Collectable Valuation Project

[EllisDee37]

I'm open to bumping up Concentration, Spellsight, and Intimidate from niche to common, but am not quite convinced yet.

When I think of categorizing an effect, I think of build posts on the forums. Not necessarily endgame build posts -- though those do loom large as the most significant percentage -- but any build. Specifically builds which list gear.

Monks using concentration is on par with bards wanting perform: The definition of niche. But can you find any non-monk build posts that list gear which includes concentration? It doesn't have to be a crafted effect; even if it's just part of a named item, that counts in my book.

Same idea for spellsight and intimidate.

[Gargoyle69]

I'm open to bumping up Concentration, Spellsight, and Intimidate from niche to common, but am not quite convinced yet.

When I think of categorizing an effect, I think of build posts on the forums. Not necessarily endgame build posts -- though those do loom large as the most significant percentage -- but any build. Specifically builds which list gear.

Monks using concentration is on par with bards wanting perform: The definition of niche. But can you find any non-monk build posts that list gear which includes concentration? It doesn't have to be a crafted effect; even if it's just part of a named item, that counts in my book.

Same idea for spellsight and intimidate.

Hmmm.... That's a good point. I haven't. I was more just going off your initial definitions :

Uncommon: 6 points
Uncommon effects are used by a fair number of builds, though clearly a minority.

Niche: 4 points
Niche effects are very desirable, but only for a small handful of build types.

If all monks want concentration then is that uncommon or niche? To me you have melee dps monk builds, tanky types, shuriken throwers, monkchers, centered kensai's etc, so that sounds more like uncommon to me than niche.

Same for bards, if all bards want perform (do ALL bards want perform?) then you have swashbucklers, freezing melee, spell singer casters, etc, so is that niche or uncommon?

It might just be a case of me misunderstanding your definitions.

Ultimately I think you're right though, that this is about demand to craft, so if people don't want to craft the items then the demand won't be there. So maybe it should take into account how many builds list gear for them.

[EllisDee37]

Well, there are 14 classes. Compare all bards to all non-bards, or all monks to all non-monks. 1 out of 14 is what I was thinking of with "small handful." The "clear minority" of uncommon is more along the lines of splashing for trap skills.

I think things like spell resistance, heal, spellcraft, concentration, natural armor, etc... go on initial lists of "all the effects I might want in this gearset" and then end up being the first cuts to get everything to fit on the gear slots you have, and thus are desired in theory but not crafted in practice.

At least, that's definitely the way it is for my gearsets. But if other people do things differently, that's what I'm interested in.

EDIT: I think I've identified the ideal glass phial farm, though it's different than other arcane 3s because it's not in eberron and thus soarwood isn't part of the drop table. Unfortunately this messes with my vision of pretty, uncluttered tables. heh.

[Gargoyle69]

I think things like spell resistance, heal, spellcraft, concentration, natural armor, etc... go on initial lists of "all the effects I might want in this gearset" and then end up being the first cuts to get everything to fit on the gear slots you have, and thus are desired in theory but not crafted in practice.

Yeah ok, you've convinced me. Lots of other builds might WANT those skills, and put ranks in them, but how many would dedicate a crafted gear slot to it? Not many, and that's the distinction.

EDIT: I think I've identified the ideal glass phial farm, though it's different than other arcane 3s because it's not in eberron and thus soarwood isn't part of the drop table. Unfortunately this messes with my vision of pretty, uncluttered tables. heh.

/mourn :-p

[EllisDee37]

Initial table frame is up for the Supply numbers, including the first actual results: Lore Tier 3.

[SuperNiCd]

Initial table frame is up for the Supply numbers, including the first actual results: Lore Tier 3.

Couple of questions about methodology here just to get my bearings.

In the Supply table, I can't quite figure out how you're deriving the average time to get one specific type of collectible based on the rarity. For example, the Eyes of Stone line item. If it takes 1:30 to run start to finish on this character, and there is 1 arcane node, how could on average you accumulate 1 arcane in Eyes of Stone in less time (1:20) than it takes to run (1:30)? Guessing this is some kind of model that takes into account the number all types of nodes in there but I'm having trouble reverse engineering the equation.

Why essences as the base medium of exchange? Seems like essences are more valuable while leveling in crafting than after you've maxed crafting level, and a capped crafter would probably be more likely to want to trade collectibles for collectibles. They are still valuable of course but it seems like it's easier to sort of maintain your stacks of essences in the course of natural game play once leveled. Whereas the collectibles (and especially specific ones) seem to require the specific farming. I guess with essences as the base you could do the calculation to come up with a collectible ratio? X silver flame hymnals = Y fragrant drowshood?

Guess it would be pretty tough to come up with valuation in terms of plat/AS since that will be more point in time supply/demand driven...

