Guild Wars 2

I was away for a few month.

Came back and silk went from 2 silver to 3 silver. Is there a recent patch that increased the demand for silk?

laokoko.7403:

I was away for a few month.

Came back and silk went from 2 silver to 3 silver. Is there a recent patch that increased the demand for silk?

Your post history suggests otherwise.

Wanze.8410:

laokoko.7403:

I was away for a few month.

Came back and silk went from 2 silver to 3 silver. Is there a recent patch that increased the demand for silk?

Your post history suggests otherwise.

Right, I was away for a few month from the game. But I’m still active on the forum.

Well beyond old news. Those prices spiked with Ascended armor crafting. The forums have been griping about that and precursor inflation for months.

Rauderi.8706:

Well beyond old news. Those prices spiked with Ascended armor crafting. The forums have been griping about that and precursor inflation for months.

Right, that’s what brought silk price to 2 silver.

I thought 2 silver would be the stable price, but I suppose that’s wrong. I guess it was still on the climb.

But the latest spike started around Sept. 1st.

It may have to do with anticipation that the “drops skewed to your profession” would impact the cloth market since everyone “must run a zerk warrior” mentality. I assume it’s mainly speculation driven with players hoarding silk for the day the silk supply dries up.

I run a thief and haven’t noticed a major shift in cloth salvage.

Perhaps people saving up to finish/do collection achievements.

so in short, find a place where silk is common and cash in big time.

Probably a combination of factors. I know some people are going through and creating a new character at the moment to experience the new levelling system, myself included. That has equated to me buy a few thousand silk in the last week in preparation for ascended armor as well as general crafting expenses and building armor every X level to match my characters current level.

Linen can still be farmed with Karma. Farm Linen, sell Linen, then use profits to buy Silk.

Could be the new collection achievement for collecting all 3 types of ascended armor. People who were happy with 1 or 2 sets went out and bought a ton.

The spike is due to the collection achievement to obtain all 3 sets of ascended armor. It rewards you with a 200g exotic. People who were close or only ever made one type or armor are now crafting it again to try for this achievement.

But we didn’t know the exact contents of collections until a day or two before the patch drop (even then the collection list wasn’t comprehensive). The price move started well before that.

Behellagh.1468:

But we didn’t know the exact contents of collections until a day or two before the patch drop (even then the collection list wasn’t comprehensive). The price move started well before that.

Blogposts were up way before that.

Behellagh.1468:

But we didn’t know the exact contents of collections until a day or two before the patch drop (even then the collection list wasn’t comprehensive). The price move started well before that.

September 3rd was the first glimpse, showing us rare and exotic collections. It’s not a too big a stretch. That is pretty much when supply started dropping. I wouldn’t be surprised by people holding onto one of the materials that you can almost not have enough of.

Shanks.2907:

Could be the new collection achievement for collecting all 3 types of ascended armor. People who were happy with 1 or 2 sets went out and bought a ton.

This, I think. Silk (and damask) should stabilize in a few weeks.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The spike is due to the collection achievement to obtain all 3 sets of ascended armor. It rewards you with a 200g exotic. People who were close or only ever made one type or armor are now crafting it again to try for this achievement.

what’s the 200 gold exotic?

Is it just a random named exotic you can choose from?

laokoko.7403:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The spike is due to the collection achievement to obtain all 3 sets of ascended armor. It rewards you with a 200g exotic. People who were close or only ever made one type or armor are now crafting it again to try for this achievement.

what’s the 200 gold exotic?

Is it just a random named exotic you can choose from?

Crustacea, Arthropoda

Well, I know what I’ll be choosing when I complete these Collections then. XD

Well i wrote that silk have been subject to insider trading but the message was deleted.

Since was written officially on patchnotes, clearly proved by players that noticed a huge supply drain before silk changes were announced and even John Smith confirmed, i think its an information Worth mentioning.

And not a void accusation.

