Hello! In this guide I want to go over my top ten personal favorite ways to make gold in Guild Wars 2. There are A LOT of different ways you can make gold in this game and certain ones are more fun for certain people. Where I want to look at gold farms from the perspective of how much gold you can earn from them but also from the perspective of how fun they are, how difficult they are, and how much fun you would be having after doing them 10,000 times.

If you want to look through gold farms from strictly a monetary stand point, I highly recommend the [fast] Farming Community website that is an incredible resource for earning gold in Guild Wars 2.

https://fast.farming-community.eu/

All gold values in this guide are taken from the website and were applicable at the time of writing this guide. Gold values will likely fluctuate over time, but should remain mostly consistent when compared to one another.

This guide is based off of the video version of this same topic that I made, which you can watch here if you prefer video guides.

1. Many different pieces of content in this game revolve around a set schedule. Where certain high value events will take place at certain times of the day. As such, depending on your schedule, you may not be able to hit every event in the game during the time that you are playing the game. The Guild Wars 2 Wiki has a phenomenal event timers page that is super useful for seeing when these special events will be active.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Event_timers


2. Some pieces of content in Guild Wars 2 requires you to have a decent understanding of the game and to also be decently geared. Where a lot of the ideas on this list don't require that, but many will benefit from you being well geared and well educated. Where this then goes to the topics of many other guides that could be made, but here are a couple of resources that give good build guides and some other guides that you may find helpful.

https://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki
https://snowcrows.com/


3. A somewhat challenging concept with gold farming that a lot of newer players struggle with is the difference between liquid and material gold. Where liquid gold is the amount of gold in your wallet that you currently have. Where a lot of players will look at this and think that this is the total amount of gold that they have. But in reality, you need to take into account all of your material assets.

Similar to real life, you have your bank account balance, cash, and whatnot that is worth however much money it is. But most people have assets in a variety of different forms that aren’t cash but are still worth money. Like a house, a car, or that weird bowl that has been passed down in your family for generations. Each of these are worth a monetary value and you could sell them to get that cash.

Going back to Guild Wars 2, you have all of the materials in your material storage and potentially in your bank and inventory that aren’t directly gold, but you can sell them on the trading post for gold. Where a lot of the gold we will talk about is in the form of material gold, where if you don’t sell the materials you are getting from all of these farms… you will be getting much less gold than what is stated. Where there is a balance between having materials for things you need them for or selling them for gold. But if you are ever short on gold, take a look at your material storage.


4. The in-game LFG tool is a great tool to use in order to find groups to do some of these farms. It can be a little daunting at first to navigate the menu with all of the different sections of the game. Where you'll have to understand where certain farms would be located, like how Silverwastes is in Central-Tyria Squads but Drizzlewood Coast is under Living World: The Icebrood Saga.

Right off the bat with this list, this is probably the most popular gold farm in the history of Guild Wars 2. Where with how popular it has been and how long it has been in the game, it has cemented itself as one of the most iconic parts of Guild Wars 2. But with that, it also has the problem with how it has been ran so, so many times. I know a variety of different people who get burnt out from the game, stop enjoying Guild Wars 2, or quit the game altogether because of how many times they have run this farm. Which, I think is a testament to it.

RIBA stands for Red, Indigo, Blue, Amber and is a farm train that you can find in the Silverwastes. Where you basically run around Silverwastes in a massive circle tagging a bunch of mobs and events, in the order of the four bases that correspond with those four colors, until you get to the part of the meta where you fight the Vinewrath. Where you do that, then you run around the map looking for chests to open until the map resets where you do it again.

Looking at [fast], you get about 24 gold per hour as you do this train. With each train lasting about one hour.

It’s pretty consistent, pretty solid, and pretty easy. Actually, easy may be an understatement. It’s borderline mindless and it gets you a lot of gold, which is why so many people like it so much. You’re just running around in circles a bunch, it’s hard to find something less complex than that. Where I think RIBA is a pretty solid and fun farm, but I have definitely done it many times in my life to the point where I only like doing it once every now and then nowadays. But overall, it’s a solid farm.

This is a very broad and vague idea that we can see take shape in many different forms. The idea of alt parking is that you take a character that you aren’t actively playing and you place them somewhere in the world where you can login once a day to get a reward from where you parked them. This could range from the end of a jumping puzzle to a spot where a bunch of resource nodes spawn to a bunch of other locations. And over the years, we have seen different spots rise and fall in popularity.

Looking at what is currently popular and profitable, logging out at the Hidden Garden is pretty solid income. However, you have to have completed the Kudzu III collection and the Wayfarer’s Henge achievements to be able to harvest all of the items. Some people like to log out at the Legendary Matriarch spawn location where they just login when it spawns right after reset. But I personally just go there on my main character and take the helicopter up whenever I want to do it. There are a ton of chests in the Bjora Marches that people like to park their character at. And there are so many other different locations.

