Guild Wars 2

Hello all,

I’ve been sort of moving towards getting a legendary, but the lack of direction is difficult. I know of websites like http://www.gw2legendary.com/ and am familiar with the required mats to get the legendary I want (incinerator).

However, reading another recent thread people seemed to express some criticism that the OP didn’t know how to properly go about gathering mats/etc for the legendary.

I feel I am in the same position as that OP, and my method is therefore completely unoptimized.

So, anyone willing to offer advice or a link to some info on how to best gather the mats/karma/etc that are required? I’m not especially interested in precursor info, since that info is more widely available.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

If you look at the page for a legendary on the wiki, they typically have the the Gift of Mastery first, followed by the Gift of Fortune, then the legend specific gift, and finally the precursor. While perhaps not the best order for everyone, it is a very good order to approach things. The wvw and map completion helps build a chunk of karma you need for obsidian shards. Once you have that done and start working on the gift of fortune, make sure you craft the clovers first since the recipe also drops the other mats you need. Farming/buying 250 blood vials, only to have 10 drop when you do the clovers, is an avoidable inefficiency. It may be worthwhile to do the legend-specific gift before the gift of fortune, if for no other reason than farming dungeons translates to farming mats/gold.

Anyways, I think the most important thing for most players is to just focus on one part at a time, but never use something you will need later. Trying to get all four pieces of a legendary at the same time is a much more overwhelming goal than working towards it through smaller goals of “I’m going to get the gift of metal”, and selling t6 mats or a needed lodestone to fund your precursor or Icy Runestones, when you will need them later, just means you will have to work 15% more to recover that seller’s fee.

good advice, thanks.

As for the post-gift-of-fortune phase, when gathering those t6 mats, what is generally the best way to get them? Are these exclusive for rich players who can buy them all? Or, are we supposed to farm gold to buy them (thus getting rich in the process)? Or should we farm the mats, or do promotions in the MF, or all of the above (with what sort of prioritizing)?

The gift of mastery seems simple enough, and I’m still working towards that, but it doesn’t seem unobtainable. It’s the gifts of might & magic which seem like they will just suck the life out of me trying to get them, and that’s long before I need the ever-scare precursor.

I’d start making a complete list of materials you need and make sure you never sell any of those when they drop for you, much like Serapheles.5409 suggested. Wikipedia luckily does it for you (Incinerator -> Show Base Ingredients) It’s overwhelming, I know, but it avoids any unneeded TP-fees and gives you less of a grindy feeling (atleast it did for me.) Molten and Destroyer Lodestones(/Cores) and t6 materials/ecto are the most important, imo. And once you get to that part of the Legendary, it will be nice to already be halfway. Also don’t convert Skillpoints into money, or Karma or any other currency unless you know you won’t need it.

The order is then up to you, how-ever I’d recommend:
1. Map Completion
2. Mystic Clovers
3. Any Karma you still need
4. Gift of Battle (Badges of Honour)
5. Start the Goldfarm
6. Gift of Baelfire (CoF p1 is easy money, so I assume you got the 500 tokens)
7. Purchase materials that are unlikely to get by at random (e.g. the food for Gift of Spark)
8. Purchase t6 materials and get Spark in a way of your liking. (Mystic Forge/buying it)
9. Skillpoints, if by some mircale, you don’t have them yet.

Map completion yields Karma and has the potentional for some Gold, t6 materials and if you’re ridicilously lucky; Spark. The Mystic Glovers can return t6 materials or Orichalcum Ingot for Gift of Steel, so once again, recommended before collecting the t6 materials/Orichalcum to avoid any unneeded TP-fees. Lastly the Gold, Materials, Skillpoints and Karmafarm go hand in hand, whether you do Dungeons, Fractals, Championtrain. Also having a chance to drop Spark, no matter how low. (A friend of mine bought his precursor first and then had it drop, that’s ~100g wasted whilst gaining nothing.)

If you’re the type that can’t follow progression and do want it by doing it all at once (sort off) I’d recommend this order:
1. Gift of Mastery (Karma, Skillpoints, Exploration and Badges)
2. Gift of Incinerator (Steel and Lodestones, Ghostpeppers, Gift of Baelfire)
3. Gift of Fortune (250 of each T6, 250+ Ecto, Karma, Skillpoints, note: Start with the Mystic Clovers!)
4. Spark

Ofcourse it’s your Legendary and you should do it the way you enjoy doing it.

