A Daily in the Life of: GW2
Log into Guild Wars 2. Alt-tab and open the TaCo addon, which provides invaluable overlay support to extra activities, should I choose to engage with them.
Load main character (Scourge). Collect daily login bonus. Today is Day 8 of the 28-Day cycle, which is four Mystic Coins. The prices of Mystic Coins have collapsed since the End of Dragons expansion, presumably because the new Legendary weapon options that came with it use less of them. I have also heard that some cheater may have been banned a while back, and tanked the market? In any case, they used to be worth 2g apiece and today they are 71s. I bank them with the rest, bringing my total stash to 415. That seems like a lot, but apparently you need like 230+ of them for one Legendary.
Waypoint to Divinity’s Reach, enter home instance. Not many personal nodes in there – the math says you’d need like 500+ days just to break even on the typical 50g purchase price – but the Quartz node in there supposedly sometimes drops Charged Quartz Crystals which are otherwise 1/day limited.
And… holy shit, it actually happened:

Waypoint to bank to deposit goods. Use the Ley-Energy Matter Converter for some “free” goodies, same with Princess (eating some of the thousands of Draconite Ore I stashed for some reason). Between the AH and the vendor, I made about 21s.
Waypoint to Lion’s Arch, near a Skritt vendor that gives me a Provisioner token in exchange for a Mystic Forge Stone. I have 108 of the latter somehow and this appears to be the best use for them. Waypoint to Durmand Priory with its easy Commune Hero Point to turn 25 Quartz Crystals into a Charged version once per day. Waypoint to Black Citadel near another Provisioner token NPC, this time trading one for an Obsidian Shard. Need 50 total Provisioner tokens to exchange for a Gift of Craftmanship, a component in Legendary Sigils and Runes. I could earn more than 2/day from these and other vendors, but the other exchanged goods cost money and I’m not in a particular hurry. Two per day will add up over time – I have 42 total, for example.
At this point, I check the actual Daily quest options. If you complete three “achievements” from a rotating list, you get 2g straight up plus some other bonuses. Some are more annoying than others. I generally hope for “Mine/Chop/Gather X nodes,” “Vista Point in Y area,” and “WvW Big Spender.” Of the WvW options, I will settle for things like killing a Sentry or capping a Shrine, but it’s highly dependent on what’s actually going on in WvW at the time. Today is… ugh. Veteran Creature Slayer or Kill 5 Guards. These aren’t hard but increases the risk of me encountering enemy players. Luckily, a Jumping Puzzle is one of the daily options and TaCo will provide an overlay of exactly where to go and how to jump.
Completed all three, collect the 2g. There’s more I can do, but I switch to alts now.
Load Daredevil. They are already at Flax farm in Draconis Mons. Collect all the nodes, sell the 14 Piles of Flax Seeds for 43s. I could just keep the alt here, but I use the Spearmarshal’s Plea item to teleport to a small corner of a map on the opposite side of the world. Just south of that destination is a guaranteed Rich Orichalcum Vein. Sell the 10 ore for 31.8s. I use a Watchwork Pickaxe bought with Karma, which adds an extra 6.75s worth of sellable goods to the haul.
Load Renegade. They are right by the Rich Orichalcum Vein mentioned above. They get a rare gem proc, which is an extra 7.5s, totaling basically 45s altogether. Use the Season 3 Portal Tome to port to Draconis Mons, in basically a reverse route as the Daredevil. Somehow get 16 Flax and a bonus item, selling for 50s even.
Load Mirage. Repeat above.
Load Mechanist. This alt is parked near a Grand Chest in Echovald Wilds, in the new expansion. Looting it gives a Jade Runestone worth 36s by itself, and I occasionally get two. The chest also has about 6ish Unusual Coins which… probably have some purpose. Not selling anything just yet, just in case.
Load Tempest. This alt is parked near the three chests in the Sanctum of Nabkha from Path of Fire. I honestly don’t really know why. Most of the items can’t actually be sold (below minimum price on the AH). I do get 25+ Trade Contracts, which is a sort of expansion currency. Hmm. After checking the Wiki, the Trade Contracts are necessary to use with other goods to trade for Funerary Incense, which is then used to help build Legendary weapons. So… probably that reason.
Load Firebrand. This alt is parked at Bjora Marches, near the frozen waterfall. There are three chests here that can each be opened once per day for a lot of Eternal Ice currency plus other (low-value) goodies. Eternal Ice can be converted to other map currency, to use in the creation of a Legendary without having to farm in more annoying ways.
