MTP prices in bazaar last night

[Faymar]

I keep thinking about this, and I keep coming to the same conclusion.

HMP and MTPs are broken. The stats are too high, the goods too readily available, the ability to use it as a skill-up too easy.

You can't compare baking to tailoring when valuing time. The amount of farming/hunting/begging you need to do is simply not in the same league. Baking is a step beyond brewing but, as pointed out above, the stat drinks are some of the most difficult to collect items for, instead of the simplest.

[payens]

No one who is not insane goes into tradeskilling for the bag. Maybe for the range slot 50 cha 10 str 10 int item if they need it, and maybe to be able to summon unlimited 100% WR 10 slot bags, but not for the 1 bag alone.

/sigh

I don't claim it's worth GMing a tradeskill just for the 1 bag. However, I do maintain it is reasonable to conclude one gets more bang for the buck by putting 5k into a tradeskill rather than buying a single tink bag. Yes more time is involved, probably a lot more time, but you get a trophy and a useful skill along with a bag, and if you play your cards right you'll wind up with no out of pocket costs.

IMHO GMing brewing and getting a trophy could be done for much less than 15k. For the princely sum of 200pp I got to 194 via fetid essence, skull ale, fadwer shakers and then some MHBs. Total time spent was 10 hours including farming the skull, all at my lowly 125 Wisdom. I think I could have gotten to 248 for 1-2k total and in about 20 hours. Figure one failure at the trophy which seems about average, and paying 1k per corker, I'm still looking at less than 10k all said and done. If one got lucky with skillups and the trophy, 5k is within reason. Baking is different because once you get into HMPs and MTPs it begins to at least pay for itself, and the trophy costs less to attempt. I can't really say "Baking has cost me X pp" because I have no cost basis, I have more in the bank than when I started. To me the skillups are free, as the trophy will be.

HMP and MTPs are broken. The stats are too high, the goods too readily available, the ability to use it as a skill-up too easy.

Baking is a step beyond brewing but, as pointed out above, the stat drinks are some of the most difficult to collect items for, instead of the simplest.

I think you disproved your own assertion. HMPs and MTPs aren't broken, baking is just one little step beyond a store-bought tradeskill and they ensure it's place there. Also remember that HMPs and MTPs are made to be eaten, which is relfected in their stats. Without those two recipes baking would be more akin to a hard-core tradeskill which is out of line considering that the items made from it are consumable. If armor deteriorated over time, I'm sure smithing would be a store-bought skill too. See where I'm coming from with this?

As for the stat drinks being hard to collect items for, welcome to GLM, QAT and Kaladim Constitutionals. Those are very easy to collect and offer stats comparable to HMP and MTP (GLM is strictly store bought). JC, like brewing, is also a vendor purchased skill and it also produces nice stat items that are easy to get parts for. Yet JC and Brewing aren't broken because of this. By extension, baking is fine.


The only negative facet of the relative ease of raising baking is that it means there's no huge long-term profit potential. But I think that's a good thing, because good food will be available to all people at a reasonable price and we can all have more fun playing. Just as most raiding guilds have an in-house GM Jewel Crafter and Brewer, they likely will have their own GM Baker for stat food (which I hope to be for my guild). I don't see where this is broken.

[Zyrtryx Conjureblade]

I'm on The Rathe, and I haven't been able to sell HMPs in the Bazaar lately (I'm making those to raise skill). Mainly because there are always 8 or so vendors there already selling them also, and they're not only selling them for about as low as I'm willing to go, but they have 10 times more than I do.

Try going to PoK and doing an auction, and doing it on your server's Trade channel, too. I've had more success selling them this way lately.

[Bennan]

As for the stat drinks;

Kaladim Constitutional
Has two barriers. One you have to collect the ingredients from Underfoot Farm, and second only 45 to 60percent success rates.

The Qeynos Afternoon Tea, has the barrier of the foraged components. I have never made any so no idea on success rates.

Both of the above have kept a good price 10pp plus, on the Tarrew Marr server.

Grob Liq Meat is a vendor bought recipie, and as such prices will always be well low, as the costs are very low to make.


*MY* opinion is that they should reduce the amount of fillets returned for the Wolf and Mammoth meat. The kind of figures I would not mind seeing are 4 fillets returned for Wolfs and 4 for Mammoths. That would help the recipie keep a value of around 10pp.

Anyways, my belief is that two distinct branch's of brewing/baking should exist. That being one branch is skill ups, making not overly desirable goods for other players. And the other making desirable goods for other players.

With the desirable goods, I would keep around the same amount of effort it takes to make Kaladim, and the same success rates.

