Please stop using nothing but Elder Wood and Mithril for Legendary Weapon Collections

Every single LS3 and LS4 legendary is gated behind massive amounts of Elder Wood and Mithril in the 3 weapons leading up to it, both in the specific tribute as well as in the Mystic curios. Please use a greater variety of different materials for these. It is ridiculous that a large amount of the materials in the game are irrelevant at high levels. It would be great if you would go back and change some recipes to incorporate more mats or give alternate recipes that use other mats, but at least going forward, please bring some variety to this.

I've always figured it is because both are quite the staple materials in Weaponsmithing in general - only the requirements are dailed up to eleven because Legendary.

Using these is actually fine because it creates a need for those mats that would, without this system, be almost completely worthless (just look at the mithril prices). Though, replacing a quantity of those mats with silk could actually be a great solution to rise the price of it a little.

The OP is technically correct: there's a lot of basic T5 mats required. But that's entirely to create a sink large enough to deal with the huge over-supply of those mats. The vast majority of loot is L80 gear, and much of that is weapons, resulting in tons of elder wood & mithril.

If ANet were to follow the OP's advice and mix up the requirements, here are the questions they'd have to address first:

• What sinks will replace legendaries to consume10-30k elder wood or 10-30k mithril?
• How will players react to sharply increased costs for other components?
• What other components should be used, that are equally-simple to farm or acquire from the TP?
• How will we know when we've achieved the "right" balance?

Relevant example: The Shining Blade costs ~2500 gold to craft

• Elder Wood accounts for ~500g. Mystic coins account for ~500g
• Amalgamated Gemstones count for 460g
• Mithril & Large Claws each account for 100g
• Ecto counts now for only 81g (at its previous, pre-PoF price it would have been ~150g)
• Fixed costs are 100g

Still hasn't done much to the prices, so we probably need MORE sinks. I don't even bother mining mithril anymore; I feel like it's a gold/second-loss over just going and doing literally anything else.

It would be nice to be able to use gold, silver and maybe platinum to be able to make weapons and armor a touch nicer or allow us to 'customize' armors or weapons a bit.

Orichalcum and gossamer is basically worthless too

What do you think that change would actually accomplish? All the other alternatives are more expensive. You are basically complaining that legendaries are too cheap although you aren't the first either.

@Malediktus.9250 said:Orichalcum and gossamer is basically worthless too

Only because ANet decided to dump all the cost into leather. It's not that big of a deal though except for one place. Fully upgrading a guild's cloth synthesizer is a mistake.

@Malediktus.9250 said:Orichalcum and gossamer is basically worthless too

Elder is now more expensive than ancient wood log to log. That's messed up right there.

@Fluffball.8307 said:Still hasn't done much to the prices, so we probably need MORE sinks. I don't even bother mining mithril anymore; I feel like it's a gold/second-loss over just going and doing literally anything else.

Sinks, but with purpose. I think they are missing out on additional guild hall updates. In a ideal world each release would include more guild hall upgrades available over time. More consumables would also go towards good sinks, buffs that players can craft and apply on a regular basis. They don't even need to be high amounts. Picture player craft-able boosters.

Adjusted food and utilities would also make good sinks. Base items does +x, add more mats now it does +y, add more mats its does +z. They don't even need to be high amounts. Examples of types of these are like the LS3 recipes. There are variants out there that have the same main stats but by adding extra mats (Winterberry Pie vs Omnomberry Pie) you can craft a version that also does additional boost.

And have to agree with the above, the newer legendaries are very effective sinks even if they are far less fun to make versus the journey ones. I like my shinning blade but H.O.P.E. is more dear to the heart since it took more than just materials to make.

The legendary sinks are fine, in fact I think they are well done, the problem is that Arenanet are not introducing enough new craftable items for us to use mats on, I miss the early years when patches would have recipes that would spike prices on various mats, everything is so static these days.

