A couple of questions from a newbie. I would really appreciate the help.

My first question is about crafting Kudzu.So I started to craft Kudzu and got the Kudzu Experiment which I roughly spent 200g on. And now I learned that Leaf of Kudzu is on TP for 280g. And if I want to craft the Leaf of Kudzu I need to spend around 300g more which equals to around 500g in total. So I am really disappointed by the fact that I wont get my money back if I sell Leaf of Kudzu when I craft it. What I have is the Kudzu Experiment now. Is there a way to return from this path of crafting? Like turning this Kudzu Experiment into gold somehow or should I just let it go? Because right now if I want to craft Kudzu itself I might as well go and buy Leaf of Kudzu from the TP and I would spend the same money as I would in crafting(having spent 200g already) but in this way I will have wasted the money I spent on crafting Kudzu Experiment. Show me a way please!!

And my second question is about Magic Find.I have stacked up 500 rare unids and opened them with all the boost I could gather and know. SW bonus+ celebration Booster+ Pumpkin Oil+ Omnomberry Bars but since I have %102 base MF (around %400 with the boosts) I didnt get any unique stuff. I know there are many ways to level MF. I would like to have your opinion on salvaging ectos for lucks and which salvage kit to use in doing so. Tell me if it is a good idea to boost mf like this and if you have some other ways to do it please share it with me :). IF there are other materials or items to boost the MF for a while please tell me!

@Hemhemty.2481 said:My first question is about crafting Kudzu.So I started to craft Kudzu and got the Kudzu Experiment which I roughly spent 200g on. And now I learned that Leaf of Kudzu is on TP for 280g. And if I want to craft the Leaf of Kudzu I need to spend around 300g more which equals to around 500g in total. So I am really disappointed by the fact that I wont get my money back if I sell Leaf of Kudzu when I craft it. What I have is the Kudzu Experiment now. Is there a way to return from this path of crafting? Like turning this Kudzu Experiment into gold somehow or should I just let it go? Because right now if I want to craft Kudzu itself I might as well go and buy Leaf of Kudzu from the TP and I would spend the same money as I would in crafting(having spent 200g already) but in this way I will have wasted the money I spent on crafting Kudzu Experiment. Show me a way please!!

There's no way back.

And my second question is about Magic Find.I have stacked up 500 rare unids and opened them with all the boost I could gather and know. SW bonus+ celebration Booster+ Pumpkin Oil+ Omnomberry Bars but since I have %102 base MF (around %400 with the boosts) I didnt get any unique stuff. I know there are many ways to level MF. I would like to have your opinion on salvaging ectos for lucks and which salvage kit to use in doing so. Tell me if it is a good idea to boost mf like this and if you have some other ways to do it please share it with me :). IF there are other materials or items to boost the MF for a while please tell me!

Don't even bother with magic find. It mostly affects the loot you get from killing mobs and some very specific chests like in meta events or festivals (which you can stack up and open at once while using all MF boosts).

The gold you've spent is already spent and there's no way to revert your crafting of the Kudzu Experiment.

It's hard to say whether salvaging Ectos to boost your Luck is ever "worth it." Assuming you have, or can make, lots of Mystic Salvaging Kits, or have the Silver-Fed Salvage-o-matic, you could perceivable recoup most of your costs by selling the Crystalline Dust you get. However, due to the sheer amount of Luck needed to increase a single point of Magic Find beyond a certain level, this method may be a little suspect.

From your list of MF bonuses above, you're missing:

• Amulet enhancement (+20%)
• Item Booster (+50%)
• Guild Magic Find Banner (+10%)
• Guild Hall Magic Find Bonus (+10%)
• Lunar New Year Firecrackers (+10%)
• Black Lion Booster (+100%)

@"Ojimaru.8970" said:The gold you've spent is already spent and there's no way to revert your crafting of the Kudzu Experiment.

It's hard to say whether salvaging Ectos to boost your Luck is ever "worth it." Assuming you have, or can make, lots of Mystic Salvaging Kits, or have the Silver-Fed Salvage-o-matic, you could perceivable recoup most of your costs by selling the Crystalline Dust you get. However, due to the sheer amount of Luck needed to increase a single point of Magic Find beyond a certain level, this method may be a little suspect.

From your list of MF bonuses above, you're missing:

• Amulet enhancement (+20%)
• Item Booster (+50%)
• Guild Magic Find Banner (+10%)
• Guild Hall Magic Find Bonus (+10%)
• Lunar New Year Firecrackers (+10%)
• Black Lion Booster (+100%)

How can I get amulet enhancement, item booster, lunar new year firecrackers? And do they all stack at once? Thank you for the information btw :)

The amulet enhancement requires any ascended amulet. The Enrichment (that is the real name) can be purchased from any Laurel Vendor in the major cities for 20 Laurels. Item boosters can purchased also at a Laurel Vendor for 1 Laurel each. The boosters are also gained from Gemstore for 100 Gems. And you get one for reaching level 54. The lunar year firecrackers can be purchased straight out of the TP, Draketails cost less than 1 silver. All stack.

