Money rant.

If you actually bought amber then your silly because you can faction farm it fr33!

Hope your code=45 stuff gets all worked out btw luna and hope you start locking your brother out of your pc.

I blame the 'eastern farming community' who sell gold online for this ridiculous inflation (as well as those who buy gold) because its bumps up the prices of everything. As for armour and skills, they are very expensive in Cantha, yet still affordable. If I want a weapon/weapon mod and Kaineng armour, my storage will be severely hit.

Well here's a simple test for some people to do.

1) Forget you have a storage box. Pretend you have ZERO funds or chars in other continents you could use to farm.

2) Don't farm.

3) Make a new Canthan character and do only the missions and maybe some side quests until you get to the mainland.

4) Report how much money you have.

If someone's making a new character/survivor it can be done in about 7 or 8 hours from scratch without being run or power levelled.

In other words behave like you've just bought Factions (no Prophecies, no previous assets) and doing what most new players will do - play the main quests.

I was thinking of doing this, i may decide to start a thread later. I'm bored and have a free char slot so why not?

I disagree that the armor costs too much, however I may be wrong, so I am going to test it.

Ive only done shing jea 3 times now =P but whatever.

Do some chest runs. I find those exciting in the fact that you are always thinking "Oooh, will this time be the time when I get that one perfect item?" Go to Imperial Sanctum and do them, especially this weekend. Double golds I've earned over 600k doing these so far, and it only took me 250 chests

Haha.
Wowww...
What about the keys though? Do you buy them? Find them?
That's a lot of keys .. I barely ever get key drops.

I use the collector armor for the most part. 3 pieces are easy to get outside the marketplace, I only end up having the head piece and boots crafted, so that saves alot. Then I can decide later on if I want to invest money on getting prettier armor.

There are also armor collectors in the 2 lower canthan areas.

Ari

To the OP:

You, sir are exactly right on all points. Prices are out of control in GW, in either chapter but especially Factions.

I've been playing for over a year and I have 150k in my account, for use across six characters. That's nothing. I've bought one suit of 15k armor for my main; considering the amount needed to spend on rare crafting materials, I can afford maybe two more sets of 15k armor, but no more. Black dyes are essentially out of my price range; Superior Vigor runes might as well be black diamonds to me, there's no way I can afford them at 34k a pop. Weapon upgrades, no chance, not when they often go for 100k or more. The GW economy is out of control thanks to farmers and people who can spend twelve hours a day in front of the computer. It's a serious problem for casual or new players, and ArenaNet isn't helping matters by designing the armors to be so freaking expensive.

Me? I've got a job, and a life. I guess that just means I'm out of luck.

I still feel that GW should be a controlled economy, with price caps on anything that a merchant sells. 34k for a single rune is ridiculous.

So kudos to you, sir. Your "rant", as you called it, is perfectly valid.

apparently you don't remember when superior absorbtions were worth 100k and i believe superior vigors were at one time close to the 100k cap as well. the merchants in guild wars are basic supply vs demand. low supply high demand drives up the prices. large supple low demand decreases the prices. you take the superior absorption rune for example 1 year ago from today it was worth around 100k and now, 800gold??? I paid around 60plat for mine and now it's worthless. Monk runes did the same thing as factions tried to kill off the 55 monk, but the great AoE nerf and UW introducing dying nightmares for the solo UW 55 farmers drove down the prices of monk runes from what they once were. It's all supply and demand.

Your points seem a little... odd I suppose. Cantha has the rushed feel to it, so you don't earn enough to get the armour when you get to Kaineng Center to buy the 1.5k armour. So you want the armour to be cheaper... so you can do what? Get through the game faster?

In which case, that means you'll have to farm or repeat the same areas over and over to get the gold. You say you can't pvp, and enjoy the RPG aspect of the game. Endgame conent is pretty much just repeating the same areas over and over again, might as well get into the habit of seeing the same scenary sooner rather than later. Afterall, in the early stages of the game there is actually a meaning (rather a purpose) to the gold besides vanity.

