Most effective ways to earn gold these days?

1st Official Post

    Hello everyone,

    I just started play Guild Wars again after many years.

    Right now my main concern is to make decent money with a minimal time investment since I want to get some of the new gear and make a few new characters.

    As far as I can tell, the only truly worthwhile methods of making gold are selling Nicholas' gifts and doing the daily Zaishen quests on every character, then selling Zaishen coins.

    First two questions:

    How much do 5 Nicholas gifts sell for these days (both in ecto and in gold respectively)?

    Selling Zaishen counts is indeed better than keys, correct? If so, should I sell only gold keys or is it better to keep them as bronze? And how much do they sell for (ecto and gold respectively)?

    I know the price tracker website https://kamadan.gwtoolbox.com/ and have a vague idea, but would like some confirmation.

    Third question:

    Is there any other method that's worth the time investment? I assume speed clears can be worth it, but they are very unreliable. The only other thing I hear people mention that's still worth doing is Vaettir farming during good events.

    I am also aware that you can offer to vanquish areas for people, but I'm not sure where to find players who might be interested.

    Fourth question:

    Is there any place in the game where you can easily sell Zaishen coins and traveler gifts, or is the only simple way these days to post on the forums?

    Thank you!

    Edited 3 times, last by Cifer (July 31, 2021 at 9:46 PM).

    • Official Post

    -Gifts are ~3e each. Selling them for plat directly isn't really feasible - it's always either ecto or arms if the quantity is big enough. (You can of course just sell the ectos for plat afterwards if you need.)

    -I haven't calculated the exchange rate, but if zkeys sold for more than gold zcoins people would just trade them in and then sell them. Keeping the coins as silver is likely ideal. You can trade from bronze to silver to gold but not the other way. So if you have silver and someone wants gold that's fine, but if you have gold and someone wants silver that won't work. Looking at trade chat it seems most people want golds now anyway, but unless you're dealing with a huge quantity of coins and storage space becomes an issue there's no reason to lose the flexibility.

    -If all you want money for is for getting your characters set up you really don't need to invest any meaningful amount of time into farming. You get enough to get what you need just by playing through the game. If you want to obsessively min-max yourself and your heroes (which is not even remotely necessary) then you'll want to be grabbing the nick gifts, but that's about it. You don't need to think about getting involved in speed clears for this purpose.

    -You can advertise vanquishing services and the like in the services forum below. Maybe people search for such things on Discord too, but I don't use it so maybe not.

    -Kamadan is the go-to trade town.

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    if you came back to the game after a long break, likely you might have some items in your inventpry that might not be able to drop anymore. These can be worth loads. Advice on these items: do not fall for pm offers that seem high, but list them for auction on the forums - or at least post the on the PC section to get some idea.

    The easiest as money/time method is getting nic gifts - but it is limited by the number of accounts you have. Usually you can get n * 15e / 10min where n is the number of accounts you have. Buy the nic items from players (not on monday, but rather toward friday - when the initial demand has faded and more ppl started farming so you'd have an easy time getting them. Usually the nic set goes for an ecto or so (depends on the item). Then pack all accounts into one group and run to the spot and store the gifts. Once you have a stack you can sell easily - often fpr higher price than individual gifts. The spot to trade stuff like that is kamadan - putting them on forum isn't as helpful for high quantity, low price, common items like that. Forums can be used if you have huge quantities to get the best price (the ppl buying save a lot of time sitting in kama, trying to buy small bunches of those items and hence pay more)

    Other than that the ways to make money include:

    1. farming (Wind of Change - "A Chance Encounter" is one of - if not THE one - most profitable (ask youtube or forums for instructions)

    2. Speedclears - DoA if you want something reliable, SoO if you are more into the lucky segment.

    3. Vanquish services - tough to find customers but can be good money/time if you know what you do.

    4. Dungeon/elite area runs - to add a little extra if you have a good team you can take along on your speedclears some customers with a good extra money. Requires skill and a good team usually.

    5. Stock market type of action. Requires funds to invest, but minimal time input. Buy common resources at times of low cost and sell at times of high cost. More speculative approach: ecto/armbraces, more reliable: items that have predestined price fluctuations: birthday cupcakes, wintersday gifts... But you need to know what you are doing and it is no fast profit in the second case.

    6. Powertrading. If you know the market very well, the customers with odd items to buy - you can make good money. And by good I mean very good.

    Hope this helps as a starting point - and I don't think this is 100% complete, accurate, fault-free - so anyone may readily add to this ;)

    EDIT: Zaishen quests are usually shitty money/time. Only do those quests, that can be completed fast - or if you want to go for the vanquisher/guardian titles anyways. If one is rushable you can do the maths - but usually it's only profitable to offer running it (and then might actually be good the day the quest is out - since many customers are around)

    I WTB all kinds of Tower Shields and Defenders. I do drop research - if you find anything remarkable or want to see the results - check the thread or send a pm!

    IGN1 Red Fireball Rusher

    IGN2 Silberner Magier

    Thanks for the pointers!

    I already have all of my characters and heroes set up with the new meta builds, so the money isn't "needed" (like most of the time in Guild Wars). It's just for items with nice skins. After reading all of the above, I will stick with my original plan and focus mainly on selling gifts each week, do quick Zaishen quests and do some Elite area speed clearing, solo farming or try the new A Chance Encounter farming.

    I have one more question:

    The build I'm currently using is https://gwpvx.fandom.com/wiki/Build:Tea…enary_Mesmerway

    Is this overall the most effective meta build at the moment? I've read that until 2018 it was 2 Ritualist/Necro healers plus a BiP healer, and it was called "7 hero BIP support" on PvX I believe, but the page was deleted a while ago. Is that an outdated variation of the above Mercenary Mesmerway build and the latter is simply better, or is the dual BIP build equally good and still around?

    And does the above Mesmerway build work just fine for most elite areas or should I run with two necros at least for those, one with Pain of Disenchantment (excluding for Elite areas where you need a completely different hero build, of course)?

    Additional question: Since the Mesmerway build works better by far with melee heroes, is it the best to simply go Dagger Spammer build with every hero no matter if Monk, Ritualist, Elemental ist, etc?

    Thanks!

    Edited 7 times, last by Cifer (August 2, 2021 at 10:22 PM).

  • Cifer August 13, 2021 at 1:47 PM

    Changed the title of the thread from “Most effective ways to earn gold these days?” to “CLOSED Most effective ways to earn gold these days?”.

  • cosyfiep August 31, 2021 at 4:26 PM

    Changed the title of the thread from “CLOSED Most effective ways to earn gold these days?” to “Most effective ways to earn gold these days?”.