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Buli ba kalo kau!
(edited by Hsevrah.8326)
Ascended crafting how easy..
I just hit 500 in Weaponsmith, already had 500 in Artifacting. Took me about 4 to 5 weeks to get from 400-500 in crafting in each area.
I farmed Orr for mats & salvaged gear from champ Zergs.
Orr temples & world champ events for Dragonite Ore
Blood Stone Dust from champ Zergs.
Empyreal fragments from Orr chests and Jumping Puzzles.
Also used laurels to buy Heavy Crafting bags for T6 mats.
It only costs me a few gold 3-5, I also sold some Berserker Orichalcum Imbued Inscriptions for gold, this helped pay the way.
The biggest pain is wood, It’s a long grind for wood (soft wood, hard wood, seasoned wood, etc).
I would recommend crafting Magic Forge salvage kits and buying the trading post tools (pick & axe), I used gold I had so I didn’t spent any real money. It also helps to have multiple level 80 characters, you can keep on different maps for farming & events.
Is it worth it?
No, I really don’t notice any real difference between Exotics vs Ascended weapons.
You can get the same or better results using Exotics weapons with food boosters.
(edited by Sola.7250)
The “easy/cheap” way to level is (at least how I leveled up)
On a Friday night (~1 hour before server reset, for the WvW crafting bonus) pop a crafting booster (and a guild one if you’re lucky)
400-425: refine ore/wood
425-450: discover exotics (if I recall it takes somewhere between 8-10), though this may change now, I’ve heard that you can also use the new crafting runes/sigils to get crafting exp in this range as well. That could be cheaper than crafting exotics, but I’m not sure. Artificer can also discover potions for exp as well.
450-475: You can sit here as long as you want, doing the daily refinement. Depending how many ascended crafting mats you have (dragonite, fragments, and dust) you can also refine them now (given you have enough T2-T4 mats) otherwise you can just do the daily ecto refinement. I think I stayed there for about 3-4 weeks, and I ended up at ~473 from doing just the daily refinement.
For the last leg, wait till another Friday night and pop another crafting booster (if you have them to spare)
475-500: Discover more exotics, I think this was in the 10-12 range. Again, I’m not sure if the newest LS recipes give exp in this range or not.
Technically, it’s “easy” to get to 500, it’s just expensive. Do you have the spare ~100 ectos lying around? How long are you willing to milk the daily refinement at 450 (and those take 50 mithral ingots and 50 elder logs)? Do you have enough T2-T4 to refine all the dust/dragonite/fragments you have lying around? (Do you even have the 500 or so of each that you need for an ascended weapon?) Etc.
You can start gathering ascended mats as soon as you hit level 80 (and can’t refine them until you hit crafting level 450), so there isn’t a reason to rush crafting until you get to 80. Then most things that you do will give you ascended mats (just usually not in great amounts).
Dragonite comes from world bosses and temple events
Fragments comes from jps/world chests and dungeons/fractals
Dust comes from champ bags
(And you can get them all in WvW as well, depending on what you cap).
As for the difference between Exotic and Ascended weapons, it depends what stat combos you use. They get a +5% direct damage increase in their weapon strength. The stat boost isn’t that big though (though you can put in 2, +5 infusions).
If you are a condition heavy user, you can skip them safely. If you are a zerker, you should be able to notice a difference, but it still isn’t required.