Guild Wars 2

I know there are a lot of players with extra tomes of knowledge. i mean lots of them, one guy said today he had 500+ of them on his main character. And they can’t trade them. and maybe they are not interested in guild hopping to drop them for extra cash.

I suggest that there be a way that you can trade a small number (like 3, 5, or 10) of them in for a trade-able version that can be sold on the market place.

EDIT:

This would give hardcore players a market to help casual and new players.

One can always trade them in for Spirit Shards, rather than keeping them in inventory.

Good luck.

500+ tomes, ~5000 spirit shards

1553 tomes + 29 characters =/
I use 8 per week for keyruns.
Wvw gives a lot of tomes

Fade.5904:

1553 tomes + 29 characters =/
I use 8 per week for keyruns.
Wvw gives a lot of tomes

Weekly key runs help to keep the number of tomes down. (And I use one more tome to get to level 11 since that gets you your first utility skill).

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

One can always trade them in for Spirit Shards, rather than keeping them in inventory.

Good luck.

Only if you have maxed your masteries. Still though, if there is an empty char slot use them for key runs at least.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

One can always trade them in for Spirit Shards, rather than keeping them in inventory.

Good luck.

I’d like a variety of uses for them.

Spirit Shards are ok. I’d like the option of purchasing some other items such as transmutation charges and upgrade extractors which are generally harder to get, not that it’s terribly thematic to purchase such items with Tomes. Hell, maybe even allow the purchase of Black Lion Keys…

Menadena.7482:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

One can always trade them in for Spirit Shards, rather than keeping them in inventory.

Good luck.

Only if you have maxed your masteries. Still though, if there is an empty char slot use them for key runs at least.

No, any lvl 80 character can use a ToK to gain a spirit shard.

Menadena.7482:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

One can always trade them in for Spirit Shards, rather than keeping them in inventory.

Good luck.

Only if you have maxed your masteries. Still though, if there is an empty char slot use them for key runs at least.

You may be confusing Level-up rewards with Tomes of Knowledge exchanges. You might visit Miyani and peruse her offerings.

Good luck.

The reason so many of us hold on to them might be, that we never know whether Anet adds another upgrade to the Guild Hall that requires a stack or more, too.

Miyani’s offerings are not the most needed or useful items in most situations. Yes, you need them for legendaries and minor utility things like swapping ascended stats and upgrading mats, but none of these are things you will be doing so often, on average, that you aren’t covered by the spirit shards you get for leveling after maxing masteries.

I consider myself a casual player and I certainly don’t try to farm either tomes or spirit shards, but the rate of gain for these items far exceeds the rate at which I am able to use them. I currently have 782 tomes of knowledge and 5838 spirit shards.

I occasionally do key runs, but I still have dozens of instant level 20 and instant level 30 scrolls to cover many more weeks of key runs, so tomes are unnecessary for that. My main characters are are outfitted in ascended gear, so I don’t need to spend more shards for crafting those. At this point, I have very little interest in making the special MF skins either for myself or to try to flip on the TP, nor do I have any interest in trying to upgrade mats due to how tedious and/or time-consuming it can be.

Assuming this rate of obtaining tomes and shards doesn’t change, we badly need new ways to spend these items.

Kalendraf.9521:

Assuming this rate of obtaining tomes and shards doesn’t change, we badly need new ways to spend these items.

…or to just start deleting them.

I really wish they could be bought/sold on the Trading Post.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Kalendraf.9521:

Assuming this rate of obtaining tomes and shards doesn’t change, we badly need new ways to spend these items.

…or to just start deleting them.

My inner skritt (packrat) nature prevents me from deleting items which might have a future use.

Kalendraf.9521:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Kalendraf.9521:

Assuming this rate of obtaining tomes and shards doesn’t change, we badly need new ways to spend these items.

…or to just start deleting them.

My inner skritt (packrat) nature prevents me from deleting items which might have a future use.

