Guild Wars 2

Tanetris from Reddit

I recently picked up a set of Molten tools from the gemstore when they were half off the other month. I’ve been enjoying the lack of running to a merch, and though I do still have a fair pile of Frostbitten Toolboxes, I’m not really worried about the tiny snowflakes enough to care about keeping track of them. To be clear, this has nothing to do with tool-based gathering bonuses.

For those that aren’t aware, since about 2014, plain mining picks that you buy from the merch get an ‘extra swing’ with each interact. When you hit F to interact, the third animated swing is actually two-in-one. For regular 3-swing nodes this is often irrelevant (unless you get an extra gather use from e.g. Power of the Mists), but when it comes to rich nodes (10-swings) it means you only require 3 interacts (4 swings from the first interact, 4 swings from the second, and you finish on the second swing of the third interact) instead of 4 interacts (3 swings, 3 swings, 3 swings, finish on the first swing of the fourth interact).

Apparently molten picks (and I’m guessing likely other gemstore infinite tools) never got this update. Meaning merch tools are objectively better on rich nodes. This seems super-silly particularly considering at this point you’d need hundreds of thousands of uses to break even on cost at these days’ gold-to-gem rates, even when you factor in the convenience (not having to visit merches) and cool (unique animation).

Seems like a bug?