Guild Wars 2

I am a returning player that wants to make a legendary I am wondering is precursor crafting worth doing or should I just save up and buy the precursor off of the trading post?

It depends on the precursor. For the highly desirable ones then yes.

Sites like https://www.gw2bltc.com give you a cost breakdown.

The answer is “it depends.”

Are you a wiz at gathering gold and keeping it without spending it? Is your goal to have the precursor as soon as possible? Then save and buy.

Do you enjoy collecting items, doing lots of thematic quests, and making steady piecemeal recordable progress? Do you want the bonus items you get from the collections, like the chromatic ooze thing from Juggernaut or the hidden garden from Kudzu? Then craft.

Short version: Crafting them is not quick or easy and it’s not much cheaper (in some cases it may be more expensive) but some people find it a lot less frustrating and more fun.

Long version: Based on my experience buying a precursor before crafting them was announced vs. making one now I think it depends on a number of factors.

If you just want to do it quickly and especially if you are able to make gold quickly or enjoy doing things that make a lot of gold like running dungeons or Silverwastes repeatedly or flipping items on the TP then buying one is probably the better option.

If you do decide to craft one be aware that it will either cost a lot of gold or you’ll spend a lot of time farming materials, or a bit of both. Also it requires actual crafting so you’ll need to level at least one craft if you haven’t already (but that’s true of making the finished legendary too).

On the plus side I feel like it’s a lot less daunting because it’s broken down into smaller steps. When I was saving for a precursor I needed about 800g and when I’d finish playing for the night and add 2g to my savings that felt impossible to reach. This time I can just focus on the next step – I just need 2 Spirit Wood Planks, I just need 250 Elder Wood Planks, etc.

But it’s also possible to plan ahead and combine steps if I feel like it. For example for one step in the Tier 2 collection I needed Obsidian Shards, at the same time I needed Elder Wood and I knew I’d need Karka Shells and Passion Flowers soon. So I started playing in Southsun for a bit every night and made progress towards all of those goals at once. Whereas when I was saving gold all I could do was make more or less.

It’s also a fixed target to work towards. If I’m away for 2 days and can’t play I don’t make any progress but I also don’t ‘fall behind’, even if I’m working on time gated materials. Whereas when I was just saving gold I could easily come back to find the price had jumped up by even more than I’d have made in those 2 days and it felt like I’d slipped backwards. (This was at a time when precursor prices were rising pretty much constantly, I’m not sure it’s as much of an issue now.)

Overall I much prefer crafting them and I can’t imagine I’ll ever buy one again. But I know other people hate it and prefer to farm the gold.

Also be aware crafting requires components from pvp, wvw and fractals too. The pvp and wvw parts are minor as you can buy them on the TP fairly cheaply.
The fractal parts are account bound so you must get it yourself. However AFAIK they can be achieved in T1 fractals.

I personally found the crafting journey quite satisfying.

How much Fractals is involved varies a lot between precursors though. The Lover seems to require doing every single fractal at least once, whereas for The Legend I just need to fight the Jade Maw. I also need 25 Stabalising Matrixes but I can buy them from the TP.

That does bring up a good point though, it might be worth checking the Wiki to see what your chosen precursor requires before you start so you can see if there’s anything involved that you’re going to have problems with.

Also, useful tip for both methods: you can make quite a bit of gold by selling crafting materials. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. I normally only sell cooking materials and jewels because I rarely use those, and even then I set a ‘reserve’ of 50 of each to keep just in case. But even so it adds up.

And there might be some surprises. At some point in the past I made 10 charged ambrite just because I had lots of ambrite and some spare charged crystals and yesterday I found out those are worth 2g each. I checked what they’re used for, decided I’m unlikely to need them and sold the lot. Then used the money to buy things I need for my collection.