Guild Wars 2

I might be the only one, but I found ESO to be well worth the 30 dollars I paid for it on PC. It plays more like a single player than a MMO, and the quests are pretty decent. It’s F2P now (aside from the base game), which makes it so much better

200+ from the forge, 0 from drops/chests, 7000AP

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/32uj3o/data_200_precursors_for_science/

I forged over 200+, here’s my data with pictures:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/32uj3o/data_200_precursors_for_science/

When you press “F”, it worked when you were near the actual mystic forge because “F” activated the mystic forge option, which closes and reopens your window. When you use the conduit in your inventory, there is no “F” option. So the only way to speed up the animation is to click on the conduit while the combining is occurring, which would be rather redundant and tedious

It’s money “spent”, as in I had to sell the precursors I made and buy more items with it. So it’s not as impressive as it sounds, since it’s only looking at the “expense”

When you put 4 exotic/rare items into the forge, the average level of the four items has to be at least 75 (not 74.9, doesn’t round up), for a chance of a precursor. When you said level 68-80, the average may have not been high enough to register for a chance at a precursor. I’ve forged over 200 precursors myself, and the tries per precursor stat averages out once you’ve put in a sufficient sample size. That being said, you are working with too small of a sample size (but I would not advise gambling any more than you’ve actually have, should just buy it with gold next time or wait for HoT)

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/32uj3o/data_200_precursors_for_science/

I made a reddit post about it a while ago, posting it now to GW2 forums because I forgot forums existed. I’ll try my best to answer any questions below. Enjoy!

…..and Mini Kasmeer meades just jumped to 2.5G. GG

It was nerfed, so now it is about 20-30% of what it used to be (Source: Reddit post about 4000 gifts opened pre-post patch comparison)

Honestly this thread isn’t constructive at all. No logical counterarguments are being made, and every argument just ends with OP making yet another logical fallacy. OP is obviously just trolling at this point. Why hasn’t the Mods locked this thread yet?

The “price” is artificial, not set, the “price” is only what the buyers WANT to pay for it. Just because you don’t want to buy something at 2g doesn’t mean someone else (with more funds) doesn’t. This whole thread reeks of single-mindedness and ignorance.

First of all, I hope you’re not confusing flipping with speculation. Speculation is another can of worms you don’t want to open, because it will always be there as long as there is any form of free trade going around. Second of all, why are the players making so much of flipping to begin with? The profit margins are based on their current wealth/amount of money they are willing to deticate to flipping. A person who only has 10G would not make as much money as a person with 1000G flipping, even if they are both making, let’s say 5% a day. Farming events, materials, dungeons are not associated with current wealth, and a person with 5G will still make 3G+some off an Arah path as opposed to a person with 1000G. You simply cannot compare the two methods of making money, because each has different factors when considering how money is made

Most of my tests were done with exotics. I mixed generic and unique types, depending on which was the lowest cost. Type of weapon does matter, all 4 items used have to be same type (ie greatswords) in order to recieve an item at the same type (ie greatswords). IF one of those items were, say a scepter, the item that you would recieve would be completely random, say a focus. As of now, most rares are too expensive to experiment with, since the price of rares (you usually craft the rares from t5 mats) are driven by the costs of the higher priced precorsors (staff, GS, dagger etc.), so it’s very uneconomical to use rares for lower end precorsors (shortbows, longbows, axe etc) Add me in game if you want some tips or advice

Regarding OP’s ignorance;

People often disregard the other IMPORTANT elements concerning each transaction on the TP, which are time, information, and risk. Each of these three elements are considered when doing every TP transaction. The difference between a “Buy Now” transaction and “List your own price” is time. TP traders make most of their money off of impatient people, people who have limited time, but are willing to spend gold to make up the difference. An example of this would be, say you needed 50 ectoplasms for a recipe and you needed it now. You are trading the extra 1 gold you spend with the “Buy Now” option (lowest sell offer) over the 10-20 minutes you would have spent waiting for that offer to complete on the highest buy offer. On the other end of the spectrum, there are impatient people who sell their ectoplasms immedietly after acquiring them from a salvage, and even though they can make an extra 2s per ectoplasm by waiting the 10-20 minutes for it to sell, they would rather have that gold now. You cannot just disregard time as a resource/item of transaction, because of such things as opportunity costs.

