We all have things we love about Guild Wars 2, places that make us cheer out and say “yes, this is my ultra-mega place!” We all have classes, abilities, and features we’re passionate about, either negatively or positively. This is a place to share all that. A couple times a week I’ll be raising a Guild Wars 2 question to the community– hopefully an interesting one– and we’ll share our opinions. I’ll start off with my opinion just to get the ball rolling, but these questions will not have any right or wrong answers, so feel free to argue with me to your heart’s content!

So, this past week I’ve been doing quite a bit of crafting on my main. I’m rounding my way to level 40 now as a weaponsmith/jeweler, and still finding myself needing iron and silver (along with, of course, fine materials (fangs, vials of blood, etc.)). I’ve managed to keep my crafting fairly current with my level, but it does take some extra ore farming occasionally. I don’t mind this. In fact, I find it somewhat refreshing that crafting takes a bit of work sometimes. Having goals is a good excuse– er, reason– to explore if you ask me, and it keeps me wandering eagerly.

I enjoy also the item discovery system immensely. The first time I tried discovering a cooking recipe during beta, I instantly fell in love. At first glance the system appears complicated, but it also makes sense. Cooking uses real ingredient combinations, and axes don’t just need ore– they need wood, too, for the handles. The collection tab and the fact that we can now craft from it and our bank adds to my enjoyment of crafting overall. The game’s salvaging system is also solid, in my opinion, since it gives players a few options when it comes to obtaining needed materials.

That said, I’ve heard quite a few complaints about Guild Wars 2′s crafting system lately, especially on the official forums. Some crafting disciplines naturally need more fine materials than others, which I imagine could be frustrating (this may be true for cloth/leather disciplines as well). There’s also the fact that down-leveling and playing crafting catch up isn’t everyone’s idea of fun. Also, it’s a little difficult to play the Trading Post smartly at the moment, thanks to the market’s general saturation of certain goods, which is something that will ideally shift in time.

As a result, I’ve kind of formed the opinion that crafting in Guild Wars 2 is something that isn’t going to satisfy all types of players, but those who enjoy it seem to thoroughly enjoy it. Why, yes, I’m gleefully gathering onions and carrots for when I plan on leveling my charr’s inner chef. On second thought, I may have an MMO addition to collecting onions. I RPed in LotRO as a goofy, onion-farming Guardian. Dang, my secret’s out…

How about you? What’s your take on the crafting system? Is it fun and worthwhile, or is it lacking in one regard or another?

For anyone who’s journeyed to a lower level area in order to help friends, complete exploration objectives, or gather crafting materials has noticed that part of the time, loot scales with a character’s level. The rest of the time, players receive loot equal to the area they’re in. This is quite an interesting mechanic in theory, one that attempts to strike a balance that meets the objectives of multiple players. Need Jute Scraps at level 40? No problem– run some starting area DEs. Helping guildmates in Metrica Province? Fear not– you might get some cool upgrades, so it’s still worthwhile to loot.

But what about in practice? Is it better to farm on a low level alt, or farm on a level 80? Also, how about WvW? How does loot scaling work there? Yesterday, Linsey Murdock, Games Designer, answered a couple questions in regards to WvW loot scaling. It seems that ArenaNet still might be working out some of the kinks in the system.

First, this was said:

WvW DOES scale all loot to your level, but PvE does not. I don’t know the exact percentage but it’s not a big number, I am sure. We wanted you to be able to go back to low level PvE maps to farm for low level mats.

Afterwards, it was followed up with:

I dug a little deeper and it seems that the loot system for WvW is a little more nuanced than I initially thought, and doesn’t always scale the loot to YOUR level. Which explains how you were getting lower level mats.

Interesting. So technically players have multiple options when it comes to farming lower level crafting materials. The real question then becomes… what are the percentages we’re looking at?

Some players have been reporting on the official forums that the percentage of lower level drops when farming on a higher level character doesn’t seem nearly high enough, especially since certain crafting materials like cloth and leather are drops only found in bags or by salvaging. Other players report that the percentage in PvE seems to be around 75% for low level items, and 25% for base level items. I’ve personally noticed PvE percentages in this range as well, but I can’t help but think that it would be nice if ArenaNet released some actual numbers.

