the “stealth nerf” happened. Maybe the rate of exotics from rare weapons was never very high, and people have only just noticed that this was the case?

10 exotics from 10 conversions costs 40 rares, leaving 260 rares worth that only yielded rares. That would mean 86 conversions worth of rares (each failure to yield an exotic costs 3 rares, not 4), with 2 rares left over at the end that didn’t get used.

So, 10 exotics from 96 conversions, right? That means your friend only got a ~10% rate of exotics from putting rares into the forge.

However, this still isn’t a particularly large sample size, unfortunately. I wish your friend had done more rares and less exotics.

Raiz.7402

I am not a statistician so I can’t fully comment, but I am certain that your formula for calculation is wrong. There is no cumulative chance of success based on the number tries. I believe we might need a Normal Distribution curve to calculate the chance.
Again, I am not a statistician so I might be totally wrong on the right statistic formula, I hope a statistician can compile this data and give us a more valid chance as well as graphs.

Well, since each attempt has the same chance and any previous attempts don’t have an affect on the outcome, I guessed that a geometric distribution would be the best. I’m not a statistician either so it would be great if any of them could chime in and give us some accurate numbers.

I not going to lie, I’ve spent alot of gold trying for either Dusk/Dawn. Everytime I get to 20 gold, I use around 15 of it just in the Forge. I’ve spent more then 100 gold so far with nothing to show for it. It’s ridiculous how low the % is. I had a nice couple of runs before +5 exotics (from rares) in a row, but no Dusk/Dawn.

I would just say if you’ve spent over 100g, to just start saving your money and hope the price doesn’t increase too much. It’s your only safe bet at getting the weapon, unless arenanet decides they want to add an alternative(unlikely in my opinion).

You shouldn’t expect to get one from only spending 100g. If you do manage to get one from spending that little, then you got lucky and that’s awesome, but it’s hardly the expected outcome.

Also, the amount you’ve spent up until now should not be a factor in your decision-making, except insofar as it helps you to estimate the odds of getting what you want (and in this regard, you’re better off using data from lots of other people instead of just your own).

Including it as a factor would be falling for the sunk cost fallacy – that money is already gone, and no decision you make now will change that fact, regardless of whether you get Dusk/Dawn or not.

Also, make sure you don’t fall for the gambler’s fallacy – the Mystic Forge doesn’t care how much you’ve spent; your odds don’t change just because you’ve spent a lot of gold already.

So for what i have seen people have 100g or above while i got 5 gold maximum and grinding orr for alot of time. So i have 2 questions. 1. does putting 3 exotics and 1 stone in the mystic forge makes you profit or loss 2. if question 1 is makes u loss can someone share tips for making money tnx.

lackofcheese.5617:

You shouldn’t expect to get one from only spending 100g. If you do manage to get one from spending that little, then you got lucky and that’s awesome, but it’s hardly the expected outcome.

Also, the amount you’ve spent up until now should not be a factor in your decision-making, except insofar as it helps you to estimate the odds of getting what you want (and in this regard, you’re better off using data from lots of other people instead of just your own).

Including it as a factor would be falling for the sunk cost fallacy – that money is already gone, and no decision you make now will change that fact, regardless of whether you get Dusk/Dawn or not.

Also, make sure you don’t fall for the gambler’s fallacy – the Mystic Forge doesn’t care how much you’ve spent; your odds don’t change just because you’ve spent a lot of gold already.

This right here is good advice. I recommend everyone listen to this man/woman/cheese.

@ DarkyKillah
3 exotics+stone gives you a random item back. It will not always be a Greatsword, which is why if you want a certain precursor, you have to use 4 of that identical item type(Greatsword,Mace,Shield,staff etc.)

@Celestea
I don’t want to make a precursor for now i was saying about armor and making profit of of it. So if i put 3 armor peices of lvl 72 or 70 and 1 mystic stone and then a lvl 78 or higher comes out do i make profit from the item?

It depends how much you bought the items for, and how much the item you get is going for on the trading post.

The days when my friend was doing this he didn’t make profit from getting level 78’s, only from getting level 80’s.