Guild Wars 2

I’ve found the fastest way to get a Black Lion Key is to create a new Human Warrior and do the commoner story mission. You can finish the level 10 mission at a lower level by letting the NPCs do a lot of killing for you.

Is it an exploit to do this repeatedly to collect Black Lion Keys? I don’t want to be banned, and I don’t know if you would consider this “too good to be true” or not, since it takes at least thirty minutes of effort, but generates a hard to find item.

Just to clarify what I’m talking about here, this is a screenshot of the reward for the level 10 story quest, next to an in game mail with items you get on a new character. The time stamp is “29 minutes old”.

At the end of a key run you’ve earned a Black Lion Key and about 6 silver and 30 tier 1 crafting mats from loot / quest rewards.

To clarify my question, is this an appropriate reward level for 30 minutes of activity, and is it acceptable to treat a key run like many people treat dungeons — something to do every day?

Hi Frank,

we will forward this to the team and see if they can provide an answer.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

From the money side – maybe.

But from the economy side no.

The price of a BL key is 125 gems, equating to about 1.6 gold per run, with a 30 minute redo with 0 DR thats a cool 3.2 gold per run.

However, you CAN’T sell the black lion key, you can use it to eat up the rest of your chests.

Is this intended, probably not.
Should you recreate a human character over and over to do this, probably not.

It otherwise gives you an advantage over other players who have a full character compliment over 1 empty slot players.

This better not be considered an exploit, key drops are non existent. Pretty much the only way to get them is to waste money on them (given the return on the chests, this is a horrible idea) or to do your personal story.

If they turn around and nerf the personal story key rewards, that’s just messed up.

My money is on it being nerfed to claimed to be improper. BL keys are a source of income to anet since the drop rate is horrible… you get like 1 key for every 10 chests. I would imagine there are a number of people paying for them on the gemstore… hope I am wrong but I don’t see them letting this stay the same way especially since the ideas is out and about now.

People aren’t buying keys because the chests are so bad. Chests cost 3c, why would I pay to open something that no one wants. ANet only makes money on chests when it’s a special chest (Wintersday, Halloween; and even the Wintersday interest died down at a laughably quick speed). Hope you get one of the new Contracts!

I think this might be 1 kitten of a gray area. My brain says yes, but my instinct says, Im not sure. I think that while not intended, it is working as intended but still, I think we need official word on this. Also, if it does indeed turn out to be an exploit (working as intended exploit???) might there be an alternative way to get keys as say rare drop loot either from most mobs or from bosses in dungeons?.

nobody would waste their time to play until story level 10.

OP said 30 minutes and someone calculated that it equated 3.2 gold per hour if you spent all money on gems to buy keys – not exactly a waste of time.

I tend to say it’s okay since it doesn’t hurt the economy.

Hmm, how can you do a storyline quest at a lower level than the storyline level requirement. According to my understanding, you have to be the equivalent level of the storyline level to be able to gain access to doing it.

Nah, you can do it at a lower level than the “requirement”.
On topic, I really hope this is ok to do, I contemplated doing it a while back, but judging by recent history of some things being/not being considered exploits I didn’t risk it. So basically, clarity would be awesome

It takes roughly 25-30 mins to do this. Any character that completes the level 10 quest gets a black lion key. While I’m sure it wasn’t intended to be done this way it was intended to get a key for your level 10 quest, just as it was intended for the npc’s to spawn illusions to help you on the quests fight. In my opinion, if someone wants to do something so boring to get a single key, let them. Regardless of taking this out, you won’t see an increase in sales of black lion keys because the rewards are garbage and the keys are not worth 125 gems.

But as of late, being Anet this will probably end up being called an exploit, players will be banned because of something that benefits the players and was intentionally put into the game. Or they’ll remove the key you get from your level 10 quest, but I expect bans to go out and that’s just sad to expect that to happen.

