Guild Wars 2

Oh, one more question:

Other than your current streak without a Dusk, does your data seem pretty consistent across the whole timeline of your sample?

I’ve only thrown 124 rares into the forge since I’m not made of money and am pretty cautious about gambling. I love the data you’ve gathered Spooky, makes me think twice about getting my legendary in the near future :p

Well, considering naegling and many other weapons have their own recipes, i wont be surprised if we find out that theres already precursors recipes out there while we’re here asking Anet to add one, lol.

Icarium.5863:

Other than your current streak without a Dusk, does your data seem pretty consistent across the whole timeline of your sample?

As far as getting the exotics, it’s pretty consistent. I might go ~15 combines with no exotics, but it always evens out with a few exotics in a row shortly after. Also 2 of my dusks were found within ~250-300 combines from one another, got lucky there.

Thanks! Last question, I promise:

Did you use all of the same rare greatswords, i.e. Carrion Krait Slayer? Or did you mix and match as much as possible? Obviously when you use rares that come out of the forge they’ll mostly be different ones, but what did you use to start off?

Icarium.5863:

Did you use all of the same rare greatswords, i.e. Carrion Krait Slayer? Or did you mix and match as much as possible? Obviously when you use rares that come out of the forge they’ll mostly be different ones, but what did you use to start off?

Mixing and matching whatever was cheapest to craft at the time. For a while I was just combining 4 of the same weapons over and over, then tried to always include at least 1 or 2 different weapons in the combine. But it didn’t seem to make a difference either way.

140 rares in, mixture of stave and scepter. No precursor found and 2 or 3 named exotics received.

I’ve done at least 100 lvl 80 rare crafts and about 180-200 exotic crafts (around 550-600 lvl 70-80 exotic weapons total), almost always using 3 random weapons + a mystic forge stone. I’ve gotten a tremendous variety of weapons, named and generic, but never a precursor.

LinseyMurdock already confirmed theres no fixed reciped for it. Only way to get it is luck or trading post.

Malediktus.9250:

LinseyMurdock already confirmed theres no fixed reciped for it. Only way to get it is luck or trading post.

Yes, were all aware of that. The reason people are upset is…What is legendary about a guy who throws 4GS into the forge gets a precursor first try, meanwhile another player puts in 2000 & has nothing to show for it?

Its a terrible design. The only end-game atm is legendary creation & its exclusive to lottery winners. Great concept.

It was a response to Belmont who still believes their might be a recipe for it.

This is by far the dumbest part of the legendary process.

I’ve been trucking along trying to complete all facets of the legendary (collecting T6 mats, karma, gold, tokens, badges of honor, lodestones, etc) but the worst part is trying to get the precursor. I refuse to spend 300+ gold on the precursor, so like everyone else, i’m playing the Mystic forge lotto. Every time i dump 50-100+ rare GS into the forge and walk away with…….. 1 rare GS let alone a garbage exotic, i get an urge to quit this game.

So close to just blowing all my gold in 1 attempt so that i can just delete my character after its inevitable failure.

Malediktus.9250:

It was a response to Belmont who still believes their might be a recipe for it.

Because there should be a set recipe since, like forever? The reason why I feel that way has been expressed countless times. I’m still having a blast and one day I’ll have an Eternity. That day is nowhere near and I’m fine with that.

If in the end I’ll have to buy the precursors from TP, so be it. But I still won’t feel comfortable giving that sum of money to someone who is Blessed by Fate.

17 Rare Staff —→ 1 The Legend Precursor Staff
55 Rare GreatSwords (CKS)-—> 1 Dawn ( I wanted Dusk though…)
38 Rare Scepters —→ 0 Precursor

I’m working on getting my Scepter precursor now so will continue to throw more into the MF.

i got my Dusk on first try.. just thought id might be lucky and get an exotic and make a gold or two, but ye;

rares – 4
precursor – 1

Honestly, if linsey does decide to make changes on the acquisition for the pre-cursors, it likely won’t be until after the the halloween event is over.

