Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2, I waited patiently reading up on it every day before its release. I pre ordered, ive been there since the beginning. Just recently got the Heart of Thorns expansion, and couldnt be more pleased with the new content. However one thing ive always had trouble with is the weapon skins. Something that has always bothered me slightly is that from level 1-79 there is a good chance the only weapon skins that are dropping are the ones you get at the beginning of the game. This game has always been very level 80 oriented, which is okay, but the experience should be one where you feel like your character is growing. Sure there are a few cool skins along the way usually linked to a karma vendor but how about some variated drops? *End Rant

There are actually a lot of skins for while you’re leveling up. Unfortunately, you have to craft for a good handful of these skins. I believe after level 35 armor the Rare armor crafting options become available. While they are a bit more expensive to make, it does allow you to unlock skins. These skins, I believe, are also tied to collections which will give you a small bonus after completion. Some of these skins are not the best, but they do give you some options as you progress to 80

Another options is the Hall of Monuments from Guild Wars 1. These skins can be obtained on a lvl 1 character and are skins and minis. Some of them are really cool!

A third options is to to find some skins that you really like on the TP and save up for them. Lower level mats are still worth a pretty penny and just because a GEAR is lvl 80, doesn’t mean you can’t unlock the skin at lvl 4 and use the skin on your armor. Skins themselves are not level bound, only the gear attached.

There are a decent number of armor skins as you level provided you explore all possible acquisition methods (drops, crafting, karma merchants, cultural armor), but yah, weapon skins are sadly pretty limited. Even the crafted ones are just variations on the basic / starter skins with different colored blades / hilts / shafts.

Other than that, you basically have the regional weapons of blue / green, yellow, and orange quality and that’s about it. And while the blue / green ones are common enough (though nowhere near as common as the basic skins), the other two you can easily go your entire leveling experience without getting one, and if you do there’s a chance you won’t be able to use it anyway.

Buying them from the TP is always an option if you really want some variety (or from karma vendors, since cultural weaponsmiths aren’t race-locked) but generally speaking since you level fairly fast and thus find yourself upgrading gear frequently its not a great thing to do from a money standpoint.

For a while, I did map exploration on lower-level characters, to increase the chance of getting some rare-drop missing skins. There are a bunch that aren’t available for L80 gear.

There are also several rare crafted weapon sets below level 80 that have unique skins, like the dredge weapons and the ogre weapons , als well as exclusive skins found on karma merchants like the jotun greatsword , the wooden sword , or the charr meatoberfest chalice (which shares skins with a rare exotic named focus).

I’m particularly fond of the Beaded Weapons . They are hard to combine with armor, but the result can be really great.

Yea dropped skins have a pretty small loot table (not including the RNG chance for a precursor because ha). But as you level up you do have access to the various karma vendors and cultural vendors—however I don’t think the game explains where the cultural vendors even are if you are a new player.

Rasimir.6239:

There are also several rare crafted weapon sets below level 80 that have unique skins, like the dredge weapons and the ogre weapons , als well as exclusive skins found on karma merchants like the jotun greatsword , the wooden sword , or the charr meatoberfest chalice (which shares skins with a rare exotic named focus).

I use dredge staff skin on one of my ele’s staffs, jotun gs for my warr/guard. It’s quite amusing how many people think that the best = the flashiest looking skin. Once a guy insisted on me pinging my staff in a regular SE p3 cos he didn’t believe someone would put dredge skin on asc weapon.