Time cost of Astral/Stellar Weapons...

With the new limitation on Palawadan supply stashes, it makes Krakaltite ore in general a lot more scarce. Brandstones can't be relied upon, so there's not really a reliable way to mine Krakaltite. I'd like to collect the Astral skins but at 500 Krakaltite each... it's just not feasible. Considering these are only the first phase of the weapon, for someone who wants to get all of the Stellar weapons they're looking at potentially hundreds of hours of grind. I understand it's just cosmetics and so the barrier on possessing skins is really up to the player, but I just suspect that the current Krakaltite costs were set without the current situation in mind.

Am I just cheap? Lazy? Or do you guys agree?

Can't you get 75 per day from NPCs? Or is that something else.

My guess is most people do not care at this stage of Living World Season 4 Episode 1 (which launched November of 2017, over 1 year ago). Most people who wanted the skins (which are not even associated with a collection) have farmed them by now. The rest will have to commit to grinding them out, similar to Dry Top which is now a lot more time consuming compared to when the map was new.

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:Can't you get 75 per day from NPCs? Or is that something else.

You can, but that would be doing all three hearts, every day religiously, for at least 105 days to get enough Krakaltite to craft just the Astral weapons. If you wanted to get the Stellar weapons, it would double that. Assuming you were getting caches and some ore from Palawadan and general activity in the map, you might be able to cut that down to something like 90 days, but that's still a lot of time spent in Istan alone to get these weapons. Hence why I figured I'd make a post about it... I didn't have to do that much farming even for my Legendary armor or Astralaria.

@Cyninja.2954 said:My guess is most people do not care at this stage of Living World Season 4 Episode 1 (which launched November of 2017, over 1 year ago). Most people who wanted the skins (which are not even associated with a collection) have farmed them by now. The rest will have to commit to grinding them out, similar to Dry Top which is now a lot more time consuming compared to when the map was new.

Dry Top at least has alternative means of getting fossilized insects in the form of the PvP and WvW tracks, which award you with your choice of insect at the end along with loads of geodes. I finished my Ambrite collection well after the map had passed its prime with some help from PvP and WvW dailies and I found it rewarding and not that heavy in grind. I had a similar level of challenge with it as I did getting the various HoT map currencies for the Machined weapons. The Domain of Istan reward track does reward Krakaltite, but only half the amount you would need to craft a single Astral weapon.

@Nefara.2186 said:You can, but that would be doing all three hearts, every day religiously, for at least 105 days to get enough Krakaltite to craft just the Astral weapons. If you wanted to get the Stellar weapons, it would be another 11 days on top of that.

I don't see that as a problem. Completing the Stellar set is a long term goal for me; it will finish when it finishes, so I'm in no rush.And my time horizon is much longer than 105 days, as I never could stand to do the Istan meta more than a few times a week. Most of my kralk is from map completion & reward tracks, so it trickles in slowly.

@Nefara.2186 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:My guess is most people do not care at this stage of Living World Season 4 Episode 1 (which launched November of 2017, over 1 year ago). Most people who wanted the skins (which are not even associated with a collection) have farmed them by now. The rest will have to commit to grinding them out, similar to Dry Top which is now a lot more time consuming compared to when the map was new.

250 kralkatite per track is more than fine. 2 tracks for a full weapon is more than reasonable. And you can do hearts multiple times (the more toons you have) daily.

@Cyninja.2954 said:My guess is most people do not care at this stage of Living World Season 4 Episode 1 (which launched November of 2017, over 1 year ago). Most people who wanted the skins (which are not even associated with a collection) have farmed them by now. The rest will have to commit to grinding them out, similar to Dry Top which is now a lot more time consuming compared to when the map was new.

You dont really grind out anything here. You buy Quartz from tp, and get kralk by doing hearts daily with multiple chars. It is a hard-to-get collection, anyway. Reward tracks are one's friend here, much like with the ambrite collection.

There was a developer comment recently on the question of why there are no collection achievements for some weapon sets (like Heroic Dragonsblood or Astral&Stellar). I can't seem to find it now, but if I recall correctly the answer was that they did not want to introduce collections for the more (time and resource) expensive weapons so people would not feel forced to grind the sets but rather could pick and choose the weapons/skins they actually wanted to use.