Two repeatable quests in Ferndale that net 400 faction a piece, along with gold and experience. Takes me less than half an hour to do both of those quests, and earn myself 800 faction. I have done this with both my monk and my warrior, with only the assistance of henchmen. The gold I get from the quests, along with what I pick up and from the drops helps to fund my keys to open the occasional chest that appears along the routes in Ferndale.

There are numerous repeatable quests for faction, gold and experience on both the luxon and kurzick side. However you need the patience to put in a little grind.

In general, PvE is a joke. You can complete every mission with henchmen, and even score bonus + mission with just henchmen in Prophecies. So if you don't have the best armour available at the time, try to enjoy the challenge of being at a disadvantage. Hell I took my level 12 necromancer with ascalon armour and starting fighting outside of Kaineng Center for a while. Henchmen are a godsend, and drops were 50-60 gold a piece.

thats right, thank those power-farmers, without them superior runes would'nt be 34k...


...they'd be 65-80k like they were back in the days without massive amopunts of farming; furthermore, IMPERFECT golds, even 14.50 9-10 req weapons could EASILY cost you up to 300k. +30 hp pommels were in excess of 120k. superior absorbtions were 100k.
without farmers and traders stuff would be SO MUCH MORE expensive its not even funny. its because these people are willing to tolerate sitting in trade channels for 6 hours, or farming for 6 hours, that people such as yourself can get an item quickly, and cheaply (i remember the days when getting a +30 pommel could often take a week or more...even when you had the money to afford it).
low on cash? use greens or collectors items. you can build a character with perfectly useable (pvp equivilant) equipment for about 30-70k, depending on the character type and whether you use droks or collectors armor, and if the former what type of droks.
while this may sound like a lot, keep in mind if you actually play the game, as opposed to taking shortcuts left&right, you should be able to easily muster 40-60k. it is AMAZING how many people expect to be given all the money the'll ever need at the character creation window; yes, i am rich, yes i have spent probably over 1,000 game hours trading, and yes, that is way too much time spent on a game. but, if you are not willing to put in the time and effort, do not expect the same reward. poor because you dont have enough time to thoroughly complete the game, and only get run from mission to mission skipping all the quests? then of course you wont have the money to make your armor, and you'll have to pull it from another character. do this enough times and you'll be broke. but, compared to other games, guildwars is CAKE in the need-to-farm-to-afford-basic-equipment department. in virtually any other game you'll be farming for HUNDREDS of hours to afford stuff that rich players would laugh at; in GW, an hours here and there should make up for whatever minor deficit is left from questing, and the equipment is (more or less) identical to the stuff the richest players in the game use, you have zero right to complain.
its called money&time management, its a lifeskill that can be applied to both video games, and real life. Use it.
yes i'm wealthy in gw, but, it is seldom that i get a character run. 2 of my 3 warriors, my ranger, my necro and my monk were not run through the game. i completed every mission, many, many, many quests, and, believe it or not, i prefer not to use my existing funds to help a character if it is a primary class i've never played before. it makes the game more fun, and gives it a longer lifespan. i do not like having to ship money to a character for droks or kaineg, i prefer to pay for it off of the character's own earnings.

Ah ... I didn't even know there were repeatable 'quests'. I thought only missions were replayable.
Learn something every day I guess.
I'll consider those though, in terms of gaining Faction, so thanks.

The problem with your argument is that every single item you mention is either a luxury (black dye/15k armor), or a marginal upgrade at best. You don't need a perfect max stats weapon. Why spend 34k on a sup vigor when majors are 3k and only a 9hp difference? Why spend 30k on a 30 hp fort mod when you can get a 28 hp mod for 1.5k? You can get a near max damage weapon with near max mods (good ones at that) for less than 10k, and you'll never notice the difference. Better yet, buy items for a desert collector, get a max damage, low req, 15>50 weapon, and mod it yourself. With 5k you can get it a nice set of mods. You don't need that 2 extra hp, or 1% additional furious chance.

