Guild Wars 2

Hello,

In short, for those who don’t like to read a whole story:

• Full Magic Find gear: 1 rare drop in 6 events
  (Yes, I always join a party when farming)
• Salvaging rares for ectos results in 1 ecto per 3 rare items.
• Cursed Shore events overcrowded. Give the event mobs more HP so everyone can hit them or find an other way to get people away from Cursed Shore and to some other place where they can get nice gold and karma.

Full story:

I am having trouble getting a decent amount of gold like a lot of other players do. So according to some players ‘farming’ events in Cursed Shore is the best way to do this.

I crafted myself a nice Magic Find armor set, a greatsword, upgrades, sigils, runes, accessories, food blablabla because people say that this raises your chance of getting rare loot. In short: Now I got tons of Magic Find.

So I started farming Penitent and Shelter with my Guardian that I got to 80 today and this is what happened (no joke):

- Average of 1 rare drop in 6 events.
- Got an average of 1 ecto for 3 rare items.

So my question is: WHAT IS GOING ON? Did you decrease the droprate of rare items?

Some people in my parties say: “Oh well, it’s you just you having bad luck today.”
The problem is that I had the same thing on my warrior who also has full Magic Find, while all my friends are counting the rares every event: “1… 2… 3… 4…” and I’m going: “0… 0… 0… still 0…” How does this system work? I don’t think it’s working properly because this isn’t about luck anymore, I believe there’s something more to it.

However I did get some lucky events on my warrior but that was weeks ago, when the cursed shore wasn’t as crowded as it is now. Which brings me to another point!…

Cursed Shore events are WAY overcrowded. This is probably not the first time you read about it, but it is a serious issue. People go there because it’s the best place to farm gold and karma. But here’s the thing: mobs drop dead before you can even see them.

So these are the problems that I am encountering in the game.

Things I would like to know:

• Is my account cursed?
• How does Magic Find EXACTLY work?
• When can we expect a different way of earning a decent amount of gold instead of farming very boring and overcrowded events?
• How are you going to fix the issue of overcrowded events?

1) I have no idea…

2) Only note on magic find is it only affects the loot generated by killing creatures. I find the rarity of “rares” odd too given the fact that dungeoning or crafting can easily produce exotics. You would think a good amount of farming could yeild better result :\

3) Bump +1

4) Best thing to do right now although I support any new mechanics Anet can provide—memorize spawning locations. You can actually hit most of the monsters once, maybe even twice before they render on your computer. AoEs help a lot and that’s why people just spam them early. It’s annoying I know, and some classes with bad AoEs have it hard. This has to be looked at.

Rares unfortunately live up to the name a little too well sometimes for me too =( While I’m not in full MF gear I have many MF pieces and 5 pirate runes, and some magic find gems.

While the rares help give you a nice boost of gold, it’s really all the many greens/blues that you should be selling to merchant that give you the majority of the gold you earn.

I have no idea why you are salvaging your rares… when you get them, you are supposed to sell them for gold, you only salvage for ecto if you really really need ecto… then it’s still usually safer to sell the rare and buy an ecto with the proceeds.

The farming method after all is meant to earn as much gold as possible, not to get as many ecto as you can.

Maybe you aren’t tagging enough monsters? I’ve noticed it takes my D/D Ele 2 hits minimum to tags monsters in Orr for loot. Sometimes it takes 3 hits. Lucky for me, my attacks are AOE, so I hit many monsters with each attack.

I am running about 165% MF when I farm. Here are some things I have observed that may help others:

1) As far as I can tell, MF works like this: it increases the base % chance of a drop on the loot table by the MF%. This means that when a mob would drop a junk item 60% of the time, it becomes 120% with 100% MF. The loot table places the rarest items at the bottom of the table so that as you increase MF% you increase the chance of the good stuff dropping while pushing the excess chance of junkie loot “off” the table entirely.

2) The chance a mob drops loot during an event seems in some way contingent on the total damage you deal to it compared to other players in the event. I notice that if I solo an event, the total number of drops I get is much much higher than when a lot of other players are helping. However, group members seem to add the damage they deal to your total so if your pal does 1000 and you only do 1 you still are counted as dealing 1001 damage. I’ve observed that solo using a hammer I will hit mobs in a wave for 1200+ and get no loot frequently. Meanwhile, using a staff in a group, I can hit mobs for 300 damage (staff is so so bad) but my drop frequency is much higher. This means that either someone in my party contributes damage as I have suggested, or that drop rates in general increase for parties, though I have other experiences that contradict that assertion.

3)MF% really really matters. Some of the items, such as rares on event mobs, have abyssmally low drop rates so you really need to do everything you can to raise the odds.

4)Don’t salvage stuff. Just don’t. When ectos were worth a truckload it was worth the gamble. I find that most rares I get, if I sell them by matching the lowest seller, sell withing 10 minutes often for 2-8s more than an ecto. Sure there is always the chance you strike it big and salvage 3 ectos. But once you factor in all the times you end up with a single chunk or ore/wood/cloth, it’s a wash and you basically salvage about .75-1 ecto per rare. Just sell the darn thing unless you really want ectos. But based on OP’s remarks I think what you are after is cash.

