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A Second Look at Glyphs

Back in April 2018, ArenaNet introduced gathering glyphs into the game.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Glyph_(upgrade)

Now that we are at the one year anniversary of this game-changing aspect of the game - which glyphs should you be using - if any at all?

As always, while the specifics may change, the purpose of this is to give a general idea and give information to the player in how best to maximize their resources.

Prospector (Ore): 239 gold

Assuming you "hit' with Iron ore all the time, it would take over 12,000 successes before you reach the break-even point. (Breakeven being the point where the gained ore is greater than the cost of the glyph.)

Forester (Trees): 239 gold

This one is more interesting as the most likely hits are the most expensive items. But even at this pace, over 13,000 successes are needed. Yes, this will be much easier than farming tier 2 nodes but this too is economically unsound.

Tailor (Cloth): 145 gold

The numbers here look a little better, needing almost 6,000 t4 hits before breaking even. How long would it take to mine 18,000 nodes?

Leatherworker: 240 gold

It's expensive but Hardened Leather is also a much better hit than anything else. But even if you got only hardened leather, it would take just under 1,900 hits. Most likely though, one gets T5 instead of T6 which is a huge drop off in price.

Herbalist: 86 gold

When one hits with the herbalist glyph, one gets an ingredient pouch.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ingredient_pouch

Each tier contains several possibilities encompassing a plethora of options - way too many to list. Only a few options cost more than 2 silver and most are in the low copper range. Needless to say, while the glyph's costs is among the lowest, it still would take a lot of hits to break even.

Bounty: 278 gold

This one is quite interesting. Yes, this is one of the most expensive glyphs. But when this hits, it hits with whatever was gathered.

Many players have characters placed at the Verdent Brink Flax Farm for the purpose of flax farming. There are 8 nodes yielding on average 12 flax seeds. With each flax seed going for 2.44 silver - that yields almost 30 silver per character.

With the bounty glyph, the average turns out to be about 24 flax seeds per character run. With this 30 silver difference, one just needs to do 834 flax runs to break even. For those players who do indeed flax farm, this isn't too unreasonable.

Scavenger (Trophies): 94 gold

As with the herbalist, when this glyph hits, one get a fine crafting material - otherwise known as a trophy. The price range on this ranges from 6 copper to 43 silver for an Elaborate Totem hit.

This sounds like it could be interesting. Even T5 hits are almost a silver each and dedicated runs can make the breakeven point achievable. However there is a flaw. Unlike most glyphs which count each swing, this glyph counts the entire node for its 1/3rd chance. So instead of basically guaranteeing one hit per node, would need three (3) nodes before a hit is guaranteed. Ouch.

WatchKnight (Sprockets): 18 gold

At 18 gold, this is indeed the most inexpensive glyph by far. Sprockets are also among the most consistent of prices with only a one (1) copper variance between instant sell (94 copper) and instant buy (95 copper). This means just over 1,900 hits before this glyph pays for itself.

Considering that sprockets are a guaranteed drop not matter the area, this can be used by low-level characters and for dedicated gathering runs.

Unbound: 98 gold

Volatile: 420 gold

These have a different mechanic - they yield unbound/volatile magic per swing and therefore use a different formula.

We've received reports that one can get insane amounts of unbound/volatile magic by suing these glyphs. But the main question we have is what do you do with all of them? Once you've purchased everything you can, then what? What is the 'sink'?

The answer seems to be magic-warped bundle. Costing 1,250 unbound and 40 silver per container seems better than 500 and 1 gold. The volatile version costs 250 and 1 gold.

To figure the breakeven point of this would be the difference between the coin spent on getting the container and the contents of said container. This sounds like too much math for this exercise.

To recap:

So what is the bottom line?

If you are a serious player - serious being defined as having some infinite gathering tool for our purposes, then one should definitely have a glyph in each of the tools.

As you probably have guessed, the watchknight glyph is the best value. It's also at a price point which makes obtaining three (3) of them for each of the gathering tools is feasible for regular players. We feel that if you have any unused glyph slots on your infinite tools, you should fill them with the watchknight glyph.

1,900 sounds like a lot - and it is. That said, it will not take too long to get that many hits. The Feline Airline Guild nodes gives 40 swipes averaging 13 hits - available per day on top of the normal gathering results. Plus, that drip-drip of 2 gold every time you sell a stack of sprockets is a nice feeling.

I only want to get one (1) glyph. Where should I put it?

The pick axe. There are just so many more ore nodes than tree nodes. While there are pockets of plant nodes, they typically only have eight (8) nodes whereas a rich ore vein will contain ten (10). Rich tree nodes? What's a rich tree node?

2020 Update

Prices have certainly changed since this was posted a few months ago.


Type

Low Price

High Price

Comments

Leatherworker

246

380

Expensive but good

Tailor (Cloth)

91

130

Cloth scraps are inexpensive

Prospector (Metal Ore)

61

70

Possible pick

Watchknight (Sprockets)

22

29

Decent value

Scavenger

58

79

Once per node, not per strike – too few good hits

Bounty – same as

230

265

Expensive – could be worth it

Forester (Wood)

61

70

Great value here

Herbalist (Plants)

68

124

Too many cheap plants

Industry (Faster gathering)

150

170

Expensive for the effect

Flight (Faster Movement)

6

15

Not needed with mounts

Unbound (+1-3 unbound magic)

150

195

Expensive to purchase mats

Volatile (+1-3 volatile magic)

230

290

Expensive to purchase mats

Alchemy (+1 tier)

44

53

Tier 6 is not as valuable as it used to be

Crucible (-1 tier)

41

52

Could be interesting as tier 4 mats are the most expensive

Reaping (Gathers all local)

Account bound

Account bound

Gem store purchase


We believe the glyphs to consider purchasing are Forester, Watchknight with nods to leatherworker, prospector, bounty, unbound, volatile and crucible.

Here is a breakdown of how one member uses glyphs:

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