Guild Wars 2

Is it me or are some lodestones just impossible to farm? For example, onyx lodestones drop from earth eles on Orr (which there aren’t many of) and you can get them from chests in TA.

Well, I’ve done at least 30 TA runs, and all I got was 1 lodestone and 7 cores (I open all chests with my magic find set + food). I find this pretty ridiculous. The pre-cursor is expensive enough, and now I have to spend an extra 100g just to get some lodestones?

EDIT 11/13: 250 Onyx lodestones are now 530g+++

yes =(

I’ve only done TA runs around thrice. First time gave me a lodestone, third time gave me a core.

The dungeon chest drops are so extremely low it is almost insulting to people who love to pve. Droprates from farming are a LOT higher then continuously running dungeons.

The dungeon chest drops are so extremely low it is almost insulting to people who love to pve. Droprates from farming are a LOT higher then continuously running dungeons.

But… where do I farm them? Only other place I know that drops them are earth eles in Cursed Shore. There aren’t many.
You can find ice eles at the temple of grenth and claw of jormag event, so those are not that hard to farm, but I really don’t find any good spot to farm Onyx lodestones. And I doubt DR will let me farm this for long. At least give me 1-2 lodestones per TA run if that’s one of the few places that can actually drop them. The current drop rate is ridiculous.

What bothers me is that part of getting a legendary just means you need to have a kittenload of money. I’d rather complete every dungeon or something, or something else that at least requires you to do something special.

Money makes the world go round. But i do hope they do something about the drop rate of lodestones, its a bit too much.

The drop rate is ridiculous, true but…it’s suppose to be difficult to get legendary items. If you get 1-2 lodestone per run and 30minutes per run…simply op.

Nagorn.2307:

The drop rate is ridiculous, true but…it’s suppose to be difficult to get legendary items. If you get 1-2 lodestone per run and 30minutes per run…simply op.

I didn’t realize farming items with a ridiculous drop rate = difficult. There’s nothing difficult about it, it’s just boring. The pre-cursor already relies on RNG or a kittenload of money.

You can turn the cores you find into lodestones in the mystic forge. 2 cores + 1 Crystalline Dust + 1 Ellonian Wine + 1 Crystal = 1 Lodestone.

I’m quite okay with the current drop rate of lodestones. Yes, it does make it a bit more expensive, and I am fine with the legendary being hard to obtain.

However, where my stance differs from the lodestone vs precursor is this. Buying a precursor off the TP consolidates wealth to a very few individuals. Buying lodestones distributes wealth to more people.

Unless the lodestone supply is being controlled by a few right now, which I doubt.

Yeah, judging by the prices on the tp, its about 15s~ cheaper to craft lodestone rather than buying. Just after i first posted in this thread, and what do you know i found my first charged lodestone.

Happy~~!

Its just another one of the hidden costs to the legendary.

On the surface you see “oh i need 120g + all these other things”

Then you realize those “other things” like lodestones and precursor, and t6 mats, etc add up to another 400+ gold.

I’d much rather see they change the precursor instead of lodestones. Lodestones are managable even if they take a while. You can get some from farming and buy more from the TP. For every lodestone you’ll be a little bit closer.

Precursors however have no progress, you just keep loosing money in the forge untill you maybe you get one eventually.

so… where can you get onyx lodestone/core again apart from TA? :O

Archer.6485:

I’d much rather see they change the precursor instead of lodestones. Lodestones are managable even if they take a while. You can get some from farming and buy more from the TP. For every lodestone you’ll be a little bit closer.

Precursors however have no progress, you just keep loosing money in the forge untill you maybe you get one eventually.

I agree with this guy, we gotta pick the right battle and it can’t be every 5 mins someone makes a new post “OMG I FARMED MOB A FOR 15 MINS AND IT ONLY DROP 1 ITEM B CHANGE DROP RATE PLZ” yes lodestones are difficult to farm but it is a rare item for a reason, secondly it’s not that expensive to buy them. I mean anyone who plays the tp properly should have no problem raising the money required for that part of legendary. Thirdly as stated it’s optional so stop being a huge cry baby everytime something doesn’t give u the item u want right away.

