Obsidian Armor Calculations

Okay... I really have wanted Obsidian Armor for my Monk for some time now, so I went through and did a little calculating:

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1,201,100 gold...

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Now this is obviously possible to get, as I have seen Monks running around with such armor on. What I want to know is... How did they do it?! I'm serious. FoW and UW drops are not that high. I've only gotten 2 Shard drops from FoW from the 7 times I've been there. Either these people have superb luck and are blessed by the gods, or they have a tactic I have not even thought of yet.

I'm not an Übermensch. If anyone can recommend ideas on how your average person can get Obsidian Armor, it would be very much appreciated.

I farmed UW and FoW for my two sets of Obsidian Armor. It took me 2 months for the first set and 2 weeks for the second one.
I don't know how you could do it with the current state of the game; I just quit farming after the Spirit Bond nerf update..

There are builds for solo farming in both UW & FoW, that way one can easily get piles of shards & ectos in a matter of days/weeks/months depending from time spent there

Most players buy ectos & shards from others instead of farm them.

If one doesn't like soloing those places then of course chest running, getting couple lucky drops worth 50-150 Ecto works nicely as well.

There are numerous ways to make oneself rich in this game. Running ppl through missions/explorables etc. Just pick a way that fits you best.

A possible way is trading. I know someone who found a shield with a rare skin , and sold it for 100K and 100 ectos. That would be like 700 K.
That , and in combination maybe with a little farming , and a few lucky drops , could get you to that ammount of money.

I duo farmed UW with my necro friend for months. I also solo 55'd the place for a while. So when I got enough ecto and more I started to trade them for shards or sold them and bought shards with the money. It also took time and I suspect it will take a little longer now.

Shards prices are low now so I advice you to buy them first.

Sorry to tell you but it's not ment for the average person. But you still can have it after a while.

the quickest way is power trading

to get my fow i farmed for about a month and a half.

I used two methods to get my armor.. first i farmed ecto in underworld untill i had the 105 i needed for my monk fow armor.. then i continued to farm ecto to sell for shard money..

and when america did not have favor i would farm hydras for cash to buy shards..

finally when i had all 105 ecto and 105 shards.. i saved up 100k to finish off the rest of my purchases..

It was a hard road. but when i look back upon it i can say that it was worth it.

Keep this in mind... when i started saving for fow armor my monk had about 500k experience..

when i was done he had around 4 mill...

So it takes a ton of work and dedication if your gonna farm for it.

but some people have been known to aquire the fow armor in just a few days by selling and buying with the buy low and sell high ideal..

and yes others do ebay.. but i encourage you not to do that... because when you finally do get your armor.. knowing that you earned every cent of the money used for it makes for a much better respect of what you have.

alot of the monks you see with FoW on also got the armor when the Ascetic armor didn't require shards so it was the cheapest at the time which is what my FoW armor is.

to me, fow armors are not that beautiful enough to drive me work so hard to get them even I have enough money for a few sets.

It's all in the eye of the beholder ofcourse but no other monk armor can come even close to fow imo. The part under the head is just beautiful and reminds me of a high priest in some ancient cultures. The same pattern comes back in the other pieces of the armor. Just an amazing design and it strikes out. Defenetily worth the trouble and money if you like it like I do. If not go for something else.

there are 4 sure fire ways to get you o armor in a matter of weeks or maybe a month depending on your luck

1. farm the crap out of uw/fow
2. chest run [this method might actually cause you to lose money in the short term but in the long run youll be making money]
3. "power trade" quoted by coldplay
4. green farm

if you dont mind sitting in outposts for countless hours buying and selling or becoming a sell forum junkie, go the "power trading" route.

if you want to play the game, experiment with builds, dont mind the same environments/enemies over and over, option #1 is your best bet

if youre a gambling type of person, chest running is for you

im not too up to date with green prices but if greens are selling for anything above 20k-ish, solo-in bosses for greens can be profitable as well

]

I have to admit that if I ever going to craft a set of fow armor then it gotta be the female monk armor.

i am going to be honest...for the AVERAGE person it is a bitch to get FoW armor. i myself do not have one set yet but i am looking to get one soon...i got all my materials and 105 shards and 3 ecto...i usually will just farm and if i notice i have made enough cash to buy an ecto i will buy one...not the quickest route but effective. Good Luck with getting your set of FoW armor though.

p.s. as for the answer to your question about how they all get the armor...never discount the fact that eBay is around

p.s.s. for all of those who are about to flame me and say "well i farmed mine n00b" and "not everyone has to eBay gold n00b" yeah i know that you all farmed and your all honest and are uber farmers but people do and we must never forget this.

