Guild Wars 2

Is there any reason to farm keys for a profit or is it just for account-bound skins?

Depends on how you level to 10.
If you have some tomes to spend or those birthday scrolls that level to 20, then go for it.
If you do it by crafting, then I think that the profit you get for the time you spend isn’t really worth imo.

There is no reason to farm keys for profit nor for the skins, which can be acquired via the TP for less effort. The only reason to farm keys is that you love the anticipation of getting something fun or valuable (and don’t mind if you get garbage), because it’s cheaper to farm the keys than to convert gold to gems and buy them directly.

We have only limited data available to determine drop rates. Market prices for the items vary considerable over time and because ANet changes the contents periodically. So all of the “monetization” estimates are really just educated guesses. They assume that you can get 80 to 100g from a BL ticket (not always true) and that each scrap is worth 10% of that (not true, since 9 scraps is worth nothing, while 10 scraps is the same as a ticket).

Then you have to factor in the time to level up to reach L10 and what else you could have been doing (e.g. CoF, AC, …). The actual run itself is usually under 20 minutes for anyone who does it more than a few times per year and closer to 12 for those who do it regularly.

Overall, you could be doing something else to earn more gold.

However, farming keys is often the cheapest in-game way to get keys. At 20g/100 gems, it costs nearly 17g to get one key (if bought at the bulk rate of 25 for 2,100 gems); not many farms offer 17g for spending 30-40 minutes with as little work as this farm.

Thus, if you really like opening chests (which many do), then the farm is the most efficient method to supply your fix of keys.

However, if you want anything that the chests might drop, it is far cheaper to buy those on the TP. Unless, of course, the RNG gods smile at you.

Farming the keys ingame yields probably the worst hourly wage you imagine.

Depending on the hourly wages in your country, of course. One key cost 90 gems if you buy the 5 pack, 1 gem cost 1.25 cent, that is 90*1.25 cent = 112.5 cent or $ 1.125 or 1.125 Euro for one key. (gems cost the same in Dollar and in Euro).
You get approx. 1 key in 20 minutes, 3 keys in 1 hour, this is the equivalent of $ 3.37 hourly wage.

I don’t know how your country pays for work, but here in Germany there is a minimum wage of 8.50 Euro, which is approx. $ 10. A cleaner in a private household is paid approx. 10 Euro here, three times the benefit of one hour of key farming.

If you go cleaning for 4 hours, you get 40 Euro, which yields about 35 keys if you buy them in the shop. On the other hand, ingame farming for 35 keys takes about 12 hours.

A very bad deal if you go ingame farming for keys, if you ask me. Go cleaning for 4 hours, buy the keys with your wage, and play what you have fun with in Guild Wars 2 for the remaining 8 hours instead of meaningless ingame farming/grinding.

Ingame key farming gets you absolutely nothing but the bare key. No character progression, no chance to become better player, no gold, no interesting new story, no teamwork with fellow gamers. It’s totally wasted.

Depends. Not only do you need to have a high boredom tolerance but you need to hold on to the skins you buy to make a good profit. If you get a ticket buy a skin and sell it for 80 gold or so, then not really. If you hold the skin till it’s worth 300-400 gold, then yes, it’s profitable that way but it requires patience.

Silmar Alech.4305:

Farming the keys ingame yields probably the worst hourly wage you imagine.

Depending on the hourly wages in your country, of course. One key cost 90 gems if you buy the 5 pack, 1 gem cost 1.25 cent, that is 90*1.25 cent = 112.5 cent or $ 1.125 or 1.125 Euro for one key. (gems cost the same in Dollar and in Euro).
You get approx. 1 key in 20 minutes, 3 keys in 1 hour, this is the equivalent of $ 3.37 hourly wage.

I don’t know how your country pays for work, but here in Germany there is a minimum wage of 8.50 Euro, which is approx. $ 10. A cleaner in a private household is paid approx. 10 Euro here, three times the benefit of one hour of key farming.

If you go cleaning for 4 hours, you get 40 Euro, which yields about 35 keys if you buy them in the shop. On the other hand, ingame farming for 35 keys takes about 12 hours.

A very bad deal if you go ingame farming for keys, if you ask me. Go cleaning for 4 hours, buy the keys with your wage, and play what you have fun with in Guild Wars 2 for the remaining 8 hours instead of meaningless ingame farming/grinding.

