Guild Wars 2

I’m sure this question has been asked a fair few times already, but does anyone have any tips on the best method to obtain a precursor? I’ve been playing since launch day and have yet to have any drop for me, let alone the one I actually want.

I’ve been after the Bifrost since the start of last year, and after months of saving up to purchase it, after the wardrobe patch it jumped up to nearly 1400g. Keep in mind I’m a casual gamer, I only play a few hours a night and on weekends, so I don’t have a lot of time to invest in gold farming and stuff.

I’ve tried my hand at the Mystic Forge, doing dungeons everyday to gain tokens in order to trade for Exotic Weapons and putting 4-12 staves into the Forge in hopes a precursor will pop, with no avail.

I’ve recently started doing the World Boss Train everyday as well as I heard the bonus chests the bosses give have the highest chance of dropping a precursor, but then again the chances of it dropping are still very low, and the chances for it to be The Legend are even worse.

At this point I’ve just gone with the “be patient” approach but after nearly 2 years with no precursor I’m losing hope! Have any of you guys had success stories with certain methods, or simply got luck of the draw?

I’ve been able to get precursors for about 200 gold in the Mystic Forge with putting in 4 rares of the weapon type you want (eg 4 daggers for legendary dagger precursor for about 200-400 gold compared to the 1400 it costs on tp).

Guild Wars 2 uses a pseudorandom number generator based on timing to generate all drops. Because of this all drops, regardless of precursor, exotic class or otherwise, tend to ‘clump’ in the same timing, but nobody really knows when the ‘clump’ occurs.

Your best bet if buying is to watch the market for a while because when one person gets dawn, usually 4 people get dawn at the same time, and then some of them will decide to sell it at the same time.

It’s not entirely luck, the time of the day where you play will affect whether your time bracket for that day is likely to include the time when the precursor can drop, while at all other times the chance is actually zero. For this cause some people can and will get multiple precursors with very little investment, and others will get next to no exotics even after months. It is not clear whether or not the drop timings will ‘drift’ from day to day so that everyone at the same time zone will have a similar overall chance.

As far as the people reading the numbers are aware, the item tick tends to occur every 0.1 seconds, together with the duration accounting for other things like boons and conditions.

Aside from this Anet has kept information on its PRNG so secret we are unable to peer any further into the details of its operation from observation alone. The most reliable method to get a precursor remains to buy it off the TP, as while there are people that can roll one with 200g, there are also people who roll as much as 3000g into the Forge, never getting even a rarer exotic (E.G. Genesis), let alone a precursor.

Thanks for the reply guys, I guess in the end it’s all up to luck really. I’ll just have to keep trying and see how I go. Alternatively, with the amount of money the world boss train yields, I may as well end up buying the darn thing

As someone who spent a ton of real world cash back in the day trying to get a precursor to drop via the Mystic Forge, I wouldn’t recommend that route. The chance that it won’t happen and all your money will be gone is just too high.

Personally, I’d just save your pennies and try to buy it directly. Who knows, maybe you’ll find one while you’re saving up!