Wintersday Overview

Snowman and an asura carrying presents Guild Wars 2 wintersday loading screen

Wintersday is the GW2 seasonal winter festival. Get an overview of Wintersday, including pointers on how to earn gold and farm karma during Wintersday.

Wintersday Karma

The theme of Wintersday is karma. Many events exist solely to earn karma, including the Wintersday race in Divinity’s Reach, and giving presents to orphans. Click here to read more about earning karma from oprhans at Wintersday.

Use TacO for Wintersday

We highly recommend using the TacO overlay for Wintersday. TacO has a set of markers for Wintersday orphans in Divinity’s Reach. Instead of having a YouTube guide open on your phone or second monitor, use TacO!

For more information about TacO, including step-by-step instructions for installing and using it, see our TacO guide.

Farming Gifts: Make Money During Wintersday

The most common way to earn gold during Wintersday is to farm and sell Wintersday Gifts.

If you enjoy jumping puzzles, the Wintersday jumping puzzle is an efficient way to farm Wintersday Gifts. However, this jumping puzzle is notoriously difficult. In recent years ArenaNet has split the puzzle into three difficulty modes, which makes it more accessible to new users. It’s still damn hard, though.

Bell Choir is the second-easiest way to earn presents for farming gold during Wintersday. For tips, tricks, and winning strategies, see our Bell Choir Strategy Guide.

Open or Sell Wintersday Gifts?

We recommend you sell Wintersday Gifts instead of opening them. On average over time, you will earn more money by selling the Gifts instead of opening them and selling their contents.

Expensive Wintersday Items

Many players want to know, what am I looking for from this event? What are the random drops that are worth a lot of gold?

Snow Diamonds

Snow Diamonds are a random drop from Wintersday gifts and event rewards. They sell for about 6 gold on the Trading Post.

You can exchange Snow Diamonds for minis and other Wintersday items from the vendors. However, it’s more efficient to sell your Snow Diamonds on the Trading Post, then use the money to buy what you want from the Trading Post.

Snow Diamond Infusion

This is the most expensive Wintersday drop. The Snow Diamond Infusion drops from Wintersday Gifts, and sells for 250-500 gold on the Trading Post. This infusion gives your character a diamond texture aura and an icy frost look.

Wintersday Weapon Skins

Open 1000 Wintersday Gifts to earn a Rimed Verdant weapon skin. These skins can also drop from Wintersday Gifts. You can buy the skins on the Trading Post, as well.

Get a Star of Gratitude and Home Instance Wintersday Gift Tree

Wintersday is the only time of year when you can earn the Star of Gratitude (which eats Empyreal Fragments and exchanges them for random items) and the Wintersday Gift Tree for your home instance.

Best of all, you don’t have to spend any gold or Karma for these items. They are rewards for completing the For the Children! achievement.

Read our guide to learn more about how to get these items.

Wintersday Achievements

There is a whole set of separate Wintersday achievements which you can only complete during the Wintersday festival. See this handy MetaBattle guide for more details.

Winter’s Presence

Winter’s Presence is an exotic shoulder item which makes it look like snow is falling around your character. You can only unlock Winter’s Presence during Wintersday, by completing the Winter’s Presence achievement.

To complete the achievement, you must:

  • Craft three items in the Mystic Forge: Essence of Mischief, Essence of Snowfall, and Magnanimous Obsidian Crystal.
  • Complete Bell Choir 3 times.
  • Complete Snowball Mayhem 3 times.
  • Complete the Winter Wonderland jumping puzzle 3 times.
  • Complete 30 rounds of Toypocalypse.
  • Defeat Claw of Jormag 3 times during Wintersday.
  • Drink 10,000 Wintersday drinks.

Buy Tyrian Exchange Vouchers

You can buy Tyrian Exchange Vouchers during Wintersday from the Wintersday Trader. Click here to learn more about Tyrian Exchange Vouchers.

Check out all our Wintersday articles for full coverage of this seasonal event.

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