Gemstore overview
The Gemstore is how Arenanet monetizes Guild Wars 2 to be able to fund future content. While some free-to-play games usually have pay-to-win cash shops, the Guild Wars 2 Gemstore sells mostly utility and cosmetic items.
Not every utility item sold in the Gemstore is as useful as others, and some are easily obtainable by playing the game. We’ll try to explain when and why you might want some items, and most importantly, what items you absolutely don’t want to buy.
Gems
Starting with the basics, the Guild Wars 2 premium currency accepted in the in-game cash shop is Gems, which can be obtained in two main ways:
- Convert gold into Gems.
- Buy them using real-world money.
You’ll earn some as you progress in the game (you’ll get 400 for every 5000 achievement points you earn). You can also take part in one of many community events and giveaways organized by Arenanet and Arenanet partners on social platforms for a chance to win Gem codes.
Overview
This guide will focus on highlighting the most useful Quality of Life (QoL) items and upgrades available for purchase.
It’s worth mentioning that majority of Gemstore items are cosmetic items. These range from single item skins, full sets, and outfits, to mount skins. These don’t affect gameplay at all, and it’s up to you to decide if a certain skin is worth purchasing to support the developer.
Note: Most items, especially account upgrades and convenience items, are often on sale. If you want to save gems, check Gemstore for discounted offers of items you are interested in.
The biggest sale periods are the March sale and Anniversary sale which happen sometime around August.
Before we go into more detail about utilities available in the Gemstore, we should mention two elements that don’t quite fit the QoL or Cosmetics category. Those are Living World Story episodes and Black Lion Keys.
Living World
Living World is the story that happens between the expansion storylines and needs to be purchased separately. (Season 1 is free for all players, including free-to-play).
Each Season contains a few story chapters, which are unlocked for free on your account if you were in the game while they were initially released. Active players don’t have to buy them if they manage to log in for each episode.
Living World Seasons sometimes have periods of free access. This allows you to unlock them for free on your account after the initial Season launch. Very rarely does this happen, however, if you are on a tight budget, that is something to watch for.
Every episode can be purchased individually through the Story Journal (found in the Hero panel) or per season in the Gemstore at a discounted price.
You can also buy Living World seasons as a part of the Complete Collection bundle available on steam and the official Guild Wars 2 website.
Season 2 only adds story episodes taking place in maps available from the core game. Episodes in Season 3, Season 4, and the Icebrood Saga add new maps to explore, and other additions like new mounts, maps, and rewards.
All Seasons will give access to new achievement sections, which once completed, will reward you with a legendary amulet, the highest tier of GW2 equipment.
These packages have incredible value in content and game experience. They offer:
- Personal story
- New maps
- Entry-level instanced PvE content in the form of Strike Missions
- Re-iteration of 5-man Dungeons in the form of Dragon Response Missions (also referred to as DRMs)
- New mount types
- Masteries
- New items attribute prefixes
- A multitude of skins and achievements
We do recommend buying them in packs for the best price (often available at reduced prices during sales), or as a part of the Complete Collection.
Black Lion Chests
Players in Belgium are unable to purchase
Black Lion Chest Key[s]s due to their anti-gambling laws.
There are usually two items that are exclusive to the
The contents of
Note:
Black Lion Chest Key[s] is guaranteed once-per-week rewards for completing a few story steps because one is first rewarded upon completing the level 10 personal story. It’s very common for players to create a new character every week and finish that part of the story. This is commonly referred as “key farming” and can be done in less than an hour with the use ofTomes of Knowledge .
Extremely useful items
Now let’s get to the good stuff. The items listed below will provide you with the ultimate convenience.
While none of them are required, they can eliminate the mundane tasks you do every day. For example: logging into different characters to transfer an item, buying or crafting tools like salvage kits or gathering tools, organizing your storage and bank due to lack of space, or even running from the Bank to the Trading Post merchant in the city because they are so far apart.
Shared Inventory Slots
When purchased and consumed, they’ll appear at the top of your inventory, and any account-bound item you put there can now be used on any character on your account.
Accounts that purchased any of the expansions will get a few free
We recommend putting most of the items of high value from the Gemstore listed here into
Salvage-o-Matics
The Salvage-o-Matics offered in the Gemstore are simply unlimited salvage kits. Instead of constantly buying new kits, you can have a single item in your inventory and pay a small fee for every item that you salvage.
Salvage-o-Matics come in three variants:
Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic ( 3 per use)Runecrafter's Salvage-o-Matic[s] ( 30 per use)Silver-Fed Salvage-o-Matic ( 80 per use)
For the absolute ultimate min-maxing of your salvage results, get
Lounge Passes
Lounge Passes are used to enter VIP areas in Guild Wars 2 that have a lot of services concentrated in a small area. They function like a compressed town with bank access, merchants, and crafting stations.
They also have some features that make them unique. A few noteworthy lounge passes are the
Gobblers
Gobblers are items that can “consume”
If you want to speed up the rate at which you gain rewards in WvW and PvP, these items are a must-have!
Bank & Storage upgrades
The
The
You can expand the material storage to hold whopping 2500 units of every item found there.
Could be useful
The items found in this section provide some level of improvement to your gameplay experience. For example: materials delivered every day, easier or faster gathering, more characters, less swapping between characters, more crafting disciplines on one character, etc. Depending on your goals and how you play the game, you might find them a useful addition or an absolute waste of money.
There are tons of items like that in the Gemstore. From the World Boss portal/timer device, to permanent teleport to a friend, to gathering nodes or tools, to infinite fishing lures, and so much more. Since this will depend on personal preferences, we’ll focus on only a few popular ones.
Character slots
Guild Wars 2 is a very alt-friendly game with end-game gear being account-wide, and ultimate legendary items not even required to have multiple copies of them to be used on multiple characters, account-wide bank, shared inventory slots, etc.
