Q: How do I go about getting Magic Find?

A: The easiest and cheapest way is to buy/make magic find food.
Omnomberry Bar Is currently my favorite food to use. Another option is Chocolate Omnomberry Cream as it provides 40% magic find but it is only while you have a boon and it also does not provide increased gold gain so it is inferior for farming.

A more expensive but permanent way to get magic find is through equipment and upgrades.

Runes

To my knowledge there are 4 Runes that provide magic find, and 1 Sigil that provides magic find: (Please note that an effective way to get more magic find is to stack 5 of one type and 1 of another, giving 60% rather than 50% magic find.)

Rune of the Noble
Rune of the Traveler
Rune of the Pirate
Rune of Scavenging
Sigil of Luck

Equipment

Magic find armor is most easily obtained by having it crafted or buying it, note that the former is cheaper and you need only ask the crafter for the mats. Note that weapons are made from similar materials and called by the same prefixes.

The prefix is “Explorer’s”, providing Magic Find, Power, and Precision, and they require a tier of the claw fine crafting material depending on your level in addition to other materials. You can have it made in whatever rarity your budget allows, at level 80 you could probably obtain a entire Masterwork set for under a gold if you buy the materials yourself and get a friend to make it for you/make it yourself. The exotic set is considerably more expensive as it requires 5 ecto a piece in addition to the highier tier materials.

If that isn’t your speed you could look for armor with the prefix “Traveler’s” as that provides Condition Damage, Power, and Magic Find.

For Rings/Accessories/Necklaces you are looking for items with the prefix “Opal” and it also provides Magic Find/Power/Precision. Once again buy the set that fits your budget as the difference in stats between rarities is small.

Q: How does Magic Find work?

A: Magic find increases the chance you obtain highier rarity items. It works on getting crafting materials. It works on getting Blues(Fine)/Greens(Masterwork)/Yellows(Rare) from mobs.

It is believed that all your bonuses to the stats are added up and that modifies the drop tables. So if you have 2 bonuses of 50% magic find for example you would end up with 100% magic find. So if a mob had a 5% to drop a ‘fine’ quality crafting ingredient or piece of equipment that chance would be doubled to 10%. I must caution that this is not fact and still being tested, because current smaller tests seem to indicate that magic find is actually more effective that what is described above as this small sample seems to indicate:

Level 40~ skales.

50 kill sample – 0% MF – 6/50 dropped bloods.
50 kill sample – 20% MF – 11/50 dropped bloods.
50 kill sample – 63% MF – 21/50 dropped bloods.

Data from Shantarr.

Q: Is it worth it?

A: If you plan on killing things yes, a thousand times yes. Even spending gold on the Omnomberry Bar just to go out and farm for for a while is extremely worth it. You’ll easily make back and probably even double/triple the 1-5 silver the food cost you just through the 40% increased gold alone. The 30% magic find is a massive boost for something that is already effectively free at worst and otherwise makes you money.

If you want to make more gold in GW2 you should stack up your magic find bonus. You should at least have the food magic buff always on. Even at lower levels you should buy or make food with magic find buff.

Tarts  are a dessert food that has magic find and can be usedat different levels. Buy them on the trading post or make them yourself. You can level cooking easily by following this 1-400 Cooking Guide.

How you ask? Just by scanning the trading post you will notice that more than 80% of items listed there are sold only for 1 copper above vendor price or vendor price plus listing fee. Most players don’t know that there is an additional selling fee of 10% that is subtracted from the selling price, when the item is sold.

In this image you can see how players are clueless of how they are losing copper.

This quest item (yes you can sell quest on the TP) is listed for 1 copper with the listing fee of 1 copper, that is taken from you in advance. And if the item is sold an additional selling fee is subtracted so you actually lost money from this deal.

So the true cut that the trading post takes from you is 15% of the selling price. So if you are selling items 1 copper above vendor you are losing gold. You would be better selling the item to the vendor and getting your money right away with no additional charges.

Whenever you sell an item make sure to calculate the 15% cut the trading post subtracts from your sale. Too difficult? Guild Wars 2 Riches  has posted a great calculator tool that does all the math for you and you see exactly how much you will earn. Check out the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post Calculator and see how easy it is to use.

With the current state of the game you are better off vendor selling the item or salvaging it for crafting materials. In a months time things will change and we should see the prices of goods going to a normal level.

John Smith has made this infographic showing you a snapshot of the economy in Guild Wars 2 during one Beta Weekend. Although it is not taken from the live game, we can still see some trends and learn how to use them in our benefit.

When it comes to earning money trough game-play, nearly one third of all the gold comes from rewards. One half of all the gold comes from dynamic events and renowned hearts. You will get nearly 80 % of all your gold by doing these three things. As we already know, grinding mobs is not the most efficient way to get gold and it is represented here nicely by its low percentage of only 12%.

