Guild Wars 2

Hi Guys,

I wanted to give you my personal opinion on the economic changes I expect for the upcoming patch.

The skill/trait overhaul, the changes to conditions and the ability to change stats on ascended gear with the forge recipe will obviously affect alot of markets.

Here is my view on things:

In general alot of players gonna try out new builds, so in the last 2 weeks, we had an additional demand on ascended crafting mats as people started crafting new armor and weapons, along with all the new accounts that joined during the 75% off sales and whatever new players the pre purchase got in that start crafting their first sets.
Along with that came a price rise for most kitten t5 common mats, as more people also started leveling their crafting professions.

Common mats
The announcement that stats on ascended will be changeable, if you forge it with ectos, skill shards and an exotic insignia/inscription, somewhat lowered that demand, at least for cloth, as many players have a couple of ascended armor chests with undesirable stats in their bank, they can now forge into a stat they want. As those asc chests will keep dropping, i can see cloth prices going down long term, except gossamer, which will have additional demand in crafting exotic insignias.

Metal and wood prices will keep going up in price i think, especially ori and ancient wood will see a big spike, as those are needed in high quantities (30 each) per inscription and ori is also needed for crafting new superior upgrade components.

Leather might also go up in price but personally, i invested not too much gold into common mats, except into ori/ancient in form of ori plated dowels (to save space) and spiritwood planks.

Fine Mats

Obviously t6 mats will go up in price to craft exotic insignias/inscriptions, especially vials of blood for zerker gear and t6 claws for assassins gear and the ascended backpacks (Quiver of a Thousand Arrows and Yakkingtons Tale) with stats to choose from.

Ectos will propably go into the mid 40 silver value as they are needed for changing stats on ascended, crafting insignias/inscriptions and new upgrade components.

Then there are a couple of newer fine mats that will propably be affected as well.
Quartz is likely to keep going up in price as celestial has always been a popular stat combo and there will be high demand for sinister/verata gear with the condi changes.
The sheets of charged ambrite for sinister gear are tradeable and still available for close to crafting value of ~7s but those will be bought up quickly from people who want to circumnavigate the timegate of charged quartz. As the insignias and isncriptions from celestial and sinister are account bound, you will have to craft them yourself, if you want to change some gear to those stats, so better stock up now on charged ambrite and quartz, if you plan on doing that.
Watchwork Sprockets will also see additional demand, as more people will be able to afford an ascended keeper set but again, have to craft the exotic insignia/inscription themselves as it is account bound (prices for those exotic recipes are rising on tp).
You also need 500 sprockets per insi/inscr (watchwork mechanisms still available under crafting value on tp), so you can easily end up needing 5k sprockets for a full asc zealot build.
Sprockets are also used in some upgrade components focussed on conditions (Sigil of malice and Bursting, Rune of Perplexity and Tormenting), so there will be added demand for that as well.

Regular sheets of ambrite might see some demand but i doubt that nomad gear will be very popular and prices on the tp have been under 50% of the crafting value for the longest time.

Toxic Spore Samples also have condi focussed sinks with the toxic nourishments and sigil of torment. Even Marjory´s Chili with its unique stat boni might rise in popularity.
Runes of Antitoxin also seem to be popular and their value doubled from 1-2g in recent weeks but they are still a far way off their crafting value of 5.5g, so it might take some time until spores are needed to craft those.

I am not sure how lower tier fine mats will be affected, my guess is that they might rise gradually in the first couple of weeks after the update, as more people will level their crafts but alot of people will hang out in new LA instead of earning those mats, while leveling an alt or karmatraining in eotm.

Rare Mats

Some Lodestones might go up in price as they are used in popular upgrade components:

Charged for Sigil of Bursting and Scholar Runes
Corrupted for Sigil of Malice
Chrystal for Perplexity Runes
Molten for Trooper Runes
Onyx has a couple semi popular runes and sigils around crafting value

Continued…

This sounds more like trying to influence the market instead of an indepth analysis. You can only analyze something when it has passed, not before.

I might as well dump my bezerker insignia on the TP to crash the prices……doh.
Something ‘might go up, something ’might’ not, its all pointless predictions.

Besides, anyone with half a brain will already have gotten their stuff before the update hits.

You’d be surprised, Sthenith, at how many people don’t stay up-to-date and get mats beforehand.

Also, Wanze is pretty well-known for being in-game wealthy enough that he does not need to bother with influencing the market in any underhanded way. I’m pretty interested in the rest of the post, myself.

Jewels
Apart from maybe opal and ruby orbs, i cant see much happening here, except for the already mentioned quartz and passion flowers. The other orbs might spike shortly and as they are close to vendor value, it might be worth it obtaining a few and relisting for double the price.
If orbs should come towards crafting value, we might see additional demand on t5 dust for the transmogrifications.

