Guild Wars 2

Zeivu.3615:

Enemies that drop bags containing them? Those bags are rather frequent. Made a killing farming dredge.

Cormac.3871:

It’s the consequence of having silver doubloons drop at a rate that is barely adequate to supply those who want a Juggernaut. There is no really good way to farm them and the zones where they drop aren’t played in that much. The price is that high because the market can bear it, but I doubt the devs foresaw the drop rate being so low.

I farmed 110 light miners bags to do drop rate research for the wiki and got one silver doubloon. I would be surprised if people could consistently farm at a rate greater than 2 an hour given that bags drop from about one dredge in four. Not many people would be prepared to put in the time farming required to make a serious dent in the number of doubloons needed for the Juggernaut.

But that was only half my point. The second tier zones are hardly ever played, partly because there aren’t any world bosses there. Even with Gendarran Fields being the new hub my world pretty consistently had the dredge stolen supplies quest unfinished. As a consequence silver doubloons aren’t being provided by random adventurers and the price for doubloons is being pushed up by people like me who would rather gain a doubloon by running a dungeon and buying it off the TP rather than killing 400 dredge.

It’s the consequence of having silver doubloons drop at a rate that is barely adequate to supply those who want a Juggernaut. There is no really good way to farm them and the zones where they drop aren’t played in that much. The price is that high because the market can bear it, but I doubt the devs foresaw the drop rate being so low.

For p3 boss you can clear out the first room and lure him in there. It makes finding a safe place to revive much easier. It takes a long time but it’s still quicker than wiping and trying again (unless you wipe really early).

Remember that DR kicks in with chests, so you’ll occasionally have to move around.

I have had success with Shaman’s Rookery and Troll’s end. Anything with a chest at the end will do.

Aberrant.6749:

But laurels->dyes you say! Srsly who uses their laurels for dyes… it’s a limited resource and most people would use it for an ascended upgrade on a character or T6 mats for their legendary gifts etc.

It depends on the price dyes hit. At the moment dyes are a poor use for laurels, but if dyes go up past 65 for “sell now”, it will start to become worthwhile converting laurels to dyes, selling those and buying the t6 mats you need off the TP.

What the OP is talking about is not undercutting by 1 copper, but putting a sell offer at 1 copper above the highest buy offer. Like having Dawn drop, seeing that there is a buy offer for 700 gold and putting a sell offer in at 700 gold and 1 copper.

To answer OP’s question, the only time I have seen sell offers at 1c above it has been for high volume items where people just haven’t bothered to look at what the buy offer is and have just gone with the lowest bid or else have enough of the item that getting an extra copper 100 times is worth it.

At the moment the best uses for laurels are t6 mats followed by dyes. Given that laurels are going to become the primary method for obtaining UnID’d dyes, the dye price will end up being linked to the average price of a t6 mat.

1 laurel = 2 dyes = 3 t6 mats

Therefore 1 dye is 1.5 t6 mats

That’s the middle, the question is whether it hits the floor or ceiling.

For dyes to hit the floor interest in them would have to drop right off. In this case a buyer would expect to be able to buy 3 t6 mats with her laurels, instantly sell them and then instantly buy dyes and pretty much break even. So the theoretical long term floor for quick buying UnID’d dyes is the average quick sale price of a t6 mat x 1.5 × .85 (TP tax). If I were to say quick sale t6 mats averaged 35s, that would mean a price of about kitten . It could go a little lower because the box with t6 mats in it are a bit of a gamble.

Assuming the demand for UnID’d dyes is very high, at the theoretical ceiling a player would expect to be able to get 2 dyes with his laurels, quick sell them and then quick buy 3 average priced t6 mats while breaking even. So the sell price of a dye would be the average t6 mat price x 1.5 × 1/0.85 (TP). At 37s for quick buying a t6 item this ends up roughly 65 silver.

All of this takes no account of long term prices of t6 mats of course and assumes that laurels currently being spent of t6 mats and dyes will be enough to meet the demand and that the glut of dyes at update will eventually be consumed.

TL;DR between 45 and 65 silver each after the price settles, though my money is on the low end of the scale.

Edit: I messed up the TP multiplier for the ceiling price. Originally I had 1.15 instead of 1/0.85 . Fixed now.

Exotic is fine for WvW, although supplementing with exotic trinkets is helpful. In fact there is no reason not to do a bit of WvW now, as you will be levelled up and not be at a huge disadvantage. Skill counts for more than gear, so start with getting experience as soon as you can. Also remember to laugh maniacally when you drop a meteor shower on opposing troops besieging your tower.

hendo.1940:

kyubi.3620:

if you wrote full zerker only or meta only dont expect a miracle at this level :/

Isn’t the whole point of a miracle that you don’t expect it?