When search function will be fixed i will gladly link stuff… in the meantime in case of doubt mod can ask directly to john Smith.

P.S. 200 G O___o? can i complete it with fractal boxes or its only craft?

Ascended might have a lot to do with it, but also add to that that fact that many people are interested in crafting the new back skins making leveling to 400 worthwhile even if people weren’t/aren’t interested in ascended armor. There is also another achievement to craft all of the Rare quality armor skins. I don’t believe this is the result of just one source of high demand, but rather several surges in demand for the same thing for different reasons. Intricate silk insignias/rare armor, ascended armor, people crafting to 400 for new back pieces, and (just a maybe) disheartened people that would rather just cradt-level alts than deal with the new leveling system. This is the exact kind of ‘perfect storm’ that would increase the value of a highly supplied material by 50-100%.

*just my thoughts

The price of making ascended set increased by approximately 100g as a result of the silk price increase. It was already expensive to craft a cloth set, but now it’s simply insane. About 600g I think?

LordByron.8369:

Well i wrote that silk have been subject to insider trading but the message was deleted.

Since was written officially on patchnotes, clearly proved by players that noticed a huge supply drain before silk changes were announced and even John Smith confirmed, i think its an information Worth mentioning.

And not a void accusation.

When search function will be fixed i will gladly link stuff… in the meantime in case of doubt mod can ask directly to john Smith.

P.S. 200 G O___o? can i complete it with fractal boxes or its only craft?

First of all, we are talking about the recent price spike from 2s to 3s within the last 2 weeks, not about last december.

A huge supply drain of silk before ascended armor doesnt neccessarily mean it was inside trading. Alot of people bought off silk in order to promote it to gossamer (which spiked in price before asc armor got released).

Even without changing the refinement recipe from 2 to 3 scraps and needing only 50 bolts instead of 100, silk would have been the most used cloth in ascended armorcrafting, it was easy to figure out for players with a bit of brain since asc weaponcrafting went live 3 months before.
Since then, billions of silk scraps have been farmed, traded and used in crafting, so suggesting that the price of silk we have now is due to 4 million being bought up prior to the patch has no merit.

Even if no one would have bought silk prior to the patch, the supply on the tp would have been enough for only 13k players to craft a bolt of damask, so the supply would have been drained during the first day anyways and the new price equilibrium would have been set by supply and demand, just like we have now.

It may have to do with anticipation that the “drops skewed to your profession” would impact the cloth market since everyone “must run a zerk warrior” mentality. I assume it’s mainly speculation driven with players hoarding silk for the day the silk supply dries up.

Btw, they really do need to fix “profession loot.” My thief keeps getting leather drops now, NOBODY needs leather drops. This is why Silk prices are going up, because 5/8ths of the classes are now getting less silk than usual, while the remaining 3/5ths are profiting off the difference.

Ah … thieves use medium armor. Medium armor uses leather to make and therefore you get leather from salvage. My level 80 thief has been getting silk as well so I must be getting light armor drops as well. I normally play in zones well below the level where bag drops and salvage drops contain or breakdown into silk.

Ohoni.6057:

It may have to do with anticipation that the “drops skewed to your profession” would impact the cloth market since everyone “must run a zerk warrior” mentality. I assume it’s mainly speculation driven with players hoarding silk for the day the silk supply dries up.

Btw, they really do need to fix “profession loot.” My thief keeps getting leather drops now, NOBODY needs leather drops. This is why Silk prices are going up, because 5/8ths of the classes are now getting less silk than usual, while the remaining 3/5ths are profiting off the difference.

5/8th+3/5th= 49/40

New class confirmed.

Ohoni.6057:

It may have to do with anticipation that the “drops skewed to your profession” would impact the cloth market since everyone “must run a zerk warrior” mentality. I assume it’s mainly speculation driven with players hoarding silk for the day the silk supply dries up.

