Guild Wars 2

Might be worth it to folks, giving the cost of ectos, to run some dungeons. About half the armor pieces for any set are 180 tokens (3 paths). Depending on the stats you want, you can bang that out fairly quickly… While doing the dungeon, you’ll grab some coin and maybe a rare or two. If you want the full set of armor, it takes about 20 runs (without DR)… or about a week of dungeon runs (doing 3 paths a day before DR kicks in). This calculation might be a little off because bosses can drop little baggies now that gives some stuff including additional tokens, but fair to say it’s a bit of running in order to fully trick out your toon.

Since all the armor pieces require the same amount of ectos for crafting (and really just differ on how many wood/ore/goss/leather are needed), it’s better to craft the chest/pants (assuming they don’t cost 180 tokens) and try to get 3 pieces from a dungeon. While you might lack certain cosmetic appeal, I’m guessing most people want the stats first and then worry about making their character look cool.

Weapons are a toss up. 300 dungeon tokens for a mainhand/offhand weapon or 390 tokens for a two hander is a bit grindy, whereas these weapons are typically 4-5 gold on the TP (at least from what I’ve seen).

Looks like this is the first time some here have happened on an actually working market.
In or out of game.

Welcome.

Compared to GW1, ectos are easy to come by. I remember the only Underworld run I ever did. In the entire run across all members exactly 1 ecto dropped. And those runs take forever. Unfortunately we wiped shortly before we reached the chest that would have rewarded all of us with ectos.

In GW2 you have multiple ways of getting rares/exotics for ectos. Lets take a look:
- crafting rares to salvage. it’s cheaper and if you push your profession you eventually will need to craft a certain amount of rares to reach 400 so you can even craft your exotic gear. I got ~12 ectos from the rares I crafted when pushing my tailor.
-personal story. If you progress through the story q you will find rares every once in a while. salvage for the ecto. You’ll get other drops too! sell for cash so you can buy ectos.
- FotM. I had 1 exotic and 1 rare in the same chest on lvl 5 or so. They drop like crazy there. Do the monthly and you’ll have at least 3 rares or so. More if you use MF gear.

-dungeons. You get rares and other loot from chests. The rare helmets can be salvaged too. So from the 70 dungeon onwards even story mode gives you one chance for ectos guaranteed. Those dungeons also offer ‘cheap’ rare armour pieces for like 30 tokens. You get 60 per path. that’s 180 tokens per day if you do all 3 paths. 6 shots at ectos. not counting loot. Not counting the coin the bosses drop.

-mystic forge. If you find lvl 70+ green stuff, combine it at the forge and hope for something rare.

-dailies/monthlies do them. You will kill stuff, you will participate in events, you will get loot.

-dragons leave behind chests that drop nice loot. Shatterer is in Blazeridge stepps, Lowland burns waypoint. Tequatls in the sparkfly fen, splintered coast or similar was the name of the waypoint. Claw of Jormag is in frostgorge sound, forgot the name of the waypoint though. They spawn all 3 hours. Check the maps or the online timer apps to see if they are due soon when you are online.

-exploring/map completion doing hearts and stuff will yield you loot. maybe rare stuff? You’ll encounter events. Do them. They don’t take long and you will be rewarded with coin at least. Most often with other loot as well. You get coin and loot for each area completed.

-WvWvW. Kill intruders, loot them.

And while you are playing the game, doing dungeons, map completions etc. You get loot. You will earn money plus find rares who might give you ectos. The game is not killed. You have tons of ways of getting rares which will yield you ectos if you are lucky.

Kumu Honua.2751:

The drop rate has not been steadily nerfed since launch.

What has happened recently is demand is up.

Increase in availability of precursors from the karka event means that those people now need ecto for their legendaries and spent the money they were saving for the precursor on the ecto. Additionally with the mystic forge back slot ascended items people are burning through ecto there as well.

Your perception is the issue.

In all actuality. Selling your ecto for profit while the price is high, and waiting for it to drop when the demand stabilizes would be the best bet if you were a market betting man.

I am selling all my materials on the TP making as much money as I can; because in the end farming the materials is easy. If the price does stabilize and drop; I effectively will end with more materials that I put into the system.

Zombie.2310:

Compared to GW1, ectos are easy to come by. I remember the only Underworld run I ever did. In the entire run across all members exactly 1 ecto dropped. And those runs take forever. Unfortunately we wiped shortly before we reached the chest that would have rewarded all of us with ectos.

