Farmer's Almanac - Wolf Farming in Fireheart Rise

Hello fellow farming enthusiasts. Totally Kreweless returns with another farming location for you all to try out.

Fireheart Rise is this week's destination so head on up to northern Tyria and visit Breaktooth's Waypoint. Head north from there to meet up with some killer level 69 wolves. As you'll be down-leveled to 71, you should have no problem rounding up a few wolves at a time. Don't forget that wolves can summon another wolf to aid them which can quickly double their numbers overwhelming you. The main thing we are farming for are Large Claws and Large Fangs. You can expect around 30 of each every hour on top of several blue and green items with a rare or two thrown into the mix. If you tire of the wolves, head into the caverns to take out some separatists for their salvageable container bags. Expect to get around 1 gold an hour or at least save you some money on crafting should you need those crafting materials. Have fun, guys!

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Wintersday Spikes - Market Speculation Part II

Did you know that when you search for images on google with the search term 'spike' you get mostly images of a well known vampire? I decided I'd run with that after another long day of work and a nice, tired buzzing in my head.

There he is, almost like the petty, but handsome, lord of a supermarket. "Won't you buy my goods guv?" He reigns above all the items that are spiking or that have spiked in the past 48 hours. You can probably add more to that list - little movements you've seen elsewhere, but that's the majority of the items on my wintersday watchlist on gw2spidy.

Will other items spike? I think we might just see movement elsewhere but already the strong contenders for 'bubble' status (along with chocolate) are emerging.

What do we do with this information? Well hopefully you've been using the information we've been sharing in First Wintersday Information (Sparse), and Watch Out For Christmas Bubbles And Market Manipulation (and in each posts comments) to snag some of these items early before they rose. Maybe you snagged some even earlier (I believe Halloween Food - Revealed - specifically my comment right after it - was when I first mentioned it).

If not, have no fear. Some of these items (perhaps the most artificially inflated) are going to at least slump, if not crash, early as investors get the jitters. There's a while until Wintersday yet so there'll be time after that for another mini-bubble.

Some items are just beginning to rise so you can still get in early (but you'll be gambling - as we all are at the moment :P). Again, because Wintersday isn't here for days yet there's time for "investors" (bless) who don't check around for information until the last minute to buy up popular, predicted product lines in a panic.

Keep your eyes peeled here, or over on reddit, or on another GW2 fan sites (I believe in a wider community and not this site alone - though I'm purdy smrt ;D) or even the main GW2 site for news about Wintersday, videos (press sites are good for previews - like we saw during Halloween) and screenshots containing recipes.

Even if the recipes shown in screenies don't give anything good, the price of these items will spike like a vampire.

For you see, what we're really doing here is guessing what other players think will sell well - not what will be needed and what will sell well in reality.

Keep sharing your thoughts in this post, or any of the previous wintersday posts. I've been working on the forum and I hope to have it up soon which will, I hope, help keep ongoing discussion much neater and more informative.

PS I know I asked at the weekend for ideas for this week's posts but what with the market shenanigans I had to postpone the drafts I was working on for those ideas - they'll no doubt appear another time! 

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First Wintersday Information Drop (Sparse)

There I was, just posting to google+ and Facebook that I didn't have time to post due to lots of work. And then I see:

Wintersday: The Wondrous Workshop of Toymaker Tixx
December 14 to January 3

The nights may be long and dark, but Tyrians of all races keep joy alive during the ancient holiday of Wintersday. While each race celebrates Wintersday in their own unique way, children all over Tyria share a common love of one thing: toys.

This year the city of Lion’s Arch will host the asuran Toymaker Tixx as their special Wintersday guest of honor. Before Tixx arrives in Lion’s Arch in his massive airship toy workshop, he’ll visit every major city in Tyria to deliver Wintersday toys and holiday cheer.

Truthfully we've little to work with here just yet but we've a time scale (a start date importantly) which means we can further predict potential bubbles and when they'll burst.

I'm also interested in the fact that this is, so far, focusing on toys (and other types of gifts). I've had a long look at most of the cooking possibilities but I'm now thinking about other crafting skills. Maybe we'll be able to construct wooden soldiers or dolls; miniature zeppelins and things of that nature.

Share your thoughts below!

PS Chocolate spiked again and it was exactly a day after (give or take an hour) the first spike. Anyone listed some for 1 silver predicting another wave of purchases tonight? If the trend repeats itself you'll be able to buy more chocolate back than you sold and still have made profit. It's a gamble but then, isn't all speculation?

