Guild Wars 2

Looking at current state of whole crafting/itemization before cap leaves kind of sour taste in the mouth. Main problem at 80/400 will be different, but that’s for a different thread (though partially it touches this a bit as well – namely decay – still the leveling pace makes it de-facto irrelevant before cap). GW2 is a game where in essence a gear is just a tool for the job (which is great, it’s been a while since we had mmo approaching gameplay this way) – thus some decisions are even more surprising.

Main pre-cap issues sumamrized:

• the game throws literally barrels of white/blue/green/ junk at every player – not mentioning story rewards and not too pricy heart vendors; it’s physically impossible to have problems with access to reasonable gear; use what you need, vendor or broker what you don’t – everyone is set for free
• at the same time, some common and practically all fine materials are – in comparison to full items – nonexistent; for some reason it’s logical (?) that you have to kill 10 harpies to get 1 claw (if you’re lucky), even that each of those poor beings have at least 4 per one leg. Not mentioning other things such as like 20-30% dead mobs not even being lootable; or champions having 1 white item, or veterans being worthless to bother with). Sorry that’s korean mmo “logic”. Not common sense or “GW2 is different”.
• pre-cap stuff is for the most part obsoleted in a matter of minutes / hours
• some level stages leave pve drops superior to crafting (e.g. 45, green drops vs. blue only crafts); add the above two points and you have far more and far cheaper equipment from standard mobs than crafted stuff

To emphasise: the discrepancy between material availabilty and full non-crafted items’ availabilty is insane. The damage coming from it is even far worse, because:

• levels 1 – 79 serve single purpose: map content gating – which comes down to essentially skill/trait points; the level range flows rather fast; any pvp is completely exempted from it and everything else is downscaled
• levels 1 – 399 of crafting are somewhat analogous – save few specific things that just happen to be learnt a little bit before 400 with no 400 counterparts, no one gives akittenabout this stuff

Now where do the above points put “discover recipes ! have fun ! craft useful things !” ?

Literally nowhere.

From practical point of view, almost everything pre-80 is pointless – a placeholder in essence, for example – does anyone ever crafted a “minor potion of <whatever> slaying” for anything else than skillup ? Drop rate is upside-down, there’s is zero demand for significant majority of pre-80 crafted stuff. It goes straight into salvage, use + salvage a few hours later, or vendor.

Besides diehard crafting for the sake of crafting (and discovering how ugly say, male’s light rare lvl35 armor looks like on a sorcerer), discovery and experimentation (with random fan db or not) is actively avoided, choosing the most efficient/cheapest route to 400 to get to proper exotics and just avoid the whole material farming chores and/or broker costs.

Was that the aim of the system ?

As mentioned above, almost everything during leveling phase is a quickly obsoleted content filler. It could at least be enjoyable filler, but because of some crazy decision regarding silly drop rates – it’s hardly anything enjoyable or even appreciated.

brother, i could say much of the same thing about 400/400 crafting. basic problem is that mats are more expensive than the finished products. if i didn’t craft (400leather/380-something huntsman on my ranger…400cooking/tier1 jeweler on my mesmer and in tier3 on ws/as on my guardian and tier1 art/tailor on my ele) i’d have the money back that i spent on keeping up with my zone…i wouldn’t have the crafted berserker exotic chest on my ranger (but i wouldn’t have spent the karma i did on cooking mats and would have a 42k karma cp instead…that looked a LOT cooler…exotic crafted medium looks TERRIBLE!!#*!#^@!%#$!@RF!).

The economy with crafted items is waaaaay off-track. Supply is huge, and there is zero demand. World drops are cheap and better.

Which means as we craft, we are only making vendor trash. Expensive to craft vendor trash. We need to take an insane amount of “trophies” to make inscriptions and insignias, that end up completely worthless.

The only reason, at all, to craft is to discover what the look of the item is if we want to transmute it. But, we could just buy the item made for cheap (1 bronze more than it vendors for….) off the Trade Post. Sadly, we still don’t know what any of the sets look like unless we discover them, because the Wiki is lethargic with pictures to show us.

It’s a sad state of affairs.

Crafting should either be superior because of how expensive/difficult it is to farm Trophy drops like Claws and Blood, or the drop rate (of the Trophies) increased immensely, since the crafted gear is worthless so it isn’t like we are getting ahead. The crafted gear has no runes on it, but dropped greens do, and are insanely cheap on the Trade Post. The imbalance is glaring.

