A Request. This thread isn’t for people to bellyache about how hard it is to get a legendary, how they’re not “legendary,” or how precursors shouldn’t rely on RNG. If you’re not interested in figuring out how to work within the system that’s in place, this ain’t your thread, bucko.
So you don’t have a legendary yet. You know what?
Good.
Yeah, I wrote that. Good. The game has been out a month and a half, roughly—it’s a good thing that you and I don’t have legendary weapons yet. How boring would it be if it only took a month and a half to get to 80 and get a legendary? Sure, some people have them already, but they’re either exceptionally dedicated players or… well, more about them below.
What makes these weapons so legendary, anyway? Well, I don’t work for ArenaNet, but if I had to guess, I’d say that their creation is designed to test your mastery of every aspect of the game.
- Mastery of Combat. You need a whole lot of Badges of Honor from World vs. World.
- Mastery of Trade. You need a whole lot of money. A whole lot.
- Mastery of Exploration. Gifts of Exploration. Enough said.
- Mastery of Crafting. You need two crafting skills at 400. Probably the easiest part, all told.
- Mastery of Dungeons. Each legendary requires a gift from a certain dungeon. Get used to that dungeon. You and it will be friends.
That’s what makes these weapons legendary: if all goes well, you know that anyone wielding a legendary weapon is really good at every aspect of Guild Wars 2. Pretty cool, huh?
The real situation. Okay, let me level with you. Those players who already have legendaries? Most of them had help. There are entire guilds that formed in the early days of Guild Wars 2 with the goal of making the first legendary weapon. That said, it is possible to get a legendary on your own—it’s just going to take longer.
How do I make money? That was a fairly long preamble, but let’s be honest: the thing you’re probably worried about, right now, is your ability to make money. My advice? Before you do any of the below things, you need to know this: stop spending your kittening money. Just stop. If you have a full set of rare armor, weapons, and jewelry, you have everything you need to start working on your legendary. Stop buying different exotic sets. You can get your exotics from dungeons easy enough, and make money doing it. Stop trying to “play the Trading Post.” Save your kittenloving money.
Ahem. There.
Another disclaimer: I’m sorry, but you probably can’t get Sunrise or Twilight right now. The costs of those precursors has gone through the roof. Some people exploited the everloving kitten out of those things, and now a small group of players essentially controls the market. None of the below advice is going to apply to those. The Mystic Forge really is your best bet there, because it’s unlikely that you can make money faster than Dusk or Dawn’s price rises. Quite frankly, that sucks. Unless ArenaNet can find some way to remove those Dusks and Dawns and that money from the game, that market’s kittened.
(I want you to know I’m actually typing “kitten.”)
Malchor’s Leap, Cursed Shore, and Frostgorge Sound are goldmines. Or, rather, orichalcum mines. Not counting the nodes in Eternal Battlegrounds, there are 12 orichalcum nodes and 12 ancient/Orrian saplings in the world, and they reset every 24 hours. Chances are, someone on your server has an up-to-date map of their locations, but keep in mind that the locations change whenever there’s a server reset. If you mine all of the orichalcum available to you and chop down all that ancient wood, and then sell it all, that’s about 1.5 gold per day at current prices—and that’s if that’s all you do. That’s not taking into account that you can hit all these nodes again on another character, if you have another 80.
So step one is: gather all the orichalcum and ancient wood available to you every day.
After that it’s up to you. Here are some other options: