I played with Alchemy this weekend (CB5) because I wanted to see how much of a drain on my Kinah leveling this would be before release. If you plan on using work orders to level up alchemy, plan on spending a lot of money. After finding this out I went hunting for a solution and I found it: “free” recipes.

It won’t stop you from having to spend money on some of the work orders but there are enough “free” crafting recipes out there that it’ll definitely make a  difference to your pocketbook.

The first 40 levels of every level of alchemy except master can be gotten without having to spend a single Kinah if you’re up for gathering a lot of elemental stones and ore. Levels 1-40 of each level can be gotten by turning elemental stones into either powder or water and levels 21-60 can be gotten by turning ores into powder. (the elemental stones and ores will differ w/ level of course)

This week Nicholas the Traveler is collecting Rolls of Parchment in exchange for his Gifts of the Traveler. (5 Rolls of Parchment per gift)

A quick tip for those that don’t want to buy Rolls of Parchment. Prophecies and Factions crafters will craft one Roll of Parchment for 5 Wood Planks and 20 Gold. This could definitely save you some money.

Good luck with those gifts!

This article is not to tell you whether or not to keep items but to help you in deciding what collectable drops you think are worth keeping.

Profitable Rewards

These rewards once traded for will make you more gold than selling the collectable items themselves.

The entire list of profitable rewards can be found: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Category:Profitable_trophies. It’s a pretty handy list to have bookmarked with the new storage upgrades.

Rewards Worth Keeping

* Alphabetized by Collectable Item

• Blobs of Ooze x 7 = Refined Jelly (1 Sweet Tooth Point)
• Charr Hide x 4 = Fur Square (Rare Crafting Material)
• Destroyer Core x 250 =Destroyer Gauntlets (Armor)
• Diessa Chalice x 50 = Blindfold (Armor)
• Dredge Manifesto x 5 =Scroll of Hero’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll)
• Enslavement Stone x 5 =Scroll of Adventurer’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll)
• Glacial Stone x 100 = Glacial Gauntlets (Armor)
• Golden Rin Relic x 25 = Dread Mask (Armor)
• Kurzick Baubles x 5 = Scroll of Adventure’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll), Scroll of Rampager’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll), or Scroll of Hunter’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll)
• Luxon Pendant x 5 = Scroll of Adventure’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll), Scroll of Rampager’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll), or Scroll of Hunter’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll)
• Mahgo Claw x 3 =Scroll of Berserker’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll)
• Mandragor Roots x 3 = Mandragor Root Cake (1 Sweet Tooth Point)
• Seared Ribcages x 12 = Scroll of Slayer’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll)
• Sentient Spores x 5 = Bottle of Vabbian Wine (1 Drunkard Intoxication Level)
• Stone Grawl Necklaces x 8 = Honeycomb (1 Sweet Tooth Point)
• Superb Charr Carving x 250 = Mask of the Mo Zing (Armor)
• Unctuous Remains x 7 = Scroll of Hero’s Insight (Exp Bonus Scroll)

Holiday Event Collectors

• Halloween Collectors
• Wintersday Collectors

At both of the above links you will find collector items that give items that will aid in Sweet Tooth, Party Animal, and Drunkard titles.

If you’d like to do more research, a complete list of collectable drops can be found: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Category:Trophies

Sorry in advanced for the rant…

I’m very annoyed at the PvP slant that these quests rewards show. Not only do they consist of 60% of the rewards each day but PvP characters can be re-rolled and gain the rewards multiple times quite easily.