This comparison is, unfortunately, completely invalid. I wish it wasn’t, but it is.

Why?

As I understand, in GW, you didn’t need ectos. You could get the best equipment in the game (or equipment with the maximum stat-budget) rather easily and without ecto-farming.

If you farmed ectos, it was therefore just for fluff. It was truly optional as in “just for looks and the fun of it” optional not the new GW2-optional as in “you don’t have to do it because there’s still a few parts of the game left open for you if you don’t do it.”

TL;DR: GW1 ectos: for looks only, grind acceptable. GW2 ectos: needed for max-stat exuipment, grind unacceptable.

Karma and dungeons and wvw tokens can all be used to get max stat gear.

edit – also, a run of fractals gives me 3 ectos mininum. in the last week i’ve collected up to 60 ectos (i know it’s been a week cause my ecto supply outstripped my mystic coin supply significantly from fractals and the tipping was last sunday).

Kumu Honua.2751:

The drop rate has not been steadily nerfed since launch.

What has happened recently is demand is up.

Increase in availability of precursors from the karka event means that those people now need ecto for their legendaries and spent the money they were saving for the precursor on the ecto. Additionally with the mystic forge back slot ascended items people are burning through ecto there as well.

Have you looked at the market trends for Ectos on GW2Spidy? Because the above most certainly doesn’t explain the drop in supply (-68%) and the rise in prices (+75%) between November 1st and November 18th (while demand has, for the most part, remained steady during this period). And looking at the chart, there doesn’t appear to be any huge spike in demand post November 18th (which is when The Lost Shores precursor dump occurred).

Either we’ve seen a drop rate nerf on many items or We’re seeing the market fallout of ArenaNet’s anti-botting measures. ’Cause unidentified dyes and drop-dependent high tier crafting mats are following a similar trend (massive drop in supply, steady demand and ridiculous increases in prices).

EDIT: It’s anti-bot measures folks! https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Recent-Market-Shifts/first#post666787

Phooka.9042:

Zombie.2310:

Compared to GW1, ectos are easy to come by. I remember the only Underworld run I ever did. In the entire run across all members exactly 1 ecto dropped. And those runs take forever. Unfortunately we wiped shortly before we reached the chest that would have rewarded all of us with ectos.

This comparison is, unfortunately, completely invalid. I wish it wasn’t, but it is.

Why?

As I understand, in GW, you didn’t need ectos. You could get the best equipment in the game (or equipment with the maximum stat-budget) rather easily and without ecto-farming.

If you farmed ectos, it was therefore just for fluff. It was truly optional as in “just for looks and the fun of it” optional not the new GW2-optional as in “you don’t have to do it because there’s still a few parts of the game left open for you if you don’t do it.”

TL;DR: GW1 ectos: for looks only, grind acceptable. GW2 ectos: needed for max-stat exuipment, grind unacceptable.

You don’t NEED ectos in GW2 either.

Why?

There is Karma gear. Max Stat.
There are Dungeon Armors. Max Stat.
There are drops. Max Stat if you’re lucky.
There are Max Stat armor Sets on the TP.

I have 4 (!!) ways of getting Max Stat gear that don’t require me to get a single ecto. You only NEED ectos when you a) insist on crafting your stuff yourself b) want special exotics that require ectos from the MF c) want a legendary d) want to play high difficulty fractals and thus need ascended gear (though even here exists a way of getting what you want without ectos. Ascended stuff can drop every 10 lvls or so)

Zombie.2310:

There is Karma gear. Max Stat.
There are Dungeon Armors. Max Stat.
There are drops. Max Stat if you’re lucky.
There are Max Stat armor Sets on the TP.

Where are the karma trinkets and those dungeon token jewelry?

stof.9341:

Zombie.2310:

There is Karma gear. Max Stat.
There are Dungeon Armors. Max Stat.
There are drops. Max Stat if you’re lucky.
There are Max Stat armor Sets on the TP.

Where are the karma trinkets and those dungeon token jewelry?

I admit, they don’t have that stuff. But the TP has. And it’s cheaper to buy exotic trinkets & jewellery than to craft it.

