Guild Wars 2

At this point, I have created the “Perfected Staff.”

For the amount of gold and mats I’ve already spent, ( setting aside the time and effort,) I could already have bought The BiFrost.

Yes, I’ve completed the world multiple times.. so travelling to the various locations isn’t an issue.

Still, I’m unhappy to have spent this much in resources and not even be to the stage of crafting the blasted precursor.

Well, it’s not the game’s fault that there are “cheap” legendary weapons on the market. Plus, think of the bragging rights in being able to say that you built your own legendary weapon from the ground up!

Also, I believe any legendary weapon added after Heart of Thorns is account-bound, so you have to build those yourself. The older weapons had crafting recipes added so that you didn’t have to rely solely on having the precursor randomly drop somewhere.

Crafting is not supposed to offer an cheaper path to the precursor. It offers an guranteed way to the precurser without hoarding a lot of gold. Sometimes you get some goodies with it like the garden for Kudzu or the metallice slime for juggernaut.

You have a point on the crafting pride.

Well the good news is the final stage is a lot cheaper/easier. There is a bit of farming (getting Manganese Dioxide from coral nodes is probably the most tricky part, you may want to start on that as soon as you unlock the collection) but mostly it’s running around finding and combining items, like a longer version of the first tier collection.

I found the 3rd tier collection the most enjoyable part of the process, and compared to The Perfected Staff (or even The Legend Experiment) the materials required to craft the finished precursor are nothing. Which actually makes sense given a big part of the ‘journey’ is about learning how to craft the ultimate staff properly instead of just throwing a ton of ascended materials in and hoping for the best.

For people that only care about cost, buying the precursor outright is almost always the better choice. Sure, you can sometimes save some coin based on market prices of the mats, but that doesn’t factor in the value of your time — time that you could have been doing something you like more or that earned top gold.

The collection method was set up as an alternative that allowed you to work at your goal at your own pace, that provided a story, and that allowed you to also earn a few AP along the way. It was never meant to guarantee a price break.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

For people that only care about cost, buying the precursor outright is almost always the better choice. Sure, you can sometimes save some coin based on market prices of the mats, but that doesn’t factor in the value of your time — time that you could have been doing something you like more or that earned top gold.

The collection method was set up as an alternative that allowed you to work at your goal at your own pace, that provided a story, and that allowed you to also earn a few AP along the way. It was never meant to guarantee a price break.

I haven’t seen anyone asking for a price break, I’ve seen people wondering why it is so much more expensive.

Ok so I hope you are exaggerating on how much it cost you to craft the perfected staff. According to gw2efficiency, it costs about 700 gold to make the perfected staff, while buying the Bifrost on the TP would cost you 2,800 gold, which is 4 times as expensive as it would cost to make the perfected staff.

I agree that crafting a legendary from scratch should give you some extra bragging rights. Unfortunatly nobody can see if you did that or just bought the precursor.

Would be nice if they added a title for crafting a precursor from scratch.

OriOri.8724:

Ok so I hope you are exaggerating on how much it cost you to craft the perfected staff. According to gw2efficiency, it costs about 700 gold to make the perfected staff, while buying the Bifrost on the TP would cost you 2,800 gold, which is 4 times as expensive as it would cost to make the perfected staff.

Of course he is exaggerating but he isn’t wrong either

He is crafting the legend right now and only at the perfect staff segment

The legend is usally around 930g with a buy order 100g cheaper so using the buy order because who in their right mind straight up buys expensive items he should expect 830g. I spent 823g myself when I bought the legend though oddly enough according to gwspidy the bifrsot by orders are 799 right now so all the 800+ orders have been filled or removed.

Gw efficiency says it costs 817g to craft the legend so like just about every old legendary there is no point to crafting at all. You craft the new legends because you have too but at this stage in the game no old legend should be crafted and he is indeed burning a lot of time and energy crafting that thing. To late now though and its best for him to keep on plugging away because he is never going to get back the time for events, collection, crafting, and so forth so might as well finish it.