What do you think about the loot scaling system? Does it work in both theory and practice, or does it need some additional adjustments?

Many players anxiously awaited Guild Wars 2′s crafting system because of the ways in which it differs from other crafting systems found in most MMORPGs. The discovery system, the fact that crafting cast times aren’t stagnant, the idea of one character having access to all of the crafting disciplines, and, of course, the fact that crafting gives pretty awesome experience all ties into this original excitement. In fact, leveling through crafting was one of the ways the first level 80s leveled so quickly. ArenaNet definitely attempted to do something a little unique with the game’s crafting system.

Now that we’ve all had some time to take part in the adventures around Tyria, and see for ourselves what GW2′s crafting has to offer, the real question becomes– does GW2′s crafting system live up the hype? Is it as good in practice as it first sounded on paper? Each individual person is going to have their own answers to this question, naturally, but let’s take a look at both sides of the coin, shall we?

I’m going to be using some opinions from players on the official forums as points of reference. Make sure and chime in with your own opinions in the comments section if you have something you’d like to add or share! For this subject, the opinions are taken from this thread and this thread.

First, let’s look at the negative aspects about GW2′s crafting system:

Well, I think the overall problem is that you level way to fast in this game. I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if you got experience for typing /afk or /dance.

So, all the people who really enjoy crafting and wish to make things mostly for themselves are kind of screwed since you level so fast as a character, you cannot keep up with crafting items for the rapidly passing character levels. The mats do NOT come fast, it takes a lot of farming to be able to get the proper materials to craft even one item. But, since you level is adjusted per zone, you still continue to get experience and so continue leveling creating the problem of even more behind in crafting level vs player level.

So, crafters are thus faced with a few choices in getting mats BUT NOT LEVELING:

1. Create a low level alt to get mats in a lower level area.
2. Buy mats

This is an interesting observation, and true. For players who level while trying to keep their crafting skills at their level, it’s quite difficult to not out-level their current content. This leads leveling players to reach level 80 before they may have intended, but at the same time, this is a positive aspect as well, in my opinion. Farming materials isn’t always very fun when everything is too easy to kill. Also, this system’s kind of handy for players who enjoy alts.

One thing’s made apparent here, however– fine crafting materials can be a pain in the butt to collect. This is partially due to the low-ish drop rates of many (the rumors about diminishing returns on farm locations don’t help, either), the fact that many recipes need large amounts of fine materials, and the fact that ArenaNet keeps adjusting crafting drops. Fine materials used to be found fairly frequently in bandit item bags, but now it seems like Butter and Chocolate are found more often than anything else. All of this can be quite discouraging for players who can’t afford to play the Trading Post.

And that brings me to the next player opinion:

“With the market right now (inflated material prices because to many people are crafting just to get to Lvl 400 as quickly as possible) and the amount of gear that drops off the mobs, there isn’t much reason to craft here atm. I am sure it will get better once the material prices drop, but the market still won’t be there to make good money selling. Getting the Legendary Weapons is 1 good reason. The XP is another.”

This is another side effect of crafting rewarding such good experience– everyone’s taking part. In most MMORPGs, some players skip crafting altogether, boosting the in-game economy. In Guild Wars 2, there’s little reason to ignore the system while leveling, and since all players can grab every tradeskill, there’s less specialization. Add in a uniquely-global Trading Post and the fact that the Trading Post was added late into the game’s launch, and the effect is exactly what we see– an over-saturated Trading Post, with very little reason to sell most low-level crafting items on it.

Will the market improve in time, allowing players to sell what they craft for a better profit? Most likely. That said, it is still possible to make a profit on the Trading Post, but it may take a bit of research.

And yes, as far as the positives of crafting in GW2 go, Legendary weapons are definitely something to look forward to for most players. The experience and the different useful Exotic pieces of gear are also useful. Here’s another thought:

“The only real reason to do crafting is if you find it fun.”