This is something that is nice to do if you have some alts that you don’t think you want to play on, where you can just put them in a spot to get easy loot. But it can become a hassle if you want to use that character for anything because you’ll have to make your way back to a location. This is something I have done a tiny bit of, most notably with the flax farm under Jaka Itzel which is still pretty popular but was super popular when Heart of Thorns originally launched. I think I had like seven characters parked there and I would loot all of the flax everyday to help upgrade my guild hall. But all in all, a pretty simple idea for a gold farm that is definitely worth considering.

This is another type of gold farm that is pretty similar to RIBA. Where there are basically two different tiers to this farm that you can do that are increasing in intensity but increasing in gold. The first tier is to just run around the map randomly and do events and whatnot as you progress towards the final meta. As the final meta begins, you go and complete that then run around the map killing all of the bonus champions. Dragonfall as a whole is a pretty fun map, the meta is fun, and it is one of my favorite maps in the game. And if you do all of this, you will make quite a bit of gold. I think overall, this is a pretty enjoyable experience and I definitely come here every now and then.

But the second tier is where you are basically doing all of that but scaled up by a thousand. Where [fast] has a pretty decent guide for this farm that I’ll link here because I can’t go over everything in a short time frame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGMuivaZKVg

But it basically revolves around a specifically designed route through the map tagging specific events as quickly and efficiently as possible. Where this can be pretty complex for new players to grasp, but if you have an experienced commander it will always be easier for you. But the complexity definitely pays off. Doing a full Dragonfall run this way, which takes just over 2 hours, will net you around 37 gold per hour. Additionally, the first run of each day will net you more gold, at about 40 gold per hour. So overall, just a great farm to get a lot of gold.

This is a high skill but high reward activity that is one of the most popular activities in the game. Fractals are pretty similar to traditional dungeons, where you can run through instances killing bosses and completing challenges until you get your final reward. Where there are a wide variety of different Fractals, and certain Fractals are selected each day to give you a daily reward.

Where on average, completing your daily fractals will net you about 20 gold, and an experienced group can get through them all in about 15 minutes.

You can then also do the daily recommended fractals for around an extra 6 gold, but it still takes an additional 15 minutes.

Additionally, you can do each of the challenge mode fractals every day which on average will net you around 10 gold for 30 minutes of time.

So in total, you can spend about an hour doing Fractals each day and get around 36 gold from doing them all. Which is pretty good. And you can also modify this to your needs or interests. You don’t have to do the recommended fractals or you could do lower level fractals which will net you less but still a good amount of gold.

With all of that said, this gold farm is one of the more difficult, time consuming, and costly ones to get into. Where on one hand, getting prepared to do Fractals is generally the only bit of vertical progression in the entire game and most players end up doing it anyways to do any piece of endgame content. But as you approach the highest level of Fractals, you will need Ascended or Legendary gear. Where alongside that, you will need to get enough Agony Infusions in order to participate in the highest level Fractals, which to max that out is around 80 gold right now on top of the cost for Ascended, or Legendary, gear that is needed to hold the Infusions. But with both of these, you can progress up Fractals as you can do most Tier 1 fractals without any of these and slowly start building up as you get closer and closer to Tier 4. Additionally, when we look at Tier 3, Tier 4, and Challenge Mode fractals… they are pretty challenging. Where you will need to have a decent understanding of the game and the Fractals themselves to progress through them, especially the Challenge Mode fractals. But Fractals are generally considered to be one of the funner parts of Guild Wars 2 and people love doing their daily fractals each day.

Similar to alt parking, this is another kind of vague answer that has a lot of different ideas in it. When we look at RIBA or Dragonfall, we are doing a single meta event over and over for gold. Where when we look at meta trains, we are doing a wide variety of shorter metas in a row. Where typically, you would only do each of these metas once a day in order to get the bonus daily rewards from them. Where there are a ton of different metas in this game.

To highlight a few, we got the Defense of Amnytas where you can make around 22 gold in 20 minutes. Forged with Fire where you can make around 4 gold in 7 minutes, the Ley-Line Anomaly where you can make around 2.5 gold in 3 minutes, the Legendary Matriarch where you can make 1.5 gold in 2 minutes, and so on and so forth.

This is highly modifiable and you can pick and choose which metas you want to do. Where if you look in LFG, you will oftentimes, generally around reset, find groups doing meta trains that you can join and just follow along with. This is generally pretty easy, fast, and fun.

I have done a wide variety of different meta trains in my years playing Guild Wars 2, but my personal favorite meta train is as follows.