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Watch Out for Christmas Bubbles and Market Manipulation

I had good fun over the weekend on our FB page. I often find that I've got too much to do socially over the weekend to get much playtime in and when I do I don't get enough time to write up a post so, as a little experiment I kept my 2nd monitor focused on the fan page to engage with anyone who wanted a chat.

I like the format so I'm going to do it again when I can :) - I even got some good ideas for this week's posts which I'll get to but today, one item of news really caught my eye: chocolate bubbles!

We've talked about Christmas before: I think one of the earliest blog mentions was at the end of Halloween. The time is nearly upon us now though.

We're starting to see speculation creating peaks in the prices of a few materials. In particular, the past 24 hours saw a leap in the price of bars of chocolate check it out:

There's some speculation about this hike. It's a pretty pronounced spike and it's counteracted after with a sharp drop. My own theory is this is one big spender (or a conglomerate of big spenders) trying to create the bubble early. What do you think?

Aside from the causes for this one spike, it's becoming quite obvious that bars of chocolate are going to be growing in value up to Christmas. I hope you all have some stacks waiting to sell! If not then I'd watch for chocolate dropping after a pronounced spike. 

When these spikes appear and word spreads, chocolate hoarders will be looking to offload. Plenty of people do this in a silly fashion, unloading all their chocolate and undercutting like crazy. When enough of them do so the price takes a pretty sharp tumble. That's when you want to buy. 

Other investors will be watching the price and doing the same thing. The price will start to rise again. 

In fact, whatever force produced this first, pronounced price spike will likely keep doing so in the hope of making 25% (after fees) on thousands and thousands of chocolate. 

For a quick 'out' wait for what you think is the next spike. You can do this multiple times. Look at the graph above (on GW2Spidy where the info will be fresh) and take note of the patterns that emerge. It's like playing with real stocks and it's good fun :)

You can also buy a chunk in one of the troughs and hold on until the bubble is just about to burst then sell. 

On that note - we're looking at a bubble that bursts shortly before or just after the content drops so you'll want to sell at a peak before the Christmas event starts. 

Take your cue from the way pumpkins, ghost peppers and strawberries behaved just after that first Halloween cooking recipe teaser. 

What do you guys think! Share your thoughts.

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Patience And The Art of Buy Orders

Edit: As the good folks in the comments reminded me - there's an extra fee to take into account! Check the comments for details.

Patience. Patience is the core to the art of buy orders. There are other variables when you head to the trading post and look for a likely niche to flip items in, but the patience required... the patience required never changes.

If you want to make a bit of money, and feel clever doing so, buy orders are a good bet.  I'm aware that, for some of you, I'm preaching to the choir. But maybe you're missing a note or two, maybe you're off key. Maybe the choirmaster (me in this long analogy) wants the choir to share their tips amongst themselves! 
So even if you're rolling your eyes right now: "yeah, buy orders, I KNOW", have a read - you might learn something. Or you might feel I've left something important out and want to share in the comments or on FB or G+!
Today I'm going to look at dyes because, it's the first thing I thought of when I was thinking about this post. To begin with: unidenfitied dyes. Here's how the listings look in the trading post at the moment (Friday 23rd November 6pm CET): 

Things to be aware of when you're trying to scope out a potential market at this stage - the total number of items available (# Avail); the price (price per unit) and number (available) of the cheapest listed (1 at 9 silver 10 copper in this case) and the price per unit and available of the next few tiers up (9 at 9 silver 60 copper, then 28 at 9 silver 64 copper - enough for this example). 
Now we check the existing buy orders for unidentified dyes (click 'place a custom offer'): 

Again, we want to check the price per unit and number ordered at the dearest (10 at 8 silver 38 copper) price point and then the numbers and prices working our way down the tiers (9 at 8 silver 37 copper, 3 at 8 silver 36 copper, then 53 at 8 silver 35 copper - enough for this example). 

The long and short of the screenshots above is this: you can place buy orders at 8 silver 35 copper to 8 silver 38 copper (depending on how fast you want the item) and most likely find a seller who wants to 'sell to highest buy order' over the next few hours. 

If you're buying anything because you need it (not for profit) this is the best way to go about it. You'll get the item quick enough and you'll not spend as much as you would for the lowest listed item at that time. 

Right now we're looking for a flipped profit. To work that out try to sell (anything) in the trading post at the price of the cheapest listing you think will sell over the next few days. Now, this varies depending on how fast the items move and experience is the only thing that'll teach you this. Un-ID'd dyes move fast so you don't need to undercut and don't even need to match the lowest seller. 

You could probably list at 9 silver 90 copper (250 dyes away) and still sell reasonably fast but understand more will be added to 'lowest seller' and slightly above. For this example let's go for worst case flip - lowest seller and dearest buy order.

