Guild Wars 2 trading post is down, but here are 5 ways you can still make gold.

We are coming up on a week now since Guild Wars 2 has launched and we're still without a trading post.  (At least at the time I am writing this we are.)  Without a trading post the economy of the game has been pretty stale in comparison to what it could be.  When you really look at it the trading post is essentially the heartbeat of the games entire economy.  Much of the game is dependant on the economy.  The good thing is there are still ways that you and I can make gold even with the trading post being down.  Here are five ways that I have made gold since the game launched despite the trading post being down the entire time.

Utilize the in-game mail system.  Just because the trading post is down doesn't mean that you cannot move items from one person to the other.  This has been pretty popular and I actually anticipate that I will always be popular, but the in-game mail system has been pivotal in players moving their items.

Enjoy the game.  This one goes without saying, but the trading post being down has really given me the opportunity to just play the game and enjoy it as a story.  I am playing a human Ranger and I have to say, so far, the storyline has been exceptional.  I won't give anything away, but for my fellow humans out there that chose the say storyline features.  The courtroom phase--very, very cool!  Since we don't have a trading post that is live right now just take this time to enjoy the game.

Work with guild members.  I was fortunate enough to have a good guild lined up prior to ever getting into the game.  They were able to get it created despite a few bugs with the guild system.  I'm not all that bent outta shape over a few small issues so I just got in my guild and we deal with things as we can.  We already have begun planning out the growing of our guild and how we are going to expand our guild storage and such.  We are all focusing on different ways to make gold.  I have probably the most enjoyable job around.  I get to farm for cooking ingredients.  That's fine by me considering I am also the resident cook in the guild so it's not like I wouldn't have been doing it anyway.  One person on their own can be successful, but working with guild-mates makes it easier and also more enjoyable.

Prepare Crafting Disciplines.  We were all anticipating stiff competition trying to make gold through our disciplines when the game launched.  In a small way the trading post being down is almost a blessing.  It has acted as a grace period where we can get our two primary disciplines leveled up without having to worry about soaring material costs and competition from massive guilds.  Those who are interested in making gold are all leveling at about the same pace.  Because of this there have been tons of opportunities to facilitate mutually beneficial trades with other players.  Rarely will it be for materials, but I have been well geared through the whole process just by people trading me gear.

Dynamic events.  You can gain Karma from doing dynamic events.  With Karma you can buy cooking ingredients and other commodities in bulk!  In case you missed my post on it BULK IS GOOD.  BULK IS VERY GOOD.  It gives you numerous advantages over other players when you buy in bulk.

The Guild Wars 2 trading post being down is a total bummer, but we always have to make the best out of what we have.   Even without the trading post there are numerous ways to make gold.  Have you found any? Would you care to share?  Leave a comment if you have.  I would love to hear from you guys!

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Five reasons why gems will always sell well.

Even now there's a lot of speculation about people being able to sell gems in Guild Wars 2. I've been one of the people since the beginning that said it's going to be possible. Not only is it be possible it's going to be quite easy as well. There are a number of things in the game that people need which are only able to be purchased using gems. For today's post I only give you five detailed reasons why you will be able to sell gems as a long-term profitable item. In my honest opinion – they are going to be the most successful item in the game until the day the servers are shut down.

There are a number of reasons why gems will sell very well coming straight from ArenaNet. The biggest reason is that people are inherently lazy and if they have the option to spend money over actually farming in the game they're more than likely going to do that. At least a certain amount of people are this way – not everybody. From a gold making standpoint gems really are a gold mine and for many reasons. Here are the reasons why I think they are:

1. Bag Slots. Bag slots are something that everybody is going to want to upgrade on their characters. Since bag expansions are purchased from the gems shop and people are always leveling alternate characters this is going to be a very viable option for a very long time.
2. Account Services. Many of the account services items are also purchase from the gems shop. If you wanted to switch servers or change your character's name you bring much need to go to the gems shop and purchase that feature. This is a very common thing in all MMO's. I personally have switched servers on my main WOW character over four times in the course of me playing the game. Not everyone is doing this, but enough people are that it will keep gems selling for a long time.
3. Booster Packs. Remember when I said that players are inherently lazy? It is because of this that people are going to buy a lot of booster packs as well. What booster packs do is essentially just save people time by giving them bonus XP for killing mobs or extra karma for participating in events which reward it. Karma is also a great way to save gold while leveling which is something that I'll get into in tomorrow's post.
4. Vanity Items. I don't know if you're new to MMO's or not but vanity items sell insanely well in just about all of them. One of the items that even I have been attracted to since I saw the games gems shop were the aviator sunglasses.  Not every vanity item in the gems shop is going to be your cup of tea but pretty much everybody's got something in there that they can enjoy. ArenaNet has done a really good job with putting a variety of different things on the gems shop. They have boxing gloves for gods sake!
5. Mini's. Minis are essentially mini pets if you're coming from World of Warcraft. If you are coming from World of Warcraft I don't have to tell you that pets are insanely popular and people are willing to pay out the ears to get a certain one. People will be purchasing many pet packs from the gems store for 300 gems a pop. Since gold can be traded for gems a lot of people are just going to go that route, but gems are still being purchased nonetheless. It really doesn't matter how you sell them the point is that you did sell them.

Those are five of the most interesting reasons why I think the gems are going to sell very well for the entire duration that Guild Wars 2 is online. There are going to be many more than what you see here so if you have any that you think are important please leave a comment on this post. I would love to hear more input from all of you on the subject!

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Guild Wars 2 trading post transaction breakdown.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post where I corrected a bit of misinformation that was put out there by a fellow blogger as it pertains to the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post.  This person got some pretty basic information wrong and I felt it was important to correct them to ensure that people are investing into markets that are not only going to make them money, but also ones that actually exist.  I follow a huge amount of blogs right now and there is a disturbing amount of information that is being passed around which is incorrect.  So for today's post I wanted to just go through the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post with a fine toothed comb and set anyone straight who is still wondering.

Guild Wars 2 Trading Post Guide
This is going to be a shortened guide.  It includes the basics and all other important information.

Where are the trading posts located?
That is easy! It's everywhere.  Consider it like your traveling companion.  It can be accessed from anywhere in Tyria and at any time you choose. There are actual trading post and PCs in every major city and every zone in the game as well.

How do I access the trading post?
There are two ways to open up the trading post.  First you can just press the "O" key.  This is by far the most simple.  The second would be to just right-click on an item in your inventory and click "sell on trading post."

How do I post an item to the trading post?

When you want to sell an item there are two things to do.  Two ways to sell your items--and those are.  You can match the highest buy order or you can match the lowest current sell order.  Buy orders are exactly what they sound like.  Other players place buy orders and specify a price which they would be willing to pay.  Then that means sell orders are people, just like you, placing their items for a price that they would be willing to sell.  You never actually speak to anyone or interact with anyone at all.  This is all autonomous and handled by the client.

Quick side note–when you are selling items on the trading post they can be placed in stacks 250. If you are coming here having played Guild Wars this is the same as that.

What are the fee's for posting an item on the trading post?

There are two fees that are charged to you during an entire transaction cycle.  At this point you will incurr the first fee of 5%.  This is 5% of your sales price.  So if you are selling something for 10 silver you would have a fee of  50 copper charged to you.  This is non-refundable.

I've sold my item(s).  Now what?

Whenever you sell an item on the trading post you're going to incur your second fee which is 10% of your sales price. This brings your total fee for the transaction to 15%. At this point the extent of the transaction is over and you can go collect your money. Unlike every other aspect of the trading post your money isn't sent directly to you though. You actually got to go and collect it from one of the trading post NPC's spread throughout Tyria.

