Ways to Earn Gold

This guide is an overview of the best and most commonly used ways to earn gold in Guild Wars 2.

Last updated August 2020

The Trading Post

Instant Selling

When selling items on the trading post, be aware that you incur both a 10% transaction fee, and a 5% listing fee on items you sell. This can add up to large losses over time, and alternate methods may be more profitable, such as material trading.

Crafting Materials and Gear

When you kill enemies, complete events and gather nodes, you accumulate a lot of crafting materials that go into your material storage. These can be worth a surprising amount of money on the Trading Post, ranging from 1 silver each for basic ore, wood, and leather, to 30 silver each for Vials of Powerful Blood. If you don't need these materials, you can convert them into liquid gold by selling them on the Trading Post.

Relatedly, if you cannot make use of gear that drops, you can usually sell it on the trading post or salvage it for materials (which may also be sold). Typically it is more profitable to salvage and sell materials rather than selling the gear directly, but this can vary. Rare and exotic gear in particular may be more valuable to sell - an approximate value of above 20 silver for a rare or above 40 silver for an exotic is likely to be worth selling directly rather than salvaging.

In the case of fine or masterwork (blue or green) unidentified gear, you should either sell the gear or open it before salvaging - salvaging directly will result in much lower profit.

Trading Post Flipping

If you have a good eye for commodity trading, you can buy low and sell high on the Trading Post for potentially massive profits. This is quite difficult, requires a lot of capital, and is generally beyond the scope of this guide.

For those interested in playing the TP, some useful sites may include GW2BLTC, GW2 Spidy, and GW2 Efficiency. Additionally this Reddit post provides advice for trading with different levels of wealth.

The Overflow Trading Company may also be useful to those seeking to flip or trade. Their discord can be found Here

Daily Checklist

Daily Completionist

Every day, you can complete 3 daily achievements for 2 gold. They can be any 3 achievements across any of the game modes, and you can do this regardless of your character level.

Daily Gathering

These “farming spots” provide a lot of materials when gathered, making them a good place to park your alts. They provide anywhere from 30 silver to 1 gold worth of materials just by logging in and pressing F a few times. Below are a few examples:

• Players who have completed Kudzu III will have access to a Hidden Garden
• Arkjok Farmlands, north of Allied Encampment Waypoint in Domain of Kourna
• Tomb of the Primeval Kings in Desert Highlands has several chests that can be quickly looted.
• Malchor's Leap elder wood farm, southwest of Pagga's Waypoint (respawns every hour)
• Verdant Brink flax farm, in the valley north of Jaka Itzel Waypoint
• Draconis Mons flax farm, near the Druid's Grotto POI

If you have some more time you can waypoint around the open world and gather permanent nodes. A database of permanent nodes can be found here.

Crafting

You can make a profit by crafting certain items and selling them on the Trading Post. Due to the nature of supply and demand, the most profitable items are always changing, so you'll have to put in some legwork to get the most out of this method.

A relatively reliable source of income is crafting timegated items. These items or their components can only be crafted once per day, which means they have inherent scarcity which makes them profitable to sell.

• Bolt of Damask
• Deldrimor Steel Ingot
• Elonian Leather Square
• Spiritwood Plank
• Carbonized Mithrillium Ingot
• Square of Vabbian Silk
• Blended Leather Sheet
• Composite Wood Board
• Ley-Line Infused Tool
• Clay Pot
• Grow Lamp
• Heat Stone
• Plate of Meaty Plant Food
• Plate of Piquant Plant Food

Currency Conversion

If you have excess Spirit Shards, Karma, Badges of Honor, Laurels, Guild Commendations, or Black Lion Claim Tickets, you can convert them to liquid gold through a variety of methods. See GW2 Efficiency for a detailed breakdown.

Players with access to gizmos such as the Ley-Energy Matter Converter, Karmic Converter, or Fractal Reliquary can obtain a variety of items at low cost (the items offered changes daily). The items lists offered by each of these are somewhat similar, so you can look to GW2 Efficiency for an indication of value.

Home Instance/Guild Hall Gathering

Players with access to an upgraded Home Instance or guild hall will be able to gather a variety of nodes each day. Different tiers of guild hall nodes are reset separately, so if you have access to a less upgraded guild hall, you may be able to harvest some additional resources.

In the case of home instance nodes, it is worth mentioning that those nodes you have to buy to unlock can often take years of daily gathering to pay themselves off.

Map/Event Farms

Dragonfall

Completing events in this map will earn you Keys to unlock chests that spawn after certain events. Completing the meta spawns a number of champions in the map that groups can move between to kill all 9. The first 100 chests you open each day will contain a guaranteed amount of rare items (technically for every 3 chests you open), and the 1000th chest is guaranteed to drop a Gift of Aurene if you haven't had one drop already.

