Ethics and Concideration.. a Dwarf smith seeks advice

[Zeralenn]

And if they had 19 BPs, they'd sell them too

If they had 19 BPs, they would sell them too.

Not only is there no evidence that going for a higher trivial will make you skill faster, there IS actually evidence that working on something CLOSER to your trivial level will make you skill faster.

If you think about it, it makes sense, if you understand learning theory (and that it IS applied in this game). If you tell one computer-illiterate person to learn how to use an email program, that person will learn their task quickly. If you tell a second computer-illiterate person to WRITE an email program, however, this will take a lot longer. I believe this is applied to tradeskills as well. If you are at 155 in smithing, you will get to 160 a lot faster making fine plate bracers than you will making shadowscream bracers.

For the trade issue, I will tell the tale of the Great Halas Pie Meltdown on Innoruuk.

My friend is a GM baker and used to male Halas Pies to sell. These generally sold for between 10-15pp each. They are incredibly complicated to make, requiring many sets of steps to create, not to mention farming mammoth meat. In the salad days of the Bazaar, it was an incredibly fast way to make money.

Then a lot of people saw that Money Was Good and they all jumped in. People had hundreds of Halas pies for sale, and gradually they started undercutting one another, first by a plat, then by golds, then actually by silvers. In the space of a couple weeks, the price of Halas pies was driven down from 10pp to 3-4pp each. People had hundreds of Halas pies for sale and literally started trying to be the cheapest by COPPERS.

Many people got out of the Halas pie market because price competition had made the product not worth making anymore. Nobody ended up winning in the end. They were made for JUST above cost -- and at what price is your time?

You may wish to do what I did when I had 20 non-stick frying pans for sale (I made these when the recipe just came out, and yes, I sold all 20). I never put more than 4 up for sale at any given time. Just because you have 19 BPs for sale doesn't mean you have to list all 19.

Part of what you are running up against is the created perception that cultural BPs are common. This is what your smithing compatriots are getting cheesed off about. This WILL drive down the price.

And when was the last time you sold 19 BPs in one night? If you are lucky, you may sell a BP or two. Just don't offer more than a few for sale at any given time and the others won't be so upset.

...Zera

[Radasar]

back again for another day

Thats the point of contention that Im most curious about, If I price my goods based on the per attempt cost, say 200-250 pp per attempt, and sell for 1k-1250, thats a relatively high mark up in my opinion because I make cost, plus 3-4 additional attempts back in sheer profit, which seems reasonable. But they seem to want a sale price of 2500-3k, which is their profit line. Some smiths are trying cultural at 150 skill, which makes the failure rate really high for them, but also means they have not even finished the ornate chain-fine plate stages. I dont have a lot of sympathy for them, I went through those stages, as agonizing and costly as they were.
as for middle newbie, I resemble that, only being level in the low 40's, but then eq isnt about the biggest pile of plat for me, Im tradeskilling because its fun, not becuase I want to get rich off the uber armor, but I want to wear a set I made. At this point, Ive spent enough on trade skills I could have probably have just bought it... But wheres the fun in that?

[Boleslav]

Ethics and Consideration: A Dwarf Smith Asks Advice

The point in this case is that the market will not be able to absorb all the Dwarven Plate you would make if you used it as your primary skillup tool. There are only so many members of the target audience for that armor. Lowering your price to try to sell more will not accomplish much other than destroying that market for yourself and others.

I hate to say it, but Shadowscream Steel is the best armor to skill up on. Make a full set or so of Dwarven Plate and sell it for CASH profit! Make Shadowscream for skill. Heck, if you are from 40 – 52 you can still get decent experience hunting for some of the components.

Good luck to you!

Boleslav Forgehammer
Paladin of Brell in his 56th Campaign
E'ci – The Twilight Fellowship

[Radasar]

what I wanted

That is what I primarily wanted, Shadow Scream Steel sounds like an option, just how difficult is it to come by the materials? as a mid 40's pally, is hunting for the parts faster than the many hours of enchanting time it takes for the vendor available cultural armor supplies? (not counting tempers and padding)
Ive also concidered simply doing Imbued armor, no enchanting, but rubies are horribly costly, and then just vendor the successes if its not to low, and plain imbued armor is dwarf pally/cleric only, an even more limited market than enchanted dwarven which is small races, plate wearable
if I can go this route, and leave my prices in the range for the other smiths not to lock them out of the market, everyone can be happy
at this point in my skill, I am much more concerned with time vs number of combines than success rate or profit.
Is there a thread on shadow scream somewhere? I havent been able to find it.
I do appreciate all the posts.