Nah, they wouldn’t consider an exploit something that no one would take 30 or more minutes to get done. Around 30 min in Orr can give you as much loot, mats, and karma, as well dungeons, and that would be a better option rather than doing this. Also not to mention how many times you would die in order to get this lvl 10 story done with a lower level toon. Also, by the time u get to make this lvl 10 story, no matter how rushy u went… u will be at least level 8, I remember I did my Sylvary story some of them like 3 levels below the level suggested. Remember its not a level requirement, it is a suggested level for the story.

Naioby.3705:

Nah, they wouldn’t consider an exploit something that no one would take 30 or more minutes to get done. Around 30 min in Orr can give you as much loot, mats, and karma, as well dungeons, and that would be a better option rather than doing this. Also not to mention how many times you would die in order to get this lvl 10 story done with a lower level toon. Also, by the time u get to make this lvl 10 story, no matter how rushy u went… u will be at least level 8, I remember I did my Sylvary story some of them like 3 levels below the level suggested. Remember its not a level requirement, it is a suggested level for the story.

This is specifically about the Human Commoner story. I do these runs without dying regularly, but dying isn’t too important if it costs 4-6 copper. The fastest I’ve ever gone is 23 minutes from creation (based on the timestamp from the golem you get in the mail with Collector’s Edition.) All you do are story missions, and you’re level 4 when the level 10 mission begins.

It’s not a waste of time if you want something that comes in a Black Lion Chest, and your alternative is converting gold to gems to buy a key.

My concern is that this specific story line is too easy. I want to confirm with the development team that repeatedly playing it for this reward won’t later be considered an exploit, because I do this when I want a Black Lion Key, as do many others.

Are we going to get an answer on this? You removed black lion keys from commendation list, not that we can trade them in anyway, but still.
Are going to see another repeat?

Good to know. It’s sad that this tedious method is currently the best way to get keys if you don’t wanna spend real money or lots of gold. I did this six times myself before Halloween when I heard about the skins and it wasn’t very fun. What you get in an average chest is definitely not worth 30 minutes of boring. Now if there was something fun that took 30 minutes to get a key it would be a different story!

Please please make black lion keys obtainable by some other method!

The Black Lion chests are there purely to make Arenanet money. And I’m perfectly happy with that. It lets the more gullible among us spend money to get gems to get keys to open the chests. When those gullible players eventually realize that they’re not worth it, that form of income for Arenanet/NCSoft will dry up for that one person. But the cycle continues for gullible new subscribers.

The only thing worthwhile I’ve ever received from Black Lion chests are 1.) 25 Stacks of Black Lion Salvage Kits, and 2.) 50% Karma Boosters. And I can get both of those items without ever opening a single Black Lion Chest. Worse, those chests don’t guarantee one of those two items, so only a fraction of the time do you get something worthwhile.

As another poster said, not worth the effort. Spend your time in a high-level zone farming mobs, dragon event chests, running explore mode dungeons, or running even level number fractals instead, preferably 10+. I have a ton more fun while doing dungeons and fractals anyways.

John Smith.4610:

Making new characters for Black Lion Keys is NOT an exploit. Have fun all!

Wait, what?

So . . . repeatedly making an item that can be sold for in game money is an exploit, but repeatedly getting an item that deprives ArenaNet of real world money (no need to buy keys if you can farm them), and also provides items which can be sold for in game money, isn’t an exploit?

No sarcasm or trolling here, I’m being completely serious. I just honestly don’t understand the logic behind this decision. Can someone smarter than I am please explain this to me?

Peregrine Falcon.5496:

John Smith.4610:

Making new characters for Black Lion Keys is NOT an exploit. Have fun all!

Wait, what?

So . . . repeatedly making an item that can be sold for in game money is an exploit, but repeatedly getting an item that deprives ArenaNet of real world money (no need to buy keys if you can farm them), and also provides items which can be sold for in game money, isn’t an exploit?

No sarcasm or trolling here, I’m being completely serious. I just honestly don’t understand the logic behind this decision. Can someone smarter than I am please explain this to me?

I imagine it’s because there is a time investment for these keys. Personally, I would not invest 30 minutes just for a key, because the contents in the chests just aren’t worth it for me.

