Guild Wars 2

How is this a bug? None of the special starter items are available in any format other than character creation.

There is a workaround if you have a spare character slot. I created a new guardian with the shoulder armor, then transmuted it with a set of other shoulders. Banked the transmuted set and then retrieved them on my ‘main’ guardian.

This is not a bug. They want you to keep the item as a symbol of the unique choices you made in the very beggining of your adventure.

There are “workarounds” like the transmutation one, but I’m pretty sure they are not intended to work. These should be unique items that reflect your character’s story.

Bloodlust.3672:

Yulan.4069:

This is not a bug. They want you to keep the item as a symbol of the unique choices you made in the very beggining of your adventure.

There are “workarounds” like the transmutation one, but I’m pretty sure they are not intended to work. These should be unique items that reflect your character’s story.

that’s rather pointless if we can’t wear them stat-wise without constantly consuming transmutation stones

That’s a design choice, not a bug.

I held onto the starter pieces on all my characters. They stayed in the bank until I was about 40 and started putting together a “final look” for them, then they came out and got transmuted. You only need to replace your gear every 10 levels or so, so it’s not “constantly” transmuting. And you are guaranteed 3 transmutation stones every time you 100% a capital city, and a chance at 3 stones every time you 100% a zone, so even though I’ve been structuring my characters’ looks from about 35-40 on up (with 7 characters) I’m not even close to being out of stones.

There’re also a couple of items that are inexplicably straight-up missing from PvE. The Stalwart’s Mask/Hat/Helm/Whateverit’scalled is probably the most obnoxious of them, particularly since the rest of the set (aside, I think, from the shoulders), is obtainable through the story. It would be really lovely if it were added.

There really ought to be a way to reobtain anything that has the potential to be missed or accidentally deleted. Some of the later story rewards present an even worse problem in that you have to choose one of several and they soulbind on acquire, so you can never get hold of the others, even via the AH, if you later decide you like the look. It’s silly that the answer is to roll an entirely new character just because you want the skin from one fairly low-level piece of armor.

I don’t know about that workaround as I didn’t try it myself. However I always try to work things cautiously. When I created my guardian at the start of the game I said to myself I loved the shoulders and decided to put them in the bank until I was 80 and would transmute them to 80 when I got the stats I wanted for them. yes I could do it along the way but that’s a pain so I just saved them. I didn’t expect to see another version of it later on but loved them so I wanted to save them for 80. If I saw them later on I would have let the others go since it was the skin I cared about.

If you really enjoyed a skin do yourself a favor and hang onto it.

Bloodlust.3672:

even with the workaround, its really lame that we can’t play with a skin we enjoy until level 80—unless we waste transmutation stones.

i thought gw2 was built on anti-grind philosophy. but it seems with a lot of things in this game, anet just want to gold sink every little thing to make us grind for more gold or buy gems.

it’s not a grind nor is it a waste of transmutation stones. If you want to wear them use transmutation stones. I have well over a hundred of the normals saved up. I have that many because I don’t go back to my bank all that often to use them and honestly I am only a certain level for a short period of time so I simply save it until 80 where I won’t be changing my armor stats all that often.

Your complaint seems a bit stretched. Save skins you like and use transmutation stones if you want. I just don’t bother with that until 80. I save them since I just don’t want to go through the bother. Thats just me. I am hoping I can take a stack and use the mystic forge with them someday but that’s another story.

Simple moral to the story… if you find a skin you like save it because you never know if you will be able to find it again.

What else are you going to use the multitude of transmute stones you get during the story mode?

I’m not saying the idea that ANet add a specfic method to obtain another one of the items at some point during the storyline is bad, but I don’t think it’s 100% legit to consider this a bug (an oversight, maybe?).

The workaround doesn’t work. It remains soulbound to the lvl 2 character.

What Boris De Pig said, pretty much.
Create a new char with the starter armor u want.
Put it in the Bank.
Take it out of the Bank with the char u want the starter armor to have.
(Yes, the starter armor remains soulbound to the new created char).
Transmute it. If immediatly transmuting to a non-white armor piece doesnt work, transmute to a white armor piece first and then transmute again.

Stronghammer.3952:

The workaround doesn’t work. It remains soulbound to the lvl 2 character.

It’s lying. It says it is, but you can place the now transmuted item in the bank and another character can run with it. Tested and it works just fine.

Again- after your transmute it will says soul bound but that is a lie. It is no longer soul bound.

Transmutation stones are not hard to come by.

I’ve not bought any in the Black Lion Trading company and I’ve used about 20 on my Necromancer, 20 on my Mesmer, 12 on my Engineer, 5 on my Warrior and 5 on my Thief.

I still have about 30 of them spare.

