Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing this game since day 1, and before that, since the first BWE. I have 8 characters. :-/ I think I had to do this, simply because of how my brain works… or doesn’t work. I did it to determine which profession I really wanted to play, just by exploring them all. And I have 5 of them up near to Orr, around level 65. Every one of them has 2 crafting disciplines, around level 300. So I’m nearing the final stages. I think. I am not sure. It seems there is one more tier of gear, but still 2 more after that—rare and exotic. I don’t know how that works, because I’ve never gotten that far.

But all I can say is that I would have 8 80s already, if it weren’t for crafting. I would say about 40% of my time has been devoted to leveling, and 60% gathering materials. That’s just a guess, really. But I do know that the majority of my time has been spent gathering fine ingredients, and it’s about as fun as biting my fingernails down to the bone, and then dipping my fingertips into lemon juice. What I’m trying to figure out is… why is ANET so determined to slow our progress down? You can buy your gear, get it from dungeons, or even drops, right? So why the adamant determination to make this so unpleasant? It’s not as though the gear looks amazing. Well, I do like the rare light armor set (not so much the exotic). The leather armor doesn’t look that great. So what’s the deal, here? It’s not about keeping us from looking so good, and gear can be gotten many ways. What’s the point?

Who knows … Pre-80 the crafting has one set of problems, at 80 another (though partially shares some). A lot of functionally desirable things are not even craftable in the first place (not even mentioning possible upgrades).

Slowing down ? Not sure. Don’t really recall that happening to me, but people have to get rid of the concept of “craft useful stuff for yourself” – plastered all over the web everywhere, starting with ANet’s marketing department. I have 400 in tailorer/artificier, a friend in weapon/armor. We both deliberately found things that could be sold (broker or npc) for rough value of materials bought from TB. Sometimes for small gain, sometimes for small loss (think: upgrades, potions, crystals, rares+). There were occasional choke points, but nothing really bad.

They could have made proper drops and ratios, properly implemented decay (seriously, who makes non-geargrind game without one …), made pve an economical backbone of wvwvw. All part of the game complementing each other, without forcing to cross-participate. Instead we got gems, omnipresent tokens, dungeon grind, undestructible equipment. All the junk from typical geargrinder rammed down into not really fitting design.

To answer the question in your subject line: in my opinion, yes, crafting is a waste of time in this game, AND a money sink too

Maxed Arti WS Tailor and JC and yes it’s a waste of time. With the very very low amount of stuff you can craft, the market is floded by crafted stuff with low value, you can barely make any profit out of anything especially when considering how much you need for a legendary.

Of course you can craft yourself some stuff, but really youcan buy it for same price or cheaper usually.

Oh yeah talking about legendary weapons, well you do need disciplines for the gifts.

I think you are all forgetting that it gives you a nice chunk of exp. Crafting while levelling is an incredible boost for exp and I found it nice that my Engineer has full armor sets with my preferred stat layout for the next 30 levels.

As a get rich quick scheme, crafting is not viable. I think the intention in this game is for additional progression while levelling, and at 80/400 you can make your own first set of exotics yourself. It’s worked lovely for me in that regard, as I made my first exotic set through crafting.

I never expected to make money from it. From all the research I did about Guild Wars 2 before launch, I was under the impression that there were several ways put in place to get your endgame gear: Dungeons, paying for it (with gold, not real money) from the cultural armor and weapon vendors, or crafting. This was practically shouted from every corner, before launch. That’s all I ever heard about.

Now set aside all this money-making stuff for a second… if my choices are dungeons, paying gold, or making it myself, clearly I would rather make it myself, just because, hey, why else have crafting in the game, at all?

BUT…

As it stands now, just getting the mats to level the stupid crafting disciplines has basically sucked the fun right out of the game for me. I am about to walk away from Guild Wars 2, simply because I am sick to death of killing the same garbage over and over again, for hours and hours and hours, putting up with bots in the same area, no matter where I go, and putting up with the barely existing drop rate. It has been this way every 15 levels, for every character. Yet ANET seems determined to slow progress down, for whatever reason. And here I was thinking GW2 was different from all the other MMOs that did this. At least those other MMOs have a reason to do this: it’s called monthly subscriptions, and keeping the players paying for as long as possible. So… what excuse does ANET have?