[EllisDee37]

In the Supply table, I can't quite figure out how you're deriving the average time to get one specific type of collectible based on the rarity. For example, the Eyes of Stone line item. If it takes 1:30 to run start to finish on this character, and there is 1 arcane node, how could on average you accumulate 1 arcane in Eyes of Stone in less time (1:20) than it takes to run (1:30)? Guessing this is some kind of model that takes into account the number all types of nodes in there but I'm having trouble reverse engineering the equation.

Eyes of Stone is listed as Lore Tier 3, so the numbers tell you how long it will take to farm Tier 3 Lore. The arcane is an incidental bonus that has no bearing on the numbers, but it's there so it doesn't make sense to not collect it.

For a concrete example, say you need 8 Romantic Sonnets. They're Tier 3 Lore commons, so looking at the table you can expect it to take on average 8 * 1:20 = 10:40 to get your 8, depending on your speed. (Everyone can use wings, so you should be able to get fairly close to my times.)

By contrast, if you need Glass Phials, you'd look at the Arcane tier 3 entries. For those you're looking at 4:05 per Glass Phial, or exactly 1 per run on average. (10 nodes * 20% chance for uncommon / 2 uncommon possibilities = 10 * 0.2 / 2 = 2 / 2 = 1.)

Why essences as the base medium of exchange? [...] I guess with essences as the base you could do the calculation to come up with a collectible ratio? X silver flame hymnals = Y fragrant drowshood?

Exactly.

Guess it would be pretty tough to come up with valuation in terms of plat/AS since that will be more point in time supply/demand driven...

Actually, based on my experience selling essences, 10,000 essences is worth around 100 astral shards. I've sold stacks of 10k essences for 90 buyout twice, and both times they went within around 8 hours. (Both were listed for 3 days.) Then I sold a third stack for 120 buyout, which took maybe a day or day and a half.

I envision two columns for values: essences and astrals. The idea is to have a basic framework to make informed trade offers and also (hopefully) to encourage people to post collectables on the asah.

[SuperNiCd]

Eyes of Stone is listed as Lore Tier 3, so the numbers tell you how long it will take to farm Tier 3 Lore. The arcane is an incidental bonus that has no bearing on the numbers, but it's there so it doesn't make sense to not collect it.

For a concrete example, say you need 8 Romantic Sonnets. They're Tier 3 Lore commons, so looking at the table you can expect it to take on average 8 * 1:20 = 10:40 to get your 8, depending on your speed. (Everyone can use wings, so you should be able to get fairly close to my times.)

By contrast, if you need Glass Phials, you'd look at the Arcane tier 3 entries. For those you're looking at 4:05 per Glass Phial, or exactly 1 per run on average. (10 nodes * 20% chance for uncommon / 2 uncommon possibilities = 10 * 0.2 / 2 = 2 / 2 = 1.)

Ah, that makes sense. So basically you're doing the most effective run for each level/type and only counting that. An interesting side effect (and this project is just now bringing this to light for me) is that those "incidental" collectibles could in some cases devalue that collectible type. Just sticking with the Eyes of Stone example, if T3 Lore is a highly desirable collectible type because it's used to make something in the Common column on the demand table, then that could to an extent devalue the T3 Arcane because those are getting picked up incidentally along the way of frequent T3 Lore runs.

Trying to factor that in probably makes the model unnecessarily complicated though.

So will the demand table translate into some kind of multiplier for the valuation?

[EllisDee37]

So will the demand table translate into some kind of multiplier for the valuation?

That's the idea, though the specifics are kind of hazy right now. Any ideas on how that should work is welcome.

Using glass Phials as an example, if you just add up and multiply the demand by the number of seconds to farm one:

(10 + 6) * 245 = 3920

Obviously Glass Phials aren't worth 3920 essences, but if we could come up with a consensus on how much they're worth (500? 1000?) we'd just need a multiplier to get there. Like, say, if we feel they're worth around 800 essences, we could then just divide all the products by 5.

[SuperNiCd]

That's the idea, though the specifics are kind of hazy right now. Any ideas on how that should work is welcome.

Using glass Phials as an example, if you just add up and multiply the demand by the number of seconds to farm one:

(10 + 6) * 245 = 3920

Obviously Glass Phials aren't worth 3920 essences, but if we could come up with a consensus on how much they're worth (500? 1000?) we'd just need a multiplier to get there. Like, say, if we feel they're worth around 800 essences, we could then just divide all the products by 5.

Would knowing some theoretical average "essences per time period" number help in figuring out the ratio?

