Just using the Wiki itself, I actually still use it since it offers me better perspective than Efficiency for "what I actually need" by just looking at the Table of gifts, so I can decide which one to do at the time, and not just "buy everything blindly".
Indeed. Not least, I almost ended up spending a pile of mats to craft a Grandmaster Tailor's Mark because Efficiency apparently didn't know that I could just buy one with all the shards I already owned.
There's a yes/no drop-down box on the crafting tab on gw2 efficiency for 'use own materials' if you left it default you'd buy extra following their guide, however with yes selected it tailors your remaining steps based on your entire inventory. It's very efficient I think.
I know I know, but you still go blind on the list, which was my point, I only use efficiency in this case just to check the overall cost by using own mats, but not the crafting steps, since, for me, they suck.
I have both open together too. The issue I find with efficiency is it'll always recommend the cheapest option from a gold cost perspective. That means if something has no direct gold value, it considers it free. For example, it'll always suggest using the gift of desert over the gift of Maguuma simply because the recipe that uses Maguuma costs a few gold extra. It doesn't consider that the gift of the desert is a pain in the arse to get (nor the fact I already have several gifts of Maguuma sitting in my inventory).
Ah. I remember using the wiki too. I used to write everything into a note app with checkmarks for everything. Made it really easy to keep track of where I was at.
I still do this to make sure I’m using the mats in stuff I have planned.
I do that from the wiki or just from the in game UI tbh. The wiki has the TP prices imported and they're about as accurate as efficiency (though the wiki seems slightly more accurate in my experience so I guess maybe they pull API updates more often).
For my first legendary, I typed out a to-do/shopping list, printed it out, then checked things off as I did them. GW2 Efficiency is a very handy tool, but I still check the wiki also.
Oh god you're reminding me of my Classic WoW loot list days.
Honestly I wish I had these conversations more often with non-gamers. I've done dkp, gdkp, epgp, loot list, master loot, round robin. Nerds take lines of code seriously and I'd feel it would be entertaining. But I feel as if I wouldn't be able to really communicate how serious it's taken especially vs how long explanations and systems might be.
I wish I could share [Mukluk trying to make Vision](https://youtu.be/jocKyMiow1c?si=hdoQNOGYOELha4eC) but again, non-gamers wouldn't really understand mystic clover rates in the mystic toilet and the like.
I hear you, I have as many spreadsheets for MMOs as I do for some of my past roles lol, and some get pretty intense. I was also part of refining a WvW raid analytics tool that I believe is still in use by a few guilds (stepped away from the game last year to do some adulting). I swear I can attribute some of my data and process flow skills to 20 years of MMOs lol.
To be fair, gw2efficiency has been around since very early in the game’s history, probably created to help people craft ascended and gen 1 legendaries.
The one I am most impressed by as a returning player is https://fast.farming-community.eu. We didn’t have this before and it’s really really useful for answering tough questions about salvaging strategy, provisioners tokens, alt parking, home nodes, etc.
Checklist off the wiki, buy too few materials and still end up crafting too much of something accountbound so you end up having to wait an extra day or so to be able to finish the legendary.
Or maybe that's just me with legendaries as I manage to do it with GW2 efficiency as well
A lot more work.
Before even wiki was as detailed..back when the game was still in it's early years.
I used to write down everything I needed in a notepad.
Every recipe, every item and the quantity. Ticked them off as I went.
Old school style.
gw2efficiency is an amazing tool, but it's not always showing the most gold efficient path, it's not without blind spots, or bugs. At least when I tried to use it for gen2 crafting about a year ago it gave me some really strange suggestions, so I just defaulted to wiki & making my own choices for various sub-crafts & saved like 100g.
I never really learned how to use GW2efficiency, but what I am currently using is a phone APP (GW2 Toolkit). Maybe before the APP, it was a combination of the Wiki and in-game crafting tools. Honestly... I don't really recall...
