Scout Archive

So you wanna sell hide/bone on the bazaar or to the friendly neighborhood crafters for lots of money but no one seems to want that those 3 batches of 500 units of 912 OQ leathery hide you have on the bazaar for 10cr/u. Worse yet you pull the sale and drop the price to 7cr/u...then 5cr/u...finally you drop it to 3cr/u and it sells.

What's wrong?

Why don't the Artisans want your 912 OQ hide when the Scout guide says I should get almost 10cr/u for hide that good.

Well...the trick is...it ain't about OQ.

Let me repeat that...in uppercase & bold just to make sure the point is driven home:

IT AIN'T ABOUT OQ!!!

I was speaking with another Scout in /tell's last night about this but didn't get into too much detail, but for about 2 weeks I've been working on an Artisan grind and noticed that OQ didn't make a big different in ANY resources I was using whether it was organic or mineral...chemical resources seemed like they gave better results for high OQ, but not the others ESPECIALLY HIDE when I was working on some Bone Armor.

Why is that?

Let me tell you a little story.

I bought a droid. A cute little R4 droid with a Weapon/Droid/General Crafting module (best 7000cr I've ever spent in the game -- thanks Calis).

I started experimenting on different materials in my Artisan grind.

First was with CDEF blasters. I realized that with metals quality is not determined by OQ but rather CONDUCTIVITY. I have CDEF guns that normally can be found on the Bazaar with a Min/Max damage of 19/38 that I've experimented up to 24/52 and after powerups, which also are greatly affected by conductivity, bumps the max Damage up over 60.

Funny thing is that in the CDEF Schematics, Conductivity is listed in the experimentation values so that lead me to my next find.

I experimented with different hides for bone armor as well and the OQ didn't seem to make a difference...in one cast I had some high OQ hide (800 something IIRC) that actually gave WORSE results than some 400 OQ hide.

I had reached one of those "What the hell?" points. I suddenly realized why some of my high OQ hide didn't sell, it was because OQ isn't the primary attribute for crafters.

In the case of hide, its the MALLEABILITY!!!!!!

Let me repeat that in bold and caps to drive the point home:

IN THE CASE OF HIDE, ITS THE MALLEABILITY!!!!!!

Through some serious tests using Bone Armor I've discovered that hide with higher Malleability, regardless of the OQ. High Malleability + higher OQ hides gave the best results, but low Malleability hide ALWAYS gave poor results no matter what the OQ.

So at least in the case of Hide...MALLEABILITY is the key.

And as with the CDEF blasters, what gave me my biggest clue was that in the bone armor schematics themselves. Malleability is listed in the experimentation stats. OQ appears to be secondary in nearly all aspects of experimentation. My THEORY is that Malleability gives crafted items their quality and better statistics, but the OQ gives them more durability. That's only a running theory I haven't tested thoroughly yet, but looks to be the case.

So here's the deal, the Scouts now have an "IN" with the crafters. They've been keeping the information as to what they REALLY need to themselves. Yes I'm working on becoming a crafter but I'll always be a Scout so I'm passing the following advice along to help everyone:

1) Base your prices on Malleability first, OQ second with HIDE. Still go with OQ for Bone (yes it has a Malleability rating but I haven't experimented fully with that yet). For the most part look at Malleability. High Malleability makes better items regardless of the OQ, but if you stumble across some high Mall/high OQ hide, nudge the price up a bit because that's good stuff.

2) Change your hunting patterns. Harvest only the QUALITY parts of your animals. For example on Naboo: Capper Spineflaps currently High Malleability hide (800 or so as of last night)...so don't harvest meat or bone, get their hide. Nunas have high OQ avian bone but low malleability leathery hide, so get the bone and ignore the others. Ikopis give you low malleability hide and bone, they're worthless to crafters so harvest the meat and sell it for 3-5cr/u for the BEs and Medics. BEs are normally HAPPY to pay you 5cr/u for ANY meat.