I know it would vary all over the place, so to get a good number you'd probably have to have hold some things constant like you're doing to get the collectible times. E.g. capped character specifically farming essences by running quests with high chest density and level. Chests not ransacked. All lootgen items deconstructed, no jewel of fortune in play, quests completed (but possibly zerged) etc. Or maybe go another way and just use something like epic dailies as the litmus test since lots of people do those.

Seems like having some baseline for essences/time would help in reaching agreement on collectible:essence ratio. Essences still might have to be discounted a bit as compared to collectibles since after you cap crafting levels, I'm not sure anyone specifically farms them like they do collectibles. They're easier to accumulate in the course of normal (fun) questing.

Just brainstorming here.

[EllisDee37]

I see where you're going with that.

Epic dailies generate around 500 essences per hour, but then you have to wait a day to repeat it or the chest ransack catches up to you.

Essence farming cannith challenges with 3 or more people generates around 2500 essences an hour, sustained, with no ransack, but it's not something you can do for extended farming without wanting to gouge your eyes out with a fork. It's more like if you're out of essences and they announce on Wednesday a crafting bonus weekend and you want to quickly farm up 20,000 essences by Sunday to level a crafter. (He says from experience.)

Specifically, 3 epic alts enter Short Cuts on CR25 and all run straight to different large extractors. (There's 3 of them.) 3-man scaling means 2 bosses spawn at each extractor, for 6 bosses total. Each person kills their 2 bosses, meaning each run everyone in the party gets 6 challenge chests added to their inventory. Takes around 90 seconds per run, 6 chests per run. After 8 runs everyone runs to the crafting hall and opens up their 48 chests and decons the loot, then resume. Those particular chests were nerfed long ago to prevent tome farming with this technique, so the ML14 items only produce 17 essences on average. 12 minutes to do 8 runs, 8 minutes to decon, for a total of 20 minutes per "session." 48*17 = 816 essences, three sessions per hour = 2448 essences per hour.

It's even more grueling than it sounds. But then again, it's no more painful than collectable farming. The only difference is you don't need two other people for collectable farming.

[SuperNiCd]

LOL, that is a pretty creative option for essence farming. And yes, it does sound horrific.

Maybe 500 essences/hr, 8.33/min, 0.14/sec is the more practical baseline, then. Was trying to think of something that would be a reasonable "opportunity cost" to collectible farming. I'm not sure specific essence farming would be that. Just based on personal experience, if you ever do essence farming it would be kind of a short-lived thing you'd do to level your crafter. Then after that, you probably stop any specific farming since normal questing produces enough to keep the crafting factory lights on. Not saying you might not have a specific need from time to time - just not sure it's frequent enough to be the baseline.

Of course there's a lot of other activities you can do in the game and call those an opportunity cost but epic dailies seems (to me anyway) like it would be a pretty common one. Something you'd give up time for in order to do collectible farming. Plus non-crafters do that too.

So let's see, what does that do to:

(10 + 6) * 245 = 3920

becomes:

(10+6) * 245 * 0.14 = 548

Might work?

[EllisDee37]

That number is pretty reasonable, as is your logic. Re-reading the linked thread, it looks like my true epic daily numbers are 600/hour. The last couple weeks I've been dualboxing for double the chest pulls / essences / epic tokens but it takes 1.5x as long, so I was guesstimating with that 500/hour figure. 600/hour would put it at around 650.

Coming at it from the other side, what we really need is feedback on what people feel is fair. How many essences would you trade away to get 10 glass phials? Or if (like me) you had 80+ glass phials when the crafting pass happened, how many essences would you trade for 10 ornate charms? Fragrant drowshood?

For me personally, my most dreaded collectable is ornate charms, followed closely by fragrant drowshood. I'd probably trade 10,000 essences for 15 of either, and probably would go the other way as well. I wouldn't trade 20 away for 10k essences, and I wouldn't trade 10k essences for only 10 of either. So let's see, just me personally, that means I rate my most valued collectables at around 666 essences. Poetic! And it's very close to the 653.33 we get if we plug 600/hour into your formula.

How about you? What's your most dreaded collectable, and how many would you trade for 10k essences, and vice versa? Same question for anyone else reading.

[SuperNiCd]

What's your most dreaded collectable, and how many would you trade for 10k essences, and vice versa?

Whatever I need and don't have. XD

Seriously though, the phials and drowshoods are near the top of my list - I'm sure they are for many. Some of the culturals can be kind of a pain point too. Stone fetishes, for example, seem to elude me but maybe I'm not looking in the right spot.

It's a bit difficult for me to think of it in terms of how many essences they are worth to me. Because if I were to give up some of my collectibles in exchange for essences, I'd probably be viewing it as somewhat of a favor for someone. Part of the reason for that is that at the moment, I don't perceive it to be very easy to go back the other direction. I.e. offer up essences and hope to get the collectible I need. So by and large I prefer to stockpile. This valuation project, if gets some momentum, could potentially change that.

