Guild Wars 2

I have a level 15 mesmer. I am finding Guild Wars 2’s crafting system pretty frustrating and complicated at the moment, mostly because it seems as if the drop rate on the fine material that I need in order to advance in tailoring and artificing is very, very low.

I’ve searched the internet far and wide for information on where and what creatures drop the things I need, and when I then go there to farm, I seem to leave the area with almost none of the materials I sought in the first place, but with a lot of junk that is only useful for being sold.

Take this for example. A YouTube guide suggested a place in the human starting area that spawns mobs which drop Tiny scales, tiny claws and weak blood vials, all of which I need for articifing. After 30 minutes of killing the mobs that are supposed to drop these things I have, in total: 1 tiny scale, 1 tiny claw and 1 vial of weak blood.

Am I being unreasonable for feeling like having wasted 30 minutes of playtime?

I have the exact same problem with finding materials for tailoring.

Is this a common problem amongst players or am I doing something wrong? And if so, could you please tell me what I’m doing wrong so that I can do something about it?

I am level 12 and 15 in articifing and tailoring, respectively. I feel as if I’ve made very little progress and would like to speed it up a bit.

Thank you in advance!
Errol 246

The drop rate on “fine” crafting materials is fairly low. that being said I think you just had bad luck or were not in a good spot for those items. you will not be able to maintain 2 crafts at once from your first characters farming effectively. What i recomend is to wait till later levels and then work on 1 craft to max. later on come back and do a second probably with purchased materials from the TP or alts. I am waiting to do crafting on my current alt untill about 60-70 because crafting from 1 to 400 gives you 10 levels of experience… I would rather get 10 big levels of experience instead of the starter levels that go by so fast.

Direwulff.2396:

The drop rate on “fine” crafting materials is fairly low. that being said I think you just had bad luck or were not in a good spot for those items. you will not be able to maintain 2 crafts at once from your first characters farming effectively. What i recomend is to wait till later levels and then work on 1 craft to max. later on come back and do a second probably with purchased materials from the TP or alts. I am waiting to do crafting on my current alt untill about 60-70 because crafting from 1 to 400 gives you 10 levels of experience… I would rather get 10 big levels of experience instead of the starter levels that go by so fast.

That’s some good insight, one I hadn’t considered myself. I always thought it was important to get started early in the game, but maybe it doesn’t have such a huge impact.

Thank you for your help, I’ll definitely consider this.

Buy gems from the TP with real money, convert to gold and buy materials from the TP.

The time to start crafting was when the game went live. Mats were fairly cheap then as you had tons of people all leveling up and trying to undercut each other for cash. That’s the time i maxed all crafting on my toons. Now it’s alittle harder since there isn’t a big influx of low level people leveling up like at the beginning not to mention bans on bots. Like the others up top said, i’d work on one craft and when you get 80, cash will cone alot easier to fund a 2nc craft as well as others if you so desire.

PowerCat.5738:

Buy gems from the TP with real money, convert to gold and buy materials from the TP.

Very easy for you to say, not everyone can afford to buy gems with real money. There are more important things money is used for you know.

That is how the game is now I am sorry to tell you. I delayed my crafting and because they nerfed every open world loot drop to 0 and porous bones crafting materials are far and few between and expensive.

Add that they included DR on top of the above and frankly there is no point in going out into the world.
My best advice is to grind fracs or dungeons to get gold and buy them when you get higher up in level.
All I can do is wish you luck and to hope bots keep the price down for you because after a ban wave goes out the price of materials spikes for a week.

Drop rates are very low atm. I’m happy if I can get vendor trash from a mob. I’ve tried to gather up around 10 mobs and killing them all off, and most of the times, I can loot maybe 2 or 3 of them and get a piece of vendor trash from them. Getting a crafting material is huge, so is getting a blue item.

Having even a little bit of magic find helps alot in my experience, if you want to find crafting materials. And bring a good salvage kit with you! The Commendation salvage kits are the best, 250 charges and they don’t cost that much (donating 12-16 green items will do the trick).

Buy more gems, that’s what’s wrong with the drop rate.

Keep in mind that salvaging all loot valued 33 copper or less with a basic salvage kit will net you some amount of be it ore; leather or cloth crafting materials.

xCrusadentx.2784:

PowerCat.5738:

Buy gems from the TP with real money, convert to gold and buy materials from the TP.

Very easy for you to say, not everyone can afford to buy gems with real money. There are more important things money is used for you know.

That guy is just bitter. He most likely got banned when he used the Snowflake exploit.

Loot bags are a great source of fine materials. If you are going to farm for them, focus on human like enemies, and even better mobs of them during events. The cash rewards from the events can also be used to buy items you didn’t get dropped. Always salvage low value armor, and sell high value. Also look to just buy the insignias to use in the discovery pane as they should be cheaper than the ingredients.