Drizzlewood Coast

A WvW-style PvE map that drops a huge amount of materials. You have some control over the loot you get through the Glory to the Legions mechanic, which functions similarly to a reward track. Following the meta, 10 champion Cache Keepers will spawn, one after the other. These champions leave behind chests that can be unlocked with Cache Keys. There is no limit to the amount of loot you can get per-day from this map.

Istan (Palawadan/Great Hall)

The two metas in Domain of Istan are still very profitable, but you are limited to 12 chests per day from the Great Hall and 30 chests per day from Palawadan.

Daily Heart of Thorns Metas

You get a daily Hero's Choice Chest from each of the meta events in Heart of Thorns. You can select an Amalgamated Gemstone from these chests worth 1-2 gold on the Trading Post.

• Verdant Brink: Hero's Choice Chest (You don't have to do the full meta, you only need to participate in one of the canopy boss fights)
• Auric Basin: Hero's Choice Chest
• Tangled Depths: Hero's Choice Chest
• Dragon's Stand: Hero's Choice Chest

You can complete a “Meta Train” of these events by starting at Verdant Brink and killing the Matriarch, progressing to Tangled Depths for pre-events and the meta and then finishing with Auric basin pre-events and meta. This method takes a little over an hour. Dragon's Stand is not included as the time commitment is much greater for similar rewards.

Daily Path of Fire Metas

As with Heart of Thorns, you get a daily chest from the following maps:

• Crystal Oasis, for defeating the Choya Pinata
• Elon Riverlands, for defeating the Doppelganger
• The Desolation, for completing the Maws of Torment OR Junundu Rising
• Domain of Vabbi, for completing Serpent's Ire OR Forged with Fire

The “Meta Train” here starts with Augury Rock and the Dopppelganger, then jumps to Domain of Vabbi for Forged with Fire. This is hopefully done quickly enough to then progress to Crystal Oasis for the last rounds of Casino Blitz and the Pinata, before heading to the Desolation for Junundu Rising. Any downtime between meta events can be filled with completing legendary bounties.

World Bosses

Every 15 minutes in core Tyria, a World Boss spawns, that provides around 1g for each kill. Of particular note are the “hardcore” world bosses - Tequatl the Sunless, Karka Queen, and Evolved Jungle Wurm.

You get ~4 gold from defeating Tequatl the Sunless in Sparkfly Fen. This takes about 15 minutes.

You get ~1 gold from defeating the Karka Queen, but the boss dies very quickly so it can be over in less than 5 minutes.

You get ~4 gold from completing Triple Trouble, though it requires far more effort than any other open world boss, so you will need to find a group in LFG that is experienced at running the event.

Also worth mentioning are Ulgoth and The Shatterer. Both these feature events that spawn a lot of mobs and can generate a lot of gold if you manage to tag a lot of them - it may be helpful to run a Zerg Build to increase your chances.

RIBA (Silverwastes)

RIBA is a popular method of farming the Silverwastes to get hundreds of loot bags and Bandit Crests per hour. All account types can access it, but it only offers around 60% of the profit of more recent map farms.

The basic idea of RIBA is to run in circles around the map, participating briefly in events at each fort to "tag" them before running to the next one. You run to the forts in the order Red, Indigo, Blue, Amber, or RIBA. If you have a squad of enough players doing this, all the events can be completed without failing, and every player will get loot and participation for every single event that they tagged.

RIBA continues until The Breach happens, at which point the map will stop and do the meta event. After the Vinewrath boss has been defeated, the squad commander equips a Silverwastes Shovel and leads a "chest farm" around the map where they dig up chests for the rest of the squad to open. Keys can be bought using Bandit Crests. Once Time Out ends, the squad spreads out and starts the farming process all over again.

RIBA squads are usually advertised in LFG under the Silverwastes tab. If you join a RIBA squad, it's recommended to have either a mount or tons of swiftness and mobility skills, so that you can move between the forts faster and tag more events. You should also open all the loot bags on a level 53 character (or thereabouts). This is because the materials from salvaging mid-level gear are worth substantially more than those from level 80 gear.

Endgame PvE

Weekly Raids

Raid bosses drop gold and a variety of valuable loot. With an experienced squad, you can smoothly clear each boss in 5 minutes or less, resulting in ~30 gold per hour (not including things like ascended gear drops). This method is restricted by the limited number of raid boss clears every week (capping out at ~100 gold per week), and becomes much less profitable if your squad can't reliably clear raid bosses on the first pull.

Strikes

Strike missions award players with Prophet Shards, which may be converted into Prophet Crystals in order to open the Emissary Chest in the Eye of the North. Opening this with three prophet shards gives loot worth ~10 gold plus the chance at some rare drops.

Daily Strikes

Strikes drop a variety of rewards worth around 2-6 gold depending on the mission, and may be repeated daily. In addition to these rewards, each day there is a priority strike mission that will award a Prophet Crystal for the first three completions per week. An efficient daily clear can earn ~20 gold in a little over half an hour (most groups do not do the lengthy Forging Steel mission, and others may also skip Cold War).

