Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone, I’ve written a guide, How to make 1 glob of ectoplasm, into stacks of ectoplasm over at Guild Wars 2 World Records!

Enjoy, and Happy Wintersday!

P.S. I had to make the first link a bit.ly link because these forums don’t redirect URLs properly if they contain &’s.

sounds like to much of a hassle……

Unfortunately the BL salvage kits are so expensive right now that this isn’t profitable unless you get the BL kits from drops, and you’ll get much more bang for your buck saving your BL kits for rares with valuable runes/sigils

Is that working as intended?

I tried it and it worked, but I don’t want to get in trouble.

also the cost of the materials is worth like 40 silver. which means you need at least 2 globs of ecto or you will lose money.

If you wanted to make real money salvaging for ectos you should have invested in a different snowflake… the boat’s already sailed on that one though (made about 70g-80g in a day though when the getting was good)

Like I said “by the time you read this” :P

Well at least now I know why the price of ectos tanked and mithril shot up.

If it is indeed an exploit why are they not answering to that thread in the BUG forum?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Snowflake-exploit/first#post1028701

How shall we know it is an exploit, when even if we ask them whether it’s okay to do it we do not receive a clearly statement? And anyway it will use up your black lion kit, so we do not get the salavaged items for free.. humm…

And to which forum did they move the thread you’ve posted in???

Not an exploit, they were just out smartened. Lol

So crafting and salvaging are exploits now? LOL.

This is an exploit? I thought it was just game mechanics… The way to get ectos has always been to salvage rares/exotics… and they added new rares to the game… I don’t see the problem

Let’s see… an item that can be salvaged to return more than it cost to make? That sounds like an exploit to me if only because of the effect that something like this can have on the game’s economy.

Astraea.6075:

Let’s see… an item that can be salvaged to return more than it cost to make? That sounds like an exploit to me if only because of the effect that something like this can have on the game’s economy.

So lets say I craft a krait greatsword for 40s, I salvage it get 3 ectos worth up to 90s. Oh crap exploit !

lolitsage.2185:

Astraea.6075:

Let’s see… an item that can be salvaged to return more than it cost to make? That sounds like an exploit to me if only because of the effect that something like this can have on the game’s economy.

So lets say I craft a krait greatsword for 40s, I salvage it get 3 ectos worth up to 90s. Oh crap exploit !

If the krait greatsword required an ecto to craft and could be “reliably” salvaged for more, yes. I’m aware that there are “edge” cases where you can salvage for profit, but they have a lot less potential to unbalance the economy than this one did.

It is not working anymore. ^^
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Can-t-create-Exquisite-Snowflake-Jewelry/first#post1029947

Kanthor.2094:

So crafting and salvaging are exploits now? LOL.

Cooking and selling the resulting items to a vendor was deemed an exploit so why not?

e: not to say anything here is an exploit. Just that your argument is dumb.

It’s not an exploit any more than black lion keys from Lyns was an exploit (although that also has been disabled). Anet makes new items that make some other items easier to get, and then they later say “whoops we didn’t mean that (even though they originally did), and you’re a bunch of exploiters”. I’ve made decent money recently from the mystic forge, but I’d never ever make a forum post about the specifics of it because Anet will likely change things and call it an exploit. Maybe I should become a TP flipper or maybe a pump and dumper who spams the forums with “buy this now”. Anet doesn’t seem to interfere there (which besides the forum spam is a good thing).

Yeah its blocked now :/ ah well

I should clarify that by “exploit” I don’t mean this in the usual negative manner that applies to the things people do to bypass difficult (or boring) content, but rather that the salvaging results are an unintended consequence of the item that people have legitimately “exploited” for a profit.

I don’t think anyone should be punished for this, just that it is something that needed to be closed down.

Anet better ban these people for doing this…

Anything that lets you make more money than Anet wants you to is an exploit and will be hotfixed asap.

haha…
also if you have all your bank slots and character slots unlocked using purely ingame gold turned to gems, and not by purchasing gems from anet, you’re exploiting

How do I continue to over-estimate the average intelligence of GW2 forum goers?

Anyways, taking advantage of an Overlook made by Anet is considered an Exploit. So technically, this is an exploit. I doubt there will be any repercussions though. I envy those of you who were able to take advantage of it.

I saw this, reported it and didn’t take advantage. I guess I’ve learned my lesson. Hate the world.

To all those crying about this being an ‘exploit’

I found a dev in game and he was nice enough to answer my question as to whether ArenaNet viewed this flipping as an exploit, he said “not as far as he knows” and his exact advice to players was “get it while it’s hot :p”

So thank you^ we have

Astraea.6075:

Let’s see… an item that can be salvaged to return more than it cost to make? That sounds like an exploit to me if only because of the effect that something like this can have on the game’s economy.

