Guild Wars 2

The grind has been terrible. 5 lesser vision crystals + 1 full vision crystals (i.e. about 2.5 lesser vision crystals). It took me 2 weekends just to grind out 1 lesser vision crystal and I’m already tired.

Still slowly working towards mine (for 5 characters, no less!), but I see lots of people in the game with Ascended armor skins, so the answer must be yes.

I stockpiled a vast quantity of Ascended mats back when they first started dropping, but I only recently reached the stage where I could start refining them. I’m up to 40 Bloodstone Bricks, 23 Dragonite Ingots and 38 Empyreal Stars. I still have enough raw mats on my mules for way, WAY more than that. (Good thing too, because I calculated I’ll need approximately 190 of each for all my Ascended crafting.)

Zaxares.5419:

Still slowly working towards mine (for 5 characters, no less!), but I see lots of people in the game with Ascended armor skins, so the answer must be yes.

It depends, did they craft them or did they get them as drops (e.g. Fractals)?

Don’t Ascended armor boxes only drop one piece out of the set?

I finally got around to making my first piece of ascended armor just today. So, now my necro has a pair of ascended gloves. Dunno when I’ll ever make another item.

Zaxares.5419:

Don’t Ascended armor boxes only drop one piece out of the set?

Don’t know, I never got one.

But if that is true then you would hope that it drops the chest piece as that requires a full vision crystal to craft.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Zaxares.5419:

Don’t Ascended armor boxes only drop one piece out of the set?

Don’t know, I never got one.

But if that is true then you would hope that it drops the chest piece as that requires a full vision crystal to craft.

You can actually choose the piece of armor you want from the armor box.
I got 5 boxes so far, 2 from the LA events and 3 from wvw but only the zerker box seemed useful for me.
Apart from that, i just crafted my 2nd full set of ascended armor (pvt first, now sentinel). I am not really concerned about the material costs or vision crystals, i am mostly gated by the pace of laurel acquisition to acquire new recipes for it.

I crafted celestial light armor. The time gate was brutal, not so much in that it limited how fast I could make it, but because if I couldn’t play or I didn’t get my 300 silk scraps in time I couldn’t make it up later. It took me about 2 months to make the set.

I’m working on it too. So far I got the chest and pants.
I don’t really have problems with the account bound mats.
I find the grind for enough cloth scraps for my light armor far more challenging…would have been easier to take one of my twinks and go for ascended medium or heavy armor on them.

I have 2 full sets made, no pieces from chest drops. One medium set for my ranger and one heavy set for my warrior. For my tastes, the worse grind was getting the empyreal and dragonite ore than anything else. I had the time gated stuff done long before those.

serapheles.5409:

It took me about 2 months to make the set.

Isn’t that around the time it takes to make a typical legendary?

Arzo.8671:

For my tastes, the worse grind was getting the empyreal and dragonite ore than anything else. I had the time gated stuff done long before those.

Agree, I am suffering from those right now.

One pair of Ascended pants from that Lesser Vision Crystal we got from Season 1 I think. All my normal Vision Crystals have been going towards the weapons of my 5 characters, and the Gift of Blades for my fractal runner’s (one day) infused back item.

Before I even stared with Ascended crafting I already have gathered thousands of Empyrial, Dragonite and Bloodstone Shards. It was pretty easy to me to produce Vision Crystals. Now, after making about 4 ascended weapons and armors I am running out. Especially the Silk Scraps. I had around 3 – 5k dont remember, but even that is not enough if you are Tailor. Pretty stupid design decision to make the material sink. Very, very, very bad decision from Anet.

The crystals are the easiest part of ascended armor crafting. Especially on a light armor.

Arzo.8671:

I have 2 full sets made, no pieces from chest drops. One medium set for my ranger and one heavy set for my warrior. For my tastes, the worse grind was getting the empyreal and dragonite ore than anything else. I had the time gated stuff done long before those.

At the time I made 2 sets for my thief and necro, stars indeed were a pain. Now, with EotM trains I started to trash them.

I’m still working on my first set (go figure, it’s light). I have enough to do a couple of pieces… I just don’t know which stat set to work on first. Too many options…not enough stuff.

I’ve made my ascended armor for “free” when they where introduced. I stocked all the mats to level up armorsmith to 500 and I sold the 20 exotics i made to buy everything I needed for my armor

Dark Dark Binks.8210:

I’ve made my ascended armor for “free” when they where introduced. I stocked all the mats to level up armorsmith to 500 and I sold the 20 exotics i made to buy everything I needed for my armor

Unfortunately, you can’t buy vision crystals or their ingredients, which means they are a necessary grind if you want to craft them.

Dragonite is the hardest of the materials you cannot buy. Silk is what costs the most of those you can. I have two light sets and one medium set minus the head piece.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Dark Dark Binks.8210:

I’ve made my ascended armor for “free” when they where introduced. I stocked all the mats to level up armorsmith to 500 and I sold the 20 exotics i made to buy everything I needed for my armor

Unfortunately, you can’t buy vision crystals or their ingredients, which means they are a necessary grind if you want to craft them.

the vision crystal part of ascended is meant to represent playing the game world, over the economy. It isnt that hard to do actually, if you do the best thing for each currency.
WvW for a day or 2 will get you enough bloodstone and empyreal, 7 orrian world events will get you the dragonite, (which probably takes about 70-95 minutes of playtime. each dungeon path gives like 20 a path, soo 10 dungeon paths, i guess this is the grindiest part, unless you are speed running specific paths, but you can also get empyral from treasure chests if you prefer doing that.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

Dragonite is the hardest of the materials you cannot buy. Silk is what costs the most of those you can. I have two light sets and one medium set minus the head piece.

depends on playstyle, but dragonite is really easy if you are used to doing highlevel world bosses.
empyreal is easy if you do dungeons or wvw a lot
bloodstone is easy if you kill lots of champs

I get a decent amount of dragonite from raiding keeps/SM in WvW with my guild. That being said, I still haven’t gotten around to getting ascended armor or even weapons for my characters yet, since I’m finishing up my legendary first. Only a few hundred more gold to gooooo.