The professions chart will not represent the live distribution, as this was taken from a beta weekend, and there will be far less jewelers and more cooks. The interesting thing to note from this section is the armor making crafting disciplines, that are essentially equally represented (there are less armorsmiths because there are only 2 professions who use heavy armor).

The currency exchange graph shows a normal tendecie of gem prices starting high, dropping and then rising again. Nothing new here, as players will not have enough gold at the star to buy gems. As they get more gold the demand for gems will rise and the price will go up.

Nearly half of all the trading post purchases are for crafting materials. This is expected as players will be leveling their crafting disciplines and will be prepared to buy the crafting materials. The interesting thing to note is that there was a 25% higher purchase of weapons than gear.

Apply the leanings from this infographic in-game and surely you will make a profit!

Here are the 4 things that should always be in your bags:

1. Salvage Kits - Always have at least 2 stacks of salvage kits in your bags. Use them regularly on any salvageable items (cloth scraps, leather scraps, ore) and also salvage any gear or weapons that you can’t use. The exceptions are gear and weapons with stats (power, precision) that can be sold on the trading post or the vendor price is higher than the salvaged materials.

2. Gathering Equipment – Harvesting Sickles, Mining picks and Logging Axes are essential for gathering crafting material. Always check the state of your gathering tools stack size and buy an tool when the numbers are getting low. Also make sure your gathering tools are level appropriate as you won’t be able to gather higher level nodes with lower tier tools.

3. Food - Different kinds of food give you different kinds of buffs, but all food gives you a +10% Experience buff. The faster you will level up, the higher content you will be able to do, giving you more gold, karma and loot.

4. Bag Space – This is not an item by itself but it is a contributing factor to the gold/hour formula. If your inventory is full al the time and you can’t loot mobs you are waisting precious time. As soon as possible make or buy four 8 slot bags and send all your crafting material to your bank regularly.

These tips might seem a little too obvious to the experienced player, but by just following these four simple tips you will increase the efficiency of your play-style, thus make more gold, and have a better experience of this fantastic game.

When a GW2 player makes their first character they will have a 20 slot starter backpack and four bag slots. They will also have 30 shared bank slots and a special bank for crafting materials which has a capacity of storing stacks of up to 250 items of one crafting material.

At the end of the introduction quest the players gets a 4 slot bag and from then on he has to loot them of mobs, buy them of vendors, make them via crafting or buy them at the trading post.

This is where you come in by providing the bags players need in the trading post.

To make bags you will have to be a Tailor, Leatherworker or Armorsmith. Each of these crafting disciplines can make 8, 10, 12, 15, 18 and 20 slot containers. Thea all can also make Invisible Bags (Safe Boxes) – items in these bags cannot be sold to merchants.

Each of the three crafting disciplines can also make special bagsthat store certain things first:

- Tailors can make 8, 10, 12, 15, 18 and 20 slot Craftsman’s Bags (Crafting materials have a priority)
- Leatherworkers can make  8, 10, 12, 15, 18 and 20 slot Oiled Leather Packs (Junk items have a priority)
- Armorsmiths can make 8, 10, 12, 15, 18 and 20 slot Reinforced Padded Equipment Boxes (Weapons and Armor have a priority)

Before making bags to make gold be sure to check out the prices on the trading post of available bags and of all the materials you need to make the bags. Higher level bags also require runes of holding which you can buy from vendors. Be sure to calculate all the materials plus the trade post fee and compare them to the prices of the listed bags to see if you will make a profit.

It is also important to know when to post your auctions so be sure to check the trade post regularly to see the different changes to bag prices. Posting when there is a peak of players or when there are fewer sellers is usually a good strategy.

Higher level bags will usually give you a better profit margin especially at the start of the game, when there will be fewer crafter’s capable of making them. So it is a good idea to level as fast as you can to get the high end materials make high end bags. For more tips on how to level faster check out this guide.

The Tradeing Post, which is the GW2 version of the Auction House, was having a glitch and every time you sold something it would duplicate the item and the amount of gold it sold for. This only worked if there was a demand for that item.

You can check out this video and see how it worked for Donatin who couldn’t wrap his mind around it .

Other players have reported the a similar gold exploit. Whenever they dragged an item to the trading post it would triple or quadruple and would show as “3 or 4 item listed”. Then the player canceled the auction a got ALL the items out. Then he would just repeat the same exploit again a get 4 times more items. After getting a bunch of items he could just sell them to a vendor a get a lot of gold.

This Trade Post exploit didn’t last as after some time ArenaNet disabled the Black Lion Trading Company along with the Trading Post. No more trading was possible untill the end of the Stress Test.

