Guild Wars 2

Crafting newbie here. The only crafting I’ve done so far is a bit to help my leveling along.

I’m interested in trying to make ascended weapons and could use some advice. As a mesmer I currently use a mix of weapons from all three weaponcrafting professions, and swap them around according to the battlefield conditions I’m facing.

1) Should I be using an alt for the third profession? Is there any downside to this?

2) I understand that I can switch professions without being set back to crafting level 0, unlike other games, but is it expensive/feasible to keep switching professions? It also occurs to me that this may prevent me from getting ‘gated’ materials efficiently.

3) Any hints from the devs how this decision may affect crafting ascended armor pieces?

AFAIK, there’s no downside to crafting an Ascended item with an alt. All of the materials used to make them are account-bound, as are the weapons themselves (they’re bind-on-equip, I believe). If you want to level up a craft that you haven’t started on any character yet, this may be the one you’d want to do with an alt.

When you switch out one craft for another, the cost to switch depends on the level you’ve gained in the craft you’re switching TO. The rate is 1 silver per 10 craft levels. or example, if you are switching to Artificer and you are at level 400 in that craft, you will pay 40s to switch. So, constantly switching back and forth CAN add up if you’re not careful, but it won’t break the bank if you do it a couple of times.

Hope this helps! :-)

EDIT: oh, and I haven’t seen much to indicate how Ascended armor crafting is going to differ from weapons. But between two characters, you should have your bases covered (three weapon crafts + Tailor), as far as not having to swap out crafts goes.

Switching active professions does cost some. Perhaps not very much, but still. I delegated 2 crafts to each character for this reason. It also helped some of them to level.

The downside to have the weaponcrafting on more than one character is the Inscription recipies. I decided to only have one chracter learn them all. If others need them, I need to log her on to make it. Inconvenience, but not that bad.

good to know about the recipes, are they very expensive?

Ekstra.5264:

good to know about the recipes, are they very expensive?

The recipes for rare/exotic inscriptions cost karma, and since that’s not as easy to come by now as it was in the past, it makes all the more sense to get all the recipes you want for a specific craft on one character, i.e. no need to double up.

21k karma each. That amounts to a fair bit. Of course, one does not need to buy them all like I did. Just buy the one you need.

It is better to lvl it on an alt because switching is expensive if you do it often. I have 4 characters with 2 professions each which is very convenient.