Guild Wars 2

I’m not sure if I’m thinking about this right, but right now, the thought of being able to get precursor weapons has spawned a dilemma for me.

So, one can either keep doing world bosses and the likes, and patiently wait for the precursor he/she wants for the legendary weapon he/she’s trying to craft, but that’ll take ages. Getting one is already rare enough, let alone the one you want. So then there’s gambling some gold on the Mystic Forge, and hope that you don’t have to spend a lot of gold to finally get your precursor. Finally, we have the good old Trading Post routine; just get a ludicrous amount of gold (either by farming or currency exchange) and there you have it.

Now, I’d hate to just farm for 900 gold or more, or spend close to 90 bucks on gems to exchange for gold, but thing is, how do I know I won’t end up spending far more than that on the Mystic Forge?

What should I do? Heck, what did you guys do? Precursors are by far where crafting a legendary weapon will hurt your real life/in-game wallet the most

how do I know I won’t end up spending far more than that on the Mystic Forge?

You don’t, hence why the TP price.

You have a safe but expensive path: TP
An extremely time consuming and RNG loaded but “free” path: World Bosses
An even more RNG loaded and potentially costlier than the safe path: Mystic Forge

If you’re worried about RNG, just work towards the tangible goal of buying from TP

Maybe wait for precursor craft system in HoT. Maybe you will want new legendary with that. Also buy for gold always better than mystic forge for guarantee result. I see people often say spend thousand of gold on mystic forge and no precursor and other say spend few hundred and get. It is RNG and chance is you will lose more than win. Buy for gold is guarantee you get what want with no anxiety of lose a lot of gold for nothing. When you buy precursor on TP you buy some other person luck that had luck from drop or mystic forge. The many people with no luck from forge that spend thousand of gold have no thing to sell but sadness. And you can buy much sadness if you pay gem for black lion key and open chest.

Qugi.2653:

Maybe wait for precursor craft system in HoT. Maybe you will want new legendary with that. Also buy for gold always better than mystic forge for guarantee result. I see people often say spend thousand of gold on mystic forge and no precursor and other say spend few hundred and get. It is RNG and chance is you will lose more than win. Buy for gold is guarantee you get what want with no anxiety of lose a lot of gold for nothing. When you buy precursor on TP you buy some other person luck that had luck from drop or mystic forge. The many people with no luck from forge that spend thousand of gold have no thing to sell but sadness. And you can buy much sadness if you pay gem for black lion key and open chest.

They way you wrote this made me chuckle a bit, to be honest xD But in a good way! Anyways, thanks for the advice, man.

Honestly, from my experience I would say kitten the mystic forge that kitten is just a gold sink I have literally lost enough gold to make 2 legendaries over my 3 years of playing which made me quit for a few months after each attempt… It’s addicting. Just play it safe and farm the gold, I finally made my first legendary this year but I had to drop $75 on gems for my precursor cause to me my time > money but yea… Just stay away from the forge.

Avectius.3271:

I’m not sure if I’m thinking about this right, but right now, the thought of being able to get precursor weapons has spawned a dilemma for me.

So, one can either keep doing world bosses and the likes, and patiently wait for the precursor he/she wants for the legendary weapon he/she’s trying to craft, but that’ll take ages. Getting one is already rare enough, let alone the one you want. So then there’s gambling some gold on the Mystic Forge, and hope that you don’t have to spend a lot of gold to finally get your precursor. Finally, we have the good old Trading Post routine; just get a ludicrous amount of gold (either by farming or currency exchange) and there you have it.

Now, I’d hate to just farm for 900 gold or more, or spend close to 90 bucks on gems to exchange for gold, but thing is, how do I know I won’t end up spending far more than that on the Mystic Forge?

What should I do? Heck, what did you guys do? Precursors are by far where crafting a legendary weapon will hurt your real life/in-game wallet the most

1. If you need to spend money to change to Gold to buy Precursors, you must not have even a couple of hours to play GW2 everyday. My sympathies if that’s the case.

2. If you can play at least 3 hours everyday and cannot get a Precursor within 2 months without spending money, you’re doing it wrong.

