Crafting Service Experiment

[Vanshilar]

I'm going to experiment with crafting-for-hire. I may or may not change the terms and conditions or cancel this depending on how it goes, but want to see if this is a more time-efficient way of getting crafting mats and levels.

My current crafting levels are (I'll update this as I level up):
150 arcane
150 divine
150 elemental

I can craft any unbound shard that's available in the game.

Pricing
My pricing may change depending on how things play out, but currently I'm looking at:
base cost of shards
+50 greater essences (or 25k plat) for first shard
+10 greater essences (or 5k plat) for every shard thereafter
+50 greater essences (or 25k plat) if you want me to put the item together for you

* With some exceptions, you don't need to provide the correct type of essences. Any assorted ones will do. So this is great if you've been diligently looting chests and have a bunch of random essences lying around. The exceptions are if I'm running low on a particular type of essence, but I try to have enough of each type at all times. Assume you can give me random ones unless I tell you otherwise. I (try to) maintain a stock of at least 1k of each type of essence to be able to craft on demand; currently, law essences are the only kind that I have less than 1k of due to some recent crafting, and my bag currently has around 22k greater essences. (And no, they're not for sale, at least not except for exorbitant prices -- it would make no sense for me to spend time buying essences at the market rate just to sell them at the market rate.)
* You don't need to provide khyber/siberys fragments, I have over 10k of each. I also don't need enhancement spirits.
* You don't need to provide the collectables, although I'll gladly take them if you happen to have them.
* I accept lessers as well as greaters, of course 5 lessers = 1 greater. If you give me too many lessers though I may not have enough greaters to do the recipe, whereas it's easy to sunder 1 greater into 5 lessers, so greaters are preferred. You don't need to sunder them for me beforehand, chances are I'll have enough lessers lying around.
* If you don't have enough essences, I'll charge 500 plat per remaining unpaid greater essence. This is above the market price for essences. So although I'll take plat, realistically I have to spend the time soliciting in trade channel or going on the auction house to buy the essences, so the plat compensates for that time I'll be spending doing this. If you're out of essences though, plat is a welcome substitution.

Essentially I'm more or less done with leveling so I don't need to charge that much over recipe cost, other than some small amount to slowly make up the resources I spent on leveling. I prefer doing multiple shards at once rather than running to the crafting hall each time, so the first shard is more expensive while any shards after that are cheap -- it is better to have a few big orders rather than a lot of little ones. Also, note that the extra cost depends on how many shards you want me to craft for you (and whether or not you want me to put an item together for you), rather than the cost of the shard. This means that it is better for expensive shards than cheap shards, compared with crafters who charge 2x recipe cost or some other formula based the cost of the shard. So this service is better suited for if you want high-level shards.

Keep in mind the following things:
* Unbound crafted items are bound to character on equip. This means when you get a crafted item, do not equip it unless you are on the character it's intended for. I won't reimburse etc. if you screwed up and accidentally equipped it on the wrong character.
* If you are crafting an item, you may need "shards of potential" to increase the item's ability to accept better shards. Of course, I can make them for you, but consider them when you're looking to get an item crafted, since you may need to buy them as well to make the item.
* Please have your completed order ready when requesting it. This means knowing (or having a good idea of) what you want and how much it'll be in essences and/or plat, and having those ready. The first shard is more expensive and successive shards are cheaper because I prefer a few bulk orders that I can fulfill at once, rather than a bunch of little individual orders that I have to keep making trips to the crafting hall for. If you want to pool several orders with your friends as one order, that's fine, but I'll only deal with one person. This also means that after I take the payment, please don't say "oh by the way can you also do this other shard that I just saw" which I'll consider as a new order.
* I won't be able to do certain recipes unless you have the materials on hand, if they have non-collectable ingredients. For example, unbound construct bane shards require 45 adamantine ore, and I don't have that many (you should just buy a smiting weapon anyway, most likely). If you want me to make them, you should have the necessary materials already.