A good point. Is crafting fun in Guild Wars 2, or is it merely a time and gold sink? It’s both, in my opinion. Once the game settles a bit, hopefully our economy will improve and make things a little more profitable for everyone. Personally, I enjoy the game’s crafting so far and find it worthwhile, but I am still leveling. What do you think?

For crafters or salvagers looking for ways to get the most bang from your Guild Wars 2 time, here’s an interesting item to consider: Mystic Salvage Kits. These yellow-quality kits raise the chances of finding rarer materials by 25% and recovering upgrades by 80%. The item recovery stats are the same as the stats on Master’s Salvage Kits, but with an interesting twist– they come in stacks of 250. Yes, 250! Out on a long farming session or WvWvW adventure and often run into bag space issues? Mystic Salvage Kits may be your answer.

There’s a slight catch, naturally. Mystic Salvage Kits must be made at the Mystic Forge, and require the following materials: 1 Fine Salvage Kit, 1 Journeyman’s Salvage Kit, 1 Master’s Salvage Kit, and 3 Mystic Forge Stones. Mystic Forge Stones are available in the Black Lion Trading Company Gem Store, which makes forging these kits a little complicated. Still, it’s an interesting option.

Check out this video, where Dontain talks about Mystic Salvage Kits.

What do you think– worth the Gems, or no?

One of the most enjoyable things about crafting in Guild Wars 2 is the fact that if a recipe calls for materials in a lower level area, farming those materials isn’t necessarily a waste of time. Experience, gold, karma, dynamic events, and map completion all come attached with your crafting goodies. Exploration at any level is encouraged and rewarding.

So, where are some good crafting material farming hotspots? Need help remembering what mobs drop Bone Shards or Vials of Thick Blood? GW2Guru has a pretty awesome list that’s currently a work in progress. Here’s a sample:

Format: Material — Zone / Area — Monster Type — Monster Level — [Area Level]

Vial of Thin Blood — Kessex Hills / Manfire Hills — Skales — XX — [YY]
– Gendarran Fields / Lake Gendarr — Skales — XX — [YY]
Bone Shard — Diessa Plateau / Holystone Caves — Grawl — 25 — [26]
Small Claw — Harathi Hinterlands / Guardian Lake – River Drake — 34 — [34]
Pile of Shimmering Dust – Gendarran Fields / Lawen Ponds — Risen — 28/29 — [27]
Small Fang Diessa Plateau / Holystone Caves — Grubs — 25 — [26]
Small Scale — Gendarran Fields / Lake Gendarr — Barracuda — XX — [YY]
— Harathi Hinterlands / Guardian Lake – River Drake — 34 — [34]
Small Totem — Diessa Plateau / Holystone Caves — Grawl — 25 — [26]
Small Venom Sack — Diessa Plateau / Holystone Caves — Grubs — 25 — [26]
— Kessex Hills / Overlord’s Greatcamp — Fireflies — XX — [YY]
— Gendarran Fields / Cornucopian Fields (east) — Wurm Hatchlings — XX — [YY]
— Gendarran Fields / Vigilant Hills — Fireflies — XX — [YY]
— Gendarran Fields / Overlook Caverns (vista) — 28 — [YY]

Head on over to the complete thread to see the full list.

It’s Monday morning and GUILD WARS 2 is live! Now that head start weekend is over, it’s tip to share some knowledge with all you gamers out there.

PRO-TIP #1: If you’ve got a ton of stuff in your inventory and you want to save some of it in your bank, you don’t have to transport all the way back to a city to deposit it! You can gain access to your bank account via any crafting station. This serves two purposes: 1) You can deposit any crafting pieces in your bank when you are finished crafting and bring them out as you pick it back up later, and 2) you can use the crafting station is a pseudo bank teller.

PRO-TIP #2: You may or may not know that every single crafting material is categorized as a “collectable”. Your inventory space may be getting short, so you can right click on any collectable and select “deposit collectable” which puts it in storage. Here’s the best part, it does not use your typical bank slot. Every collectable in the game has it’s own slot in the collections tab. You can store up to 250 items of each type.

So while you’re out gathering and collecting you can deposit them whenever and where ever you are which keeps bag space open.

