Where to find dyes? How much is reasonable to pay?

[crispydonuts.4029]

Hi everyone!

I just started playing GW2. As a female, I’ve noticed there are a lack of good pink dyes that aren’t pricey on the trade post. Electro Pink is 21g, but I have no idea what the weight of currency is and if I can find it from a vendor cheaper or by completing events.

Could anyone give me some guidance on where to find dyes, and how much is a respectable amount to spend?

[JustTrogdor.7892]

You may or may not find this wiki article helpful:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dye#Acquisition

Dyes are obtained either from TP purchase, crafting unidentified, birthday gifts, mystic forging lower tier dyes for a chance of a better one, and the RNG gem store kits when available. In the case of RNG gem store dye kits you are most always better off buying the dyes you want from them from the TP instead of spending gems hoping for luck. As you are a new player the ones available from birthday gifts won't be an option for a few years as they are part of later birthday rewards. You will get a few dye options as level rewards as well but they are the cheap dyes.

As for what you should spend on the TP for dyes you want, you spend what you think they are worth to you. You can put in a buy order and wait for it to get filled or buy at the current sell price. For example the current buy order for Electro Pink Dye is 15 gold 23 silver 20 copper so you could put in a buy order for 15 gold 24 silver and see if someone sells it to you instead of paying the current sell price of 21 gold.

The trading post is player driven so the prices often reflect what players feel is a respectable amount to spend on the items listed there based on the current supply and demand.

[crispydonuts.4029]

Thank you for the advice! Super helpful. I’m glad to hear that the TP is reasonable.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Sometimes Guilds have extra Dyes in their Guild Storage for members. Or, some players are happy to share Dyes they don't want or need.There's also a thread in the Players Helping Players sub-forum where you can request an item (do be sure to read and understand the rules before posting a request).

Welcome to Tyria, and good luck.

[Skotlex.7580]

Also, your daily income should be at least 2 gold, from just doing the daily. If you aren't into crafting, then selling all your gathered materials (rather than storing them) also provide quite some income (lower tier materials are usually more expensive than level 80 ones because most players don't really spend in core Tyria).At first, and until you get higher level and more waypoints, you may not be able to complete some dailies in the PvE category, but the PvP and WvW ones are doable pretty much at any level (and you can mix, for example do one from PvE, two from WvW and get your 2 gold).

My suggestion is to sort by price and buy all the cheap dyes you like. As you advance the story you'll get some unidentified dyes, generally speaking it's better to sell them and buy back with the earnings the dyes you want.

[JustTrogdor.7892]

@crispydonuts.4029 said:Thank you for the advice! Super helpful. I’m glad to hear that the TP is reasonable.

Glad to help. I think you will find most here are very willing to help with questions. Also forgot to say welcome to GW2. Check your in game mail. I think you might find somepink you like. :)

[Khisanth.2948]

Simplest option is just buy them

You can buy all the fine dyes for just 1g 73s 47cAll the masterwork costs 14g 45s 47cThe 50 cheapest rare dyes is 9g 92s 20c

Make sure you preview the dye on the actual piece of gear you plan on dying before buying. Some items have materials with surprising results. Also make sure to click on the gear icon and then click on "Show Locked" so you can play around with all the dyes in game instead of just those you have unlocked. Once you find the dye you want you can right click on it and select "Find in Trading Post" and if the price turns out to be "unsatisfactory" you can use https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/tool/dye/search and https://kulinda.github.io/dyes/ to find similar dyes that might be cheaper.

[crispydonuts.4029]

Thank you everyone for your quick responses!! Already feeling very welcome in the community!

[Curunen.8729]

Keep an eye when exclusive dye kits become available on the gemstore as tp prices usually drop then so can pick up nice stuff for cheaper.

As others have said go from the dye panel - sort by colour if you're just looking for pink and preview how they look - then can right click find price on tp.Or can sort by set - so easier to focus on uncommon and ignore rare/exclusive until getting more gold.

I think a nice pale pink is Glint's Rebellion. I think there's a fair few cheaper pink/purple hues that look decent.

[Khisanth.2948]

@crispydonuts.4029 said:Thank you everyone for your quick responses!! Already feeling very welcome in the community!

crispy donuts ... ?

[crispydonuts.4029]

Hahah it’s my nickname from college... ya girl worked at a tanning salon to pay rent and thus Crispy (a play on my first name) stuck. Donuts got added to the end bc I have a healthy obsession with maple bars.

[Danikat.8537]

I just want to second the advice to preview dyes before buying, ideally on the item you want to dye, but at least on similar materials. Dyes affect cloth, leather and metal differently and some armour has it's own effects which will also change the way the dye looks. I definitely have my favourite dyes, but often find I need a slightly different one to get the right look on certain pieces.

Also, just because I haven't seen it mentioned yet, the Trading Post is game-wide. Everyone on all EU and NA servers can buy and sell from each other through it, and all listings for an item are grouped together and sorted by price (with the highest buy order and lowest sell order at the top) so what you see is always the current market rate.

Whether it's a reasonable price is up to you. A lot of items in GW2 are optional, dyes being one of them, so it comes down to how much you want it. There's been lots of times I've wanted an item, seen what it cost and decided I don't want it that much. And prices do fluctuate - items availability and popularity will change over time so prices will change too, and that can be quite hard to predict. But at least you don't have to worry that you're only being shown listings from people hoping to trick new players into paying far more than an item is worth.

[crispydonuts.4029]

Thank you. That’s really good to know about the trading post. This discussion has peaked my interest about the value of in-game currency. How much gold do players usually carry, what is a safe amount of gold to keep handy, and about how much should I save up by the time I hit level 80 to get a solid full weapon and armor set. Due to a few days of binge playing, I’m at level 55 and am approaching the level-up finish line...

