Guild Wars 2

Hey I don’t know if this is the right place for this since I don’t use the forum as much, but here’s a little Guide to make fast AND easy black lion key farm runs. Feel free to post critique.

The point of this run is to be quite fast but still casual friendly so anyone can pick it up and have his own 15 minute runs.

Yeah this is pretty old news. The process hasn’t changed all that much, even after the nerfs. :p

Ye youre right but all I found were either runs that use like 3 different armor sets and gemshop items or runs that take 20 mins +

Human warrior is the method novices use nowadayz.

What method other use ?

Some run with guardian or elementalist. Both slower.

It may still be possible for people to craft to 200 cooking without a net loss. There were some recipes that produced a profit but I’m not sure what their status is as of now. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be able to handle people mass farming and flooding the market with them. Bowl of Vegetable Stock was one of those recipes.

I doubt that theres such a way of crafting up to 200 since as far as I know gw2crafts.net uses an algorithm to find the best deal to craft your way up and that deal always costs gold.

I’m kind of ambivalent on the practicality of crafting to level. I see a couple of problems with it.

One is that if you don’t make a profit, then it lessens a reason to do a key run if you assume the main reason is to get a ticket. If you “only” lose one gold by crafting but then it takes you 40 runs to get a ticket, then you haven’t saved all that much. Lose 2 gold each run and you might as well buy a weapon skin when they drop down to 80 gold or so.

Another problem I see is time to find the profitable items to craft and sell. That research time should be put towards the total time. Even if it only takes a few minutes to find the profitable recipes before each run, that needs to be added in with the time to do one key run.

Though even using tomes has a cost as they currently give skill points that could be used in the mystic forge.

Papierkorb.2301:

I doubt that theres such a way of crafting up to 200 since as far as I know gw2crafts.net uses an algorithm to find the best deal to craft your way up and that deal always costs gold.

Gw2crafts has its flaws.

“it takes you 40 runs to get a ticket” -> Just a wrong statement

After making way over 500 keys in the past 2 years I can say that the average ticket (10 scraps count as 1 ticket) is 25 – 30. This information is BEFORE they increased the drop chance for tickets/scraps.

Besides that there’s a lot of stuff (home instance nodes) that gives you 80 – 400g that drops quite regularly.

Your point only makes sense for people that make less than 20 runs, dont get anything and then stop for ever. If you farm daily or weekly you will make a lot of profit. Otherwise I would solo Arah or farm dungeons all day long if this wouldn’t be a appropriate alternative.

“Lose 2 gold each run” -> Just a wrong statement

You pay 2 Gold in the worst case and you always make 50 Silver – 1 Gold back through the 11 loot bags and the 1 champion bag you drop in the run. Also even a crap key gives you about a gold most of the times.

So in the worst case you spend 1.5 Gold and make 0 profit. But that is just the nature of the randomness of the black lion chests, not the weakness of the run.

Papierkorb.2301:

“it takes you 40 runs to get a ticket” -> Just a wrong statement

After making way over 500 keys in the past 2 years I can say that the average ticket (10 scraps count as 1 ticket) is 25 – 30. This information is BEFORE they increased the drop chance for tickets/scraps.

Besides that there’s a lot of stuff (home instance nodes) that gives you 80 – 400g that drops quite regularly.

Your point only makes sense for people that make less than 20 runs (and then stop for ever). If you farm daily or weekly you will make a lot of profit. Otherwise I would solo Arah or farm dungeons all day long if this wouldn’t be a appropriate alternative.

“Lose 2 gold each run” -> Just a wrong statement

You pay 2 Gold in the worst case and you always make 50 Silver – 1 Gold back through the 11 loot bags and the 1 champion bag you drop in the run. Also even a crap key gives you about a gold most of the times.

So in the worst case you spend 1.5 Gold and make 0 profit. But that is just the nature of the randomness of the black lion chests, not the weakness of the run.