Exploiting =/= oversight on devs part.

I genuinely thought it was ANet’s way to bring the price of ectos back into line, and thought it was a great idea. I got a couple hundred ecto out of it and my Legendary is that much closer now. I think they should bring it back and make every jeweler recipe work this way. It did great things to the economy, like, for instance, Mithril being valuable, jewelry crafting being useful, and ecto prices more reasonable.

Lazy.2389:

I saw this, reported it and didn’t take advantage. I guess I’ve learned my lesson. Hate the world.

I saw this and didn’t take advantage. I guess I’ve remained set in my ideals.

John Smith.4610:

From my blog post:
“The Guild Wars 2 economy (and virtually every other economy in the same vein) is not designed to have any loop that involves creating value for no cost.”

“Exploits are mostly generated by a mistake on our end and are really hard on players. When an exploit is discovered, players are tempted to participate by the draw of becoming wealthy and out of fear of being left behind the massively wealthy players who do participate. We take a harsh stance on exploiters because this decision should be easy: find an exploit, report the exploit and move on. It isn’t worth the risk to the player or the game.”

To be honest a majority players do exactly that but in all honesty it becomes harder and harder to turn away from those exploits when you make a conscious decision to cripple the economy but nerfing loot in general. For the most part those decisions begin to play a major role in why some turn to this behavior, some not all and certainly not myself but you need to take some responsibility.

Well I’m glad my jewelcrafting is 0 and I didn’t know about it earlier, because I did not think it was an exploit (salvaging has a cost so it’s not an infinite loop), and I certainly would have made lots of those trinkets. Does your statement mean anyone who made those will be banned?

It certainly wasn’t an infinite loop of materials entering the market, that’s for sure. It had the opportunity cost of the snowflakes themselves and the Mithril, which added up to the price of the ecto you stood to gain. Furthermore, the salvaging risk plays into it a lot with a chance you won’t get what you want out and could lose the snowflake. The only guaranteed way to get your snowflake back was by blowing BL kits, which are very, very expensive. By the end there before it was removed, prices for ecto and mithril and everything had mostly stabilized again at a lower, more reasonable price. Personally, I think it was great, and ANet should consider bringing some variant of that methodology back in the future.

Seems just like the karma weapon exploit. Handful of players acquired millions of weapons in very short time.
That time they handed perma bans to the worst offenders. The rest got 72 hours ban and walked away with their loot.
Hopefully this time people don’t get a free pass.

Vlad Morbius.1759:

John Smith.4610:

From my blog post:
“The Guild Wars 2 economy (and virtually every other economy in the same vein) is not designed to have any loop that involves creating value for no cost.”

“Exploits are mostly generated by a mistake on our end and are really hard on players. When an exploit is discovered, players are tempted to participate by the draw of becoming wealthy and out of fear of being left behind the massively wealthy players who do participate. We take a harsh stance on exploiters because this decision should be easy: find an exploit, report the exploit and move on. It isn’t worth the risk to the player or the game.”

To be honest a majority players do exactly that but in all honesty it becomes harder and harder to turn away from those exploits when you make a conscious decision to cripple the economy but nerfing loot in general. For the most part those decisions begin to play a major role in why some turn to this behavior, some not all and certainly not myself but you need to take some responsibility.

I have to agree with Morbius’s sentiment here. I have yet to exploit anything but, the continued nerf to drops in addition to the skyrocketing prices for many things on the trading post (for instance I nearly cried when Silver Doubloons spiked to 75s on the TP, thankfully the market for those has crashed) I find it harder and harder to resist the urge to do things like this. I only have a couple of hours a night during the week (on the nights I choose to dedicate to GW2 and don’t have other responsibilities) it’s depressing walking away at night with maybe 1.5 gold having been made, and feeling like I made little progress on how I want my character to look and feel, because I choose to play the game rather than fighting other players for farming locations or flipping on the TP.

John Smith.4610:

From my blog post:
“The Guild Wars 2 economy (and virtually every other economy in the same vein) is not designed to have any loop that involves creating value for no cost.”

“Exploits are mostly generated by a mistake on our end and are really hard on players. When an exploit is discovered, players are tempted to participate by the draw of becoming wealthy and out of fear of being left behind the massively wealthy players who do participate. We take a harsh stance on exploiters because this decision should be easy: find an exploit, report the exploit and move on. It isn’t worth the risk to the player or the game.”

