Guild Wars 2

I didn’t know there were enough shards to do that! did they decrease how many are needed to kill it?

removing the armor, or make it not visible. transmute another skin over it…
why is this still a bug??? radiant has been out like 5 months now!

well, I have my answer.
infusion slot is for any infusion (even infusions with AR). legendary greatsword has 2 of these, trinkets and back have 1.
agony slot replaces “infused” part of items, so a “lunaria (infused)” has an agony slot while “lunaria” does not. either of these rings could still have an infusion that has AR.

as I understand it, that is correct.

/open sesame

do legendary weapons have 2 infusion slots and 2 AR slots?
also, in a way this kinda demotes previous AR/stat infusions
before: 5 AR / 5 power infusion = 50g
now: 5 AR infusion = grind, 5 power infusion = 5 laurel
point being that if you went with a cheap 5 AR infusion before, it would only cost you 5 laurel to get what 50g got you before. multiply by (ring + ring + acc + acc + amulet + back + weapon = ) 8 infusions, and that’s the difference between 400g and 40 laurel.

there seem to be reports that that recipe doesn’t work… anyone got it to work?

from what they described, I would guess this will be what happens:
Solaria (infused) with 5 AR / 5 power infusion (total of 10 AR) will become:
Solaria (infused) with 5 power infusion and 5 AR infusion (total of 10 AR)
It sounds like if you find two 5 AR infusions, you can combine them with artificer to make a 6 AR infusion, which you can then replace that old 5 AR infusion with, and retain the 5 power infusion.
I’m curious what they’ll do with a Sunrise that has two 5 AR / 5 power infusions in it.

vials of condensed mist essence drops from fractals level 1-9
globs of condensed mist essence drops from fractals level 10-19
shards of condensed mist essence drops from fractals level 20+
rarely, on one of the higher levels you’ll get a lower essence
there are recipes to convert vials to globs and globs to shards and shards to globs and globs to vials, just in case you need a vial but only do high level fractals, or visa versa.
you should be able to get 1 vial in 4 or less fractal runs (1 run = a set of 3 or 4 fractals).

what about: hold down the ‘-’ key to mouse-click repeat. similar to scroll wheel, but a keyboard key instead. this sounds like something I’d want to do if I knew how, and it seems like it would be legal.

I have crafted that infusion a couple times before. I think it cost me about 30g each at the time. When you have 500g there are only so many ways you can improve your equipment. 5 AR / 5 toughness was preferable over just 5 AR.

sounds like ascended celestial might be cheaper than exotic celestial…
I remember when these recipes were like 5s each and I decided I didn’t want to invest in them :P

very low supply. how many have you found? I find like 10x more T5 mats than T1-4. it has to do with what areas you run around in.
they can be used to level crafts: level ~100-400. not for 400-500. gw2crafts.net usually has a few of these in random places.

only some exotic weapon stat combos can give you inscriptions.
and of the stat combos that can give inscriptions, not all named exotics will.
for example: Final Curse and The Ugly Stick both have Rabid stats (cond, prec, tough). But Final Curse can give an inscription, while I’ve salvaged 10 Ugly Sticks with no inscriptions. (I’ve calculated the odds of getting 0 inscriptions from 10 exotics to be 1 in 12284)

anyways, I fully expect some exotic armor stat types to be able to drop insignia, which is why I bought 300 armors over the last couple days It’s possible some that should, won’t, but I doubt that as there are only like 20 different named sets (compared to 200+ named weapons).

yeah, but the last one with a Radeon was produced mid 2011. he said he got it late 2013

isn’t there a once-per-reset timer on those chests? I think they added that so people would stop turning the gift of battle into the gift of jumping.
anyways, if you had 2 sets of keys, it would only take one set when you opened the chest. or maybe it bugged and didn’t take your keys and didn’t give you credit. either way, go try it again after the daily reset and see if it works (you just need to open the door and chest – not the rest of the puzzle)

for a given rarity, it’s the same across all item types.
however, each rarity gives different amounts:
rare = 0.9 ectos with MSK
rare = 1.25 ectos with BLSK
exotic = 1.27 ectos with MSK
exotic = 1.75 ectos with BLSK

it’s like why all the story things revolved around asura – they are simply the race that has all the high-tech gadgets that find karka energy or can build giant present-giving blimps.
artificer is the profession that has the theme that potions and AR fit into.

