Spiderling Flesh hurts Smithing: law of unintended conseq.

[andyhre]

I post this in the general as it references tailoring, smithing, bazaar purchased components, and the global economy. I hope this is not out of place.

I have a theory from observing the bazaar on E`Ci that I want to share and see if it holds true more generally.

About two weeks ago, maybe three, they seem to have added Spiderling Flesh to the spiderling drop list. I have no idea what it is for. Since then, on E`ci the supply of spiderling silk has shrunk dramatically and, not surprisingly, the cost to purchase has jumped up as well. This in turn has almost evaporated the leather padding. Previously, there were tow or three major suppliers (my character being one of them) and lots of occasional entrants into the market. Now there is one or two main suppliers, and then me when I can get the time to go out and farm my own components, since the bazaar has dried up. And the price of the leather padding jumped up as well. It was ranging between 24-30 and now is 30-35. This in turn, seems to have spurred a boost in the price of the various pelts, as now, even with more costly thread, the profit on the padding is higher and thus the value of the pelts has increased.

I am wondering if this is E`ci specific phenomenon, or if it is global. If it is global, does anyone else have a clue as to whether the addition of spiderling flesh has caused a decreased drop rate for spiderling silk (My farming seems to indicate that to be true, at least for Misty Thicket). And if so, I wonder if Sony really intended to make it harder to GM smithing when they added spiderling flesh to the spiderling drop list.

[Tinile]

Spiderling flesh has been in Innothule since "the change". Whether flesh drops have increased, making silk drop less, I couldn't comment on. Then again, you may just be having a run of bad luck /shrug.

[andyhre]

I was pretty sure everyone got the spiderling flesh. What I am curious about,mostly, is whether the bazaar economics have changed on other servers. How about yours, have you seen less Spiderling silk for sale? Do you buy or sell leather padding, and if so, have the prices changed?

[Silound]

Prexus is flooded as usual. You can fork 8pp and sell hte padding at a comfy 30-35. Same as always.

Silound

[Hibashira]

Xev's market functuates a lot. There are lots of merchants/traders ready to supply components. So whichever is hot and expensive, everyone jumps on it. When supplies >>>> demands, all the prices drop again. Until another wave of new tradeskill-ers. As for leather padding, we went from a boom cycle (30pp-50pp a piece?) a couple of months ago down to a slow cycle (10pp-15pp a piece).

[Maevenniia]

A prime source of spiderling silks were the crab spiderlings outside of Gukta, the swamp was just swarming with them….up until recently.

A few days ago I was playing my level 2 froglok shaman (on Rodcet) and while there were a zillion jungle spiderlings inside Gukta (dropping only a few spiderling silks), the number of crab spiderlings outside Gukta seemed to have been drastically lowered. They recently added a lot of low-level ‘pests’ to the newbie starting zones, instead of rodents, I guess Gukta got spiderlings.

[Cigarskunk]

I think the question is "Now that all spiderlings are dropping less silk since they can also drop flesh, is your padding market hosed?"

[Lothay]

Since this is more of a rant than anything else, moved to PSR.

~Lothay

[Reflan]

Padding/silk/pelt market seems to vary a lot on my server. I don't see any less silks lately, and actually the price for padding has dropped drastically. Whereas it used to be very easy to sell at 25 to 30pp by the bagful, I see a great many vendors in the market now, and the padding has dropped to about 15pp per. Silks themselves are a hair lower, too.

[Ruatha]

Given that you can still run up 2-3 stacks of spiderling silks in an hour in Innothule (to say nothing of Feerrott and Steamfont), I'd say the relationship you're seeing is coincidence and nothing more.

[Mahlig]

Since Leather Padding can be made with LQ Rockhopper Hides and Shadeling Silk (or spiderling silk) Threads, I get (and make) Leather Padding by the score. Therefore, I don't think the market has suffered by this.

[andyhre]

First of all, to the extent this seemed like a rant as opposed to a rational inquiry, I apologize. I'm not mad at all - I'm making more rather than less money, as this has flushed out the minor players completely, and I have side deals to ensure adequate supply. I was asking more to see if this was a global phenomenon or an E`Ci one [it continues on E`Ci, with spiderling silk selling at 6pp-plus now], and whether it was related to the change in the drop rate at all.

