Every Currency in Guild Wars 2 Ranked

Gold, gems, spirit shards, and astral acclaim rank as the four most valuable currencies in Guild Wars 2, while most map-specific tokens and one-off event currencies fall to the bottom once their content is finished.

The team here at MetaForge cross-checked every currency below against its current in-game function and the most recent official patch notes, since several currencies changed significantly following Guild Wars 2’s early 2026 raid system update.

Which Guild Wars 2 Currencies are Worth Keeping?

Guild Wars 2 has accumulated dozens of wallet currencies across a decade of expansions, and most of them matter only to a specific slice of the playerbase. The table below groups every currency covered in this guide into the tiers used throughout, so you can jump straight to the section that matches what’s sitting in your wallet.

Essential Currencies You Need no Matter How You Play

These four currencies are worth prioritizing before anything else in this guide, regardless of build or game mode.

• Gold: The universal currency for trading post purchases, waypoint travel, and crafting. Most other currencies exist as detours to eventually get you more gold.
• Gems: The premium currency used in the Gem Store for character slots, bag slot expansions, and cosmetics. You can buy gems with real money, but you can also earn them by converting gold or from achievement point rewards, so new players are not locked out of the Gem Store.
• Spirit shards: Earned as random loot or automatically once a character hits level 80 and caps out experience gain. They feed the Mystic Forge and several legendary crafting recipes, which makes them relevant to almost every long-term goal in the game.
• Astral acclaim: The currency earned through the Wizard’s Vault, Guild Wars 2’s daily, weekly, and seasonal reward system. Astral acclaim cannot be purchased with gems or real money, and rewards are chosen from a shop rather than unlocked automatically.

Check the Wizard’s Vault each time you log in, since daily and weekly astral acclaim objectives don’t carry over once they reset.

Currencies With the Best Gold Conversion

These currencies are not essential, but converting them into gold is close to a guaranteed good outcome unless you specifically need what they buy. Treat them as a secondary gold-farming layer rather than a collection goal.

• Laurels: Earned through the Wizard’s Vault and select achievement rewards, then spent at laurel merchants for ascended gear components or gold-adjacent goods.
• Imperial Favor: Earned across End of Dragons maps and used to craft Generation 3 legendary weapons, with leftover favor converting cleanly into other useful materials.
• Magnetite Shards: Earned from raid encounters, including the encounters formerly known as Strike Missions. ArenaNet’s raid system update merged the former Prophet Shards currency into magnetite shards and set the weekly cap at 800, so reward totals are now consistent across raid bosses of the same difficulty.
• Gaeting Crystals: Now function as a general raid encounter currency alongside magnetite shards, rather than being tied to one specific raid wing as before the update.
• Unbound Magic: A Living World Season 3 map currency that converts to gold at a solid rate, though not as efficiently as volatile magic.
• Volatile Magic: A Living World Season 4 map currency spent at dedicated vendors, including a trophy shipment vendor that converts it directly into sellable goods.
• Tyrian Defense Seals: Earned from Dragon Response Missions and the Dragonstorm meta event, then spent on supply boxes that resell for a meaningful profit.
• Tales of Dungeon Delving: Earned by completing dungeons in core Tyria, with a fast farm speed that makes the gold conversion rate more attractive than the currency’s other uses.

Since several of these currencies come from timed meta events, checking Event Timers before you commit to a farming session helps convert your play time into currency more efficiently. Route any of these currencies toward their gold-conversion vendor as soon as you’re not actively saving them for a specific reward.

Currencies That Depend on Your Playstyle

This is the largest and most inconsistent group of currencies in the game, since their value depends entirely on whether you regularly play the content that produces them.

• Ancient coins: Sourced from older expansion content and mainly useful for legacy skins, with a farm rate that most players find slow relative to the reward.
• Ascended Shards of Glory: Earned through ranked PvP and spent on ascended or legendary PvP gear, which makes them far more valuable to competitive players than to open-world players.
• Badges of Honor: Earned almost exclusively from World versus World, with utility and food purchases that reward players who already spend significant time on WvW maps.
• Fractal Relics and Pristine Fractal Relics: Earned inside Fractals of the Mists, with pristine relics specifically used to purchase ascended rings and daily fractal keys.
• Rift Essences: Earned from rift hunting and convergence events, useful both for gold conversion and for crafting newer legendary items and open-world legendary armor.
• Legendary Insights: Earned from raid encounters, including the encounters formerly known as Strike Missions. They’re used to craft Perfected Envoy legendary armor and the Coalescence legendary ring, so their value rises sharply if raiding is part of your routine.
• Testimonies of Heroics: Earned through World versus World and spent on hero point unlocks and relics that would otherwise require PvE content, which makes them most relevant to WvW-focused players working toward PvE unlocks.
• Ursus Oblige: Sourced from Janthir Wilds content and useful for gold conversion, though the associated farm has a reputation for being slower than other options in this tier.
• Transmutation Charges: Earned from reward tracks, map completion, and the Gem Store, then spent to change equipment appearance without altering stats. Following the Fashion Templates update, appearance changes now happen through the Fashion tab in the Hero panel rather than the older Wardrobe and Outfit menus.

