Guild Wars 2

So I finally bought HoT and I was all hyped up that I would finally be able to craft my first pre cursor. I finished Incinerator I: The Experimental Dagger, and moved on to the second part Incinerator II. But on the half way of the achievement I said wait a minute, this costs waaay too many gold. So I did the math:

Spark on the Trading Post = 669 Gold

Achievement Crafting = 671 Gold

Incienator Vol 1 = 5 Gold
100 Memorys of Battle = 6 Gold
100 Shards of Glory = 1 Gold
10 Globs of Ectoplasm = 3 Gold
10 Elonian Leather Squares = 108 Gold
85 Deldrimor Steel Ingots = 512 Gold
25 Stabilizing Matrix = 10 Gold
100 Karka Shells = 7 Gold
Steel, Iron,Orichalcum.. Blades = 10 Gold
Steel, Iron,Orichalcum.. Hilts = 3 Gold
50 Elderwood Plank = 3 Gold
Gemstone + Lodestones = 3 Gold

After all the time and gold spent only to find out this!? Seriously I want my gold back, If I knew that pre cursor would cost me the same amount of gold like on TP, I wouldn’t even started crafting it. Opinions?

Anet never said that crafting was going to be cheaper…../thread

Disregard Precursor, acquire leather.

masterfan.8375:

So I finally bought HoT and I was all hyped up that I would finally be able to craft my first pre cursor. I finished Incinerator I: The Experimental Dagger, and moved on to the second part Incinerator II. But on the half way of the achievement I said wait a minute, this costs waaay too many gold. So I did the math:

Spark on the Trading Post = 669 Gold

Achievement Crafting = 671 Gold

Incienator Vol 1 = 5 Gold
100 Memorys of Battle = 6 Gold
100 Shards of Glory = 1 Gold
10 Globs of Ectoplasm = 3 Gold
10 Elonian Leather Squares = 108 Gold
85 Deldrimor Steel Ingots = 512 Gold
25 Stabilizing Matrix = 10 Gold
100 Karka Shells = 7 Gold
Steel, Iron,Orichalcum.. Blades = 10 Gold
Steel, Iron,Orichalcum.. Hilts = 3 Gold
50 Elderwood Plank = 3 Gold
Gemstone + Lodestones = 3 Gold

After all the time and gold spent only to find out this!? Seriously I want my gold back, If I knew that pre cursor would cost me the same amount of gold like on TP, I wouldn’t even started crafting it. Opinions?

Maybe you should do some research next time before you craft a precursor.

Who promised you it would be cheaper than buying a drop?

Nobody said it would be cheaper. They said you’d have the option of crafting it yourself over time in stead of having to save up a giant chunk of gold and rely on someone else to get lucky enough to both get it as a drop, and not need it enough they’re willing to sell it.

Yeah, the point of precursor crafting was to provide a guaranteed method of obtaining a precursor that doesn’t involve simply buying it from the TP. They never said it’d be a cheaper way to do it.

At least the prices are pretty close in this case.

I miss calculated something. It should be 100 Gold more expensive than on TP. But hey I don’t see the point of having those achievements then. You spend your time on those boring crafts, and achievements all over the map for what? To pay 100 gold more and spend hours of crafting and doing achs?… Seriously..

Having so many sources to investigate, so many places to ask about… how you invest so much money in something without even look first? /facepalm

you should check out the dreamer. 350 gold to buy and like 800 to craft. but hey thats not anets choice. the market decided its price. its not very popular.

Well yea, so it’s concluded that crafting through achievements is useless. Waste of money and time. I feel sorry for people who will fall in the same trap like me, thinking that it would’ve been cheaper.

At the time I made Twilight, I had actually saved about 200G over buying Dusk. So which route is more cost effective is very much something you need to research beforehand. Ignore the wiki… it doesn’t summarize the numbers in any coherent way. Use gw2efficiency.com or gw2bltc.com instead.