Examples
* 1 +5 enhancement shard is 45 arcane greaters and 192 lessers, which is equivalent to 83.4 greater arcanes. It's 1 shard so I would charge an additional 50 greater essences. So it would cost 133.4 greaters or 66700 plat or some combination thereof.
* 5 +5 enhancement shards is 225 arcane greaters and 960 lessers, which is equivalent to 417 greater arcanes. It's 5 shards so I would charge an additional 90 greater essences. So it would cost 507 greaters or 253500 plat, or some combination thereof, so 50700 plat apiece if buying in bulk.

Boss beaters
I will also sell boss beater kits. They will include all the shards you need to make a +5 holy silver weapon of lawful/chaotic/evil bane, which you can apply to your own silver weapon. I highly encourage people to use holy silver or better boss beaters in raids, rather than sticking with metalline of pure good, because for TWF, taking khopesh as an example, a +5 holy silver khopesh of lawful outsider bane will do around 15% more DPS than a +5 metalline of pure good, and around 5% more DPS than a mineral 2 khopesh against pit fiends like Arraetrikos (Shroud) and Horoth (Tower of Despair) at 50% fort. Given that they upped raid boss stats in the update, you should be looking to improve on what you take into those raids, to make it easier for the healers.

A boss beater kit includes:
+5 enhancement shard (45 greater and 192 lesser arcanes, or 83.4 greater arcanes)
holy shard (45 greater and 80 lesser goods, or 61 greater goods, plus 3 glittering dusts but not required)
lawful outsider bane shard (30 greater and 32 lesser chaos, or 36.4 greater chaos, plus 3 medium chains)
potential +6 shard (75 lessers, or 15 greaters)
potential +7 shard (150 lessers, or 30 greaters)
potential +8 shard (300 lessers, or 60 greaters)
potential +9 shard (525 lessers, or 105 greaters)
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390.8 greaters + 3 medium chains base price
+ 110 greaters for crafting 7 shards
+ 50 greaters for putting it together
----------
550.8 greaters + 3 medium chains selling price
or 275400 plat + 3 medium chains if in plat

For the medium chains, since they're not a collectable, you should either have them ready or I'll charge an extra 40 greaters (20k plat) for each one I have to provide. So it would mean 670.8 greaters total, or 335400 plat total, if I provide the medium mats.

I think it's important for people to have boss beaters though, so if you're getting a +5 boss beater kit, I'll sell it for 600 greater essences or 300k plat instead if you don't have medium chains, or 480 greater essences or 240k plat if you do have medium chains, including putting it together for you if you have a silver weapon available.

If you're really low on essences/plat, I can sell a lesser +4 boss beater version, which largely because it doesn't require a potential +9 shard, is significant cheaper. It would cost 398.4 greater essences (plus medium chains) or 199200 plat (plus medium chains) under this pricing scheme if you worked through the math, but I will sell it for 350 greater essences or 175k plat (plus medium chains) instead. If you don't have 3 medium chains, then it would be 470 greater essences or 235k plat instead.

I can also make cold iron versions (of chaotic outsider bane of course) for the same price. If you prefer evil outsider bane though but don't have the medium scales, I would charge 100 greaters or 50k plat for each medium scale I have to provide, because they're more expensive on the auction house. (As an aside, I do recommend using EOB for DQ, simply for convenience so that you don't have to switch weapons between Lailat and the efreeti, but that's a personal thing.)

Note that I'll put it together for you at no additional charge if you have your silver/cold iron weapon ready when you make the order.

Remember that the alternative to this is to make a mineral 2 green steel, whose ingredients are easily in the millions of plat, and requires running through Shroud (or DA I guess) quite a few times for the shards of power. The mineral 2 is also less damage if you went TWF (the damage between the crafted and Min2 for THF is more or less equivalent, with the crafted version slightly ahead). I'm hoping that people who have gotten a bunch of essences while leveling up can convert them into boss beaters once they reach raiding levels, without having to run a bunch of Shrouds. Another alternative to this is getting your crafting levels up yourself, which means figuring out the system, gathering a lot of essences, and many, many hours of mindless clicking.

