The real thing that is ruining alchemy for everyone!-

[Cimeara]

lll demon lll

umm some vendors are the main ones that do
alchemy
they might in return resell it for higher but its the same as an item. That vendors want profit no harm in it. Even if the component is "rare" and vendors get them cheap well that makes the craftable items more expensive aswell. Look at Erebus' Moon. When components started dropping the item did as well. It went from 85m to 65m and now its 50m or below. Gaia is about making gold to have what you want. Vendors are just better at doing it than everyone else is.

It takes a very dedicated vendor to earn as much gold as a dedicated Booty Grabber. ^_^

And even those can get caught when prices suddenly drop. It's a rough and tedious way to gather gold, and very dependent on sheer luck.

[Somewhat_Slightly_Dazed]

Cimeara

But I also understand the temptation the vendor is under when they've spent 150K each on 100 caches, and most were filled with only 10K items. So they might offer something at a greedy price just to try to get back the rest of their investment.

Constipated Trillionaire

Vending is a lot of work, spend a lot of time not getting anything so when you do get a good deal it's nice to be able to sell it for a good price.

That's it right there for me. Yeah, some people have a list of components:50, 200, ones with all the pictures razz ALL of those cost the vendor the price of opening a cache. Sure as heck I want to make some of that back!

The other thing too - whatever I make with the components, sell's for maybe 1/10 the price of what it took to make.

[RDG87]

lol

[xX_Ari Eli_Xx]

its more of a challenge then a profit my dummy one

[Errol Havok]

Where the hell can I get shark's blood without having to buy it on the MP? I'm a total n00b at this alchemy thing. All I want to do is make a shirt, but the one component I need is more than 8 times more expensive than what the finished product will sell for.

I'm not even really interested in selling the shirt when I'm done. I actually want the item. But I don't have 850 thousand gold to drop on something I'm going to basically throw away in an alchemy transmutation that may not even work.

This is the kind of stuff this chick is talking about. Sure, shark's blood might be rare, but for it to be necessary to a level 1 spell and cost 850k on the MP is freakin' retarded. And what's more, is that there's no where else I can find to get it. If I had 850k I could piss away on a 50/50 shot at something an eighth as valuable, I wouldn't be interested in alchemy at all. I'd just buy whatever I wanted and let the guys with level 10 skill make it for me.

Anyway, TL;DR, Where can has shark blood? Need it for beginner formula.

[Little Dead Soldier]

I am one of those people atm who is only profiting off alchemy because I refuse to craft anything till Sea Waters and Smooth Whetstones level out and more are around. So I spend my time just crafting caches and making profit from that.
Most people who have been doing alchemy for awhile won't pay 2mil for those items. That's why we have an Alchemy Exchange, and anyone who is a regular Exchanger, knows that the Exchanges are ALWAYS cheaper than MP. People who are new and don't know about this are the ones suffering paying inflated price </3

A huge problem in alchemy right now is lack of components. We need more to keep up with demand hence : Supply and Demand. When there is only a few items a month, prices can be jacked up because those vendors know that people need them and can get a higher price for them. Refusing to buy from them in hopes to lower costs isn't going to do much good because no matter what, someone will always buy. Gaia needs to generate more items. Smooth Whetstones and Sea Waters are suppose to be common items, but now they are a rarity. It shouldn't be like this. Even if everyone crafts caches, there is no grantee that they will get items that everyone needs. I believe I read from someone who opened up 52 P. Caches and never got a single Smooth Whetstones. This no longer is the people of Gaia's fault. More on Gaia staff for not allowing us to have certain items.

[Total Space Ninja]

Errol Havok

I think you can get Sharks Blood in Philosophers Caches. Otherwise I have no clue. ^-^;;
Oh and, if you fail on the formula, you keep all the ingredients, just lose the gold you payed. :3

[las aves]

Caches' prices are dropping pretty fast now. Seems more people have picked up the hint to make them razz

[Erynnis_Tristis]

The problem with that is you're blaming individuals for something that is really a systemic problem. There aren't enough rare/wanted components, and most alchemists are going to hoard those anyway, or only exchange them for other rare/wanted components, and the excess crap either isn't worth listing.

So you might as well blame 'non'-vendors for having inventories full of alchemy components that they won't list but only sell/trade in the forum. At least vendors list their items in the vend. If everyone who had excess components undercut those vendors you'd see prices come tumbling. But it wouldn't be fair to blame them for keeping stuff they might want/need, or for not wanting to lose even more gold by driving the prices down on the few items that are actually valuable, since everytime they open a case and get a crap item worth less than the case itself they have to try and make that back with the decent stuff.

So I don't think you should blame users, for something that is caused by the alchemy system as a whole. Gaia needs to adjust drop rates so that you don't end up with 80% crap when you open a case. 3nodding

[GeryKo]

Cimeara

I agree that there are vendors who overprice their components just because there's no others currently on the market, and that's extremely frustrating when it's the last component you need for a formula. The best you can do is try to wait it out and hope they re-offer it at a reasonable price, or that someone else comes in and does so.

But I also understand the temptation the vendor is under when they've spent 150K each on 100 caches, and most were filled with only 10K items. So they might offer something at a greedy price just to try to get back the rest of their investment.

And Gaia doesn't help by screwing up the distribution of items. The "store price" is supposed to show how rare a component will be, but that's obviously screwed up. Add in the fact that some components are more desireable just because the formulas they're used in are more desireable, and it all becomes totally whacky. You get "500 gold" Sapphires selling in the MP at 20K, "100 gold" Sea Water going for 2 million, and Gum Rubber at 70K and Used Tissue at 360K when both are "10 gold".

ok i wanna know whats going on with Gum rubber jumping in price every now and then O_O it goes to 10gold then back to 10k and again goign down to 10gold like all other DC items actually

[Cimeara]

GeryKo

Cimeara

I agree that there are vendors who overprice their components just because there's no others currently on the market, and that's extremely frustrating when it's the last component you need for a formula. The best you can do is try to wait it out and hope they re-offer it at a reasonable price, or that someone else comes in and does so.

