How are people able to make legendaries?

[Rickz.6230]

So I never looked into it in advance before I started Frostfang (my mistake), but eventually managed to craft the precursor. It took a long time, and it literally cost every last gold I had (around 250g) even after I used whatever resources I'd been hoarding.Looking up what is left to do, I am having a very difficult time envisioning myself finishing it. Roughly 600g worth of materials, including 3 full stacks of t6 mats (blood, venom, totem), 100 glacial lodestones and 100 corrupted lodestones (each of those go for ~90g on the TP). Not even mentioning the clovers. The stacks of metal ingots I can imagine, but the time needed to grind for these materials or the gold to buy them seems ludicrous.I work full time, have a dog, a fiance, gotta work out a couple times a week. Is this game built around people who have a plethora of free time to grind and grind and grind? Or is it the game's subtle attempt at getting me to swipe my credit card for gold?Not trying to poke fun at anyone. In fact, I would welcome some kind of sound strategy to amassing the 600+ gold id need to finish Frostfang (because I imagine grinding for the mats themselves is a waste of life). But at the same time, I'm baffled at the sheer amount of grinding that would lay before me if I choose to press on.

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

You can make gold, fast. You can grind mats, fast.

You just have to know how to.

You just have to want the knowledge.

[coso.9173]

i agree with you, i think legendaries are not for everyone, and definitely not for me. i haven't even tried to start to get one, it's absolut nonsense to me.they're not needed though, just aim for stuff you both are interested in and are willing to do the grind necessary. for instance i'm just geting my frst ascended weapon, it's taken me months because i need to do a lot of things for it, but i'm taking it slowly at my own pace. I'll advice to do the same. don't start on something you don't wat to do the work for, if you're not going to enjoy it.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

After you play for a few years all of that's just sitting around in your bank unused.

The Lodestones you can't get around, you're going to have to farm the gold for them--Elder Wood Logs are a good source.

The T6 mats are converted from excess T5 mats using Pile of Crystalline Dust, which are salvaged from Globs of Ectoplasm (from Rares, with yellow kits) from any meta event of your chosing, such as Silverwastes, Auric Basin or Istan.

The Mystic Clovers come at the end of every month for free, from Fractals, or from WvW reward tracks.

Part of the problem is that you burned yourself out crafting the precursor. That is the expensive way to do it, and people only do those quests to get the exclusive rewards like the personal farm that comes with Kudzu. Otherwise, you're paying 2-3x for a precursor by crafting it than if you just bought it off the Trading Post directly, due to the quests being quite old now while lack of demand has dropped the TP prices.

[Kodama.6453]

With the power of friendship.Sounds stupid? Maybe, but that is literally how I got my legendary weapon. I had 2 friends helping me collecting all the materials needed for it.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

I just recently made my first Legendary. Bought the Precursor, as the collection/crafting is too long (imo). Had most of the mats saved up, including Mystic Clovers (still have about 20+ Chests of Loyalty in bank). All told, it cost me about 250 Gold total, maybe a bit more.

But, it will take some time to save up all those mats again.

(Make sure you WvW during Bonus events to get your GoB quickly.)

Good luck.

[Waffler.1257]

Doing the daily only takes a few minutes, and if you just do that for a year then you would have 730 gold, more than enough to finish your legendary. You didn't mention how long you've been working on your legendary thus far, but they are meant to be long term goals, not something you grind out in a month or two.

[Fenella.2634]

So far I have finished one legendary and started two more. The one I've finished took a year, the others might well take longer. I refuse to hurry. They get done if and when they get done. A bit of farming here and there, a bit of crafting in between, and when it gets too annoying, I take a break and do something else. They are certainly not high priority, but a nice longterm goal.Ascended equipment is absolutely viable and there are a lot of pretty skins available, legendaries are no must-haves.

[Danikat.8537]

First thing: I think some of your numbers are wrong. You only need one stack - 250 - of each T6 material, not three stacks. Also Glacial Lodestones sell for about 40 silver and Corrupted Lodestones are 60 silver - meaning you're looking at spending about 40g and 60g in total for each.