The price rise is intriguing on the ectos. I’m not sure what’s driving it. It could be:

1. Increased demand
2. Reduced supply
3. Inflation
4. Something else entirely that I don’t know because I’m not God

The effects 1 and 2 are easy enough to understand — however there could be many causes (reduced bots, reduced drop rates, more players at level 80 than last month, etc.).

I have a hard time believing supply is down. Especially with the introduction of fractals with better rewards and high player population grinding it. That just screams more ectos on the market. Although this is completely speculation on my part regarding effects on supply.

Inflation would be an interesting point to discuss. Gem prices have really gone up in the last two months — so players can convert RL money to more in-game money than before. This was needed to counter-act gold sellers (which ANet can put out of business simply by making gem sales more attractive to the gold buyer). A possible side effect is more game gold flowing into the economy driving up prices. Again pure speculation.

I think everyone can agree that the price rise is substantial — over 100% in the last few weeks. Similar price rises can be seen on other items like dyes (500% or more for the best dyes). So it’s not just ectos and items derived from ectos.

It’s 1 :

The fact you need 50 for an ascended back piece and 250 to infuse it on top of it isn’t a stranger to that.

I think supply is down because hundreds upon hundreds of people are melting 250 stacks of ectoplasm into the abyss through forging for ascended gear. Supply is, actually, horrendously down. FotM giving you a few more RNG chances at ecto per run does nothing to stave off burning through stacks of ecto at a time. Prices will only continue to rise as this trend continues because the material sinks heavily outweigh the material sources now.

stof.9341:

It’s 1 :

The fact you need 50 for an ascended back piece and 250 to infuse it on top of it isn’t a stranger to that.

That sounds reasonable, but there may be more supply as well from players grinding fractals.

In addition, this doesn’t explaing other incredible price increases like 500% on dyes or 400% on some superior sigils (fire was at 5gp last night — I bought a sup sigil of fire last month for 90sp).

Another reason for ecto price increase : the much bigger supply of precursors.

Dye price increase was due to that reason too, along with a sudden reduction in drop rate after it was incorrectly increased.

stof.9341:

It’s 1 :

The fact you need 50 for an ascended back piece and 250 to infuse it on top of it isn’t a stranger to that.

It’s only 50 if you are too lazy to farm the 1850 fractal tokens to make one.

You either grind or you spend your hard earned grinding money from Cursed Shore.

For those who claim that the rising prices are attributable to any of The New Lost Shores content (i.e. legendary precursors and ascended gear), have you even looked at the market trends? Yes, supply IS down compared to one month ago, but supply was on a massive downward trend BEFORE The Lost Shores went live. And supply for ectos has been on an upward trend since November 28th (which explains the commensurate slight downward trend in prices since November 29th).

The Lost Shores stuff may be having some impact on prices, but know that the trend started well before The Lost Shores went live and the new content likely isn’t having as much of an impact as y’all think.

Cabbage.4085:

stof.9341:

It’s 1 :

The fact you need 50 for an ascended back piece and 250 to infuse it on top of it isn’t a stranger to that.

It’s only 50 if you are too lazy to farm the 1850 fractal tokens to make one.

You either grind or you spend your hard earned grinding money from Cursed Shore.

That’s not an argument. My argument is that you need 50 ectos to craft an ascended back piece. Sure you can buy another one for 1850 fractal tokens but a LOT of players went the crafting way because it allowed them to get the back piece much faster for one, and seconds, because it was the only known way for a long time.

What I don’t understand is why in god’s name they are deciding to tie in ectos to EVERYTHING high end. That is just a recipe for disaster. Every time they release a new item requiring ectos (and 250 stacks no less) supply tanks and the price for everything requiring them goes up massively. Add in the fact that it’s not really possible to adjust ecto supply like it might be for orichalcum (just mine more), and you’ve got a problem. Why can’t they just make gear recipes more unique, so that their prices don’t all hinge on some ultra-rare bottleneck ingredient?

As more ascended items are added, crafted exotics will be completely out of the picture just because it will become so infeasible to get them compared to dropped exotics or karma gear.

makes me wonder how i used to pay 2g a piece for my draconic armor and ruby accesories. Given those stuff need 30 ectos per piece. Those crafters are selling at a loss or something.

Oh and farming everything yourself does NOT mean its free. You can farm all the mats and craft it for no money. But you could otherwise have sold all the mats on TP if you didnt craft the stuff so your losing money anyway.

