Guild Wars 2

I have just recently gotten this account and am currently a L15 Guardian.
I am really only interested in Open World Player vs Environment.
Now I may make another character or two in the future but I am generally just looking for casual game play.

So with that said, is there any real reason why I would need to do crafting?
Is there any advantage to my basic game play style that would be to my advantage as opposed to just buying the stuff I need?

Thanks in advance for any responses.

There are absolutely reasons to craft. Several in fact.

First of all, the highest tier of gear in this game can only reliably be attained by crafting. You don’t need that gear but at some point you’ll probably want it. Ascended weapons can’t be bought or sold as they’re all account bound.

There are other items you’d have to craft that you can only get through crafting as well.

If you hate crafting you can play this game without crafting, but you’ll lose a few options doing so.

If you ever want to make a legendary weapon, then crafting is required. Also getting the best gear/weapons in the game are needing the highest level of crafting (ascended/crafting level 500). In essence you dont REALLY need them in order to function in the game but once your lvl 80 with all exotic gear, you’ll wish you had started early. The other good thing about crafting now is that your crafting level also levels your actual characters level. Ive gotten two of my 80’s from 1-80 through crafting. Of course, this was earlier in the game where getting a craft from 1-400 got you 10 levels.

If you plan on doing it for levels i use Gw2hub.com. Theyre a bit more expensive than other guides but theyre the most concise from my experience.

-Side note- If you plan on doing any crafting put in buy orders, instead of buying it instantly, it will save you alot of money in the long run. Trust me

If you need any other help in the game please feel free to friend me and wsp me anytime, ive been crafting since i started two years ago.

So from what I am hearing, the highest tier of stuff I may want for some reason, but really don’t need. I just looked up Ascended and from what I can tell it is about 5% better than the exotic stuff that I can get as drops or on the Trading Post, is that right? Is 5% a lot when you are top leveled?

I get that later in the game I may be missing out on some high end things, but crafting just seemed repetitive and kind of boring to me, not to mention expensive for us casual gamers.

As for the Legendary weapons, I have been to a few of those Group Boss events and it seems that everyone already has Legendary weapons. I was told the only difference is changing the stats and the pretty sparkles. I can see how changing stats is nice but the pretty stuff looks kind of boring when everyone has them. I counted 6 people with the black swords, 4 with the white ones and 3 people shooting unicorns.

It just seems like I am missing the boat about some key thing about crafting.

For open world PvE you will be just fine in exotics. You might want ascended for the skins. But you can do just fine without crafting if you’re willing to miss out on some items.

It is good xp for leveling, though. And unless they’ve fixed it you can get the survivor achieve by just standing at a crafting table getting 5 levels (happened to me to my surprise, way back when). But if you really don’t mind not having the crafting skills, you can instead just harvest all the nodes you find in the world and sell the mats on the TP for good profit.

Crafting is definetely NOT neccesary at all. I’ve been playing this game for 2 years in Exotic quality armor and I have been able to do everything except high level Fractals (a dungeon that gets harder each ‘tier’ but it’s arbitrary numbers increasing and a new damage debuff that gets added at higher tiers). Since I personally am not interested in grinding the same dungeon just to get to a higher tier of the same one I ignore Ascended weapons and armor.

There are a few things that are nice from crafting, each ‘tier’ of crafting (apprentice, journeyman etc) you can craft a backpack skin that you can only get through crafting, it’s nice to have while levelling and they do look nice but are completely optional. Another thing is that at level 400 crafting you can make account bound ‘Ambrite’ weapons made from materials from Dry Top (a zone added this year) that you can only get through crafting. Again, only for the visuals. On top of that legendary weapons require crafting but if you want to aim for a legendary then you will likely have so much gold that you can just buy your crafting to 400+ by getting materials from the trade post.

When levelling the only benefit you will have is getting experience from crafting and being able to create your own weapons and armor along the way. Overall it’s not such a big deal in my opinion.

Marmatt.8590:

If you ever want to make a legendary weapon, then crafting is required. Also getting the best gear/weapons in the game are needing the highest level of crafting (ascended/crafting level 500). In essence you dont REALLY need them in order to function in the game but once your lvl 80 with all exotic gear, you’ll wish you had started early. The other good thing about crafting now is that your crafting level also levels your actual characters level. Ive gotten two of my 80’s from 1-80 through crafting. Of course, this was earlier in the game where getting a craft from 1-400 got you 10 levels.

