Account-Bound Currency Gold Making Guide
- Last updated: April 18, 2021
In this GW2 gold making guide we’ve gathered the best methods for turning your account-bound currencies into gold.
General
Laurels
Spending laurels on crafting bags is the absolute best way of converting this currency into gold. As for which one to invest in, always trust gw2efficiency for up to date and accurate estimations.
In case you haven’t used them up already, there are also a couple of once-per-account purchases offered by the laurel merchants, these are absolutely worth it.
Spirit Shards
For these we recommend converting crafting materials through the Mystic Forge. The best items and their recipes are yet again provided by gw2efficiency, follow this link.
Each recipe follows the same pattern:
- Buy Philosopher’s Stones from Miyani, you’ll need this for every recipe. This is how you spend your spirit shards.
- Dust that matches the tier of the material you wish to create.
- The item you want to create more of.
- A bunch of related materials from a tier below.
While you may see higher returns per shard on some other items such as exotic weapons, materials are the safest and easiest to sell in a bulk.
To maximize profit, place a buy order for the materials you’ll throw into the forge and list the ready products as a seller instead of selling to a buyer immediately.
Karma
There are plenty of ways to convert karma into gold, we’re only going to focus on the best ones. In terms of profit these are all very close, but the numbers can change daily.
Wintersday is often the clear winner, but can only be done during the end of the year when the event is active.
- Pact Supply Agent
- Beaded Weapons
- Mystic Forge
- Wintersday
Pact Supply Network Agents
Pros: decent money as far as karma goes, can be done all year, low effort
Cons: time gated, mastery required (Supply Line Management)
To goal is to buy as many Pact Scout's Mapping Materials as possible and then use them on the right map:
- Agents are on a rotation. Each day 6 different agents are active. The schedule can be found here.
- You may only buy 1 item per agent, so a maximum of 6 per day.
- There's also a weekly rotation. You should hoard these items and use them on the right map during the right week for maximum profit. Rotation can be found here - current week is highlighted by a yellow background. When and where you use these are up to you.
Beaded Weapon Crafting
Pros: can be done all year, not time gated
Cons: requires crafting, selling in bulk can take a while
This one is a bit more complicated. First you must complete the heart quest of Cuadinti in Sparkfly Fen to be able to purchase Sun Beads from him.
Then you need a character with at least 250 Huntsman skill level. At that point you should discover the Beaded Weapon recipes, all of them require 75 Sun Beads each. The recipes can be found on this page (click on the weapon you wish to pursue).
Once again use gw2efficiency to figure out which weapon to craft at any given time.
Mystic Forge Conversion
Pros: can be done all year, on par with other non-restricted methods
Cons: very repetitive and time consuming to the point where you may be better off farming something instead of doing this, lots of inventory space required (could force you to travel back and forth a lot)
With this method you'll buy armor pieces (usually gloves) for karma, convert them through the Mystic Forge into something salvageable, and salvage that item for materials that can be sold on the TP.
Once again gw2efficiency is your friend.
Wintersday Gifts
Pros: lucrative and low effort
Cons: seasonal with daily time gate
Each Wintersday vendors arrive in Divinity's Reach, selling gifts for karma - look for the Charity Corps Seraph. Wintersday Gifts start off cheap, but as you keep buying you'll be forced to pay more and more for the same amount of gifts. Even then there is a cap, so it's not an infinitely scaling system.
Prices and cap reset daily and are shared by the entire account.
Both the gifts and the contents can be sold.
Trade Contracts + Karma
This method often comes out on top as the most efficient way of turning karma into gold, but requires another account-bound GW2 currency.
Chances are you’ll run out of Trade Contracts way before you run out of karma, which is why we didn’t include this in the previous section – this method is more about the contracts.
First off look up the Trade Crate deemed best by gw2efficiency, then find a renown heart NPC on the gw2wiki that sells the desired crate. After that, you’ll just have to coplete the heart quest and buy the crates.
Guild Commendations
Spending them on Armor boxes or guild WvW blueprints are both viable ways of getting gold out of this currency. These are always available which makes them consistent, but not necessarily the best.
Blueprints are consistent in a sense that you always know what you’ll get for your commendations spent.
Armor boxes are more of a gamble and require salvaging. There is RNG involved – you could get rares or exotics, great upgrades or worthless ones. They are however 33% cheaper than blueprints. The choice is yours.
If you have Guild Trader 4 unlocked however, Tub of Wood Glue is the absolute best option among the always available ones.
Map Currency
Bandit Crests
The best way to turn Bandit Crests into gold would be to buy Bandit Skeleton Keys from the Priory Historian vendor at Camp Resolve and use them to loot chests.
If however you don’t want to bother playing the map for hours, we recommend Sandy Bags of Gear.
These even have a chance to drop named exotic weapons which could sell for a couple of gold each.
Waypoint chat code for vendor: [&BH8HAAA=]
Geodes
Spend your geodes on Bricks of Clay. Use the clay to create Clay Pots, then sell those on the TP for gold:
- On a single character you can only craft one Clay Pot a day.
- The recipe is sold at Dry Top by Dusk on maps where the meta event has reached tier 3 or higher. Waypoint chat code: [&BIAHAAA=]
- You can save Geodes by purchasing Bricks of Clay only when the map meta progress is at a higher tier. The difference can be substantial – at tier 1 a Brick of Clay costs 12 Geodes, while at tier 6 it’s only 4 Geodes!