That is the extent of the basics relating to the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post. Hopefully this clears up any confusion that there has been if you've gotten some misinformation from some of the other blogs that are out there. A lot of those blogs are coming about with the intent to sell a guide and make easy money off of you guys and they could care less about the actual information that they are putting out right now. When the game launches the compile information from sites like this one and put it into a guide to sell it. It's an unfortunate thing, but it happens with every MMO. Well-meaning bloggers like ourselves just get to try and clean up the mess as best we can and write posts like this to try and clear it up.

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Guild Wars 2 has officially released! New players, beware of shady sites trying to sell you something.

So this is it everybody, the game we've been waiting for has "Officially" released. I want to personally welcome all the new players to Guild Wars 2. Most of us have been able to play the game for just over 48 hours now and I can tell you that it is an absolute blast! From here on out we will have new gold making tips nearly every single day on the site. It is exciting to know that the community we have here is already developing so many wonderful new strategies even though the trading post has yet to function as intended.

Today I wanted to point out to all of you new players some of the things to be aware of when you are looking at blogs devoted to making gold in Guild Wars 2. I've written a post about this before, but I wanted to put up one today on the official release of the game just to make sure everybody who's coming to the game today has the opportunity to be informed as well. What I am referring to are sites that are essentially trying to sell you something. Almost all blogs nowadays try to take in money in some way shape or form. There are some costs involved with hosting the website and people like to offset those costs. I do the exact same thing here; however, I am very honest with that right up front and tell you that I've got a donations tab.

Guild Wars 2 Gold Guides going to be popping up left and right in the coming weeks. They're going to claim that they have the single best leveling strategies for all professions in the game. If you know me or any of the blogs that I've written in the past you know that I have a strong dislike towards these shady guides. They all make very bold claims and not a single one of them can back them up.

My warning to you would be to lookout for in the very questionable of any blog that is supporting a gold guide at this point. There is no way that any of them are proven, especially just 48 hours into the game. Anyone who is selling a guide or even has an affiliate link for one on their blog is doing it solely for the purpose of making easy money off of unsuspecting people. It is quite easy to spot someone who is utilizing an affiliate link on their site with a guide banner. All you have to do is click on the image and look at the URL. Clickbank is the most popular online vendor that I know of in this is how their URL will look if someone is using an affiliate link.

so the image that you see above is how a URL for an affiliate link would look. They are incredibly obvious. I just want to make sure you all know that none of these guides hold any special or proprietary information on how to make gold playing Guild Wars 2. I know personally because I have purchased gold guides in the past as well as seen free copies of many of the ones that are out today and never once they've fulfilled all of the promises they made on the sales pages.

Gold guides at this point, as I mentioned before, cannot possibly be tested or perfected. They cannot have the best strategies possible for leveling every profession because no one has gone to Max level at this point. None of the beta weekends that we were able to participate in even allowed you to reach Max level. No one has been able to max out their crafting disciplines because to do so would require players to get to the higher-level zones for the materials.

Guild Wars 2 is obviously a very popular game and because of that there are going to be many shady people trying to make an easy buck off of people like you. I would be very wary of anyone who is selling a guide that this point. I would also question the integrity of any blog that is supporting one of those gold guides by way of affiliate links. There is no way they can swear by its usefulness at this point. Any affiliate link for any gold guide on any blog is just a shameless attempt at trying to make money off of a incredibly popular game.

If you are looking for ways to make gold in Guild Wars 2 I would suggest, before you go looking for gold guide, to check out any one of the incredible resources that are linked on the site. Also you could check out our forums as well. It is the only one that is devoted entirely to making gold in Guild Wars 2.

Would you like to see a review of a gold guide done on this site? Let me know through the contact us form and I will make that happen I it is possible.


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Guild Wars 2 Cooking Guide [Breakdown]

Guild Wars 2 Cooking Guide

As I research Guild Wars 2 more and more I find myself becoming much more attracted to the cooking discipline. Out of all the MMO's I've ever played it has to be the most in-depth cooking breakdown that I've seen. There is something terribly interesting to me about the vast amount of items that can actually be created. I ran across this really cool Google document last week one day where it actually breaks down all of the cooking items from level 0 All the Way through 400 and I have to say I was blown away. If you are at all interested in cooking you got to check this out.

Guild Wars 2 Cooking Recipe List

-Also-

Guild Wars 2 Riches Cooking Guide

One of the most interesting things that I found with cooking is that everything that is created is actually going to contain real ingredients to make that item. I found that to be very cool. If you're familiar with World of Warcraft you made some pretty crazy off-the-wall items. Actually, even some of those people found the recipes for – but that was quite rare. Let's use a bowl of mashed potatoes as an example. To make a bowl of mashed potatoes it requires a potato, class of buttermilk, stick of butter and a packet of salt. While the quantities of each item aren't listed that is in fact the recipe for mashed potatoes. How cool is that!

There are a lot of cool features with cooking where other items are combined to make better ones. Having a piece of cinnamon toast would require you to first craft a ball of dough then create a loaf of bread and put butter on a piece of bread and make toast. Then finally you would add cinnamon sugar to create cinnamon toast.

There's it ton of gold to be made using the cooking discipline. With as many craftable items as there are in the cooking discipline there are going to be markets that get overlooked all the time. There may be a day were you could sell a grilled steak to low-level players and make a decent amount of profit on it for long duration of time. With that many items it's unlikely that every single item on that list is going to be covered at all times. There are going to be items that are pretty much worthless to most people. Don't worry, that is common in MMO's. Some of the most useful items are going to be those which come from farms in the boring zones in the game. If you recall my post from last week I highlighted, very briefly, the idea that people eventually start to race towards max level no matter how casual they play.

Eventually people are going to see the end goal of being level 80 and pick up their pace. When they do this they begin to move through zones faster and neglect the nodes that are gatherer oval in those zones. As a very basic and wide range to look at I would say the zones which make up the 60 to 70 level range. Obviously none of us have been that high level as of yet, but I would wager a bet that it is somewhere in that range where you'll see the gathered materials become less abundant for that reason.

You got just over three days to look through this list and pick a few items to keep an eye on. I would suggest referencing the prices that they can be sold at using GW2Spidy. What you are looking for are the prices of the ingredients it takes to cook a certain item compared to the price that that item can be sold at. This is a completely theoretical example, but it proves my point. Let's say you wanted to make a bowl of salsa. A bowl of salsa takes a tomato, onion, lemon and chili pepper to craft. If you could go in by a tomato for 10 copper, onion for five copper, lemon for 10 copper and a chili pepper for five copper your grand total to craft that item would obviously be 30 copper. Now you want to go to to GW2Spidy and take a look at how much a bowl of salsa is selling for. After you've looked let's say you find that a bowl of salsa sells for 32 copper.

Should you do it?

The answer is no.why you ask? Well – even though it appears you are turning to copper profit on every bowl of salsa sold you still got to remember to account for your auction house fees which total 15% of your sale price. The way you can calculate this is to multiply whatever your sale price is by .85.

Sale Price X .85 = True Profits

Knowing that you're Selling your item for 32 copper you would take 32 x .85 and you get 27.5 (28) copper. I know it's a bummer, but if you were to sell a bowl of salsa for 32 copper you actually lose gold on every sale.

You've always got to be aware of trading post fees whenever you are dealing with it. Failure to do so will result in wasted time and even worse, wasted money. That would be very bad!