Food
The condition changes will have a big impact on the food market, i reckon, and food related to condi damage and +-duration might get expensive.

For nearly all the lvl 80 condi related food you will need snow and orrian truffles, as well as poultry meat and lemongrass for the counterfood.
The recipes from drytop also offer some unique boni related to condis and boon duration, so nopale and prickly pears wont get much cheaper.
And as plenty people are trying out new builds, i can see demand for cooking ingredients in general go up, especially with everyone hanging out in LA the next couple of days, supply wont come in as much as in the last weeks.

Boon Duration
People that traited into boon duration will most likely lose a bit as the loss from traits wont be compensated with the added stats to gear, unless you equip giver gear that is not available in ascended. So they might look elsewhere for it.
Foodwise you have the offensive version with might on crit from Fried golden Dumplings, which has limited supply from Lunar New Year and isnt craftable and the defensive versions from drytop (account bound), which use nopale/prickly pears.
And then you got the farm version with magic find.
Then you have the bountiful nourishments, which will be popular in my opinion and put additional demand on ori, charged sheets of ambrite and platinum doubloons, which might also be used more as upgrade components on exotic gear.

Other obvious markets that will be affected are salvaged exotic inscriptions and insignias which are most likely to go up in price, the more popular ones being soldier, rabid and dire in my opinion.
Popular Exotic Runes and Sigils will go up in price as well, so this might be a good time to do some research which armors and weapons will yield an exotic inscription/insignia and also an expensive rune/sigil to use up all those black lion salvage kits you have lying around.
Thats it for now, if you have any questions about what i talked about or other markets, feel free to ask.

Sthenith.5196:

This sounds more like trying to influence the market instead of an indepth analysis. You can only analyze something when it has passed, not before.

I might as well dump my bezerker insignia on the TP to crash the prices……doh.
Something ‘might go up, something ’might’ not, its all pointless predictions.

Besides, anyone with half a brain will already have gotten their stuff before the update hits.

I dont think I used the word analysis but forecast. Feel free to dump your zerker insignias on the tp, i didnt invest in fine t6 mats anyways as i believe other mats will see a higher spike. You should have bought inscriptions anyways, as those would not only account for a possible spike in t6 blood but also ancient wood and orichalcum, which makes up the mayority of the inscriptions value.

And beside that, zerker is the stat combo most people go for on their first set, so I am not sure if there will be more demand for that compared to other sets.

I’ve seen lots of posters here trying to influence the markets and Wanze certainly isn’t one of them, but believe what you want. Everything he has stated makes sense to me, but I’m not TP guru, so what do I know.

Content updates

Apart from the changes to ascended gear, traits/skills and a new LA, I have small hopes for some new content related to LA. Colin already spilled the beans that we will probably get a dragonite eater with next update, so i guess, there will be some new events, a little scavenger hunt, some new rewards and most likely some returning rewards.
If they recycle some old content, my guess would be that we might see the pavillon and gauntlet again, even though they might leave it for an update in 4 weeks maybe. I think its something that many people would like to see again and along with the pre purchase start of HoT, bring many old players back to the game.
I could also imagine that they maybe recycle some events from last years destruction of LA, maybe we get to fight a Holograph of Scarlet, her Knights and the marionette to relive our victory and celebrate the new LA. That would propably mean some old, limited rewards making a comeback, that either got introduced during last years events (power cores, blade shards, watchwork sprockets for the backitems, scarlets rifle skins) or got reintroduced during last years events.

The Ultimate Citizens Rescue Bag from the Scarlet fight had alot of limited loot on the table that currently doesnt drop anymore. One of anets goals of season 2 was that content (and rewards) are permanent additions to the game and they followed up on that. The limited rewards form season 1 are a problem though but most of it got got rereleased during the LA events. Most of the items have incredibly high prices on the tp atm and i expect them to be made available again before HoT and the new LA is a good opportunity imho.
Those rewards would include:

Recipes:
Zealot
Keeper
Celestial
Toxic Nourishments
Potent Nourishments
Molten Facility Cooking recipes
Sigil of Torment/Rune of Antitoxin recipes
Some endless tonic recipes

Back Skins:
Molten Jetpack
Zephyr Rucksack
Toxic Spore
Desert Rose

Armor:
Monocles
Air FIltration Devices
Gas Mask (unlikely, moved to laurel vendor)

Mini:
Captain Magnus
Molten Firestorm
Toxic Hybrid

Weapon Skins:
Scarlets Rainbow
Scarlets Kiss

Tonics:
Quaggan Tonics

Those events last year also had a decent faucet for Toxic Spore samples, quartz and watchwork sprockets, all of which could do with some resupply, as mentioned in my prior posts.

