Guides/Making gold
Home instance: your own room that drops materials every day
Where it sits for each race, which nodes go in it, what they cost, and why a fully furnished home instance pays for itself in years rather than months.
On this page
Every character has a home instance, a private area inside the capital of their race. It starts empty and looks pointless. Then resource nodes appear in it and it turns into the daily round that every long-term player runs.
Where it is
| Race | City | District |
|---|---|---|
| Human | Divinity’s Reach | Salma District |
| Charr | Black Citadel | Hero’s Canton |
| Norn | Hoelbrak | Hunter’s Hearth |
| Asura | Rata Sum | Applied Development Lab |
| Sylvari | The Grove | Dreamer’s Terrace |
The instance belongs to the character’s race, and the nodes belong to the account. Install them once and every character has them, whichever city they live in (about races).
What goes in it
Three kinds of node:
- Ore for mining, from copper and silver and iron up to orichalcum
- Wood for logging
- Plants for harvesting, as garden plots growing specific vegetables and spices
Plus decorative residents: cats that move in after you feed strays across Tyria, along with assorted NPCs and small wildlife.
🔴 Once per day, per account
The limit that shapes everything: each node and each chest can be gathered once a day, counted on the account.
Ten characters do not give ten harvests. Walk the instance on one and the day is done.
Where nodes come from
The gem store. Basic packs run 800 gems; garden plots are 1,000 gems each.
Black Lion Chests. A rare drop, or bought with Black Lion Statuettes.
Achievements. Several nodes arrive as rewards and cost nothing.
Vendors. For Unbound Magic, Volatile Magic, karma and other currencies (about currencies).
World drops. A few nodes come straight out of the world.
Is it profitable
The honest arithmetic: no, if you count in months.
A fully furnished instance yields a few gold of materials a day. Gem-store nodes cost hundreds of gems, which is dozens of gold through the exchange.
Payback is measured in years. So treat the purchase as convenience and a reason to log in daily rather than as an investment.
What does pay off quickly are the nodes that arrive free: from achievements, from drops, from map currencies. Install every one of those you come across.
How the round goes
The standard daily routine among long-term players:
- Enter the instance
- Walk every node and chest
- Salvage the surplus with a Copper-Fed
- Deposit materials into storage with one click
Three minutes, and it is the calmest gold in the game: no risk, no competition over nodes, no dependence on other players (other methods).
Advice for a newcomer
Do not spend your first gems on nodes. The store holds far more useful things, and nearly all of them are about inventory rather than resources.
Do install the free nodes the moment they appear. They are permanent and they keep working for years.