GW2: Mystic Forge fortunes?

As I mentioned, I’ve been making an attempt to get a precursor, dropping rare staffs into the forge. I have a pretty good idea how this will turn out, but it’s still a good experiment. The other day, I got this:

Awesome, huh? That’s the exotic staff, Deathwish. I put 4 rare Krait Crooks in the Mystic Forge and got that back.

That seems like a pretty good deal, doesn’t it?

It is if you ignore the other 9 attempts I made that only yielded another rare staff. That’s 10 attempts to get 1 exotic. Granted Deathwish is worth about 7 gold. That’s some nice change, but let’s look at what this actually cost me.

I made a total of 10 attempts. Each attempt yielded another rare staff, then finally Deathwish. I’d always put the rare staffs I got out of the Forge back in the Forge, so I needed 4 staffs to start with, then 3 more for each new attempt. That means I put 31 rare staffs in the Mystic Forge before I finally got Deathwish.

Rare staffs tend to sell for a bit more than normal rare weapons – everyone is try to get the Legend, the precursor for Bifrost. Depending on the staff, I could have sold them for 60 to 70 silver. Let’s just say on average, I’d make 60 silver after the trading post took their cut. 31 x 60 = Yikes!!! 18 gold, 60 silver!!!

I could have bought two Deathwishes if I’d just sold the staffs I dumped into the forge, and I’d still have about 4 gold left over.

You see how the Forge gets you? Every now and then, it gives you back something sweet. That something sweet makes you think the Forge is working and luck is with you. It isn’t though. No more than anyone else. In most cases, if you would just resisted the temptation of the Forge, you’d be better off.