Btw, they really do need to fix “profession loot.” My thief keeps getting leather drops now, NOBODY needs leather drops. This is why Silk prices are going up, because 5/8ths of the classes are now getting less silk than usual, while the remaining 3/5ths are profiting off the difference.

Blue leather armor should be sold on the TP or to a merchant. Green leather armor should be forged for a chance at a promotion to Rare quality (at which point you can salvage it for the Ecto and Rune).

Ah … thieves use medium armor. Medium armor uses leather to make and therefore you get leather from salvage.

Yes, Behellagh. . . this is the problem?

I do still get cloth drops, but it seems considerably less than an even amount of them.

Blue leather armor should be sold on the TP or to a merchant. Green leather armor should be forged for a chance at a promotion to Rare quality (at which point you can salvage it for the Ecto and Rune).

. . .

What are you even talking about? Yes, of course you can do these things, but neither will earn you as much return as doing the same with even level cloth gear. Most types of leather are barely even above vendor prices, while cloth gear tends to sell for several times vendor prices.

You are the one Ohoni that is suggesting that ANet needs to “fix profession loot” drops. It was added so when leveling you are more likely to get loot useful to you. Is it your profession’s fault that the primary component for their armor isn’t as useful a profession that uses light armor and therefore cloth? No, the game’s loot mechanism isn’t balanced around the current TP value of salvage components of item drops.

I remember a while back when heavy armor was the most desirable for salvage but that was before the onslaught of ascended armor crafting.

You are the one Ohoni that is suggesting that ANet needs to “fix profession loot” drops. It was added so when leveling you are more likely to get loot useful to you.

I understand why they thought it might be a good idea, I’m just pointing out that they were wrong. The reason why they’re wrong is that while you’re leveling, the quality of your gear is mostly inconsequential. You replace it often enough and the stat scaling is forgiving enough that you can run around in gear ten levels beneath you or more. In practice, what this change means is that my level 49 Thief is constantly getting leather drops, most of which is either weaker than what he already has, or marginally so.

If I ever do need better gear, it’s far better to get exactly what I want off the TP rather than to hope it drops for me vaguely in the time-frame that I’d need it, and being able to sell the highest value drops gives me more profit with which to do so.

The point of gear drops is not to put them on, it’s to sell them or salvage them for mats, so whether a piece of gear is something I could theoretically equip is not even secondary to its market value, it’s tertiary at best.

Since only 3/8ths of the classes are getting the best loot, and 5/8ths of the classes are getting the worse loot, of course silk prices will be impacted. The cost has risen by about a third since the patch.

If ANet wanted to make a game in which gear drops were valued for your ability to put them on, then they would need to vastly overhaul their core state mechanics, and I don’t think that would be for the better.

Is it your profession’s fault that the primary component for their armor isn’t as useful a profession that uses light armor and therefore cloth?

No, that’s ANet’s fault, which is why I would expect ANet to do something about it.

The problem with this new drop system is that it is introduced directly into a greater system that is, at this time, massively uneven (why is irrelevant) in terms of mat values. So, no, it’s not the profession’s fault, it’s the game’s current and by now long-standing mat economy that’s the issue here.

The game’s loot mechanism, by the way, was balanced before this new addition. That is to say, every class type, and by consequence, every character had the same chances of getting X or Y armor type drop (presumably, anyway). Now that is no longer the case. Some classes will be generating more value over time for their drops than others, no matter how mat prices fluctuate.

The bottom line is this: If this change affects the class-based armor type drops significantly enough to be of any real purpose to a given character’s progress—which appears to be the intent—then by extrapolation light armor classes will to some degree measurably benefit coin-wise compared to the others. Further, medium armor classes will be the most adversely affected, being “gifted” with extra, relatively worthless, leather armors for their characters’ lifetimes.

The OP has a point. Will ANet rescind this system? Not a chance. Should they? I’d have to know the actual impact in terms of the drop tilt introduced by this to offer an opinion, and I’m not expecting that information to show up unless some very industrious players start keeping close track of every armor drop they collect by class type.

