Guild Wars 2

I’m saving up to buy Zap off the TP. But I’m reaching the point where I’m considering trying to forge and just say screw it if it doesn’t work.

What I’m trying to get a handle on is, what are my odds like for investing something in the realm of 450g into trying to get Zap? Most of the percentages I’ve come across seem to talk number of tries that are way beyond the budget of 450g, so I’m not sure.

1. Do easy dungeons for tokens. The paltry silver reward and low level mats (leather, etc) are nice too.
2. Save your tokens. After getting enough, use them to buy multiple exotic swords from the dungeon vendor
3. If what you get is the precursor you want, congratulations. If it isn’t, sell that kitten and try again.

Repeat until you A. Get the pre or B. Have enough gold to buy it

At least we have options now. I’ve bought one pre in the last month and I’m having a go at crafting others. Always nice to have options.

I crafted Leaf of Kudzu. Really enjoyed the process. Probably Rogort next.

i have to say use the forge and get your crafting and mj find lvls up and save the money from buying it to use for crafting instead

There’s a few ways to look at it; is it something that you are willing to put time into investing for the precursor, actually going on the journey as this was designed to. And if you’ve done the rest of the stuff needed for the legendary piece.

I started the precursor journey with the colossus for crafting the juggernaut to use for my main revenant character. I’ve already gotten most of the stuff needed for the legendary outside of the silver doubloon. And as of this time I have finished the last piece of the tier 3 collection that I was lucky to get from tequatl. It took me at least two months from the start of the journey to the finish.

In my opinion, if you’re going to make the legendary as the long term goal, especially if you’re starting fresh, crafting is the way to make it and the game in general more enjoyable.

Before HoT I had all the materials for meteorlogicus and just needed storm. I decided to do the crafting and though I’m not done yet, I’m loving the journey. The clues are just enough to know where to go without giving everything away. It takes she time, but I’ve experienced things in the game I never would’ve come across before, like the grotto in the grove or the lady white event in Shaemoor.

Labjax.2465:

I’m saving up to buy Zap off the TP. But I’m reaching the point where I’m considering trying to forge and just say screw it if it doesn’t work.

What I’m trying to get a handle on is, what are my odds like for investing something in the realm of 450g into trying to get Zap? Most of the percentages I’ve come across seem to talk number of tries that are way beyond the budget of 450g, so I’m not sure.

I think it’s far more cost effective to buy the precursor than to gamble for it. If you have 450g to invest now, put in a buy order for Zap for 450g. Then every time you have 40-50g saved, remove the order and add 20-25g to it. Eventually, you’ll end up with all you need (and it is likely that you’ll get a better deal than normal if someone sells instantly and you happen to have the high bid).

The alternative is that you’ll spend the 450g and end up with nothing. Generally, industrial producers of precursors find that they can go through a ton of attempts without any and then get 2-3 within the next 100.

Put another way, you should only gamble 450g if:

• You’re willing to lose it all and accept the loss.
• You expect to get 450g worth of excitement from rolling the dice and hoping to get lucky in the first few dozen tries.
• You are willing to pay a potential premium for the chance you’ll get to build your legend sooner (the premium is if you lose it all).

Unless all of those are true (to some degree), I recommend strongly you avoid the risk.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I think it’s far more cost effective to buy the precursor than to gamble for it. If you have 450g to invest now, put in a buy order for Zap for 450g. Then every time you have 40-50g saved, remove the order and add 20-25g to it. Eventually, you’ll end up with all you need (and it is likely that you’ll get a better deal than normal if someone sells instantly and you happen to have the high bid).

The alternative is that you’ll spend the 450g and end up with nothing. Generally, industrial producers of precursors find that they can go through a ton of attempts without any and then get 2-3 within the next 100.

---

Put another way, you should only gamble 450g if:

• You’re willing to lose it all and accept the loss.
• You expect to get 450g worth of excitement from rolling the dice and hoping to get lucky in the first few dozen tries.
• You are willing to pay a potential premium for the chance you’ll get to build your legend sooner (the premium is if you lose it all).