To me the cost of those weapons is fine, even though I only have 2+2 so far, staff and scepter, but if I found I wanted the skin on another character, then coming up with the resources for another couple of weapons should be ok, despite the fact that I have not once taken part in the Palawadan events yet (I just don't enjoy those kinds of huge, timed events, but fortunately the episode meta achievement was doable without playing the Palawadan events at all ;) ).

The game needs goals for those who enjoy spending lots of time and resources on exclusive stuff, and skins are a good way to offer that kind of goal. As such I can live with the fact that there will be extremely expensive/time intensive skins a few times a year. If you want them all, be prepared to spend the time and resources, or just go for the ones you actually want to use, and leave the rest as long-term (as in: years) project. Who knows, one day you might find you have enough resources for another one without the need to grind at all (that's how I got my astral and stellar scepters, with materials gathered over time from story and map exploration).

I'm fairly new to ascended crafting, so if this question seems stupid, please forgive me :)

Wouldn't stap swapping work? When I made the heroic dragonsblood greatsword solely for the skin I swapped to zojja's and the result was also zojja's skin. Shouldn't that work vice versa with the inscription of the spearmarshall? Or does that only work with already unlocked skins?

Just bring all/ most of your level 80 characters to istan and speed complete the level 80 heart at the telescope with each one.

The guide on YouTube will say something about logging and switching to another character to let the telescopes and obelisk reset, but there is no need for that, you can just turn the sun dials on the lower level.

@"Shep.4026" said:I'm fairly new to ascended crafting, so if this question seems stupid, please forgive me :)

Wouldn't stap swapping work? When I made the heroic dragonsblood greatsword solely for the skin I swapped to zojja's and the result was also zojja's skin. Shouldn't that work vice versa with the inscription of the spearmarshall? Or does that only work with already unlocked skins?

Ascended stat swapping destroys the old item (weapon or armour) and creates a brand new "blank" one with the new stats on it, just as if you had crafted it from raw materials.

EDIT: so if you stat-swap to Berserker you end up with a plain-Jane Zojja's Greatsword (in your case).

EDIT2: and if you stat-swap to a stat set you had never had in ascended for that weapon, you'll unlock the relevant skin. If, for example, I stat-swap a Zojja's GS to Soros's (Assassin stats) for whatever reason, and hadn't yet unlocked the Citrine skin by crafting, I will unlock it by the Mystic Forge process.

EDIT3: for Spearmarshall? Not sure - the Wiki doesn't directly document any Mystic Forge recipes with that one.

@Steve The Cynic.3217 said:

@"Shep.4026" said:I'm fairly new to ascended crafting, so if this question seems stupid, please forgive me :)

Wouldn't stap swapping work? When I made the heroic dragonsblood greatsword solely for the skin I swapped to zojja's and the result was also zojja's skin. Shouldn't that work vice versa with the inscription of the spearmarshall? Or does that only work with already unlocked skins?

Yes, exactly this, Stellar weapons have Marshall's stats but if you stat swap another Ascended weapon to Marshall's then you'll get a plain old Nadijeh's weapon and not a Stellar weapon.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nadijeh%27s_weapons

@Pifil.5193 said:

@Steve The Cynic.3217 said:

@"Shep.4026" said:I'm fairly new to ascended crafting, so if this question seems stupid, please forgive me :)

Wouldn't stap swapping work? When I made the heroic dragonsblood greatsword solely for the skin I swapped to zojja's and the result was also zojja's skin. Shouldn't that work vice versa with the inscription of the spearmarshall? Or does that only work with already unlocked skins?

Well, there you go. Would have been a little too easy a backdoor, come to think of it :D

@"Lambent.6375" said:Just bring all/ most of your level 80 characters to istan and speed complete the level 80 heart at the telescope with each one.

The guide on YouTube will say something about logging and switching to another character to let the telescopes and obelisk reset, but there is no need for that, you can just turn the sun dials on the lower level.

This is the Video I was talking about. At around the 2:17 mark Deroir starts talking about respawn timers, and logging to a different character, but I would ignore all of that, and just go to the lower level, turn those sundials and finish the heart.