I predict that cooking is going to be wildly popular when the game launches. A discipline that goes that in depth has a natural ability to draw people towards trying it out. The flipside of that coin is that it will also be quite expensive to level up. All disciplines in the game require multiple materials to craft a single item; however, cooking is the only one that requires more than three ingredients for the majority of items crafted. Just the sheer amount of gathered materials that are part of that cooking discipline will make the market large in size and also highly active. It is because of this that you should always be tracking the prices of cooking ingredients. In market that wasn't there yesterday may be there today and you definitely don't want to miss out on easy gold if you can craft a simple item like a bowl of chili.

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Guild Wars 2 Trading Post errors mean you have a few options for making gold.

I don't have to tell all of you about the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post errors.  They've pretty much plagued the game since the second it went live, which is strange, because there were very few issues with the trading post during all of the beta weekends and even stress tests.  It was pretty much expected that there was going to be a numerous amount of issues though.  Don't forget that this is an MMO launch and they never go off without a few issues.  The trading post going down for this long does have a few implications though.  Some of them can really help you out, but then again, some of them really do some damage if you want to make gold.

There are two sides to the coin for the trading post being down.  The first is that people are forced to hang on to the materials that they gather.  The lack of an in-game face to face trading system entirely eliminates the ability to move commodities.  Since people are forced to hang onto everything they gather I can almost guarantee you that they are now using those to level up their disciplines rather than saving them to sell when the trading post is working.

The upside to this scenario is that when the trading post does go live there is going to be an abnormal amount of materials going up at once.  There are absolutely people who are now leveling their disciplines, but there are also people who are still interested in gathering items just to sell them. When the trading post does finally start working as intended is going to become flooded quickly in the prices are going to go down into the basement. This is great for you and I because it allows us to level of our disciplines for much cheaper than we would have been able to otherwise.

Anytime you have issues that are the significant there's two sides to the coin. The trading post being down absolutely cripples the economy of the game since it is entirely reliant on the trading post. On the other hand you have to pay attention to the possibilities that can arise from it. Unfortunately, right now the trading post is down and it's going to be for an unknown duration of time. The good thing is that as long as you know what to expect when it does go up you still got some pretty good opportunities to make gold.  Here are a few of the most important things to note given the situation so far.

1. People are going to be leveling up their disciplines since they are forced to hang on to all of the commodities.
2. When the Trading Post does go live items are going to be cheap cheap cheap.  The market will become flooded due to all the people trying to unload after hanging on to their goods for this long.
3. You are going to want to place as many buy-orders as you possibly can.  Low-ball people to the extreme.  This is the greatest opportunity to buy in bulk that you will have for a long time.
4. Utilize this opportunity to get your own disciplines leveled up--especially COOKING.
5. Players are going to be pricing their goods incorrectly--I guarantee it.  Keep your eyes open!

Don't look at the trading post being down as a roadblock and it will not be one.  There are bound to be a number of issues that have yet to come.  Look at the implications of every one of them and think of how it affects the games economy.  This is what you need to do for every bug, hot fix and even major patch.

Utilize every opportunity you can for your own economic gain and you will find yourself with an important leg up on 95% of your competition.

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Guild Wars 2 Riches Server

A change to the previous owner's server. Thundergore Mesmer is playing on the following server:

Gandara

The wait is over. Let's get rich together!

This is it! Just 24 hours from now we will finally be playing Guild Wars 2. It's not going to be a stress test that shuts down and resets or even a beta weekend. It's going to be the real deal from here on out. All of my posts prior to this are based on a lot of theory rather than hard numbers. From here on out that will all change with the exception to a few posts here and there. A lot of the difficulty about writing gold tips prior to the game's release was that we didn't have any cold hard numbers to go off of and with that changing we can actually develop strong tips with numbers to back them.

I have said since the first day this blog came that the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post was going to be a primary way of making gold. Nearly every market that you get into is going to involve either buying or selling via the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post. Since we all share one global market it isn't going to be easy to take over an entire market. The chance to sort of slide under the radar of other players and accrue a small amount of wealth will actually not be all that difficult to be honest. The key is putting together all of the tips. The important basic information that I have already given you like tracking markets, doing your research and buying in bulk are going to be three of the most important pillars to your success in making gold playing Guild Wars 2.

When the game launches there is just going to be too many great tips to cover them all at one time. Some may actually fly under the radar for a little while before we are able to post them on the site. One of the crucial things that I've always made sure I did was not to overflow you guys with information. I've always found that having five posts a week was a great foundation to go off of. When you've got five new tips in five days you're able to stop and think about what you've read and actually take the chance to implemented into your game-play. If I were to start posting multiple tips each day unfortunately that would mean that some get buried and may go completely unused by many players. That would be completely contradictory to what I want to do with this site and I made the decision that I wouldn't post more than one gold tip in a day.

If you are playing the game and you run across a tip that you think the community could benefit from learning I would like to invite you to write a guest post on this blog or event on our sister blog Guild Wars 2 Trading Post. For those of you that are still unfamiliar with it that is where the podcast is also hosted out of so be sure to head over there and subscribe to the RSS feed if you haven't yet and you can get all the latest posts to your smart phone as well as syncing the podcast to your audio device.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been a fan of this site since the day it was conceived. The overwhelming outpouring of support from you guys has made all the work that I have put into this site worth it. I've stated on a few different occasions that I don't intend to make money off of any of my efforts. What I do is strictly a labor of love in every sense of the saying. Many other sites that are going to pop up in the coming weeks are going to try and sell you a guide, get you to subscribe to their forums for a fee or even come up with some other silly way to get money out of you. I'm here to tell you guys that this site will always be free. I will never ask you for a penny to access its content. Every single item that ever has been and is ever going to be loaded onto this site, the forums or even on our podcast is going to be absolutely free to you. There is no need to go out and buy a guide from anyone on how to make gold playing Guild Wars 2.

I'm not trying to tell you guys to avoid other sites. Actually I would encourage you visit other sites. I do it every single day trying to look for better sites to help build this community of people who are interested in making gold playing the game. If you run across a site that shares the same content as we do here be sure to let us know in some way or another. If it is a fit for this community I will always link to it. If it is useful content I have no trouble letting you guys know about it. I'm not here blogging for page views or visitors and especially not for money. Unlike other blogs who are focused on that sort of thing I have the freedom to tell you that information is found elsewhere because it doesn't hurt me in any way. There is something to be said about hosting a free site like this and I think it is just the right way to do things. I've always done it that way and it's always going to be this way.

Thank you again everyone who supported this site and even donated to show your appreciation for what not only I, but everyone involved with the forum as well, does here. I look forward to playing the game with all of you for years to come and I will warn you right now that there will be no posts this weekend. I'm sure you understand why.

Here is to five years of waiting everyone!

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Guild Wars 2 Riches Prepare For Launch VoIP Party!

The time has finally come!  We've been waiting for over five years now to get our hands on Guild Wars 2 and we are meere hours away!  It seems like a long journey hasn't it?  I am just as excited as you.  Instead of sitting at your computer hitting refresh over and over waiting for the announcement how would you like to spend that time hanging out with people who are just as eager as you?  I decided earlier this week that it would be cool to have a Guild Wars 2 "Prepare for launch" party.  As it stands right now the plan is just to meet up on Skype, but if we have enough people there are Ventrilo, Teamspeak or Mumble servers we can use as well.

If you would like to join please feel free to add me on Skype.  My username is the same you see everwhere around here.  In fact--you can get a hold of me on just about any service if you just look up the following username.

