Guild Wars 2

So AreaNet decided to tell us that they were going to add sticks of butter as a drop rate item. In the process, they did not tell us they were scaling back all the other fine crafting items needed to advance crafting.

Spent the whole day hunting Bone and Bone Shards, and not one has dropped since 10 am this morning (EST).

If this is a glitch, please fix it.

I believe you cannot farm materials endlessly… it will eventually yeild nothing the longer you farm. Farm a little, do something else, farm a little more. You can’t just roam around killing the same mobs over and over again… it knows you are doing that and adjusts drop rate accordingly. It’s an anti-farm code.

that’s dumb, what if you need a lot?

Then how does one get enough fine crafting materials without shelling out 2 gold on the trading post just to advance mid-way?

I find that for most materials, there is usually more than one place to farm for them. Some are more efficient than others, but I find that if the circuit of mobs cover a much larger area, then the likelihood of the farming throttle code kicking in would be much lower.

Interesting note on the butter… I feel it drops way too much, I’m swimming in butter after only a few hours of playing. Also not happy about the fine mats dropping less, that’s the only thing limiting me being able to craft most times.

VakarisJ.5619:

Then how does one get enough fine crafting materials without shelling out 2 gold on the trading post just to advance mid-way?

Exercise patience.

I often get the feeling on this forum that some people expect to get to max level, get the best armour in game, level up crafting to 400, and complete all dungeons, within a month of the game being out.

The issue I have with tradeskills is that you out level areas too fast. It is no fun to have to go back and farm for mats in beginner areas. I am lvl 23, getting ready to go into my third zone and still have to go back and farm for copper and jute.

In my opinon this removes from the replayable of the game because now I will go into the other starter zones and do their quests. I did not want to do that as I wasnt to discover those areas when I play those classes.

I created 3 toons of 3 different races and classes with 6 different tradeskills not I am wondering why if all I am going to do is repeat all zones 3 times.

I am just hopeful this whole crafting system will allow people like me, who abhor crafting in mmo’s and prefer to gather, to make a decent living doing just that. I hear you guys on the crafting issues, including the butter; I gave it a chance but me and crafting go together like jalapenos and chocolate.
Unfortunately lost some economy time with the Tp but thus far it has been worth the running around. Seems like crafting legendaries is gonna be the thing to do at 80, so hopefully the higher-end raw mats will be enough to keep me afloat without having to pound the armorer’s hammer, lol.

Yiou cant stay in 1 spot for hours on end and expect the drop rate to stay the same or get better. This is an anti farming code they implied in GW2 to stop botters from farming mats and gold in a certain spot with their botting programs

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Anti-farm_code

pmiles.3489:

I believe you cannot farm materials endlessly… it will eventually yeild nothing the longer you farm. Farm a little, do something else, farm a little more. You can’t just roam around killing the same mobs over and over again… it knows you are doing that and adjusts drop rate accordingly. It’s an anti-farm code.

this may sounds a bit crazy,but i think it’s true O.o

i was on gendaran and i need 30 Small Fangs to make a pair of rare Axes level 35…of course i went to hunt the boar,yes the first 2 minutes gave me around 4-7 drops…but after that i have to kill over an hour just to get the drop rate to “reset”

after that i just do some stuff while i hunt for mats, DEs, hearts, ME..aaand guess what?the mats already piling on my inventory without me realizing it

thank you ANet

Here’s the problem I’m having with it. Just doing normal stuff, running around leveling, doing hearts and DE’s, I’m getting less Fine Mats today than I was before. I’m not staying in one location too long, just long enough to do a heart or a DE, but I’m definitely getting less Fine Mats. Oh, and tons of butter. I don’t know what to do with all the butter I’ve gotten in the last few hours.

Soothsayer.9476:

VakarisJ.5619:

Then how does one get enough fine crafting materials without shelling out 2 gold on the trading post just to advance mid-way?

Exercise patience.