BakedGoodz.4082:

I mean anyone who plays the tp properly

This isn’t what everybody considers fun to do… So you can’t expect everyone to molest the economy for their money and get rich fast.

BakedGoodz.4082:

Archer.6485:

I’d much rather see they change the precursor instead of lodestones. Lodestones are managable even if they take a while. You can get some from farming and buy more from the TP. For every lodestone you’ll be a little bit closer.

Precursors however have no progress, you just keep loosing money in the forge untill you maybe you get one eventually.

I agree with this guy, we gotta pick the right battle and it can’t be every 5 mins someone makes a new post “OMG I FARMED MOB A FOR 15 MINS AND IT ONLY DROP 1 ITEM B CHANGE DROP RATE PLZ” yes lodestones are difficult to farm but it is a rare item for a reason, secondly it’s not that expensive to buy them. I mean anyone who plays the tp properly should have no problem raising the money required for that part of legendary. Thirdly as stated it’s optional so stop being a huge cry baby everytime something doesn’t give u the item u want right away.

Are you kidding me? There’s a big difference between farming 1 mob for 15 minutes and getting nothing and doing a dungeon 30+ times and only getting 1 item (3 if i forge the cores).

There are some people that actually want to play the game instead of standing in front of the TP for 5 hours a day.

playing the TP is market manipulation and shouldnt be considered by any decent player. I for one refuse to take part in that shady business.

BakedGoodz.4082:

Archer.6485:

I’d much rather see they change the precursor instead of lodestones. Lodestones are managable even if they take a while. You can get some from farming and buy more from the TP. For every lodestone you’ll be a little bit closer.

Precursors however have no progress, you just keep loosing money in the forge untill you maybe you get one eventually.

I agree with this guy, we gotta pick the right battle and it can’t be every 5 mins someone makes a new post “OMG I FARMED MOB A FOR 15 MINS AND IT ONLY DROP 1 ITEM B CHANGE DROP RATE PLZ” yes lodestones are difficult to farm but it is a rare item for a reason, secondly it’s not that expensive to buy them. I mean anyone who plays the tp properly should have no problem raising the money required for that part of legendary. Thirdly as stated it’s optional so stop being a huge cry baby everytime something doesn’t give u the item u want right away.

I farmed a long route of Elementals (Air, Earth, Fire, and Ice) in Malchor’s Leap two nights ago with quite a few Risen and Spirits thrown in. Probably over 200 unique mob spawns and I never got DR on experience or loot that I could tell. Wearing 141% MF gear plus 40% from food. Got a single Molten Lodestone for 6 hours of it. Could that just be poor luck? Yeah, of course, but I’m having a particularly hard time coming up with these Lodestones through any sort of ‘natural gameplay’ or farming.

Lucubration.8361:

I farmed a long route of Elementals (Air, Earth, Fire, and Ice) in Malchor’s Leap two nights ago with quite a few Risen and Spirits thrown in. Probably over 200 unique mob spawns and I never got DR on experience or loot that I could tell. Wearing 141% MF gear plus 40% from food. Got a single Molten Lodestone for 6 hours of it. Could that just be poor luck? Yeah, of course, but I’m having a particularly hard time coming up with these Lodestones through any sort of ‘natural gameplay’ or farming.

The thing is, if you spend that 6 hours doing dungeon with a good group, you would have a better yeild. Depend on the dungeon and how good your group is, it’s possible to get 1.2→1.6g per houw if you’re lucky with drop and salvage, but a decent group should have a guarantee minimum yield of 1g per hours. That means if you do dungeon in that 6 hours, you would at least have a guarantee of 6 lodstone, more if you’re lucky.

And I doubt “2 logdstones” was the only things you got in your 6 hours either. You probably picked up some other loots, mining the node along the way, karma …etc… in those 6 hours. It’s the same with people arguing about dungeon drop. Tunneling vision in just the logdstone drops is hardly a correct measure, you get loots from those dungeon, you got yellow for sale and salvage, your token can be used to by gears you don’t need and salvages, your reward, the EXP you gain for the next SP …etc… all of those should be counted toward your progression toward the next logdstone. Slow or fast aside, I agree that at the very least the lodstone is a trackable progression, unlike precursors.