If you buy at 8 silver 38 copper and sell at 9 silver 10 copper you'll get the item pretty fast and sell it pretty fast. Within hours most likely. Here's what you'd make: 

8 silver 19 copper gross (after trading post fee). Subtract the 8 silver 38 copper that you spent and you'd have lost 19 copper. Subtract the additional listing fee (46 copper) and things are even less rosey. 

Although there's potential for profit by putting in a low buy order and a higher sell order (9 silver and 60 copper is a very achievable sale here) this isn't an ideal buy order flipping opportunity. 

Let's look at an old faithful dye friend of mine (Saxon Cain's favourite armour colour) - GOLD DYE. I'll stick up three new images (we don't need the same lengthy explanation) to show our options here: 

The current listings...

The current buy orders...

Your gross profit (minus TP fee) if you sell at cheapest listing price. 
With good, old gold here, as you can see, for every buy order you got at the dearest buy order price (88 silver and 3 copper) sold at the cheapest price listed (1 gold 4 silver and 99 copper) you'd be making 1 silver and 21 copper net profit. Not bad for no real work!
To turn that into top notch earnings, you'd need to put in buy orders in bulk.
That's not to say gold is the best option on the trading post at the moment - no way! I'd go as far to say that  there's no chance, no chance at all that that's the best price difference you can find between max buy order and min listing price.  But you can use this technique to easily make a bit of money at will. 
All you need is patience!
What do you guys like to flip? What kind of trading post buy order techniques do you like?
One final tip - don't leave buy orders up too long (over 12 hours or so) as it ties up your money and the market might change overnight meaning you're not going to get those orders in for a month or more. 
One final, final tip - don't forget the listing fee ;) 
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Gold Guru - Mystic Forge Gold Making w/ Rare Weapons

I used the Mystic Forge for the first time ever yesterday.  Does that make me a newb? Raydon here with the ShoddyCast and it's time for another episode of Gold Guru.  For better or for worse we put every Guild Wars 2 Trading Post strategy to the test.  This week sees a Mystic Forge strategy.  Specifically, purchasing rare level 60-65 items in batches of 4, then tossing them into ye old Mystic Forget to see what comes out the other end (that's what she said).

So, my fellow Guru Kornuit didn't lie.  Although this is a gamblers method, because it has to rely on chance, it is a viable way to make gold; that is if you can get your 60-65 rare weapons for cheap- around 3-5 silver.  The items I tested within that price range did consistently well.  The moment I would step out of that zone, and into the 6-7 silver price range, my risk went up and my reward became my loss.  Although the tests I ran didn't see it happen, you do have the chance of hitting it big with a nice exotic weapon.  The gamblers out there will particularly like this strategy's element of chance.

x4 Berserker'sHammer of Blood = Berserker's Hammer of Water = 1s41c (profit after TP share) +4.7%
x4 Berserker's Focus of Debility = Berserker's Focus of Serpent Slaying = 6s96c (profit after TP share) +20.2%
x4 Shaman's Norn Trident of Water = Rampager's Trident of Blood = -4s22c (loss after TP share) -18.3%

Took four more tests besides the ones listed above, but I'm too lazy to list them out too.  SCREW YOU.  I don't get paid for this.  In summary stick with rare 60-65 weapons below 5 silver and you'll be fine.  Venture  outside of that at your own risk, because I incurred a loss every time.

Thanks for tuning in for this episode of Gold Guru.  Don't forget to 'Like' and 'Subscribe' and all that good stuff.  It means a lot.  Until next time, this has been Raydon with the ShoddyCast Channel.  PEACE!

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Farm Karkas At The Lost Shore - Super Secret Mesmer Build

I know a lot of classes have no problem farming mobs at a great rate. This isn't always the case with a mesmer (a profession I love dearly). In fact I levelled a warrior exclusively for farming, though I turned him into quite a durable shout healing, condition removing tanky fellow.

I actually had an email this morning from a fellow mesmer fan who asked me a pretty simple question: How do I farm young karkas at the lost shore?

I know there are a lot of builds out there for effective mesmer farming - and for other classes too - and I know some of you guys will share them on Facebook, Google+ and the soon to be ready forums but in this post I wanted to show the build I've been using to mess karkas up real good.

The core of the build is simply a focus, feedback and 0/0/0/20/5 and from here, depending on your own preferences, you've a lot of flexibility. I prefer the following set up.

