Overview

After completing my fifth legendary weapon, I thought it would be useful to pass on any advice I've learnt along the way. I will forewarn that creating a legendary weapon takes a significant amount of time, money and patience. It isn't quickly achieved but it is a good, long term goal. Below are 10 tips I'd readily advise people to follow.

Pick it and Stick

This might sound the most obvious, but deciding early what legendary weapon you’re aiming for and sticking to it is critical. If you enter into building a legendary weapon, you should be prepared to use that weapon for the foreseeable future. Flip flopping between weapon sets simply isn’t sensible when you’ve a legendary weapon sat there waiting to be used. When I set out to make the Kudzu it was on the basis that I loved the longbow and its playstyle and had absolutely nothing to do with the whether or not it was a good weapon or not.

Don’t Gamble

I’ve encountered plenty of players who have thrown a single set of 4 rare bows into the Mystic Forge and come out with a the Lover. The attraction of this mystical gamble paying off is fantasy and irrational. The probability of you succeeding in acquiring a pre-cursor from this method is absolutely miniscule and is an expensive (and ultimately pointless) endeavour. You are better served saving your money for the precursor you want and buying it outright instead of crossing your fingers and hoping for lady luck. As a small sample size, I’ve thrown in around 1,000 rare weapons into the Mystic Forge and never got a single precursor.

Don’t Grind Tier 6 Materials

I hear a lot of people who have made legendary weapons say that they farmed certain areas or monsters for the Tier 6 materials. Unfortunately this method is inefficient and ridiculously time consuming. The drop rates on Tier 6 materials are absolutely tiny. It is so much quicker to buy all the Tier 6 materials you need, as and when you can afford it. If you place buy orders it reduces the cost significantly, while running dungeons, fractals or event chains in Cursed Shore should see you earn around 2.5g per hour. This is more than sufficient to buy the materials at a good rate, and far quicker than simply grinding them.

Make Your Money

It’s surprisingly easy to earn money in Guild Wars 2 and yet many claim to be constantly poor. Whether you’re flipping items on the trading post (see our Black Lion Underground articles or Gold Wars 2) or running dungeons, they all provide a wealth of earning potential. The easiest method of a guaranteed income is to run a high level dungeon with Honor of the Waves, Ascalon Catacombs and Citadel of Flames particular favourites. Many paths in these dungeons have earning potential of around 2 gold per path it’s easy to begin to amass a good amount of funds. I'd also recommend you check out my diary series.

Save, Save, Save!

When you start making money the best method of amassing it properly is to simply deposit the vast majority of it into your bank and forget about it. None of my characters ever have more than 50 silver on them at once as the rest is deposited. 50 silvers should see you have enough money to make a multitude of Waypoints and cover any repair costs. It’s surprising how quickly your money adds up when the temptation to spend what you have is removed.

Sell, Sell, Sell!

The only items I ever salvage are rares, everything else I simply vendor. This is partially because it’s time consuming weeding through your bags, but also because I know that 99.9% of all blues and greens aren’t worth listing on the Trading Post. Selling them to the vendor can often net you 1s or more per item which stacks up quickly after a couple of dungeon runs. When it comes to selling, you should also offload all your craftable materials on the Trading Post. With the exception of materials you know are needed for your legendary, don’t be afraid to sell the lot. It’s surprising how much money you can earn by liquidating in this way.

Beg and Borrow

I would be lying if I said that I earned every penny of my gold to build my legendary weapon. Due to market fluctuations on precursors I was keen to pick up my Leaf of Kudzu quickly; unfortunately I was a little short when its price was low having bought all my Tier 6 materials. Thankfully I had some great guildies and friends who were more than happy to lend me the money, which I repaid over several weeks. It’s nothing to be ashamed of to ask for help from friends in game.

Free First

A large percentage of a legendary weapon is free. Obsidian Shards, Blood Stone Shards, World Completion and Badges of Honor are all easily obtained just by investing time and obtaining them will chalk off a huge amount of work needed; everything else can then be bought with money as you earn it. It might seem like an up hill struggle to complete these big elements, but once they’re done and banked you’ll feel so much better, safe in the knowledge that a huge proportion of the weapon is complete.

Enjoy Yourself, But Focus

It’s very easy to get sucked into trying to rush a legendary weapon. Make no mistake, it’s very time consuming but most if not all of it can be completed just by playing. My approach was to target specific areas of the game that yielded the item I needed, before playing it until that item (or items) was completed. For several days I only played WvW for Badges of Honor or for several weeks I only ran events in Cursed Shore for Karma. While that might sound a little restrictive, all of it was elements of the game I enjoyed just focused into a single area of play, as to not spread myself too thinly during my play times.

Precursor

It really needs no other title. Without your precursor, a legendary isn’t possible. Don’t count on lucky drops or the mystic forge but instead save, borrow and save some more (as above!). Obtaining your precursor is the absolute priority over everything else so resist spending any money and stock pile all your gold. Once it is in your hands, the difference you feel is euphoric giving you the feeling that the battle is almost won.