These “farming” tunnel vision is what I believe make people more stress than feel the goal is too distance for them. I do play the game normally and collect just about everything I come across. For example I don’t know why people who farm ori/ancient nodes just run pass mithril/elder node. We have this conversastion in our mumble last night where we were just comparing our bank stock. In term of “lengendary progression”, it seems I’m the most behind since the only gift I have is Ascalonian while others already have a few, plus some other karma/recipe mats. But when we count the mats, the guys I talked to went “holy cow” when I told them I have like 300+ ecto and 200+ oricalcum ingot, a butt load of cores and other mats, not to mention my gold and karma stock. One of the guy comment that the reason I seem to be behind because I haven’t convert my crap into stuffs yet, it may be quite possible I’m actually ahead of most of them. I told them I probably wait until I have most of everything and convert in one go.

The thing is, these are what I picked up naturally. Everytime I play, I don’t make a specific mission like “I gonna go farm core today and I want to have at least 5 by the end of this gaming session”. I just play, I may run dungeon, I might farm event, or I might run around gathering node, or a combination of all depending on my mood. But everything I gain and pickup go toward my legendary progression. And I think this is how people should go about their legendary so they don’t end up getting burnt.

When you farm for lodestones you may not always get them, but at the very least you’re earning some coin while doing it (and you can buy lodestones with that money).

The precursors are just the opposite. For everytime you try to get it through the Mystic Forge you’re going to LOSE money. At least with lodestones it’s impossible to move backwards from your goal, the precursors on the other hand are just that. Constantly moving backwards.

I’m not saying the lodestone drop rates shouldn’t be changed at all. If Anet changes it you won’t hear an argument from me. I’m just saying that as grindy as they may be, they pale in comparison to the main problem.

Putrid Essences (Rare crafting mat from Risen-type mobs) are probably on the same loot-drop rate as the lodestones. It is quite simple to determine if farming 250 lodestones is even feasible using a comparison model with Orr Karma events.

I’ve farmed at least 2 hours a day for the past 14 days doing Tunnel runs and various other events in the Cursed Shore. I have a total of 38 Putrid Essences while hovering around 100% mf and killing an uncountable amount of Risen mobs. I probably had around 10 in my bank from just random drops while leveling and such. So, about 1 item dropped per hour of hard-core farming/killing mass level 83-84 risen mobs. If we were to apply this drop-rate model, it would take around 250 hours of farming gameplay to get a stack of lodestones.

I agree that the drop rates are unreasonable. I’ve been trying to put together a Corrupted weapon because I’m nowhere near saving enough for a legendary and I figured the corrupted would be a nice skin that a casual player such as myself can achieve without too much pain.

To my surprise after 5+ hours of farming I have only been able to get 2 of them. My time and effort would be much better spent farming gold and purchasing the items than actually attempting to kill the mobs that should drop these.

The best way to achieve the items you want should not always be to farm gold in the most efficient way possible and buy from TP. I find in most of the Orr events there are so many people there that I have a hard time getting credit for tagging mobs before they die and with not even an ounce of effort required in killing the mobs in these large groups I feel like I’m not really “playing” the game and instead I just need to be the most efficient at tagging mobs and knowing where to go next which is really boring for me.

Please allow me to solo the mobs that drop these and have my time spent doing that roughly equal to event farming for gold which I feel is barely even playing the game.

Grim.6415:

Please allow me to solo the mobs that drop these and have my time spent doing that roughly equal to event farming for gold which I feel is barely even playing the game.

And what will be the metric to measure this? The value of the lodgestone is determined by the market, and it’s fluctuated. How can you match something that’s dynamically change? Most people tend to forget that there is no “set value” for most items. The reason they cost 1g is due to their rarity, if it become easier to get than naturally its price will go down, maybe to the point people will complain again that it’s too cheap it’s better to farm goldto buy than actively farming it, in which by your order of progression the rate of gold farming should be toned down to match the lodstone drop rate – rinse and repeat in that circle.

