Category: Games

(Written and posted Dec. 5 2022 for the Guild Wars Casuals Facebook Group)

There have been a few posts of late on various daily crafting routines, and I wanted to take a moment to explain some things that are easy to miss when you get into what I’m going to call the “mid-game.”

The Mid-game is that place where you’ve hit level 80, maybe made your way through some expansion content, and you’re wondering on how to get started on some harder stuff. Things like ascended armor and weapons, ascended trinkets, and getting a skyscale. I know that when I started looking into ascended gear I was really confused about where things came from and how to get them. Then when I figured those things out I was a little frustrated to find that I could have saved a lot of time by pre-crafting things even before I knew what I was going to need them for, or even if I was going to need them at all.

If you’ve just hit level 80 and you’re wondering what you should do now to make your experience moving into ascended, and legendary gear easier this information may help. This is not everything you’ll need to figure out, and I haven’t even mentioned Legendary armor, but it will get you started off on the right foot and save you a huge amount of time and gold.

1) Embrace All the Crafting

You are never going to go wrong maxing out crafting skills. If you buy the Additional Crafting License (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Additional_Crafting_License) you can have four crafting professions on each character. Personally I think that’s a great way to go because it cuts down on the number of times you have to bounce between characters.

Of special note is Chef, specifically Master Chef which gives you access to three garden plots in your home instance and a number of plants that can only be grown in those plots. But by far the best reason to become a Master Chef is the cooking station in your home instance that gives you access to your bank. Personally I find that so valuable that I have ranked three different characters to 500 in cooking.

2) Get Serious About Your Home Instance
Your home instance (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Home_instance) is much more useful than it might seem early on. A lot of things in a “full” home instance are only available through the Gem Store, but there are a good number of Vender Upgrades that you can buy for Unstable Magic or Volatile Magic, along with map or festival currency and some gold. There are also useful items that you can get as rewards for completing various achievements.

It’s the Vender Upgrades that are worth your time here, particularly the ones that reward map currency. As an example, for the Skyscale you’ll need the following map currencies:

250 Kralkatite Ore
250 Difluorite Crystals
250 Inscribed Shards
250 Lumps of Mistonium
250 Branded Mass
250 Mistborn Motes

This is a step that a lot of people hang up on, and to get the map currency they need they find themselves working on the various “Return To” achievements. Those achievements are worth doing on their own, but wouldn’t it be easier if that map currency was just sitting there in your bank?.

Another example are the ascended trinkets from Living World seasons 3 and 4. You can get Bloodstone, Winterberries, Petrified Wood and Jade shards, a few every day, from vender nodes in your home instance. Believe me when I tell you that it is well worth the time and investment.

One of the great quality of life upgrades that you can get for your home instance is the Krait Obelisk (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Krait_Obelisk_Shard_(item) which is an item that allows you to make a Charged Crystal Shard. Yes, you can make a Charged Crystal at any Hero Point with a Commune (The Earthen Magic HP in Shaemoor Garrison is a popular one) but it’s much more convenient to make one in your home instance as part of your daily routine.

3) Start Making Ascended Crafting Materials Now

The base materials for ascended and legendary gear are time gated to one craft of each type for every server reset. There are 4 of these, and will appear in your crafting station under the title “Ectoplasm Refinement.” https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Refinement#Ectoplasm_refinements

Even if you don’t think you’ll ever want or need ascended or legendary armor, weapons, or trinkets you should craft the base materials everyday, because though the results of these crafts are account bound, the actual items they make are not and can yield a respectable profit. But I encourage you not to sell them because at some point you’re going to want something for which they will be needed. As an example let’s say you wanted to craft the Legendary Precursor “Dawn.” There are 100 time gated, crafted items in that recipe, which means 1 Deldrimor Stell Ingot a day for 100 days.

And don’t forget to make that Charged Crystal Shard at the Krait Obelisk in your home instance.

4) Get On the Map Meta Train
There are many good reasons to participate in map metas. They can be quite profitable, they can reward you with lower lever gear that can be salvaged for Globs of Ectoplasm, and most importantly they can provide you with materials that you’ll need for ascended gear. The best example (to me at least) is Ley Line Sparks which are used to make Fulgurites  (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fulgurite), which are then used to make about a million other things. The fastest way to get Ley Line Sparks is from the Noxious Pods in Dragon Stands, but in order to open the pods you’ll need Machetes, which are rewarded for progress in the Dragon Stand Meta.

There are more map meta events than I can list here, and many of them provide important components for ascended and legendary crafting.

You know where else you can get Ley Line Sparks? From the Crystallized Supply Cache in your home instance (see what I did there?).

5) Park some Toons
And we’re back to Charged Crystal Shards, because you’re going to need 25 Quartz shards for every Charged shard you make. Where are you going to get those?

There are a number of Quartz shards nodes scattered around various maps, but the important ones are the Rich Quartz shard nodes. There are three of these that I know of, but only one is worth investing time in, and that is the one in Crystal Oasis located in Glint’s Legacy above the mine near the mastery point. The other two are either surrounded by mobs or only available after a map event.

The easiest way to get there is via Griffon. Port to Temple of Kormir waypoint [&BEAKAAA=] then find your way to the top of the cliffs on the south side of the temple. From there it’s an easy flight south east to the node. If you don’t have a griffon you can either use a spring to climb the walls around, or make a dash through the Fortunate Strike Mine.

You should try to park three toons at this Rich Quarts node, because each will be able to mine 10 quarts shards. You’ll use 25 each day to make a Charged Crystal Shard, and the remaining 5 will go into your materials bank and build up a reserve. If you’re feeling a little strapped for cash you can sell a stack every now and then for a few extra gold.

6) If You Have Time Grind Mats, If You Don’t, Grind Gold

It’s really easy (at least for me) to get caught up farming mats to the point where that’s all you do. On a normal day I run routes for Iron, Platinum, Flax and Mithril. I also farm three guild halls a day, I log three toons at the Rich Quartz shard, and farm my home instance. But it’s important to remember that I do that because I have time, time that you may not have.

7) Conclusion
If you have the gold it’s easy enough to just buy what you need, even up to and including Legendary Weapons. But there are some things that you can only get by putting in the time, and we’re talking about a lot of time. If you start working on your home instance, park a few tunes for quartz shards, and run a map meta or two a week I think you’ll find your efforts well rewarded when it comes time to embark on acquiring ascended armor, the skyscale mount, and legendary weapons.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.