Guild Wars 2

So what’s the harm? Stuff doesn’t sell? Because my stuff sells almost always and in a reasonable period of time.

Buy orders on crafted goods get filled all the time. Why raise the bid?

skotie.2614:

You guys might want to cut this out you’ve found a way to earn gold and that might just be an exploit in action people, can we get a word on weather this is an exploit from a mod here?

It’s not a bug. It’s a feature!

Logun.5360:

Whatever happened to citing sources? This was posted over 3 days ago in the silver doubloon thread in an attempt to help talk the OP off a ledge.

OP in this thread is the same OP you talked off the ledge in the other thread… he was QQing about how hard silver doubloons were to get, and then you told him how to get them, and now he posts this thread like he’s some super genius who thought of it.

You know, “fake” orders get really filled, and if you try to drive the price of something up too far beyond equilibrium your fake orders will begin to get filled very quickly. It’s playing with fire.

IMO all you guys who want to “fix” market “manipulation” in this game are tilting at windmills. Placing lots of buy orders on commodity goods lasts only as long as the placer of such orders is willing to fade the pain of having them filled faster than he can sell at the higher price.

Adenos.3018:

majorkong.9073:

Tyr.2489:

Wow just another reason to stay away from the MF unless you are crafting a guaranteed recipe.

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Again I’ve done I don’t know how many tens of thousands of combines and this has never once happened to me.

It’s one bugged recipe. Just don’t put green swords in it and you’ll be fine.

The items that you are mystic forging might be fine, but it’s not just one bugged recipe. Having done hundreds of rare combines under level 70, have resulted in numerous drops in rarity down to greens and blues for me. I still make a profit over the combines, but the drops in rarity with those items is something that I have to take into account.

Huh. I’m surprised I’ve never run into this then, since I’ve done my share of this type of combine also.

Sorrow.7452:

I just forged 252 pebbles, and 252 nuggets. In the end each forged 2 silver doubloon.

RNG, is RNG…my sample size is too small to make any real judgement, but this yield wasn’t very cost effective, it turns out to be roughly 37s for the doubloons gotten from the pebbles, and 65s for the doubloons from the nuggets.

I did get a lot of marks and talisman of mending and stout, so maybe odds are not equal across the tier.

Again with not “cost effective”. What do you guys mean when you say this isn’t “cost effective”?

The ROI from pebbles is well over 100%. I can’t get spidy to load right now, but I’m guessing pebble prices went up a little bit since we started posting about this, so maybe it’s down to just 100% ROI right now. Also pebbles are ridiculously liquid and most people could turn all of their available cash into pebbles overnight if they wanted to.

I said earlier in the thread that pebbles were better ROI than nuggets.

If you forge pebbles only you get 80% T1 back and 20% T2. If you mix tiers or use only T2, the loot table stops obeying the 80/20 rule and you get more like 50/50 with higher tiers. Since you want a T2 item, this is a bad thing and makes using T2+ materials a poorer choice since they are much costlier.

If you want to do this efficiently in an attempt to achieve the highest ROI, you buy a ton of the cheapest pebbles on the market, you combine all the pebbles you bought (and only those you bought). You TP all the T2 gems, the copper doubloons, and the pearls. You TP or vendor all the marks (it was vendor when I did it, but with this thread people might be buying marks off the TP so you might be able to TP them now). The only ones you recombine are T1 gems that cost roughly the same as the variety you bought.

You’re just burning up your ROI if you recombine the pearls and the T2 items like carnelian nuggets.

I’m pretty sure the chance to get a silver doubloon from combining four T1 gems is 1 out of 65. I think, though I’m less certain, that if you combine four T2 gems you will get a silver doubloon 1 out of 26. But the attempts are much more expensive in T2, and the failures are mostly “junk”, whereas many of the failures with pebbles actually produce something worth much more than a pebble (e.g., pearls, copper doubloons, T2 gems, marks, etc.)

