Artisan Archive

Is it just me or do the prices for resources seem a little high? I realize that the game is still in its early stages and the economy needs to be stabilized, but here's what I found. I noticed that the base price for resources seems to be about 10 credits per unit. This is fine, but finished products seem to run for cheaper than the resources. For example, a personal mineral harvester costs (on the bazaar) around 1000-2000, or so I've seen. However, it requires 250 units of various metals in order to build, meaning I could have sold those base materials for 2500 and made more than had I spent the time constructing the harvester. Maybe crafters are charging less on purpose (i.e. - the need for usage exp). However, I think crafters need to be compensated for the time put into they put into the item, and not just for the resources. Otherwise, a newbie Artisan with Surveying 4 may end up making more money than a Master Weaponsmith. (At least it's a good incentive for me to venture into the great outdoors and gather resources myself)

It's now 2 months into the game and resources are still overpriced in my opinion.

I'm a Novice Chef, so I need things like wheat and berries among others. I've figured that my cost per unit of a relatively common resource (like wheat) is around 1 credit per unit if I harvest it myself. However, that same exact resource is being sold for 5 cr per unit.

I can turn around and sell my wheat (if there's a demand) for say 2 credits per unit and make adecent profit. I may not get rich that way, but it would make more money for me than being a chef.

I understand selling rare or high-quality resources for 5+ cr per unit, but not the mid-quality stuff I'm harvesting.

I guess it's time for me to become a farmer.

I am not seeing that large of a profit for materials, but that may just be my server. For anything other then rare resources most of the common items sell for 2.5 to 3 per unit. I wish I had the problem that you people are seeing. I am a up and coming weaponsmith and I have to sell half of my harvest to be able to afford to continue my learning.

Course I did hear someone comment in /say that Mos Eisley has the cheapest resources on the planet.

Dandain

Novice Weaponsmith

0 1 0 3

Well, my situation is that I can harvest far more than I can ever possibly use. I can easily take 50% of my harvest for myself (and that will last me a long time) and sell the other 50% for around 2 cr per unit and the net result will be a big chunch of FREE resources for me.

On the other hand, if I turned around and sold 100% of my harvest for 2cr per unit, I'd make a healthy profit (if I can sell that much).

Perhaps the problem is demand. If there isn't enough demand, then people have to raise their prices to pay for their harvesters. I'm just thinking that by LOWERING prices, demand will go up - I personally would rather run a few missions and pay 2-3 credits per unit rather than harvest them myself. But at 4-5 credits per unit (except for the rare and high-quality resources) it's much more efficient for me to harvest them myself.

Now, if I could buy these resources at 5cr/unitand turn around and turn them into foods that I could sell at 6cr/unit used, then I'd gladly pay the 5cr. Unfortunately, as a low-level chef, nobody would (or should) pay that much for my product. Either the buffs that low-level foods produce need to be raised or the cost of resources needs to come down otherwise I'll have to take a loss on my production.

TEN?!? I wish!

On Wanderhome most things are around 3/unit. Some rare, named materials go for more, like 5 per. Common stuff often goes for closer to 2-2.5

Since when a lower in demand increases the price of a product?

Well, i might speak of real life economy, and when there are too many units of a resource (call it steel, coffee, lemons) the price goes down because the market cant absorb all the units. If there are fewer units of a product, the price increase.

So whats the deal with increasing the price of a product because you dont sell it at your price? That you will not ever sell it. If you dont sell a thing, you need to lower the price.

And yes, the minerals are overpriced. I buy them at 3:1 but i have acquired now one chemical harvester and one mineral harvester. I will sell the minerals i dont need for 2:1 and i will make a lot of profit.

Almost everything in this game is overpriced. Ive seen people selling crates of powerups for as high as 5000, and i sell them for just 750. Now i will be able to lower the price to 600 or 500 per crate because i will reduce the cost by harvesting my own minerals and chemicals. Everyone tells me that i sell them cheap, but here are the costs of a crate of, say, muzzle powerups:

Minerals per 100 units: 1000
Cost of minerals (bought at a 3:1 rate): 3000
Cost of factory (at this time, no need to pay for reclaiming it): 450 (three hours of power and maintenance)
Aditional cost for handling, and schematic cost: 250
Total cost: 3700
Suggested retail price: 7500

Units per crate: 10
Price of each crate: 750

Now, i sell almost 50 crates of powerups per day, and i get a profit of 19000 credits per day. If i wasnt selling them as cheap, i wouldnt be getting such a profit. Today or tomorrow i will have three factories running, what it means that i will be earning 60k per day...

And a little advertisement: If you want powerups, just send me a mail ingame, or just a /tell. Also making crates of camp kits (up to high quality camp kits), crates of phecnacine darts and flash bombs.

David,

Melkart Tartessos,
Melkart Corp, Moenia, Eclipse

A solid resource price is based on the highest attribute divided by 100 rounded down to the nearest .5, then multiply by 1.25 if its a rare find like conductivity(999) or something.

90 = 1cr / unit

110 = 1cr / unit

230 = 2cr / unit

490 = 4.5cr / unit

780 = 7.5cr / unit

999 = 9.5cr / unit (11.5cr / rare unit)

1000 = 10cr / unit (12.5cr / rare unit)

ALSO the reason Materials are usually priced much higher than actual item costs (weapons, armor, deeds, etc..) is because crafters can make many items from few units to cover costs.