I dunno, a whole bunch of people seem disappointed when they drop 16 rares in the mystic forge and don’t get a precursor out, so I guess they were expecting a miracle.

Somebody opened 500 and posted the results https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/50-Black-Lyon-Keys/

Think of them like scratch and win tickets, you know the odds aren’t in your favour but if you get a few might be lucky and end up ahead. If you don’t like scratchies, you probably won’t like keys.

I really like this, mainly because while it has a lot of parts it all fits together quite elegantly. I don’t think it will achieve its stated intention of encouraging build experimentation though as it is very much an endgame proposition.

I have to admit I would also be curious as to how much insignias of would trade for if they were not account bound.

Go to the events with flame legions with a couple of friends. That should help upscale the event and make the killing quicker. Supplementing with Twilight Arbor runs is also a good idea. You could even get 2 cabalist mantles per run from the dungeon vendor afterwards and salvage them.

If the torch has Magi stats (heal, precision, vitality) or soldier stats (power, toughness vitality) there is a chance of getting an inscription from it. The chances are about 1 in 3, but the inscription is worth 2.5 gold. I would use a Black Lion Salvage Kit if you have one spare. You can also get dark matter, which is account bound and only useful if you are doing crafting to 500, and ectoplasm.

If crystalline blade is not soul bound sell it, otherwise use a Black Lion Salvage Kit to get the Superior Sigil of Air, which is worth one gold.

Dalanor.5387:

ACp3.
Blue = guardian.
Red = me.

To be fair if you are going to bring a staff out as a guardian you are not bringing it out for the dps. That extra couple of percent damage on staff isn’t exactly going to add a lot to its dps, even with a decent build. That’s why I went the cleric equivalent for my staff, but then the only dungeon I bring it out in is TA, and even then I swap it out if at all possible. It’s great when two zergs meet in WvW though.

Just south of the Vigil HQ are tunnels full of dredge. Their bags give out lots of thin leather and 1% of the time a silver doubloon. Depending on your world heading down there to collect Black Lion Supply chests and clearing out the tunnels can be a good way to kill five minutes. Then of course you can head to the other side of Gendarran fields in the hopes that Nebo Terrace has fallen.

Wanze.8410:

Cormac.3871:

Personally I am surprised that the price has stayed so low given that crafting consumables with them is the only sustainable use for bloodstone dust.

But it uses spores/dust at a ration of 10/1000 i think.

10/100

Although, having looked at the prices for the toxic consumables the price probably won’t go up too much further. It gives a return of 15 copper per bloodstone dust.

Keep an eye on world boss timers at a site like gw2stuff.com . The events give a guaranteed rare. On my server there is a well organised World Boss Zerg that does the events one after the other at reset.

Events where lots of bags drop are useful given the current price of fabrics, particularly if you are good with aoe attacks.

Get your ele to do jumping puzzles or hunt for chests. While a character’s level is in the 20’s there is a chance of getting Silver Doubloons from chests. The chances of them dropping is only about 1 in 6 (from my experience), but at over one gold each you if you find jumping puzzles fun it might be worth the time.

Personally I am surprised that the price has stayed so low given that crafting consumables with them is the only sustainable use for bloodstone dust.

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

Bob F It.5701:

Let me clarify that, but saying it in a different order: past events that have occured to the character are to be future actions of the player. This ludology I’m talking about. This is one of the things that brings negative points to new players. Is LS going to spoil things like your mentor's sacrifice at Claw Island in taking its position of centre of attention of the player’s experience?

But that would be the flexibility of the system I proposed, if you don’t reach the pivotal turning point where your mentor dies, then it wouldn’t activate a flag in the dialogue. An example of this could be the death of Kasmeer, after which you have to pick an option to console Majory, such as, ‘you need to grow stronger, so that you never lose your loved ones again’(fierce), ’She’s at peace now, awaiting you in the mist’(majestic), or ’You’ve still got me’(romantic). But if you meet the conditions(picked an order and watched your mentor die), it would trigger and additional response that would carry the conversation, such as ‘I didn’t think I would ever stand back up after losing Forgal...’

The first thing I’d like to point out is that you can go down to Orr and see the pact no matter what point of the story you are in, so this is not a problem caused Living Story, but a problem that Living Story can at times highlight.

As for the example given, for the person who has not yet played that part of the personal story you have the option of foreshadowing. Something along the lines of “I lost someone I cared for greatly before…” etc. Words that might hit home when you get to that part of PS.

