Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, am new in GW2 and its crafting system.

I just been wondering; how useful is it learning armor and weaponsmith? I mean, it will take a long time to max it out, to build the best of what it has to offer, but I am wondering; is it worth it?

Like, can you build weapons/armor that will be useful and will use a lot, or should I stick to picking items after finishing story quests?

I use weaponsmith as a cash cow when I need quick income, I log on my weponsmith and start building things to huck on the TP.

I also used crafted weapons / armor on both my Warrior and Guardian while leveling.(both have lvl 400 armorsmith, warrior has 400 huntsman, guardian has 400 weaponsmith.)

Bear in mind, if you’re a heavy armor class (warrior / guardian) and you wield metal weapons (swords, greatswords) you will have the two professions competing for your Orr. For pure leveling of the two crafts in tandem, consider using your weaponsmith to make things that have a Wood component (maces / hammers.) It puts less strain on your mats that way.

Also, after about level 35 (and I think crafting level 225) you can craft Rares for yourself, while story rewards top out at Masterwork. I frequently run characters from Rare lvl armor to the next Rare bracket before replacing armor (Rare sets are at 35, 50, 65 and 80.)

As Cassie said, I’ve used my crafted weapons and armor (two different characters for me) to equip my alts, and double check every 5-ish levels if I can make something better than what I’ve found.

For the purposes of a first time playthrough, I wouldn’t touch a crafting profession at all. Just sell the mats that you get rather than using them, and periodically buy green upgrades on the TP with that money. You’ll be more than fine and life will be easy.

Fiddle with them later on if you want.

yes it is worth it
yes it is worth it on first playthrough

you get exp from it

although I wouldn’t take both armor and weaponsmithing on the same char, especially if it is your first

get chef with either armor or weaponsmithing. Much cheaper and more uses.

Crafting is not useful. There are very few items that you can craft and sell for low profit. More profit requires more investment which I would not recomment if you are a new player.

You can buy everything you need from the Trading Post for an averrage of 20% of the crafting cost.

It doesn’t take a long time. It takes 4g – 10g.

I think the XP you gain while crafting is not necessary, since it is so easy to level in GW2.

The only purpose of crafting I currently see is Legendaries.

Just want to tag back in here for a second with a few of the useful parts of crafting:

#1: Crafting is required for some daily achievements (Craft 10 items), no reason not to have access to a craft to make sure you get all your laurels / mystic coins / jugs of karma

#2: Crafting for profit requires that you study Input Value (how much are the raw goods worth) vs. Output Value and look for cases where the latter is greater than the former. As it happens, Weaponsmith and Armorsmith both have opportunities to generate significant profit in these areas.

#3: Refine your own components for high end weapons. Let’s say, as an example, you want to forge Vision of the Mists, which requires 250 Orichalcum Greatsword Blades. You could go to the TP and buy them from someone else who forged them and is selling them at a profit….. or, you could buy the raw Orichalcum Ore, refine to your own ingots, and make your own blades. People may try to marginalize the savings, “oh, it’s only 50c savings to make your own blade” but when you make 250 of them, it adds up.

#4: Exp: Every time I have leveled a character using Map Completion, I have completed the ‘level appropriate zone’ 2-3 levels short of the level range of the next zone. By keeping my crafting on pace with my character level, and producing gear I can use as I go, I stay on a more consistent leveling curve without having to detour to another zone and grind more hearts, or, idle in the zone I’m in chaining events.

Here’s the bottom line. If you like crafting, like the process of taking raw materials and producing something of use / value, of looking for places where you can produce something of more value than what you started with, or just the notion that you are self sufficient and not reliant on the TP to get your gear…. crafting is worth the time.

If you don’t see that as something that’s fun, you can bypass it, get your gear from karma merchants or the TP…. it’s entirely up to how you want to play the game.

CassieGold.7460:

#1: Crafting is required for some daily achievements (Craft 10 items), no reason not to have access to a craft to make sure you get all your laurels / mystic coins / jugs of karma

With the expected chances to the daily achievement system (choose your dailies) planed for next Tuesday this is obsolete.

CassieGold.7460:

#2: Crafting for profit requires that you study Input Value (how much are the raw goods worth) vs. Output Value and look for cases where the latter is greater than the former. As it happens, Weaponsmith and Armorsmith both have opportunities to generate significant profit in these areas.

This information is available via various web sites and thus the market changes quickly.

CassieGold.7460:

#3: Refine your own components for high end weapons. Let’s say, as an example, you want to forge Vision of the Mists, which requires 250 Orichalcum Greatsword Blades. You could go to the TP and buy them from someone else who forged them and is selling them at a profit….. or, you could buy the raw Orichalcum Ore, refine to your own ingots, and make your own blades. People may try to marginalize the savings, “oh, it’s only 50c savings to make your own blade” but when you make 250 of them, it adds up.

Just now the profit of crafting a Orichalcum Greatsword Blades and hope to sell it at it’s current lowest sell offer is -4c. So you loose 10s which is nothing but still a loose.