The problem is, you released a game that created an economy based on exploits, bots, and gold sellers. People were playing with disregard for the rules you set out for the longest time. Then you cracked down on botting and cleaned up the anti-exploit measures for farming after the economy settled on cheating being the norm.

Immediately afterward, you gave ~50% of all people participating in the Lost Shores event a precursor, which they immediately sold at the levels priced by botters and gold buyers. All of that gold people bought was being held by the Trading Post by offers made for big-ticket items. Suddenly it became available in the marketplace. Massive inflation occurred.

John Smith.4610:

From my blog post:
“The Guild Wars 2 economy (and virtually every other economy in the same vein) is not designed to have any loop that involves creating value for no cost.”

Strictly speaking this crafting loop is not costless or material-less. It has input materials which are consumed and it’s price is ultimately dictated by the supply of those materials which in light of the recipe will rise to equilibrium quite quickly.

It’s not like the pepper popper exploit for example, where people were generating gold almost from thin air (by converting trivial amounts of karma into actual gold)

Thanks for the quote John, although I don’t believe it to be relevant here – as players weren’t creating value out of nothing. For each rare crafted and salvaged, there was the cost of the mithril/orichalcum and salvage kit, and unless they were burning up Black Lion salvage kits (which have a significant cost, in gems), there remains the 20% chance of the snowflake breaking when salvaging (assuming master/mystic kits).

I ran the numbers on this myself, and except for the very early adopters (who got their mithril and snowflakes on the cheap – the orichalcum recipes were never wildly profitable due to the cost of orichalcum ore), it was only modestly more efficient in terms of gold per hour than the “classic” salvaging of crafted rares for ectoplasms that to the best of my knowledge has been a staple of this game since the beginning to allow for a soft cap on ecto prices. I think it would be helpful to clarify specifically if the “classic” salvaging of crafted rares qualifies as an exploit, because while it does create value, it likewise eats up a fair amount of base materials and copper in the process.

I for one assumed it was related to ReginaBuenaobra’s post which touched on the developer’s desire to bring down the cost of attaining the ascended gear and associated infusions. As anyone who has crafted one of these is well aware, there is a significant cost (50 ectos) to create an ascended tier back piece, and a very significant cost (250 ectos) associated with adding an inherent +5 agony resistance. Prices of ectos coming down to around 25 silver each seemed to reduce this burden in a meaningful way. From her post: “With the Wintersday build we will be making some changes to help those trying to attain their agony resistance gear.”

I think it is clear that the value created here wasn’t spun out of nothing, and in fact was approaching a break even point when the recipes were disabled. Also, it seemed to perfectly fit with the stated intention of reducing ascended/infusion costs for players. Not to mention the happy side effect of imparting a significant value to the snowflakes, which the masses are out there collecting while they play through the game content.

“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

I say permanently ban them all. They knew they shouldn’t be able to do that, yet they continued doing it anyway…..and I’m sure told their friends about it. That’s why the price of Mithril went up and the price of Ectoplasm came down.

If more people thought less about themselves and more about the state of the game they love playing, these things would be reported, not exploited and fixed quickly.

I’ll say it again….

They knew what they were doing was an exploit and they should be permanently banned from the game.

So. King John Smith’s statement basically stated that crafting anything with ectos that has a high profit return rate is considered an exploit. Okay, ArenaNet.

@Erasmus
I don’t think John is calling this an exploit, he is simply quoting from a standing definition of exploiting in GW2. In fact, my guess is that he included this here for reference in response to xxxzavulonxxx’s comment that “Exploiting =/= oversight on devs part”.

So, my take (FWIW) is that ANET has not yet confirmed if they do or don’t consider this to be an exploit, although they clearly rebutted the suggestion that dev oversights can’t open up exploits. Also, from John’s quote, exploits are when value is spun from nothing (with a reasonable person also including when value is spun from “next to nothing”), and since there was a significant input cost to creating ectos here, I don’t see anything stated or implied (except from players) that this is or will be considered an exploit.

Erasmus.1624:

So. King John Smith’s statement basically stated that crafting anything with ectos that has a high profit return rate is considered an exploit. Okay, ArenaNet.

You’re missing the point here. The recipe allowed you to basically produce ectos out of almost nothing (mithril) and an initial investment of only one ecto.

It’s not rocket science. Do something once, you’re not exploiting. Do something 10 times, you’re probably not exploiting. Sit there for hours on end doing the same mundane task with no risk and high reward from something that was only implemented a few hours previously, and you’re almost certainly exploiting.

If it is (a) quickly repeatable and (b) exponentially more profitable than anything you’ve come across while adventuring, then it’s almost certainly an exploit. You’re more than welcome to try to take advantage of it in case it isn’t discovered, but don’t whine when the inevitable happens and you get caught with your hands in the cookie jar.