Commoditized Shards
Boss beater kits are one kind of crafted item that I'd like to commoditize (i.e. sell at a set price), rather than using the custom job pricing scheme above. Another is +5 enhancement shards, which I will sell for 100 greater essences or 50k plat each. The third are +6 stat (str, dex, etc.) shards. I will sell those for 300 greater mind/body essences or 150k plat each, because getting there was really expensive (around 7700 greater essences to go from level 130 (able to craft any arcane shard other than +6 stat shards) to level 140 (able to craft +6 stat shards at 50%), then another 5700 greater essences to be able to craft +6 stat shards at 100%, so over half the essences used above level 90). For now, +6 stat shards require mind or body essences if you're paying by essences because I'm low on those due to crafting the shards. For commoditized items, I actually make them beforehand, while for custom jobs, they are made on order.

Just as a quick reference, +6 stat shards can be crafted on the following slots:
str: ring, belt, gloves, bracers
dex: ring, boots, gloves
con: ring, belt, necklace
int: ring, helmet, goggles
wis: ring, helmet, necklace
cha: ring, helmet, cloak


If you are a powergamer and willing to dedicate the plat and time it takes to spend many hours doing mindless clicking, then I'd recommend that you get your crafting levels up and create crafted items for yourself because it seems like the best items (such as +5 holy burst silver of greater lawful outsider bane) are bound-only and cannot be sold. If you however prefer to spend your time in quests/raids, not too concerned about trying to eke every last point of damage out of your character, and don't feel like trying to figure out the crafting system nor spend the plat to level up in crafting, then buying crafted items may be better so that you don't have to spend the resources in leveling up yourself.

If you're interested in getting me to craft something for you, send me a PM, and we can work things out from there.

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Crafting takes a big investment even though each individual shard is relatively cheap. That is to say, the expensive part is the amount of essences it takes to level up to the higher levels, while the cost of making each recipe (shard) is cheap by comparison. In this way it is not unlike modern consumer electronics, where the cost of building a LCD fabrication plant for example is measured in the billions of dollars, and the selling price of each unit reflects that investment and know-how rather than the material cost of the components (glass, metal, etc.) which is cheap. Similarly, currently I estimate I've spent the equivalent of around 34 million plat and around 85 thousand greater essences to get to my levels; I am a relative latecomer to the crafting scene so didn't really get to take advantage of the initial cheaper recipes nor the, shall we say, highly essence-efficient ways to level up such as the PJW method early on. Nor am I a guild crafter (OR doesn't have a guild crafter, everyone is expected to get their own levels up; I may not even be the highest-level crafter in guild) so this has all come from my personal resources.

The estimated number of greater essences needed to get to a given level for the arcane school is below:



Or, if you prefer to see what arcane level you're at after using up a certain number of greater essences:



This is under Update 11 crafting XP and recipes, assuming you start at level 1 in each school and use nothing but greater essences (converted into lessers as necessary). Lessers are valued at 5 lessers = 1 greater. Of course a crafter in reality would also be gaining crafting XP from decons, but that's largely just a change of variables (i.e. converting from dollars to euros); I could've also given the graph in terms of number of deconstructed items of say crafting level 4 instead. The method is "close to optimal", i.e. I tried quite a few different methods and this was the most inexpensive one to reach arcane level 146, although I can't prove that there isn't a better one. Now-available House Cannith favor items (+5% XP elixir, +3% success rate item) were not considered here. It also assumes you don't use recipes with soul stones nor purified dragonshards, and don't use some of the newer recipes such as arrows (the database didn't have arrow recipes yet). Although this was for just the arcane school, I would expect a similar shape for the other schools.

You can see that, just like character XP or guild renown, it's very easy to level up early on, but gets progressively harder at the higher levels. It takes around 6300 greater essences to reach arcane level 90, enough to craft any bound arcane shard for your own personal use. It takes around 29400 greater essences to reach arcane level 140, enough to craft any unbound arcane shard, or 467% of what you need to make shards for your own use. The amount is due to more expensive recipes at higher levels, plus fewer of them, meaning you have to use each recipe more (and so there is less XP per use on average). So the essences needed to go from level 1 to 140 would be enough to get 4 separate characters from level 1 to 90, and then a 5th from level 1 to 79. This difference of 23100 greater essences is essentially what you pay for when buying high-level shards; there is no reason currently to be above level 100 in any school unless the crafter is going into the unbound shard business, since it's only speculation right now as to if Turbine will be raising bound crafting levels further, so leveling above 100 if not for unbound shards is like squirreling away equipment for your future druid.

