Guild Wars 2

so how do you farm silverwaste shovels?

Doing the events in SW is the only way I know of. People do group up to farm the chests, so even with a few you get access to many chests.

I have a feeling you dont get as many as you used to, same with nightmare keys. Can anyone confirm?

I haven’t noticed a change in the shovel drop rate but I never run out of them so I don’t pay much attention.

@OP. As stated, just do the Vinewrath event chain in Silverwastes. It’s quiet lucrative in any case, and you need to do it to earn crests to buy the keys to open the chests that the shovels dig up. Use the lfg tool to find “sw 50%” or “vw 70%” or similar.

And if you have no shovels you can still tag along with a chest farm run as there are always plenty of people using shovels but you’ll still need plenty of keys. The event chain and chest farm compliment each other quite nicely.

hmmm so the shovels are very rare?

the guild hall mine upgrade needs 50 shovels.

No, the shovels are not rare. Doing the Silverwastes meta should net you 5 at least. Plus you will get a lot of exp for Masteries.

shovels are a possible reward for every event you complete in silverwastes. take a keep, defend a keep. escort a dolyak. take or defend the skritt cave. kill a mordrem veteran boss that roams around. kill a legendary mordrem. gather rubble to rebuild a keep. vinewrath events. the only silverwastes events that DON"T reward shovels are the hero challenges, and maybe the donate bandit crests for a NPC merchant (bank, trading post, merchant) in the main Pact Camp.

Forgotten Legend.9281:

shovels are a possible reward for every event you complete in silverwastes. take a keep, defend a keep. escort a dolyak. take or defend the skritt cave. kill a mordrem veteran boss that roams around. kill a legendary mordrem. gather rubble to rebuild a keep. vinewrath events. the only silverwastes events that DON"T reward shovels are the hero challenges, and maybe the donate bandit crests for a NPC merchant (bank, trading post, merchant) in the main Pact Camp.

ah, i see! thanks!

I forgot the shovels now have another use. Just get some guildies in there doing the events and you should reach your 50 fairly quickly. When one map is done use the lfg to switch to another.

Shovels come from event bonuses and champ bags in he silverwastes. So the best way I found to farm with my guild is run the mets through a few times. After vine wrath when you hit the 3 champs, skip the maze and go find the other 2 champs as they each have a chance to drop another shovel. They both lurk the north side of the map until the cool down on the mets ends.

aye ? unker never did Silverwaste meh ?

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

hmmm so the shovels are very rare?

the guild hall mine upgrade needs 50 shovels.

Depends on what you mean by ‘rare’. Can you farm 50 of them quickly? No. But those who spend time in the silverwastes (especially for the meta) end up with more than they need usually.

Like a lot of currencies in this game, they are only ‘rare’ for those in a rush to accumulate them quickly; they drop plenty often for those who are taking their time.

(I’m not making a value judgment about whether style of gameplay is better or worse — it’s a matter of perspective.)

I usually have nothing to complain about in GW2, I love it so much. But I’m bumping because I am so frustrated with this shovel business. My guild is a small intimate group of friends, only about 6 of us, and earning enough shovels to upgrade our mine is an exhausting, tedious, boooooring grind that is killing the fun.

Shovels are stupidly hard to earn considering how many we must have, and considering that we can only get them in one map, and considering that that map gets really, reeeeally boring after grinding for a full week (evenings only) with a reward of only about 4 shovels. I calculated an average of 3 – 5 shovels after 10 hours of play. Utterly huge waste of time.

I mean, we would like to play the rest of the maps, too. Not to mention the huge amounts of flax we have to farm as well. So … maybe easy for big guilds, not good for small ones.

(It sux when the game becomes “Going for a flax/shovel run. Wanna come? And, oh, well, if we encounter events along the way, we might do those too, but b/c we have limited time, flax/shovel farming is the priority.”)

Do shovels have to be account bound? If they weren’t, at least we could buy a few to supplement, like with the kegs. Ugh… Sorry for the rant, I’m just really sick of the Silverwastes.

I’ve seen people selling shovels in LFG now and then.
I guess they join your guild temporarily deposit the shovels and you pay the gold.
Never done this so not sure it’s 100% right but sounds feasible.

Join a fresh map and take it to 100%. You’ll have plenty of shovels.

If you have 6 people in your guild, have all of them join you.

If you are jumping onto maps that are close to doing the Vine Wrath your shovels per hour will be very low (because those last events take a long time). Your goal is to maximize your events per hour which means picking a base and camping it for the defenses, rebuilds, and escorts that happen there from map start to map finish.