Dollada06 

We can only fit so many on skype so I will be using the amount of contact requests as a gauge for the next 24 hours to decide if I should get a better meeting spot set up.  If you are interested in joining us you can comment on this post as well. 

There is no set plan for what we are going to talk about during the party, but I would wage some bets that there will be a few gold-making strategies that get discussed during it.  If this works well I want to have some Guild Wars 2 Gold Gathering every so often when the game launches.  These will be just like the party, but the topic of discussion will be directly related to gold making.  This is something we used to do back in the World of Warcraft days and it was quite popular so I would like to see how it goes with Guild Wars 2.

It really has been a long time coming and I can't express how excited I am to finally play the game outside of the beta-weekends.  In just a few hours we will finally have some hard numbers to go off of.  We will see how accurate [or inaccurate] my predictions have been pertaining to how the market will react to launch.

Thank you all of being such strong supporters of our site.  We've got many resources here for you to learn how to make gold.  We just added another one yesterday which is

Guild Wars 2 Gold Guide

I have been in contact with the owner of this site and after launch I expect he will have a ton of great information for you guys as well.  I will make it a point to link anything he does here so that you never miss out.

You've got very little time left to get your strategies figured out so take this time to poke around this site and our forums to get your plans set.  I hope to see you at the Prepare For Launch party.  More importantly; good luck to you all and I hope you have fun because the waiting is OVER!

So why should I care about making gold?

Last week I received a very interesting e-mail from someone who has been a long time reader of this site. I get a lot of e-mails each and every day, but this one managed to capture my attention because it had a question that I've really not answered before in any direct way. The whole basis of the site is obviously to make gold playing the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post. I think that, at this point, this incredibly obvious. Since June I have given out over 40 different gold making tips or theories for you guys to ponder leading up to the launch of the game. Using the tips that are given so far you should be able to make a decent amount of gold in an easy way. None of the tips involve doing a whole lot other than just understanding the economy and playing the most simplistic markets available. Yet – when I read this e-mail it caught me a bit of guard because, like I had said, it was a question that I had just never answered before.

Why should I care about making a lot of gold in Guild Wars 2?

That was the question. It seems like a pretty simplistic and straightforward question. I could have just e-mailed this person back and said "because having a lot of gold is totally awesome." Somehow I feel like that would not have done this person's question very much justice. I thought about it a bit and I realize that to each person having gold does something entirely different. One person's entire basis for playing the game may be to become as filthy rich as possible. On the other hand, there are people that may read this site just to make enough gold to participate with their Guild mates.

I wanted to write this as sort of a reflection for each of all of you. We are getting so close to the launch of the game that it may be healthy to take a quick stop and just think for a minute what you actually want to get out of playing Guild Wars 2. Do you want to be that person that has thousands upon thousands of gold to spend at the drop of a hat? It doesn't matter which style you choose to go with the tips on this site will work no matter what. While it is easier to stay in the market and never leave it you are also able to drop in and out as you need to make gold. Those who want to make their millions are going to stay in markets and become major players. They are going to combine all the tips that they have found on this site, and many other sites like this one, and become a perennial powerhouse in the economy of Tyria.

Since I really can't answer my readers question with one specific response I decided to write this and have everyone ask this question for themselves. Why are you going to care about making gold in Guild Wars 2? What kind of player do you want to be? 

Just take a minute before the game launches and the chaos ensues to think about that.

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My apologies for not having a post today. I dropped the ball!

I want to apologize at this point for not having a post for you all today.  I just noticed it about 2 hours ago.  I had another great Guild Wars 2 Trading Post idea for you guys.  What happened was; I went to proofread through it yesterday morning and forgot to schedule it to post and it was converted to a draft.  Anyone who uses Blogger knows about this and I have a strong feeling I'm not the first one to do this--neither will I be the last.

We've got just a few days left before launch and it is getting a little chaotic around the site with people developing new bold ways to make gold on day 1. 



I could have still put out a post today, but at this point I will just call it a loss for the day and wait until tomorrow.  I was pretty bummed when I saw that nothing went up today I must admit.  I will try to not let this happen again!  I still have many opportunities for people to write guest posts here as well so if that interests you click on the contact us tab in the navigation bar.

Lastly, check out our podcast at Guild Wars 2 Trading Post!  We've got two episodes up already!

Sorry again for the lack of a post today everyone!  See you tomorrow.

Sincerely,

Adam

Farm the zones that players are in and out of quickly.

One of the key aspects to making gold off of farming is to find items which people want, but also people don't want to go out and farm.  Where are the best Guild Wars 2 Farming Spots? Often times these sort "High demand low motivation to retrieve" items exist in the most boring zones of the game. People will generally get to the zones and level as fast as they possibly can just to get out of them and move on. These are the kind of zones where the most of your profits will come from. Going out and farming for copper is going to get you a little bit of gold at the beginning, but essentially you want to be the provider of items which are the least farmed in the game.

So how will you know which is a good zone to be farming in?  The way MMO's work is that they are an endurance race rather than a sprint. What I mean by this is that very very few people will start up and level straight through in a short duration of time. Instead, most people are going to play casually and the leveling process may take upwards of a month to do. In many cases, even longer than a month. Even in an endurance race people tend to pick up steam as they get closer to the end. With 80 levels to reach in the game people get to a certain point and realize how close they are to the end and the desire to reach maximum level will take over.

What we're looking for in a zone to farm in is that special level range where people finally see the end goal. They will see how close they are to reaching level 80 and begin to press on with out thinking at all about farming along the way for the materials they will need further disciplines. It's hard to say exactly what level this will be at, but if I were a guessing person I would say that it is somewhere between the 60 to 70 level range. I say those levels because from my own personal experience. When I am leveling characters it is usually around that time where I start paying more attention to the ultimate end goal. This isn't going to be the same for everyone. Some people will simply just play the game casually going from level 1 all the way to level 80. They will farm along the way and experience every single thing that they can. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that play style, but that's not the market that we are aiming for anyway.

The way Guild Wars 2 is set up it caters more to a casual playing style. Not having a monthly fee means that people aren't incentivized to play the game every single day if they don't want to. People are still going to want to play everyday, but that incentive just is not there so it may take a little bit longer for people to reach maximum level. A tip for determining what zones you should be playing in is to just play the game yourself. People overwhelmingly agree with aspects of the game. For instance – if you speak to many people they almost universally agree that the crafting system in the game is done very well. Many also agree that the gem store is a great idea. So if you are leveling through the game and you progress into a zone which you find to be quite boring, there is a good chance that others agree as well. When you stumble across this for yourself just take a look at what resources come from that zone and you will more than likely find something that is profitable to farm.

A key component to making gold in Guild Wars 2 is to put yourself into the mindset of someone who is playing the game and someone who is buying rather than what you are doing which is trying to sell. The more you think about what other people would pay for the easier it will become for you to make sales with better reliability. So the simple tip in this post is to pay attention to the zones you are in when you're playing the game. Maybe just keep a small sheet of paper near you whenever you are leveling. If you find a zone which wasn't all that much fun to you just write it down. When you out level that zone and you go back with little trouble just take a look at what resources you will be farming and check the trading post. If other people feel the same way as you those items will be of higher value than others like it.  If that is the case you farm away and start making easy gold.

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Guild Wars 2 Farms are an asset for gold making.

Perhaps one of the coolest features that ArenaNet decided to put into Guild Wars 2 was their implementation of farms in the name. We've all played Guild Wars 2 in some way shape or form at this point and you know that there are a plethora of nodes around the world. While those are always going to be your primary way of obtaining crafting materials there are some really cool features which make gathering for cooking materials a little bit easier.

