Hi folks,
As some of you are leveling up to 80 and starting to look at end-game gear/exotics, you're probably seeing a fairly steep price uptick between your greens/yellows and the exotic gear...not to mention the runes and sigils to go on them, which frequently are more expensive than the gear itself! Over the past 1-2 weeks I've made a pretty good amount of gold by doing a few things, and nothing I'm doing is out of reach for an average player. Obviously your mileage may vary on these things, and some tips may appeal more than others, but all have been successfully employed.
- Take a look at the crafting lists at www.gw2spidy.com. This website is NOT the be-all-end-all for tracking the economy, but it is a solid guide as to looking at pricing trends and seeing where you can craft for profit. You don't even need to be at 400-level crafting to make coin, as a significant amount of coin comes off of making lvl 125-200 gear and jewels. If you work for a living, jump on at night before you go to bed, craft a few items and list them, and log back in the next morning to find a 20-40s profit. That's not a huge amount of profit, but that's also taking on low risk and putting in minimal effort (and the only way I know of to generate revenue while NOT playing the game).
- Take a look at fine crafting materials and other commodities on the spidy listed above. Some you may have stored up and want to sell. In particular, the 200-300 level fine crafting materials sell very well right now since many bots were banned recently and folks are starting to level out of those zones now. You might find some places where you can place a low buy order and then sell for a profit as well. Profit margins can be small per item, but if you're the kind of person that likes to play the market and you invest wisely, eventually you can get to a point where economies of scale really come into play.
- Complete the world map. You get some serious gold from all the hearts, dynamic events, etc. along the way, plus completing the high level zones grants you a fair amount of silver, 40 raw ori/ancient wood/gossamer scraps, and two exotics. Many times these exotic gears will come with a high-selling rune like a Rune of the Traveller that can be stripped and used by your character or sold for gold (which assumes, of course, that the gear itself is something you can't/won't use, which is frequently the case). Completing zones also yielded a fair number of Black Lion Chest Keys for me, which I then used to open chests at the opportune time (in this case, the Halloween event) and made gold by selling the sought-after items.
- Sell your Unidentified Dyes on the trading post. Don't open them!!! From my experience, there's only a 10% chane you will get a rare dye, which means there is only a 10% chance you will get your money's worth by opening the dye. If you want dyes, sell the dye instead, and then buy the dyes you don't have with the money you make. If you don't want dyes, that roughly 7s per dye you just made by selling it.
- Complete your personal story quests. This is something of a hit and miss proposition I suppose. The quests rewards themselves weren't usually stupendous, but many times I would end up killing heaps of mobs in the action and received a very favorable drop rate. Lots of fine crafting materials were gathered this way, as were the goody bags, etc.
- Get yourself a full set of Explorer/Magic Find (MF) gear. If you can afford the rare-quality gear, great; otherwise, go with the masterwork quips and work your way up to the yellows. Note that the MF% you get from the greens vs. yellows is the exact same...what the yellow gear gives you over the green is greater power and survivability, but no MF bump.
- Load up your gear with MF sigils and runes. For the weapon, I use Sigil of Luck which grants .6% MF for every mob I kill. This stacks up to 25 for a total of 15% MF. When slotted into an Explorer weapon, that brings your weapon alone to 18%MF, which is the highest single MF slot I've found so far. For runes, you can start with 5 Runes of the Pirate and 1 Rune of the Noble. These runes will add up to a total of 60% MF. Or, if you prefer and you have the coin, go with the more expensive Runes of the Traveler. Using six of these runes will cause you to sacrifice 10% MF, but you will gain 25% run speed. For my money, I haven't found a place where running 25% faster will make up the gold difference I paid for runes, nor the loss in MF. Ever. That's just my usage, though.
Note - Using two Sigils of Luck is, so far as I can discern, a waste. The only sigils that I've seen stack are the ones that say something like "chance on crit". If you have data showing otherwise, I'd love to see it so I can consider adjusting my tactics!
- Use MF-boosting foods. I use a mixture of Peach tarts (26%MF for 30min), Glazed Peach Tarts (26%MF for 45min), and Omnomberry Bars (30%MF and 40%gold find boost from monster kills). I haven't used the bars lately because the market for them and their raw materials has been ridiculous, but the peach tarts are well within reason to buy/make.
- Farm mobs and events in Cursed Shores. Hooooo boy, can cash be made here! After some practice and learning the events, spawn points, and successful tactics, I'm making 15-100 silver PER EVENT, and events run on average once every three minutes or so (and last 5-6 minutes). I'm sure there are plenty of places around to farm mobs and events, but I will only focus on what I've personally been successful with.
- Port to one of the two towns on the north or south sides of the Penitent Path.
- Find a group or start one, and try to have a group of five as often as possible. I have no ANet proof or statements confirming this, but my experience has shown that the drop rates I get are 2-3 times as high when I am grouped with 3-4 other people vs. running solo.
- Run to the first event you see that spawns at one of these towns, kick in the AOE, and kill everythign in sight. AOE attacks are vital here, as mobs spawn in large packs and will all die quickly because of many folks attacking them.
- Once the event is done, sell your loot as quickly as you can, then run to the other side of the tunnel and wait for the next event. I typically deconstruct all the whites for mats, sell the blue and greens, and decon the yellows for Globs.
- While waiting for the next event, don't just wait! Kill mobs around the area. Many times these mobs will come to the "doors" of the encampments so you don't need to go anywhere. Just kill what comes to you.
- Wash, rince, repeat.
These events and mobs tend to grant rare armors and weapons pretty readily, and most of them are Traveler's Gear of the Crap which is ANet's way of saying, "Hey, consider breaking these pieces of equipment down for Globs." On average, I get around .6-07 rare equips per event. There are 5 events that spawn around these two encampments - two defenses and three patrols (which are quick ones), plus one additional defence at Jofast's camp/waypoint a little southwest of the southern Penitent Path town. There are so many events that spawn that I frequently find myself chaining events. Bag space becomes vital!
As you do these events, try to remember these things...
- Make sure your MF food is active!
- When the packs of mobs spawn, they will frequently be invulnerable for a certain time or until they cross a certain boundary. Learn these times and boundaries, and time/place your AOE accordingly.
- Learn the general patterns of where the packs spawn and when. Frequently there are 4+ spawn points, and sometimes only two of them can be effectively and efficiently farmed at a time.
That's about it for now! If you have other spots or techniques that have been profitable for you, let us know! Have fun...