As a trader, I hope those rewards wont make a comeback as i have alot of stock of those, primarily of the limited recipes but i think it would be for the better in general.
As a player, I do hope that we actually get some content and events in LA that drops (random and rare) loot. Otherwise I am a bit concerned about material production in general, kitten many people will probably hang out in LA without getting any loot, so the regular supply from SIlverwastes/world boss trains/dungeons/wvw and what people normally do in their game time will go down, while there is high demand for crafting materials, especially t6 with the balance patch.

Brother Grimm.5176:

I’ve seen lots of posters here trying to influence the markets and Wanze certainly isn’t one of them, but believe what you want. Everything he has stated makes sense to me, but I’m not TP guru, so what do I know.

I always try to influence the markets that I invest in with my posts.

However, this one was primarily to educate people on how to anticipate changes to the meta and economy in general. I invested heavily in most items i talked about here:
Passion flowers, Karka Shells, Sprockets, Truffles, Ori and Ancient, Toxic Spores, Plat Doubloons, Quartz, Charged Ambrite, Salvageable Inscr/insignias, Runes/Sigils, Lunar New year Envelopes and food, the list goes on…
But I invested into all those mats for reasons stated above, not because I planned to make some posts on it on the forums to raise their prices.
Sure, due to my reputation there might be some added demand from other players reading this thread but compared to the demand through meta changes starting tomorrow, it will have very little influence on the outcome.
Some items, like inscriptions/insignias and popular runes and sigils will also see a much higher initial spike and go down again pretty quickly, as new supply comes in through secondary sources (mostly salvaging off exotic gear that is available on the tp for low prices) and some items, like quartz, sprockets, foods and food ingredients will see a more gradual rise in value in the next days weeks.

But getting back to the initial point, if I, as an experienced trader want to discuss what I am doing, its basically impossible without saying what I am trading in. And once I say it, it doesnt take long for someone to claim that i just do it for personal gain.
Even if I didnt invest in anything prior to this patch and would have posted the same forecast, people wouldnt believe me anyways.

I dont really care, if people think that i do this for personal gain and call me a manipulator and influencer. I cant force anybody to buy or sell anything on the tp, its always their own choice.

I expect to make alot of profit starting tomorrow because I am good at trading.
I would expect the same amount of profit from my investments, if I wouldnt have opened this topic in the first place.

Weren’t there more minis? Mai Trin, Kasmeer and the karka hatchlings, for example?

Just as a follow up, I checked my top 10 investments of the last 90 days.

Thanks to the new trading API keys you can track your purchase and sales history of the last 90 days offline now through various websites, personally i use gw2bltc.com

As you can see from my screenshot, I only mentioned 2 of my top 10 purchases specifically.

Sheets of charged ambrite, of which i have been trading in ever since they got introduced and superior runes of antitoxin, which i have been trading in ever since they flooded the market during last years LA events (salvaged from rare head gear).

I didnt mention Zhaitaffy, which i trade for koi cakes that are condi food (just like garlic kale sautee and rare veggie pizza) but with a different duration (20 min instead of 1h/30min).

Putrid Essence I simply forgot to mention earlier, its used in crafting in superior krait and undead runes, which are condi focussed and are crafted alot anyways because of their cheap crafting value to get the discovery exp when leveling weaponcrafting professions from 400-500.

So most of the items i mentioned, didnt actually make it into my top 10 purchases.

Well, i don’t really invest in the market, i’m to poor for that atm (won’t stay that way),
but i do farm and keep all my stuff so i can craft the items that go up in price.

That way, when i see things going up in price, i tend to make them so i can make a profit in those. If players desire a certain insignia or food item, and the price of that goes up = more cash for me by makin it.

Consider me a hamster waiting for a good opportunity. And those will come ^^

No, no, no. This is how you do economic predictions…

Sthenith.5196:

Well, i don’t really invest in the market, i’m to poor for that atm (won’t stay that way),
but i do farm and keep all my stuff so i can craft the items that go up in price.

That way, when i see things going up in price, i tend to make them so i can make a profit in those. If players desire a certain insignia or food item, and the price of that goes up = more cash for me by makin it.

Consider me a hamster waiting for a good opportunity. And those will come ^^

Well, my post was also directed at people like you, that try to make the most of the mats they gather. I mentioned plenty of mats that already have seen or probably will see a significant rise in value in the upcoming days, weeks.

One problem that many people that dont trade regularly have, is that they are not aware, if something in their material storage sees a sudden spike in value.

But now you might be more inclined to follow up on the prices of the mats i mentioned and decide when the price is right to sell for you.
Without this post, their price spikes might have come and gone unnoticed to you and you would have sold your stash whenever you needed gold in the future for a lower price.