Power trade. There are players (like me) who prefer to sell it fast, which generally means selling it cheap. A patient player could turn a profit on many of the items I've sold in the past for 5-10k.

Yep, I found this was the best way. Buy low, sell high.

That's how I got my FoW Ranger armor. It took months on end nevertheless, because I don't play that often.

I started with some solo farming for gold, and got myself some ectos, and began buying other ectos cheap and selling them at a higher price.

I got 1 got drop in Factions which provided me with 100K.

Awsome. Thank you all for responding. After seeing the cost for Obsidian Armor, I had given up on the prospect of ever getting my hands on it.

I still have those thoughts, but I'll still hold onto the dream. That's gotta be worth at least 1K.

It was easy before the nerf , just make a goal of 10-15 ecto a night on UW runs .
If your goal was 15 a night then you'd have 105 ecto in one week . I still have 5 mill worth of plat , ecto and shards just no desire to spend . GW is boring now.

So then why not donate your goods to those who need it?

Well,

For my necro FoW I did the common farming runs, got good mods sold them and what not for whatever they were worth at the time. I did that for a good 5 months, getting up to around 500k (this was Sept-Dec 05), had maybe 20 or so shards from FoW and around 5-10 ecto or so I think. Then I was buying an unided Stormbow req 8 for 30k in Ascalon. I ided it and it was a 15^50. I told the dude that sold it to me, that I loved him and got it modded and what not then ended up selling it to cheaply for 40 ecto. Still, by that time I had enough to dish out the rest for the ecto, which was the only cost. Sold the shards I had and well, that's how I did it.

For my Monks armor, this was before factions came out, 2-3 months before. I was just doing my common farming runs getting mods and selling them. I think I sold a few greens, not sure what I did just saved up. Only cost ecto at the time so I went and got it. I didnt' get the arms and legs till they cost shards till after factions, when I made a ton of money selling mods,weapons and other things.

Then so on my mesmer and warrior FoW all acquired the same way farming and or lucky drops. Mostly lucky drops. My warrior I farmed all the shards with and made about 500k in a week from chest drops.

I just get lucky I guess that's how I did it. I never really grinded..I'd just hit one spot a day and get money. But I never spend money on weapons, I just use what I get.

So my advice to you Felix, is farm FoW/UW nightly from now on, explore areas buy a few keys and just kill things to make money. I'd say do Tombs but I don't know if people still do B/P there. Since I had a good stack of money when the new chapters came out I could do chests runs and the like. All the old farming spots are dead, so if you have NF...do the new ones other people are doing..make some fast money. But above all save up and don't spend! You'll get there faster than you think.


Oh, my farming spots of old included..

Griffons at Path
Minotaurs in Elona's Reach
Trolls in Talus
Talus Chute itself..Trolls>Tundra>Whatever Avicara didn't have Guiles or big groups>Grawl+bosses.
Witmans Folly
Ettins
The Falls about 1-2 hours of fun for me, made me 10k nothing to great.
Running Chests in Nahpui, Raisu, Kurzick and Luxon side and Hell's Precipice.
Nightly FoW runs, sometimes 2-3 a night. With ele, necro, monk, mesmer or ranger..to add variety.
UW 2 man, back before Factions mostly.

grind.
Just takes a lot of time....
Then again, its supposed to be the ultimate farmer's armor.

As seen by the posts in this thread there are several ways of doing this, and I think it boils down to farming (preferably solo) or trading.

Now, trading takes a lot of deep knowledge on item rarity and situational supply and demand. This is simply not an option for me, so I resort to farming instead.

I'm somewhat more than a casual player, with 6 chars through both Prophecies and Factions, and they're all under way of completing Nightfall. 6 chars with different professions gives me plenty of options when it comes to farming. I went from 100k to 1400k in two months (august - september 2006), bringing in some 10-30k per hour on average solo farming greens and a bit of other stuff.

I farmed Totem Axes and Arrahhsh's Aegis as a W/Mo, Milthuran's Staff, Scar Eater and Rajazan's fervor as a W/N, FoW Spiders as a W/Me, Ghial's Staff and a 55 hp Mo/E, Wing's Axe as a 55 hp Mo/Me, Mountain Trolls, Giants and Hydras as a 55 hp Mo/X, Scar Eater as a N/Me and a few full team runs in FoW, Underworld, Sorrows Furnace, The Deep and Tombs. Thanks to my many different chars I was able to spread out my farming over many different areas, and the anti-farming code never kicked in. Even though the single most pricy object I got this way was a Drago's Flatbow in SF (some 40k), I quite easily managed to save up for my fissure armor. I must have made several million gold in SF when it was fresh and new as well, just by joining small farming teams and keeping at it. This is, in my opinion, perhaps not the fastest way possible but a sure way of getting the gold you want.

