Guild Wars 2

First of all,there’s probably a topic somewhere discussing this matter,but i haven’t found any on the first page so I’ll automatically assume there’s no active topic about this. Anyway,thanks for any replies in advance.

Now, to the point…
I haven’t played GW2 in a while,I was never an “active” player for too long,so I have little knowledge about crafting Ascended gear. I already checked some recipes and noticed that I’m gonna need a kittenload of materials,money,and time to grind them. Thing is, I have absolutely no idea where to begin ,so I’d like some help from anyone who has knowledge and experience about crafting ascended stuff.

The only materials you cannot buy in any form are the ones needed for the vision crystal. In order to get those you’re going to have to farm champions, dungeons and world bosses. You can use the gold, tokens and materials you gain from that to start leveling up your crafting discipline to lv 500.

You already realise it’s going to be a long journey, so I suggest you pick it up with what you enjoy doing most and generally work towards your goal. If you are bent on getting ascended quickly, then crafting is probably the worst way to go about doing that. You’re better off at high Fractal levels for that, even if the drops are random.

You can get Empreal and Dragonite taking camps, towers, and keeps in WvW and Empreal is also available in chests all over the place in small quantities.

Depending what kind of player you are/what you enjoy doing/how much time you have, you can get the 500 of each ascended mat (dust, fragments, dragonite) in as little as 1-2 days (more realistically a week or two).

Some tips for them:
Fragments: If you hate dungeons (like you), you can do fractals or park all your level 80 alts at a jumping puzzle. The pirate jp in LA gives ~7 fragments a day for each alt you leave there. Or you can just go on a jp quest. Camps in WvW are also really easy to solo/duo if you have a friend.

Dragonite: A bit harder to get since the mega server update (only 4 world bosses and hour, and unlikely temple events), but some give more than others. You can look up a world boss timer, for example:
http://dulfy.net/2014/04/23/event-timer/
to see what’s up and how much dragonite ore it gives. The big ones (that can actually be completed) are the Golem, kitten, and Claw. And if you get lucky to be on when it’s going the Karka Queen. Ignore the 3 headed wurm and Teq (they require too much organization and people to reliably be done).

Dust: Thanks to the death of the queensdale champ farm (yay!!!) this may be a bit harder to farm. But still pretty easy if you enjoy WvW. Heck even just doing the Queen’s Pavilion can be a good source of champ bags. Honestly, this is the one you shouldn’t worry about. You’ll get enough champ bags in your normal play you shouldn’t need to worry about this.

As for where to begin. First, focus on the easy and important stuff.

Ascended Amulets from WvW with badges and laurels (less laurels than through the PvE vendor)

Ascended Rings from Fractals lvl 10+ (you get a 1/day chance at every “batch” of 10 levels. 10-19, 20-29, etc.) or if you hate fractals you can just buy them with laurels.

Ascended Trinkets: If you’re part of a big guild, do guild missions and get them with commendations, if you aren’t you can get them for 50 ectos and laurels (honestly don’t do this right now if that’s how you plan to get them).

Right now your ectos have a much better use. Crafting to 500. Focus on your weapon first, the 5% extra weapon damage will have a greater impact than the small stat gains from armor. Hopefully you have enough materials to craft to (or are already at) 400 in your weapon choice. The cheapest way to craft from 400-500 is roughly this. From 400-425 refine the T6 mats that it uses (Ori ore or Ancient Wood), then at 425, wait for a Friday night before WvW reset (WvW will give you a small +% at crafting exp), pop a crafting booster if you have one, then discover recipes up to 450. If you want this to be cheap, stop discovery there (I think it’s ~7-9 discoveries). Then from 450-475 you can start doing daily refinement. You’ll have two new unlocks: Ecto Refinement and Oby Refinement. Everyday you can do 1 Ecto Refinement per item, do that (I hope you have a lot of T5 wood and ore saved up as you need 50 per day along with 1 ecto). It’ll slowly level you up to 475. Again on Friday’s before WvW reset you can use the extra boost to crafting exp to then refine the Lumps of Mithrillium and Glob of Elder Spirit Residues (assuming you have T2-T4 ore and wood) and also do Oby refinement (if you have 100 dust/fragments/dragonite by then). Once you get to 472-475 you can then discover your way up to 500. After you get your weapon(s) (hopefully they’re all in the same discipline, if not repeat the above for the other weapon crafting disciplines)

Or plan 2, grind out a lot of gold (~200 maybe? haven’t kept up with the market) and just buy everything you need (besides the dust/fragments/dragonite), craft your way straight up to 500, then craft a weapon.