Adding in one charge of a black lion salvage kit, that isn’t “almost nothing”, and mithril ore did rise significantly as a result. John Smith has implied that ANY use of a future recipe that is more efficient than currently existing recipies is an exploit subject to a potential ban. The infinite loop argument does NOT apply because this was NOT an infinite loop. If it were, ectos would have crashed to under a few silver.

The confusing part is trying to determine what is considered an exploit and what isn’t.

I would have believed looting multiple Karka chests from a “one-time” event would have been an exploit. But it seems this was not an exploit but an acceptable method of playing the game.

Also confusing is the response (part of a response) another mod used in closing a thread:

“However, it is not up to the community to decide what is considered as an exploit and/or worth a suspension/punishment.”

How are we, the players, supposed to know what is an exploit and what is not? It’s not up to us supposedly. Use Karma vendor for profit=exploit. Loot multiple karka chests from a ‘one-time’ event for possible precursors=no exploit. Use a loophole to make a hefty supply of ectos=????

And the money for the prestine snowflake.

If you didn’t salvage it with the black lion kits, you had a chance that the jewel will be destroyed. So you had to buy more snowflakes to make more jewels. It was a gamble then.

If you used black lion kits, you used up a very pricy item and got something in return.

People who buy things cheap at the trading post and sell it for a higher price, usually get more back than they invested. But they can also loose money. It is a gamble, too.

It isn’t that different from what you could have done with the jewels:
- you have to buy things and invest some money
- then you have a chance to receive more money back
- you loose a bit in that process (for materials, for the kits, for destroyed jewels, ..)

Ryuujin.8236:

It’s not like the pepper popper exploit for example, where people were generating gold almost from thin air (by converting trivial amounts of karma into actual gold)

Pepper poppers was not an exploit. You needed to use karma which could not be bought again with gold so there was no infinite loop.

Ursan.7846:

Erasmus.1624:

So. King John Smith’s statement basically stated that crafting anything with ectos that has a high profit return rate is considered an exploit. Okay, ArenaNet.

You’re missing the point here. The recipe allowed you to basically produce ectos out of almost nothing (mithril) and an initial investment of only one ecto.

Yeah, I know. It was kind of a joke. Furthermore, it wasn’t worth it since, as was stated before, you actually need to be using BL kits for it to be profitable. If you try using Mystic, it’s not worth it at all unless you get super lucky. Which isn’t often enough, considering RNG Wars 2.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

The confusing part is trying to determine what is considered an exploit and what isn’t.

There’s a very thin line between what actually is an exploit and what the developers consider an exploit.

Ursan.7846:

Erasmus.1624:

So. King John Smith’s statement basically stated that crafting anything with ectos that has a high profit return rate is considered an exploit. Okay, ArenaNet.

You’re missing the point here. The recipe allowed you to basically produce ectos out of almost nothing (mithril) and an initial investment of only one ecto.

Possibly true if you used BL salvage kits, although I disagree with your veiled suggestion that those qualify as nothing. I personally have 4 stacks of BL kits stashed away, and wouldn’t dream of burning them up for such a trivial gain. Also, mithril costs are hardly “almost nothing”. Actually, I agree with a previous poster that this was a net win for players, since they got more for their snowflakes and mithril, and were able to meet their ectos needs with less gold. The real losers here are people who were hording ectoplasms (and chose to dump them at the bottom of the market), or people who are in the business of generating ectoplasms through less efficient means (and didn’t adapt to the new, albeit temporary, market conditions).

John Smith.4610:

From my blog post:
“The Guild Wars 2 economy (and virtually every other economy in the same vein) is not designed to have any loop that involves creating value for no cost.”

“Exploits are mostly generated by a mistake on our end and are really hard on players. When an exploit is discovered, players are tempted to participate by the draw of becoming wealthy and out of fear of being left behind the massively wealthy players who do participate. We take a harsh stance on exploiters because this decision should be easy: find an exploit, report the exploit and move on. It isn’t worth the risk to the player or the game.”

That is a rather overreach of using the term “exploit”.

Exploiting is used more to describe finding a bug or glitch in a game and using it to one’s advantage in some fashion. Like people finding their way into or around “physical” walls in WvW to kill lords from a place their entirely safe from other players.

This recipe was no bug. It was a brain fart. There was no extracurricular activities that players used to do this process. There’s a difference.

The outcome sucks for people who did not do this. I didn’t.

Players routinely get extravalue out of items by playing the TP market. By your definition they would be exploiters when in reality they’re not.