Also a little note about the food. If you really want to outmax MF for opening bags, you can also use Chocolate Omnomberry Cream. It gives 10% more than the bar. Struggling with the boon uptime? Look out for an afk Revenant/Herald, or just log a Herald and activate any Facet. If you have a mesmer with some boon-extension gear, you can also just equip the Signet of Inspiration.

Also worth noting:

The containers you are mentioning say they are affected by "account magic find" only (important difference). This means your basic mf from luck + the extra % you have gotten from achievement chests (you can see this value in the hero panel). You can stack character boosters to 1200%, and they still won't give you any advantage whatsoever.

In short your best bet is to wait until you reach 300% mf which is the cap, or just open them right away.

(For raising mf as fast as possible, just salvage everything (below rare = basic kit, rare and above = master/mystic kit), deposit mats, and consume luck. If you are maxed on money ofc you can start salvaging ectos with bl or master/mystic kits)

@"rng.1024" said:Also worth noting:

The containers you are mentioning say they are affected by "account magic find" only (important difference). This means your basic mf from luck + the extra % you have gotten from achievement chests (you can see this value in the hero panel). You can stack character boosters to 1200%, and they still won't give you any advantage whatsoever.

Community research have however established beyond any doubt whatsoever that they are affected by character buffs to MF. Bug or tooltip error? Only Anet knows, but the unidentified gear is definitely affected by things like the Silverwastes buff.

@"HnRkLnXqZ.1870" said:The amulet enhancement requires any ascended amulet. The Enrichment (that is the real name) can be purchased from any Laurel Vendor in the major cities for 20 Laurels. Item boosters can purchased also at a Laurel Vendor for 1 Laurel each. The boosters are also gained from Gemstore for 100 Gems. And you get one for reaching level 54. The lunar year firecrackers can be purchased straight out of the TP, Draketails cost less than 1 silver. All stack.

Also a little note about the food. If you really want to outmax MF for opening bags, you can also use Chocolate Omnomberry Cream. It gives 10% more than the bar. Struggling with the boon uptime? Look out for an afk Revenant/Herald, or just log a Herald and activate any Facet. If you have a mesmer with some boon-extension gear, you can also just equip the Signet of Inspiration.

Thank you for these valuable informations!!

@Tanner Blackfeather.6509 said:

@"rng.1024" said:Also worth noting:

The containers you are mentioning say they are affected by "account magic find" only (important difference). This means your basic mf from luck + the extra % you have gotten from achievement chests (you can see this value in the hero panel). You can stack character boosters to 1200%, and they still won't give you any advantage whatsoever.

Source please. What I think you are referring to are the "Lost Bandit Chest" containers found there, and they are indeed affected by both account and character boosted magic find. As the wiki states:

"The Bonus Magic Find activates for one second when you open a Lost Bandit Chest, granting an additional +30% Magic Find per stack"

So you are very right indeed when it comes to the Bandit chests, but not all containers behave the same as some are affected by account mf, some both account and boosters while most others none of the two. As far as I could tell the container in question was of the typehttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Piece_of_Rare_Unidentified_Gearand it specifically states account mf.

Even so, let's say you are right. This means another 150% magic find. When you open a bag you roll on 4 separate tables. Let's assume they are equally split, 25% for what table you get. As you might notice, 2 of the tables are exotic gear only and 1 can be both. We already know from the mystic forge that it's about 20% chance of conversion through tiers. Since the containers specify "rare" loot, it is now forced to serve up a rare unless a conversion takes place. As a programmer, it's easy to see that you now need to start adding variables to ensure the desired outcome. Let's say you get a roll on the exotic armor table, but then fail on the 20% conversion. It now moves on to the next category as you were promised atleast a rare. This is why the last category, the elonian rare weaps" is the one you'll see most of because the roll fails in the other 3 (and because they are all rare). Let's recap, 25% chance for a) rare (automatic drop) or upgrade b) upgrade c) upgrade d) automatic drop, not upgradeable). Already we can see you have 50%, 20%,20% and 100% chance for an automatic drop in each category. Factor in the already existing chance of 25 for category, you get:Category 1:0,25x0,8=20% total for a rare0,25x0,2=5% total chance for an exoticHere you are guaranteed a rare atleast if this table is chosen.Category 2:0,25x0,2=5% total chance for an exoticIf roll fails it moves to category 3.Category 3:0,25x0,2=5% total chance for an exoticIf roll fails it moves to category 4.Category 4:0,25x1= 25% chance to get a rare from this category.

Simplified:

1. The game chooses a category randomly
2. If it fails to produce an exotic, it will move on to another category
3. If it produces a rare, it's an automatic drop

Okay I am derailing the post now, but my point is you are looking at 0,25x0,2x0,01 (1/60)= 0,05% chance for any pre from this container for instance, and magic find only helps in getting you better loot tables, it does not alter your chances for the existing loot on that table. In this case it will give you a better chance to roll category 2 and 3 first, but they still only have 5% successrate.

The problems with this are many. It means it will take a massive sample size to determine whether the small 150% boost has any effect whatsoever, and the study would NEED to take into account both the account and character mf of every participant when opening the containers.