@Lambent.6375 said:

@Lambent.6375 said:Just bring all/ most of your level 80 characters to istan and speed complete the level 80 heart at the telescope with each one.

The guide on YouTube will say something about logging and switching to another character to let the telescopes and obelisk reset, but there is no need for that, you can just turn the sun dials on the lower level.

I was gonna post this same exact video....you beat me to it lol.

Seriously though, I thought Kralkatite was pretty slow to collect as well, until I came across this guide. It's now one of the easiest of all the LWS4 materials to gather.

Home instance node racks it up quicker than you might think. Sure, it's only 3 a day but that's 3 more than you'd get otherwise. I'm at 1250 kralk and barely touch istan.

@Lambent.6375 said:Just bring all/ most of your level 80 characters to istan and speed complete the level 80 heart at the telescope with each one.

The guide on YouTube will say something about logging and switching to another character to let the telescopes and obelisk reset, but there is no need for that, you can just turn the sun dials on the lower level.

Oh, you know I didn't realize the purchase wasn't account bound. That's not a bad idea, if I bring four characters over to the Astralarium I could get an astral weapon per week. That's not so bad. Thank you for the suggestion :)

@Funky.4861 said:Home instance node racks it up quicker than you might think. Sure, it's only 3 a day but that's 3 more than you'd get otherwise. I'm at 1250 kralk and barely touch istan.

The home instance node also gives rose quartz.

@Lambent.6375 said:Just bring all/ most of your level 80 characters to istan and speed complete the level 80 heart at the telescope with each one.

The guide on YouTube will say something about logging and switching to another character to let the telescopes and obelisk reset, but there is no need for that, you can just turn the sun dials on the lower level.

That heart was nice for quick completion but at some point in the last couple of months it seems someone messed with the mirrors. The interaction time seems much longer now. It used to be you can just go up press F and jump off to the next one.

I feel like it is all reasonable except maybe for the rose quartz.

Does anyone have a reliable way to farm rose quartz in 2019? You can't get it from the TP, or from reward tracks. The wiki says it only drops from brandstone, but even with the tool equipped I didn't see any drop today while trying to farm brandstone for the first time since the heyday a year ago. Am I missing something?

@"Temper.2190" said:I feel like it is all reasonable except maybe for the rose quartz.

Does anyone have a reliable way to farm rose quartz in 2019? You can't get it from the TP, or from reward tracks. The wiki says it only drops from brandstone, but even with the tool equipped I didn't see any drop today while trying to farm brandstone for the first time since the heyday a year ago. Am I missing something?

Which TP have you been looking at?

74s72c for 16

@Khisanth.2948 said:That heart was nice for quick completion but at some point in the last couple of months it seems someone messed with the mirrors. The interaction time seems much longer now. It used to be you can just go up press F and jump off to the next one.

Are you sure? It's always taken a moment, and there's an achievement for getting them all within a very limited time. They can't make them take longer without either adjusting or breaking that achievement.

@Palador.2170 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:That heart was nice for quick completion but at some point in the last couple of months it seems someone messed with the mirrors. The interaction time seems much longer now. It used to be you can just go up press F and jump off to the next one.

Not 100% sure about the time but I know I used to be able to quickly jump from one to the next and the mirrors have a weird turning animation now whereas before it was one smooth rotation.

Anet needs to make a huge mat sink for Rose Quartz. Maybe reintroduce it in another map. Brandstone Farming during launch was really chill and relaxed, we would wait for like 5-10 min at the Astralarium for Brandstones to fall down, and then we'd scavenge out for the impact site. It was so interesting.

There was also a progression system where if 5 (4?) people marked the site then the rewards would multiply per mark. One Rose Quartz had a merchant value of 50s, and each impact site yielding an average of about 8, so 4g avg per site. If they spawn 5-10 minutes per instance and less than that if multimapping, then let's say 5 min. interval that's 12 impacts per hour or 48g per hour... just by hanging out as a squad and treasure hunting.

Of course, 48g was too much, and if it hadn't been disabled for merchant selling there would've been a huge amount of inflation. Maybe make a huge sink that evens out the value of rose quartz to around 30s or 35s on TP?

It's similar to the treasure hunt system but more improved. It'd also fix the Kralkatite issue.