Guild Wars 2

You can indeed duo fractals. My friend and I have been experimenting with new builds and synergies and trying it out. Since we’re wimps, we’ve stuck to L1-4, but we keep learning. There are only a tiny number of issues for smaller parties, not the least of which is that you can suffer a lot more damage, since aggro is always on one of you.

Personally, I’m glad that FotM doesn’t scale down with fewer players, because it makes victory all the more satisfying.

To prevent this thread from completely derailing from the original topic, I’m creating a new thread in “Players Helping Players” entitled, Duoing Fractals. It’s got a couple of tips that might be helpful (and if you have questions, of course, I’m happy to help).

re: Bork
Did you know that GW1 allowed you to change your preferred language from English/French/etc to BorkBorkBork? (If you own the game, it’s almost worth logging on just to see what that does.)

Thanks again, Stin for the compliments. Somehow, the egoist in me is well pleased (while the “realist” in me feels sure you have confused me with someone else ;-) )
(I do the same thing, though: I often PM people who are especially helpful on the forums. )

My friend & I have been duoing fractals at low level for the last month or two and I wanted to share some of the tips & tricks we’ve learned along the way. The intended audience includes players who are looking for a challenge, don’t consider themselves “elite,” and can’t be bothered to fully optimize their builds.

For me, it’s a lot more fun than trying to solo (too tedious), repeated PUGging (too random), or waiting around for just the right group of friends/guildies to be on at the same time. A fringe benefit is: we always have room for one more, so we can help people who are working on monthly or someone who has to AFK a lot (e.g. sick kid or playing from work).

A lot of fractals have “gating” that makes them much easier for full groups, but they are still possible to do. The exceptions are:

DIFFICULT TO DO WITH TWO

• Swamp: can be done by an expert thief or by any prof + thief|mesmer. You have to be really quick, though.
• Dredge: two spots need three or more people.

NOT AS DIFFICULT AS YOU THINK
The ones that sound tricky to people who are used to full teams are:

• Uncategorized: Thieves Infiltrator’s Arrow, Mesmer’s Blink, Elementalist Lightning Flash and similar tricks allow you to shutdown the electrical trap on the Guitar Hero stairway.
• Cliffside: Turns out, it’s sometimes easier for two people to manage the last pair of seals. Remember that as long as you break one seal, it doesn’t matter if the other resets.
• Volcanic: Two people can get the bonus; you have to be good at avoiding the knockdowns and fast at killing the veteran shaman.

Everything else comes down to being easy enough or your being willing to forget about what has always worked for you and try some new things.

• Bring multiple weapon sets, including stuff you don’t normally use.
• Bring at least one alternative armor or trinket set, so you can trade damage for durability, if required.
• If you need to try a third time to finish a room, change your strategy: swap to different traits, replace your main weapon with one you never use, and definitely use a different set of utilities. We’ve found a use for a lot of “bad” weapon sets — some of them will have a useful niche somewhere in FotM.
• Finally, think of it as “practice” — instead of being worried about how quickly you can finish, focus on getting better at strategy/tactics, managing your rotations, perfecting damage mitigation/avoidance techniques, and delivering more damage. This psychological edge might be more important than any other trick.

If you get stuck with a particular part, reply here and I’m sure folks will offer a variety of techniques to handle it. Likewise, if you find a cool way to manage a difficult bit, please share it with others, as it seems that many are interested in taking on FotM in pairs instead of quintets.

edit: added headers to clarify what the lists were showing

Zui.9245:

Yamsandjams.3267:

…setting Internet Explorer as your default browser can help remedy some loading-related issues regarding the trading post

Even if true, this is something that will never be happening on my computer. Ever.

Shouldn’t need to. The issue is that GW2 spawns a third party browser (awesomium) and that application also needs special privileges to one or more special folders in your system. The easiest way to ensure this is to run GW2 with admin privileges (details in the technical forum sticky).

Once in a while that special folder gets corrupted and needs to be deleted (and there are instructions about that, too, in a sticky post in the tech forums).

Failing that, contact support; they will get you straightened out quickly.

It’s never been possible to see your own star.