I often get the feeling on this forum that some people expect to get to max level, get the best armour in game, level up crafting to 400, and complete all dungeons, within a month of the game being out.

A month is a fair time to spend on a 60-dollar game. I rarely spend more then a week on most games, aside from ones like APB, Starcraft 2, Garry’s mod, etc.

Just as it happens, I got my cooking up to 400 from 1, the cost of which was 2 gold and maybe 1000 karma. Tailoring is taking a lot longer – 370 currently, already spent 6 gold on it, expect to spend 1 or 2 more and they say that cooking is supposed to be the costly one.

With numbers like those, one may start to wonder if it’s even worth the trouble to level up a crafting discipline when you can just buy things already done for next to nothing in comparison with fine crafting materials that usually sell for more then the end-result. Even more so, when you can’t make exotics via crafting disciplines.

I find you can still do it, just move your farming around a little. There was a pattern I ran for probably 4 levels (I don’t heart much any more, not because I don’t want to, just because I keep getting behind in crafting and when I get caught up, I have to feverishly work on the next level. I’m going to be 80 and have to go back and start working on the last zone I was in the middle of, which was a 40-50 zone – I’m 57 now, and not even close to being caught up to make my 60 greens, just started with linen!) in Lorne’s Pass (sp?) in the south of the zone. I’d play with the Jorun (Jotun, Josun, sp?) fellows in the area where you are helping the Norn hunters and squishing worm mounds and killing those Jorun. The Jorun were great Bone and Totem. The worms were good Venom Sac, and I believe the occasional fang. There were trees and mines around (I’m also an Artifice).

After that, I’d go terrorize some bears for Fangs and Claws (mostly the latter) to the West of that area, as well as lots of Minotaurs (a bit north of the bears) for Blood, and more trees and ore.

Then further west to the lake shore (and also a bit south) there were fireflys for Venom sacs, and Bandits for cloth and the surprise sacs of whatever, which yielded all sorts of everything.

I maybe spent 20-30 minutes at each place? It can get a little grindy, which is unfortunate for a game that really isn’t grindy at all with all the DEs and Hearts and all that, but if you are someone like me that loves to keep their crafting up with their level and “live off the land” as their character progresses, this game certainly makes it a bit more difficult (and I put that totally on me, it’s grindy because of how I want to play, that’s not their fault).

And after saying ‘all’ of that, I started to realize it was a lot cheaper and time consuming to go about half-n-half. Farm half of what I needed, and with the extra silver I was making from drops, I could buy about half the other materials I needed from the TP to catch up. Of course, that left me with 6s at 50th level. I’m 57 now, have 1g 5s to my name, I know I need 2g at 60, and I’m not much better than 230 in my Tailoring, just ‘barely’ started leveling making linen cloth. At this point, I’ve fallen behind big time. And I think the last time I did a Heart was maybe 51st level? I still do DEs, because there are usually a lot of people around for those and they are a lot of fun and I can’t help myself, especially if it’s a tough one and people need some ‘support’ (I won’t use the ‘H’ word). :p

So, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, find about 2-3 different areas of things that are different and move around between them. If they drop things you don’t need but you know they are those ‘premium’ crafting pieces, TP them and use the cash to help supplement your farming.

Yes, just for the xp if nothing else. It’s not like the gathering isn’t something you do while leveling up anyway.

pmiles.3489:

I believe you cannot farm materials endlessly… it will eventually yeild nothing the longer you farm. Farm a little, do something else, farm a little more. You can’t just roam around killing the same mobs over and over again… it knows you are doing that and adjusts drop rate accordingly. It’s an anti-farm code.

if that’s true, that’s the most awesome thing ever.

I have 250 butter and 250 chocolate
Since the change to the contents of the bags, I have received no more than 60 of any other material.
I have 250 butter and chocolate in my collection, and another stack of each almost maxed in my inventory.
Sad panda

I’ve been wondering about this since yesterday when I noticed how much butter and chocolate I was finding.