For now, it’s better to just play the game instead of jumping on the forums and fighting among each other, well, at leas that’s what i’m doing =P

I was curious; anyone have a Dusk that is not soulbound? Thanks!

I find it funny how anet prides themselves with upholding the saying “No grinding”.

Don’t get me wrong, I love this game, it’s gone beyond what they promised and I’m satisfied…. except for legendary creation. Whats more grindy then killing 50+ earth elementals for 1 onyx lodestone, and spending all my time hoping I get rare loot in Orr before my drop rate falls, only to be hit with a big middle finger from the mystic forge. Yes, there are a lot of people willing to work at it, many harder than me, and a legendary weapon should be legendary. But there has to be a way to make it fun AND fair.

3-4 weeks grinding and farming mats. Well over 500 level 80 rares in, and about 50 exotics. 70 g when i started 12 g now, no mats. No precursor of any kind. 3-4 weeks and I’m worse off now using the pathetic Mystic Forge than when I started.
Thank god it’s free to play because you won’t get another dime from me. Your “fun” Mystic Forge will make me and others uninstall.

And prices are still going up… 300g + for several

Snow.5269:

Malediktus.9250:

LinseyMurdock already confirmed theres no fixed reciped for it. Only way to get it is luck or trading post.

Yes, were all aware of that. The reason people are upset is…What is legendary about a guy who throws 4GS into the forge gets a precursor first try, meanwhile another player puts in 2000 & has nothing to show for it?

Its a terrible design. The only end-game atm is legendary creation & its exclusive to lottery winners. Great concept.

Perfect.

Arena needs to change it and made it skill based no lucky based.
An idea can be that for a weapons need 500 badge from all istance and the dungeon master title.

why not?

Two weeks ago I got a dusk with using about 40 rares into the mystic forge. Today I decided to sell it for 360 g which left me with 320g. I tried over 200 exotics and did not receive another dusk/dawn. 320g down the drain. Well played arena net, well played.

It’s normal like in every other MMO that you need luck for the best Stuff. Be it being dropped or in this case crafted..

14 attempts with random combinations of Rares = 2 exotics, not named.

Shakki.3219:

It’s normal like in every other MMO that you need luck for the best Stuff. Be it being dropped or in this case crafted..

Yea some luck is needed…….. but the crafting rate for a precursor is abysmal.

its about 1/8 chance to get an exotic from 4 level 80 rares (about a 80-90s investment), then from there you have about a 1/40~ish chance of getting the precursor, so your looking at around 0.3% chance. This also assumes that each exotic forged has an equal chance of being made, which i doubt so the actual odds are probably even worse.

My guess is its at around .1% or maybe worse in actuality, so your looking at ~1000ish attempts at ~80silver a pop (you will make some of the money back so it isn’t pure loss, but it WILL be a loss in the long run.)

I made some statistics and for me, it’s around 26% to get exotic with golds items. Zommoros gave me 150 exotics and no precursor in sight. I agree with the fact it’s a loss in the long run !

In this thread, someone did ~3000 conversions and got 4 Dusks and 0 Dawns (i.e. a rate of ~0.12%), with exotics coming from very close to 20% of conversions.

0.12%, srsly Anet?

namastex.8906:

Two weeks ago I got a dusk with using about 40 rares into the mystic forge. Today I decided to sell it for 360 g which left me with 320g. I tried over 200 exotics and did not receive another dusk/dawn. 320g down the drain. Well played arena net, well played.

This would be insta quit for me.

Yeah it’s brutal, not sure how long I will keep playing. I only risked it because I was far far away from making a legendary anyways, and if i made another dusk/dawn with any profit I would have been leaps ahead of where I was. When I sold it I was completely broke. Now I’m back to where I was but without a dusk haha… RNG or rigged? You would think 200 exotics would give you the sword.