Glad to hear this had a happy ending. Gz on your new acquisition. And… yeah, sorry you learned the hard way to never do high-end crafting, forging, or posting on the forums while half-asleep. The first two cause you to spend money unnecessarily and, well, the last, ’nuff said.

I agree they got things backwards. Instead of the system we’ve heard about in the official interviews, how about a set price for the commander tag, with a number of upgrade options:

• 300g: you get a character-bound blue tag.
• +100g: tag becomes account-bound
• +50g: you get to replace the permanent blue with a permanent color from the ones offered.
• +100g: you can choose any color at any time.
• +50g: cost to add a new color, as those become available

And perhaps new options (as they become available):

• +40,000 influence + 15 merits: add a unique color for guild commanders
• +50g: change the default shape to a diamond, square, or circle
• 100g: you can choose to any of those shapes at any time
  Grandfather in people who already have one tag to blue; anyone who has 3 gets grandfathered in to all the upgrades, too.

Although the total initial cost of this would be less (550g for four colors instead of 1,200), I would bet that a lot more people would spend 550g compared to how many are likely to spend 300g just to have one possible color. Heck, I don’t command at all now and I would consider it — and I have absolutely no interest in considering buying two tags for 600g, let alone three or more. In any case, this isn’t a very good gold sink, because it only applies to a narrow subset of the population.

With this proposal, ANet also has room to tweak the prices and the offerings; with their own proposal, they are tied into this all|nothing situation, which is nothing like what they themselves suggested during the open discussion a few months back.

tl;dr instead of one-size fits all, offer upgrades to the command tag system that are individually affordable (although bought at once, they will add up).

Well, apparently, it’s available again as I post. (Plus some other fan favorites.)

Glad y’all didn’t have to wait long.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

The main reason I want to be able to do that is to hand random people treats on holidays, or hand off stuff to friends I actually trust without needing to go through the mail system every time.

I’m a bit confused as to how the current mail system might be harder to deal with than a trading system? During Wintersday, I was able to give gifts to friends even while they were offline; I’ve lent money; I’ve given random newbies “care packages;” and, yeah, handed out treats to strangers. From my point of view, that was easier than the typical P2P trade window, because I didn’t have to wait for confirmation from anyone.

I’m asking because it never occurred to me that might be a fringe benefit of P2P trading, but at the moment, I still think the trading system would make those transactions take longer.

StinVec.3621:

Very nice and helpful response, Illconceived Was Na.9781.

I think you meant to paste the Chaos Infused Clay Pot wiki link in #3 instead of the RCO wiki link as making the CICP consumes the RCO as you mention.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chaos_Infused_Clay_Pot

Just mentioning it to clear up any potential confusion.

I did indeed bork the link, so thanks for clearing up that confusion. (And thanks for the compliment at the start of your post.)

Filaha.1678:

Brother Grimm.5176:

This fact makes OUR point….

Unless your point is that the current TP system is not as secure and idiot-proof as it could be, I don’t see how that makes your point.

I mean, because the current TP allows one to set a price which would result in an objective loss compared to vendoring something, how does that mean that a system that wouldn’t allow that at all would somehow be a problem?

I’m afraid you’ll have to explain that instead of simply stating your assertion… again.

While we’re at it, please show your numbers of CS tickets regarding scamming both with and without the trade system which allows you to assert, for a fact, that having a secure trade system would result in more tickets.

Really, if you can’t provide evidence, you shouldn’t state things for facts. Which is really the general problem with the detractors’ arguments. A majority seem to be claiming that they can see the future and know things as facts, while a minority actually accept possibilities.

If you read the posts that Gaile had to respond to in GW1 about scams, you wouldn’t be surprised that there are tons and tons of people who got taken advantage of, scammed, or were trying to renege on a deal, claiming that the other party cheated them. People would change the trade offer at the very beginning, so it was hard to tell just when something substantial was changed. There were substitutions, players would agree to terms and argue whether they were fulfilled, people would spam chat accusing someone of being a scammer (and sometimes they were).

All of that is preempted by the TP, so again, if you want to bring back the P2P trade mechanism, even as a thought experiment, you need to be able to better explain the fool-proof system that prevents humans from exhibiting human nature.

laokoko.7403:

…the 28% exchange difference does look like Anet are trying to rip people off.

