Legendary weapon owners: share your stories and insights

[Ashantara.8731]

@Nemezijus.6851 said:Which weapon(s) did you craft?

Nevermore, Howler, Bolt, The Flameseeker Prophecies, Frenzy.

How long did it take to reach your goal?

A couple of weeks (or a few months) per weapon.

Any advise to people just starting their legendary journey?

Yes: Check out the weapon's sounds and effects on YouTube before deciding to take on a specific journey. Because some have annoying sound effects (Bolt, The Dreamer) or underwhelming footsteps etc. (like Howler) and turn out to not be worth the effort.

[Eudoxia.6408]

Firstly I’d like to start off saying that I am not a vet and have not even had my first birthday reward from anet yet; so relatively newish. I was very confused about how to craft a legendary weapon with the seemingly many steps involved and the countless variety of different materials required. However, after crafting my first and contrary to popular belief, it is not as daunting as it might seem and it certainly does not require as much planning as you might expect.

My account was 230days old when I crafted my first legendary weapon: Sunrise. Bearing in mind that like any new player, I had something like 5 gold to my name and 0 mats in the warehouse when I first started guild wars 2.

I had always wanted to own Sunrise but had never intentionally planned or saved up for it. I was having too much fun exploring and playing the game as all new players would. This consisted of mostly PvE content: PoF, HoT and Tyria in that order. My point here is that as you play the game, you inadvertently collect materials and the required currencies required to craft a legendary without even knowing.

I would recommend doing the dailies because not only does it reward you with 2 gold (which was my purpose for doing them) but some days that meant I had to do a dungeon run which gave me dungeon currencies that I didn’t know I needed.

So, you’ve decided that you want to begin your journey to owning a legendary weapon:

The first stepThe beauty of crafting generation 1 legendary weapons is that you have the option of doing the collection OR purchasing the precursor from the trading post/market place. I started the collection for ‘Sunrise I: The experimental daysword’ which was relatively easy to finish, but stopped short of crafting the actual weapon because I picked up the precursor for the legendary longbow Kudzu. I traded it up for the precursor for the legendary great sword Sunrise, and due to the popularity of great swords meant that I had to top up 150gold.

My magic find when I found the precursor was 170% (factored in guild buffs and banners) so fret not if your magic find is not 900% or whatever.

CostSo wiki.guildwars2 and gw2efficiency were my two main reference guides. The later shows you the crafting steps required but personally I prefer the wiki because it has an overview of the materials needed. If you look at the breakdown, the only actual gold required was for Icy Runestones and 2 recipes which came up to 120 gold. That was it. I believe this is the standard cost for all the other gen 1 weapons (I did not click through all of them but they shouldn’t vary much anyway).

If you login every day, you would have a few ‘Chests of Loyalty’ lying around, these give 7 Mystic clovers per chest. I had 7 of them which gave me 49 clovers, the remaining 28 I made in the mystic forge for no additional gold (more than sufficient mystic coins from log in rewards, ecto from salvaging rare items, obsidian shards bought with karma and spirit shards earned after completing all masteries in the region in which you are gaining experience). Personally I have maxed out PoF, HoT and Tyria masteries, 274 at time of writing from playing PvE content and it would help if you’ve maxed out at least 1 of the above regions for the spirit shards. PoF easiest IMO.

I did however spend another 100gold on trophy shipments in LWS4 maps to top up the remaining Tier 6 materials that I was short off.

I spent 370 gold in total.

The only actual ‘work’ required‘Gift of exploration’ which requires world completion. I boosted my toon to level 80 when I bought PoF and only had 45% of the world unlocked. Still it took me all of 3 days to finish the remaining 55% (hearts took the longest) but on hindsight I enjoyed exploring more of Tyria that I otherwise would not have.

‘Gift of battle’ requires completing a WvW reward track. You can follow a commander around in a zerg, it took me 2 days to complete said reward track. Incidentally the gift of battle reward track also awards mystic clovers.

ConclusionI hope I’ve helped clarify some of the more iffy items/tasks required. The remaining materials that I did not cover, T4s and T5s I had enough of and I would suspect they are not too difficult to get as you go about doing what you love in the game. I hardly did any farming at all as you can see.

Subsequent crafting will be much easier once you are familiar with the process. However, this may also require targeted farming for specific materials.

All the best and have fun! :)

[Ayrilana.1396]

@Nemezijus.6851 said:I just started my long path towards getting The Dreamer. The path which will take me many months to complete. I was wondering whether the owners of legendary weapons could share their advises in this crafting :)

Which weapon(s) did you craft?

All

How long did it take to reach your goal?

About a year when I first started the crafting process.

What were the biggest pitfalls on your way to legendary weapon?

Karma and spirit shards since I used to sell the weapons so I was low and I don’t play much.