Some add ons:

There are some more foods from the lunar new year that focus on condi and boons than i previously mentioned. In fact its all of them, except the cheap rice balls.
Makes me wonder how long ago they already anticipated amd planned the changes to condi damage and boon duration with this patch.
If you have a look at new consumables that have been introduced since the start of s2, a moyirity of them are focussing either on condis or boon duration.

This is pretty accurate because price already went up when livestream showed the new trait last week.

LONGA.1652:

This is pretty accurate because price already went up when livestream showed the new trait last week.

You might want to state which items you specifically are talking about.

A little more than 24 hours in and you can already see some trends.

First of all, the ecto vendor:

That one obviously had a big impact. Some people complained about huge losses and some proclaimed huge profits. The ecto prise has risen since patch but i doubt that the vendor acts as sink for gold or ectos. John Smith stated the that envelopes during Lunar New year didnt act as a sink either and i guess thats true for this fella as well and in a macro point of view, it will give as much gold and ectos back than it consumes. Personal mileage may vary of course, some people win, some people lose. Some people who are on the losing end, might become winners with the next glob. Personally, i was up with 2500g at some point but right now, i think i am at a loss of 500g.
I dont complain, as I can afford it, but in general I am not a big friend of more gambling options in game. What I do like though, is that they reintroduced the mystic forge conduit. Even though I trade alot in limited items and make good profits with it, they should return periodically.
(I disagree though with the reintroduction of account bound rewards that got earned through achievements)
Maybe they should have put the drops for the conduit into the princess dragonite eater gifts for a limited amount of time or Nolan´s Chest.
Apart from the Dragonite Eater Scavenger hunt and the new JP, we didnt get much new content. However, there is one NPC running around in LA, training for the Gauntlet and Linsey Murdock mentioned on reddit that we will see a new sink for ascended trinkets, so I have some hope that we will see some content updates in the coming weeks.

Until now, some markets developed like i predicted, some didnt.
Quartz and Sprockets are seeing high demand as I expected. I already went though my stash of sprockets to craft runes and sigils, which all sold for a profit of 2-4g each. I didnt use up much quartz yet, as its very limited in daily use. I bought 20 stacks back when it was way below 1s, just to be able to craft my daily charged quartz. Charged sheets of Ambrite saw a quick initial spike to 2g in which i was able to make some good profit, its price went down a bit now to about 90s but still substantially higher than pre patch.
The grow lamp still gives the best profit, if you want to profit from charged quartz, however, I am keeping mine in case they introduce new recipes in the future.
Quartz is still fine as there is plenty of supply left until 3s but once we hit that price range, we might come into dire straits, if no new faucets get introduced.
Toxic Spore Samples didnt see as much demand as I anticipated. There isnt much profit in crafting runes and sigils yet, as antitoxin runes still have a glut of supply from salvaged runes last year and sigil of torment isnt too popular. You can make decent profit with toxic nourishments ( I made 1s per bloodstone dust used yesterday) but now i am out of bloodstone dust. I even opened my 2 stacks of champ bags that i hade left to get some new and have buy orders up for wintersday gifts and t&t bags to gain some more. As the recipes for toxic nourishments are limited and expensive, the pool of people being able to craft them is pretty shallow, so profit margins are likely to stay up.
I am considering to forge some of my bloodstone bricks back into dust (I would propably be the first one to use that recipe, heh).

As predicted wood prices are still going, except ancient wood, where I anticapted a higher spike and cloth prices are going down, except gossamer, which sees some added demand for crafting exotic insignias.
Spiritwood is already available as direct buy 15% under crafting value, so i still have buy orders up. If you want to buy 1 each kitten log of wood, you already pay more than buying 1 each kitten cloth scraps (16s and 15s respectively), even though its directly farmable via nodes, who would have thought that a month ago?

Most insignias and inscriptions havent seen too much price increase yet, even though I already used some of my ori dowels to craft zerker inscriptions for about 1-2g profit.
Sinister, as the most popular stat atm is account bound, so its popularity mostly influenced the price increase in quartz and sheets of charged ambrite.
Most t5 and t6 fine mats have actually seen a price decrease which has me a bit baffled because I am not sure, where that supply is coming from.
My guess would be either alot of people opening champ bags they piled up in bulk to generate gold for new builds or alot of old players returning to the game adding to the supply. I still have very little info on the new dragonite eater loot table but my guess would be that fine mats are on it. Pre patch I suspected that SW and the WBT would see a decrease in population after patch, maybe thats not the case.

The more popular runes and sigils also seen a sharp price increase and I am using my BL Salvage Kits up for around 2g profit per charge.

Condi Food hasnt seen a big price increase yet, except Zhaitaffy and Koi Cakes. However, as Koi Buffs only last 20m, Rare Veggie Pizza is still the cheaper food.

