Guild Wars 2

Quite a while ago I started a search for a pre-cursor. It didn’t matter to me what pre-cursor I got as long as I could sell it to get The Chosen. Anyway, I wasted about; say, 35g on the forge. No pre. I bought as much magic find as possible and farmed in Orr for hours. No pre. I attended every group event with a bonus chest that I could (obviously not while sleeping) for 2 months. No pre. It seems that the most effective way to get a pre is to just buy it on TP. Is anyone else having this experience or am I just really, really unlucky? What is the method you use to get a pre? How successful is it? How much gold have you wasted? How much have you made?

well i personally have not actively “searched” for a pre, I usually do the world events during my daily’s or if i remember them later. If you look through this forum you will see people dump hundreds of gold in to the mystic toilet and get nothing. So since there is RNG behind every way to get a pre (besides the TP) than people can’t give you numbers that are meaning full at all to you. This is because they might get lucky and only put in 8 rares and get a pre from the mystic toilet and i might take you 1000 rares.

Played on one L80 (main) for 2600+ hrs and never seen a precursor drop. I’ve used MF, no MF, bought and dumped loads into the mystic toilet, crafted my own rares and exo’s for use in the mystic toilet, as mentioned above done hundreds of group events with nothing much to show for it. I’m one of those ‘really unlucky’ people who have invested a whole lot of time and gotten little reward for it, all in the name of one particular item.

Waste of time? Possibly… but I don’t believe in giving up especially when I’ve got the rest of the legendary already sorted and ready to go.

Protip: when it comes to making a legendary weapon, get the precursor first. Don’t start wasting time and gold on materials and other related stuff for legendary assembly until you have that one (extremely difficult to acquire) precursor weapon. If you have loads of cash to waste on looking pretty then by all means, buy them off the TP.

For me took me 4 days of farming world events and dungeon, spending all the profit on rare daggers until i got mine in the forge… i got lucky i guess, but just dont give up

Don’t go about playing this game expecting a precursor. You will grow to hate this game quickly and be massively disappointed.

Precursors are more massive surprises than expectations.

Yeah, this is a hard situation. I recently got lucky with the forge, but I was in the same boat as you before that. I’m not trying to say you’re doing it wrong, but here are a couple of things I noticed that I had been doing that turned out to be not very helpful.

1) Hoping for a precursor drop in open world, dungeon chests or world boss event chests.
We’ve all heard that this can happen, but it seems to me that it’s just so rare and there’s nothing you can do to increase your chances other than keep doing these things for eternity. Worth a try I guess, but I’d not get my hopes up.

2) Playing the forge impulsively and rushing your attempts
I spent a few months failing at forge attempts after having read about someone’s good luck. I’d decide I had a good chance, I go buy 100-200g worth of rare or exotics and I’d lose them all and have zero to show for it. I’ve found that a more sustainable way is to use rares only, put in buy orders for everything and be patient. Your orders will be filled and you’ll have plenty to throw in, just not immediately. Do not throw in any exotics at all, sell them all on the TP and you’ll make a fair portion of your money back so you can buy more rares. I’ve read that for some people this process is nearly self-sustaining, that is, they can cover all their costs by selling back exotics so they’re not losing any gold. That has not been my experience, I do lose some gold, but you get many, many more attempts than when you just impulse buy a ton of stuff and throw it all in. And of course, this forge game is all about the number of attempts you make. I switched from the impulse mode to the patient mode recently and I’ve spent less money, made many more attempts, and gotten 2 precursors so far.

Good luck to you, OP.

Thank you, Facepunch. Could you please clarify ‘some’ gold? I am generally poor with only 40 gold in my coffers, by ‘some’ do you mean 10? 100? 200?

RNG is RNG. I got 2 Dragon tickets with 300 chests opened. Some get a Precursor with a few MF runs.

Your best bet is to play with the forge, but dont go in the trap by spending all your gold at the same time. This is what i did so i wouldnt feel to bad:

Save up like 8-10 gold and buy rare weapons with that. It should be around 9 tries. You might get a few exotics back wich you can sell to get like 5 gold of it back. Save up to another 10 gold and repeat.

By using a small amount of gold at the same time doesnt feel bad at all. Even if you use hundreds of gold after a while, but believe me! Spending like 10 gold several times and failing feels alot better than spending 100 gold at once.

Look at it as lottery IRL. You spend like 10$ a week/month something for years without thinking. Imagin if you spent all the money at once. It would be thousands of dollars.

Sorry for the bad explanation, i was in a hurry :s

Vol.5241:

Don’t go about playing this game expecting a precursor.

This about sums it up. You could spend 1000’s in gold trying for a precursor and get nothing or you could throw in 4 rares you saved from drops and get it on your first try.

What I did is lvl up the profession for which type of precursor you are trying to get. Craft lvl 80 rares from mats you get from drops and throw those into the forge…all the while saving gold you get for the precursor you want.

I threw 3 AC GSs and 1 TA GS into the forge and out came a Dawn. I already had a Dawn at this point as a guildie sold me one for real cheap.

After this, I’ve thrown in hundreds of rare swords and used many dungeon tokens to gamble exotics, have not had anything since.

RNG man.

1% of the level 80 exotics that pop out of the forge will be precursors. That means, in the long run, that you can expect 1 precursor per 2000 rares tossed into the forge.

You should be prepared to throw several hundred gold into the forge if you’re going fishing for a precursor. Unfortunately, if you have enough gold to overcome to RNG though sheer sample size, you also have enough to buy whatever precursor you want outright.

Wise Muffin.3964:

Thank you, Facepunch. Could you please clarify ‘some’ gold? I am generally poor with only 40 gold in my coffers, by ‘some’ do you mean 10? 100? 200?

I did a rough estimate in another thread, but the gist of it is to forget MF if money is a concern. While you might get a precursor on the first try, you also might end up paying more than what is asked on TP. Much more, in fact, more than buying a finished legendary even.

So, unless you can spare 3,000 gold to gambling without it seriously affecting your in-game wealth, just bite the bullet and use TP.

Two guildies got lucky yesterday and got theirs out of about 7 or 8 tries each with exotics in the MF. I’ve probably spent over 100g on tries with rares and exotics in the mystic forge, which isn’t much compared to others. I think I used up all my precursor luck when the Trident dropped for me off a supply camp defender in WvW. /cries

My “Search for a Precursor” will continue with massive CoF farming for gold and using the tokens I get to buy exotic greatswords for the forge. Not the best route, but I dun even care at this point.

Never mind. I am officially broke. I used up the last of my 30 gold in the Mystic Toilet; thus ending not only my economic adventures but also my legendary adventures. Darn you; toilet. Darn you.

So you decided to ignore the advice given by several posters in this thread and gambled away your money?

I think you should get rid of that “Wise” in your handle.

Got mine via lvl 80 exotics in the forge (3 rounds)

I got mine from mystic toilet.

Tom; I did follow their advice for the most part. I was able to make back about 5 gold from selling exotics; not terrible, but still pretty poor.

Wise Muffin.3964:

Thank you, Facepunch. Could you please clarify ‘some’ gold? I am generally poor with only 40 gold in my coffers, by ‘some’ do you mean 10? 100? 200?

Using all level 80 Krait crafted weapons you make yourself and selling all the exotics, you need around 600 gold to have a 95% chance of hitting an precursor before you go broke.

The worst feeling in GW2 is when you see a steel chest at your feet after you wipe in WvW… was it a precusor… you will never ever know.

I must be doing something wrong… I have never actually seen a steel chest…