Announcement

**Lling** · 07-11-2003, 03:38 PM

Depending on your server, this started happening months ago, right after everyone twinked their new frogs.

A lot of people are skilling up to work on the Aid Grimel quest. Some of my human friends are going the cultural route rather that do a lot of farming.

Making a decent profit in cultural armor was still viable even as recently as 6 months ago. Now, many are using it as a means to an end. It doesn't matter what you price it at - there is just too much of it floating around out there.

**Araon** · 07-16-2003, 08:33 AM

Heraldic does not appear to be moving very well on Torv either. Having finally been able to start making some Heraldic pieces after a long period of skilling up on imbued field plate I had hoped to at least sell one item but nothing yet despite relatively low pricing. Fortunately, for my piece of mind, I have sold a couple of Tae Ew chain items

I agree that the "twink your froggie" days are long over and there are more GM smiths than ever thanks to that PoP quest. However, I can't imagine too many people are using Heraldic purely to skill up on, the essence of sunlight bottleneck would be too severe.

**Boleslav** · 07-16-2003, 10:01 AM

My sales of Underfoot have dwindled as well. I keep a full visible set on my mule all the time, but I only sell a piece here and there. I sell even less Mischievous Plate, but I stock that as well.

Mudflation has put a lot of very nice items directly into competition with smithed cultural armor. Also, with so many people working the skill up for the Aid Grimel quest (and other reasons) more people have a friend willing to hook them up. Those people used to be customers, but have been removed from the pool as well.

Lastly, the average level of characters is rising rapidly. Higher level characters have there sights set on nicer stuff that what we can make.

With all that said, there is still some money to be made in GM smtihing. You will eventually sell a few pieces of Heraldic Plate, there are sickles to be made as well as Tae Ew, and Night Terror armors. The get-rich-quick days appear to be gone though.

Boleslav Forgehammer
Paladin of Brell in his 63rd Campaign
E'ci � Sacred Destiny

**Scirocco** · 07-17-2003, 05:01 PM

The get-rich-quick-days come and go in waves. The trick is to catch each new wave as it is coming in and ride it for what it is worth. Then head back out, and wait for the next one.

For example, I did it with tailoring, catching the cobalt drake belts, then the acrylia reinforced and studded armor, then ceremonial solstice robes, then the new PoP robes.

Smithing had its own waves, of course. Sickles, heraldic/cultural armor, and black acrylia weapons, for example.

Just getting to a high level in your respective skill is not enough (although it is necessary to take full advantage). You have to keep your eyes open and look for big opportunities. Mostly, these come with expansions, new zones, and patches.

In the meantime, you can still make some money. What works depends on your server, of course. On mine, for example, you can still make money on sickles and black acrylia. Not much, but enough to make it worthwhile.

**rolsdar** · 07-18-2003, 05:19 AM

Just recently started making fierce heraldic armour. Have a full suit on a bazar Mule at the standard prices on my server. And i have sold about 2 pieces in the last 3 weeks.

Using the auction channel, and auction in the bazaar i have sold roughly about 2 full suits of it in this time. Seem to get more interest from people looking to buy multiple pieces.

**burnttoastv** · 07-18-2003, 08:39 AM

On Drinal it always seemed I bumped into plenty of High Elves who had worked on thier smithing right before the blue diamond cultural was introduced. Even ran into a couple enchanter/smiths who had gotten 250 smithing. Nowadays when I search for full mithril in the bazaar I always do find something for sale, but only a few pieces if I'm lucky, usually just one piece is left. Heraldic there is plenty of but since you can make it for many religions or agnostic there seems to be lots of variety. For the last year when I needed to raise cash/work on smithing a little I could just work on a few full mithril bracers which for some reason almost never sell on the weekend, only on weeknights when someone buys a set of bracers and a boot. I don't sell on a regular basis but it's nice that things usually move in a few days.

**Monodon** · 07-18-2003, 01:40 PM

Deflation

It is an unfortunate truth that smiths seem to work against each other. We see this time and time again. We price war, trying to out-compete each other. THe end result is that we often drop the market price for our goods down to near or even at times below the cost of production.

I have seen this on CT with sickles in the past month or so. The price of sickles has dropped to below 900 pp. In less than 1 week the market went from 2500 pp per sickle and everyone selling plenty to sickles no longer being profitable. The same has happened with Tae ew after the drop rate of bloods increased. This isn't faulting Sony for the drop rate increase, as that is what we as smiths whined for.