In other words……Crafting is useless now, nothing more than huge money sink for little gain. Not profitable at all.

Either way,, this game is getting really really grindy. So grindy that im feeling its much on par with AION, another really grindy game rather than others…..

Working on 250 vials of powerful blood
Gets a rare from grinding mobs like once every 2 hours?……..
50 ectos making it even more expensive…..ouch

So much for ascended gear requiring minimal grind

Seriously this thread is stupid. Nobody is forcing you to buy ectos.

And even if you want them, farming both supplies gold, and possible ectos! Not to mention crafting materials.

It kills three birds with one stone. That’s a pretty nifty trick if you ask me.

TLDR; L2P.

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

Hobocop.1508:

I’ve gotten almost 50 ectos in three days just running dungeons. Supply has actually gone UP, but there are also more things to use them on.

The problem with that is those ectos aren’t reaching the market. Flood the market with supply and you start to level the supply/demand equation.

I personally use BL salvage kits and lately I’ve been VERY lucky to pull one ecto off a 70+ rare in the last 12-15 salvages. So either my luck is really crap or the drop rate is diminishing.

Seems your being extraordinarily unlucky. I get 1 to 3 ectos from an average of 1 in 1.5 of every 74+ rare. I have over 300 ectos now just from the rare drops. This has always been the case since I have been salvaging, definitely doesn’t seem to be a nerf to the drop rate.

there is no dr from salving.

my experience with ecto is after every fotm run, i salv all the non backpiece rares and i have never broken even; 1:1. it’s more like 1.25 ecto:1 rare. been doing this since fotm launched…

Nobody has cornered the market on Ectos. Essentially, the availability of all mats in the game is controlled by Anet. If you could go out and farm for mats, it would be totally irrelevant what someone wanted to charge for the mats. In WoW, I could farm savage leather and blackened dragonscale for a couple hours and have enough to make a set of armor. It was my principal way of making gold. It was easy to grind out mats and it didn’t matter what the cost was on the AH. Some people didn’t like to farm and there were plenty of people willing to farm and sell for reasonable prices. But, you could always farm.

Anet needs to understand that a grind needs to be reasonable and all mats should be farm-able for the purpose of making gold through crafting. In WoW, the zones where you farmed contained mobs that were easily farm-able and nothing like the tedium of what you find in Orr or Southsun. Who wants to even go there. Anet has fully embraced grinding as a design principle; they now need to look to WoW again to understand how to make a grind rewarding and endurable, both for gear and mats.

juno.1840:

stof.9341:

It’s 1 :

The fact you need 50 for an ascended back piece and 250 to infuse it on top of it isn’t a stranger to that.

That sounds reasonable, but there may be more supply as well from players grinding fractals.

In addition, this doesn’t explaing other incredible price increases like 500% on dyes or 400% on some superior sigils (fire was at 5gp last night — I bought a sup sigil of fire last month for 90sp).

That’s mostly due to #3, inflation and a little bit of #2, low supply…. People are making gold hand over fist doing fractals/dungeons and gold farming, demand is the same or higher, yet the supply of materials, runes, and dyes is the same or lower. Basically, the rate of gold coming into the system far exceeds the rate of materials coming in; so the economy goes into equilibrium by devaluing the gold, requiring more in order to buy stuff.

Ahlen.7591:

Seriously this thread is stupid. Nobody is forcing you to buy ectos.

And even if you want them, farming both supplies gold, and possible ectos! Not to mention crafting materials.

It kills three birds with one stone. That’s a pretty nifty trick if you ask me.

TLDR; L2P.

If you engaged with the thread you would find that farming is tedious and unrewarding in terms of finding the necessary mats to craft.

TLDR; L2R.

Raine.1394:

Ahlen.7591:

Seriously this thread is stupid. Nobody is forcing you to buy ectos.

And even if you want them, farming both supplies gold, and possible ectos! Not to mention crafting materials.

It kills three birds with one stone. That’s a pretty nifty trick if you ask me.

TLDR; L2P.

If you engaged with the thread you would find that farming is tedious and unrewarding in terms of finding the necessary mats to craft.

TLDR; L2R.

That is completely YOUR personal opinion. It has nothing to do with facts. Fact is if you farm, you will get materials.

Whether YOU want to farm, or find it tedious, is completely irrelevant to that discussion.