What would I suggest? I think scrapping the change to armor (and weapon) drops, and putting more emphasis on class-based level-up rewards would be as effective and more controllable. Of course, making these level-up items non-salvageable would be obvious. The intent would be served—and more reliably—and no one gets shafted or gains monetary benefits simply by virtue of their class.

The professional loot is kind of silly. Ya, play certain profession, get more loot.

I think Anet spend too much time caring about the NPE, that some thing don’t make sense.

Besides, even if people get the loot they can use when leveling up, don’t mean it is actually useful if it is not the stats they want.

The OP has a point. Will ANet rescind this system? Not a chance. Should they? I’d have to know the actual impact in terms of the drop tilt introduced by this to offer an opinion, and I’m not expecting that information to show up unless some very industrious players start keeping close track of every armor drop they collect by class type.

Yeah, fair enough. I’m leveling a character that’s at 49 at the moment, and gained the last few levels under the new system, during which time he’s picked up 1 new trait point, something like 6 SPs in bulk, a yellow ring, a yellow sword, and a yallow amulet, I think. What if instead over every six levels you get one SP per level, and also one armor piece in a rotating cycle, first gloves, then boots, then legs, chest, hat, shoulders, then boots again, so you always have at least something within six levels of where you’re at, and maybe better if you’re lucky with drops or buy something off the TP. Trinkets can just be drops.

mtpelion.4562:

Blue leather armor should be sold on the TP or to a merchant. Green leather armor should be forged for a chance at a promotion to Rare quality (at which point you can salvage it for the Ecto and Rune).

I did the forging for a little bit and without making spreadsheets found it to be not worth my while. Maybe that has changed, but basically I concluded just vendoring is faster and the result in silver is equal to the potential promotion into rare and from there to ectos.

But this might be a fun thing to do for some, you can always be lucky and get more out of it, especially if you are getting a nice promoted rune at the end. In the long run probably worth it in terms of profit.

mtpelion.4562:

Blue leather armor should be sold on the TP or to a merchant. Green leather armor should be forged for a chance at a promotion to Rare quality (at which point you can salvage it for the Ecto and Rune).

Also the chance of getting cloth armor. The silk you get from fully randomized forging of greens is a non-trivial fraction of your income.

1. People had hoarded tons and tons of silk.
2. When they added ascended crafting, they increased the cost for bolts to 3 bolts, and made it so you needed 100 bolts for a damask, to take out all that silk.

That silk was quickly used up, but they didn’t adjust the costs again, which resulted in cloth costs going bonkers as silk can’t be acquired as consistently as wood and metal, because there’s no nodes for it.

This problem can be addressed with one or more of the following:

• Change the cost of bolts of silk 2 scraps per bolt.
• Change the damask recipe to require 50 bolts instead 100.
• Add a gathering node for cloth. This node would also drop a bit of leather sometimes, and rarely fine crafting materials. You get the lockpick gathering tool, go find the nodes in the map, and open them. Silk nodes would be in level 70-80 areas.
  • For example, the node could be called “XXX lockbox”.
    • WhereXXX is the material of the “XXX lockpick” gathering tool used to gather the node: copper, silver, gold, platinum, mithril, orichalcum lockpicks.
    • Unlike exploration and JP open chests and Dry Top’s buried locked chest, these lockboxes would be nodes with map icons and material drops, and that count for daily gatherer, not chests with random drops.
    • The same way metal nodes spawn frequently inside caves and in mountains and wood on plains and forests, lockbox nodes would spawn often in population centers, like were enemy factions lurk. Need some silk? Visit some known svanir, or grawl settlement in Frostgorge, you may find some there.
    • Of course, thegathering tool would have unlimited counterparts. The first one could be a “Skritt Burglar’s Lockpick” that spawns the Skritt Burlar herself to open the lockbox before she realizes the gatherer is there, and then she runs away.

I’d like to see the gathering node solution. I prefer to go gather some basic materials when I need them.