[Vanshilar]

Just a note that I hit arcane level 140 last night so I'm now able to make unbound +6 stat (str/dex/con/int/wis/cha) shards. If you put just them on an item then it becomes a very good minimum level 11 twink item (can go down to minimum level 9 if you get House Cannith favor). However, they are hugely expensive and initially progress will be pretty uneven because of the low success rate. If there's a particular stat that you're looking for and are interested in, please let me know so that I will try crafting those first.

I haven't decided on a price yet for those things but currently they're being offered for 200k plat on a server where essences are significantly cheaper and 250k plat on a server where essences are at around the same price, with a discount for buying in bulk. I'll probably have roughly similar prices. Remember that the price includes not just the recipe's cost but also the cost of actually leveling up to arcane 140 so that you don't have to spend the millions of plat getting yourself up to arcane 90.

[karl_k0ch]

Is this offer still valid?

A PM was sent a few days ago.

Also: Free Bump.

[vengfarga]

Finally! A reason to go read those pesky crafting rules!

[Vanshilar]

I've updated the pricing scheme. I've more or less finished leveling now so prices have been reduced because I no longer need that many essences. I've also tried to explain some parts more clearly, hopefully it makes more sense now.

[Roderickus]

Thanks for the charts they are very helpful.

[Faent]

Oh my. How does one acquire 60,000 Greater Essences? I would estimate my current GE acquisition (from questing alone) at 6000, or about 1/10th of what's required to take an dragonmarked artificer to cap in all three schools.

Can you provide any tips on Greater Essence acquisition? I'm beginning to suspect I shouldn't decon anything and instead sell everything on my haggle bard and buy the essences off the AH. I haven't looked into this pricing structure yet, but assuming one can buy in bulk for 500/essence, this looks like a much better deal than deconning.

[Untitled]

Oh my. How does one acquire 60,000 Greater Essences? I would estimate my current GE acquisition (from questing alone) at 6000, or about 1/10th of what's required to take an dragonmarked artificer to cap in all three schools.

Can you provide any tips on Greater Essence acquisition? I'm beginning to suspect I shouldn't decon anything and instead sell everything on my haggle bard and buy the essences off the AH. I haven't looked into this pricing structure yet, but assuming one can buy in bulk for 500/essence, this looks like a much better deal than deconning.

Hmm, interesting that you ask. I had the same question a while ago. In the end, it was more cost effective to sell loot to vendor, and spend plat buying, however this was at a lower rate then 500/Greater. I went to vendor, dragged items in and looked to see how much I would receive. I then decon'd the items and did the math per/essence (greater/lesser), in most cases the plat was a slightly better way to go, however it is always nice to get lessers instead of getting wrist injuries swapping at vendor! ;p

If you ask in TRADE you can expect to pick up greaters for anywhere from 150-250/ea, I wouldn't spend anymore then that. If you are on AH, expect 300-500/ea. These prices are what I see on Orien, and I can't speak for other Servers.

Compared to looting essences in quests, it is far more beneficial time management wise to purchase essences, however, I am now at 139/138/136 and have probably spent around 8Mpp give or a take a couple. If you have the time, looted/deconned essences will take a lot longer, but far cheaper! ;p Just depends how fast you wanna cap lol.

[Faent]

Hmm, interesting that you ask. I had the same question a while ago. In the end, it was more cost effective to sell loot to vendor, and spend plat buying, however this was at a lower rate then 500/Greater. I went to vendor, dragged items in and looked to see how much I would receive. I then decon'd the items and did the math per/essence (greater/lesser), in most cases the plat was a slightly better way to go, however it is always nice to get lessers instead of getting wrist injuries swapping at vendor! ;p

If you ask in TRADE you can expect to pick up greaters for anywhere from 150-250/ea, I wouldn't spend anymore then that. If you are on AH, expect 300-500/ea. These prices are what I see on Orien, and I can't speak for other Servers.