And yes, much of the Leather Armor in the game is very sad to look upon. It is beautiful in a minimalist way, but after looking quite plain for 50 levels, you’d hope to find something more than solid color leather gear with little detail and few dye channel options. It’s bland. (the cloth armor, especially on female characters has tons of details and color channels to make unique looks, before level 20. Medium gets giant patches of solid colors……)

Still happy, but I was seriously expecting more, especially with how detailed the concept art was. The execution…. not so much.

As the MMO progresses the earlier level materials will end up increasing in value because their supply will decrease even further than it is now.

I’m curious what you expected to happen with gear that is being used to level up tradeskills? Was YOUR purpose to level your way up to 400 and sell all of your gear for profit while everyone else was doing the exact same thing? If so then you know now why that was an erroneous assumption because it cannot happen when someone else is willing to undercut you to simply recoup costs versus making a profit. Some will even sell at a loss, undercutting you even further, because they are less patient than you are.

at the same time, some common and practically all fine materials are – in comparison to full items – nonexistent; for some reason it’s logical (?) that you have to kill 10 harpies to get 1 claw (if you’re lucky), even that each of those poor beings have at least 4 per one leg. Not mentioning other things such as like 20-30% dead mobs not even being lootable; or champions having 1 white item, or veterans being worthless to bother with). Sorry that’s korean mmo “logic”. Not common sense or “GW2 is different”.

Um. What logic would you prefer exactly? The one that only increases all the drops you specifically want? Why is your system better?

I was keen on crafting in this game, my intent was to create cool gear to use/wear rather than selling. There’s a certain satisfaction that comes from having all your gear self-crafted (would be even better if it was marked as crafted, and by whom).

Unfortunately I’ve found that the difficulty in obtaining some materials and the prevalence of great gear from quest rewards and/or drops means that I always get better gear elsewhere than from crafting.

If other players feel the same (better gear from just playing rather than crafting) then it makes sense that the trading post crafted items are sold so cheap – no demand.

I personally enjoy having only materials drop and all gear crafted (yes, there is a game that does that), but I feel that lowering the drop-rate of gear and increasing material drops (if needed) would increase demand in crafted items, both for personal use and on the trading post.

Here is what I think is actually the problem with crafting: the xp you can get off of crafting one level worth of a single crafting component is more than what you need to craft the matching crafting component, AND the weapons you can make with those crafting components, before the xp level gets surpassed cutting off xp gain. But you can’t salvage components. Example: I can make 150 Jute Mask Paddings without making a single Rawhide Mask Strap using the craft all button, and my crafting level will fly up above the level that lets me get xp from making any of the Rawhide Mask Straps. It also ends up above the level that lets me make Masks using Rawhide Mask Straps and still gain xp. And above the level that I would get any xp from actually using the Jute Mask Paddings to make masks. Or make any xp from making the insignias that go with any of those components. But I cant salvage the Jute Mask Paddings. So what do I do? I dump the Jute Mask Paddings in the market and try and sell them to people. But EVERYONE is doing that so no one needs em.

Should I have hit the Craft All button? No, probably not, but @ 4 in the morning when I decided to just hit up a crafting station before I went to bed after 8 hours of playing I wasn’t really in the mood to figure out at what point all the xp gain was gonna disappear. And not everyone wants to sit around mucking with excel charts to perfectly level up in the most efficient manner. I’ve already surpassed my crafting level weapon and armor level by leveling my character, so none of the stuff I make is gonna be worth anything anyway. I don’t really care WHAT I make, I just want my level up so I can get back to a level that lets crafting actually have a point again. 150 Jute Mask Paddings all made in one go using the craft all button works just as well for leveling my crafting as actually going to the effort of figuring out what all I need to make the armors the component is for.

If you look in the market, you will see that the crafting components are WAAAAY cheaper to buy than the ingredients themselves are. All you need to do is buy up the uber cheap components necessary to make one item, make the insignias to go with em, do a discovery, then hit craft all. I jumped up about 50 crafting levels in a day yesterday for either leatherworking or huntsman (I can’t remember which) doing this. If you could salvage the crafting components and get the ingredients back this wouldn’t be the case.

I think they just need to taper out the xp cutoff levels a little more, or let you salvage components, and all the problems would disappear.

Just wanted to note in addition to my previous comment (can’t seem to edit it) that I have no problem with difficulty of crafting (in fact I don’t mind it being harder/longer to get to 400) but more with the fact that the stuff you do craft doesn’t seem to be substantially better than quest rewards/drops (even when you are crafting at your players level).