Let’s take this one step further. Click the gear icon in the top right portion of the inventory window. A drop down menu will appear where you can choose to deposit all collectables. Quick, easy, and efficient inventory management.

Guild Wars 2 has eight crafting disciplines to choose between, and players can have two. They can also have all three of the gathering disciplines, which thankfully aren’t tied to any of the crafting trades. Players can choose to become a jeweler as one of their crafting disciplines, which allows the player to craft jewelry– amulets, rings, and earrings, as well as upgraded gemstones to use in equipment. Both will be undoubtedly useful in GW2, and hey– every profession benefits from shiny things, right?

Mining and logging are the two gathering trades essential to the jeweler discipline. Logging may not seem useful on the surface, but one of the gems needed– amber– is found while chopping down logs. Gemstones are randomly found while mining and logging all types of gathering nodes, and the chances of finding them can be raised by using special gathering tools. The appropriate gathering tool must be equipped while gathering (luckily all three– mining pick, logging axe, and harvesting sickle– can be equipped at once), but they do run out as you use them. For long gathering sessions, keep a few stacks handy.

One very awesome feature about gathering in GW2 is the fact that nodes appear uniquely for every player. This means that two players can both run up to an ore node, and both walk away with ore. This approach is similar to the entire game’s cooperative approach to combat and loot, and will make all our crafting lives easier. The other nice thing about gathering is that while mining or logging, players will get multiple whacks at each node, which equal multiple chances of receiving gems. Rich nodes also increase the chances of obtaining gems by increasing the number of whacks before the node is depleted.

As a general rule of thumb when considering which gems to prioritize, here are the stats acquainted with each type (in the same order as pictured above): Garnet – Power, Turquoise – Vitality, Amber – Condition Damage, Tiger’s Eye – Precision, Malachite – Toughness, and Pearl (not pictured) – Healing. Later on, when gems can be transmogrified, or combined into new types, these stats also combine as such.

Once gathered, gems can be used to place into gear, or used for crafting jeweler recipes. All jeweler recipes require the use of ore as well, which is obtained while mining and from metal scraps, which drop off mobs, can be found in bags, and can be sometimes found in interesting places around Tyria (ruined metal hunks in the environment, for example). Ore must be forged into bars at a rate of 2 ore per bar then crafted into jeweler ingredients like hooks and bands, which can all be done at the nearest jeweler station.

When just getting started with the jeweler profession, I first recommend running out and mining a fair chunk of copper nodes, which appear in areas for levels 1-15. Collect those gems, and try and have as much of a variety as possible. As a jeweler in GW2, you’ll be spending quite a bit of time discovering new recipes. In fact, once you learn the recipes for metal bars and ingredients, the rest of the jeweler recipes (at least in the early stages) come from discovering. Not that this is a bad thing. It’s quite fun, but it takes a bit of getting used to.

So what does discovering mean? Instead of automatically being given a list of recipes to flounder through or purchase, you’ll have to discover recipes yourself, using your own ingredients. The good news? Most of the discoveries follow a pretty basic pattern for jewelers– slap a gem with some metal ingredients, and there you go. As you work your way up, upgraded gem types and new gem types altogether will become available.

The discovery interface is easy to figure out. Tab over to it, plop your ingredients in, and see if something comes up. If so, craft it. You’ll learn the recipe and also craft the item. Discovering boosts crafting experience as well as crafting items that are orange, yellow, and green. Oh, did I mention that crafting experience not only boosts your crafting level, but your real level, too? That’s a pretty nice perk for players who enjoy crafting.

Here is a list of the basic copper-level discoveries. These recipes should get you to jeweler level 50 or so:

Rings:

Amber Solitaire of Festering [0 difficulty]
1 Copper Band, 1 Copper Setting, 1 Amber Pebble

Turquoise Solitaire of Vitality [0 difficulty]
1 Copper Band, 1 Copper Setting, 1 Turquoise Pebble

Garnet Solitaire of Might [0 difficulty]
1 Copper Band, 1 Copper Setting, 1 Garnet Pebble

Tiger’s Eye Solitaire of Precision [25 difficulty]
1 Copper Band, 1 Copper Setting, 1 Tiger’s Eye Pebble

