Guild Wars 2

Recently, I’ve found my willingness to play the game in a bit of a quandary, I love the game, immensely so, I’d even managed to get some good friends of mine to play it with me, but, them not playing has directly impacted why I almost can’t bring myself to play it, and, as frivolous as it sounds, that very reason is Fine Transmutation Stones.

My friend is in the situation where, and I quote in part from him, he wants to play, but use the looks he’s taken the time to craft and get, but can’t because he can’t afford to buy Fine Transmutation Stones with Gems from his own money, yet can’t justify spending what he calls extortionate rates from the Gold to Gems conversion, I’ve tried to sway him by even offering many ways where I would buy them for him, but he’s one of these stubborn ‘no resolution other than my desired way’ types, and that would be to somehow acquire them by his own volition.

So, I’m asking, for ANY other way to guarantee acquisition of them, via Mystic Forge, Karma, Map Completion or any other way I’m sure some creative thinking can come up with (Achievement Rewards also seems a rather good option).

Response from a Developer as to why they can’t would be greatly appreciated if such a outcome occurs.

extortionate rates?
Around 3g to get 5 stones from conversion…3g is NOT that hard to farm. Kill a few dragons, also level a low character and sell the crafting mats you find and the white drops on the TP.
Or stick to the high level and salvage cloth scraps fromt he higher level mob armors to TP the gossamer you find.

Just tell your friend suck it up and buy some gems with gold OR just not be a big baby about his armor looking crappy for some period of time.

I have received a number of fine stones from zone completions. Luck of the draw, but no cost.

i also have lots of them and used lots of them. no gem spent to have it.
i found them in black lion chest (never bought a key, i some times have key for map completion). sometimes i had them as a reward for map completion.
i used 12 of them and still have 10. i can’t share because are account bound but surely if i have that much any one else can and for free, same as me

I ended up equipping a character in level 79 gear solely so I could keep using the regular transmutation stones. I don’t know what kind of gear your friend is using, but that might be an option.

As an aside, I really wish there was some sort of mystic forge recipe because I literally have almost a full stack of 250 of the regular stones that I will never use, but I hate to just destroy them even though I keep accumulating them.

I have 30+ fine transmutation stones and never brought a single one (I’ve also used 6 to get my T3 looks on my exotic gear).

So basically what you’re saying is, your friend would rather quit a game then pay less then 5g in game to get the look he wants? If you go and play WoW or any other MMO with a transmuatation system, you’ll have to pay in game gold there, so what’s the difference? None.

Tell your friend to listen EliteZ.1682 advice. I might add, my friend got lucky with Black Lion chests and has like 100+ of those stones. But that is his luck.

Also tell him it would be better to spend money on gems to unlock certain things like extra bag slots, extra bank slots, extra character/toon slots. And let him work with everybody in dungeons and events to earn gold for those stones.

Thanks for the responses, in truth I’m wholly content with the plethora of options available to get what I want, and I agree in most part with the comments here, it’s more his opinion thats conflicting, and there is some sense to what he wants, but he isn’t ready to accept the idea that it’s current functionality could be working as intended and refuses to aid said cause or work around the problem until it’s fixed.

I’m not going to call him one of these ‘entitled’ types, but it’s difficult to see it any other way.

I still think a more concrete way of acquiring them in the game could be a way forward, even if it requires a extreme cost (X>1 Basic Transmutation Stones + Mystic Coin + X ‘Y’ Dust = 1 Fine Transmutation Stone).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for you! But HOW the hell can some of you guys have so many fine transmutation stones??

I’ve checked a lot of threads about those stones and people go like:
“oh I spent 20 and still have 20 left hahaha”
“yeah I have like 30+ of those, never use them meh”

Can you please tell me WHEN you were finding that kitten-load of those from black lion chests, map completion, etc.?

Because I have two characters and in total I have received only 5 of those.
Thats it, and it was around the time when my first character was around level 5-20, so somewhere back in oct/nov.

Im mentioning this because I think that the way to acquire those stones got nerfed since then…

So again, can you guys tell me if you have gotten recently fine stones??

3g are peanuts, but spending it over and over again when I see other people who have sooooo many that they can neeeeever use them all- pisses me off….

i opened a black lion chest yesterday and had 5 of them, and i also whined since i don’t need those…
i would share it for free to help friend if i could.
i didn’t notice a drop reducing since october but i really didn’t pay that much attention, so i’m not a reliable source on that, sorry.

i found the black lion key completing gendarran fields if you want to know where the key came from

You can get them from black lion chests and completing map areas, maybe even more but I’m not sure. Also, each time it gives you 5 stones so you only need to really lucky when opening 10 black lion chests and there you go, 50 fine stones ready to use.

@ThirtyOne, it’s one of those items that people want, so they’re rare and placed in the gem store to try and get money off them. The game is B2P, they need items in the gem store that people actually care about and want to buy like transmuatation stones, black lion keys ect.

Personally, I fail to see any sense in what he says/wants. You can get stones from WvW and PvE if you’re willing to “farm” for them, it would just take along time because they are random. However, if they made them much easier to get, nobody would buy them with cash in gem store and Anet would get less money to spend on making the game better. Which I think is abit more important then someone moaning just because he doesn’t want to spend in game gold to buy them.

Almost every other MMO uses this same system in some shape or form. WoW you have to go to the NPC and pay a fee of each item you transmute (which i’d say works out alot more expensive then buying stones from here). TSW you have to spend ingame cash to transmute your items too. So I seriously fail to see his point. This game atleast gives you a chance of getting them from lucky drops which most games don’t allow. If his willing to leave a game over not wanting to spend afew gold which you can farm within a few hours then it’s probably for the best anyway.

I don’t belive that you can get fine transmutation stones from map completion anymore. You can only get them from black lion chests and the gem store. However, if a developer reads this I would like to see a mystic forge recipe to make regular transmutation stones into fine transmutation stones. It could even be really expensive on the regular stone side because I honestly will never use them and have a lot of them from map completion, etc.

25 fine and 251 regular left. I estimate I have used at least 50 fines. I have never bought keys or stones. They have all come from map completions and BLTC chests (keys were from drops or map completion).
But I do have 6 level 80’s, a lvl 42 and a lvl 30. Two 80’s with 100% world and 1 @ 77% and climbing.

I seem to recall you get some from a story missiokittenome point, but I may be getting confused with a map completion…

There could be more ways of getting some of the more consumable stuff other than farming gold or paying money but I doubt they’ll change it, the games made for them to make money not to make things easy.