TBH, despite the bugs, I did enjoy the around-the-world collection (not so much the “craft a million sword hilts” part though). It’s a shame Anet couldn’t find a way to efficiently create that type of content for the new gen legendaries.

Checked on gw2efficiency and even this is what shows up for spark (without using own mats) :

- 574g —> buy everything through demands even daily gated mats.
- 451 —> same except you use your own gated mats (mithrillium, elonian leather, etc).

This is with buying everything, you should have some mats laying around that can bring the cost to less than 400g easily.

Of course the price will be close to pre if you decide to straigth up buy your mats from the tp instead of filling buy orders.

In this case it’s not pre crafting who is the joke…

StonePower.8321:

Checked on gw2efficiency and even this is what shows up for spark (without using own mats) :

- 574g —> buy everything through demands even daily gated mats.
- 451 --> same except you use your own gated mats (mithrillium, elonian leather, etc).

This is with buying everything, you should have some mats laying around that can bring the cost to less than 400g easily.

Of course the price will be close to pre if you decide to straigth up buy your mats from the tp instead of filling buy orders.

In this case it’s not pre crafting who is the joke…

This is totally wrong. You are basically forced to buy Deldrimor Steel Ingots. 85 of them costs 522. Don’t tell me you will craft them. It will take you 85 days to do so. And then again 10 Elonian is 106 gold. I checked prices in game. I don’t know where you got your prices from.

EDIT: I checked on gw2efficiency and the price there is without Deldrimore steel ingots. Therefore its 451 gold + 10 elonian + 85 deldrimore. You do the math….

masterfan.8375:

StonePower.8321:

Checked on gw2efficiency and even this is what shows up for spark (without using own mats) :

- 574g —> buy everything through demands even daily gated mats.
- 451 --> same except you use your own gated mats (mithrillium, elonian leather, etc).

This is with buying everything, you should have some mats laying around that can bring the cost to less than 400g easily.

Of course the price will be close to pre if you decide to straigth up buy your mats from the tp instead of filling buy orders.

In this case it’s not pre crafting who is the joke…

This is totally wrong. You are basically forced to buy Deldrimor Steel Ingots. 85 of them costs 522. Don’t tell me you will craft them. It will take you 85 days to do so. And then again 10 Elonian is 106 gold. I checked prices in game. I don’t know where you got your prices from.

EDIT: I checked on gw2efficiency and the price there is without Deldrimore steel ingots. Therefore its 451 gold + 10 elonian + 85 deldrimore. You do the math….

Most people craft the Time gated mats daily and save them so it’s not really a gate it’s sucks if you don’t do that to begin with, plus you can have friends not using their Time gates and have them help you craft them, that’s how I was able to craft 2 full ascended sets in less than a week without buying a single deldrimor/Elonian/Damask on the market.

Precursor crafting is a system whereby you can pay more gold and use even more time on the process than before.

You are paying for inconvenience, basically.

masterfan.8375:

StonePower.8321:

Checked on gw2efficiency and even this is what shows up for spark (without using own mats) :

- 574g —> buy everything through demands even daily gated mats.
- 451 --> same except you use your own gated mats (mithrillium, elonian leather, etc).

This is with buying everything, you should have some mats laying around that can bring the cost to less than 400g easily.

Of course the price will be close to pre if you decide to straigth up buy your mats from the tp instead of filling buy orders.

In this case it’s not pre crafting who is the joke…

This is totally wrong. You are basically forced to buy Deldrimor Steel Ingots. 85 of them costs 522. Don’t tell me you will craft them. It will take you 85 days to do so. And then again 10 Elonian is 106 gold. I checked prices in game. I don’t know where you got your prices from.

EDIT: I checked on gw2efficiency and the price there is without Deldrimore steel ingots. Therefore its 451 gold + 10 elonian + 85 deldrimore. You do the math….