Now as for exact prices? Who knows...its probably going to vary from city to city/server to server. Here's what I'm going to try for Hide based on Malleability:

900+: 7-9cr/u
800-899: 5/6cr/u
0-799: 3/4cr/u

If I find any 900+/900+ malleability/OQ hide I'm DEFINATELY making it a 10cr/u item.

Now if you want some quick cash I'd recommend running out and hunting easy animals like Chubas that have low Malleability hide and no bones and get a whole bunch of lousy quality hide and selling it on the bazaar for 3 cr/u for the artisan grinders who are just crafting for XP, not for quality. Garbage hide like that is disposable and usually sells in 100-500 unit chunks within 24 hours.

So remember next time you're hunting, when it comes to hide...the Malleability is FAR more important than OQ for crafters. Price accordingly when selling.

Hi,

Thanks for the insight. Just to add my two creds worth.....

My understanding of the OQis thatit affects all the other stats as a kind of multiplier. So if the OQ is high, it will give you a higher percentage "effect" from the other stats, such as malleability. If the OQ is high, for example, but the mall. is very low - then high OQ X low Mall. still gives a low mall (i.e. it doesnt matter how high the OQ is, if the mall. is poor, and what you need is good mall. properties). Using your findings, a mid level OQ with a high mall. is still better than very high OQ with low mall. Then again, even very high mall. coupled with very low OQ would not be so good, but from your findings, is apparently still better than the other way around.

Wow, that was confusing . FWIW.

FUna,

Awesome work! This is critical info for us, and I'm impressed by the amount of work that went into this. I'll have to reevaluate my advice based on this new info.

B

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AtcoGass wrote:

Hi,

Thanks for the insight. Just to add my two creds worth.....

My understanding of the OQ is that it affects all the other stats as a kind of multiplier. So if the OQ is high, it will give you a higher percentage "effect" from the other stats, such as malleability. If the OQ is high, for example, but the mall. is very low - then high OQ X low Mall. still gives a low mall (i.e. it doesnt matter how high the OQ is, if the mall. is poor, and what you need is good mall. properties). Using your findings, a mid level OQ with a high mall. is still better than very high OQ with low mall. Then again, even very high mall. coupled with very low OQ would not be so good, but from your findings, is apparently still better than the other way around.

Wow, that was confusing . FWIW.

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That's the way it appears to work, I think we both are saying the same thing.

It put it simply, the main attribute for "quality" is the Malleability. High Mall does better than low Mall no matter what the OQ when it comes to Hide. Higher OQ "adds value" to the Malleability rating. High Mall/High OQ hide should make better items than High Mall/Low OQ. But Low Mall/High OQ hide will just make garbage in comparison. I actually think all the stats affect the outcome of the crafting process to some degree, its just that each item has a primary stat, like conductivity for metals in weaponcrafting and malleability for hide, that determines most of the outcome for a manufactured product.

To make it easy on the Scouts I didn't want to delve too deeply into the relationships, but point out that Malleability is much more important and leads to why some of our hide won't sell at the rates we think it should.

Tonight I'm gonna work on BONE experimentation using bone armor panels...more on that later this week...

Brisc:

Honestly I can't take much credit for the findings. I wasn't really doing the experiments for the benefit of the Scout community but rather for my own benefit. I was trying to figure out how to make the Bone Armor have higher resistances with lower HAM costs.

When I made my discoveries the first thing I thought of was to share it with everyone here because I couldn't have been the only person beating my head against the desk for the last month wondering why my high OQ hide wasn't selling for what we all thought it should. Like I said I'm a Scout first, crafter second. The only reason I'm a crafter is to be as self sufficient as possible as a Scout. When I can build my own Laser carbines my journey to the dark side will be complete.

I can see it now..."Le-Ge's Custom Weaponcrafting"...