Example:

Crafting tools usually costs about25 materials to create, selling for about 200cr each.

a 1000 conductivity material will create a +15.00 effectiveness Tool, and will sell for about 2500cr each.

500 units of a 1000conductivity material will usually cost about 6-10k depending on the supplies.

Optimumly, Twenty +15 Tools can be made from 500 units of 1000conductivity materials.

Cost of Materials = 6-10k

Sale of 20 Tools = 50k

Profit = about 40k

Now, realise that its not that easy and i simplified the process somewhat. Selling +15 Tools for 2500cr might be easy or hard depending on the server, and the process isnt just limited to tools but can be applied to weapons and armor that cost upwards of 60 units of varied materials to create.

Generally though, a merchant's prices will optimumly land his profit margins in the +30% range (if no mistakes or criticals, all units sold, etc... etc...) and this is by no means a common occurance. Usually a merchant will be good to go if he nets a +10% profit so he can continue to buy the materials to build better and more varied stuff.

ANYWAYS... i hope that explains the high cost of Resources to you a little, realise that all conditions and variables change based on individual server's economy, but this is a good glimpse into the why of things.

You are completely wrong. I will explain the real cost of resources:

If at a resource shift Mineral A of 1000 conductivity is available, then that week the star will be 1000 conductivity resource selling as low as 2 credits per unit. In the next mineral shift, if the highest conductivity of a mineral, Mineral B,is 800, then that justify an increase of the price of Mineral A because its no longer available. So, Mineral B will be sold for 2:1, and Mineral A can be sold for 4:1 or 5:1. The next shift gives out a Mineral C with conductivity of 900; this makes Mineral B lower its price to 1.5:1 and makes Mineral A also low its price to 3:1 or 4:1... And if at a mineral shift theres no mineral that overcomes a conductivity of 500, then the Mineral A can be sold for as much as 7:1 or more.

So i would recommend stocking lots of Mineral A when they are low priced.

If in a week where Mineral A is available other people harvest a MineralD of conductivity 600, its their problem. Why harvest MineralD when you can harvest Mineral A? Its silly.

Its not a matter of rare or common minerals. Its just a matter of harvesting high quality resources, not every resource you can only because you can. When i craft things, i build them with the highest quality minerals i can buy for a reasonable price (commonly 3:1 or 2:1). So, theres no increase in the cost of my things because of the type of minerals (or chemicals or hides or whatever) i use on them. Today im crafting +28.8% powerups because ive run out of 950 overall quality minerals (that boost my poweups to +30.5% damage increase) and im not even thinking of lowering the price. The reason? The cost to making them is the same. Well, i have to say that if i would begin paying 4:1 for the resources, for sure i would be increasing the price of my things.

David

Melkart Tartessos
Melkart Corp, Moenia, Eclipse
Selling powerups, camp kits and scout and ranger bombs

I forgot something:

I wil be talking about why the things are sold two times its production cost. Im in the market of book publishing, and i know the costs and selling prices of them. Now, take a look at this numbers:

20% production cost

30% profit for the editorial and authors

20% profit for the distributor

30% profit for the store

This numbers are for the spanish market of role playing games. Normally, the cost of selling things is double its production cost. Now i can say that, if i would be extracting minerals in the game (their harvesting cost is .8 per unit),and with this numbers, i would have to sell them for 2 credits each to a distributor, the distributor would be selling the mineral for 2.8 credits and the user would be purchasing it for 4 credits.

Now, in this game theres no distributor and no store (yes, theres no store in the sense we use it in real life), so i can sell the mineral for 2:1 to anyone that wants to buy it. If you can harvest two types of minerals with different quality and they cost the same to harvest, why harvest the lower quality one?

Think about all of this.

Uhm, also, i can think of lowering a bit the prices and making people sell my products. Anyone want to sell my products? Just mail me and we'll talk about that. If so, i will stop selling them to people directly.

David

Melkart de Tartessos

Melkart Corp, Moenia, Eclipse

I have to disagree. Cost for harvesting is somewhatmore than .8cr for me, taking in to consideration time and costs of maintaining a power supply including maintainence fees for both the power supply and the harvesters. I'm new so I maybe doing something wrong but... I think that retail price of 2.25 per unit is a base price and should go up slightly based on demand. The reason why you might not harvest the higher resources is because there might not be any around to harvest. Especially if you want to keep all you're equipment within 3000m of each other. As it is, 3000m is wayyyyy to far to run around and maintain everything.

Well, i have a harvester at Lok, i powered and funded it propertly for running up to seven days, and ill go there when the time is over or a resource shift is made. And so, the cost of that chemicals im harvesting will be .8 per unit, if the harvested runs for seven days. The harvested has been placed in a 90% spot, so it is running at almost 100% capacity (its a chemical extractor, not a personal one).

So, to the quantity harvested i will add 6k in concept of travel tickets, so i will sell that resource for 2 per unit (if i need to). No more no less.

David

as a buyer i can think "YAY!"

as a seller, i want to destroy all your harvesters and poop on your lawn for undercutting myself and everyone else out there.

On Kett anything over 3 credits per unit is considered too much, regardless of quality. Unless it's rare or the buyer's just desperate.