Weaponsmith Archive

I've gotten lots of great advice on this board for my new Weaponsmith shop, so thought I would ask another question I've been struggling with.

How much better do Sliced Weapons sell than Unsliced?

I've learned that most players look primarily at the damage output of weapons, and secondarily look at speed.

It concerns me somewhat that some customers will look at my vendor of Unsliced weapons and see lower damage output than Sliced weapons on a competitors vendor. Plus there is the additional inconvienience to the customer of having to go out and find a slicer to slice the weapon for them, which will be a negative in their consideration to purchase my goods.

On the other hand, I can sell several of the same item to the same customers who will try to get the "perfect slice" and in that way will sometimes sell more weapons. Plus, I don't have the added inconvienience of having to wait on a Master Smuggler to come slice my weapons before I can put them for sale on the vendor (no room for slicing on my template).

I have gotten to know MANY Master Smugglers since I started my crafting career. Early on I opened a Slicer Tools shop that sold WUKs, AUKs, Mol Clamps and Survival Knives for grinding and made my first million helping Novice Smugglers finish the Slicer tree quickly. So finding someone to do the work at a nice price would likely not be a problem.

I would appreciate the input of the Weaponsmith community on this matter. Do you sell primarily sliced or unsliced weapons? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each way?

I would recommend selling both, with a significant price premium between each. If you are willing to take on the "bad slice" risk, and only offer your best sliced stuff, and then discard the "bad" stuff, you can command a very high premium for your sliced goods over your non-sliced goods.

If a standard Republic is 10k, then sell you very best sliced ones for 100k (yes 10x). This means you can risk a few bad slices. You might consider using 3 vendors: Top-end, mid-grade, & unsliced...except it's likely that the mid-grade sliced stuff won't command much more than unsliced.

I sell both. I have two vendors side by side. One of them called "Sliced Weapons" and the little rodian barking that everything on the vendor is already sliced. I only have my own weapons sliced and I always have the base stats in the name. That way anyone can see that the weapon is sliced by comparing the stats to the name. I price everything based on the quality of the slice and the resulting Damage Per Second compared to all the other weaponsmiths I track on the server.

I do a brisk business on both of them and keep my smuggler friend very busy indeed. At times they seem to serve two different customer bases but I've had people buy from both vendors in the same session.

I agree with the person who said that it's best to sell both and charge a premium for weapons with excellent slices. I think 10x the price is bit excessive but this is mostly a personal preference. The way I look at it is this: How many unsliced weapons would a person have to buy to get a comparable slice? Barring extreme bad luck, I'd say 3 to 6 slices will usually yield a pretty good result. That's my take.

I may be out of line on this one...but why discard the low slices? They are still improvements over the original weapons. Why not have something like a low-midrange slice vender at a price in between the base weapon and the "high" slice vendor? Just my two cents.

Personally I never have, and never will, sell sliced weapons for one reason. Once you start selling sliced weapons, you subject yourself to requests to "hold the best slice for me" from just about every customer you have. Sure, some people are looking for bargains, but in my experience I've found the majority of players are willing to spend whatever it takes to get the "perfect" slice, and thus you'll have a ton of people requesting that you hold back your best slices from the vendor, and sell directly to them.

Of course you can choose to ignore these requests. Then you end up putting the guns on your vendor, and having the best ones sell to anyof the first few customers who come in, leaving the rest of your clients a selection of weapons with mediocre slices. On ceratin weapons, many players consider speed slices worthless, and only want damage, so even the "good" speed slices won't command a very high price. And if it's a poor or mediocre slice, you might have trouble selling it at all, as I've seenmost players would rather take their chances of buying an unsliced weapon and rolling the dice.

That all being said, I'm speaking from the perspective of a weaponsmith who already has a very large client base and has no need to boost sales any further. I believe sliced sales could benefit a business that is selling a little slowly.

You have to ask yourself though...do you want the extra work, and potential aggravation (Heyd00d do u have ne 35% dmg slice republicans plz? No? Can u tell me when u do plz k thx) of dealing in sliced weapons. If you do decide to go down that road DEFINITELY set up separate vendors for sliced and unsliced.

Thoax Dromallet

Master Weaponsmith

"Guns don't kill people: People with Thoaxcorp Guns kill people"

I had 2 vendors, sliced and unsliced with a 1-10k premium on the sliced weapons..... Thinking that even low % sliced weapons would sell for an additional 1k over the cost of an unsliced weapon.

While in theory this is a great idea, reality shows different. All my damage sliced weapons sold quickly while the speed sliced weapons, even the uber slice ones didn't sell at all. So as the number of unsold speed sliced weapons piled up, I decided it wasn't worth it, stopped pre-slicing weapons and changed the name of the vendor to 'Speed Sliced Weapons' until they sold out.

I specialized in making only slicedpistols (except for friends and guildmates). I'm a master smuggler as well, so I slice my own weapons. I charge a premium based on the % outcome of the slice as well as whether it was a damage or speed slice. A good damage slice will as much as double the price of one of my weapons. I put the base damage and speed stats in the name of the pistol, so customers can compare the quality of the slice for themselves.

I've since decided to add an unsliced pistols vendor as well, just to be complete. I don't get a huge influx of customers on Rori, but I noticed that what sales I have gotten are about 50/50 between sliced and unsliced.

What I have noticed is that the damage slices sell pretty quick. I think I may have only sold one speed sliced pistol. Obviously, speed isn't as important on pistols as it would be for, say, heavy weapons, so that's why the damage slices go fast. I'm thinking of either charging a higher premium for the good damage slices, or maybe charging through the nose and only sell good damage slices (throwing out everthing else--but that will eat up resources like crazy).

I also haven't had anyone asking me to hold my best slices for them, though that could be because I have gone to great lengths to avoid /tell hell. My store is namedafter my toon's last name, I don't wear my MWS or master smuggler title, and I've barely told anyone (other than friends and guildmates) that I'm a MWS/master smuggler. So far it's working, I haven't gotten a single WS or slicing related /tell since I opened by store two weeks ago. Itmight bebad for business, but it's good for my nerves.

Slim Vargo, Corbantis