Mmmm, that one, I gotta say that’s really kinda your own problem. I mean, I understand, but the problem is … unless y’all have literally unlimited storage, at some point you gotta get rid of something, and this might be that point. At least for a few thousand of ’em

A lot of the excess tomes could be used up if there were more things to buy with Spirit Shards. At this point I have 5.8k Shards and no interest in using any of them. I think it might be interesting if we could buy buffs with them. Since so few people put out guild banners any more why not Spirit shard banners that act like guild banners? I’d use my Spirit Shards to buy those and I’d have a reason to use excess tomes on level 80s to get more.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Mmmm, that one, I gotta say that’s really kinda your own problem. I mean, I understand, but the problem is … unless y’all have literally unlimited storage, at some point you gotta get rid of something, and this might be that point. At least for a few thousand of ’em

Storage isn’t really a big issue at this point. Shards are currency, so they go directly to the wallet. The tomes stack to 250, so those only tie up 4 stacks, and between having fully unlocked bank tabs and multiple Alts that serve as packmules, I’m not lacking space to hold them.

Fundamentally, ANet should be addressing these types of items that continue to be rewarded at overly high rates (and in some instances, even increasing rates), but which are simultaneously becoming less and less useful or even useless to a growing number of players.

https://www.gw2shinies.com/shard-alchemy

Promote some crappy mats.

ArchonWing.9480:

https://www.gw2shinies.com/shard-alchemy

Promote some crappy mats.

Yeah. I’ve seen this recommendation before. But as I see it, it has a big problem.

What happens to the amount of gold you get from doing promotions if everyone is doing promotions. Doing promotions can be profitable now for some items. Doing promotions with everyone else doing promotions? The profit margin would be smaller to non existent. I have 5.8k Shards and I’m not the only one with thousands of Shards. Then throw in all the Shards from using tomes. Then have everyone with their hundreds or thousands of Shards following this advice. It’s advice that only works if very few follow it. Which is why my suggestion is to add more things to buy with Shards.

Most people are too lazy to do it, or too stupid and they screw it up. But sure. More things to do with shards wouldn’t be bad.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

ArchonWing.9480:

https://www.gw2shinies.com/shard-alchemy

Promote some crappy mats.

Yeah. I’ve seen this recommendation before. But as I see it, it has a big problem.

What happens to the amount of gold you get from doing promotions if everyone is doing promotions. Doing promotions can be profitable now for some items. Doing promotions with everyone else doing promotions? The profit margin would be smaller to non existent. I have 5.8k Shards and I’m not the only one with thousands of Shards. Then throw in all the Shards from using tomes. Then have everyone with their hundreds or thousands of Shards following this advice. It’s advice that only works if very few follow it. Which is why my suggestion is to add more things to buy with Shards.

That is like true of everything.

Fortunately the more likely if is people not wanting to stand in front of the. Mystic forge every day. Nor do they need to squeeze the last copper out of what they have.

ArchonWing.9480:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

ArchonWing.9480:

https://www.gw2shinies.com/shard-alchemy

Promote some crappy mats.

Yeah. I’ve seen this recommendation before. But as I see it, it has a big problem.

What happens to the amount of gold you get from doing promotions if everyone is doing promotions. Doing promotions can be profitable now for some items. Doing promotions with everyone else doing promotions? The profit margin would be smaller to non existent. I have 5.8k Shards and I’m not the only one with thousands of Shards. Then throw in all the Shards from using tomes. Then have everyone with their hundreds or thousands of Shards following this advice. It’s advice that only works if very few follow it. Which is why my suggestion is to add more things to buy with Shards.

That is like true of everything.

Fortunately the more likely if is people not wanting to stand in front of the. Mystic forge every day. Nor do they need to squeeze the last copper out of what they have.

That’s another point. I’ve tried doing the mystic forge promotion thing a couple years ago. It was tedious and I’d much rather spend that time playing rather than feeding stacks of mats into a gamble device.

ArchonWing.9480:

https://www.gw2shinies.com/shard-alchemy

Promote some crappy mats.

2-3 gold per shard?

yeah I’m rich (you know)

(eh no you are not little asura)

Use them, you get 5 boosters (only way to get the karmabooster), colors, mats and 5 exotic pieces you can put in mystic forge.
I had more then 1000 of them, now i push my keychar every week to 80

Lyp Sao.1375:

ArchonWing.9480:

https://www.gw2shinies.com/shard-alchemy

Promote some crappy mats.

2-3 gold per shard?

yeah I’m rich (you know)

(eh no you are not little asura)

The table is misleading. In order to get the 2+ gold per shard, you need to craft some ultra-expensive items which initially ties up hundreds of gold. Once you complete crafting the item, then you need to play the TP game where you list the item, only to see other players undercut your price by 1 copper over and over. If you try to relist, you automatically lose 10s of gold each time. If you stand pat, your item may never sell, meaning you’ve essentially lost all those hundreds of gold you invested to craft the item.

