Guild Wars 2

Dante.1508:

So “play the way you want” has been totally dropped from this game and changed to “Farm dungeons 24/7 to get end game gear”?

Sounds very much like another MMO 99% of the population seems to have come from…

I agree if you want to enjoy content outside of the dungeon grind you must buy Gems to make Gold, sadly its pretty simple and not real fun..its not even a mmo reborn every Free to play MMO made works like this game..

Or you could learn how to use the TP to make gold for you… buy things with low cost orders vs. the “retail” price-> ? -> profit. I’ll leave you to figure out the ? (there are many many ways).

So you can use your brain or your wallet. Your choice.

Aberrant.6749:

Dante.1508:

So “play the way you want” has been totally dropped from this game and changed to “Farm dungeons 24/7 to get end game gear”?

Sounds very much like another MMO 99% of the population seems to have come from…

I agree if you want to enjoy content outside of the dungeon grind you must buy Gems to make Gold, sadly its pretty simple and not real fun..its not even a mmo reborn every Free to play MMO made works like this game..

Or you could learn how to use the TP to make gold for you… buy things with low cost orders vs. the “retail” price-> ? -> profit. I’ll leave you to figure out the ? (there are many many ways).

Sounds fun. You do that.

Aberrant.6749:

This OP’s title is misleading and simply isn’t true. You’ll need gold at some point… even if you do dung’s… you might not need to buy gold… but you’ll certainly need a decent amount of it.

The major cost that seems to have been forgotten… runes. Yes you can get some pretty rubbish ones from the dung’s themselves for free (if you’re lucky). Orbs are an option but are inferior to good rune sets. Lets be honest… to be optimally geared… sorry… but you’ll have to spend some gold… and they’ll probably run you a couple gold… each.

Also you’ll need some gold to get some exotic necks/earrings… don’t try to farm the mats yourself… it’ll take you quite a while to get all 5 of the same type of orb you’ll need… for just one of your jewelries. You can get Power/vit/tough jewelry from pvp, but that’ll take ages and those are the only stats you can get. Then you’ll still need to get something to put inside of the slot on them. It’s far easier and better to just get the gold and get exactly what you want.

I mentioned this in the post, please read the original post before commenting.

Now, this is where you’ll need gold. However as long as you didn’t blow your gold on pointless stuff, then you’ll have made enough gold from running dungeons, wvw, or getting karma to buy the runes and sigils you want 10 times over.

Dante.1508:

So “play the way you want” has been totally dropped from this game and changed to “Farm dungeons 24/7 to get end game gear”?

Do date I have 1 lvl 80 character with exotics that I Crafted, 1 level 80 character with exotics that I got for Karma, and one character I’m setting up with exotics from Dungeons. I’ve used crafted exotic weapons, mystic forge exotics, dungeon exotics and exotics I bought off the TP. You can do what ever you want to get your gear.

If you want to chain events in Orr / Frostgorge for Karma and drops, and harvest mithril and orichalcum along the way to get your gear you can do that. If you want to live in Fractals to get fractal tokens, more drops to salvage, and the rewards in fractals, you can do that too. And if you want to run dungeons for gear, that’s viable as well. I can’t speak to WvW as a method of gearing a character as I’ve never done it but frankly, you can do whatever you want and get what you want from it.

Is there a faster method? Are some methods more efficient than others? Sure. The OP started out with an intention of providing a guide to getting gear w/o using gold. Using gold might be faster. Might not be. Using Karma might be faster, might not be. The fastest way might be using a mixture of all available weapons. The fact is, there are several viable ways to get your gear and make your way in this game that don’t involve buying gems to convert to gold.

Aberrant.6749:

Long post… but worth the read… I promise.

This OP’s title is misleading and simply isn’t true. You’ll need gold at some point… even if you do dung’s… you might not need to buy gold… but you’ll certainly need a decent amount of it.