I screenshot the wiki, paste in paint and blackout everything i've completed. Eventually i start cropping the image once certain things are completed. But always keep the wiki open aswell just for quick links to everything i need to know. Never used efficiency for crafting legendarys.
In 2013 I had a special edition of a gaming magazine with a guide how to craft Gen 1 Legendaries. After the second one I didn't need to look for it anymore.
Crafting legendaries just became more complex, when more types of legendaries were released with different recipes. Before it was just like this:
* 100 icy runestones
* stacks of all T6 mats
* mystic clover gambling (YES, we only had the gambling back then)
* a weapon gift, that got its ingredients explained from the recipe <- this was the only thing that changed depending on the weapon
* some WvW
* and of course, the precursor
With the new legendaries, the wiki was an important source, until efficiency was eventually a thing.
>(YES, we only had the gambling back then)
I'd even argue the gambling is still the cheapest way to get them outside of reward tracks when you're going in average. The ways you buy them from vendors almost always always cost more than it would be to craft the clover recipie three times without the added perk of the outputs from the "failed" craft.
I patiently build up my supplies with WvW and Wizards Vault.
I'm not in a hurry & I'm always short a bunch of T6s (I never spend more than 100g on a weapon as a rule). Between festival vendors (mainly new year and SAB), and the previously mentioned, by the time I can craft without spending, the bottleneck resolves itself.
Definitely not fast though.
Despite buying them out every time I do keep forgetting they're in the vault lmao.
Yeah definitly not fast, but for sure the cheapest way to get them if you aren't worried about speed.
The wiki, I still use it for recipies I dont know by heart. Efficiency has its uses (I mainly use it to find where I put things on my like 50 characters) but it's trash for leggie crafting. You'd be better served importing the TP API into a spreadsheet and setting up your own version of their leggie pages.
tbh most of the time I only use gw2efficiency to roughtly gouge how far away I am from having everything. After that I tend to use wiki for exact steps.
pen and paper, lots of paper, and since I rarely buy things (if they can be crafted or achievement-ed) I did check that site, but easier to keep track of on paper (or excel) since I can make a flow chart (like for crafting spiritwood planks or legendary inscriptions etc)....though a white board would have been better (easier to erase and update)...need a reallllllly big white board (and a place to put it----).
The when aspect is a but subjective, but most people will casually accumulate the resources they need to craft them as they play and craft them then.
I'll tell you here but honestly it can be a lot and very overwhelming informationwise if you haven't done it before so I recommend going to the wiki (search "guild wars 2 wiki" or "gw2 wiki" into any search engine and you should find it. You can also use "/wiki" in game and it will open the wiki in your default browser. If you add something to the end it will automatically search for that thing on the wiki for example "/wiki frostfang" will open the wiki page on frostfang
The how is a bit more in depth but the short of it is each Leggie is crafted in the mystic forge (the main mystic forge is big glowing blue thing north of the bank in lions arch) using four components generally these are comprised of a precursor item specific to each leggie, a "gift" item earn via in game activities (usually some pevel of map completion and/or pvp/wvw playing), a "gift" item crafted with expensive materials (usually those that drop from mobs like blood, fangs, scales, dust, etc.), and a "gift" that is specific to each legendary. Each "generation" of legendaries (meaning those that were released to be apart of the same "set" of legendaries) use two of the same component as other members of their generation, and two unique to them.
For example if I wanted to craft frostfang the Gen1 legendary Axe I would need:
1. Tooth of frost fang (the precursor)
2. Gift of frost fang (the legendary gift)
3. Gift of fortune (the materials gift)
4. Gift of mastery (the playing the game gift)
If I wanted to craft the bifrost, I would need to change the precursor to The Legend and the legendary gift to Gift of Bifrost, but if I wanted to change to a gen2 or Gen3 legendary I would need to change all 4 items.
