UF cultural sales a bust so far?

[Ratblaster]

Has anyone else had a problem selling the new UF cultural gear in bazaar or /ooc ?

I made full sets of Barbarian plate and chain cultural armor (and symbols for each slot) but have yet to sell a single piece of cultural armor on Maelin server, even though it has been priced down to 1/3 of what SoF cultural was selling for.

In fact, the only that that has really been selling so far are the templates, because they are needed for combine with the group armor drops. I've sold a dozen templates so far at 10k a pop.

The lack of demand for UF cultural may have several causes:
1. The number of groupers & bots who farmed the hell out of Rallos Returns raid during the 10 months that it was groupable. Since this is SoD raid armor, it surpasses all UF group/cultural armor. Although SOE finally fixed the mission, it may be too little too late.

2. Equivalent armor available for free via SoD McKenzie/MM missions, and UF Arena.

3. Equivalent UF group armor available for those who can group named effectively in the mid-tier zones like UQ.

4. Reduced AC on UF cultural vs SoD cultural. I ran into this one myself...My Warrior has SoF cultural armor/symbol plus raid seals (Last Blood and higher...all have 45 ac/seal). After comparing the UF group armor (with soloist seal) with the SoF cultural using raid seals from older content, many of which are groupable now), I decided to stay with SoF cultural armor rather than take the AC loss. I'm sure many will argue that you cant compare armor using group seals with armor using raid seals...but the fact is that raid seals were readily available for group armor in SoF, primarily via farming last blood seals, but also in some cases to Faysite/Sunshard/Dragon seals that rotted to bots. The reason I mention bots of raiders here is that they were some of the most frequent purchasers of the SoF cultural armor.

[bocote]

materials are selling well and in demand. Templates are doing decent as well.

To add to your list I think that the level 85 requirement (focus seals) on the cultural is hurting demand as well - very much so in key slots for each class.

Another thing that is hurting demand is the number of tradeskillers. It seems like everyone is a master of something or knows several who are. I don't have a problem with this at all though.

The nice thing about the cultural though is you can gear up fairly well without having done old content or deal with the endless tedium of Old Man McKenzie. I think it'll be sellable once prices on materials normalize.

Have fun

[wayshaper]

this problem goes back in time to the planes of power era, problem is not so much with the gear, the gear is decent. the problem is, when compared to pre-planes of power, everyone and their brother is a master tradeskiller. during the velious / luclin era, us tradeskillers were semi-rare, you actualy had to work hard at mastering a tradeskill. Yes, its easier nowadays, and i am thankful for some of the changes (well, my wrist is thankful anyway).
The earring quest in planes of power, the changes in cultural during dragons of norrathe caused many players to go for the tradeskill rout, the tradeskill quest in secrets of feydwar as well as further upgrades in cultural armor.

basicaly this means, why should i buy armor in the baz when i got an alt or bot that can make the armor, or at least a dozen guildmates that can make the armor

[Lenowill]

That kind of uncertainty is one reason why I make armors and symbols to a person's order, generally speaking, rather than making a bunch of extra and trying to sell them.

With that said, besides my guildies (whom I don't charge), I haven't really had very many bites yet for people wanting me to make symbols or armor. Granted, I haven't advertised all that much--I'm trying to build up a supply of Spongy Loam first, and get friends/family's equipment needs squared away. People will be wanting this stuff to twink with for a long while to come, I figure, so I'm not too worried from the money-making standpoint.

[crystilla]

Yeah I've seen this as well. Though the expansion has only been out for 1.5 weeks for a full launch so really early in the lifecycle.

One thing I've found (I haven't yet sold any armor either) is without the matching components for sale, it's very hard for someone to know what the end stats are and I've seen a lot of folks who want that knowledge first.

We "just" started getting folks who can make the slot 16 symbols but haven't seen any slot 17 available yet in bazaar.

[Sump]

For plate, isn't the old cultural 130ac and 80HEM and then only three slots for augs? And the UF plate is 171ac and460HEM? Not to mention the UF has a slot just for focus augs that can be tradeskilled. Just adding the slot 16 aug to the UF armour brings it up to 187ac 800+HEM. Add in another 40+ac 400HEM+ aug that you can get from group progression merchants and you're breaking 230+ac and 1200+HEM. Did SoF cultural even with raid augs compare to that?