'Scuse me..

OP means what?

And where do you trade in fac for Amber?

/agreed

later

OP=Original Poster

House Zu Heltzer, there's a Factions Reward NPC where you can trade in your faction for amber.

My first Canthan char got decent armor solely on that which I came across on that character up untill the point of buying the armor (quest rewards) including materials, I salvage everything I come across so materials weren't a problem. Bought armor in Seitung Harbor, then waited untill I got to HzH to get my max armor. No farming needed for it. The only thing I had to farm for is unlocking all my skills.

Unlocking skills. That's probably the only real problem with money for people, honestly. The quests simply don't pay enough for you to afford skills easily in Factions, and they are definitely needed to be purchased many times, unlike armor.

thx all for definitions btw.

and i feel pathetic now. ive never gotten past the marketplace :P

I do not mind the gold drop rate...I never had to "farm frantically" to get money.

Yup, that's what I did when I first started on Factions. I created a new Necro and just followed the storyline and did the main quests/missions. I didn't hunt out sideline quests, I just did the ones for NPCs that I bumped into on my journey. I played as if I was completely new to the game, avoiding my storage funds. I picked up drops, salvaged along the way. By the time I got to Kaineng Center, I had more than enough monies to buy the 1.5K Shing Jea armor. However, the 1.5K Cantha armour was unaffordable due to the lack of monstrous materials.

Thanks for confirming that then Caged. The experiment shows you can in fact get max armour just by playing the missions/some quests on the way if you're a new player. Maximum stat weapons are not too much more difficult to obtain, from collectors and crafters who are not too hard to get to.

If you played like that (as a new player) and found you had insufficient funds to pick up the armour, then I think there would be some more grounds to argue something was broken.

Beyond that, everything else is more or less just down to vanity really (with some exceptions e.g. superior vigor, which you'd have to save up for later)

I've played my sin and rit as if I had no additional money on my account.
I was saving for some items for my other characters and did not want to waste any money. Most likely i've even deposited gold from my sin and rit for that.
Bought gear by questing and missions (I think at Seitung and later Kaineng).
For my sin i've used the weapons í found during quests and missions.
For my rit i've bought one restoration stave at Kaineng, the rest i've obtained with quests and missions.
I've tried to solo as much as possibe on the island and kept team minimal to ensure maximum drops.
On mainland I've played with max team most of the time, but salvaged all armor drops and some weapons. Others went right to merch.

On general economy.
Specific upgrades and weapons can be expensive, but you don't need them to finish the game.
I have bought a few green items (Willcrusher even via guru) because i could not find similar items in the game and i did not want to spend the time to get one myself (kill boss, no drop, back, kill again...).
But none for more than 15K. Runes the same, most of them are not expensive. And when you cannot afford a +3 divine favor you can allways settle for a +2 (all +2 runes are about 100g), when you don't want to build a 55hp. Vigor is the only exeption afaik.

All weapons and armor beyond Kaineng are nice to have, but you don't need them.

Money is not really a problem in Factions (enough for 1.5K armor anyway).

My Necro has 10k, with only 30 hours, and no farming or good drops under his belt.

Since you get your ID kits, bags, runes of holding, salvage kits, etc, with those tokens from completing quests: No money spent there.

So anything you get is gravy. I even used collectors for my first set of max armor, to save even more money. (This way, you could play your character for a bit to decide what set you want before investing 7,500 + materials for your armor. Or, wait until the Kurzick or Luxon area...)

On a side note, I'm about as casual as they come (got Guild Wars over a year ago, played about 500 hours TOTAL across all 6 of my characters), and I only have about 60,000 gold total. I know that's not a lot, but I've never needed more, either. My goal is to eventually get 15k armor for ONE Character. Pretty lame goal, I know, but hey, we all can't be "leet".

