Guild Wars 2

There was a write up on how to do this in a post on guru, which I can’t seem to find at the moment. Since the last big patch, there is some wording on transmutation stones that makes me think they ‘fixed’ (punished us further) that little loop hole, but was curious as to whether you are still able to do it, if anyone has tried?

From what I understand, it works something like this (but could have the steps wrong and other information wrong, so please don’t try this verbatim):

1. Use character that belongs to faction you want a piece of armor from and have them buy the piece.
2. Use a FTS to graft the look onto some lowbie piece of armor, perhaps one of the starter white pieces of armor you buy from armor vendors.
3. Put transmuted piece in the shared bank.
4. Character who ‘wants’ to use the item can take the item out of the bank and then use an FTS (or BTS, if the target is lower than 80 at this point) to graft the look onto whatever they want.

Or did they ‘fix’ that?

And if they did fix that, why? What is the advantage, to them, of limiting those armor skins in that way? If it’s a profit thing, then sell me all the individual pieces for each faction in the cash shop, right? Or a faction change ticket, sell me that in the cash shop?

I don’t see any benefit to the company to limiting what each faction has, ‘especially’ without giving me a way to obtain it which involved green strips of paper transferred from me to them, no?

Thanks.

I believe what they’ve done now is automatically soulbind an item that’s transmuted. I get this warning now when I use my heritage skins. So if you try to transmute an Order item to a white item, it will still soulbind. And you can’t pull soulbound items from the bank if it’s bound to another character.

I know that someone posted in an earlier thread that the hood trick still worked, but I can’t confirm or deny that.

I recommend trying it out with a cheap piece of soul bound gear so if it doesn’t work it’s not a big hit.

Please let us know if it works!

LithePanther.5027:

I know that someone posted in an earlier thread that the hood trick still worked, but I can’t confirm or deny that.

I recommend trying it out with a cheap piece of soul bound gear so if it doesn’t work it’s not a big hit.

Please let us know if it works!

Well that makes me nervous, I don’t want to try it out on the pants I want, it’s like 2 gold.

Thanks for all the answers though, folks.

Now the big question unanswered is ‘why’ did they do that.

LithePanther.5027:

I know that someone posted in an earlier thread that the hood trick still worked, but I can’t confirm or deny that.

I recommend trying it out with a cheap piece of soul bound gear so if it doesn’t work it’s not a big hit.

Please let us know if it works!

Well I did a small test, though not exactly a good test, but I’m not sure why it would be different?

I leveled a character to 2 and completed Divinity’s Reach to get 3 stones. I took a pair of magician legs from my bank, 44th level, that I’d been saving in case I wanted to use the skin again some day (though I’m not terribly excited about the hose part of them, the skirt is nice). At any rate, I took one of my stones and transmuted it to a white level 5 item I bought from an armor vendor. While the ‘stone’ declared “danger, danger, item will be soulbound”, my resulting item is ‘account bound’.

Now, I picked the lower level stat items, if that matters?

So I’m trying to figure out how/why that would work any different doing it with a piece of faction armor that I bought? I guess I could test it, but I’d end up burning 2g just for the ‘test’. There are a pair of Whisper boots that I thought might look nice on my Elementalist and what she’s already wearing, that would be an easy enough test to try. Either way I burn 2g, though. I don’t ‘need’ that skin, per se, so I’d be out either way. Not too mention I’d need to find a space for it (since we can’t memorize skins like we do dyes) in my bank and let it sit there.

I guess it’s possible this still works, even though the warning on the trans stone would indicate otherwise. Even without having to delete the character? So now, is it work the 2g to test? I’m not very good at making money. I don’t run dungeons. I do some WvW, and the money/time there is only as good as your match up for the week and whether or not there are times when you can PvDoor for a few hours?

I wish they’d just sell all the faction armor in the cash shop and be done with it. I have money, I’m willing to give it to them, they apparently don’t want it.

Makes me wonder what the overall motivation is behind faction armor, not being able to change factions, not being able to buy armor and transfer it directly to other characters. What is gained by the limitation, other than some weird artificial barrier that makes you feel like you chose wisely/poorly? I thought the idea was it was supposed to just be a little role play choice that affected your story early on, not a punishment later for skin choices?

I like the fact that faction armor is limited to the faction that you choose. What’s the point of joining a certain faction as part of the story and lore if you have access to everything that any faction has to offer? I understand why people want to mix and match armor, but that’s just my opinion.

As far as actually doing this, I answered in a previous thread that they had fixed the ability to do this, but was then proved wrong even though the item was still labeled as soulbound. So at the time of that thread it was still working, but it’s not something that I would regularly attempt, so I have no idea at this point.

I agree, but make it something else. Leather wearers are already pretty kitten as it is, and the whole faction specific armor ends up adding insult to injury, which is also just my opinion.

Make it something like ‘food’ or something. Vigil eats pizza. Whisper eats tacos. Priory eats wafers. There, something specific to the faction.

The whole ‘artificial painful’ mechanic that really serves no purpose other than to be painful is silly. Like corpse runs and de-leveling a character when you die from Everquest. This game has taken those silly, painful things to the next level (WoW initially cleaning it up, and we’ve been waiting since 2004 for group-less, monster tag-less, resource node tap-less stuff since, as that became the new ‘pain’ mechanic over the years), and it’s odd to have something like this in, also in my opinion.

I’m even trying to help them out!

I have some green strips of paper on me! I’ll buy lots more gems if you let me buy those faction pieces from the cash shop! Or, keep it as is, make me do the double-transmute-secret-probation move, and burn two stones on it, which is also more money from you. Either way, you win.

‘Fixing’ it would seem to have no purpose, other than to make us be 80 and ugly. Yay?

Edit: But thanks for the feedback and getting me off in the right direction, so far so good. The only problem I have now is getting a character up to Vigil in time.