Chef Archive

Searching the Chef forum is a dismal failure, so I want to spawn another pricing guilde and discussion.

I am a new Master Artisan and will be going Chef, and am doing most of my work in foods and drink. My first ever factory run of anything was of 5-use bofa treats I hawked as pet food crates. Decent buff too, can't recall it now. Anyway, by running around shouting I sold the run at 18k a crate, and felt at the time this was fair.. and it obviously sold.

But further discussion with folks who are not chetfs btw, I find I may have overblown the price.

Which makes me feel bad, cuz although it sold, I would rather sell to everyone and make em happy with the deal than sell to [perhaps] desperate folks who'll buy whatever is in reach and not care about price [or are just millionares, heheh].

I went not my resources per, but with the maximum buff stat amount. I did times well also but simply discarded it. Should I have in fact gone by # of resources?

I want to be known as a good chef, so I want to do this right, and make a profit as well. I do alot of freebies as casual handouts and give them away to close associates and guildmates. But I want to keep solvent also; how do I strike a good medium? Any responses & discussion appreciated.

The current pricing guide above has some flaws, ie, it is based on usage. If one chooses to put all points into experimentation, the usage is high, the price is high. The current pricing guide does not take into account factory time, nor the time to make subcomponents such as dough, carbosyrup, pu36, etc.

Being a Math Teacher, (dont hate me yet), I spent a few hours comparing the Ralloszek list, and my current pricing, and came up with a Formula, (ack.. formulas in a game), that seems to cover it all. So first, a little background in how I devised it, then a few examples as to how it works.

As a Master Chef, runninga Cantina, 6 factories, 5 vendors, time spent to locate quality materials becomes very rare. One of two things happens...either others mine for you (5cr per) or you buy on bazaar (10cr per).

For most components, I used a value between 3 and 10 credits per unit, depending on availability ON MY Server. The formula roughly works like this... Take the quantity of the material used (total material) times 3 (cost per unit) times 333 (how many you can make in a factory day -avg) plus 2400 (a factory day cost) all divided by 333 to get a per unit price.

Saving you some time, and adjusting for materials, I decided the following are accurate per item costs...

Pastabread 210 ea

Carbosyrup 40 ea

A pu36 410 ea

sunrise 130 ea

soypro 105 ea

dough 40 ea

Next, I used the following 'Level' adjustments, based on the tier block one gets the recipe.

Novice 5

tier I 10

tier II 15

tier III 20

tier IV25

Master 30

Combining the component pricing, with the 'level' factor, the following formula 'WORKS', accounting for factory time, all materials, all subcomponents. What you get is a PER CRATE Price.. not

The current pricing guide above has some flaws, ie, it is based on usage. If one chooses to put all points into experimentation, the usage is high, the price is high. The current pricing guide does not take into account factory time, nor the time to make subcomponents such as dough, carbosyrup, pu36, etc.

Being a Math Teacher, (dont hate me yet), I spent a few hours comparing the Ralloszek list, and my current pricing, and came up with a Formula, (ack.. formulas in a game), that seems to cover it all. So first, a little background in how I devised it, then a few examples as to how it works.

As a Master Chef, runninga Cantina, 6 factories, 5 vendors, time spent to locate quality materials becomes very rare. One of two things happens...either others mine for you (5cr per) or you buy on bazaar (10cr per).

For most components, I used a value between 3 and 10 credits per unit, depending on availability ON MY Server. The formula roughly works like this... Take the quantity of the material used (total material) times 3 (cost per unit) times 333 (how many you can make in a factory day -avg) plus 2400 (a factory day cost) all divided by 333 to get a per unit price.

Saving you some time, and adjusting for materials, I decided the following are accurate per item costs...

Pastabread 210 ea Carbosyrup 40 ea A pu36 410 ea

sunrise 130 ea soypro 105 ea dough 40 ea

Next, I used the following 'Level' adjustments, based on the tier block one gets the recipe.

Novice 5 tier I 10 tier II 15

tier III 20 tier IV25 Master 30

Combining the component pricing, with the 'level' factor, the following formula 'WORKS', accounting for factory time, all materials, all subcomponents. What you get is a PER CRATE Price.. not a per use price.

Food Pricing

((material * level) + component) *40 +2400 = CRATE PRICE

Using this guide

fishnak = 83,200 per crate B o H = 134.400 per crate Sunburns = 24,800 per crate

Pate = 35,600 per crate Ice Blaster = 53,200 Durindfire = 42,800 per crate

sorry bout triple post.. it blinked during typing, jumped to top of page before i was finished (was too long) so i edited to make it fit, and poof.. triple post

The pricing per charge isn't perfect, I agree, and I think I'm losing profits as I've just started out.

I'd like to see the formula incorporate the value and duration of the buff though. Without that you're selling low end buffs for the same as high end buffs.

BEs don't sell stronger pet stims for the same price as lower pet stims. Docs don't do it with stims for players.

We need to account for the "power" (buff and duration) in our formula somehow in addition to what you've done.

I price like this. I test a couple out first by making singles. Generally, I spread my experimentation points over quantity and quality (I don't do anything in the area of duration generally). I then see how many uses I get. Then I take the number of units of resources I need and multiply it by 15. Many resources cost 10 credits per unit to buy, some less, but I think earning 15credits per unit of resources is reasonable. I then divide that number by the average number of uses I get. That gets me a price per charge based roughly on a 15 credit per resource unit price. I then adjust up or down from there based on the market, the availability of the resources and their quality.

Wow, interesting.

