Very, VERY new and have all sorts of questions...

[Cyninja.2954]

@BlueJin.4127 said:Woohoo~

3 days ago, I had around 60g. Since I shelved crafting for now, I decided to sell some of my excessive crafting materials that are easily farmed for around 40g (several stacks of iron among them). I also got a BL Claim ticket and used it on an Equinox weapon which, to my surprise, sold for around 70g. Now I’m only about 75g away from my griffon. :smiley:

I may get the griffon MUCH sooner than I expected, thanks to the Equinox weapon.

Go for it, small steps will get you to your goal.

Do make sure to check out T1 and T2 fractals. If you do find the content enjoying you are looking at tons of hours of instanced fun with very decent rewards at Tier 4.

[BlueJin.4127]

Yeah, my friend takes me along for some fractals every once in a while. I don't really like dungeons partially because I can't play for long without pain, and partially because I get bored doing nothing but fighting for a long time. But with how short fractals are, I'm finding them very fun. ^^ While I'm more of a world player, I do enjoy variety so I may get more into fractals later.

[Evil.1580]

Just go to Istan and follow the squad. You will get 15-20g per hour by collecting and selling your volatile magic and saving your collected unidentified gear to open them in Silverwastes for bonus magic find (which you get by doing some of the events there + the meta). If you play 3-4 hours a day, you will have the gold for a full set of asc gear in less than a week. Basically, you buy trophies with volatile magic and selling their mats + the mats from the gear.

[starlinvf.1358]

Something thats alluded to, but not really explained well so far, is that the game is pretty flat in terms of "progression paths". A lot of Content is compartmentalized to feed back on itself, but over time the mode specific equipment started being added as rewards to other game modes as a way to lower the barrier for entry into other content blocks. The result of all of this is that in today's setup, you only need to focus getting into one section of the game initially, and from there it reduces the cost of breaking into other areas of the game by a significant amount. People also tend to overlook WvW rewards (or actively complain about its existence), as it effectively lives in parallel with PvE gearing requirements and rewards, but itself being a large scale PvP mode.

Now regardless of WHAT you want do to in the game, there will ALWAYS be some minor element of grinding or wealth acquisition required for any particular goal...... however, the game is also designed to get you up to viability very quickly, and even assists you in hitting max level with multiple side rewards via daily achievements, regional achievements, global achievements, and achievement rewards. It also offers multiple alternate avenues for obtaining items which have practical value, aside from a hand full of high-end mode exclude rewards or collections.

The reason this all looks really complicated when explained, is because of the fairly large number of paths available toward most rewards, and how they overlap in several places. Navigating this is largely about finding paths with differing vectors of efficiency, and figuring out which ones you are able to best take advantage of based on differing requirements. The more flexible you are in activities, the greater the number of options are your disposal. The more narrow you are (ie: refused to do PvP, or crafting, or gold farming) the more gating mechanisms you have to deal with in your path.

Using Ascended gear as an example, its largely unnecessary from an overall stand point. However, ascended trinkets are easier and a LOT cheaper to obtain and offer a significant increase in stats, as well as some hybrid combos, then the majority of Exotic versions. When dealing with HOT and POF exclusive stats, there is almost no practical reason to ever use exotic trinkets, and no reason to make/use Exotic armor unless you get the armor for free. Whats evolved from this is the "common knowledge" that any performance build should, ideally, have Ascended Trinkets (which cost little to no gold), and only invest in Ascended Armor (which costs 300g per set) if you need the infusion slots, or is a stat combination with a high minimum cost for Jewel materials (ie Vipers, Harriers, Minstrels). But thats not a hard and fast rule. Since if you don't need the infusion slots for fractals, or the other benefits associated with T7 (Asc) gear, you could substitute exotic armor pieces as a viable alternative if you can obtain the armor cheaply or at no cost (WvW armor, reward tracks, Living Story or Expansion collections, choosy armor boxes, etc). If you organize all this information, you can determine which options offer the best "return on investment", and later expand that investment as requirements increase. (IE later obtaining an Ascended armor set to do higher level fractals or Speed clearing Raid wings)

In overall terms of ROI, Crafting is by far the most reliable method of obtaining armor and weapons, but is often the most costly in terms of gold/material. The level of increased cost varies heavily with the items in question. Like how the difference between a normal crafted Ascended armor set, and the Fractal/PvP/WvW Vendor set is around 10-15% (the latter being the cheaper); but that cost offset comes from spending Tokens which cost time/effort to obtain and is based on an alternative recipe. So basically you're trading several hours of your time for a minor gold discount.

Plus theres also the fact that managing materials for crafting becomes a game in itself. You need to know where to find sources for materials, ROI for effort/time, when to use the TP or when to farm, what materials are good for liquidating to extra gold, how much and of what types of materials to stock pile, planning ahead or crafting time gated materials before they're needed, what state certain materials are either most useful or most valuable as, when to process excess materials, or when to sell them, identifying reoccurring trends in prices to take advantage for either buying or selling, or when its simply better to use a non-crafting alternative.

