Kaladim Constitutional

[Bennan]

Cost Factor

To be honest, I have not looked into the cost factor of making other drinks. That is an interesting point you bring up.

I will not be selling Kaladim Constitutionals at 30pp but, there is a glut (about 4 or 5 people) that do, and they all undercut each other i.e one at 30pp one at 28pp another at 25pp.

When I first approached making these, I worked out the cost, the time and the market. At 30pp each I alienate a good 60% of the market, at 30pp each I am only selling to rich players from big guilds, I know because I started at around 30pp and I checked out who my buyers where. Now, I get buyers in the mid-range guilds as well.

At 10 to 12pp each, I return 100% to 120% profit per day. So on Kaladim's I believe I have it right.

[Lixivia]

"Why do people place so LITTLE value on their time? "

i dont understand it either. i wont go below 15pp each.

kcs 10pp each and grobbs 2.8 pp each now on my server. its really stupid, i could go and get spider silks in the time it takes me to make kaladims and grobbs, or make leather padding and make twice as much money. i'm not in it just for money, but im not gonna sell my hard work for pennys either.

[Clementine]

Bennan, for the time and success rate of making the Kaladim Constitutionals selling them over 25pp is more than worth it and I know since I have sold Kaladim Constitutionals, QAT, and GLM for a good 3 months straight since the time miraculous drinks came out. No you will not be getting the average player buying since it is the higher end guilds and gamers who often raids who'll have more need for these drinks than other players. As a tradeskiller you should take into account other brewers skilling up on the QAT, foraging those tea leaves are a pain... but these are just my opinions of course /sigh.

[Diania]

Prices on just about all the drinks have plummetted since they came out. I was the first on Bristlebane to sell them with my mule Brewmistress, and for the 3 big sellers, I had grobb at 40pp each, QAT at 45pp each, and kaladims at 50pp each. I've now had to go with the flow of the rest of the clones on the server and drop my prices drastically. Grobb is now 12pp each, QAT 20, and kaladims 25, I will not lower them anymore then they are, and if someone tells me my prices are too high, well then I don't have to sell to them. And even though there are about a dozen or so others selling drinks, I still have repeat business, customers from when I started.

[Bennan]

I respect your opinions, but in my experience I have found that what I have said is true for myself...

That being, the time involved in making the Kaladims is 30mins. With a trip back to Kaladim 2 or three times a day, so lets say 40mins all up.

When I said average players, I am referring to the market that goes to Halls of Testing, on Tarrew Marr there are quite a few guilds capable of doing this, but not able to say kill Vindicator. And they will be in HOT for a fair while, not to mention the people who go on open raids there as well....

For an expenditure of 330ish pp, per 40 combines, I can make 72 to 100 Kaladim's. Selling each at 10pp means I always net a profit of between 390pp to 670pp per day.... and I am happy with that.

I only make 40 combines a day, and sell out fairly quickly, there are still 4 or 5 other traders out there that have them for sale for 25 to 30pp each... so if people want this item, they have to buy from them.

Also, as a Tradeskiller, I enjoy Brewing as a skill, in fact I enjoy all the Tradeskills I work on, and in just about all cases the people I meet, that also work on tradeskills. Except in this skill perhaps if other Brewers on my server had been more pleasant, I would most likely give into the pressure and go along with price fixing.

Thats not the case, and this is business. I did MHB to 248, its a pain, but I could only imagine skilling up on QT's would be a nightmare, if people are skilling up to 248 I believe they should do MHB's.... The cost factor in reaching 248 in Brewing, is only what you create....

[wolfram]

Last batch I made i had a 54% success rate. I almost always try to do combines of 100 or more per session of brewing.

As for cost. I am not allowed to sell them anymore since i am a "detroyer of markets" I am required by a few of my friend sto put them on a friends mule, however, his mule is bgetting filled up, close to 1000 (each)Qats, KC and GLM tend to make a full mule I do crazy stuff like sell them for 1pp more than it costs me to make them. Why you might say? The answer is simple but has a few parts.

1. I dislike the have and have not mentality on the servers. I dont view consumable like drinks and food as the realm of the uber guilds. ( think of it as the Robin Hood mentality)

2. I would love to group. people say that time is PP and exp, HOWEVER when i cant get a group i do tradeskills. And seeing how I beleive in #1 i tend to "crash markets" Some would say well you are ruining it for XXXX. Well seeing how the largest complaints i get on my server about me are from peopelin UBER guilds i dotn mind if they loose out on some PP. and as i hav etold them if u dotn want me to be selling then group with me, cause then i cant do tradeskills.

