Guild Wars 2

Hi all,
I thought I’d share the results of opeing a pile of Orrian Jewelry boxes in one go.
I started with 581k karma.
I also had +75% karma bonus for recycling the liquid karma drops immediately.

At the end I came away with 1075 bits of the vendor trash (5g37s50c)
53 obsidian shards
6 mini-pets
1 pile of putrid essence
1 each Charged, Corrupted, Crystal, and Glacial Lodestones.
2 each Destroyer and Onyx Lodestones.

Good luck!

On my server bloodshores is now crawling with a new herd of bots (that I’ve reported). I expect T3 and T4 mats to saturate.

Exotics from chests are account bound. Exotics off mobs are not, and can include some very strange skins. I got an exotic sword in there that had the wolfguard (Norn T3) sword skin for example.

Zumy.6318:

This weekend, like almost any weekend, I saw three precursors drop:

-Energizer and Dawn to partymembers in the Maw-Fractal.
-Zap to myself in Wv3 from a player, just 9 hours ago.

This is the sixt precursor I get. Twice Dusk from MF, Scepter and Focus in Orr doing Plinx from random mobs, dagger and Zap in Wv3, killing other players.

I dont understand the issue.

If the phrase “sample size of one” doesn’t mean anything to you, you never will either.

Sellers think they have cool skins – buyers CANNOT SEE THE SKIN.

Not surprising there’s a bit of a gap .

I’ve only been waiting since the makeover kits – it was clear they’d need that tech in place before they could roll out new options. And while I’d expect a few new options in the default array, I’d also pay/gems for packs of new options.

Eternis.1746:

My example for LoL is that they have an announcement in the launcher a few days ahead of time. So your point is moot about it benefiting players who don’t check or log in every day.

Moot you say? So if you knew that they always give a 48 hour warning, and you checked in and saw there wasn’t one, you couldn’t tell that you could skip the next day, possibly two with no possibility of missing a sale?

You were satisfied with the price when you did it. What’s the problem?

I think you may be missing the point – unannounced sales favor people who check in regularly and stay informed. Like dailies, they’re part of a strategy of rewarding frequent interest in the game. Their making a habit of saying “hey, nothing is going on for the next 48 hours, feel free to ignore us!” isn’t going to happen.

Awesome site. Only suggestion I have for improvment is to take the pictures with slightly more contrasing colors so its easier to make out different dye-zones.

How did you take pictures of the complete “Guild Armor” set… and is it possible to get in for use in PvE?

Midnightjade.3520:

Do you guys get your items in a specific order, or just as you reach the target for each one?

I am working on Flameseeker Prophecies and currently have the precursor and 550,000 karma, along with some of the other requirements (eg 90% world completion and working on it).

I’m tempted to grab the obsidian shards now and cross them off the list – is that a reasonable idea or is it better to just finish everything up once I reach the final threshold?

Thanks for advice!

Always finish your clovers before counting your obsidian. You might have quite a bit less than you think…

haviz.1340:

EddardStark.4692:

What is the best Critical Chance % range for a DPS?

For DPS best critical chance is 100%.

I have 75% crit chance on my guard unbuffed so I know that much is readily achievable. There’s really no reason to go above 80%, as you’ll be over-buffed while you have fury applied to you.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. So I am lead to believe if I had unlimited real life money resources, I couldn’t buy all the gems my heart desired? I would be told at some point that there are no longer any gems I can purchase with real life currency and I have to wait for some gems to be exchanged for gold?

I really just don’t believe this.

Look up a post or two.

“Finite” does not mean “small”. The total number of gems in the system is likely in the BILLIONS. possibly the tens of billions.

If you had a sudden urge to throw 25 million dollars at ANet just to test the robustness of their system… I think they’d count that as a win even if it was a bit wonky for however long it took every other gem owner on every server everywhere to sell off their stash at the rate of 111g per gem .

Svarty.8019:

John Smith.4610:

the supply of gems is not unlimited

Oh? I didn’t know that.

From his precise language I’m fairly certain gems can be created – but if so they are created by registering new accounts (or possibly by buying character slots) rather than by players spending money to buy them. The total number of gems in the system is probably responsive to the size of the player base (measured in either accounts or character slots).

Likewise the function the Exchange uses probably is based on something closer to the percentage of all existing gems in the Exchange, rather than factoring off of the actual number of gems – again so the curve is responsive to player base size.

You’d need something like that so that the bot-ban waves don’t cause weird fluctuations.

Well, since the players finance the game and not the other way around, keep in mind THEY are hoping to keep US entertained enough to occassionaly give them money.

Its probably easier to understand that when the sale was announced gems and gold both spiked in rapid succession.

Its also easier to understand if you recognize that on the graph a “gem spike” is an upward slope, and a “gold spike” is a downward slope. If you see a very sharp ^ shape – gems spiked first (the rise “/”) and then gold spiked (the fall “\”).

People who wanted gems and had coin converted en mass – spiking the gems. That spike suddenly made it the best time ever to cash out gem for gold if you’d been holding them for that purpose (or bought some with dollars) and they promply drove the price back down. Not as far though (people willing to pay cash or waiting to cash out were far fewer than the people chasing the sale).

No, You missed the point – the Exchange system is automated and follows explicit rules. Tinkering with it is minimal because being able to have faith in the stability of the rules is a key part of the system gaining acceptance and building trust.

Drop rates they DO tinker with, mostly in response to concerns we the players raise. Some of that tinkering goes wrong and EXACTLY like I just suggested, those errors cost them trust, and player-base retention.

They don’t mess with drop rates willy nilly. So its more true to say “They CAN change them – but don’t without a very pressing reason”.

Tallis.5607:

How is the supply of gems NOT unlimited? Every time someone buys gems with dollars, gems are created out of thin air by Anet. Every. Time. That’s unlimited supply or am I missing something?

You ARE missing something: That he’s explicitely stated that does NOT happen.

Imagine there is a large but finite number of gems in the entire game. I’m going to speculate that number is about a 5 billion. That enough to have a reasonable safety net against if every account owner decided to spend 20 bucks on the same day.

Those gems are in one of two places – in the Exhange, or attached to someone’s account. When gems are bought with coin or real money they move from the Exchange to that acount – none were created. When gems are used to buy anything by anyone anywhere, those gems are returned ot the Exchange. No gems are destroyed.

The exchange counts how many gems it has at any give moment, runs it through a function, and uses that to set the Gem:Gold ratio. The buy/sell ratios are one and the same permanently seperated by a 15% adjustment to prevent casual flipping. No gems are created or destroyed.

As people pull gems out of the Exhange by ANY MEANS the ratio moves towards favoring selling gems for coin. As more people convert coins to gems the ratio becomes less and less desirable, while players who have gems (or could buy them with real momeny) are encouraged to acquire gold. As gems are returned to the Exchange the ratio moves towards favoring buying gems with coin – ANet is flush with cash and loosens the reins on buying gems with in-game coin.

Any time you do what it tels you to, it drives the ratio the other way – its a negative feedback loop or “self-damping”.

Or, put another way, it punishes you for being the herd, or worse, following behind the herd.

When the sale was announced, there was a huge rush to buy gems. That was the herd, and the herd got spanked for it. Meanwhile people who had foresight, buying gems with their coin when there wasn’t much obvious incentive did quite well capitalizing on the 20% discount. The dollars-to-goods people are entirely immune to such swings, and often do pretty well selling off the leftover gems when one of these sales goes down.

We saw a huge spike and people with in game coin converted it to gems to take part in the sale – the ones who did so quickly used something like the ratio it had settled down to for a while. Those that were even an hour slow got slammed. LIKEWISE people who sold off their gems for coin at the peak of the spike did great, but an hour or two later they had driven the price back down. Not as far as it was, but down.

Actually the gem exchange its controled by a fixed formula (gems:gold ratio based on number of gems left in the exchange), and that formula only takes inputs from players.

azizul.8469:

why the hell do we need consumables for the slots….. ? the unlocking method not sufficient ?

As consumable they can be added to the random loot tables of Black Lion Chests for example.

Gisei.5749:

What if I spend all my gold, and come out empty handed?

No one can tell you the value of your free time (and this the coin you’ve amassed), but to me blowing up to 300g on a blaze of glory do-or-die attempt is going to make a better war story even if you lose it ALL, than grinding out another 300g and tamely pushing a ‘make offer’ button to collect the fruits of someone else’s daring. I’d make it a party. I’d make all my friends come watch. I’d friken DOMINATE LA chat for a half an hour announcing the results as it played out. And I’d be a happy, happy player no matter the outcome.

Then again I’m Phoenix Clan (in Legendof the Five Rings). We have a simple game-play ethic:

Its not whether you win or lose – Its the size of the crater you make on your way out!

:)

Gisei.5749:

I know quite a few like this, including myself. I look at my meager 320g, and at the price tag on Dusk, and I wonder if I would be lucky enough to get one from the MF if I used it all. I’ve nearly convinced myself to try on several occasions, but stop when the “What ifs” start appearing. What if I spend all my gold, and come out empty handed?

And that sums up my biggest complaing about the precussor market – not that the price is too high (it’s not) and not that some shadowy cabal are controlling things (they aren’t). Its that the centerpiece for “game mastery” and cosmetic glory is being bogged down in an economy of FEAR.

There is nothing heroic about constantly evaluating which path to a goal is the least scary.

Is there a distinction in you mind between the market “reacting” to better information vs. “shock” at a revelation? Just trying to get a better feel for what questions we can ask that can be answered.

A number of us are certainly contemplating the meaning of the few bits of volume data you’ve been able to share. I dont’ think knowing those details has noticably altered the trends for those items or other precursors.

Solandri.9640:

The vast majority of the market is too smart to pay 600g for a precursor.

Oh, I think the majority of the audience is too afraid of the mystic forge to do anything other than stare at the Trading Post and dream of buying one without taking the risk personally.

I don’t see the need for it, but maybe there could be some sort of freeze on the exchange rate for say 24 hours after an anouncment like this, with the mechanisms of equalization then pulling double time for 24 hours after that as whatever shifts are distributed out. That would cause the 20% in the store to be reflected in gems bought with coin at least briefly.

I find it a little odd that more gems aren’t created in the process of more accounts being registered.

I’m thinking people who buy gems with gold during quiet moments did quite well for themselves when the sale was revealed, while people who either were the stampede or came after the stampede did poorly.

Something to consider for the future.

I personally just gave ANet a couple of bucks by way of ‘thank you’ for an entertaining pastime and then used those gems to buy bag slots on the cheap for my characters at or near level 80. Worked out great for me.

You might be amused to know that I’m building the Gifts of Might and Magic strictly from personally harvested mats. I don’t buy them, period. I’m also collecting the 250 ectos for the Gift of Fortune (have the 77 clovers already) strictly by cracking rares myself. Not because I’m some sort of masochist, but because I’m pacing myself. I’m just not in a rush. I advance a percent or two towards one of the legendary gifts every day. Some days its harvesting toward might and magic, some days its jumping towards the gift of battle.

At the same time I’m getting gobs of coin. I could be saving that towards a precursor, but instead I’m buying my way to the charged lodestones for Infinite Light. Cruising along nicely at a couple cores per day. That way I have a sense of progress while waiting farily patiently for the precursor scavenger hunt.

I kinda of wonder if people are buying their way through some portion of the gift of fortune and then expecting the precurssor to go faster for some reason. If you’ve harvested and stowed 250 of every t6 fine mat yourself, you have to know the whole of the Legendary process while avoiding the TP is anything but fast…

Iehova.9518:

Nike.2631:

And then that sale wouldn’t be logged as one of the ten a day going on via the tradingpost. All you are saying is the number of these flowing into the system is even higher than John Smith’s post indicates.

Don’t forget, “30ish Dusks were traded the last 72 hours” != “10 dusks are traded on a daily basis”.

Actually John Smith has provided that sort of data point on other occasions, and it was essentially 10 per day that time also. Actually it was a tuesday, which I thought was pretty high for a mid-week sampling, but there you go.

And I’m replying to a direct question posed at me asking “what would you do if you lucked out with the toilet?”. One person does not playerbase make.

Well, from what we can see of the player base the GS precurrsors do change hands pretty steadily around 10 times per day. You’ve added an additional likelyhood that some percentage of precursors that drop are changing hands above and beyond that. The volume of the precursor market is simply too large to be controlled – its reached its current levels because people with excess precursors would like to recieve as much coin as possible for giving one up and there is a steady stream of buyers out there ready to gratify that impulse. The action of individuals is quite addequate to explain what is being attributed to conspiracy.

I only dump level 80 greens in the fountain. Mixing in lower level items seems to really throw off my Rare return rates. This seems consisten with comments that rarity AND level affect precursor return chances.

Darxio.5672:

Other than the [Rage] I DO have, I gave up on legendaries and sold off all my T6 mats due to the cost of the precursor for the dagger. By the time I get 700 gold for the dagger, the price will inflate even more.

