Guild Wars 2

The prices for Charged Lodestones were starting from 2g 30s a few hours ago, and there were like 100 +/- available. Now they are all gone, so i’m guessing prices will increase even more.

It’s absurd to say the least, to have such differences between lodestones. From Glacial ones at 15 silver to charged ones that are extinct.

People suggested farming them in CoE or from sparks on Cursed Shore or Malchor’s Leap. Since your lovely mittigation (which ruined any chance of getting a legendary weapon smooth since karma farm is also damaged) won’t allow you to really farm them there, CoE seemed to be the best resolve.

CoE is so far the hardest dungeon i encountered on EM. CoF / TA that drop Onyx and Molten Lodestones are a walk in the park to say the most. So i did 2 runs of CoE, that took me a while thank god, and with 170% magic find i only got a few blue items from everything (mobs and chests).

So do tell me, if i’m not overreacting here, how is one supposed to get 100 Charged Lodestones in such conditions? Ever considered BALANCING the game? There are a few factors that are just impossible to miss…You could really consider changing them.

1) MF doesnt work with chests.
2) I did about 10 full CoE runs and only got 2 charged cores, no loadstones.

That explains why the price is so high, chances are horrible.

Charged Lodestones are currently a joke. John Smith can condescend to players all day on the forums, but his tightly-controlled economy is a disaster. Various elements of the game scream RNG, grind, and coerced Gem purchases.

Well i specified mobs and chests. Figured there’d be a drop chance on mobs aswell.

Still, we’re on the same point here, that chances are horrible…Why then? Shouldn’t Lodestones have the same chances, same values and whatnot? What’s supposed to make them more or less special? So that someone that crafts a bow or whatnot can make it easier, and someone that crafts Sunrise can slit his wrists.

I also checked BLT again, prices went to 5g and then to 3g 20 per lodestone..Absurd

Karpuz.5409:

Well i specified mobs and chests. Figured there’d be a drop chance on mobs aswell.

Still, we’re on the same point here, that chances are horrible…Why then? Shouldn’t Lodestones have the same chances, same values and whatnot? What’s supposed to make them more or less special? So that someone that crafts a bow or whatnot can make it easier, and someone that crafts Sunrise can slit his wrists.

I also checked BLT again, prices went to 5g and then to 3g 20 per lodestone..Absurd

The bots have started farming them across several servers. Expect the gold sellers to attempt to control the Charged Lodestone market in order to fund their operations and increase profits.

So John, what’s your solution to this? You inflate the price with artificial scarcity, which only encourages RMT groups to exploit your broken system.

what?? wait. what??? sucks that someone bought out all the lodestones and repriced them higher =/ I now feel bad for those people who are trying for their legendaries (or even not legendaries but other unique weapons). They should really do something to people who try to monopolize the market of a particular product. (fyi, 100 lodestones at 2.3g each costs only 230g, which im sure alot of people have [precursor sellers]. Now, that person stands to gain at least 50-60g in profit, and max of 200g (from selling them back at 5g a piece). This is really ridiculous! Somehow I think max of 1g a piece is a somewhat fair price to begin with).

I was already alarmed at the rapid price increase in lodestones. I knew it was because of the halloween stuff, but since the chest drops them and getting those became much much cheaper, I’d reckon prices will lower down. I hope something is done about this. I would very much like to see cores or lodestone as stuff that can be bought with dungeon tokens or some other means x.x

The solution now is:

Farm like me that i do 20 TA at day and i drop like 10 core = 5 lodestone for day
or
Buy gem and take lodestone from ah

Skill Based game…..

For reference:

Before today, prices of Charged Lodestones had tripled as a result of the Spirit/Foefire weapons (starting around 80s before the recipes were discovered, to about 2.3/2.4g). Today, with the gold sellers involved, the prices have become unstable and we may see additional spikes in price before the market stabilizes.

If these items start going for 4g each, I can’t imagine a solution that does not involve developer intervention (increase availability, fix prices, etc.).

Just checked gw2spidy, it seems the lowest sell price is now at 2.6g. I was alarmed that prices suddenly skyrocketed. Though with the current trend, I certainly won’t be surprised if it came to 4g.

