Guild Wars 2

For all those out there that have legendaries, what was your way of attaining them?
I personally don’t have map completion on any character, so it seems like Gift of Exploration is as far off of an achievement as the legendary itself is.

What route should I take? Farm gold to then just buy it outright, or try and take the time to craft it? (Note: I also don’t have 500 level weapon crafting).

Frankly it’s going to be expensive either way, whether moreso in gold, or in time invested. As for map completion, it’s more easily doable if you use a durable character. Just aim to complete one map, or even just half a map, each day, and you’ll finish map completion in a month or so. Harvest as you go as well, as you’ll want many of those resources for the legendary gifts as well.

make it
farming gold sucks

also if you are wanting a gen 2 legendary you dont have a choice, your options then are make it or dont have one

Level 500 crafting isn’t cheap, but it’s probably less than 180 gold for a discipline even if you buy most raw materials on the trading post. That isn’t quite so much compared to the hundreds of gold a precursor costs, or the 1k~2k gold a legendary costs to make generally.

depend how much you hate map completion.

also if you have the karma and spirit shard.

if you don’t hate map completion and have enough karma and spirit shard make it.

Map completion isn’t that bad. Use a character that has easy access to swiftness to make if quicker. It also rewards you with various mats and sometimes a black lion key.

If you do lots of Wvw, you can use the proof of heroics to at least get the hero points painlessly.

Depends on how much money you earn IRL imho. Lol.

Game aint pay2win but it’s certainly pay2pretty.

As somone with a decent job I consider a couple of hours of my wage to be far cheaper than 6 months of grinding silverwastes.

If you want one of the old legendary’s → craft it! (Well, buy the pre and craft the rest^^) That way it’s up to 1.000g cheaper instead of buying, but you need the 100% map exploration. Personally I find it way more fun doing 100% map exploration instead of farming 1.000 more gold (on top of the already needed ~1.600g for the legy).

If you want one of the new legy’s. Give it up. There price is endlessly raising extremly and it’s just crazy to farm for these. (For one of the new legy’s you can currently craft two (cheaper) old one’s)

(Short answer: Doing World Completion is FAR faster, easier and more fun than farming the rather large premium you’ll pay for a completed weapon. And it gives you TWO Gifts of Exploration, so you’ve got a start on your second weapon too.)

Flat out buying the finished weapon just seems anti-climactic to me. Arthur didn’t buy Excalibur from the Camelot Qwik-E-Mart, right?

I just crafted my first legendary a few nights ago (Sunrise). I’ve been playing since launch, so yeah it took me a while. But that’s because I decided early on that while crafting a legendary was something I would be interested in eventually doing, it would not be something I would explicitly focus on. Specifically, I was not going to play with the sole intent of “grinding out my legendary” – because I knew that would turn the game into a chore. Instead, I decided that the legendary would “happen when it happens.” It would be a by-product of playing, and not my REASON for playing.

But while I wasn’t going out of my way to build the weapon, I was also keeping the requirements in the back of mind. Basically, take advantage of every opportunity you see to gather crafting materials, coin and karma.

The hardest part was, of course, the precursor. Admittedly, I got mine from sheer blind luck. I was playing through the event chains in Auric Basin and got my precursor out one of the random rewards bags. It wasn’t until I got the precursor that I hunkered down and actually got serious about completing the weapon. And, honestly, I don’t think I would have considered making a Legendary if I hadn’t gotten the precursor as a random drop – even though at one point I had enough money to buy one.

For me, World Completion is something I would have done regardless of whether there was any kind of reward at the end (“the journey is the reward”). It really doesn’t take that long and it isn’t all that hard. I did my first World Completion way before I was anywhere close to even considering a Legendary.

There’s 25 explorable zones, 6 cities and the Chantry of Secrets. So, set a goal of exploring one zone every day or two and you can finish quite comfortably in less than two months.

And don’t just race through it. While completing each zone, take the time to play through any dynamic events you come across, gather all the material nodes you see and salvaging everything that can be broken down. By taking your time in each zone, you’ll be earning the experience, coin, karma and materials you’ll need.

And please forgive me for sounding cheesy here, but… ENJOY the journey! Talk to the task/heart NPCs (did you know they actually have dialog that gives context to all the tasks you’re doing?). Watch the vista cinematics and enjoy the view. Stop in a few scenic places that aren’t vistas and just pan your camera around. Take a few selfies. If you see some place that catches your interest, go explore it – even if there’s no point of interest there. There are MANY interesting places that aren’t official POIs. If you’re not having fun, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG. Guild Wars 2 may have some faults, but The World of Tyria is a pretty fun place to explore if you take the time to stop and smell the Red Iris Flowers along the way. And by taking your time, you’ll not only have more fun, you’ll also find – by the journey’s end – that you’re a lot closer to having everything you need for your Legendary than if you just rushed through to World Completion. That’s kind of the whole point of a Legendary. It’s not the goal of your journey; it’s a symbol of all you’ve done on your journey.

• If you like the do-it-yourself part of acquisition, then craft the precursor.
• If you plan on rushing the process and care about saving coppers, buy from the TP — you’ll spend far less time and trouble getting what you need.

What you shouldn’t do is try to combine both: try to do-it-yourself and rush — everyone who has done that seems to be disappointed in the result. (By “in a rush”, I mean push and grind — you can be quick, just don’t force yourself to work past your personal line of impatience.)