I like this build because it gives me unparalleled flexibility in many situations. You can trait into torches removing conditions; Greatsword CD reduction and stat bonus; Sword CD reduction and stat bonus; Scepter CD reduction and stat bonus; Confusion/glamour builds; even a pretty good phantasm dps build. In fact, nearly every build and weapon combo save a staff/bunker build or a shatter/Illusionary Persona build.

It suits me in dungeons, WvWvW and I even like to roll with this setup to be unorthodox (and therefore hard to predict) in sPvP - but I digress! You just need to worry about a focus in your offhand, feedback, illusionist's celerity, glamour mastery and warden's feedback. 

In action, you simply introduce yourself to a karka - perhaps with a bow or a mainhand weapon attack (which is why I prefer the scepter, if you start with a warden sometimes the karka melees it down in 2 hits) and then a reflecting spell in the following order of preference: 

Illusionary Warden  is better than...

Feedback which is better than...

Temporal Curtain. 

The young karka will raise it's tail and then flatten in preparation to shoot you with whatever it shoots you with (doesn't bear thinking about) and you will reflect it back at them while dpsing yourself. They wilt! 

Once you get into the rhythm you'll find that you have at least two of your reflective options open at any one time. 

What I find interesting is that the reflected damage uses your own crit rate and damage bonuses. My warrior with a shield traited to reflect (long cooldown - not very effective reflective farming) in his exotic cleric's shout gear does very little damage. 

My mesmer with 20 points in power and precision lines and exotic beserker's gear on the other hand, suddenly feels very farm-tastic. 

I know a lot of classes get this kind of damage out in other, less convoluted ways but I've played a few (mesmer, warrior and thief) and this reflect build makes for a pretty quick kill - trust me on that. As a bonus, because you reflect the young karka's main attack, you take almost no damage.

Now, here's the important question: why would you farm these rowdy, young, foolish karkas?

Well maybe you want revenge on the entire species based on the end of the lost shores event. Perhaps you missed the chest :(. Maybe the lag was almost insufferable to you. Either way I agree, the crabs deserve to die.

Oh, they also drop karka shell and powerful blood (or potent blood) - none of which are to be sniffed at (needed as they are for the ascended back items, amongst other things). Add to that blues, greens, yellows and even oranges at the same rate as mobs in Orr.

The only downside to this spot, profession and technique combo is hitting diminishing returns pretty fast :(

What do you guys think? Where are you farming? How are you farming? Do you find this spot profitable?
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Join Us On Facebook, Google Plus and Our Upcoming Forums

With the Lost Shores event over and the ancient karka put to rest my Guild Wars 2 work schedule has been returning to normal. This means working on the site and trying to spread the locations which our good community can call home (yes I have been listening to your complaints about the captcha in the comments section!) 
Today I've set up a Facebook page and tweaked the google plus page. Now, I know not everyone uses these two social media platforms and, perhaps you dislike them. But what I want to do is help spread the word about the community we're building (nothing spreads like social media in this day and age) and give you guys  a way to get more involved in the site. 
I've said that we're happy to host guest posts but Facebook pages and google plus pages give you even more options - post links; post images; post videos of you earning money or playing - there's lots of scope for some nice sharing, which is what these sites are all about. 
And I see this as just the beginning. I'm working on getting a forum set up - hopefully this week and hopefully one that we can get Facebook sign up working with to minimise the accounts and logins you guys will need when trying to join the discussion. The strengths of a forum are obvious to me (I'm a bit old school in that way) and, again, it's a way for you guys to share content without it going through me as a filter before being posted on the blog. 
I'll be continuing the blog as normal but I see these posts as starting points for discussion. In fact some of the best insights - over the past two Guild Wars 2 events while I've been in charge of the site - have popped up in the comments sections!
And continuing the theme of getting you guys involved in this community and the collection of sites I want to be linked together within it, I'd like to ask for your feedback: 

• What content would you like to see in the forums? 
• Gold making will always be a primary focus but what about other categories - like subforums to share PvP/PvE tips; videos; builds and the like?
• Are there any other directions you'd like to see the community move in?

Answers in the comments below or on Facebook or Google +! 
PS don't forget that 'like' button :) 

Final Karka Event - Worth It In The End

IF you can tolerate the lag (I was absolutely dejected at this aspect spoiling my experience);

IF you can avoid death or get a resurrection when the inevitable one shot by karka arrives;

and IF you can tolerate the style of the event (I hear some players were lag free but otherwise upset with the format);

This final Lost Shore event is great.

My only quibble (as stated) was the massive, overwhelming lag. It's epic and the final chest contains many, many goodies (precursors galore for some) and guaranteed exotics.