Fate is a cruel mistress. All I can craft is frenzy if I work towards it. I don’t really want frenzy at this rate. I could sell it on the TP, but who the heck would buy it?

All legendaries are equally valuable to people looking to fill the seal on the log in page.

And then that sale wouldn’t be logged as one of the ten a day going on via the tradingpost. All you are saying is the number of these flowing into the system is even higher than John Smith’s post indicates.

How could any unified body be controling a volume that large?

I kinda keep hoping I’ll get a precursor to drop as I go about my business. Because if its not the precursor for sunrise, bifrost, or the flameseeker prophecies I am so selling it for a huge amount of cash to push forward my Infinite light project (now with over 15% of the lodestones acquired and the other ingredients are trival). Then I’ll be miles ahead on that and still poised to do the scavenger hunt whenever that comes out.

If I intend to sell a precursor for the most money I can possibly extract from it (and I don’t mind pricing in a way that may take days or even a few weeks to sell) does that make me an ebil “manipulator” or just someone playing the game? Because from the outside I think it’ll look exactly like what we’re seeing happen in the marketplace now. You don’t need an evil cabal, just enlightened self-interest and awareness of how the market has been trending on these items. Oh, and a teensy, tiny bit of patience.

I wouldn’t buy Mjolnir. Like any crafted item, its cheaper to make it myself unless the seller is willing to take a (huge) loss.

Geopap.1725:

Dusk:800g, Available : 4. Really? That means they can even sell these 4 for 3000g-4000g anytime they feel like. This is 100% Market controled item. I play mmorgps for years and years,first time I see this on such an important item-aspect of an mmorpg. I wanna hear other opinions too. Cheers~.

I take it you don’t read the Dev tracker…

30 of them have sold in the last 3 days. The 4 you see are the ones that DIDN’T sell.

Unless the uber-conspiracy can fund 6-7 THOUSAND gold per DAY for weeks at a time, uh no, its not “controlled”.

Its at a price that still sells steadily every single day, and people who are getting them from drops or the forge but don’t intend to make the legendary are sellinging them at near “the going rate” every single day.

Rainbow.3496:

JOHN. were not asking for free precursors. Were asking for tangible ways to actually achieve them. SOMETHING WITH SKILL. gimme a beanstalk and a giant to kill, or a quest or adventure or sumthin. Like the way you approached the RNG aspect of fractal rings, making them purchasable with Pristine relics.

RAINBOW. Read the dev tracker. Its in progess. Its not going to come quickly, but it’s comming. THE. END.

Iehova.9518:

So how come no one loves to talk about the price of precursors like Storm or Venom?

They’ve been manipulated as well, have no doubt about that.

Define “Manipulated”. If you mean ‘bought with the intent to re-sell’ well no duh.
Thing is right now these items do no have the requisit 15%+ split in buy and sell offers to make flipping possible, which means at best a ‘manipulator’ is buying them and sitting on them in the hopes prices continue to rise – time spent with gold tied up in speculation rather than out working actually profitable niches.

Ask yourself – if you got a precursor you didnt’ want, would you post it for more than 15% below the current rates in the lonely crusade to lower the prices, or would you cash your lottery ticket like everyone else has done?

My own prefered build/playstyle is a bit different, but I’m watching any non-AH build with great interest . From the videos I can totally grasp the use of Greatsword in this, but I’m a little unclear why sword/focus over sword/torch or sword/shield. Mainly I’m missing the ‘mindset’ for when to use button 4 (the bouncing ray)…?

I sit at 75% crit chance without fury, but my build is very different .

(5% for sigil of accuracy and 15% from right-handed strength do not show on the character sheet.)

No. I’ve got a ‘No’ handy for each and every repetitive poll on this topic.

Adine.2184:

Speaking of Legendaries wouldn’t raising the level cap make them obsolete since they are level 80 weapons?

Not an issue according to Devs assurances they will always be best in slot. The weapons would likely autoscale – presumably to current character level from 80-onwards until you reached the new cap.

As to your earlier question “why so many focuses” most of the assets used to create Mystic Forge goodies are re-using things found elsewhere in the game. The Mystic Weapons are nothing more than a hue-swap of the Cruicible Weapons. The Guardian spirit weapon utility skills are re-used as skins. The focuses show up here and there across all Tyria in the hands of NPCs or plain old physical props uses in map creation. …Even my personal holy grail the sword Infinite Light is just re-used assets from every melee harpy in the game. There just aren’t that many rifle weilding NPCs, so there isn’t a huge stockpile of rifle looks to populate the MF.

