Guild Wars 2

Short version: Transmuting gear sometimes — but not always — stamps the flavor text of the skin onto the resulting item. This stamping is not consistent even for the exact same skin being stamped onto multiple base items.

Long version: After getting a certain spoileriffic item and wanting to transmute its skin onto a base item that I’d actually use, I ended up falling down a rabbit hole of confusion and inconsistency regarding transmuting items and skins that have flavor text.

Regarding weapons, my tests have all ended the same way: the base/stat item retains its flavor text (if any) regardless of any transmutation done to it, and regardless of whether the skin being used had any flavor text or not. While personally I think gear should get the flavor text from the skin rather than the base item, I can’t argue that that’s a “bug,” although I hope it is.

Armor, on the other hand, seems to be a whole other can of maddened worms. I personally have done only limited testing — I have few armor skins with flavor text, and limited gold and transmutation charges — but even within my small sample, something is awry; and several people in mapchat claimed to have even odder results.

For example, I used the Hellfire Vambraces achievement skin, which displays the flavor text “Fear incarnate” in the wardrobe (but NOT on the skin you can withdraw from the hero panel,) on multiple pairs of gloves, none of which had flavor text originally. Some of the resulting gloves ended up including the “Fear incarnate” flavor text, others did not. I tried a few different rarities and level requirements, but couldn’t figure out a common thread; it should be noted that my testing was quite limited, however. I didn’t try using another copy of the same base item a second time to see if the results matched that item’s first result (I confess that I spend all my gold on dye and booze, leaving me little enough that I’d rather not spend it crafting duplicate exotics for bug testing purposes.)

Further, several players in mapchat reported that they got different, but repeatable, results if they pulled a skin from their hero panel and double clicked it vs applying the skin in the wardrobe without withdrawing it first; I was unable to replicate this observation, however.

The saga continues:

I just unlocked the Lightbringer’s Pack collection; intending to get an item with the flavor text I wanted (“When you stand with…”) and then transmute it to the appearance I wanted (Guild Backpack skin,) since that’s how transmutation has /usually/ worked in the past. Guess what? The item ITSELF is lacking the flavor text that’s present on the skin. Just for my own edification, I decided to try reskinning a different item (a random low-level back item) with the Lightbringer’s Pack skin – THAT item acquired the skin’s flavor text.

In desperation, I tried skinning my actual Lightbringer’s Pack into something else and then reskinning it BACK to the Lightbringer’s Pack skin to pick up the flavor text that it should have come with — this much worked — and then reskin it for a THIRD time to get the appropriate appearance overlaid onto the flavor text (since god knows I’ve tried to get that stupid “Crafted in the style of…” text off of my weapons before without any luck.) But of course, in this particular instance, changing the skin also removed the flavor text. Four transmutation charges down the drain… and I had created a completely generic back item.

I wouldn’t mind that the flavor text “stuck to” the skin (in fact, I’d prefer it, honestly) — IF that was always how it worked. However, in the opposite corner(s), we have the spoileriffic weapon Broken Caladbolg and the Sunless weapons. Spoiler Weapon itself is a rare that includes flavor text, and the skin also includes flavor text when you hover over it in the wardrobe. However, in Spoiler Weapons’s case, if you attempt to reskin a different sword, you do NOT get Spoiler Weapon’s flavor text on the resulting sword; you get whatever the base sword had, if any. Then there’s the Sunless weapons, which include flavor text on the item themselves, but NOT on their wardrobe skins. And of course, we have the skins I complained about above, which sometimes behave one way and sometimes behave another way.

Seriously, I don’t care (much) which way they make the system work at this point, but for the love of all that is decent, can it at least work CONSISTENTLY? I am frankly pretty kittened off at all the time and money and transmutation charges that I have wasted because the transmutation system keeps throwing back unexpected and inconsistent results.