Guides/Making gold
Map currencies: why your wallet has twenty lines and what to do with them
Unbound and Volatile Magic, Trade Contracts, airship parts and the rest of the strange currencies. Where each is earned, where each is spent, and why hoarding them is a mistake.
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Open your wallet after a month of playing and you will find two dozen lines with names you do not remember. Magic, contracts, crystals, airship parts.
This is not clutter. Every expansion and every season brought its own economy, and none of the old ones were thrown away. The game keeps them, because of how it treats your time: what you earned in 2017 is still worth something.
The cost of that is a newcomer staring at the list with no idea where to start.
The general currencies
These work everywhere and accumulate constantly.
Karma drops from nearly everything and is spent at vendors across the world.
Spirit Shards are what surplus experience becomes once your masteries are done. They feed the Mystic Forge and the legendary vendors.
Laurels come from daily activity and go to laurel merchants.
Astral Acclaim is the Wizard’s Vault currency.
Research Notes come from salvaging crafted items and matter in late crafting.
Season currencies
Unbound Magic comes from Living World Season 3 maps: Bloodstone Fen, Ember Bay, Bitterfrost Frontier, Lake Doric, Draconis Mons, Siren’s Landing.
Volatile Magic comes from Season 4 maps: Domain of Istan, Sandswept Isles, Domain of Kourna, Jahai Bluffs, Thunderhead Peaks, Dragonfall.
Both are spent with local vendors on bags of materials. This is probably the most underrated way of turning farm into gold: the bags are cheap and often hold things that sell for more on the market (what else works).
Expansion map currencies
Airship Parts, Verdant Brink, Itzel vendors. Lumps of Aurillium, Auric Basin, Exalted vendors. Ley Line Crystals, Tangled Depths, Nuhoch vendors.
Three Heart of Thorns maps, three separate currencies, three separate vendors. That was the era when the game enjoyed making things complicated, and it has not gone anywhere.
Trade Contracts come from the Crystal Desert maps: Crystal Oasis, Desert Highlands, Elon Riverlands, The Desolation, Domain of Vabbi.
Jade Slivers come from the Recycler module in the Jade Bot, End of Dragons.
Why hoarding them is wrong
This next part runs against the instinct of anyone who plays MMOs.
Saving these currencies achieves nothing. They do not appreciate, they do not convert into each other, and they count toward nothing outside their own narrow shop. Three thousand Unbound Magic sits in your wallet as dead weight until you walk to a vendor.
The design logic is transparent: a map currency exists to keep you on the map. It has value only where it is earned, and that is on purpose.
So the rule is short: earn it, spend it. Not “I will save up for something big”, but “walked to the vendor, bought bags, moved on”.
What a newcomer should do
First and most important: do not worry about the wallet. It looks alarming, and 90% of those lines will not matter to you for a long time.
Watch three of them:
- Karma, which you should spend on recipes and gear, because it piles up faster than you can use it
- Spirit Shards, which you should keep, because legendaries need them
- Astral Acclaim, which you should spend weekly, because it burns off above the cap
The rest arrives on its own once you reach the maps that produce it. And there, standing on the spot, the right vendor is obvious: they are usually ten paces from wherever the currency dropped.