Post by Indigo on May 11, 2017 15:33:40 GMT 1
Updated : 5th August
Path Of Fire is coming, and it's only 7 weeks away! With this is mind it might be an idea to prepare for the next expansion. To start with we can learn from Heart of Thorns, see what we did there and learn from that.
HoT was our first expansion, we didn't know what to expect, so most players who were prepping just invested in pure gold or easily convertible materials, it felt like a safe move. However we didn't expect HoT to hit our in game wallets so hard. Guild Halls were expensive, the new HoT legendaries were awesome, but at least 1000g more than a Vanilla one and if you wanted to Scribe at HoT launch say goodbye to 2000g. Everything on HoT launch was expensive, materials were in short supply and prices were being driven up by the demand. T5 and T6 Leather went from the most useless materials in the game to some of the most valuable materials now. So much so that ANet created a new leather farm, specifically for people to farm leather and it's only just started having an effect on the market.
Eventually scribing costs have come right back down to something more reasonable, it's still an expensive Crafting profession and you'll need a levelled up guild to get the most from it but it's more in line with other crafting professions. HoT legendaries are still significantly more expensive than Vanilla ones and Guild Halls are much easier to manage new upgrades once you're maxed out as a guild.
With all this in mind, what can we we learn? HoT was a bit of a shock to the system, lots of new items, materials, content to spend your gold on. I have no doubt we'll have a similar experience but we do know some things. The new legendary system is much more stable, it's easier to predict how much gold you will need to create a new one, whilst we aren't expecting a specific legendary weapon release with PoF if you do decide to craft one, it'll be much more of an expected cost. Also if it's a newer legendary, it should be a bit easier to farm for the precursor (in theory). The guild hall won't be anywhere near as expensive this time, we have all the upgrades in our hall and even if they added a new structure I can't imagine it'll be the 10000's of gold spent before.
It's unlikely we'll see a new Crafting Profession, Anet would have already mentioned it. The material balancing, ANet had good intentions with leather, it should have been a core material like cloth and ore but they went way too far with it. ANet may try to give overstocked materials some use. Silk, Gossamer, Auric Slivers and Leaf Fossils are in a similar position to where leather was back at HoT launch.
We know we're going to the Crystal Desert. And I have just mentioned how ANet likes to balance materials, well Crystal Cores/Lodestones very much fit this. A very underused in that set of materials, take Crystal Lodestones currently priced at 22s. Nearly every other lodestone is 3 or 4 times as much.
As you can see it's a massive oversupply issue. To bring them inline we could see many new crafting recipes use a Crystal Core or Lodestone and start levelling out the price and driving the supply amount down. It would make sense thematically, Dragonbrand in the East of Ascalon have a habit of dropping Crystal Fragments.
We can also look at the new Specializations and mainly their new weapon unlocks. Thief - Rifle, Ranger & Warrior - Dagger, Guardian & Mesmer - Axe, Engi & Ele - Sword, Rev - Bow (Short we think), Necro - Torch. We can make an assumption that the precursors and popular/rare skins for these weapons might be more in demand, especially with the hype of an expansion and people returning to the game.
What else can we do to prepare for the next expansion?
Having some gear sets ready. You could spend time completing T3 or T4 fractals hoping for a Ascended Chest drop, you could also raid for those drops. Having the chests or currency ready to go for 1 set or more is something you can do. Whenever PoF drops you can get right into it on whatever character you want and be geared to go.
Materials, on HoT launch ANet proved that they will clear out your material storage. It could be worth hoarding materials until PoF launch. On the point of materials, I know I'm bad with is the daily Ascended crafts. HoT got us to spend a lot of these with Guild Halls. Also charging a Quartz Crystal daily would be a good idea.
Gold, save save save. Chances are you're going to spend a good chunk of change with the release of PoF. This also applied to common currencies like Karma. Fractal relics would also be a good one to hoard. Apparently Unbound Magic we'll be seeing a use in the new maps also, so having a stockpile of that would be of use.
Skirmish Chests from WvW, saving them might actually be a really good way of instantly unlocking Elite Specializations in PoF, right now 1 chest can be traded for 6 Proofs of Heroics, saving the Proofs from WvW level ups might also be a good thing to save however we don't know if that's the currency that will unlock PoF hero points. For now I would suggest keeping the chests until we know and then trading them in for the correct currency should a new one appear.
Boosters, we know we are going to see a lot of new masteries with PoF, chances are you're going to need a decent chunk of experience. XP, Celebration and Birthday Boosters all fill the job. You can also invest in certain Halloween food and utility buffs that provide 15% XP on kill over the standard 10%. The forgotten Guild Hall boosters from the Tavern, they are free, last a day and can give you another 10% XP. One final XP booster is the Lunar New Year fireworks - wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lunar_animal%27s_Gift
I'm sure there's other things I'm forgetting but I'll keep updating this post as we find out more info about PoF. Feel free to add to the discussion/speculation here. Hopefully with this expansion we won't get hit as hard as HoT hit.