1. People had hoarded tons and tons of silk.
2. When they added ascended crafting, they increased the cost for bolts to 3 bolts, and made it so you needed 100 bolts for a damask, to take out all that silk.

If that was their intent then they have no idea what they’re doing. You don’t put in long term sinks to cover supply hoarding, you put in short term sinks, like introduce one really slick recipe that 90% of players will be using within the first month, and then the other 10% will trickle in later but the mass demand will be gone by then (like Spinal Blade packs or Mawdrey).

Add a gathering node for cloth. This node would also drop a bit of leather sometimes, and rarely fine crafting materials. You get the lockpick gathering tool, go find the nodes in the map, and open them. Silk nodes would be in level 70-80 areas.

I would just make them plants and stuff. ESO has cloth nodes in their open world. Like silk would come from spider webs, gossamer from Risen spider webs, jute, linen, and cotton from plants, wool, I don’t know, kill sheep.

Ohoni.6057:

1. People had hoarded tons and tons of silk.
2. When they added ascended crafting, they increased the cost for bolts to 3 bolts, and made it so you needed 100 bolts for a damask, to take out all that silk.

If that was their intent then they have no idea what they’re doing. You don’t put in long term sinks to cover supply hoarding, you put in short term sinks, like introduce one really slick recipe that 90% of players will be using within the first month, and then the other 10% will trickle in later but the mass demand will be gone by then (like Spinal Blade packs or Mawdrey).

Ahem

John Smith.4610:

We design in some volatility and some stability (silk wasn’t an accident ). We use our past experience, mixed with data to make predictions of what will happen given our choices. We then select outcomes that match whatever goals we have and use the data/experience to match those outcomes. We’ve gotten surprisingly good at this, but if we do make a mistake, the robustness of the player market helps smooth any bumps. For example, at one point a long time ago, we had an ecto exploit with snowflakes. This exploit produced a decent amount of ectos and put them into the market, but the market absorbed that and return to normal in a very short period of time.

So it wasn’t an accident, it was just a deliberate mistake. They intended to do it, but intending to do so was incredibly foolish. It happens.

Note, btw, that he references an incident in which the prices fluctuated, but then returned to a stable and balanced value. Silk has stabilized, but at a much higher value than comparable materials, and much higher than it was before. cloth is still radically out of balance with other materials, so clearly the “robust market” has not “fixed it.”

The problem is with the comparable materials, not with silk.

It’s probably a bit high (check back after the surge), but that’s being amplified by mithril, elder wood, and thick leather being too low. Those materials continue to be relatively worthless, which skews the market.

It’d feel a whole lot better if they all had value.

One day people complain that light classes have to pay too much gold for ascended armor, the other day people complain that light armor classes loot more cloth.

It’s probably a bit high (check back after the surge), but that’s being amplified by mithril, elder wood, and thick leather being too low. Those materials continue to be relatively worthless, which skews the market.

It’d feel a whole lot better if they all had value.

If that’s true, and if the silk changes were designed to deliberately drive up the price of silk to where they think it “should be,” then it would still be a massive error on their part to not have simultaneously made changes that would drive up the price of Hitril and thick leather accordingly.

One day people complain that light classes have to pay too much gold for ascended armor, the other day people complain that light armor classes loot more cloth.

If your argument is “yes cloth users will make more money than other classes, but they will need it because they pay more for ascended armor,” then that is a weak argument. While true to a point, it only matters if A. they want Ascended armor, and B. they don’t already have it. At any point that they aren’t saving up for ascended armor, the disparity is pure profit to them, which they can spend on anything they want.

Nobody is arguing that the cost of silk should come down AND that cloth users should still have to pay more for their armor, if they correct the one, they can and should correct the other at the same time.

Ohoni.6057:

If that’s true, and if the silk changes were designed to deliberately drive up the price of silk to where they think it “should be,” then it would still be a massive error on their part to not have simultaneously made changes that would drive up the price of Hitril and thick leather accordingly.