Unless all of those are true (to some degree), I recommend strongly you avoid the risk.

Yeah, this is pretty much where I’m at in terms of weighing my options. I don’t know if I’m willing to risk it. I’m hoping to find some kind of percentages, so I know just how bad my odds are (cause I doubt they’re good). Like if it was 25%, for example… I might take those odds. If it was 5-10%, probably not.

Buy order sounds like a good idea, if only so I don’t have to stare at the unspent gold all the time.

In response to a couple others: Dungeon tokens sounds like a good idea if I did dungeons regularly, but I’d be going out of my way to do them and I don’t know the content well, so it’s not the greatest route for me. Crafting it would be nice if it wasn’t for the collections. I pretty much gave up on that at the Dwayna event part and even more so after I looked on wiki and saw all sorts of random Fractal stuff to get pieces of later collections. Going into instanced content for pieces of a collection is not my idea of fun and neither is being slowed by waiting for the right event to pop.

Ironically, the one part of the precursor crafting process that was supposed to be fun is not appealing to me. Maybe if it had stayed in open world and avoided events, I might have enjoyed it.

Labjax.2465:

Crafting it would be nice if it wasn’t for the collections. I pretty much gave up on that at the Dwayna event part and even more so after I looked on wiki and saw all sorts of random Fractal stuff to get pieces of later collections. Going into instanced content for pieces of a collection is not my idea of fun and neither is being slowed by waiting for the right event to pop.

Ironically, the one part of the precursor crafting process that was supposed to be fun is not appealing to me. Maybe if it had stayed in open world and avoided events, I might have enjoyed it.

Then you should definitely stay away from crafting. This part is basically the only reason why someone might pick the crafting route, as it is more costly than just buying precursor off the TP.

Also, if you want to get your precursor anytime soon, i’d advise you to buy it. Forging might pay off in the long run, but short-term it’s more likely to cost you all your gold without giving anything worthwhile in return.

If my memory is correct, when using exotics, the chance of a precursor is 0.79%.

If you can buy exotic swords for 2g per sword, you can have 56 forges with your 450g.

The chance of you getting a precursor with 56 forges is 35.86%. (ie the chance of you not getting one to the power 56)

1-((1-0.079)^56)

Edit 1: Sorry I forgot to take into account the exotics you’ll get from your 56 forges, (an extra 17 forges worth) which will take your chance of a precursor to 43.95%.

Edit 2: my memory wasn’t correct, so my chances were a bit small.

The way I look at it, either way it’s gonna cost you gold. The question is, how much gold you want spend and do you want to spend time running around tyria doing this and waiting for that. Some precursor can be cheaper to craft than actually buy, just time consuming. Here is an example. I just recently crafted dusk and it cost me about 600g to craft, and it goes for over 1000 on the tp. Now for rodgorts flame it was a different story. By the time I finished the 1st tier I realized it would be way cheaper to buy. So I just suggest you research before you commit.

Qazwersder.3574:

If my memory is correct, when using exotics, the chance of a precursor is 0.79%.

If you can buy exotic swords for 2g per sword, you can have 56 forges with your 450g.

The chance of you getting a precursor with 56 forges is 35.86%. (ie the chance of you not getting one to the power 56)

1-((1-0.079)^56)

Edit 1: Sorry I forgot to take into account the exotics you’ll get from your 56 forges, (an extra 17 forges worth) which will take your chance of a precursor to 43.95%.

Edit 2: my memory wasn’t correct, so my chances were a bit small.

Thanks for doing the math.

Magnus Godrik.5841:

The way I look at it, either way it’s gonna cost you gold. The question is, how much gold you want spend and do you want to spend time running around tyria doing this and waiting for that. Some precursor can be cheaper to craft than actually buy, just time consuming. Here is an example. I just recently crafted dusk and it cost me about 600g to craft, and it goes for over 1000 on the tp. Now for rodgorts flame it was a different story. By the time I finished the 1st tier I realized it would be way cheaper to buy. So I just suggest you research before you commit.