I had to crab the credits per resource out of the blue because I am basically self-sufficient with components; I don't buy, I harvest and brew my own. So general power, and occasionally duration, were my only guides.

I'm curious Mokai, as you developed, did you rise in boxes evenly [grab all tier I then go for tier II] or in some random order? Since I am still grinding for Novice, I am still stuck in Artisan's recipies.

Bloody no edit feature

Also, I myself only put points into uses until I rise one or two above standard, then dump the rest into the other two. How much do you folks place into usage and how important does it appear to be for popularity of a particular crate run? I try to max the buff and duration, rather than create a super-#use item, generally.

Pricing is indeed a tough issue...

Currently i tend to use a resource-based costing with a few fudge factors thrown in for things like popularity (if something continually is sold out, raise the price a bit to see what the market can bear) or for effectiveness (perhaps one batch is awesome and the next not so great, it doesn't make sense to price them both the same on the same vendor at the same time) or even for my time If I'm running around a ton trying to get some special resource, then I may charge more).

I like per charge pricing...but Im always very cautious about my buff quality. Ive set mins on my buff quality...I experiment that to where I want it first and foremost. Then if I need to hit duration a little I will and then quantity comes last. That makes the amount of charges be a direct reflection of how good my resources are instead of the buff as the buff is usuallyabout the same. It also ensures that my customers know if they come to my shop, they will always get a certain quality of buff. I never ever set out to just soup up charges..even my sunburns I soup up buff/time then charges.

I also like pricing per charge for a couple of other reasons. Since I aim to make all of my buffs be at the same level, as I consumer I would then compare usage next. I would frankly feel a bit cheated if my friend went into a shop and bought a +586 fishak crate that had 275 usages for 70k and a few minutes later I went in and bought a +586 fishak crate with 200 uses and I had to pay the same amount. Whena person comes into my shop, they know that every dose of +586 fishak will cost them 300 credits, whether they buy 100 uses or 200 uses or 300 uses. They dont have to hope that they hit me up at a time when I had the best resources around to feel like they got a better deal. Its constant. In addition to that, when I make schematics and I get those lousy failures...I shovel all my points into buff to get it what it normally would be and I may end up putting say a2 charge sunburn for 600 credits. (Obviously not something I aim to do but still happens) Pricing per charge and regulating the buff amount allows me the flexibility to still be able to sell those not the best in the world combines that alot of people use for personal use or destroy and pretend they didnt make. Also, by selling these bad combines that really end up as good quality but low usage (when I do them) allows people to buy them that normally may not be willing to spend that much money or may not have enough money to buy them.. Often times, if people try it, they like it...you just have to get it in their mouths at a time when they need it. So the low charge versions work well for "curious" customers.

I guess the sum of my windbag post is that price per charge is not a bad thing as long as the person doing it takes the responsibility of making sure they put out a good product first. ANY price scheme can be abused. Just as people *could* experiment only for charges, people could also charge 50 cpu, or 5k for a stack of anything, or charge 5 cpu and not care about resources...there are abuses that can happen inalmost anyway of pricing. But if you want to have a successful business, then you are likely not going to participate in the abuses irregardless of which scheme you use to price.

When I first opened my shop I had a formula I used to figure price...it went something like this:

10 credits per charge, 10 credits per 25 points of buff to the first stat, 15 credits per 25 points of buff to each additional stat, +10 credits if it was a drink (I dont recall why lol) and -5 credits if there was a negative modifier. I had it set up on an excel spreadsheet so I could enter the stats and it would spit the price back at me. At this point I was still in domestic arts but the formula worked pretty darn good for me and I felt it was fair as it directly reflected what I made.. But what happened is I spent all my time pricing my stuff instead of making my stuff. Even with the spreadsheet calculating for me, it was just too complicated. And goodness knows if someone ever wanted a quote...hehe how would I know what to quote them ahead of time. I really dont know if the chef food would fit into this formula or if it really was doomed to just be a domestic arts tool, I had to ditch this and go for the per charge (even tho I was initially against per charge)because this way ate up way too much of my time and I wasnt comfortable selling based on resources or a set price because it just didnt seem fair to customers who got a lesser batch.

All in all, pricing per charge has worked well for me. I get paid more when I have exceptional resources and I get paid less when my resources arent as good. My buffs generally have a certain level of consistancy so people know what to expect when they come in to my shop. (there are some times when I cant get the buff to my set level especially with pate since domestic meat is so rare, sometimes I have to make it with crappy meat and it may not make what I want. In this case I max the buff out tho and will often boost duration to make up for it but generally I can usually reach my buff goal)

oh and regarding the first post I sell bofas for petfood too...I charge 25 credits / charge which makes my crates usually work out to be 5625 each.

I use bofas for pet food. Unfortunately, pet food doesn't sell on our server. I guess our pets aren't hungry.

I run into some per crate issues. My goal is to have the most powerful stuff on my server, so the quantity suffers...I only experiment to get uses up to a 4 use minimum, and pump the rest into power and duration. Also, it was a pain to price drinks when I had multiple runs and didn't remember how many charges each run had (since you need to pull it from a crate to get the uses).

For simplicity in bookkeeping, I use a per crate method. I have now determined acceptable minimum duration/power/uses for each item, and I make them to that degree. It leads to a clean, flat price. It has become easier now that I have a reliable resource inventory. I make sure my resources are 750+ across the board, lean better resources for final assemblies, and I make a fairly consistent product.

My prices range from 40-60k, with exceptions being my pet food (Kreetle Krunch!) at 5k and my BoH at 100k.

I use various sliding scales for my hunters/wholesellers/big customers, but above is my basic scheme.