Guild Wars 2

I am usually wrong about most things in the GW2 market, but I’d be interested to see how that would happen since as far as anyone knows right now the skins are being permanently retired at the end of this month.

Aurisai.3416:

So lets be generous and say that all in all, over the ~8 months I’ve been playing the game, I’ve netted 180g, of which at least 50g has been lost in essential taxes (WPs and repairs).

This was my experience as well. I’ve been playing since September and prior to the changes they made to boss event loot I was barely scraping 200g (most of which has gone toward account upgrades). Even now I make maybe ~1.5g a day (if I’m lucky) and that’s only if the rares I get from the events sell.

I know this post sounds a bit sour, but I’m certainly not feeling like my effort in-game has been suitably rewarded.

Well, I relate. I’ve tried everything but CoF runs because I hate dungeons. I’m basically a failure at anything related to the TP. I’ve tried farming Orr, but I’ve never made anywhere near the per hour profit others claim nor can I stand to do it for long.

As an altoholic, it really sucks. This is the first MMO I’ve played where having an alt is a financial burden instead of a boon, especially when they add items like the mining pick that aren’t even account bound. There’s definitely no way my income can keep up with having to buy separate items for 8 different characters.

Yeah, the supply has gone down by at least 100 for each skin. I was surprised to see how few of each are left.

No idea, but the higher the better. I was beginning to think I’d made a mistake buying GS skins when I did because they dropped by 8g within the next week of my purchase, but now the price is double what I paid, so yay. :P Same with the shield.

Razor.9872:

Greatsword price just jumped from 39 gold to 64 in a day O_0

Nice. Both the GS and the shield are double what I paid for them, makes me feel better about my investment decision.

marnick.4305:

“afford” isn’t the right term. “Willing” is more appropriate. I’m not willing to pay a subscription for an MMO. Not that I’d have a financial problem with that, but more of an ethical problem. I would even bet that many people who don’t want to pay a 15€ sub on a game they play 5 hours a week tops, are probably the people with the largest disposable income levels, the kind of people willing to throw a 100€ at the game every now and then because frankly … 100 euros isn’t a whole lot of money.

So a pick costs 10 euros, which is less than pocket change. Even a 12 years old kid on parental allowance should be able to save that up in a week or two. The argument you won’t have some spare cash is simply invalid.
You may not be willing to give it to arena.net, and that’s your full right. I respect that, you shouldn’t throw away your money on things you don’t like. However you don’t have a right to complain either in that case.

Wow, that is really presumptuous.

Azure Prower.8701:

He’s been doing SAB since the start of April and only just got 250 bauble baubles. I think it’s safe to say he knows how but doesn’t have the time to do so to get another 250 bauble baubles.

shrugs I’d been doing SAB for almost two weeks straight before I found out about those dig sites. Besides, depending on which skin the OP wants taking a few quick tours around zone 2 will be faster and cheaper than trying to grind the gold to buy one in the TP.

Also, unless I missed something the OP should only need 50 BBs, not 250, and that’s certainly attainable in the amount of time left on SAB if s/he only runs the zone 1 & 2 cages once a day until the 30th.

Watch this video:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/sab/6000-Baubles-per-hour-Updated-Dig-spots

You can easily get over 250 baubles per run, it goes very quickly. That’s assuming you can’t stomach doing alt runs of the Z1 & Z2 “bosses” for 4 bubbles per char, per day.

marnick.4305:

If and only if you want to support the game now and then. And that’s apparently your root problem.

Not everyone has the disposable income to “support” Anet. The fact that GW2 doesn’t have a subscription fee is going to be a draw to those who cannot afford an extra $15/mo. for entertainment in the first place.

Having said that, there are very few ways in GW2 to make gold and all of them require grinding except for the TP, which not everyone is gifted at playing (I’m certainly not).

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

But if you have another party member in there, it is safe to leave the box and come back later as the original instance is kept up.

I’m not sure that’s true. I walked a friend through the achievement (I already had it) and he didn’t get credit. I am certain we got all of the baubles, however, said friend did zone out at one point (I stayed inside). I believe that’s what kept him from getting it. Especially since our second run through we did everything the same (without zone-outs) and got the achievement.

I did buy 2k worth of gems back when they were 2g for 100, but I’m saving those for the next time there’s a sale on character or bank slots. (I thought there was going to be one in March, but apparently that’s not what they meant when they advertised “upgrades”.) It’s definitely not going to be enough for me to get those upgrades and have anything left over for anything else.