What’s the point in crafting if I can just play the other aspects of game and get the same gear without trying?

(for reference purposes my max level character is 57)

I think the point of crafting is cuz it’s there.

It is stupid to make something that takes 8 trophy items to make the inscription, each with a market value of a silver or two, plus the raw mats, and create an item that has a value 1/10th or less than its ingredients.

Except… no one wants to say “I’m only 130 tailoring,” we wanna be the 400/400 stud.

Fact is no one is holding a gun to your head. If you’re not into it, just gather mats. You’ll be richer, and rest assured that your guild mates will eagerly craft stuff for you if for some reason you ever want it.

Zar.6953:

Just wanted to note in addition to my previous comment (can’t seem to edit it) that I have no problem with difficulty of crafting (in fact I don’t mind it being harder/longer to get to 400) but more with the fact that the stuff you do craft doesn’t seem to be substantially better than quest rewards/drops (even when you are crafting at your players level).

What’s the point in crafting if I can just play the other aspects of game and get the same gear without trying?

(for reference purposes my max level character is 57)

Crafting was never really intended to give better anything. The game tries to provide alternatives for various things. Crafting takes some of the randomness out of getting the gear that you want. My elementalist is holding two sets of Pirate gear from random drops and that is obviously not usable.

One other cause not mentioned here is that you don’t need gear to keep up with your level. You might want to have your gear keep up with the zone but it’s still fine to be in a level 40 zone with level 25 gear. Some people are also doing all the lower level zones before the higher level zones. That means they could easily 10 or more levels of gear.

Those things are nice under normal circumstances but it does make it tough to sell anything.

So basically in this game you craft because you want to or because you want a bit of a boost to your leveling speed and NOT because you think you can make some money.

I really haven’t had a gear upgrade that was super-noticable in game play.

But it’s easy to keep your gear up. Just go trading post, get stuff that’s a copper or two above the vendor price. Buy it. Wear it. Sell it. You’re out a couple of copper.

Here is what I think is actually the problem with crafting: the xp you can get off of crafting one level worth of a single crafting component is more than what you need to craft the matching crafting component, AND the weapons you can make with those crafting components, before the xp level gets surpassed cutting off xp gain. But you can’t salvage components. Example: I can make 150 Jute Mask Paddings without making a single Rawhide Mask Strap using the craft all button, and my crafting level will fly up above the level that lets me get xp from making any of the Rawhide Mask Straps. It also ends up above the level that lets me make Masks using Rawhide Mask Straps and still gain xp. And above the level that I would get any xp from actually using the Jute Mask Paddings to make masks. Or make any xp from making the insignias that go with any of those components. But I cant salvage the Jute Mask Paddings. So what do I do? I dump the Jute Mask Paddings in the market and try and sell them to people. But EVERYONE is doing that so no one needs em.

Should I have hit the Craft All button? No, probably not, but @ 4 in the morning when I decided to just hit up a crafting station before I went to bed after 8 hours of playing I wasn’t really in the mood to figure out at what point all the xp gain was gonna disappear. And not everyone wants to sit around mucking with excel charts to perfectly level up in the most efficient manner. I’ve already surpassed my crafting level weapon and armor level by leveling my character, so none of the stuff I make is gonna be worth anything anyway. I don’t really care WHAT I make, I just want my level up so I can get back to a level that lets crafting actually have a point again. 150 Jute Mask Paddings all made in one go using the craft all button works just as well for leveling my crafting as actually going to the effort of figuring out what all I need to make the armors the component is for.

If you look in the market, you will see that the crafting components are WAAAAY cheaper to buy than the ingredients themselves are. All you need to do is buy up the uber cheap components necessary to make one item, make the insignias to go with em, do a discovery, then hit craft all. I jumped up about 50 crafting levels in a day yesterday for either leatherworking or huntsman (I can’t remember which) doing this. If you could salvage the crafting components and get the ingredients back this wouldn’t be the case.

I think they just need to taper out the xp cutoff levels a little more, or let you salvage components, and all the problems would disappear.

1. If you don’t care what you make then it stands to reason you also should not care about the consequences of your actions, which is to have an overabundance of supply in your inventory that you cannot sell because you refused to think too much about it.

2. That’s because everyone is leveling up their crafting so the prices are going to be higher than the finished product because the finished product is constantly being replaced or isn’t necessary because people are getting gear from their personal story.