To take full advantage of this and the birthday gifts your characters receive every year, you may want to invest in having more characters.
Character Slot Expansion offers just that, a slot to create a new character. Accounts start with 5 slots (free-to-play with 2), and you can unlock over 60 more slots.
Having more characters is a good way of “farming” boosters. This will be mentioned in the What NOT to buy section, but ultimately it depends on if you actually want more or if you are sticking with the original few.
Templates
Around 4 000 to fully unlock all gear and building tabs on a single character, sounds (and is) ridiculous. Even during the highest 40% discounts, the final number ends up around 2 500.
So why we are mentioning those? Because many players still go for fully unlocking build and equipment templates. The majority of invested players will buy multiple Character Slots instead, as each character comes with 3 build tabs and 2 equipment tabs.
The worst item in this category is
That’s because build and equipment templates actually swap your items, skills, and traits with one click. Using a build from the storage only works for builds and requires you to permanently change your current template by overwriting it with a build saved from the storage.
However, there are some players who enjoy only one or two professions and play those on multiple characters. For those players, build storage might actually provide better value over template expansions. Like everything in this section – it all depends on your preferences.
Home Instance upgrades
There are multiple packs like
While most of those offer some value,
It comes with a collection that takes the player all over Tyria collecting seeds for their own garden. The collection culminates in them unlocking the ability to craft 2-hour primers (
Note: If you join another player’s home instance, you’re still able to harvest these nodes even if you don’t own them yourself.
More Home instance upgrades worth noting are multiple “contracts” like
Every day after “server reset”, upon entering any major city, you’ll be sent a
The main appeal is receiving a handful of materials every day for some extra gold and getting map currencies without playing on those specific maps.
Due to their high price, it will take quite a while before you’ll start profiting after the initial investment. It is worth researching which region provides the highest gold value for each contract if you want to buy them for profit.
Endless Gathering Tools
Endless Gathering Tools are indestructible tools. Unlike regular gathering tools, these will not break after a specified number of uses. Some also come with a Glyph that gives them a unique bonus or effect while gathering. For example,
Due to their high cost, you are unlikely to make a profit any time soon. You’re paying for the convenience of not having to run to a merchant when your gathering tools break.
If you do decide to buy such tools, always go for the ones with the Glyphs. If you are not looking for a specific gathering effect,
What NOT to buy
The items found in this section are either way too expensive for the “services” they provide, not useful at all, or available in-game by other means. You shouldn’t buy them under any circumstance.
The main takeaway here will be to avoid spending gems on items listed below. We’d like to go a step further and tell you how to actually earn those:
- Create multiple characters as early as you can. If you stick around, you’ll be getting Birthday Gifts, which will contain for example
Teleport to Friend orBirthday Booster[s] . - Participate in global game events like World Boss Rush, or Fractal Rush, to receive
Celebration Booster[s] . - Hunt some achievements points as every 500 points you’ll get
Achievement Chests with boosters likeHeroic Booster[s] ,Transmutation Charge[s]s ,Mystic Forge Stone[s]s , and single-use services likeBank Access Express[pl:"Expresses"] ,Revive Orb[s] ,Trading Post Express[pl:"Expresses"] , orMerchant Express[pl:"Expresses"] . - And finally, play the game! You’ll get plenty of
Transmutation Charge[s]s for fully exploring maps, finishing PvP and WvW reward tracks, and even as part of daily login rewards. - Invest in Gobblers if you really need boosters.
That being said, let’s go through all those free items that are also available in the Gemstore.
Transmutation Charges
They are rewarded for completing maps and can be even farmed by creating a new character and map completing the five capital cities.
During any of the six festivals that are happening during the year, weekly vendors will have some
For players enjoying more competitive gameplay, most PvP and WvW tracks will have 2
By playing the game often and earning achievements, you’ll get some from
So unless you are changing your looks every single day, you are unlikely to run out of Charges anytime soon.
Note: Players that manage to craft any sort of legendary equipment are able to reskin that piece of equipment free of charge.
Boosters
The Gemstore provides three boosters:
While these boosters are very good for maximizing Experience gain, Magic Find, Karma gain, or PvP/WvW experience, they are poorly priced. There are also plenty of other ways you can gain access to them.
Every time you get
If you absolutely need the boosters, or ran out of options, invest in
Mystic Forge Stones
While this salvage kit is a good substitute for the
Later in the game, you’ll have some other niche uses for
One-time Services
Town Services consist of
These items are very convenient, but with proper planning before going on your adventures, you’ll never find yourself using them. The game also provides plenty of these from
Additionally, there are permanent versions of all these items available as rare drops from
Black Lion Salvage Kits
Simply because they only should be used for salvaging exotic gear. Expensive runes or sigils slotted will be recovered during salvaging.
But since you won’t be dropping too many exotic items, you find yourself using them maybe once or twice a day.
You’ll be able to get more than enough of these through the Chest of Black Lion Goods that are available through the login rewards.
If you do find yourself running out of them, just sell your exotics on Trading Post or use your
Waypoint Unlocks
These packages unlock all waypoints in one region you bought them for.
All core Tyria waypoints are easily obtainable due to how fast exploration with mounts is in these areas. The expansion areas have even fewer waypoints compared to core Tyria.
Considering that full Core Tyria map completion can be done under 10 hours (world record), unlocking waypoints with these packages are simply a waste of money.
Dye Kits
Dye kits (like for example classic
In the worst case, you’ll obtain a dye that is worth a few coppers. In the best (rare) case, you obtain an exclusive dye that usually costs only a few gold coins each, especially in the older dye packs.
Since they are all tradeable, you’re better off buying them off the trading post for much much less than you’d pay in Gems.