You don’t have to – they blank out when there’s nothing to mix. It works like the recipie hunt in crafting. Further – the Mystic Forge itself filters out a MASSIVE percentage of game items as having no mixes associated with them. While it’s possible that no one has ever clicked a Gift of Light while having garlic bread or a wolf’s blessing in their bag, its a bit unlikely that the wings of dwayna are made with garlic bread.

There may be desrable random results from flushing 4 rares, but no one’s reporting repeatable combinations to generate a specific interesting exotic.

But feel free to carry out thar research yourself. No reason for a Dev to ever come by and dash your hopes for you .

Atroras.9481:

Seeing that karma basically does get add up over time regardless if you play open map, dungeons or wvw, I don’t really see that you need to boost it; now I’m leaning more towards the ‘elusive’ 20% magic find?

I’m going with kharma because we now recycle kharma with the Orian Jewelry Boxes – you spend kharma to get (less) kharma + a chance at lodestones. That +15% gets applied at every turn of the loop. It takes a LOT of kharma to turn those wheels.

Ragnarox.9601:

dont you get it already , price of precursors will rise to aprox 1000gold(maybe more), because Anet make profit this way, lots of ppl buying gems (yea that ppl exist) so better the price of precursors = more gems sold

That’s really not true. If I could buy a precursor for 100$ I might. For 400$ the idea becomes ludicrious. There are people with far more disposible income than me, but the higher the price goes the fewer the potential customers that exist in that wealth bracket and the total volume of gem sales for that purpose likely plummets. If I had 500$ to drop on pixels, I wouldn’t be using an MMO as a pastime, I’d be out skiing or something decidedly more tangible.

The prices have gone way beyond representing a practical appeal to RMT.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Just a quick note—I said the odds of it dropping was closer to .005 than the 1 in a million or so that was tossed out. Those aren’t the exact odds, but if my math is correct, 10 players running the event every day might expect one staff to drop after about 7 months. (And we haven’t been out that long.)

…So it cannot be meaningfully farmed even if we did know exactly where to look.

I guess I’ll know when someone has discovered it when it shows up on the Trading Post for 3000g. Which would be a bargain at this point.

Good luck all. Not something I’m going to spend game time seeking.

I don’t think ANet can offer “perfect” information until the patch actually hits. Statments of intent don’t neccessarily represent how actual live implementations will shake out. Even timeframes are fuzzy right down until the code goes live.

I occassionally face tank to the limit of my tools (aegis/blinds/regen) just to keep a boss in a single location long enough for other melee characters to get off their strongest in-place bursts. But when you heal on dodge, theres just no reason to stick around forever .

I only anticipate making 1 unless the next wave is either a) more visually appealing, b) includes legendary armor, or c) they devise a new system that is less easily sidestepped with money.

Right now they don’t convey much prestige in my mind and they don’t look that good on my characters. The only reason I’m bothering working towards one of the first generations Legendaries AT ALL is for the log-in screen seal. I’m hoping we see some progess towards a second generation before I actually pull the triger in case I can redirect some of my progress towards those. ANet still has a few months to try to do something with more long term appeal.

Goldenpocket.1439:

How come that I cant make my legend?
…Cause I know that I can still make my legend even if the item is transmuted.

Or not.

- – -

I am assuming the kharma boost stacks with everything, same as people are assuming the gold find, magic find, and XP reward infusions stack with their kin. I’m going for the kharma boost as its both cheaper and directly effective for my goals (Infinite Light charged lodestones via OJB) whereas magic find is still a bit suspect while out killing sparks.

There was some mention of interim shifts in precursor acquisition. My guess is they have the same infintesimal chance of dropping in a laurels-bought class gear box as they do out of a dragon or temple chest. New means of acquisition meets the stated intent without changing the situation (or unsettling the market) at all.

I wish other games would bar directly trading items so I wouldn’t have to have every chat channel in the universe infested with WTB/WTS blather.

Trade with someone you trust. Simple as that. You cannot enforce the exchange in-game and ANet won’t do it for you.

I do crafting jobs for people worth multiple gold. I try to help them break down the task into more managable chunks so that at no time to I hold more of their mats than I have to – unless they choose to mail mutiple lots together. I minimize their risk and have no urge to steal pixels. But with a legendary there is not much incremental exchange you can do.