The other important element is information. In the real world, not everyone has equal access to information. Things like patch notes and experience (on items that are good to flip) are valuable weapons in every trader’s kitten nal. Some people might be playing when patch notes come out, and are the first ones to log in. Those people have the advantage, and information power over others who were too late to the punch. The most recent example is the Bazaar rewards (wind catchers, rucksacks etc.). People who were first to log in realized that the gauntlet rewards now had a random chance at giving previous bazaar rewards, and this allowed those who had those items to sell quickly and minimize losses before the item could crash from speculation. Those who were too late, lost out on that opportunity and the potential gold. Next up is experience, just like how an experienced dungeon runner would naturally make more gold p/h on average than an inexperienced one, the same runs for traders. Naturally, this is not free, and this also comes with time. For example, you may know from countless trial and error that a particular item gives great reward and turnover rates (how often it’s sold/bought), and this is an advantage you hold over other players.

Finally, the concept of risk. It seems a lot of you fail to acknowledge the amounts of risks associated with trading. Consider my previous example of Bazaar rewards. There were people who took the risk of investing in wind catchers or rucksacks, but were punished heavily once the patch notes came out. Other people took the risks of buying them up again during the event while they were low, and were rewarded with the rewards returning to their previous values, but the more greedy ones were punished later on as they crashed heavily (down 80%, they held on to them for too long!). With every transaction, is a risk. You can easily lose your bank overnight from bad investments with how the market moves, but you could easily make all that back in another lucky investment. There are very few people who are willing to take risks, and in doing so they are rewarded with the chance to make it big.

Trading and the TP is not a simple matter of gold for item transactions, you also must consider other factors as well, espicially time. Why do people spend real money on gold/gems? Because these people have abundant funds, but limited time. Same with every transaction on the TP. Why do people buy an item on lowest sell offer instead of waiting it out with the highest buy offer? Because these people have abundant funds, but limited time. In all these situations, it is because they are WILLING to do so. So, if your selfish request were to go through, you are taking away these people’s way to play, people who are willing to spend more gold to spend less time. Not everyone has time to play GW2 all day. Some people want their items NOW, and these people are how most traders make their money from. Also, TP flipping is not where most people make their 1000’s of gold from, or cause many of the highly valued items to be inaccessable to the majority (such as precorsurs). It is speculation. And speculation will always exist even with trade restrictions, since it’s driven by demand. TP flipping is for STEADY incomes, speculation is for HUGE wins/losses. And with both methods, they always include the risk factor. For every success story you hear about someone making thousands off of “predicting” an item that skyrocketed, there are 10 other poor chumps who lost everything they had investing in quartz crystals. Those people just aren’t vocal about it. It seems like this whole thread is just full of jealous, single minded, VERY VOCAL individuals who just can’t seem to grasp the idea that not everyone has to play the same way as they do.

5 more added! I know I’m past 30 crafted now, but I don’t have access to google docs so I can’t recall XD

Well 6 months ago I made my first legendary, the Bifrost. Before then, I was a poor noob, but once I had the taste of wealth I wanted more… Learned to flip and speculate, next legendary, Incinerator was made in a month. After that, Frostfang in another month (had to get more gifts). After that, I was back to 0, but I made money from dungeons and put all of that back into flipping. I am now sitting at around 12k-15k G(not including the legendaries). 1700 hours played. I guess my advice is, if you want money/rich, don’t sit around and complain about your lack of money, instead go out and actually make money, whether it be dungeons/boss/train/TP.
You get about 20g/day doing AC1-3, SE1,3, COF1,2, HOW1, salvage all the level 68+ armor you buy with tokens for ectos. Once you do that, use the 20g’s to put into investments/TP. Any money sitting in your wallet is wasted because it’s not growing. 600g-800g of money for a precursor is easily made in a month, if you are willing to put the hours and work into it. And if you feel like you can’t put in the work, then don’t go for a precursor. Nothing is free in this game except for INFORMATION (patch speculation, methods of making money), but INFORMATION is worth millions so you just have to put in the work.

Make Sunrise, Sell Sunrise, Sell Dusk, Buy Eternity. You will save about 1600G compared to making them both then crafting it.

Yea if you’re just going to recycle your products, just go with 4 exotics or one rare. But I usually sell my exotics after, since if I’m doing rares it’s usually because at that given moment using rares is more economical. Either formula works fine :P

Honestly I don’t think they’ll ever take it down. If they are planning on it, they will probably make an annoucement. At that point, if you STILL havn’t made the money for it, add me in game and I’ll loan you the difference you need

The formula used for comparing is, assuming that you have a 20% chance of getting an exotic from 4 rares is:
RARES: 5*3*(cost of one rare) – 1*(cost of one exotic).85 (Assuming you sell the exotic)
EXOTICS: 3(cost of one exotic)

Whichever is cheaper using this equation is your best bet. For the Rare equation, if you plan of recycling your exotics gained from rares, don’t multiply by .85.

For all equations, it’s 3*x, since you always get an item back, so it’s never 4*x.