If you plan on doing it for levels i use Gw2hub.com. Theyre a bit more expensive than other guides but theyre the most concise from my experience.

-Side note- If you plan on doing any crafting put in buy orders, instead of buying it instantly, it will save you alot of money in the long run. Trust me

If you need any other help in the game please feel free to friend me and wsp me anytime, ive been crafting since i started two years ago.

Really good tips here.

I took my time crafting and had a lot of fun doing it, especially if I made something that sold for a nice chunk of gold.

Marmatt is right about http://www.guildwars2hub.com/crafting It has a lot of good info and will get you started on crafting easily. I enjoyed discovering recipes and eventually went out seeking where I could get other recipes around Tyria.

Another tip is to check the recipes you get and make sure the avie that has that crafting profession uses that recipe. Recipes are not account bound (yet at any rate…) so you do have to be careful with that. Nothing like using a neat 400 level insignia recipe you got and then realizing only a tailor could make that and you don’t have any avie with a tailoring profession yet…lol.

Try not to feel like you have to grind to get there. I did do that for the Mawdry backpack and burned myself out a bit – I probably would have enjoyed it more if I had taken my time. Do a bit at a time, put in buy orders to save some money where you can. Salvage for materials. Ultimately I enjoyed the crafting process and was able to finish all of them and I do feel I accomplished something. I recently made an ascended armor set that I am very proud of and hubby recently bought me Rodgort’s Flame (precursor) so now I am going for my first Legendary.

Good luck if you decide to craft, you will feel proud of your accomplishments the first time you make a nice set of armor for yourself or a weapon you just love.

Hmmm, a lot to noodle over. Thank you kindly all for your thoughts and opinions.

I did have a question on an excerpt of Lauree’s statement:

Lauree Akhtar.3205:

Crafting will always give you better gear than drops

Could someone explain what that means?

Is that because you can craft Ascended/Legendary which is always better then dropped exotics?
or
Do crafted items of the say, exotic rarity, have better stats then a similar dropped exotic?

As to that, no, all exotics have the same stat spread, and the dropped and crafted ones are generally available on the TP for much less gold than the value of the component mats. However, dropped exotics are far too rare to rely on that for gearing up. You either make them or buy them. Ascended miiiight drop (heck, I just got my first ascended weapon box) though you can’t choose the stats (I got Settler’s), but otherwise you must make that tier.

Jewelcrafting might be an exception, jewelers can do things to gems to enhance them greatly and I don’t recall seeing drops of such upgrades.

If you learn up to 400 it is not hard to craft something just to sell it and buy something you actually need. For example I just made some weapons I did not need and used the profit to buy some Medium Armour I wanted but could not make. Had I not learned to make those weapons it would have taken goodness how long to get the gold together.

Lauree Akhtar.3205:

…If you’re keeping up with your crafting (so what your crafting level is on par with your character level) you will (and I should say you will /likely/; there are occasional super awesome drops) generally be crafting equipment with better stats or closer level than what will be dropping from mobs…

I have been leveling a new toon for the past couple days. What I have found is that even through map completing 4 zones, I am still lacking in the materials necessary (even with salvaging) to break into the higher tier of crafting without using the Trade Post. As I am sitting right now, the new character is level 35 and the gear I am able to craft is only ~level 20 gear.

While level 20 gear is adequate for a level 35 character, the story content is granting me level-appropriate gear at a regular enough pace that it makes crafting feel very useless for a new character. Likewise, it starts to feel (even with boosters) like there is a definite crafting grind happening just to get that next level unlocked.

I don’t want to say that the new leveling system is responsible for making crafting feel more like a chore than ever, but the reward system currently is making crafting feel grossly inadequate. To be fair, I have not fully leveled a character in some time ankitten ot going to pass judgement on it until I have done so, but at this point in my leveling experience, crafting really does feel like a waste of time.

I didn’t start crafting until my third character, when I had a huge pile of mats to work with. Not intentional, I just didn’t feel like I needed it. I still don’t think I missed anything.

The first tier takes longer to break out of than the other tiers, and tier 2 tends to be the hardest in terms of materials.

OP – you asked if that 5% makes a difference for end-game: not really.

The only reason you’ll need Ascended gear is if you want to tackle the very high-end dungeon, Fractals of the Mists. Ascended gear allows access to a specific kind of resistance (Agony resistance) that you can’t get by any other means and is necessary for anything but beginning Fractals.