Apart from the few big spikes on popular, low demand items, I expect most changes to the economy become more clear during the weekend anyways.

What is your thought on venom sacs Wanze? Am I crazy in thinking that rampager’s gear should only increase in demand due to the recent patch? Is there just too much supply of rampager’s gear already available for them to be affected? I appreciate you throwing a bone to us filthy part-time investors :p

Riptides.5439:

What is your thought on venom sacs Wanze? Am I crazy in thinking that rampager’s gear should only increase in demand due to the recent patch? Is there just too much supply of rampager’s gear already available for them to be affected? I appreciate you throwing a bone to us filthy part-time investors :p

For now, they just dont have enough valid sinks.
Compared to other t6 mats, there are no decent runes/sigils/nourishments which require them, no ascended back items (books/quivers), only 1 mystic forge weapon skin (focus, unpopular weapon to begin with). Sure, Rampager should be a popular stat in the future, but I am not sure, if it will be enough to get demand higher than supply.
It drops in large quantities from SW, which is the reason why its so cheap in the first place so unless people leave that map and migrate somewhere else to farm, i doubt it will go up much. I dodnt play the HoT beta yet, but my guess would be that it will drop there alot as well from all the modrem, so unless we get new sinks, i doubt it will go up too much.
If I had some stacks lying around, i would probably have a close look during the weekend on the prices for rampager inscriptions and insignias as you might be able to make 1g profit per craft. The insignia already lost half its supply during last week.
If you want to craft inscriptions, you should start putting in buy orders for ori and ancient wood now as I suspect a small rise in price during the weekend.
If the rampager inscription doesnt give too much profit during the weekend, you should be able to sell your ori and ancient in form of dowels with a good profit.

Quality advice, thank you Wanze <3

Some stuff that i forgot to mention was the changes to black lion chests:

The parrot and raven mail carriers got their droprate reduced, so they went up in price.
And the miniature egg was introduced meaning we have a new constant supply of all three mini sets, so prices are going down across the board.

I did some additional research and i think my assumption that players might spend alot of time in LA instead of completing content was incorrect. In fact, i think alot of players either came back to the game or stopped playing on their lower level alts.

Especially SW seems to have a healthy population atm, as there seems to be a huge influx of mats from that zone.

t5 common and fine mats saw up to 20% loss of value in the last couple of days, just like some undesirable t6 mats as well (venom sacs, totems).
The falling t5 prices will have the biggest impact on the precursor market, which will be welcome by those that are still looking to buy a precursor, as most pres have the highest price yet this year.
I already started forging again but no luck yet, 750 staves and daggers in.

For now, i held on to most of my investments, as I think the best profit will be made during the weekend, when alot of people are online and also tend to make more impulsive purchases.
I think plenty of casual investors expect a huge spike of their investments right after patch and if that doesnt happen, they dump their supply on the tp to cut their losses.

However, I made the experience that its better to wait a bit and have a close look not only at price evolution but also supply evolution.
Most items have the bulk of their supply listed in the range close to the actual value.
If demand gets higher with the patch, prices might initially just rise by 1-2% per day but supply on the tp might get depleted by 10% per day.
An item with 100k supply and a value of 1s might have 50k listings between 1s and 1.10s. In the first couple of days, supply will get depleted by 10k but prices only rise 1-2kittenil after a couple of days we have eaten through that bulk of supply and are left with the next 10k supply between 1.10 and 2s.
So usually, when we are near the end of a supply wall like that, I start putting in more buy orders and either start relisting at 2s or keep it in my vault (depends on my available storage space.
I also have a look at the next 10k supply and might decide to buy them out, once the price hits 2s to bring it up to 4s.

I expect plenty of items to tear down their initial supply walls this weekend, so i will have a close look, especially the food market will be interesting in my opinion, as food mats arent easily farmed in SW either.

Supply walls arent easy to spot in game, so I use 3rd party websites.

GW2spidy.com was the pioneer in that regard but i stopped using that long time ago.
I mostly use gw2tp.com because i think its graphs, with separated value/supply/demand give you a better overview.

GW2BLTC.com also has nice graphs and multiple other nice features that make use of the new trading API to analyse your trades.

Compared to the spidy, the other 2 also show you ALL buy orders and listings, which makes it easier to spot supply walls.
I attached 3 screenkittens, for the same item (quartz) with graphs from the start of the year from all 3 sites.

Spidy
TP
BLTC

Edit: I made 2 screenshots from gw2bltc.com, as it displays more info. However, adjusting the timeline on the graphs seems to be bugged as I can only adjust it up to 1 month.

pfft noobs….

prices are going to crash boys!!! time to dump, dump them all! quick!

Very good thread!