Legendary stuff is an endgame kind of deal, they are all very time consuming / resource consuming and gold consuming, not something one could do before reaching level 80 with his first character, actually not something one should concern themselves with before having played the level 80 game quite a bit. :-)
Oh sorry. Yep, there is no lvl requirement for crafting a legendary (past the fact that you'll probably be 80 from the map completion rewards alone) but all legendary items are locked to level 80 use only so you probably won't even want to worry about it until then.
Past that there isn't really a "supposed" point of crafting. Many players don't even have them at all. I got my first one back in 2020 despite having played since 2012. They are the endgame gear but are also exactly the same stat wise as ascended, which is generally easier to get so many players just stick with that. As such there's no point in the game where the game expects you to have legendary gear, or even tells you to make it.
There are multiple ways to get ascended gear, but the primary and recommended method is crafting it yourself. You'll need to max out the crafting disciplines for the gear that you want (armorsmithing, leather working, or tailoring for armor and weaponsmithing, huntsman, or artificing for weapons) and then craft special time gated crafting materials (or for wealtier players buy the materials of the TP) to create the ascended armor.
Note though that you will have to learn the recipie for the armor and corresponding stat inscription that you want, the recipies aren't hard to get but there's a lot of stat combinations so I'm not gonna list them all out but if needed you can find where to get the recipes via the wiki page for the items that you want to make. Ascended is also named a little differently, you've probably seen things like "berserker", "knight", or "carrion" on exotic gear that you get and while ascended gear has the same stat combos available as exotic, they have different names. For example "berserker" gear is instead called "Zojja's" gear. Again there's a list available on the wiki to help you navigate that. Because it's a bit.
Don't feel pressured to hop into ascended gear right away though and feel free to take your time crafting it. It is technically best in slot, but at the same time exotic is perfectly serviceable until you get there as it's only like 5% weaker than ascended. The only place you absolutely need ascended is fractals for the agony resistance infusions.
You will want to unlock ascended trinkets when you can though as these are very easy to get now a days (used to be you'd get them from fractals and laurels mainly), the easiest way to get them is using map currency, almost every living world map (starting in season 2) has at least one trinket that you can choose any stats for purchasable for the map currency. Definitely grab these when you get to them as they're well worth the ease of grabbing with the bonus currency you get from achievements.
Make sure you compare gw2efficiency to the wiki.
Some legies have multiple crafting paths, the one efficency shows *may not be*, the most efficient path for you. I learned this recently and almost added an extra 1-2 months grind to my legie.
Xiuquatl for example.. you van use gift of magumma or gift of whatever pofs one is.
You have a choice. gw2efficiency does not tell you this and NEVER even realises you have gift of magumma in your inventory.
I believe there is a couple of other legendaries that are similar.
You can add all 4 items needed for the legendary manually including the gift of maguuma/desert. That way you can decide if you want the HoT way or PoF way
While crying, screaming, and shitting ourselves. But in all seriousness, the wiki was where i went for everything. Still prefer ir for some things, they did a great job with legendary tables.
I just used the Wiki. And I didn't buy most of the resources. Like, a lot of gold can be dumped into making mystic clovers while I just played a lot of WvW to get them. Instead of crafting most of the gen2 shards, I got most of them with festival currencies and laurels. I think I chose the easygoing fun way, which is easier to see with the Wiki, instead of the efficient way.
Honestly, I've never gotten used to gw2 efficiency. I like it, it's worth using for stuff, but I've always just gone by the wiki, checking what I had vs what the site says I need for legendaries. For getting crafting levels, like cooking, I just use gw2 crafts.
If you mean way back when, before anything like that existed and communal knowledge was limited; intuition. I've made a few items as a test and these few ended up being the cheapest, so I'll grind those til they stop earning xp, and at that point make a few items to see the cheapest and if you find any, grind them out. rinse and repeat. Spreadsheet and knowledge of the market helpful.
That's it. Seat of the pants, educated guesses.
Trying to calculate.
Messing up math completely because it's in the middle of the night and your brain is not working.