The legendary run is driving away a ton of players from the game, including 3 of my friends that said they’re going to pandas since there legendaries requires both personal and group effort and not this bullkitten asian RNG thing.

I really feel little to no sympathy for those who do nothing except craft thousands of Lv80 GS, and throw them into the forge. This is, in my opinion, the absolute worst form of gambling with no thought or planning aside from “I want that dusk, I deserve this dusk for trying this many times.”

As it costs ~16s to acquire one right now, the cost to roll once is 16×4, or ~64s.
The ‘common’ result is another rare, roughly worth 16s. Thus the expected deviation is a net loss of 48s per roll for a common result, and value spikes when they are transformed to exotics. You do nothing except lose money this way.

Because I really only have my personal experience to compare to, I currently have 2 paths of crafting right now that are heavily mystic forge-based, and allow for the opportunity to roll precursors, AND generate (minor) profits. Overall, across all my systems, my net loss for a ‘common’ result is a loss of ~2-5s, and gains on the ‘exotic’ rolls are variable based on sigil/market price, but between 50s to 2g. This gradually accumulates profit on average, though good/bad luck makes this vary from batch to batch, but most importantly makes the roll for the precursor essentially free.

For those who might ask, revealing my crafting buy/sell paths is a no-win scenario. I am either:
A) Accused of manipulating the market by driving up the cost of some material i’ve allegedly stockpiled or
B) Stupidly driving up the cost of materials I need

so, no thanks. I already assume when people start moving away from trying to stick as many krait slayers into the forge as possible, the cost of other, currently more affordable items will rise and nullify the viability of what I do. When this happens, i’d like to think that i’ll acknowledge that this is no longer worthwhile, and move onto a different market segment.

I’m trying to help you, guy who threw 1000 GS into the forge, I really am.

Consider this my last plea to the people making videos: stop trying to brute force the precursor in this way (Alternatively, accept the results from doing this as your own personal responsibility). The way the odds are rigged right now, it is mathematically improbable to EVER come out ahead, and then we all get to see you complain in this thread. Very few will get lucky, and come out ahead. You are all right. In the way that most people are trying right now, it IS a stacked deck, it REALLY is. But why don’t you change?!

Instead of begging ANet to change their odds to make whatever it is you’re doing the ‘right’ way, try to find another way. You might be pleased with what you find.

I am starting to wonder if DR does affect the mystic forge. I know the mods said you cannot receive DR from mystic forge, but what if you got DR prior to using the mystic forge, which in my case is what happened.

I had just finished farming cursed shore events for karma and hit DR, and realized my dusk sold. I than ran to Lions Arch to perform my own exotic experiments. I did notice that I received a ton of exotics in a row, such as, the cleric’s pearl great sword, which I thought was unusual. I would say I went a stretch of getting 6 of those in a row.

LFk your post is a bit contradictive. You want people to find a way to roll for precursors while making average profit at the same time. But you refuse to give away your own method because it would drive up the prices and thus making your method invalid.

This means that no matter what, your method cannot work for the masses but only for a few individuals. While I’m glad you found yourself such an effective method but it doesn’t really solve the larger issue. Someone like myself would be more interested in a scenario where players in general could have a more stable (even if still expensive) way of crafting a precursor.

In the end, the only way to craft a precursor is still only through the tiny chances of the mystic forge or even much tinier chances of world drops. Someone has to do it. Someone has to throw in those blades into the Mystic Forge untill they drop. Someone will have to get extremely lucky while most others will have to go on empty handed. There’s no win win scenario here.

For all intents and purposes, gaining a precursor is no longer a matter of PVE but economy based PVP. For everyone who’s currently winning like yourself a lot of others need to be loosing. The problem is, this isn’t the type of game everyone wants to be playing. Not everyone wants to play the TP. Personally I wanted to get a legendary, not through farming but through regular play that would eventually allow me to afford getting one. The state of the precursors however is making it a huge problem for me to do so.

