Guild Wars 2

I have farmed for Lodestones for nearly 10hours with 167% Magic Find gear in the areas that are known to have them. In this 10hour time frame I managed to find 1 Corrupted Lodestone. I just want to make a couple weapons and a legendary. I tried to get Charged Lodestones from the sparks and never found one. The Trading Post doesn’t even have enough Lodestones to buy to make certain weapons. I feel this drop rate is WAY WAY too low. When I started collecting supplies to make this legendary I am constantly told to go farm dungeons or work the trading post. This is not why I play the game though. I am happy to destroy mobs in areas where these things are found but spending all my weekend game play to get 1/200 lodestones required to make my weapon is ridiculous.

I guess my point is:
1.) I want to play the game and I want a legendary
2.) I’m spending HOURS/DAYS trying to get mats for this legendary and I am getting virtually nothing for it
3.) I would rather fight for my mats in the different areas and NOT just run 15min Dungeon runs so I can get money and buy them.
4.) I would rather fight for my mats in the different maps and NOT just be a boring Trading Post Wallstreet broker so I can get money and buy them.

Maybe I’m just doing this wrong. Who knows but

PLEASE PLEASE make lodestones easier to find!
PLEASE PLEASE make lodestones easier to find!
PLEASE PLEASE make lodestones easier to find!

I get most of mine from Fractals and dungeons but I got one this morning from a Veteran Icebrood Elemental at the Claw of Jormag event.

It’s for a legendary..shouldn’t be easy to find or get..

No. Lodestones are too easy to get. They need to make them much more rare, so Legendary weapons are harder to craft.

I find it easier to farm the money and buy 1-2 lodestones/cores a day. The chnaces of getting a lodestone from open play every day are incredibly slim

Wiseman.4075:

The Trading Post doesn’t even have enough Lodestones to buy to make certain weapons

You know you can only see the first 20 orders in the trading post right? I am sure there is more than enough for you to buy if you have the gold…

Smooth Penguin.5294:

No. Lodestones are too easy to get. They need to make them much more rare, so Legendary weapons are harder to craft.

They are only easy to get for someone who can make a bajillion gold a day on the TP or no-lifers who grind for a bajillion hours a day…

For the majority of people who can’t/don’t want to do that…they are hard enough to craft…

Wiseman.4075:

The Trading Post doesn’t even have enough Lodestones to buy to make certain weapons.

While that statement is just plain untrue (there are currently 1,335 Corrupted Lodestones listed), I can help with this.

The recipe to create a (Corrupted) lodestone is :

2 x (Corrupted) Core (Currently ~29s on TP)
1x Crystal (Can be bought from Miyani @ 5 per 3 Skill Points)
1x Bottle of Elonian Wine (Can be bought from Miyani @ 25 silver)
1x Crystalline Dust (Currently ~25s on the TP)

Total Monetary Cost = ~1.08g.
Cost of Corrupted Lodestone = ~1.3g

The Corrupted in parenthesis can be replaced with any type of core, to create the corresponding type of lodestone.

Assuming you do not have anything specific planned for your excess SP, this is a more cost-efficient way to get them (as opposed to buying the completed lodestone).

Hope this helps.

Also, as an aside, the drop rate of Cores also bleeds into the lodestone supply due to the reliable crafting recipe. Because Cores are far more common, the lodestone supply is not as small as you may think. Elonian Wine and Crystals have infinite supply, as they are NPC regulated items. The only side effect of this is the additional pressure placed on Crystalline Dust, which seems to make a number of people unhappy. The T6 dust is used in most upgrade recipes, and is thus relatively expensive.

You can also buy something from the laurel vendor which help convert cores – lodestones

Randulf.7614:

You can also buy something from the laurel vendor which help convert cores – lodestones

Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

To my knowledge, that replaces the Elonian Wine in the upgrade recipe.

Effectively, it turns a laurel into 25 silver.
Funnily enough, that seems to be the standard approximate exchange rate for a laurel.

16 Laurel = 2 Letters = 2000 influence = 4g to buy. (25s per laurel)
10 Laurel = 10 Mystic Binding Agents = 10 Elonian Wine = 2.5 g (25s per laurel)
5 Laurel = 10 UnID Dye = ~17s each on TP = 1.7g (*.85) = 1.45g w/ tax (~28.9g per laurel)

Yes, they should be rare, lodestones shouldn’t be super easy to acquire, however, while farming for them obviously increases supply, most players find it easier to farm for gold instead of farming for the actual items, so in the end prices, are getting higher instead of lower, making items even harder to acquire for those who don’t farm too much. This is something that the devs should look into, offer more places for various high-demand items, including t6 mats/lodestones.

There was a suggestion on the dungeon forums to allow players to earn lodestones by exchanging dungeon tokens (different dungeons offer different lodestones) that could help a lot

No, suck it up and realize some stuff is going to take a little bit more effort than you’d like.