Any advise to people just starting their legendary journey?

Take your time and don’t stress out about it. Also try to do the steps in an efficient order such as forging for mystic clovers before getting the T6 fine mats.

[DeanBB.4268]

I have a second success story. I upgraded a revenant to a renegade, then someone on the forums mentioned that the precursor for Dreamer was cheap. And it was! So I bought it and the Pre for Quip, since it was cheap, too, and I use pistols. I'm a certified hoarder, so other than Clovers, had most everything I needed to craft Dreamer. I love the visual effects -- and normally play with no sound. :)

But that was the end of my Gifts, so my to-do-list now includes WvW for Battle and finishing World for Exploration. I'll start picking Legendary Materials for my end of the month login reward. By the time I get the gifts, I'll be ready to craft Quip.

[Dante.1763]

Ive crafted in order:The Minstrel, The Dreamer, The Incenerator, The Shining blade and the Flame Seeker Prophecies.

It took me one year to make the minstrel due to having to buy the precursor for it, and at the time over 100 gold was an insane amount of money for me to have to do so, after that..usually six-eight months.

biggest pitfalls included the amount of materials at a time when i was still leveling my crafting professions, and the gold farming to obtain the massive amount of gold i actually needed to obtain it.

Some tips i got from my guild that i still use when making the legendaries im working on now which include Bolt, Kudzu and Astaralia.

Take your time crafting it, dont burn out farming for mats itll make you resent the legendary afterwards, make sure you actually want the legendary, its a long involved process and if you decide you dont want it after investing a bunch of time and its a generation 2 legendary you cant sell it like you can the generation 1 legendaries. Make sure when you are buying materials if you are buying materials you buy the correct materials.

[starlinvf.1358]

The best advise I can give is "never start a crafting project until you have nearly everything you need from the beginning". I say this, because Time gated items create a LOT of problems with items you need to store when they cause a project to stall. This is less of a problem in Gen 2.5, but Gen 1 and Gen 2, theres a lot of hidden costs that GW2eff, and other crafting guides can't account for due to crafting steps that involve non-valued items. Older ones also involve a lot of "token" bought items on maps that only active in certain time zones, or the weekend. Knowing about these in advance, or having a stock pile ready, avoids potentially jarring stoppages. For Gen 2.5 (Shard based crafting), ALWAYS take advantage of luls in the economy to make Mystic Curios. Their production cost triples in the month following a popular legendary, and you can't efficiently farm enough T5 mats due to the sheer amount required for the whole process (curio plus gifts).

However..... with Halloween coming up, bone prices are going to tank with Mad Lab farming, so that does offer opportunity to get some Curios done.

[MauChann.3081]

I started my journey about 4 years ago with crafting Sunrise, I mained a warrior/berserker at the time and her aesthetic fit very well.I got most of the money gifted though, and it took me about a full year to complete it.After that I completely lost it and got addicted to making legendaries.2nd up was Meteorlogicus. Took me 3 months of dedicated gold farming, as the precursor was rather cheap at the time.Then HoT came and I was very happy with the collection system so I no longer needed to farm gold for precursors.Boy was I wrong..Astralaria took me 5 months to complete, mostly because of the timegated ascended materials, and I tend to craft more instead of buy, and that was the best decision and my best advice on crafting Astralaria, HOPE, Chuka & Champawat and Nevermore. You will need SO much money to buy mystic coins, save up for those and try to craft everything else yourself.

Then Chuka and Champawat came out, I loved the mini tiger backpack thingy you'd get so my first intentions were to only make the precursor. Then I fell in love with the story of the bow and crafted the legendary. ( Seriously I recommend doing this collection, its SO adorable )

My 5th legendary was The Moot. It was 2 months before New Years eve and I completed the legendary as soon the clock hit 12.6th was Shooshadoo. I wanted a legendary shield and I didn't try crafting a newer tier legendary with mystic curios before and I wanted to try it.And though it didn't take me long to complete it. I never will make one of those again simply because of how tedious and repetitive it is. It's no fun content and more of an actual grind.7th was Aurora. Absolutely recommend making that one. Though you need a lot of karma for it, PoF came out around that time and it gave me a boost to complete that one.8th was Incinerator. I always loved how the daggers looked on other characters around me and I really wanted my own mini lightsaber.

9th is going to be Bifrost, I'm halfway there now and I learned one lesson while making all of these legendaries.It's no contest on how many you have, or how fast you do it. These weapons ( and amulet ) are meant to be an achievement, you do need to work to get it. It's amazing if you get it done, walk over to the mystic forge and put it all in and then swoosh around your shiny weapon for a bit. Take your time, there's no timelimit on legendary crafting.

[moonboi.1764]

I’m slowly getting the urge to have Bolt.