Guild Wars 2

Why in the heck would a rare dye recipe come out common? Every try…I get a common dye as the result. You trying to make me quit trying?

I have done a few times now and resulted in nadda. Just a few common dyes. Not sure this makes sense on any level.

The same reason the dozens and dozens of free Transmutation Stones don’t work on the only gear that ultimately matters (level 80 gear)…to encourage you to purchase things from the Gem Shop.

It’s a pretty bum deal, but it makes at least a modicum of sense in a way.

Assuming that ANet specifically tuned material rates and crafting recipes in a way such that it’s more or less not possible to turn a profit through crafting (i.e., virtually every item crafted through normal professions is sold at or only slightly above cost)…

Consider Unidentified Gray Dye. You can determine the opportunity cost of crafting that dye based on the materials cost of all of the components needed to craft it (some of which are obtained with Karma – disregard that). When you compare that to the average value of the 29 dyes in the Grey spectrum (which, bear in mind, includes several of the most valuable dyes – Celestial, White, Black, Abyss, and Midnight Fire), you can very easily determine the profitability of crafting Unid Dye recipes. I did the math. On average you’re losing about 25 silver per dye crafted. In fact, the only times that the dye obtained outweighs the materials cost of crafting it are the same five outliers in the set.

In contrast, if the Rare Dye recipes were guaranteed to grant rare dyes, you’d narrow the field there to contain almost no dyes beyond the ones I mentioned above – the most valuable dyes on the market.

With all of that out of the way, I think that the names should be clarified significantly. At first glance it does look like you should be getting a rare dye every time.

It’s a ripoff. My advice is not to bother with it. You’ll end up very disappointed.

Yeah…seems like a ripoff. But I do get that you can’t get a rare every time. I knew that from the get go. I just figured you would, at the very least, get uncommon from crafting a rare. Out of three rares now, all were just ordinary boring colors.

Should be that when you craft master dyes, you get anything below rare, but better chances at uncommon than crafting basic dyes. When crafting rares, they should be anything but commons. The chance to get a rare wasn’t really what my gripe was. I get that it might be 1 in 20/30/50 or something.

Blueshield.6291:

Assuming that ANet specifically tuned material rates and crafting recipes in a way such that it’s more or less not possible to turn a profit through crafting (i.e., virtually every item crafted through normal professions is sold at or only slightly above cost)…

Yes… Go on believing that easy lie… Oh, time for me to turn over my TP inventory of another easy large profit….

More on topic – I see the dye recipes as serving one of two roles:
Role a: a way to keep the basement price for some materials from dropping below certain values. This then doubles as sinks for those items – there are then no infinite quantities back logged in the TP. This is a long view role, which I don’t see entering use for at least a year
Role b: a temporary place holder for the recipe, currently set to be unprofitable by any measure, for future adjustment into use as a sink of mats and faucet of dye.

Dunno which, don’t care which, the role for craftable dyes is for tomorrow.
//Yamagawa
— Crafting VVisard (self proclaimed)