Guild Wars 2

Edit: There’s hope now!

Update: Apparently lurking in the labyrinth that is Reddit has been a response to this issue: Paper is meant to be tradeable! Soon* we will be able to buy paper from the crazy few who have leveled Scribe and have a chance to actually start crafting our precursor!

In order to begin the collection to begin crafting The Chosen, I have to craft an Anthology of Villains to take around the world. This item needs 13 Sheets of Quality Paper. Despite being a Weaponsmith, these papers can only be crafted by a level 300 Scribe, and are account-bound.

Having to level up a new crafting discipline is a bit annoying, but for a “Legendary Journey” I’m willing to consider it. There’s a problem, though. In order to even begin Scribe, my guild needs a Workshop in our guild hall. We’re getting close to that point no, but for reference, here are the requirements for getting there:

That is a LOT of stuff. Admittedly, it can be split among the members of a guild, so it’s not as bad as it seems. My guild will get there in 12 hours or so. But I’m not there yet! Because I still have to craft enough Scribe recipes to get to 300, which will undoubtedly be an extremely expensive proposition with the relevant materials extremely inflated in price as other people use them for upgrading their guild halls and/or training their own Scribes.

But once that’s done, I can finally start the first collection.
Start. The first collection. To say nothing of the actual materials that will be required, or of the actual scavenger hunts and collections that will follow. So I’m left to ask. Is this worth it? Am I going to end up spending a precursor’s worth of gold to finish the rest of the journey after I slog through all this? Is this even intended? Or did someone just put the paper requirement in the recipe because it was thematic with no regard to how much it will actually cost?

Needless to say, I’m a bit frustrated by the whole experience so far, and I really want to know what I’m getting myself into before I go further.

I have to admit, I just started the Flameseeker Prophecies myself, and this seems really excessive. The path to getting your mastery levels up, Earning mastery points, and filling the collections, plus needing 500 of your chosen crafting such as weaponmaking should be enough. We still need gifts and all that, why make everyone who wants to have a legendary item be a scribe? I think this is a pretty nasty oversight.

Mabbat.7241:

I have to admit, I just started the Flameseeker Prophecies myself, and this seems really excessive. The path to getting your mastery levels up, Earning mastery points, and filling the collections, plus needing 500 of your chosen crafting such as weaponmaking should be enough. We still need gifts and all that, why make everyone who wants to have a legendary item be a scribe? I think this is a pretty nasty oversight.

One thing I left out (somehow) in my rant: It appears that this Scribing requirement is only a factor for making The Chosen. As best as I can tell*, none of the other precursor crafting journeys require leveling up an entirely new discipline, let alone such a heavily gated one. We seem to be getting uniquely screwed here.

*Admittedly, there’s not exactly comprehensive info on most of the journeys yet, so I could be wrong about this.

This may not be the answer you want to hear, and apologies if this is unhelpful, but I think your best bet is to save up 450g and buy it

Well compared to precursers being random drops before, the cost to craft one is nothing.
I think its fair that it needs some much mats and time to make.

Ragmon.6350:

Well compared to precursers being random drops before, the cost to craft one is nothing.
I think its fair that it needs some much mats and time to make.

This is just not true on any level. Observe cost in time. The time spent farming ALL of the mats could be used farming content for just gold. You fail to mention that purchasing the item off the TP is not random either, which would be faster through gold farming compared to farming all the mats for all three tiers.

I am horrified. I am the only person willing to give anything to our guild and I have never been rich. Getting a scribe will take me many months and means I have to give up all other crafting.
I have to consider carefully whether to take up this challenge or forget the dream of getting a scribe.

gosh i bought the precursor yesterday for 480gold.

thanks i did it, seems i dodge a bullet.

Misguided.5139:

This may not be the answer you want to hear, and apologies if this is unhelpful, but I think your best bet is to save up 450g and buy it

You’re probably right, but that’s the core of the problem. I get that the journeys are supposed to be harder than the trading post in exchange for being cheaper. But this is a good deal more of a hurdle than any other precursor journey I’ve seen, and I haven’t even started the bulk of the process yet. Admittedly, in a few months, when more guild halls have Scribing available immediately, and the prices calm down somewhat for the materials needed to level, this will be a lot less of a setback than it is currently. At this point, though, it’s an enormous hurdle, and likely going to end up costing more than just buying the precursor straight-up to boot. It’s disappointing since being able to do the journey for my precursor instead of buying it off the TP. I’ll probably end up doing the crafting anyway (for science!) but I wanted to make my displeasure known and see if it might have been an oversight that could be corrected before I try it.

