Am I kidding myself?? Human Cultural Rant of sorts.

[Eshelon]

On my server there have really only been 3 kinds of heraldic armor for sale. Fierce, Luminant, and Fine... The only other type ever for sale was Salubrious and it's a pretty rare find... I am always offering my services to people and occasionally get a customer but they always want to farm their own stuff (I don't make much money).

I decide I'm going to try and fill the gap of the other heraldic armors. I know why the gap exists in the first place (lack of a strong customer base) but that doesn't mean no customers exist? Right? It's been 2 months and so far I've sold 1 salubrious bracer.. Made 1k profit. To my knowlege I have no competition (at least no one selling in the bazaar) on Fetid, Dragonkin, Hateful, Radiant and Thunderous.. I don't have EVERY piece but heck I figure if someone wants a piece I don't have they'd send a tell right?

I don't know.. I'm starting to think I wasted a lot of money investing in this stuff.. btw my markup is about 25% after factoring in -My Cost * 2.38- (42% Success rate, isn't that right?).

The reason I don't touch fierce or salubrious is simple fact that there is so much out there the stuff sells for way cheaper than I can make it.

I guess my delima is this: Is my problem my customer base?(not enough Inny human SK's etc.) Or my price in relation to other heraldic armors? i.e. Fine or Fierce?

[Lling]

My guess is customer base as the biggest factor, followed closely by simple game practicality.

When I started making this armor well over a year ago, my biggest focus was Fierce Heraldic due to the customer base. There was a smaller market for Luminant and Fine. I only made other pieces to order because there was not a huge market for it.

The game has also advanced a lot in the last year. Ornate and PoP armors are slowly replacing cultural armor and thus our customer base and our profits dimish as well.

To achieve any real financial success as a human cultural smith, I think the time to do it was last year.

On a positive note, at least we have other things to make.

[Kaysha Soulsinger]

Ornate > Heraldic.

It's a sad fact. Sad for us Human smiths anyway.

[Eshelon]

I think you are right Lling. Too bad I wasn't a smith back then!! Jerks!! Give me new stuffs to make money on! *sigh*

[Eshelon]

Originally posted by Kaysha Soulsinger
Ornate > Heraldic.

It's a sad fact. Sad for us Human smiths anyway.

Yeah but on my server Ornate is from 4 to 5X the price of Heraldic (assuming plate since all heraldic is plate).. So I don't really think it's the ornate that's killing me.. Plus cultural is droppable and resellable as ornate is not thereby raising it's value slightly... anyway - thinking out loud here.

Edit - in the case of BP's and legs you're looking at 10x the price.

[Eleena Transient]

Thing is ornate is hurting you in 2 ways:

a) Joe Warrior decides he wants a new pair of sleeves. I can get Heraldic (good stats) or save up and get ornate (good stats + regen).

b) Jim Warrior gets an Ornate Sleeves Mold to drop, and makes his armor. Time to sell that piece of Heraldic... Hmm, Smith_03 selling it for 15k, I'll sell it for 10 just to get rid of it.

On my server, Full Mithril bracers, even with the great resists, hardly sell at only 2500pp.

[Haphern]

Heraldic was a strange one in the progression of smithing. Stats, for the time and still today, are wonderful for a player made item - even tier 1/2 PoP stuff isn't as good (with the req/rec level tag).

TBH, I think we're going to be seeing much more of the PoP-type smithing than the store-bought stuff for high end, great stats, items in the future. That is, ingredients that are dropped and really rare so as to keep the flow of items into the game down. The chance for profit will still be there but, with so many max skill smiths (and all other tradeskills), the skill requirement is no longer the limiter to making items it once was.

[Boleslav]

The Underfoot gravy train is over too. I feel lucky if I sell a piece or two a week.

Ornate is so much better that people are saving money to try to buy it. As mentioned before, those that get Ornate are selling the droppable gear they used to have, which floods markets. These two factors seem to have impacted the market for anything worth more than a couple k. Then you add the fact that some people are hoarding pp to see what the new expansion will hold for them and you get a depressed market.

I have had trouble selling just about everything, including some nice weapons I took in trade because my armor sales have been so slow.

I've been around long enough to bemoan the destruction of the Fine Plate market, the erosion of the market for Old Cultural and now the relegation of Blue Diamond Cultural to insignificance. Feeling kind of old…

Boleslav Forgehammer
Paladin of Brell in his 65th Campaign
E'ci – Sacred Destiny

[Lling]

I feel old, too, Boleslav.

But something to consider.

Do you know how many elemental flagged plate classes still wear a good bit of played made armor? I see a lot of warriors still wearing Fierce Heraldic, high elf paladins wearing Blessed Mithral, dwarven clerics wearing Underfoot, etc.

Despite the fact that the gravy train is over, we made good stuff.

[Axterix EnObelix]

On the flip side, I'd really like to get myself Rodcet Nife neck, 1 bracer, belt, and shoulders for my paladin. However, it's just not available. A shame, because those 4 pieces would give me about 120 more hp.

[BrewtPhorce]

Axterix, look up a human GM smith on your server, I'm sure they'd love to actually do a commission. Stuff like that is hard to move, so we don't usually make it and keep in stock

Brewt

[Rachelou]

for Axterix EnObelix

OMG -- you mean I am not the only person who knows who Twisted Sister is? WOW! I even know the song you quoted, Burn in Hell

[thrashette]

Well...

There is a steady market for all the human armors...For tribute turnins.

You just need to let people know that a radiant breastplate is 21930 tribute, and a radiant bracer is 7712 tribute. They probably don't know.

People will come back to you again and again for this. If you are selling as cheap as you say.. people will be all over you for this.

[KletianTellah]

Cloaks of Greater Pernicity > Human Cultural (for Tribute Turn-in)
Gold Geode Rings > Cloaks of Greater Pernicity (if you have access to a forager and a 210+ skill JC'er they run over 30 tribute per pp spent)

[thrashette]

I'm sure the economics vary server to server. I make a bracer for <1k, sell it for 4k, the person gets 7k tribute in one turn-in, and everyone wins. Breastplates are the same except they sell for 8k-9k and I can take a bath on a failure run.

> Cloaks of Greater Pernicity > Human Cultural (for Tribute Turn-in) <

On my server, the cloaks are rare enough that they are priced higher than armors.

> Gold Geode Rings > Cloaks of Greater Pernicity

In efficiency, yes. But who wants to carry 100 rings to the tribute merchant? Convenience is important, especially to people who don't carry 8 bags.