Yeah, I look at the “running around” as opportunity cost, in part. If I knew I would enjoy it, that would be one thing, but since I’m sure I’ll find half of it a slog, it would be time spent on something I don’t like that could be spent farming gold. So factoring in that kind of opportunity cost, I doubt it would be any cheaper for me.

Remember that Mystic Forge math is averages of massive numbers.
4k rares forged in the last 10 months got 4 precursors.
None, zero, nada in the last 4 months.
It can just as easily be the first 4 months.

If you’re that close I’d just save up and buy it. I gambled for a bit with extra mats, but I would never use all my gold to try to gamble for it.

compare here : https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/item/29181-Zap

Took me about two years of casual flushing to get mine.
No idea what the gold value would have been if I sold the items instead. Next one will be via HoT mastery whenever I get it, may be a method worth considering.

azizul.8469:

compare here : https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/item/29181-Zap

Just be aware, that the costs given here for crafting do not include the costs of base mats for some reason. Nor do they include costs of doing collections. In short, these are useless when comparing actual prices

Qazwersder.3574:

If my memory is correct, when using exotics, the chance of a precursor is 0.79%.

If you can buy exotic swords for 2g per sword, you can have 56 forges with your 450g.

The chance of you getting a precursor with 56 forges is 35.86%. (ie the chance of you not getting one to the power 56)

1-((1-0.079)^56)

Edit 1: Sorry I forgot to take into account the exotics you’ll get from your 56 forges, (an extra 17 forges worth) which will take your chance of a precursor to 43.95%.

Edit 2: my memory wasn’t correct, so my chances were a bit small.

You really put all those numbers into that post to sell him this? You are wrong on the assumption that chances add up. If the chance is 0.79% it is 0.79% every time you hit the button. Stochastics don’t have a memory.

The “total” chance to get at least 1 favourable outcome does increase with multiple attempts, obviously. I don’t know if the numbers are correct, but that formula sure is.

Nope. I doesn’t increase.

It’s like saying “if you gamble on the lottery much, you have a better chance to win every time you play on it”. And we know that’s not how it works.
Every new attempt, the game reset to 0,79%, they do not stack.

You are mistaking this with dice rolling. When you roll 1 dice (the Forge case), you can get 6 in 1/6 times. When you roll 6 die at THE SAME TIME (not the Forge case), you can get 6 from any of those die, so your chances improve.

Get a clue.

“The “total” chance to get at least 1 favourable outcome does increase with multiple attempts, obviously.”

If you deny this, you’re saying that someone who gambles once has the same chance of ending up with a precursor when he’s done gambling as someone who gambles one billion times.

Rule #1: Never use your gold to forge for a precursor you want. Save it always.
Rule #2: Use dungeon tokens to acquire exotic swords while you are building up your savings. Forge those.
Rule #3: When forging swords, always check the sell price of the ones that pop out. Any that sell for more than 2.5g should be sold on the TP instead of reforged.

jeezlaweez.6810:

Nope. I doesn’t increase.

It’s like saying “if you gamble on the lottery much, you have a better chance to win every time you play on it”. And we know that’s not how it works.
Every new attempt, the game reset to 0,79%, they do not stack.

You are mistaking this with dice rolling. When you roll 1 dice (the Forge case), you can get 6 in 1/6 times. When you roll 6 die at THE SAME TIME (not the Forge case), you can get 6 from any of those die, so your chances improve.

I will use a coin toss as an example. Heads or tails, the chance is 50/50. You want a head.

You are going to throw the coin twice. The possible outcomes are:
HH
HT
TH
TT

So there are four outcomes each with an equal 25% of occurring. But how many of those outcomes have a head in? 3. The chances of getting at least one head is 75%. The chances of getting two heads is 25%. The chance of no heads is 25%.