At the end of the day, it’ll cost about the same. When one method, rare or exotic becomes cheaper than the other, the prices adjust to reflect that. Personally, you can save more from exotics, if you are willing to wait, since buy orders are more flexible than rares (which cost is only reflective off of T5 mats, which don’t have much difference between sell-buy price)

It seems like the gambit bags don’t drop much compared to the hefty price of one ticket… do you guys think it’s worth using gambits?

What’s the cheapest commodity to trade in for zephyrite boxes, according to lowest buy order? So far I’ve found for 100 boxes it costs between 8G-8.5G range

Almost all my precursors were received by mixing. And No, I dont think so, all <80 exotics are some form of “Stat type” “Weapon type” of “sigil type”

though I might add that if the exotic is not named, your buy orders will fill out VERY slowly, and that’s why named exotics are usually used since they are more common, and people wrongly believe that only level 80 exotics will net you a precursor.

Ok here’s a secret I’m willing to let go, so hear it well:

THERE IS NOT DIFFERENCE! I honestly don’t see how <80 exotics are so cheap compared to level 80’s. I use a mix of exotics everytime, from lvl 70 – 80 (to save lots of money), and as long as the average of the 4 items pans out to be level 75, you’re good to go. Now if the average is 74.9 I don’t know, but you can try it out once and see for yourself. If the item output is lvl 75 or above, you’re good to go since precursor rates are the same for every forge.

Well, gold ore about doubled, but I think once I get back from the lab I’m going to spend most of it trying to get festival tokens so I can get all the rewards I missed out on!

Well I’m sitting on 1k gold worth of gold ingots and ore… Ore has risen 40c since I bought it so technically I’ve already made about 800G in a few days, but we shall see the outcome post patch

Been experimenting with rares now since price of exotics have been quite expensive recently. Doing most of my forges on my second account now so I can enjoy the luxury of not having to worry about inventory space. Anyways, about 200 forges in, got Spark. Updated pictures

Currently, the only thing I’m still worried about that I’m sitting on is my Molten Jetpack, but I HIGHLY doubt they’ll rerelease that, since it was from a boss. My 5 Chain greatsaws should be safe, since they were from Halloween, and the rest of my investments sit on Black lion weapon skins and a couple of precursors. I should probably sell my precursors since they earn nothing in the short term, but I do need extra cash for when the Bazaar madness begins. While everyone panics, just quietly buy up everything else. Personally, I think the price of the catchers would stabilize at around 10-20g, but wind catchers will drop the most since they were the “rarest” post-patch, but now the numbers should catch up as more people trade scraps for them. Then again, there’s always a chance that the skins won’t be introduced at all. If that happens, the moment GW2 goes online and I confirm that, I’m going to buy up every sell order ;D

LOL someone just unloaded about 200 of them… I unloaded all of mine at 120g because I knew people were gonna panic

Sit back, relax, watch the wind/lightning/sun catchers crash! (May 20th update)

Ladies and Gentlemen, grab your popcorn, and watch the wind/sun/lightning catchers crash!

Bad news… Google docs is blocked in China haha XD

Well the problem is, we don’t know how many are actually dropped on a daily basis, since a precursor can be dropped from random mobs, boss chests, JP chests, etc. But it can be concluded that there exists precursors that are part of the supply that weren’t forged. But those chances are REALLY slim, so my guess is that the majority of precursors on the market since the beginning of the game was in fact from the mystic forge. In this case, the crafters/forgers are actually the price setters for precursor prices, and if experienced enough, they are the ones that possess the most information (when to sell, market trends etc.). On the other hand, people who get one as a drop mostly likely would sell at the current market price, since they know less about the market. This is why I think the prices of precursor and prices of average amount of exotics to forge a precursor is relatively the same, BUT because of external factors like supply from people with lucky drops, the price of precursors is slightly lower than what it should be, so at the end of the day, you are better off just buying the precursor with cash.

Agreed, it’s hard to make money off crafting precursors. As for business science, if we assume the precursor market follows basic supply and demand, the prices for precursors right now should actually be HIGHER because of the extra supply from random precursor drops. Normally, the price of the precursor and the amount of forges it takes to get one should average out to be nearly the same, because people will tend to craft the precursors that are most cost efficient. But since there’s more supply from random drops, it actually makes crafting precursors worth less, therefore making it less efficient.

100 forges away from 2k forges! Running low on cash now, so I will begin experimenting with rares (swords, daggers, staff, greatswords), I put aside 400 gold for flipping, and by doing that I can self sustain forges for my rares each day! I’ll update the spreadsheet once I have about 1k forges with each type

Thanks lol, fixed

To the last poster, I stopped doing greatswords because the margins (4g per exotic, 50s for each rare crafted) were too low to be profitable.