3. Salvaging components wouldn’t make all the problems disappear. It would make your problem of having to analyze what you are doing to not be wasteful go away. It’s a lot easier to hit craft all and watch items whiz by than it is to think about what you are doing; one will guarantee waste and the other will help in reducing it.

You figured out a cheaper, more efficient way to level. Good job. :o) That’s a good thing.

Khisanth.2948:

Zar.6953:

Just wanted to note in addition to my previous comment (can’t seem to edit it) that I have no problem with difficulty of crafting (in fact I don’t mind it being harder/longer to get to 400) but more with the fact that the stuff you do craft doesn’t seem to be substantially better than quest rewards/drops (even when you are crafting at your players level).

What’s the point in crafting if I can just play the other aspects of game and get the same gear without trying?

(for reference purposes my max level character is 57)

Crafting was never really intended to give better anything. The game tries to provide alternatives for various things. Crafting takes some of the randomness out of getting the gear that you want. My elementalist is holding two sets of Pirate gear from random drops and that is obviously not usable.

One other cause not mentioned here is that you don’t need gear to keep up with your level. You might want to have your gear keep up with the zone but it’s still fine to be in a level 40 zone with level 25 gear. Some people are also doing all the lower level zones before the higher level zones. That means they could easily 10 or more levels of gear.

Those things are nice under normal circumstances but it does make it tough to sell anything.

So basically in this game you craft because you want to or because you want a bit of a boost to your leveling speed and NOT because you think you can make some money.

You expected it to be another way? The game hasn’t been out for very long. The open of an MMO or an expansion to one will ALWAYS have this dynamic because there is more demand for materials as people level their crafting skills initially so PROFIT on those items is just NOT going to happen unless what you craft happens to be extremely rare and usable immediately.

The problem in my opinion is less in crafting itself but it gear as a whole.

If every single piece of equipment was viable no matter at which level of crafting or character level you could make/drop it there wouldn’t be any problem, because it would all of a sudden be worth it to spend time at the lower levels. Higher level crafted items would only give different effects (for instance low gear could be plain stat boosts, high crafting level gear could give say, magic find or +critical chance) so depending of your character build going after gear that’s easily made wouldn’t be a waste of time nor obsolete.

Unfortunately for such a gear system to exist Anet would need to overhaul the whole stat system and it would take ages, since it would mean pretty much starting from scratch.

The only solution I see to this problem is to remove ‘’ tiers ’’ of insignas/inscriptions. For instance have the low level insignas do the usual stat boost, but have those boost scale with the level, and replace higher level insignas with something else.

With such a system there would always be a demand for low crafting level items since they would stay viable from level 10 to 80 because of their scaling, and higher level insignas/inscriptions would still be demanded for their various effects, depending of what type of gear the player wants.

Agree with the OP. Other MMOs I’ve played have had enjoyable crafting systems and still managed to encourage a demand for the products without either insane price gouging or the kind of upside down values that we see here with ingredients and finished products.

With GW2, I am beginning to feel as though there is no point in pursuing any of the crafting disciplines, despite how enjoyable the mechanic of actual crafting is with discoveries and the like. All crafting is really doing for me is costing me money, for no apparent gain or purpose, because let’s face it, the experience benefit is not so staggering that you simply cannot get this from another facet of the game.

It’s disheartening and sufficient to put quite a dent in my perception of the fun inherent in playing.

I don’t see your problem here.

Why don’t you scout the market for items that ARE pulling a profit or at least a return, before you make it?

Try looking at items people actually want, not items that have crapshoot stats.

I make specific items (Jeweler: Power/Precision) or the like and make my money back…if not a profit. Many times, I don’t even have to list my items, I can even auto sell them.

My only complaint is the fine materials being such a pain to get in any quantity. That is killing my mood in weaponsmithing at the moment. lol.

I’ve never looked at crafting as a way to make an income. It’s not impossible, but very difficult with a market of this size because the products being offered are limited in scope. The game dictates what can be produced and there are hundreds of thousands of people able to produce, thus the only items that have any value will be the ones that require the most time to gather to make the aforementioned items.

In the current state of the game, these are of course fine crafting materials.

Crafting should be an alternative, interesting way to level your character in addition to providing helpful items and bonuses in return for the time and gold investment. The problem is, crafting doesn’t really provide a significantly valuable return on the investment in most cases. And if a particular recipe does happen to sell well, it’s only a matter of time before other people catch on in an open market comprised of millions of players.