The major cost that seems to have been forgotten… runes. Yes you can get some pretty rubbish ones from the dung’s themselves for free (if you’re lucky). Orbs are an option but are inferior to good rune sets. Lets be honest… to be optimally geared… sorry… but you’ll have to spend some gold… and they’ll probably run you a couple gold… each.

Also you’ll need some gold to get some exotic necks/earrings… don’t try to farm the mats yourself… it’ll take you quite a while to get all 5 of the same type of orb you’ll need… for just one of your jewelries. You can get Power/vit/tough jewelry from pvp, but that’ll take ages and those are the only stats you can get. Then you’ll still need to get something to put inside of the slot on them. It’s far easier and better to just get the gold and get exactly what you want.

You can get the ecto’s for the jewelry from salvaging 68+ rares (which you’ll need gold to buy unless you get lucky on your daily and get a free 25 stack of black lion kits… but that’s pretty kitten rare). Dung’s might provide enough rares to salvage, but if you’re not lucky…

Sigils… you can get some 5% damage ones from your story quest items (they are in some of the greens they give you near the end)… so you’ll need to buy some more nice kits to try to get them out. If you more than those… or you’re unlucky and you don’t get the sigils out with your kit… you’ll need to buy some.

You’ll also need some gold for your trait books.

Protips…

Use orders to buy everything. Don’t pay “retail”

Don’t sell things at a loss. Make sure you’re at least getting something decent over NPC cost (the TP will tell you the projected profit).

Do not fill orders unless it is very close to the “retail” price. Instead undercut the lowest seller by 1 copper.

Some level 80 crafted items (including exotic jewelry) cost for more than would cost you to get the mats and make yourself… other final products cost less than the mats it took to make them. Check gw2spidy to see which way is less expensive.

While leveling up buy blues that cost 1c over npc price. Update them regularly. Npc them after… and you’re out all of 1c/item. Greens aren’t superior for that many levels and cost much more. This will help you save karma for your karma gear later if you choose to do that as well. Note Iirc… Karma gear has limited in its selection of stats on the gear. There are certain stat combinations you just can’t get from Karma gear (such as knight’s gear stats).

Try to use karma to buy your gathering tools. Specific heart NPC’s sell them for karma. This is one of the few ways left of turning karma->gold without a massive karma loss and not much gold gain.

If you’re trying to save $… don’t do crafting. You’ll lose a lot of potential gold just on making those inscriptions vs. just selling the raw mats until you’re pretty far into the profession. Even at 400 most things will still be a net loss or just break even.

Very good post. Agree with everything. You should make a thread it’d be better than this one!

CassieGold.7460:

Dante.1508:

So “play the way you want” has been totally dropped from this game and changed to “Farm dungeons 24/7 to get end game gear”?

Do date I have 1 lvl 80 character with exotics that I Crafted, 1 level 80 character with exotics that I got for Karma, and one character I’m setting up with exotics from Dungeons. I’ve used crafted exotic weapons, mystic forge exotics, dungeon exotics and exotics I bought off the TP. You can do what ever you want to get your gear.

If you want to chain events in Orr / Frostgorge for Karma and drops, and harvest mithril and orichalcum along the way to get your gear you can do that. If you want to live in Fractals to get fractal tokens, more drops to salvage, and the rewards in fractals, you can do that too. And if you want to run dungeons for gear, that’s viable as well. I can’t speak to WvW as a method of gearing a character as I’ve never done it but frankly, you can do whatever you want and get what you want from it.

Is there a faster method? Are some methods more efficient than others? Sure. The OP started out with an intention of providing a guide to getting gear w/o using gold. Using gold might be faster. Might not be. Using Karma might be faster, might not be. The fastest way might be using a mixture of all available weapons. The fact is, there are several viable ways to get your gear and make your way in this game that don’t involve buying gems to convert to gold.

It seems people would rather cherry-pick the original post or just completely disregard it in an effort to promote conspiracy theories about how anet wants you to buy gems.

OP, you base your argument on Farming and grinding, something no one wants to do. I do not consider running a dungeon more than once “Fun”, you might because you may be “Programmed” to think this is normal, to repeatadly run dungeons to get items, to me this is foolish and a mechanic of developers.