3. Since it also takes me forever to get groups (and no it is not because of my tradeskill stance) i do other crazy things. I have camped Nurga to get the opals to make demi-secs, effectively makeing the cost of makeing them the supplies i buy from the brewing vendor and the gold bar. I love how the Warder spawns everywhere in there

I know, flame me all you want, but seeing how selling stuff for 1 pp more than it cost to make gets me more PP then i get from being in a group i am fine with that. There tends ot be too much greed as is in EQ. I know i already have a few "enemies" int eh TS area, but oh well. I did find it interesting that they came to me and asked to do combines for them, of course they didnt like my price since i told them i would do it for the same prices they charged.

Oh well enogh and back to work, Flame away, i put on my aspetos suit

[Stillgar]

I am on Tarrew Marr along with Bennan. I was the first to sell the Kalladim Constitutional regualarly. Up untill about 2 weeks ago the market was steady at 25 to 30pp each with variation in between depending which traders were on and how many of us were on. The brewers I competed with were cordial and respectful. I never had a conflict with anyone regarding the ground spawn in kalladim. This has all changed recently.

I would brew in large batches. I would try to do about 120 combines (resulted in 260 kalladims plus or minus)at a time which took about 4 hours total including the celestial essance, soda water and fermented yarrow combines(total of 380-400 combines in that period depending on failures). This was a significant amount of game time for me but it allowed me to leave my vender selling while I was sleeping or at work. I do not have the privlege of owning 2 computers and have one on selling while I am playing. I also do not belong to a large guild we are HoT capable if everyone is online. So the brews were my main source of upgrades.

Stat food a drinks are not well known commodities on Tarrew Marr. I would estimate, at best, 40% of the population understands the benefits of them, and even less then that understand how to use them. I didn't have a lot of repeat clientele. I had a lot of referred clientele because usually when someone buys from me and I am online I explain the theory behind force feeding and drinking. Therefore if they buy a stack and they understand the concept they shouldn't have to buy from me for a eextremelylong time.

Well now I obviously have no clientele. The market has dropped out beneath me. I do not have the luxury to spend an hour each day brewing kalladims. I do enjoy tradeskills. But I also enjoy adventuring and tradeskills helped me become better at it. Most of my skills are master or better except for tailoring which is the devils task I say. I will have to find another way to finance my upgrades due to someone else's less then desirable business tactics.

Point is, the market was stable and cordial but is now ruined. The brewers I had contact with were more then pleasant and agreeable. There was no price fixing or one would never have seen the fluctuations between 25 and 30 pp that was very common. My experiences tell a different story. One of someone out to break the market for self interest. And in business there is nothing wrong with that as long as that is what it is known for and not portrayed as doing right for the little guy. There is no little guy here. Stat drinks do not ever have to be used up and therefore are extremely cheap stat modifiers. An item that offers the same stats as 1 kalladim constitutional easily sells for 500 pp to 1k to even more on the market. You can make a stat drink or food last forever if you educate your client so selling an item for 25pp that goes for 500pp is a service that anyone who can use can easily afford. I therefore respectfully disagree with your opinion and your experiences.

-Stillgar Argus
Grandmaster Brewer of Tarrew Marr

[Bennan]

In Response...

In response Stillgar, I don't have the same motives as Wolfram. And as I said I am only doing this as a business venture, and the enjoyment factor (putting people out of business is NOT part of that fun) of being a 250 skill Brewer.

I don't belong in a guild anymore, my old one split into two, for reasons that I will not go into. After that I just didn't have any interest in being in either, and no interest in joining another guild. Plus, I found my interest in the game waning. Then I started to get back into Tradeskills again. I have interests in all fields, and hope to reach 250 in all of them one day. I don't XP, only PL to get alts to certain useful levels (Enchanter up to 49 for example). All I do, is farm tradeskill ingredients, and make items. With my other hobby being Quests, be they level 1 or higher in difficulty.

In short, all I do now is trade and quest. I don't feel good that people like yourself, feel they are getting shafted over this. If I wanted to destroy the market I would of used Wolframs tactics above, but I have not.

I make an acceptable profit, and I still believe that 25 to 30pp, while a fantastic price, is an inflated one. The nearest item that comes close to Kaladims (that I am aware of) is Holy Cakes and that goes for 7pp to 10pp that I have noticed. The only difference between the two items is the plus 5 stamina on Kaladims.

Also, I would add, this price crash was something coming anyways, I had noticed in the 2 or 3 weeks before I started selling merchants (infrequently) had been selling Kaladims at 15pp and 18pp. Plus, in that period, there were periods where nobody was selling any Kaladims....

I am not saying that justifies my actions, actions that I don't believe I need to defend, but what it did give me was an opportunity, and I took it.

[wolfram]

I could really care less about making a profit. I would love the little guy to not worry about force feeding food and drink and buy stacks of Drinks and Food than to buy 1 of each forever. I have fun clicking combine a gazzilion times. I truly believe the prices on most Tradeskill items are over priced. Think of me as the guy opposit the one that sells Blue Diamonds for 10kp in the bazaar. I am the Ying to his Yang.

