Guild Wars 2: The Molten Alliance Mining Pick is not a deal

ArenaNet has a special, limited-time offer for you. For 800 gems you can buy The Molten Alliance Mining Pick, a mining pick that never wears out. Isn’t that an awesome deal?! You better get one, and you better get one, soon, because it’s a limited-time offer.

Or should you?

The Molten Alliance Mining Pick has unlimited uses. Yeah, that’s awfully nice. But let’s take a closer look at this.

The current exchange rate for 100 gems, as of April 18, was just about 2 gold 75 silver, so this mining pick would cost you just about 22 gold (8 * 2.75).

Keep in mind the Molten Alliance Mining Pick has the same efficiency as the Orichalcum Mining Pick you can buy in-game for 4 silver. You know where this is going, don’t you? For 1 gold, you can buy 25 Orichalcum Mining Picks and for the current price of a Molten Alliance Mining Pick you can buy 550 Orichalcum Mining Picks. That’s a freak load of mining picks.

Are you really going to use that many mining picks, ever?? Chances are if you’re like most players you might go through one a week. But let’s be liberal and assume you use 2 a week. Even at that rate, you’d only use 104 of the Orichalcum Mining Picks in a year. You’d need to play GW2 consistently for more than 5 years before the Molten Alliance Mining Pick begins to be worth the cost!

Unless you’re the kind of person who’s constantly harvesting nodes, the Molten Alliance Mining Pick is a deal that’s not a deal. Go spend your gems on a Quaggan backpack.