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Introduction to Glyphs

ArenaNet has decided to shake up the gathering aspect of Guild Wars 2 by introducing glyphs and gathering skins. While gathering skins are purely a cosmetic effect and vary from person to person, the glyphs are a new mechanic that we should take a look at.

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

Until April 24th, all non-free accounts can pick up their choice of gathering glyph for free! Which leads to the obvious question: Which glyph should you choose? Fortunately, we hope to help you answer that question.

To make matters even easier, you can purchase limited versions of each of these glyph-enhanced gathering tools – for karma. Each racial city has such a vendor. The vendor in Rata Sum is due south of the Accountancy Waypoint, the one in the middle of all the crafting stations.

So let’s go over the glyphs and see what they do – Prices are Trading Post prices at the time of writing.


Types of Glyphs

Glyph of Flight (non-bound version) — Increases movement speed for 5 seconds after gathering completes - 39 gold. Sounds interesting and would be desirable for certain players. However, because of the raptor, any distance gained would be easily outclassed by a simple jump.

Glyph of Industry (non-bound version) — Gathering completes 50% faster - 421 gold. This is one of those traits which would be great if it was embedded with a tool to compliment something else. We realize that this is short attention span theater and waiting seven (7) seconds for gathering to complete is unacceptable to some players. But is changing that to 3½ seconds really that much a game changer?

We’ve not been able to confirm that the speed reduction stacks. In other words, if one has a gathering tool which does the gathering in four (4) seconds, will adding this to that tool reduce the time to two (2) seconds?

Glyph of the Leatherworker (non-bound version) — Gain a 33% chance to receive bonus leather scraps. 215 gold

Glyph of the Tailor (non-bound version) — Gain a 33% chance to receive bonus cloth scraps. 220 gold

Now these are interesting. Not only do you get the original metal/wood/plant, you also get some cloth or leather. Obviously this will increase the available supply which will drive down the price. While this is a good thing, it would take way too long for the glyph to pay for itself.

We have been able to confirm that tier 6 cloth and leather do indeed drop from using these glyphs.

ArenaNet has also glyph-ized a few infinite gathering tools and we will speculate on possible future purchasing opportunities. We hope ArenaNet prices the glyphs around 125 gems each. Anything above that price will simply take too long for the glyph to pay for itself.

Glyph of the Watchknight — Gain a 33% chance to receive a bonus Watchwork Sprocket. Watchwork Sprockets are going for 1.21 silver each. Not a bad return per success.

Glyph of the Unbound — Rewards unbound magic while gathering. We anticipate a glyph of volatile magic to be available as well. Givng 3-5 unbound magic per strike may not sound like much but over time will accumulate. Once you purchase everything you desire, then what do you do with the excess?

The obvious answer would be the magic warped bundles. We would recommend using the 1250 unbound and 40 silver option instead of the 500 and 1 gold if one is using this option. You would want to use the unbound magic as the payment method, not coin. Additionally, considering that most of the rewards are worth less than a gold, why would you pay a gold, plus unbound magic, for items that would be obtained for less cost in the trading post?

Glyph of the Scavenger — Gain a 33% chance to receive a bonus fine crafting material. One of the more frustrating things about legendary crafting is the amount of tier 6 materials you need. Wood and metals can be farmed. But blood and totems are not so easily obtained. This can help alleviate that burden.

While this should be helpful, it most likely will disappoint. There are eight (8) types of trophies consisting of six (6) tiers, yielding one of forty-eight (48) possible outcomes. So for each tier 6 totem that you receive, you also will receive a tier 2 scale. This also assumes an equal distribution. We also believe that the tier 6 trophies will be rarer than everything else.

Glyph of Bounty — Grants a 33% chance to gain an extra strike while gathering. This one seems very interesting. This obviously would work great on farming runs. Instead of three (3) logs or ore, you will average four (4). We expect demand for this glyph to be quite high.

One word of caution however - this does not work on rich metal veins. These are capped at ten (10) strikes.

Glyphs of Wood/Metal – These should not be too difficult for ArenaNet to introduce into the game and we believe that they will. We also believe that these will not be in great demand. Wood and metals are plentiful in the PvE environment. Rich orichalcum nodes can be found. Now, if Anet made it so there was a .1% chance of a tier 7 drop, that could be interesting.

So which of these glyphs are best? That obviously is up to the player.

Should you swap out glyphs? That depends on which glyph you are using. Our advice is that if one is doing full home instances and maxed out guild halls, it is indeed worth it to swap out the glpyh – assuming one is using one of the 33% chance glyphs. A full guild hall, like Feline Airline, will average about fifteen (15) successes. A full home instance will yield about forty (40) successes. So we recommend taking the few extra seconds to swap out the glyphs.

If one chooses not to swap out, what is your advice? We would recommend putting the glyph on the plant harvesting node for guild hall gathering and on the mining tool in PvE. The numbers simply indicate that those are the best – more plants in the guild halls, more ore in PvE.

Would you recommend purchasing the glyphs when they become available? That all will depend on the price ArenaNet charges. If Anet charges 1,000 gems per glyph, that translates to about 300 gold, which we feel is way too much, even for the best of the glyphs. Our initial estimates state that one would need to harvest guild nodes and full home instances every day for at least two (2) years before one can begin to think that the glyph has paid for itself.

What do you expect to happen to prices in the future? We expect the prices of cloth and leather to drop but not so much as to make a huge difference. The price of glyphs seems to have stabilized and are too expensive for our liking.

We have also discovered a possible anomaly: In Divinity’s Reach, the glyphs of cloth and leather yield their t1 counterparts but in other cities, they yield their tier 5 and 6 counterparts.

2020 Update:

Glyphs are fairly cheap compared to when this was written – making buying one for each infinite tool feasible for regular players.

Bounty Glyph does NOT work in home instances and with guild nodes. They are useful for those who flax farm.

Many glyphs are available in the trading post, Others can only be found included as a combo with infinite gathering tools.

As you would expect, the initial glyph anomalies have been remedied.

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