Of Sigils and Chance

Today, I've been running something of an experiment, with the help of that mean little genie, Zomorros.

Zomorros will eat 4 major sigils, and there is a reported 20% chance he will spit up a random superior sigil in return. Alternatively, and most likely, he'll just spit up another random major sigil.

Some superior sigils sell for silly amounts on the Trading Post. You can probably see where I'm going with this. Bearing in mind that I knew from the outset that I was likely to make a loss, I decided to throw some gold at this for the sake of mild curiosity. And possibly science. Or something. That gold was just burning a hole in my pocket anyway.

So, some numbers. I brought 400 major sigils of random on the cheap from the trading post. This is 100 guaranteed chances at getting something nice and expensive. This set me back 10 gold, 12 silver 72 copper in total - I used buy orders, which is why this all took a while. I then spent far too many minutes of my life splitting up stacks in my inventory, since the Mystic Forge window won't let me do it there. Fail!

I fed Zomorros 4 major sigils at a time, 100 times, and here are my results:

That is 79 major sigils, and 21 superior sigils. Of course, I then fed all of the major sigils I'd picked up from this back into the Mystic Forge until I didn't have enough left. This gave me 2 more superior sigils  in the end.

I ended up with the following superior sigils:

Centaur Slaying
Conjuration
Demon Slaying
Demon Summoning
Destroyer Slayer x 2
Elemental Slaying
Energy x 2
Hydromancy x 2
Ice
Impact
Luck x 2
Paralyzation
Purity
Restoration
Sorrow x 2
Strength
Wrath
Undead Slaying

Based off this alone, I stand to make 12 gold, 40 silver, 94 copper from current trading post prices if I sell all of the Superior Runes at the lowest sell offer, while factoring in the 15% tax on sales. Statistically speaking, 125 shots at the Mystic Forge is not a decent enough sample size to determine if this is actually worth any investment as a money making scheme. Bear in mind that I checked the TP prices of the results before publishing this post - and the TP changes constantly!

I did profit off this. By 2 gold 28 silver 22 copper. Seems a lot of effort for that amount!

If you are going to try this, bear in mind that it is like playing a lottery. I got lucky this time, but without that Superior Rune of strength (which at the lowest sell offer was over 4 gold!), I would have made a loss here.

So, in conclusion - it's risky, but you *can* profit from this. If you want to buy in bulk for cheaper, you could always invest in minor runes and upgrade them to major in the same way.

Also, maybe I'm not so unlucky in Guild Wars as I thought! :)