In some cases, by the time the item sells, you could have probably made far more gold by investing that money by flipping something else on the TP that has much higher sales volume. I’ve crafted a handful of items with shards to try to resell this way, but the experience really turned me off. Between the time invested and the risk/reward ratio, it just wasn’t worth it to me.

As for promoting mats, most of them end up being extremely tedious and time-consuming, and you end up making only a few silvers per shard. The gain per time spent ends up being very low, and I can easily make more by playing other much more enjoyable content in the game.

Well the eldritch weapons are higher risk yes. I don’t suggest it. But even at buy prices they aren’t bad and I think that is way too safe. Mats though are only a few combines though. I don’t think that is very time consuming and it goes well with the forger daily.

Though to me it is more about making use of t1 mats that do me little good, as well as stuff like cores to lodestones rather than the shards themselves.

I wish ToK was sellable, as I could buy these tomes to level up my many alt characters!
I still don’t get why they’re not sellable...

If person A do not need his/her tomes why should this person keep them?
And if person B is deepy needing tomes to level up alternative characters why can’t we just trade them between each other?
Everyone will be happy then!

Alga.6498:

I wish ToK was sellable, as I could buy these tomes to level up my many alt characters!
I still don’t get why they’re not sellable…

If person A do not need his/her tomes why should this person keep them?
And if person B is deepy needing tomes to level up alternative characters why can’t we just trade them between each other?
Everyone will be happy then!

If you’re going to do that, why even bother starting new toons at level 1 (or 2 after the tutorial instance)? Why not instantly start every new toon at level 80?

Kaltyn of Torbins Deep.2946:

Alga.6498:

I wish ToK was sellable, as I could buy these tomes to level up my many alt characters!
I still don’t get why they’re not sellable…

If person A do not need his/her tomes why should this person keep them?
And if person B is deepy needing tomes to level up alternative characters why can’t we just trade them between each other?
Everyone will be happy then!

If you’re going to do that, why even bother starting new toons at level 1 (or 2 after the tutorial instance)? Why not instantly start every new toon at level 80?

Good question. Maybe you should ask ANet that. They did, after all, give a level 80 boost to purchasers of HoT, including those who are brand new to the game.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Kaltyn of Torbins Deep.2946:

Alga.6498:

I wish ToK was sellable, as I could buy these tomes to level up my many alt characters!
I still don’t get why they’re not sellable…

If person A do not need his/her tomes why should this person keep them?
And if person B is deepy needing tomes to level up alternative characters why can’t we just trade them between each other?
Everyone will be happy then!

If you’re going to do that, why even bother starting new toons at level 1 (or 2 after the tutorial instance)? Why not instantly start every new toon at level 80?

Good question. Maybe you should ask ANet that. They did, after all, give a level 80 boost to purchasers of HoT, including those who are brand new to the game.

And that was a marketing ploy to sell more copies of HoT. And it was a one time only addition. I was trying to point out the problem with being able to sell/buy ToK on the TP.

How do you seriously manage to get so much times? People say it’s faster to level alts with tomes but I feel the tube it takes to get one single tome in WvW is equivalent to get to or three levels in world completion… I get like 1 tome every 40 minutes I’m WvW……

ArchonWing.9480:

Well the eldritch weapons are higher risk yes. I don’t suggest it. But even at buy prices they aren’t bad and I think that is way too safe. Mats though are only a few combines though. I don’t think that is very time consuming and it goes well with the forger daily.

Though to me it is more about making use of t1 mats that do me little good, as well as stuff like cores to lodestones rather than the shards themselves.

Suppose I want to convert 5K shards to gold by using mat upgrades. The immediate problem is that the number of shards needed for a mat convert is extremely small since most of the MF upgrade recipes use only 1 to 5 Philosopher stones. Miyani sells these at a price of 10 stones per shard. When viewed that way, 5K shards is really 50K stones, and each MF conversion will only nibble away 1 to 5 at a time. Thus, in order to spend all my 5K shards for material upgrades, I would need to do somewhere between 10K to 50K upgrade steps, 1 by 1, at the mystic forge. Yet somehow this isn’t supposed to be time consuming or tedious? How exactly is someone suppose to perform upwards of 50K MF attempts quickly?