What you havent been playing the game at all?
I got 77 deldrimore, 92 lumps of mithirlium so could craft those easily if i ordered the materials from tp.
57 elonian with 100 spools
27 spirit wood with 125 elder spirit
Only 48 damask and 67 silk since i cant be bothered to farm 100 silk bolts everyday.

Its suposed to be a long term goal not buy everything from tp and done…. if you wanted that just buy the kitten precursor.

masterfan.8375:

StonePower.8321:

Checked on gw2efficiency and even this is what shows up for spark (without using own mats) :

- 574g —> buy everything through demands even daily gated mats.
- 451 --> same except you use your own gated mats (mithrillium, elonian leather, etc).

This is with buying everything, you should have some mats laying around that can bring the cost to less than 400g easily.

Of course the price will be close to pre if you decide to straigth up buy your mats from the tp instead of filling buy orders.

In this case it’s not pre crafting who is the joke…

This is totally wrong. You are basically forced to buy Deldrimor Steel Ingots. 85 of them costs 522. Don’t tell me you will craft them. It will take you 85 days to do so. And then again 10 Elonian is 106 gold. I checked prices in game. I don’t know where you got your prices from.

EDIT: I checked on gw2efficiency and the price there is without Deldrimore steel ingots. Therefore its 451 gold + 10 elonian + 85 deldrimore. You do the math….

I farmed and crafted everything for HOPE, Chuka and Ascension. The time-gate never effected me because I been crafting those time-gated items randomly for a very long time long before I ever needed them since I was always getting capped on Silk and etc from salvaging. Only thing I couldn’t obtain enough of w/o using the TP is all the Orbs and flipped Mystic Coins.

masterfan.8375:

StonePower.8321:

Checked on gw2efficiency and even this is what shows up for spark (without using own mats) :

- 574g —> buy everything through demands even daily gated mats.
- 451 --> same except you use your own gated mats (mithrillium, elonian leather, etc).

This is with buying everything, you should have some mats laying around that can bring the cost to less than 400g easily.

Of course the price will be close to pre if you decide to straigth up buy your mats from the tp instead of filling buy orders.

In this case it’s not pre crafting who is the joke…

This is totally wrong. You are basically forced to buy Deldrimor Steel Ingots. 85 of them costs 522. Don’t tell me you will craft them. It will take you 85 days to do so. And then again 10 Elonian is 106 gold. I checked prices in game. I don’t know where you got your prices from.

EDIT: I checked on gw2efficiency and the price there is without Deldrimore steel ingots. Therefore its 451 gold + 10 elonian + 85 deldrimore. You do the math….

Even if one had not saved up any of the time gated materials, some people wouldn’t care that it takes them 85 days to do it. So you aren’t forced to do it. 85 days is just under 3 months. Considering legendary weapons are long term goals, 3 months isn’t too long.

Especially if you start the process for making the precursor when you first start to work on the legendary. Then 85 days may not end up with too much wasted time. Especially for casual players.

Linken.6345:

masterfan.8375:

StonePower.8321:

Checked on gw2efficiency and even this is what shows up for spark (without using own mats) :

- 574g —> buy everything through demands even daily gated mats.
- 451 --> same except you use your own gated mats (mithrillium, elonian leather, etc).

This is with buying everything, you should have some mats laying around that can bring the cost to less than 400g easily.

Of course the price will be close to pre if you decide to straigth up buy your mats from the tp instead of filling buy orders.

In this case it’s not pre crafting who is the joke…

This is totally wrong. You are basically forced to buy Deldrimor Steel Ingots. 85 of them costs 522. Don’t tell me you will craft them. It will take you 85 days to do so. And then again 10 Elonian is 106 gold. I checked prices in game. I don’t know where you got your prices from.

EDIT: I checked on gw2efficiency and the price there is without Deldrimore steel ingots. Therefore its 451 gold + 10 elonian + 85 deldrimore. You do the math….