This means the supply (and price) for these will drop quite steeply and people will panic to sell but it got me thinking - aside from a tweak to a drop rate (slight Anet reports) from the mystic forge and chests and mobs - is this the single greatest precursor give away planned?

If so there's a chance that prices will drop then rise again. Let's be honest - nearly every player wants a legendary. Therefore nearly every player will buy a precursor. Few players right now will keep theirs (believing the price will plummet or because they didn't get the precursor for the legendary they want).

This means demand will stay high. This injection (though of course it's impossible to predict numbers - we'll wait on the trading post and market updating) may be temporary. We may see a fall overall in precursor price but you may be better off waiting if you got lucky enough to get one.

Finally, was the end so buggy (complaints galore on reddit) that it will be elevated above '1 time' to '1 time for the next few days'? Will alts be running it and therefore will even more exotics and precursors enter the market?

I wish I knew right now but that was one long exhausting event :) Worth it in the end!

What do you guys think? Better yet, what did you GET (if you did the final event)?

Lost Shore Weekend - Black Lion Keys

The potential economic shenanigans from the Lost Shore patch are not as spectacular as the recent Halloween event (there's a lot of 'account bound' stuff so far) but the content is amazing. Have you guys ran any fractals? I've never had a better MMO dungeon experience, seriously!

Of course, there are things we can be doing to make money or prepare to make money at a later date (investing in other words) but after a check on what you can buy with fractal relics...

...and a check to see what you can buy with captain's council commendations...

...the most interesting (well, in my opinion) investment I could find involves the upcoming winter holidays event - let me explain!

I don't think Black Lion Chests are dead. At least, I believe they'll be upgraded permanently (or perhaps during certain holiday events) in future. I think that's easier (from a design and community point of view) than phasing them out or removing them. Their contents will once more be intriguing.

Consortium chests are a possible replacement - maybe Arenanet are running a test with these consortium chests - renamed Wintersday Chests; Halloween Chests; or just Holiday Chest but I'm not convinced this is the case. I predict we haven't seen the last of Black Lion Chests.

Interestingly you can get black lion keys through commendations and this opens up another avenue for profit and investment in holiday content (probably the only worthy purchase with commendations at this point in time):

Getting these commendations involves the mystic forge and a new method emerged on reddit a few hours ago - a means to get 2,000 using a jeweller and candy corn amongst other things. 
You create level 80 exotic jewelly and combine 3 with donation packaging. Right now it's the most efficient way to get these commendations in bulk. 
Costs for the materials required for the candy corn orichalcum amulets are on the increase, although 150 candy corn per amulet isn't going to start a rush on corn or make that much of a dent (BUT expect Arenanet to introduce more subtle methods to drain the stocked corn supply like this in future.). 
If you are interested in items that will shoot up - look at the other materials that go into level 80 exotic jeweller recipes. 
Alternatively, if you want to stock keys so that you can open chests during a holiday event at a much cheaper rate (and get a chance at a desirable skin) then this is the way to go. 
Speaking of skins, those introduced with this patch are underwhelming visually - which is why the economy remains a touch unpredictable, but it is early in the event yet!
Tonight and tomorrow - expect this kind of trading post search to show up many, many more results: 

What about you guys - what have you been keeping an eye on so far?

November 15th Update - Lost Shores

The patch that just went live is full of interesting changes. There are many but it is a little late in this part of the world so I thought I'd throw up the notes and see what you guys think. I've cut out the PvP, class and story changes and a few other, non-commerce, non-trading post sections as there is just so much already - even if those sections were full of awesome or noteworthy changes too. 
Personally my eye is drawn to a new type of chest that's temporarily available from the gem store - consortium chest (if this is a new approach for events are Black Lion Chests thoroughly dead now?); the multiple crafting materials (karka shells, passion fruits); changes to the dungeons; and, and, and man there's so much! 
Looking forward to playing, reading your comments and analysing tomorrow and the whole weekend.

Release Notes:

The Lost Shores Update

Something is stirring in the Sea of Sorrows. Ship wreckage is washing up on shore, whales are beaching themselves, local quaggans are leaving their undersea homes, and strange new creatures are being spotted along the Tyrian coast.

Head Researcher Levvi has been pleading with Captain Magnus, leader of the Lionguard, to heed her warnings of imminent danger to the city of Lion’s Arch and other coastal settlements. Magnus remains unconvinced, though the disruption of maritime trade has the Ship’s Council concerned.

Something new is coming ashore in Lion’s Arch at 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday, November 16. This epic event will change that city forever, even as it introduces an entirely new twist on dungeon play. Come to the defense of Lion’s Arch and race to discover the secret behind a mysterious new menace.

