Guild Wars 2

I’ve been curious for a while. What is ANet’s efficient method for players to get some of the mats for some of the mystic forge exotics. For example, the Triforge pendant requires 750 gold ore, 750 piles of crystalline dust, 250 ruby orbs, 250 sapphire orbs, 250 emerald orbs. The gold ore isn’t really a problem.

For the crystalline dust, is ANet’s suggested method to “farm” the trading post or do we farm the mobs in Orr until we either get enough incandescent dust to upgrade to 750 crystalline dust or hope to get lucky with crystalline dust drops period. I’m not finding fault, but to me, the method they are suggesting is to “farm” the trading post, due to the dropratess of crystalline dust and other tier 6 mats being so rare. If this is the suggested method…while I don’t find fault with it, it seems counter-productive since you should theoretically be able to farm the mats efficiently to make some of these items. I don’t want to have to “farm” the TP to get tier 6 mats – they should be available to players at an efficient rate that doesn’t resort to having to buy them. This goes with all tier 6 mats – powerful venom sacs seem even rarer than crystalline dust does.

This happened a couple weeks ago – I ask in Cursed Shore map chat where the best place to get powerful venom sacs is and multiple people said the trading post in reply, which IMO just seems weird. Is this how its supposed to be, kinda forcing players to buy these mats from the TP if they want these unique items? If it is, then I’ll deal with it, but I really hope its not.

I would ask you: Why do you have so much trepidation over trading one resource for another?. You act as though farming the items without trading is somehow inherently better and trading is a huge loss.

I would trade if there was a direct way to trade. If I could trade x many tier 5 mats for y many tier 6 mats instead of using the TP I would. No player will want to do it that way though since there is no actual trading system in game. Mail is not a trustworthy way to trade mats for mats. With the TP, you have to use coin as a middleman to trade mats for mats.

Its not trading when you buy them from the TP. That’s buying them, not trading, huge difference.

Other games I’ve played, you could get the best crafted equipment strictly via getting the mats as drops because they had a fair drop rate. Farming mobs for hours on end and getting only a few materials is not a fair drop rate. In these other games, I didn’t have to visit the auction house or buy them. I was able to gather the materials in a decent amount of time and make it. Getting 750 crystalline dust would take at least 6 months with the time I am able to play. That’s unrealistic.

If I could trade a player 500 tier 5 mats for 250 tier 6 mats WITHOUT buying them, I would, but you can’t. There’s no trade window system and you’re telling me you would trust me via the mail system to give you 500 tier 5 mats and you would expect me to trust you to give me 250 tier 6 mats in return? Yeah, doesn’t work that way, sorry.

if they are on the Trading Post it mean someone looted/salvaged them. So no you don’t need to farm the trading post. Just got to be patient if you want to do it the long way.

Fair enough. So really, getting the more unique items caters to those that can spend hours on end playing, and who don’t have to work 40+ hours a week or they do, and just don’t like to sleep. I’ve never played a game that had this much grind in it. GW1 had less. Its been a month and a half and I’ve gotten I think 17 crystalline dust? Lets round up and say 20 in a month – 37.5 months to get 750. I guess I’ll stick with my non mystic forge exotics since well, mystic forge recipes are just for look, and don’t actually offer better stats (except the triforge pendant since you can’t get a amulet with all stats via crafting). I know GW1 was the same way, but it was more attainable. I didn’t mind buying mats in GW1 because you could easily make 5k a day from casual play. Do casual play in GW2, you might make 2k copper or 2g.

By casual play, I mean doing the Zaishen dailys and maybe something else. Doing daily achievements in GW2 gets me a little over 500 copper or 5 silver (5 silver guaranteed from completing daily achievements).

I expect to play an hour a day and acquire the rarest items in the game within 2 months.

If I don’t I’m going to cancel my subscr…

Except I played GW1 (a more casual friendly game of the same series) as much as I play GW2 probably, and was able to obtain the rarest items in less than 37.5 months. Just saying.

Yes, I said 2 months also – learn to read much? I said 37.5 months, which is basically the time it would take me to get the item I used as an example. 37.5 months is way more than 2 months. Thanks for the sarcasm though. Much appreciated.

Magiofdeath.2745:

Except I played GW1 (a more casual friendly game of the same series) as much as I play GW2 probably, and was able to obtain the rarest items in less than 37.5 months. Just saying.

So what?

So what? It means there’s a lot more grind in this game, which they kept on saying pre-release that there wouldn’t be a lot of grind. They said the same thing with GW1, even for the rarest items, and it ended up being true (there was only a moderate amount of grind). 37.5 months for 1 amulet? That’s a little ridiculous and a bit heavy on the grind side IMO. I’d find the grind acceptable if things like legendarys were actually significantly better stat wise than exotics. Multiple years to make and I have a bow that shoots rainbows, cool (example, since my main is a ranger and I primarily use shortbow). I was under the impression pre-release that legendarys were going to be better stat wise than exotics.

Magiofdeath.2745:

So what? It means there’s a lot more grind in this game, which they kept on saying pre-release that there wouldn’t be a lot of grind. They said the same thing with GW1, even for the rarest items, and it ended up being true (there was only a moderate amount of grind). 37.5 months for 1 amulet? That’s a little ridiculous and a bit heavy on the grind side IMO.

The amulet is an exception of pretty much all items in the game right now I think, in that it is dramatically different than all of the other items of the same rarity.

For weapons and armor though, there isn’t a grind for stats. The only thing that you may have to grind is for cosmetic purposes only, and even then it depends on how fast you want it.