Ravenyth.4106:

I usually have nothing to complain about in GW2, I love it so much. But I’m bumping because I am so frustrated with this shovel business. My guild is a small intimate group of friends, only about 6 of us, and earning enough shovels to upgrade our mine is an exhausting, tedious, boooooring grind that is killing the fun.

Shovels are stupidly hard to earn considering how many we must have, and considering that we can only get them in one map, and considering that that map gets really, reeeeally boring after grinding for a full week (evenings only) with a reward of only about 4 shovels. I calculated an average of 3 – 5 shovels after 10 hours of play. Utterly huge waste of time.

I mean, we would like to play the rest of the maps, too. Not to mention the huge amounts of flax we have to farm as well. So … maybe easy for big guilds, not good for small ones.

(It sux when the game becomes “Going for a flax/shovel run. Wanna come? And, oh, well, if we encounter events along the way, we might do those too, but b/c we have limited time, flax/shovel farming is the priority.”)

Do shovels have to be account bound? If they weren’t, at least we could buy a few to supplement, like with the kegs. Ugh… Sorry for the rant, I’m just really sick of the Silverwastes.

My guild is around the same size or even less depending on how you want to count. Shovels are the least of your worries. In fact we are all done with them and have accidentally gotten 50 more than we need.

I hope you aren’t actually trying to get the mining rate upgrades as well. For a small guild those are a waste of resources.

You are also doing something wrong if you get 3-5 shovels in 10 hours. I get that many in a single SW cycle which is no where near 10 hours.

Silverwastes also gets you sand which you will need lots of as well or did you forget about these?

It is not too shabby for mithril either.

If your whole guild do the silverwaste event cycle 2 or 3 times each you’ll not be far off the 50 shovels. Guild stuff is aimed at large guilds now so many things you need for upgrades will be a bit of a pain.

Please don’t “buy” the shovels off the lfg people – they are not supposed to sell on there and you will only encourage them (and they might rip you off).

Anet has talked of changing guild/scribing upgrades, haven’t they? Is this something to hold off on until we get more info?

DeanBB.4268:

Anet has talked of changing guild/scribing upgrades, haven’t they? Is this something to hold off on until we get more info?

They only mentioned scribing. It will be on Tuesday we find out what that means. Not long to hold out.

Join a guild sponsored sw event map in LFG where everything gets farmed efficiently as possible. You wont even worry about shortage in shovels.

I don’t know if this still valid, but every fort’s first defense (or clearance? can’t remember) for a new cycle has 100% to drop a shovel. This is how we used to start a cf before HoT. The whole zerk run to the forts one by one and got more than 100 shovels in a few minutes.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

hmmm so the shovels are very rare?

the guild hall mine upgrade needs 50 shovels.

Depends on what you mean by ‘rare’. Can you farm 50 of them quickly? No. But those who spend time in the silverwastes (especially for the meta) end up with more than they need usually.

Like a lot of currencies in this game, they are only ‘rare’ for those in a rush to accumulate them quickly; they drop plenty often for those who are taking their time.

(I’m not making a value judgment about whether style of gameplay is better or worse — it’s a matter of perspective.)

I spent the entire day in SW today and you know how many shovels i got for doing it? I got a whole 8 shovels. If that is what you mean by “end up with more than they need usually.” I would suggest rethinking that comment.

There’s a use for my 60 shovels? I gotta go to my GH…

kitten atio.6875:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

hmmm so the shovels are very rare?

the guild hall mine upgrade needs 50 shovels.

Depends on what you mean by ‘rare’. Can you farm 50 of them quickly? No. But those who spend time in the silverwastes (especially for the meta) end up with more than they need usually.

Like a lot of currencies in this game, they are only ‘rare’ for those in a rush to accumulate them quickly; they drop plenty often for those who are taking their time.

(I’m not making a value judgment about whether style of gameplay is better or worse — it’s a matter of perspective.)

I spent the entire day in SW today and you know how many shovels i got for doing it? I got a whole 8 shovels. If that is what you mean by “end up with more than they need usually.” I would suggest rethinking that comment.

Is it really important that they rethink it a year after they said it?

you get shovels for defending the forts. If all you do is liberate them, you won’t get as many as you would for defending them.

Sephas.8793:

you get shovels for defending the forts. If all you do is liberate them, you won’t get as many as you would for defending them.

I was defending and that is all i got.

I understand that there’s actually a “Defend the fort” farm that happens in Silverwastes now, where an organized zerg actually runs around between the four forts (or maybe just Indigo, Blue, and Amber?), stick around long enough to defend it, then move on to the next one.

I’m assuming this is to get as many shovels as possible.