Ingame key farming gets you absolutely nothing but the bare key. No character progression, no chance to become better player, no gold, no interesting new story, no teamwork with fellow gamers. It’s totally wasted.

But could I get up on a Saturday morning, randomly decide I want some black lion keys and go clean a house for a few hours, get paid and then not do it again for weeks? I certainly couldn’t do it in my dressing gown while eating my breakfast.

That’s where this analogy of any type of in-game farming vs. part-time low wage job falls apart. Even the most casual job is still much more of a commitment than farming in-game.

Sure people will say you could do something that’s not even officially classed as a job, like mow your neighbours lawn. But you can only do that once a week at most. And what if they don’t want to hire you? Or they’re not in when you decide you want the money? Or they don’t have a lawn (which most people around here don’t)?

It’s usually not useful to compare hourly earnings to in-game earning.

• If you have disposable income, you can afford to buy gems (and convert to gold or not).
• If you don’t, even overtime earnings can’t be spent on games.

People play to have fun or to get away from work. If you like opening chests, key farming is the most efficient method in the game to get them. If you want the items inside the chests, then the TP is the most efficient way.

The way in which you get the gold to afford stuff on the TP is something that can be completely separated from the question of spending gold or gems. And, again, if you can afford to buy gems, then sure, it’s very efficient to convert them to gold. Or if you can’t, then there are dozens of guides out there for earning gold in game.

tl;dr only farm keys if you really enjoy the anticipation of opening the chests; otherwise get the stuff you want from the TP directly.

with NO buffs NO bonuses and SOLO it takes about 2 hours to create a toon, level it to 10, run the story, strip it and bank the items and delete it. so figure if 2 hours is worth a key to you. if you are bored, sure…if you are looking for actual profit, then no..some chests have nothing of value while some may have up to 1 whole ticket, a gathering node, or in extremely rare circumstances a permanent hair kit (80g-3k gold depending on market prices)after farming about 300 keys (i get bored easily) the average key was worth about 8 gold.

realmouse.1095:

with NO buffs NO bonuses and SOLO it takes about 2 hours to create a toon, level it to 10, run the story, strip it and bank the items and delete it. so figure if 2 hours is worth a key to you. if you are bored, sure…if you are looking for actual profit, then no..some chests have nothing of value while some may have up to 1 whole ticket, a gathering node, or in extremely rare circumstances a permanent hair kit (80g-3k gold depending on market prices)after farming about 300 keys (i get bored easily) the average key was worth about 8 gold.

True enough, but….

You get 10 tomes/28 days minimum plus a few writs a day from PvE daily. If you do the PvP daily you can get a tome a day to get 38 tomes/28 days. If you spend 10-15 minutes gaining 3 levels by doing hearts you’ll be level 5 and only need 5 tomes to reach level 10. Or you can craft 3 levels and then use tomes. That will get you 7-8 key runs/28 days minimum using the tomes and writs for very little time spent leveling.

The answer depends on what you consider profitable. If you hit ONE high value item, it certainly can be. If you are looking to farm BL scraps or Tickets for skins….doubtful. I have done my fair share of key farming and always did it to break up other monotony of other activities and get some boosters and even a few skins for myself (I’ve never felt that Trading BL skins is worth the effort). I did hit a perma-bank item once that netted me a quick 500g, but if I honestly divided that over ALL the key runs I’ve done, I’d be hard pressed to call it “profitable”. I certainly don’t consider them wasted time either (no more than playing the game in general).

I guess it all comes down to how much time you spend on each run and what you “value” that time to be.

The short answer is “No”.

The long answer is that given enough keys, you may eventually hit the jackpot and score a super valuable item that will make up for the thousands of hours you spent farming keys that did not pay off and if you quit at that time then you will have achieved a profit. However, the likelihood is very slim and requires so much time that you’d be better off begging in Lion’s Arch for gold donations.

You can level to 10 from cooking with a slight profit but the time it takes to key farm isn’t worth it as there are faster methods.

I use cooking to get to lvl 10. For a human theif I use 25 min max for a run total to grt the key. Use a little gold for the ingredients but I have gotten good recipes for little price after experimenting. Just cashed in 2 Bl skins for total 300 gold. Also gotten other stuff. Done maby 40 runs total. Wll say that is a good profit for time spent. (Also got other stuff, this gold only from the scraps). Boring as hell tho, better have a movie on while doing it

It’s good to do when doing something else. Or if you like to get some tradition grind in like you’re playing an oldschool MMO.