This is the same of what happened to the fine craft market. In the beginning people complain how it’s so expensive to lvl and demand increasing in drop so they can be “self” sufficent or keep up with their craft, and thank the maker it didn’t happen. Look at what happen now, without any adjustment the price still tanked greatly, almost by 100%→150% for most material. It make you shudder to think where the market would be now had Anet given to the “more drop” demand.

This is why the market work, you have people who pick up the thing they don’t need and sell it, and the people who need more than what they can produce will buy from those. If you create a system with perfect equivalent then there won’t be even a market.

After reading this thread, and looking at the price of Onyx Lodestones I figured I’d give it a go. I found out where the Earth Elementals spawn (wiki is your friend) and killed them for an hour straight, with just +40MF food. I got just one after the first 20 mins, but then no more after that.

I ran CoE story for the first time two days ago, got a Charged Lodestone from a chest there with no MF at all.

I killed earth elemental in W vs W for 2 3h like 200 300 of it and no one drop -.- I finisched TA like 10 15 times and no one drop… only 2 core -.-

p.s. i m in full MF equip plus guild buff

Lodestone are impossibile to farm. Best way is farm like korean the events in Cursed Shore and buy it from LT.

….

Yeah its such a waste of time. You can’t get this reliably. Its too long and too grindy.

I disagree. Lodestones should be rare. They are used to build the rarest items in the game. They are already less then 1g each, you can get enough gold to purchase all you need for the rare exotics in a week. You can get the gold you need to purchase all you need for a legendary in a month.

If they were any less rare everyone and their little sister would have a legendary and the best skins.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

You can get the gold you need to purchase all you need for a legendary in a month. the best skins.

Let’s do some math here.

Assumptions:
Purchase the pre-cursor, lets use dusk, which is 350g atm IIRC
Average farmer gains about 3g an hour minus lucky drops
Farmer farms 25% of the required 400 level crafting items, purchasing the other 75%
Farmer farms all mats needed for gift of metal

Estimated cost of all mats: 350g for dusk, 100g for Icy Stones, 20g for both gift recipies, 95g for onyx lodestones, 50g for 400 level crafting items (kittenumption here but follow along) and of course 375 globs of ectoplasm so another 50g. Total cost of Twilight gold wise is…665g.

Ok now adjust for Gold Per Hour your farming time is about 220 hours to “buy” twilight….yup…doable in a month if you have nothing else to do…or if you have help or there is always getting lucky with Dusk or other drops. Either way…more than likely to take longer than a month? Also dont forget other non-purchasable requirements like WvW, dungeons and karma.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

If they were any less rare everyone and their little sister would have a legendary and the best skins.

Based off my experience trying to farm Onyx Lodestones, running at 120% MF btw, even if you doubled the drop rates it would take me 300 hours to get 100 Onyx Lodestones since it took me 6 hours to get 1. Bad luck I know but still even if you averaged 2 an hour, thats 50 hours to get em…which mean you should just buy em.

Anyways I think its safe to say that it takes way longer than a month to get a legendary and that we are in no danger of “everyone and their little sister” having one in the near…or distant future.

Arciel:

Here’s the problem with the way it works right now. Not only do I not want to have to be forced to farm events to be efficient at making gold because that’s the only way to reasonably get that many lodestones (because you can’t farm them within reason) but what will happen when the majority of players figure out that the best way to get what you want is to farm events to make gold and then buy from the TP?

Once everyone figures out that gold farming is the smartest way to get what you want and everyone is doing that then there will be less people farming and putting the actual lodestones on the market. The price will increase as the gold farmers compete for dwindling stock (from the players who just happen upon the occasional lodestone through normal play and put on TP) and more people will be swarming these events until the market adjusts to a point where the lodestones cost much more where it’s actually about the same time investment to farm gold as it is to farm the mats. Until that point has been reached it bothers me that I need to do this brainless gold farming to get the lodestones I want unless i want to spend 5 times as much time farming them myself.

I farmed half my onyx lodestones at the melandru temple event in CS. Took about 2 weeks of consistent farming. The other 50 I bought cores and turned them into lodestones with the money i made farming the first 50.

