Guild Wars 2

Hello I am a new gw2 player. So far I have found GW2 very confusing but I’m getting a little better. One thing that really confuses me is the crafting system. I’m playing as a human elementalist and have chosen the artificing skill, which I think is the correct one for my profession. I have gathered basic materials using pick, sickle and axe, and salvage kit. I managed to craft a mighty crude staff but it was weaker than what I already have so I salvaged it for wood, but I have some questions:

1. What are inscriptions? They are on the crafting list but I’m not sure what they do.
2. What are trophies? When an item has that label what does it mean?

Don’t really get the discovery panel either. I assume I can find new items to add to the crafting list but most of them are red, and for the ones that can be used, the craft button is greyed out.

Trophies (if not all of them, some you can use with crafting I believe) are just junk and usually you’d sell them. As for inscriptions, they are usually put on weapons, they give stats such as Power, Precision, condition damage, etc. The rarer the inscription the more stats it gives.

1. Inscriptions are items used to craft weapons. So to make a Mighty Staff (not the crude version) you need a mighty inscription, a green staff head and a green staff shaft. Combine those 3 in the discovery panel and you will be able to craft them into a Mighty Green Staff (or whatever it’s called). Artificer can also craft potions when you reach the right level/have the right materials. Have a look at the profession on the wiki to get an idea of the recipes (most of these potions are discovered in the discovery panel).

2. Trophies are junk items you get from killing critters which you can sell to vendors for some extra coin.

Yes I crafted the head and the shaft to make the staff but wondered why I didn’t have to use the inscription. So crude stuff doesn’t use them? Crude is the weakest type of equipment right?

I’ll sell my trophies and keep ones that may be useful for crafting.

Thank you for answering my question.

SuperSlayer.4853:

Yes I crafted the head and the shaft to make the staff but wondered why I didn’t have to use the inscription. So crude stuff doesn’t use them? Crude is the weakest type of equipment right?

I’ll sell my trophies and keep ones that may be useful for crafting.

Thank you for answering my question.

Yeah crude is the weakest. Here’s the wiki page for artificer crafting weapons – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Artificer/Novice_recipes#Weapons

You can see on the right it shows you the ingredients needed to make an item. These are the items you need to add to the discovery panel to create the recipe and the item.

If it’s a grey item that says it’s a trophy, sell it. The easiest way is to click the “sell junk” button at a vendor. Any useless items in your inventory will auto-sell. If you have one you want to save for some reason, eg RP flavor, keep it in an invisible bag to protect it from that function.

Inscriptions are absolutely necessary in crafting anything higher than starting gear. They also help level your crafting as you discover how to make one, then use it to discover how to make an item. Discovery is the way you advance crafting, do not do what I did in the beginning and keep crafting something you’ve already learned.

To discover you pull items from the discovery panel into the right hand slots until it tells you it looks like something, then you make whatever it is. For cooking that can be a wild mix of things; for gear, it’s pretty much always inscription + piece + piece (eg a berserker’s inscription plus a sword hilt plus a sword blade makes a berserker statted sword). You can check your inscription mat supply to pick which ones to make, and then you can discover that stat version of each type of gear you know how to make.