Just because you don’t agree with it doesn’t mean it’s a bug, sorry.

Anybody running into a bug where, if you transmute one of you starter items (I tried it with the Ele Water Headstone yesterday) and try to wear it, it only shows up in the Character Select screen and not in-game?

Bloodlust.3672:

requiring transmutation stones to workaround this bug is a waste of transmutation stones

Try not to whine about it too much. If it turns out to have been intended, then they might just take away our ability to transmute them. I’d rather “waste” the transmute stones than never get to have that armor.

I like the individuality that comes with a really unique starter piece of equipment, but what if I regret my choice later on? My perception of my characters’ personalities has developed as I play them, why shouldn’t the clothing that represents their individuality do the same?

Not to mention some just look awful in-game compared to the icon and description (like the Determination Headband).

Also I didn’t know they were unique when I started the game, and destroyed a couple of them. I should at the very least be able to get a new copy in my home instance or something.

You should be glad you aren’t an elementalist. The <element> Eye items we choose at character creation are currently broken. If you transmute the appearance onto a better headgear the model no longer displays in-game on the character; it shows up on the character select screen but not while actually playing.

I don’t see what’s so bad about using transmute stones for their intended purpose,
I always have way more of those things than I could ever hope to have use for…

Also, if it’s that life or death of a situation, can’t someone just make a new character, explore their capital in around 5 minutes, bank the stones, and have enough stones to suit hours of leveling high enough to transmute to the next level of gear?

Sure it’s a bit of a grind but this is an mmo, not minecraft, and if we were able to just throw on our favourite looking gear out of the whole game’s database right when we start, and then not have to change or transmute that gear until level 80, doesn’t that defeat the purpose of the rpg?

I may be missing something here, but I get satisfaction out of earning my character’s gear and not having it all presented to me in the get-go. =/

Stronghammer.3952:

The workaround doesn’t work. It remains soulbound to the lvl 2 character.

It becomes account-bound – and it stays account-bound even when you wear it.

You must be doing something wrong.
It goes like this:

- starter armour (unique skin, soulbound) on new character
- buy white armour of same class / type, transmute LOOK from starter armour and STATS from purchased white armour yields the LOOK of the starter armour with the stats of the purchased transmuted piece and changes it to account bound.
- When you hit 80 and have the desired stats on your exotic piece, transmute the LOOK from this account bound piece and the STATS from your exotic piece.
- Final result is you have the starter armour look and the stats of your existing exotic or whatever piece of gear.

You guys seem to be overlooking the point that while Basic Transmutation Stones are as common as dirt, Fines are only found from the BLTC or from a BLC. If someone want’s that “awesome skin” from the beginning of the game to go on a level 80 piece of armor, they now have to pay in gems. Back when the game was released, that wasn’t a problem as gems went for 25s for 100. but what about now? its 1g 50s for 100 and Fines cost more than that. It would be nice to see character creation choices available in a way that hom skins are. I was lucky in that my monocle can be obtained through the Noble Mask, but many other people aren’t as fortunate and would have to pay inordinate amounts of gold to get the look they like.

you get fine stones from 100% zones too. Pretty sure most of the skins can be found from the random karma vendors around the world (aside the class starter gear iirc)

they need more armor sets in vendors to. i dont want to look stupid till lv 30+

I must be very unlucky then, as all I’ve ever received are basics…

I agree they should only be obtained through character creation and transmutation but the starter backpack for the engineer cant be obtained through transmutation. Its the only back armor in the game that looks similar. They should add a few white and blue back armors so it would be transmutable too. Or atleast have a vendor or something where you can trade one of the starter items for another… The backpack is the only starter gear I know of that isnt transmutable

I saved mine cause I figured it would be exclusive to the creation screen :P they’re in my bank right now.

Well I’d be more concerned about skins that are completely missing in pve like Commando and Stalwart sets, which look both really cool IMO.

personaly i dont see a problem with this. doing maps is the main way to lvl, from 1 lvl 80 i have close to 20 basic stones in my bank and thats from doing less than 10 maps. As for the fine stones, its, either pay the gold/gem, grind out the higher lvl maps for them. or deal with it they give you two ways to get them, a long/cheap way (grind) or a quick/expensive way (buy them). just be happy i know alot of games that have an ingame store that anything in the store can only be bought with realy money, and cant be gotten in the game otherwise.

I was trying to transmute my starter headpiece with another one and was having the same problem. It wouldn’t work. Then i realized that i was placing the item on the wrong side of the window. If you put the starter headpiece on the right side of the window you won’t be able to transmute, but if you put the item on the left side of the transmutation window, it works perfectly! And apparently it’s transmutable with items of any rarity.
Hope i helped someone.