Guild Wars 2

I tried to craft a yellow dye as a cook, and got a lemon dye. However, the crafting still tells me it’s an unidentified yellow dye? Is this normal? If so, it can be tricky to not only remember which dyes I have created, but also what the different dyes are. Did I miss somethng?

Note that I am still only character level 21, and have barely started my cooking career. I’ve done some leatherworking, but that’s about it.

You don’t craft specific dyes you craft unidentified dyes of a certain spectrum (yellow, blue, red etc.) which you then identify afterwards.

Edit – here’s the wiki article about cooking and specifically dyes – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chef#Dyeshttp://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chef#Dyes

Interesting. But how will I know when I’ve crafted all the dyes I can? Take the first yellow dye, for instance. How can I know how many types of dye I can get from it, and how do I know which ones I’ve got, and which ones I’ve got left?

Take the first two dyes, for instance. Both require onions, so I don’t want to waste a ton of onions on one dye if I can’t get anything new from it. I’ll rather use it on the second one I haven’t crafted.

Honestly, making dyes is generally a waste of materials. If you’re just wanting to unlock dyes, it’s better to just buy them on the TP.

Pretty much what Rose said.

The wiki lists 21 possible dyes that can come from a crafted fine unidentified yellow dye.

Banana Dye, Brass Dye, Butter Dye, Butterscotch Dye, Caramel Dye, Citrus Ice Dye, Clove Dye, Cornsilk Dye, Daffodil Dye, Honeysuckle Dye, Lemon Dye, Lemon Ice Dye, Pastel Honey Dye, Pastel Lemon Dye, Pastel Spring Dye, Patina Dye, Peanut Butter Dye, Spring Ice Dye, Squash Dye, Tang Dye, Tangerine Dye

Since what you get is random, identifying one won’t stop you from getting it again. Because it’s RNG, you are better off buying the dyes if you only want them for your wardrobe and crafting to sell, if it’s possible to make a profit.

In the case of the fine unID dye, with choices as described above (and on the wiki):

• The average value of those colors: 3 silver, 40 copper.
• The minimum cost of the ingredients for the unidentified (fine) yellow dye: 24s 25c.
• The cost of buying the unID vial: 18s 7c.
• If you already own the onions, you could sell those for 20.82s or so.

Thus, if you just want the unID vial (for whatever reason), it’s cheaper to sell the onions and buy the unID. Even more compelling: you can buy 5 fine yellow dyes of your choice for the cost of buying that vial; you can afford even more if you own the onions and sell those.

The same economics is true for all the other craftable dyes, at least for now.

• If you want a specific color, buy it on the TP (with a custom offer, to save even more).
• At any given moment, only 2-3 specific recipes for crafting unID dyes are profitable (but only if you craft to sell, not to open).

tl;dr unidentified dyes are like lotto tickets: a few big prizes, but most people lose out on average.

Maybe I’m just weird, but I don’t like buying my own rewards. I like gathering the materials and crafting my own stuff. Thus, I want to gather the materials and make my own dye. Buying it in the AH is just… boring. I prefer testing new ingredients to find new recipes, watching that crafting level increase a bit, and so on.

Or put it this way: Thanks to the daily log-in rewards, I have 12+ books that’ll increase my character level. In other words, I can instantly get 12 levels higher if I wanted to, but I don’t. I want to do it the hard way. No pain, no gain. If you don’t do it the hard way, there’s no sense of satisfaction when you finally reach the finish line. You can buy a DLC tht unlocks everything in the Krypt in Mortal Kombat X, or get a “time saver” pack for Need For Speed nad unlock all the cars. But where’s the fun in that? Where’s the fun in getting everything unlocked right from the start?

Edit: Or buying your own Christmas present. Sure you get what you want, but… what’s the point?

Well, in that case use the list to check off which dyes you’ve discovered and stop crafting that unidentified dye when you’ve gotten as many as you want from it.

Where is the fun? Some people enjoy optimization and efficient use of resources. In this case the resource is gold since everything else can be converted into gold.

Your analogies are also faulty. GW2 currently doesn’t offer the equivalent of those things (yet). GW1 had something similar to unlock all skills.

As for the Christmas present that is a much better comparison.
Buying from the TP = gift card
Crafting the dye = ugly sweater

I tend to be the type who prefers to play rather than buy, too. But crafting dyes is one of those things that just isn’t worth it for me. It requires so many mats, and unless you flat out sell the unidentified product, you’ll lose a lot of gold.