For crafting to work well, I believe the following additions should be made to each:

1. All crafts should be able to produce a set of items that are of rare quality every 50-100 points, for very few materials, that are bind on account. Presently, world gear is easily obtainable that obliterates anything that can be crafted from 1-399 on a gold for gold basis. Crafters need an incentive to keep their craft in line with their character level.

2. All crafts should be able to make bind on account vanity items that change the appearance of their character or give interesting flavour bonuses. This game is about fun, so people will spend their gold on things like this that make them unique or open up more variety for their characters. Additional content that expands on these fun little bonuses will provide large incentive to level up all trades.

3. All crafts need to have their fine material and cloth requirements reduced slightly. People will bite my head off for proposing that crafting becomes easier, but one only needs to take a passing glance at the trading post to realize there’s an imbalance. Fine materials and cloth are 3-10x more expensive than any other ingredient. The counter argument to this change is that making these limited ingredients more available will tank the value of products that utilize them. But of course we all know that this won’t happen because the raw materials are already far more valuable than the products being crafted, which presently sell for barely above vendor price.

I’ve given up on crafting until I hit 80. It’s senseless to waste time farming low level materials when I can hit 80, do event quests and more challenging content, simultaneously gather high level materials, sell those high level materials and then reinvest my silver/gold in those items that I need to craft. In the end I’ll get more karma and experience this way and more value for my time. Low level fine materials are too difficult to acquire at the moment.

Zar.6953:

I was keen on crafting in this game, my intent was to create cool gear to use/wear rather than selling. There’s a certain satisfaction that comes from having all your gear self-crafted (would be even better if it was marked as crafted, and by whom).

Unfortunately I’ve found that the difficulty in obtaining some materials and the prevalence of great gear from quest rewards and/or drops means that I always get better gear elsewhere than from crafting.

If other players feel the same (better gear from just playing rather than crafting) then it makes sense that the trading post crafted items are sold so cheap – no demand.

I personally enjoy having only materials drop and all gear crafted (yes, there is a game that does that), but I feel that lowering the drop-rate of gear and increasing material drops (if needed) would increase demand in crafted items, both for personal use and on the trading post.

A-Net, THIS^^^^^

After having spent the last few days crafting a lot, I agree that there is a problem with this. Crafting doesn’t seem useful enough to me.

It’s like every time I collect materials to craft something, I get roughly the exact same item from a drop, karma merchant, or reward, and enough money to be able to buy it on the trading post. And selling the few materials I can found gets me enough money to update my entire gear by buying them on the trading post.
There’s also a problem between the level of the areas where materials are found, and the level of the items that can be crafted with these, because no matter how I did it, I always ended up making items of lower level than I am. Kinda the same problem as dungeon tokens, because of the time it takes to collect them, the armor and weapons you can get are already worthless.

I know crafting is only an alternative. Well, it’s a terrible one. Crafting more and more seems to me to be a huge time and money sink. Either the items created aren’t useful enough, the materials are too hard to find, or exploration and quests are too rewarding, but there’s something wrong with it.

I myself think that crafting is too hard, but not challenging enough. It’s all about being lucky, because whether you spend 10 minutes or an hour finding materials, especially trophy ones, is all about luck. I’d rather see a part of it quest-based, like having to hunt down a specific creature or hidden treasure, to get a unique crafting material that can’t be found anywhere else, and make sure this isn’t easy so that just anyone can’t do it, and increase the value of items crafted with these. That would create an interesting balance with the materials you gather as you play, and an alternative to the trophy items.

To thekittender craft gear only, NO, that kills all real end game PvE (meta events and explo dungeons).

To thekittender craft gear only, NO, that kills all real end game PvE (meta events and explo dungeons).

It realy doesn’t. Part of the stuff for crafting should just come from them, and only them. Then you have different parts of the game needed without favoring one of them. Add decay instead of overpresent binding and you have normal thriving economy w/o artificial item reuse inhibitors (which will not work here either way, gw2 is not geargrinder – at least on functional level) or desperate content gating.

Hsinimod.5784:

The economy with crafted items is waaaaay off-track. Supply is huge, and there is zero demand. World drops are cheap and better.

Which means as we craft, we are only making vendor trash. Expensive to craft vendor trash. We need to take an insane amount of “trophies” to make inscriptions and insignias, that end up completely worthless.

The only reason, at all, to craft is to discover what the look of the item is if we want to transmute it. But, we could just buy the item made for cheap (1 bronze more than it vendors for….) off the Trade Post. Sadly, we still don’t know what any of the sets look like unless we discover them, because the Wiki is lethargic with pictures to show us.