@Grim: what you say is based on a very limited point of view and set of assumption and thus not correct. You’re assuming “everyone” who pick up/farm lodgestone need it like yourself: this is obviously not the case, since if it true you wouldn’t see any on the market to begin with. You are farming to use, and statiscally people like you are in much smaller number comparing to the people farming to sell. Which lead to this self-control circle:

- If a lot of people want to use it, or decide to give up farming for themselves and just buy it. This will dry the market and drive the price up. When people see the profit margin become lager, more will go out and farm it (to sell, not to use), when enough people doing it, you will see the price go down again. Eventually the price will go down enough that people like yourself again decide it’s better to get gold and buy instead of farm, and the cycle continues. For the most part, the market will float around a stability point unless someone or something cause a shock.

You are assuming everyone is playing the game and thinking the same way you do, trust me not every do. In this case, not everyone out there farming for lodgestone is because they want to use it. Some will farm for Core, and use their skillpoint to make stone, resell to make a profit (I have quite a few guild mate doing this). So basically, supply-demand.

I’m trying to get charged lodestones for my level 80 armor (not legendary). Spent an hour and a half killing sparks in Malchor’s and got not a single drop. Given that the sparks are only up when other events have been completed, I feel this is too low a drop rate.

And these are for level 80 armor. These are not for legendary weapons. Rare is one thing, impossible is another.

@ Arciel

You mention that the market will float around the stability point unless something causes a shock and I would be fine if it was around the stability point because then I could chose my method of gaining the lodestone, but right now it is about 5 times more effective to gold farm than corrupted lodestone farm so I can either choose to be an idiot because I enjoy actually playing the game by solo farming, or I can play “smart” and mindlessly grind events an cursed shore for gold and buy them off the TP much much easier.

That’s a lousy choice.

Nope, the tone of your argument is the same as the one we heard one month ago about fine crafting material. And like I said, look at where the market is now. Use all the “sentimental provoke” words all you like, but the market run on logic, not sentiment.

Fun, smart, mindlessly or w/e, that’s your choice. I already wrote a bigger post above explaining the approach to getting something. It’s your choice to do thing a certain way and get burnt by it.

FYI I need 100 charged stone for my Legendary, and right now I have 2 cores. You think you have it hard with Onyx? At least TA is easy to run, CoE is a mean dungeon. But like I said, I never make a mission to “get 10 core” per day when I play. It’s a long road and everything I do direct or indirectly will go toward it that I believe when the time come, I will have or be ableto procure 100 stones. (How do you think I have 300+ ecto right now?)

those cores and lodestones are too rare drop to even bother farming them. in one hour of DE farming in cursed shore anyone can make a minimum of 2 gold with mf>100 gear.

How do you guys get so much gold? :| I only get around 50s more or less per hour. Or do you sell all stuff you get, ori ores, ancient wood, ectos to get to 2g/hour? o.o

I want to farm Onyx Lodestone.

I finisched the Melandru event in CS but no one of 50 60 ppl there droped a lodestone on the final chest. I killed 1 2 h elemental there but 0 drop…..

Where i can farm it better? In LT buying gold from Arena or GS -.-

Personally, I’m selling all ectoplasms now with the hopes that when I do finally need the 250 for the legendary that the price is lower than when I sold them. It’s a gamble, but it’s better to make your money work for you.

Of course you can get a Legendary in one month if you a guild to support you or you do nothing else in life but sleep and play GW2.

A Legendary is suppose to take way more time. Playing a lot, it should take 6 months to even maybe 1 year, for most of us regular players.

In that time, you’ll have plenty of lodestones or maybe not, but the rest you just buy them. Let’s say by the time I get my precursor and I’m ready to craft my legendary I have 10 lodestones from my casual farming. Well, I will have to buy the other 90, because farming them would be insane. It’s way more cost/effective to farm gold, then buy what you need. Also you’ll find during your play time, other lodestones that you can sell to buy more of the type you need.

Just chill and try to enjoy your ride. Otherwise you’ll get very frustrated, because this is not intended to be farmed/pushed like this. These few players that are doing it used exploits some of them and all of them used whole guilds to back them up.

Try to have fun, this is a loooong run effort that sums all of your adventures in Tyria. Otherwise you’ll burn out and rage quit.