I also have an interest as someone who likes to understand markets and so I watch the bazaar as entertainment.

So it may have been off topic, but it wasn't meant as a rant.

As for shadeling, shadeling is an inferior substitute for spiderling. On E`Ci, the price of shadelin has increased as well, as demand seems to have shifted some. For a crazy period the only offered shadelin was at 24pp per, but that was just silly, someone eventually showed up with large quantitities at 4pp or so.

Rockhopper Hide, as the most flexible of pelts, seems to have shrunk in its general availability in the bazaar as well.

I had postulated to myself, at first, that as the price of one input increased, the price of the other woudl tend to decline, as the profitability of the combine decreased. However, the price of the padding jumped up which seems to have ensured demand staying high for the pelt inputs.

All of this is influenced by the fact that I am not a passive observer. I jump in and buy all the silk whenever I see some below my strike price. The current shortage has simply caused my strike price to rise a bit.

Anyway, I find the changes in pricing of this item to be fascinating (as well as profitable) to watch, and so I welcome any further observations from E`ci or elsewhere.

[Mahlig]

I guess I do not understand your dilemma. Are you trying to sell Leather Padding or Spiderling Silk? Because the lack of spiderling silks does absolutely nothing to the smithing market, to be sure. Shadeling silks and LQ Rockhopper hides can be gathered much faster than any other combination. And if you call shadeling silk " an inferior substitute to spiderling silk" because it can only be combined with LQ Rockhopper Hides (with regard to making Leather Padding), then you are not seeing the forest for all the trees.

The smithing market (especially the high level smiths doing shadowscream that farm their own padding) are going Shadeling/Rockhopper route because it is easier and faster. Shadeweavers Thicket provides both (as well as Swirling Shadows). Perhaps this should be your source of Leather Padding as opposed to worrying over spiderling flesh (is it not used in newbie quests?).

[andyhre]

Dilemma is maybe the wrong way to put it. I am primarily intellectually curious. I sell a lot of leather padding at 28pp - 30pp. When I say "a lot" it's probably on the order of 500 pads per week, sometimes more.

I figure this is mostly smithing, as I speak with some of my customers and they are generally smiths. So presumably some of them are farming themselves with rockhopper and shadeling, so they aren't in the public markets, but for those who are, the price of spider silk, shadeling silk, silk thread, shade silk thread, rockhopper hide, and the various other Norrath pelts are are inter-related. So more than a dilemma is that i find the interrelationship fascinating.

As for "inferior" I was probably using jargon I should explain. From an economic point of view, Spiderling Silk is superior to Shadeling Silk, because if you have 2 spiderling silks, you can use 4 different creatures' pelts (including rockhoppers) while for shadeling silk, you can only use rockhopper. if you have rockhopper, they are thus equal in value. if you have a cat pelt, you will see that spiderling has more value to you. And since there is no situation in which the shadeling silk is useful where the spiderling is not, the shadeling is simply "inferior" as a supstitute for spiderling. That doesn't mean it's not useful or valuable. A Car that can go 50 mph is inferior to an otherwise identifical one that can go 60mph. if you only need to go 45, though, who cares.

So anyway, what prompted this all was

1) Spiderling silk was selling, in decent quantities, at 2pp or less two months ago. Shadeling silk was even easier to get, sometimes at 1pp per

2) Spiderling silk is now selling at 6pp. Shadeling silk costs less, in general, more like 5pp per.

I was curious if this was related to the change in frequency in which it drops now that there are more spiderling items, like spiderling flesh [btw, do we know what that does].

So perhaps the impact is as you say, more and more smiths are farming on Luclin. That alone is fascinating to me: Change the rate of drops in innothule swamp and more smiths hang out in Shadeweaver Thicket. Wow! What a complex world!

That's really all.

But I do think it will, as a result, increase the cost of GMing smithing, one way or another. Farming will be a wee bit more crowded, bazaaring will be more explensive, those who go from grabbing in the bazaar to farming will need to devote a lot more time.

Think of the reverse. If they suddenly tripled the rate of spiderling drops, wouldn't you expect some people to spend more time getting cat pelts in Stonebrunt? So the reverse is also very interesting. At least I think.