Just tunnel farming in Cursed Shore (so boring but $$$), you should get 1.5ish silver per event every 5-6 min just for being there. That’s about 18s an hour. On average, the junk + blues + greens + misc crud in my bags after each event gives me about 25s per event. That’s around 3g per hour. Additionally, I “usually but not always” get at least 1 rare per event. Sometimes I get as many as 5-7 rares in one event followed by an event or two with nothing. Assuming an average of 1.5 rares per event at and average sale price of 16s, that’s 2g88s per hour.

So its very possible to make in the neighborhood of 6g per hour by farming. Find some players who make good conversation to pass the time between events, group up and farm. The money will add up faster than you realize.

TL;DR – If you’re farming and making no money, you’re doing it wrong.

obiemvy.5632:

I have no idea why you are salvaging your rares… when you get them, you are supposed to sell them for gold, you only salvage for ecto if you really really need ecto… then it’s still usually safer to sell the rare and buy an ecto with the proceeds.

Huh? Have you actualy checked the prices for ectos? One ecto goes for 15-17s. One! And if you use a BL salvage kit or master you might get 1-3ectos pe item. Selling one rare item get’s you a maximum of 13-15s, and if you go for buy orders it’s almost never more then 11s.

It could be a small gamble, but in the long run you definitely get more more gold salvaging then selling the item. I did a small statistic in my case and i got 1.4 ectos per item for 50 rares using one BL kit and one master kit. So i think it’s worth it.

Because of a market shift some mats have had a huge spike in price – ie ectos so in the future keep an eye on this and use it to your advantage.

Also if you are having issues getting loot – make sure you are in a group it help a great deal. Plinx is the best + the tar and arena – that is by far the best loot loop you can in orr that I am aware of.
There is also frostgorge for blood
In the end it comes down to tag wars doing enough damage to get a loot drop then having mf to increase that loot to rare then salvage or sell whatever is most valuable in terms of price/cost.
THat has been my experience and I hope it helps you. Try not to let the bots get you down but it is hard.

There is also a very underrated event in the south most part of Cursed Shore, with some corpses. When you destroy one, it spawn 10 grubs all clumped together. They have low hp and mobility and very awesome loot. The event does not trigger as often as plinx/penitent/tar but when it does it seems to provide a lot more loot then the other events, mainly because there is hardly anyone around so tagging is very easy.

I have done ok in cursed shore doing chain events and many times im not partied due to time constraints etc. Finding rares is hit and miss from day to day just as compared to Shatterer Sunless and Jormag Their end chests vary day to day. I have full mf and somedays its works and somedays it doesnt. I do well on my ecto salvages tho. I use blacklion kit and i average 2-3 ecto per salvage but only on certain weapons.. Maces and axes 1 handed swords (rare of course) seem to have the highest yields. There have been days i didnt boost my mf with food or a banner and did better. MF is something we are going to figure out in time. Just like in Diablo2 mf numbers there was always a sweet spot.

supergica.8652:

obiemvy.5632:

I have no idea why you are salvaging your rares… when you get them, you are supposed to sell them for gold, you only salvage for ecto if you really really need ecto… then it’s still usually safer to sell the rare and buy an ecto with the proceeds.

Huh? Have you actualy checked the prices for ectos? One ecto goes for 15-17s. One! And if you use a BL salvage kit or master you might get 1-3ectos pe item. Selling one rare item get’s you a maximum of 13-15s, and if you go for buy orders it’s almost never more then 11s.

It could be a small gamble, but in the long run you definitely get more more gold salvaging then selling the item. I did a small statistic in my case and i got 1.4 ectos per item for 50 rares using one BL kit and one master kit. So i think it’s worth it.

If you have a BL salvage kit, then you are right, it’s better to salvage. But The OP obviously doesn’t have one from the terrible ecto rate that he is getting. Your average chance at an ecto is less than 1 per rare with any other salvage kit. That’s why rares are less valuable than ecto. If you are purely farming for gold, playing it safe is the best way to go.

And remember… using a salvage kit costs gold too…

With 100% MF gear on, you effectively double the EXISTING chances of getting non-white/gray items from mob drops. If exotics have a 0.5% chance to drop from a mob, it is now 1%. It doesn’t give you 100% chance of a RARE item drop, just increasing existing chances for RARER items to drop, meaning more blues/greens/yellows than normal. With an increased chance for blues & greens as well, you’re at least not getting gray vendor trash (although no amount of MF seems to push gray/white items off the loot table completely).

Vendoring blues & greens and TP’ing blue materials is the bread & butter of DE farming for gold unless you just get extra lucky. But as another poster said if a super-duper rare thing has a .0025% chance to drop, MF may seem useless until that .005% chance kicks in and it drops for you.