This can be applied to the mystic forge in the same way. For two forges the possible outcomes are:

NP/NP
P/NP
NP/P
P/P

the chance of a pre is 0.79% per forge. There are three possible outcomes which will result in a pre. The easiest way to do it is to consider the chances of not getting a pre (99.21% per forge). Only in one case will you not get a pre, the chances of which are 0.9921*0.9921=0.9843 (98.43%). With every other outcome you get a pre (1.57%).

I hope that makes sense. You can do the same for you die example but it would take me longer to write out.

This does apply to the lottery so long as you always use the same numbers and enter every draw. Note that the chances of you winning a specific draw remains the same.

 For your die example. You want to roll a six. A die has a 1 in 6 chance of a six on each roll (0.17). You care going to roll twice. The possible outcomes are:
 
Six (0.17) / Not Six (0.83)  = 0.1411     
Not Six (0.83) / Six (0.17) = 0.1411
Six (0.17) / Six (0.17) = 0.0289
Not Six (0.83) / Not Six (0.83) = 0.6889
 
Chances of you not getting a six is 0.6889 (68.89%). Therefore the chances of you getting a six is 1 – 0.6889 = 0.3111 (31.11%).
 
As you can imagine, the more times you throw the die, the more chance you have of getting at least one six. The chance on each roll is still 0.17 (1 in 6).

Falanu.4289:

Qazwersder.3574:

If my memory is correct, when using exotics, the chance of a precursor is 0.79%.

If you can buy exotic swords for 2g per sword, you can have 56 forges with your 450g.

The chance of you getting a precursor with 56 forges is 35.86%. (ie the chance of you not getting one to the power 56)

1-((1-0.079)^56)

Edit 1: Sorry I forgot to take into account the exotics you’ll get from your 56 forges, (an extra 17 forges worth) which will take your chance of a precursor to 43.95%.

Edit 2: my memory wasn’t correct, so my chances were a bit small.

You really put all those numbers into that post to sell him this? You are wrong on the assumption that chances add up. If the chance is 0.79% it is 0.79% every time you hit the button. Stochastics don’t have a memory.

I rather hoped those numbers would put him off, showing that after 450g worth of forges they would still have less than a 50% chance of having received a precursor.

I’m aware of the maths involved and it is indeed correct.

If you want to use the forge do not gamble with exotics — this is almost always much, much more expensive than gambling with rares. (The costs of the exotics substantially exceed the improved chances.)

jeezlaweez.6810:

Nope. I doesn’t increase.

It’s like saying “if you gamble on the lottery much, you have a better chance to win every time you play on it”. And we know that’s not how it works.
Every new attempt, the game reset to 0,79%, they do not stack.

You are mistaking this with dice rolling. When you roll 1 dice (the Forge case), you can get 6 in 1/6 times. When you roll 6 die at THE SAME TIME (not the Forge case), you can get 6 from any of those die, so your chances improve.

There’s no fundamental difference between playing with dice and trusting Zomorros — only the specific odds and distributions vary.

• Each individual roll has the same odds, as stated; there’s no difference between dice rolls or throwing four items into the forge.
• The collective odds of repeating the same toss improve for the player, since all they want is to get at least one precursor; they don’t care about the average chance.

Or to use the same example: if you play the lottery 1,000 times, you have the same chance to win each time. However, your chance of winning at least once improves by more than a factor of 1,000. (The main issue with the lottery is that your odds of that happening are still below “slim & none”.)

Qazwersder.3574:

 For your die example. You want to roll a six. A die has a 1 in 6 chance of a six on each roll (0.17). You care going to roll twice. The possible outcomes are:
 
Six (0.17) / Not Six (0.83)  = 0.1411     
Not Six (0.83) / Six (0.17) = 0.1411
Six (0.17) / Six (0.17) = 0.0289
Not Six (0.83) / Not Six (0.83) = 0.6889
 
Chances of you not getting a six is 0.6889 (68.89%). Therefore the chances of you getting a six is 1 – 0.6889 = 0.3111 (31.11%).
 