Persistence and this very forum pays off big time. Check the farming forum and experiment with your own builds and you'll get there eventually.

/Gwon

Never farmed a day in my gw-life.

Did grind ToPK when it was just new, made rougly 500k there in 3 weeks.

Went into FoW with teams alot (3-4 shards avarage / run + drops, had a nice shield from a chest that I sold for 150k).

Stopped spending money on runes/skills.

Took 3 months and then I had FoW.

Please don't start with the "grind" complaints. In real life, it's call working towards a goal.

Gathering the materials and gold required is one part of what's needed for FOW armor. The other part is obtaining the skills and knowledge to make the required FOW and UW runs. I've only been down a few times with my warrior as America seems to get favor about my bedtime and loses it about the time I get up. But I have yet to take my monk down and she is the one that will get the armor.

Meanwhile I'm working on the gold part (although I do have one ecto from a trade for amber). All my characters have lowest level max armor. I farm for the costly runes instead of buying them. I don't buy expensive weapons, there is usually a cheap green or crafter weapon that works just as well. I sell unwanted greens on the guru auction instead of wasting my time spamming trade messages.

When I finally get the FOW armor, I'll have worked hard for it. If other people brush it off with an e-bay comment, who cares. I will know how I got the armor.

Yeah, sure. I play since April 2005 and never got a thing like that.
The max i got was a req8 15^50 Golden Phoenix Blade that sold for about 100k + 10e.
And yes, I spend too many time farming (5.000.000xp++ on my monk).
You have to be very lucky to get something like that.
And I have divorced my luck.

I was going to buy it one time for my elementalist. So I stocked up on all of the ectoplasm and shards, all of which I bought. I did try Solo farming the UW but it was so boring that I couldn't take it anymore.

But you can get enough money to buy them by spending your time doing a number of things.

1) Chest running, back in the day, though (it doesn't really work for the gold anymore), you could just run Raisu palace about 50 times in an evening, and then you could ID your own golds (or sell the crappy ones with higher requirements unIDed for 1k each) and then sell the mods for a lot. Or sell the golds for a lot. Say twice a week, you could sell one weapon for 100k and then about 4 or 5 mods for 20-30k (and that's being nice, I've never tried to sell a perfect sword hilt of fortitude for anything more than 30k). That way, money just sortof kept coming in and eventually piled up.

2) Just plain old farming for gold, anywhere.

3) Green farming! Yay! I had three characters with inventories completely filled with green weapons and focii after the event weekend in Cantha. Even having to sell them at a low price got me so much gold, and they went really quickly. That's how I furnished my guild hall.

So yeah... After playing Guild Wars a lot, I wanted to do something different before getting another character through one of the campaigns' storylines, and I found that doing other things tends to get you money.

Basically Grind, I've set that objective and did it. My Monk has more than 350skill points to spend. Now that farming isn't possible the same way, you're pretty messed up...

My friend and I got FOW our by helping rangers capture spiders (pre nerf). It was great because you got paid to capture the spider (average 25K per spider) Then you can do a smite run while you were down there for a chance at some ectos. I have to say everyone is ranting about farming and grinding but after you have beat the game with alot of charcters like I have (I pve only) there really isn't alot left to do. Besides I am kind of a freak and enjoy the grind

i got my first set of fow by farming sf when it came out, took me bout 2 months get enough to buy the ectos n shards

my 2nd set i got in like 3 weeks by farming fow (spiders) got between 2 and 6 shards per run as well as other drops including a r8 15^50 chaos axe ( was happy bout that ).

u just need to find somewhere u can farm that pays well and repeat till u have enuough cash

I've seen a lot of solo and duo farm answers here, be it for greens or in the uw, which I find a bit sad. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the solo farmers out there. Its clearly effective for gaining wealth and there is no harm in taking advantage of it. I just don't like the fact that a game with such great multiplayer aspects has the most lofty goals and rewards in some very mind numbing solitary excercises.

It took me a while but I did it by doing a lot of farming and FoW runs. Good Rune drops did help. I bought most of my ecto by selling off stuff.

