To make a Gen 3 Aurene Legendary, you need:
1x Gift of Jade Mastery
1x Draconic Tribute
1x Legendary Weapon Gift
1x Precursor Weapon
Start with Gift of Jade Mastery, because you get lots of materials you need to craft other components. To create this, you need:
1x Gift of Cantha (100% EoD map completion)
100x Antique Summoning Stones (timegated, you can buy it off of the trading post)
1x Gift of the Dragon Empire
1x Bloodstone Shard (buy for 200 spirit shards, obtained from PvP or WvW reward tracks, hardest part of the legendary)
Gift of the Dragon Empire requires 100 Jade Runestones (looted from EoD jumping puzzles or bought from the TP), 200 Chunks of Pure Jade (mined from Dragon's End, or bought from TP for cheap), 100 Chunks of Ancient Ambergris (bought from a vendor in exchange for fish, or bought from TP), and 5 Blessings of the Jade Empress (complete meta event on all four EoD maps, or buy from TP for cheap to unlock the vendor. Then buy each Blessing for 500 Imperial Favors, so you need 2,500 favors total, which you get from doing EoD events).
Draconic Tribute:
1x Gift of Condensed Might
1x Gift of Condensed Magic
38 Mystic Clovers
5 Amalgamated Draconic Lodestone
Gift of Condensed Might requires:
1x Gift of Claws
1x Gift of Scales
1x Gift of Bones
1x Gift of Fangs
You need to buy the receipe for 10 gold each from a vendor near the mystic forge. Your need Artificer, Huntsman, or Weaponsmith crafting skill over level 400. For each gift, you need 100 tier 6 materials, 250 tier 5 mats, 50 tier 4 maters, 50 tiers 3 mats. Tier 3, 4, and 5 mats are bought for dirt cheap off of the TP. T6 mats can also be bought off of the TP but are more expensive. You can also buy T6 mats with laurels, and bags of T5 and T6 mats with Unbound Magic (LWS3 currency, buy in Ember Bay because it's cheaper) or Volatile Magic (LWS4).
Gift of Condensed Magic
1x Gift of Blood
1x Gift of Venom
1x Gift of Totems
1x Gift of Dust
Same process as Gift of Might
38x Mystic Clovers
Fastest (and most expensive) way is to craft them. Requires 1 Obsidian Shard, 1 Mystic Coin (VERY EXPENSIVE), 1 Glob of Ectoplasm, and 6 Philosophers Stones. Receipe has a 33% chance to give a Mystic Clover and a 66% chance to give you mats, so you might have to do this 114 times to get 38 clovers. If you plan to use this method, do it first because the mats might be useful for the other components.
The other way to get Mystic Clovers is from doing
PvP and WvW reward tracks:
Gift of Battle WvW reward track (gives 2 Mystic Clovers but you need to do this track anyway to get the Gift of Battle)
Drizzlewood Coast WvW and PvP tracks, which give a total 14 mystic clovers each, for a total of 28. Requires beating Icebrood Saga episode 3.
Bjora Marches WvW and PvP reward tracks give 11 mystic clovers, for a total of 22 Mystic Clovers if you do both. Requires beating Icebrood Saga episode 1.
Grothmar Valley WvW and PvP track, gives 9 clovers each, for a total of 18. Requires beating Icebrood Saga prologue.
Final chest of daily login reward
If you like doing Strikes or Fractals, you can also buy mystic clovers.
5 Amalgamated Draconic Lodestone
Can be bought off of the TP
You can also craft them, but it is more expensive then just buying the finished product off of the TP.
Legendary Weapon Gift
100x Mystic Runestones (bought for 1 gold each, 100 gold total, requires the last tier of the Tyria legendary crafting mastery)
1 Gift of the Mists
1 Gift of Research
1 Themed Poem
Gift of the Mists requires:
1 Gift of Glory (bought for 250 shards of glory, which you get buy PvPing or buy from TP)
1 Gift of War (buy with 250 memories of battle by WvWing or buy from TP)
1 Cube of Stabilized Dark Energy (need a crafting profession over level 500, requires 75 stabilizing Matrix bought on TP, and 1 Ball of Dark Energy, which you get buy salvaging ascended weapons or armor. Buy an ascended Salvage Kit from a PvP, WvW, or Fractal NPC, and salvage any useless armor you have).
1 Gift of Battle (from WvW reward track. Keep your participation tier up at 6. This will take about 8 hours. You can speed this up by 1. using your guild's 10% WvW reward track buff, 2. using a celebration or birthday booster for 10% more WvW reward track exp, 3. buying a 5% WvW reward track exp enrichment, and 4. heroic and black lion boosters).
Gift of Research
250x Thermocatalytic Reagents (bought for dirt cheap from a vendor)
500 Hydrocataltyic reagents (bought using research notes. You need 2,500 research notes total. Notes obtained by salvaging with your Jade Bot. One of the most efficient ways is to salvage potions bought off of the trading post. The potions must be at least level 25.).
250 exotic essences of luck (from salvaging unidentified gear, or buying globs of ectoplasm off of the TP and salvaging them. Then go to the artificing station and convert essences of luck into exotic luck).
Themed Poem requires:
10x Tales of Adventure (obtained by replaying EoD story missions daily or buy from TP for cheap)
10x Lamplighter's Badges (complete EoD maps or buy from TP)
1 Sheet of Premium Paper (buy from TP)
1x Tier 7 Weapon Part (you need crafting discipline level 500, huntsman for bows or weaponsmith for the rest).