Bottom line. Is this fun? Probably not for most people. Is this the most efficient way to make money in game if you already have 20g+ and a level 80 character? No.

But someone with a level 10 character and 20s could turn that 20s into 6g in a day using this method, and as such it may well be the most efficient way for THAT person to make money.

T1 gems are called pebbles. Four of em, any four (same or different) in the forge will yield a T1 or T2 gem, mark, or doubloon.

Flipping doesn’t drive up prices. Logun doesn’t even drive up prices. Rare items are rare (and expensive) in this game due to low drop rates and high demand. Period.

TP Players.. of all different styles.. make money because people habitually offer their dropped items for sale for less than the equilibrium price. That’s all I do to make money-buy items selling for less than they are worth and reselling at value (often after mystic forging it).

They only thing that drives up prices is an increase in the gold supply. TP players reduce the gold supply, not increase it.

Point is, silver doubloons are a pain to get, but not impossibly so, and they are infinitely “farmable” at the mystic forge. Their price is tied to the price of pebbles, and therefore they will not settle in at a price north of, 1000 pebbles, which is what people seem to be afraid of. They should never cost too much more than about 200 pebbles because you can turn 200 pebbles into one doubloon in the MF.

Also, good luck to anyone trying to corner the market on all T1 and T2 gemstones.

Tyr.2489:

Wow just another reason to stay away from the MF unless you are crafting a guaranteed recipe.

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Again I’ve done I don’t know how many tens of thousands of combines and this has never once happened to me.

It’s one bugged recipe. Just don’t put green swords in it and you’ll be fine.

Dreamslayer.7659:

I tried forging pebbles to get Silver Doubloons.

It’s not very efficient (my finger hurts from double clicking) and it’s not really cost effective.

2000 pebbles forged
all products forged except doubloons

12 Silver Doubloons
31 Copper Doubloons

It’s probably a good hedge against extreme price manipulation, but it’s not a easy road at all.

This took me well over 2 hours that I would have been doing fractals or CoF so when you add in the time, it’s really a bad deal.

Define “cost effective”. If you paid 11c per pebble which is what I was paying when I posted, you paid 2.2g for your 2k pebbles.

This turned into

12 silver doubloons
31 copper doubloons

Current sales price for silver is 40s99c. Current copper price is 99c. Therefore, your total sales will be:

[12*(4099) + 31*(99)]*0.85 = 4.4g

In other words, you exactly doubled your money. It’s nearly a 100% ROI with almost no risk.

Also it looks like my 1/65 guess is pretty on target. If you got maybe 8 in the first 500 pebble combines, and then 4 more when combining the products, that’s right around 1/65.

Finally, you can remap double-click to fix the problem of your hands hurting and to speed things up tremendously. For example, it would have taken me half an hour to run through these, not two hours.

BOTTOM LINE: I agree. If you want to run fractals, do that instead. If you are already good at making money off the TP, this is probably not as profitable as whatever you are already doing. (I.e., Each pebble combine in the MF is worth about 45c. The combines I do are worth anywhere from 6s to 80s each, so I make a whole lot more per click than I would clicking pebbles.)

However, this is a virtually risk-free option to make money for someone just starting out with the TP/MF, and if you get good at it (efficient clicking), it’s equivalent to the money you can get farming at level 80.

I completed it but I also got DCed twice. First time was talking to watch captain before trebuchet part and second time was in the beginning where you first warn Mira.

Just soloed it with a 50 warrior. Had no problems. You just run past the mobs. The clue that you’re supposed to do that is you don’t get credit for any kills.

My guess is it’s 1/26 for nuggets and 1/65 for pebbles. But the ROI on pebbles is better.

If you can’t figure out how to make money in this game, it’s a no-brainer. Place a buy order for a zillion pebbles and then click them all away and TP/vendor the products.

But yeah, not worth the time if you are already making good money.

Xamon.5783:

How often do you get doubloon from pebbles/nuggets?

Often enough.