Kaltyn of Torbins Deep.2946:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Kaltyn of Torbins Deep.2946:

Alga.6498:

I wish ToK was sellable, as I could buy these tomes to level up my many alt characters!
I still don’t get why they’re not sellable…

If person A do not need his/her tomes why should this person keep them?
And if person B is deepy needing tomes to level up alternative characters why can’t we just trade them between each other?
Everyone will be happy then!

If you’re going to do that, why even bother starting new toons at level 1 (or 2 after the tutorial instance)? Why not instantly start every new toon at level 80?

Good question. Maybe you should ask ANet that. They did, after all, give a level 80 boost to purchasers of HoT, including those who are brand new to the game.

And that was a marketing ploy to sell more copies of HoT. And it was a one time only addition. I was trying to point out the problem with being able to sell/buy ToK on the TP.

And what exactly is the problem then? Considering the game hands them out to you hand over fist if you do sPvP or WvW to the point where people have hundreds or thousands of tomes, what is the problem with selling to those who don’t do sPvP or WvW?

nick storm.6219:

and maybe they are not interested in guild hopping to drop them for extra cash.

How can you turn ToK into cash in guilds???

Kalendraf.9521:

ArchonWing.9480:

Well the eldritch weapons are higher risk yes. I don’t suggest it. But even at buy prices they aren’t bad and I think that is way too safe. Mats though are only a few combines though. I don’t think that is very time consuming and it goes well with the forger daily.

Though to me it is more about making use of t1 mats that do me little good, as well as stuff like cores to lodestones rather than the shards themselves.

Suppose I want to convert 5K shards to gold by using mat upgrades. The immediate problem is that the number of shards needed for a mat convert is extremely small since most of the MF upgrade recipes use only 1 to 5 Philosopher stones. Miyani sells these at a price of 10 stones per shard. When viewed that way, 5K shards is really 50K stones, and each MF conversion will only nibble away 1 to 5 at a time. Thus, in order to spend all my 5K shards for material upgrades, I would need to do somewhere between 10K to 50K upgrade steps, 1 by 1, at the mystic forge. Yet somehow this isn’t supposed to be time consuming or tedious? How exactly is someone suppose to perform upwards of 50K MF attempts quickly?

I only brought it up as a way to make use of shards and low mats. I don’t have hundreds of thousands of t1 mats, and nor do I have any intent of monetizing all my shards all at once.

wish we could send them to our alt accounts

Ashantara.8731:

nick storm.6219:

and maybe they are not interested in guild hopping to drop them for extra cash.

How can you turn ToK into cash in guilds???

You sell them to the guild, guild’s need tomes for upgrades, Tomes of Knowledge can be put into the guild storage, they just cant be used to lvl up characters.

Menadena.7482:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

One can always trade them in for Spirit Shards, rather than keeping them in inventory.

Good luck.

Only if you have maxed your masteries. Still though, if there is an empty char slot use them for key runs at least.

what is a key run?

AtheWunder.2301:

Menadena.7482:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

One can always trade them in for Spirit Shards, rather than keeping them in inventory.

Good luck.

Only if you have maxed your masteries. Still though, if there is an empty char slot use them for key runs at least.

what is a key run?

A key run is when you do the level 10 personal story to get a key. It’s not to unusual for people to have a char slot which they keep for this use, repeatedly creating, leveling, doing a weekly key run then deleting the char.

@Anet, allow us to rank up in WvW via tomes of knowledge…I don’t need any more spirit shards… already have 3k -_-

Just a flesh wound.3589:

AtheWunder.2301:

Menadena.7482:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

One can always trade them in for Spirit Shards, rather than keeping them in inventory.

Good luck.

Only if you have maxed your masteries. Still though, if there is an empty char slot use them for key runs at least.

what is a key run?

A key run is when you do the level 10 personal story to get a key. It’s not to unusual for people to have a char slot which they keep for this use, repeatedly creating, leveling, doing a weekly key run then deleting the char.

if you have to many tomes I would urge you to level that char to 60 for 3 keys and some other goodies like karma booster.

if there is really such a huge supply, it would be good to see them as a sell able thing.
maybe an NPC that has a passive rate, that way we don’t get tomes for 100g/pp.
something like 20 silver per tome to sell them but 30 silver to buy them, so you can sell them if you want but it costs more (in a steady rate) to buy them.

ps. the reason why i would not like them for the TP is because i know how out of hand this can go, a ridicules price for a tome will happen within a month or less.

sorudo.9054:

ps. the reason why i would not like them for the TP is because i know how out of hand this can go, a ridicules price for a tome will happen within a month or less.