Maybe the player-base is just reaching the “end” part of their stage, and seeking to get legendaries/ unique weapons are now the “in thing”?

It’s 3g 20 at the moment. Also, Starlink, you’re talking about Onyx Lodestones.

Onyx Lodestones seem to be much easier obtained..Either higher drop chance or beats me. Those are worth 1g and something, which is decent enough, i’m willing to buy them for that price..But not for 3g 20 like Charged Lodestones.

And Melchiz, you are right about the intervention being required. Sadly though, i doubt they will even bother reading the complaints, let alone do something about it. Don’t know if that’s because they are too busy or simply not interested in the oppinions of those that play.

Lowest now at 3.19g, with only 40 total in stock on the TP. Someone is obviously trying to corner the market.

ok my bad. Guess gw2spidy isn’t as updated in real time x.x

Dat feel when I can’t even sell my lodestones because I’m ironically too poor to pay the listing fee….

aha! so you’re the hoarder! :O (I hope you were just joking and bought those stuff to make your own stuff tho :|)

EDIT: sell something to get 15s. sell 1. wait. sell the rest.

penatbater.4710:

aha! so you’re the hoarder! :O (I hope you were just joking and bought those stuff to make your own stuff tho :|)

EDIT: sell something to get 15s. sell 1. wait. sell the rest.

LOL!

I was actually hoarding these a few weeks ago trying to make Foefire. At one point I had about 98 Lodestones, but I sold a few to get The Crossing for 25g and resell it at a later date.

If the lodestone prices go up to 4g, I might tell Foefire to f-off and sell my lodestones to buy Dusk.

Well the point was to normalize the market, not make it worse xD

So yes, i’d rather throw you a Dusk and get the market to a state of balance, than reach the point where lodestones are 16 s, 40s, 1g, 4g etc

Drops need to get better farming at higher levels as dropped off greatly . Why? not sure but its not worth the time for what you get back . It cost me more on gates and pick and axes and the armour repairs then what I’ve been getting back or at least it seems that way . I killed it at 40-60 levels but since moving up then Its been all but whites and blue’s

I expect the november content update will slip in some balancing on the availability of these lodestones.
If I had enough money to do anything, I’d purchase a lot of glacial lonestones/lodestones, and sit on those till the november patch just to see if any new recipes involving those come out. I would probably not hoard the charged ones past that date. It seems to be obvious that the current situation cannot hold without Anet intervention.

I somehow expect they’ll release a new “UBER COOL” weapon with a limited time duration sometime soon (Christmas? Do they make events for that holiday as well?) which uses another 250 charged lodestone =/ or glacial since it’s christmas. =/

Somehow, I think when they made the game, they already had an idea as to how much prices would be at certain stages of the game. While they may not directly be influencing supply, they can kitten well influence demand by putting in events and stuff that require those stuff (like the halloween stuff).

I think it’s just bad luck the foefire essence was discovered just prior to the halloween stuff and lodestones shot up through the roof. =/

Whatever.

If there is price manipulation (monopolism) going on, then the same thing will happen everywhere there is a strong stock market: the zone will get flooded with too much cash for the monopolist to control; i.e., people will farm the CoE seriously and the downward pressure on the item’s price will intensify.

If GMs actually manage to locate and “trustbust” (close offending accounts) then the process speeds up.

Or add lodestone transmutation. Turn one lodestone into another.

Just before the halloween, I’ve managed to get 5 Charged Lodestones in about 3hours. by farming Sparks in Orr. Today I’ve spend almost whole day and haven’t found a single lodestone. I know about the anti-farm code and I was swiching the locations but still, drop rate of them seems to be lower.

However, I went to kill Claw of Jormag few hours ago and I found 3 Corrupted Lodestones from killing about 100~ corrupted minions. It took me less than 30min.

If GMs actually manage to locate and “trustbust” (close offending accounts) then the process speeds up.

Really? You think banning someone who buys and resells at a higher value is the way to go here?