Baking and Brewing will always suffer, due to highly sought after items from quests (Shawl quest for example) that require these skills, and hence will involve players only interested in skilling up and dumping any finished product. That finished product normally being a Baker/Brewer's bread and butter.

Thats my 2cp anyways

[Faymar]

I think Bennan put it more succinctly than I did. Also, in terms of the comparison with JC, we are talking about a skill where the gems sell for more in the bazaar than the final product does. Tailoring has the same issue with the solstice robe. "Dumping" usable products that you have used to skill up on just isn't a sensible economy. The fact that most 250 bakers "never want to see another picnic" attests to the problem that the product that a baker should be glad to finally be able to make consistantly and offer for sale is actually the thing that was simplest to skill-up on.

Should you be making cash on skilling up? You <i>should</i> in my opinion be able to recoup your costs. You should not be getting rich off it, really, until you are a master. In this light, the "broken market" pricing reflects what one would expect: you can recoup your costs but making MTPs at a skill level of 190 is no longer going to pay off bigtime. What is wrong with this is that having put in the time, effort, RSI and money into getting into your 200s, there isn't anything "better" you can make.

Look at jewelry craft for a moment. You do a lot of skilling up on things that really aren't that exciting. You have the option to do so which means no one, really no one, is going to try to skill up on PoP jewelry because it'd simply be madness. You are wasting valuable components, you are very likely to fail so no chance of that uber PoV ring, and because there are other, easter options I don't believe anyone is even tempted to use these for skill ups even though that is what's going to sell.

I take the point that food is expendable, jewelry is a one-off purchase but I still feel there is a middle ground.

[payens]

After reading the responses to my last post, this is what I took as the root cause you believe baking is broken: Brewing (and even JC) have distinct skillup recipes and then separate recipes for product people actually want. Baking post 200 does not have this kind of distinction in recpies, the byproducts of skilling are in demand.

Ironically, this is one of the reasons I chose to GM baking instead of brewing. I think a sensible alternative to nerfing HMPs and MTPs (I'll get into why nerfing them is uncalled for in a moment) is to provide a vendor purchased skillup path in baking that results in something people don't want, maybe an inedible food. This should take people up near 250 but not all the way, have a cost similar to MHB, be tedious to combine but not insanely tedious, and require a slightly higher combine to skillup ratio than HMP or MTPs (basically more combines needer per point). I think this would fix the HMP and MTP markets without over-burdening people who just want the skill. It would also be cool it the stat foods required a baking utensil comparable to a corking device. Skillers wouldn't invest the 1k necessary to buy it, so there would be no dumping of stat foods by them.

Anyway, here's why nerfing HMPs and MTPs is uncalled for: they by no means break the game and in fact they help with what SOE has been trying to accomplish lately. PoK ports, player made equipment that rivals ToV drops, focus items, the LFG tool, easy access to KEI... all examples of how SOE is trying to reduce down time and increase everyone's fun factor by enhancing their game play. Having readily available and inexpensive stat food allows everyon to enjoy the benefits of it and makes playing more fun. That's what really counts, and is why I have no problem selling HMPs as long as I'm making something off them (selling at or below cost is something I won't do). If cheap and easy to get KEI doesn't break the game, then cheap HMPs certainly aren't either.

[Faymar]

I have my own views on cheap and easy KEI but I agree: HMP's and MTP's existing in the game are not imbalanced per se. Currently there is a huge supply and demand problem.

If seven enchanters are in the Nex and all undercutting each other then realistically another seven aren't going to park themselves there and say "that's fine, I can offer KEI cheaper." The demand just isn't there, they will move on. The same would happen if an NPC were set there to KEI people when they hailed it. This is how it should work.

The "market crashing" etc effect in baking is due to these being the obvious skill up recipes. This is because they are cheap, have a "relatively low" time investment (compared to say getting enough wyvern hides to get from 191 to 250 tailoring, say) and a high yield making up for low success rates at 200-220.

They are also effectively the best stat food in the game.

It ... frustrates me that those bakers that go vendor mining/hunting/farming/bazaar buying can not make anything better. Effectively in terms of "reward" there is no point in doing anything other than pick up a couple of brownie and mammoth meats and go to it from there.

I would agree that a skill-up path is desperately needed. As an "old school baker" who skilled up on chocolate recipes and whooped and hollered when centi steaks gave an alternative to cinnasticks, it would depress me vaguely to see baking go the route of "hit the vendor and max out baking" but I concede it would be of benefit for the current situation.

I would prefer to see new recipes come in (the new LoY fishing recipes would have been perfect, not quite as simple as nipping over to the vendor but still straight forward) that are the skill-up recipes with low-level or no stats given, and MTP's and HMP's made more difficult.