What you havent been playing the game at all?
I got 77 deldrimore, 92 lumps of mithirlium so could craft those easily if i ordered the materials from tp.
57 elonian with 100 spools
27 spirit wood with 125 elder spirit
Only 48 damask and 67 silk since i cant be bothered to farm 100 silk bolts everyday.

Its suposed to be a long term goal not buy everything from tp and done…. if you wanted that just buy the kitten precursor.

92 lumps of mithrilium would take 92 days to make… And it’s only ONE part of crafting the pre cursor. If you farm couple of hours daily, in 92 days you would make way more than 600 gold in order to buy it from the trading post. And me personally, I played PVP most of my time and didn’t focus on those boring daily crafts. What I’m trying to say is that the system for pre cursor crafting as it is, is broken

masterfan.8375:

This is totally wrong. You are basically forced to buy Deldrimor Steel Ingots. 85 of them costs 522. Don’t tell me you will craft them. It will take you 85 days to do so. And then again 10 Elonian is 106 gold. I checked prices in game. I don’t know where you got your prices from.

EDIT: I checked on gw2efficiency and the price there is without Deldrimore steel ingots. Therefore its 451 gold + 10 elonian + 85 deldrimore. You do the math….

You don’t need HoT to craft the time gated mats, and you’ve had more than a year since HoT released to plan/gather your mats if you were looking to craft a legendary.

TBH, you should have done your homework… unlike everyone who jumped straight into legendary crafting when HoT launched, you’ve currently got plenty of online resources and guides to help you.

masterfan.8375:

This is totally wrong. You are basically forced to buy Deldrimor Steel Ingots.

No one is forced to buy them — you chose to do so, even after seeing the premium charged for being impatient, versus crafting. You even had the option to put in lowball buy orders and waiting.

masterfan.8375:

…You do the math….

Obviously, doing the math isn’t always sufficient; people still choose to save time by spending money instead of the other way around.

masterfan.8375:

Linken.6345:

masterfan.8375:

StonePower.8321:

Checked on gw2efficiency and even this is what shows up for spark (without using own mats) :

- 574g —> buy everything through demands even daily gated mats.
- 451 --> same except you use your own gated mats (mithrillium, elonian leather, etc).

This is with buying everything, you should have some mats laying around that can bring the cost to less than 400g easily.

Of course the price will be close to pre if you decide to straigth up buy your mats from the tp instead of filling buy orders.

In this case it’s not pre crafting who is the joke…

This is totally wrong. You are basically forced to buy Deldrimor Steel Ingots. 85 of them costs 522. Don’t tell me you will craft them. It will take you 85 days to do so. And then again 10 Elonian is 106 gold. I checked prices in game. I don’t know where you got your prices from.

EDIT: I checked on gw2efficiency and the price there is without Deldrimore steel ingots. Therefore its 451 gold + 10 elonian + 85 deldrimore. You do the math….

What you havent been playing the game at all?
I got 77 deldrimore, 92 lumps of mithirlium so could craft those easily if i ordered the materials from tp.
57 elonian with 100 spools
27 spirit wood with 125 elder spirit
Only 48 damask and 67 silk since i cant be bothered to farm 100 silk bolts everyday.

Its suposed to be a long term goal not buy everything from tp and done…. if you wanted that just buy the kitten precursor.

92 lumps of mithrilium would take 92 days to make… And it’s only ONE part of crafting the pre cursor. If you farm couple of hours daily, in 92 days you would make way more than 600 gold in order to buy it from the trading post. And me personally, I played PVP most of my time and didn’t focus on those boring daily crafts. What I’m trying to say is that the system for pre cursor crafting as it is, is broken

It’s not broken. It’s an alternative they put into place for obtaining a precursor. They explicitly said prior to the launch of HoT that they did not want to destroy the precursor market. Which meant the cost wasn’t going to be that much lower than the TP prices of the precursors.