1) you misread it, the 40 runs was an ‘if then’, not an ‘it will’
2) just because the average is is 25 to 30 doesn’t mean that people will not take longer than the average on occasion.
3) I don’t count the home instance nodes as they don’t show during a key run. Those are a separate farm that I have already done each day before I do a Key run. You may combine them but they aren’t part of it and really shouldn’t be counted towards the profit. It would be like waypointing to a rich node during each key run or a chest somewhere and claiming that the node or chest is part of your key run profit. Also, not everyone has the home instance nodes.
4) the champ bags and loot bags I didn’t put towards the calculation of cost so you might be right there. Even so, they can only offset gold lost and make it not as severe if there isn’t a profit made by crafting

1) youre right i guess
2) youre kinda right
3) the nodes can DROP out of the black lion chests and can be sold in the trading post for 80 – 300 gold, so the times where the value by a key was estimated by its ticket drop chance is over for quite a while. I never said I would harvest anything, I dont even own nodes.

It’s just another black lion key farm video.

But looks especially good now since the buy order of weapon is at 110 gold. And the ticket rate is higher at this time.

I think people used to run guardian because there’s no lvl10 requirement before. The video is nothing special.

Truthfully, now that leveling is involved there is a cost to key faming that wasn’t there before. Either the person can craft to level and have the opportunity cost with the time lost to research the best prices and buying the ingredients needed, the time to craft then the time to sell, or chance taking a loss directly by crafting unprofitable items. Or they can have the cost by taking the time to level, which is again an opportunity cost. They could have used that time to run dungeons or farm instead. Or use tomes, again an opportunity cost as the tomes give skill points that are worth silver.

If someone wants to key run, then they have to decide which of these costs are better for them.

Since everyone is so into sharing in this post I’ll share something.

You can farm skill points too. Instead of just farming keys, in 2 hours you can also farm 60 more skill points.

Weather that is worth it depends on if there’s good promotion at the time.

That being said skill farming is getting nerfed soon.

Hmmm, I might delete my level 26 necro and get back into keyrunning.

Just a couple of things
1) if you don’t want to run all the way through DR to the crafting station, just pop into WvW as soon as you exit the tutorial – the cooking station is just beyond the stairs on your left and the tp is close in case you forgot to get some ingredient.

2) If you need trans charges too, you can map rata sum in less than 10 minutes and get the last 75% or so from level 9 to level 10 at the same time – a bit longer than doing it all with crafting but worth it if you use a lot of trans charges. And, if you did the crafting in WvW, it’s just a matter of taking the portal to LA and few steps to the portal to RS (only if your toon has not been in LA before – otherwise the WvW to LA portal will stick you down at fort mariner)

My preference is to get to level 7 by doing hearts in Queensdale. I use the lunar fireworks that give an extra 10% exp from all sources and rice balls for 10% extra exp per kill. Takes me about 35 minutes to get to level 7. Then I use 3 tomes to get to level 10, go to PvP to get weapon swap, and then do the key run.

For me, the 35 minutes is shorter or about the same time it would take me to find profitable things I can craft before each run, put in buy orders and then the time to craft.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

They could have used that time to run dungeons or farm instead.

Uh, well I know that gold to gem conversion has its ups and downs, but a quick look at gw2spidy.com is telling me that it takes 18g82s to buy 100 gems.

A Black Lion Key costs 125 gems, so about 23.5 gold. Even taking into account the cost of buying the cooking ingredients, or hoping for a lower gold-to-gem conversion rate, are you saying that there is any situation in the game where you can farm enough gold to buy a Black Lion Key in under 15 minutes?

Fyrebrand.4859:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

They could have used that time to run dungeons or farm instead.

Uh, well I know that gold to gem conversion has its ups and downs, but a quick look at gw2spidy.com is telling me that it takes 18g82s to buy 100 gems.

A Black Lion Key costs 125 gems, so about 23.5 gold. Even taking into account the cost of buying the cooking ingredients, or hoping for a lower gold-to-gem conversion rate, are you saying that there is any situation in the game where you can farm enough gold to buy a Black Lion Key in under 15 minutes?

No. Good point. I never buy keys and don’t track the prices, I only get keys from key runs. However the time to get to level 10 needs to be factored in. it’s more than 15 minutes, unless you use tomes.