To the poster who asked for the breakdown of my components, I’ll explain:

To have a chance at the precursor, you must put 4 exotic weapons (or rares), and their average level must equate to 75. Meaning if you add all the levels up, it should be 300. This means that any of the following combinations work: 3 level 80, one level 60… 4 level 75… 3 level 76 one level 72. I almost never use 4 level 80’s because it saves me an average of 1g per forge if I do 3 level 80’s and one level 60 instead (Level 60 exotics sell for 1g ea, while certain weapon type level 80’s go for 2g+.

As for the poster who commented that making precursors is very lucrative, it’s actually not. At my peak, I made 3.6k g, and in the next few weeks, on my longest cold streak, I went down to 1.6k. As you can see, cold streaks can cost you 2-3x the cost of actually buying a precursor. So unless you have a large amount of capital to begin with, if you try to make money of precursors you’.re going to have a bad time lol.

Honestly, if I invested all my money into speculation or flipping, I could have made ALOT more money during this time period compared to doing over 2k forges ( a lot of clicking and waiting on buy offers…) Pretty much that money is “stagnant” and is not making its full potential. On the other hand, if I were to be constantly flipping with that money, I could have made much more money than the mystic forge. So bottom note, it COULD be profitable to mystic forge precursors, but to be able to do so efficiently, you need to have a LOAD of money, and if you had a LOAD of money in the first place, you could have put that to better use rather than gamble it :P

20th Precursor! Also went on a 2k gold cold streak… Will continue until I go broke lol

It is a bug. I’ve done about 150 forges since patch, and it seems like I’m getting a >80 weapon 43% of the time. I cannot confirm if precursor rates have actually been affected, since I’ve gotten one precursor from forging since patch, but currently I’m on a 100+ cold streak. I’ll update once I get more, but if I manage to get 2-3 more precursors at the rate I found previously (1.1-1.3%) then I can be pretty confident that the rates did not change. Even though I’m not concerned about the costs, the bug still bugs me because if it truly lowers the number of lvl 80’s, then that means less forges I can do for science (I resell lvl 80’s that are worth more).

I know this have been mentioned before, but I would like to take this time to mention that right now, there is a huge bug where if you put in 4 lvl 80 exotic or rare weapons, about half the time it will come out to be a lvl 77-79 weapon, instead of the expected lvl 80. I have spent over 1k gold so far experimenting (to find precursor rates), I have the number pinned down at about 43% so far, after about 150 forges. Overall, I have done over 1.5k forges, and in the past this has NEVER happened. Is this intended?

(if you are interested in the other data about actual rates, I have a thread on the crafting forums about it)

I am just concerned, because the developers said they made changes to the Mystic forge, and they said that they were sure that “we would like it”. Sadly, getting stiffed with a lvl 75 exotic after putting in 4 lvl 80 exotics into the mystic toilet isn’t very likable.

Add me in game… I am willing to teach you how to make money so you can get it in a month or so

I’ve got many private messages about my data, thank you for your support! Some of the suggestions is that I record the number of forges in between each precourser, as a way to track hot streaks and cold streaks. I will start doing that now, I will update the spreadsheet when I get a few more precoursers, and I will try and make a website so it can have graphs and such etc. Stay tuned…

The instant bank access is a joke, one use is like 5g lol, and you would need 2 for what I’m trying to accomplish.

Banker golem only lasts 2 weeks, I want a sort of permanent solution lol…

With the new update introducing account bound ascended and Legendary items, I think the need for an account wide inventory slot is sorely needed. For example, it will be separate from the normal inventory slots, and any item you put inside it will be shared across all accounts (kind of like a bank slot, but accessible anywhere). Why do we need it? When I need to swap toons for fractals, I have to transfer my items, and the bank runs really wastes time. Valuable time that I can use to carry my team. Of course, this shouldn’t be free, but I think it should start out at 3 slots, and cost an additional 300 gems for each 3 slots. This way, bank expansions will still be worth more.

I’ve forged 19 precursors to date, my advice is:

If you have at least 3k gold, forging is worth the risk, because you can take the short-term losses (sometimes reaches negative 1k gold). Eventually, you will come out on top if you keep forging, but it means you have to be smart with what exotics you buy.

If you have less than 1k gold, DO NOT GAMBLE! Save your money, and buy it. Yes you can be lucky and get it after 10 tries, but that is very unlikely. What is more likely is that you waste almost all your gold before striking lucky, and usually, most players with 1k gold after losing all their cash will never try it again. Long term wise, you can make a small profit, but you must have a large reserve of funds to work with.

My Data:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/Precursor-Research-with-5k-gold-DATA/first#post3929636

That is correct, hence the oversupply of Eternities on the market right now

I have a factal capacitor, if I transmute that to look like some other backpiece, could I still use that capacitor to upgrade to the infused version when I have the funds to do so later?