Done.
Total haul appears to be 2.62g + 2g + miscellaneous currencies. I don’t typically do the Flax/Ore loop on my Scourge, Mechanist, or Firebrand, despite it being fairly easy to get them back into position, thereby losing out on another 2.62g daily cash. Resetting the Tempest would be more annoying than it is worth, assuming I value Trade Contracts at all. Which I do, for the hypothetical future.
At the time of this writing, 4.62g is worth exactly 15 gems. Buying 800 gems costs $10, which means… 8 gems equals ten cents. I earned about $0.20 with all that activity. Not difficult activity, but not nonzero either. Jesus Christ, I never bothered doing the math until just now, writing this post. What the fuck am I doing with my life?
Log off.
Posted on September 20, 2022, in Guild Wars 2 and tagged A Daily in the Life of, Daily Quest, Guild Wars 2, What Am I Doing With My Life?. Bookmark the permalink. 9 Comments.
There is also easy money to have in Aborstone. Once a week Leivas sells you up to five Antique Summoning Stones for various currencies. This go for about 6g on the TP at the moment. You can find him near the mystic forge on the lower level. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Leivas
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Amusingly (or tragically), I have yet to really do anything in EoD content. I sent my Engineer into the story just far enough to unlock the maps so I could then do enough hero points to unlock Mechanist and see if it was as OP as people were talking about. It does indeed some pretty OP but also not particularly fun (yet?), so I have been working on other alts.
Meanwhile, clearly, I am wasting my time with less efficient farming techniques.
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I earned about $0.20 with all that activity. Not difficult activity, but not nonzero either. Jesus Christ, I never bothered doing the math until just now, writing this post.
Wisely so, for that way lies madness. Like dwelling on the opportunity cost of playing games at all.
As one who enjoys time optimisation puzzles, though, I found this fun to read despite not playing GW2 myself. More so as I find myself trying to refine a daily routine, on a shoestring playtime allowance, to eventually collect all the weirdo NPCs for my adventurer squadron in FFXIV. Which might be even more quixotic because that system is set to be completely abandoned in the near future.
Journeys, destinations, all that jazz.
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I do not usually indulge in time-value-of-money considerations, not because I need a cloak of mystery (or denial) to maintain suspension of disbelief, but because it requires a leap. There is no direct connection between, say, messing around in Cyberpunk 2077 and real dollars. With GW2 (and WoW) though, the gem shop is right there. The devs actively invited the comparison.
You’re right on the money though (har har): determining optimum efficiency of farming routes is itself a major component of the fun. That it amounts to literal pennies of difference is rather unfortunate, but I do this sort of thing for free. Actually, I suppose I pay for the privilege.
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
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Hmmm but do you actually *play* the game, or you only log in for the grind?
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Fair question.
“Playing” GW2 can mean a lot of different things, not all of which are distinguishable from farming. Doing world bosses and meta trains, for example, is basically zerg farming. Do achievements count?
Realistically, I’m probably not “playing.” That is to say, I have an expansion worth of content I am making no progress on, in addition to some Living World content that remaining unseen. The reason for that though, is because I’m tired of my “main” character and want to go through it with someone else. So, for example, I grinded out some Hero Points to unlock the Mechanist elite spec on my Engineer alt. Only to really discover it’s a bit too simple. So I unlocked the Firebrand on my Guardian alt. That is a bit too complicated, insofar as needing to press a bunch of buttons as a rotation. Fun in groups though. Of course, I don’t really want to just unlock elite specs all day, so I try one here and there, and then stop. But if I’m already logging in, I may as well gather some herb nodes… etc, etc, etc.
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Considering I got bored halfway through this list of chores, I don’t know how you keep your sanity actually doing it during your ‘fun time’ of playing games.
Each their own I guess?
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Over the decades, I always thought my preferred genre was JRPGs. As it turns out, I like just about any game in which the numbers go up. After spending (and enjoying!) 159 hours playing ARK solo, nothing surprises me about myself anymore.
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That was pretty fascinating to read. The WTFs came quite a few paragraphs earlier for me though, but I’m really well known for being very averse to money making or grinding in MMOs :P I get my login reward even if I am not playing actively and if I am currently playing then I do the 3 dailies. That’s it. But if I ever start again I guess I will look up this post again :)
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