Guild Wars 2

I know most people obtained their sets pre-HoT, but for players like me who returned for the expansion, what is the best way to obtain on the BoA/Non-TP materials to craft ascended gear?

5Bloodstone Brick
5Dragonite Ingot
5Empyreal Star
1Augur’s Stone

Above is what’s required just to create the vision crystal to make ONE piece of ascended armor.

Now, looking through the wiki, not all the information there is updated for HoT. I keep reading some things here and there and not everything is clear from lots of players:

1) PvP reward chest track farming for ascended chests?
2) Silverwastes gives you all the materials you need for those bits?
3) Recipes can only be bought with Laurels?

Can anyone give advice on how to even begin getting ascended gear together? Since the release of HoT, its beyond confusing trying to figure out where to begin to start getting all the ascended gear required.

Also fractals give ascended boxes too.

1) dont know about pvp
2)Yes, you can get all those materials from silverwaste, but only if you also do chest farm, i dont know if they are still going on
3) you can buy recipes for some stat combinations very cheap on the trading post, below one silver. you can than change stats in the mystic forge to the one you want.

besides dropping from fractals, tequatl and triple trouble have a chance to drop ascended armor and weapon boxes, too.

All of those mats drop in high quantities. Just play the game and you’ll have plenty of all.

Dust — champ bags
Empyreal Stars — WvW camps, dungeons, fractals, jump puzzles
Dragonite Ore — World bosses, WvW keeps
Augur’s Stone — Bought from vendor next to forge.

In addition large quantities of all drop from SW chest farm.

1. I’ve gotten 3 ascended chests from pvp since the update. Pvp tracks give you ascended mats too.

2. Silverwastes is a good ounce for everything.

3. Yes some recipes need laurels. There is a mystic forge recipe for you to change stats however. So buy the recipe for your ascended zerker pants, and if you need to change the stats there is a recipe for that.

The main thing to do is get your crafting to 500 and craft the daily time gated materials. Thats your main focus. Once you have the materials, craft the rest.

For PvP, the trick is to save all your reward chests until call of the mists is up (the buff that’s active during the pro tournaments), and the max out your magic find with food, boosters, etc. I’ve had a few exotic weapon or armour chests drop that way.

Also, if you’re crafting you don’t need a vision crystal for most armour pieces, just the chest. The others use a lesser vision crystal, which only needs 2 bloodstone, empyreal and dragonite.

Getting the 5 lesser vision crystals and 1 vision crystal for a full armor set shouldn’t take you more than a day if you go at it hard. You can prolly farm up a stack of each of the 3 mats per hour and you need 1500 total. If you do it in SW you also farm Obsidian which you need to refine the mats. You also farm champion bags which drop spirit shards you need to buy augur’s stones.

As for all the other stuff, the insignia recipes cost you 21k karma which is easily done, a full set of armor costs you 18 gold and 30 laurels, however, you can buy fractal encryptions and stabilizing matrices on the TP. You can excchange the matrices for fractal encryption keys (1 for 2 keys) and start opening boxes. In my experience you get about 90% of the gold you spend on buying them from TP and you have a decent chance at dropping the recipes that normally costs laurels, so this could also be done in a day. Prepare to buy at least 1000 fractal encryptions to get a full set of 6 of the same armor type (as all 3, light, medium and heavy can drop). You also have a chance at very rare aetherized skins that even if you loot the cheapest one make sure you at least break even on buying those fractal encryptions. They also contain the 3 mats needed for the vision crystals so if you already have enough Obsidian and Spirit Shards you could skip the SW farm all together.

Finally, the actual mats for the insignia and armor parts are all buyable on the TP. It’s quite a time grind to go and make all the mats yourself so you’re better off just farming gold and buying it all. I always get all the base mats needed (e.g. bolt of damask instead of damask shoe sole or damask coat lining) and make all the pieces myself. People charge more for finished products. If you have patience you can also get all the mats on buy order. While the prices are close together you can still save a few gold if you buy order instead of buy out.

All in all, a full set will set you back at least 700 gold. Possibly more if you want to do the fractal encryption thing and alot more if you want some of the new stats on your armor + extra grinding. Prices may vary as leather and metal is cheaper than cloth so a medium and heavy set will be cheaper than a light set.

Weapons are alot cheaper averaging about 80 gold per I’d say, but follow pretty much the same process as above. A backpiece costs you on average 100 gold and 24 spirit shards and needs a special drop from fractals.

Amulets are cheap if you have badges of honor as they will only cost 20 laurels then. Guild commendations can very easily get you two accescoires for 12 commendations and 5 gold a piece. Two weeks of guild missions buys 1 so you’ll need a month of guild missions to get both. Rings can be farmed really fast by doing alot of fractal dailies for pristine relics and/or getting lucky with your daily fractal reward chest. They can also be bought for laurels and badges but are 50% more expensive than amulets. Some ascended trinkets can also be gotten from achievements like story missions or collections.