Now I'm not sure what "more difficult" means, really. I'm not saying it should include a chunk of dragon meat and I'm really not trying to play the "I'm uber and you aren't so it should be in my reach and not yours" game. But you know, really, I can't give the **** things away, I now make them only for my own use. Tryi to give people anything else, unless it's very situational (Holy Cakes), they'll force feed it the second you are out of range to make space. That's what saddens me.

Maybe drop the yield on wolf/mammoth meat, as someone else suggested, or simply the yield on the final combine itself. Maybe add in a level restriction of 200 for pies and 220 for picnics. Maybe (as in my original "letter to Verant" post) focus more on situational foods for the new recipes so that if, by god, you get a piece of dragon meat in your hot little hands there is something worthwhile to do with it.

But I think if you add in an easy recipe to skill up to 250 that is inedible or statless, you will still find the majority sticking to these recipes as they at least get something at the end of it; I'm not convinced it would solve the problem.

[Taraddar]

Baking has several problems right now that almost ensure the market will crash.

The first and most obvious is one that people have pointed out several times in that the most viable skill up methods are also the most reasonable recipes to sell. This results in people "dumping" thier skill up combines on the market just to make some money back. Combined with the high number of results both theses recipes make that puts alot of HMP and MTP on the market. This constant amount of people selling low to sell quickly definitely drives the price down.

The second is the actual vendor cost of components are fairly low. Both recipes have pretty low vendor cost to make them but are fairly combine intensive. Unfortunately people have a tendancy to forget the value of thier time. This leads to very low pricing relative to what they should be worth IMO. It may only cost you 2 or 3 pp per MTP to make them but the time involved makes it worth alot more.

Third is the huge numbers you see on vendors. Acting as the banker for my guild I frequently sell items in the bazaar and one thing I have noticed is no matter how cheap something is if there's large numbers of them then people always assume that they are high/over priced. What that exact point is does change some. 20 BP's is definitely over, 20 HMP isn't but several hundred HMP is and it isn't uncommon to see that many on a vendor. This furthers the price dropping because seeing those quantities on a vendor makes people think it's over priced even if your selling under cost. Seems to go back to that gut lvl supply and demand that everyone knows. If there's only 1 of something it's more valuable than if there's 10 of them.

The final problem is related to the quality and quantity of these 2 items compaired to other foods. Things like hero sandwiches, torment sturfry aren't that much better yet for hero sandwiches you end up with sandwich per hero part gathered with no fails. Compair that to the yeilds either of these other recipes and it's rather hard to make any descent supply of those.

[Garulf]

It would also be cool it the stat foods required a baking utensil comparable to a corking device. Skillers wouldn't invest the 1k necessary to buy it, so there would be no dumping of stat foods by them.

That will have zero effect, why would "the skillers" as you put it, be bothering to skillup, unless it was to make the products that require the "baker's corker".

People have suggested adding "skillup only" recipes in the past, but frankly, it's just not worth Verant's time to add such things. Especially if the "skillup only" items are storebought only. They've gone out of their way to make sure the high end recipes require non-storebought items (at least the newer recipes) For example, how traumatic would it be to add Mammoth meat to the current vendors that sell bear/lion/gator/etc. meat?

All the tradeskills need more recipes (at pretty much ALL trivial levels) that are worthwhile, rather than 1 or 2 that are worthwhile, and a few others than aren't worth a bucket of warm spit. Tailoring is a good example, there are multiple recipes for 1-low 100s, and MANY >250 recipes. Between those two, there are only 1-2 recipes for a given range, except for the two races that have cultural tailoring (halflings/Wood Elves), who get a couple more (completely worthless BTW) recipes to fill the gap. Other skills (like brewing) have incredibly cheap, storebought only recipes that take you to all the way to 250. You could theoretically do mino hero brew from 1-248, and not spend a fortune on it.

We basically need a bunch more recipes that yeild useyieldroducts all along the line, for all tradeskills, not just baking.

[payens]

That will have zero effect, why would "the skillers" as you put it, be bothering to skillup, unless it was to make the products that require the "baker's corker".

I think this statement is off the mark. For one, there aren't that many GM tinkerers on most servers. Tarew has only a handful for example. By making the "baker's tinkered George Foreman Grill" (I like that better than calling it a corker) a lore item you will limit the number of them being produced. Granted over time a sizable number will get into circulation, but at least it puts a reasonable limiter to the situation. And cost is a deterant, and this would be a much larger barrier than anything existing at the moment.

But even beyond that, yes there are many "skillers" who want to GM a tradeskill and never, ever plan to bake anything to sell on the market. They either want it for the satisfaction and trophy, or they want it for a quest, or they want to supply their guild with food. There are a myriad of reasons why people would GM in a tradeskill and then not actively sell in the market. There are several people who have maxed all tradeskills, and I'm sure they don't sell goods from all of them.

