Guild Wars 2

Hey
I just started fractals runs recently (never bothered when first implemented), and wanted to know the basics of getting my ascended gear started. Right now, I only have about 30 tokens and have only completed level 1; I am obviously going to keep going up. But with these rings, the backpack items, and infusions, I’m sort of in the dark. I know where I can find some recipes for things, but that’s where my knowledge ends. Got any useful advice for getting started?

do daily fotm even level get the pristine token you can exchange with ascended ring. wiki to find out more

Dulfy has a great guide on how everything involving ascended gear works!

http://dulfy.net/2012/11/17/gw2-ascended-gear-and-infusion-recipes/

There’s two types of ascended gear Backpieces and Rings. Basic versions of these have an open slot which you can put an infusion in to get +5 agony resistance. The basic versions of Rings and Backpieces can be upgraded to have an inherent +5 agony resistance in addition to an open infusion slot. So every piece can give you a total of +10 agony resistance.

Dulfy explains in detail the ways you can obtain + upgrade your rings and backpieces, but I can sketch out how it’s done later this evening when I get in from skiing ^__^

You need Agony resistance to defend yourself against the Agony condition, which bosses start to use at difficulty 10+. Agony resistance can only be found on Ascended gear (Rings and Back pieces) as of yet.

Starting at difficulty 10, you have a chance of getting an Ascended ring from the daily chest reward (You can get the daily chest from the bonus fractal (The Jade Maw) on all even levels, so 10, 12, 14,.. once a day). On top of that, you get a Pristine Fractal Relic guaranteed, which can be exchanged for a ring of choice at a ratio of 10:1.

All Ascended gear comes with an infusion slot, in which you can place an infusion “gem”. The easiest to obtain infusion gem gives +5 Agony Resistance, and can be bought from the Fractals Relic exchange golem in the lab for 75 relics. These infusion gems can also be crafted, and often give +5 of a bonus stat (like Power or Precision) on top of the agony resistance. However, crafting the infusions is rather expensive and not worth the +5 stats in my opinion.
You should also note that some gear have “Defensive infusion slots” and others have “Offensive infusion slots”. The 75 Relics infusion gem works on both, but the crafted infusion gems might be restricted to only either of the two (I suggest checking wiki if you plan on crafting them, to see if it’s an Offensive, Defensive or Versatile (works with both) infusion gem).

Ascended Back pieces can either be crafted (Quivers and Books) or bought for 1350 Relics (Prototype Fractal Capacitor).

All Ascended gear can also be Infused/Upgraded (not to be confused with adding an Infusion gem to the socket). This will add an additional +5 Agony resistance to the base stats. This way you can get +10 Agony resistance on a single item (From both upgrading it and adding an Infusion Gem).

Agony starts kicking in at difficulty 10, and thus you don’t need Ascended gear below that difficulty. Between difficulty 10-20, +5 agony resistance will cut the damage by half, and +10 Agony resistance will pretty much null it completely.

tl;dr:
You can do early Agony levels (such as 10-14) without Agony resistance without much problem, so don’t feel the need to craft a back piece as soon as you hit difficulty 10.
If you get lucky you might get a ring in your first difficulty 10-12 run, if not I’d suggest repeating those a few times for the daily reward chest until you do get a ring. Going on with at least +5 Agony resistance will make your life a lot easier, and they aren’t that difficult to obtain.

Edit: Ninja’d by Errant

Thanks for the help!