I choose to believe the devs try to state things as precise as possible, as they ever so often improve various tooltips with their updates. Else there would be absolutely no reason to make these distinctions when deciding what goes into any given tooltip.

@rng.1024 said:

@Tanner Blackfeather.6509 said:

@rng.1024 said:Also worth noting:

The containers you are mentioning say they are affected by "account magic find" only (important difference). This means your basic mf from luck + the extra % you have gotten from achievement chests (you can see this value in the hero panel). You can stack character boosters to 1200%, and they still won't give you any advantage whatsoever.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/5547/research-different-salvage-kits-for-unidentified-gear-and-magic-find-for-idingLinks to a couple openings showing a clear boost while under temporary MF bonuses like in SW. Others have also done research, but I didn't find the thread I've seen compiling it.

Should however be pretty easy to test, 1k common identified with no boosts and 1k common with various buffs. Purchase cost of 2k Common Unidentified Gear ~40 g.

Edit: Aha - found it!https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/22164/does-unidentified-gears-indentification-bonus-include-magic-find-bonuses-from-buffs-boons

@Tanner Blackfeather.6509 said:

@rng.1024 said:

@Tanner Blackfeather.6509 said:

@rng.1024 said:Also worth noting:

The containers you are mentioning say they are affected by "account magic find" only (important difference). This means your basic mf from luck + the extra % you have gotten from achievement chests (you can see this value in the hero panel). You can stack character boosters to 1200%, and they still won't give you any advantage whatsoever.

Ahh, always good to see some research :)Straight of the bat, I notice that they use the common variety of the unidentified gear, for reference I'll link

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Piece_of_Common_Unidentified_Gear

As you can see immideatly, it's relevance to the previous discussion is already weakened by it having 3 loot tables instead of 4, and the research doesn't specify what table the exotic came from (aka armor or not). What this research tells us, is that by opening a 1000 containers:

• You will have between 10,7% - 17,3% chance at getting a rare
• That you will have between 1,2% - 1,9% chance at getting an exotic (from either of 2 tables)

We also see that the only way to get a rare is by rolling on just one specific table. If we assume there is a midpoint (14% for rares and 1,55% for exotics), this leaves us with a variance of 3,3% and 0,35% respectively. Which for a sample size of a 1000 really isn't that much.

Plus as the author of it also states he didn't try it out on a 0 mf account yet so we don't even know whether those 311% he started impacted those results, and as the other forum member pointed out we don't know the mechanics behind how mf affects the drops. At best these results are statistically inconclusive, if he did more we could narrow down the variance and hone in on the real value. Just because there is a difference doesn't mean it has statistical significance, as you could flip a coin a 100 times and get a 100 tails. Or 0. Or 25. Even though we all know the chances are 50% so that number should have been 50 exact. This is like that, only most likely one result will affect the other (by using loot tables) therefore obscuring the real chance.

I didn't talk about the rest of his research as it was aimed towards salvaging results, and not identification so that discussion I will leave for another day.

That being said, I urge all who reads this to give it a go, write down your mf and open as many bags as possible to see if you can find trends, because I am sure there are many players who would enjoy sharing their findings :)

I'm sure there are tons of intricacies, but the question to be answered was very simple:You stated, based on the tooltip, that only account MF affects ID results. The research shows conclusively that character MF buffs affect it as well.

@Tanner Blackfeather.6509 said:I'm sure there are tons of intricacies, but the question to be answered was very simple:You stated, based on the tooltip, that only account MF affects ID results. The research shows conclusively that character MF buffs affect it as well.

No it really doesn't. All we know is that he passes the fine AND masterwork table 73 more times the second time around. Already we know those 2 tables are the most likely ones (as that was about 800 of his tries), same as the rare drop having a 10x higher droprate than the exotics REGARDLESS of amount of magic find. He got 7,3% more high tier gear for an investment of 87% increase in mf, which was already relatively high. Since it's based on separate tables with which we know already have different chances of being rolled, why on earth would 7,3% change prove anything conclusively?

The only way to test this conclusively with 2k more bags, is to open half of them on a 0 mf account, and then the rest once you reach 87%. If you are correct and both types count, you will see the same 7,3% increase. If I am correct, we will see a significant increase in loot quality.

It's also worth noting that anet devs have explained that mf works in the following way:

If you have a 1/10 chance at rolling a specific table, 300% mf will effectively give you a 3/10 chance of getting it.

Whatever difference those 7,3% make are far more likely to come from the initial draw of tables rather than external magic find, if it was directly related we would see an 87% increase in loot quality (means less below rare types), so we already know there are hidden factors at play. If there is a direct relation between mf below 300 (account) this research is completely debunked. So until then I would advise everybody to take this research for what it is - a sample size for reference.

Guys I am following your discussion with great interest! Thank you for the brainstorming hehe.

@Hemhemty.2481 said:Guys I am following your discussion with great interest! Thank you for the brainstorming hehe.

Hehe yeah me too checking in once in a while, but seems like we don't have more to go on. Would love it if someone could add in some more numbers or point out a mistake in my reasoning - after all it would mean more loot for everyone! It's an interesting topic though for sure :)