Logun.5360:

That and there’s a chance to mystic forge nuggets into one

Pebbles are more cost effective I believe, though it will take you more combines to get the same number of doubloons.

I have never put specifically level 75+ green swords in the forge. My guess is you found a bug in the loot table for the MF. I would stop trying that combine if I were you. It doesn’t seem to work.

(And honestly, if your purpose is to make money with the MF, you were barking up the wrong tree anyway with those 75+ green swords.)

Palinois.1064:

majorkong.9073:

People trust their memories over nearly everything else. Human memory, however, is so fallible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mpITsNL5xjw is what I followed before they changed cooking, look how much xp he gets per cooking level x.x

That’s what you get today also when you are going from 300 to 400. You get much less for the first 200 points.

Cruzyo.7304:

majorkong.9073:

Cruzyo.7304:

making 50g a day aint possible when you dont have at least 10x the amount of that to speculate with.

Definitely not true. The stuff I do has ROI in the 25-200% range. If you sat there nursing buy orders for 4-6 hours you could make 50g profit starting the day off with maybe 50g. 200g is overkill. 500g is WAY overkill.

What 500g allows you to do is place a zillion buy orders, go to bed, wake up and make 50g. Maybe that’s what you meant.

I was only talking about pure gold investments, if you put in Karma and SP aswell, its surely alot easier, but making 50g a day just with buy low and sell high, you need some cash :P

Yeah, no karma or skill points. Right now I have buy orders down for 25% and 30% ROI stuff, and there’s a 100% ROI thing I do everyday just buying stuff straight off the TP sell orders. Pretty sure I’m the only one doing it because besides me the demand for the item is almost nil.

Pretty sure it’s a bug. In zillions of combines, I have literally never dropped down in rarity, and I only had it eat my items and give me nothing back once.

I highly doubt a drop in rarity is working as intended.

Cruzyo.7304:

making 50g a day aint possible when you dont have at least 10x the amount of that to speculate with.

Definitely not true. The stuff I do has ROI in the 25-200% range. If you sat there nursing buy orders for 4-6 hours you could make 50g profit starting the day off with maybe 50g. 200g is overkill. 500g is WAY overkill.

What 500g allows you to do is place a zillion buy orders, go to bed, wake up and make 50g. Maybe that’s what you meant.

samwzz.8946:

I just want to comment that I believe it did change recently. I don’t know about 20 levels but it was definitely possible to get ~15 with crafting booster and wvw bonus. However, yesterday I got to 400 crafting 3 times on my alts and all three times I got 10 levels, and exactly 10 levels, no more no less. I used a crafting booster + 18% wvw the first time, but only got 10 levels. Disappointed, I did not use a booster on another alt, and I still got 10 levels. Granted, I leveled only cooking/artificer, so maybe those crafts are different from the others?(doubt it).

How recent is recently?

Orikx.9671:

Palinois.1064:

Berengar.6951:

It’s been like that since launch

No it hasn’t, I got 20 levels(60-80) before they changed cooking a while back. Meh, doesnt really matter when they changed it, still sad. Less reasons to craft now too v_v

No you didn’t.

People trust their memories over nearly everything else. Human memory, however, is so fallible.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

If I’m not mistaken, every Legendary has a Superior Sigil in their recipe. That’s why some show up in the Mystic Forge panel.

And there you have it. My knowledge of all things legendary is poor.

Ryuujin.8236:

Cornering the market and jacking the price sky high is one thing; getting people to pay that price is another.

Big calculated risk that the price the players start buying again will be a price that exceeds taxes, especially since abyss was already like 7-9 gold

I was selling them for 17-18g. I’m astonished they were selling so quickly at that price, but I do have to wonder how much higher it could go as the number of players who even have much more money than that dwindles significantly. Also, as opposed to a precursor, you can craft the things economically.

Some exotic sigils seem to be forgable, however, since they appear in the left-hand list of items. But they aren’t forgable with each other, they must have some other recipe. And it’s only some sigils, not all of them.

Increasing the limit on stacks from 250 to some larger number goes a long way.