As for everyone else I don’t think you need a title or anything for crafting because crafting precursors is achievement based and thus your reward is additional achievement points.

FWIW, I’m doing them the hard way because I care more about the experience than the gold. So, economically it’s a loss, but in terms of turning my real world $$$ into fun for me, it’s a win.

Obviously not everyone will feel this way.

Djinn.9245:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

For people that only care about cost, buying the precursor outright is almost always the better choice. Sure, you can sometimes save some coin based on market prices of the mats, but that doesn’t factor in the value of your time — time that you could have been doing something you like more or that earned top gold.

The collection method was set up as an alternative that allowed you to work at your goal at your own pace, that provided a story, and that allowed you to also earn a few AP along the way. It was never meant to guarantee a price break.

I haven’t seen anyone asking for a price break, I’ve seen people wondering why it is so much more expensive.

You’d have to define “much more expensive.”

According to GW2 Efficiency, the price differential between collecting and ‘finding’ ranges from purchasing being as much as 44% more expensive (Carcharias) to collecting being twice as expensive (The Bard, Chaos Gun, The Hunter, The Energizer, The Lover). All of those are comparatively unpopular options, i.e. the market prices have been historically lower, despite having roughly the same drop rates.

The collection costs vary with the price of the materials, which rise & fall without anything directly to do with the precursor. In contrast, the value of the precursors themselves depend entirely on supply and demand, with the demand being low, very low (relative to the others).

Unless ANet constantly changes the collection requirements to fit the market, there will always be discrepancies between the cost to collect and the cost to buy outright.

But again, it’s moot: if you care about costs enough to consider the above, you should almost always buy outright. Even for Dusk, the 200 gold saved by collecting requires spending a lot of time invested traveling Tyria, waiting for events, crafting, etc. It’s less effort (and more fun) to do the thing you want and slowly increase your buy offer for the greatsword until you get one at the price you’re willing to pay.

Anet doesn’t control the market, and when people find out what you need for collections i.e maguuma Lily, now selling for 12 gold, the greed sets in, and the flippers buy and sell to make profit at the average players expense. I think this could have been more thought through, and unique items used that are not available on tp, as in tier 1. The crafting of the precursors was supposed to be able to allow people to afford their own, not grind to the enth degree at someone elses gain, and youre time, effort and more gold for the same basic precursor. Smell the roses, its a con from our own players, and nothing can be done. Im busy crafting zap, and again disappointed in the procedure, cost and gold to craft it. Forget the title, I just want to be able to craft something that is a process, and yet the same cost as a precursor, that would be fair.

I just did the collections for the four HoT legendaries over the past week. To be honest, the journey wasn’t all that great. It’s essentially a checklist to do already existing content which you’ve likely already done several times. One of the reasons why I did the four legendaries at the same time as there’s overlap. I’ve looked at the collections for the others, aside from the few I had also done, and any story was nonexistent.

The only legendary that had any form of a story was the new HoT short bow and that was primarily contained within the journals.

The “a guaranteed precursor” no longer works, since it’s cheaper and quicker on the tp.
The collections are more if you are the “journey, not the destination” kind of person. If you find satisfaction in doing it yourself, without worry of cost, the collections are for you.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

FWIW, I’m doing them the hard way because I care more about the experience than the gold.

I do care more for the experience as well… which is why i absolutely hate the 2nd tier of all precursor collections. It turns what was supposed to be fun into nothing more but a massive, boring grind.
In that case, i’d rather just buy it off tp, as it doesn’t leave as much of a bad taste.

Nick Lentz.6982:

The “a guaranteed precursor” no longer works, since it’s cheaper and quicker on the tp.
The collections are more if you are the “journey, not the destination” kind of person. If you find satisfaction in doing it yourself, without worry of cost, the collections are for you.

A – Its not cheaper for every precursor.

B – Even if it was, how would this mean “a guaranteed precursor no longer works”? Its still guaranteed to you if you do the collection. That hasn’t changed just because the price on the TP has dropped