It looks like more people returned since last patch than i anticipated, so SW is being farmed hard, which affects quite some markets.
I took advantage of cheap t5 mats and starting crafting rare weapons again to forge pres and got a good turnaround.

With a crafting cost about 42s per rare, i got 6 sparks and 1 legend over the weekend.
The legend was quite costly, taking me around 1400 rare staves but i got lucky on the sparks, needing only 2500 rare daggers to get 6 pres.
At one point, I even threw 1 spark back into forge by accident but got another one from that forge attempt, so i only lost 3 exotics on that.

I lost a good portion of my profits to that kitten skritt though, gambling ectos.

Wanze.8410:

It looks like more people returned since last patch than i anticipated, so SW is being farmed hard, which affects quite some markets.
I took advantage of cheap t5 mats and starting crafting rare weapons again to forge pres and got a good turnaround.

With a crafting cost about 42s per rare, i got 6 sparks and 1 legend over the weekend.
The legend was quite costly, taking me around 1400 rare staves but i got lucky on the sparks, needing only 2500 rare daggers to get 6 pres.
At one point, I even threw 1 spark back into forge by accident but got another one from that forge attempt, so i only lost 3 exotics on that.

I lost a good portion of my profits to that kitten skritt though, gambling ectos.

Rngesus ? is that you ?

Wanze.8410:

With a crafting cost about 42s per rare, i got 6 sparks and 1 legend over the weekend.
The legend was quite costly, taking me around 1400 rare staves but i got lucky on the sparks, needing only 2500 rare daggers to get 6 pres.
At one point, I even threw 1 spark back into forge by accident but got another one from that forge attempt, so i only lost 3 exotics on that.

Getting a precursor in 1400 rare staves (including recycling all the exotics) is not, in fact, quite costly – it’s well below the expected number of staves you need to throw. You have roughly a 50% chance of seeing one or more precursors in a sample of that size.
.
The Spark numbers are incredibly lucky – the odds against getting that many from 2500 rare daggers are under 500:1.

Regardless profit margins on crafting precursors are very, very high right now, the highest I have seen in quite some time. If you have ever had an inclination to gamble for precursors, now is the time – just do not expect results anything like the above, as they are far up the tail of the distribution.

Ensign.2189:

Wanze.8410:

With a crafting cost about 42s per rare, i got 6 sparks and 1 legend over the weekend.
The legend was quite costly, taking me around 1400 rare staves but i got lucky on the sparks, needing only 2500 rare daggers to get 6 pres.
At one point, I even threw 1 spark back into forge by accident but got another one from that forge attempt, so i only lost 3 exotics on that.

Getting a precursor in 1400 rare staves (including recycling all the exotics) is not, in fact, quite costly – it’s well below the expected number of staves you need to throw. You have roughly a 50% chance of seeing one or more precursors in a sample of that size.
.
The Spark numbers are incredibly lucky – the odds against getting that many from 2500 rare daggers are under 500:1.

Regardless profit margins on crafting precursors are very, very high right now, the highest I have seen in quite some time. If you have ever had an inclination to gamble for precursors, now is the time – just do not expect results anything like the above, as they are far up the tail of the distribution.

Yeah, I know I am on a lucky streak. I think 4/6 or 6/7 (if you count that spark reforge) came from exos that i forged from rares. I didnt keep good track of my exo droprate but it seemed higher than the usual 20% overall.
I forged another 900 daggers yesterday without any spark and I think I am 1000 deep into gs without a pre.

I am not the biggest forger but when t5 mats drop over 20% in a short time, I usually start going. I got 2 pres which i forged into leggies for myself, therest I sold.

I think it was around 15 during wintersday, forging givers weapons and now 7.

I am quite surprised that the price of pres didnt tank more than it already did.

Wanze.8410:

It looks like more people returned since last patch than i anticipated, so SW is being farmed hard, which affects quite some markets.
I took advantage of cheap t5 mats and starting crafting rare weapons again to forge pres and got a good turnaround.

With a crafting cost about 42s per rare, i got 6 sparks and 1 legend over the weekend.
The legend was quite costly, taking me around 1400 rare staves but i got lucky on the sparks, needing only 2500 rare daggers to get 6 pres.
At one point, I even threw 1 spark back into forge by accident but got another one from that forge attempt, so i only lost 3 exotics on that.

I lost a good portion of my profits to that kitten skritt though, gambling ectos.

SW is super popular at the moment with the buff to world boss HP SW is so much faster. Been farming hard the last few days and have not seen a single failed VW or breach. So crazy fast kills. There is usually multiple event SW running full maps at even the lowest times (I live in Australia).

I am doing my daily ascended crafting and still come out ahead.