I think the problem here is that they are rated as common crafting materials so the game gives them a higher chance to drop by default. In other words I think the pre-existing overall loot table is interfering with the new loot bag table. Worse still these items also drop from high level bags, this makes no sense at all and has to be a bug.

I just hope this gets fixed soon, I need my crafting materials.

It needs further adjustment, clearly.

Torva Messor.1452:

I’ve been wondering about this since yesterday when I noticed how much butter and chocolate I was finding.

I think the problem here is that they are rated as common crafting materials so the game gives them a higher chance to drop by default. In other words I think the pre-existing overall loot table is interfering with the new loot bag table. Worse still these items also drop from high level bags, this makes no sense at all and has to be a bug.

I just hope this gets fixed soon, I need my crafting materials.

IMO this is a problem. I don’t mind that the cooking ingredients are now a drop, but clearly the butter especially is dropping WAY too much. Tailors and leather workers who already struggle more than other professions due to not being able to harvest their mats from any type of nodes are now especially out of luck as even less cloth/leather is dropping than before. Skale can no longer be farmed for blood at all. In 30 minutes and over 100 kills I got 2 blood and about 30 eggs. This is very unbalanced.

I don’t mind the anti farm loot code, in fact I think it’s GREAT. I have no problems moving around from area to area to farm what I need, but the rate of cooking ingredients needs to be toned down some and the rare crafting mats need to drop more than they are since they made this change. I just opened 12 of the little dropped loot bags and out of that 12, Seven of them had butter. way… too… much
-Az

I did do a bit of queensdale earlier and do remember getting about 10-18 butter from a single bag….didn’t think much at the time but it does seem a bit OTT.

Butter and chocolate have completely taken over what’s inside all my loot bags. It’s really not cool.

But the title question about whether crafting is worth it or not —
you can get most crafting stuff for substantially cheaper than the price of the ingredients. From that point of view it’s not worth it, and never will be.

On the other hand, you get xp, achieves, a feeling of accomplishment from gathering and crafting. So people will always be doing it, regardless of the relative value of ingredients and products.

I realized my error when I didn’t gather materials at an earlier level. However, I just created an alt and my alts have been able to craft the necessary materials without me really noticing (because I am having fun with the quests and what not).

Because of this, I have not once had to sit down and tried to endlessly farm for a material. I just add the materials to my collections (even if I don’t really need them at the moment) and move on. I feel like I have a warehouse of things now and it has helped level up crafting skills for the other characters in the process.

All good suggestions, but let me throw a monkey wrench into this…

The following information is from Brady Games “Official” GW2 guide.

Ettins – Kessex Hills
30 minutes killing – no bone shards

Risen – Kessex hills
30 minutes killing – no bone shards

Krait – Kessex Hills
15 minutes farming – no bone shards

Ebonhawke (Fields of Ruin)
- did not even see any Skritt around

Kessex Hills – Eukaryote Caves (sp?)
- Trolls – no bone shards

Gendarran Hills
- Trolls (Guardian Pass) – 30 minutes no bone shards

Lorna’s Pass
- Skritt mining hole – 20 minutes no bone shards

See what I am getting at? I was spread around a lot…but still no bone shards.

I took an hour or two break in between each attempt and tried this same concept again, two more times, and still same results.

Not one single bone shard drop today at all.

What I am saying is the “anti farm code” might have throttled crafting drops way too low when the devs added these other things as drop items….I have 5 million pounds of butter now…as probably everyone else does.

I can’t get small totems for the life of me, but if you want butter and chocolate…I’m your man.

I usually find a lot of these and I’m not even looking for them. I constantly put them up the BLTC so people can buy them from there. Sometimes for low prices, sometimes for high, it really depends on the mood of other people that put things on the TP.

However, most of the time I fill orders. Magic find bonuses have helped me to move my economy around with a constant income from materials I don’t need or I don’t want to use and others find useful.