I agree, exotic crafted armor/weapons are fairly easy to obtain. Some of the mystic forge non-legendarys are moderately easy to obtain (except foefire’s essence and a few others – a little bit more work than moderate involved). I guess, personally, at this point in time, I can’t see spending the grind for a legendary since not stat-wise better than exotics. I’ll just spend that time grinding for the Triforce instead, heh. I’ll be jealous of Link by the time its over though, since he was able to obtain the Triforce more easily.

I see the Tri force pendant kind of like the legendary of trinkets- sure you can’t get it right now, but so what?
Nothing is chasing you, get it in your own time, or not.
I really don’t understand the level of anxiety in your posts- it is just a game, you can take your time.

crystalline dusts are going for around 1 silver on TP. if you’re not willing to buy that off the TP, what about the orbs? are you going to farm them as well off gathering? :P

Orbs can be made via jewelcrafting fairly easily. 2 crystals, 5 tier 5 dust per orb. Crystals drop more frequently than crystalline dust and I get a boatload of tier 5 dust. :P I get really lucky with crystals for some reason. I just don’t understand why a fine crafting material is so rare to find.

I suppose if you look at it that way Morrigan, then yes, it is the ‘legendary’ of amulets. What about the foefire’s essence though? :P I don’t plan on getting that though, stats are meh.

Not really anxiety over the time it takes, moreso annoyed with somewhat false information. There is a huge grind in this game and pre-release, we were told there would be little grind. I expected them to not completely get rid of the grind, but wasn’t expecting some of the levels of grind currently present tbh. Like I said, I’d be fine with it if legendarys weren’t basically exotics with different skins. I gave a horrible example with the amulet, because that is a true ‘legendary’ of the general definition of a mmo legendary, since it offers significantly better stats than any other amulet.

It’s my understanding that what ANet kept promising was no need to grind. Which as far as I’ve been able to tell so far is absolutely true. You can progress in level and crafting and armor quality quite effectively without grinding. If you additionally want the absolute best (or at least best-looking) equipment in the game, then yes, there’s grinding involved. That’s not the same thing as their giving you false information about gameplay.

Please stop asking for legendaries to have better stats. Then GW2’s gear/stat system becomes just as kitteny as every other MMOs. Leave those of us who hate, hate hate that system one game, please.

Ok, offtopic, but wtf does kitteny mean? Same thing as carebear? I haven’t seen that word until these forums. It sounds silly.

you can craft T6 dust from T5 in mystic forge (5 philosofer’s stone+250 dust T5+
1 dust T6+ 5 crystals)
or
you can farm some events on Cursed Shore and buy much more dust then the direct dust farm

Magiofdeath.2745:

Ok, offtopic, but wtf does kitteny mean? Same thing as carebear? I haven’t seen that word until these forums. It sounds silly.

“Bad” words on this forum get censored to “kitten”. Lots of people just skip the automatic filtering and use “kitten” directly in place of the intended epithet, which leads to different grammatical forms like “kitteny” and “kittening” and “kittened”. (Though I suppose the last two might result from simply changing only the offending part of a longer word, “kitteny” would most likely end up as “kittenty” if the forum software only changes the specific 4-letter offending bit and not the whole word.)

Actually I didn’t go ahead and use kitteny … I used another adjective that ends in y and is a synonym for poopy. :B The word filter changed it correctly.

Hah, that’s actually pretty cool of them. (I mean, once you get past the fact that they’ve decided to protect the children from bad words or whatever.)

" This goes with all tier 6 mats – powerful venom sacs seem even rarer than crystalline dust does."

Yet they, along with ancient bone, are the most common and obtainable of the T6 mats.

Magiofdeath.2745:

Fair enough. So really, getting the more unique items caters to those that can spend hours on end playing, and who don’t have to work 40+ hours a week or they do, and just don’t like to sleep.

Yes, this is exactly it. But really you’re looking at one of the most elite items in the game. It’s totally unnecessary to get it, and for most people the 1g50 amulets are better for their character in addition to being cheap.

A regular player aiming for all lv 80 exotics is a reasonable and difficult goal. Legendaries, Triforge, most of the uniques in the forge are all for people who dedicate their lives to the game and/or pay tons of real money and/or exploit and/or become a pain in the community’s butt with TP manipulation.

250 orbs is also a pipe dream to get in drops. It would take at least a year of grinding. They do that on purpose to make us all interdependent, and force us to interact with each other because we’re so asocial.

I wanted to add that it’s the TriforGe Amulet, not TriforCe. It has nothing to do with Zelda, and everything to do with the gaming company Triforge Games.

A normal amulet has 154 stats + 5% crit.
Triforge has 240 stats + 5% crit.

So you get 86 more stat points but they’re in skill you likely don’t use or want. If they were the same price I would choose a Ruby Orichalcum Amulet or equivalent because the stats are placed where it’s important for my character. Quantity vs Quality.

The price of triforge is actually decreasing daily. The most expensive part of it used to be the Ruby orbs, but they are around 2.5 silver each now. Everything else listed is under 2 silver (ore is like 40copper, dust is 1.2 silver, the other 2 gems are also under 2 silver.) Gems are becoming cheaper every day because there isn’t as much use for them compared to other mats. The dust is fairly easy to get; the t5 dust is really common if you farm orr at all; i’ve promoted 3 stacks just from my own drops, soon to be 4.

Clark Skinner.4902:

It has nothing to do with Zelda

The name may not be (only) a reference to Zelda, but the icon certainly is.