I've heard this advice several times, but I'm unsure if it's even a viable strategy - crafting low level staff that branches a lot (like Brandish) in hope of getting one with good UVs to sell it for a small fortune.
Is it even possible to get crowns via crafting&selling low level items?
Tue, 04/15/2014 - 03:17
Tue, 04/15/2014 - 07:30
#2
Okay, I tried to do some math.
It's grossly simplified, but still, let's try and estimate the effect of mass-crafting Brandish - 2* sword.
It takes 1000cr to craft and another 3250cr for the orbs, resulting in 4250cr per sword - assuming we don't find orb in Clockworks at all.
I assume the price for energy is 6500cr/100ce, and the only demanded UV is ASI, with CTR and DB being equivalent to no UV at all.
Observing the market and asking my friends, I decided to go with the following price table, from no UVs to ASI VH:
500cr 1000cr 9000cr 25000cr 60000cr
From wiki I took chances of getting one UV as following: 10% to get it at all, then 33% to get ASI (I assume Damage Bonus takes one "slot", not six), then 66.67%, 27.41%, 4.44%, and 1.48% chances to get UV levels from Low to VHigh respectively. From that we can calculate total probability of getting certain ASI level, from none to ASI VHigh: 96.7%, 2.2%, 0.9%, 0.15% and 0.05%
Then to find average refund we need to multiply total probability of ASI level and cost of the item with UV of said level, including no UV, and find the sum of all possible outcomes. I got ~650cr, which is not even close to the crafting cost. =(
The calculation above ignores material cost, possibility of several UVs and demand for UVs other than ASI on the sword in question.
Tue, 04/15/2014 - 09:44
#3
adjustments
The available UV data (for example here) suggests that damage bonus is not "one slot out of three", but rather six out of eight slots. So the chance of ASI is more like 1/8 than 1/3. That's going to depress your expected earnings even more. :(
Are CTR Brandishes no longer valuable, due to the Chaos buff? They used to be really valuable --- for example CTR+3 going for 500,000, CTR+4 going for 1,500,000. That was before guild halls were created as a crown sink though. Anyway, CTR UVs should increase your expected earnings a bit.
Tue, 04/15/2014 - 10:36
#4
@Bopp
Ah. I have very little knowledge of Auction's demands. Let me integrate your data into my calculations...
UPD: It does, but not enough to matter. I'm still ignoring double UV's because they seem to be order of magnitude more rare than single UVs, but with 2 UVs out of 8 being valuable I have 97.6% chance of not getting anything useful, and chances of getting High or VHigh UV are practically null, rendering high prices for those pretty much irrelevant. Even with prices like (from no UV to VHigh) 500cr, 20kcr, 100kcr, 400kcr, 1kkcr estimated payout per brandish will be 2320cr. Unless I farm Clockworks for orbs it won't get me anywhere... but then I could just as well farm it for crowns.
Unless I'm missing something.
Before release 2013-07-30, we would mass-craft 2-star items and then sell the excess. We used mist energy, which was free. Now you need to use orbs of alchemy, which are not free. It seems to me that whether mass-crafting is profitable now depends first of all on how many orbs of alchemy you have. We could also do a calculation comparing the price of orbs and energy to the prices that you get from selling the items. What have you calculated so far?