Sadly, ascended will be either a 1) long time sink while you go out to farm T2-T5 ore and wood, then T6 fine crafting & ectos to craft yourself up, and the time to do all the world bosses/dungeons. Or 2) a huge gold sink if you just buy everything off the tp instead of farm it.

Here some steps you need to do in your journey to ascended crafting.

- Leveling a crafting profession to 500. Visit gw2crafts.net to see the cheapest way to reach that goal. If you start from fresh, it cost between 2 gold to 20 gold to get from level 0-400. And to get level 400-500 it will cost about 100 gold per weapon profession and 50 gold per armor profession. Don’t rush into it. I had enough material when I started that, it only cost me about 150 gold to level up 400-500 all of the 6 professions.
- Ascended Crafting Materials. There is 3 of those. Empyreal, Bloodstone Dust and Dragonite. Empyreal come from Chest, Dungeon and WvW, Dust come from champion bags and Dragonite come from World Boss. Dragonite are usually the only one that ppl have difficulty with (i destroy the other two for the last 3 months, i have too much of those). Get started asap on Dragonite. Do some world boss from time to time and accumulate them and have a bunch of those ready when you need them.
- Tier 5 Materials and Time gated. This is mithril, elder wood, silk and thick leather square. They are the more common material you get get as a level 80. Salvage most thing and you shouldn’t have much problem to accumulated them over time. I have 10 ascended weapons and 2 ascended armor and I never bought any of those materials. Once you are 500 in your crafting profession these Tier 5 will be use to craft time gated material. Do these asap. You can only do 1 each day so start slowly and craft them as you accumulate the other material so you are not stuck waiting a months with everything you need just waiting for the time-gated crafting.
- Tier 2-3-4. Metal, Wood, Leather and Cloth. Once you crafted the time-gated ascended material from the Tier 5, you will need to refine it with those Tier 2-3-4 material. As a level 80 you will have a lot less of those (they are level 20-60). Some are easy to farm, especially metal. There is some rich metal vein that never move. You can go farm them each day and accumulate them over time (especially efficient if you have several character that you leave next to the vein). For wood, you can gather them, but its usually better to accumulate them and then when you need to craft, buy what you still need. For leather and cloth you can’t really farm that. Accumulate what you can and buy the rest when you need it.

That’s the most important things you will need to get into ascended crafting. Like you see, most stuff can be accumulate while playing, you just need to check what you get the less and work more on those over time.

Thanks for the help guys,I can see things more clearly now. I realised I already have a ton of fragments,and some other mats to begin with.

Have you actually LOOKED at the stat increases over Exotics and considered if it’s actually worth it? I suggest you start out making a single Berserker Weapon (those are arguably worth the damage increase) and re-evaluate the merits of SIX pieces of armor after that.

I would say that the value of ascended weapons, but mostly armor is directly proportional to the amount of characters of that armor type you actively play.

For that reason I think berserker heavy armor is a good investment as most people play guardian and warrior, both rather wanted classes. And both of those usually wield a greatsword.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Have you actually LOOKED at the stat increases over Exotics and considered if it’s actually worth it? I suggest you start out making a single Berserker Weapon (those are arguably worth the damage increase) and re-evaluate the merits of SIX pieces of armor after that.

Before the crit damage nerf, I think the dps difference between full exotic vs. full ascended was roughly, Zerker: ~20% increase, Soldier: ~14% increase, Knights: …..9%? [don’t remember this at all really], Dire: ~laughable%. I never bothered to redo them after we gained ferocity. Then again most of that comes from the trinkets and the weapon (the +5% weapon damage for ascended in particular).

But like Grimm said, really just start with crafting a weapon (and grab trinkets from Fractals & WvW & laurels/guild commendations). If you liked it then you can slowly work on your armor.

There’s not really that much of a grind to make ascended armor. I’ve made two sets of heavy ascended armor gradually over time since it was put into the game. I made them Beserker gear because it will always be the highest physical DPS output available. Beserker may get changed, buffed, nerfed, etc but by its very nature will be the best physical DPS…so it’s a safe investment.

Since then I’ve consistently ran daily fractal 50s and 38s to put together my other A armor sets for my light armor toons…since their mats are far more expensive. Also, you don’t have to run lvl 50s either. Lvl 49 doesn’t require armor like 50 does and it has good armor/weapon box drop chances. Since the update I would dare to say that about 50% of the time someone in the party gets at least one box.

So unless you’re one of those ppl that scream OMG I must have a full set of armor now than yeah…you’re gonna pay heavily for it. But consistent play will yield it much cheaper and consistently. Do your fractals, dungeons, world bosses, and farm/order the basic mats and they’ll just flow in. Do fractals for sure tho…I think on sitting on a dozen boxes ATM.