I’ve enjoyed the precursor crafting process myself. However, I went in knowing it wasn’t going to be cheaper or quicker than saving up all of the gold to just buy it off of the TP. Probably shorter time for me to craft it as having the goal be too far out without any middle steps discourages me. Having the smaller steps in the process keeps me motivated.

Right now the only broken thing about precursor crafting is the number of bugged events that are still bugged that parts of some precursors are dependent on.

masterfan.8375:

Linken.6345:

masterfan.8375:

StonePower.8321:

Checked on gw2efficiency and even this is what shows up for spark (without using own mats) :

- 574g —> buy everything through demands even daily gated mats.
- 451 --> same except you use your own gated mats (mithrillium, elonian leather, etc).

This is with buying everything, you should have some mats laying around that can bring the cost to less than 400g easily.

Of course the price will be close to pre if you decide to straigth up buy your mats from the tp instead of filling buy orders.

In this case it’s not pre crafting who is the joke…

This is totally wrong. You are basically forced to buy Deldrimor Steel Ingots. 85 of them costs 522. Don’t tell me you will craft them. It will take you 85 days to do so. And then again 10 Elonian is 106 gold. I checked prices in game. I don’t know where you got your prices from.

EDIT: I checked on gw2efficiency and the price there is without Deldrimore steel ingots. Therefore its 451 gold + 10 elonian + 85 deldrimore. You do the math….

What you havent been playing the game at all?
I got 77 deldrimore, 92 lumps of mithirlium so could craft those easily if i ordered the materials from tp.
57 elonian with 100 spools
27 spirit wood with 125 elder spirit
Only 48 damask and 67 silk since i cant be bothered to farm 100 silk bolts everyday.

Its suposed to be a long term goal not buy everything from tp and done…. if you wanted that just buy the kitten precursor.

92 lumps of mithrilium would take 92 days to make… And it’s only ONE part of crafting the pre cursor. If you farm couple of hours daily, in 92 days you would make way more than 600 gold in order to buy it from the trading post. And me personally, I played PVP most of my time and didn’t focus on those boring daily crafts. What I’m trying to say is that the system for pre cursor crafting as it is, is broken

But then again, if you sold those items and buy the pre cursor from the TP, you would still be in +

With approaching 5000 hours played and still no precursor drop (from mobs/wvw/or forge) in over 4 years, I am thankful for a route to get one that isn’t RNG or cash.

That said, yes, in nearly every instance it is cheaper to buy any of them from the TP than to craft them. The ones from HoT, however, have to be crafted.

The only reason I did Nevermore was because I wanted a staff and Bifrost looks like crap (imo). But, crafting the precursor for Nevermore was (at the time I made it) roughly equal to the cost of the precursors for both Bifrost and Incinerator combined.

some precursors are more expensive with precursor crafting than buying on TP. however most of them are in the region of 100-200 cheaper than on TP.

for me , it is not worth it. made my shield precursor. the time taken to do the scavenger hunting does not justify the price difference. i can make more gold within the same period of scavenger hunting, and simply buy the precursor off the TP.

I always warn my guildies, unless you’re going for HoT Legendaries, just buy your precursor from TP.

masterfan.8375:

I miss calculated something. It should be 100 Gold more expensive than on TP. But hey I don’t see the point of having those achievements then. You spend your time on those boring crafts, and achievements all over the map for what? To pay 100 gold more and spend hours of crafting and doing achs?… Seriously..

I just went and checked. Crafting Spark is 124g cheaper than buying even with a buy order.

Yep finally someone who agrees. Well it is what it is, I guess I’ll finish the crafting one day, even though it will cost me 200 – 300 gold more than on TP

Even under the the most frivolous situation where you buy stuff like dagger blades and hilts instead of buying the ingots and crafting the hilts yourself you still save around 5g

azizul.8469:

some precursors are more expensive with precursor crafting than buying on TP. however most of them are in the region of 100-200 cheaper than on TP.

for me , it is not worth it. made my shield precursor. the time taken to do the scavenger hunting does not justify the price difference. i can make more gold within the same period of scavenger hunting, and simply buy the precursor off the TP.