Malachite Solitaire of Resilience [25 difficulty]
1 Copper Band, 1 Copper Setting, 1 Malachite Pebble

Earrings:

Amber Stud of Festering [0 difficulty]
1 Copper Hook, 1 Copper Setting, 1 Amber Pebble

Garnet Stud of Might [0 difficulty]
1 Copper Hook, 1 Copper Setting, 1 Garnet Pebble

Turquoise Stud of Vitality [0 difficulty]
1 Copper Hook, 1 Copper Setting, 1 Turquoise Pebble

Malachite Stud of Resilience [25 difficulty]
1 Copper Hook, 1 Copper Setting, 1 Malachite Pebble

Tiger’s Eye Stud of Precision [25 difficulty]
1 Copper Hook, 1 Copper Setting, 1 Tiger’s Eye Pebble

Amulets:

Malachite Amulet of Resilience [50 difficulty]
1 Copper Chain, 1 Copper Setting, 1 Malachite Pebble

Amber Amulet of Festering [50 difficulty]
1 Copper Chain, 1 Copper Setting, 1 Amber Pebble

Turquoise Amulet of Vitality [50 difficulty]
1 Copper Chain, 1 Copper Setting, 1 Turquoise Pebble

Garnet Amulet of Might [50 difficulty]
1 Copper Chain, 1 Copper Setting, 1 Garnet Pebble

Tiger’s Eye Amulet of Precision [50 difficulty]
1 Copper Chain, 1 Copper Setting, 1 Tiger’s Eye Pebble

In addition to these recipes, adorned gems can be made, which are upgraded gems discovered by combining a gem with a filigree. The adorned gems can then be combined with the same copper pieces as listed above to create upgraded jewelry. These recipes using the upgraded gems are known as masterwork recipes. After that point, at jeweler level 75, the recipes begin to repeat themselves utilizing the new gems and metal ore found in silver nodes.

At jeweler level 50, it’s also possible to begin creating new gem types, known as transmogrified gems, using two different types of gems and a pile of glittering dust. These feature the combined stats of the base gems. Some of the transmogrified gems can also be found in silver ore nodes.

While leveling my jeweler on the last BWE, I found the experience to be quite enjoyable. I love the idea of discovery in crafting, and I’m quite pleased with the gemstone system in GW2. Gemstones are used both for jewelry and inserting into equipment, which makes the trade quite useful. A good stock of gems is definitely needed for leveling, however, so for any aspiring jewelers out there– make sure and grab some mining picks and logging axes as soon as possible, and gather, gather, gather!

Stay tuned to Guild Wars 2 Junkies in the months to come, as I’ll be sure to update this guide with higher-level information in the future.

Originally posted by Lindsey Murdock (Source)

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The way leveling XP gain works in crafting is this: For leveling a discipline from 0-400, you will gain 10 levels along the way. By maxing out all 8 disciplines, you will gain 80 levels. That means you could dedicate a character to crafting, feed it all the mats you get on other characters and level it all the way to 80 without ever needing to kill a thing. As hardcore crafters, we think that is pretty cool.

Last week, we discussed at length about how cooking will be my tradeskill of choice in Guild Wars 2. Based on feedback that I received, I know there are plenty of you who are looking very seriously at also making this your crafting discipline as well. Here are five tips to help you master the cooking discipline.

1. A great place to start if you’re trying to get some recipes discovered is to think about realistic recipes, as was suggested in my previous article. Taking it a step further, remember that discovered recipes have a maximum of 4 ingredients, so breaking real recipes into 4 basic ingredients is important. We can assume that most real life recipes start with a base such as a meat or a starch, they then have some sort of sauce or water added, and then have a vegetable, and either seasonings or another vegetable added.

2. There’s more than one recipe type in the game. In my brief time playing I managed to create Cooking Ingredients, Desserts, Meals, Seasonings, Soups, and Snacks. Recipes in the Cooking Ingredients section are for the most part given to you as you level your skill higher, but within the other areas of cooking, obviously certain ingredients are going to work well together. Be smart about what you combine and you can plan out your recipes much better, if it doesn’t sound like a good match, it probably won’t be a recipe. I’d be willing to bet that, garlic and sugar are not used in a recipe together, but blueberries and sugar make more sense and may lead you down a path more appropriate for a dessert.