I think the problem may be that SoE cracked down hard on plat sellers lol. On my server, each armour piece is listed at 100k plats. Each aug is 100k plats. That's 200k plats per slot.....before adding in the focus aug, which is yet unseen and I'd bet that'll be 50k to 100k? So, lets just say 250k per slot. That'll be 2 million plat per player for a full set. These prices are based on what? When people were buying plats for a few dollars? Now SoE wiped a ton of plat sellers inventory and whatever is left goes for a whole lot more $$, but bazaar people are still pricing as if plat is cheap. You don't really think all those people buying the last set of cultural had all those plats from just playing the game did you?

[Zopharr]

I put a set of ogre and dwarven plate up Saturday, no bites yet. I've seen two other toons put up armor, don't think that they have had much luck yet. I have been selling supplies, slowly (oddly enough, pelts going best) but enough to have recouped most of the cost of all the hoarding I did over the last two months.

I note that no one is selling the slot 16 augs - which makes the armor somewhere between SoD T1 and T3 without focii. Nor has there been much advertising.

I finished the venerable aug quest Saturday on two toons. Wife faction willing, I'll make some augs tonight and try some advertising in general, see how it goes.

At the very least I can say that I am close to breaking even, and since my alts are mostly casters (so don't have the focii choice issues that hybrids face), it gives me a quick way to catch them up on visible since I skipped all the SoD tiered armor.

[Ishwar]

The way cultural works, it will not sell itself. It does not show up in searces when searching for stats, no one is going to buy 450 HEM armor.

It will most likely start selling as the word spreads, after all its pretty nice.

Just curious, how much are you selling it for?

[Merlaina]

It's the price!

I think there are 3 big components at work here:

1 - The expansion is new, and so everyone is on their mains, who are probably better geared than the new cultural or plan to be via UF drops very soon. They don't see a need to buy this armor at the current price. Once they start getting out alts again who might not be as well geared they'll want to patch holes in their armor.

2 - Level 85 requirement on seals. It seems to me the perfect market for this armor is low level 80s characters who haven't quite reached 85 and thus didn't get to do a whole lot of SoD farming before UF went live. They're the ones who could use the upgrades most, but aren't going to spring for it if they can't also use the focus seals.

3 - Price. The lowest I've seen any of this armor going for is 60k and augs for 100K. As has been pointed out, a full set at this price would be very expensive. Since your target audience here is groupers, and those needing to play catch up with their gear at that, you're looking at over 1 mil pp for a full suit with augs, not even counting seals. I'm guessing the average grouper just doesn't have this kind of cash. I would guess if they could get armor, aug, and seal for 60-80K per slot then you might see it sell more. No one is going to break their bank for one piece, when you need the set of 3 to make the armor really worth it.

Edit: I also know on Luclin at least I haven't seen my seals for sale (read: 1), and again, without the armor/aug/seal combo I doubt anyone would be buying the armor.

[Ratblaster]

For plate, isn't the old cultural 130ac and 80HEM and then only three slots for augs? And the UF plate is 171ac and460HEM? Not to mention the UF has a slot just for focus augs that can be tradeskilled. Just adding the slot 16 aug to the UF armour brings it up to 187ac 800+HEM. Add in another 40+ac 400HEM+ aug that you can get from group progression merchants and you're breaking 230+ac and 1200+HEM. Did SoF cultural even with raid augs compare to that?

I think you are looking at the BP only, which does benefit from having an emblem slot (assuming someone plans to get a full set of cultural..otherwise the emblem stats tank if jsut have a few pieces). The BP did not compare too bad with prior SoF cutural. Its the other 7 armor slots that have an issue. Even using metal orb for extra AC, the other 7 UF armors fall behind on AC assuming the SoF user has at least a last blood aug which are easy to get. I'm mainly discussing AC here since a big chunk of the cultural buyers has always been WAR and knight classes for which AC is king. If I had a melee or caster dps class, I'd probably ignore the ac difference and go with the UF cultural armor for the HEM gain.