IMO either put a hard limit on how much you can trade on the TP or, if there is no hard limit, remove the “soft” barriers like having to click a million times or having to wait for TP cooldowns and let people just trade in the tens of thousands with one order.

You get 10 levels maxing a craft. Crit rate doesn’t matter. If you remember something different on your toon.. Well there’s the reason eyewitness testimony is considered unreliable.

Vol.5241:

It’s only 15 seconds, not long enough to make you impatient

Makes me impatient, that’s for sure.

When you have a bunch of things to sell, it can take 10 minutes or more to wait for the cooldowns. I’ve been trying to think of ways to fill the time productively, but if you just sit there and wait it sucks.

Duplicated.4715:

I really hate to bring this up again, but you can actually make money off of just playing the TP. Things required are some capital (more = better ROI) and DIY research on various “markets” aka the item being sold on the TP itself.

A nit pick because I’m in a nit picking mood. The more capital you have, the WORSE your ROI is on the TP. When you have 1g it’s a LOT easier and faster to double your money than if you have 100g. Of course, you’ll make more gold per day with 100g than with 1g.

@TabMorte

Great post. #5 was new to me! Great idea.. free port to WvW, free port back to city.

Clarification RE salvage kits: use Master over BL unless the upgrade you’re trying to get is worth more than 5x a salvage.

E.g., Right now a BL kit goes for about 5g20s, so it’s 21s per salvage. Therefore I use master on any upgrade worth less than 1g and BL on any upgrade worth more. If it’s close, though, and you’re short on money, the BL is “safer” even if it costs a bit more.

tropenfrucht.8963:

As Exotics are lvl 60 – 80 and rares are lvl 30 – 80 can I get an exotc from throwing 4 lvl 30 rares into the mystic forge or is it only possible from lvl 60 – 80 rares?

I’ve done lots of experimenting and I know how to get any desired level of exotic.

You should experiment also.

I’m not sure what happens if you put level 30 rares in. My assumption is you never get an exotic back, but you can’t know if you don’t try. Very few people are doing this, so I doubt you’ll get a better answer.

Karka chest didn’t add gold to the game. It added items, and you can’t trade items for gems. The only way to turn items into gold into gems is to vendor them.

Also, I’m pretty sure the point of gems is that casual players are intended to buy them with cash, not in-game gold.

Flyfunner.2093:

But the tp is such a bad ui, everytime you check your sell orders, you have to go back to the transaction tab from the item

One of the barriers.

I’d be surprised if anyone could make even 1g (let alone 8.5g) in 30 minutes starting from 25g flipping 68+ rares.

Having said that, it’s profitable no doubt.

Flyfunner.2093:

Ryuujin.8236:

Jiro.6589:

oops you are right

I expect this is the single biggest problem with the TP. When you have a million people all competing to be l33t trad0r d00dz, there’s a high probability a few of them will “oops” and then you end up with items being listed below crafting cost; and you just can’t compete with that :p

You especially can’t compete with the many people who have around 500g and up too, they can and probably do flip exotics and legendaries

It’s a lot easier to make a high ROI on your bankroll with a small amount of gold than with a large amount. When you have a lot of gold you start running into various barriers.

@Jiro

It’s 35 × 0.85 – 25 = 4.75s per sale, not 8.5s per sale.

Looks like a gift to the GW2 community.

Ryuujin.8236:

Flipping BTW is a colloquial term that seems to have arisen in GW2 hence you wouldn’t have heard of it. The technical name is arbitrage

And it doesn’t cause inflation.

95% sure the email address was a self-deprecating joke and not his actual email address.

Kirrund.2654:

The Mystic Forge Conduit is an awesome item. Anyone who is telling you otherwise doesn’t have one, or doesn’t understand what’s so great about it.

I use mine constantly. I have 80 inventory slots, and often times in WvW or in a dungeon or when farming I will fill up but be able to leave, and I can take the greens and transmute them into rares while out on the field, thus saving tons of space (and items I othewise wouldn’t have been able to carry)

I will probably never sell it, I use it that much.