1. Starting at reset, I do Tequatl which takes about 13 minutes and nets 5.5 gold.
2. Then I do the Burning Effigy which takes about 6 minutes and nets 2 gold.
3. Then I do the Legendary Ley-Line Anomaly which takes about 2 minutes and nets 1.5 gold.
4. Then I do Chak Gerent which takes about 15 minutes and nets about 3 gold.
5. Then I do Auric Basin which takes about 7 minutes and nets 6 gold.
6. Then finally I do Dragonstorm which takes about 12 minutes and nets around 9 gold.

So in total, from Tequatl to the end of Dragonstorm, this farm takes about an hour and fifteen minutes and nets a total of 27 gold.

Where there are definitely better meta trains than this, but I like this one because I get a few minutes of downtime here and there where I can relax or do other things in between.

Drizzlewood Coast. This is another meta map that is incredibly popular to do over and over for gold, and is my personal favorite out of all of them. Where in general, I just love Drizzlewood Coast and everything in it. It is a great map with great vibes, but the two meta events in this map are phenomenal. They are super engaging, super fun, and definitely super rewarding. Where when we look at the map of Drizzlewood Coast as a whole, there are two distinct metas: the southern and northern meta. The south meta feeds directly into the north meta so you can complete the south meta and then go do the north meta. But there are instances of the map that open where the south is already completed and you can just hop straight into the north one if you prefer.

We can see commanders and players opt to do a few different things here. Where they will sometimes do south over and over or do both the south and north meta. But for a single runthrough of this farm, which is doing both metas once or doing the south one twice, you can make 46 gold in one and a half hours.

This is a pretty similar idea to Fractals of the Mist, as those are basically an evolution of the traditional dungeons. Where we have a total of eight dungeons in Guild Wars 2 and each one has a total of three explorable paths, with the exception of Arah which has four, on top of each of the dungeon’s story paths, with the exception of Arah which no longer has a story mode. Each explorable path has a different route through the dungeon with different challenges, mobs, and bosses. Where across the board, dungeons are incredibly easy to complete and are a lot more approachable for newer players. However, dungeons have a stigma in Guild Wars 2 where a lot of people don’t think they are worth your time which leads to not a lot of people completing them, and I just want to say that this stigma is not based on reality at all and dungeons are incredibly underrated. Where when we look at a lot of people who are doing dungeons, it tends to be newer players who may not understand anything that is going on. Where I want to clarify, this is completely okay and please don’t be mean to them. But I definitely understand how it can be frustrating. Where if you want to avoid that, this can be a great farm to do with friends. Where if you have four other friends, you can blast through these dungeons. Where you can often low-man or solo these dungeons as well, except it just slows down your time.

Looking at the dungeons as a whole, there are a ton of them and each of them has a different gold value. But I’ll go over my eight personal favorite ones to do. Where completing eight total dungeon paths rewards a bonus 5 gold and additional dungeon currency which can just add on to your gains. Keep in mind this is all for the first run of each day, so you can really only do them daily.

• Sorrow’s Embrace path 1 nets you nearly 4 gold in 3.5 minutes.
  
• Sorrow’s Embrace path 3 nets you nearly 4 gold in 6 minutes.
  
• Citadel of Flame path 1 nets you just over 3 gold in 5.5 minutes.
  
• Honor of the Waves path 1 will net you nearly 4 gold in 4 minutes.
  
• Caudecus’s Manor path 1 will net just over 4 gold in 4 minutes.
  
• Caudecus’s Manor path 3 will net just over 3 gold in 4.5 minutes.
  
• Ascalonian Catacombs path 1 nets just over 4 gold in 7 minutes.
  
• And Ascalonian Catacombs path 3 nets just under 4 gold in 12 minutes.

Where if you add all of these values up, including the bonus 5 gold, it comes out to a grand total of around 35 gold in about 46.5 minutes. Which I don’t think is half bad, but it is even better if you did the eight most optimal paths instead of just my favorites.

This is a another vague answer and this is actually a time limited activity. Where Guild Wars 2 has a total of six different festivals that you can participate in throughout the year. Where each one lasts 3 weeks and are around about 2 months apart from each other. Where each one takes place in a specific time of the year, like how Wintersday starts in the middle of December and goes into the start of January. But each festival has different activities that you can do for gold, and some are pretty good and they are all pretty fun. There are a bunch of them, so let’s just go over the most notable and my favorite.

Looking at Shadow of the Mad King which takes place around October, you have probably the most popular festival farm in the game which is the Mad King’s Labyrinth. Where you basically just run around in a circle in this map, following the commander, tagging events, and making around 44 gold per hour. You also got the Ascent to Madness which is the special festival dungeon where you can get just over 2 gold in 2.5 minutes.

Taking a look at Wintersday, you can do the Bell Choir Ensemble which nets you around 20 gold per hour and you have the Winter Wonderland jumping puzzle which nets you around 18 gold per hour.

During Festival of the Four Winds around July and August you can do Boss Blitz for around 17 gold per hour.