Kodan Farm

Though repeating a Strike Mission in the same day will not award any further chests, it will continue to award Prophet Shards and basic loot. A fast group can repeatedly fight the Voice and the Claw to farm these rewards.

Fractals

Daily Fractals

Fractals of the Mists give a lot of valuable Fractal Encryptions and Fractal Encryption Keys every day. When you open a Fractal Encryption, it gives loot and valuable junk items that can be sold for gold. The Recursive Resourcing mastery is very lucrative if you plan to do fractals a lot.

In addition to the baseline loot from fractals, you can buy up to 30 Deeply Discounted Fractal Encryption Keys per day from BUY-4373. You should always buy these and use them to open Fractal Encryptions. You can buy or sell unopened Fractal Encryptions on the Trading Post.

At high tiers, fractals also drop valuable items like Stabilizing Matrices, ascended crafting materials, or full pieces of ascended gear. You can salvage and/or sell these for gold. Rewards for challenge modes are even higher.

Each tier of daily achievements provides around 5 gold. Completing every daily fractal on T4 will net you ~25 gold for an hour of your time (down to 30 minutes if you have a good group and the fractals are fast).

Fractal Farms

Fractal scale 42 is Captain Mai Trin Boss Fractal, which can be completed in 5 minutes or less by a party of experienced fractal players. You can farm this fractal over and over to get Fractal Encryptions to sell.

Another farmable fractal is scale 96 or Aetherblade Fractal. Many parts of this fractal can be skipped with shadowstep exploits which makes it possible to complete in 7 minutes or less.

Farming either of these will provide 10-15 gold per hour, with even more profit if you invest in fractal titles.

Daily Dungeons

Dungeon paths provide daily gold and dungeon tokens. Completing 8 different dungeon paths will also give you 5 gold and a Chest of Dungeoneering from the repeatable Dungeon Frequenter achievement. With a party of experienced dungeon runners, you can speedrun a path in 10 minutes or less.

Here are some recommended dungeon paths to farm:

• Ascalonian Catacombs paths 1, 2 and 3
• Twilight Arbor paths Forward and Up
• Sorrow's Embrace paths 1 and 3
• Citadel of Flame path 1

More experienced groups may also wish to include Crucible of Eternity paths 1, 2, and 3 as chests in this dungeon have a chance to drop Charged Cores and Lodestones, which are worth a good amount. It can also be valuable to learn how to merge all three paths of Ascalonian Catacombs to complete them in around half the time it would otherwise take.

To convert dungeon tokens to gold, you can exchange them for rare or exotic equipment at the Dungeon Armor and Weapons vendor, which you can then salvage for insignias/inscriptions and Globs of Ectoplasm to sell on the Trading Post. See GW2 Efficiency for a detailed breakdown.

Doing a fast daily dungeon farm will provide ~25 gold for an hour of your time.

Competetive Modes

sPvP

Ranked PvP reward chests and Automated Tournaments provide a fair amount of liquid gold. PvP reward tracks will also provide rewards of varying gold value.

Holiday reward tracks such as Wintersday or Halloween are usually more lucrative than permanent reward tracks. If your guild has access to it, be sure to maintain the Guild PvP Reward Track enhancement for even more profit.

Grinding Ranked PvP during an active season awards ~7 gold per hour, with more or less profit depending on your division, top stats, and how consistently you can win matches.

The account bound Tomes of Knowledge and Potions of PvP Reward you receive from PvP can also be informally sold to guilds, as they're needed for guild upgrades. To do this, you can arrange to get invited to the guild, deposit the amount requested into the guild bank, then get paid in the mail. This is a bit more risky than other methods as you can get scammed if the guild refuses to pay you after receiving the items.

Note: queueing for PvP does not require you to be in the PvP lobby. If you wish to use the downtime between games more efficiently, go gather materials in PvE while waiting for the next match.

WvW

Similar to PvP, some decent gold can be earned by choosing a profitable reward track. In general, tracks that can only be repeated once, such as the Crystal Desert or Warclaw reward tracks will give the best results. Once those are completed, look out for temporary tracks like Halloween, or recent living world tracks like the Icebrood Saga Reward Track.

Gems to Gold

For the vast majority of players, the best gold farming method in Guild Wars 2 is to work a full-time job and buy gems to convert to gold. The minimum wage in the US is $7.25 ($15.00 in 5 years) USD/hour which translates to 580/ gems or ~120 gold per hour. Now that's efficiency!

More Resources

Tekkit's Workshop - Farming routes and general money-making tips.

[fast] Farming Community - Farming Community with a huge amount of API-driven data.

Peu Research Center - A large collection of guides to getting the most out of Open World farming.