How to use Karma to craft Ascended gear

Within the old forum there was a discussion regarding "Karma to Gold FAST in 2017?" where in Michael.9403 responded (in part) with:

"More recently, I’ve turned a million karma into an ascended backpack and a full set of ascended jewelry (5 pieces), done with 100% karma, and spent about a 1.7 million to produce a full set of ascended leather armor (6 pieces). Using karma reduced the armor set gold cost to about 10g.".

I am very interested in using my Karma towards acquiring my next round of light Ascended gear as mentioned above but I am not sure how that was achieved. Could someone please explain how I go about using Karma to accomplish this task?

Thanks in advanced for your help and hope all is well.

He likely bought level appropriate gear from Renown Heart Vendors, forged it, and salvaged the results for materials to sell/use to craft the armour set.The trinkets I’m not so sure “100% karma” is accurate, all ascended trinkets (apart from some back items) have an account bound currency you also use to purchase, whether that be Laurels, Badges of honour, Unbound Magic etc. You’re best route for trinkets are probably the LS3 maps.

tl;dr I think we got a rosy estimate of how easy and valuable the conversion was.

Almost for sure they were converting karma to leather via grab-grabbin' gloves. It's currently worth under 10s per 1000 karma and tedious as heck. You take a character with lots of room in inventory and a personal mystic forge node. You buy a full inventory-worth of the gloves, combine 4 at a time in the forge, salvage the results. It's neither fast nor particularly efficient.

Beaded weapons are theoretically worth much more, but the market is saturated (in part because it's easier for everyone to make them). The same for a couple of spectrum-specific dyes: they can be worth a lot, but you can't convert that much karma and sell them for a profit.

The easiest karma-to-gold comes from Orrian Jewelry Boxes, worth under 2s/1000 karma, so much much less than the method of gloves. On the other hand, it's a lot faster: pick a number at the vendor, press 'buy', then open all, and sell.

The best compromise is next month, during Wintersday, assuming the same vendor prices. You can convert karma to Wintersday Gifts, resulting in about 2-7s/1000 karma depending on the market value of the gifts and how many gifts you get (the karma cost goes up progressively with each 10 purchased).

Resources

https://gw2efficiency.com/currencies/karma

The original thread:https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Karma-to-Gold-FAST-in-2017/6534261

And at a mirror (when the old ones shut down):https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Karma-to-Gold-FAST-in-2017/6534261

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:converting karma to leather via grab-grabbin' gloves.

*Crab Grabbin' Gloves

Just in case the OP (or anyone else) was thinking about doing it. (I believe those particular gloves are used partially because they convert to valuable mid-tier leather items and partially because you can get them right outside LA. Especially useful if you don't have a personal Mystic Forge node and need to keep going back.)

Also if you're looking for ways to convert karma to gold a much easier way is likely coming up - wait for Wintersday, buy presents with karma and sell them on the TP. I can't absolutely guarantee they won't change the system this year, but it's been that way for the last few years.

Thank you for the feedback all, most appreciated. I thought I could send a message directly to the OP but have not found a way to do this using the new forum. Again, appreciate the quick response. Have a good one!