Now if only they would update my FoW armour so I could put insignia on it, I think everything would be right with the world......

FoW armor is not worth making yourself broke for.

I have 2 full sets of FOW - monk and ranger. Playing for over year and a half now. I was never broke, on contrary i did manage to buy some good weapons, get 15 armors for rest, and still do. While i was getting materials and money for FOW armor i did manage to bring all in-game proffesions through Tyria and Cantha, done allmost every mission with them, still missing some in Tyria, fire islands. I did farm, but never was my goal getting fow armor as soon as possible.

So u dont get broke going for FOW armor.

The numbers in OP are quite a bit off IMO. It looks like you just took the traders' sell price and added them up. If you bought ectos and shards from people + gathered up all the useless dust and wood and crafted damask yourself, you could easily shave off ~200-300k from that price tag.

I have 2 sets of FoW - necro "scars", bought back when they required only ectos and a set for my monk, which I kinda regret buying now, since I hardly play my monk anymore. For my necro's armor, I duo farmed UW for a while to get all the ectos and I sold basically everything I found.

For my monk, I had about 20 ectos lying around from random UW trips, plus I sold a req8 15^50 storm bow for 100k+40 ecto (my only so-called "lucky drop", I never found anything else that was worth over 100k). Then Factions came out and ecto and shard prices dropped like a rock. So I spent about 400k more, buying ectos at 4.5 each and shards at 2 each, and got a set of FoW.

Some people I know (who PvPed longer than I had) bought multiple sets of FoW armor exclusively by selling sigils back when they were worth something... today, the 70 sigils I have tucked away on two mules won't even buy me 70 ectos

I'd go for trading... and speculating...
I have been loading up sapphire/rubies since prophecies, an article with anet did confirm they have a use in the future. Sometimes you have to read articles outside of forums. I bought hundreds during factions when they are around 2k. Bought from players for 1.5k, sometimes they just wanted 1k lol. Sold them all at 7kish in nightfall. Just earned my 4th fow this way. Absolutely no farming, no hard work at all for this set, just patience, and trust your instinct as this has anet's backup.
Bought all 120 ecto for 6k some even 5.5k from players who just want to sell them because they think ecto would crash.

The others, just plain 55 monk, solo hydra, 5 man fow, 2 man sunreach farm, rushed through game with 5 characters in 2 weeks time, sold endgame green (hands of forgotten) 75k each... datz about 400k. There's just too too many ways to make easy $, and I still consider myself noob in making bucks, as I'm sure there're smarter ways of doing it, the pros are keeping them a secret .

Don't really know how you do it now with the new aggro system and everything. But when I decided to get FoW for my monk I just farmed UW like crazy. 55 monk, SS necro, spirit bonder..... Everytime I saw euro get favor i went to UW. After i got my 105 ectos I farmed some more to get ectos to trade for shards. Whenever I had enough money I bought some from trader or other people. When I finally had all the materials (after a month) i didn't have enough money to buy the armour luckily i got to borrow 60k from a friend. And I'm glad that I got the armour a week before the big update

-.-
Almost no in the game saves up 1.2kk then buys materials.
eBayrs do that and long time pvp players with good drops from HoH chests.
I farmed for 2 and a half months and got my armor. Easy as that.

IGNORE THIS SENTENCE
As much as i try to convince you guys that my new shield Bonder build wroks the more you spit on it.

In Nightfall:
One friend of mine farms Fastfoot. Kills fastfoot and the 16 spiders that spawn with him.

After like... 1 day of heavy farming He had 100k from drops and selling some of the bows for 5k ea, like 15 Kournan Keys, and still had like 6-7 Bows to sell. Some golds from the spiders and dye drops too.

I know that with SoA you can aggro the same amount of baddies, but I can't stand to see them scatter as soon as you hit them with aoe.
I used to farm uw for the fun of seeing a whole room of mobs collapsing in a matter of seconds; money/ectos were just an added value to me.

Bomo probali . Te bom pobaral v igri za nasvet.

Ok, right now i must get 15k armors for some of my proffesions still did not get, then i go back for third FOW. Still dont know if for mesmer or dervish .

In my honest opinion, Obsidian armor designs aren't that great.. especially for Monks. However, I really like the Obsidian armor for the Ritualists and Paragon.

But back to topic, if someone has already repeated this, sorry. But you could try buying materials at a cheaper price from other players. Or even invest in something else. Eg. Superior Vigor runes. A few weeks ago they dropped down to as low as 22k. Now they're back up around 31k from the last time I've checked.