First thing that comes to mind is that you didn’t do the emerald jumping puzzle. there are 3 borderlands: red, green, blue. your server is one of those (whichever color your’s is on the map).
red = garnet ach
green = emerald ach
blue = sapphire ach
the key isn’t consumed until you open the big chest. any key can be used to open the chest on any of the 3 borderlands. (you can do the puzzle on red, then go to green and open the chest)

Me: 2010 Mac Pro, 6x 3.33 GHz, Radeon HD 5870.
On max setting: I get 50 fps in my home instance with no other players. 30 fps looking at the Mystic Forge in Lion’s Arch from the bank steps. minimum of 20 fps in WvW in big battles.
when they say GW2 is a system-intensive game, they mean INTENSIVE. very few computers can run it perfectly on the highest settings. Some settings demand more than others, you should play around with them and find which you don’t need. More than a few make almost no visual difference but will cut fps in half – turn those to low.

huh… just noticed. iMacs don’t come with Radeon graphics cards. all of them are Nvidia GeForce somethingerother. I know it’s possible to replace the graphics cards in some imacs?

460g is a lot to work with, especially if you’re new. there are many niches that can give you 50+% return on that.
If you were going to start from scratch, I would recommend starting with crafting. It’s the most straight forward, only requires research. Just find an item that sells for more than the cost to make it and make a bunch of them – be sure to include the 15% tax on listing on the TP. The others are more speculative or random – less guaranteed, need to know more trends, etc. Get creative – the less likely someone is to know about it, the more likely you can make a profit off it.

Everyone else is right: it’s easy to get a high percent return on a low amount. but with large amounts the percent return goes down. Over a weekend, I might get 100g profit from 100g spent, then 200g profit from 400g spent, then 100g profit from 1000g spent. The first is definitely the best, but of course I’m going to do all of them. Having more gold will simply allow you to do more things with it, but the profit vs. spent curve is logarithmic.

why reset that which is meaningless?
why not reset that which is meaningless?

now, the problem with resetting would be that people that already did achievements couldn’t do them again.
personally, I think they should just cap how many AP can be obtained from daily/month – like they did with agent of entropy.

if make = “create new”, then champ farm is currently the best way (also, there’s a short list of dungeons that give more per hour that you can do once per day, such as CoF and SE and Arah). around 5-10g/hour

if make = “get more”, then TP trading is the best way. This method usually just multiplies your current wealth. Profit is measured in percent, not amount. So when I say I made a 200g profit last night from 1 hour of trading, I only made that much because I invested 2,000g and got back 2,200g. There are many ways to make a profit on the TP – buy low/sell high (flip), salvage, craft, rng. Just be very selective about what you pick, as the majority of things in that category are losing investments. You’d need to learn to identify which ones aren’t, then do it. A couple examples:
flip: Buy order Azurite Orichalcum Amulet of the Sentinel for 26g, then sell listing it for 18g. after tax = 4g profit (15%)
salvage: buy any level 68+ rare for less than 20s, salvage with Master Salvage Kit, sell the ectos. 35s ecto * 0.9 * 0.85 – 0.61 kit = 26.16s max price to pay per rare; the less you pay for it, the higher the profit. 20s = 6s profit (30%)
craft: buy some incandescent dust and craft Quality Tuning Crystals. costs 1.4s each, sells for 2s each = 30c profit each. This one, I happen to know you can make like 2,000 of them and they’ll sell within an hour = 6g profit (21%).
rng: buy thousands of major sigils at 2s each, throw them in the Mystic Forge, sell any superior sigils that come out. Superior sigils will sell for an average of ~60s. 20% chance of getting superior from major. 4 sigils each try. = 20 major sigils per superior. 60s / 20 = 3s. So if 3s is your break-even, then 2s will give you 1s profit per major you buy. If you buy 10,000 of them, that’s 100g profit (on average). Trouble is that 10,000 sigils takes a long time to throw into the MF – probably around 4 hours, and profits are not guaranteed – you only expect to get a profit on average, so there will be times where you get almost nothing, and times where you get 3 superior sigils of fire in a row.

I dip my hand into all of these TP methods. But that gets really boring. I usually do about an hour or two of that, then play any part of the game I want. The only time I champ farm is when I get carried away and invest 100% of my bank by accident or because I feel silly, then I have to run from LA to queensdale.

one of the problems is that each pre-event takes about 5 seconds to complete. closing each portal can be soloed in like 4 mashes of skill 1. no one else has a chance to get a hit in edgewise. Most people don’t do them because they know they’ll be completed by the time they get there.

what gold is consumed to craft ascended?
the 200g price tag to get to level 500 goes directly to other players on the TP. buying the recipes will be a gold sink… but that’s only like 10g.

