Guild Wars 2

This is a minor issue, but it greatly bothers me. During the Headstart, recipes bought from Karma merchants were account bound, which was great – I could buy a Weaponsmith recipe with a Sylvari character in the Brisban Wildlands and send it to my human character at Queensdale so she could actually craft it.

Now, when browsing Karma merchants there is no mention of the recipes being soulbound, but after buying them the recipe can only be used by the character who bought it. It’s very slightly disruptive to gameplay – “Nice, this Karma merchant is offering an Armorsmith recipe, I’ll log off this character, bring my other character who actually has Armorsmith here, and fill this Heart again so I can craft this thing”.

I guess this change was made in order to fix some kind of exploit, but does someone know exactly what happened? Are the Karma recipes soulbound for good, or is this a temporary thing?

I see no reason to not make them account bound. Expecially when you can level to 80 from crafting without ever earning 1 point of Karma.

I don’t believe the recipes were always soul bound because I distinctly remember picking up a jeweler recipe for my husband and mailing it to him. It wasn’t until I bought up a whole bunch of armor smithing recipes on my cook/leatherworker thinking to stash them for my other character that I realized it had changed.

The change affects lower level recipes, but my guess is they don’t want people using one level 80 character to supply a stable of lower level crafter alts with the high end recipes from karma merchants the low levels couldn’t open.

They let you switch crafting professions without losing your progress for a reason. So I just learned the recipes on the character that bought them. Maybe she’ll be an armorsmith someday.

There’s an overall lack of clarity on what is soulbound to who. They need to put that in the tooltip of every souldbound item you own, and these recipes need to say ‘soulbind on acquire’ (which they don’t).

I believe all karma merchant items are soulbound if I’m not mistaken.

All of them are now. I had to throw out countless ones from my bank that used to NOT be soulbound, but becamse as such. Having them go back to account bound would be great! Please, please make them say they are account bound if it gets fixed though. The currant ones don’t even say Soulbound til you own them.

LinseyMurdock.4165:

Agreed. They should be Account Bound. I’m looking at getting a fix for this into an upcoming build.

Thanks, Linsey! It’s great to know they will eventually become account bound.

Thank you for asking about this. I noticed the change, but thought it was intentional — nice to know that it wasn’t and will be fixed.

LinseyMurdock.4165:

Agreed. They should be Account Bound. I’m looking at getting a fix for this into an upcoming build.

Hooray!

Is there any reason gathering equipment is also soulbound instead of account bound (and not shown to be soulbound until after you purchase it)?

LinseyMurdock.4165:

Agreed. They should be Account Bound. I’m looking at getting a fix for this into an upcoming build.

Awesome! Thanks

LinseyMurdock.4165:

Agreed. They should be Account Bound. I’m looking at getting a fix for this into an upcoming build.

Please change the recipes bought with gold as well. I bought a recipe for a gift for 10g the other day to send to an alt and it was soul bound. It does not say at the merchant its soul bound and I can just as easily have sent the 10g to my alt via the bank and bought it on him.

While you are making this change, could you also look at crafted products? For example, the cooking recipe for a loaf of bread is soulbound.

It is a problem with the merchant. I think they should tell if someting will be bound after you bought it. Otherwise this should be considered a but and people like chuiu should get their gold back(and the item removed). Or of course you just change the bound type to account bound. But still should be told at the merchant.

If there has to be a trading restriction on something, there should at least be a label to say so. It’s frustrating to buy, say, a recipe for my chef, only to find that it sprouts a “soulbound” label as soon as it’s in my inventory.