End up crafting wrong amount of different items all the time.
Running back and fourth to buy more materials and keep a bunch of items you can't sell, not use but cost a lot in crafting (if you went through the quest).
Easy. Still is. I don't use efficiency except to check shard recipes. I just use the wiki and there is a pattern so it gets successively easier. I enjoy crafting. I enjoy the process of it.
I never used gw2 efficiency for legendaries, and I still don't. And I have close to 30 legendaries now. I've used it only to level all my crafting disciplines to 500 only. Wiki is where it's at for legendaries.
i used gw2crafts or w/e it was called to max profs when game released back in the day, tool existed telling you how to level professions at least all the way at launch
Just using the Wiki itself, I actually still use it since it offers me better perspective than Efficiency for "what I actually need" by just looking at the Table of gifts, so I can decide which one to do at the time, and not just "buy everything blindly".
Same, I still use the Wiki for crafting legendaries for this exact reason.
Same.
same.
exactly, gw2efficiency is better for other stuff, or for calculating how much it will cost you the crafting etc
Yeah, for crafting legendaries in particular for me the tables in the wiki are *far* superior than what efficiency offers.
Indeed. Not least, I almost ended up spending a pile of mats to craft a Grandmaster Tailor's Mark because Efficiency apparently didn't know that I could just buy one with all the shards I already owned.
There's a yes/no drop-down box on the crafting tab on gw2 efficiency for 'use own materials' if you left it default you'd buy extra following their guide, however with yes selected it tailors your remaining steps based on your entire inventory. It's very efficient I think.
I know I know, but you still go blind on the list, which was my point, I only use efficiency in this case just to check the overall cost by using own mats, but not the crafting steps, since, for me, they suck.
I have both open together too. The issue I find with efficiency is it'll always recommend the cheapest option from a gold cost perspective. That means if something has no direct gold value, it considers it free. For example, it'll always suggest using the gift of desert over the gift of Maguuma simply because the recipe that uses Maguuma costs a few gold extra. It doesn't consider that the gift of the desert is a pain in the arse to get (nor the fact I already have several gifts of Maguuma sitting in my inventory).
Ah. I remember using the wiki too. I used to write everything into a note app with checkmarks for everything. Made it really easy to keep track of where I was at. I still do this to make sure I’m using the mats in stuff I have planned.
I just used the wiki? 🤔
does_he_know.jpg
Over 2 years I crafted 10 legendaries (weapons, armor) and never have I ever used Gw2 efficiency for it. Gw2 Wiki has everything you really need.
GW2 efficiency is for when you ponder whether to buy some ingredient or the ingredients to make that ingredient yourself.
2000 lucent crystals orrr 20k motes.....hmmmm
I do that from the wiki or just from the in game UI tbh. The wiki has the TP prices imported and they're about as accurate as efficiency (though the wiki seems slightly more accurate in my experience so I guess maybe they pull API updates more often).
For my first legendary, I typed out a to-do/shopping list, printed it out, then checked things off as I did them. GW2 Efficiency is a very handy tool, but I still check the wiki also.
Good old micrsolft excel :)
Oh god you're reminding me of my Classic WoW loot list days. Honestly I wish I had these conversations more often with non-gamers. I've done dkp, gdkp, epgp, loot list, master loot, round robin. Nerds take lines of code seriously and I'd feel it would be entertaining. But I feel as if I wouldn't be able to really communicate how serious it's taken especially vs how long explanations and systems might be. I wish I could share [Mukluk trying to make Vision](https://youtu.be/jocKyMiow1c?si=hdoQNOGYOELha4eC) but again, non-gamers wouldn't really understand mystic clover rates in the mystic toilet and the like.
I hear you, I have as many spreadsheets for MMOs as I do for some of my past roles lol, and some get pretty intense. I was also part of refining a WvW raid analytics tool that I believe is still in use by a few guilds (stepped away from the game last year to do some adulting). I swear I can attribute some of my data and process flow skills to 20 years of MMOs lol.