Cooking is going to be a very intensive profession. It's going to take a lot of gold to get max level and more notably it's going to take a lot of time. Of course there is still the benefit to crafting in general which gives you XP so there is a bit of a trade-off to investing the time and gold. The aspect of cooking that I want to cover today pertains to how you go about obtaining the materials. Unless you're going to buy them off of the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post you going to be spending a significant amount of time gathering them from around Tyria. If you go through the game and you skip over utilizing the farms throughout the world you are doing yourself an incredible disservice.

What are Farms?
Farms are a concentrated group of nodes spread around Tyria. All farms consist of eight nodes grouped together. Farms are limited to just one per map which means that there obviously aren't going to be as many farms as there are standard nodes. There are still going to be quite a few farms considering the amount of different regions that are part of the world. Each region has a certain amount of maps within it as well. Right now since very few people explored the higher-level zones we only know the locations of a few of the more basic ones.

Just through cross-referencing some of the farms to the prices that are reflected on the trading post I can say that a lot of the farms get neglected just because of their location. For instance – there is a clam farm in the Brisban Wildlands. This farm really isn't all that far out of the way from anything that is highly traveled; however, it is underwater so many people don't want to go get it. I don't know what the reasoning behind this is but it seems like a lot of the items that are underwater people are not willing to go and get. I'll get more into this on a later post, but for now just keep that in the back of your mind.

Cooking is going to be an expensive profession as I said earlier. The thing that makes it a little more difficult even with the globally shared economy is the way that farms are set up. Farms can only be harvested once in a 23 hour time frame. So essentially you're only going to be allowed to harvest them once a day, that is, unless you are incredibly dedicated and you do it at exactly 23 hours every time.  I'm guessing this is highly unlikely.

The reason you stand to make a decent amount of gold if you decide to just sell the materials on the trading post is because even with the globally shared economy very few people are going to be motivated enough to hit up every farm every day that they can. Because of this and the high demand for cooking items by people who are leveling their discipline I predict that there is going to be a lack of materials in the economy as they pertain to cooking. Going off of the past beta weekends and stress test this was mostly true.

After the game launches I'm sure there's going to be an extensive map showing where every farm is located. At that time I'll post it on the site, but for now we just have to go off of what's shown on the wiki and different sites that have documented them as best as they can. Hopefully this happens quickly after the game launches. If I were a betting person I would say that some sort of map will be created before the end of the early access period which begins this Saturday.

Guild Wars 2 Weekly Roundup: The best posts from the Guild Wars 2 Community.

During the week I read a lot of different posts from the Guild Wars 2 community. I would say in an average week I read about 20 to 30 of them. I already link to a lot of different sites, but what I want to do is on Sundays I'm going to put together a sort of "best from around the web this past week" section to the site. It's going to be a post that comes on Sundays and I'm just going to pick a handful of the best posts that I've read from the past week to share with you guys on my site.

Some of the posts don't actually relate to gold making, but they are good for many other reasons. Not all gold making tips actually have to involve the market or crafting. I read many different sites. Some of them devoted to specific aspects of the game such as role-playing. You may think it's a little odd but I read role-playing information during the week. Now – let me explain first, because it does make a little bit of sense. An important aspect of making gold is understanding all facets of the game. Role-playing, while it's not the most prominent part of the game, is an actual part of it. People who are interested in role-playing and Guild Wars 2 are going to be looking for certain items. They may not even be the most fancy gear in the game, but rather just unique items that many other people don't have. Role-playing opens up a market where people aren't necessarily looking for the item with the best stats on it. They are looking for items that make their character unique compared to everyone else on their server.

Unique items can come from out in the world or they can come from crafting as well. Since they can come from crafting you and I can control those items in the market. There may be a popular item in the role-playing community that can be crafted for next to nothing. Since role players are just like you and I, many times they may just go to the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post to buy it.  This opens up a great market for selling items. Not only does it open up the market for selling them, but it also makes it easier to turn larger profits on these items. This is another one of those markets that while you're not going to get rich solely on focusing on it you can combine it with other smaller markets and it adds up in a hurry.

Not all these articles that I'm linking deal with role-playing, but some of them do. I would suggest glossing over all of them in some way. They all have great information in them and the more you know about other markets the easier it is to make gold. So here you are.

Complete Skill Challenge Guide To Queensdale - Guild Wars 2 Hub

Guild Wars 2 Role-Playing Forums - Guild Wars 2 Role-Playing Community

Beta Weekend Engineer Changes: For Better or Worse? - Talk Tyria

The last one I wanted to cover was from a podcast many of you may know already, but if you don't this is an absolute must listen. On this episode of the podcast they go over the market in many ways to make gold. Episode runs just under two hours long so if you have a block of time to set aside or even if you're sitting in your desk at work this is something you definitely could listen to.

That was the YouTube link. If you want to listen to it straight on their website you can also find the link below. This really is an excellent podcast the matter which way you measure it and anyone who's interested in making gold Guild Wars 2 launches needs to check it out.

Tales Of Tyria #42: Buy High, Sell Higher - Tales Of Tyria (July 31st, 2012 MUST LISTEN)

Guild Wars 2 Community Spotlight: The Feral Engineer

Since I have already said that I'm going to be taking Saturdays and Sundays off from posting gold tips I have had a few e-mails from people asking me to at least post something on those days. Because I'm an absolute sucker against criticism and I guess I really aim to please I'm going to be doing a community spotlight each Saturday for the next few weeks or as often as I can put one together.

What the heck is a community spotlight you're probably asking right? Well – let me tell you.

There are a ton of sites devoted to Guild Wars 2 already and the game hasn't even launched yet. This site is a great example of one of them. As blogs pop-up people are already part of close-knit communities devoted to specific aspects of the game. If you are here you're probably interested in making gold. If you visit GW2Versus.Com you will see that they are interested in world PVP. People who join those communities tend to find all the information that they desire in one area. A sign of a good community is one that has a forums to communicate, a podcast interact and content to read. There are many blogs that may not pertain to the exact thing you read here each and every day. I would like to take a few Saturdays to highlight some of the different blogs from around the community. All of them have wonderful content as well as friendly authors and are just all around worthwhile to be looking at.

So for my inaugural community Spotlight I would like to introduce the following site.

Flame-Throwing: A Guild Wars 2 Engineer Blog

As you can already tell this site is devoted to the engineers profession. If you read along enough you will quickly notice that many of the tips and breakdowns that he has on the site pertain to much more than just engineers. I have had this blog on my own blog roll for quite some time now and it is one of the blogs that I check almost daily for new content. He does not actually post new content every day, but when he does post the content is very good and and after reading it once you will not want to miss again.

For those of you who are interested in playing an engineer when the game launches there is no way you can pass up reading this site. He has some of the most in-depth breakdowns that I've seen beating out even the big-name sites that we all visit each and every day. He does a wonderful job of telling you exactly why an engineer is going to be more beneficial in a certain part of the game over others as well as breaking down specific mechanics and skills that they can contribute to any group that they are in. In addition to having post on his website he also has a section for builds as well and although it is currently listed as being on hiatus I would imagine he is going to be updating this much more when the game launches. Given his expertise I would say that this is going to be a great place to go for all things related to the engineering profession.

I cannot overstate how wonderful of a blog this is and it would be a complete shame if you were interested in playing an engineer and you did not take a look at this site.