[kodiacFL]

Hey everyone,

I just had to weigh in on this issue since I'm one of the people that everyone is complaining about on here. For right or for wrong, I decided that I wanted a GM trophy. That plus 50 to charisma is worth it alone for my enchanter. I started out in jewelry but not being able to sell my goods really frustrated me. So after reading a number of posts on here, I decided on baking because the final product is consumable. My chanter's INT is maxed at 255, yet the skill increases are mighty slow. My skill is currently at 198. It is currently taking 30-40 HMP attempts to get a skill increase. With a success rate between 85-90% that equals out to a ton of HMPs. Merchants won't pay squat for them unlike fish rolls which I could sell to merchants for a small profit. I've given tons of them away to my guild members and friends. So I parked them on my bazaar mule and matched the lowest price. They didn't move. So I have all this cash and inventory space tied up in pies, and I have the prospect of making thousands more before I skill up to triv. I hate HMPs. The are much more tedious to make than MTPs in my opinion. So I priced mine to sell. Several traders had them priced at 3pp on Karana, so I reduced the price to 2p9g. I sold over 500 of them in the bazaar the first night. I calculate my cost to make HMPs at about 2.5pp per pie. So even at that price I am making a small profit. But there is no way I'd waste my time making HMPs as an income source simply because of how difficult it is to get mammoth meat. My level 40 druid has wasted hours and hours in EF killing mammies to get the meat when I could have been using that time to level him. The only reason I am making them at all is that they are really the only viable way to reach 224. I assure you that once I reach triv, I will never make another HMP again. I am not looking forward to MTPs either for that matter.

As far as making money goes, I have a much easier time making money with my main, a level 40 druid, doing ports. But I don't much care for sitting around waiting for the next customer, either that or being flooded with more requests than I can handle. I'd rather be soloing ice giants in EF(like you can ever find 'em not camped). Love to kill those giants - great xp and a nice pay check at 20-40pp per giant.

I've only been playing EQ for just over 3 months. I haven't been around to remember the good old days when MTPs sold for 50pp. I have been around long enough to know that prices only go down. I won't make another HMP once I reach triv, but there are probably a dozen young bakers right on my heels, who will be forced to do the same thing I am, trying to get that elusive spoon.

[Bennan]

imo there really is no right or wrong in this for players. Everyone has the right to max a tradeskill if they want.

All we are doing is choosing the available skill paths open to us, that the game supplies. I believe that if another skill path existed, that had equal difficulty, and those recipies that these are replacing on the skill up path, made so that they fail more or take more time to make or yeild less etc, those that just wanted to skill up etc would use the other recipie.

[FeroceFV]

Aye, when they first came out, I was selling the Halas Meat Pie for 250pp PER PIE. I got away with this for a while, even after they upped all the relevant yields, but eventually, I came to sell them at 300pp per stack, with the offer to deliver. I made about 65kp off of them.

I tried selling Holy Cakes, too, but there's not much of a market for them. They're just not well known at all.

[Bennan]

I am just trying out the Holy Cake market myself FeroceFV, arghh they are a pain to make.

The average price on the server I play (Tarrew Marr) does not have them for sale all the time, and I think thats due to players pricing them way too low. 8 to 10pp is about the average. I have mine at 12pp each, and sold 30 today. I think they are a really good baked item, that do have the chance to return good profits.

[Lixivia]

I'm a 250 Brewer... we had a discussion about this in the brewing section also, was quite some time ago.

It's true bakers are more crazy with price wars than brewing, Although, for me i thought bakers were crazy, on Emarr MTP are 9pp now. HMP are 3pp, and Holycakes are the average of 4pp.

I really never understood this... but in comparison to Brewing, Grobb drinks are 4pp, Tea 9pp, and Kaladims 8pp.

i've also been working baking recently. i have been brewing a very long time. If you ask me Kaladims are not worth making to sell for 8pp each, i no longer make them. MTP if i were being realistic, i guess i would sell them for 10-15pp each. They seem like a lot of combines, but the yeilds make it pretty easy. Holy Cakes take me forever to get the parts, as do Kaladims since its a ground spawn.

Its really disappointing to me that people value their time so little, to go as far to make these items 3pp each, if MTP went to 5pp i know a lot of people wouldnt be making them. Tea has fallen to 7pp once or twice, but they usually go away after a week, i am thinking because they are not worth the foraging to sell them for that little, and they arn't, i almost stopped making them myself

It's not worth my wrists hurting to make 1k per 15 stacks of Grobbs, and i can see how it would be that way with MTP/holycakes

It saddens me to see the market crash so much... there is a difference between reasonable prices and crashing completely