Guild Wars 2

To mis-quote Shakespeare, that is the question.

Is it advised to hoard Karma points till late/end-game or spend them as you level on gear or crafting?

I ask because in other games equivalent ‘currency’ is often wasted early/mid-game. Take LOTRO for example, for those who know it, Skirmish Points can be used to buy useful leveling gear, but later on they’re far, far more valuable to barter for Legendary Item upgrades.

Is GW2 like this or not? If I spend, say, 10K Karma points leveling up to, say, 50, will I later bitterly regret that because KPs get harder to earn; or will it be the case if I hoard them I’ll end up at 80 with many thousands unspent?

Karma points are really easy to earn. Every day you finish your daily you get a jug of liquid karma which is worth about 4.5k karma. You can save those and use them all at once with karma boosts will make it around 7k karma a pop. Also, dynamic events are always everywhere in the world so you earn karma that way too. If you chose to WvW every time you kill a dolyak, defend/attack a tower/camp/keep/etc you get karma.

However, there are some nice lvl 80 karma gear you can get which is around 42k a piece and if you want to make a legendary you will need around a million karma. So it’s up to you, what you want to do with your karma. It’s not too hard to earn back if you do decide to spend it.

There are two schools of thought on Karma spending as you level: one recommends that you use karma to buy your gear as you level to save gold, and the other recommends that you hoard everything until you hit 80.

Why spend your karma on gear? Simply because you save gold. You need gold for your skill tomes, waypoints, crafting mats you don’t gather (if you like crafting) and gems (if you want something from the gem store). Between dailies and dynamic events, you tend to get plenty of karma compared to the price of the gear you’re buying.

Why save your karma until level 80? For those exotics you can buy from cleared temples in Orr and for chasing a legendary. Temple Exotics run in the realm of 50K Karma per piece, and you will speed hundreds of thousands of Karma if you want to make a Legendary weapon.

I fall into the latter camp, so I only spent my early Karma on crafting materials (a lot of foods are Karma-bought), salvage kits, and harvesting tools. Every 5-10 levels I would buy near gear from the BLTC (usually blues or greens, but whatever’s cheap and has stats that I like) or craft gear to kind of save on money, too. Salvage white gear drops, vendor blues, and either post on the BLTC or vendor greens (if you don’t use them).

You can “rent” most blue and some green (masterpiece) gear for 1-10 copper while leveling.

Just search on TP for the gear you want and sort it by price. Find some nice armor or weapons which cost only a few copper more than the sell price to an NPC. Buy it and use it. When you outgrow it and replace it, sell it to an NPC. Net cost to you is a few copper. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking the green weapon which costs 1.79 silver is more expensive than the blue weapon which costs 40 copper. But if the price you’ll get for selling the two are 1.78 silver and 20 copper respectively, the blue weapon is actually more expensive.

As for karma, it’s plentiful enough that I wouldn’t worry about hoarding it. You do want to save it up for the level 80 exotic karma armor (unless you know you want different armor), so don’t go nuts spending all your karma. But even if you do use it all up, it’ll only take you a few days to a week to get back up to 10-20k.

Thanks for those comments, they’ve given me a far clearer idea of Karma and its’ uses than I had before.

I’m pretty much in DEKeyz’s camp, I only buy gear if I find my character is struggling with quest rewards and drops, but I do insist on talking to those wretched Karma vendors and in the mid 20s now I’m seeing some nice gear that my crafters can’t make ATM.

Your comments make me think that I can afford to splash out a little from time to time and won’t have too many regrets later.

Cheers all.

I spend them when I’m starting to suffer with levelling. I had all alts maxed out in crafting so sometimes I’ll make something, but I can’t always be bothered to logout, login, craft then take my other character over to a bank, since I always level my alts in a duo and they have to hang around waiting for me to get done with it. Always doing your dailies is well worth it though, especially now that you can get not only karma but laurels.

Solandri’s suggestion is probably the most efficient method for upgrading armor and weapons as you level, especially now that there are effective uses for karma at level 80, such as the new Orrian Jewelry Boxes. Just be sure to avoid the low-level rare armor, because those prices are usually far higher than what you’d want to pay for gear you’ll only use for 5-10 levels.

Karma skins are also different (and often better looking) than usual armor and weapon skins, so if you care at all about how your character looks as you’re making your way to 80, that might lean your decision to use karma, as well.

Personally, I’m a cheapskate, and save all my Karma.

I just figured if I spent it on low level items I would regret it later.

The only Karma I spent was on Balthazar armour, and I stll have 500,000 left.