Guild Wars 2

Basically, this one’s been on my mind for a while, pretty much ever since ascended gear was introduced. As it stands, a single upgrade extractor from the gem store will run you 250 gems, or at gold->gem exchange rates at the time of this post, 33 gold, 70 silver. There are currently no upgrades excluding forged/crafted agony infusions and Superior Sigils of Generosity that would even meet 50% of the cost of buying an extractor in the game (rune of strength hovering at about 15g right now). That’s a pretty narrow market; only 3 upgrades in the entire game are actually worth the cost of buying an extractor.

So, with the feature pack we were given the GW1-esque ability to refund trait points at any given time as to allow people to experiment with their builds without visiting a trainer and having to pay for it. It was a great addition, and I’ve done more build experimentation than I ever thought I would with the new system.

The one thing that didn’t really catch up with the times, though, are ways to get upgrades out of things such as ascended gear that cannot be retrieved through salvaging, which requires an upgrade extractor. Experimenting with builds often requires experimenting with sigils and runes, and with, say, an exotic weapon or armor piece it’s not such a big deal to use a BL or Master/Mystic kit to salvage a rune or sigil out of it, as oftentimes the sigil or rune is worth far more than the exotic. I’m not talking about skins, of course, because while items like Whisperblade, Foefire’s Essence, Infinite Light, etc, are very expensive, an exotic with identical stats can be bought for only a couple of gold and reskinned with a more expensive look once you’ve unlocked it in your wardrobe. Generally any upgrade you care enough to retrieve by salvaging it out of your weapon is likely worth more than the weapon itself (stats-wise), so using an upgrade extractor on a salvageable item would seem ludicrous when compared to the price of simply replacing the upgraded item at 5-10% of the cost you would pay for an extractor.

So, with that in mind, I’d offer up a suggestion akin to BL Salvage Kits, except instead of a single extraction for 250 gems, perhaps offer a 25-use kit for 500 gems. That’s far more palatable, in my opinion, to the majority of the GW2 population, and 25 extractions at approximately 67 gold works out to about 2.7g per extraction. This falls more in line with the average cost of superior upgrades, and with more expensive situations where you may end up replacing a whole rune set which could add up to quite a bit of gold, it would potentially pay for itself after 7 uses, counting underwater headgear.

Bottom line: do away with the old upgrade extractors. They’ve fallen behind the times of trait refunds, free armor repairs, and ascended gear. There are nearly no situations that warrant their use at the current price, and I’d say more people are likely to fork over the 500 gems for a 25-use kit than however many (I’m guessing not a lot) are currently buying the single-use extractor. I know I’d be first in line to buy one, and with all the complaints I hear from guildies/other players in the game about dealing with rune/sigil experimentation and ascended gear, it’s likely I’m only one of thousands who’d jump on such an item at the first opportunity.

Introducing a gem store item that will enable you to make gold profits (extracting melandru runes from karma armor for example) at the present gold/gem ratio will only result in gem prices getting higher until its not profitable anymore.

Wanze.8410:

Introducing a gem store item that will enable you to make gold profits (extracting melandru runes from karma armor for example) at the present gold/gem ratio will only result in gem prices getting higher until its not profitable anymore.

Ah, I wasn’t thinking about karma armor. That’s really the only case it would be an issue, though, because while the current upgrade extractor makes any upgrade you pull account bound, you can slap it on a green item and salvage it with a BL kit to get it back non-bound for sale.

Perhaps karma armor should really be the only exception, because no matter what way you look at it, there is almost no reason to use an upgrade extractor as it stands now over simply replacing the upgrade or item with something else (in the case of ascended gear that you won’t be salvaging to replace, just slapping a new rune/sigil on top of it is still far cheaper than (stupid censor) using an extractor, then applying it to a green item method).

The issue I’m seeking to address is not that you can’t make money with the current extractor, but that build experimentation using different runes and sigils is extremely expensive if you’re running karma/wvw/ascended gear that can’t be salvaged. I’m trying to find a way that doesn’t result in a massive gold sink to simply try out a new build, which is generally in line with the trait refund system introduced in the feature pack.