Peregrine: you ask a very reasonable question. The idea is to look at all the inputs and outputs for the system.

1. Creating new toons for BL Keys is expensive: you have to invest a lot of time to get one key (create the toon, watch over battles, move the character around). You lose the opportunity to generate other kinds of wealth and to level your other characters.
2. Creating rares to salvage into ectos is expensive: besides the cloth materials, you need an insignia that requires a lot of fine mats. In effect, you are converting a bunch of fine mats into a rare mat or two.
3. Creating the snowflake jeweler to salvage into ecto was (by comparison) cheap (before the bug fix): the fine mat was returned about 90% of the time, meaning you were converting a handful of common mats into slightly fewer rare mats.

A lot of people tried to argue that (2) and (3) were the same, since both involved crafting things to be salvaged right away…and that aspect of the comparison is fair. The analogy fell down, however, because (2) resulted in losing nearly all the inputs, while (before the fix) you received back nearly all the inputs in (3).

I may be wrong but I think the determination of what is an exploit is whether your are leveraging a mistake/error/oversight for gain…gain which has game impact, generally in the economy. The OP was asking if the key runs were leveraging an oversight and ArenaNet responded “nope”. Clear as mud?

Oh, I believe they didn’t think that somebody was going to use it that way, but what is the difference is the result.

As Illconceived Was Na said the one key gives you access to something that will not change the game for others. Those boosters are more or less useless (IMHO). The contents of the boxes will not make you rich. So I guess it will never be considered to be an exploit.

I keep those boxes in my inverntory and I use almost all boosters upon receiving them. I even sold a bunch of that boxes before.

Thank you for taking the time to look at and answer my question, John, Gaile, and the rest of the moderation staff.

And to everyone else, thanks for the discussion. It’s good to see that I’m not alone in thinking the legitimacy of playing this way was questionable. ArenaNet makes money selling the items that come out of these chests, so they’re obviously useful to someone (and occasionally worth 30 minutes of my time).

Michael.4791:

Oh, I believe they didn’t think that somebody was going to use it that way, but what is the difference is the result.

As Illconceived Was Na said the one key gives you access to something that will not change the game for others. Those boosters are more or less useless (IMHO). The contents of the boxes will not make you rich. So I guess it will never be considered to be an exploit.

I keep those boxes in my inverntory and I use almost all boosters upon receiving them. I even sold a bunch of that boxes before.

So what happens if you did this before Halloween, saved your keys, and then proceed to use the keys to get the rare skins?

Since most of the skins where going for 1g-60g during the event, the potential to make a decent profit from doing this could have occurred. If someone got a ton of keys this way, the chances of them obtaining skins would have been very high, and thus generating a large profit could have been obtained.

The message is this: while there is not anything good in the box right now (besides the contracts, which may/may not be worth the runs idk), this does not mean something good later on can be released. If someone hoards keys this way, they would have good chance of making tons of money if something desirable was released.

The Anet’s line between works as intended and exploit can change in a heartbeat.

Gaile Gray.6028:

However, I wanted to add that things can change, and the devs may make adjustments to the rewards if they feel that would be a good thing to do. But at the present time, they do not consider these runs exploitative.

That just encourages panic and a hoarding mentality. When you bring up similar events in the past that were introduced via a lack of ANet’s QA department, such as Black Lion Keys for Commendations, Commendations themselves now, Flawed recipes (which resulted in banned players), and other so-called exploits it illustrates how stressful this game has become when just playing it normally.

Nobody wants to lose thousands of hours of progression because of an internal decision that reverts on something originally pushed out by the same team. It honestly takes a lot of the fun from the game when you’re worried that you could lose everything so easily.

It probably would have been better to just leave it at John’s comment and call it good while leaving the community in a state of bliss (until the next internal change).

How is this not exploiting? Are we not exploiting a reward by doing it over and over again to amass it? How is this any different from doing something previously considered exploitative by doing it “over and over again” to gain something at a rate that isn’t normal? What is A-net’s term of exploit if not the normal usage of it?