And as for the XP? I can do something more fun than crafting for that, such as… WvW, or complete another map—even a low-level map. Why punish myself with this? What is the freaking point of crafting?

It’s not viable to level crafting as you adventure; you’ll outlevel any profession you try to keep at your same level, if you do hearts and DE’s as you go. It’s simply impossible to collect all the raw materials you need, given the absurdly low drop rates for what you need, in the time you would spend in the areas for those levels.

There’s no doubt you can collect the stuff you need, but it will take far more time than it takes to adventure through the content. In other words, you’ll be farming low level content at a higher level, in some cases, at between 10 and 30 levels higher. In particular for leather and cloth.

It’s not viable to make money. There are thousands of every crafted weapon, armor, and jewelry on the market, and this shows no sign of changing. Given the game is now over a month old, there’s no reason to expect this situation will change any time soon.

You’re far better off selling raws such as logs, ore, jewels, scraps, squares, creature-bits, than using them yourself. You will have nothing but money in a completely broken economy and able to purchase anything you want at cost. (even rares/exotics/ecto’s, now)

There is no upside to crafting, and no downside to not crafting. Working as intended, apparently.

Everyone seems hung up on the money-making thing. That was never even something I was concerned about. I make money selling trash, and doing events. And if anyone ever expected to make money from crafting, the only way to do that is with things that get depleted. i.e., food and potions. Am I wrong? Because you only hit 80 once, and once you have your 80 gear, what else could you possibly need?

@jwburks – Have you actually looked at the food prices? It’s one of the most expensive crafts to level and you lose the most amount doing it. They may get depleted, but not nearly fast enough for them to be worth anything.

No, and the reason I have not is because my Chef has been stuck at level 200 for a very long time, probably because things like chili peppers and vanilla beans are so difficult to come by. I have two bank tabs filled with cooking mats that say they can be used to discover new recipes, but I am missing exactly 1 ingredient for all of them. Just one more thing to love about crafting in this game -sarcasm-.

So making money isn’t the purpose of crafting, and it’s probably easier to just buy gear. I am still wondering what the point of it all is? I wonder if ANET even knows.

YES and yes and one more time yes

Huge waste of time. Just buy your gear off the TP. No fuss and until you get to lv 80 ecotics, VERY cheap. You can get a whole set, weapons and all, for like 50s.

Once you get to exotics, a typical set will run you 15g without weapons or trinkets. A weapon is roughly 3-4g, so a little over 20g for a full set. You can easily make this simply by selling all those crafting mats. Just make sure you notice how much they go for. If they go for 1c over vendor, sell it to the vendor.

Only two viable ones I found are jewelcraft and cooking, and that is really only for the XP gains. Cooking drops are broken in some cases, like vanilla and chili peppers. It’s just like most other MMO’s where crafting is a bit half-baked with materials being more valuable than finished products, etc etc.

Crafting is a huge waste of money but I am not sure it is a waste of time. Eventually everyone is going to want their Legendary and guess what? You gotta craft it yourself. All the gifts for the Legendary recipes are account bound which means you have to make them yourself. Usually you need at least 2 crafting types maxed for your Legendary depending on which one you are going to get.

Yes, you do out-level the materials required as you level. If you are in a hurry then just wait till you are 80. Then you will want to go back and get Explorer for your Legendaries. At which time you will complete 100% of the maps in all areas and as a result of that you will have more crafting materials.

I recomend getting a full “Masterwork” explorer set ASAP (green). I do not care what people say it DOES increase your fine crafting material drops. It may not increase every single material, but it does increase quite a few of them. Get an explorer weapon too, and 2 rings, 2 accessories, and an amulet. Also you can add more Magic Find to these items as well using their upgrade slots. I never had more than 50 silver at any time as a crafter until I had my explorer set.