Maybe if I hadn’t had to spend so much gold on what I consider basics I’d have a lot more disposable income to spend on fun things in the gem store. As it is, (prior to SAB at least) I’ve done nothing but farm for gold during my play time for the past few months and am not even close to being able to keep up with inflation (especially not at this rate). I’m about to resign myself to never having anything in the gem store or finding something else to do with my time, because gold farming is NOT fun.

I’ve never thought the exchange rate should be so closely linked. Even if I did have the disposable income to exchange gems→gold the amount you get is terrible and not worth the money, IMO. I really don’t blame people for not using that system more often.

However, on the reverse side of the coin the gold→gems exchange is equally terrible, especially if you’re like me and don’t easily come by gold. I’ve only made a little over 200g since I first began playing in September and I have literally spent over half of that on account upgrades alone. (Not for lack of effort either, I have tried every gold farming strategy except CoF because I hate dungeons.)

Needless to say, my in game income remains fixed while prices continue to rise. It’s eventually going to mean I won’t be able to afford anything because I’ll be too poor both in and out of game to buy anything.

Kichwas.7152:

I look down on the people who -don’t- make some attempt at decent grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Not perfect, but decently readable.

I have to admit I am similar. I don’t so much look down on them as much as I assume they’re either not intelligent or are somehow developmentally challenged. I know that probably sounds terrible, but text is often a first impression and when someone can’t even put forth the effort to form complete words let alone sentences (internet shorthand is a pet peeve of mine) it’s not a particularly good first impression.

Sokina.8041:

Color me arrogant, then. It’s much quicker for me to type correctly, as a writer and a journalist, than to purposely leave out periods or capital letters because it comes across as “arrogant.”

Elaborating, I have over 100 WPM, but I will still backtrack to correct every single mistake if I notice it. If I realize I didn’t capitalize the first word of a sentence, I’m compelled to go all the way back to amend it.

This fits me as well.

Are the themed dyes account/soulbound?

There’s no telling. I find I frequently underestimate the amount of gold/money people are willing to spend on gambling.

I do wish I’d purchased more gems when they were still ~2g per 100. I’m afraid after this month that may be an exchange rate we never see again unless there’s a significant period of ‘rest’ before new items/sales for the prices to decrease.

Mairenaianelle.3849:

Not something for me, apparently. I’m an alt hopper so there’s no way I’d get something like that and only be able to get for one character. x_x

Even if it was account bound the inconvenience of having to continually swap it between 8 characters is enough of a turn off for me.

I never would have guessed a 1 in 50 drop rate. I try to run SAB Z1 & Z2 every night on 8 characters with my bf, so that’s roughly 32 chests a day. Between the two of us we’ve gotten 5 skins total since the beginning of the event. I’m left to assume that our luck is simply terrible.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Josh, could you perhaps look into the problem with the camera remaining zoomed out, after leaving SAB at a boss area? It seems to be consistently reproducible. Its a bit wacky having your camera zoomed out like at the boss, while running around in LA, and not being able to zoom in any more.

I hope it is a simple thing to fix.

It is simple to fix yourself.

Zone 1: Either jump down or wait to be ported to zone 2.
Zone 2: Either walk onto the rainbow, jump down, or wait to be ported to zone 3.
Zone 3: Never had this problem after the boss. Edit: Nevermind. I guess I don’t do the zone 3 boss enough to notice/remember. No suggestions here other than to zone back in or relog. :P

I usually only get what I call “super zoom” if I port to Rata Sum directly after finishing zone 2, so I’ve made a habit of making sure I at least walk onto the rainbow before I leave.

SlaYer.2138:

3. It’s unfair that a player can receive another 2 bauble bubbles by playing a different toon. It strongly encourages farming SAB. For example, I have 8 toons. Basically, I just play all of them and get a skin within 2 days. Comparing to my friend, she plays only one toon, so she can earn only 7 baubles per day unless she farms baubles. And because she hates farming, she just buys her favorite skin from TP. My suggestion is to make those drops from chest account bound and increase the reward of bauble bubbles to 5 per chest AND per account, not per toon.

I will never really understand why people take so much issue with alts. I mean, if you wanted to argue against character create/delete farming that would be one thing, but having alts has arguably never been particularly profitable to anyone who has them outside of the enjoyment of playing them. Every time it is beneficial to have one in GW2 it seems to get nerfed, even though alts are a financial drain in almost every possible respect (needing additional character slots, storage space, equipment, etc.).

Someone with one character has to do a LOT less work than an altoholic in almost every other aspect of the game. I envy people who only have and can stick with one character. Because I enjoy multiple characters the amount of time, effort, and resources I put into the game is increased 8x as opposed to only having to do it once.