But even so the simple answer is that if you don't have a lot of time to grind you make a legendary slowly. I've made 4 so far and they've taken me between 7 and 13 months each, from the time I decided to start making them. The main reason it took so long is because I wasn't spending any more time on GW2 than I would normally and I wasn't exclusively working on making a legendary, I did lots of other things in the same time.

For one thing getting the materials actually gets easier the longer you're willing to wait - especially the T6 mats because you can buy those with laurels, which come from login rewards. Same with Mystic Coins which are a major part of the cost of any legendary. You'll also get T6 mats, and other materials you need, and gold, from drops while playing normlly, so the longer you can leave it before you need to use them the less gold you'll have to spend. Every time I've made a legendary I leave the Gifts of Might and Magic to last for exactly that reason.

There's other 'tricks' you can do to reduce the time and cost required as well, like getting the Gift of Battle before you make Mystic Clovers, because you'll get some from the reward track, and making the Mystic Clovers before the Gifts of Might and Magic because the Mystic Forge can drop T6 mats instead of Clovers. There's detailed guides you can find online if you want to, but I've always prefered to do it my own way because the biggest barrier for me is getting burned out and fed up with the entire process and the game. That happened briefly with my first one - this was before you could craft precursors, and the prices on the TP were constantly going up so I ended up selling everything I could and farming gold to afford it and once I got it I actually quit the game for a few weeks and stopped working on my legendary for longer because I was sick of the whole thing.

So with the others what I've done is made a 'shopping list' spreadsheet of everything I needed, and then I pick what I feel like working towards. Maybe one day I'll do some WvW for the Gift of Battle, another day I'll do a meta-event map I like to get gold and assorted materials, or I'll ask my guild to do whichever dungeon I need tokens from, or I don't feel like doing anything in particular so I log into the character I'm doing map completion with and just wander around a map for a while. Or maybe I don't feel like any of it today so I do something totally different. Breaking it up like that works much better for me than trying to burn through a list in order and get it done as quickly as possible.

@"Kodama.6453" said:With the power of friendship.Sounds stupid? Maybe, but that is literally how I got my legendary weapon. I had 2 friends helping me collecting all the materials needed for it.

That can be a huge help too. :) When I told my guild I was working on my first legendary and it was going to be The Dreamer the first reaction was one guy going "Oh, you'll need wood!" Next thing I know he's mailing me about 10 stacks of assorted logs. At the time I couldn't even refine some of them so they sat in my bank for ages while I got my huntsman level up, but I really appreciated the help.

[Ayrilana.1396]

@Rickz.6230 said:I work full time, have a dog, a fiance, gotta work out a couple times a week. Is this game built around people who have a plethora of free time to grind and grind and grind? Or is it the game's subtle attempt at getting me to swipe my credit card for gold?

Those that play a lot will benefit sooner than those who do not play as much. This much is true for just about any game.

That said, it's very much possible to get legendary weapons while having a job and a social life. You have to use the time that you play the game efficiently but of course there will be grind. Grind is an integral part of MMOs.

[Khisanth.2948]

Let see .. my first legendary was on October 2013, second was September 2014. So that is around 1 year each and that was when I started playing the game. The first was a little more than a year but I didn't start as soon as the game came out. Both gold and materials were also much more difficult to acquire back then.

However ... using a similar schedule it is easy to compute the other requirements.

Frostfang cost a total of 1371g assuming you start with nothing - https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/calculator/a~0!b~1!c~0!d~1-30684Using a roughly 11 month schedule that will cover all the clovers so 275g for the Mystic Coins can be subtracted from the totalFrom those 11 months of login rewards you also get 220 Mystic Coins which you can sell for another 239g subtracted from the total11 login cycles of 28 days each is 308 days, 2g per daily is another 616g that can be subtracted11 login cycles also gives you 385 laurels, at 74s per laurel(https://gw2efficiency.com/currencies/laurels) that is another 284g to subtract

1371 - 275 - 239 - 616 - 284 = -43g

So that would mean you will be left with an extra 43g by the end. This is while buying everything that can be bought. There are only two requirements.1) login every day2) complete the daily each day

However as you are doing those things you will be acquiring materials along the way so in reality those requirements are not very strict.