[KennyCelican]

Re: MY NAME IS LILOSH

My name is Lilosh, NOT LOLISH

L I L O S H

-Lilosh

/blush

Sorry about that. Fixed the post. Thanks for backing me up on this. Based on your past posts in other threads, we don't quite see eye to eye on this, but seems like you and I are far closer to each other than the rest of the board here.

I am tempted to note that the player in question has noted that he considers PP below 1KPP to be a fairly large sum. Ergo he is NOT one of those folks with a huge warchest, or gobs of playtime, but rather someone like myself who has to move the items fast if he's going to move them at all, since he doesn't appear to have a mule account / machine.

I'd say see if the others want to buy them off you at, say, double cost, then let them sell them for full retail price. They get money, you get money, everybody's happy.

[Glatius2]

Ergo he is NOT one of those folks with a huge warchest, or gobs of playtime, but rather someone like myself who has to move the items fast if he's going to move them at all, since he doesn't appear to have a mule account / machine.

I would purpose that often times you won't be able to move the items as fast as you want to move them at any price. Basically because there are only so many people at any one time looking for a Breastplate. Yes, you might get a larger percentage of the sales during those times you're selling if you price them at just above cost. But then you add to deflation making other smiths follow your pricing line or lose sales, and they're no more willing to go completely without sales than you are. Which leads to a downward spiral on the price which crashes the market to where people might actually have to take a loss to sell the item. That just sucks.

You might be better off trying to cut a deal with another smith whereby you sell him your success as a slight increase over cost and allow him to use his mule/trader to sell them out over a period of time. If you don't try and flood him with too many at one time, this might work well.

The point is, selling our successes is what finances most of our further skill ups. Destroying the market to the point people actually end up being able to do fewer skill ups each time they complete a manufacturing batch, just delays everyone's progress. I don't advocate charging people through the nose. Nor do I advocate putting people in a position where they either have to give away their successes or vendor them for gold on the plat.

[Xorshaik]

Maybe you can find some profit weasle to take your stuff just above cost who would be willing to hand on to the stuff to sell at market value and make his own profit.

Pretty sure this is exactly what happenned to me when I sold my KT bracer after getting my Dozekar quest bracer~

[Unnone]

The more of an item you have, the less likely you'll sell it all off. I'd try to vary my skillup attempts among the decent pieces. And you need to familiarize yourself with the dropped items that are competing with your cultural armor. If your bp is almost as good as the Barbed ringmail, but it's restricted to brell dwarves, expect to get about half the price. Restrictions mean it's harder to resell. And if you have 19 bps, that means you have to find 19 brell worshipping dwarves that can't afford barbed ringmail or better. You're going to end up competing with your own product. People who bought your bps are going to upgrade and then undercut you. This is what happened to the Black Acryllia market. The object is to maximize your profit, not maximize your throughput. Keep the cost high, because once it drops, it's very rare for it to go back up.

[Glatius2]

I'd try to vary my skillup attempts among the decent pieces.

I do this as well, although I hadn't consciously thought it through. I keep one of each size acrylia BP, Greaves, Cloak, and Pauldrons on my mule. I don't sell as many of the cloaks or the pauldrons as I do the BP or Greaves, but a sale is a sale and it increases the number of items I can make and hopefully get skill ups on. Focusing on just one or two items, which might sell fairly well, also means you end up flooding the market more or building up more of an inventory back log.

[Guntar Thickneck]

My suggestion...

What I would suggest is that you sell the bp's at a price that is similar to the other dwarven smith's prices, or priced near mob dropped stuff with similar stats.

Now this is the big part. With the profits from a bp or two smith smaller pieces that you can still gain skill at and vendor sell them. You will loose some money, but you don't have to wait around for people to buy the items. I checked the sell back price of an enchanted boot last night with a 45 charisma and it was 55pp. With a maxed cha it is probably about 60pp. That covers your folded sheet price (51pp and change at maxed price) with a little to spare for the jointing. When you have to switch to gauntlets you will probably take a bigger hit, but it shouldn't be terrible.

If you do smith and vendor sell make one piece of all the decent stat items and have them for sale. You might as well. You may get lucky and sell them.

If you vendor sell be sure to sell them to a vendor that has his inventory completely full, or one that doesn't show stuff sold to him. This is very important. You don't want to kill the enchanted dwarven market by letting folks buy your sell backs from the vendors.

With smithing it is often very important to make your money on the pieces that are useful and then spend that cash on making skill up pieces that don't sell.

Guntar Thickneck
250 dwarven smith
(hehe haven't done my sig yet)

[Xorshaik]

Re: My suggestion...