Raine.1394:

Nobody has cornered the market on Ectos. Essentially, the availability of all mats in the game is controlled by Anet. If you could go out and farm for mats, it would be totally irrelevant what someone wanted to charge for the mats. In WoW, I could farm savage leather and blackened dragonscale for a couple hours and have enough to make a set of armor. It was my principal way of making gold. It was easy to grind out mats and it didn’t matter what the cost was on the AH. Some people didn’t like to farm and there were plenty of people willing to farm and sell for reasonable prices. But, you could always farm.

Anet needs to understand that a grind needs to be reasonable and all mats should be farm-able for the purpose of making gold through crafting. In WoW, the zones where you farmed contained mobs that were easily farm-able and nothing like the tedium of what you find in Orr or Southsun. Who wants to even go there. Anet has fully embraced grinding as a design principle; they now need to look to WoW again to understand how to make a grind rewarding and endurable, both for gear and mats.

There are ways of farming ectos. Dungeons & fractals offer enough chances for rare drops. And if you want to stay at 1 place, braindead, and grind mats you can try getting ectos by crafting rares and salvaging them. Buy x of fabric/leather/wood/metal, x T5 mats, x auxilliary mats from the trainer and craft till you drop dead. Or your inventory’s full.

Orr and Karka Island aren’t the only places to farm. There is frostgorge as well.

GW2 != WoW
ANet != Blizzard

The game was released end of august. We have early december. It’s not even 4 months old! Give it some time. The market will calm down again. Fractals and dungeons and other farm methods will increase supply. As time passes more and more people will have legendaries/ascended gear and the demand will go back a bit. And the average player can afford ectos once more.

And as said, it is possible to get fully equipped without even touching a single ecto.

Zombie.2310:

And as said, it is possible to get fully equipped without even touching a single ecto.

Depends upon your definition of “fully”. I would say no if fully is ascended. If it’s exotic, well you can avoid “touching” ectos by buying the end-items from the TP. As mentioned before, you cannot use karma for exotic jewelry. So ultimately the price of ectos does impact your ability to get “fully” equipped. Don’t belittle it.

It is strange to tie a single crafting material to 100% of all high-end gear.

The folks arguing about ectos being cornered the strange drop in supply blah blah blah, please read this post you all conveniently ignored.

Ryuujin.8236:

Gosh there are so many tinfoil hats in this thread!

Let’s have a look at the facts, facts exist

Here’s the data for ecto
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19721

The red bars are demand, blue bars are supply. The red line is asking price, the blue line is order price.

Over the first month things were still ramping up, hardly anyone was 80 or farming orr both supply and demand still growing – ecto during this period averages around 20 silver. Supply peaks over the halloween period due to the extra players, dropping the price as low as 12-13 silver.

Around 5-10th of November arenanet goes on a huge bot banning spree and you see supply of ecto drop to a new lower level, despite the cheap supply available there is no significant spike in ecto demand – speculators, if any are not having a significant effect on the economy

From then til now, demand for ecto remains high and even continues to grow slowly while supply remains at it’s new post-bot banning levels, as a result the stockpile of cheaper ecto continues to dwindle, forcing up the prices across the board.

tl;dr

In summary

• There has been no reduction in rare/ecto drop rate, only a reduction in botters and plinx runners farming it.
• The rising price is due to demand vastly out-stripping supply
• Speculators are not significantly affecting the price
• Ecto is a poor short term investment choice, seeing only 30% growth in the last 2 weeks, day traders arn’t flipping it.

Alternatively, arenanet has some really convoluted conspiracy going on where they manipulate market prices in just such a way that it looks exactly the players have caused it… I’m going with the former theory however, this is a hell of our own making. Everyone wants a piece of the crafting pie and now we’re all fighting over limtied resources

Dromar.1027:

1)Play the game.
2)Get Rares.
3)Salvage Rares.
4)Save for gear or sell.
5)Progress or profit.

In 5 easy steps your problem can be solved. If your looking for exotic gear then do Dungeons. I’ve had good exotic drops in FotM.

Rare drop rate is bugged since the last patch that was supposed to increase it. You’re lucky to get 1 rare a day from farming Cursed Shore now. So yeah, this doesn’t work like it used to at all.

In 3 days of farming Cursed Shore, I got one rare. That’s with a full magic find set. Something is screwed up.