I had a weird series of pug runs last night, culminating in CM 3 where the Mesmer refused to equip feedback against Wallen. The reasoning was that it wouldn’t work because those red circles meant he was doing aoe attacks, not projectile attacks.

Looking at gw2spidy a huge amount of poultry was bought up around October last year, and another batch around the end of January. I am not sure why this happened (January might have been due to the latest tournament announcement) but the current price rise looks to be the end result of all the purchasing that happened earlier now that the poultry surplus has all been acquired.

I have had one precursor drop in 3,000 hours of gameplay, so obviously relying on drops is terrible because you know that when one finally does drop it’s going to be The Bard. As for the Mystic Forge, if you put in level 80 rares there is something like a 0.3% chance of getting a precursor out. So on average that is over 300 attempts per precursor. But it gets worse. You are only after one so you put yourself hugely at the mercy of the RNG. After 300 attempts the chances of you coming out with nothing are about 1 in 3.

If you want a guarantee go via the trading post.

Also, ouch if you have already made your Gift of Color.

Paths 1 and 3 of Caudecus Manor shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes each unless somebody is having real trouble making the runs. You should also be getting 60+ tokens unless you miss clicking on something at the end. If you do two runs a night it will take about 12 nights to get your full set of armour. If you add the trickier path 2 it will take 8 nights.

Crafting used to be a good option but a jump in the cost of lower tier mats means that even if you collect enough materials yourself you are probably better off short term selling those mats and buying the gear. Long term you can probably make money off crafting, but it requires a little research.

Wanze.8410:

I once sold bags of rice on a tiny atoll called Puka Puka, whose inhabitants were out of rice at that time. True story but also totally unrelated.

You should have given it to them just for the karma.

For the long term price of Unidentified Dyes I am going to say about 50% more than the price of the average t6 fine crafting material, which at the moment would make it about 60 silver. I don’t like to spend my laurels, but given the choice between spending 60 gold spending 50 laurels for dyes I will go the laurel option. It has the added advantage of having a guaranteed return as opposed to the crafting boxes. For someone crafting a legendary 50 laurels should be quite doable.

All this will have a small inflationary effect on t6 mats, but I doubt it will be detectable given current inflation there.

How confident am I with this prediction? Well, I had about 130 Unidentified Dyes in stock just in case I wanted to craft Bifrost one day and I sold my 30 surplus at about 50 silver, so not super confident, but I’m also reasonably sure that the price will drop below 40 in the first week after the patch, so selling at 50 seems prudent.

I think that if you combine sunrise and twilight you will end up with the skin for all three, but only have one legendary weapon. To make up for that you’ll have have to make an ascended greatsword, pay the transmutation cost and accept that you can’t change the stats on your second greatsword.

I can’t see UnID’d dyes getting past 80 copper barring high inflation from t6 mats (which have admittedly been going up). At 50 copper the psychological factor of spend 5 laurels, get 5 gold guaranteed hits (yeah I know, 4.25 after tax), at around 60 copper it become the best laurel to gold converter and at 70 it becomes cheaper for people who want their gift of fortunes to buy dyes, sell them and just get whatever t6 mats they are after.

I know laurels are time gated, but without specifically farming I usually get less t6 mats or UnID’d dyes than I can buy from my laurel, so I feel that laurels have the potential to fill in most of the gap left by regular drops, besides which their demand is going to drop off long term.

Thobek.1730:

Cormac.3871:

You guys do know that Lord of the Rings broke a lot of these rules. Just setting forth a set of things that you think make for interesting story telling doesn’t necessarily mean that anything that doesn’t adhere to them will be bad.

Really? what rules did it break?

Not having an enemy whose power level is over 9000. Knowing very few of the enemies henchmen. Not seeing any character development of the enemy.

You guys do know that Lord of the Rings broke a lot of these rules. Just setting forth a set of things that you think make for interesting story telling doesn’t necessarily mean that anything that doesn’t adhere to them will be bad.

Lion’s Arch map has been taken over by quaggans, and is now called Quaggantopia.

I find the hard part battling the camera down in that little area. I prefer pulling him upstairs, but some groups don’t like that option. I certainly prefer the new fight to the older stack and bash one.

Power levelling with other crafts is not as efficient as it once was thanks to ascended crafting. Cooking is cheaper than any other option at the moment and comes in at a little over 4 gold.

Mission to take one of Scarlet’s bases turns out to be Plants vs Zombies mini game.

The bouncer at the Crow’s Nest survived. In fact he’s still up there. Obviously he did a good job.

As someone one map chat said when I pointed this out “Scarlet, your name’s not on the list, you’re not coming in.”