In the end you need lots of gold no mater how you state you get it in this game to get anything.

Graill.8596:

OP, you base your argument on Farming and grinding, something no one wants to do. I do not consider running a dungeon more than once “Fun”, you might because you may be “Programmed” to think this is normal, to repeatadly run dungeons to get items, to me this is foolish and a mechanic of developers.

In the end you need lots of gold no mater how you state you get it in this game to get anything.

Okay, let me sound you out on this one…. if you full clear a dungeon, you get between 180 and 200 dungeon tokens for doing the whole dungeon once. Now, I will admit, that’s not quite enough for 1 armor piece, but if you just do 1-2 of the paths a second time, you will have enough tokens for one piece of dungeon armor.

You could entirely decide that you want to gear your character with a piece of dungeon armor from 6 different dungeons and minimize the ‘repeat’ factor quite a bit. Bonus, you’d get the dungeon master achievement.

Personally, I like dungeons because I do them (in general) with friends, though I PUG dungeons as well. If they aren’t your cup of tea though, Karma is a good option, as is coin.

And pardon me if this is trolling, but wasn’t the goal of the thread to be: “How to not need gold.” and not to argue the point that “You do / don’t need gold?” Gold is a valid way to get things done, but offering up an alternative to people who may not realize that it’s out there hurts nothing.

TonySu.7942:

How do you get the skill point item (crystal of philo)?

That’s actually the main issue I’ve been having, I’m constantly low on skill points.

I guess just do some map completion.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

TonySu.7942:

How do you get the skill point item (crystal of philo)?

That’s actually the main issue I’ve been having, I’m constantly low on skill points.

I guess just do some map completion.

I have more skill points on my main than I know what to do with. It seems like I just gained a ton of extra exp playing the game normally. Maybe it’s because I don’t go for many things that require those skill point items.

What is it you need so many of those for? I’ve only needed them for an ascended back item so far.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

I mentioned this in the post, please read the original post before commenting.

By saying this I presume you mean that you agree that your title was misleading. In the future don’t make misleading titles when you post. This will cut down on the number of people upset after reading your post. But it seems you kinda expected that with the whole I’ll report you thing.

Thanks for trying to help the community and I hope you receive and listen to more constructive criticism so you can learn how to improve your posts in the future ^^

Nayru.4537:

Very good post. Agree with everything. You should make a thread it’d be better than this one!

Thanks

I would go into more specifics, but my worry is that if I put out specifics about the ways that I’ve figured out how to do things… that I’ll just be shooting myself in the foot… and have to enter a dung or farm Orr (shudders).

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Graill.8596:

OP, you base your argument on Farming and grinding, something no one wants to do. I do not consider running a dungeon more than once “Fun”, you might because you may be “Programmed” to think this is normal, to repeatadly run dungeons to get items, to me this is foolish and a mechanic of developers.

In the end you need lots of gold no mater how you state you get it in this game to get anything.

I have listed SEVERAL different methods to obtain gear. If that STILL isn’t enough for you, then this isn’t the game for you. You can do ALMOST ANYTHING in this game and you will make progress towards gearing up. You can run around doing dynamic events, you can play WvW, you can do dungeons, you can explore for the hell of it.

Yea, you can’t sit around spamming map chat in lions arch while occasionally alt+tabbing to the forums to complain and make progress on gearing up, too bad, so sad, deal with it.

This is a bad responce to some one having issues. Instead of just telling them not to play, maybe try to understand their POV.

Dung’s are boring after a few runs of the same thing… seriously… nothing changes. You can beat most of them in greens with no traits. They really are that mind-numbing.

WvW has ONE type of gear you can get with a LOT of badges. Most classes/players don’t want pure pwer/vit/toughness… and to boot you’ll get more badges from the kittening jumping puzzle than you will from playing in actual WvW. That’s messed up.