Or think of it as a counter balance to pricing too high and force feeding food. Too high also drops the market because people will only buy once. I would perfer to have customers 60 years from now and not have 60 year old Tea in someone slot getting all moldy and stuff cause they force feeding.

I truly am out for the little guy. Trust me on this, i have irked my guild enough by giving away a LOT of stuff for free.

[Luminare]

I really hate to see a market ruined by one person who sells a lot of stuff very frequently for extremely low prices. If someone just does that once in a long while, it has very little impact on the day to day market and I don't really care. If it's a frequent thing, it can get pretty irritating. Many of us ARE trying to use our tradeskills to supplement our income. For us being able to make something off all the time we've spent skilling up is part of the fun. While brewing typically isn't one that will bring in really big profits like smithing can, it can give you a somewhat small but steady income and partly there's just some satisfaction in using that tradeskill to bring in some plat. If someone destroys the market with frequent selling of goods at extremely low prices, we tend to get very frustrated because other than the once in a long while quest item and occasionally supplying ourselves or a friend, our tradeskill is now no use to us.

but here's the quote from wolf that really got me...

"I have fun clicking combine a gazzilion times. "

/boggle!
mindnumbing comes to mind, but fun? heh... to each their own I guess.

[Luminare]

"I had grobb at 40pp each, QAT at 45pp each, and kaladims at 50pp each. I've now had to go with the flow of the rest of the clones on the server and drop my prices drastically. Grobb is now 12pp each, QAT 20, and kaladims 25"

I'm really amazed at the prices some servers have reported getting for these things. I can't imagine 40-50pp each! Grobbs especially is entirely merchant stuff and has a yield of 6 on the combine. With 2 stacks of combines, I get over 200 drinks since I almost always succeed. I'd be happy to charge 12pp each. I'd make a lot of plat. I wouldn't be able to sell them for that though. It's hard to even sell them at 10pp. I have to go a bit lower to move them even leaving the trader up all night or all day sometimes. I have a cutoff price in mind though where if I can't sell them anymore, I'll quit making them. 4 or 5pp is just too low.

kaladims... I wouldn't get 25-30pp on my server. I tried 20 for awhile and didn't have much luck, then got rid of 2 stacks at 18. My fail rate is still very high on these so I don't make a lot, but i've got 2 more stacks to sell now. Maybe i'll try 20 again. this one is definitely more of a luxury drink, even when it's down to 20pp or a little less. It's your high level people that will buy it for anything close to that price. I'm fine with that though. stat drinks are certainly not essential. If ya can't afford them, then don't buy them. 10pp each wouldn't be worth my effort at all.

I do wonder about some of the shorter times people list to make batches, especially the kaladim's. What's the spawn time on those shrooms in kaladim? 6 minutes? it's something like that... and I always get more shrooms than dark fungus. I get at most around 6 dark fungus each time they spawn. So if I wanted to do 60 combines, that's 10 spawn cycles. If it's 6 minutes per cycle and we'll assume I get one cycle right at the beginning, that means 54 minutes just collecting the ground spawn. Now add zoning repeatedly, getting the other supplies (soda, scent of marr/solvent for elixirs, etc.) and doing the subcombines, then finally doing the 8 component main combines, and you've got a pretty large chunk of time. you could just do 36 combines and cut out 24 minutes of ground spawn farming. but of course that means a much smaller batch. Adjust times if my 6 minute spawn time is wrong of course.

-- Luminare, 224 brewer

p.s. brewing to 248 in 12-14 hours is very surprising to me. I've probably spent longer than that getting to 224 and my wisdom runs 242-255 when i'm doing combines. I think i'm pretty quick with the mouse too. heh... oh, and almost all my points past 188 are with minotaur hero brew in FV where it's easy to make. But it seems like if I spend an hour on it, I get 3-4 points. so the 60 points from 188-248 would take me at least 15 hours, probably more. Then there's the time getting up to 188 in the first place.

[Bennan]

Combines....

The respawn time is about 5 to 6mins, I have never timed it myself. To make/collect enough for 40 batches of kaladims goes like this (note spawns are 10 mushrooms, 7 fungus)...

Collect spawns before setting up trader....

In morning gate to kaladim (its set as home point), collect a set of spawns, shower eat blah blah collect a set of spawns.

Get home, collect a set of spawns. Do whatever has to be done IRL.

Collect a set of spawns, I have 35 fungus now, total time spent in front of computer for them is about 5mins.

Gate to w.commons zone to e.commons buy 40 scent of marr, gate to nexus zone to shadowhaven buy 40 corks, bottles, enough yarrow and 45 sodas. Gate back to kaladim, collect spawns, do all sub-combines, collect spawns if any or just go ahead and do kaladim constitutionals (inside the mushroom farm I use the brew barrel).