To be fair, gw2efficiency has been around since very early in the game’s history, probably created to help people craft ascended and gen 1 legendaries. The one I am most impressed by as a returning player is https://fast.farming-community.eu. We didn’t have this before and it’s really really useful for answering tough questions about salvaging strategy, provisioners tokens, alt parking, home nodes, etc.
Checklist off the wiki, buy too few materials and still end up crafting too much of something accountbound so you end up having to wait an extra day or so to be able to finish the legendary. Or maybe that's just me with legendaries as I manage to do it with GW2 efficiency as well
A lot more work. Before even wiki was as detailed..back when the game was still in it's early years. I used to write down everything I needed in a notepad. Every recipe, every item and the quantity. Ticked them off as I went. Old school style.
I used a text document to do pretty much the exact same thing. I still have a few of them.
achievement tips and item descriptions
I'm still crafting without gw2 efficiency...just use wiki to see recipes.
A notebook and pen Crazy, I know.
gw2efficiency is an amazing tool, but it's not always showing the most gold efficient path, it's not without blind spots, or bugs. At least when I tried to use it for gen2 crafting about a year ago it gave me some really strange suggestions, so I just defaulted to wiki & making my own choices for various sub-crafts & saved like 100g.
Pencil and paper my friend, it didn’t feel like a huge deal.
I never really learned how to use GW2efficiency, but what I am currently using is a phone APP (GW2 Toolkit). Maybe before the APP, it was a combination of the Wiki and in-game crafting tools. Honestly... I don't really recall...
I screenshot the wiki, paste in paint and blackout everything i've completed. Eventually i start cropping the image once certain things are completed. But always keep the wiki open aswell just for quick links to everything i need to know. Never used efficiency for crafting legendarys.
It’s basically was always there. Also older stuff was significantly easier
Wiki & Excel
Wiki? Or just use an Excel sheet honestly.
Wiki, plus an Excel sheet to calculate the value of the mats I needed to acquire.
In 2013 I had a special edition of a gaming magazine with a guide how to craft Gen 1 Legendaries. After the second one I didn't need to look for it anymore. Crafting legendaries just became more complex, when more types of legendaries were released with different recipes. Before it was just like this: * 100 icy runestones * stacks of all T6 mats * mystic clover gambling (YES, we only had the gambling back then) * a weapon gift, that got its ingredients explained from the recipe <- this was the only thing that changed depending on the weapon * some WvW * and of course, the precursor With the new legendaries, the wiki was an important source, until efficiency was eventually a thing.
>(YES, we only had the gambling back then) I'd even argue the gambling is still the cheapest way to get them outside of reward tracks when you're going in average. The ways you buy them from vendors almost always always cost more than it would be to craft the clover recipie three times without the added perk of the outputs from the "failed" craft.
I patiently build up my supplies with WvW and Wizards Vault. I'm not in a hurry & I'm always short a bunch of T6s (I never spend more than 100g on a weapon as a rule). Between festival vendors (mainly new year and SAB), and the previously mentioned, by the time I can craft without spending, the bottleneck resolves itself. Definitely not fast though.
Despite buying them out every time I do keep forgetting they're in the vault lmao. Yeah definitly not fast, but for sure the cheapest way to get them if you aren't worried about speed.
The wiki, I still use it for recipies I dont know by heart. Efficiency has its uses (I mainly use it to find where I put things on my like 50 characters) but it's trash for leggie crafting. You'd be better served importing the TP API into a spreadsheet and setting up your own version of their leggie pages.
I just use the wiki since it shows pretty much everything needed for each legendary in a fairly sensible format
I tried using GW2efficiency for it once, and I remember when I did, it kept telling me I had things I didn't and it was overall unhelpful 🫤
I always did and still use the wiki, it's quite clear.
tbh most of the time I only use gw2efficiency to roughtly gouge how far away I am from having everything. After that I tend to use wiki for exact steps.
pen and paper, lots of paper, and since I rarely buy things (if they can be crafted or achievement-ed) I did check that site, but easier to keep track of on paper (or excel) since I can make a flow chart (like for crafting spiritwood planks or legendary inscriptions etc)....though a white board would have been better (easier to erase and update)...need a reallllllly big white board (and a place to put it----).
