Making Astral Diamonds through Guild Marks

By Aenhir

Existe una manera de amasar una pequeña, mediana o gran fortuna (dependiendo de tu empeño), mediante las misiones de la fortaleza de tu cofradía, y aprovechando una serie de eventos que encadenarás en el proceso a lo largo del tiempo.

Aunque el beneficio puede ser muy grande, advierto de antemano que requerirá una elevada dosis de paciencia, si bien, esta se verá recompensada si sigues con diligencia cada uno de los pasos.

FASES:

1. ADQUISICIÓN DE INFLUENCIA Y SHARDS. Adquiere y almacena toda la influencia y otras recompensas que puedan ser donadas para obtener marcas de cofradía (Guild Marks a las que en adelante nos referiremos como GM) con las que eres recompensado al donar a tu cofradía la influencia y recompensas adquiridas en la Stronghold.
2. DONACIONES. Dona al Mimic de tu cofradía durante un evento de x2 a las Guild Marks) 
3. COMPRA EXPLORER CASES. Adquiere estos pergaminos de exploración durante los eventos de 20% de descuento en las tiendas de la cofradía
4. PROSPECCIÓN DE MATERIALES. Con los explorer cases (y durante un evento de x2 a materias primas de profesión, junto con una Guild con boon de x2 adicional a los materiales profesionales, que cuadruplicarán la bonificación si se combinan ambos bonificadores)
5. VENTA en la SUBASTA. Una vez transcurra un tiempo prudencial que permita la recuperación de los materiales que hayas adquirido y almacenado en tus atiborradas bolsas, vende tus existencias a un precio digno.

FASES EXPLICADAS:

1. ADQUISICIÓN Y ALMACENAMIENTO DE OBJETOS PARA DONACIONES A LA COFRADÍA.

Acquire and store in your bags and personal bank all the profitable donations stuff for the Treasure Mimic of your Guild's Stronghold.

Some of the "profitable donations" are:

• Shards (can stack up to 999 per bag slot) 1 shard=10 Guild Marks (GMs)
• Acquired through the SH daily missions (up to 60/day).
• Influence (can stack up to 999 per bag slot) 1 influence=1 GM
• Acquired through the five available daily SH Heroic Encounters (HE) (up to 400) and the Weekly Marauders (600)
• Vouchers (Can stack up to 99 per bag slot) trade of varies, depending the voucher's quality and type.
• Bags of Goods dropped from Quartermaster's Enchantment. (Can stack up to 999 per bag slot). Trade varies depending the bag quality. You can also keep them for refinement (opening them during a x2 to Refinement Items).
• High Quality Gems. From Black Opals and above.
• Epic & Legendary Underrated Equipment. Store all the gear of epic and superior quality that you are not going to sell in AH.
• 1 Epic item= 162 GMs (324 during x2 GMs event)
• 1 Legendary ítem=2,500 GMs (5,000 during x2 GMs event)
• You can acquire tons of epic rings and some legendary while doing Demogorgon multi runs (usually called "Ndemo", from Normal Demogorgon)
• I recomend to purchase primal rings with your Seals of Brave (once you stopped needing them for your own gear), as the final profit will be higher by donating them to the Guild than acquiring direct RAD with your seals. Same applies with Drow gear (Shirts and Trousers) through the use of your Ichor in the underdark Campaign.

STORE: This is advised to store the mentioned stuff, waiting for a x2 Guild Marks event in which all the donations made to the Guild's Stronghold Mimic will award you double Guild Marks than those you may get without that event. This, literally will double your profit.

What if I run off on bags space?

Then, this is recommended to donate a part of the donation items to the Mimic, but not anything, just donate those things that gave you the lower GMs amount, like those donation items that don't stack, like equipment items (not the equipment vouchers as those can stack)

You could, perhaps, free space by donating some of your Epic Rings.

10 epic rings will provide you 1,620 GMs, enough to purchase 1 explorer case.

But try to keep the stacks and the rare legendary items for the x2 to Guild Marks event, because from a legendary ring, you will get 5,000 GMs instead 2,500 if you can wait for said x2 GMs event. About the stacks, they just take 1 slot on your bags and you can hoard high amounts of donation scores on them, awaiting for the aforementioned x2 GMs event.

2. DELIVERING THE DONATIONS & ACQUIRING THE EXPLORER CASES.

Once we get released a x2 Guild Marks event, we will be allowed to donate all that stuff stored in your bags during as long time.

Beware:

Pro Tip I: There is a limit of 30,000 GMs you can own with your character at any given time. If you donate being close to this amount, you can lose GMs when you try to donate something valuable. Try to adjust the donations or stay a little below, to make sure you do not lose even any of your valuable resources.