Path Of Fire is coming, and it's only 7 weeks away! With this is mind it might be an idea to prepare for the next expansion. To start with we can learn from Heart of Thorns, see what we did there and learn from that.
HoT was our first expansion, we didn't know what to expect, so most players who were prepping just invested in pure gold or easily convertible materials, it felt like a safe move. However we didn't expect HoT to hit our in game wallets so hard. Guild Halls were expensive, the new HoT legendaries were awesome, but at least 1000g more than a Vanilla one and if you wanted to Scribe at HoT launch say goodbye to 2000g. Everything on HoT launch was expensive, materials were in short supply and prices were being driven up by the demand. T5 and T6 Leather went from the most useless materials in the game to some of the most valuable materials now. So much so that ANet created a new leather farm, specifically for people to farm leather and it's only just started having an effect on the market.
Eventually scribing costs have come right back down to something more reasonable, it's still an expensive Crafting profession and you'll need a levelled up guild to get the most from it but it's more in line with other crafting professions. HoT legendaries are still significantly more expensive than Vanilla ones and Guild Halls are much easier to manage new upgrades once you're maxed out as a guild.
With all this in mind, what can we we learn? HoT was a bit of a shock to the system, lots of new items, materials, content to spend your gold on. I have no doubt we'll have a similar experience but we do know some things. The new legendary system is much more stable, it's easier to predict how much gold you will need to create a new one, whilst we aren't expecting a specific legendary weapon release with PoF if you do decide to craft one, it'll be much more of an expected cost. Also if it's a newer legendary, it should be a bit easier to farm for the precursor (in theory). The guild hall won't be anywhere near as expensive this time, we have all the upgrades in our hall and even if they added a new structure I can't imagine it'll be the 10000's of gold spent before.
It's unlikely we'll see a new Crafting Profession, Anet would have already mentioned it. The material balancing, ANet had good intentions with leather, it should have been a core material like cloth and ore but they went way too far with it. ANet may try to give overstocked materials some use. Silk, Gossamer, Auric Slivers and Leaf Fossils are in a similar position to where leather was back at HoT launch.
We know we're going to the Crystal Desert. And I have just mentioned how ANet likes to balance materials, well Crystal Cores/Lodestones very much fit this. A very underused in that set of materials, take Crystal Lodestones currently priced at 22s. Nearly every other lodestone is 3 or 4 times as much.
As you can see it's a massive oversupply issue. To bring them inline we could see many new crafting recipes use a Crystal Core or Lodestone and start levelling out the price and driving the supply amount down. It would make sense thematically, Dragonbrand in the East of Ascalon have a habit of dropping Crystal Fragments.
We can also look at the new Specializations and mainly their new weapon unlocks. Thief - Rifle, Ranger & Warrior - Dagger, Guardian & Mesmer - Axe, Engi & Ele - Sword, Rev - Bow (Short we think), Necro - Torch. We can make an assumption that the precursors and popular/rare skins for these weapons might be more in demand, especially with the hype of an expansion and people returning to the game.
What else can we do to prepare for the next expansion?
Having some gear sets ready. You could spend time completing T3 or T4 fractals hoping for a Ascended Chest drop, you could also raid for those drops. Having the chests or currency ready to go for 1 set or more is something you can do. Whenever PoF drops you can get right into it on whatever character you want and be geared to go.
Materials, on HoT launch ANet proved that they will clear out your material storage. It could be worth hoarding materials until PoF launch. On the point of materials, I know I'm bad with is the daily Ascended crafts. HoT got us to spend a lot of these with Guild Halls. Also charging a Quartz Crystal daily would be a good idea.
Gold, save save save. Chances are you're going to spend a good chunk of change with the release of PoF. This also applied to common currencies like Karma. Fractal relics would also be a good one to hoard. Apparently Unbound Magic we'll be seeing a use in the new maps also, so having a stockpile of that would be of use.
Skirmish Chests from WvW, saving them might actually be a really good way of instantly unlocking Elite Specializations in PoF, right now 1 chest can be traded for 6 Proofs of Heroics, saving the Proofs from WvW level ups might also be a good thing to save however we don't know if that's the currency that will unlock PoF hero points. For now I would suggest keeping the chests until we know and then trading them in for the correct currency should a new one appear.
Boosters, we know we are going to see a lot of new masteries with PoF, chances are you're going to need a decent chunk of experience. XP, Celebration and Birthday Boosters all fill the job. You can also invest in certain Halloween food and utility buffs that provide 15% XP on kill over the standard 10%. The forgotten Guild Hall boosters from the Tavern, they are free, last a day and can give you another 10% XP. One final XP booster is the Lunar New Year fireworks - wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lunar_animal%27s_Gift
I'm sure there's other things I'm forgetting but I'll keep updating this post as we find out more info about PoF. Feel free to add to the discussion/speculation here. Hopefully with this expansion we won't get hit as hard as HoT hit.
