Guild Wars 2 Making Money Guide

Guild Wars 2 Making Money Guide by Wicklow

As some of you may have noticed that amount of gold you receive in Guild Wars 2 is much less than other MMOs.  I have thought about ways to preserve the gold you get and decided to share what I’ve come up, with you.

1. Be aware of the loot you get.  This is rule number one because it defines the way the rest of the choices are determined.  Do not simply mindless move your mouse through your bags clicking on whatever highlights blue for salvage.  I know the deposit all materials function is tons of fun, and I used to do this, but I 100% guarantee, you are losing a huge amount of gold.

2. Have a basic understanding and ability to determine what a trading post worthy piece of gear is.  For example it’s probably not worth it to put a blue piece of light armor with +healing and + crit damage on the trading post.  Not that there is a limit of things you can put up there, it’s just that you are wasting copper to post it and you are delaying the inevitable.   The inevitable is rule 3.

3. So you may be asking:  If I’m not salvaging the gear and I’m not putting it on the trading post then what am I doing with it?  The answer is, vendoring it.  However this is similar to rule number 1 in which you don’t mindless go through your bags clicking everything without a second thought.  You need to be a rational person when it comes to this and it will pay off in the long run.  The example I like to think about is taking a weapon that can be vendored for 1 silver.  Imagine you salvage it (its easy if you try).  You are awarded with a soft wood log.  Okay now let’s do some simple math.  Soft wood logs sell for the price you can vendor them for, on the trading post, 4 copper.  Now you may say “hey Wicklow, they sell for 3 copper”. And my response is that it takes 1 copper to post them on the trading post.  Why people sell them for this on the trading post is beyond me, but there they are regardless.  But I digress.  So you now have a log valued at 97 copper less than the original piece of loot.  As you can see,  the better choice was to sell it to a merchant.

4. How to determine what to sell and what to salvage.  This is a calculation you really need to make for yourself, and it takes a basic understanding of what you will receive from what you salvage and what that material sells for on the auction house.  Whatever threshold you set for determining the choice you make it’s important to realize that you will need to raise that threshold as you level, to account for the higher level gear drops.  As a point of reference here is my calculation I make at approximately level 50.  Anything above 30 copper in value gets vendored.  I feel like that’s a good place to be, but maybe I need to be moving it up to 35.  Also I always, always vendor heavy armor, and I’ve been beginning to vendor heavy armor scraps.  This is because there is no reason to be stockpiling so much ore.  You are already harvesting ore like a champ trying to get that exp.  and I feel, for me, that it’s really piling up.  This feeling is strengthened by looking at the prices of ore on the trading post, clearly others feel the same as I.  However there are no leather nodes or cloth nodes.  So I always salvage light and medium gear and the corresponding scraps.  I’m beginning to think I should raise the threshold for these items maybe even as high as 50 copper but I need to do a bit of research before I make that jump.  The reason I like light and medium armor so much is that the materials they break down into sell like hotcakes on the trading post, especially cloth. I think I’ve beaten this dead horse enough and if anyone has any questions on determining a threshold I’d be more than happy to answer them in team speak.

5.  The salvage kit paradox:  this is something that’s overlooked by many a player.  Let’s pick some arbitrary numbers for sake of easy mathematics.  You buy a salvage kit for 2 silver.  Each individual salvage you do is essentially valued at 8 copper.  Now let’s go back to the weapon example.  You salvage it and you get a nice soft wood log.  By hitting that salvage button you effectivly raised the value of that piece by 8 copper.  Now you go to sell you quard of shiny logs on the trading post, oblivious to the fact that you lost 1.04 silver.  You lost more money than the piece was valued at. That may make you feel bad but don’t worry, we have all made the mistake.  The moral of the story is:

Be aware of the loot you get
Sell appropriate loot on the trading post (power is always a nice stat)
Don’t mindless salvage everything else
Don’t mindless vendor everything else
Make a moveable threshold for the salvage/vendor determination
Never salvage heavy armor gear or heavy armor scraps
Be aware of the cost of the salvage kit itself

Lastly in a topic unrelated to loot drops but very much related to gold.  I know the waypoint system is fun but for the love of god, don’t use it like it’s going out of style, it’s much much much more effecting to run to 95% of the places you want to get to in terms of making gold and experience (harvesting etc.) Just use them sparingly, they are huge gold sinks.

Also if I have time I may do some research about what is the best salvage kit to use.  I’m not sure if it is worth using the better ones unless you need an upgrade, as in I’m not sure how effective the gain x% chance of finding rare materials is compared to the cost of the kit itself.  If I do a spreadsheet I’ll post it on a new topic,  keep your eyes out for it in the next couple of weeks.

When you post something the is an initial 5% listing fee.  If that item sells there is an additional 10% fee after the sale.  The percentage is based upon the price you post it at.  As an example you posted an item for 10 silver.  Initially there is a 50 copper fee, if it sells there will be another 1 silver fee.  For a total of 15% of the sale given to ANet.

Whenever you need to sell something on the auction house. This is the calculation that you need to make in order to determine if it’s better to sell or to vendor.

(Item posted price)*(1.15) > (vendor price)

If that equation isn’t true then DO NOT POST IT! YOU WILL LOSE MONEY.

An easy way to do a quick calculation is to look at the posting fee, double that number and then add both the fee and the doubled calculation to the listing price. Let’s go back to the 10 silver example

50 copper posting fee X 2 = 1 silver, 50 copper + 1 silver = 1.5 silver.  If the items vendor price is greater than 8.5 silver DO NOT POST IT!

I hope this helps some people.