I still intend to get one of course, but I definitely definitely think Anet needs to look at it’s current method of obtaining.

You got a Dusk for 40 rares into MF. You sell it for a good price and then you go ahead and basically throw all that money away ? You got amazingly lucky once, and you tried to get lucky again ? I’m actually proper shocked how stupid that was.

Also guy who got Dusk on his 1st try with 4 rares. Some guys spend 6 weeks and 4594g on that kitten, some get it for 64 silver. <—- that is exactly the reason why legendaries aren’t really legendary, IMO, flopping a Dusk outa forge is the same as insta Twilight.

Yeah I know it was stupid, but all in all, it was pointless for me to have a dusk at this point in time anyways. And with all that money, and no dusk, it would be pointless to have all that money, get my drift?

If I really want to make a legendary, it will come, I’m not forcing it, but that doesn’t mean I will force myself to stick around and wait for it to happen either. I was planning on playing a long long time, was looking into buying new content if it appeared.. but now.. with first hand witness to how hard it is to recreate a specific weapon.. I am starting to wonder if it will be worth the time/effort.

Well either keep Dusk or keep the 320g – for that money you can buy nearly all mats for crafted gifts, get runestones and gift of fortune :/

I don’t disagree with the fact that my method cannot work for all. You’re right. It can’t.

But I disagree with the fact that my post contradicts itself.
I’m not trying to argue that people should find my current method and use it.
I’m arguing that there is always ANOTHER way.

What people are looking for is one recipe to just use, and use forever. In a relatively free market, this just doesn’t hold up.

What I suggest is for people to just take a step back and look at their margins. Look at the value of what you throw in, the expected value of your most common result, the odds of your luck rolls, and what the luck rolls produce.

gw2db and gw2spidy are excellent resources to find recipes as well as the cost of making them. 30 minutes of research might save you more than you think. It doesn’t frustrate you when people bemoan about how bad a method is, make a video about it, then turn around and try the exact same thing again?

I realize what I said in my previous post can’t help everyone. The reality is exactly as you said, Archer: the market can’t let everyone win. You are 100% right. The current state of the market creates winners and losers. Is that bad, though?

When the current method becomes less efficient, move and hunt for a new one. If you find a good way before others do, you get to utilize it until the market forces move to cover up for the inefficiency. I don’t know. Do i sound insane for preferring it this way? Elementary school in the US taught us that everyone is a winner, but I find that not only is this not true, I don’t want this to be true.

At the end of a PvP match, if I win I want to win, and if i lose I want to win next time. I don’t want a big message saying congrats, you’re both winners for playing. I don’t want IoJ vs. ET vs. CD (the current WvW on my server) to end in a 3 way tie, with pats on the back for all for a great effort.

In the same vein, I don’t want legendaries to just be another item that everyone gets to have if they so choose. That is the quintessential “everyone is a winner!”

At any rate, a +1 to you for the response, Archer, which I think was well thought out. As I touched on above, there are a number of points that I cannot disagree with, and to wrap up, that “not everyone wants to play the TP”. Well. Then you lose

I did around 200 rare gs today , and got around 20 exotics that i sold.. and after my last try of 44 rares i got 5 exo back , wich i put in the mf and wiolaaaaah a DUSK came out!

This is my second Precoursor , my first one was a spark i got from 3 axes and one mystic forge stone=)

You know what upsets me about all this:

You get your account hacked, your pre-cursor sold for a measly 87g ..

Arena Net to prove theft of account, have the account restored, and then be told that they have no tool to get you to return your item sold by the hacker.

Seriously, has spent more 50gold trying again my The Lover and nothing …

I can not count how many tickets open to the GMS, asking for a solution and nothing ..

I’m almost a week without playing, bored with it all

Here is a story about gaining 400 gold, and losing it within 24 hrs to gambling.