But the only way to prevent the devaluing of our wares is to market them responsibly. As far as heraldic is concerned the people on my server have done a commendable job thus far. There is little deviation from a fair market price and we all know that when we see someone selling a single item for much less, that they are most likely a past customer that just got an upgrade and is looking for a quick turn around so they can get back out. We let them sell their wares quickly and don't try to beat them. someone gets a really good deal on that BP they've been dreaming about, and then the market goes back to normal.

I can only pray to Mithaniel Marr that this wonderful situation continues as it only takes one person to totally destroy a market.... Correction, it takes two very stubborn people to destroy a market and screw everyone over.

Basically we need to think before we get into pricing wars. So the market is a little slow. Wait it out. I don't sell a huge amount of armor. But it's steady and has allowed me to afford many upgrades. If you suddenly hit hard times and really need to sell an item, I recommend lowering the price of one item like a BP. But be courteous. Send a tell to the other smiths to let them know what's up. If they know that you absolutely must sell that BP so you can afford a spell etc., but that you have no intention of trying to out-compete them across the board they will more than likely react favorably. And no, I am not talking about price fixing, but communication can go a long way to avoiding conflicts that will ultimately ruin everyones day.

Be good to one another.

**Reflan** · 07-18-2003, 09:36 PM

I agree on being responsible on pricing if you can.

If someone has a piece or two of something to sell at less than market price, it usually doesn't bother me much. I may not move my prices down to theirs, and I will rarely try to undercut them.

But I see some people figure that if they will just put their tae ew shields/swords/armor 100 or 500pp below everyone else, in quantity, whatever the price is, they will walk away with the whole market for as long as they want it. When that time comes, I bust out my big supply of stored bloods and tempers and go to town on them, selling usually less than they do but sometimes matching them, until they realize that being a jerk to all the other smiths isn't nearly as profitable as they thought -- heck, with the failure rate, they could make more money selling the components than trying to compete against me.

What happens next is they usually go right back to what most everyone else is charging and STAY there, or after they sell out of their wares they never make another stab at the market again. At least, not playing it the jerk way.

It's a little hard on all of us when one guy starts it, but when I finish it, it returns to being much easier for everyone, and we all go back to making money again at a reasonable price instead of dealing with a permanently trashed market.

All it takes is one bad apple to trash the market permanently, but sometimes all it takes is one person who can afford a loss for a while to set it straight.

**Kosari** · 07-19-2003, 11:02 AM

No

Selling prices of items depends on two things.

Supply and demand.

What other smiths are doing, and what prices they think they can get etc have no impact on what you are doing. Blaming other smiths for setting the prices they need to sell at is stupid.

People will produce materials most likely as fast as is reasonable for them to do so. This means that easily accessible materials and combines will be sold in large volume (high supply) this will droip the priuce. You cant have 10,000 of the same item for sale without causing a drop in price.

Other items available that are drops can also flood the market devaluing the smithed materials. Again this reduces the demand for the smithed material as people may be able to buy a comparable product at a lower price than you can make it.

Dont be silly about this, set your prices to sell materials. If there are no dropped items in great supply that are comparable to your products, and if the materials to make your products are hard to come by, so that you can only make a few of them - then youll be able to sell them at high prices. If they increase the drop rates, then your selling price will drop.

This is basic economics .. like you learned when you were 10.

Kosari - Lord Protector - Drinal

**Taraddar** · 07-19-2003, 02:44 PM

Supply and demand definitely has an effect but it's silly to ignore the effect that even an individual person can have on things. As a maxed tradeskiller and the banker for my guild I spend alot of time watching the bazaar and have a mule selling items almost 24x7. There are alot of things that even a single person can do to undermine the market on a single item.

First perception is a large part of the supply side of things. If people see someone with a large amount of something for sale they automatically think that the supply must be high and the price should be lower no matter how low this is. Doesn't matter if that person spent days, weeks or even month gathering up the stuff to make those thats the automatic perception. Where that line is varies. 20 halas meat pies obviously isn't an excess give it's yeild and the quantities people buy at. On the other hand you stick 20 tae ew chain tunics up for sale and you've got a problem. One person bumping a bunch of tunics on their mule all at once can crash the market even if they just match everyone else because of the perception. On the other hand if they put them up for sale max of 1 or 2 at a time they quite possibly could sell them all with out crashing the market.

The seller that wants thing sold quickly can also do alot of dmg to the market. Especially if they have multiple to sell or keep thier vendor stocked. This is especially true of recipes with out a bottle neck on them from dropped components like sickles or solstice robes. The problem is that when they drop thier price to try and encourage buyers that they change public perception and even after they are gone from the market the perception is still there. There's always the well my friend got x for y so that must be the going price.

