Crafting, Farming, Mats, Oh My

[TheTimelessShadow.2958]

Hey everyone. Considering getting back into the game again and I have already made a new character to start anew. I was curious about something though: I enjoyed the crafting system back then and farming and what not (weird, I know), but I've... kinda forgotten some things about it. The knowledge was replaced with how to do stuff in FFXIV. Sooo...

-With farming for materials... How does one know where to locate them? Are certain materials very specific to certain enemies? Or are material tiers scaled along with each zone's level range? Are the map rewards for completion a good indicator of what to expect from that zone?

-With farming in general, is there a mechanic still in place that throttles material gain in each zone dependent on how long you farm for?

In FF, they gave you logs for materials and where you can find them (very handy), but GW2 isn't as simple. Any tips and refreshers would be greatly appreciated.

[Mea.5491]

In my opinion, instead of farming materials, it's a lot easier to farm Gold at max lvl and buy the materials you need to max your crafting disciplines in a couple of hours with the help of gw2crafts.net

[Tanner Blackfeather.6509]

Material nodes (wood, ore, plants) are generally scaled to level, plants however somewhat erratically.

 

Leather and Cloth mostly come from salvage and depend om the level of the gear salvaged. Much of the gear dropped will be set to *your* level, so those are generally harder to farm.

 

Intermediate materials (like blood, totems and dust) will usually come from drops or bags scaled to mob level.

 

Advanced materials (the sliver to lodestone steps) are usually also drops based on mob level.

[perilisk.1874]

Material nodes show on the map, and are mostly based on the zone level. Others explained drops, salvage, etc.

 

However, there are also lots of new ways to acquire mats using map currencies in the Living Story maps. And you can always buy crafting materials from the TP.

[ReaverKane.7598]

> @"TheTimelessShadow.2958" said:

> Hey everyone. Considering getting back into the game again and I have already made a new character to start anew. I was curious about something though: I enjoyed the crafting system back then and farming and what not (weird, I know), but I've... kinda forgotten some things about it. The knowledge was replaced with how to do stuff in FFXIV. Sooo...

It's pretty straightforward, you'll receive some recipes as you level the craft (usually Blues and greens) and later you can learn/discover rarer items (rare, exotic, ascended and even legendary).

 

Learning means acquiring recipes (from drops, NPCs, Trading Post, Friends, or if your guild is like mine, the Guild Bank ^_^), the first recipes you'll end up buying are probably for the rare and exotic Inscriptions or Insignias, which are sold by the NPC next to the crafting stations.

 

Discovering means getting the components for a certain recipe, and adding them on the Discover tab (top tab of the crafting station interface window) to get a new recipe and the item. This for most crafts follows a very Linear structure that you'll pick up from the early recipes you're given as you level. For example all armor pieces use a Panel (external part) a Lining and a Insignia (the insignia is what determines the stats), so you can make a bunch of different insignias, panels and linnings of the same crafting tier, and just mix them all up to get different new recipes (also discovering recipes is the best way to lvl up).

 

> -With farming for materials... How does one know where to locate them? Are certain materials very specific to certain enemies? Or are material tiers scaled along with each zone's level range? Are the map rewards for completion a good indicator of what to expect from that zone?

There's a few different kinds of materials:

* Wood, Ore and Plants, you gather with gathering tools all over the maps. The nodes will show up on the mini-map. Wood and ore will change with the level of the maps, so low level maps will have copper, then Iron, then more iron (for steel), then Platinum, then Mithril and rarely in lvl 80 areas you get Orichalcum. Plants are more region than level based, although some "plants" (coral) will drop increasingly higher tier items with the map level.

You can also get wood and ores from salvaging weapons and armor.

 

* Cloth and Leather are dropped from enemies (leather drops more often from herbivore animals, while cloth from "sentient" enemies like Grawl) usually it drops as salvagable items. There's special nodes in guild halls, private home instances, and WvW i think, that will also allow you to gather leather or cloth from them.

You can also salvage them from armour items.

 

* The final material type are the "Fine materials" or "Tier X materials" they all used to be fine (blue named), but recently the Tier 6 ones were made rare. These drop randomly from certain enemies, or from loot bags. These are used for Inscriptions and Insignias and are the factor that determines the stat combination for those items. Gems are also a material that can drop from loot bags or minning, or Coral, and work the same way as the above, but are specific for Jewellery. Also gems can be slotted in place of a Rune or a Sigil.

 

> -With farming in general, is there a mechanic still in place that throttles material gain in each zone dependent on how long you farm for?

Yes, there still are diminishing returns.

> In FF, they gave you logs for materials and where you can find them (very handy), but GW2 isn't as simple. Any tips and refreshers would be greatly appreciated.

It kinda is, the wiki helps (you can also type /wiki ingame to check it out real quick (opens your browser).

 

 

[TheTimelessShadow.2958]

I totally forgot that the wiki can be opened straight from the game.

Thanks everyone!

[Hoodie.1045]

> @"TheTimelessShadow.2958" said:

> -With farming for materials... How does one know where to locate them? Are certain materials very specific to certain enemies? Or are material tiers scaled along with each zone's level range? Are the map rewards for completion a good indicator of what to expect from that zone?

 

Some materials can be farmed from certain enemies. If there are no enemies that have a guaranteed way of dropping the materials you want, you can do map bonus rewards. Just find the material you're looking for on the map bonus reward list and you might be able to find it. The materials change maps every week. The best way to farm for map bonus rewards is to do champion events. They give out the most amount of experience.

 

The other way of getting materials is to spend laurels at laurel merchants and buy crafting bags. The bags that include tier 6 materials are heavy crafting bags. Each of these bags cost 1 laurel. It's RNG, so you better have a lot of laurel and a lot of luck.

 

If you're not interested in doing these things, the only thing you can do is farm for gold and buy the materials that way.

[perilisk.1874]

> @"ReaverKane.7598" said:

>

> * Cloth and Leather are dropped from enemies (leather drops more often from herbivore animals, while cloth from "sentient" enemies like Grawl) usually it drops as salvagable items. There's special nodes in guild halls, private home instances, and WvW i think, that will also allow you to gather leather or cloth from them.

> You can also salvage them from armour items.

 

You can also use the newish karma gathering tools that drop bonus leather or cloth when harvesting/logging/mining.

 

 

[Goettel.4389]

Welcome back! Somewhat off-topic, but relevant: if you're intent on serious crafting and grinding mats yourself make sure to check out tools like https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/calculator/ - it will break down and list everything you (still) need if you provide the site with an API key.