BattleCat.2098:

Maybe I’m just weird, but I don’t like buying my own rewards. I like gathering the materials and crafting my own stuff.

I don’t see anything wrong with it, but you’re stuck with the lotto; there is no way to guarantee which dyes you get from crafted vials.

There is, however, a way to keep track in game:

• Open your hero panel to the dye subpanel.
• Using the gear icon,
  • Make sure that you are ‘showing locked’ (instead of hiding it).
  • Sort by Hue

Unfortunately, the order within each color spectrum is from ‘darkest’ to ‘lightest’, so you can’t easily tell which are fine, master, or rare colors. For that, you need to group by set instead (which doesn’t arrange by color).

Another alternative is to change your way of thinking of how you think about rewards. In real life, I like to cook a good meal, more than I like to eat out. I also like to grow stuff that I eat. However, I don’t have any interest in farming my own chickens nor my own lettuce (I’m hopeless with it). So I buy stuff at the supermarket using money — and I did earn that money. It’s not that close to “living off the land” when I cook using bought ingredients, but it’s a good compromise between what I prefer to do with how tedious and time consuming I want my daily routine to be.

tl;dr think of earning your own coin through a favorite method and buying luxuries with that coin (such as dyes), but not gear.

Regardless of which methods you choose, good luck — if you’re having fun, I’m all in favor of it.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Well, in that case use the list to check off which dyes you’ve discovered and stop crafting that unidentified dye when you’ve gotten as many as you want from it.

That might work, thanks. Now I just need to go buy a printer, so I can print the list. (well, do I need one for my work too, but this it just yet another excuse.)

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Another alternative is to change your way of thinking of how you think about rewards. In real life, I like to cook a good meal, more than I like to eat out. I also like to grow stuff that I eat. However, I don’t have any interest in farming my own chickens nor my own lettuce (I’m hopeless with it). So I buy stuff at the supermarket using money — and I did earn that money. It’s not that close to “living off the land” when I cook using bought ingredients, but it’s a good compromise between what I prefer to do with how tedious and time consuming I want my daily routine to be.

Actually, wouldn’t that be buying the ingredients in the AH (onions, carrots etc), so you can focus more on the dye-crafting, and less on gathering the ingredients?

Another problem I have with the dye randomness is crafting for friends. Take Lord of the Rings Online, for instance. As I absolutely loved that game. I was a cook there too, and found a recipe for Blackberry Pie. This was a very nice pie, with tons of nice buffs and stuff like that. However, the ingredients (mainly blackberry) was a bit hard to find. But no worries. I always dragged a long quite a lot of them, so when I was in a group in a dungeon etc, I always offered pies to my group mates, if they lacked their own food. But perhaps more importantly, I always offered Blackberry Pies to my friends, if they asked. Give me the ingredients, and I’ll hand you all the pies ou want for free. Easy peasy.

But in GW2, that’s not an option. Here it’s more a “hand me the ingredients I need, and I’ll make a buckload of random pies for you. Let’s hope at least some of them are the ones you want.” See the issue? So if I can make an awesome dye for myself, I can’t make another for a friend. I’ll need to craft the dyes over and over and over, hoping the one I want pops up. Or I can tell him to buy it in the store, which pretty much makes dye-crafting pointless.

I’m not saying random dyes are a bad thing, though. It just needs to be improved. One way would be to put identified dyes in a list, so you can craft it over and over. Don’t worry, rare dyes are still rare, and the “make them over and over” could be countered by requiring rare ingredients you can only get at random from various harvesting nodes (or bought on the AH.) This would also give us a list of all the dyes we’ve unlocked, essentially creating a To Do-list. Or something like that.

And btw, I know AH isn’t the correct term for this game, but I hope you know what I mean. I’m just used to AH, so I tend to stick to that. Just be glad I don’t run around asking for Fellowships or Kinships. :p

Dyes are the only random thing I can think of out of all crafts, and only when you try to craft them yourself. Food and the other boon items (oils, crystals, stones) are never random, you get exactly what you chose to create (e.g. blackberry pie).

If you want to feel a sense of accomplishment, craft an unidentified dye of any spectrum, sell that and then buy the dye you want (you can probably buy more than one with the gold you get from the unidentified dye). Or when you get doubles, put them in the guild bank for others to use or give them away to strangers.

Yeah, the crafting in this game is great. I especially love cooking, by mixming and matching ingredients to try to find new stuff. It’s just the dye crafting that annoys me.