Starting from the beginning, I had 125 gold, which was quite a large amount in my mind. I never thought much about getting a legendary, but after reading all these (and being envious) lucky precursor stories, I decided to try a few for the heck of it. After spending 25 gold on rare weapons, a precursor came out (Zap) which I sold for 150 gold. That got me to around 250 gold, which was an amazing feeling.

After a few hours, seeing such a large amount of gold, I spend 50 gold trying to get more precursors, to no avail. Still with a good amount, I spend another 75 gold, and near the end, I hit the jackpot. The legend, a staff worth 300 gold was in my hands. With a loss of 125g, I still managed to have a net gain of 150g. That was 400 gold in my hands, a colossal amount. I was ecstatic, I celebrated by buying 75 gold worth of rares and threw them in the forge.

Only after 25 of that gold, The Lover appeared, a shortbow worth 250 gold. I was now over halfway to the 1000 gold mark. This was an extreme amount of gold, around 550. With that I bought a few insignificant things, bringing me to around 500. Forward a few hours, I was bored and decided to see what other precursors would drop for me. 500 gold dropped to 400 with nothing. 400 dropped to 300, still nothing. I started to have the gambler’s fallacy, surely a precursor was due? 300 dropped to 200, I was getting very worried. Once I saw that 200 drop to 125, I pondered if I should just ignore all this precursor stuff. Guess I should have listened to myself, 125 dropped to 25, and finally to 0.

There was a brief moment of silence for myself, and with that I shook my head and closed the game client, for good.

Now for trivia/statistics:

-The gold items I used were all random 74-80 rares, I bought the cheapest prices listed.
-I sold all exotics that came out of the forge worth over 1 gold
-All exotics under 1 gold were put in the forge again with a forge stone
-Around 6000 gold items were used
-All 3 precursors came from four rares
-There are many unique skinned exotics
-I got around 170 exotic weapons total from 6k rares
-The most expensive non-precursor for me was the charrzooka
-Non-unique exotics popped out more frequently than unique named
-74 rares seemed to have the same outcome as 80 rares.
-I lost an estimated 200g due to trading post fees
So in closing, quit while you are ahead if you get lucky. Don’t lose everything like me to the mystic forge.

@LFk

You’re right. Obviously when it comes to PvP you can’t simply have all ties or have everyone be the winner. But it was Anet’s own philosophy to separate PvE and PvP where PvE would be focused on cooperation and PvP would be focused on competitiveness.

In my opinion the legendaries definitely fall under PvE so it’s a bit disheartening to see it being gated by the economic competitiveness. Obviously whoever is good at making money through trading should be rewarded and they are since they can forge a legendary a lot faster as well as afford anything else they want.

Problem is not everyone is interested in the TP. Some people just want to play and farm out the mats over time. The thing with precursors though is that they can’t really be farmed out. Considering how extremely rare they are, they seem to be almost impossible to obtain by anyone who doesn’t engage in and is extremely successful at TP play.

Most people probably wouldn’t mind if they needed high skill in combat or even jumping puzzles in order to obtain a legendary but aren’t too crazy about the idea of playing a stock broker.

I guess if competitiveness and being among the best should be a requirement for a legendary then I’d preffer it if they were given as rewards to top ranked sPvP players.

Aphix.9846:

You got a Dusk for 40 rares into MF. You sell it for a good price and then you go ahead and basically throw all that money away ? You got amazingly lucky once, and you tried to get lucky again ? I’m actually proper shocked how stupid that was.

Also guy who got Dusk on his 1st try with 4 rares. Some guys spend 6 weeks and 4594g on that kitten, some get it for 64 silver. <—- that is exactly the reason why legendaries aren’t really legendary, IMO, flopping a Dusk outa forge is the same as insta Twilight.

All I have to say is anyone that is willing to waste over 4.5k gold trying to get it is far from the brightest bulb. That would be enough to buy every precursor 2-3 times, if not more.