I don’t expect my point of view will change anything, but it will hopefully serve as food for thought.

I went ahead and set aside a couple of every skin, but I did get extras for the GS, staff, and shield for exactly the reasons you said, Vol. Although, the GS was more because it’s the most popular weapon.

Personally, I love the scepter. I’m not sure why it’s not more popular other than maybe it’s not a weapon many people use? So many weapon skins seem to rely on particle effects instead of animations and the scepter is one of the very few that’s actually animated.

Jemmi.6058:

Lane said more unique looks, not more looks. They mean almost the polar opposite. More unique is synonymous with more rare, if that helps.

Say for example there are 0 items that are unique. As you say, people will gradually quit and the extinction will begin, then down the road this item is super rare with only a handful of people having it. Now we are 1 unique item. ==> More unique items

Well, that’s not what I consider more unique looks. More unique looks, to me, would be if there were so many cosmetic options to choose from it was rare to see anyone using the exact same thing. Not only is that difficult to do currently in GW2, but it’s only made worse by removing items that would promote more variety.

As I said, I’m not a proponent of item removal. I dream of a day that individual personality is displayed through player choice rather than people trying to showboat with whatever they have that’s the rarest. I just find the whole, “Hey, look at me! I’m special because I have this item and you don’t!” mentality (especially in video games) really silly. Just my opinion.

laharl.8435:

Lastly, discontinued skins will most assuredly lead to more unique looks. Sorry, but this part isn’t opinion, this is fact.

No, it’s not fact. What ends up happening is a good percentage of people who have one-time-only items end up quitting over time. I’ve seen this happen in every MMO I’ve played. Eventually you simply won’t see them around at all. Gradual extinction of an item doesn’t create “more looks”.

As much as I adore cart racing games I would never leave the box if they added this!

What’s Tyria?

Rising Dusk.2408:

snip

Agree with all of this.

laharl.8435:

I definitely agree with this. Early adopters should get some sort of bonus, and stat-less skins are perfect. No one is freaking out because they can’t get Halloween skins, same will happen with these, except these are much more common. Having limited series’ within the game gives players more opportunity for unique looks. And that’s kind of a big thing in this game where most rewards are visual.

Early adopters of what? SAB? The game is almost 8 months old. :P

Halloween, seriously? Did you ignore how many people were livid about the greatsaw? Not to mention that most of the Halloween skins weren’t that great. Aside from the GS the only other nice ones were the staff and the shortbow, both of which can still be crafted.

The bigger issue at hand is that GW2 does not have enough cosmetic variety. This has been an ongoing complaint. People struggle for unique looks because there’s not that much choice and having one-time-only skins isn’t going to help that either.

Well, I not only have all the skins I could ever possibly want from baubles, but I’m also holding some of the rare ones aside for potential future profit. Point being, I gain nothing (and possibly lose) from them making the skins recurring. However, I am not and never will be a fan of one-time-only items.

I also think “veteran prestige” is silly for a variety of reasons. Then again, I’ve always been a bit of a socialist when it comes to MMOs.

Just out of curiosity, which zone were you doing?

Yeah, apparently my brain was stuck inside the box. :P I didn’t even really consider the possibility of them breaking up the skin sets per SAB release. I just figured at one point there would be a Super skin for everything and they’d all be available at the same time. Guess not!

Josh Foreman.8250:

I don’t know how you got that out of what I said. We will certainly (as much certainty as the continuation of SAB) be making at least one Super Skin for every weapon in the game.

Sorry, Josh. I worded my question poorly. I’d just finished reading someone’s speculation about a whole new skin set with the next release of SAB and it carried over to my reply.

Thank you for the information.

Well, as I said in another thread that’s both surprising and disappointing. It would’ve made more sense to me for them to add onto the existing set with skins for the weapons they couldn’t get around to this time. Not to mention strange that they weren’t able to complete one full set but would be planning a whole new set next time?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/sab/So-what-s-the-deal/1808780

Josh Foreman.8250:

Nothing is certain, but I’m pretty sure these ones will only be around for this month.

So we’re never going to see “Super” versions of the weapons that didn’t receive skins? It’s going to be a whole new set next time?

Yeah, that’s both surprising and disappointing as I was looking forward to the “Super” versions of the weapons that didn’t receive skins.

Oh well, everything I speculated has officially been negated. :P Guess the person(s) who bought up all the skins earlier knew what they were doing after all.

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

Funny enough, I am also under the impression that the stick has a better range than the key, not worse…

Since a picture is worth 1,000 words I did my best to show the discrepancy. I know it’s not an Asura, but having played SAB with every race I find it’s the same range issue on everyone regardless.