This is the only game that has made me quit crafting. I refuse to pay the insane prices on the trade post and I don’t have 8 hours a day to farm for crafting items.

I am a 400 Jewelcrafter. I didn’t find out until I maxed it that the amulets I wanted aren’t available in rare or exotic, only in green (Rabid stats, thanks Anet). I offered to craft any jewels for my guildies if they supplied the mats. Surprise it’s cheaper to TP a finished product then it is to buy the mats.

Crafting is worthless.

Crafting is not well designed in this game atm it is NOT WORTH touching.

There’s essentially no profit to it. Right now it serves as a gold-sink and another gating mechanism for Legendary Weapons – a means of making it take longer to get them while making them more expensive. -IF- you get your Crafting to 400/400 you can make your own exotic gear (unless you need a stat itemization that crafting doesn’t provide) via your own mats, but the money you think you save is laughable compared to what you would have made selling all the mats to get to 400/400.

Legendary Weapons are the only reason to pursue Crafting right now. Period. A few people claim that they’re making decent profits by mass-producing +5s profit items, but honestly, I think I’d rather just hang out in Orr or Frostgorge.

Certainly do not pick it up if you aren’t going for legendaries and just want to have the money to get your max-stat gear. You’ll have that money faster by selling everything.

I enjoy crafting and making my own stuff simply because I MADE IT. I didn’t spend money on mats since I don’t buy them I get them from doing events and gathering them myself while leveling. I don’t consider them mutually exclusive. I don’t sit down at my computer at night and go , “Ok, time to farm for 5 hours so that I can craft.” Who would think that would be fun? NO ONE. If you run around, doing your personal story missions, participating in dynamic event chains, gathering nodes you encounter along the way AND completing hearts…you should have plenty of mats to get you through. Not to mention you get experience for crafting/gathering/events anyways so why not do them all at the same time. Crafting is something I do when I just need a break from dynamic events and exploring zones.

Someone said why would ANet want to slow progression. The game has been out for 2 months…less even. Most players now have multiple 80s, have experience most of what this game offers (despite what you all are saying is “slowing them down”). Do you want to get to the point where you have the BEST gear, have 20000 gold and have explored everything? Why would you play after that? As far as I’m concerned the crafting is paced just fine.

Also, a guildy of mine currently has Armorsmithing/Weaponsmithing/Cooking and Jeweler MAXED and he buys a lot of his mats from the Trading Post. Despite this he’s making roughly 80 silver to 4 gold PER sale depending on what it is he’s making. If you do your research and follow trends you’ll determine what is worth selling and what isn’t. Also…

PRO TIP: Just because something is listed at a certain price doesn’t mean you can’t buy it for cheaper..that’s what the Ordering system is for. If there are 3000+ auctions for Copper Ore selling at 16 copper per unit, and you make an order to buy it at 8 copper per unit, someone eventually will look and see that there are 1000’s of people trying to sell at more than what they are able to sell it for and cut their price for the instant cash, even though its half what everyone else will try to get.

Now with that in mind, please for the love of all that is GAMING….STOP trying to order mats for less than what they are worth to the npc vendor. I see this constantly where someone will order a product that is worth 1 silver to an npc and they’ll ask someone to sell it for 40 copper.

Margaret.3526:

@jwburks – Have you actually looked at the food prices? It’s one of the most expensive crafts to level and you lose the most amount doing it. They may get depleted, but not nearly fast enough for them to be worth anything.

At least cooking is something that is useful to every character. Out of all the crafting things, cooking is the most expensive, but gets the best benefit from actually getting used in leveling (also, magic find food …yay )

Will you make gold off of it? Nope, but that 10% exp per kill sure adds up. You can also get a lot of easy levels on your toon from discovering the tons of recipes there are as well.

Crafting is a side activity that allows you to level from the comfort of a crafting station, and in the end, construct a legendary weapon if you desire one.

Crafting will not make you loads of cash (in most cases it will drain your cash) and it will not allow you to make your own armor sets for a significant discount compared to their trading post price.

In some niche markets you can definitely turn a small profit, but in most scenarios, this will not be the case.