That concludes this inaugural post on the "Guild Wars Two community Spotlight." I hope you've enjoyed it and I hope even more that you take a look at the website. I will see you back here on Monday for brand-new post on making gold and again next Saturday with our next blog on the spotlight.

Have a great weekend everybody!

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Guild Wars 2 Gem Store Overview (Video)

When I participate in beta weekends and even the stress tests a lot of what I do goes into a collecting data and information to help you guys make gold when the game finally launches. As I am collecting information to pass on to all of you fine folks I often find myself forgetting that the most basic information is just as important as gold tips themselves. One of the aspects of Guild Wars 2 which I've spoken about extensively is the gems store in the game. I also did a "what can I purchase on the gem store" post breaking down each section of it and what is available-for-sale in it. For those of you who find reading long lists of content like that boring and find it difficult to comprehend I have also created a video where I just shoot through the gems store very quickly highlighting some of the most important information as it pertains to making gold.

While it is very important to actually learn gold making tips you've got to know the basics before you can know all of the advanced things that are going on in the game. It is sort of that old adage for they say you've got a crawl before you can walk. So I want to take today and teach you guys how to crawl. The following video is my breakdown of the gems store tab by tab and I also go over individual items which are going to be profitable both at launch and in the long-term.

Enjoy!

I hope that you enjoyed the video, especially since it took about five times longer to upload it than it actually does to record it. Hopefully YouTube hasn't made you watch a five-minute advertisement for this video. This is my short little vent on the blog, unholy hell YouTube is getting out of control with their ads aren't they?

New community spotlight!

Before I call it a day I also want to spotlight a new site that is starting up in the Guild Wars 2 community. I feel obligated to help out other people because I got a lot of help from the other fine bloggers for Guild Wars 2 when I first started out this site and it would be incredibly selfish for me to look the other way when a new blog is starting up. The site I am referring to is Guild Wars 2 Versus. Their site is a forums much like we have here except they focus entirely on world PVP in the game. I expect their forms to grow very quickly and become a fantastic source of information for the game. I suggest you all head on over and take a look as I have already. I think they've got a very flashy looking forums and the content that is there is already second to no one.

GW2Versus

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Buying in bulk works everywhere! Including Guild Wars 2.

When you look at all the big-name stores of today there is one common theme that they all follow. They tend to sell massive quantities of items at a very small price. They can do this because the amount of product that they can move is offset by the amount that they discount their items for each sale. This is just known as buying in bulk.

For example – you go to Walmart and go into the cold section. You see an entire cooler full of ice cream which is cheaper than anywhere else in your town. They can do this because they buy large quantities and make very small amounts of profit on each item which adds up over time. This same theme is to be followed in Guild Wars 2.

The way we operate in the game is through the use of buy orders and sell orders. People are always looking to unload their items on the trading post and get the most gold that they can out of every sale. What we as "gold – makers" want to do is try and find the people who have a massive stock of items and try to get them for as little as possible. This is essentially the opposite side of that coin.

So why are we preying on people with massive stockpiles? What it essentially comes down to is desperation. When people have a massive stock that they want to get rid of they are often times going to act in a more desperate way than if they had a smaller amount. It is because of this that we are able to buy in bulk and just like Walmart, make large profits. Let's say someone is selling copper on the trading post and they've got 1000 of them to sell. They go a few days and are not able to sell all of them for various other reasons. Perhaps, they are just trying to get too much gold for each copper they're trying to sell or maybe the market just isn't there at that point in time.

What we can do in this situation is, assuming you can afford it, place a buy order on the trading post for fractions of what copper is going for at that point in time. Most people probably will just look at this and move on because they know that they are getting an unfair deal. The players that you are looking for are the ones who are in dire circumstances and are needing to sell commodities like copper for any one of 1000 reasons. People with large quantities of items to sell are much more likely to take less of a profit on each item if they can unloaded all at one time so when you come in and offer to take them off of their hands and they can still make a profit they are quite likely to take you up on it.

Buying in bulk is going to be a great moneymaker for the game when it launches and long after as well. There are many advantages to buying in bulk which go beyond just reselling for profit. If you have the bankroll for it you can level large chunks a professions by making a single purchase of materials for a very small cost. Not only are you able to level your discipline for much less gold, but you are also able to sell the crafted items at a lower price than your competition. This is exactly what big-name stores like Walmart are doing each and every day. It is because they buy so much quantity that they can sell for such low prices like they do. In many ways your business in the game should be set up just like Walmart. Except, without the horrible reputation for being an evil company... Just kidding.


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Guild Wars 2 Riches Podcast Episode 02 - Gems

This episode of Guild Wars 2 Riches Podcast is brought to you buy GW2Verus.  A PvP based community for Guild Wars 2.  They are going to have the resources to make you the best player you can be at PvP regardless of which profession you choose to play. After you're done listen to this episode be sure to head on over to their website and check them out – you won't regret it!

Okay – for this episode of the podcasts I covered gems. There is so much to know about gems and there is so much money to be made off of them. After listening to this podcast you will know all the juiciest markets to get into to make you the most gold you can possibly get off the gems market. Many pessimistic players think that gems will not be a viable source of income in the long-term. Do not believe them! Just listen to this podcast and I will give you more than enough reasons why you should be very interested in gems not only at launch but long after the game is been released.

Show notes:

• We are now on iTunes!  So all you Apple children be sure to subscribe to the show on iTunes ASAP!
• We've set up a new "Guest Post" site as well at www.guildwars2tradingpost.org.  If you've got a great gold making tip that you would like to share click on the "Contact Us" tab on the top of the site and contact us. We'll get back to you as quickly as possible excavation point
• Will gems be a viable source of income in the long-term?
• I correct my own silly mistake with the URL of www.guildwars2spidy.com
• This episode is brought to you by GW2Versus.
• Should you spend real money buying gems at launch?
• Do you have a topic you think we should cover on the show? Email the show a guildwars2riches@gmail.com and let us know!  We may even have you on as a guest--who knows!?
• Join our Forums
• Tell a friend about us to help grow this already wonderful community!

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Salvaging for gold through trading post purchases.

When Guild Wars 2 first launches the inevitable wave of people wanting to level their disciplines is going to begin at an incredible rate.  It is just the nature of the beast when we are talking about MMO's.  Everyone thinks they are going to get the jump on other people by powerleveling their disciplines.  Due to the wave of people doing this there is also a really great opportunity to make some gold early on.  You see--powerleving disciplines early on will do two things.  The first, people will end up paying more for crafting materials.  Their main concern is getting to level 400 before everyone else so price is less of an issue.  These are the same people who are likely going to buy gems and trade them for gold just to get this jump on everyone else.  The second thing powerleveling disciplines does is it temporarily devalues crafted items.  Since so many people all at once are crafting many of the same thing and trying to sell them they will lose value to the point where people are almost giving them away.  This is where you stand to make a lot of money!

The first thing you want to do is just track the prices of a few items.  Remember--this will be globally so the entire world will be driving the price down.  It is because of this that the prices of crafted items will actually be so low that buying them to salvage will become viable for profits.  This is done using a Salvage Kit.

A point I want to make is that you skip buying a crude salvaging kit.  Crude salvaging kits cost 32 copper.  They are cheap, but you get what you pay for.  With a crude kit you get 15 uses out of it.  That is 10 less than the next one.  In addition to that the crude salvage kit has a 0% chance to get you rare materials and a very small chance to get upgrades.  This is compared to the basic salvaging kit which costs 88 copper, give you a 10% chance to obtain rare materials and a 20% chance of getting upgrades.  While it may cost a bit more it is much better if you spend a little extra since your only concern is what you are getting out of your salvages.