Vol.5241:

It’s for a legendary..shouldn’t be easy to find or get..

Smooth Penguin.5294:

No. Lodestones are too easy to get. They need to make them much more rare, so Legendary weapons are harder to craft.

I’m sure you already know, but lodestones are used for things other than legendarys as well.

I think the drop rates are okay personally, but I wouldn’t complain if they added some areas to farm the cores in midrange zones, maybe very slightly increase the drop rates of the cores as well. It would help bring some more people to those zones.

They aren’t meant to be farmed. They’re meant to be gotten off of the TP so that you’re tempted to buy gems and convert to gold. Working as intended.

Only problem with the above post is that they have to come from somewhere. If everyone bought from the TP the supply of lodestones would be non-existent fairly quickly, then no money would be made at all by Anet.

Lodestones should be rare and hard to find. upgrading cores to lodestones give a decent profit depending on the core to lodestone price difference. As I recall, some are more expensive to buy the cores+wine+dust than to buy the lodestones. I wouldn’t mind seeing increased drops on cores (not from chests in dungeons, drop rates seem fair) but i’d rather see some of these things farmable in the actual world. maybe higher drop rates from champs, since they tend to drop garbage most of the time.

Each explorable dungeon has a chance to dropping one kind of core, and cores have a higher chance of dropping then lodestones. The cores can then be made into lodestones in the mystic forge, using this recipe; 2 Core, 1 Bottle of Elonian Wine, 1 Pile of Crystalline Dust, 1 Crystal. You can find corrupted cores in ‘Honor of the Waves’.

This has been very helpful! I forgot lodestones can be crafted as well. I mentioned the lack of stones on the TP due to their being less than 250 Charged Lodestones at one point this weekend when I wanted to see how much they would cost total. I see now there are plenty. The legendary is one thing but weapons like Mjolnir are exotic but require 350 Charge Lodestones.

Thank you for those that helped!

What I don’t understand is if ANET doesn’t want us to farm then EVERYTHING should be obtainable at a reasonable rate and not almost unobtainable as it is now, or, allow us to farm without the DR kicking in so soon. Totally unacceptable/unfair as it is for the casual player.

If they dropped at a high enough rate that you could reasonably farm them yourself without touching the trading post, the trading post would be utterly flooded with them. For every player that wants corrupted lodestones for an item there are dozens picking them up from killing mobs during events, from exploring the map, farming gold or just cracking bags from WvW. If anything is going to be rare in this game, its drop rate needs to be very, very low.

One day not so long ago the RNG Gods smiled on me and I collected 4 charged lodestones in just over an hour. I have farmed those sparks every couple of days for at least an hour and that was the only day I have found even 1 charged lodestone. So on and off I would guess about 100 hours farming sparks and 4 charged lodestones to show for it.

i still can find bots farming, so those lodestone on TP might partially come from them

I farmed the corrupted lodestone spot in frostgorge with 0% mf and got one within the first two minutes.

RNG.

Random = random

They’re locked away… Protected by RNG.

anywhere but your inventory/bank

Rooks Zaer.5846:

They aren’t meant to be farmed. They’re meant to be gotten off of the TP so that you’re tempted to buy gems and convert to gold. Working as intended.

You can’t… try making a Cragstone and get back to me with your result, there aren’t enough lodestones or cores to even buy them on the TP…

And i laugh at these TP flippers claiming there is enough and they are easy to get, keep dreaming…

@op
Material upgrading and putting up a buy offer instead of buying outright does wonders regarding this lack of supply you are talking about.

Believe me, there is always enough lodestones/cores being sold if you just patiently put up buy offers regularly. Even if supply gets bought out completely, actual price won’t fluctuate from what people are willing to pay for them and your orders will be filled.

As for fighting mobs to get lodestones outright(no cof p1 farming), go do the corresponding dungeons that drop what you want, they are fun/challenging compared to mindlessly killing 1 type of mob for hours on end… (I myself got more than enough onyx lodestones without buying a single one in TP just by doing TA, and if you want destroyer/charged SE & CoE are quick and easy to run too).

Corrupted lodestones are a bit of a problem though.

LFk.1408:

Randulf.7614:

You can also buy something from the laurel vendor which help convert cores – lodestones

Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

To my knowledge, that replaces the Elonian Wine in the upgrade recipe.

Effectively, it turns a laurel into 25 silver.
Funnily enough, that seems to be the standard approximate exchange rate for a laurel.

16 Laurel = 2 Letters = 2000 influence = 4g to buy. (25s per laurel)
10 Laurel = 10 Mystic Binding Agents = 10 Elonian Wine = 2.5 g (25s per laurel)
5 Laurel = 10 UnID Dye = ~17s each on TP = 1.7g (*.85) = 1.45g w/ tax (~28.9g per laurel)

Buying the Heavy crafting bag with T6 materials gives you 3 T6 mats, easily going over 50s each time. Unless you’re unlucky, but most days I get 1 blood or 1 dust at least.