Only if you aren’t paying attention. It’s an exact 15% fee whether you sell gems (to get gold) or sell gold (to get gems), same as anywhere else on the TP.

laokoko.7403:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It’s misleading to say you can get to r500 “without spending anything” — using stored mats is spending, since (a) you can convert those mats into gold and (b) you’d lose the ability to use those mats for anything else (such as creating a legendary or ascended gear).

not really. I think one of the poster mentioned already, he just craft destroyer weapon and level to 500 without spending anything. Obviously it take month for him to lvl to 500 since it take very long time to sell. I’m not sure if it is still viable now.

I’m not sure how much the market have change, but some of the items have really small gap between material cost and sale value, for example soldier item usually sell for lesser lost because it is more popular.

Obviously the market might change now, but all I’m saying is the crafting cost value for gw2crafts isn’t entirely accurate. Because they never taken account that some items are good to craft that you can recoup a huge percent of your crafting material cost.

The goal of the OP is to level quickly without map completion, EotM, or other types of traditional method. Are you saying that can be done without spending a lot of coin, a lot of mats (that could be converted into coin), or a lot of time?

Good detective work, Shikigami.

If you have time, this would be a good thing to add to the wiki article (or if you don’t want to edit, you can drop a note on its talk page.

PS I agree that this wasn’t a “necro’d” post; Shikigami.4013 found an explanation to an “age old” issue.

You shouldn’t be able to delete it without getting a warning message, so let’s assume that isn’t the problem. The possibilities are:

1. It’s in your bank and you can’t see it.
2. It got moved to another toon (meaning you are as absent-minded as I am, so let’s hope not).
3. You made the http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chaos_Infused_Clay_Pot, which consumes the RCO.
4. Something else, perhaps that the game did.

If it’s the first two, try using the word filter to help sort through inventory; I find that very handy. You might not have noticed (3), since you have a pot now instead of an orb.

If it’s none of those, I’d recommend contacting support. They should be able to help you troubleshoot; you aren’t likely to get individual attention by posting in the forums.

edit: fixed link, thanks to Stin Vec.3621

Behellagh.1468:

Esplen.3940:

And they still haven’t addressed it.

They did, by not releasing anymore.

Neutering the pick would force an equally large blow back of players wanting gem refunds and can result in a massive spike in watchwork sprocket prices. I mine 3-4x the sprockets from 2 hours of play than I get from my sprocket node, all which I sell. Sprocket supply massively decreased since the introduction of blade back items and by cutting supply back 75-80%, getting them solely from personal sprocket nodes or random drops, I could see the price shoot over 10s easily if not much much higher. So that’s not going to happen.

We got their response.

Agreed I wrote about how they didn’t change the WMP (or provide a new, widespread source of sprockets), while Behellagh focused on how the subsequent tools didn’t share the “bonus” feature with the WMP.

We shouldn’t dismiss the above evidence as “no response,” even though they didn’t come with a signed statement by an ANet employee.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Just wanted to add, the PvP Balthazar backpiece also emits light like a torch. Also, iirc, the greatsword Cobalt.

Yes, Lilith is correct that are there several others; I only mentioned a few to illustrate Tyrian Physics.

The wiki link above should be a complete list (if it’s not, please add any missing items or put a note on the talk page, so that someone else knows and can do the editing).

Esplen.3940:

It casts a shadow, even though it’s a light.

Light sources work oddly in GW2:

• Molten weapons have distinct, fiery effects, but do not provide any illumination.
• Torches are good sources of light, but produce the same amount of lumens-equivalents regardless of which one is used.
• Mad Memoires (complete) illuminates a larger area than any other item in the game (and creates a brighter effect), but only for the wielder; no one else can see the illumination.

In other words, don’t expect Tyrian physics to match too closely with our own.

Esplen.3940:

And they still haven’t addressed it.

They haven’t addressed what? They re-released the Watchwork Mining Pick without any technical changes; I think that’s reasonable evidence that they don’t think it’s a problem that only one of the nine everlasting tools offers bonus materials and, more interestingly, that that material is in high enough demand to make a significant difference in number-of-uses until breaking even on the costs. (Most people still won’t break even any time soon, but anyone who bought one will earn back the costs much much faster than with any of the other e/l tools.)