Ecto’s are being impacted by very straightforward economic principles.

Demand is up due to being required for crafting Ascended items.
Supply is down due to being required for crafting Ascended items.

However, Ecto’s are not required in order to obtain Exotic or Ascended gear. Because of this, I severely doubt the Dev’s will make them easier to get.

Sion.1653:

Ecto’s are being impacted by very straightforward economic principles.

Demand is up due to being required for crafting Ascended items.
Supply is down due to being required for crafting Ascended items.

However, Ecto’s are not required in order to obtain Exotic or Ascended gear. Because of this, I severely doubt the Dev’s will make them easier to get.

Someone else mentioned gw2 spidy earlier which has some really interesting data. http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19721 is the link to the graph for globs of ectoplasm. You can clearly see that the number of people selling ecto started decreasing around the end of October and increased during the beginning of November. You can also see the prices increasing during the time of low supply and high demand. Nearer to the present you can see that supply has recently gone up while demand has decreased slightly along with an almost identically timed drop in prices. What has caused these trends is purely speculation since only Anet has the numbers for how much ecto there is in the game vs on the trading post and where the ecto is being used. With this graph you might be able to say that the supply has increased which could possibly be caused by the drop rate increasing, or more people salvaging their rares, or more people getting rares (Anet did say they increased the drop rate of rares and exotics, right?). However, with the data available, we can’t assert anything about the drop rate of ecto. The graph is pretty cool though.

Ash.2175:

. What has caused these trends is purely speculation since only Anet has the numbers….

Look on the BLTC forum, early November was the big bot crackdown when Arenanet mass-banned thousands of botters in a single swoop – John Smith, the Arenanet economist guy himself confirmed this.

On November 15th was the patch where they nerfed Plinx farming, these events both correlate with the decline in ecto supplies as one would expect. It seems a very reasonable conclusion to draw

Ryuujin.8236:

Ash.2175:

You can clearly see that the number of people selling ecto started decreasing around the end of October and increased during the beginning of November. You can also see the prices increasing during the time of low supply and high demand. Nearer to the present you can see that supply has recently gone up while demand has decreased slightly along with an almost identically timed drop in prices. What has caused these trends is purely speculation since only Anet has the numbers….

sigh

For the third time… look on the BLTC forum, early November was the big bot crackdown when Arenanet mass-banned thousands of botters in a single swoop. Additionally, on November 15th was the patch where they nerfed Plinx farming, the two combined had a massive impact on supply of rares.

Which is a great guess and probably true. Until you show me data such as how much ecto bots were putting in the market or how much ecto people were getting from Plinx farming, I think its still a guess.

edit
Also, I was just saying the late october/early november for some background. I think the more interesting part is closer to the present (which is that prices are currently dropping and supply has gone up).

Ahlen.7591:

Raine.1394:

Ahlen.7591:

Seriously this thread is stupid. Nobody is forcing you to buy ectos.

And even if you want them, farming both supplies gold, and possible ectos! Not to mention crafting materials.

It kills three birds with one stone. That’s a pretty nifty trick if you ask me.

TLDR; L2P.

If you engaged with the thread you would find that farming is tedious and unrewarding in terms of finding the necessary mats to craft.

TLDR; L2R.

That is completely YOUR personal opinion. It has nothing to do with facts. Fact is if you farm, you will get materials.

Whether YOU want to farm, or find it tedious, is completely irrelevant to that discussion.

The nature of farming, whether it is rewarding or not, is central to the discussion. Do you remember the thread title? Ectos are essential and the price is high. The price is high because they are relatively rare compared to the need for them. In another post I contrasted it to my experience in another MMO where in 2 hours of intense farming I could gather the mats for an entire set of armor. It’s how I made gold in that MMO. When I contrast that to my experience (and others experience) in GW2, it’s a relative mat wasteland. So, yes, this is essentially the OP and it’s my experience as well. That’s why you see threads like this. There will be threads like this until crafting becomes a rewarding experience. No one wants gold to fall in their laps; they want to work toward a goal and be rewarded for their efforts.

ChairGraveyard.2967:

Dromar.1027:

1)Play the game.
2)Get Rares.
3)Salvage Rares.
4)Save for gear or sell.
5)Progress or profit.

In 5 easy steps your problem can be solved. If your looking for exotic gear then do Dungeons. I’ve had good exotic drops in FotM.

