GW2: I got a precursor!

Surprise, surprise! Yesterday, I got a precursor. I should’ve taken a screenshot, but I totally spaced on it.

I know. You’re thinking, “That’s awesome. Make a legendary.”

Sadly, it wasn’t The Legend or even one of the other precursors people yearn for. It was Venom. The Legend is the precursor needed to make the legendary staff Bifrost; Venom will get you the legendary trident Kraitkin. It’s still a legendary, but not exactly a desirable one.

So why not make a legendary, anyway?

I guess if you want a legendary and you don’t care which one it is, a cheap one like Kraitkin is a good way to go. You’ll certainly save a lot of gold on the precursor. But it’s still going to cost you about a 800-1000 gold to craft the legendary. Kraitkin sells for about 2000 gold on the trading post, so theoretically I’d save almost 1000 gold. That’s still not worth it to me.

A lot of people in the game have legendaries, and that’s cool. Except for Bifrost, none of the legendaries appeal to me enough to make me want to spend that kind of gold on them. It’s a personal decision. I think there are much better weapon skins you can buy, and they don’t cost you 3000 gold like some of the legendaries. Yes, that’s the going price on the trading post for the more popular legendaries. That kind of gold will buy you a lot of cool things from the gem store. So it makes me think twice, three times, about whether I want a legendary.

Unless I get The Legend, I doubt I’ll make one.

I sold Venom. It got me about 72 gold. So I got my first precursor and I got some sweet gold.

But you know something else? I was a bit irked, too. Why?

You see, it was slightly annoying I got this out of the Mystic Forge.

If you’re curious it was 3 Krait Crooks and another generic weapon – a mace, I think – all level 80 rares. There’s a whole mythology of superstition surrounding what weapons are more likely to yield a precursor from the Forge. I think most of it is just that – superstition. I don’t think named weapons are more likely to yield a precursor than a non-named weapon, for instance.

But all that’s sorta beside the point, though. Why was I annoyed that I pulled this precursor from the Forge?

Because I’ve run Jormag until I couldn’t stand it, anymore. I’ve run dungeons. I’ve gotten probably thousands of loot bags from bosses all over Tyria. But I hardly ever “play” the Forge. Sometimes, very rarely, I dump some random stuff in my inventory into the Forge. This was one of those times. I had made the Krait Crooks, myself, so they were sorta free, and I’d just picked up the other weapon as a drop. So I just decided to drop them in the Forge, and lo and behold, my first ever precursor.

You see, it’s annoying because I’m here to play Guild Wars 2, not play the slot machine known as the Mystic Forge.

Hah. Joke’s on me.

So I think I’ll try a little experiment. I have lots of T5 mats and can regularly make rare staves more or less for free. I’m not going to do this a lot, because I suspect it’s a waste of gold, but every so often I’ll dump some staves in the Forge and just to see what I get.