Guild Wars 2

So I’ve just finished my legendary Bifrost staff and have been speaking to alot of people who are aiming for there legendary and need help and information, so I thought I would write out a simple step by step guide on the most effective and efficient way to get your legendary.

Now the total cost for mine not including the exotic weapon needed came to around 300 gold climbing to a potential 600 if you buy the Precursors

As an example i will be referencing alternating materials to The Bifrost and the Gift of the Bifrost Be sure to use your legendary version!

Note: I will be updating the guide alot and will simplify this as i go!

Step One: World Completion

This should be the very first thing you do. Bank everything you get from drops, events and so forth.

You will receive your Gift of Exploration from this and will have enough skill points to buy your Bloodstone Shard from Miyani by the mystic forge in lions arch.

Step Two: Gift of Battle

Fairly easy to do, is bought from the NPC in WvW for 500 badges of honour. Easiest way of getting these is completing the four jumping puzzles in each borderland and following a zerg around.

Buy your Gift of Battle.

Step Three: Your instance materials

Each legendary requires 500 instance mats, for example the Bifrost takes 500 Shards of Zhaitan from Arah dungeon explorerable mode. Check below to see what instance you need to run for your legendary.

Get your 500 materials whilst banking all drops and buy your Gift of (instance) by the required NPC in lions arch by the portals to WvW (whole bunch of merchants next to each other)

Step Four: 1.1 Million Karma

Yes this will be a pain in the butt but its best to do it first whilst banking all the drops you get. You need 525k karma for the 250 Obsidian Shards you need and an average (following the estimate of 30% per lucky clover) of 256 Obsidian Shards to gamble.

I highly recommend cursed shore Plinx event farming for this as with a decent MF set you can farm 2-3 gold hourly whilst earning anything between 15k to 32k karma. After the Champion Risen Abomination dies start a timer head back to Plinx 1, log out and log back in exactly 9 mins later. This will maximize the karma booster and not waste mins running around looking for events whilst Plinx respawns and will also reset the diminishing returns you hit when doing events over and over keeping you at the full +378 karma unboosted all day.

You can now buy 250 Obsidian Shards from the Temple of Balthazar when he is uncontested and a further 200 minimum for now, coming back to it should you need more for lucky clovers. You can also craft your Gift of Mastery by placing your 1 Bloodstone Shard, 250 Obsidian Shard, 1 Gift of Exploration and 1 Gift of Battle in the mystic forge.

Step Five: The Lucky Clovers

Most people leave this to last but I highly recommend getting this done first. Failed attempts at clovers result in tier 6 materials most of which you will need. I recommend buying and crafting them in 15 bulks to save you over buying on materials, per attempt you will need:

1 Glob of Ectoplasm
1 Mystic Coin
1 Obsidian Shard
6 Philosopher Stones

Making them by 1’s instead of 10’s will result in a better average so I recommend doing 1’s. Continue this buying more bloodstone shards from Temple of Balthazar if needed and craft your 77 Lucky Clovers.

Step Six: Your 2 400 Crafts.

You will need to level 4 specific crafts to 400 to make the 2 gifts found in your "Gift of … (i.e. “Gift of THE Bifrost”) Below is a list of what 2 crafts you will need to level to 400 for your legendary (for example the Bifrost’s “Gift of Color” requires 400 cooking and the “Gift of Energy” requires 400 Artificer)

After levelling your crafts to 400, buy the 2 recipes you need for the two gifts from Miyani by the mystic forge in lions arch. Click here then find your legendary weapon and click on the Gift of … (i.e. Gift of the Bifrost) gift, that’s below the exotic Precursor and buy the recipe for the 2 gifts within that gift (i.e. The Gift of the Bifrost ones is Gift of Color and Gift of Energy)

Step Seven: The 4 sub-gifts needed

Now comes the crafting of the 5 gifts needed to make the main gifts. Two of these (Gift of Magic and Gift of Might) are used in every legendary (which in turn makes the Gift of Fortune) and the other two found in the Gift of … (Gift of Bifrost) recipe (i.e. the Bifrost is Gift of Color and Gift of Energy) gather the following:

Gift of Magic (Crafted by placing these 4 items in the mystic forge)
250 Vial of Powerful Blood
250 Powerful Venom Sac
250 Elaborate Totem
250 Pile of Crystalline Dust

Gift of Might (Crafted by placing these 4 items in the mystic forge)
250 Vicious Fang
250 Armored Scale
250 Vicious Claw
250 Ancient Bone

Gift of Fortune (Crafted by placing these 4 items in the mystic forge)
250 Globs of Ectoplasm
77 Lucky Clovers
Gift of Magic
Gift of Might

The next find out the next material you need by checking the Gift of … (Gift of Bifrost) recipe and clicking on each of the 2 gifts in that. You will have the instance material already so you will need the other 7 components.