At 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Saturday, November 17, the second phase of this epic adventure will take players to a place they’ve never been in Tyria, where they’ll meet a new pet creature and discover previously unknown crafting resources that unlock new recipes and a unique way to upgrade gear.

Join us at 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday, November 18 for your chance to take part in an unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime final event!

Dungeons

General

• New dungeon rewards have been added to all dungeons.
• Each dungeon has a new set of unique items with new stat combinations, ranging in rarity from masterwork to exotic. These items have a chance to drop off of certain bosses in the explorable mode of each dungeon.
• Story and explorable bosses and encounters have a chance to drop Bags of Wondrous Goods, which contain coins and karma. Bags of Wondrous Goods obtained in explorable mode also contain dungeon tokens.
• If the owner of a dungeon instance intentionally leaves his party to kick out players and invite new players, it will now also kick that owner out of the dungeon to prevent people from kicking PUG members and inviting guild members for the final boss of a dungeon.

Fractals of the Mists

There are new stories being told in the taverns of Lion’s Arch, usually in hushed tones by broken and bloodied adventurers. They weep into their ales and shake as they speak…not about dragons or the undead, but of something new, a mysterious portal that has emerged in the city, beckoning the bravest to venture through it.
Introducing a dungeon experience like no other—Fractals of the Mists! A series of unique “fractal” minidungeons, increasing in difficulty, offers players unlimited levels of challenge! With great risk comes great rewards, including new weapon sets, a back slot item, new Ascended loot, and much more!

• New level 80 dungeon with dynamic leveling so you can bring your friends!
• Endless and scaling. The deeper you go, the harder it gets!
• The portal to the Fractals of the Mists will activate with the Lost Shores content Friday at 12:30 p.m. Pacific Time. Head west of Fort Marriner to the entrance and try your luck. Perhaps you’ll survive and reap the rewards, or perhaps you’ll be lost forever to the Fractals’ bloody secrets.

Items

There are two new major features added to items in this update. For more detailed information on these features and how they tie into the new Lost Shores content, check out this blog post!

• Added new crafting materials as part of the Lost Shores update.
• Crafted Halloween potions are no longer account bound.
• The mighty Zommoros has slightly increased the drop rate on Legendary precursor weapons from the Mystic Forge from both Rares and Exotics.
• The drop rarity of Rare and Exotic weapons from certain places in the world (champions, veterans, and players in WvW) has been increased. Rares and Exotics should be much more likely to drop and every champion should be guaranteed to drop loot. This was to ensure that world loot drops were not a significantly worse way of acquiring rare and exotic items than crafting and running dungeons.
• The amount of loot that drops for downscaled players has been increased. You should now be able to receive level-equivalent loot until you are fighting at a downscaled level that is less than 2/3 of your actual level. You should also receive loot a greater percentage of the time as well as receiving a greater percentage of experience, gold, and karma. For level 80 characters, this means level 55+ areas will be able to drop level 80 gear and give about 75% or so of the other rewards. Previously, these areas would give level 77 gear at best and closer to 60% or so of your rewards.

New Rarity Type: Ascended

• Ascended rarity falls between Exotics and Legendaries on the rarity spectrum.
• Ascended items have higher stats than Exotics and come with slots for the new upgrade type, Infusions.
• Ascended rings and back slot items have been added to the game.

New Upgrade Type: Infusion

• Infusions are a new type of upgrade component that can only be slotted into a matching Infusion slot.
• Added 12 new Infusions of the offensive, defensive, and omni types to the game.
• Create Infusions through the Mystic Forge using new crafting materials.

General

• The Fire Elemental encounter in Metrica Province has received a balance pass.
• The Shatterer encounter in Blazeridge Steppes has been updated.
• A UI confirmation window will now pop up on large vendor purchases.
• Players will now be warned if they do not have enough inventory space to acquire an elemental fragment during the Dierdre’s Steps jumping puzzle.
• Harvesting tools are now account bound.
• Updated Rune of Water to provide 10% boon duration instead of 15% in PvP.
• Updated Rune of the Monk to provide 10% boon duration instead of 15% in PvP.
• Updated Rune of Earth to provide 15% protection duration instead of 20%, and 3 seconds of protection instead of 4 seconds in PvP.
• Updated Rune of the Citadel to properly grant power instead of healing.
• Rune of Svanir’s block of ice effect will no longer allow players to capture points while they’re invulnerable. Removing the stun from this effect will remove the invulnerability as well.
• Rune of Air’s lightningdamage has been reduced by 25%.
• “Unblockable” skill facts have now been added to various skills.
• Rune of the Pack’s on-hit effect now works properly.
• Many skills, items, and traits were applying healing to an infinite amount of targets and have now been limited to 5 targets.
• You can no longer view opponents’ account names through reporting in WvW.
• Fixed a bug that caused many piercing, boomerang, and bouncing projectiles (those that hit more than 1 target) to continually increase in damage the more targets they hit.
• Fixed a bug preventing melee attacks from hitting static objects in the world if the character was not moving. As an example, this should help players using melee in Ascalonian Catacombs to hit graveling burrows, amongst other offending objects.