As you can imagine, the more times you throw the die, the more chance you have of getting at least one six. The chance on each roll is still 0.17 (1 in 6).

Bullkitten. That would apply if you rolled two dice, not a single one twice. Stop deluding yourself and others.

Please don’t talk about stuff you don’t know about. Qazwersder is 100% right.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Please don’t talk about stuff you don’t know about. Qazwersder is 100% right.

So, next time I feed the forge, I simply press the button twice and raise the chance of getting a precursor? Wow, now I understand.

Excuse me, got to laugh my kitten off.

Yes, the more times you gamble, the higher your cumulative chance to get at least one winning result. It’s not rocket science.

I think where people are getting confused is chance versus odds.

More tosses into the forge increase your chances of hitting the 1 in 1000 odds, or whatever the odds of precursors are these days.

Using the die example: if you’re simply looking to roll a 6. The more times you roll, the better your chances to get a 6. The odds of getting 1 six doesn’t change the more you roll, though, it’s still 1:6.

Now if you start to add parameters to it, your odds change. So let’s say you want three 6s in a row. The odds of that happening is reduced significantly. Instead of 1:6, it’s 1:6^3 or 1:216 odds to roll 3 6s in a row.

current best way to forge Zap from 4 crafted items are rare items: 1x Assassin’s Godskull Edge + 3 x Rampager’s Krait Machete
it will take about 781 attempts (start with 2342 total rares), and throwing in any other rare/exotic you get out.
this will cost you roughly 864g
if you only spend 450g of this, that’s roughly a 52% chance you’d get it
that’s not the entire story, because that’s over long runs with hundreds of outcomes (average).
a quick google search found a similar answer to what would happen for shorter runs: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25qsv7/eli5_if_i_attempt_something_with_1_probability/
781 attempts = 0.1285% success
chance of not getting anything in 781 attempts = (1-0.001285)^781=36.63%
so, even if you spent 864g, there’s only a ~63.4% chance of getting a Zap (or more than one).
63.4% of 52% = 32.95% chance of getting 1 or more Zap with 450g
you could get it cheaper by buying level 65+ rares for under 33s to replace the Godskull, but you wouldn’t have nearly the same velocity.
I recommend gambling only if you want to have fun gambling. not because you want something cheaper.

To my understanding, there is this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers

In probability theory, the law of large numbers (LLN) is a theorem that describes the result of performing the same experiment a large number of times. According to the law, the average of the results obtained from a large number of trials should be close to the expected value, and will tend to become closer as more trials are performed.

Which only applies if you’re doing a bunch of rolls at once (and does not apply if you, say, roll once today, once again tomorrow, and so on). From what I can tell, this “law” does apply to the overall daily, or at least hourly/minutely, use of the Mystic Forge (and other rolls like it) which is why some people get lucky and some don’t get any luck at all (the deviation in rolls combined with the large number of them).

You can also do this on a personal level, I’m pretty sure, but you need a large sample size, which is why I was asking about the math of my chances. If we assume that I did every attempt at the same time and did a significant number of them, then I would think that overall my chances would be a bit different from 0.79% (the number the wiki gives). Remember I’m talking about the statistics of the sequence of rolls, not each individual roll one.

The question is, how close would I be getting to the number of rolls where things start to average out? Probably not close at all, I imagine, which screws with the numbers, I’m sure. But it’s not that statistics have “memory.” It’s averages. And it’s also unclear (to be fair) whether a program that is being accessed near constantly for dice rolls can ever truly be tested accurately for sample size; as in, even if I were to do 5,000 rolls at once, myself, is it really the same as rolling a virtual die in isolation on my desktop, or should the rolls of all the other players be counted in the equation? (which is impossible to do unless you have software that monitors every player’s roles at once).

The wiki says 0.79% with 2901 trials. So it seems to me like my chances would be severely diminished overall if I did all rolls at once and did a number of trials that was way below 2901. And my chances would be best if I did 2901 or more in the same sitting. Presumably, 2901 is a number people got from extensive testing with long forging sessions.