For Karma I’d recommend Edge of the Mist (preferably on a level 80) because of the high amounts of events yielding good Karma, Badges and Champbags. For anything else I’d farm the gold in a method of your chosing. (World Bosses, Dungeons, Powertrading, etc.)

thanks for more great advice! I appreciate it and it certainly helps me feel like I have direction. Even some of the things I was planning to do are on your list, but hearing them from someone with more experience certainly makes me feel better about it!

Note that map completion can be a problem due to the need for WvW completion. So as others suggested start with that. Get as much map completion as you can in one shot, then check periodically to see if the remaining ones you need have opened up.

I recently read here about someone having those troubles. I’ll definitely take that advice, plus I love farming badges to buy beserker sets on the cheap for my alts. thanks!

Hum keeps notices one mistake. NEVER GET THE PRECURSOR LAST :P. Everyone I know of that quit their legendary stopped because of that. Save for your precursor first. Do not trust the mystic forge unless you are making hundreds of gold a week. Everything else you get get slowly but their is no way around the precursor unless you are lucky. Save for precursor, gift of mastery, gift of fortune, then gift of x legendary. In that order. Notice that the price of precursor is always rising. A year ago precursor were 200-500g now 300-1500g :P.

Ulion.5476:

Hum keeps notices one mistake. NEVER GET THE PRECURSOR LAST :P. Everyone I know of that quit their legendary stopped because of that. Save for your precursor first. Do not trust the mystic forge unless you are making hundreds of gold a week. Everything else you get get slowly but their is no way around the precursor unless you are lucky. Save for precursor, gift of mastery, gift of fortune, then gift of x legendary. In that order. Notice that the price of precursor is always rising. A year ago precursor were 200-500g now 300-1500g :P.

There’s always inflation in a game, which is caused by people being able to make more money, so last year it might have costs you 3 months to make 500g, where-as now it takes you 3 months to make 1500g. Since the Wardrope patch the precursors also went up in price and I wouldn’t be surprised if they slowly went down again after the hype has settled a bit. And guess what, inflation happens to all the materials you have to buy (e.g. most T6 materials) and how many people facepalmed farming jumping puzzles for badges when they introduced EotM? There’s always a risk involved when new things can get introduced, which hopefully in gw2 is still happening, be it a better gold-farm causing inflation, easier badges/karma farm or even the precursor scavenger hunt people are hoping for.

It’s a fact that whilst obtaining any of the other needed components (unless you TP-flip day in, day out,) your precursor can drop, the chance is incredibly small, (hell, I never used to count on it happening) but it does happen and then it’s simply a setback of 100g+ (the TP fee) for what? Holding a weapon in your storage/inventory until you can finally craft your Legendary? So unless you adore the precursor skin and plan on using it until the Legendary and that gives you joy, it’s not a wise investment. So you’ve definitly not convinced me it’s a ‘mistake’

Those who ‘quit’ just because they suddently felt a Precursor was too expensive obviously underestimated the full cost and effort of a Legendary. Whether they got it straight away or later, they’re paying for that Precursor one way or another, just like any other component, whether you do it straight away or later, you’re doing the work. Work only goes wasted if you obtain X material whilst farming Y. For example you farmed all your Karma, suddently realise you need Badges of Honor and either way, you’ll get Karma whilst getting those Badges, meaning you could have spend less time farming Karma. The precursor is simply in that list since, once again, it can drop, but the chance is simply minimal. For that reason I don’t see an issue either way, my list was simply made to be as efficient as possible.

It does bring out a very important thing; never combine the gifts that use trade-able items, if you give up, atleast you can sell the items instead of sitting on accountbound gifts (though, let’s just not give up)

Esmee.1067:

snip

Well the amount of gold I make per week has not change that much it since I have been playing. It has been 100-200g per week. Patch week are different since speculating can greatly increase your profit. Some patches I have made enough money buy a legendary in 2 weeks. Never really farmed for anything after I found my niche on TP.

I stated save for your precursor first not necessarily buy it. Anything can happen, I could find something that is worthwhile to invest and double my money. It is not wasteful to save for it knowing it is a long term investment. Precursors are RNG so it is best to just save up not hope one will drop. It takes most people months to make that much gold, so they have time to decide.