So, donate till you get exactly 30,000 or near that point, then run to the Generalist NPC and purchase as many Explorer Cases as possible. (From 30,000 GMs you can get 20 Explorer Cases for easy areas as each one costs 1,500 GMs or 10 Explorer Cases for dangerous areas, each one at 3,000 GMs)

Pro Tip II: After donate all your stuff, try to keep 30,000 GMs not used on your character.

There is a Mysterious Merchant that sometimes can visit those of the top Guilds on your Alliance. Said NPC can sell very special items, where the best ones are usually costly, requiring up to 30,000 GMs to purchase. This is why you may be interested to keep in your hands the last 30,000 GMs, once you had used all your previous GMs purchasing as many Explorer Cases as possible.

After all, you can use these Gms anytime to purchase more Explorer Cases!

Pro Tip III: There is a second reason why you would want to keep your cap on Gms fulfilled. This is the 20% discount to Guild Sales Event that can happen between your main tracked events (double Guild marks and double Profession Materials). So during a 20% discount sale in your guild, you could get more Explorer Cases or a cheaper special item from an eventual Mysterious Merchant.

3. GATHERING THE EXPLORER CASES' RESOURCES (or DIGGY DIGGY HOLE)

Activating a "[Area's name] Explorer Case", will highlight 6 nodes in that area, that you can grind to obtain the resources listed in the explorer case. 

More than 1 resource per node are possible under the following circumstances:

• Joining (temporary) a Guild with the Explorer's boon at Rank 6, which allow double drops from chart nodes. (WoTC is the current guild of our Alliance with that boon)

• Using the explorer cases during a double professional materials event, which also gives double drops.

• Combining both, the guild boon and the event, you will get quadruple! (x4) when grinding each node.

This means, 6 nodes x 4 resources = 24 resources from a single Explorer's Case.

Obviously, you want to get 4 resources per spot, as will quadruplicate your profit!

What Explorer Case is best?

So far, that will depend on the Auction House prices, but you need to track prices on each material for a long long time.

A resource that gives a very good profit is the Alum, acquirable in Hotenow, so I suggest you to go full on Hotenow Explorer Cases.

Nowadays, a single Alum can be sold in AH by 6,000 to 7,000 AD.

If you get 2 nodes of Alum out of 6, you will acquire 8 Alums, meaning you could get from them up to 56,000 AD from a single Hotenow Explorer Case (not counting the profit from the other cheaper resources available in Hotenow)

How to use the Explorer Case

• Go to the explorer case's area.

• Double click one of your explorer cases, you will get a mission, highligthning 6 nodes in the area that you can dig to obtain the resources.

• Follow the track to find all the six nodes, digging on each one to acquire the resources.
• .
• Repeat the process until you run out of explorer cases or you needed to take a break (remember to continue before the double professional materials event were done!)

Tip: Avoid combat. Since you should have tons of explorer cases, you are going to want to optimize the time you use to obtain all the resources.

4. SELLING ON AUCTION HOUSE

Once the double professional materials event is gone, you should have gathered loads of resources that are burning your hands! Patience my friend!

You were not alone doing that, so now the prices for your most valuable resources are falling down into prices that might make you lose a big amount of your potential profit.

So now, you need to sit atop your mountain of resources and wait, wait and wait until the prices go up again, which can happen after a few or a lot of weeks. The recovery time is not guaranteed to be fast.

Once the resources you want to sell recovered a decent spot, will be time to sell your own materials.

Pro Tip I: Analyze prices. Keep tracking along the time the prices on all the expensive Explorer Cases' resources so you could evaluate what Price is the profitable one to start selling them.

Pro Tip II: Sell stacks for all kind of pockets. Once you started to sell your resources, put them in small stacks of 10, as well as big stacks of 100, so your potential buyers could evaluate your Price and so you could have more buyers among the poor and the rich.

Pro Tip III: Don't undercut the prices! As you want profit, you can analyze the prices other sellers have placed, and then, put your own resources at a Price slightly above the cheaper resources that were being sold, and below other prices listed so high. We can guess, the cheaper will get sold faster and then, your own stacks will be the next eligible ones. If you are not selling your resources, check prices (those may have been undercut a lot in small time) and considerate to remove them until prices recovered again, or list them at your desired Price, not caring how long will take you to sell them.

Remember: if you are VIP Rank 8, you haven't Auction House posting fees. Other way, AH will punish you with a tax just for be placing your auction, so either raise your VIP Rank there or make sure your Price will be competitive like to sell, but avoiding at same time a big undercut that might make you lose even more AD.