CassieGold.7460:

#4: Exp: Every time I have leveled a character using Map Completion, I have completed the ‘level appropriate zone’ 2-3 levels short of the level range of the next zone. By keeping my crafting on pace with my character level, and producing gear I can use as I go, I stay on a more consistent leveling curve without having to detour to another zone and grind more hearts, or, idle in the zone I’m in chaining events.

If you like to buy XP than crafting works. So you could also buy XP boosters or do your personal story, events, dungeons or kill some mobs, make your daily.

CassieGold.7460:

Here’s the bottom line. If you like crafting, like the process of taking raw materials and producing something of use / value, of looking for places where you can produce something of more value than what you started with, or just the notion that you are self sufficient and not reliant on the TP to get your gear

It could be that crafting is fun for you. But there’s a chance that you are disappointed because: you don’t find enough materials for your crafting during map completion (not self sufficient), feel that the items you can craft are of no value (more expensive than buying).

A few points:

#1: A-net has said that on ‘choose your daily’ that you will have to do X/Y, but that if you do more than that, you get more rewards, so crafting for daily… not obsolete, you would still want to have access to it to get the max potential out of the daily.

#2: If you use websites like GW2Spidey in a fast moving market like the GW2 TP for anything more than trend analysis you’re doing yourself a disservice because the site lags significantly in high velocity markets like raw materials. Yes, the markets in which you can gain max profit for a crafted good move and shift, but if you sit down and just look at the TP for a few minutes, it’s pretty easy to guage opportunity.

#3: Crafting for XP != buying XP unless you’re sourcing all your mats off the TP, which I don’t advocate for people leveling their characters. Hit a gathering node = gain xp for getting raw mats, then refine those mats = get xp for crafting, then, turn those refined items into basic components = get more xp for the items you gathered, then, discover a finished good = get more xp for using the things you gathered.

Of course, you could argue that you could just sell the mats you gather, but then all you get is coin…. you lose out on all of the gains that are available via crafting.

Which brings it squarely to the last point: If you find the mechanics of crafting to be fun, then craft. If you find it to be more fun to sell the things you gather and go back to bashing more monster skulls, then by all means bash more skulls!

Crafting for profit is viable, crafting to be self sufficient is viable, but if you don’t enjoy doing it, then there is no point, and you should spend your time in the parts of the game that are more rewarding to you.

Same as some people like WvW, some people like Dungeons, and some people like Open World play…. do it because you enjoy it.

Crafting is not necessary at all. Dungeon gear is easy to get and has exactly the same stats as crafted.

1-400 crafting will get you 10 levels, but you will find yourself levelling too soon anyways.

For exactly what it would cost you to make something if you bought all the components on the TP, you can buy the finished product on the TP. So unless you just like the act of crafting sell your harvestables and just buy what gear you need because crafted gear offers no advantage at all.

And as to the crafter component of the daily, you can refine the lowest tier harvested ore to satisfy that. So choose a crafting discipline (they are free to pick up) just for the easy daily completion.

TheBlueI.3486:

Crafting is not useful. There are very few items that you can craft and sell for low profit. More profit requires more investment which I would not recomment if you are a new player.

You can buy everything you need from the Trading Post for an averrage of 20% of the crafting cost.

It doesn’t take a long time. It takes 4g – 10g.

I think the XP you gain while crafting is not necessary, since it is so easy to level in GW2.

The only purpose of crafting I currently see is Legendaries.

If you don’t gather or salvage while leveling, it takes a lot of gold, yes. If you do gather and whatnot, you’ll still have to put in about 2-5g to finish it unless you grind more than doing events.

Once you’re at 400, though, you can EASILY make money. I’ve made over 200g off of tailoring which was my first profession to 400. This 200g is net profit, not gross, and includes all costs, including materials even if I already have them from salvages or looting.

Agreed, I hit every node I see on my characters. My first character I did cooking and artificer. The cooking seemed to level quicker and I got to 400 on it realatively easy. But I also banked a lot of crafting mats and I have started leveling up my alts in crafting as I am playing them. This is also allowing me to stock up on mats again so when I start my next alt and pick their crafts I already have a lot of the mats I need. So far it is working out really well and I usually sell or salvage everything they make. If I can get a decent price for something I sell it other wise I just salvage it to put the mats back in the bank.

The xp earned off of crafting is just a bonus.

Esplen.3940:

If you don’t gather or salvage while leveling, it takes a lot of gold, yes. If you do gather and whatnot, you’ll still have to put in about 2-5g to finish it unless you grind more than doing events.

I’ve leveled up a craft on only 60s, without gathering any materials, only buying off the TP, just to see if I could do it. You can find profit opportunities if, as CassieGold says, you look at the TP and not at websites. They vanish quickly (usually), but other ones show up. You can even sometimes find profits crafting in the first tier, though the best profits come from making the gold rares at 35, 50, 65, and 80. The gold rares are really nice, and last ‘till the next gold level, if you craft for yourself. They’re the only not-max-level weapons/armor where there’s a good market (but only some are profitable at any moment).

The only craft I had trouble crafting up profitably was cooking, oddly. (I’ve maxed each out once, and am working some up again for Legendaries.)