If you vendor sell be sure to sell them to a vendor that has his inventory completely full, or one that doesn't show stuff sold to him. This is very important. You don't want to kill the enchanted dwarven market by letting folks buy your sell backs from the vendors.

Or sell to vendors you can kill, or sell to HQ ore vendors you can restock (ie poof everything they had from making him respawn)

[Mardark]

You made the stuff. You sell it for what you want. If the other people making the stuff dont like it, tough.

If it costs 300pp to make, selling for 1200pp is not unreasonable. But thats if it sells. I would recommend selling at a price where the product moves, so the next time you do a batch of 20, your arent left holding 39 of them because you matched everyone elses prices.

You are taking the route of selling in volume. So your profit margin may be somewhat less than others. But your overall profit should be more.

If you were to choose to sell at cost, just to get rid of them, thats fine too. It might upset other tradeskillers though. You have to do what makes you comforable. And if the other tradeskillers give you grief, then you have the option of /ignore.

[Glatius2]

You made the stuff. You sell it for what you want. If the other people making the stuff dont like it, tough.

I agree and disagree with this attitude. On the one hand if other smiths think you should price your items at a rate that is unreasonable for the market, then I agree. Too bad for them.

If on the other hand if you are pricing your items so that it destroys the market, making the items essentially worthless garbage, then I disagree.

Keep in mind, you have impact beyond just yourself. You should consider what that impact is before you make rash decisions with long lasting impact. Just because sooner or later you won't need to stay in that market, doesn't mean other people will be as lucky.

And given that I've gotten a total of 8 skill ups since the big cultural patch, doing acrylia plate, I imagine there probably needs to be enough room in the market for a lot of people, since many of us will be in that 188-230 range for a long long time.

[Mardark]

Selling for 4 times your cost to make should usually not crash the market. The real problem is flooding the market on items that just plain ole don't move fast. I had 80 shadowscream boots for awhile. Yup, I crashed the market on em selling them for 35pp each. I didn't hear any complaints. And yes, I know they really werent worth much anyway, just making fun of shadowscream because I hate it so much. If they are going to sell at a rate of one a day, regardless of you selling at 1.5k or 2.5k, then sell at what is best. Thats the hard part to figure out. Some items just wont sell.

But still, if you get filled up on one item, make something else. The shadowscream bracer does not sell at all hardly. Be aware of that. Gorgets do not sell very well either. All the other peices pretty much will sell slowly. I don't make much cultural or Acrylia. Just occasionally when I get components to make.

After the big patch I was at 175, currently at 214 and slowly rising. Almost ready to stop farming, but not quite.

[Eumerin]

The trick isn't so much to move as much product as possible. The trick is to maximize your profit overall.
This doesn't necessarily mean to raise your price to the highest possible that you can sell at. It means to adjust your price so that your net gain is as high as possible, which is a combination of both price per product, and the number you're selling.
As an example, I'll use my recent foray into baking.
Erudite smithing is pretty much non-existant, so I've left mine at 170 (from when banded could take you that high) while I struggle with my tailoring. So I can't use that as an example, unfortunately. However, I recently got my baking skill nice and high and have started to sell patty melts, which I price at 1pp per melt. I got this price from listening in to other posters on the message board.
When I arrived in the bazaar the other night with a stack of melts, I noted that someone had already set up shop, and was selling them for 5g. Despite this, I stuck with 1pp per and left it up while I went to work. When I came back, I had sold 6 stacks of patty melts, which produced a 'whopping' 120pp for me (okay, I know its not that much, but its better than nothing).
There are a few things that are important from this.
1.) Whether the price per patty is 5gp or 1pp probably isn't important to the buyer except at the moment of sale. i.e. most buyers will buy for 5g if they're available at that price, but are just as willing to buy for 1p otherwise.
2.) If I had dropped my price to 5g per, I would have needed to sell twice as many patties (i.e. 240) in order to pull in the same amount of cash, and my cost per patty would have been double, as well.
3.) The fact that I didn't move all of my product isn't that important in this particular case. The guy who was selling them for half my price didn't have as many in his inventory as I sold, which means that chances are, 240 patties weren't sold during that time period, and even if I had managed to sell to every last customer by matching prices, I wouldn't have shown as much gross.
4.) My competitor (actually more than one as I've seen a couple of other people pop up with the same price - then again, there's also the guy that's asking 10pp per. I think he's nuts) is not making nearly as much money as he could be.

At any rate, the point of my ramble is this.
You have the volume to sustain a fairly high number of sales. Try and set your prices up to maximize your net profit, even if it means destroying some of your product because you run out of bank space.