Ettanin.8271:

Phil.7903:

During boss fight 3 people had strange lags and disconnected at low hp, managed to finish boss in 2, when rest logged in final cinematicss didnt play and we got stuck.

This is the culprit. The 3 people relogging managed to crash the cinematic firing script by logging into the instance right at the moment the cinematic should fire, causing an undefined state and thus the script crash.

That sounds like a plausible explanation of how the bug got triggered, but … as players, we shouldn’t have to worry about when we try to recover after DCing. In other words, it’s still a bug and ANet should not only try to fix this one, but should go to some effort to ensuring that progress is never blocked because a cinematic failed to trigger.

@Phil: sorry you weren’t able to get the final reward. I’ve had that happen at it is horribly annoying.

@Altriba: you might want to update your post (or restart it) with a tl;dr at the beginning, so whichever ANet employee reviews it can see the key issue without having to absorb all the details.

My best understanding of the issue you are reporting:

• LFG tool disables joining a new group for 15-20 minutes after dropping the previous one.
• This prevents you from doing more than 1-2 dungeons within the hour.

You might want to use a new title, too: it’s not “confusion” (you don’t sound confused in the least), it’s that group joins are getting throttled, so maybe: “LFG timer preventing joining a new group after completing a dungeon with the old” (or something along those lines).

(I think it’s probably ok that you included the full story, since it’s hard to know what details the QA team needs to reproduce the issue.)

In the meantime, have you tried forming your own group instead? Or are you blocked from doing that? (Obviously, requires that you have story mode completed, but, hey, any port in a storm.)

Good luck (and please let us know what you find out, if anything).

Bloodstealer.5978:

Don’t know about chat code causing crashes but since Tuesday 12th patch I am getting these sudden "serious error notifications with a request to send report back to ANET… not like normal crashing where I loose connection to server or network error’s, but almost like a client incompatibility with windows or other software/hardware.

That does sound different from simply losing a connection, so I urge you, too, to contact support and get some individual attention. They are almost always really good at troubleshooting this stuff. If it turns out to be a problem on their end (or with intermediate service providers), this will also give them valuable data they can use to negotiate.

Good luck.

laokoko.7403:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

laokoko.7403:

You can already level up with crafting…

Actually, you can’t anymore. When all crafts maxed at r400, you could level all to reach L80. Now, you need level each discipline to r500 before reaching L80, but two crafts (Jeweler and Chef) only go to 500.

Currently, maxing out every discipline costs over 1,000 gold (source: gw2crafts). That’s the equivalent of 12,500 gems (if you convert to gold) or 8,333 gems (if you buy gems with gold). Somehow, I don’t see too many people willing to spend that kind of coin/cash on leveling to 80.

You won’t get to 80. But you can get decent amount of level. If you have a lvl20 scroll it’ll be even easier.

and gw2craft isn’t entirely accurate. A few people manage to get 400->500 in their craft without even spending anything. Obviously they are selling items with very few loss or even profit so it take a while.

If you just lvl all 8 crafting displine to 400, you’ll still get 56 level. It ain’t so bad.

It’s misleading to say you can get to r500 “without spending anything” — using stored mats is spending, since (a) you can convert those mats into gold and (b) you’d lose the ability to use those mats for anything else (such as creating a legendary or ascended gear).

The tl’dr point of my analysis above was:

• You can’t level to 80 by crafting alone.
• To do so costs far more than US$20 = 1,600 gems, in terms of actual coin or in the labor required to replace any hoarded mats. Even if it’s half what gw2crafts estimates, it’s still beyond the reach of most players.

ANet will take these figures into account (or something like it), if they ever decide to add leveling tools to the gem store. Name change contracts cost 800 gems and all they do is rename an existing character. I speculate that for 800 gems, ANet might supply a +5 or +10 leveling tome, but not much more than that.