You will need the Gift of Battle. That is 80 WvW potions if you don't want to do WvW but the WvW dailies can be part of 2). That is a maximum of 80 WvW dailies out of 1232 possible ones in the 11 login cycles or around 7%. On most days there is an easy one that is basically kill 1 to 5 NPCs.

There is also the Gift of Exploration which I believe was around 60 hours but that might be without mounts.

Is 11 months a reasonable time frame? That is roughly how long it took me to craft several of mine so it is very realistic to me. Additionally if I divide my play time by how many legendaries I have it would require around 20 minutes a day but that also includes a lot of AFK time. For example just now an hour has been added to the play time but all I've done is stand at the WP in Domain of Kourna for an hour.

[Turkeyspit.3965]

@Rickz.6230 said:Not trying to poke fun at anyone. In fact, I would welcome some kind of sound strategy to amassing the 600+ gold id need to finish Frostfang (because I imagine grinding for the mats themselves is a waste of life). But at the same time, I'm baffled at the sheer amount of grinding that would lay before me if I choose to press on.

Correct on both counts. Legendaries drain your game time and your resources. The trick is trying to keep that in balance. I crafted a full set of WvW legendary armor between mid-January and finished it last week. I already had the timegated stuff in storage (WvW skirmish tickets, clovers, the precursors), but still it took tons of T5/T6 mats. I'm currently wiped out on T4 mats - like nothing left - and had to resort to the TP. I easily spent about 400g over the past month just finishing it up, one piece at a time - but really, until you have all 6, it's not that useful.

Now I'm looking at doing another Gen 2.5 as I already have 290 curios in storage, but I still need stacks of T5/T6 and loads of mithril and elder wood...but I'm not going to rush it. I'll just build up what I need over time, and when I have most of the mats, I'll buy what's missing from the TP and finish it.

Mystic Clovers: I get these from monthly logins and WvW reward tracks (don't sPvP anymore). I don't bother gambling for them, I just wait until they trickle in, even if it takes a few months.

T4/T5 mats: I really enjoy HoT metas, particularly Auric Basin, which I find gives you a ton of mats and ecto, as well as Amalgamated gemstones. T4/T5 mats are also commonly found in heavy loot bags from WvW

Mystic Coins: I earn those from logins, fractal dailies, and from weekly pip reward chests in WvW. Again I don't buy them, I let them trickle in, but I never seem to have less than a stack or two, likely because I don't use them to craft clovers.

For Gen 1s, my first weapon was Sunrise, and I wanted the 'full experience', and crafted Dawn. I won't bother doing that again if I make a Gen 1 again, as the cost of materials for Stage 2 (craft 250 of these, and 250 of those, etc) comes close to equalling the cost of the precursor.

For instance, the Tooth of Frostfang costs about 345g to craft with materials, but you can purchase it from the TP for 350-400g. Better to just grind some gold and buy it, then use your materials in storage to finish the actual legendary.

Legendary weapons are supposed to be painful for the average player, it's part of the experience.

[Danikat.8537]

@Khisanth.2948 said:Using a roughly 11 month schedule that will cover all the clovers so 275g for the Mystic Coins can be subtracted from the totalFrom those 11 months of login rewards you also get 220 Mystic Coins which you can sell for another 239g subtracted from the total

How are you getting Mystic Clovers from login rewards without using the Mystic Coins?

[Ayrilana.1396]

@Danikat.8537 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:Using a roughly 11 month schedule that will cover all the clovers so 275g for the Mystic Coins can be subtracted from the totalFrom those 11 months of login rewards you also get 220 Mystic Coins which you can sell for another 239g subtracted from the total

How are you getting Mystic Clovers from login rewards without using the Mystic Coins?

Final chest/reward.

