That's right. Less than zero. The economy on my server is paying me to make glyphs in a way you wouldn't normally imagine. Look at the chatlog in that image.
See what I'm getting at? That's right. One Snowfall Ink selling for more than 21g! I generally try to pay 18g per stack of Adder's tongue, but will only very rarely go over 20g. Each stack of Adder's Tongue averages one Snowfall Ink or two Icy Pigment - which, by the way, are selling for 11 - 12g. Each!
What does it mean?
It means, my dear reader, that every glyph I craft is 100% pure profit.
Every. Single. One.
No matter how low I price it.
I'm still reeling from this. I was calculating my costs based on approximately 18g per stack of Adder's Tongue = 6 inks = 6 glyphs + 3g for parchment = 3.5g per glyph cost.
I was wrong. Glyphs cost me less than zero to craft.
/boggle
/giggle
/laugh maniacally
Aye, I'm experiencing the same thing on my server.
ReplyDeleteI am having a difficult time understanding the math used in your post and hope that you couldclarify this, since I am really interested in what you are talking about and trying to convey.
ReplyDeleteSo could perhaps give a step by step into the forumla you are using to figure it out?
I do understand that a stack of adder's Tongue is 18 gold. That it averages 1 Snowfall Ink which sells for 21gold. I guess the problem is where you talk about 6 inks, 6 glyphs etc...
Thanks for the comment. I will try to reword the post to be more clear, but here's the short version.
ReplyDeleteCost of Adder's Tongue = 18g*
Yield from 1 Stack of Adder's Tongue = 6 Ink of the Sea + 1 Snowfall Ink**
Income from Snowfall Ink = 21g
Now I've essentially been paid 3g by the "market" to mill those herbs.
And now I have 6 Ink of the Sea with which I can craft any Glyphs I like. At less than zero cost.
* - for the sake of argument
** - on ***average***
That makes a lot more sense, thank you so much though for being patient and saying it over again. :)
ReplyDeleteI would suggest looking at it a little differently. Consider that instead of making glyphs with your ink of the sea, you could trade it in to Jessica 10:1 for the snowfall and sell it for 21g. Therefore, the oppurtunity cost of an ink of the sea is 2.1 gold each. So really, your glyphs that use 1 ink and the most expensive parchment cost 2.6 g (2.1+.5) and the ones that use two inks are 4.7 g (2*2.1+.5).
ReplyDeleteOn my server, there doesn't seem to be too much demand for snowfall ink. I just sell off whatever I get from milling, but it's starting to accumulate faster than I can sell it for a decent price (12.5 g each for snowfall, adder's tongue is going for about 14 g / stack).
With your prices, I'd be busy as a beaver making as much snowfall ink as I could manage to sell. =D
-Aanar
I'd make far less money if I did that, Aanar. Some of my glyphs are selling for 25-50g.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I was really hoping someone would come and post your angle about opportunity cost. I know that there are about 4-5 different ways to calculate my costs and profits on these, but none of the other ways provides as intriguing and inflammatory a post title as the way I chose.
On your server, your costs to produce glyphs are still really low if you look at it my way.
You're looking at a cost of 1.5g to generate enough ink to make 6 glyphs. That's about 25 SILVER + parchment per glyph.
Were I on your server, I'd be doing the same thing I am now, but my prices would be a bit lower. When you can undercut to about 1g per glyph and still make profit, it should be easy to own a fair chunk of it...
... assuming you can get your Scan-Cancel-Collect-Relist ritual very, very efficient. Look for a post this week on my "secret weapon" in this process, and keep the comments coming!
You're right of course that it's still worth making glyphs. I was just trying to point out that if all you did was buy adder's tongue for 18 g a stack, mill it, make ink, trade the ink of the sea for snowfall and sell all the snowfall, you're looking at a pretty juicy $/hr.
ReplyDeleteFor example if it takes 30 seconds per stack to process it like this (14 for milling, 16 for all the ah, mail, trading, posting), then you're looking at 1853 gold per hour. 3600 [seconds/hr]* (0.95 [ah cut] * 6 * 2.2 [ink of the sea] + 22 [snowfall]) - 18 [adder's cost]) / 30 [sec] = 1853 [gold/hr] And of course, if you can be more efficient than 30 sec per stack, it only gets better.
One more thing, isn't the vendor price for ink 1 gold each? So the ink oppurtunity cost will never be less than that (+ parch) for a glyph.
Good work!
-Aanar
Aanar, that is a completely valid calculation, though I would be concerned about market saturation. The market for glyphs is, essentially, infinite. The market for inks, however, is limited to Scribes and people who think buying the mats is a better deal than buying the glyph or the herbs. But mostly the Scribes.
ReplyDeleteI don't know many scribes that buy ink. I did know one, a guildie, but I quickly whispered her a little math and cured that. And it wasn't really the math that she was hung up on, she just thought the difference wasn't enough to worry about, and was going for the quick fix. Which brings me to my previous post in which I decry people that can't divide by 10 or 3(Eternal->Crystallized and Greater->Lesser essence).
She made me realize it's not that people can't do (super) simple math, they make a semi-conscious decision not to. I should do a post on that.