I think it’s far more likely that the company will provide alternative means within the game to level up, especially for altaholics, including the existing Tome of Knowledge.

laokoko.7403:

You can already level up with crafting…

Actually, you can’t anymore. When all crafts maxed at r400, you could level all to reach L80. Now, you need level each discipline to r500 before reaching L80, but two crafts (Jeweler and Chef) only go to 500.

Currently, maxing out every discipline costs over 1,000 gold (source: gw2crafts). That’s the equivalent of 12,500 gems (if you convert to gold) or 8,333 gems (if you buy gems with gold). Somehow, I don’t see too many people willing to spend that kind of coin/cash on leveling to 80.

sorudo.9054:

if they really want more money, they should make the gem->gold exchange higher so ppl can buy gems with real money and get a real profit.
and if the really want to cash in, make a different kind of gems that you buy with real money so the gold->gem exchange can’t be exploited that way.

i will never ever exchange my gems, gems i bought with hard earned money, for a lousy amount of gold.
if it’s 100 gems for 100 gold then i see something good in it (still not much but better), for now 100 gems gives me a pathetic 9-ish gold.

Supply & Demand sets the prices:

• More people buy gems with gold, the ratio goes up.
• More people sell their gems for gold, the ratio goes down.

While you are saying that 9g for 100 gems is too little, there are a tons of players out there who are saying that paying 12-13g to get 100 gems is too much. Historically, the ratio keeps going up, so you can hold onto your gems and sell them later, if you want.

It was available during last year’s anniversary sale.

I just got credit for the monthly. And yes, it’s annoying: the trigger spot is smaller than for other JPs, so you have to sort of wiggle around the right spot until you get credit.

You probably did the same thing as I did:

• Got the armor before the wardrobe; got credit towards the Emperor’s Wardrobe.
• Deleted, sold, or forged the armor (because it was too low level).
• Looked in wardrobe afterward, which didn’t have the skins.

In other words, I got credit for the one title track. but not the second. And worse, didn’t have the skins unlocked, all because I did my original purchasing before the wardrobe even existed. Annoying, but that’s the way of the world sometimes.

Behellagh.1468:

slamb.4781:

Bumping this as it needs to be addressed be Anet!

No it doesn’t if you take their month silence on the issue as “working as attended”. They don’t even owe us an explanation as to why since any explanation would simply create even more vocal, upset players.

Eh, I don’t agree. They are often silent when something isn’t working as intended, but they don’t have the specific solution worked out yet.

We know they don’t want to make converting karma to gold too easy (they’ve adjusted karma and karma->gold conversion methods a couple of times already). We can guess that they have the same interest in limiting badge-of-honor->gold. I’m sure that they are worried about the impact on the economy if they introduce a “perfect salvage kit” (as exists in GW1), due to the major impact that would have on supply and demand of meta-usable upgrades.

Therefore, I speculate that they intend, at some point, to make it easier (and cheaper) to move valuable upgrades from old gear to new gear, but we won’t hear anything until it’s ready-for-prime-time.

Always buy the skin directly from the TP; it will always be cheaper than farming the tickets (either by doing key farms or by buying the keys directly with gems).

I’ve collected data on a couple thousand chests (both during and outside the double-chance period) and the rate seems to be about one skin for every 25-33 chests (reducing to perhaps 1 per 16 with double-chances).

25 keys costs 2,100 gems

• If you have that many already, convert to 212g: that can get you 3-6 of the latest skin and usually 1-2 of any older ones.
• Obviously, if you can afford to convert gold to gems, you’ll have even more gold to start with and can just buy the skins directly now.
• A super efficient key farmer could manage 25 keys in 6.5 hrs, but if you’re that efficient, you could also farm various events, world bosses, or dungeons for the 50g for a chaos skin. (If you’re less efficient, farming elsewhere becomes a much better choice.)

However, to complicate matters, there’s no guarantee you’ll see one ticket per 25 keys. In fact, on average, you’ll see less than that. Some people will be lucky and get a ticket more easily, but most of us will need a few more (or a lot more) chests before we get our full ticket.

tl;dr If you really want the skin, don’t spend any time or effort to acquire keys; save up and buy them directly.

The keys are like a lotto ticket: the value is the entertainment of rolling the dice; in the long run, you lose most of your “investment.”