T2-4 are protected by Ascended material production which is still quite valuable.T1 is protected by material promotion.T5 prices are still some of the lowest material prices. Only Elder Wood is particularly valuable and even then it's barely above the average for white mats.

The only material tier that's not doing very well is T6.

Mithril and elder wood are arguably the most plentiful resources available for a L80 character. Half the maps across all of Tyria are level 80 which is where the majority of L80 toons spend their time. I can currently store 1250 per mat in storage (haven’t maxed my storage yet) and would regularly sell overflow stacks of mithril for a few gold. Since I started crafting my legendary in earnest, I go through them a lot quicker but never encountered a stage when I had to farm more mithril or elder wood to finish a step in crafting.

Hard wood and iron ore, on the other hand...

Technically what they need to do is change from having mats only on certain level maps to having mats on certain level OR GREATER maps. Then all the tiers will be present in more equal quantities. That whole setup made more sense when you were leveling up, but breaks down when 0 new sources of low tier mats are introduced.

@"Boogiepop Void.6473" said:Technically what they need to do is change from having mats only on certain level maps to having mats on certain level OR GREATER maps. Then all the tiers will be present in more equal quantities. That whole setup made more sense when you were leveling up, but breaks down when 0 new sources of low tier mats are introduced.

That isn't as easy as it sounds. One of the reasons ascended crafting calls for mid-tier mats is to increase the demand, so that veterans will pay more to newbies for those mats, thus transferring wealth (and sinking gold, too). If Iron is available in Orr, then it becomes less valuable to newer players and decreases the incentive for people to return

Further, it's ultimately bad for the economy if all mats are "present in more equal quantities." It's those differences that help keep the markets flowing and giving people a reason to trade. It also keeps things more interesting: if everything is equal, then it becomes even more annoying to collect it all.

The point is that these sorts of things aren't ever as simple as "just do this or that;" there's always consequences to making such changes, always balance issues, and always more moving parts to the puzzle than most of us notice.

@Boogiepop Void.6473 said:Technically what they need to do is change from having mats only on certain level maps to having mats on certain level OR GREATER maps. Then all the tiers will be present in more equal quantities. That whole setup made more sense when you were leveling up, but breaks down when 0 new sources of low tier mats are introduced.

If you want to extend this line of thought to the logical conclusion that there shouldn't be any tiers at all, I would agree. Having all these tiers is just complexity that serves no real purpose if the end goal is to make mats more similar in price.

Woudnt it be better if the resources in the game had some relationship to whats used as the games currency?eg A gold ingot in the game is only worth around 1 silver on the TP.In Real life an ounce of gold ingot would be worth at least $1300 USD.Mithril is another example.In most MMOs mithril is a fictional but extremely rare metal, but in GW2 its as common as dirt and a mithril ingot is only worth 95 copper, ie close to worthless.A copper ingot in the game is worth 1S 47C on the TP, but a silver ingot is only worth 18C, so copper is worth more than both silver and gold.A platinum ingot on the TP is only worth 5 S.The value of the metals is all wrong,mainly because of the ease of acquiring them.As an extreme example , a carrot on the TP is worth 2S 15C , so a carrot is worth the same as 12 silver ingots.

If everything is going to be available everywhere and have all the same price ... what is the point of having more than one type exist?

this post is almost a year old but still so relevant

Why would they make every legendary made the same way and then change the way the last one is made for shits and giggles just to throw the people who prefarmed for a loop? They're only making one more. They haven't promised more legendaries with the next expansion, and considering these took 2 expansions to deliver, I doubt they will.

Lower tier mats are tied to lower tier zones. It is to encourage to go play and farm there. It's a check and balance system.

Making more low level materials required would be worse than having more level 80 materials required. The vast majority of players play in level 80 maps.

If this were changed, you would require a similar amount of materials, only that you would pay huge premiums on the way less available lower level materials which would sky rocket in price.

@Naevia Mercer.8671 said:this post is almost a year old but still so relevant

The post was vastly incorrect then, and it is vastly incorrect now. Thanks for necroing though.