[Danikat.8537]

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Danikat.8537 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:Using a roughly 11 month schedule that will cover all the clovers so 275g for the Mystic Coins can be subtracted from the totalFrom those 11 months of login rewards you also get 220 Mystic Coins which you can sell for another 239g subtracted from the total

How are you getting Mystic Clovers from login rewards without using the Mystic Coins?

Final chest/reward.

Ah, I forgot about that. I almost always go for the extra laurels, to use for T6 mats (or just to convert to gold).

[Moradorin.6217]

@Rickz.6230 said:So I never looked into it in advance before I started Frostfang (my mistake), but eventually managed to craft the precursor. It took a long time, and it literally cost every last gold I had (around 250g) even after I used whatever resources I'd been hoarding.Looking up what is left to do, I am having a very difficult time envisioning myself finishing it. Roughly 600g worth of materials, including 3 full stacks of t6 mats (blood, venom, totem), 100 glacial lodestones and 100 corrupted lodestones (each of those go for ~90g on the TP). Not even mentioning the clovers. The stacks of metal ingots I can imagine, but the time needed to grind for these materials or the gold to buy them seems ludicrous.I work full time, have a dog, a fiance, gotta work out a couple times a week. Is this game built around people who have a plethora of free time to grind and grind and grind? Or is it the game's subtle attempt at getting me to swipe my credit card for gold?Not trying to poke fun at anyone. In fact, I would welcome some kind of sound strategy to amassing the 600+ gold id need to finish Frostfang (because I imagine grinding for the mats themselves is a waste of life). But at the same time, I'm baffled at the sheer amount of grinding that would lay before me if I choose to press on.

It doesn't have to be as hard as it seems to make Legendary items. Once upon a time I didnt think I would ever make a single weapon. So far I have made a set of armor, backpack, trinket, and multiple weapons.

OK Here is what I basically do:

1) save your coins for the gifts and try to avoid making clovers with them when ever possible.

2) As many have said, at least login daily when possible. the laurels, coins, etc add up and pay off over time. Also the monthly chests can be handy.Each Monthly chest gives 7 clovers without using a single coin. This pays off 11mo = 77 clovers from that alone.Laurels convert to T3, T4, T6 Trophies directly. This has a big value for making some of the most expensive gifts.

3) If you do some PvP/WvW or even fractals you can get more clovers without using the Mystic Toilet.*In PvP/WvW you get 2-7 clovers usually in the final reward track chest. You also get materials you can sell or will need.

4) If you have access to Living World 4 maps you can buy Trophy Shipments to get T3, T4, T5, T6 trophies for allot less than buying off the TP.

5) Use Spirit Shards and the Mystic Forge to upgrade cores into lodestones and to upgrade T5 trophies into T6 trophies. (always check prices and crafting costs)

6) Always check recipe and crafting prices for the Legendary and the bits you need via the wiki, gw2bltc.com and gw2efficiency.com They are all considered good reliable sources. Remember the crafting costs usually are looking at profitability from selling the thing u craft vs keeping to use in a gift or recipe. So some times you can soft of add 15% to the profit side if you aren't selling.

7) Remember the cost for the collections and crafting of a gen. 1 precursor is some times much more expensive vs just buying one off the TP. Its always best to compare, then decide which you want to do. The benefit of doing the collection is you can craft it more than once. ;)

All that said, yes its expensive to make legendary items. Its more of long term goal kind of thing.

However, It is very doable over time. I hope you or somebody else finds some of this helpful.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Rickz.6230 said:snip

Short answer:This game is 7+ years old. That is a very long time to gather materials and gold.

Long answer:It depends a lot on each individual. Some simply buy them off the Auction House. Some players farm excessively, some gather the required wealth over long periods of time. The first legendary is always the one that takes the longest. Mine took me around 1-1.5 years of occasionally working towards it. That was over 5-6 years ago. Today, I can craft a legendary each month if I so desire (without resorting to gem to gold conversion). That's the one thing GW2 does versus almost every other MMORPG, it allows players to accumulate wealth constantly without even devaluing their gear or items (what is a common occurrence in most other MMORPGs).

[KrHome.1920]

@Rickz.6230 said:I work full time, have a dog, a fiance, gotta work out a couple times a week.Then you should not waste your time with an MMO in general. Enjoy your life!