I always warn my guildies, unless you’re going for HoT Legendaries, just buy your precursor from TP.

Better advice is to tell them to do their research on the precursor they want and then let them decide what is best for them.

Because there may be guild members in your guild who would find crafting the precursor to be the right choice for them. It’s not the right choice for everyone, I totally get that.

Precursor crafting is for the “Epicness” to whoever made the achievement. It is never meant to reduce the cost to acquire one but to reduce the RNG factor besides pulling from TP instead.

Anet, true to form, bowed and scraped before the robber barons who run this virtual economy and ended up making a system that’s more expensive and time-consuming than the problem they were trying to address (especially when it was skyrocketing precursor prices that inspired them to start creating a “scavenger hunt” in the first place back in 2013).

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Anet, true to form, bowed and scraped before the robber barons who run this virtual economy and ended up making a system that’s more expensive and time-consuming than the problem they were trying to address (especially when it was skyrocketing precursor prices that inspired them to start creating a “scavenger hunt” in the first place back in 2013).

No it was people who asked for a none rng way to get precursors, not having to throw stuff into the forge or hope for a random drop that might be spear and you wanting 1h sword.

And we got exactly that

masterfan.8375:

So I finally bought HoT and I was all hyped up that I would finally be able to craft my first pre cursor. I finished Incinerator I: The Experimental Dagger, and moved on to the second part Incinerator II. But on the half way of the achievement I said wait a minute, this costs waaay too many gold. So I did the math:

Spark on the Trading Post = 669 Gold

Achievement Crafting = 671 Gold

Incienator Vol 1 = 5 Gold
100 Memorys of Battle = 6 Gold
100 Shards of Glory = 1 Gold
10 Globs of Ectoplasm = 3 Gold
10 Elonian Leather Squares = 108 Gold
85 Deldrimor Steel Ingots = 512 Gold
25 Stabilizing Matrix = 10 Gold
100 Karka Shells = 7 Gold
Steel, Iron,Orichalcum.. Blades = 10 Gold
Steel, Iron,Orichalcum.. Hilts = 3 Gold
50 Elderwood Plank = 3 Gold
Gemstone + Lodestones = 3 Gold

After all the time and gold spent only to find out this!? Seriously I want my gold back, If I knew that pre cursor would cost me the same amount of gold like on TP, I wouldn’t even started crafting it. Opinions?

I completely agree. The issue I have is that if I purchase a precursor, the Legendary I get will be unbound and I can sell it. If you craft a precursor, often for more $ than purchasing, the Legendary you get is bound. Not sure why Anet decided to make it bound. They should have kept it unbound and people could simply choose which path to take to the same end item.

Djinn.9245:

I completely agree. The issue I have is that if I purchase a precursor, the Legendary I get will be unbound and I can sell it. If you craft a precursor, often for more $ than purchasing, the Legendary you get is bound. Not sure why Anet decided to make it bound. They should have kept it unbound and people could simply choose which path to take to the same end item.

because they did leave it that way and you are just confused …

Yea only way to get it bound to character is equip it or putting a sigil in it.

Crossaber.8934:

Precursor crafting is for the “Epicness” to whoever made the achievement. It is never meant to reduce the cost to acquire one but to reduce the RNG factor besides pulling from TP instead.

If “Epicness” is cool kid slang for “Tedium”, I agree.

I did the tier 1 collection for Dawn. Of the time it took me, most of it was spent standing around waiting for events to start. Some events in the early game areas had me waiting an hour or more, only to finish them in a minute or so. Awful way to spend time. It was about as “epic” as watching grass grow.

When I finished and saw the materials it took, I had a good laugh and never looked back.