Commerce

• The Consortium Chest has been added to the gem store in the Consumable category for 250 gems each or 10 for 1800 gems. No key is required to open these chests; simply double-click them in your inventory.
  • When you open the Consortium Chest, you will receive some number of crafting materials and one random item.
  • Some items in the chest include: shoulder skins, breathing masks, weapon skins, hats, and minis.
  • All items in the chest are new and have never been available before.
  • Weapon skins are rare, and the minis are very rare.
  • All items can be sold on the Trading Post.
  • The Consortium Chest will only be available for a limited time.
• All the items found in the Consortium Chest can also be obtained as rare drops from any creature from the new Lost Shores event.
• The Consortium Dye Kit has been added to the gem store in the Consumable category for 125 gems each or 5 for 500 gems.
  • The Consortium Dye Kit gives one random blue dye and one random yellow dye.
  • The Consortium Dye Kit will only be available for a limited time.
• Dye Packs now come in bundles of 5 for 800 gems.

Gold Guru - Salvage Kit Trading Post Strategy

It's Thursday ladies and gentleman, and one day until the Lost Shores patch!  There was something else too... Oh yea, this week's episode of Gold Guru right here on GW2Riches.  I spent part of my weekend playing with a fresh Trading Post strategy.  Like most, this Trading Post strategy was born out of curiosity.  All the trading post strategies I've tried up to this point have been long term strategies.  I have always been more drawn to long term and passive investments that can make me Guild Wars 2 gold offline.  This time I wanted to try a Trading Post strategy that I could use to turn immediate profit.  So, the question; can you take salvage kits to the trading post and somehow turn a profit?  Naturally I pulled out Kornuit's Flipster tool and I set out to prove if it could be done, and more importantly, to see if it is even worth your time.

 Going into this I figured a couple factors would come into play.  The first issue I faced was which salvage kit to try and test it on.  The cost of the salvage kit will obviously have to be calculated into the expenses.  I settled with the Basic Salvage kits.  Since I wanted to perform my initial tests on low cost armor pieces I figured I didn't have to put much silver into more expensive kits.  With the basic salvage kits I was paying 4 copper a kit which seemed acceptable.

The next issue I foresaw with this strategy was Anet's need for balancing.  Like any gold-making method in Guild Wars 2, you will see Anet's anti-gold-farming hands in everything.  My fear was that they knew someone would come along and try to do what I am doing with salvage kits.  Because of this, they would have nerfed what you get from salvaging a long time ago to kill any chances of TP profit.  This is always a possibility with any TP strategy that has a "gambling element" in it.  Perfect example would be the Loot Bag strategy a tried a while back, but in that case it worked perfectly.

Enough talk though, here are my results on the tests I've run so far:

Rawhide Bracers x5: -55c (items) -20c (kits) +1s8c (sold components) = 17c (profit after TP share) +22.4%

Rawhide Masks x5: -70c (items) -20c (kits) +78c (sold components) = -24c (lose after TP share)

Rawhide Shoulders x5: -85c (items) -20c (kits) +1s21c (sold components) = -2c (lose after TP share) -2%

Apprentice Coat x5: -1s50c (items) -20c (kits) +3s21c (sold components) = 1s3c (profit after TP share) +60.5%

Apprentice Coat x25: -8s80c (items) -1s (kits) +15s22c (sold components) = 3s12c (profit after TP share) +20.5%

According to my tests so far there is some promise here.  In the next episode of Gold Guru I'll try and take it to the next step with some more higher end equipment.  How about equipment with runes?  Would the kits pull enough off of the higher end stuff and potentially increase that speedy profit?  Honestly I have no clue, but I'm willing to test it for myself next week.  I'll keep you all posted on Twitter and Facebook. If you happen to make it to the trading post before I do and want to try it for yourself, let everyone know in the comments below if you find any success, or if you meet with utter failure.  By sharing our experiences with each other here on the site we all stand to grow a little richer.