Becka Williams.4978:

Today, they put on sale the collection expander. Normally, I’d jump on that. But in 2 weeks, we learn about how they’re going to change how we “collect and trade” items. Does that mean that the collection expander I might buy, and the ones I have bought are going to be useless? What about other items, like the lumber pack? I just feel like I’m stuck in a holding pattern, waiting for them to tell us more about the feature patch.

Waiting is a decent strategy.

• You only risk 200 gems per expander that you might buy.
• They will have another sale on expanders (some day), because everything that’s been discounted once has been discounted again.

I bought a few more, because I wanted the storage space today (not in 4-6 weeks). I freed up the equivalent of two bank tabs. Yeah, a mule would have been cheaper, but that just means I have to spend more time keeping track of stuff and moving it around when I need it.

If you look more closely, you can see that, at any given moment:

• You get 15% less coin than a straight transfer implies when you convert gems to gold.
• When buying gems to gold, you also get 15% less.

In other words, when we sell gems to coin or when we sell coin for gems, we pay the exact same 15% total tax as if we were selling items on the Trading Post.

In other words, there’s no discrepancy, if you include the fees.

(Same thing, alas, happens in the real world: you go to a Money Exchange vendor at the airport and buy Euros with Dollars — when you try to buy back the dollars, you’ll end up with a lot less than you started, since the vendor takes a cut each transaction.)

Labjax.2465:

Anyone with a working brain can see that when it comes to precursors, the gap created from rarity and difference in demand is completely absurd.

TIL I don’t have a working brain. (Yes, I’m joking, but perhaps the above poster can tune down the incendiary rhetoric and still make their point.)

More seriously: I see this completely differently: a notable subset of players believe that acquisition of a legendary should be just like acquiring an equivalent ascended, with a bit more effort. However, ANet set thing up so that only a tiny portion of players could forge a legendary. As another poster suggested, perhaps people who think precursors should be more common should reconsider their goals and look for other things within their means.

The only two fixes are: make high-demand precursors so much more common that just about anyone can afford them (thus devaluing their already-tarnished status as a “legendary”) or creating new sets of high-prestige items, to which people will turn their efforts (thus decreasing demand).

Neither of those things is trivial to setup.

We do see hints that ANet is working in both directions:

1. The acquisition of Mawdrey could be a test for a precursor hunt: it’s long, expensive, and yet within the means of anyone willing to put in the effort.
2. The introduction of PvP-only armor and PvP-expert-only items suggests that ANet is offering more opportunities to show status.

Cheburashka.7583:

Welp, I spent 2 gold in total, oh well. Thanks for the info guys!

Sorry you spent the gold. I would recommend contacting support in case there is something they can do. It seems to me that it’s a bug to allow a completely useless item to remain for sale on the TP, without updating the description to say “hey, don’t buy me — I can’t be used for anything anymore.”

I haven’t seen anything like this. I adjust the numbers of items sold frequently and each time, the amount listed for sale is correct.

If you suspect that, your best bet is to create a support ticket with time/date/location details, so that ANet has a chance to figure it out.

However, I suspect you are experiencing some other issue (and again, Support is your best bet to resolve it quickly).

As I recall, when this first surfaced (and sometimes reappeared), it kicked everyone in the same instance, not just the person typing the code. I don’t believe it mattered if you hide /map or /local, because those codes still get sent to your client (you just wouldn’t see them). On the other hand, it couldn’t hurt to try.

RyuDragnier.9476:

That’s probably it qarinus. It caught me off guard because I do that all the time and this is the first week I’ve ever seen it happen.

It’s not consistent. There are a couple of unlucky accidents that have to happen in a row for you to pop into a specific character. There are a couple of ways to work around it:

1. turn off auto-play — takes longer to get into the game when you alt-tab back.
2. use the -autologin command line argument — this skips the 5s timer in auto-play, which is good if (a) you are as impatient as I am and (b) you don’t share your computer with anyone else (since you have to store your email+password in plain text).

MithranArkanere.8957:

If you upgrade an item of masterwork, rare or exotic quality, it will become soulbound.

Basic, and fine will become account bound.
Ascended will remain account bound.