The clip on the left is the max range I could get from the monkey and still hit it with the Key (range 200). The clip on the right is the max range I could get with the Pointy Stick (range 150) and hit it. (The monkey obviously died on the second hit, but the apple shows where he was and I aligned the hands perfectly. I’m sure someone could have found a better way to illustrate this though.)

At any rate, this is why I asked if the tooltips were correct.

I am honestly surprised at how many people seem to believe new skins will be designed for the next appearance of SAB. They didn’t even have time to complete a full set of skins for its debut and it’s already been said that they will be added for next time. There’s no reason to believe they wouldn’t be in the same design set as what already exists.

Josh has said that there will be “special” rewards for people who complete hard modes, but I haven’t read any indication those would be a whole new set of skins.

UrScrewed.6183:

The next time SAB comes out they will be less farmable.

Which is why informed people are hoarding their baubles. Even Josh Foreman has said he’s holding some aside for next time.

You can see on gw2spidy how much demand for these skins there are and how much supply. Most are around 50-80 supply and 200+ demand, so kinda informs you where the market could be heading.

It’s difficult to tell since you can only view the top 20 buy orders. There could be some huge bulk orders we’re simply not seeing.

Where is the market floor? looks like it may have passed.

I sincerely doubt it. Looking at the data on gw2spidy the prices have progressively gone down on every single skin since the spike. I still think this was a weird time to buy. Personally, I would have given it at least another week if not 2.

When i look at any skin i see multiple buy orders from same buy, and i scroll down the list and there is tons. A crap ton need to be farmed to fill all these orders, before price can fall. People have way to much gold in this game, & with only 50 of each type on the market someone with 10k gold can easily buy out skins to manipulate the market.

When I looked at how much buying all of the greatswords listed would be before the spike it came out to less than 300g. There’d be no reason for someone with that much gold to not just buy out the supply to truly manipulate the market unless they knew it wasn’t going to be worth it in the long run.

Everyone assumes anet will have the new world out in a few months, but it’s uncertain could be next April.

Highly doubtful. As popular as SAB has been I expect they’ll return attention to it as soon as the Living Story arc has wrapped. It’ll probably be part of a content patch between the end of LS and before Halloween.

Unavailible skins go up over time, holloween has been 6 months, and look how much those wanted skins raised, with no supply.

Halloween really isn’t a fair comparison. Those skins were an RNG drop from BLCs during an annual event. SAB isn’t annual and the skins can be easily purchased. The price of the greatsaw, for example, would be nowhere near what it is if people had been able to farm for one like they can the SAB skins.

Many seem to think that the supply will overcome the amount of buy orders, and the price will fall in the next 2 weeks. But what if the opposite happens.? Everyone gets sick of running the instance, & less skins are supplied, then many realize that this is there last chance to buy skins, so everyone starts buying.

It’s certainly possible, but I’m still going to err on the side of there ultimately being more skins than demand for them. There is zero reason to buy the skins off the TP unless you abhor SAB and never intend to set foot in it.

My speculation is more and more of those buy orders are going to fall off as people simply accumulate the baubles they need to buy them from Moto. I had buy orders up myself for skins for alts, but I’ve since gathered more than enough baubles to get every skin I wanted and have cancelled them all.

The SAB skins are not even remotely like the greatsaw. The greatsaw was an RNG drop from BLCs during an annual event. SAB isn’t annual and since you can easily buy the skins from Moto with baubles there is no RNG-forced rarity involved.

Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see SAB make a return by mid to late summer between the end of Living Story and Halloween. That’s my speculation.

Kal Spiro.9745:

I was the same way, I counted out all 54 individual baubles in the zone and swore I didn’t have the acheivement. Then I checked and it turned out it had snuck in on me and I never noticed.

Is 54 the total amount of baubles you need for Z3? I’m trying to get a number before I attempt the achievement again, unfortunately a lot of the people who’ve made video guides started with baubles already in their inventory (and/or buy stuff along the way) so it’s difficult to tell.

Edit: Oh, nvm, 54 isn’t the total, just the number of individual baubles. Reading comprehension FTW. ;P Would still like to know the total needed before fighting the Z3 boss to make sure nothing was missed.

According to the tooltip on the pointy stick its range is 150, while the range for the key is 200. Is this correct? Because I find with the key I have to get much closer to enemies to hit them than I do with the stick.

Also, plants eating keys is just evil. :P

Some person (or persons) are jumping the gun. I can’t even fathom why someone would do their bulk purchasing now with almost a full 3 weeks left of SAB. Supply is going to keep increasing as people continue to farm it while demand decreases as people get their desired weapon skins.