Compared to looting essences in quests, it is far more beneficial time management wise to purchase essences, however, I am now at 139/138/136 and have probably spent around 8Mpp give or a take a couple. If you have the time, looted/deconned essences will take a lot longer, but far cheaper! ;p Just depends how fast you wanna cap lol.

Thanks for this. Selling items on my hagglebard will produce 8M plat quite a bit faster than deconning will produce experience or essences. I suppose I'll start running The Sane Asylum, Shroud and Schemes of the Enemy a bit more. And I'll see how well buying at 200 works on my server. Standard AH prices are bit more than 500 plat here.

[Vanshilar]

Oh my. How does one acquire 60,000 Greater Essences? I would estimate my current GE acquisition (from questing alone) at 6000, or about 1/10th of what's required to take an dragonmarked artificer to cap in all three schools.

Can you provide any tips on Greater Essence acquisition? I'm beginning to suspect I shouldn't decon anything and instead sell everything on my haggle bard and buy the essences off the AH. I haven't looked into this pricing structure yet, but assuming one can buy in bulk for 500/essence, this looks like a much better deal than deconning.

It actually depends, so it's not that straightforward of a question. Yes, early on, most of your crafting XP will come from recipes, so it may well be better to sell your stuff and use the plat to buy essences. As you get to the higher levels though (> 100), recipes start drying up, and more and more of your crafting XP will come from deconstructing items. At that point, it's better to deconstruct your items. At the highest levels, when you've pretty much exhausted the recipes, the only source of crafting XP will be from deconstructing, so if you really want to level up you'd be buying stuff off the AH to deconstruct. Once you've reached level 140/135/128 though you can craft any shard under the current system, so there's not that much reason to go past that at the moment. For the general crafter though that's just crafting for their own uses, and thus don't need to get above crafting level 100, yeah it's probably better to just sell your junk and buy essences. It really depends on your situation though.

Acquiring greater essences is just a matter of time. If you're looking to level up quickly, then expect to pay through the nose since you'll quickly exhaust the cheaper sources of essences and have to resort to more expensive methods. If you build it up slowly but consistently though, you'll gradually amass a lot of essences. I use a combination of AH, trade channels, and just simply looting chests in quests/raids for my essences. Currently I'm at a total of around 36k greater essences on me, including lessers which are valued at 5 lessers = 1 greater:



So on average I have around 3000 greaters of each type of essence; they range from the lowest, law, which is at 1762.6 greaters (decimals since it includes my lessers at 5 lessers = 1 greater) to the highest, air, at 4275.4 greater essences. No, they're not for sale nor trade. I try to keep each amount somewhat balanced when I buy essences, which is why I can just accept any random type of essences when I craft for people, rather than requiring only the type that's needed for the shards they want (the only exception is +6 stat shards); having enough of each type of essence is something I ensure on the "back end" (monitoring trade channels, looking on AH, etc. prior to crafting for people), rather than on the "front end" (when crafting for people).

[Vanshilar]

I took a bit of time this weekend to cap my crafting levels, since it's a double decon weekend:



Of course there's not necessarily any point to getting beyond crafting levels 140/135/128 right now, because you can pretty much craft anything available in the game currently with those levels, but I've just been slowly accumulating XP from deconstructing junk after my final crafting leveling spurt a while back.

Although I still craft for people, I haven't been as active with the game lately because of school. So be sure you know what you want, but you can still PM me and we can work out a time. You can also look here for a list of high-level crafters on Orien, although I don't know if anyone else on Orien has also already capped their crafting levels. To a certain extent, I think ideally you should find crafters whose levels are roughly at the levels of the shards you're looking for, so that they can get some crafting XP out of it too, but that's just because I tend to try to min/max certain things and that XP is "free" (since the shards need to be made anyway) and will benefit the crafter.

[Phemt81]

I need a +6 constitution shard.

Look for phemt if you can do it, thanks.

[karl_k0ch]

I need a +6 constitution shard.

Look for phemt if you can do it, thanks.

I think the best idea is to write him a PM here. He will get back to you.

[Phemt81]

I think the best idea is to write him a PM here. He will get back to you.

I already sent one and didn't get any answer...