you can not get inscriptions from crafted exotic weapons, but you can get them from found items and named items with the right stats.
you may not be able to salvage most sources of rabid armor, but there are 3 named sets that come to mind: Khilbron, Vatlaaw, Galrath.
It is likely Anet will do something similar to weapons when they release ascended armor (where you can salvage some exotic armor to get insignia)

Arikyali.5804:

Corvax.1675:

Well, ArenaNet should introduce a global filter for the word ‘gold’ and automatically replace it with ‘4-slot leather bag’. Imagine the spam messages after that

“I need to buy more 4-slot leather bag ores.”
“Why do you need 4 slot bags? Don’t you have capped armorsmith for 20 slot bags?”
“No, I need 4-slot leather bag ore to make the ingots.”
“Ingots? You need Ori, not leather.”
“No! I’m trying to cap jeweler!”
“Then what do you need leather for? Jewelers can’t even make bags.”
“Argh!”

…This could be a problem.

Like the time they expanded the kitten filter here to include all “s” and “t” that were next to each other. stop = kittenop. must = mukitten. master = makittener. just start = jukitten kittenart

what irks me is when something doesn’t rally you. Enemy Dolyaks in WvW is an excellent example.
This one time, in WvW, I was being slaughtered by 4 enemies in a pack of wild Moas. They downed me like 4 times in 10 seconds and were nice enough to kill a moa (while trying to finish me off) so I could rally and run away to fight again another day.

my roommate was flabbergasted when I told her that our landlord is definitely capable of steeling our identity based on what we gave them. It’s so infuriating that it’s common to have to give things like SSN, how much you have in the bank (a few even asked for the bank account number!!!), drivers license number, address, full name. It’s all things they use to convince themselves you will pay rent, but it could also be used to take out credit cards in your name, etc.
Don’t give personal information to anyone you don’t trust with your future.

I have 26 stacks of dark matter I’d like to sell you.
I get it as a by-product of making gold from salvaging exotics for inscriptions.
It does seem like BLSK gives more than MSK, but I’ve never done any direct tests as I already have more than 100 alts would ever need.

global warming, man. even affecting thanksgiving date.

wasn’t the sale like 20% off the digital deluxe version? I don’t recall any gem store sale.

high-end Mac Pro here.
I started on windows and it ran very well on best appearance.
When Mac version came out, I switched and it ran very well on best appearance.
no noticeable difference – always above 30 fps on both.
still running on Mac. Around June or so, game has started crashing sometimes so I reduced to best performance and now it’s almost crash-free. One of these days I may try windows again to see if it’s now better or not.

Romek:
5 hours to get maybe 10,000 fine items which give about 100,000 luck and 100g profit.
To get 100,000 luck with ectos, you need 910 ectos and you’ll lose 60g; it’ll take you less than 4 minutes. you could farm 60g in 5 hours. But then there’s that 100g profit you missed out on.
To max out mf with ectos, you’ll spend 12,600g and get back 10,000g for a total cost of 2,600g, this could take as little as 4 hours. If you max it from buying fines, you’ll spend around 6,500g and get back 10,700g for a total profit of 4,200g, but will take you around 200 hours (you can typically buy them for 1.5s and salvage into 3s worth of materials = 1s profit per item)
Of course, this requires already having ~1,000g. And I usually don’t even place as many buy orders as I could. If I had twice the bank, I could buy twice the number of items items and get twice the luck and twice the profit in twice the time! (Didn’t they say something like this in Contact?)
It’s the same as every other choice in life: fast and expensive or slow and cheap

I don’t know about lower population servers, but I believe Dragonbrand is still in the very high category, and it does get very crowded in big events. Usually even medium events like Fire Elemental will have 50+ players at it. However, if you picked a random waypoint and went there, you probably couldn’t see another player nearby. Everyone is doing their own thing and only really gather for significant things.
One interesting website you may want to check out: http://mosli.net/events/
it literally lists all the zones in the game and counts how many times events changed (went from active to inactive, for example) then tells you the top 3 servers. Effectively, it tells you the most active servers in that zone. If you want an active open-world server, you could try looking through there for servers that are in the top-3 often. “Last update:Mon Sep 16 22:52:21 UTC 2013” looks like the website creator isn’t so active anymore :P he posted source code… I have half a mind to re-create it and then list the servers by activity.

WvW is where you can go if you want to fight in a war against 2 other servers. So it’s PvP, but on a massive scale where zergs of 50-100 players exist and fight each other over control of map locations. It’s completely possible to do content here by yourself, but it’s best with at least a small team.