Lol yeah, that's what I'm working towards.
I think I'll turn to collector's for all my new characters, just to save some time, and then focus my money on one character for better armor and weapons.

After reading a lot of people's responses I've looked into a lot of different areas to farm as well, and started with Ettin rune farming, although the better runes I've gotten have only been Superior Healing and Divine Favour, and Major Vigor which got me about 13k. The rune trader was offering more than I was willing to ask from people myself, so I just sold them there. So not so bad.

Right now I've been reading up a lot on solo W/Mo Armored Spider farming in FoW. I've got most the equipment and skills required, save a couple shields and a sword (I want to try a sword build for once).


I suppose, aside from the basics it all comes down to knowing where to look and where to play for a few hours to get money and Faction.
I sort of laughed at the concept of Ettin rune farming, hearing people say they got 3-4 Superior Vigor's in their first couple runs. It could be possible, and would be nice if it happened fairly soon.
So I suppose, after reflecting, the only difficult time would be right when you start a new character, and when it comes to saving for that 15k or FoW armor. I'm not going to bother saving for weapons that people want 100k+ for. Why spend that much on a 15^50 weapon, or a weapon with one health short of a maxed mod, when you get get something for 1-10k with just below max mods? It's stupid. I think the only thing I would waste that much money on aside from armor is the mini pets. But I'd rather just wait out the next 3 months so my own character can get one for free. Lol.

For the OP

Let me say that money making in this game is terribly out of balance. If you play the game the way it wasnt meant to be played you pretty much going to be broke. I think that more money was made in Proph. than in Faction by far. Making money in GW is about being oppruntuntistic and getting it quick before its nerfed. For example my biggest money maker--

Running Supply Lines mission south of Cavalon

1) When faction first came out you could run the supply lines mission over and over again and each run would take about 2 minutes. I ran it with a Mo/W (not 55) using Charge, Sprint, and bonds. Each run got you 2000 exp and 400 faction. At that time you could sell Jadeite for 4-5k each. 25 runs in about an hour got you 10000 faction or 40k - 50k. I did this enough to make about 400k then went shopping. Later everyone caught on and it was nerfed.

2) Also when Factions first came out there was a large number of new Rits and Sins. Mats- including tanned hide squares went up in value for ridiculous amounts. There is a place on the Kurzick side that you can 55 monk solo very easily and fast. The wardens there drop lots of tanned hide squares. Not the fastest way to make money now, but at the time of factions. The value of tanned hide squares was very much up.

Another that i had not mastered but some friends had was 3 man farming Sunreach shield outside of Durham Archives. Each run took about 5 - 10 minutes. May you got a drop maybe you didnt. But when you did I think that shield had sold for 100K-200K at the time. He 3 manned this enough to max out his account to full and said he had 4 more shields in storage.

And the classic Droks run. 3-4 k person take 5 people with you. 15-20k in however long it takes to run it. I never got into this myself.

I final one I remember doing with my 55 monk was the Droks Squirrel farmers run. This involved 55ing the trolls outside of Droks. At this time you could stand by the gate in Dis 2 of Droks and watch a river of Mo/W running out the door.. quite amusing. This run got me only about 1k every 10-12 minutes, but not bad when i was bored.

So when Nightfall comes out keep an eye out for the next big thing. (Im not buying Nightfall, personally.) And get it before ANET nerfs. Personally I play this game very little now, I still PVP some with a Touch Ranger in Aspenwood but I mostly play WOW. But if you want ill give you 40k to make your 55 monk if you dont have one.

Have a nice day

Lies!
That's a lot of money. -.-


I've never been able to get a grip on the whole Drok running thing, I can see that being very beneficial to your funds though.
As for the supply runs, maaan I wish that didn't get nerfed cause I'd be doing it right now.