WOWWWW and i thought the bifrost was a bit excessive!!! at least i had all the bloodstone sitting around, but thats insane! :O

The intention was not to make getting precursors cheaper, it was to make it feel more like an actual journey that thematically fits the weapon. It’s should still take as long or longer and perhaps cost as much or more. The difference is that you’re not just outright buying it. You can feel some progression sooner, and if you don’t like just farming gold, you can now go from map to map to earn the things you need. I bought The Chosen and made Flameseeker before HoT because it was one of the cheap precursors (500g as opposed to 1000g like Zap). If they didn’t balance out those differences in the new collections then you very well may be spending even more gold doing it the new way, but your also going to have considerably more fun doing it than I did. Don’t be mad that it’s hard though – it’s a legendary. It’s supposed to feel like an almost insurmountable task, but it isn’t, and if it didn’t feel that way, you wouldn’t be proud to have it when you do eventually have it.

Entrea Sumatae.7830:

You’re probably right, but that’s the core of the problem. I get that the journeys are supposed to be harder than the trading post in exchange for being cheaper.

Actually, they clearly aren’t intended to be cheaper, which is the problem.

The way I thought it would work would be that it was a lot of work with relatively low cost. Then you would have three options: luck-based, gold-based, and effort-based. But as cool as the idea of a legendary journey to obtain a precursor is, having to put in all the effort and even remotely as much gold makes this a not terribly desirable thing to do. In a sense, you are being charged twice by the new method: you have to put in significant effort for the privilege of spending a bunch of money (which presumably also requires significant effort to obtain). The part of me that wants to play in at least a semi-efficient way just balks at the idea.

I love the idea, but not the execution.

I completed my Flameseeker shield a week or so before the expansion hit, because I wanted it for my Revenant. My first legendary. It took a lot of effort, but I enjoyed the process. There are many intermediate goals to shoot for, so you feel like you are making progress. Whatever you decide to do, I hope you enjoy the journey.

I feel like this really does need to be looked at. As best as I can tell, the precursor journeys do involve a lot of expense and gating, but this is far, far beyond any of them.

I can’t imagine that the devs actually intended to require membership in a guild with an advanced guild hall and a high level in a fairly niche guild-specific profession to obtain something that’s not even related to guilds.

radioAspen.6829:

I feel like this really does need to be looked at. As best as I can tell, the precursor journeys do involve a lot of expense and gating, but this is far, far beyond any of them.

I can’t imagine that the devs actually intended to require membership in a guild with an advanced guild hall and a high level in a fairly niche guild-specific profession to obtain something that’s not even related to guilds.

In fairness, it does look like a lot of materials when I list them out like that, but it’s nowhere near an advanced guild hall. The later upgrades are really crazy. Once the rush on materials calm down and prices get more reasonable, I think having to level a new profession isn’t an unreasonable thing for a legendary journey. My biggest issue is that it’s literally the first thing you have to do after unlocking the collections, and it’s impossible to make any progress without going through that gate. It’s really off-putting.

Misguided.5139:

Entrea Sumatae.7830:

You’re probably right, but that’s the core of the problem. I get that the journeys are supposed to be harder than the trading post in exchange for being cheaper.

Actually, they clearly aren’t intended to be cheaper, which is the problem.

Lauriewonnacott.9841:

The intention was not to make getting precursors cheaper, it was to make it feel more like an actual journey that thematically fits the weapon. It’s should still take as long or longer and perhaps cost as much or more.

They’ve stated the collections are supposed to be balanced to make them slightly cheaper than the trading post prices in general . Some of them might be a bit more expensive due to a whole slew of reasons, but they clearly aren’t intended to be as vastly more expensive as this one is shaping up to be.

Well, after (briefly) attempting to level Scribe, I’m finding it even more difficult than I expected. Most things are, as expected, gated behind a metric ton of Flax, but mostly Flax Fibers, which aren’t even easily farmable. The recipes are confusing and the sparse documentation I’ve been able to find suggests that many of them are gated behind FURTHER guild unlocks. I’m increasingly convinced that even in a few months when most guilds have plenty of stuff unlocked and documentation for Scribe recipes is easily found, the paper requirement still won’t be anywhere near reasonable.

I’m going to continue bumping this, because it’s a pretty big issue for anyone who’s interested in this collection. At this point, based on the material costs to level Scribe, it would cost about as much to make the paper as it would to buy the precursor directly.

Well, this is sad news for me.

I’ve had the precursor for some 8 months now, bought for some 200-250g back then, and everything else I need for the legend, but I waited until now because I wanted to see the collection for the precursor. It seems to me much much cooler to go on a thematic journey to get the precursor, than just buying it with gold. However, if it requires this scribing BS to just begin the journey, I’m out. Just gonna craft mine and be done with it, and maybe do the collection anyway for the feels in the future when the price for scribing will go down.