Exactly, so (a) this sounds like a tool-tip bug and (b) @OP: I hope you create a support ticket . Maybe ANet can do something to help you get this weapon (or its equivalent) to the right character.

See also:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Cliffside-Fractal-Hammer-Bug-1/first#post4300894

Khairiya.7240:

Brother Grimm.5176:

THIS is the kind of FUD that players read and repeat and then base their future decisions on. Your LAST toss (and your previous 50,000 ones) has NO bearing on the next one (or any future ones). A 0.1% chanced does not mean you get a prize after 1000 tries….it means you get a prize if you roll a 1 on a 1000 sided die (and how many times you roll that die has NO effect on previous or future rolls).

I’m not complaining about the forge here, but I’m convinced it is not as ignorant of previous outcomes as we are led to believe. I know about the high variance, but stretches of 30 to 40 tries without upgrades, or 5 upgrades in a row are supposed to happen ~0.05% of the time if the upgrade chance from rare to exotic is stated as 20%. Yet, that happens about once per inventory load every time I use the forge. The same goes for the 0.125% chance of getting a precursor upgrade.
So I could basically say the same: Assuring that past rolls will have no consequences when they actually might is cosying people into traps.
I don’t reckon that statement to be true but then, neither is yours. Maybe others disagree, but my experience points towards some pattern in the randomness of the forge.

There are always patterns in random numbers. We humans are really good at spotting those patterns. But as soon as you look for a longer period, those patterns disappear (although they might be replaced by something else). Random numbers really are random.

What you have described is a common superstition among gamblers, that one deck of cards is “hot” and another is cold, that a craps table is lucky, that the roulette wheel has to come up mostly black, because all morning, it’s been mostly red.

Lady Luck doesn’t care about any of that. As noted above, each roll of the dice has exactly the same odds.

Morsus.5106:

You get a lot of T6 mats when making mystic clovers. Do the 10 recipe. It’ll take you longer to get all your clovers, but you’ll get lots of mats along the way.

You should gather your clovers first, since “failures” will give you something you need. However, don’t try to make clovers after you get your 77; there are far better ways to convert karma and skill points into gold.

Brother Grimm.5176:

No crafted new stat items have been sell-able for at least the last 12 months (since Celestial was introduced). Not saying it’s right or wrong, but expecting something different is not logical.

Agreed.

I wish they would treat all stat sets equally, as it makes figuring out how to acquire stuff more of a headache than I think is good for the community. But, as Grimm sez, that’s the pattern that ANet has established and it might be here for good. (Fortunately, I can’t think of a personal use for Nomad stats, so I haven’t bothered farming for them.)

Depending on the market (e.g. ectos are falling in price, but dust isn’t), it could be cheaper to buy ectos to salvage or it could be cheaper to sell the ectos and buy dust.

However, it’s always going to be close, because the TP is really efficient at reaching equilibrium quickly.

So, when I want both luck and dust, I salvage ecto. When I just want dust, I buy it. In both cases, I try to offer as little as I can without having to wait weeks for my buy order to be fulfilled.

Ensign.2189:

Goal/reward pacing is a Big Deal in MMOs. People will only work so long towards a goal before they get frustrated and give up, and if it’s far enough off they won’t even bother to try.

Legendaries, sans-precursors, are done pretty well; it’s a very involved, long term goal, but it is broken up into smaller goals that are achievable – gather this mat, do your map completion, grind some karma, etc. While the whole is pretty daunting from scratch there are a bunch of sub-goals with their mini-rewards of completing gifts and seeing it all come together.

The precursor though is well past the point of being a tractable stand-alone goal and now a lot of people just kind of look at it and go…‘yep, not going to get that’; and they’re justifiably frustrated that they’ve gone through all the other, well paced micro-goals and are stuck waiting on the mountain to be fixed.

I get that precursor crafting is hard – the forge devours an enormous amount of material from the game to generate precursors, after all, and you can’t just obsolesce that without causing a ton of damage to the economy – but it really should not have taken this long.

Except it’s exactly as tractable as any other component. The only difference between farming for gold versus 100 Charged Lodestones is… one is stored in your bank (and forgotten) and one shows up every time you open your inventory panel.

