Don’t worry about Mystic Coins

We’ve had some pretty heavy posts on here so far. Let’s have a light one instead.

On Friday, ArenaNet posted about upcoming rewards in the expansion pack that’s being released in a few weeks: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-end-of-dragons-strike-missions-balance-and-rewards/

Reddit, predictably, was very angry about this.

You don’t have to read what I’ve linked to. In fact, you don’t even need to read any of the sentences in this post at all. If there is a thing, it’s safe to assume that Reddit is very angry about it.

So what happened?

The ArenaNet blog post has three main points:

Removal of Mystic Coins as a reward for Fractal Challenge Mote Bosses.
Addition of a new source of guaranteed Mystic Coins from End of Dragons Strike Missions.
Rebalancing of availability of discounted Mystic Clovers.

Which point is Reddit angry about? All three of them. Again, you can just assume that if there is a thing, Reddit is angry about that thing.

Let’s break it down.

Mystic Clovers are a resource used to craft legendary items. You need 77 Clovers to make a legendary sword and 15 to make a legendary pair of pants. The main method of obtaining Mystic Clovers is random, but on average they cost about 3 Mystic Coins, 3 Globs of Ectoplasm, and some amount of a non-tradable resource. If you’re not in a hurry, you can get 7 Mystic Clovers and a bunch of other stuff just by logging into the game on 28 different days. If you play competitive game modes, you’ll get Mystic Clovers just by playing enough.

Globs of Ectoplasm are obtained mainly by salvaging rare and exotic gear obtained by playing basically any part of the game. A few hundred years ago, Globs of Ectoplasm were worth so much that they were used as a higher-value version of currency, but now they’re common enough to be a non-issue.

What about coins?

Mystic Coins are a little harder to come by. You can buy them from other players, but of course they have to come from somewhere. The easiest method of getting Mystic Coins is, again, just logging into the game. On the 1st, 8th, 15th, and 22nd days of the 28 day cycle, you get 2, 4, 6, and 8 Mystic Coins (respectively). You don’t have to log in on consecutive days; you always get the next reward if it was a different day last time you logged in, no matter what.

You can also get Mystic Coins by winning automated PvP tournaments that happen multiple times per day, with a big one happening once per month. The biggest reward you can get from automated tournaments contains 100 Mystic Coins, which 10 players in the world can obtain each month. If you play a lot of World VS World, you can get 2 or 4 Mystic Coins from the Gold and Diamond tier skirmish chests.

Once per day, players can obtain a single Mystic Coin from the Ley-Line Anomaly, a boss that spawns in one of three zones every two hours. If Daily Mystic Forger is a one of today’s objectives, you can get a single Mystic Coin essentially for free.

Completing Daily Fractals of the Mists also gives a chance to get Mystic Coins – up to 9 per day, but doing so has a vanishingly small probability.

Recall that you need 77 Mystic Clovers to make a legendary weapon, or about 231 Mystic Coins. 231 Mystic Coins is a very long term goal, and this assumes you’re not getting Mystic Clovers from any other source.

There are a few one-time methods of getting Mystic Coins and a few ways to get them from seasonal events, but for the most part, those are the ways by which Mystic Coins enter the economy.

Except one.

The one method of obtaining Mystic Coins that’s going away is killing one of seven bosses known as “Fractal Challenge Mote Bosses”. These are very challenging boss fights that only a small portion of the community have even completed once.

These bosses drop 0 to 3 Mystic Coins, with the majority of kills giving 0.

With this change, the number of Mystic Coins you can obtain per day from Fractals of the Mists is changing from theoretically up to 30 but more reasonably 0-3 to theoretically up to 9 but more reasonably 0-2. Not a big deal, and it only really affects people who could consistently kill seven of the most challenging bosses in the game over and over every day without getting bored.

What’s replacing it?

Very simply, the repeatable boss fights in the upcoming expansion will allow players to obtain up to 10 Mystic Coins per week. There’s no random chance here; if you play enough, you will get all ten Mystic Coins every week.

We’re going from a tiny fraction of the community getting up to 30 mystic coins in a week to essentially the entire community having access to 10.

Alright, what else?

The final change mentioned in the blog post is that discounted Mystic Clovers were changing from 2 per day to 25 per week, and that the cost was changing from 1 Mystic Coin and 3 Globs of Ectoplasm to 2 Mystic Coins and 2 Globs of Ectoplasm.

Even with the increased Mystic Coin cost, you still save over 200 gold when crafting a legendary weapon on average. The 25 per week is split up between game modes, with 10 in Fractals of the Mists, 10 in Raids, and 5 in Strike Missions.

So what?

In short, don’t worry about it. The changes may negatively affect the liquid gold income of a very small group of players, but most should see increased access to the materials needed to craft legendary equipment.

And at the end of the day, if all you’re interested in is making as much money as fast as possible, the best way to do that is and always will be working a real life job and converting some portion of your paycheck into in-game funds through the gem store.

But most of us don’t work a video game. We generally try to play.