I got a magi armor chest drop once, but its one of the least useful stat combos ever, maybe I’ll put it on a regen-power roaming ranger build or something like that in the future.

phys.7689:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Dark Dark Binks.8210:

I’ve made my ascended armor for “free” when they where introduced. I stocked all the mats to level up armorsmith to 500 and I sold the 20 exotics i made to buy everything I needed for my armor

Unfortunately, you can’t buy vision crystals or their ingredients, which means they are a necessary grind if you want to craft them.

the vision crystal part of ascended is meant to represent playing the game world, over the economy. It isnt that hard to do actually, if you do the best thing for each currency.
WvW for a day or 2 will get you enough bloodstone and empyreal, 7 orrian world events will get you the dragonite, (which probably takes about 70-95 minutes of playtime. each dungeon path gives like 20 a path, soo 10 dungeon paths, i guess this is the grindiest part, unless you are speed running specific paths, but you can also get empyral from treasure chests if you prefer doing that.

I’d like to know how “7 orrian world events will get you the dragonite”. The most I’ve seen from one event is temples, which reward 30 dragonite. You need 500 for one vision crystal. That would be 17 events and temples aren’t exactly common due to megaserver. Also, “WvW for a day or 2” only works if you are on a map that is doing EotM. I’ve been there a few times now since everyone says that’s the place to be and have yet to see my server actually doing it.

Made my armor set in one go, I just stockpiled materials until I had enough. Damask was the slowest, ofc, since it’s timegated, but once I almost had all I needed, I bought the rest and crafted the armor. As for ascended mats… lol. I have a mule character whose only purpose in life atm is to hold my Bloodstone Dust stacks, and he only has 15 slots left… And another char for Dragonite and Empyreal Fragments. And I also still have 32 ingots of each of the 3 asc mats (made 50 of each in one go when I was levelling armorcrafting to 500 so I could get from 450 to 475 for free)…

Dragonite is indeed the hardest to come by, but “hardest” here seems like an overstatement: it’s still very easy to obtain, just not as easy as the other 2. But I guess you can’t get it if all you do is chat up LA or oggle at passers-by.

I really hope they add more sinks for this stuff, I don’t want to delete any of it and I am slowly getting to the point where I just won’t have room for it anymore.

I crafted exactly one Ascended armor set and Anet nerfed it the next week.

I’m not making another one.

I got 4 sets. 3 heavy(tank,support,dps) and 1 light(rabid). It isnt really hard if you just do your daily craftings and supplement what you are farming with buy orders. Eventually you will get to know those market too. You can also transform your karma into expensive mats. You can transform your dungeon tokens into uncraftable insignia if u want rabid or soldiers ascended armor. You can run EOTM train for empreals and dragonite.

Just play as you want and eventually you will get it.

I got 2 heavy armor set and i’m working on 1 medium set for my thief and 1 light set for my elementalist. I also crafted about 6 ascended weapons.

The only things that can be hard to get are dragonite and silk. Silk, i get them slowly. I can usually make a bolt of damask each 4 days now. But I kept my silk for like 6 months before ascended armor was implemented. For dragonite, just do some world boss everyday. It will take you 2 week if you do only 1 world boss per day, but you can easily get 1 gift in 3-4 days if you do the complete run or world boss.

phys.7689:

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

Dragonite is the hardest of the materials you cannot buy. Silk is what costs the most of those you can. I have two light sets and one medium set minus the head piece.

depends on playstyle, but dragonite is really easy if you are used to doing highlevel world bosses.
empyreal is easy if you do dungeons or wvw a lot
bloodstone is easy if you kill lots of champs

I prefer to play solo most of the time being able to do what I want when I want. Dragonite always requires a mob (world events/WvW keeps). That makes Dragonite my gating factor because I can always harvest Empreal from chests or WvW camps.
Megaservers has improved the world events turnout, but they are on a schedule so I only do them when I happen to be around.

I crafted 5 armor sets and 17 weapons so far. Have enough mats to craft a couple more sets.

Enko – it’s those kinds of statements that make me groan. Then I realize if I played as much and “focused” on doing the things I need to get the mats, instead of roaming around and having fun killing whatever and doing events that popped up; I’d probably be able to say the same kind of thing.
I have a real lack of focus in RL and in the game. ADD really bites especially when it wrecks my ability to farm for what I need. At least I saved up all my silk and mithril mats in a personal guild bank before ascended crafting came about.

Props to you and all others that have been able to get the stacks of ascended crafting mats you need. Every time I go to Orr the temples are open and in EoTM the one place to get Dragonite is rarely captured by my server.
I have been doing the mega boss rotation when I can jump in to the train.
IF I can remember to check Dulfy ahead of time and stay focused long enough to remember why I came to the map in the first place.

Made a full set around a month of the release. Haven’t bothered making any more. Making an ascended set is less of a ‘must do’ and more of a ‘you have nothing better to do anyway’. I don’t really notice any difference between using ascended and exotic.

I actually really like the look of illustrious armor… this could take awhile…

2 full sets, Zojjas and Celestial