The creation of Guild Wars 2 Charged Quartz Crystals is temporarily disabled, as developer ArenaNet addresses an exploit allowing players to repeatedly convert the crafting material an unlimited amount of times, avoiding daily reset limits. The material, which is used to make some of Guild Wars 2’s more valuable tradable items such as Skyscale food and Celestial gear, will be inaccessible outside of rare gift bags until the issue is resolved.
A Guild Wars 2 update on Tuesday September 26 included a bug fix that was “preventing players from communing with the Searing Cauldron hero challenge in Iron Marches.” Quite how this affected the place of power, or whether this particular note was the exact one responsible, is unclear, but the result was that players could use the Searing Cauldron location to charge unlimited stacks of Quartz Crystal, a feature that is typically heavily time-restricted in the MMORPG.
By default, you can use a claimed hero challenge spot to convert 25 Quartz Crystals into one Charged Quartz Crystal – but only at a rate of one single crystal per day. This heavy time restriction effectively imposes artificial limits on how quickly the gear and items crafted from Charged Quartz Crystals can be made, driving up their demand, and thus their prices, among the game’s community.
However, following the latest update, players found that they could repeatedly charge a stack of Quartz Crystal at the Searing Cauldron – according to reports, not only did this bypass the daily limit, it even functioned as a duplication exploit that allowed players to make thousands of the otherwise-restricted currency.
“We are temporarily disabling the ability to transform Quartz into Charged Quartz Crystals while we address an issue,” ArenaNet posts to its Guild Wars 2 forums. “We’ll update once we have addressed the issue and re-enabled this content.” In the meantime, if you’re really, really desperate, you can find them in Wintersday Gifts and Trick or Treat Bags, if you happen to have any spares lying around.
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