Maxzero.4032:

Wanze.8410:

It looks like more people returned since last patch than i anticipated, so SW is being farmed hard, which affects quite some markets.
I took advantage of cheap t5 mats and starting crafting rare weapons again to forge pres and got a good turnaround.

With a crafting cost about 42s per rare, i got 6 sparks and 1 legend over the weekend.
The legend was quite costly, taking me around 1400 rare staves but i got lucky on the sparks, needing only 2500 rare daggers to get 6 pres.
At one point, I even threw 1 spark back into forge by accident but got another one from that forge attempt, so i only lost 3 exotics on that.

I lost a good portion of my profits to that kitten skritt though, gambling ectos.

SW is super popular at the moment with the buff to world boss HP SW is so much faster. Been farming hard the last few days and have not seen a single failed VW or breach. So crazy fast kills. There is usually multiple event SW running full maps at even the lowest times (I live in Australia).

I am doing my daily ascended crafting and still come out ahead.

Thanks for your cheap loot, i guess.

Its kinda ironic though. People realize that SW goes faster now and farm the heck out of it but after a day or two, the average value of the loot drops goes down as well, so you end up making as much gold as before.

From a loot value perspective, it would be much more profitable to farm DT.

Whenever I read forum topics like this it makes me depressed seeing how rich other people are in game.

With that aside, Wanze, thanks for the tips and heads up.

While I didnt try forging any pres last week, to not press my luck, i got some cheap inscriptions on by order over the weekend, threw 500 daggers into the forge today and got 2 more sparks. Here are some general tips on how i go about it:

First of all, i go and check the prices of precursors, as going for the expensive ones gives more profit. At the moment that are:
Legend at 1250g
Dusk/Dawn at an average 0f 1050g
Spark and Zap at 1000g

From all those weapon types, daggers have the lowest crafting cost, with an inscription and 5 mithril ingots for hilt and blade, sword and gs needs 6 ingots, staves need 6 elder planks, which are roughly double the price of mithril ingots.
Thats why i mostly go for daggers atm.

To get rare daggers, i can either craft them myself, or buy them on the tp.
Currently, most highest bids for lvl 75-80 rare daggers on the tp are between 45-50s.
To craft one, you need 1 rare inscription and 1 dagger blade/hilt each.
Since patch, prices for most t5 fine mats (except bloods and snowflakes) hovered around 1.5s, even though i sometimes got buy orders filled for as low as 1.25s.
Mithril Ore is around 50c, ingots 1s.
Elder wood is around 66c, planks 2s.
Thats basically my price cap for now, I dont place bidy higher than that and are my standard for calculation. If I get some mats for cheaper, even better.
To craft an inscription, i need 15 fine mats and 2 mithril dowels, to craft the weapon, i need the blade and hilt also.
Crafting cost for a dagger comes down to 15 fine mats for 1.5s each,
4 elder planks at 2s each and 11 ingots at 1s each for a crafting cost of 41.5s for the dagger, including 36.5s for the inscription (22.5 for fine mats, 14s for 2 dowels), 3s for a blade, 2 silver for a hilt.
I often push my crafting costs down by putting in buy orders for inscriptions, dowels, hilts and blades as well, when their highest bid is under the crafting cost but that is only supplementary as I dont get enough buy orders filled that way.
I also look, if refined or unrefined mithril/elder is cheaper atm. So I am guestimating that my general crafting cost of a rare dagger is below 40s but i take 40s for further calculations.
For some weapons its cheaper to use exotic weapons as their value on the tp is quite low, to double check, if you should use rares or exotics you need your purchase/crafting costs of your average rare weapon (in my case 40s for the dagger) and the average value of the highest bids on the cheapest lvl 75-80 exotic daggers. Some daggers are as low as 2.30g atm but from experience i can say that i wont get a big amount of it on buy order.
The average highest bid on the cheapest exotc daggers is around 3g atm.
So to get 1 new exotic dagger from the forge, i need to throw in 4 daggers which costs me 12g.
IF you throw in rares, your chance to get an exotic is 20%, so every 5th forge attempt on average. I need 4 rare daggers for the first attempt and 3 each for the next 4 attempts, so on average, i need 16 rare daggers to get an exotic from the forge, that only costs me 6.4g, so i use crafted rares instead of bought exotics.

Just out of curiosity Wanze….

In general, what do you see happening to the cost/price of T5 mats up until & just after HoT ?

doomfodder.2906:

Just out of curiosity Wanze….

In general, what do you see happening to the cost/price of T5 mats up until & just after HoT ?

Its hard to predict because as end game loot, it relies heavily on demographics, what kind of updates anet brings out until then and how HoT will look like.

Due to my last posts i guess you mean in relation to their demand for precursor forging.

I havent looked too deep into it yet because i need more info about HoT which will be released closer to launch.