Until next time, I've been Raydon.  You've been you.  And this has been the ShoddyCast.  We'll see you next time, and don't forget to 'Like' and Subscribe to the channel.  It means a lot to us here and encourages us to keep doing what we love.  PEACE!

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If You'd Like To Contribute To Guild Wars 2 Riches You Can

I've been contacted a few times by users asking if they can contribute more. We're working on a new forum (after the debacle with the old one) and we hope to bring a lot of unique, quality discussion to that area. But in the meantime, aside from comments, we're very, very open to guest posts. 
A guest post is where you write something and it gets posted on another blog. Maybe you're a blogger and want to do an exchange of posts (we can talk about that possibility) or maybe you have no blog but have ideas or specific speculation you want to share with a larger audience. 
Either way I'm very happy to be involved with the community on that level. It helps spread the word of what we're doing here. It helps build on the already excellent Guild Wars 2 community (with a shared link to your own site). It means you as a reader get top quality, varied content. 
Just get in touch (contact page or imthundergore@gmail.com) and we can chat about what your ideas are and where we can fit you in.
That's not a lot to comment on below so I'll also drop in some changes that are going on in the economy: 
Tier 6 mats (scales in particular) are on the increase nearly universally. Speculation is rife. Black Lion Chests have dropped a little again as speculators got nervous/uncertain.
I find the scale increase most interesting. A very logical post by Flekk Stoneguard on our last speculation post posited that scales will be dropping from the Karka and I'm inclined to agree. 
Then again, the counter argument (driving prices up) is that the new recipes - there could be quite a lot - will require tier 6 mats together with the new tier. Given we're getting a 'nautical' theme it's also logical to imagine we'll be crafting nautical items with nautical materials. 
Additionally, there's never as many of the totems, blood, scales, fangs etc on the TP at any one point. A rush on these can have a pretty big effect on their price.
As usual, ideas and discussion (on both elements to today's post) welcome below! 

Take Advantage of New Content Speculation

I know we like speculating ourselves and the goal of speculation is to guess a winner but there's other benefits to trying to predict what items will increase and decrease in price with patch changes.
Take, for example, Black Lion Chests. 

Over Halloween you guys will have noted that during the event they held a pretty low price point. Higher than now, but only by a few copper.   The real spike was just before the event landed - when people had heard and speculated that the chests were going to be oh so expensive. Imagination and speculation drove up demand and they soared to 30 copper each.   That was the first time we'd seen this kind of thing with new content and each time you can bet that the spike will be lower but we're already seeing movement in black lion chests now. The announcement doesn't even mention chests but that could be a double bluff (and so speculation goes on :P)!
There will be other opportunities, chests are the first but I'm noticing movement with piles of putrid essences too. I love those essences! I've a stock of 1,000 myself from close to vendor price but there's no way of telling if these are going to be needed in this patch or a near patch. 
It's speculation (some believe it's pump and dump too) and lots of players are doing it every day. Speculation is powerful.
This is the first way you can take advantage of speculation. You figure out what people will logically assume will be needed for a new patch or for new content well in advance. Stock up on those items when they're still at their 'Post Halloween Low' kind of levels (think chests before the last Lost Shores announcement) and then sell when the speculation is reaching a peak - not when the content is launched. 
It's a surer bet than waiting for the content to hit and watching prices plummet. 
You can benefit in another way from speculation. 
Look at the guesswork going on elsewhere. Orichalcum is falling in price. There are numerous theories about this. Some say it's only natural - more players have multiple 80's and can farm more. More servers have Ori maps that make finding it easier. 
At the same time, players have been told about this new tier of materials coming with the Lost Shores content. A lot are worried this'll reduce Ori's value: "Dump Ori now" is something I'm reading in a lot of places. 
I'm not fully behind this. The fact that there's some new nodes doesn't mean Ori won't be needed. Look at the types of items that Orichalcum makes in the mystic forge. Some of them look incredible and still will even if new resources become available. 
I'm not advocating you buy Orichalcum (yet - at least not at the current price) but keep your eyes on it. You could stock up on a valuable material while negative speculation is driving the price down then wait for the market to stabilise when there's little actual change in the supply/demand for the material, bringing the price back up.
Lost Shores is content where speculation is more tricky and price movements are going to be all over the place - there's no theme to the items that will be popular after launch. We'll have to check as many resources as we can for word on what the masses are going to speculate on. 
But the Christmas event - that's themed and much more predictable! Eggs, cinnamon (and other traditional xmas spices), snow truffles, butter (all that baking), anything mentioning snow or that's involved with Christmas festivities at all, are bound to spike before the content drops and now's the time to get them before the first wave of speculators start moving.  Share your thoughts!