Rare drop rate is bugged since the last patch that was supposed to increase it. You’re lucky to get 1 rare a day from farming Cursed Shore now. So yeah, this doesn’t work like it used to at all.

In 3 days of farming Cursed Shore, I got one rare. That’s with a full magic find set. Something is screwed up.

You buy the rares with tokens and then brake them down for the ecto no drop rates at all. I think its CoF and up i could be wrong.

Ash.2175:

Which is a great guess and probably true. Until you show me data such as how much ecto bots were putting in the market or how much ecto people were getting from Plinx farming, I think its still a guess.

Average supply listings dropped from ~14k to ~7k, so, possibly as high as 50%

Ash.2175:

Also, I was just saying the late october/early november for some background. I think the more interesting part is closer to the present (which is that prices are currently dropping and supply has gone up).

I have a nagging feeling the bots may be making a comeback, lot of reports of bots coming in the last few days on the forum and seen a few myself. Certain T5 and T6 prices have taken an unscheduled dip in value too.

But, there may be other explanations, maybe a lot of folks are giving up on their ascended gear and selling the stockpiled mats

Stop whining,complaining and maketh more gold or go grind ur rare,manually.
The games just barely 3 months old and the price are not ceiling yet.
I believe the price of Ectos will sky rocket way more than what you’re experiencing at the moments.
Is basic economy as what metion by Wasabi Kitty ; laws of supply and demand. Everything haz been downgraded way too easy in Guild Wars 2.

The problem is ectos are tied to exotics, legendaries AND ascended items. That’s just dumb.

Making it harder for normal people to get exotics because you tied the same item to legendaries and ascended items makes very little sense.

Ectos should be split into two resources: one for exotics, and one for legendaries and ascended items. Punishing people who didn’t get their exotics before you released the next tier because they use the same items is just stupid.

Simple fact is this, a set of armor or whatever takes X amount of ectos. Those ectos have to come from somewhere.

If you’re not farming those ectos yourself, that means someone else is farming them for you. Now that the bots are (mostly) banned, it turns out real people want to get payed more for their time, so the price goes up.

So, if the price to pay someone else to farm them for you is too high then go farm them yourself. Why should other people feel obligated to farm for less gold/hr just because you don’t want to pay the current market rate?

ChairGraveyard.2967:

Dromar.1027:

1)Play the game.
2)Get Rares.
3)Salvage Rares.
4)Save for gear or sell.
5)Progress or profit.

In 5 easy steps your problem can be solved. If your looking for exotic gear then do Dungeons. I’ve had good exotic drops in FotM.

Rare drop rate is bugged since the last patch that was supposed to increase it. You’re lucky to get 1 rare a day from farming Cursed Shore now. So yeah, this doesn’t work like it used to at all.

In 3 days of farming Cursed Shore, I got one rare. That’s with a full magic find set. Something is screwed up.

I’ve read this sort of thing a lot lately.

Is this bug possibly account dependent? (Not asking ‘ChairGraveyard’ specifically, just throwing it out there.)

I farm those areas every day and depending on the variables (how good the group I’m in is, how lucky I am to hit good events, etc), I end up with between 1-5 rares. My MF is limited to Omnomberry bars, the 24-hours guild buffs (not the little 1hr banners), 25-luck stacks, and pirate runes.

ot. I use Mythic or BL salvage kits and haven’t seen a drop in Ecto recovery. I agree with the people talking about market condition changes causing the price increase.

HOWEVER, I do believe ANet nurfed the hell out of getting BL salvage kits from BL chests. Which sucks big time. But I understand why they did it – forces you to buy the kits outright instead of getting them, and other stuff, from the BL chests.

Ryuujin.8236:

Ash.2175:

. What has caused these trends is purely speculation since only Anet has the numbers….

Look on the BLTC forum, early November was the big bot crackdown when Arenanet mass-banned thousands of botters in a single swoop – John Smith, the Arenanet economist guy himself confirmed this.

There’s the post from John Smith confirming this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Recent-Market-Shifts/first#post666787

Aleaf.8174:

BuddhaWrath.5073:

They are nearly 40s on Emhry Bay now. Just sayin’, ridiculous.

All trading posts are linked regionally (or globally not sure) so the price of ectos are for the most part the same everywhere. And they are 32s last I checked in the last hour.