At end collect spawns and all done.

Travel time is about 8 mins, buying stuff about 10mins, combing about 10mins if that...

I never sit and wait for spawns, hence I have no downtime waiting on re-spawns... If I wanted to I could buy more stuff in bulk and cut down the time even more...


As a comparison, on Tarrew Marr right now )....

Grobbs is going for
7p 5g quantity 22
13p quantity 270
8p quantity 534

kaladims
20p quantity 139
25p quantity 197
25p quantity 342

Qeynos
18p
19p
and about 4 at 20pp, with quantities being anywhere from 40 to 451....

Also, expect to experience only a 45 to 55percent success rate on kaladims, even when you hit 250 (if you are not already), even with a brewing modifying device in hand... if you didn't know that already.

For 30 mins work per day, I make about 500pp day in day out.

Also, I would like to add, that I have given great consideration to Stillgars post, and will be equaling the lowest price present (going as high as 20pp) when I set my trader up per day. Today it will be 20pp. Any higher is still way overpriced in my opinion. But its not my desire to remove a source of income from anybody totally. Thats the best I can do.

[wolfram]

I just go and sit there when i am LFG. I dont have to be in a zone to get a tell if i want a group, so any zone is fine. Oh, i seemd to forgotten to say i am a Wizard and on Innoruuk (hmmm here coem the trains i bet, hehe). I dont think that just my selling cheap (wich i do rarely since ihave stated i have to give stuff toa friends mule) hurts the drink economy that much. If anything, i think it helps it by getting a larger client base. If the drink are set TOO high people will buy them and force drink, so u have no repeat customers. In essence i am liek a "crack" dealer who gets liuttle kids hooked and then the rest of you reap the rewards by having your prices set higher.

[Karrac]

Kaladims success rate

With Trophy and 250 brewing I made 6 batches of Kaladims. success rate was as follows (out of 20)

10, 10, 9, 11, 9, 14.

worked out as 52.5%

Karrac
Monk of the 55th Circle
Karana

[Dragnet]

A new server point of view

I have 2 accounts, 2 PCs and when Kane Bayle opened I joined and left my old worlds behind for a fresh new world. I was a tradeskill nutter on torvo so I decided to keep this up on an alt while having my main do the XP thing. (Something I had never bothered with before)

As a brewer I made a Vah Shir Shammy (Skampy) and my main, the Halfing Cleric Dragnet, helped him to get his 2% brewing cloak and gave him a few hundred pp and a cyclops skull.

It was at first the intention to be the first GM brewer on KB but fairly soon I was being told 'My brewer is 250 skill' by several people so I took it at a more leisurely pace when I couldn't get a group - or couldn't be bothered.

Working skull ale I soon got to 150 skill (the grub merchant and PoK were still some way off) and I heard a call for a brewer to make cultural tempers (remember new server - hard to get components) I offered and the guy was so delighted with my 32/32 success rate he gave me a 1kpp veil.

From that point on my brewer has made money for me. I plugged away at Mino hero brews getting to 230 skill before the patch made it easier (Wis ~180) and started making QATs before anyone else for profit at 30pp each. This gave me the money for some decent gear for my main character and bought the first corking device on the server for 5kpp. MHBS got me to 248 and demi secs to 250 ;-).

What has this to do with pricing?

I am still the ONLY player making Kaladims and only one other makes QATs.

I sell KCs for 30pp and QATs for 25pp. I encourage competition and aim to keep a stock of each at all times (24/7 trader)

Am I getting rich? Undoubtedly.

Am I ripping people off? I don't believe so. I have to find time to brew the KCs which I hate, just so that there is a supply available. I buy the QATs from the skilling up brewer (210ish now) so that she has the space and cash to make more while they sit on my mule for a small markup to my price. This pleases us both as I don't have to brew - but can supply my customers, she keeps her inventory clear. If they wish to make them them selves I would be only too delighted to let them.

I for one will not drop my prices much further. I consider the price is a payment for my time and that is the price I set on it. When people no longer wish to pay my rate, I shall happily hang up my corking device and just pull it out sometimes for fun or to help my friends.

If you wish to work for less, feel free. In a market where demand still vastly outstrips supply, I would prefer my fellow brewers to make the most of it now to pay their training before many others come along and make tradeskills the pp sink they are on most servers.

Its a funny old world. Many people go into tradeskills expecting to make a fortune, and just spend one.

I went in expecting to enjoy losing money, and ended up making a fortune from the KCs I now hate making.

If some other high level brewers don't come along soon I am likely to have paid Dragnet's way to around 200 in all tradeskills as well as buying that fine Mischievous platemail from his friend Forge the Smith.