Resin Pricing

[Goonie]

I was going to be an armorer, but my rl buddy (shaman) decided EQ1 burned him from alchemy completely. (cant really blame him) My decision to be an armorer was based off him being an alchemist, so we would have an inner supply for the other.
So, now we just switchin roles. I think I will be happy as I cannot recall how many times I had to go to the chemist table to make a sub-component. Thats when I realized, hey, I could sell these.
After trying to raise my skills in the noob zones for wholesaler quest (very tedious and frustrating, but worth it) I had several stacks of roots. I also deleted many stacks to make room for the tin clusters (oh well.)
I ended up with 3 stacks of chloro resins, which cost me about 2.5 silver per stack. I sold them for only 4 silver per stack, because that was still a minor profit for myself.
I couldnt keep them in stock. They sold faster than <a five cent cup of coffee>. So I went to the noob zones and began gethering again, this time offering 7cp per root, or 2sp per stack. This brought in the roots faster than I had room to store.
Now, making the resins cost me 4.5 sp so naturally, i had to raise my price. I only raised it to 6sp per stack. STILL they vanished quicker than a <day dream in the boss' office>.
Moral of the story is, you can have your prices jacked way up and turn a large profit. Or you can have them at a reasonable price to where you profit a smaller amount, but quicker.
let me know if 6sp per stack is fair or outlandish. On my server, I was seeing 1 resin selling for 2sp - 4sp, seemed silly to me.

[Goonie]

LOL, sorry bout that Zen.

[Zendaken]

NP, I found them a nice break from the totally standard ones, so keep up the imagination, but they were just a bit far for the environment we're trying to foster. :)

[Latormenta]

I've been kicking pricing around myself. After giving it a lot of thought, I think 6s a stack is way too low. Why? The person who makes the finished product, say an app3 spell scroll, is going to make a lot more profit than that. I have consistently been able to sell tier 2 spell scrolls for 15-20 silver. Even if I buy ink, quills, and paper for 1sp each (20sp a stack), I'm still pocketing 12-17 silver in pure profit. The folks that made the ink, quill, and paper are getting coppers. So, I do less work and make 5x or 10x the profit. That's just not fair.

The artisans who are supplying the raw materials and interim products should be able to get a decent share of the final profit. If I can sell a scroll for 20s, I think 5 or so silver would be reasonable for me. The rest of the profit should be spread throughout the supply chain. The same thing is true for tier 1 products, but the total profit is lower of course (5s or so), but the principle is the same.

Of course, if the societies start selling interim products, that's going to put a ceiling on what people can charge (actually, it probably eliminates the market completely). I also realize that not all finished products sell equally well, so higher prices hurt the artisans in marginal markets (furniture, for example).

If we're going to have a real economy, we have to let real market forces work. There's a basic principle in economics that the only real measure of an item's value is what people are willing to pay for it. How much it costs to produce is irrelevant to value (but very relevant to whether you stay in business).

If you try to sell for "too much", people won't buy it. If people buy it, you are not charging too much. If people buy everything you have to sell, you aren't charging enough.

In a free market, what keeps prices down is competition, not fixing prices based on the how much it takes to produce an item. When people find out how much you're making, they'll try to get a piece of that action. That will increase supply and lower prices -- good for everybody.

If you're making diddly for profit (and 6s a stack is close to diddly, as far as I'm concerned), other producers will stay away. That will either drive up prices or restrict supply -- bad for everybody.

Disclaimer: I am currently a scholar (18th) and have an alt that's a craftsman (17th), so I don't actually have to buy much of anything from anyone. I also don't sell anything but finished products. So I don't have a vested interest in the argument above.

[Kbern]

It seems Alchemist will be hurt the most if the societies start selling resins and oils and other components needed for the main combines.

Some crafters need some basics supplies from other types of crafters than alchemists, but their finished products will sell for a lot more.

Our finished products are broken (poisons and potions) so mainly we have the resins, washes, tempers, etc as our main source of income.

Other than the fighter upgrades, this would make us almost uneeded for many other crafters.

I do not understand why the potions we make or poisons do not have a description of what they do. Boxes tell you how many slots they have and the wgt reduction of bags, armor and weapons show stats, jewelry shows the stats it gives, app3's and adepts describe the power they are for, why do potions have to be a mystery to the experts who make them? :confused:

[Goonie]

I think if we raised the prices for the resins and tempers and what not, the end price would just go up. Our only chance is to come up with a base price, whether it is higher than 6sp per stack or not, and then just hope the game is new enuff that people will come to accept this is the going price.
Our problem will be the people that bottom out the market. I was guilty of this, I know. But our best solution would be to come up with a base price and then we can raise / lower based on that.
just my 2cp

[Latormenta]

Competition will tend to reduce prices to just above production costs. Since I don't enjoy spending hours to make a few silver, I try to get out of markets by then and into new ones. In EQ1 I made some money for a while as a shaman selling SoW potions. Over time the price of SoW potions dropped to less than 1pp over the cost to make. That being not worth the effort to me, I stopped making them except for my friends and alts.

While I believe macro'ing had some influence on that, I expect the same thing to happen in EQ2. From a personal perspective (and contradicting what I said above :) ) I have an idea of how much profit I need to be able to make per time invested to make it worth the effort. I often set my prices based on that. When (as always seems to happen) someone comes in and undercuts my price, I stop selling that and try to move to something different.

Now, I will admit that I have never been a pure tradeskiller. I tend to bounce back and forth. When the market is good, I spend 90% of my time tradeskilling. When the market is bad, I go adventuring. A pure tradeskiller doesn't have that luxury.