I highly doubt there will be a new set of skins next time. The most they’re probably going to do is add to the already existing set for the weapons that didn’t receive skins this time.

I also don’t see prices going up for anything but possibly the greatsword skin and even then you’re going to have to bank on people who somehow didn’t manage to get one during the entire month of April. Maybe I’m being naive, but I’m guessing that’s not going to be many. The shield is nice, but so few people use shields I’m not sure buying those in bulk is a wise investment.

I’m actually really surprised prices have gone up as much as they have. There’s still almost 3 weeks left of SAB availability with many, many people still actively farming it daily. Whoever said that skins are as high now as they’re going to be is probably correct. Supply is only going to keep increasing over the next 3 weeks while demand steadily decreases.

Ultimately, it’s only going to be the uninformed who spend inordinate amounts of gold on these things post-April. They’ve already said SAB is coming back and I’m personally speculating we’ll see world 2 by July (we’ll see).

StriderShinryu.6923:

I’d prefer it if the boss fired more often and the cage itself had half it’s current HP.

Definitely agree about the HP. Whenever I run SAB with a friend the amount of time it takes for 2 players to kill it is about how I feel it should be solo.

Thanks for answering my questions, Josh.

I have another suggestion. The timer in zone 1 before being ported to zone 2 could stand to be increased a little bit, maybe by 5 seconds or so.

Granted, this has only happened to me once in many, many runs, but the last time I got zapped off the top (all the way to the bottom) right as the cage was destroyed. By the time I got control of my character and ran around to a point to where I could start climbing back up I had about 5 seconds left to make it to the top, which was not enough. Needless to say, I completely missed the chest and had to repeat it.

PolarTank.5902:

ElenaDragon.8401:

Noviere.7309:

I ended up using Dulfy’s guide because it’s the only way of knowing whether you have them all before doing the boss.

I also used a guide for this reason. Even so, I ended up missing one and had to repeat the whole zone twice more until I realized my mistake.

same here used the guide for zone 3 and twice failed.

I also used Dulfy’s guide for Z3 and failed, after having spent 3 hours making sure I got everything. I was not pleased.

I wouldn’t have even bothered with a guide if the achievement wasn’t dependent upon ending the level (or if there were a counter). I have no problem exploring, but I do have a problem dedicating that much time to it only to find out past the point of no return that I missed something.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

i know i can do 8 times on 8 on my characters but i like to spread them around the world.

Same. I did try the delete/create thing a couple of times, but having to go through the intro was enough of a deterrent for me. Despite this practice supposedly being popular I’ve had to solo the intro every time, at least when making an Asura.

I also have yet to loot a single weapon skin, so it’s easier/more fun for me just to farm baubles and not worry about chest runs anyway.

I’d really like to know if there’s any special arrow/shooting animation with the super bows. I can’t seem to find an answer to this question and I haven’t seen anyone in game with either of the bows either.

Trying to decide if it’s worth getting one since design wise the bows are the duller of the bunch, IMO.

I have a couple of questions:

1. Will the upgrades (shovel, bomb, slingshot, etc.) remain saved on our characters for the next time SAB reappears or will we have to repurchase them?
2. Are there any plans on making said upgrades account bound? I’m really regretting getting them on an alt I planned to delete. :P (It’s just been so convenient to have a character permanently parked outside of SAB.)

Josh Foreman.8250:

Special items that are super hard to get… will most likely be stuff that stays in the Box.

I hope said items are skill based and not RNG.

Erebus Delirium.4892:

However, I completed all of the content (including all achievements) and still have not earned anywhere near enough bauble bubbles to purchase a single weapon or backpack skin.

I’m 2 achievements short of having them all done, but I’d be in the same boat if I hadn’t been chest farming on my alts. So, I’m glad there are BoE skins (though none have ever dropped for me).

The 12.5k baubles needed per skin probably wouldn’t seem so bad if there were more worlds available. It just seems grindy because there’s only one world and one month to get it done.

I got Z1 & Z2 without any trouble. As for Z3, I’m going to blame the guide I was following. It was very inefficient and confusing.

Unfortunately, you don’t even know you’ve missed anything until it’s too late since the achievement requires killing the final boss.

Boolet.2968:

As someone who completed all SAB achievements, I WAS going to try and help you, but you wouldn’t respond to whispers. :P No cookies for you.

Cause I was alt-tabbed forum reading/posting! I also got snacks. :P

I don’t have it in me to try again right away anyway, 3 hours in one zone for one achievement has wiped me out for the day. x_x