Ingredients are crafting materials mainly for cooks although some are used in other GW2 crafting professions. Ingredients can be gathered from resource nodes that can be found all throughout Tyria. You can find a list of all the ingredients here.

To gather or forage these nodes you will need special gathering tools called Harvesting sickles. These tools lose durability every time you forage a node. After loosing all 50 durability they will disappear and you will have to buy new ones. They can be bought from vendors for gold or for karma. You can also get Mystic Harvesting sickles from chests.

The real money makers are the Farm Nodes – groups of 8 patches or nodes of one type of ingredient. There is one node per map and they are on a 23 hour timer. Some of these foraging node farms are in plain site while other are hidden ore have a jumping puzzle to get to them.

Here is a list of the location of some of these farm nodes:

- Lettuce farm – Queensdale, south of Beetletun in the top most farm area.
- Potato farm 1 – Plains of Ashford, directly south of the Loreclaw Waypoint
- Potato farm 2  – Wayfarer Foothills, scattered around The Osenfold Shear.
- Strawberry farm 1 – Kessex Hills, at Isgarren’s View. To successfully farm all 8 strawberry nodes you have ot carefully make your way down the cliff edges.
- Strawberry farm 2 – SE corner of Snowden Drifts, at the bottom of a cliff near Griffonfall.
- Strawberry farm 3 – Northern entrance to The Black Citadel, west of the Town of Nolan, there is a jumping puzzle to get to it.
- Spinach farm – outside Lion’s Reach to the West, there is a jumping puzzle to reach it.

Here are 3 tips for making gold with foraging:

1. Find the locations of the farms a visit them once a day. Check the trading post for the ingredients that sell well and remember that you can sell them on the spot. If you have more than one character you can double or triple your income.

2. Remember to check have level appropriate Harvesting sickles as you will not be able to gather higher level ingredient nodes with low level sickles. Also remember to check your sickles durability and have a spare one in your bags.

3. If you are doing any World vs. World be on the lookout for foraging nodes. You will find a lot of good spots with high level ingredients so check your mini map regularly.

Now go out and forage some strawberries!

Exploring the wonderful landscape is by itself rewarding but the developers at Arenanet decide that they would also reward the most eager explorers – with a Chest full of goodies.

To complete a map you will have to do all the Renowned Hearts, find all the Points of Interest, do all the Skill Challenges and discover all the Waypoints.There are a different number of each o these in different maps.

You can check how many Renowned Hearts, Skill Challenges, Waypoints and Points of Interest you have in one area by looking at the left side of the map. It show you how many you have completed of the total number in that area.

You can see how many you have completed in a certain area by looking on the left side of your map. It also shows total amount of each in a particular area.

Once complete you will get a Map Completion message and you will be rewarded with experience points and a chest. Inside the chest you will get a certain amount of gold. The higher the area is the more gold you’ll be awarded (1-15 area 30 silver, 15-25 area 52 silver, 25-35 area 66 silver…). In the chest you will also find 2 random pieces of gear, transmutation stones and a stack of gathering material.

In major cities there are only Waypoints and Points of Interest and completing them will only grant you experience.

So go out in the world of Tyria and explore everything…its really worth it!

Like in most successful MMO Guild Wars 2 has a complex economy system. There are a lot of different gold sources from which you acquire gold and there are also gold sinks. the later ones are there to keep the economy in balance.

You can get gold just by playing the game as a rewards from questing. This should cover all your basic needs and you can do just fine. But if you want to experience all the aspects of Guild Wars 2 you will need some extra gold as there are many gold sinks in-game.

If you want to level crafting for example you will need a lot of materials, which you can gather yourself or go buy on the Trading Post. A big sink are also schematics in WvW, books for traits, repair costs, crafted gear, making your guild, vanity items, food, boosters…

Guild Wars 2 has an unique gem currency with which you can buy different upgrades, dyes, mini pets, additional character slots, additional bag space…These gems can be bought with real money or exchanged for gold via Currency Exchange.

So if you have enough gold you don’t need to spend any real money and buy all the items the Gem Store offers with gems you bought with gold. This is fantastic if you are a collector and want all the mini pets and the dyes. I also want extra bags and extra character slots. Without paying a dime!

So if gold if you would like to make gold in GW2 make sure you read all the guides on Guild Wars 2 Gold Guides and try out for yourself these proven methods. This way you’ll be able to spoil your characters with all the commodities this fantastic game has to offer. or you might just give it away to your friends, your partner or total strangers .

There are lots of gold guides out there each trying to tell you the best thing to do to get more gold in Guild Wars 2. I like things that are simple and methods that really work.

This is why I’ve decide to share all the techniques and tricks that I’ve found and tried on making as much gold as you want in Guild Wars 2. And more importantly spending the least amount of time doing it and concentrating on the fun stuff in the game.

Remember have fun and see you in Tyria.