Guild Wars 2

I find the crafting in this game to be highly convoluted and un-intuitive.

Let me attempt to explain… Say I need to level my tailoring through the “Linen phase”. I need to craft bolts of linen and leather squares in advance of crafting the equipment pieces. I have no idea how many equipment pieces I need to craft to reach the “Wool phase”. Refining bolts and squares only gives experience and crafting points for the first few levels of that profession, so I need to craft how many I will need in advance in order to maximize my efficiency. The problem is, I don’t know how many I need to craft.

I always end up in one of two situations:

1) I crafted too many bolts and squares, now they go to waste because they sell for much less than the pre-crafted materials price.

2) I crafted too few bolts and squares. In this situation I need to go back and craft more without gaining any experience, which basically means I could have leveled further than I am now and I will need to craft additional equipment (more wasted materials) to reach the next crafting phase.

I understand there are certain websites available to help maximise your efficiency, but for me alt-tabbing between the game and a website every minute or so really gets on my nerves.

What am I doing wrong? I would be very grateful for any advice.

Craft as many as you can. Save the rest. If you want to be prudent about your costs (if you’re buying and not using reserves) use a website like gw2crafts.

Crafting from 1 to 400 is expensive it always has been 8-25g each depending on what one.

I wouldn’t worry about making too many bolts. They tend to sell for more than their scrap counterparts (other than silk afaik). Bolt it all, sell the excess, get a few more copper back.

There are also lesser known things you can craft in addition to just armor. Runes are some times the best way to go if you’re trying to do it for the least cost. With something like artificing making potions is often less expensive and more rewarding Vs. making weapons. I would highly suggest you use a guide like gw2crafts which updates based on current tp prices.

Crafting is not intuitive at all. Because most of it is based around the discovery system, you could easily craft stacks of random pieces before you figure out what will actually help you level.

In addition to that, I’ve explained crafting to several people who didn’t understand what the discovery panel was. One of them thought it was another mystic forge, which is a relatively reasonable conclusion, considering there’s no explanation in-game as to how it works.

VidGhost.3215:

Crafting from 1 to 400 is expensive it always has been 8-25g each depending on what one.

That’s a lie. It hasn’t always been 8-25g.

Currently it’s like 2-14g

Esplen.3940:

VidGhost.3215:

Crafting from 1 to 400 is expensive it always has been 8-25g each depending on what one.

That’s a lie. It hasn’t always been 8-25g.

Exactly! Some times is almost free!!

As a example, my first char just started to work on his Jewelery craft when he reach lvl 80!
At that time , i lvled it from 0 to 400 with out spending nothing in mats, because he have gathering lots and lots of it!!!

So just depend of your patience, or if you wanna use all the Craft exp to also lvl the char some lvl’s!

You can try this crafting guide. It makes it fast and (relatively) cheap.

http://www.gw2crafts.net/

As for alt tabbing, maybe write it down or save it on your iPhone or iPad, or something equivalent if you have one to refer to.

If you think the crafting with Linen is confusing, go put on a Chef hat.

There IS a specific feel for how much refined materials you will need but the amount of XP you get for refining is quite small compared to discovery, so just try not to over refine and then go back and refine what you need as you advance in the tier….If you refine some without getting XP it’s not that big a loss.