Guild Wars 2

With the current market for good, leveling up mid tiers of weaponsmith and armorsmith are substantially more expensive than the other crafts, except maybe top end Jewelcrafting. The cost of coal and primordium make raw materials cost 2-3x what a tailor or huntsman pays. To make a 15 slot bag (i think thats the size) a tailor spends 50s and 20 cloth scraps. A armorsmith requires 10 primordium making the bag cost 5s more to make. This is substantial when the trader markup is often less than 5s (and the tax). I know the cost of the specials is substantially more than the raw materials when making armor, but those can’t be farmed and are equal among all crafts. This also effects the raw material skill gains. A leatherworker/tailor can spend 10s and gain 20-25 points at each tier. Armorsmith can do cloth (for slightly more) but they don’t need that quantity but if they do metal which they need, it racks up the cost . It’s not possible with bronze at 5 bars per combine.

Could we get a slight adjustment to this? Maybe make the stacks of coal and primordium 25 and tin 50 (change combine to 2 ore to 1 bar). While the extra cost would still be there, it wouldn’t be as punishing to lower/mid level characters.

You have a valid point for one item, but consider the raw materials can be mine through nodes where if you use the correct tool you will get the desired material. For some of the other crafting disiplines they have to salvage items with the hope of getting the correct material. With that in mind I believe that there isn’t a need for a change with costs. From what i know of the disiplines I beleive that they weren’t designed to be equal, for example cooking is one of the most expensive and time consuming while jewel crafting is one of the easier disiplines.

With leather being the cheapest material on the trader(besides food) I don’t see that salvaging is that big a constraint on supply. Cloth is a little higher than ore, but not to the extent that primordium costs. Jute commanded a premium for a few weeks but it has fallen to just higher than copper. While I agree cooking is time consuming (and space demanding) I disagree it is expensive if you do any farming. Jewelcraft is easy/cheap up to 300, but gems after 300 skill are almost 1s ea to a vendor, yet you can’t sell the result for much more than that and I still haven’t found a way to get from 380 to 400 without wasting about 2g (not dev’s fault, power skillers crashed the price of rares).

I’m not suggesting they remove the vendor component, just lessen it’s effect a little.

Cost of harvesting ore with a Mithril Pick – 1.6c per ore
- Cost of ingot – 3×1.6c + (8c/0c/16c/48c) = 12.8c/4.8c/20.8c/52.8c per Bronze/Iron/Steel/Darksteel
Cost of “harvesting” leather with a Basic Kit – 3.52c + vendor price of item
- Cost of refined leather – 2×3.52c + (10c/20c/30c/40c approximate prices for white) = 17c/27c/37c/47c
Cost of “harvesting” leather with a Fine Kit – 11.52c + vendor price of item
- Cost of refined leather – 2×11.52c + (10c/20c/30c/40c) = 33c/43c/53c/63c

So even assuming the player is wasting money while mining by higher than necessary picks they still aren’t paying a big difference per item.

It is possible to salvage more than one item per use but that can happen with harvesting as well.

Price history of Jute Scrap http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19718
Price history of Copper Ore http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19697
Copper Ore has been approximately 10c cheaper than Jute Scrap.

You mentioned needing 5 ingots but that is just the chest panel. The equivalent in Tailoring requires 4 Bolts of Jute, 1 Stretched Rawhide Leather Square, 3 Spools of Jute Thread.

Here the base cost of ingots is more than the bolts but that is offset by the difference in cost for harvesting.

Not sure why you would use anything but a crude or basic kit for any white salvage below level 70 as there are no upgrades or rares possible. Also, salvage can give 1-3 items, with 2 or 3 happening at least 50% of the time for me. I was more referring to the trader buy/sell prices rather than the cost of farming directly. Even if t3 and t4 leather cost 37 and 47c to salvage, the market is saturated enough that people sell for a fraction of cost. Also, while exping, if you didn’t salvage and collected whites for sale, you would quickly run out of space and be constantly running to a vendor. I know the trader is player driven and will change over time, I can only comment on what I’ve seen over the first month.

My comment about 5 ingots of bronze was the refining, not the usage. This means you can’t refine bronze for skill ups effectively.

Choice of kit largely depends on how you interpret the description. None of them say anything about rares, only rarer. To me that means salvaging into things 1 tier higher than what the item would normally salvage into. This is both good and bad depending on the tier IF you plan on salvaging to sell.

As for the cost of things from buying.

1 Bronze Ingot = 2xCopper Ore + 1/5xLump of Tin
                           = 2x20c + 1/5x8c
                           = 41.6c
1 Bolt of Jute    = 2xJute Scrap
                           = 2x30c
                           = 60c

I never really thought of the higher tier option. I thought of rares as specials, gems or Ectos, maybe silver/gold as I’ve gotten a couple of them recently. I’ll have to pay more attention next time I salvage a few items.

I don’t have an issue with the cost of bronze, just the fact that you have to refine 5 at a time. The cost issue is about coal (slight) and primordium(steep). As it stands, mithil is 1/4 or less the cost of progressing through darksteel. With specials so expensive, every recipe that doesn’t use them is important, and darksteel makes most of them impractical.