The Investables

How time flies by! Six weeks into season 2 of the Living Story already and I must say it has kicked off with a bang and seems to have much more drive and purpose than the previous season did. I am particularly impressed with the most recent patch, The Dragon's Reach: Part 2, which had some gripping storytelling and included some genius narrative lines - some of the best I have seen in this game thus far. If you want to reflect on this patch(spoiler alert), then you should check out a great blog I have found, Black Lion Chest, written by Sayana.

As enjoyable as this episode has been, there was a slight bit of bad news with the announcement of a mid-season break. This means no new content for a month, however ArenaNet have announced an exciting feature pack coming to the game September 9th, so that is something to look forward to! In the meantime, we can take a look at a few markets that have potential investment opportunity in the coming weeks.

Elder Wood Log
I have gone on and on about these ever since the release of Foxfire Clusters. If you didn't read my previous posts then I suggest you do, but in the meantime let me catch you up quickly; Foxfire Clusters are a component in the crafting of the new back pieces Mysterious Vine and Cultivated Vine. As such, this item is highly demanded at the moment and to make things worse, the only way to obtain them is through RNG by harvesting trees. If there is one thing I have learned playing Guild Wars 2, it is that the player-base is incredibly impatient when it comes to new content. These new back pieces are no exception, as showcased by the current price and supply and demand figures of Foxfire Clusters. Many players are now farming these items at Rayhan Bayt in Malchor's Leap due to the large amount of Cypress Sapling trees - this is causing a huge excess supply of Elder Wood Logs, which is where we come in. In the past 2 weeks, the price of Elder Wood Logs has dropped from 60 copper to a ridiculous 16 right now - that's 73 percent! Be patient with this one - Foxfire Clusters are still very valuable, and as long as this stays true they will remain a hot farm spot. Keep an eye on their demand, when players no longer want Foxfire Clusters their price will fall and when that happens the farm will no longer be worthy and the supply of Elder Wood Logs will ease up again.

Chaos and Ley Line weapon skins
Even if you didn't invest in the Ley Line skins prior to the Dragon's Reach: Part 2, there is still a decent opportunity in a long term investment here. While there is still high supply on the trading post(and will be for a long time yet), prices are relatively low for the unique Black Lion skins. If history is anything to go by, these weapon skins will rise considerably in price over the next 6-12 months due to scarcity in supply and steady demand. Another opportunity, albeit a more risky one are the new Chaos weapon skins introduced a few days back. These skins are fluctuating a fair bit in price at the moment due to the high amount of Black Lion Claim tickets floating around after the double drop rate last week. In the patch notes it was mentioned that Chaos skins will remain at the introductory price of 1 ticket for 4 weeks before(presumably) a new set of skins is added. The opportunity in these skins arises from a far lower supply than that of Ley Line skins. As such, these skins will have a tendency to rise in price at a faster rate after their ticket price is hiked. However, the 'risk' factor is that you have to invest more gold, as Chaos skins are around 30% more costly than Ley Line skins.

Orrian Truffle and Omnomberry
Another byproduct of the Foxfire Cluster farming going on in Orr, these two cooking ingredients had been increasing in price steadily ever since the introduction of the megaserver maps back in April. The megaserver change nerfed the common server-side daily mining runs, which kept the supply and therefore prices of these and other crafting items down. The Foxfire Cluster farming has pulled many players back to Orr again and so many more of these ingredient are being harvested than usual, so the price has dropped naturally with increased supply. Expect the price of Orrian Truffles and Omnomberries to rise steadily after Foxfire Cluster farming dies down.