People don’t like to have to grind PvE for gold. Again… It’s mind numbing to kill a million trash mobs… even worse than doing a dung.

The problem is that all these things wind up being more like work. You have to do one of them over and over and over until it’s mind numbing. If you’re given the choice between killing 1,000 boars and 1,000 bears… that’s not really a whole lot of freedom >.>

If the sort of token rewards we got from doing these things were all the same… then we would have freedom.

My solution was to just skip it all and figure out how to make gold without having to do any of these things so that I COULD play anyway that I wanted.

Khristophoros.7194:

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

TonySu.7942:

How do you get the skill point item (crystal of philo)?

That’s actually the main issue I’ve been having, I’m constantly low on skill points.

I guess just do some map completion.

I have more skill points on my main than I know what to do with. It seems like I just gained a ton of extra exp playing the game normally. Maybe it’s because I don’t go for many things that require those skill point items.

What is it you need so many of those for? I’ve only needed them for an ascended back item so far.

You get 1 skill point every time you max your xp bar once you’re 80.

If you have skill points you’re not using, you can convert them to gold via the exotic mystic forge weapons. They take 5 of each of the normal mats for an exotic (eg 5 ori blades/hilts etc.) 30 mystic coins (or 50 for just the 1h sword for some reason) and 1 eldrich scroll (50 skill points each from the npc by the forge). Those weapons sell for about 9-10g each. That’s quite a bit of profit over the base mats.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_weapons

Thank you OP-great post and good info for newcomers to the game.Actually i`ve chosen to equip my third lv 80 in similar way and will do same for my still at lv 2 engineer.Already done with AC power/vit/toughness set and 2 pieces away from CoF dps set.In between doing all the runs i was really surprise how much money i have made.Certainly was more enjoyable for me than getting all the karma for full temple set from Orr for my first character.Also running dungeons can net you a good piece of jewellery you can eventually use,money to buy the trinkets you need or one of those super rare recipes for jewellers which cost almost nothing to craft.
On topic for skill points-best way from my point of view is doing skill challenges and dungeons(you almost get a full level worth of experience when finish the path).Currently i have almost 300 skill points at one character with nothing to spend on apart from occasional crystals to convert cores i have in lodestones.

Aberrant.6749:

This is a bad responce to some one having issues. Instead of just telling them not to play, maybe try to understand their POV.

Dung’s are boring after a few runs of the same thing… seriously… nothing changes. You can beat most of them in greens with no traits. They really are that mind-numbing.

WvW has ONE type of gear you can get with a LOT of badges. Most classes/players don’t want pure pwer/vit/toughness… and to boot you’ll get more badges from the kittening jumping puzzle than you will from playing in actual WvW. That’s messed up.

People don’t like to have to grind PvE for gold. Again… It’s mind numbing to kill a million trash mobs… even worse than doing a dung.

The problem is that all these things wind up being more like work. You have to do one of them over and over and over until it’s mind numbing. If you’re given the choice between killing 1,000 boars and 1,000 bears… that’s not really a whole lot of freedom >.>

If the sort of token rewards we got from doing these things were all the same… then we would have freedom.

My solution was to just skip it all and figure out how to make gold without having to do any of these things so that I COULD play anyway that I wanted.

Literally everything you do will advance you towards obtaining exotic gear. Except spvp and keg brawl.

If out of everything you could do to get exotic gear you can’t find something you enjoy doing, this isn’t the game for you.

:P If I really “needed” gold to get “anywhere” in this game, I wouldn’t be able to play effectively-but I do, and I am POOR. My highest gold amount I’ve ever had is 17 gold, and I just got there today. I don’t really care about money, to be honest. Got all my armor and accessories through crafting/Karma (only the boots of one of my armor sets were AC boots, and that because the Temple armor didn’t offer the boots in the stats I wanted.) Crafting works, and getting Ecto is not THAT hard (I only bought a few Ecto for my first crafted weapon set-since, I always had enough for all my other weapons, which I also crafted, and for my second. self-crafted armor set and all my accessories.) I have had to buy a few mats for my armor or accessories, but these requried minimum gold investment, because I had good amounts of Orichalcum, Gossamer, and Ancient Wood Logs, as well as many of the dust piles required. In short, “you gotta be trolling me!” if you claim that this game relies on the cash shop and is pay 2 win-you really are not speaking the truth, and are being overly negative making exaggerated, false claims.