You sold me. I just bought one. I like.

Also, this market is so laughably inefficient. I mean, you can just make a significant profit placing buy orders and reselling on many, many items. That’s the ultimate in inefficiency.

I trip over arbitrage opportunities. Every five minutes I find a brand-spanking new one that I’ve never used before.

Here’s a freebie that I found two minutes ago and I’m too tired tonight to exploit. On the trading post, filter for green items and search for “Bloodlust”. You’ll find items, some selling for less than half of their value. You have to figure out how to unlock the value.

BUTTERBLUME.3217:

You do realize that these people were/are willing to give away alot of information just for the sake of sharing?

I like to share about the Mystic Forge because I think the same thought process used to make money using the MF is a thought process that can be used all the time in everyday life to make better decisions for yourself and your family. I’ve supported my family for the past decade using little more than the logic contained in my first MF post to make real money.

It’s more than that, though. It bothers me to see people get so frustrated about the Mystic Forge mechanic. “It’s all luck, it’s all random. One person could get it in two tries and another in 1,000. It’s unfair.” These ways of looking at randomness are extremely unproductive and spill over into real life frustration as so much of our daily lives are ultimately affected by chance. I believe that if you understand probability well enough to learn how to bend the Trading Post and Mystic Forge to your will, that knowledge will actually make your real life concretely better.

There already is a MF recipe that yields ectos from mats you get by the truckload.

The gold is probably sitting on the last page of the pickup tab. You may have to clear out your inventory enough to clear every item off the pickup. If it’s a pain on one character, use a different character. If you haven’t cleared out your pickup tab yet, 99% I’d bet your gold is sitting there at the end of it all.

Zaxares.5419:

250 Unidentified Dyes are needed for the Gift of Colour, which is necessary for crafting the Legendary Bifrost. That’s why people are buying them.

I guess that makes some sense, though I’m a little surprised the demand is as high as it seems to be if that’s the driver.

Anthile.8493:

Yesterday I noticed that unidentified dyes were approaching the 10s mark, today I sold some for 12s gross.
If you look on the TP then you will see that only very few dyes are actually worth more than that, mostly black, white, red and blue in their rare variants.
I’m honestly wondering just who buys the unidentified dyes at these prices.
I kinda miss opening them myself, though. There’s always that excitement of unwrapping a present but right now it’s just uneconomical. After all, if you can’t run the lottery the second best thing is to supply it.

Yup, makes no sense to buy unidentified dye for 12s when you can buy a trash yellow dye for same price. Never opened an unidentified dye myself… too much chance it turns into a worthless blue.

LFk.1408:

At one point in time, Ancient Bones could be bought for 14c. So I bought 10,000 of them. Why? Randomly? Tossed a dart? Take a look at risk vs. reward. The vendor cost of Ancient bones was 13c.

Good call on this one. There’s lots of stuff like this. I’ll probably start doing some buy and hold because you made this point.

I remember Minor Sigils of Bloodlust were at one point going for basically vendor value. I know the demand is there because it was one of the first items I flipped to start making money and it’s basically the best thing you can put on a weapon below level 40. I couldn’t figure out why they were selling for vendor value, and now they are like 3s+ each.

@ImagoX

I’m a professional gambler, so my brain is trained to find this kind of thing.

The Mystic Forge is actually 100% unmysterious once you figure out the rules. For any four inputs, I can basically tell you all of the items you could possibly get back and the probability of each one (with the exception of precursors since it seems possible they “broke” the rules just for that particular item type and hand-tuned the probability). From there, it’s arithmetic to calculate expected profits and returns on investment.

Varonth.5830:

Actually there are ways to implement real random numbers in a computer system. They require a special piece of hardware though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_generator

The hardware now ships with every current generation Intel processor. It uses thermal noise to generate random bits. There’s a RDRAND instruction now in the Intel instruction set that pulls random bits.