That high price is fairly recent though and it did used to be more comparable when it cost less to buy them with gold from dungeons, any drops and converting rares/exotics bought with dungeon tokens to ectos.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

My preference is to get to level 7 by doing hearts in Queensdale. I use the lunar fireworks that give an extra 10% exp from all sources and rice balls for 10% extra exp per kill. Takes me about 35 minutes to get to level 7. Then I use 3 tomes to get to level 10, go to PvP to get weapon swap, and then do the key run.

For me, the 35 minutes is shorter or about the same time it would take me to find profitable things I can craft before each run, put in buy orders and then the time to craft.

To each his own, but my key runs are completely over and done in 30 minutes—cooking, into story, warhorn, armor set, mostly following the standard videos—where as you haven’t even started the personal story yet. Why waste time doing it that way when the point is to make as much gold in the shortest time possible?

Prototypemind.4026:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

My preference is to get to level 7 by doing hearts in Queensdale. I use the lunar fireworks that give an extra 10% exp from all sources and rice balls for 10% extra exp per kill. Takes me about 35 minutes to get to level 7. Then I use 3 tomes to get to level 10, go to PvP to get weapon swap, and then do the key run.

For me, the 35 minutes is shorter or about the same time it would take me to find profitable things I can craft before each run, put in buy orders and then the time to craft.

To each his own, but my key runs are completely over and done in 30 minutes—cooking, into story, warhorn, armor set, mostly following the standard videos—where as you haven’t even started the personal story yet. Why waste time doing it that way when the point is to make as much gold in the shortest time possible?

For me, the 35 minutes is shorter or about the same time it would take me to find profitable things I can craft before each run, put in buy orders and then the time to craft.
If crafting isn’t profitable then it’s not as much gold in the shortest amount of time. It’s a shorter amount of time if I craft unprofitably, but that’s not my preference.

Well my average run takes 17 minutes, from creating a character to creating the next one.
And Im also a quite expirienced dungeon runner, before I picked up keyrunning I did a 3.5 to 4 hour dungeon tour pretty much every day that ended up giving me about 50 Gold.
Also selling solo dungeons in the Lfg and stuff is easy Gold aswell, so again:
If this would not pay off as well as the other stuff I do I would not do it as often and I would surely not recommend it on the official forum.

Farm constantly. Get like 30 Keys per week and enjoy the profit.

Papierkorb.2301:

Well my average run takes 17 minutes, from creating a character to creating the next one.
And Im also a quite expirienced dungeon runner, before I picked up keyrunning I did a 3.5 to 4 hour dungeon tour pretty much every day that ended up giving me about 50 Gold.
Also selling solo dungeons in the Lfg and stuff is easy Gold aswell, so again:
If this would not pay off as well as the other stuff I do I would not do it as often and I would surely not recommend it on the official forum.

Farm constantly. Get like 30 Keys per week and enjoy the profit.

Does that time also take into account the time to find profitable items to craft and the time to put in buy orders? Or are you only crafting to level without trying to make a profit at the same time? There would still be the time needed to figure out how many mats you need of each thing and put in buy orders wouldn’t there? All that time should be added to the key running time as it’s preparation time, just like leveling.

If you key farm regularly, you should just buy stacks and stacks of item before hand.

Besides saving time, you also don’t need to worry about price fluctuation. And you should just craft the same item everytime and memorize it to speed things up.

It helps if you have the collection expander since items can stack up to 1500. I rarely need to restock and even if I do, I just restock up to 1500.

There is very little time you need to place buy order. Usually when item stock get low (like 500), I just right click on the item and place 4 250 orders which takes a few second. And it is very rare you need to do so.

Exactly. The whole point is to burn through the process as quickly as possible. It takes me 25-30 mins because my runs aren’t back to back, I do them when the mood strikes, so when I go to do them I’ve inevitably run out of butter, grapes, or something else I need and I’m going back and fourth to the TP merchant. If you’re stocked up it’s toon, skip to the back of the castle, town, blessing for swiftness, items from bank if you don’t have immediate bank access, cook, armor on, quest, key, put bags and armor into bank, crafted food sold on TP, delete toon.