It’s unlikely the price would start climbing at any point since there is a steady flow of them into the game via daily logins and reward tracks in WvW and PvP. There would rather be the opposite problem of them being at such a low price point that selling them no longer becomes useful and it will trivialize the leveling process for new players. (for older players it alrdy is trivial/non-existent)

I’m in favor of them becoming an item that you could vendor for 3-5 silver each. 30 is way too much.

If anything needs to be changed, it’s the option to “Use All” instead having to click 250 times to clear a stack…

Kalendraf.9521:

Lyp Sao.1375:

ArchonWing.9480:

https://www.gw2shinies.com/shard-alchemy

Promote some crappy mats.

2-3 gold per shard?

yeah I’m rich (you know)

(eh no you are not little asura)

The table is misleading. In order to get the 2+ gold per shard, you need to craft some ultra-expensive items which initially ties up hundreds of gold. Once you complete crafting the item, then you need to play the TP game where you list the item, only to see other players undercut your price by 1 copper over and over. If you try to relist, you automatically lose 10s of gold each time. If you stand pat, your item may never sell, meaning you’ve essentially lost all those hundreds of gold you invested to craft the item.

cough instant-sell exists, but also, so does selling for more than a 1c discount on the next highest price. If you are really concerned about being undercut, just sell at 10g or more below the price … just like if you relisted once. Reduces undercutting quite a bit…

sorudo.9054:

if there is really such a huge supply, it would be good to see them as a sell able thing.
maybe an NPC that has a passive rate, that way we don’t get tomes for 100g/pp.
something like 20 silver per tome to sell them but 30 silver to buy them, so you can sell them if you want but it costs more (in a steady rate) to buy them.

ps. the reason why i would not like them for the TP is because i know how out of hand this can go, a ridicules price for a tome will happen within a month or less.

If by “out of hand” you mean how low the prices would fall, I don’t really see a problem. With how many ToKs various players have banked up and how easy they are to obtain, the “ridiculous” price could wind up at the minimum 2 cp, though more likely they would be slightly above that.

Based on data from gw2efficiency, the mean (average) for all players is 222 tomes of knowledge. Last data I saw was that over 100K players are sharing their info with this site which would mean that there are over 22 million tomes of knowledge sitting in inventories doing nothing but wasting space. And this is from just the small subset of players have bothered to share their account info with gw2efficiency. The actual number of unused tomes is no doubt much higher since only a small percentage of players may have shared their info with this site, and it doesn’t factor in the top percent of players that have banked up thousands of ToKs (one has a whopping 5646 ToKs!), and continue to earn them, nor does it factor in players that have begun to just simply destroy further ones they obtain

What about spirit shards? The average player has over 1700 of those, and one player has over 24K!

Claims that spirit shards are worth 2+ gold are a crock. They are in such abundance, that shards act more like a reusable catalyst in crafting. It is true that some shards are needed for certain crafting or upgrades, but new shards are earned so fast from normal gameplay that a typical player never uses them up, even when they do some crafting that uses them.

The fact that so many players are sitting on hundreds or thousands of ToKs and thousands or tens of thousands of Spirit Shards throws a elder dragon-sized bucket of cold water on the idea that spirit shards are worth 2+ gold. If they were actually worth that much, it would be a no-brainer for all of these players convert them to gold and then buy something else that they need. The fact the reverse seems to be happening shows how unappealing spirit shard crafting is as an avenue to spend spirit shards, and similarly why so many players don’t bother to convert ToKs into shards.

(updated to simplify the numbers since gw2efficicency reports the mean (avg) for all players)

SlippyCheeze.5483:

cough instant-sell exists, but also, so does selling for more than a 1c discount on the next highest price. If you are really concerned about being undercut, just sell at 10g or more below the price … just like if you relisted once. Reduces undercutting quite a bit…

Instant sell prices are dangerous since they can easily result in a net loss, not covering the mat cost. Similarly, reduced sell prices can be problematic, and could similarly end up being too low to cover costs, or end up being at such a low profit that you would have been better of spending your time on other activities in the game that are more lucrative.

Trying to find a middle ground where the sell price is high enough to still earn some profit, but low enough to discourage undercut bids seems to be an artform. When I have sold some special skins that used shards, I listed the items for prices quite a bit below the lowest seller, only to be instantly undercut multiple times by 1 cp less bids. Thus even with lower priced sell orders there is still a risk of undercut listings.