FUna,

I should haveincluded this in my firstpost -

Your explanation on why the high OQ stuff didn't always sell is greatly appreciated. I've had the same thing happen and it was very frustrating.

Thanks for sharing your info .

I am an artisan as well as a scout. I want to confirm this finding, although when I originally figured
it out, it didn't strike me with quite the impact that TheFUna received.

There's an easy way to tell what the important stats are for any given schematic. Using your crafting tool, bring the schematic up and take a look in the window which lists what you need to put into it.

For example, lets say you're making a widget, and the widget requires 8 bone and 3 metal and 5 hide. Well, scroll down some more and you'll see what the experimentation values are for various things related to that widget. For example, durability, or damage, or encumberance. It'll say something like:

Experimental durability:
66% Decay Resistance
33% Overall Quality

So to figure out what materials will work best with that item, you want to find bone, metal, and hide all with high DR and OQ. The higher the better. If the item you're trying to craft contains subcomponents that have to be crafted separately, each one of those subcomponents will have a (probably) different set of statistics that are important to it. Component A might care about Shock Resistance, whereas component B might care only about Malleability. Even though both A and B might be built with the same resources, they're going to want resources with different stats (unless you find a resource with 1000 SR and 1000 Mal of course).

So it's not only about OQ, it's not only about Malleability. If you want to sell hide and bone and meat on the bazaar, and you haven't got access to the schematics in-game to find out what's important, check out http://swgcraft.com/ for every schematic that might want those materials and see what the important statistics are.

It's a bit more work than just checking OQ, but it's not hard to do once you get used to it.

Experimental durability:
66% Decay Resistance
33% Overall Quality

That field in each schematic is the key. Overall Quality is important because it is used in almost every experimentation value. However it isn't the only value and I never priced my harvests based on this alone.

Bone armor is 50% OQ in all fields, and 50% of an individual property for each field. So in bone armor, all stats are important.

It's not a secret the artisans have been keeping from us. Making better items gets them more money and they'll usually pay quite well for materials that have high stats overall. Keep in mind that a single low stat might make otherwise good materials undesirable. If you're unsure what is important, ask an artisan which properties are most important to them. (Malleability is to armor because it has a 50% effect on encumbrance. The other values are "equal" in their respective effect, but encumbrance is more important to players, thus it is more important to the crafter.)

It also depends upon its use. Scout items (traps and camps), most clothes, and I have been told furniture do not rely upon quality at all, whereas others like armor and weapons are heavily dependent upon it. A tailor has no need to buy 900+ to all qualities hide when straight 1's would give them the same product. An armorsmith on the other hand will want the absolute best stats possible unless they are grinding.

Some psychological advice: If your product has good properties, make a small blurb about how it is a great item for making quality gear. People looking at the details will see this and think "Hmmm. I could store this for later use when I want to make a good item," instead of passing it over looking for grinding material. It also shows you are knowledgable about what the crafters are looking for and so they are more inclined to buy from you than only buying the cheapest materials on the market (just make sure you do know what you are talking about...).

Just a little bit of 2 cents to your statement here... it is partly based on oq. The main buyers for hides and bones are going to be armor smiths... there are three stats they should be looking at if they know anything about thier trade. OQ and Mal effect the encumberence levels to the finished product and OQ and SR affect the defence values. I know this because i have burnt through thousands of hides and bones when i was an armor smith. If you are looking to market your hides and bones talk to the crafters first and find out what they are looking for, second if the traits aren't up to spec get bulk of them... no one wants to use good materials for exp crunching...

While you are at SWGCraft.com, check out the link to the Resource Calculator. It will give you an overall rating for your resource (as far as it's desirability in a given schematic), as long as you plug in the modifiers (weights) correctly. However, I calculate it off the top of my head, and get the same results. Here's an example:

Let's take a hide with 1000 OQ, and 500 MA. Let's say that the component you are making for your armor values MA at 66%, and OQ at 33% (find this out from crafters). That's 2/3 and 1/3, ok? What I do is (mentally) take 2 units of MA and one unit of OQ and add them together, then divide by 3 to get a weighted rating for that resource. In this case, that would be 2(500) + 1(1000)/3. This yields a ratingof 666. Now reverse the OQ and MA stats. Use hide with 1000MA and 500OQ. 2(1000) + 1(500)/3 = 833. It's now easy to see which hide is going to yield the best experimental results for that component.