If I had an excess of a certain collectible at this point and needed AS, I'd consider bundling up 5 or 15 and putting them on the ASAH. I would also consider trading collectible for collectible, but I don't have a great sense of the ratios between them at this point, which is why this project is so interesting.

At this point the only thing I've traded to get some collectibles is AS. So I'd be more likely to be able to tell you how many AS 5 or 15 of a collectible is worth to me. But even that's pretty subjective. For how many levels is the piece of gear I'm making going to be viable? Is it something that's easily re-usable on another life or an alt? Or is it something pretty niche? How close can I get to the abilities I'm looking for in the AH and the pawn brokers? Can I get 2/3 of the abilities I want on the right item type without crafting it? There's a bunch of subjectivity in how much collectibles are worth to me at this moment in time. Which I guess is why I was looking for something quasi-scientific on the essence part of the equation.

[Ulfo]

how many would you trade for 10k essences

For me personally 10 k essences = 2 kk plat, and I'm surely not give more than 10-15 k plat (25 for Polished Ore... mebbe 8) ) for any collectables.

[EllisDee37]

Well, hmmm. I've slotted Mirror Darkly for the Tier 4, 5 and 6 Arcane farms because they're technically more efficient than Terminal Delirium, but I'm wondering if I should use Terminal Delirium instead. It's essentially a choice between:

10 arcane in 4:00

or

5 arcane, 3 lore, 1 natural, 1 any in 3:00 (I think)

The first is clearly more efficient for farming arcanes, but the second is more efficient in terms of collectables per minute, and those lore are useful.

One thing to consider is that I have good lore farms to post for tiers 4 and 5 (four lores plus an any in around 2:00) so maybe just list Terminal Delirium as the Tier 6 arcane farm, since it will also be the Tier 6 lore farm?

[EllisDee37]

I bumped Spellsight and Evocation up from niche to uncommon. (On par with trapping skills.) The thinking there is that pretty much every caster would like both; even DC wizards need to DPS, occasionally, and of course Warlock is pretty popular.

[SuperNiCd]

Well, hmmm. I've slotted Mirror Darkly for the Tier 4, 5 and 6 Arcane farms because they're technically more efficient than Terminal Delirium, but I'm wondering if I should use Terminal Delirium instead. It's essentially a choice between:

10 arcane in 4:00

or

5 arcane, 3 lore, 1 natural, 1 any in 3:00 (I think)

The first is clearly more efficient for farming arcanes, but the second is more efficient in terms of collectables per minute, and those lore are useful.

One thing to consider is that I have good lore farms to post for tiers 4 and 5 (four lores plus an any in around 2:00) so maybe just list Terminal Delirium as the Tier 6 arcane farm, since it will also be the Tier 6 lore farm?

I don't have a very strong opinion either way. But if you want a not terribly strong opinion, I'd say go for the absolute most efficient run for each tier/category of collectible. Rationale here is that you're trying to model a valuation. It will probably be a better model with consistent assumptions such as "all collectible farm times derived from the most efficient known runs for that tier/class." I'm circling back to that opportunity cost thing, once again.

Put another way, if I only need T4 arcane collectibles right now to complete my crafting goal, my best options to get them fastest are to a) run Mirror or b) buy/trade for it. If I need to generally replenish my T4 arcane stock, and my stock in general, Delirium might be a better bet. But I'd think the model might be better based on the right now approach.

Trying to consider the "incidentals" seems like it would make the model extremely complex.

[Drekisen]

As far as I can tell Tier 3 Arcane, Natural, and Lore are by far the hardest and most time consuming to farm because there are 9 each of Arcane and Natural and 8 of Lore at that tier.

The percentage drop rate I came up with for Intact Spore Pods while farming Assault on Summerfield was around 4% and that was out of 400+ pulls. BTW...still not sure why that is not on the collectible farm list for tier 3 naturals *hint, hint*

I would think uncommon and rares would be high demand for Tier 3.

For some reason Vials of Pure water are insanely time consuming as well.

Not sure if they nerfed the drop rates on those way back in the day when they were used for ritual crafting.

[EllisDee37]

As far as I can tell Tier 3 Arcane, Natural, and Lore are by far the hardest and most time consuming to farm because there are 9 each of Arcane and Natural and 8 of Lore at that tier.

There are only 2 each of Arcane Tier 3 in Forgotten Realms, where soarwood is removed from the table. But yeah, agreed.

The percentage drop rate I came up with for Intact Spore Pods while farming Assault on Summerfield was around 4% and that was out of 400+ pulls. BTW...still not sure why that is not on the collectible farm list for tier 3 naturals *hint, hint*

Excellent! I'll go try it out and see if I can improve my pulls/minute.