Guild Wars 2: 5 tips for making money on the trading post – Tip 5

Tip 5: Don’t gamble

Did you know if you put 4 blue weapons in the Mystic Forge there’s a chance you’ll get a green item? Did you know if you put 4 green items in you might get a rare yellow weapon? And 4 rares might yield an exotic or even a precursor? How ’bout runes? Did you know if you put 4 major runes in you might get a superior rune back?

You can upgrade stuff, too. For instance, 250 mithril ore + 1 orichalcum ore + 10 piles of incandescent dust + a philosopher stone = a random amount of orichalcum.

Isn’t that awesome?! Don’t do it.

Just think of the Mystic Forge as a giant slot machine, because that’s what it is. It works on the same principle. It only pays out enough to keep you interested. Maybe one time in ten you’ll get a little payback, the rest of the time you’re losing money.

For instance, let’s say your odds of getting a superior rune from 4 major runes is really one in seven. That’s being generous, but just for the sake of argument let’s use those odds. The first time you use the forge it need four major runes and it returns one. Each subsequent time you’ll only need 3 more major runes, because the Forge has returned one major rune for the four you gave it. (Yeah, not much of a deal, is it?) If you have to use the Forge seven times to get a superior rune, it will cost you a total of 22 major runes. Each major rune is worth about 5 silver, depending on the rune, of course, but on average around 5 silver (That’s on the low side, by the way. Major runes are expensive, because people like to gamble.). So you’ve spent, on average, 1 gold 10 silver to get that superior rune out of the forge. And you don’t even get what you want or can use. Sometimes you get soulbound superior runes which you can’t even sell.

You’d have been better off spending that gold to buy a rune you wanted, instead of some random rune. You might even have saved yourself some money. Whether it’s runes or ore or armor or whatever, almost everything you put in the Forge that yields a random return is a sucker’s bet. Don’t be a sucker.

The Mystic Forge does what every good slot machine does: It favors the house. Some you’ll win big, but most of the time you’ll keep losing.

If you want to conserve your funds, don’t play the mystic forge.