During Dragon Bash around June and July you can do Dragon Bash arena for 14 gold per hour.

During Lunar New Year around January and February you can do the Celestial Challenge for just under 15 gold an hour.

And then finally, Super Adventure Festival. My personal favorite festival in the game that a lot of people don’t think is super rewarding, but it actually is. Where making gold in this festival is a lot more complex than the others, but basically revolves around getting Bauble Baubles to spend at the Weekly Sales Vendor. You can also be lucky and get some super rare drops during this festival that you can sell for a good amount of gold. Where anecdotally speaking and not backed by any statistical proof, I do each zone in Super Adventure Box and the daily every single day which takes me about 45 minutes, which is a grand total of just under 16 hours spent in the box doing just my daily rotation for each year. And each year, I make anywhere from 250 to 500 gold per festival, which equates to around 15.5 gold to 31 gold per hour. With Super Adventure Box being one of my favorite activities in all of gaming, making that much gold while doing it makes this a no brainer farm for me. Where all of the festival activities are super fun and they can net you quite a bit of gold as you do them.

I think this is a farm that was super popular as End of Dragons released but died off in popularity as the years have passed, but still nets you quite a bit of gold. Where the biggest red flag for this farm is how it is fishing. Where I am someone who loves fishing in Guild Wars 2 so this farm is a ton of fun for me. But if you are someone who doesn’t love fishing, this farm is obviously going to be a lot worse for you. Where fishing farms relies a lot on the various fishing mechanics. Where fishing in certain areas, with certain baits, during certain times of the day is going to net you different amounts of gold compared to other areas, baits, and times. Additionally, this farm benefits a lot by having increased Fishing Power to make everything easier, so this is a farm that can ramp up as you progress or you can get Fishing Power from someone who has already been fishing.

Where there are specific paths you can take in each map with specific baits that I’ll let you explore on your own and I’ll just go over the top ones.

Domain of Kourna during the day with Scorpion bait can net you around 55 gold an hour which makes it the best fishing farm in the game from a gold standpoint.

However, I often times see more people doing the Bay of Elon during the day with Scorpion bait which can net you around 40 gold an hour.

You can also do Mount Maelstrom Benthic Kelp Beds during the day with Sardine bait for around 29.5 gold an hour.

Or Frostgorge Sound during the day with Ramshorn Snail bait for around 31.5 gold an hour.

Or Straits of Devastation Strait of Sacrilege at night with Sardine bait for 34.5 gold an hour.

Or the Crystal Oasis Bay of Elon during the night with Scorpion bait for about 20 gold per hour which is a good one to do with the daytime version of this farm which lets you stay in this spot for a long time.

This is just the idea of combining all of these, understanding a daily routine, and having a passive income. Where basically, it’s not really going for gold and it’s kind of just playing the game a lot. Where I am someone who does not specifically go for gold but I still have a pretty decent stream of gold coming into my wallets because I just enjoy playing the game. Pretty much every activity in this game will net you gold, and over time it just accumulates. But if you also understand each of the farms that I have talked about on this list and how you get gold from them, you can just generate a lot of additional gold by playing in each of these activities.

Maybe you have a daily routine where you do your dailies and get some gold from the Wizards Vault. Maybe you have a couple of characters parked in areas you log into when you remember which generates some gold. Maybe you’re in the mood for Fractals so you do your dailies and get gold that way.

You can continue this philosophy with every area of the game. In the mood for dungeons? Do some dungeons. Want to do a meta train? Do that. Take a look at what you enjoy doing in Guild Wars 2 and look at how you can make gold by doing that. Do you enjoy doing just PvP and you want a lot of gold, take a look at seeing how you can make gold by doing PvP. Where completing the Thunderhead Peaks Reward track will net you just under 27 gold per completion.

The famous saying is time is money. Where every single second spent playing this game is a second spent… playing this game.

Where you can spend that time hanging out in Lion’s Arch chatting with friends or doing RIBA over and over until you remember that you haven’t stood up in five hours. Obviously, if you need a lot of gold and you want it fast… you will want to specifically look at the other gold farms I have talked about and the ones that are not on this list.

But for me, unless I am specifically going for a legendary or another high value item, I generate more than enough gold for what I typically need, as in buying some special skins here and there or having gold to unlock new things, all just from playing the game naturally.

And those are my top ten favorite gold farms! Of course, this scratches the surface of what you can do to make gold in Guild Wars 2, but these are the ones that I generally consider to be the best farms from my perspective when it comes to making gold, having fun making gold, and enjoying the game as you do so.

Honorable Mentions |
Raids, Wizard's Vault, Pact Supply Network Agent

If you liked this guide, here are a couple of other recent ones that I have uploaded.


I hope you all are taking good care of yourselves! Have a good one everyone!