It’s a fairly minor issue from inaction. It makes sense experimentally; they knew that the first round of changes to ascended mats didn’t do the trick, so they cranked up on the lever they hadn’t messed with yet and found something that worked (and overshot, though probably not as badly as people think).

I guess it’s an error that they haven’t gone back and tweaked the other materials yet, but honestly there are tons and tons of things in this game that they should go back and tweak but just haven’t been high enough priority. They’ll get a pass at some point in the future but I really don’t blame them at all for not throwing the design power at this until it’s more relevant (such as when they put out ascended jewelcrafting / cooking).

I guess it’s an error that they haven’t gone back and tweaked the other materials yet, but honestly there are tons and tons of things in this game that they should go back and tweak but just haven’t been high enough priority.

There is no excuse. If they honestly feel that the silk change was a good idea that should remain, then there is a table someplace that says Mithrillium costs 50 mithril, and they need to delete the “5” and replace it with a “10.” If they think it was a bad idea, then there is an entry that says Silk Weaving Thread costs 100, and they need to delete least one of the 0s and the 1, and replace it with a 5.

Done. Takes less than a minute, I’m sure, or they’ve designed their systems terribly. In the meantime, the imbalance has lasted for what, nine months now? And I would say that making most classes loot less cloth and some classes loot more would be a very “relevant” place to balance out the values of each.

Ohoni.6057:

I guess it’s an error that they haven’t gone back and tweaked the other materials yet, but honestly there are tons and tons of things in this game that they should go back and tweak but just haven’t been high enough priority.

There is no excuse. If they honestly feel that the silk change was a good idea that should remain, then there is a table someplace that says Mithrillium costs 50 mithril, and they need to delete the “5” and replace it with a “10.” If they think it was a bad idea, then there is an entry that says Silk Weaving Thread costs 100, and they need to delete least one of the 0s and the 1, and replace it with a 5.

Done. Takes less than a minute, I’m sure, or they’ve designed their systems terribly. In the meantime, the imbalance has lasted for what, nine months now? And I would say that making most classes loot less cloth and some classes loot more would be a very “relevant” place to balance out the values of each.

If their intention was to make ascended armor hard to get in general, silk was the best option because it is used in every armor class.

If their intention was to make ascended armor hard to get in general, silk was the best option because it is used in every armor class.

Yes, but you can’t salvage silk from heavy or medium armor, so their goal needs to take into account that while all armor might use silk, all material types are not equal. Silk is both the hardest to find AND the most needed, which is a bit nonsense when it comes to material balance.

Ohoni.6057:

If their intention was to make ascended armor hard to get in general, silk was the best option because it is used in every armor class.

Yes, but you can’t salvage silk from heavy or medium armor, so their goal needs to take into account that while all armor might use silk, all material types are not equal. Silk is both the hardest to find AND the most needed, which is a bit nonsense when it comes to material balance.

I only play warrior and i still get light armor drops and cloth salvage mats.

Ohoni.6057:

Silk is both the hardest to find AND the most needed, which is a bit nonsense when it comes to material balance.

Thick leather is harder to find than silk.

Just saying.

I only play warrior and i still get light armor drops and cloth salvage mats.

I think you missed part of the conversation. Yes, all classes still get some drops of all types, and in my experience at least level 80 characters are relatively balanced, so maybe the system doesn’t impact them, but still leveling characters seem to receive a pronounced higher amount of class-based loot, so if your Warrior was level 50, he might receive some cloth or leather, but way less than he would be receiving metal.

Thick leather is harder to find than silk.

Just saying.

Not if you salvage all the leather gear you find. Most don’t bother, because it’s not worth doing in the current market, but it’s an option.

Ohoni.6057:

Not if you salvage all the leather gear you find. Most don’t bother, because it’s not worth doing in the current market, but it’s an option.

Yes, even if you salvage all the leather gear you find.