I will bet you that given the state of the game, it will take the “regular player” way more than 6 months to a year to get the legendary.

Then again define “regular”.

You can buy them on the TP, theres a much better “drop rate” there :P

Maxxian.3980:

I will bet you that given the state of the game, it will take the “regular player” way more than 6 months to a year to get the legendary.

Then again define “regular”.

Good, they’re supposed to be rare!

Most people want things made easy. If you had all the best gear why would you continue playing? I remember in eq1 it took me a month to get 4 shards from a random zone drop and 2 years to get my epic weapon. Never was there an option to buy it lol. Quit crying and be happy all the mobs you kill have other drops to vendor ect and hit the trading post

This is still a big issue for most lodestones.

250 onyx lodestones right now (needed for Twilight) costs 530g. Farming them is not really an option.
It’s nice that the pre-cursors are getting changed, but lodestones need some love too.

I agree that lodestone rarity is a problem however the legendary gifts only require 100, not 250.

so after 30 TA runs you have:
1 lodestone
7 cores= 3,5 lodestones
15g(50s each run)= 10 lodestones
1800 badges= you can buy 10 exotics from vendor, that you can put in to the mystic forge and get 2,5 exotic for sale on(let say 1,5g each)= 2,5 lodestones
total: 17 lodestones
not bad, so what is your problem??

FireSnake.7536:

so after 30 TA runs you have:
1 lodestone
7 cores= 3,5 lodestones
15g(50s each run)= 10 lodestones
1800 badges= you can buy 10 exotics from vendor, that you can put in to the mystic forge and get 2,5 exotic for sale on(let say 1,5g each)= 2,5 lodestones
total: 17 lodestones
not bad, so what is your problem??

30 TA runs is like what, 25-30 hours? Spend that time farming lodestone on world mobs and you will be around 25-30 lodestones instead

I don’t get it really. I know this isn’t Guild Wars 1, but at least in Guild Wars 1 you could farm for some of coolest skins and best stats in the game… that never grew old. This game, you are farming 2-3 lame areas for WEEKS on end to get one item. That’s not fun.

I understand “Legendary” is supposed to be the end all be all —- ooooohhh, watch me salivate over it —- ooooohhhh watch me swing it —- yada yada, meh. But seriously, 90% of the player base is going to say “No thanks.” There’s no fun it.

Not to mention, we are talking about ONE legendary. Every player in the game has TWO hands. The guys running off and getting greatswords, staves, and bows — good for you. The rest of us who like daggers, or pistols, or warhorns — we gotta farm two. No thanks.

Not to mention, some of us like playing more than ONE character. In Guild Wars, I had all the professions maxed and skills unlocked. I had fun doing that. I got my green items and my rare mini-pets… the game never got old.

THIS IS GOING TO GET OLD QUICK. It’s 10 times the farm-fest of Guild Wars.

Now, I know what you’re all saying – “No one is forcing you to get a Legendary Weapon… (in my best sarcastic tone).” You’re right, no one is. But I could reach Guild Wars end game content, max my toons, and enjoy all the updates and holiday events without resorting to the JOKE of 250 hours of farming in the same place every night. I could finish my Sorrow’s Furnace collection with my friends and have fun doing it. I could play with my builds and 1-man or 2-man Sorrow’s Furnance.

I can’t do squat here but mop up Plinx’s oil spills, night after night after night after night after night after night.

This model WON’T work in the long haul.

30 minutes for TA 1 path run, not a hour
srsly its not Arah, you don’t need too much time for this and you can pass a huge amount of mobs in good party

Kyrel.8942:

You can turn the cores you find into lodestones in the mystic forge. 2 cores + 1 Crystalline Dust + 1 Ellonian Wine + 1 Crystal = 1 Lodestone.

last time I checked there were 38 Ellonian Wines on TP, expect the price of those to rocket soon.

Bartas.4908:

Kyrel.8942:

You can turn the cores you find into lodestones in the mystic forge. 2 cores + 1 Crystalline Dust + 1 Ellonian Wine + 1 Crystal = 1 Lodestone.

last time I checked there were 38 Ellonian Wines on TP, expect the price of those to rocket soon.

you can buy them off Miyani for 25s60c