During the beta weekends I was a part of I was using the fine salvaging kit.  They sell at a 2 silver, 88 copper.  At that price my rewards were boosted to 15% rare material find and 40% upgrade finding.  This was a bit more, but still gave me a chance to make some serious gold so the extra cost was worth it.  When I was salvaging items it seemed like I was getting a much better return on upgrades than the 40%.  On one salvage kit I believe I got about 11-12 upgrades.  (Statistically I should have gotten 10.)  Some were much better than others of course, but all of them sold quite well and it quick time.

The key for this to work is that the prices of gear need to be very low.  It also helps if the price of rare materials and upgrades is a bit higher than normal as well. It's not mandatory, but it just makes it that much easier to turn a profit.  I don't have any hard numbers for you right now, unfortunately I didn't document all of the numbers during the beta.  I can however give you the outline of what I did specifically which is the next best thing.

1. Check the prices of upgrades and document them.
2. Check the prices of crafted gear on the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post.
3. Compare the two.  If gear is selling lower than upgrades and rare materials your eyes should bulge out with money signs on them like a cartoon.
4. Now determine what you need to make as an average profit on each salvage to break even.  At 2 Silver, 88 Copper I know that I need to make at least 12 copper each salvage to stay in the black.  Now just to be safe, remember trading post fees get deducted too, you want to add 15% onto that.  So your 12 copper should actually be 14 copper.  At 14 copper you will make money, but you've also go the costs of what you spent on your gear to make up as well.
5. When you buy gear you can hover over it and it will tell you what you can reasonably expect to get from it.  A wise choice would be to purchase gear that will give you the most valuable upgrades.  As you get more savvy you will find ways to turn a profit on the lower gear as well, but this is too dependent on the market prices for me to comfortably tell you to do this.
6. You have bought your gear and salvaged it.  Keep track of your returns early on this will help you find the most efficient gear and you can begin to maximize your profits.

That is really the basics of the strategy.  It is a bit tough when you've not got numbers to work off of specifically.  I may revisit this when the game launches to clear any questions.  You will always make back the cost of your salvaging kits, but some will forget to incorporate the trading post fees or even their costs spent on buying gear.  Remember to include all the numbers or you could lose serious gold rather than turn a profit.

Tomorrow I will piggy back off of this post and cover the Black Lion Salvage Kit.  That is the one that is purchased with gems and give you a whopping 100% chance to obtain an upgrade!  Is it worth it?  Check back tomorrow and find out!   

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Guild Wars 2 trading post market tracker exists! Introducing Guild Wars 2 Spidy!

Since the beginning of this site I have stressed the importance of tracking the prices of items before you should do anything with the market.  It would be a shame to buy a bulk quantity of something and have the market fall out from under you.  It would be even worse if it were preventable and there was a way to know that.  Well--There is and you should be as excited as I am because this can save you hours of time.  What this feature does is track the prices on the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post and records them.  It does, autonomously, what I have been telling you to do since day one!  So what is it?

Guild Wars 2 Spidy 

I am as blown away and happy as I have been in a long time by this site.  It is simple.  It is speedy and best of all it is FREE!

I would be making selfish mistake if I didn't thank everyone involved with this for creating it.  A project like this takes more coding than one would expect and they aren't charging penny (or copper) for it which is awesome.  In an age where there are an endless supply of greedy bloggers trying to sell a Guild Wars 2 Gold Guide it is nice to see people who share the same belief as I do that information for a game should always be free. So--thank you for doing this to everyone involved with Guild Wars 2 Spidy.

Lets go over how Guild Wars 2 Spidy works, shall we?  I had heard long long ago that ArenaNet had intended to make the trading post accessible through a web browser.  This was a fantastic idea.  Well somehow through the voodoo and magic of coding these people are able to essentially scan the entire trading post and track the prices of every item and what they were sold at.  As I mentioned earlier this saves you and I a significant amount of time.  Time that can now be spent farming.

Prior to this application you were restricted to doing your research while you were at home and physically logged into the game.  Now you can do it anywhere you've got access to the Internet which is awesome for you!  Horrible for your employers, but awesome for you!

Right now, from what I understand, it is in it's early stages.  I imagine they will make many more improvements to it as time chugs along.  I look forward to using this and I would imagine all of you will be too.  Making gold just got a whole lot easier with such a great asset like Guild Wars 2 Spidy.

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Guild Wars 2 Riches Podcast Episode 01 - Spidy

Good news everyone!

It's taken me quite a while to get it all set up, but I finally got the Guild Wars 2 podcast that I wanted to do recorded and uploaded today. I've been wanting to do a podcast for quite a while, but it would've just been unfair to you guys if I was putting out podcasts while the site wasn't in a state that I hadn't deemed acceptable. So without further adieu this is the first episode of the Guild Wars 2 Riches podcast. This episode is entitled "Spidy" since I cover the app which goes by that name. What does it do? Well – you'll just have to listen to the podcast to find out.

I hope you guys enjoy these podcasts. They will never be a replacement to a daily post they will always be in addition to what is already been posted for the day. I don't have any set time frame as to when there going to be recorded so I'm not going to promise one every week or anything like that, but I will be doing it as often as I can.




http://ia600600.us.archive.org/30/items/Ep01-GuildWars2RichesPodcast-Spidy/Ep01_gw2rp_spidy.mp3

If you would like to contribute to a podcast or even record your own for our Guild Wars 2 Trading Post site feel free to do so.  I can even get it hosted for you for free if you like.  Try to fit the same format as we do.  10-15 minutes long and make sure we don't have to attach an explicit tag on it.  Other than that you are free to do just about anything you would like.

Show Notes

• Introduction
• Tales Of Tyria - "The Instance" of Guild Wars 2 Podcasts.  There are no better podcasts for the game than this one.  If you don't check it out then I don't think we are friends anymore...it's that good!  Especially episode #42 entitles "Buy High, Sell Higher."
• Boons And Conditions - A Fantastic Guild Wars 2 Podcast
• Spidy

That is episode one in the books.  Thank you for listening everyone!  

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Guild Wars 2 trading post strategy to make easy gold in the first 24 hours.

Good morning everyone!

One of the crafting materials that you're going to run across early in the game, and often, is going to be copper ore. Since all of the starting zones for Guild Wars 2 have copper ore in them there's going to be a massive influx of it. Also, many of the disciplines use it as well so it's also going to be used up just as quickly. With a massive quantity of copper on the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post you're probably expecting to make very little profit off of it if you tried. Many people feel the exact same way. I'm here today to tell you guys that there is a potential for huge profits just selling copper on the trading post when the game launches.  It will require very little risk and can have a high reward for you.

The key bit of information to know about copper ore is that it sells quickly and in large quantities. What this means is that you don't need to turn a massive profit on each item to make profits overall. You can make little smaller chunks on a larger quantity and end up with a nice profit as well.  The strategy is really what most stores are doing today and that is selling in bulk. They sell 100 items for $1 profit.  In the long run they actually make more money and muscle out their competition.  This is exactly what you are going to be doing with copper ore on the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post, but I will be honest it is highly unlikely that you are going to put the competition out of business.  So what is the key behind this strategy as it pertains to Guild Wars 2?  First you want to know the "Standard" price that copper ore is sold at.

What is the standard price of copper ore?