The ppl who buy and sell the most are gold buyers and gold sellers. They are the one controlling the market. GW2 Recession is coming. It is unavoidable and Anet will not be able to fix it.
Why?
Gold sellers jam prices causing players to throw in the items slightly lesser then gold sellers prices. SO if gold sellers were banned and their items removed. The prices will still be stuck.

I don’t care if gold sellers are the primary offenders, people who are not breaking any rules do it as well, and they do not deserve to be punished for working within the system. If they start punishing people who resell, they may as well just do away with the TP completely, because that is an inherent part of any game with an active market.

And before someone tries to straw man me, no I do not play the market.

Just boycot anything over a particular price to force resellers to lower the price? gonna have to be a collective effort tho :/

Market on charged lodestones and cores just got cornered. Someone just bought all of the supply of both and is reposting slowly at double. So much for getting the 100 im working on for bolt.

Well the price of cores, now makes it more expensive to craft them. Which genius is buying them.

Charged at 3g and 20s arm and Onyx at 1g and 75s O.o

Anet is not obliged to protect the interests of resellers and speculators, hopefully they will intervene to make these items reasonably attainable for legit players who do not wan to spam massive amounts of cash just to get the lodestones.

The Lodestone transmutation or purchase via dungeon tokens are the best fixes so far.

I mean it wouldn’t really be hard…But it’s not fair to get Glacial/Molten/Corrupted without breaking a sweat, and having to farm like a mad man for months on and on to get a few Charged ones.

Would really be nice if a staff member would reply with an oppinion if not a sollution.

only if they controlled bots and bugs as well as they controlled the market…

Not sure if this helps… but I’ve noticed I’ll get Charged Cores almost everytime I do a COE explorable. They can be forged into lodestones for 24s. ….speaking of which, I think allowing Elonian Wines to drop from champions would really help take some of the disparity out the pricing & supply of all Lodestones. I hope they consider that when they change the Drop-tables this november.

Price of them is crazy, but more crazy is drop rate. I tried farm sparks, did 10+ runs of COE and in mine whole playtime of 3 months I get just one once.
I check for them on TP regularly and never seen more then 150 available on market. With that low number of them available it is not strange that price is high.
Still need 99 of them, but guess my legendary will need wait better times, can’t afford 350 gold only for lodestones.

Well it’s crazy when you think about it because 100 charged lodestones now cost more than a precursor and it’s only a SUB-SUB COMPONENT lol!

Azelroth.6801:

Well it’s crazy when you think about it because 100 charged lodestones now cost more than a precursor and it’s only a SUB-SUB COMPONENT lol!

Even worse when my goal is to make Infinite Light which cost 250 lodestones, 2 down 248 to go. If you’re on SoS and see a mesmer grinding away at the sparks with my name I’m not a bot, just someone forced into a huge grind since there aren’t many alternatives to getting the necessary lodestones.

Well at least you manage to farm them. I did 5 CoE runs, got 1 Core. And my server NEVER seems to clear Temple of Dwayna, so no chance to farm sparks alone. hurray

Exploding Acorn.3754:

Azelroth.6801:

Well it’s crazy when you think about it because 100 charged lodestones now cost more than a precursor and it’s only a SUB-SUB COMPONENT lol!

Even worse when my goal is to make Infinite Light which cost 250 lodestones, 2 down 248 to go. If you’re on SoS and see a mesmer grinding away at the sparks with my name I’m not a bot, just someone forced into a huge grind since there aren’t many alternatives to getting the necessary lodestones.

That was also my plan until I realized that current price * 250 = lol for a bloody exotic. I was up to 8 stones after much mind-numbing farming, then I decided to call it quits and cash out.

Karpuz.5409:

Well at least you manage to farm them. I did 5 CoE runs, got 1 Core. And my server NEVER seems to clear Temple of Dwayna, so no chance to farm sparks alone. hurray

I actually prefer the temple of Lyssa for spark farming. And ye the dungeon loot chances or horrible… That will be improved soon though.

TravisTrout.6803:

That was also my plan until I realized that current price * 250 = lol for a bloody exotic. I was up to 8 stones after much mind-numbing farming, then I decided to call it quits and cash out.