Yes in eq since things almost never leave the economy the price of almost everything is always going down because supply is going up and demand is going down but to ignore the effect that an individual or a couple people can have on the market is silly.

**Zopharr** · 07-19-2003, 06:43 PM

Part of the deflation is the oversupply of smiths now with the Aid Grimel quest. I can see this in the Tae Ew market. It's one thing to try and agree on prices with cultural armor - usually there are only a handful of each race of smith (at least for non-humans). But for the Tae Ew and the PoP chain where every GM smith can participate ... well, prices seem locked in a definite race for the bottom. (And to think that I sold my first three Tae Ew Chain Tunics for 40k ...)

Most of the cultural isn't hit so hard by a race for the bottom as it is by general mudflation, and also that the people who could afford to premium prices already have it or - more likely - better. While it is still **** fine armor (I was soooo glad to be able to skip HoT farming on Garshok), people in uber guilds with uber cash aren't looking for it, and the people who are looking for it can pay only half or a third as much as the old prices it used to command.

The one exception is the human cultural, specifically heraldic. While I get the impression that there are scads of human smiths about, relatively speaking (at least it seems that way on Quellious, partially due to the Aid Grimel quests), there are also scads of aftermarket Fierce Heraldic out there. All the RZ warriors who got FH ages ago who are now picking up nice toys in PoP are trying to unload it at seemingly *any* price. Most of the time there is little dwarven or ogre cultural on the market, but there is *always* Fierce Heraldic.

Seems to be an especially tough time to be a human smith - at least one who became GM after the Fierce Heraldic craze had already subsided.

**Aauminki** · 07-20-2003, 05:42 AM

Economics

You'll have a hard time keeping the price artificially high on an item if the market isn't growing, if you do price high you will attract other suppliers that are willing to accept a lower margin per unit to enter the market, unless there are some hefty entry barriers such as a high capital cost etc etc, this is basic economy. Basically there are no entry-barriers to any tradeskills in EQ other than time invested (with time/inclination anyone can get levels, pp and flags, drops etc), and everyone values their time differently.

This is a good discription of why products that start out with high margins get lower and lower as more competitors enter the market --> Boston Matrix (Product Life Cycle): http://www.marketingteacher.com/Lessons/lesson_boston_%20matrix.htm

As a market moves from Mono-/Oligopoly (one/few big suppliers) towards Perfect Competition the supernatural profits are bound to be lowered, simply because the market will be entered by more and more suppliers willing to accept a lower margin to move their stock.

Also the Aid Gimel quest has (probably, haven't had time to log on for two months) introduced a ton of sickles and robes from people who are only interested in the earring and will be out of the market again once their stock have moved. To these people, the robes/sickles are only worth what they sell for to merchants and anything above that are a profit of sorts, which is why you'll see a lot of people selling items between merchant (buy) prices and material costs, these people are acting irrationally at first glance, but actually they just value their time differently from tradeskillers that do it as a hobby and a means to make EQ-money.

until they realize that being a jerk to all the other smiths isn't nearly as profitable as they thought -- heck, with the failure rate, they could make more money selling the components than trying to compete against me.

It's a bit ironic that you advocate a mobster-strategy where you both lose money in order to force prices back up when all that's going to happen is an increased longer-term supply which you (the market) will constrict at a too high price (from market equilibrium), resulting in a marketwide stockpile of items that will bring the market price crashing down sooner or later anyway (refer to the BM/PLC above). The rational thing to do would be to let the newcomer bleed out and let the market going rate back up which will happen if he's selling at or near material costs. If his supply keeps up, then maybe the market equilibrium has moved and you all need to lower prices, should you want to compete selling the products.

I don't blame anyone trying to make money though, I can understand why you want the selling prices as high as you can :b

**Elvenphox** · 07-20-2003, 06:15 AM

thank god for us econ majors bringing sense to a world often devoid of it (kinda ironic how many econ models assume rationality though lol)

**Segal** · 07-23-2003, 08:13 AM

You know the old saying about Economists; they have correctly predicted 19 of the last 7 recessions. Here's a tip for anyone that plays the stock market, listen to the economists and the analysts and do the opposite (it's like free money).

As a craftsman, you cannot have real effect on demand, only on supply. I have found two effective ways to control supply. Either come to agreement with the rest of the suppliers on a price (almost never happens) or dominate the market so that other craftsmen have no desire to enter the market.

If I have my product priced at 8,000 and you come in and cut that price then my life mission is to make sure you never sell your product, ever. By the time I am through cutting your prices (on all your products, not just the one you cut under me), you will wonder why you started a tradeskill. I know that I am there for the long run (my bazaar mule has 169 days played) and most likely my competitor is not.

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