It’s a sad state of affairs.

Crafting should either be superior because of how expensive/difficult it is to farm Trophy drops like Claws and Blood, or the drop rate (of the Trophies) increased immensely, since the crafted gear is worthless so it isn’t like we are getting ahead. The crafted gear has no runes on it, but dropped greens do, and are insanely cheap on the Trade Post. The imbalance is glaring.

And yes, much of the Leather Armor in the game is very sad to look upon. It is beautiful in a minimalist way, but after looking quite plain for 50 levels, you’d hope to find something more than solid color leather gear with little detail and few dye channel options. It’s bland. (the cloth armor, especially on female characters has tons of details and color channels to make unique looks, before level 20. Medium gets giant patches of solid colors……)

Still happy, but I was seriously expecting more, especially with how detailed the concept art was. The execution…. not so much.

Check other fan sites…. I’ve posted this at various times. I find the wiki a nightmare to update with some of the things un-findable in how to update it so I don’t bother for some things.

I have shouted out in LA to see what something looks like crafted and that is a pain for sure. Without the ability to preview off the Trading Post it’s quite irritating. Fortunately that feature is in the works, though there is no ETA.

Crafted Armor Image Compilation
!http://imageshack.us/a/img713/4756/craftedarmorsv2.jpg!

Zar.6953:

I personally enjoy having only materials drop and all gear crafted (yes, there is a game that does that), but I feel that lowering the drop-rate of gear and increasing material drops (if needed) would increase demand in crafted items, both for personal use and on the trading post.

You would need to increase the drop rate of vendor trash then to compensate for the loss of money people would make adventuring so that they could actually afford crafted gear in order to keep the cash flow balance.

People craft to get xp, to get specific looks, and in the process of getting what they want, they happen to have to make some blues and greens, so they do. They then sell ‘em quickly. Nothing wrong with that process. It’s extra noticable when everyone’s going through the same crafting stages at the same time – for example, in the first month since launch – but I don’t think it points at any significant flaw.

It’s quite possible to make a profit crafting rares (yellows) before level 400, and it’s quite possible to make a profit at level 400. Before that, you just get a very significant amount of xp (10 levels!), and you get some sets that you can actually use while on the way to the sets you want (or to the yellows, or to 400).

I don’t think there’s a problem.

There is a simple fix for this, honestly. Decrease item drop rates, increase mat drop rates, and if necessary to compensate the changes, increase raw $$ drop rates and decrease crafting xp. Honestly, I feel like getting random armor and weapons from every lootable creature in the game unrealistic and silly. I would much rather have an economy where the creature determines the drop and where crafting gives you the best gear.

Already seeing a sharp drop in all T6 material (except blood and rubies, lots of berserkers around I guess) prices, yet the exotics you craft from them still remain at the range of 2-4g. Even if you bought all materials from TP you can already make some money on crafting certain exotics.

I see two main reasons for crafting right now. Gaining XP and being able to make legendary weapons.

If/Until Anet decides to change things, that will be it.

I’m in total disagreement with the OP, and have not found my game experience mirrors his/hers in any way.
I craft on my warrior, and so far I’ve been fortunate enough to largely keep my crafting and character levelling at a similar pace.
Now, it’s entirely possible that I’m not playing in appropriate zones, but the completionist in me wants to get 100% completion as I go along, not backtrack at the end. Currently my warrior is lvl 54 (I think) and has about 220 armorsmithing. I am still wearing a set of ‘Rare’ armour I made which is suitable for a lvl 50+ and have yet to find it outlevelled by either random drops, boss-chest rewards or story rewards. OK, it looks absolutely terrible in its native form (hellooo heritage appearance), but so what, I’ll wear it for 5 levels and replace it with something (hopefully self-crafted) when I hit the break-point for self crafted armour.
I’m working on the assumption that the OP is aware that recipes for Rare level insignia can be bought from the Master Armorsmith? Or plays at such a pace that 5 levels only takes a matter of hours.
I haven’t found that the XP gain is enormously beneficial to my character xp level, and I suspect that Legendary weapons are going to be like all the rare skins in GW1 – something that other people have…
Am I unusual that in general accumulating cash is something that just happens until you don’t really know what to spend it on? Shortly before GW2 release I had achieved 50/50 and had accumulated way more money than I could spend on anything sensible. GW2 has only been out a month and I don’t have much cash yet, but assuming I’ll play it as much as I played GW1 I’m really not worrying about ‘accumulating digital wealth’.
~BdP