Nefara.2186

Every time there's a new update for the BL chests and it says "statuette vendor has been updated" I log in to go and look for them. I've been saving my statuettes for months at this point, and the exalted shoulders are perfect for my Exalted themed elementalist.... but still nothing. I thought the offerings in the statuette vendor were loosely tied to the contents of the chests and would cycle in items from previous chests on a regular basis? Does anyone know if they're on some sort of schedule? Or is it just a random Anet member listing stuff from a list of content on a whim?

It's only 500; there's no upgrading. Only one astral is required to unlock the vendor to purchase recipes for all the stellar weapons. Well yes, there's upgrading, because as you said you put 500 powdered quartz into the krakaltite ingots to make the crystal you need to upgrade an Astral to a Stellar. Stellar weapon = 1000 powdered rose quartz, and 1000 krakaltite ore. Not talking about the rose quartz being a grind, quite the opposite, I was responding to Abelisk saying rose quartz should be more expensive and needs a sink when the price is just fine and perfectly reasonable. My position as the OP was that 16,000 krakaltite ore is a daunting undertaking and with supply caches nerfed I was wondering if anyone else thought the price needed adjusting. I now have 10 characters all parked at the Astralarium heart though so we'll see how that goes, I'll get back to you in two months (64 days) when I've finally crafted all of the skins :p

It takes 1000 rose quartz to make a Stellar weapon, and there are 16 weapons in the set, meaning for each person who wants to get the skins it would cost 16,000 rose quartz... Yeah haha, if it was that expensive that would be 350g for one stellar weapon, and 5,600g for the whole set, in rose quartz alone. With powdered rose quartz being under 1s per, it makes the cost a much more reasonable 160g or so for all of the rose quartz you'd need. It doesnt take 1000 rose quartz for one weapon. It takes 500 POWDERED quartz. Which you can get by salvaging rose quartz, each salvage yields 5-10 powdered quartz. Powdered quartz sits at 70c right now. It's 500 for an astral, 500 more to upgrade to a Stellar = 1000. And I did say powdered, just not every time. Seems pointless to correct me when my meaning was pretty clear.

It takes 1000 rose quartz to make a Stellar weapon, and there are 16 weapons in the set, meaning for each person who wants to get the skins it would cost 16,000 rose quartz... Yeah haha, if it was that expensive that would be 350g for one stellar weapon, and 5,600g for the whole set, in rose quartz alone. With powdered rose quartz being under 1s per, it makes the cost a much more reasonable 160g or so for all of the rose quartz you'd need.

Oh, you know I didn't realize the purchase wasn't account bound. That's not a bad idea, if I bring four characters over to the Astralarium I could get an astral weapon per week. That's not so bad. Thank you for the suggestion :)

Dry Top at least has alternative means of getting fossilized insects in the form of the PvP and WvW tracks, which award you with your choice of insect at the end along with loads of geodes. I finished my Ambrite collection well after the map had passed its prime with some help from PvP and WvW dailies and I found it rewarding and not that heavy in grind. I had a similar level of challenge with it as I did getting the various HoT map currencies for the Machined weapons. The Domain of Istan reward track does reward Krakaltite, but only half the amount you would need to craft a single Astral weapon.

You can, but that would be doing all three hearts, every day religiously, for at least 105 days to get enough Krakaltite to craft just the Astral weapons. If you wanted to get the Stellar weapons, it would double that. Assuming you were getting caches and some ore from Palawadan and general activity in the map, you might be able to cut that down to something like 90 days, but that's still a lot of time spent in Istan alone to get these weapons. Hence why I figured I'd make a post about it... I didn't have to do that much farming even for my Legendary armor or Astralaria.

With the new limitation on Palawadan supply stashes, it makes Krakaltite ore in general a lot more scarce. Brandstones can't be relied upon, so there's not really a reliable way to mine Krakaltite. I'd like to collect the Astral skins but at 500 Krakaltite each... it's just not feasible. Considering these are only the first phase of the weapon, for someone who wants to get all of the Stellar weapons they're looking at potentially hundreds of hours of grind. I understand it's just cosmetics and so the barrier on possessing skins is really up to the player, but I just suspect that the current Krakaltite costs were set without the current situation in mind. Am I just cheap? Lazy? Or do you guys agree?