My solution is: find a way to hide your money from yourself.

1. Put in a buy order for whatever you can afford, even if it’s only 100g.
2. When you have another chunk to invest, drop the buy order and start a new one with the original seed money plus your new funds.
3. Repeat, until the buy offer is as much as you are willing to part with.
4. Still no precursor? Consider selling off some stuff and upping the offer.

This does three things:

• It hides your money, removing your temptation to spend (imo, that’s the biggest impediment for most people).
• It gives you a chance to get the precursor for a deep discount.
• It gives you a psychological edge
  • Part I: you stop thinking about how hard it is to acquire the money and you stop looking at prices so often, which is dispiriting.
  • Part II: when you do look, it’s to add money to your pool. Personally, I’m always surprised by how much I’ve set aside this way and it’s always closer to market price than I remembered.

I’ve recommended this method to a lot of people and several have ended up getting their precursor for 20-50% less than market rate.

• My friend got The Hunter this week for 400g. Going rate: 750-850g.
• I acquired The Legend for about 800g in May, when the going rate was 1,000-1,150g.

Unlike throwing stuff to the forge and hoping Zommy takes pity on you, this method always succeeds (eventually) and you never invest more than you are willing to pay. It’s never a gamble, but, if the market swings the right way, you will end up spending a lot less than most other people.

Short story: yes, you can get T5-6 from exotic champ bags you get in WvW.

The longer story:

The rarity of champ bags determine the mats, regardless of which character opens them:

• Exotics: T5-6
• Rare: T4
• Master/Green: T3
• Blue/Fine: T2
• White: T1

The level of the character opening the bag affects the level of the gear. L20 characters will get ~L18-L22 gear (ballpark). By opening the gear on mid-tier toons you can get mid-tier armor mats, e.g. linen L51-55 light armor.

Finally, the chance of getting a named exotic weapon does not seem to be affected by the character level. I haven’t done rigorous testing, but I seem™ to be getting just as many of those on my L5x toon as I did on my L80.

However, I haven’t opened enough sub-exotic bags to determine whether those can drop named exotics. I suspect™ they do not.

Arrelaine.5692:

So it’s not off the loot table yet?

Evidence suggests that it remained in the loot table until at least the original update for the current chapter. The only way we’ll know for sure is if someone gets one today/tomorrow and is thoughtful enough to take (and post) a screenshot that shows the Slot Machine with the Perma Hair Contract and something in the background that proves when the drop happened.

I’m with you, OP. I’m completely in favor of making things difficult for bots, goldsellers, and Snidely Whiplash and yet avoiding creating a burden on the vast majority of the community that are honest. Unfortunately, there’s never going to be a good way to filter out the “cheaters.”

domness.6719:

I had another go, it seems that the NPCs stand there doing nothing for like 10 minutes until you maybe aggro some enemies towards them. Event carries on as usual after that.

Glad you got it to work! Well done.

BTW: that trick works to “un-stick” a number of other events (although it can be difficult to drag foes in some cases). Sometimes, you need to let on of the friendlies die and rez them to continue.

I had a friend who had exactly the same issue. He also forgot that Anise likes to troll guests at events/parties by placing clones of the Rich & Famous in strategic locations. (As a teenager, she must have been a riot at DR’s raves.)

SirPookins.9851:

I have 4 fractal uncommon equipment boxes, they do not compact but they do beposit collectibles. Any idea why?

Items within specialty bags never compact. Same goes for gear placed in a crafting or junk bag.

I use this as a feature: I place such bags at the bottom of the inventory and arrange it so each type of item is always in the same location on all of my characters, e.g. I always know to look to the lower-left for minis, just above that for the toon’s standard food/utilities, and to the lower right for commonly-used weapons. Makes it easier on me, especially while running or during combat.

The data I’ve collected from redditors and the wiki suggest that, on average, you’ll get one full ticket every 25 to 33 chests (i.e. an actual ticket or 10 scraps). My personal average is well below that, so your mileage will vary.

(During the double-chances period, it was closer to 16-20 chests.)

In other words, it’s not surprising that you didn’t see any after opening only six.