Chaos Gloves

When I first saw the price on the chaos gloves, I was put off initially. I didn't consider it a waste of money really, but I doubted that the satisfaction of getting them would justify the amount of work I would need to put into them. Additionally I was even going so far as to say, "Well if I get my ecto and get cold feet before buying them, I could get FoW armor with the ecto and have it transfer in the hall, cause these gloves won't," which was a bogus excuse cause the armor was fugly. Even so, I took a hard look at the destroyer gauntlets too... and the reason I didn't get them was because:

1. They didn't go well with my character. I have a female ranger with several elite sets of armor and the destroyer gauntlets just didn't look right. I had seen some screenshots passed around with primeval armor and it looked OK, but still not justifying the combo. With chaos gloves, I was taking the chance that they would look better with my armor because of the chest cutoff points on the arms, which were lower than most. That means less skin showing and a more uniform look.

2. They couldn't be dyed. Yes I know, what's the point in making the lava green or white or purple, and I agree. But it's that degree of customization that is lost with a static skin which made me lose interest (it's also why I don't like using greens). The chaos gloves were fully color customizable, allowing for a wide range of schemes with my existing armor. In my opinion, color harmony is probably the most overlooked aspect of making combo armor look good.

3. The prices of cores were shooting up fast. What difference does that make? Enough people were disappointed with the chaos gloves and decided to go with the cheaper gauntlets that glowed. This past weekend I saw cores selling for 1k, and being bought for 800g. Ecto was low at the time. The trader was selling for 5.5k, but I found people willing to sell for 4.8k and rarely 4.6k in bulk. It took lots of time and patience, but I eventually got my 75 by being fair yet firm when trading. Many people refused to sell for 1g less than 5k at the time, which, if I saw prices and demand rising looking for a return on my stash, I would understand. But I still looked elsewhere and found them cheaper.

Now, how did I acquire all of those ectos? I'm a packrat. I have extra characters that hold items (mules) I have kept over the course of playing, and instead of selling items on the spot when I acquire them, I keep the good ones and salvage the bad ones. This is roughly how my earnings were divided up:

1. Weapon mods. 1k here and 3k there adds up over time. People are easily discouraged from selling mods that have little demand, but if you have a large variety of them stored up, and you bounce from city to server and back scanning the party search window for "WTB" you'll find that the demand for the smallest things are actually quite high... they just disappear fast because they are common. You need to get to these people first. For instance, there's this girl who wants an ebon scythe snathe for a pvp build. She goes to district 1 because there's more people and a better chance she'll find one quick. Now how many people have one of these mods lying around? Not many. How does she find it so quick? Think about how many people are farming and stopping to ID weapons and selling to merchant and leaving. There's a greater chance some bloke will make a quick buck with his junk he just ID'd by quickly scanning party search rather than selling to merchant right away. You need to beat these people to the punch. Over the course of just one weekend, 4-5 hours a day of non-grind time, I sold about 125k worth of mods. Granted, most of my stores have been depleted now. But that's a third of what I need to get the gloves, and all of the motivation I need to keep going.

2. Minipets. I hate the things. I think they're a waste of money, and they serve me no purpose. However I am ecstatic that people are willing to pay a crapload of money for them right now just to get them to transfer into the hall. One of my characters turned 2 the other day. I get a present. A Harpy Ranger! BAM 30k. Some of my newer characters turned 1 a while ago and I never bothered opening those little blue presents. How much will people pay ingame for an unopened 1st year b-day present? BAM 15k. Why? I dunno... and I got yelled at constantly for selling at such a high price. But every day someone would buy it for that. *shrugs* In one day I sold all of my presents and minipets for 80k total. Not bad. More than halfway there.

3. Greens. Very similar to mods in the fact that only every once in a while do you find a WTB advertisement for one that you have. IMHO, it's always a waste of time to WTS because a) you are stuck in one city on one server and can only advertise one or two items at a time, and b) the people that do respond to your advertisement always cut down your offer and will want to haggle. Always. At any rate, they sell similar to many max mods because you can usually squeeze at least 3-4k out of each one, no matter what it is because you are responding to a WTB advertisement. The buyer wants what you have, and you can dictate the price. Quite the opposite in the real world! I made roughly 65k off of greens over the course of one weekend.

4. Golds. Hard to sell. When you ecounter a WTB looking for a gold, and you present them with choices, they will almost never be interested. People who look for gold items are looking for perfect golds with specific mods which they usually do not advertise and assume that you know what they are looking for. The golds that I did sell were unique skins with a decent base/inscription, and all of them had to be req9. I got lucky with a req8 max monk wand that I had on one of my heroes, it was divine favor and was bought for ~20k. Why, I don't know. You just get lucky with people like that. All in all I made about 45k from golds. That was over the course of about two weekends.

The rest of the difference in price I had on hand from the start. Now a lot of you know these experiences will not apply to everyone. I just wanted to show the people who were complaining about the price the details of what I had to do to earn the gloves. Regardless of whether you are broke, just have a lot of stuff that you didn't want to sell like me, or have plenty of ectos saved up already, it is a chore to get these things. Some may have to work harder than others, and that's just the nature of the game combined with the player's know-how, skill, and luck. I don't consider myself a rich player by getting the gloves. But I wanted to explain that, under certain circumstances, you don't have to endure a no-life grindfest to get these things. My gloves were a product of months and months of playing and enjoying my role without any real dedication to making money, and it finally payed off in a way that puts me on the same level as those who do grind. These expensive items in the game aren't just for the people who live on GW. They are for us too! Take satisfaction in how much better you feel by working hard for something! Hang in there guys, it can be done.