And like you said, if I get a dupe, I can put it in the guild bank for my other characters. But that’s sort of the problem. What if I craft a rare dye I really like, and want to use it on multiple characters? It was difficult to get the first time, so how can I craft it a second time? (then again, aren’t dyes account wide? I unlocked all three starter dyes once, and all my charactefs have all three of those dyes.)

I think selling unidentified dyes might work, though. I’ll keep some for myself, and sell others. Thanks.

ANet has this notion that the players of this game adore the god, RNGeesus and bow down to a statue of him before they log in. Since they believe that, they stick RNG into everything they can think of to satisfy the worshipers. Crafted dyes, store bought dyes, gem store minis, in game minis (Gwyenifred says “HI!” A one in 200,000 chance for it), black lion scraps and tickets, the unique and account bound skins from Teq and the 3 headed wurm to mention a few.

They don’t give the atheists to RNGeesus worship a way out but ask us to bow and pray alongside the most fervent worshipers. Don’t expect them to cater to any atheistic request of non RNG crafted dyes.

I think I’ll build a big marshmallow shrine, painted bright yellow with huge, green polkadots, and have stereotype elevator-music play non-stop on full volume. Don’t blame me, blame RNGeesus. I wanted a normal one, but this is the one I got. Hehehe.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Another alternative is to change your way of thinking of how you think about rewards. In real life, I like to cook a good meal, more than I like to eat out. I also like to grow stuff that I eat. However, I don’t have any interest in farming my own chickens nor my own lettuce (I’m hopeless with it). So I buy stuff at the supermarket using money — and I did earn that money. It’s not that close to “living off the land” when I cook using bought ingredients, but it’s a good compromise between what I prefer to do with how tedious and time consuming I want my daily routine to be.

BattleCat.2098:

Actually, wouldn’t that be buying the ingredients in the AH (onions, carrots etc), so you can focus more on the dye-crafting, and less on gathering the ingredients?

Actually, my point is that it’s whatever you want it to be. As I said above, you have my complete support if you want to gather and craft everything yourself; “fun” is always a personal choice.

What I was hoping to convey is that it’s worth considering whether there are other ways of going about it that are nearly as fun, but less trouble. It’s up to you to decide if those constitute too much of a compromise.

Good luck.

Thanks, I’ll keep it in mind. Maybe I’ll just switch profession and buy dye in the AH, or something. I’m already a leatherworker, but maybe I should start making guns, or something. Or jewelry. That’ll come in handy soon enough.

BattleCat.2098:

And like you said, if I get a dupe, I can put it in the guild bank for my other characters. But that’s sort of the problem. What if I craft a rare dye I really like, and want to use it on multiple characters? It was difficult to get the first time, so how can I craft it a second time? (then again, aren’t dyes account wide? I unlocked all three starter dyes once, and all my charactefs have all three of those dyes.)

They absolutely are account bound. Get a dye once, all your alts have it forever, even alts you haven’t made yet. That was one of the best QoL changes in the game. ANet was also kind enough to send us an unidentified dye for each duplicate dye we had across our alts when the change went through. I ended up with 4 or 5 stacks of unidentifieds!

So you don’t need to craft it a second time, and if you randomly do, then you can make some gold selling it so as to buy something you’re missing.

Think of it as communal effort. The Trading Post doesn’t spontaneously generate its goods, they all come from other players who have crafted or gathered or lucked into the items they are selling. You can add to what’s for sale so others can nab it, and you can buy the fruits of others’ efforts.

I started a human thief yesterday, and got into Huntsman crafting quite a bit. So far I’m enjoying that a lot, so I think I’ll put the asura cook on hold for a bit. Back when the game wa released, I played asura exclusivly. Now that I’m back, I’m back to asura. It feels nice to finally try something else. :p

Anyway, thanks, I’ll see about crafting and selling unidentified dye. I just need to get that printer first, so I can print a list of dyes and cross out the ones I’ve got. Then I’ll start selling once I cross out more and more dyes.

I’m not sure you really need a printed list, come to think of it. I mean, it’s a nice organizational tool. But so long as you’re in game, you can bring up your dye panel on any alt and see all the available dyes. The ones you’ve not yet learned on your account will have padlocks on them, and a drop down link to the Trading Post if you want to buy them or just check their price.

Plus when you mouse over a dye, the tooltip will say in red letters if you’ve already learned it. If you have, it’s safe to sell.