As for the Soloist seals, those will not be a selling point for a long long time, primarily because
1) require Spongy Loam which currently is in very short suply due to making armor (unless you want to buy spongy loam for 30k a pop in bazaar and then throw them away on high trivial combines with 50% failure rate.
2) requires pottery which many people haev not tradeskilled up the way they did smithing and tailoring.

I haev max pottery skill, AAs, and 12% trophy and it used up 5 spongy to make 2 soloist seals. As far as I have seen in the /baz, I'm the only one that has made & sold them. You can see which ones have appeared in game by going into /buyer and then searching. The only 2 soloist seals that have appeared on Maelin so far are the 2 that I made (Fero legs and cleave sleeves).

I think the problem may be that SoE cracked down hard on plat sellers lol. On my server, each armour piece is listed at 100k plats. Each aug is 100k plats. That's 200k plats per slot.....before adding in the focus aug, which is yet unseen and I'd bet that'll be 50k to 100k? So, lets just say 250k per slot. That'll be 2 million plat per player for a full set. These prices are based on what? When people were buying plats for a few dollars? Now SoE wiped a ton of plat sellers inventory and whatever is left goes for a whole lot more $$, but bazaar people are still pricing as if plat is cheap. You don't really think all those people buying the last set of cultural had all those plats from just playing the game did you?

I agree that plat costs are high, but there is not a lot I can do when the cost to buy Loam/Spinners/Marrow ranges from 25k-40k each in bazaar and 500 trivial combines have 50% fail rate even with max skills.

The only way we can really bring down the cost of these is to increase the in-game supply of those 3 items. Peraps N'Greth can comment on that possibily. Until then, a group armor template selling for 10k is far more attractive than armor+symbol going for combined 150-250k. And if someone cant get the group drops, and also has no plat, then they will head to the arena for free armor, for some slots at least.

[yahriel]

I can make the slot 16 augs, and have on multiple occasions when requested to. The problem with them is I don't want to use up all my supplies to make the slot 16 augs when there's so many different religions each character can have.

Take the religion part off those augs and people will make them to have on their trader.

Keep the religion on the augs and people won't make them to sell on a trader...least I won't.

[yahriel]

The slot 17 augs are costly because of the spongy loam requirement, and they don't have stats worthy of using them. 25 purity and a focus that's not that good when you consider the same materials go into making a much better slot 16 aug.

I personally won't make any slot 17 augs till I have all armor and slot 16 augs made for all my characters and friends.

Please take off the spongy loam and add something else to it, like more cosgrove powders or something.

[Aldier]

The slot 17 augs are costly because of the spongy loam requirement, and they don't have stats worthy of using them. 25 purity and a focus that's not that good when you consider the same materials go into making a much better slot 16 aug.

I personally won't make any slot 17 augs till I have all armor and slot 16 augs made for all my characters and friends.

Please take off the spongy loam and add something else to it, like more cosgrove powders or something.

For a melee to add Cleave 6 or Fero 6 to the gear is definitely worth a spongy loam, imo and my alt now has a full set of armor, symbols, and seals (minus chest). He is a melee though so didn't care much about focus effects other than cleave, fero, and faerune.

[crystilla]

Here's an update on my situation.

Right after posting this, I was contacted by someone in game to make the venerable augs. He offered to give me all the items for the combine (he wanted a full set of 'compassion' and a full set of 'skeptic' and he would give me 100k as a thank you for making it all.

I told him it would be a couple of weeks before I could finish that quest (I'd started and got mostly done). I offered to give him some names of folks who have already finished but he choose to wait for me

I finished up the quest today (had to kill 32 extra gold golems, so 52 total golems for my 6th impression) and found him online. I finished making the two sets, listed the items in here and put photos of them on Alla's.

I made my armor (arms, hands) and made the slot 16 venerable for both. I'm now working on my own slot 17 slowly.

~
My plan is to do the /willing to make ____ to order route rather than have a bunch up on the trader. Plus with two full pieces I can link, folks will be able to see the stats on the items directly instead of having to guess.

[crystilla]

In terms of prices on Erollisi Marr,

Templates are ranging 5-10k
Armor 50-75k
Venerable augs for armor 25k (but only 1-2 folks have had them up for sale that I've seen)