Guild Wars 2

I’m still at a stage where I don’t run dungeons very often so getting rares/exotics are pretty hard. I do find a lot of greens and was wondering if it’s possible or worth it to throw greens into the forge hoping for rares to pop out. At the moment, I just salvage everything for the mats and sell it on TP.

It is possible to throw greens into the forge and get rares, and I have heard of people making money doing that with certain levels of greens, though I don’t have much first-hand experience with that.

Most of the time you’ll get a rare every 3-5 goes so yeah you normally make a profit on it but like everything else with RNG you can never be too sure.

It does work and fairly often! If you get bad RNG it will only give your a rare after 100 greens so watch out. Yet that really bad luck rarely happens. If you see it start to turn bad just wait a while before doing more.

I do this all the time. Mainly I use them as fodder in between rare forges….ie…I’ll forge multiple greens in succession till I have a long enough streak of failures where I feel I’m due an upgrade, then I’ll use my rares. If I get a rare from the greens…bonus, but sometimes I kinda think “crap” now I have to start over….lol.

What I really wanted to know is if this is a good way to obtain rares to throw in for a precursor or am I better off running dungeons.

kokocabana.8153:

What I really wanted to know is if this is a good way to obtain rares to throw in for a precursor or am I better off running dungeons.

Best way for that is crafting them yourself I think

Crafting the rares yourself is pretty expensive nowadays because of the increasing prices of materials. So unless you have a lot of gold to burn I’d suggest using the forge. Besides that simply doing events and dungeons nets you a rare from time to time. I’ve recently begun saving all whites, blues and greens. And then throwning them into the Mystic forge. I’ve got quite a few rares this way already. But remember, you only get ectoes from rare or exotic items lvl 68 and above.

- You can pick up alot of greens from some dungeons. I found MF has a return rate of around 20% greens to yellows.

- If you farm alot of tokens, you can spend them on dungeon weapons/armor into the MF for precursor

- You get alot of cores in some dungeons so convert them to lodestones for your legendary.

Crafting might be a better method specifically for precursor. But if you can get a decent dungeon farming team than they might be a better, more efficient option… and you can potentially get a precursor drop from the dungeon whilst you can’t from crafting!

I don’t think Legendarys are that good. There are better looking weapons with the same stats out there that you can get from the MF and other places. Unless you specifically want a legendary for achievements or whatever, I wouldn’t recommend going for them.

I only dump level 80 greens in the fountain. Mixing in lower level items seems to really throw off my Rare return rates. This seems consisten with comments that rarity AND level affect precursor return chances.

I have a mystic forge conduit, so I have a mystic forge anywhere I go.

That being said, when my inventory fills up and I’m not near a vendor, I try to turn my greens into yellows to make more space. Extremely easy to do with a conduit since I can do it anywhere in the world.

However, I typically sell greens if I am at a vendor. I can’t be bothered with all the sorting, and in the end its only a few silver to maybe 50 silver difference in how much money I’d have made if I had some luck(hint, my luck sucks).

As a general rule, it is slightly profitable to toss your high level greens into the forge and to sell off the resulting rares. You’ll make a slight profit from converting all but the most expensive greens into the cheapest rares, and you’ll often get rares worth a good deal more.

If you are trying to accumulate ectos, tossing greens into the forge is extremely profitable, as you’re pocketing not only the slight profit from the previous example, but the 15% fee you’d be feeding the trading post otherwise.

Darxio.5672:

I have a mystic forge conduit, so I have a mystic forge anywhere I go.

That being said, when my inventory fills up and I’m not near a vendor, I try to turn my greens into yellows to make more space. Extremely easy to do with a conduit since I can do it anywhere in the world.

However, I typically sell greens if I am at a vendor. I can’t be bothered with all the sorting, and in the end its only a few silver to maybe 50 silver difference in how much money I’d have made if I had some luck(hint, my luck sucks).

No need to sort if you are throwing in weapons and armor which will be the case a majority of the time.

Nike.2631:

I only dump level 80 greens in the fountain. Mixing in lower level items seems to really throw off my Rare return rates. This seems consisten with comments that rarity AND level affect precursor return chances.

Yes, if you throw 4x 79 greens in, you seem to get a 80 green more often than you would if you put 4x 80 greens in.

I’ve put some greens into the forge, and I think it’s a crap idea, so I don’t do it anymore;
You put four greens at 1.5S in, and you get 1 green back worth 1.5S…
So lame, and I hate the system.

I highly recommend doing it, sure you don’t get a rare for every 4 greens but in the end it’s worthwhile trying.. you’re not gonna sell 40 greens to buy an ecto anyway.

I’ve found, with the rising value of rares, that the 20% chance at a yellow has made me much more money off of my greens than vendoring them.

Double recommend if you’re going for ectos.