Craft these 2 gifts from the craft window at the required craft NPC and finally buy the Superior Sigil rune you need found in the Gift of … (i.e. Gift of Bifrost is Superior Sigil of Nullification)

Check: What you should have so far

1 Gift of Fortune
1 Gift of Mastery
1 Gift of (first gift required for the Gift of … (i.e. Gift of Bifrost)
1 Gift of (second gift required for the Gift of … (i.e. Gift of Bifrost)
1 Superior Sigil of (whatever your Gift of … (i.e. Gift of Bifrost) is)

Step Eight: The final stretch, 100 Icy runestones

The last material you should need excluding the exotic weapon is 100 Icy Runestones bought from Rojan the Penitent at Frostgorge Sound in Frostwalk Tundra west of the Earthshake Waypoint. These cost 1 gold each.

At this time you should sell everything possible you have left over material wise. All them additional materials and drops from world completion and farming will make the bulk of the gold needed to buy these runestones. The rest can be got from farming gold in cursed shore from Plinx again.

Buy your 100 Icy Runestones and then craft your gift of … (i.e. Gift of Bifrost) using the 2 gifts, the sigil and runestone in the mystic forge.

Step Nine: The Precursor

Now the most difficult part, obtaining your Precursors which is the base exotic weapon you need to craft the legendary.

The known ways of getting your Precursors are:

• Buying from Trading Post. Prices flux between 150 to 350 gold depending on the Precursor. This can be farmed in 75 to 175 hours doing the Plinx karma root in the guide which earns an average of 2 to 3 gold hourly.

• Temple events in all 70+ zones on the map. These have been reported as rewards from the chest at the end.

• Monster drops from level 81+ dynamic events. Several people have reported to have received Precursors from events such as defending R&D camp from Tar Elementals.

• 4 Exotic level 80 weapons of the required type (i.e. Staffs for ‘The Legend’ which crafts ‘The Bifrost’) in the mystic forge. People have reported an average of 3.5% (1/28 chance) to receive the Precursor.

• 4 Rare level 80 weapons of the required type (i.e. Staffs for ‘The Legend’ which crafts ‘The Bifrost’) in the mystic forge. People have reported an average of 20% (1/5) to receive an exotic weapon of which an average of 1.2% (1/83 chance) to receive the Precursor.

When gambling in the mystic forge you can use rare items level 60 upwards however to drastically improve your chances level 80 rares are recommended. This is because anything below 80 has a chance to produce an item that is not level 80 thus if you did receive an exotic from a recipe that used level 60 – 79 items it has a chance of being produced level 71 – 80 and the Precursor has to be level 80. Using 4 level 80 items guarantees you the outcome will be level 80.

Ascii, one minor correction.

I can confirm a craft of a precursor out of a mix of exotic items, none of which were level 80 (78, 75, 71, MF Stone). While no doubt having 4 Level 80 exotics may increase your chances, they are not absolutely necessary.

I can also add that rares 76+ should theoretically work to craft the precursor (cannot confirm), as devs have stated that they only removed the ability of rares 75 and under to create precursors.

Otherwise, this is pretty well written and concise, though there are other guides of this kind.

The best statistics I’ve seen on precursors from rares is this post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/Keep-track-of-how-many-rares-you-use-to-make-pre-legendary/page/2#post460282

Based on that, I think the chance to get an exotic is much more like 20% than 12.5% – that 20% figure is also consistent with random forging of many other types of items.

The sample size of 3318 combines for that post is enough to convince me that 0.1% is a pretty good estimate, though it may be different for different types of weapons. What data are you basing the 2.5% / 0.3% numbers on?

I think that 2.5% is coming from the “putting in 4 exotics has a 1/40 chance” so therefore the OP is assuming that the Exotic you get from putting in rares has the same chance of being a pre-cursor as the exotic you get from putting in exotics.

But that would just be an assumption. I think that the exotic you get from putting in rares has a lower chance to being a pre-cursor myself. but that would just be my assumption :-)

I’ve never seen a good thread that contains lots of data on putting exotics into the forge.

Thank you all for the input on the mystic forge process and odds. The statistics i gave were based on a few threads i’ve viewed some with data some without. As i’m trying to make this thread the most accurate possible i will now only use the statistics from data collected threads.

Ive also updated the post to show rares 60 and above can be used to make the Precursor however its much more statistically better to use 4 level 80s to guarantee the outcome is 80.

Note: I am still editing each and every post to simplify as much of the process as i can into steps without having to troll through page after page of sites!

You should edit the section of the 2 gifts from crafting, since one of them requiere 100 Lodestones of some type, that are very hard to farm and cost around 1g each, so it’s another 100g in there. That should be included in the guide.

Great guide btw.