Precursor weapon
You can do the Return to Living World meta achievement to get one for free, or buy from TP. If you craft it, you need to buy the receipe which costs 10x Tales of Adventure (obtained by replaying EoD story missions daily or buy from TP for cheap). You need crafting profession level 500.
If you craft it, you need:
100x Memories of Aurene (you get 5 each day from doing the Dragon's End meta event, and 5 each day from doing Dragonstorm, or buy from TP).
1x transcendent Crystal (10x globs of ectoplasm, bought from TP, 1x Eldritch Scroll bought for 50 Spirit Shards, 100x hydrocatalytic reagents
2x fortified precursor components (you can buy everything off of TP except Blessing of the Jade Empress. To unlock the vendor, you need 4 statuettes which you get from EoD meta events or you can buy them from TP for cheap. Then you buy each Blessing for 500 Imperial Favors each, which you get by doing EoD events.
6/30/2022 trading post calculations:
Gift of Jade Mastery
100x Antique Summoning Stones = 724.41 gold
100x Jade Runestones = 48.24 gold
200x Chunks of Pure Jade = 6.36 gold
100x Chunks of Ancient Ambergris = 312.64 gold
= 1,091.65 gold needed to craft gift of Jade Mastery
Draconic Tribute
80 gold to buy Gift of Might and Magic receipes
Gift of Condensed Might mats = 82 gold
Gift of Condsensed Magic mats = 96 gold
5x Amalgamated Draconic Lodestones = 52.50 gold
= 310.50 gold needed to craft Draconic Tribute
(NOTE: if you do not have the 38 mystic clovers required, then you might need to drop another 90 gold on buying 116 mystic coins to salvage mystic clovers)
Legendary Weapon Gift
100x Mystic Runestones = 100 gold
Gift of the Mists = 19 gold
Gift of Research = 4 gold
100 mystic runestones = 100 gold
10 Tales of Adventure = 2.74 gold
10 Lamplighters Badge = 48 gold
Other themed Poem mats = 10 gold
= 273.74 gold to buy Legendary Weapon Gift mats
Legendary precursor
100x Memories of Aurene = 64 gold
1x Transcendent Crystal = 8 gold
2x fortified precursor components = 20 gold
= 92 gold to buy precursor weapon mats
If the precursor itself is bought from the TP, is costs about 155 to 190 gold. You can do the Return to Living World meta achievement to get a precursor for free.
TOTAL = 1767.89 gold if you buy all mats you can off of the TP.
To buy the mats with real money, this requires 6,011 gems, which translates into $75.14.
Buying a finished Aurene legendary off of the AH costs about 3,100 gold, which is 10,540 gems, which is $131.75.
If you work a minimum wage job, you can make 233 gold per hour. It would take you 7.6 hours to earn the gold required to buy all of the mats, or 13.3 hours to buy the finished legendary. If you set aside one hour of your daily wage for GW2, then you can save enough money to buy the legendary weapon within 1 week (mats) or 2 weeks (finished legendary). This might sound ridiculous... until you consider that the Gift of Battle - just one component of the legendary - requires you to spend 8 hours of grinding in WvW, aka $120 of your time. In the time you spent grinding just for the Gift of Battle, you could have earned enough money to buy the finished legendary.
The vast majority of the gold cost is from the 100x Antique Summoning Stones (timegated, requires doing daily Dragon's End and Dragonstorm, or bought from the TP for 724.41 gold) and the
100x Chunks of Ancient Ambergris (timegated, daily fishing, or bought from TP for 312.64 gold).
The Gift of Condensed Might and the Gift of Condensed Magic is going to run you about 200 gold if you buy the T6 mats off of the TP. You need two gifts PER LEGENDARY ITEM! A full set of legendary armor can easily run you over 1,200+ gold in just buying vicious fangs and such. You should buy order T5 mats and then use material promotion to get T6 mats (
https://gw2efficiency.com/currencies/spirit-shards scroll down to "Fine crafting materials" to see which ones are worth it, generally everything except dust and claws). Saves a lot of gold in the long run. Make no mistake though, T6 mats will still be by far the biggest expense with legendaries. Promoting mats saves you a couple dozen gold per piece but it's still gonna be a fair bit in total.
Dont bother buying mats off the auction house, just farm Dragonfall for gold and earn volatile magic, then buy trophy boxes and then upgrade t5 mats youll inevitably get, and if you really want to do promotions for profit, look into lodestones.
If you want to make legendaries, you need to wait until you have finished most of the GW2 story before you can actually get them. LWS3 and LWS4 will help you get mats. PvP reward tracks unlocked in Icebrood Saga helps you get mystic clovers. Dragonfall helps you get gen 3 legendary weapon precursors. Dragonfall and Dragon's End gives you the timegated stones you need for the gen 3 weapons. And you can't start farming in old zones for Zhaitan or Mordremoth weapons until you already have the Aurene legendary. You can do the prep work for obtaining legendary weapons right away by doing WvW for the Gift of Battle, and PvP for tickets, as well as logging in every day to get spirit shards, tomes, and mystic clovers, but you will have to wait until you finish GW2 to get the legendary stuff.
Also, if you do use the TP, don't just buy straight off of it. Put in buy orders and wait a bit. You can get what you want for a lot cheaper.