But I also understand the temptation the vendor is under when they've spent 150K each on 100 caches, and most were filled with only 10K items. So they might offer something at a greedy price just to try to get back the rest of their investment.

And Gaia doesn't help by screwing up the distribution of items. The "store price" is supposed to show how rare a component will be, but that's obviously screwed up. Add in the fact that some components are more desireable just because the formulas they're used in are more desireable, and it all becomes totally whacky. You get "500 gold" Sapphires selling in the MP at 20K, "100 gold" Sea Water going for 2 million, and Gum Rubber at 70K and Used Tissue at 360K when both are "10 gold".

ok i wanna know whats going on with Gum rubber jumping in price every now and then O_O it goes to 10gold then back to 10k and again goign down to 10gold like all other DC items actually

What happens is a general problem of marketplace pricing for anything that varies in the number available. If there's lots available, the price goes down because people keep undercutting each other. If there's not many, the price goes up because people are only undercutting that one guy that lists at a ridiculously high amount. If someone is trying to sell Gum Rubber at 500K, then he makes my price of 300K look like a better deal. But this is usually helped by the "average buy price": most people just won't buy if the prices are too high and the listings stay there till someone lists one with a reasonable price again. If people see the average is 25K, then my price of 300K also looks ridiculous. Unfortunately, in Alchemy you get people who absolutely need that one component to finish a formula, and maybe they have enough gold to buy the ridiculous 300K Gum Rubber. Then that makes the average price go up and everyone is screwed till there's so much Gum Rubber on the market that the prices -must- come down again.

Daily Chance items add another wrinkle. They're given to people who don't care about Alchemy, have no knowledge of Alchemy, and don't follow the prices. So all they want is to lose that item from their inventory and they put it in the Marketplace with a clueless price. If it's really low, the item's snapped up instantly. But that's still made the average buy price go down, sometimes waaaay down.

This is all why you should check the monthly/yearly graphs if you want to see the actual average price for anything, because the daily average can fluctuate so much.

[Periwinkle Buttercup]

Quote:

This is all why you should check the monthly/yearly graphs if you want to see the actual average price for anything, because the daily average can fluctuate so much.

This is so true! I sell mainly town stuff and have a few people who get upset that I won't sell to them at ABP. ABP really means nothing more than a whole bunch of people have dumped a whole lot of stuff on the MP way too cheaply and it was snatched up through the new vends most of the time before it even hit the item page.

I list all my stuff in large bulk, don't have a set selling price, just whatever looks good at the moment and is a high enough price that the mega-listers won't snatch it up and put it in their stores at higher yet (still happens once in a while but not nearly as often as it did when I had lower prices), but I think a lot of people don't realize how long it can take to get enough stuff to list in a lot of hundreds or thousands. Yesterday I had a considerable amount of back-stock built up, including fish and inks which I don't often have, and I spent most of the day just keeping my store filled. By evening my inventory was all but gone. When I'm running low on inventory I list at higher prices until I can get some stuff built back up. A few things sell here and there so that works too but I really do prefer lower prices and a faster turn-over.

I decided to dabble a bit in crafting and did the starter kit and a philosopher's cache. I got lucky with the cache and it was made on the second try. I listed the cache on the MP and while it sat there I sold out almost my whole store six or seven times.

I don't know that I'd call myself a vendor. I just do my thing, sometimes picking up a few pieces to throw into a large lot, sometimes gathering from towns. It all just depends on the mood I'm in. I mainly hawk the new vends when I'm looking for something specific to buy and trying to find a good deal. I'm sure what I do would drive some completely insane but I enjoy it. Someone said a dedicated Booty Grabber will make just as much and that may be true. I just don't much care for the game and am pretty bad at it.

Fortunately not everyone is cut out for the same things. Booty Grab is definitely not for me and I don't know if I'll ever get into crafting, might just do it here and there. Just buying the pancakes for the cache was about more than I could take.

Back to the point of the ABP, though, when it comes to these kind of items the info there is pretty useless. The amount that sells in a day, however, is very valuable info.

[Istoleyourtaco]

GeryKo

Cimeara

I agree that there are vendors who overprice their components just because there's no others currently on the market, and that's extremely frustrating when it's the last component you need for a formula. The best you can do is try to wait it out and hope they re-offer it at a reasonable price, or that someone else comes in and does so.

But I also understand the temptation the vendor is under when they've spent 150K each on 100 caches, and most were filled with only 10K items. So they might offer something at a greedy price just to try to get back the rest of their investment.

And Gaia doesn't help by screwing up the distribution of items. The "store price" is supposed to show how rare a component will be, but that's obviously screwed up. Add in the fact that some components are more desireable just because the formulas they're used in are more desireable, and it all becomes totally whacky. You get "500 gold" Sapphires selling in the MP at 20K, "100 gold" Sea Water going for 2 million, and Gum Rubber at 70K and Used Tissue at 360K when both are "10 gold".

ok i wanna know whats going on with Gum rubber jumping in price every now and then O_O it goes to 10gold then back to 10k and again goign down to 10gold like all other DC items actually

it's probably because it is a component to 1 of lv 3's easiest formulas and that is where most everyone is stuck.

[Totally Not A Lesbian]

thanks for the new caches! biggrin