I wouldn't mind seeing fixed prices myself.I need deldimore steel ignots or damask.

I agree with this guy,

The only way I was able to afford 1.5k armor back in the day was because of this site. I soloed trolls and grifs for my armor money. I never would have even thought soloing was possible until a guildie told me about it. This just shows either how naive I was or how anti-noob the game comes off. GW seems very strange nowadays because almost everything has been nerfed. For example, the drops on greens has decreased. I dont understand why Anet made soloing the bosses so easy to begin with, I almost think they needed a reason to nerf. The only reason I have like 40k is because of Racthohs spider guide. It seems like you gotta religiously play this game and create insane builds just to have decent armor and weapons.

It gets better hehe. Forget buying armor. Skills are what kill you. I don't know the amount for factions but to quest/buy every skill for a char's two professions, including elites in proph is around 70k. I know that sounds way off but it is about what you spend.

People have a very hard time with money and finances in rl. So it stands to reason that the same problems will exist in the game for many players. But the beauty of the game is you can go out in a zone and make money anytime.

I'm sorry but I just don't think people try hard enough to solve this problem for themselves. I could list examples but people who don't want to look in the mirror will just keep making excuses for my advice.

But I promise you this: you will have this problem in EVERY MMO until you make a serious and legitimate effort to solve it. I've played, I think six MMO's and the same thing works in every one of them. Pick up everything that drops, learn the value of items as quickly as possible, and save your money early on in the game. Last part the most important.

Ok... to see how bad the money situation is I created an assassin and
went through the missions, bonus', and quests all the way to Kaineng
docks.
Didn't do any farming other than items required for armor collectors.
Here's what I wound up with.

Took 13 hrs 5 mins play time.

Have a full set of 55 AL collectors armor.

7-15 dmg req 8 dm , +1 dm 12% daggers

60 Hide

7 Steel

8,950 Gold

25 skills given by trainers, didn't buy any.

Various other odds and ends.

That doesn't seem so bad to me. I'm in half decent condition to
move on just as I am. But if I want, I can manage to buy the highest
stat armor in the game with the materials and money I brought with
me from the island.
Only thing I need to scrounge up is a max damage weapon.


BTW... reached lvl 18, a little low for my taste but for the purpose of
seeing what I'd have to work with after the last island mission I left anyway.

dammit you beat me...

18s usually an ok level to leave at anyways. Guess that completely disproves that its hard to get armor.

I don't know if anyone had suggested this yet because I haven't had the time to read through all 6 pages but Collectors Armor FTW!.

I got my Necro across to the mainland in Cantha and looked at the Canthan armor, which, out of the 3 available in Kaineng Centre, plus tyrian and krytan, Canthan armor is my favourite..then I looked at the cost...HOW MANY MONSTROUS CLAWS/EYES/FANGS? Come on - you really might as well by 15k armor than buy that! Then I realised the collectors gave away the Canthan armor - SOLD! Now I have everything except the gloves which you get for 5 Venerable Mantid Pincers. Does anyone know how to get these? I have farmed and farmed those lvl17 mantids outside Nahpui Quarter for days and not one venerable mantid pincer has dropped...am I farming the wrong place?

Anyhoo - surely the reason people buy 100k+ weapons is because either:
> they found a lot of money on the floor in Kaineng Centre *COUGH* "Been to Ebay" *COUGH* or...
> they have got through the game so far that there's not much else to do. < this is the reason I have bought 15k armor for my Elementalist. She's my first (and most loved character) and I feel is worth nice clothes!

Nahpui Quarter area seems like as good a place as any to farm Venerable Mantid
Pincers. It's probably not a good idea to use henches though. Maybe you can
recruit a good tank to hold them back while your ele. nukes them? Drops would
be a lot better that way.