Here’s the thing: if you want to save money, the most efficient thing is to buy the precursor. Doing the collection costs you extra time and is a chore for those only interested in price, which diminishes their enjoyment of the game generally, leading to burnout.

If you enjoy doing the collection, even if it’s just for the AP, then sure, you can save some coin if you are careful. Those that aren’t careful will spend extra coin, regardless of whether they are doing the collection or buying the precursor outright on the TP.

Manasa Devi did the right thing: tried out the first tier, hated it, and never looked back. I did the opposite: I did some tier 1 collections and enjoyed it more than I expected, so I’m doing them all, albeit less than 5-6 items/month. I might finish a collection in 2020 at this rate, but that’s fine; I’m having fun.

in the end gold is the answer of everything

yes it is a joke but it serves a function. For those casual players that don’t earn a bazillion gold a month crafting it is cheaper providing you don’t mind how long it will take to remain “close to free” But if your a person who can’t wait wants it now and thus buys all the materials to craft then in 90% of cases it will be more money. The key thing to remember is that it’s meant to be a journey not an easy button.

Like for me I’m doing the legend I’m stuck on needing like 1500 elder planks, i’m not gonna buy them but farm them however I only do the 2 elder clusters on 1 toon so I know it’ll take me forever to get it made. I’m fine with that cuz id much rather spend my gold on something else. Now with that said, I will buy the cheap pre’s and only craft the $$$ ones.

This op though…… I bought spark like 2 years ago for 1200g plox stop asking for free pre’s dammm…

masterfan.8375:

After all the time and gold spent only to find out this!? Seriously I want my gold back, If I knew that pre cursor would cost me the same amount of gold like on TP, I wouldn’t even started crafting it. Opinions?

I paid nothing to craft my Spark because I used materials I already gathered during my regular game play. Maybe if I sold all that I could’ve bought Spark of the TP and have some gold remaining but I don’t care. The Spark collection filled from me playing the game as I always do.

If you want to use your gold to buy a precursor then buying it from the TP is for lots of them the cheapest option, especially true if you are one of the “I want it now” people. If you want to get the requirements for your precursor by enjoying the game and playing content then getting it from the collection is the best option.

It’s a matter of how you play.

Also, don’t do the math, check this out:
https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/legendaries

maddoctor.2738:

If you want to use your gold to buy a precursor then buying it from the TP is for lots of them the cheapest option, especially true if you are one of the “I want it now” people. If you want to get the requirements for your precursor by enjoying the game and playing content then getting it from the collection is the best option.

I would agree with this if the precursor crafting process was remotely enjoyable. It isn’t though.

I’ve been playing since early start, got several precursors which I all sold, and I could’ve bought the one I wanted from the TP several times over. I didn’t though, because they’d announced “precursor hunts” back in, I think it was 2013. I waited, for years, and was greeted with something completely terrible. The type of gameplay that would make me quit a game if it was actually required to progress. The price of precursor crafting doesn’t even figure into my revulsion, though I can see how it would for some people.

so the op thinks anet controls the tp right?

It depends on what your priorities are. If you just want a legendary, and especially if you want it ASAP then you’re better off buying it. But many people want to feel like making their legendary is an achievement – something they earned or created themselves. And buying the precursor (1/4 of the final weapon) from someone who got it as a random drop is totally contradictory to that.

I recently crafted The Legend to make The Bifrost. I was told repeatedly that it was cheaper to buy it. On more than one occasion I was told I was stupid for even thinking about crafting it. But I don’t regret deciding to do it that way at all.

I had previously made The Dreamer by saving up gold to buy The Lover (which at the time cost just under 800g – this was back before precursor crafting was even announced, when prices seemed set to keep climbing indefinitely). I definitely found crafting it both more fun than saving gold and less daunting. If I got to the end of the day and spent 2-3g on Elder Wood Logs to turn into something I needed for one of the steps it felt like I’d made progress, whereas adding 2-3g to the slowly growing pile in my bank (this was back when gold in your bank was separate to gold in your wallet) felt like a drop in a bucket I was never going to fill.