3. Don’t waste your money/karma purchasing lots of items from the cooking vendor in hopes of finding combinations that generate recipes. Most of what they sell are ingredients and seasonings such as salt or vinegar, the bulk of the items that are used in cooking, like meats, fruits, or vegetables are dropped or gathered, be smart about your purchases, and spend your time out in the field gathering proper materials.

4. If you’re completely stuck, try looking at other recipes in the game world. There are plenty of recipes in the game that use other recipes. For example, when you reach cooking level 75 you get a recipe for Bowl of Cream Soup Base, which has 4 ingredients. 3 of those 4 ingredients are created by other cooking recipes, 1 of them is only learned via discovery. Another example would be in the Human starting area, one of the karma vendors sells a recipe for Eda’s Apple Pie. If you take a look at the list of ingredients to make that recipe, there’s a discoverable recipe in there as well. Do keep in mind that any recipes on the Trading Post will be locked so that you can’t see the requirements, and while you can’t discover a dropped recipe, there will likely be a similar recipe that is discoverable. For example Eda’s Apple Pie is a vendor purchased recipe, and therefore not discoverable. However, there’s a pretty close approximation out there for your discovery.

5. Use the trading post for more than just buying ingredients. You can look for items crafted by other chefs. If you know the end result of the item, it’s a bit easier to try and figure out the ingredients that go into creating it. Also filtering the trading post for ingredients is an excellent way to discover what is available to use in any given recipe, and should help to get ideas flowing about the possibilities.

Anyone can go to a spoiler website and become a cooking master without exerting the effort to learn new recipes, but for those of you looking to become a master chef by discovering recipes and using the tools in game, I hope that you find these tips useful. Please feel free to share any tips that you’ve discovered while cooking, as any advice would surely be appreciated.

I want to start with a bit of a confession.  I’m a cooking junkie.  Cooking is always my tradeskill of choice in any game that it is available.  I’m a fan of cooking because I love the idea of creating consumables as a tradeskill, as there is always a built in demand due to their limited use.  Other tradeskills must compete with world drops, but Cooks have only a very small amount of competition in this regard.  Further exacerbating the competition factor in Guild Wars 2 is the fact that the Trading Post operates across all servers, and while all crafting disciplines will undoubtedly experience increased competition as a result of this, the built in continuous demand for consumables should help to keep the chefs of Tyria profitable.

For the sake of this article, I’m going to limit my discussion to Cooking, as that is the crafting discipline that I’m most interested in.  However, it is important to note that each of your characters can have 2 active crafting disciplines, and you can switch disciplines simply by paying a fee of 10 copper per level of the discipline that you’re switching to.   If you do decide to switch disciplines for whatever reason, your skill and recipes in your forgotten discipline are saved, should you change your mind at a later time.

Arenanet’s Linsey Murdock had this to say about the craft discipline cooking.

Originally posted by Linsey Murdock

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Cooking is considered our advanced craft. It will cost you more money, karma, and time traveling the world than any other crafting discipline.

Pro Tip: Every cooking recipe in Guild Wars 2 is a real recipe for real food in real life (or a basic approximation). If you think you are close to figuring out one of the combinations, google a recipe for the food you suspect it might be, and odds are, you can find a bunch of recipes for things like that to try out.

After spending a good deal of the last beta weekend working on building my cooking skill, I can tell you that Linsey isn’t kidding when she says that it will cost you more than any other crafting discipline, and rightfully so, because some of the bonuses on the dishes are simply fantastic.

Ready To Begin?

Interacting with a Cooking Station will bring up the Production window.  This window will give you a list of recipes that you currently know.  New chefs will begin with a three recipes, all three of which are used to create components for more complex recipes.  The bulk of the recipes that are used in cooking are discovered.  There is a tab on the left side for the Discovery window, and when opening that window you’ll see  4 empty ingredient slots.