The Rune component can be expensive, I admit, but in my case, I use Superior Runes of Dwayna, which are CHEAP and VERY good for my playstyle, while saving me a bundle (they are not for everybody, of course). Divinity Runes are nice, but ridiculously priced at the TP, and better for Berserker builds, IMHO. And most of the other good options are very pricey, because they are too popular. It doesn’t affect me, but this can be a problem for a few, in which case I would recommend a few runs of the Fractals and/or Dungeons, without necessarily “grinding” them. There are other ways to slowly but surely make some money, such as map completing, doing some Orr events (such as Temples DE runs), etc. So Runes may be expensive depending on chosen build, but NO ONE needs to purchase gold through cash-absolutely NOT needed at all, as you only need to pay in adventuring time rather than gems/gold.

Selling mobs; junk loot and greens is good for basic money as well. No need to do Dungeons/Fractals for that. They will ocassionally drop a high level mat that may sell for a lot, or rares/exotics (I don’t always sell rares, and mostly salvage them for Ecto, though.)

Nevermind that you could theoretically still be effective while on Rares. I got my first full Exotic armor set after probably two months since game release. Is the game easier now? Yes, especially since I am more experienced too, but I could do any content with my Rare armor back then (I.E. you don’t need to get Rares right away-much less Legendaries/Ascended stuff-so you can just take your time and just have fun.)

The only thing I see as aproblem for almost “required” gold are Legendaries, and it’s the reason I am not craving one, but just letting it happen, whether in one or two years from now -I don’t see me really “needing” them at all. In time I will have the Gold and ridiculous amounts of mats required, without spending any real cash.

Unfortunately those of us who dislike dungeons and instead spend most of our time in WvW, you know…. actually fighting the enemy rather than just wasting a BG slot playing Super Mario 2012, have no chance of getting exotics.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Aberrant.6749:

This is a bad responce to some one having issues. Instead of just telling them not to play, maybe try to understand their POV.

Dung’s are boring after a few runs of the same thing… seriously… nothing changes. You can beat most of them in greens with no traits. They really are that mind-numbing.

WvW has ONE type of gear you can get with a LOT of badges. Most classes/players don’t want pure pwer/vit/toughness… and to boot you’ll get more badges from the kittening jumping puzzle than you will from playing in actual WvW. That’s messed up.

People don’t like to have to grind PvE for gold. Again… It’s mind numbing to kill a million trash mobs… even worse than doing a dung.

The problem is that all these things wind up being more like work. You have to do one of them over and over and over until it’s mind numbing. If you’re given the choice between killing 1,000 boars and 1,000 bears… that’s not really a whole lot of freedom >.>

If the sort of token rewards we got from doing these things were all the same… then we would have freedom.

My solution was to just skip it all and figure out how to make gold without having to do any of these things so that I COULD play anyway that I wanted.

Literally everything you do will advance you towards obtaining exotic gear. Except spvp and keg brawl.

If out of everything you could do to get exotic gear you can’t find something you enjoy doing, this isn’t the game for you.

Since you missed the point, I’ll state it in a very simple way.

It’s not that people necessarily don’t like doing these things, it’s that they don’t like having to repeat the same exact things over and over. Some players like doing dung’s some times… but not the same ones they’ve already done before.

To get gear out of them, you need to keep repeating them.

That isn’t freedom. That’s a grind.

Telling people to just quit instead of listening to them and trying to see from their POV isn’t reasonable at all… so hopefully that’ll help you understand better where some players are coming from

Brannoncyll.1978:

Unfortunately those of us who dislike dungeons and instead spend most of our time in WvW, you know…. actually fighting the enemy rather than just wasting a BG slot playing Super Mario 2012, have no chance of getting exotics.