Farm the currencies tied to game modes you already play regularly, and leave the rest alone until your routine changes.

Currencies Worth Keeping Only for Legendary Crafting

These currencies have almost no independent value. Their entire purpose is feeding a specific legendary weapon, armor piece, or trinket recipe, so the right move is usually to farm them only once you’ve picked a legendary to chase.

• Provisioner tokens: Come from Path of Fire content and are used almost exclusively in Generation 2 legendary weapon crafting.
• PvP league tickets: Earned through ranked PvP seasons and spent primarily on ascended or legendary PvP items, with a secondary gold-conversion option for players who don’t need the gear.
• Research notes: Earned by salvaging specific crafted items with a Research Kit, then spent almost entirely on newer legendary crafting recipes.
• WvW skirmish claim tickets: Heavily time-gated and earned through World versus World skirmish chests and objective captures, required for any World versus World-specific legendary.
• Unusual coins: Sourced from newer expansion maps and mainly relevant to players hunting the latest legendary items or map-specific skins.

Hold off on farming these until you’ve picked a specific legendary to build, then track only the currencies that recipe actually requires.

Map-locked Currencies and Keys You can Stop Farming After Completion

Every expansion introduces map-specific currencies and matching keys, and almost all of them stop mattering the moment you finish that map’s collections. Common examples include airship parts, elegy mosaics, Canach coins, and festival tokens, along with their matching keys, such as bandit chest keys and exalted keys.

These currencies convert to gold at a low rate and mostly unlock skins tied to their specific map, so once map completion, meta achievements, and any skins you want are done, there’s rarely a reason to keep farming them.

If your wallet is cluttered with old map currencies from expansions you’ve already finished, the Inventory Cleanup tool sorts your bags and storage into what to keep, sell, or trash. Results are based on your own account data, so treat its recommendations as a starting point rather than a guaranteed outcome for every character.

Currencies to Stop Farming Entirely

A small group of currencies offer close to nothing once you account for the time required to farm them. Unless you have a specific reason tied to your own goals, none of these are worth prioritizing.

• Jade slivers: Convertible to gold, but generally outperformed by other conversion methods available through the in-game trading chatbot.
• Guild commendations: Technically convert to gold, but the guild missions required to earn them cost more time than the resulting gold is worth for most players.
• Unstable fractal essences: Mainly function as kill proof for challenge mote fractal bosses, with no meaningful gold value or broader use case.
• Racing medallions: Tied to golem racing activities and mostly redeemable for cosmetic skins with no other practical use.
• PvP tournament vouchers: A niche reward from PvP tournaments, mostly exchanged for minor cosmetics with limited gold value.

Skip these entirely unless a specific skin or achievement pulls you toward them, and put that farming time into a currency covered earlier in this guide instead.

What this Means for Your Wallet Going Forward

Start by making sure your gold, gems, spirit shards, and astral acclaim are never neglected, then check which game-mode-dependent currencies actually match your routine before committing farming time to them.

From here, audit your own wallet against the tiers above, clear out anything sitting in the map-locked or low-value categories, and point any freed-up farming time toward whatever comes next, whether that’s a legendary recipe, a raid encounter, or your next map completion.

FAQs

Should a new player prioritize earning gold or gems first?

New players should prioritize gold first, since it covers immediate needs like waypoint travel, crafting materials, and trading post purchases in Guild Wars 2. Gems become more useful once a player has spare gold to convert or is saving for a Gem Store item, such as a bag slot expansion.

Are Guild Wars 2 currencies shared across every character on my account, or tied to one character?

Guild Wars 2 currencies are shared across an entire account rather than tied to individual characters, so gold, gems, karma, and every other wallet currency stay available to any character. Players never need to transfer currency between characters manually, since earning and spending both draw from the same account-wide wallet.

What’s the most efficient way to convert several small Guild Wars 2 currency stacks into gold at once?

There is no single vendor that converts every Guild Wars 2 currency into gold at once, so the fastest method is working through each currency’s dedicated vendor or recipe individually. Prioritizing currencies with strong, established gold-conversion vendors first avoids wasted trips to vendors that offer little practical value.

Can Guild Wars 2 wallet currencies be traded, gifted, or sold on the trading post?

Guild Wars 2 wallet currencies are account-bound and cannot be traded, gifted, or listed on the trading post, unlike physical items and crafting materials. Converting a wallet currency into something tradeable requires spending it first at its specific vendor or crafting recipe, since the currency never becomes a tradeable item.

What happens to Wizard’s Vault rewards a player doesn’t buy before the season changes?

Cosmetic Wizard’s Vault rewards move into a legacy section of the shop once a new season begins, rather than disappearing, though Guild Wars 2’s official Wizard’s Vault support documentation confirms they return at a higher astral acclaim price. Non-cosmetic seasonal rewards are not guaranteed to reappear once a season ends.

Other Useful Links and Guides:

• Trading Post
• Guild Wars 2: Best Class for Everything
• How Much Gold Does WvW Make in Guild Wars 2?
• Guild Wars 2 New Player Tips: The Complete Beginner’s Guide