Discovering new recipes is as simple as dragging an ingredient from your inventory into one of the discovery slots.  Doing so will cause two things to happen.  First, a message will pop up at the bottom of your discovery window telling you how many possible unknown recipes can be made from your item and the skill required to craft your combination of ingredients.  Second, some of the other items in your inventory will grey out meaning that these cannot possibly be used in combination with what you’ve selected.  For example, placing A Slab of Red Meat into the discovery window yields the message 36 Possible Unknown Recipes, and the Blueberries in your inventory grays out.  Because that is disgusting, and obviously they’re not used together in any recipe.  However, adding an Onion to your Slab of Red Meat in the discovery window changes the message at the bottom to 3 Possible Unknown Recipes.  And so the discovery process continues until the message at the bottom changes to This Looks Like Something! Craft the Item to Save the Recipe.

There will be times in which you have compatible ingredients, but the message changes to no unknown recipes.  For example, this happens when putting a Slab of Red Meat and Parsley Leaves into the Discovery window.  This is because that is part of a non-discoverable recipe that can be found somewhere else out in the game world.

There are a lot of items that can be used in cooking.  Fortunately, Guild Wars 2 does an excellent job of making sure that players are aware of which crafting disciplines items can be used in.  At the bottom of the item tooltip, any crafting disciplines that the item is an ingredient in is spelled out for the player, it also gives the approximate skill level at which that item would be used.

The Best Parts of Cooking
There are some great parts of cooking that are fun and make it an interesting crafting discipline to take up.

1.  The wide variety of materials used in cooking gives crafters a wide spectrum of dishes to be made.  This helps to keep the craft interesting, as you won’t necessarily have to craft the same thing over and over again to level the profession

2.  Because of the large number of recipes that can be crafted, there are a wide variety of buffs that these various recipes can give characters.  In my extremely brief experience in beta, I saw your typical +Statistic buffs, some buffs that gave you a %chance to gain something when a condition is met.  For example 10% chance to remove a condition when you use a heal skill, some buffs related to the downed state like +10% health when downed, and some that are new to MMO’s, but players of other games will undoubtedly recognize. For example gain 2% Magic Find for 30 minutes.

3.  The discovery system encourages players to actually play while crafting.  Typically, I’m the type of person to use spoiler websites in order to progress my skill to max level.  That’s because in the past, crafting has felt like the means to an end.  A trainer gives me all of my recipes, and the only thinking I need to do is finding the most efficient path to the end.  That doesn’t happen with cooking in Guild Wars 2, there’s something engaging about the discovery system, and I’m actually looking forward to finding recipes on my own.

Room for Improvement

I’ve mentioned that there are tons of ingredients in the game, and given the nature of the discovery system people engaging in the craft will want to have as many of those ingredients on hand while learning new recipes.  The largest single complaint about cooking is about how much of an inventory hog the system is.  I think that inventory hog may be a bit of an understatement, cooking is an absolute inventory monster.

The cooking vendor that will get you started in your cooking adventures sells 12 ingredients, and he also has another 15 different ingredients that he sells for karma.  Remember when I mentioned that your initial 3 recipes were for components to create more complex recipes?  Yeah, there’s a whole lot of that going on.  This isn’t even taking into consideration other recipe items like Carrots, Onions, or Blueberries, which are gathered, or other components such as slabs of meat which are drops.

Arenanet has provided a partial solution.  There’s a portion of the bank that is devoted to cooking materials, if your inventory is getting overwhelmed, just right click an item in your inventory and choose Deposit Collectible from the menu.  I say that this is a partial solution, because items must be in your inventory to be used in cooking, so this only helps to clear your inventory while you’re out adventuring.  There’s a slight problem with this though, if an item is a food item that can be consumed and used in more advanced recipes, it will not be stored in with your cooking ingredients, but instead in the regular portion of your account vault.

Cooking is definitely going to be my main crafting discipline, and so the only problem I’m going to have is choosing a secondary.  Since all characters can gather, there are no disciplines that are needed to work hand in hand with cooking, and since cooking is the advanced craft, perhaps I won’t take a second crafting discipline at all.  Fortunately, there’s enough here to keep me very busy.