Underdark.3726:

Cormac.3871:

Just to add some spice to the mix, make the vote specific for each world. Every world would then have its own unique version of Lion’s Arch. For instance, who gets a statue of them built next to that of Cobiah Mariner? After it’s built you go to Blackgate LA and see a statue of Kasmeer, but in Ehmry Bay it’s Rox. Everywhere else it’s Heal-o-tron.

what about overflows?

I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s not a problem if the changes are all cosmetic. Overflow could just be the median Lion’s Arch. Each change would be for whatever got the most votes across all servers.

1. Marionette: Really, I loved that event even though my world sucked at it.

2. Scarlet turned out to be a better thought out nemesis than it originally appeared. Even though we still don’t know her full motivation we have enough clues to guess.

3. Persistance of changes. This actually turned out to be not quite as good as I hoped as the only thing the players actually decided was who the new member of the captain’s council would be, but it’s good to see lingering effects of the story, such as the Marionette and the ruined tower.

A friend of mine has a tradition he calls “Dad joke Fridays”, as it is Friday I thought I’d share the bad joke this thread put into my mind:

At a secretive meeting of the largest anti Sylvari guild the imposing Charr president stands before the group and silences the room with an ominous growl.

“I call this meeting of the Dedicated Union of Meat Based Races Of Tyia to order. Over the last couple of hours I have been made aware of some disturbing information that needs to be addressed immediately. So before we get to item 1 on the agenda, Finding a better acronym, we will act on this. It has come to my attention that details of our meetings have been passed on to sylvari within hours. These are details that could only be known by someone attending these meetings.”

“You don’t mean…?”

“Yes, someone in this room is a plant!”

(If you hate me now, you only have yourself to blame for reading past the words “dad joke”)

To answer the OP’s concern, there are in fact two important trade systems in GW2, although the second gets overlooked on this forum. There is the trading post and there is barter. Because the mail system doesn’t allow for simultaneous trades between people the barter economy only really exists inside guilds, but it is responsible for countless legendary swords being crafted months early. So if you want a trading system you can feel comfortable with you can try finding a nice guild, and there are quite a few out there. Just let them know that you have a lot of shredded rags and if someone wants to start tailoring you’ll sell for a price well below market value.

I do however feel your concerns in this instance are misplaced. People know that in order to get jute they need to farm creatures that drop scraps and bags in low level areas. They would just rather spend the money to have someone else do it for them.

I do however feel bad about low volume items with a captive market. The price of silver doubloons is pushed way up because it can be. A laissez faire capitalist would have no problem defending this situation, but it feels like gouging to me. So yeah, I see where you are coming from, it’s just the point at which it bugs me is more limited. Also I’m mad cause my level 24 toon has done about 10 jumping puzzles recently and only had one drop for him

Maranwe.6513:

I would like to open this question again because MF really depends on DPS and it is not fair for all support classes.
I know somebody, who has a warrior with over 150 MF and finds a lot of exo items and another my friends plays with a necro (support), also over 150 MF, and finds just green and blue items, sometimes yellow and once per month or two, one exo item.
So Anet, please change it so it is fair to everybody. Not just somebody.

Every class has a dps option. Some are better than others true, but a zerker necro traited right will do easily more damage than a tanky warrior. The major factor in dps is your build, and I f you are playing as a support build then you should be playing with others (which incidentally means more loot as two can kill faster than one).

Prices almost always drop after an event as players offload what they don’t need after the event is over. There is also usually a surge the day before the end as people buy enough to supplement what they have gathered themselves in order to do whatever it is that they want to do with it.

Wanze.8410:

Thaddeus.4891:

But back on the topic. Everybody seem to miss the biggest use of Artificer right now. To craft dungeon recipes which can yield a LOT OF MONEY. Just not everybody can use that if you don’t get any recipe drop.

Nobody was talking about artificer…

It’s pretty clear from context that he meant jewelcrafter even though he wrote artificer, as jewelcrafting is the profession that allows you to craft dungeon recipes.

That said, I have probably averaged three dungeon runs a day over the past year and only had one recipe drop for me. That recipe was Ring of Blood, which used to sell for 2 gold and cost 200 tokens. Last I looked though it was at 50 silver, making it hardly worth crafting given I can buy an exotic to put in the Mystic Forge for 210 tokens.

From 425 to 500 the bulk of your experience will come from discovering level 400 exotics. 20 slot boxes cost 10 gold a pop, but if you think you are going to make them anyway now is the time to do it. There are also a few runes that can help around 425. At 450 you can start craft ascended materials, but that is slow going as they are time-gated, and not really worth it past 470.