• MMOs are desinged to keep you playing. Never being done is part of the concept. And there is always someone who plays 24/7. Around these kind of people these games are designed. You can not keep up with them if your life is oranized like you described, so you should not even try. Most people reach a point in their life (usually after they finished university) where they stop playing these kind of games for exactly that reason.
• This game lives from the players buying gems. If you have a good job, then time is money and money is time and 10 dollars / euros for 800 gems (about 250g) is a no brainer since you can save about 25 to 50 hours of grinding gold. Better spend that time with your other hobbies and friends or even other games.

TL;DR: If you have a real life then buy (at least a part of) that legendary for gold and spend your valuable life time with more valuable things (you do even support the devs with it) and leave the grinding to the kids, students and unemployed people.

[Yasai.3549]

Sheer willpower and pacing yurself.

Most players don't finish their first Legendary in a snap.I myself finished my Legendary over the course of several months of gathering materials, spamming HoT meta daily, doing map completion.

For gold, I spammed Silverwastes and pre-nerf Istan.

For some, they simply buy them off the TP and call it a day.

[Vayne.8563]

Legendaries are made to be a long term goal. That said, I've made 28 legendary weapons, 2 legendary backpieces and 2 legendary trinkets.

If you think how are people making something that takes a long time quickly thats' a different question than people that chip away at it for a long time.

It took me a year to make my first legendary.

[Cristalyan.5728]

@"Rickz.6230" said:So I never looked into it in advance before I started Frostfang (my mistake), but eventually managed to craft the precursor. It took a long time, and it literally cost every last gold I had (around 250g) even after I used whatever resources I'd been hoarding.Looking up what is left to do, I am having a very difficult time envisioning myself finishing it. Roughly 600g worth of materials, including 3 full stacks of t6 mats (blood, venom, totem), 100 glacial lodestones and 100 corrupted lodestones (each of those go for ~90g on the TP). Not even mentioning the clovers. The stacks of metal ingots I can imagine, but the time needed to grind for these materials or the gold to buy them seems ludicrous.I work full time, have a dog, a fiance, gotta work out a couple times a week. Is this game built around people who have a plethora of free time to grind and grind and grind? Or is it the game's subtle attempt at getting me to swipe my credit card for gold?Not trying to poke fun at anyone. In fact, I would welcome some kind of sound strategy to amassing the 600+ gold id need to finish Frostfang (because I imagine grinding for the mats themselves is a waste of life). But at the same time, I'm baffled at the sheer amount of grinding that would lay before me if I choose to press on.

Forget about amassing the gold to buy the materials. This is the grinding causing the players to feel that a legendary is not worthing the effort. If your schedule is as you wrote, then:

1. First thing - set the time for completing the legendary to 1 year (Frostfang is a nice weapon, I don't thing you made a mistake).

2. Login every day. That means 1 minute of GW2.

   • If you select the Legendary materials from the Loyalty chest at the end of the month, you will have all the Mystic Clovers needed.
   • On top of that you will have a stack of Mystic Coins (you can sell for gold).

3. If you have HoT, you can visit the Pact Supply network agent. Six every day = 10 minutes? In one year you can have 2k tokens. Turn the tokens into map rewards - in one year you can solve the T6 materials problem - with karma cost - you need around 33k karma per day.

4. Do the dailies - use point 3 - you travel to all the provinces - gathering/vistas - you can easy do this by visiting the Pact Agent. Another 10 minutes = 2 Gold. In one year this makes over 700 gold. Deducing the traveling cost - you can have around 600 netto.

   • In this way, by playing 20 minutes per day you can have almost all you need. Except GoB and GoF.

5. Gift of Battle - you can go in WwW - for 8 hours (without any buff/less time with boosts) - you can split this time over 2-3-4 sessions. Or you can add another 10 minutes to your daily play time to do the easy daily missions for WvW (big spender/kill a veteran/ kill sentries/take a camp). You need 80 "bottles" of WvW reward track XP to complete the GoB.