Mystic.5934:

current best way to forge Zap from 4 crafted items are rare items: 1x Assassin’s Godskull Edge + 3 x Rampager’s Krait Machete
it will take about 781 attempts (start with 2342 total rares), and throwing in any other rare/exotic you get out.
this will cost you roughly 864g
if you only spend 450g of this, that’s roughly a 52% chance you’d get it
that’s not the entire story, because that’s over long runs with hundreds of outcomes (average).
a quick google search found a similar answer to what would happen for shorter runs: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25qsv7/eli5_if_i_attempt_something_with_1_probability/
781 attempts = 0.1285% success
chance of not getting anything in 781 attempts = (1-0.001285)^781=36.63%
so, even if you spent 864g, there’s only a ~63.4% chance of getting a Zap (or more than one).
63.4% of 52% = 32.95% chance of getting 1 or more Zap with 450g
you could get it cheaper by buying level 65+ rares for under 33s to replace the Godskull, but you wouldn’t have nearly the same velocity.
I recommend gambling only if you want to have fun gambling. not because you want something cheaper.

Thanks for the numbers.

hehe, yeah. I think my post might of answered your post you were writing when I was writing mine about odds of getting it from a small sample size :P

Vayne.8563:

I crafted Leaf of Kudzu. Really enjoyed the process. Probably Rogort next.

I’m going for Rodgort next too. It’s extremely material intensive to got from tier 1 to tier 2, however it’s a legendary I don’t see around very often. Looking forward to blinging ouy my Berserker.

Mystic.5934:

hehe, yeah. I think my post might of answered your post you were writing when I was writing mine about odds of getting it from a small sample size :P

Haha, yeah.

Falanu.4289:

Qazwersder.3574:

 For your die example. You want to roll a six. A die has a 1 in 6 chance of a six on each roll (0.17). You care going to roll twice. The possible outcomes are:
 
Six (0.17) / Not Six (0.83)  = 0.1411     
Not Six (0.83) / Six (0.17) = 0.1411
Six (0.17) / Six (0.17) = 0.0289
Not Six (0.83) / Not Six (0.83) = 0.6889
 
Chances of you not getting a six is 0.6889 (68.89%). Therefore the chances of you getting a six is 1 – 0.6889 = 0.3111 (31.11%).
 
As you can imagine, the more times you throw the die, the more chance you have of getting at least one six. The chance on each roll is still 0.17 (1 in 6).

Bullkitten. That would apply if you rolled two dice, not a single one twice. Stop deluding yourself and others.

What’s the difference between rolling two dice once and one die twice? The dice have no effect on each others outcome. If you still don’t see it then apply it to tossing a coin. Is tossing one coin twice different to tossing two coins once?

I am deluding no one.

If I had said that you would have a greater chance of a precursor on the second forge then I would be wrong, but that isn’t what I am saying.

Astralporing.1957:

Then you should definitely stay away from crafting. This part is basically the only reason why someone might pick the crafting route, as it is more costly than just buying precursor off the TP.

How can you say that crafting is more costly? I did a spreadsheet calculating the cost of crafting Zap (including the cost of the collections) and it costs only slightly over 600 gold, compared to highest Zap buy order of approx 870 gold. The cost is calculated assuming you buy (put an order at highest buying price) all materials (fyi, most expensive part comes from buying materials for crafting Deldrimor steel ingot). So if you gather iron ores and maybe platinum ores, crafting Zap is relatively very cheap.

I think placing a buy order to stop “gold burning kitten in your pocket” is a very good idea and a good discipline too. Gambling is exactly that and losing it all might make you sour on the game a lil.
I personally throw the dungeon exotics I get from the pvp reward tracks from unlocking the collections (as they are account bound and I don’t need them for chars, therefore no cost to me) and that’s enough gambling for me with the toilet.