Just to give you a perspective: I never got a precursor drop, I don’t trust RNG which is why I never use the Mystic Forge. I have 4 legendaries (Juggernaut, Bifrost, Sunrise, Incinerator, in that order).

I bought all precursors, and as you can see, they are all among the most expensive precursors.

I spent 20 months getting the first, 11 months getting the second, 3 months getting the third, and 2 months getting the fourth. If you can see a pattern there, I can tell you why in one word.

Silverwastes.

Yes, thanks to the Silverwastes, there’s never been a faster way to make money.

For context, I don’t do more than one Breach/Vinewrath in a weekday, and no more than 3 times on a weekend day. I do about 3 Tequatl kills, 1 Karka Queen kill and a Triple Trouble kill a day. I don’t do Chest runs in SW, I only do Dungeons on weekends, I don’t do Fractals.

Just sell all your rare weapons and salvage all your rare armors. That’s the trick. I won’t explain to you why, you’ll figure out once you understand legendaries and the market. Suffice to say, the ones who are going to fund your precursor by buying your Rares are those gamblers who think they can spend less time and gold getting their precursors by gambling on the Mystic Forge with your Rares.

I made an Incinerator in two months. Two months. From scratch. Didn’t spend a dime of real money. Think about that. And I don’t consider my schedule hardcore farming. My friend spent all his time in SW and made a Sunrise and Twilight in two months. If you’re complaining about how difficult it is to get a precursor, you’re really doing it all wrong.

In 3k hours playtime I never got any precursor, I ended up to buy all my 6 precursors from the TP. It’s kitten, but that’s what I did.

I bought mine from the TP.

It was the obvious choice for me because the main thing I wanted was some degree of certainty, followed by minimal boredom. Making/buying rares and exotics to throw into the forge with no guarantee I’d ever get anything worth the cost was out of the question and I didn’t want to be restricted to farming world bosses.

Gold you can get from pretty much anywhere if you’re not worried about always having the absolute highest rate of return. It took me 7 months to save up (I needed just under 800g) because I did it simply by saving whatever gold I got playing a few hours a night, rather than farming things that would make me a lot of gold. But I used that time to work on other parts of the legendary and took a few ‘breaks’ like spending a bunch of gold making an ascended coat.

Most importantly, unlike the other methods, by the end of it I was still excited to make my legendary and play the game, instead of being so sick of doing the same thing over and over that I didn’t even want to log in any more.

(And no I never spent real money to get it, that to me is even less of a reasonable option than the Mystic Forge. The amount of real money you’d have to spend is stupid for what amounts to part of a weapon skin.)

By the time you grind world bosses/Silverwastes/Dungeons waiting for a drop or to get gold to drop rares on MF you will have enough money to buy from TP. So TP it is.
My Twilight i used the mystic forge and ended up costing the same amount that than bying from tp.
My howler i just bought directly from TP (Howler prec is cheap tho).
3yrs in and no precursor drop.

I dedicated all my resources to crafting rare short bows knowing that if you do something an infinite amount of times over x period of time you’ll eventually achieve the desired outcome. You’re far more likely to obtain a precursor than a planet that meets ludicrously strict criteria for life to evolve developing. Our mere existence is far less likely than winning a precursor, and that’s not even factoring in that we’re intelligent life which narrows the odds further still.

I eventually obtained the lover, but still had some questing, T5 mat conversions, WvW, and dungeons left. This was before the Karka region was released too. The odds are still terrible, but if we use some perspective we can understand that it isn’t so bad. If you’re playing poker and won’t stop until someone obtains a royal flush then everyone is guaranteed to eventually have one at different times. Yes, it’d be an impractically long ultra-marathon with many games over a period of weeks at least , but still theoretically possible.

Advice: Buy it. Save the gold and buy it off the TP. It’s safe and you will eventually get there so long as you’re not spending your gold on frivolities. The mystic forge is a gamble. You could get the precursor on the first bit of random junk you throw in; or you’ll still not get it a year later.

I’ve bought 3 precursors over the past 6 months. Safe & reliable.