The time-gated materials were a non-issue for me because there was so much other stuff to get. I had a spreadsheet listing everything I needed and while I was crafting them I’d be collecting other stuff I needed, either for the same step or later on.

Actually that’s another point – when they were developing precursor crafting precursors were much more expensive – The Lover was about 800g and some like Dawn and Dusk were over 1000g each, and the prices kept going up.

A lot of people apparently made the same mistake as the OP in assuming that crafting them would be both quicker and cheaper so the announcement lead to lots of people holding off on buying them and lots of other people selling ones they had ASAP which caused the prices of all of them to crash, and they’ve never really gotten back up to where they were, maybe because the prices are now balanced around the cost of crafting them + the ‘free’ ones that come from drops.

But ultimately I think the point is Anet never said it would cost less, or be any quicker. It was just an alternative so you weren’t reliant on RNG (either your own or someone elses) to make a legendary.

masterfan.8375:

StonePower.8321:

Checked on gw2efficiency and even this is what shows up for spark (without using own mats) :

- 574g —> buy everything through demands even daily gated mats.
- 451 --> same except you use your own gated mats (mithrillium, elonian leather, etc).

This is with buying everything, you should have some mats laying around that can bring the cost to less than 400g easily.

Of course the price will be close to pre if you decide to straigth up buy your mats from the tp instead of filling buy orders.

In this case it’s not pre crafting who is the joke…

This is totally wrong. You are basically forced to buy Deldrimor Steel Ingots. 85 of them costs 522. Don’t tell me you will craft them. It will take you 85 days to do so. And then again 10 Elonian is 106 gold. I checked prices in game. I don’t know where you got your prices from.

EDIT: I checked on gw2efficiency and the price there is without Deldrimore steel ingots. Therefore its 451 gold + 10 elonian + 85 deldrimore. You do the math….

Dude there is no math to do, you just enter “spark” in the crafting section and it tells you the price depending on the option you selected. Deldrimor ingots are included, efficiency doesn’t magically take them out like you claim lol

Danikat.8537:

It depends on what your priorities are. If you just want a legendary, and especially if you want it ASAP then you’re better off buying it. But many people want to feel like making their legendary is an achievement – something they earned or created themselves. And buying the precursor (1/4 of the final weapon) from someone who got it as a random drop is totally contradictory to that.

Exactly this. It’s the “I want it now” people that have an issue with the precursor crafting price.

Manasa Devi.7958:

I would agree with this if the precursor crafting process was remotely enjoyable. It isn’t though.

That’s a personal preference. I liked crafting my precursors, although the second tier of the collections was annoying with all the time-gated materials it required but the rest of the collections gave me something to do in the game, more often events and bosses I hadn’t visited in a very long time, so that was refreshing. The collections for the HoT precursors are really nice (only tried Tigris so far but heard good things about the others too)

sophiewhite.3149:

so the op thinks anet controls the tp right?

Yep looks like it. Or maybe he wants the materials required to make a precursor to adjust based on TP prices so they always stay cheaper than buying them from the TP directly. Which wouldn’t make any kind of sense anyway.

Crafting was actually supposed to be a lot more expenisve than outright buying one in order to compensate for the fact that luck was removed from the table.
In retrospect, you got an adventure/collection before you could craft it.
So you also got some fun for that money. Unless you didn’t find the collection fun, which begs te question why you were doing it, then

Really? I’ll never understand why people calculate like this.. My spark cost close to 0 beacuse I used mats in my bank so they were free.. precursor crafting is fine.

sophiewhite.3149:

so the op thinks anet controls the tp right?

They literally based how much it takes to craft a given precursor on how much it was going for on the TP at the time. That’s why the resources required vary so wildly (by an order of magnitude or more) between weapons instead of hewing to the usual 2H/1H/OH rules as literally everywhere else in the game.