   • if you do the daily, then, for few months (2 months I estimate) add another 10 minutes to your daily play time = 30 min.

6. For Gift of Exploration - no easy or alternate way. You must explore the maps. So, if you must, then use the opportunity (you have 1 year time, remember?) to gather every resource you find in that map. The iron sells well. Also the platinum. The wood is valuable. You can use the metal and the wood for the Gift of Frostfang. Map completion is not a daily activity - you can dilute it over the entire 1 year.

Conclusion - you don't need (too much) gold. You need patience. You can complete the Frostfang in one year playing 30 minutes per day. With some sessions of extra time for map discovery.

[Comus.7365]

@"Cristalyan.5728" said:"Conclusion - you don't need (too much) gold. You need patience. You can complete the Frostfang in one year playing 30 minutes per day. With some sessions of extra time for map discovery. "

a 1 year commitment to a game.. hmm

i just started looking into crafting and leveled weaponsmithing up to 500 since i noticed i had unlocked some nice ascended recipes. when i was done leveling that i sat at less than 10 gold. looked up what the expected cost would be for 1 of those weapons (2.5k gold) and instantly lost interest.

[Cristalyan.5728]

@"Comus.7365" said:

a 1 year commitment to a game.. hmm

i just started looking into crafting and leveled weaponsmithing up to 500 since i noticed i had unlocked some nice ascended recipes. when i was done leveling that i sat at less than 10 gold. looked up what the expected cost would be for 1 of those weapons (2.5k gold) and instantly lost interest.

If you are a player testing GW2 to find if it is or not on your liking, then, during this test period you should not think to a legendary, unless you have a lot of RL money to spend on gems.

My advice was for a person who wants to play GW2 on a longer period of time but having a busy RL program and barely having some spare time to be online (I estimated at 30 minutes this time). For this kind of players I tried to explain that you still can craft a legendary, even with this schedule. I don't think that 30 min/day means "commitment". It is a way to relax (or to spend some time) - like watching TV.

[Danikat.8537]

@Comus.7365 said:@"Cristalyan.5728" said:"Conclusion - you don't need (too much) gold. You need patience. You can complete the Frostfang in one year playing 30 minutes per day. With some sessions of extra time for map discovery. "

a 1 year commitment to a game.. hmm

i just started looking into crafting and leveled weaponsmithing up to 500 since i noticed i had unlocked some nice ascended recipes. when i was done leveling that i sat at less than 10 gold. looked up what the expected cost would be for 1 of those weapons (2.5k gold) and instantly lost interest.

MMOs are designed to be played long-term, for thousands of hours over several years. Some of us have been playing GW2 for over 7 years now and it's still a relative new comer compared to some games. Of course that won't appeal to everyone, but there's plenty of other games out there with shorter lifespans, or you can play an MMO and accept that there are some long-term goals which won't be practical to achieve, and that you'll miss whatever is released after you stop playing.

[Comus.7365]

@Danikat.8537 said:

@Comus.7365 said:@"Cristalyan.5728" said:"Conclusion - you don't need (too much) gold. You need patience. You can complete the Frostfang in one year playing 30 minutes per day. With some sessions of extra time for map discovery. "

a 1 year commitment to a game.. hmm

i just started looking into crafting and leveled weaponsmithing up to 500 since i noticed i had unlocked some nice ascended recipes. when i was done leveling that i sat at less than 10 gold. looked up what the expected cost would be for 1 of those weapons (2.5k gold) and instantly lost interest.

MMOs are designed to be played long-term, for thousands of hours over several years. Some of us have been playing GW2 for over 7 years now and it's still a relative new comer compared to some games. Of course that won't appeal to everyone, but there's plenty of other games out there with shorter lifespans, or you can play an MMO and accept that there are some long-term goals which won't be practical to achieve, and that you'll miss whatever is released after you stop playing.

eh i feel this approach is just overkill. it's like play the game for years and you'll be able to get the thing you wanted passively(which by then you'll probably don't even want anymore) or shell out a lot of money to get it now.

but whatever.. i'll just stick to exotics.