There is a HUGE amount of information to take in, given how the game has seen accretion over time. But taking things one step at a time, and learning to spot opportunities based on relevance, makes everything easier to digest and plan as you gain more experience with it. The first time trying something is going to be hard and inefficient, because you won't know all the short cuts, tricks and statistics to make a process hyper efficient. However, what does help is that the inefficient methods tend to be very reliable. So no matter how bad you're doing, you're always making progress to your current goal.... its just really slow in comparison.

If you've ever played Factorio or Minecraft, the concept of scale of economics is very similar to how this game handles its reward system. You can build a functional solution to a problem with basic knowledge and some minimal amount of resources. But as you understand more about how the system works, and how it interacts with other elements, you make tweaks to improve efficiency and logistical complexity; until you reach a point where you can tackle a bigger problem in less time, by taking advantage of stock piled supplies, wealth conversion, prepossessing difficult materials, material dumps (ie festivals), and avoiding a investment lock if at all possible. An investment lock is situation where you start something, but can't back out nor recover what you spent...... most collections are like this, as are certain crafting projects and intermediate material types. Once you've sunk something into starting, it can't pay out until you've completed the entire process.... so changing your mind mid-way is basically starting over, unless you plan to come back to it later.

Again- Its not hard, its just a lot of information to take in.

[alchemist.6851]

@VanWilder.6923 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@VanWilder.6923 said:

@"BlueJin.4127" said:Wow, the OP seems to be in a similar situation as me. I, too, started about 2 months ago. I started armorcrafting to get some armors, but decided to shelve it for now to prioritize getting the griffon, since it costs 250g. My advice is to hold off on crafting for now. Getting the griffon doesn’t require exceptional gears. Plus, crafting uses up gold that you may want to use for the griffon. I’m currently using the guide from dulfy that tells you how to get the griffon. I don’t remember the page name, but googling should work. As for getting gold, I do dailies and sell excess crafting materials that I won’t need for a while. I’m still far away from 250g, though.

So you think invest 250g to the Griffon which will never pay back for itself over crafting to join high earning income contents which can pay back the investment in few months is the should go to? So after the 250g for the griffon, down to the drain, now you are working on levelling crafting discipline, gearing up and start fractals. Griffon does not work on Fractals, Raid, WvW and PvP, probably gears do. Griffon is nice, I got it too. But for newbie, every single gold is important, Other mounts do the jobs as good as Griffon, the transportations.

Sum up, Griffon does not help to earn golds. Crafting and probably gears help to ear way more gold.

No, I'm saying that playing the game and getting movement abilities like the griffon enhances the experience far more than wasting weeks on getting ascended gear which is completely useless to the person at this point in time (and as mentioned, armor is useless in almost all other pve on top of that).

You never have to level a crafting discipline ever if you do not want to. You certainly don't need crafting for ascended gear. Crafting ascended gear is THE MOST EXPENSIVE LEAST EFFICIENT way to acquire this gear.

Spvp does not need gear at all, so the griffon there not being usable is moot. WvW ascended armor is negligible at best and a detriment at worst (since it forces you to stick to this gear and stats making you less flexible). The ideal WvW setup for a new player is exotic gear (especially on armor) until you are ready to get multiple ascended sets (with a very good grasp on which stats you want).

TCs goal is to get the griffon mount. Telling him to gear up so he can play content (which is way over his level) like tier 4 fractals to make gold is insane. It's not bad advice, it's terrible advice which might even make people quit the game.

If TC started playing fractals right now and naturally progressed through them, by the time he reached T4 (and hopefully gained the skills to succeed at that difficulty) he would have made enough gold in stabilizing matrixes alone. Besides any possible lucky chest drops from fractal daily chests from T3.

Oh ok. I am sorry for giving a terrible advice. I am only 10 months old to this Gw2 who proritized levelling crafting to get ascended gears and join high tier Fractal before the Griffon. I did all the collection for Griffon but left out the payment till very later because imo, all other mounts are doing perfect jobs, keep me up with the meta trains, I had never missed my tags.

10 moths old, I got myself legendary Kudzu, 6 alts, 3 of them fully ascended gears (1 of this 3 has another ascended gear set for running WvW), 1 is half way, 15x +9 mighty infusion, stack of 50 x 9 ARs after I sent 18x +9 ARs to my friend, 800 plus gold in my wallet, 100+ each ascended mats which are time-gated, working on last stage of "Ad Infitinum" also working on my first WvW legendary armors set. Only playing 2-3 hours weekdays, 8-10 hours weekends. I mostly do Fractal dailies and normal Open world PvE dailies. Got all the crafting disciples to max but not Scribe though. I took a moth break because of work though. But still count as 10 months.