As for your world selection, best would be to select a server that your friends are already on. Different servers specialize in different things. Are you in NA or EU? Some NA servers that come to mind and can be categorized:
Blackgate and Jade Quarry are heavy in WvW (check out https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/na/wvw for how all the servers are doing in WvW)
Tarnished Coast does a lot of PvE – their temples always seem to be open (Player vs. Environment = open world stuff, the main game)

If you have no desire to play WvW and no other preference, just join any server that has a high population. There is still PvP (smaller teams), which has nothing to do with servers.
you can always guest to another server, but this can get tedious and is usually not even needed. If you don’t like a server, switching is possible: either by paying a LOT of gems or by deleting every character then switching for free (I believe this is still the case… stuff in your bank will remain)
my biggest advice would be to be on the same server as your friends.

Gasoline.2570:

It is a pretty bad booster, but at least it is useful compared to something like rejuvination one.

rejuvenating booster is VERY useful in Belcher’s Bluff.

Dreamslayer.7659:

I don’t always use boosters, but when I do, I get them from Black Lion Chests….

hehe. part 2: I don’t always get Black Lion Keys, but when I do, I get them from map completion.

Rares give 0-3, average of 0.9 with Master Salvage Kit and 1.25 with Black Lion Salvage Kit
Exotics give 0-3, average of 1.27 with Master Salvage Kit and 1.75 with Black Lion Salvage Kit (I personally tested this with 400 exotics for each kit about a month ago: 509 and 703 ectos returned, respectively)

So, 800 salvages and not a single return of 4 or 5 ectos (I looked for it Every. Single. Time.) It would be very rare indeed if it were possible.

do underleveled fractals. If your personal fractal level is 30 and you do level 20, you’ll get about 9000 karma each run. Just activate a karma booster before finishing off the maw for an extra 4,500 (it’s usually possible to do another fractal run before that booster is up)
on top of that 9000 karma, you also get fractal relics which can be converted directly to obsidian shards. 100 relics / run = 6 obsidian shards.

The main reason for gold → gem inflation is that gem → gold is not very popular. most people that buy gems with $$ use it to buy gem store stuff, which does not decrease the conversion rate. In effect, gold → gem will be whatever people are willing to pay for it. About a month ago I predicted it would get up to 14g = 100 gems on May 1, 2014. Looking at the recent increase in price, that is likely to happen sooner than that.

I’ve read that it is possible to place buy orders through an API (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/api/Guide-to-the-Black-Lion-Trading-Co-API/first#post2071778)
I am very interested in this, as it means it’s possible to retrieve TP info, calculate what is profitable to buy, then place buy orders for those things. Placing in-game buy orders is all I’m able to do so far, and it’s very time consuming and tedious.
I’m also aware that there is a fine line between this and a bot (in fact, the only change that would make the above a pure bot is to have it automatically do this every hour or so). So I think I came up with an idea to not cross this line:
Regarding macros, Anet has said that it has to be 1 click = 1 action. So what if 1 click = 1 buy order? A script that gave you a list of things to buy, and a button on each one that said “place a buy order for this”. Then you just go down the list clicking the ones you want to. It would be less annoying than in-game TP as you wouldn’t have to search, type out the name, enter price, etc. but it’s still not automated and has human involvement.
Is this within the rules? It would be good to know before doing all the work to make it.

naw, I don’t deal much with heavy armor. I only recently even noticed that armor could be profitable for this. I mostly did wood weapons. especially when ascended just came out, every salvage gave about 2s profit. lately, I mainly do weapons and cloth armor (especially coat) when I feel the urge to up my mf.
there is another bug I reported a while ago… some specific bows will give iron ore instead of soft or seasoned wood: hearty, honed, rejuvenating, strong (fine, level 30 and level 45)

3.1 is just the average amount of materials obtained from salvaging a coat. specifically:
125 heavy coat = 307 metal ore (2.456 each)
194 medium coat = 578 leather sections (2.979 each)
89 light coat = 298 cloth (3.348 each)
the heavy was clearly a different drop rate. the other 2 were close enough that they looked like they were variations of the same rate (and the other armor’s rates were also very similar), so I averaged them to 3.1. When I picked which of these to salvage, I just searched for armor between level 21 and 60 (T2-T4), ordered by price, found the lowest price of that weight and about all of them below like 1.5s, then counted how many I bought and noticed how many materials I got from them. I didn’t specify between crafted / not crafted as I doubt that would change the drop rate.
however, I did compare a few different fine and masterwork of similar levels and found that there was no appreciable difference in materials salvaged between them.
for everything, I used the unlimited salvage kit. I would prefer crude (for 0% chance to get T5), but it would of added too much time in buying and using them so I just accept that slight loss in profits.