For this you need a character with at least 400 Artificer skill. The ingredients are the following:
- 15 Piles of Incandescent Dust
- 25 Thermocatalytic Reagents (bought from the Artificer vendor)
- 5 Globs of Ectoplasm
- 25 Bricks of Clay
Volatile Magic
A living story currency, Volatile Magic can be converted into gold through Shipment Containers. You need 250 VM and 1 gold to buy a single container. As for which one yields the most profit, always rely on this link to calculate it.
There are several NPCs all over the world that sell these, the most easily accessible one is probably Karnn Fallenskull at the Eye of the North.
Unbound Magic
Honestly, this isn’t a very good idea. If you don’t trust your RNG, don’t do it, you could lose money on this.
But if you’re feeling lucky, go for the Magic-Warped Bundles sold on various Living Story maps and hope for the best.
Heart of Thorns
The Ley-Energy Matter Converter is a time gated HoT currency converter with wares that change daily. Here are the items worth buying:
- Trophy Bag: rare (tier 5 mats), fine (tier 3 mats). Masterwork (tier 4) is too much of a gamble, most items in the loot table are vendor trash – we only recommend it if you have a lot of currencies to spend.
- Karmic Crafting Bag: heavy, medium, light in this order.
- Bag of Gear: rare.
Other than the converter, the HoT map currencies are best used on their respective keys. Use them to open chests on HoT maps:
- Lumps of Aurillium on Exalted Keys.
- Ley Line Crystals on Vials of Chak Acid.
- Airship Parts are the odd one out, you can’t buy Crow Bars with them. The converter remains the only real way of getting gold out of these.
Endgame PvE
Fractal Relics
Spend them on Deeply Discounted Fractal Encryption Keys at the Fractal lobby. You can buy a maximum of 30 each day.
Gaeting Crystals
Peerless Infusions, Brilliant Djinn Doubloons and Shrouded Bench of the Final Judge are all viable options for converting Gaeting Crytsals into gold via the Trading Post.
You can buy the first two from Scholar Glenna in The Key of Ahdashim and the bench in Hall of Chains. Or you could grab all at the same place if you have a Portable Gaeting Crystal Exchange.
Magnetite Shards
The best way to turn these into gold is to buy Ghostly Infusions from Scholar Glenna in Spirit Vale and list them on the TP.
Prophet Shards
Red, Green and Blue Prophet shards can be turned into gold by first converting them into Prophet Crystals.
Use the crystals to open Emissary chests at the Eye of the North.
Dungeon Tokens
How you should spend the tokens depends on the level range of the items. The goal is to maximize the amount of ectos you could salvage per token spent. If you can buy level 68 or higher rares, grab those. If you can’t, buy the cheapest exotics.
Tokens to buy rare armor with:
- Honor of the Waves
- Citadel of Flame
- Crucible of Eternity
- Arah
Tokens to buy exotic weapons with:
- Ascalonian Catacombs
- Caudecus’s Manor
- Twilight Arbor
- Sorrow’s Embrace
You should spend a maximum of 30 tokens for rare armor and 210 for exotic weapons.
Rare armor because there are no rare weapons at the merchant, and exotic weapons because their inscriptions are worth more than the armor’s.
A Black Lion Salvage Kit is the best for this.
PvP
PvP League Tickets
You can’t directly make gold with League Tickets.
What you could do is buy Ascended Salvage kits with these and use them in our Ascended Shards of Glory method.
Ascended Shards Of Glory
Quite the gamble, but there is a way to make gold with it.
Buy as many Ascended Amulets (Mist Pendants) as you can, then salvage them with an Ascended Salvage tool. Each attempt will give you some Stabilizing Matrixes, but the real goal would be to get a Salvaged Excellence which goes for ~400g on the TP.
One use of an Ascended Salvage tool is going to cost you about 1g (the price for a regular stack of Shards of Glory) while an Amulet is another ~70s. You’ll win some of it back on Matrix drops, so let’s round it to 1g.
1g + account-bound currencies for a 1-5% chance at ~400g. If you like those odds, go for it. If not, don’t bother.
WvW
Skirmish Tickets
Avoid blueprints, you’d 100% lose money on them because Memory of Battle is also required and that alone is worth more than the blueprints.
You could try the Ascended Amulet method detailed in the PvP section, but an attempt costs roughly 30 times more gold in WvW so this is not something we’d recommend right now. It’s possible, but you have to get really, really lucky.
It’s probably better to use this currency for its intended purpose instead of trying to make gold with it.
Badge Of Honor
Converting Badges of Honor into Badges of Tribute and listing those on the TP is usually the best way to turn these into gold. BoT is sold only in Guild Halls by Davis the Survivor.
Occasionally some blueprints have a comparable or even slightly better value, we recommend you keep track of the prices at this gw2efficiency link.
Heroics
Both Testimony of Heroics and Proof of Heroics can be converted into gold the same way: buy superior blueprints from the Heroics Notary, list them on the TP.
Catapults and Shield Generators tend to fetch the best price, but you can always check the best prices here (scroll down to the Heroics Notary part).