Guild Wars 2

Let me preface this by saying that I don’t care one way or another whether precursor crafting ever comes out or not. If I want another legendary, I will do whatever is required to get one.

I posted this in another thread and wanted to see what people think. as a possible solution, as there are many people unhappy with the current method of obtaining a precursor.

How about something like, 250 Mystic Clovers, 100 Bloodstone Bricks, 100 Empyrean Stars, and a Gift of <Precursor> (new item that is craftable, recipe bought from Miyani and similar to the other Gifts of recipes). This will all be thrown into the Mystic Forge to receive the Precursor that you were working on.

This could help give something else to do with the excess bloodstone, and empyrean in the game. It would also help to create more Tier 6 mats to help prevent the costs of those mats from skyrocketing. It could, however, cause the price of ectos to go up. As well as whatever mats would be needed to create the gift of precursor, which I think should be similar to crafting an ascended weapon already.

Of course you can still obtain by random drop, from the Mystic Forge, or by buying from the TP. Crafted Precursors come account/soulbound to keep from flooding the market.

From what I remember, the quantity that you got from trying to get 77 clovers wasn’t all that much. Attempting to get an additional 250 will maybe get you halfway at the most. When you take into the consideration of all of the players that will want it craft, the prices of did 6 materials will still go up enough to harm the economy.

Refer to the drop rates from the following:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Clover/Drop_rate

I also do not like the impact this would have in ectos as they’re used in a lot of other recipes as well as for the legendary. You could easily see the price double from what it is now which could negate any benefit that this could have if not make things worse.

I think we’re stuck with crafting having to be for new legendary weapons and not use existing materials in the process.

Edit: I’ll create a spreadsheet and attach a screenshot of it as this would probably be more beneficial to see what the impact could be rather than my attempts at trying to describe it.

Could maybe try increasing the amount of require bloodstone bricks and empyrean stars to 250, this might make this look less attractive to hopefully dissuade people from going this path, but still a way to progressively work towards one, without saving up gold.

I could see the ecto prices doubling because of this. Depending on the amount of people that prefer to go this route instead of trying the MF, it is possible that less exotics get crafted to throw into the forge, possibly reducing a need for some ectos. The biggest impact increasing ecto prices would have, that I can see, would be the Forge recipes (weapons, back pieces, infusing back pieces).

Ascended heavy armor set requires 71 ecto, I believe. You potentially just added another 35 gold or so to the total cost.

Good point.

Although if fewer precursors are being bought off of the trading post, that gold that would have been spent there would have to shift to a different market. The most likely ones affected are T6 and Ecto.

If they wait to do precursor crafting with new legendaries, I would think that they would have to have completely different recipes, or it potentially affect those markets as well.

It’s something where it doesn’t really seem like there is a feasible fix at this stage of the game. This was mostly to toss an idea out there and see if it could be refined to something that might be viable. Never known, Anet might actually like the idea lol.

You’re at least thinking about the impact that would occur for all of the materials which is a lot more than a lot of people are considering.

Your new idea would require 2,060,100 karma and 750 additional Ectos. The karma, or fractal relics and laurels, could act as a barrier to getting a legendary this route. To how much of a degree, I do not know.

I’ve attached a quick screenshot of what I did using 4 scenarios. I only considered the cost of the Gift of Fortune and the Precursor. Expect prices to a bit higher when you take into consideration the legendary specific gifts as well as whatever your specific precursor gifts would be.

• Top Left = How things currently are
• Top Right = If your method was added but had zero impact on prices
• Bottom Left = Same as Top Right but with Ecto prices doubling
• Bottom Right = Same as Bottom Left but with material costs increasing 50%

The bottom right, in my opinion, has a high likelihood of happening.

The bottom 2 might be closer to what could actually happen, as the gold that would have been spent on precursors will then spread to other markets, causing a cost increase in those markets. The question then becomes, is the cost increase in those markets acceptable. This could also give value to karma again, as a lot of us have millions of karma that we are just sitting on with nothing much to spend it on. There is also the karma cost of being able to craft the bloodstone bricks and empyrean stars, so you would need about another 420,000 karma to account for that, plus the cost of the therma reagents.

The barrier for this route would depend on the amount of people that chose to go this route. The hope is that it is high enough that not everyone goes this route, as some will prefer the forge, or to just outright buy it. For people that are just sitting on 4 million karma, this would essentially make getting one legendary fairly quickly. But being that you can spend karma this way a lot faster than you can make it, once that first wave passes, that barrier should go much higher and take a lot longer. I would think that there could be more of a price spike in ectos and t6 materials with that first wave, but after that, it could settle back down to maybe a little more than what it currently is, just purely due to the amount of time that it would take to accrue the karma again to attempt another one. I would love for John Smith to run some projects to see what he thinks the impact would be, and actually share those but that might be asking too much.

Edit: Forgot to mention that crafting the clovers could potentially yield ectos, very slightly reducing the amount that would have to be bought.