They are linked Globally, which is partly the reason why the economy sucks ~ you could have a very high population server where drops are easier to get because getting a group to speed farm dungeons is easy vs a low population where getting to farm anything is near impossible ~ so the low population starts to buy up all the mats/ectos etc, which raises demand and the price.

The problem is, once the price reaches a threshold where the low population servers can no longer afford the mats/ectos, then your economy starts to have problems. Players on high population servers, or who have no problems getting dungeon teams etc, do not see the problem because they already have ways of making significant money, where as the low population servers are always playing catch-up.

If the TP was server based, would that help? No, it would be 1000x worse because of the way the economy is implemented. The only way the economy would get better if the drop rates for ectos/T6 mats had a near guaranteed drop rate, and everyone knows that RNG and DR are major factors.

Ash.2175:

Someone else mentioned gw2 spidy earlier which has some really interesting data. http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19721 is the link to the graph for globs of ectoplasm. . The graph is pretty cool though.

Very cool especially the last few days.

The number of ectos for sale has jumped from 3000 to over 18000 the price is dropping, not sure if the demand has dropped or the supply is up but it sure looks like the market has peaked. If you have been stockpiling ectos in the hope of making a killing friendly advice SELL SELL SELL

BurnedToast.3781:

Simple fact is this, a set of armor or whatever takes X amount of ectos. Those ectos have to come from somewhere.

If you’re not farming those ectos yourself, that means someone else is farming them for you. Now that the bots are (mostly) banned, it turns out real people want to get payed more for their time, so the price goes up.

So, if the price to pay someone else to farm them for you is too high then go farm them yourself. Why should other people feel obligated to farm for less gold/hr just because you don’t want to pay the current market rate?

This argument ignores the reduced supply coming into the game and the increased demand from the huge numbers of ectos required for some of the new content.

Ectos shouldn’t be a gateway for three tiers of gear. It makes no sense. People wanting to craft exotics now have to compete with people wanting to use the same gating component for ascended and legendary items. It is just bad design and it is punishing people for coming to the game later, which is the last thing GW2 wants to be doing for the sake of its own long-term health.

Guys people dont quite get this, but as the price of ecto goes up, the market will increase the supply of ecto:

Here are some methods of making ecto:
Craft level 80 rares, using t5 materials. Because there is an oversupply of T5 materials there is a lot of potential ecto. The price of crafting an ecto is about 29.9 silver per 1.25 ectos.
Secondly, you can purchase green shields with karma, throw them into the mystic forge and have a 20% chance of upgrading it to a rare, salvageable shield. Karma→ecto
You can also buy level 80 green weapons for around 2 silver each, 4 weapons has a 20% chance of becoming a rare, if you fail you get a green weapon back. Average cost per salvage is 26s per 1.25 ectos.
These three caps will keep the ecto price in control, and at most ecto will stabilize at a high of 26-29 silver.

Right now its at 32 silver, which means you can make money stabilizing the price back down to 26-29. There is profit in making ecto right now. You can make 3-4 silver per ecto you make. Sure there is RNG involved, but if you do large batches you will minimize that risk, and end up ahead.

So go players, fix the ecto market yourself!

Humposaurus.5764:

You do not need ecto’s to be “up-to-par” with other players.

You can also get armor/weapons from:
Dungeons- WvWvW – Random drop

Also the drop rate has NOT been nerfed or w/e. Its called a drop chance so you have a chance to get an item or not. So its all luck. One day you can loot 3 exotics and the next day you’ll loot nothing. Get used to it or go play something else.

The only reason why the price is going up is because the amount of gold in-game is steadily increasing. Just as in RL when money supply increases, prices rises (best example is the hyperinflation in Germany post WW).

Not when these items aren’t dropping which is part of the problem. They are investigating the issue because too many in the community are experiencing the same issue, far too many for it to be simple luck. Not to mention that the vets and champs aren’t dropping anything but greys and blues that’s definitely NOT on par with what they intended. The reason the prices are going up GLOBALLY on everthing isn’t because of more gold it’s because of lack of drops. When something becomes more rare that’s when the prices rise. When they are bought constantly they are controlled by the number of people buying them not the posters of the products, so they become less valuable when they are bought too much. Just look at all of the mats used in early crafting, people are still leveling crafting and thus buying the early mats instead of farming them so the more orders that are put in the lower the prices etc.