I know you're looking for a straight up answer but there really is no nailed-down standard price for copper ore at this point.  The numbers I will use are based on my experience in two different beta weekends.  I am confident in these numbers because it was nearly identical in both beta weekends. The price that I have found when I was testing the betas were copper was most routinely being sold was between 13 and 15 copper.  When the beta first started up the price of copper was going for about 30 copper apiece. This is obviously when you want to be selling rather than buying. If you are dealing in massive quantities of copper buying it at 13 copper and selling at 15 copper will still give you profits, but you could do so much better.

What is my strategy for making selling copper?

The strategy that I used during the beta weekends was to wait until copper got down to 10 copper apiece. I know what you're thinking – "if the normal price of copper is 13 to 15 copper why on earth would you be able to get it for 10 copper?"  Well, that is pretty easy actually! The reason you will be able to get it for 10 copper apiece is because when the game first launches everybody is going to be opening the floodgates trying to sell copper. When the servers first go live you're going to see the price of copper go through the roof. This is due to greedy players wanting to make as much as they can early on. There really isn't anything wrong with that it's just that it happens in just about every MMO and I expect Guild Wars 2 to be the same. As I mentioned--This has already happened twice in the two beta weekends I was able to participate in. For this strategy to work it is important that you are tracking the prices every 15-30 minutes.  I will get into the timetable a bit more in a second, but let's press onward.

Okay – what you're going to do is wait until other players start to drive the prices down by undercutting.  Most of this is due to people being greedy and wanting to get their cut of the profits.  If you have gathered copper through leveling you should do the same as well.  This is a small window of time where you can make this much gold just selling copper and you might as well take advantage of it when it is there.  So, as I mentioned, the prices are going to go from sky high and will be driven downward very quickly. Think of it as a pendulum swinging from one extreme to the other. The price is going to be at around 35 copper apiece and as people begin to undercut it's going to push it lower and lower and eventually it's going to be pushed down under 10 copper. I can't say for sure how low it will go, but the strategy I went with was a 10 copper/copper ore cutoff. I did see it go just a little bit lower during the beta weekend; however, not much. When the price of copper goes below 10 copper I want you to buy up as much as you can, or at least as much as you're willing to spend on it. As a small gauge to go off of the price went down to 10 copper at around that six-hour mark after the beta servers went live.  This too happened in both betas so I am expecting the same thing when the game launches.  So keep an eye on it and when it goes down below 10 copper you are going to be buying up as much as you can afford.  I wouldn't be too worried about it--it will sell.

After the price is low enough people begin to do the same as you and buy up bulk quantities of it to level up there crafting disciplines.  Except the thing you are going to do is hold out just a little bit longer and wait because the prices are going to push up to that 13 to 15 copper mark once again. At that point you are going to sell off as much as you're willing to sell. The great thing about the strategy is that copper ore is always in high demand so it will not take long for you to get a return on your items after you post them on the trading post.

That's it! The strategy is incredibly simple and since you're dealing with copper or there is little risk involved because you know that one way or another it's going to sell. This doesn't just work for copper either you can use this with logs or any of the foraged items that are obtained in the starting zones. Now get out there and make some gold!....... that is – after you wait two more weeks for the game to launch.

Gahhh!!! I can't wait anymore!

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How should I reinvest my gold profits to make more? A simple breakdown for you all.

OK everyone hypothetical scenario time!

I just log into the game and collect my booty from my overnight sales.  I've got 20 Gold in profits!  Sounds pretty awesome, but now what do I do? Do I take my 20 gold and put it into my bank storage? or--Do reinvest it into the Guild Wars 2 Trading Post?

Here is what I would do.

When I am just starting out I would reinvest nearly all of it.  18-20 gold is a safe bet in my opinion.  It may not seem like much, but even early on it is nice to put away 2 gold for your savings.  You could use that for other characters or just start slowly filling your coffers with gold.  You want to do this so you can actually make a profit.  If you continually reinvest all of your gold earned you really aren't making much gold.  You have assets, but not liquid gold and unfortunately there are very few vendors in the game that accept crafted items as currency.

The big questions is "what do I reinvest my gold into?"  Your options are quite endless, but it will fall under one of 3 categories.  Either crafting, power-trading(flipping) or gems.  This will largely depend on what disciplines you have chosen to level at first, but my greatest piece of advice would be not to put all 18 gold into a single market.  That is a bad idea for more than one reason.  Just like any economic endeavor the market can go south at any time and you never want to have all of your eggs in one basket.  Pardon the horrible saying, but it holds truth in this case.  The second reason is that if you are investing into one thing you aren't discovering new markets.  I come from a manufacturing background and there are different pillars to our business.  We have sales, production, customer service etc.  Pretty much all the major components of any business.  The one I left out is research and development (R&D).  We are always developing new ideas to keep our company moving forward.  This is no different in Guild Wars 2.  Now, I understand that you aren't actually creating new items in the game, but discovering new sales markets can be considered R&D in the game.

Each player is different in their belief of how to invest gold.  As I stated I am investing 18/20 at the beginning if I make 20 gold.  That equates to a staggering 90%.  I have to emphasis that this is only in the beginning.  My plan, over time, would be to dial that back to 60-65% and start putting the rest away as profits.  I don't do this only based on time alone.  It has to be based on what I am making in profits.  The number, depending on what I make, could fluctuate day to day.  I tend to stick to a close model for what I do.  You could do this any way you choose just as long as you are reinvesting your gold into something.

These numbers are pulled out of thin air since I don't know how much I can make in a day currently, but my own model would look something like this.

20G/Day=90% Reinvested (2G Saved)
25G/Day=85% Reinvested (3G, 75S Saved)
30G/Day=80% Reinvested (6G Saved)
40G/Day=75% Reinvested (10G Saved)
50G/Day=70% Reinvested (15G Saved)
60G/Day=65% Reinvested (21G Saved)
75+G/Day=60% Reinvested (30G+ Saved)

These are only the numbers that I use.  I want to make sure you don't interpret this as a law of economics or anything.  I have just used this model in the past and it has been successful for me.  It all depends on the amount of effort you put into making gold.  Someone who spends a little less time may save 75% at first and peak out at 45% saved.  There are too many different investment styles to say that this scenario will work for everyone.  If you are a casual player and only putting in a few hours a week you my have a completely different approach to this and I would love to hear about it so be sure to leave a comment!

I want to highlight again that there aren't any numbers set in stone.  If you want to make gold the only thing that is important is that you reinvest something.  If you are new to MMO markets you can do just 10%, but I can tell you now that you will quickly realize that the more you invest the more you grow and get back the next time around.  Each time you open up your mail and retrieve your days profits, before you do anything else, lay out a simple budget of what you are going to do with that days take.  People who follow their budgets are much better at saving money...that is a fact.

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The wait is almost over. A reflection of our five year journey to playing Guild Wars 2.

Getting into the way-back machine today to look at the long wait we've all endured to finally play Guild Wars 2.  This is a submission for a blogging carnival at GuildMag.Com.  They are one of the greatest Guild Wars 2 communities around and have been a major player in keeping me sane while waiting for the game to launch.  Be sure to check them out when you are done here today!

Here we go!

Most people at this point are foaming at the mouth in anticipation of finally playing Guild Wars 2.  It has been an incredibly long wait and now we are just a few short, or eternally long, weeks away from getting our hands on it.  If you think all the way back to March 2007 just think of all that has changed since that time.  At a certain point I stopped viewing the ultimate goal of playing Guild Wars 2 not as a long wait, but a journey.  I know that it sounds cliche, but really it was the only way to keep from going stir-crazy.  Five years is such a long time to wait for anything.  The world was a much different place back then.