So let’s take a look at some past quests and their rewards:

23 April 2009 = Blood Washes Blood (70); Kanaxai (175); Guild Versus Guild (350)
26 April 2009 = Raisu Palace (90); Rragar Maneater (105); Jade Quarry (105)
29 April 2009 = Consulate Docks (50); The Stygian Lords (105); Random Arena (105)
3 May 2009 = Dzagonur Bastion (90); Fenrir (35); Guild Versus Guild (350)
4 May 2009 = Boreas Seabed (90);    Rotscale (70); Alliance Battles (175)

So according to the above ANET is equating:

• winning 6 AB matches to doing Hard Mode The Deep to kill Kanaxai
• winning 9 JQ matches to doing Hard Mode Stygian Veil to kill the Stygian Lords or Hard Mode Rragar’s Menagerie to kill Rragar Maneater

I have a VERY hard time accepting these rewards as equal. Alliance Battle and Jade Quarry are both much easier than both Domain of Anguish and Deep in normal mode much less hard mode. Complete newcomers to the game can complete these JQ and AB requirements. The team aspect of JQ and AB would allow day 1 players to create a PvP character and get these quests completed.

And what if you choose to do the quests in normal mode? The Deep is only worth 50 zcoins while Rragar Maneater and The Stygian Lords are only worth 30! What an insult!

Whoever came up with these rewards is completely biased towards PvP. Now I’m not going to argue against the GvG, HA, etc. rewards because I personally know the work that goes into them. The other PvP area rewards are in need of a serious balancing act though.

I wanted to let everyone know that you can have 3 of each quest type in your quest log at a single time. This means that you can have a total of 9 total Zaishen quests in your log. Enjoy!

Update:
- 04 May 2009 :: Grammatical mistake

I have been Kurzick point farming through vanquishes, Jade Quarry, etc. and gold farming to buy Drunkard, Party, and Sweet points. These 4 titles are the final titles that Kousei needs to be a God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals. Unfortunately, these activities do not provide the most intriguing material for writing.

Because of this, I started working on a few guides that I hope to have published here soon. Wish me luck!

Guru has been around for years but I think we all can agree that it has it’s problems. I stumbled across a new auction site the other day and it’s amazing comparatively speaking. It’s called GW Auctions and it was made specifically for GW. The site runs fast and using the site is super easy.

Go try it out and get hooked

We’ve been using gwShack to share team builds in private for a while and now it’s time to create a place to share all of our builds (character, hero, etc). The link below will take you to a page at gwShack with all of the builds currently in use by my friends, guildies, and myself. Enjoy!

Kousei Doragon’s Builds

PS – I’ll try and keep this as up to date as possible and I’ve added the link to the side bar.

If you really want those Candy Canes for Wintersday (or any other event/holiday items), this post is for you. I have been looking around and it looks like one of the fastest ways to acquire the holiday items is the Riven Earth Raptor Farm. I will try and cover a few different classes and builds in this tutorial but let’s start with our faithful warrior Kousei.

Normal Mode Warrior

*Note: I have started using Endure Pain instead of the Great Dwarf Armor shown in the video.

To be updated for other classes.

OK, so here’s my attempt at an editorial.

Guild Wars 2 is getting closer and closer daily and the more I read PvXWiki the more I realize we desperately need a better build sharing website. Every time I look at the site I find another reason that makes me wonder, “How many good builds aren’t being posted here because of [insert reason]?”

Let’s start with the least complex topic: the usability. If you want to post a build, you have to learn wiki syntax. Once you overcome that hurdle, you then have to go through the trouble of formatting the build page correctly, etc. How many players took one look at the work of posting a build and never looked at the site to share builds again? How many more builds would we have if a player could simply come to the site and paste in a template code then fill in some pre-determined fields?

Now let’s tackle the more complicated issue: the community. A build sharing site should allow users to post anything and everything they think can be useful to others and then have users rate it over time after (and here’s the important part) using the actual build. The community of PvXWiki has such an elitist attitude that they refuse to try most builds unless they live up to certain standards or expectations. How many people posted one build they’ve used extensively, got disheartened by the lack of acceptance, and never posted again? How many builds have we as a player community missed out on because the PvX community doesn’t think something will work?

Now I mentioned GW2 earlier. What will our build community be like for GW2 if we’re stuck with a build sharing site with the above problems? How many build combinations will we miss out on trying for ourselves because this community is incredibly good at ?

Now I know there are things like GW Shack out there but build browsing and searching is lacking. It’s good for making builds and handing them out to friends but not the community as a whole.