As for weapon upgrades?
People spending 100k+ on a weapon due to the fact that it has a nice skin?
I think that's ridiculous



not only upgrades but wepons it self. Did you know taht suckish oni blades taht come out of chest out side imperial sanctum go for 50k! its like so sucking just cause looks cool u gotta spend 49.900k more then worth? so dumb

Also if you bought Urgoz longbow your a dumb ass! just cuase i looks cool it goes for 100k+20 ectos? HA.I can get a Longbow with same stats for only 10k!

And once again 15k armor! as long as good stats who cares


now I would like to look cool as much as next guy but its freaking pointless!

This has been disussed a 1000 time not sure why the admins don't close this non productive thread.

1) Cheep MAX Armor is easily obtainable by anyone who completes missions and quests.

2) MAX DMG W/ MAX Stats Weapons can be obtained from a collector.

3) There is NO different between cheepo Droks armor, and FoW armor except for looks.

4) If you think FoW is worthless then don't buy it and STFU

5) If you think that buying weapons for 100+20 ecto is pointless then buy your weapons from the collector and STFU

Spirit of the sea: I'm unsure why you feel the need to flame people who bought the Urgoz longbow, I guarantee if you where able to complete the mission and get the longbow you would go sell it for 100K + xxx ecto... you wouldn't say "Wow thats just too much let me sell this for 10K"


I'm unsure why we need to repeat the same "debates" on guru about how people are poor and jealous of thos of us with money.

All max damage weapons can be obtained cheep, max AC armor can be obtained for cheep.

If you don't want to grind then you are stuck with the "common" skin items.. those of us who want to grid get the rare skin items, whats wrong with that?

NOTHING.

Thats a load of nonsense.

The missions on Shing Jea pay out enough,if you dont spend it on useless things the seitung armor is within reach,if you screw up well thats part of learning the game,you cant expect it to go perfect the first time.

You just have to set out and leave the outposts more,that kind of money is easy to get without farming to.

Same here.

I made an Rit, did the quests and tried to keep my expenses at a minimum. My Rit has now 50k (yes, I keep some money on the char and not in the storage), full 15k armor and a nice weapon. Just do the quests, pick up EVERYTHING that drops and ..... read your Guru! This site is so helpfull on builds, skills and quests, it's sad to say but if you're still poor (poor = less then 20k) it's your own damn fault.

Must admit, I didnt read all the ops post, however I kinda know how he feels.

But then..

I Consider if everything WAS cheaper, and there was alot more gold in the game.. and I dont mean VERY cheap, but just cheap enough that the average player could easily afford 15k after .. ooo, a month of playing?

I think this would kill the longevity of GW, I like the fact that there are cheap alternative (collectors armor) and VERY expensive choices (fow, 15k etc,)

Kindly compare the length of time it takes to get to maximum level in another MMO (coh, eq, WoW) consider how LONG that takes to do.. its a good 3 months at LEAST!

3 months of playing Guildwars.. not farming, just playing it normally, learning the market place, material prices, not constantly farming but doing all the missions and trying to attain several of the titles..

Im pretty sure after this time its not that hard.. especially with all these events going off.

As for the VERY expensive stuff, the 100k weapons and the 15k or FoW Armor, Ive been playing for 15 months and NEVER got any of that stuff, its about time I did.. so its giving me something to aim for, im not in a hurry, and still enjoy playing the game in the mean time

Okay I ll explain this again....

Money came easier in Prophecies. You have "rares" that were actually "rares" and people could really use them. So there was something to sell.

In Props you could also make money running people esp to Droks

In Props you could 2 man farm ectos and pawn off your shards to FOW armor collectors. Too many new armors in Factions. The price of Ecto fell like a rock.

Green weapons in Prophs were worth some money and could be consisently farmed more. That seems to be harder in Factions.

But as a general rule you dont make money playing the game the way its supposed to be played. People new to Factions have trouble seeing how the old guys have so much money. Factions is not as profitable as Prophs, sorry. I think the Devs made it that way this time around. To be fair with Nightfall they need to change currency.