“GG” Anet…

Bumping this again. Scribe is still completely unreasonably expensive to level, and it’s a shame to lock down content like this behind such an onerous task. There’s not even any option to go do some other part of the process while you work on Scribe, because every other part of the precursor crafting is behind that wall. I really have to wonder what the thought process was behind this choice, and whether anyone has yet slogged through the process.

I ended up just getting it off the tp. Seems cheaper anyway. Which stinks because even if it would take more time, and about the same amount of gold investment I would do it anyway because it seems kind of fun to me anyway. Except I don’t want to what around for scribe. Purchased it for 450 gold.

I would not take the advice that people give to just buy from the TP. Why you may ask? Well it was mentioned in one of the Guild Chats or POI (I forget which) that people who craft their legendary’s well no doubt sooner or later want the ability to craft another of the exact same one. Obviously would be true for duel wielding weapons. So they said to address this issue they are working on new recipes that will allow us to make extra copies of our legendaries and that these recipes should be much cheaper in the long run than the original.

If they are going to do this for one handed weapons I would say they probably will for 2 handed as well as there would be no reason not to. So, just go the long haul and craft your own. Because who knows you may be able to make additional copies for alts in the future at a much cheaper rate.

Andraus.3874:

I ended up just getting it off the tp. Seems cheaper anyway. Which stinks because even if it would take more time, and about the same amount of gold investment I would do it anyway because it seems kind of fun to me anyway. Except I don’t want to what around for scribe. Purchased it for 450 gold.

Doh I stopped reading the replies after I was about halfway through the thread…..

Hope you enjoy the finished product. Love mine. And they added the new stat combos to legendaries, which makes it even more useful.

Misguided.5139:

Hope you enjoy the finished product. Love mine. And they added the new stat combos to legendaries, which makes it even more useful.

Enjoying the finished product does have the unfortunate caveat of needing to finish the product first. I’m still torn between buying the precursor now and trying out the journey when (and if) it becomes reasonable to do so, or just stubbornly pushing through this crafting journey regardless of the BS in the way.

Update: Apparently lurking in the labyrinth that is Reddit has been a response to this issue: Paper is meant to be tradeable! Soon* we will be able to buy paper from the crazy few who have leveled Scribe and have a chance to actually start crafting our precursor!

So this legendary precursor absolutely cannot be made by people that aren’t in guilds or are in guilds but with no guild hall.

Is this correct?

Celtic Lady.3729:

So this legendary precursor absolutely cannot be made by people that aren’t in guilds or are in guilds but with no guild hall.

Is this correct?

Currently, yes. But apparently there’s a fix in the works so we can just buy the paper off the TP. Admittedly, probably at wildly inflated prices due to the few people who are able to craft them, but it’s something.

It seems like it just might be more cost effective to simply buy the precursor, which is a shame. When paper can be traded you know it’s going to be expensive; why pay a premium for the “privilege” to START the collection process?

The fix that Anet really needs to do on this isn’t to make paper traded; it’s to replace the paper requirement on Anthology of Villains with something else or make paper an early recipe.

Ragmon.6350:

Well compared to precursers being random drops before, the cost to craft one is nothing.
I think its fair that it needs some much mats and time to make.

That does not seem to be the case for this particular precursor if it requires lv300 scribe.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3rec0a/scribe_is_insane_and_resonating_sliver_is_why/

By the way, some numbers. As of the writing of this post, I calculated getting from 50/400 to 75/400 had a cost of circa 400g.

That is already 80% of the cost of The Chosen but only 8% of the progress into scribing.

Well, despite a handful of other account-bound/tradeable fixes, this “bug” still hasn’t been fixed in the latest patch. Back to griping until we get a solution!

So on top of everything else, it appears that Scribe recipes are currently bugged and it’s actually impossible for anyone to get to 300 even if the paper was tradeable. The cavalcade of awfulness in this precursor collection never ceases to amaze.

I was incredibly upset when I found out you have to be Scribe for the Flameseeker… I always wondered why this is the one legendary I never saw in-game; now I know why. It is incredibly obnoxious to get this, unless you want to pay a metric amount of seagull crap in gold. For me, this is honestly enough to quit playing lol. The only legendary I want is nearly impossible to get without paying like $200. Thank you Guild Wars! :/

Metanoeo.8972:

I was incredibly upset when I found out you have to be Scribe for the Flameseeker… I always wondered why this is the one legendary I never saw in-game; now I know why. It is incredibly obnoxious to get this, unless you want to pay a metric amount of seagull crap in gold. For me, this is honestly enough to quit playing lol. The only legendary I want is nearly impossible to get without paying like $200. Thank you Guild Wars! :/

You can buy the paper for a total of 6 and a half gold. Its been tradeable on the TP for months now.