The guide in one of the earlier posts is probably the best starting point, but crafting from this point is pretty expensive no matter what you do.

I hope that what they do is that when each map is introduced they make it quite difficult to survive but once Living Story moves on it will be more like a standard map in terms of difficulty (with a few resources unique to the area). Otherwise it will be like Southsun which only ever gets visited when a big Zerg wants to do Karka Queen.

The underlying theme of GW2 at release was “United we are stronger than alone.” This goes for the orders as well as the races, with Lion’s Arch being the poster child for racial unity. It makes sense that the writers might revisit this theme in a sort of morality tale (hopefully not too heavy-handed) about the perils of racism. Certainly it has the possibility for interesting conflict when anti-sylvari groups realise that there are separatist humans and renegade Charr from Ascalon in them.

Also, I think there is a person from Bloodtide Coast’s camp who mentions anti-sylvari sentiment, so it’s something that’s definitely on the cards.

Just to add some spice to the mix, make the vote specific for each world. Every world would then have its own unique version of Lion’s Arch. For instance, who gets a statue of them built next to that of Cobiah Mariner? After it’s built you go to Blackgate LA and see a statue of Kasmeer, but in Ehmry Bay it’s Rox. Everywhere else it’s Heal-o-tron.

I see this as more of a shortcoming of the PS than LS. A character who has only done the first chapter of PS will go down to Orr and see members of a pact that hasn’t even formed yet.

I remember when Super Adventure Box II came out and I was rubbish at it. My thought at the time was “Well, thank goodness for that, now I can just do some world roaming stuff without feeling any pressure.” However now I have done most of the stuff I want to do a few times over and most of the stuff left over for me simply requires grinding (second legendary, ascended armour and a few mor ascended weapons) and I find myself thinking “Hmm, now what?” after the dailies.

The moral of the story is that not only can you not keep all the people happy all the time, if the player is like me it can just be a matter of the headspace they’re in. Personally I think the way ANet has released stuff is about as good as they can do for keeping as many people happy as possible.

As for ESO, I will play for a month, but would be genuinely surprised if I played past that before it becomes free to play. Too many reviews from MMO gamers have said “I didn’t like it but it may appeal to Elder Scrolls fans.” while reviews from Elder Scrolls fans have said “I didn’t like it but it may appeal to MMO gamers”.

I’m not sure how people think that the pact are going to fit an airship through an Asura gate. Wasn’t the whole point of the pact their air support?

Also, it’s not like the pact are all sitting in Fort Trinity, they are spread out over Orr trying to hold on to zombie infested lands. In game conveniences like waypoints and short running times make you for forget that Orr is half a continent away. Even so, two hours running across is about a day’s worth of daylight, and the escape from LA looks like it took place overnight. Time expands and contracts by necessity, because realistic time scales lead to boring travel times and events that are over too quickly. Time is one of those things where you have to choose between suspension of disbelief and an unplayable game.

Usually there is a slow steady creep up of price for event related items over the course of months. Whether or not the same happens for power cores depends on if there is a new source of drops for blades (at the moment the number popping out from the home instance watchwork source isn’t enough).

If there is a new source of blades then quite a few people will decide to craft a second, third or fourth backpiece and the price will climb. Otherwise you will just be relying on people who are still saving up for their t7 mats to then buy the cores, and that probably won’t provide enough demand to push up the price of cores too high.

For the record, I sold all mine for less than 3 gold, so clearly I am an idiot and you should not listen to me.

To reply to the OP, the problem is that we have a Living Story trying to coexist with a traditional static story. Has Orr been cleansed. For my main it has, but not for any of the other characters. For half of them the pact hasn’t yet been formed. Well, OK, they do if you go down to Orr, but they won’t form until later in the personal story. Clearly this is a problem with the personal story, and therefore something impossible to shoehorn into Living Story while making sense, as it doesn’t make sense at the moment.

I like the concept behind LS, that of a changing world with lasting changes to the landscape. No, it hasn’t been perfectly implemented, but I still prefer the way LS has impacted (toxic alliance and Aetherblade remnants, collapse marionette etc.) to the main story (Orr before cleansing = Orr after cleansing).

As for the writing, I would say it is a little better that the personal story, but just as patchy. Taimi and Braham together rock. Scarlet is an OK character in the cracked genius mould (not really a straight Mary Sue, though people really like saying she is) whose motives have not been fully explained, but there are enough clues to speculate on if you have been paying attention. The film noir section though just didn’t do it for me.

As for the singling out of individual writers here, that has some nasty echoes of an incident centring around a Bioware writer a few years ago, let’s not go down that path.