I wish you good look with your legendary

Labjax.2465:

To my understanding, there is this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers

In probability theory, the law of large numbers (LLN) is a theorem that describes the result of performing the same experiment a large number of times. According to the law, the average of the results obtained from a large number of trials should be close to the expected value, and will tend to become closer as more trials are performed.

Which only applies if you’re doing a bunch of rolls at once (and does not apply if you, say, roll once today, once again tomorrow, and so on).

Untrue, it applies to the both cases. Remember, it doesn’t apply to any individual roll, only to a bunch of rolls looked at in aggregate – but the rolls itself do not need to be made in a single batch.

Labjax.2465:

You can also do this on a personal level, I’m pretty sure, but you need a large sample size, which is why I was asking about the math of my chances. If we assume that I did every attempt at the same time and did a significant number of them, then I would think that overall my chances would be a bit different from 0.79% (the number the wiki gives). Remember I’m talking about the statistics of the sequence of rolls, not each individual roll one.

Agreed, it’s a high variance rng, and you need a lot of attempts for the results to converge to the statistical average

Labjax.2465:

The question is, how close would I be getting to the number of rolls where things start to average out?

Depends on the person. For a casual forging? Not really close. On the other hand we do have people in the game that are doing precursor production on a steady rate. This involves throwing batches of tens of thousands of rare weapons in the forge, however, and even then you are likely to hit a snag (or a lucky streak).

Labjax.2465:

even if I were to do 5,000 rolls at once, myself, is it really the same as rolling a virtual die in isolation on my desktop

Yes, because the odds of each individual die are the same.

Labjax.2465:

The wiki says 0.79% with 2901 trials. So it seems to me like my chances would be severely diminished overall if I did all rolls at once and did a number of trials that was way below 2901. And my chances would be best if I did 2901 or more in the same sitting.

Nope. Doesn’t matter. In general, the more attempts you make in your whole gaming history, the closer your average (again, across your whole gaming history) results will be to this 0.79%. Each individual batch would have the same expected chance, but due to rng variance the actual results would of course differ (though, they are as likely to be higher as lower).

That last part is important. Remember, while you have 10% chance of not getting a precursor in 290 tries (using exotics, at 0.79% chance), you have roughly the same chance (~10%) of getting at least one within first 14 tries. And 10% is on individual level quite significant – in your group of friends/guildmembers you are likely to see both cases.

Only gamble if you’re willing to lose everything, walk away and never mention your loss.

NashEquilSeek.2801:

Astralporing.1957:

Then you should definitely stay away from crafting. This part is basically the only reason why someone might pick the crafting route, as it is more costly than just buying precursor off the TP.

How can you say that crafting is more costly? I did a spreadsheet calculating the cost of crafting Zap (including the cost of the collections) and it costs only slightly over 600 gold, compared to highest Zap buy order of approx 870 gold. The cost is calculated assuming you buy (put an order at highest buying price) all materials (fyi, most expensive part comes from buying materials for crafting Deldrimor steel ingot). So if you gather iron ores and maybe platinum ores, crafting Zap is relatively very cheap.

Interesting. I admit i didn’t check Zap yet – but for all those i did check it was the opposite situation. I guess i may do a calculation on every precursor and see which ones are profitable to craft and which aren’t.

Astralporing.1957:

Interesting. I admit i didn’t check Zap yet – but for all those i did check it was the opposite situation. I guess i may do a calculation on every precursor and see which ones are profitable to craft and which aren’t.

I also did another one for Dusk, and it costs about 630 gold, compared to highest buy order price of approx 960 gold (last I checked). Anyway, if you are interested, we can compare our calculations. Moreover, if I were to extrapolate my observation, the majority of the crafting cost comes from the ascended mats (eg, Deldrimor ingots for Zap and Dusk). Thus, crafting a precursor will be cheap if we gather the mats to craft those ascended mats. I hope this info helps somehow.

I think the question is, how much time total it takes to finish the collection and if during that total time, would you have been able to grind/farm the gold to buy it on the TP.

i buy exotics for skin unlocks and then throw them in the forge. two stones with one bird.