I agree… they need to remove the badges from the jumping puzzle and put them into actual WvW.

They also need to add more than just power/vit/toughness as an option for WvW gear. Not every single WvW-er wants to be a tank.

what about runes or sigils?

Kaizer.7135:

what about runes or sigils?

Mentioned in the original post.

CassieGold.7460:

I see that there is some resistance to the notion of doing Dungeons for enough tokens to get armor and wanted to offer an alternative with a method to make life a little easier:

Karma Armor from Orr:
For many people, the notion of getting Karma armor seems like an invitation to grind DEs until DR kicks in and then wander on to a chain of missery that does not end for a goal that seems unobtainable. This does not have to happen.

How to get Karma Armor the easy way:
Step 1: Do the daily achievement every day. There are 2 things you’re looking to get out of this, the first one is the Jug of Karma, the second one is the Mystic Coin. Save both of these!

The daily achievement means you only need to do 5 events, and you can pick them up anywhere. If you’re down on Orr, it’s fast, but I find that I chain low level characters through DEs in Harathi Hinterlands or Sparkfly Fen frequently…. If you really need DEs for the daily, the lvl 1-15 zones have events up frequently, so you can always go back to pick up events there. Bonus, you will also get Karma from these events, at 300ish Karma per event, 5 events daily will net you 1500 Karma.

The daily achievement also requires you to gather. If you’ve hit 80, or are close, I encourage you to get mithril / orichalcum if able, and elder / ancient wood when available as well. Swing the pick and axe a few times and you’re set.

Step 2: Do the monthly achievement. Personally, I’m kind of fail at this one because I don’t WvW much. But, it’s worth it… 10 Jugs of Karma and 20 mystic coins, right there! Oh, and of course, you can get Karma and finish your events (maybe your gathers…) while doing WvW.

Step 3: (Optional) Obtain a Karma booster. If the gods of RNG have been kind to you, you may have gotten one as a reward from a daily, or a key from a daily and you’ve gotten one from a quest. For myself, I converted Gold -> Gems when I did this and it cost approx 1.3G at the time. If that feels like a lot, skip this step, it is OPTIONAL, but, if you look at 1.3g for a full set of exotic armor…. that’s cheaper than a single piece on the TP, so I call it a win.

How many jugs do you need? Well, a full set of exotic armor is 252,000 Karma, so now for the math:

1500 Karma per day for events X 30 days doing dailies = 45,000 Karma
4,500 per Jug from dailies X 30 days = 135,000 Karma
4,500 per Jug from the monthly x 10 jugs = 45,000 Karma

All that gets you 225,000 Karma, 5 more days of doing dailies for the Jugs will get you the rest that you need (1500 × 5 + 4500 x5) with a little to spare.

So, one month of doing nothing but logging on to do your daily and doing the monthly. Be out in the world, play the game, have fun! But wait…. remember that Karma booster? Here’s the math with the Karma booster:

1 Jug w/ booster = 6,750 Karma
23 Jugs from dailies = 155,250
10 Jugs from the monthly = 67,500
Karma from the 5 events x day = 34,500

Total Karma = 257,250, congrats, you’ll have a little left over and have earned a complete set of exotic armor in 23 days…. BTW, this can be further reduced with the guild karma boost and the guild karma banner allowing you to get over 7K karma per jug.

Of course, you may have more Karma in your starting pool, further reducing the number of Jugs needed.

The OP has already linked a great resource at Dulfy.net for figuring out which temple set you want, remember the looks are the same but the stats are different. Once you have the karma, keep an eye on Orr for the temple you want to open up, or, hang out down there and clear it yourself when able. GL and happy hunting!

Great post, if you don’t mind I’ll add it to the original post.

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Great post, if you don’t mind I’ll add it to the original post.

By all means. I realized I forgot to mention Drops of Karma, but given that it was a response to resistance to running dungeons, they may not have been appropriate.

OP has been updated.