I don't like the idea of buying my gold, but it's becoming very appealing...

Hello Everyone,

I will start with this... I love this game so much, I have clocked in 214 hours is the past 49 days. Between 3 characters, I have never had over 10 Platinum (2 of which are ascended). Apparently, I was lucky enough to start playing when anti-farming measures started to take place. It is my understanding, that worthwhile item drops are less frequent. So in a sense, I'm at a disadvantage. I would think that after this many hours, without farming, I should be able to at least buy forge armor and the necessary salvage items (because my salvaging thus far is not nearly enough). This game is supposed to work for casual players. And I don't view myself as such. I would think I would be able to afford quite a bit more, at this point.

After stealing gold from my monk, I was able to get forge armor for my ranger. Since drops are terrible, I started using my ranger as a runner. Now, finally, after those 200+ game hours, I can actually pull in over 1 plat an hour, but looking back at what now looks like a waste of time, I am thoroughly dissatisfied. So rather than waste more hours, it seems more worthwhile to just buy the gold online and go about my ways with what I feel I've earned to begin with...

Am I missing something?

With 154 hours on one character for 60 days, I've 28 plat. It's a slow buildup.

Make a monk/x or w/mo or something else that can hunt. Spend a little time to sell off whatever you find that is easy to sell. You should be able to make forge armor easily...

fissure armor well........

The drops are (with a few exceptions) the same as they've always been, it's just that the areas have been made harder for solo builds, usually by adding monsters with enchant removal (as most farmers/botters use monk builds which rely heavily on enchantments).

I'm guessing you're playing with henches?
Just bringing one henchman will halve your drops, and if you play with 6 henches you're only getting 1/7th of the drops, and yes, that will suck. If you can't solo high-level areas it's better to farm lower level areas for raw materials, runes, gold, and dye.

It's still perfectly possible to farm and make quite a bit of money, but now you ideally should be two human players rather than just one to, say, take on the Grawl army outside Draknors, or the Drakes in the Gates of Kryta mission. And never bring henches when farming.

Draknors armor isn't expensive, as others have said you can make that kind of money quite quickly.

Even with these anti-farming measures, I can still make a minimum of 5k per hour, sometimes as much as 7.5k if I'm lucky. Its a matter of finding that one spot no one will think of and keeping it to yourself. But even without a farming spot, there's no reason why you can't make enough money for Drok's armor in a reasonable amount of time. Even when I play normally, I can make 1k or 2k in a desert or south shiverpeaks mission easy and still find a couple good drops to keep.

Well, i've played for 41 days and 187 hours and I currently have 39k in storage and spent a networth of at least 300k :/
On 2 of my characters I have the 60k armor sets :/ (ranger and ele).
I don't think the anti-farming measures have anything to do with it, just the way you play the game and how quickly you catch onto things.
Anyways, keep at it trying to earn money in game. Try different methods of making money, but never buy it because in the end it's simply not worth it.

Bear in mind that money really isn't all that important.

Armour is a one-time-only purchase, collector gear is awesome, and runes are dirt cheap. (people complain about this, but I think it's fantastic)

Don't bother with expensive stuff. You can easily do without it.