[Khisanth.2948]

@crispydonuts.4029 said:Thank you. That’s really good to know about the trading post. This discussion has peaked my interest about the value of in-game currency. How much gold do players usually carry, what is a safe amount of gold to keep handy, and about how much should I save up by the time I hit level 80 to get a solid full weapon and armor set. Due to a few days of binge playing, I’m at level 55 and am approaching the level-up finish line...

Depends on what kind of character/build you want to play.

For a power DPS ...5-7g for the armor11-14g for the trinket1.5-4g for the weaponsRunes for armor can range from 0g (you can just use the ones that comes included in Zhed's(light), Nika's(medium), Devona's(heavy)) all the way up to 39g if you want to instant buy a set of Scholar runes.For the sigils it could be something as cheap as 4s all the way up to something like 9g. x2 if playing a class with weapon swap.

So that is a total of 17.5g to 82g depending on how you want to go about it.

For the low end it the purchases would be done using buy orders for the cheapest option while for the high end it is instant buying the most expensive option.

[Curunen.8729]

@crispydonuts.4029 said:Thank you. That’s really good to know about the trading post. This discussion has peaked my interest about the value of in-game currency. How much gold do players usually carry, what is a safe amount of gold to keep handy, and about how much should I save up by the time I hit level 80 to get a solid full weapon and armor set. Due to a few days of binge playing, I’m at level 55 and am approaching the level-up finish line...

That varies a lot player to player and depends what kind of content you're interested in.

First thing would be deciding on preferred gameplay - eg class, weapons etc - and from this depending on the type of content what kind of build you might want to go for (eg damage - power or condition, support and so on). Until then I'd just use whatever free gear you loot. Once you've got a better idea how you like to play at level 80, then can look into getting some exotics with the right stat combinations.

One easy way to test out new options for free with your class is jump into the pvp lobby and try different skills/stats/weapons against the training npcs/golems etc. Bear in mind some skill differences from pve but for the most part can get a good idea of how you prefer to play, before committing to expensive pve gear.

So I wouldn't worry too much about gold - keep it ticking in with dailies/log in rewards etc and don't spend frivolously. The only thing for sure is you can never have enough - whether saving for end game gear/legendaries, unique infusions, or wanting to convert to gems for the gemstore - there's always something else you may want to buy in the future.

[Irensaga.6935]

It's a good idea to keep an eye out for a reasonable price on at least one version of black dye (there's like over a dozen different shades of black), and one version of white dye.

Those are the two that can get the most expensive - aside from dyes that add shining or whatnot. But they are also really essential for getting a good color contrast scheme on your character. Black and white are such good contrasts and accents to a lot of outfits. If you can get at least one of each, you can put off buying the more expensive versions of both.

[Irensaga.6935]

I never manage to hold onto more than 200 gold at one time it seems. I went as high as 300-something once. But I tend to play "fashion-wars", so I'm always blowing my money on the trading post on new skins, or the racial armor and weapon vendors.

[Danikat.8537]

@"crispydonuts.4029" said:Thank you. That’s really good to know about the trading post. This discussion has peaked my interest about the value of in-game currency. How much gold do players usually carry, what is a safe amount of gold to keep handy, and about how much should I save up by the time I hit level 80 to get a solid full weapon and armor set. Due to a few days of binge playing, I’m at level 55 and am approaching the level-up finish line...

"How long is a piece of string?" "As long as it needs to be".

I know some people hate that analogy, but I think it's applicable here as I suspect there's as many answers to those questions as there are players. I know some people set themselves a minimum amount of gold to keep in case they unexpectedly want to make a big purchase, others aim to have as much gold as possible at any given time and others (me for example) only save up until they can afford the next thing they want and then spend it all. (On 2 or 3 occasions I've managed to get back down to having literally no money - not even 1 copper - in my wallet, although it wouldn't be entirely accurate to say I had no money at all, once it was because Trading Post selling fees took my last copper so I had the money from the sale waiting to be picked up and I've always got crafting materials or other currencies which could be converted to gold if I wanted to.)

I think one of the big factors in deciding what works best for you is whether you're likely to want anything from the gem store at short notice (when an item is discounted for example, or is on sale for just a few days) and whether you'll want to convert gold to gems to get it. The exchange rate tends to shoot up when popular items return or are discounted, meaning you either need to convert some gold to gems regularly so you've got it when you need it (in which case you'll likely have less gold on your account) or you'll need a lot of gold and a willingness to pay above average prices. Or you can buy gems with real money - the price for that always stays the same (although depending on where in the world you are there may be a currency conversion involved which can make the price different).

It also depends on what you like doing in-game - people who enjoy farming gold or materials (to sell) can generally afford to have less gold saved up because they can easily get more, although they may also be more used to having gold saved up and feel less comfortable about not having much.

Another thing to bear in mind is that a lot of gold in this game comes from selling crafting materials, so if you're not going to craft yourself, or once you've levelled up the crafts you want, those materials can act as a sort of 'savings account'. It's relatively rare that you'll need everything you can store (even without the storage expanders which increase the 250 item limit) so you can sell off excess crafting materials for additional gold should you need it. (Just check before you do which ones you do need - especially if you're doing a collection and especially if you're making a legendary weapon - those all need large amounts of some materials and it would really suck to find you've just sold the ones you need for the next step in the process.)

But for now my advice is not to worry too much about how much gold you should have - get a feel for the game first and then you'll be able to work out what's right for you.