Not really a difference between an epic looking exotic and an epic looking legendary. Especially if you transmute your legendary back onto an exotic to match the stats you need, the color will be orange again.

I farmed the sparks for 4-5 hours, and was lucky enough to get one Lodestones with like 150-60% magic find gear (and by farming i mean kitten chinese-bott-farmer-wannabe farm)

So yes, if i’m just as lucky from now on, 4-500 hours of farming gameplay and i’ll have the Lodestones. Then again there is no guarantee

I have farmed onyx and corrupted lodestones a few times and they seemed to average to about 1 per hour for me. Sometimes I got none in 2hrs and sometimes 3 in 30minutes. It’s all random and luck, but the average was about 1/hr.

Onyx i never farmed, but i got them on a preety decent chance from TA. Corrupted on the other hand, i get like 2-3 per hour the least if i’m farming the elementals that spawn at Claw of Jormag.

So yes, if i can get 2 corrupted lodestones per hour, why can’t they apply the same drop chance for Charged ones? Why should others have it easier?

That’s crazy bro. What’s strange is that the Charged Lodestones are in many recipes and yet they have the worst drop rate out of all the lodestones… that’s really not cool !

The other lodestones are super easy to obtain in comparison. It doesn’t make any sense to me that these are a super rare drop?

Well, in a conspiracy view it does —> Raise prices on the thing that’s needed most and people can’t get —> Force them to buy it from Trading Post —> Control Market and watch the cash flow

I’m updating my farm status. Farmed Sparks in Malchor’s Leap (temple of Dwayna north and south) and Cursed Shore for 8 hours and a half, with around 150-160% magic find increase, and only got ONE Lodestone. One…

So, therefore, it’s easier to just farm like a chinese bott and get gold and buy them off the Trading Post.

Thanks for your understanding ArenaNet…If you ever bother to read this topic, we’d kindly apreciate an answer, a reason for which you let us “enjoy” this imbalance, and not do anything about it.

What happened was people found out a good way to farm charge lodestones thanks to reddit, made a lot of money and deflated the prices. Then because you need 100 lodestones for a legendary, someone bought them out while they were cheapish.

Personally, I’m just saving my gold and not wasting time gathering lodestones. I know that eventually more content will be added to the game and these lodestones will dramatically drop in price. When? No one knows, so it may not be for people who want their (insert recipe that needs lodestones here) now. However, I know that I’ll be saving myself a ton of gold and in-game frustration by waiting it out until the availability increases and the market prices drop. Sure I won’t have my weapons now, but I’m expecting to purchase 5x to 10x with the same amount of gold later on, which will mean more completed recipes at a cheaper cost per recipe then if I did everything the way the market is currently.

Bowmaster, the difference is, some of us are or like to act like hardcore gamers. I’m sort of an achievment kitten for example, and my purpose is to explore the entire content and manage to get things faster than others. If i’ve been stuck for 2 weeks here because of Lodestones, it kind of sucks.

Ergo, i have no intention of waiting a few more months just to hope for a change, when these legendaries will be owned by each and every person walking in LA

Solution (BEST):
1 LoadStone x 40 Dungeon Tokens-
1 LoadStone x 2000 Karma.

Solution:
Make the game respond to supply and demand

Solution: Add a trade system.

Solution: More cheaper “core to lodestone” recipe

Karpuz- I understand that point of view. I usually play semi-hardcore in most games, but I always take a different approach in regards to MMOs. Personally, I can’t ever enjoy grinding/farming for the sake of efficiency. From experience, trying to obtain something prestige as legendarys normally take a huge time/gold investment with a game’s initial content. I see this as just coming with the territory.

This is not to say that lodestones aren’t expensive or frustratingly difficult to obtain. They are and I don’t see Anet doing anything special other then adding more content and zones in future updates. I know my advice is a long-term approach to the topic, but again I make a disclaimer that it won’t appeal to everyone.

I wish you good luck in getting your lodestones. I also don’t think that many people will be owning legendaries. Even if lodestone prices fall dramatically, precursor prices will still be high and rare to obtain, especially when all the illegitimate precursors are bought and consumed.