My complete guild has like 50 members we are all after the legendarys 20k+h played no pre/exo tons of gold spend.
Today we invited a new Member he has 190h played and allready found 3 pre exos (sounds fair to me) .
GW2 is nothing more than a good looking RNG Grinder

Came back on last night to try again with the last 12 or so gold i had, bought 80 or so rares, random weapon types. left with 1 rare weapon. I’m with spiria. Done with this game.

I love the game… extremely disapprove of Anet’s view on gambling as necessary. You gave us Mystic Clovers are the RNG mystic forge ‘rage’ item…. why make the precursor the “I quit” part? From what I see most math points to dusk/dawn having a .1% chance from 80 rares. (Exotics unknown but, we presume not much higher). Now personally- I haven’t thrown in as much as some others have, as I really dislike gambling and that is what this feels like. I’ve placed roughly 56 rares and 8 exotics into the forge and gotten nothing. I can farm, grind, and do just as much as anyone else but, to sit and tell me that I have nearly impossible odds of getting what I want even with as much effort as I’ve put in makes me not enjoy the game.

Why not give us an actual recipe to have an assured result?! You don’t even have to tell us what it is- just tell us it exist and we’ll find it on our own.

You people are all ridiculous. What, exactly, is legendary about an item you can obtain within a month or two of playing time? Why should luck not be involved as a significant factor? If you could toss 500g worth of crap into a magic box and statistically be guaranteed a precursor .. so what? You might as well put the precursors on a vendor for 500g.

The entitlement (and lack of perspective) is remarkable. Never mind the absurdity of tossing hundreds of gold in the mechanism designed to dispose of it and cry foul when it does just that.

Everyone should be issued Twilight at character creation so these poor souls can be put out of their misery.

cryptomega.3745:

You people are all ridiculous. What, exactly, is legendary about an item you can obtain within a month or two of playing time? Why should luck not be involved as a significant factor? If you could toss 500g worth of crap into a magic box and statistically be guaranteed a precursor .. so what? You might as well put the precursors on a vendor for 500g.

The entitlement (and lack of perspective) is remarkable. Never mind the absurdity of tossing hundreds of gold in the mechanism designed to dispose of it and cry foul when it does just that.

Everyone should be issued Twilight at character creation so these poor souls can be put out of their misery.

U FAIL
Nobody wants the legendary “easy or fast” but it should not be a lottery.
Like i said before

My Guild
50 members 20k+h played 0 preExo
Latest member 190h played 3 preExo
:)

I think it’s absolutely okay that Luck is involved. You don’t have to gamble. There are people who actually like it , if you don’t go make some money and buy it in the TP then.

Prob solved.

You can’t really compare a legendary weapon in this game to a “similar” legendary goal in another game. Why? Cause in this game a legendary is essentially a vanity item; the statistical boost in base damage the legendary gets is trivial. “similar” legendary weapons in other MMO’s often have a very strong effect.

For example, in FF11, the average completed dynamis weapon took 2 years to complete, required the cooperation of an entire dynamis linkshell (60+ people helping to complete a weapon for 1 person) to help farm the coins as well as the necessary precursor drops. Those weapons though were far, far stronger and borderline broken OP compared to the next best possible weapons. In this game though….. the legendary is essentially a fancy skin. You can’t really compare them.

That aside, i’m fine with the high gold/farming costs. I’d even be fine if you made some portions of the legendary require beating super hard dungeons or whatever. What i’m not fine with is how freaking small the random chance to get a precursor is. Every other single portion of the legendary is a slow grind; karma, gold, mats, badges, whatever. The precursor though is a total crap-shoot. You either get lucky, and make it in a few tries or you throw hundreds to thousands of weapons into the grinder and walk away empty handed. I’ve only done around 300 rare weapons atm which is a relatively small sample compared to most, but its really an unenjoyable feeling to gamble like this.