Best ways to farm Gold ingredients for upgrades

Cryptor · November 2022

I am sure this is a very silly question to people who focus on crafting (which I am not). I have a number of crafted pieces of equipment (Blacksmithing, Jewelerry, Woodworking) that I would like to upgrade to Gold (forgot the name, the highest tier). The prices at guild vendors are absurdly high, like 30k+ EACH (!) and I need like 10 per piece of gear. If there is somethign specific that people do to farm these that would be great to know.

tsaescishoeshiner · November 2022

Imo, I wouldn't upgrade jewelry to gold for a minor stat increase. If it's a tradeable set, it's possibly way cheaper to buy it from a trader. If you farmed 12 Chromium Plates yourself ... I would honestly just sell them lol.

For DPS, the FIRST and most important item to gold is your mainhand weapon on your frontbar (main bar that you use). This is because it gives you 200+ weapon & spell damage for very little cost.

I've done DLC dungeon hardmodes, vet DLC trials, PvP, all with purple armor, purple jewelry, and a gold frontbar weapon.

Otherwise, just pick a zone and farm resources and refine them with max crafting passives and the Champion Point that buffs refining. I would pick somewhere easy to navigate and out of the way, or just that you like to run around. Also, do daily writs and get the crafting passives that give your daily hireling mail. That's mainly it!

Jaimeh · November 2022

Daily writs is the best way, so even if you don't focus on crafting, try to make one character at least to be able to do max tier writs, and do them here and there, it does add up over time, even with just one character. Then you can also put some skill points into the hireling passive and you'll get gold mats from them periodically (I don't use them, so I'm not sure how often that happens, but according to crafters it's another good source to have). Besides crafting, your best bet would then be to either farm the nodes themselves (having a speedy build helps) or farm gold to buy the mats. But like the previous commenter said, you only really need to gold out your weapons as a starting point, and then slowly gold out the rest of the pieces, leaving jewellery for last, since it's so grindy and expensive. Gold mats do add stats, but if you are just starting out making builds it's not a must by any means. Plus, meta do tend to change a lot, so I would only gold out staple gear pieces, like vma weapons, and so on.

Djennku · November 2022

Aside from daily writs, there is a little trick to increasing the amount of gold mats when refining. What you do is refine 2-3 individual stacks of materials at a time, then exit the crafting station menu and then enter it again and repeat. What you are looking for is gold mats dropping from the refining of the 2-3 stacks.

Once you get gold mats from a set (2 gold in the small batch will get you the most), refine everything you have without leaving the menu.

Other players have videos on this method, but do not explain that once you find a good set of gold mats dropping from that small amount of refining, to go ahead and refine all your stacks at once. I figured that part out myself after testing it a few times, and it's much more effective than doing the 2-3 stack method on repeat until you run out of stacks.

tmbrinks · November 2022

Djennku wrote: »

Aside from daily writs, there is a little trick to increasing the amount of gold mats when refining. What you do is refine 2-3 individual stacks of materials at a time, then exit the crafting station menu and then enter it again and repeat. What you are looking for is gold mats dropping from the refining of the 2-3 stacks.

Once you get gold mats from a set (2 gold in the small batch will get you the most), refine everything you have without leaving the menu.

Other players have videos on this method, but do not explain that once you find a good set of gold mats dropping from that small amount of refining, to go ahead and refine all your stacks at once. I figured that part out myself after testing it a few times, and it's much more effective than doing the 2-3 stack method on repeat until you run out of stacks.

I have regularly tested. The drop rate is consistent regardless of the amount refined.

If, in fact, there is a bug like this (which I have NEVER seen, and I've refined a lot of materials), in which you are doing this. You are exploiting, and it is a bannable offense.

I've had conversations with dozens of players who have made this claim previously. Not a single one has been able to replicate or prove their results.

@ZOS_Kevin can you take a look and see if there is in fact a bug with this? Would be nice to put this persistent conspiracy theory to rest and just let people refine in peace.

Bergzorn · November 2022

The random number generator used for this game is prone to the clustering of events, e.g. if you would let it create (more or less) random series of 0 and 1 you are likely to end up with examples like this

000111110011010111110000001

where 0 and 1 are often more clustered than would be expected from a random process. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence for this.