I've got a long list of clients who buy regularly from me (mostly other resources, but sometimes creature resources). Most of them use the resource calculator at SWGCraft. Their goal is to use the resources with the highest rating for each separate component of their schematic. If you are ever in doubt as to the weight given to the stats, there is also a fairly comprehensive database there which lists schematic details.

While you are there, head to the resource pages and enter your bone/hide/meat/fish stats into the database for your server!

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Brawlmaster wrote:
So it's not only about OQ, it's not only about Malleability.

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That's true...but based on observation Malleability seems to be the baseline for quality and experimentation while OQ adds value (see further down).

I was messing around with it again last night and for hide at least, the Malleability makes the biggest difference and gives more experimentation opportunities.

One question to the crafter/scouts on this thread: why haven't you given this insight on any of the pricing threads in the last coupla weeks? Why have you kept the community in the dark? Not to be argumentative but no one, until now, has spoken up and disagreed with our Scout Guide or Correspondent or any of the people saying to base our pricing SOLELY on OQ. You've been letting all of us bash our heads into a desk trying to sell useless hides for premium prices now you come out of the woodwork to debunk or support my findings. Why have you kept us in the dark?

I mean...no one spoke up and explained it in this thread just last week: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=scout&message.id=11461 except for a Scout who had recognized that it has to do with schematics.

Here's another thread asking about selling hide: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=scout&message.id=11147 where none of our scout/crafters clued us in.

Why only after I, a burgeoning crafter, post this info to the people selling hides do you speak up? Call me a conspiracy theorist but...well...I just won't say it...

The fact is, Malleability is pretty much KEY in the uses of hide (at this time).

Sure my experimentation is in its infancy, and I'll probably have to fine-tune my recommendations, but the fact is OQ is NOT what crafters are looking for first in hide; its the malleability followed by OQ. Based on actual testing, high-Mall/Low OQ hide does better every time over low-Mall/high OQ which means that Malleability IS the key to good hides. Any thinking person will realize that high-Mall/high OQ is the most desirable, but OQ isn't what we should be basing our prices on primarily.

Not to be argumentative but no one, until now, has spoken up and disagreed with our Scout Guide or Correspondent or any of the people saying to base our pricing SOLELY on OQ.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't often read threads telling me how to play when I already know how to play...

When I do notice it, I correct it, or at least offer my opinion.

Seriyuu,

Good for you - you don't need my guides. My guides are for people contemplating Scouting, people who want to see how others did it, or people who are stuck. You're already a Master Scout, so you don't need it.

My basing sales figures off of OQ was based primarily on my experience with the questions that my crafters ask me when I've got hide to sell. They would always ask OQ, and never the secondaries. So I based my sales off of what they wanted, and I found that it sold relatively quickly.

Until reading FUna's post, I had no need to think of it in a different way, or to think I was wrong. Now I see that there are other factors, and I'll have to add those to my guide.

B

An additional problem, is that many of the schematics are busted. As a chef, I needed wooly hides. UT was supposed to be god, with OQ for charges. NOPE.. Seems DR is .. schematic says UT. Many people may not have known that schematics are busted in such a way for their profession. Also, I am starting armorsmithing. I am harvesting alot of naboo wooly for grinding (gualamas mostly). its OQ is 901, but Ma 367, sr 285 and ut 194 means it is absolute crap. However, it would be godly for pet food. charges, charges, charges Just look up schematics for various professions ( a couple hours on swgcraft/swgcenter). You'll know who to market what stat to.