Your method of searching for what’s profitable on the TP, Just, means you take more than twice as long as many who do it regularly. They’re getting two BL Keys to every one of yours, and over the long-term they’re killing you in terms of gold to time spent. You’re literally wasting your time doing it that way. You’re also wasting tomes, unless your excess from PvP or whatever is just that high.

I give up, some people just always wanna find some mistake in the video or in the calculation. If you like the run use it, if you think it’s not worth it, dont use it.

I didnt expect the english forum to be more annoying than the german one

Thanks for those who got my point or the point of my guide. If you got any more questions, I prefer you to ask me ingame (Character Name: Torrox, Account Name: Papierkorb.2301 [EU-Server]) or in the comment section of my video.

But last words since theres so much bullkitten in the last few comments:
1) You DO make quite a good profit

A specific event (ticket/scrap/harvesting node) with a specific probability (for example 0.0333…. = 1/30) will occurr if you repeat the action often enough. Thats 9th grade maths and the majority here should be familiar to that.

2) A whole run, from creating a character to creating the next character does not take longer than 17 minutes for me. 25 – 30 Minutes is just a joke.
3) The prepation time (buying the stuff for the Chef) takes like 10 Minutes and I always buy for atleast 10 Runs, that makes 1 extra minute per run. But if you buy for 20 runs you probably only need 2 more minutes and will end up spending 36 seconds per run for buying the incredients. I just dont have enough space in my bank to do that.

Thanks for all the critique tho, but all those fictional statements like “a whole run takes 25 minutes” or “you pay X amount of gold per run” are just too annoying to deal with

No, you DO NOT necessarily make a profit. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t.

The other day I opened 3 chests and got exactly 0 money back because all I got was boosters and other useless crap.

Zanshin.5379:

No, you DO NOT necessarily make a profit. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t.

The other day I opened 3 chests and got exactly 0 money back because all I got was boosters and other useless crap.

ya I’m going on the same streak. Quite depressing.

I’m really just farming skill points, else I won’t be going through this boring kitten.

I have a hard time getting skill points. The only other good source of skill points is open world champ bag farm(or chest train), Which is so boring I just don’t do them.

thanks for posting. I like that your entire post is ABOUT COMPLETING BLACK LION KEY FARM QUICKLY AND NOT TURNING A PROFIT as thos ideas would be off topic and reason for forum infractions

Also drop the loot bags in the bank and open them with one of your 80ies.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

However the time to get to level 10 needs to be factored in. it’s more than 15 minutes, unless you use tomes.

lol Yeah, I was going to say that it takes way longer to level to 10 via hearts, for instance, than 15 min. Then you have to factor in the 5 instances for the storyline.

Zanshin.5379:

No, you DO NOT necessarily make a profit. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t.

The other day I opened 3 chests and got exactly 0 money back because all I got was boosters and other useless crap.

You have to look at the key farm in the entirety. Sometimes you will get nothing, sometimes you will get two scraps per chest. RNG does come into play, and the RNG gods may hate you. I theory you could open chests for the rest of your life and never see any scraps. Aside from outliers, though, key farming is the most efficient method for gold/hour aside from flipping items on the TP.

That said, it shows you where this game is. In both my former main MMO and my current one, if I want to farm gold efficiently, I can do so by actually playing the game and enjoying myself. If I want to farm for a return here, I grind SW trains, deal with the tedium of running around in circles, opening 10,00 bags, salvaging 100,000 items, and still having to post to the TP. Even doing a daily dungeon train I have to stop between runs, especially after certain dungeons like AC, and clean out my bags so that I have room to continue.

Making and deleting characters over and over to be able to make cosmetic or equipment changes on the ones we like to play doesn’t make for an exciting premise. If any of us read a description of a new game and it mentioned that doing so—or running in circles opening chests—would be the most effective way for the majority of players to earn in-game currency I doubt too many would sign up or recommend it to friends. An aside, but a factual one.