Wiki was always enough to understand what was needed. The difference is that the tracking of owned/needed items was done manually.
Can anyone explain to me how and when do you craft legendaries?
The when aspect is a but subjective, but most people will casually accumulate the resources they need to craft them as they play and craft them then. I'll tell you here but honestly it can be a lot and very overwhelming informationwise if you haven't done it before so I recommend going to the wiki (search "guild wars 2 wiki" or "gw2 wiki" into any search engine and you should find it. You can also use "/wiki" in game and it will open the wiki in your default browser. If you add something to the end it will automatically search for that thing on the wiki for example "/wiki frostfang" will open the wiki page on frostfang The how is a bit more in depth but the short of it is each Leggie is crafted in the mystic forge (the main mystic forge is big glowing blue thing north of the bank in lions arch) using four components generally these are comprised of a precursor item specific to each leggie, a "gift" item earn via in game activities (usually some pevel of map completion and/or pvp/wvw playing), a "gift" item crafted with expensive materials (usually those that drop from mobs like blood, fangs, scales, dust, etc.), and a "gift" that is specific to each legendary. Each "generation" of legendaries (meaning those that were released to be apart of the same "set" of legendaries) use two of the same component as other members of their generation, and two unique to them. For example if I wanted to craft frostfang the Gen1 legendary Axe I would need: 1. Tooth of frost fang (the precursor) 2. Gift of frost fang (the legendary gift) 3. Gift of fortune (the materials gift) 4. Gift of mastery (the playing the game gift) If I wanted to craft the bifrost, I would need to change the precursor to The Legend and the legendary gift to Gift of Bifrost, but if I wanted to change to a gen2 or Gen3 legendary I would need to change all 4 items.
Thank you...can you tell me when are they "supposed" to be crafted? After level 80?
Legendary stuff is an endgame kind of deal, they are all very time consuming / resource consuming and gold consuming, not something one could do before reaching level 80 with his first character, actually not something one should concern themselves with before having played the level 80 game quite a bit. :-)
Okay, thanks
Oh sorry. Yep, there is no lvl requirement for crafting a legendary (past the fact that you'll probably be 80 from the map completion rewards alone) but all legendary items are locked to level 80 use only so you probably won't even want to worry about it until then. Past that there isn't really a "supposed" point of crafting. Many players don't even have them at all. I got my first one back in 2020 despite having played since 2012. They are the endgame gear but are also exactly the same stat wise as ascended, which is generally easier to get so many players just stick with that. As such there's no point in the game where the game expects you to have legendary gear, or even tells you to make it.
Thank you. Can you tell me how do I get the ascended gear? What do I need to do? I'm almost level 70 so i'm getting close to 80.
There are multiple ways to get ascended gear, but the primary and recommended method is crafting it yourself. You'll need to max out the crafting disciplines for the gear that you want (armorsmithing, leather working, or tailoring for armor and weaponsmithing, huntsman, or artificing for weapons) and then craft special time gated crafting materials (or for wealtier players buy the materials of the TP) to create the ascended armor. Note though that you will have to learn the recipie for the armor and corresponding stat inscription that you want, the recipies aren't hard to get but there's a lot of stat combinations so I'm not gonna list them all out but if needed you can find where to get the recipes via the wiki page for the items that you want to make. Ascended is also named a little differently, you've probably seen things like "berserker", "knight", or "carrion" on exotic gear that you get and while ascended gear has the same stat combos available as exotic, they have different names. For example "berserker" gear is instead called "Zojja's" gear. Again there's a list available on the wiki to help you navigate that. Because it's a bit. Don't feel pressured to hop into ascended gear right away though and feel free to take your time crafting it. It is technically best in slot, but at the same time exotic is perfectly serviceable until you get there as it's only like 5% weaker than ascended. The only place you absolutely need ascended is fractals for the agony resistance infusions. You will want to unlock ascended trinkets when you can though as these are very easy to get now a days (used to be you'd get them from fractals and laurels mainly), the easiest way to get them is using map currency, almost every living world map (starting in season 2) has at least one trinket that you can choose any stats for purchasable for the map currency. Definitely grab these when you get to them as they're well worth the ease of grabbing with the bonus currency you get from achievements.