On topic, I agree with #2. Upgrading your weapons is very useful, upgrading jewellery or armor beyond purple is rarely worth it for most players. Refining raw materials is a good and straight forward way to farm upgrade materials. Make sure you have the passives maxed out before refining.

Lumsdenml · November 2022

I've found that doing daily Writs works best for me. I have about 10 max level crafters that I do them on and can get gold mats from any and all of them. Obviously it takes time to get them to those levels, but once done, it's about 3 min spent on each character to get gold mats, where farming raw mats to get the same amount would take longer each day.

endgamesmug · November 2022

I do try out farming mats now and again but my rng is terrible when it comes to refining, i seem to get the most from writs and hireling mails. So i just stick to running writs on 18 seems the most efficient method for me and my needs.

endgamesmug · November 2022

Cryptor wrote: »

I am sure this is a very silly question to people who focus on crafting (which I am not). I have a number of crafted pieces of equipment (Blacksmithing, Jewelerry, Woodworking) that I would like to upgrade to Gold (forgot the name, the highest tier). The prices at guild vendors are absurdly high, like 30k+ EACH (!) and I need like 10 per piece of gear. If there is somethign specific that people do to farm these that would be great to know.

I have plenty of tempering alloy/rosin i can donate you if youre hard up providing youre on pcna 😀

opalcity · November 2022

I would say that most of mine comes from writs, then from refining, then from hirelings. I have one character who is my main crafter, anything that the other two characters get, goes straight in the bank and I make sure that only the one crafty character (who has all of the refining skill points) does the refining.

Cryptor · November 2022

endgamesmug wrote: »

Cryptor wrote: »

I am sure this is a very silly question to people who focus on crafting (which I am not). I have a number of crafted pieces of equipment (Blacksmithing, Jewelerry, Woodworking) that I would like to upgrade to Gold (forgot the name, the highest tier). The prices at guild vendors are absurdly high, like 30k+ EACH (!) and I need like 10 per piece of gear. If there is somethign specific that people do to farm these that would be great to know.

I have plenty of tempering alloy/rosin i can donate you if youre hard up providing youre on pcna 😀

Xbox NA

gariondavey · November 2022

I do writs on 7 characters with hirlings as well. Between those rewards and the surveys, I never run out of upgrade materials (and I'm a pvp theorycrafting addict, so I make a lot of builds)

SeaGtGruff · November 2022

One thing to beware of-- don't bother trying to improve your gear yourself if you haven't upgraded your passives such that the improvements require the least number of tempering mats. It's okay to improve from white to green, or green to blue, but if you're having to buy the tempering mats and haven't maxed your passives yet, then improving from blue to purple or from purple to gold is going to cost more than it needs to. Of course, if you feel like you can afford it, then go for it! But I assume that if that were the case then you wouldn't have mentioned how much the tempering mats cost.

Anyway, try to get your passives up to where it takes only 8 gold to improve a purple item, or 4 gold to improve purple jewelry. The difference between 10 and 8 might not seem so bad, but that's 2 extra gold mats per item, which could end up being an extra 22 gold mats-- 2 x 7 for your armor, and as much as 2 x 4 for your weapons (assuming the maximum of 2 items per skill bar, such as a 1-handed weapon plus a shield on one bar and two 1-handed weapons on the other bar).

Cryptor · November 2022

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

One thing to beware of-- don't bother trying to improve your gear yourself if you haven't upgraded your passives such that the improvements require the least number of tempering mats. It's okay to improve from white to green, or green to blue, but if you're having to buy the tempering mats and haven't maxed your passives yet, then improving from blue to purple or from purple to gold is going to cost more than it needs to. Of course, if you feel like you can afford it, then go for it! But I assume that if that were the case then you wouldn't have mentioned how much the tempering mats cost.

Anyway, try to get your passives up to where it takes only 8 gold to improve a purple item, or 4 gold to improve purple jewelry. The difference between 10 and 8 might not seem so bad, but that's 2 extra gold mats per item, which could end up being an extra 22 gold mats-- 2 x 7 for your armor, and as much as 2 x 4 for your weapons (assuming the maximum of 2 items per skill bar, such as a 1-handed weapon plus a shield on one bar and two 1-handed weapons on the other bar).

That is a piece of great advice, thank you!