I made a spreadsheet that tied into gw2spidy, does some math, then tells me the highest profitable buy price for each type. basically what you described, but all the equations are done nearly instantly.
To give you an idea, here’s a snippet from right now:
Heavy Armor Coat = 2.4 Ore
Copper 1-20 <1s
Iron 21-33 (3)(3)
Iron 34-48 (3)(3)
Platinum 49-62 (4)(80)
Mithril 63-80 <1s

it looks at the price to buy those materials, not sell them. That’s because I buy so many of them to make a profit on crafting that it’s just easier to think of in this way – as I’m buying them this way for much cheaper than outright.
spreadsheets save a lot of time. I just wish you could search the TP by armor weights. next best thing is the item’s name, which is fairly reliable.
yeah, leather rarely gives a profit. you can guess that just because the lowest 5 pages of armor results are medium weight :P clearly we are not the only 2 buy all the non-medium armors :P currently, the highest leather profitable buy price is (2)(48) for level 49-60 medium coats (rugged leather), which can still be profitable.

I’ve been fearing a daily achievement along the lines of “Defend 5 dolyaks” (even worse would be “Daily Mists Caravan Disruptor” in the same day – so the enemies are trying to kill them and you’re trying to save them). I think in my time in WvW I’ve killed about 800 dolyaks and got credit for defending 3.

if 1% base chance to find rare, then 300% mf would increase that to 4%.
if 2% base chance to find rare, then 300% mf would increase that to 8%.
so instead of 4 rares, you would get 16.
except it doesn’t apply to chests or bags, which are the primary source of rares.
in the end, your rare income will probably go from 4 to 5-8, depending on what you do.

on your mac: go to System Preferences / Universal Access / Mouse. slide the Cursor Size selector to the right. I have mine at about 1.75 times normal size, which is enough to see it easily in high activity parts, but not so much that it covers stuff and makes it hard to see where you are selecting. btw, this will affect your in-game cursor and out-of-game cursor equally.
if you have a pc: pretty sure you’re sol.

because you already have the start here, I’ll fill you in on some specifics: (these were averaged over several hundred salvages; around 200-500 each)
bows / staff / trident will give 1.8 wood
scepter / torch will give 1.1 wood
focus will give 1 wood
hammer / harpoon gun / spear will give 1.8 wood or ore
axe / mace / pistol / rifle will give 1.2 wood or ore
dagger / shield will give 1 wood or ore (I believe shield will sometimes give wood planks)
greatsword will give 1.8 ore
sword will give 1.3 ore
dagger / warhorn will give 1 ore
metal coat will give 2.4 ore
metal other armor will give 1.4 ore
leather / cloth coat will give 3.1 material
leather / cloth other armor will give 2.1 material

I’ve done some of the same you describe, except I get bored. it’s so annoying to place 400 buy orders for 90 items each (so I can easily identify which I have already placed bids on), go to sleep, collect items, salvage, collect items, salvage, (repeated 42 times), then refine luck and watch the luck percent go from 161 to 165 (or 169 if masterwork, but then there are fewer items). It takes 4 hours to place buy orders and 2 hours to salvage. Sure, you can make around 1s / item, but 42g for 6 hours of something that is even less stimulating than champ farming puts the sanity in question. I still get bored and do this from time to time.
good to see I had competition
to other people: buy orders on masterwork tend to get outbid quickly. out of 400 masterwork items x 90 ordered each, I would pick up maybe 200 salvageable items. with fine, I would pick up closer to 4000. much more people selling blue than green, and much less people interested in blue than green (because blue gives 1/3 as much luck – but the same profit!) I recommend supplementing fine salvage with ecto salvage:
2000 masterworks = 60,000 luck + 20g
4000 fine = 44,000 luck + 40g. use 40g to buy 135 ecto, salavage with MSK, sell dust = an extra 15,000 luck + 32g (same luck, more profit, takes more time to salvage, but get more for the same amount of buy order placing)

strange you mention ‘20’, because I spent a couple hours this weekend placing buy orders of 20 for several items, and often I would recheck items and find someone had outbid me, so I’d bid another 20. usually too much work to remove the first bid, and it wouldn’t hurt as it would be better if those went through as well. I like to use less common numbers so I can see if the highest bid is mine or not. looks like I’ll have to be more tricky and use 22 or 30 instead… maybe 28…
anyways, what type of items were you noticing this on? I was buying exotics. plz don’t kill my profit margins.

I just ignore all condition removal in pve because so many things pulse. get immobilized = remove condition; 1/2 second later you’re immobilized again! it’s better to have melandru runes and rare veggie pizza and just take it. It’s actually to the point that you can’t keep up with condition removal, so instead of getting rid of the conditions, you need to focus on simply surviving until the condition wears off.