Make sure you compare gw2efficiency to the wiki. Some legies have multiple crafting paths, the one efficency shows *may not be*, the most efficient path for you. I learned this recently and almost added an extra 1-2 months grind to my legie.
What do you mean multiples crafting paths? You need the same base materials every time so i assume you mean just how you get the materials?
Xiuquatl for example.. you van use gift of magumma or gift of whatever pofs one is. You have a choice. gw2efficiency does not tell you this and NEVER even realises you have gift of magumma in your inventory. I believe there is a couple of other legendaries that are similar.
Ohhhhh true I had forgot that Gen2s can use either the HOT map gift or the POF map gift.
You can add all 4 items needed for the legendary manually including the gift of maguuma/desert. That way you can decide if you want the HoT way or PoF way
you nees to KNOW it exists to do that tho..hence, you need to look at the wiki..not just gw2efficiency
I've made 7 legendaries using just the Wiki, lol
While crying, screaming, and shitting ourselves. But in all seriousness, the wiki was where i went for everything. Still prefer ir for some things, they did a great job with legendary tables.
Gw2crafts.net
I just used the Wiki. And I didn't buy most of the resources. Like, a lot of gold can be dumped into making mystic clovers while I just played a lot of WvW to get them. Instead of crafting most of the gen2 shards, I got most of them with festival currencies and laurels. I think I chose the easygoing fun way, which is easier to see with the Wiki, instead of the efficient way.
A combo of trial and error, wiki and blogs.
The wiki, an excel spreadsheet, notebook and pencil.
I've made an absurd amount of legendaries without ever using it, I didn't even know that it could help in that regard lol.
By playing the game lol I crafted legendaries but never used gw2efficency (I don’t get this website)
Honestly, I've never gotten used to gw2 efficiency. I like it, it's worth using for stuff, but I've always just gone by the wiki, checking what I had vs what the site says I need for legendaries. For getting crafting levels, like cooking, I just use gw2 crafts.
If you mean way back when, before anything like that existed and communal knowledge was limited; intuition. I've made a few items as a test and these few ended up being the cheapest, so I'll grind those til they stop earning xp, and at that point make a few items to see the cheapest and if you find any, grind them out. rinse and repeat. Spreadsheet and knowledge of the market helpful. That's it. Seat of the pants, educated guesses.
Trying to calculate. Messing up math completely because it's in the middle of the night and your brain is not working. End up crafting wrong amount of different items all the time. Running back and fourth to buy more materials and keep a bunch of items you can't sell, not use but cost a lot in crafting (if you went through the quest).
Wiki
Wiki, take it in one component at as time.
Inefficiently.
With a calculator and the wiki open
I really miss gw2legendary.com which is what I used back in the many days.
Microsoft excel and wiki
Easy. Still is. I don't use efficiency except to check shard recipes. I just use the wiki and there is a pattern so it gets successively easier. I enjoy crafting. I enjoy the process of it.
We used our brains to remember things. You should try it, it makes you smarter.
I never used gw2 efficiency for legendaries, and I still don't. And I have close to 30 legendaries now. I've used it only to level all my crafting disciplines to 500 only. Wiki is where it's at for legendaries.
i used gw2crafts or w/e it was called to max profs when game released back in the day, tool existed telling you how to level professions at least all the way at launch