The price of precursors has been a hot topic since launch all through last year. Last summer, before LS season 2, their prices were as high as never before, many of them beyond 1000g each. There was daily complaining about it on the forums, and even though i could afford the prices, I agreed and refused to buy myself one.
Until then, i only crafted Juggernaut, about 5 months after launch and back then grinded for all that goes in it, just like most other people. I got the pre from the forge, with 3 random rares and a mystic stone.

With Season 2, the prices changed and I think Anet did a great job in handling it. Compared to the Karka Event, which only resulted in a quick supply dumb but wasnt a long term solution, they actually managed to bring supply up and prices down with season 2.

And they didnt do it by buffing precursor droprates directly (from events, loot or forge) but indirectly, by flooding the market with mats to forge them.
Before season 2, t5 mats were at nearly 4s. Drytop is a lvl 80 zone and with its introduction, most players were farming there and it had a decent t5 droprate, especially after people learned to farm it and their value went down to 3.5s.

Halloween was a 5 star farmfest, where you killed lots of mobs that dropped t5 mats and we got plenty of t6 mats from trick or treat bags as well. That brought their price down a notch, mostly hovering around 2.5s.
Wintersday and snowflakes took them down to 1.8s and lots of people made lots of gold forging precursors those days. In January, precursor prices also went down significantly, partly due to the influx from the forge and Anets announcement of Hot and precursor crafting.

Since then, t5 mats have been hovering between 1.8-2s pretty steadily because the influx of snowflakes drained out and lack of content diminished the veteran population, while plenty of new players made use of the 75% savings sales.
People were a wee bit hype about the precursor crafting and many predicted their prices crashing soon.
Funnily enough, precursors have seen a significant price increase since the end of february, some even as much as 40-50%. But now people seem to be content with it, no one complaining on the forums.
That seems to be a strong indication for me that players dont care, that they will be able to craft their own pre with HoT, if they are working on getting their first legendary now. They dont want to wait until HoT and they are pretty much still in demand.
And i dont think that will change with HoT either, they will still be in demand.

Most Veteran players will propably go for one of the new legendaries, thats their mastery reward track blocked, they will propably rather buy an old pre on the tp or try to forge it themselves, if they also go for an old leggie.
Many players will also opt to advance other mastery reward tracks, in order to go deeper into the jungle. I am pretty sure, you will need to unlock plenty of other rewards from other tracks as well, in order to finish your collection for your precursor.
That basically means that people would have to complete most content of the expansion, in order to finish ONE crafted precursor. Even though your second and subsequent crafted precursor might take less time because you already unlocked plenty of stuff for them, it will (hopefully) take a couple of months until the market gets more flooded with crafted precursors, old and new.
So i dont expect too much changing on their prices.

Edit: By the time i hit reply button, i realized you were mostly asking about t5 mats and not precursors and i mostly babbled about pres. Let me sleep over it and i tell you some more about what i expect for t5 mats.

Wanze.8410:

Quartz and Sprockets are seeing high demand as I expected. I already went though my stash of sprockets to craft runes and sigils, which all sold for a profit of 2-4g each. I didnt use up much quartz yet, as its very limited in daily use. I bought 20 stacks back when it was way below 1s, just to be able to craft my daily charged quartz. Charged sheets of Ambrite saw a quick initial spike to 2g in which i was able to make some good profit, its price went down a bit now to about 90s but still substantially higher than pre patch.
The grow lamp still gives the best profit, if you want to profit from charged quartz, however, I am keeping mine in case they introduce new recipes in the future.
Quartz is still fine as there is plenty of supply left until 3s but once we hit that price range, we might come into dire straits, if no new faucets get introduced.

Quartz is getting close to 3s now and it doesnt look like Anet is introducing new faucets.
Since the update (17 days ago), supply went down from 1.2 million to less than 450k.
I realized that i had another 30 stacks listed at 2.8s which i canceled before they sold, so i have around 50 stacks. I am not gonna buy more but i still keep buy orders up for sheets of charged ambrite and sheets of ambrite, as they are still available under crafting value and by buying the sheets, i am able to store more quartz per inventory slot, the regular sheet needs 5 quartz, the charged one 25, so i can store 1250 quartz per slot with regular sheets and 6250 quartz per stack of charged ambrite.

Considering that you need 125 quartz per celestial insignia/inscription, celestial is nearly the most expensive stat to craft already.
As already mentioned, the problem is the limited supply with a miximum of 4 harvestable nodes per account per day, most people will struggle to even get the 25 quartz for their daily charge without buying from the tp and i dont know how long that supply will last. I am pretty sure that other investors have plenty of quartz stored away, which will be made available once its price reaches kitten to slow the price spike down but it will be interesting to see, at what point Anet steps in and introduces additional faucets.