Guild Wars 2

New to the game and I’ve been getting a lot of Karma and Laurels from achievements and events. Should I save them up for a higher level? What should I be aiming towards with these?

They are simply ways to get a few additional gear pieces without spending gold.

42.000 karma buys you a level 80 exotic item, saving you 2-3 gold pieces. Don’t hesitate to spend some as you level though, you’ll get more than enough later. You can also buy all gathering tools with karma, which also saves you a bit of gold.

35-40 laurels buys you a level 80 ascended ring/amulet. Save these. Also guild commendations that you can get from guild missions.

I would save all karma and laurels until level 80 and you have been playing a while. Figure out what build you are going for when you get to level 80 and then decide what to use it all on.

Me personally, I have never really spent any karma. Have just been saving it and never needed it. As for laurels, save em for ascended gear as AntiGw mentioned.

I agree you should save up until level 80. Laurel trinkets cant’t be used until then anyway. And it never occurred to me until i saw someone post it but make sure you use a karma booster before you double click your jugs of karma because they’ll go a lot further then.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

I agree you should save up until level 80. Laurel trinkets cant’t be used until then anyway. And it never occurred to me until i saw someone post it but make sure you use a karma booster before you double click your jugs of karma because they’ll go a lot further then.

I definitely second this. Also bank your karma jugs until you’re ready to spend some karma, this goes double if you have more than one character.

For laurels it depends… You can’t use the gear until level 80, but if you are in need of gold you can spend 5 Laurels for 10 unidentified dyes and sell the dye for over a gold.

And what exactly would a sub-80 lvl character need gold for?

Tom Gore.4035:

And what exactly would a sub-80 lvl character need gold for?

Keeping your gear up to snuff if what you’re getting from drops/rewards isn’t cutting it. Or to buy crafting mats.

I just leveled a Guardian to Lvl 80 without a single copper from my main and he ended up sitting on about 1,8g after hitting lvl 80 and 400 in both cooking and armorsmithing.

Yes I know he used some crafting materials sitting in the collections, but still, there is absolutely no need to spend gold on leveling your toon and even less reason to waste Laurels for gold.

Save 100 laurels buy unlimited cat tonic…

Use karma to buy equipment until you get to 80 when you can get your exotics…no gold required…

Laurels, save for level 80. You can use them to buy the highest rated gear for amulets and rings, basically you’d need 100 laurels for a level 80 (two rings at 35 each + 1 amulet at 30), but you can save 10 laurels for each of them if you have 250 badges of honor from WvW for each (you get them for kills and events on WvW and from achievement chests every 500 achievement points).

Karma, use it to buy gear while you level from heart vendors, try to do dailies when you can as you play, and save the karma jugs you get from them. Once you hit 80 you can buy gear from temples in orr (google dulfy’s guide on temple gear), you’ll need 42k karma a piece for each, so that makes 252k karma needed for a full set. Each karma jug will give you 4500 karma, so you’d need 56 of them for a full set (though you’d probably have enough karma for at least one piece by the time you’re 80), but remember that you can use karma modifiers on them (karma boost, bonfires, banners, etc), so you can hold on to them until you have a karma boost handy or someone calls for a bofire (bonfire and booster don’t stack) and use with other karma modifiers (food, banners, and so on), you can get almost 9k karma from each jug by using all available modifiers.

Also, search for cultural weapons, they’re rare quality weapons with unique skins that can be used by any race, they can be bought for 63k karma each (the level 80 versions, lower level ones can be bought for less karma but they share the skin with commonly dropped weapons).