Remember, it’s still the mystic forge and random is still random, but honestly, with all of the blues i vendor I feel like I can gamble 4s (vendored) worth of greens on a potential 30+s payout and generally come out ahead of what I was making when I vendored greens.

It’s a coin toss, and one I stopped doing for a long while due to bad results. However, now that I run fractals a lot, each run I’ll end up with something like 30 greens. I would vendor them before, which would net a decent amount of silver, but I decided to start tossing them in the MF.

Usually, I’ll get at least one rare, which (if I get an ecto back from the salvage, of course) sees me breaking even, or if I’m lucky, making more. Sometimes you’ll get a few rares, sometimes none.

It’s certainly more entertaining than vendoring, but the results are unpredictable.

PopeUrban.2578:

I’ve found, with the rising value of rares, that the 20% chance at a yellow has made me much more money off of my greens than vendoring them.

Double recommend if you’re going for ectos.

Remember, it’s still the mystic forge and random is still random, but honestly, with all of the blues i vendor I feel like I can gamble 4s (vendored) worth of greens on a potential 30+s payout and generally come out ahead of what I was making when I vendored greens.

Sorry if this might be slightly off topic..

I’m new to the MF. I just tried throwing in 4 normal dyes into the MF and got back 1 standard dye. I tried again and no luck. I was under the impression that I would get a rare dye.

So after 2 failed attempts, I lost 6 dyes to the MF. Not sure if it make economic sense.. I could well have lost 1 gold in the process. Have I misunderstood?

Of course its all about luck but at least I believe that’s how the mechanics of it was supposed to work.

stevelim.1649:

So after 2 failed attempts, I lost 6 dyes to the MF. Not sure if it make economic sense.. I could well have lost 1 gold in the process. Have I misunderstood?

Of course its all about luck but at least I believe that’s how the mechanics of it was supposed to work.

It is about risk/reward, my friend. And also, it’s magic,it doesn’t have to make sense.

stevelim.1649:

PopeUrban.2578:

I’ve found, with the rising value of rares, that the 20% chance at a yellow has made me much more money off of my greens than vendoring them.

Double recommend if you’re going for ectos.

Remember, it’s still the mystic forge and random is still random, but honestly, with all of the blues i vendor I feel like I can gamble 4s (vendored) worth of greens on a potential 30+s payout and generally come out ahead of what I was making when I vendored greens.

Sorry if this might be slightly off topic..

I’m new to the MF. I just tried throwing in 4 normal dyes into the MF and got back 1 standard dye. I tried again and no luck. I was under the impression that I would get a rare dye.

So after 2 failed attempts, I lost 6 dyes to the MF. Not sure if it make economic sense.. I could well have lost 1 gold in the process. Have I misunderstood?

Of course its all about luck but at least I believe that’s how the mechanics of it was supposed to work.

The way it works, as I understand it, is you have about a 20% chance to go up a tier – but you can’t go up two.

I always collect and throw the common dyes I already have into the forge once I have 4. I’ve only gotten a green dye back once, out of many, many times. Usually I get another common back. Sometimes it’s one I have, sometimes it’s not.

Regardless, usually all but the rare dyes aren’t worth selling on the TP once you’ve identified the dye, so if you already have it, might as well toss it in, see if you can get one you don’t.

I find transfering green to rare is usually worth your money, especially when it’s junk you were going to sell anyway.

Rare to exotic is not though. Sure, you could get ultra lucky and get a valuable exotic, but you could also get a junk rare or a junk exotic and lose big time.

I have a system I use to determine whether things get sold, salvaged, or forged. This is all for around level 80 gear.

If it’s green and worth around 2 silver, I just sell it to merch. If it’s a green greatsword, sell it to TP (people like greatswords for forging into precursors). If it’s worth around 1.5 silver, I forge it.

If it’s blue or common and worth around 1 silver, I just sell it to merch. I also sell all leather/wooden goods, as they are not usually worth salvaging.

If it’s blue or common (metal/cloth) and worth less than 1 silver, I salvage it as the materials often pay for themselves, especially when you hit gos or ori.

I check all my greens. TP the ones that net a profit after taxes vendor the rest.

I think a really big thing to remember though is that time is money.

And while I don’t expect people to like farming (let’s say 3 gold an hour), I do expect people to like playing the game (dungeons, adventuring, fractals, etc.). So it’s safe to assume you could be making 1 gold an hour just playing, having fun, etc.

So let’s say you take 5 minutes between everything you do and instead of just merching it, you salvage some of it, sort the rest, and forge a chunk of items. And by doing that you make 3-4 silver more than you would have if you just merched everything. Seems like a decent profit, but you have to remember that in the same time, you could have made an average extra 10 silver by just running around playing the game.

Even if you’re forced to hang around town waiting for friends between dungeons, you could be playing the TP and making money that way.

Long story short, penny pinching doesn’t always mean making “more money”. But if you enjoy it, don’t stop either.