I got enough in-game gold to buy Living World Season 2 and 3 after doing fractals for few months. Never spent a single real penny to the game, of course except orignal purchase.

Yup, terrible advice was given by me to the OP. Because I may make people quit the game. I appologise. I should stop giving advice on this specific matter for good.

You’re insane. How much time do you spend each day on gw2 on average?

[BlueJin.4127]

I got my griffon. ^^

[Linken.6345]

@BlueJin.4127 said:I got my griffon. ^^

congrats

[LykelRae.4627]

@BlueJin.4127 said:The OP is saying he, firstly, wants the griffon. And he’s turning to crafting to make gold for the griffon. I’m saying since you need to invest to make money with crafting, it may be better to just use that gold for the griffon instead. People don’t get the griffon to make money. And some players don’t care about fractals, wvw, raids, etc. Getting griffon is my highest priority since I like playing open world contents. I, too, started about 2 months ago. I, too, want griffon, first of all. I, too, had about 60g when I started going for the griffon 2 days ago. And since the OP sounds like me, I’m saying he may be better off skipping crafting for now, like me. I'm simply stating my suggestion so that the OP can read different methods and decide for himself what the best method is for him.

Yay, commiseration! Good to hear that you're doing alright. I, too, decided to put crafting onto the back burner for now.

Also, side note (and not a big deal): I am a girl XD. I've noticed over the 15 years of using this name that people assume masculine, so I'm used to it, haha!

[LykelRae.4627]

@"starlinvf.1358" said:Something thats alluded to, but not really explained well so far, is that the game is pretty flat in terms of "progression paths". A lot of Content is compartmentalized to feed back on itself, but over time the mode specific equipment started being added as rewards to other game modes as a way to lower the barrier for entry into other content blocks. The result of all of this is that in today's setup, you only need to focus getting into one section of the game initially, and from there it reduces the cost of breaking into other areas of the game by a significant amount. People also tend to overlook WvW rewards (or actively complain about its existence), as it effectively lives in parallel with PvE gearing requirements and rewards, but itself being a large scale PvP mode.

Now regardless of WHAT you want do to in the game, there will ALWAYS be some minor element of grinding or wealth acquisition required for any particular goal...... however, the game is also designed to get you up to viability very quickly, and even assists you in hitting max level with multiple side rewards via daily achievements, regional achievements, global achievements, and achievement rewards. It also offers multiple alternate avenues for obtaining items which have practical value, aside from a hand full of high-end mode exclude rewards or collections.

The reason this all looks really complicated when explained, is because of the fairly large number of paths available toward most rewards, and how they overlap in several places. Navigating this is largely about finding paths with differing vectors of efficiency, and figuring out which ones you are able to best take advantage of based on differing requirements. The more flexible you are in activities, the greater the number of options are your disposal. The more narrow you are (ie: refused to do PvP, or crafting, or gold farming) the more gating mechanisms you have to deal with in your path.

Again- Its not hard, its just a lot of information to take in.

This was very well explained, thank you! Based on what you and others have posted, I think it's in my best interest to nix Ascended armor. (I'm in the habit of when I want something, I want the best, ha!)

[LykelRae.4627]

@BlueJin.4127 said:I got my griffon. ^^

Congratulations!

[SirDaVamp.6901]

Lykel, I've started 2 months ago too, got my griffon and almost full ascend gear. How ?

I was doing main quest to progress the story, and farm events along the way. I did do fractals daily (thankfully RNG was on my side) and full armor set dropped from fractals. If you farm events all over the map, materials will stack up pretty fast and capping your crafting level becomes easier. Gold will start running in through fractals and events. Everything will contribute to everything :D. Eventually the gold for the griffon will be there.

[LykelRae.4627]

@SirDaVamp.6901 said:Lykel, I've started 2 months ago too, got my griffon and almost full ascend gear. How ?

I was doing main quest to progress the story, and farm events along the way. I did do fractals daily (thankfully RNG was on my side) and full armor set dropped from fractals. If you farm events all over the map, materials will stack up pretty fast and capping your crafting level becomes easier. Gold will start running in through fractals and events. Everything will contribute to everything :D. Eventually the gold for the griffon will be there.

Right now I'm pretty much event farming, map completion, etc etc for the gold. I tried to join a boss train but the lead ported without saying where he was going next so... yeah. XD I just need to not be pulled in so many different directions and enjoy the game, I suppose.

[Evil.1580]

Join world bosses. They are very interesting for new players, and some veterans also :)You can track them here:https://gw2timer.com/?page=Chains

[slydde.2485]

hello guys,plss i just need some that can guide me. there are really lot of confusing things there. since this is my first mmorpg. my discord tag is #4903. thanks ****

[ShadowDove.8329]

@slydde.2485 Can't see your discord tag. Add me sapphyrelily#3918. I'd be happy to explain things to you :)