Guild Wars 2

When you salvage dye with salvage kit (any kit works and all kits give same amount of salvage) you get pigments.
Dye salvages to pigment same color as dye was. Brown dyes – brown pigment, red -red except for gray dyes that can be salvaged to either white or black pigment.
Fine dyes salvage to 2-4 pigment
Masterwork salvage to 5-8 pigment
Rare salvage to 9-12 pigment
Usually selling price for a pigment more then selling price for a dye. For example if you salvage rare brown dye you will get 9-12 pigments that will sells for ~ 2.5-3g while selling rare brown dye directly will net you 1.5-2.2g

rip pigment prices

That market was way too unbalanced. If you can buy dye by sell price, salvage it, sell pigment for buy price and still make a lot of gold it is definitely wrong.

emikochan.8504:

rip pigment prices

Pigment prices may go down after more players figure this out. But…..dye prices will go up as a result. So it balances itself out.

Sounds like that market will even itself out in short order.

Babai.7531:

That market was way too unbalanced. If you can buy dye by sell price, salvage it, sell pigment for buy price and still make a lot of gold it is definitely wrong.

No more so than buying white/blue/green gear, salvage it and sell the mats for twice as much as the piece of gear. But not enough people can be bothered to do that or simply don’t know that’s the better choice than just selling it on the TP to the high bidder or Gods forbid an NPC vendor.

Behellagh.1468:

No more so than buying white/blue/green gear, salvage it and sell the mats for twice as much as the piece of gear. But not enough people can be bothered to do that or simply don’t know that’s the better choice than just selling it on the TP to the high bidder or Gods forbid an NPC vendor.

Well, actually little more then that. Just after spring update goes live i bought some dyes that was dumped in huge quantities to BLTC from that 80lvl boost. Average profit per one rare brown dye salvage was ~1-1.5g and about 0.5-1g per masterwork. I’d really like to see any white/blue/green that give that amount of gold per salvage.

daaaaam. been doing it so wrong. tahnk you for this.

Dav.9152:

Sounds like that market will even itself out in short order.

People have been posting this idea for a while. The prices haven’t matched up …yet.

Although I tend to make a lot of money from stuff like this, I’m glad when people post this sort of advice — it’s better for the game and its economy if everyone has access to the same information about what things are worth.

For the first few months after release, you could make buckets of gold salvaging brown dyes like this. The gap narrowed to almost nothing so I moved on.

Now that scribing has become popular again it may be worth a look.

(Yes, it’s probably better for the game when everyone becomes aware of this stuff… but I prefer to keep quiet about them to make a few gold while it lasts. The secret inevitably leaks out, and that’s why it doesn’t pay to be too greedy with the sell prices.)

Ben K.6238:

For the first few months after release, you could make buckets of gold salvaging brown dyes like this. The gap narrowed to almost nothing so I moved on.

Now that scribing has become popular again it may be worth a look.

(Yes, it’s probably better for the game when everyone becomes aware of this stuff… but I prefer to keep quiet about them to make a few gold while it lasts. The secret inevitably leaks out, and that’s why it doesn’t pay to be too greedy with the sell prices.)

Wether you make profit from salvaging dyes into pigments has very little to do with the scribing changes but with inconsistant dye supply. Pigment prices went down across the board since the quarterly update but that doesnt mean that you cant make a profit.

With the update, they also changed the dye kits that are available from bl chests and the loot table in general, for example the new permanent repair contract. This usually sparks a higher temporary consumption of bl chests. The dye kits available from the chests usually have a couple of unique rare dyes on offer but also a couple of dozen regular fine and masterwork dyes. So those dyes have a pretty buffed droprate during times when bl chests get promoted (either through sales discounts or loot table updates). During the first couple of days after an update like this, you will be able to get the fine and masterwork dyes from those kits at a heavy discount compared to other dyes, simply because their supply spikes extraordinarily and it takes a couple of days until people realize the profit margins for salvaging/flipping.

emikochan.8504:

rip pigment prices

That was bound to happen, considering the lowered dependency on brown dyes for scribing due to last patch changes.

Astralporing.1957:

emikochan.8504:

rip pigment prices

That was bound to happen, considering the lowered dependency on brown dyes for scribing due to last patch changes.

Actually prices even goes up after update. At least for most traded ones like brown.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Dav.9152:

Sounds like that market will even itself out in short order.

People have been posting this idea for a while. The prices haven’t matched up …yet.

I’m guessing that it’s because most players, like me, don’t come to the forums very often so even though it’s been posted it hasn’t caught on with the greater player population.

Additionally I expect most players don’t want to bother themselves with flipping items on the TP even if it’s easy, low-risk gold. Even knowing now about the salvage trick, I still won’t bother buying dyes to salvage.

The problem I have is that it is hard for me to measure expected profit. I’d have to know the expected salvage rates. I’d have to figure out which dyes count as which colors (because salvaging green dyes is not useful, but you should be able to still forge them into non-green dyes).

Do we have stats for these (salvage rates, and pigment color of each dye)?

Why not do a some little experiments? When i found that dyes can be salvaged i did several tests to figure salvage rates, dyes/pigment color relationship etc.
(Hint. you can use dye screen from hero panel to figure out to which specter each dye belongs)

I stopped playing the dye market when HoT came out. Before then, I would forge cheap dyes to get new dyes. I would unlock the ones I didn’t have and sell/forge the rest. I was doing this more to fill out my dyes than to make money.

When HoT came out, cheap dyes skyrocketed in price. Right now, it looks like it is better to forge green dyes and salvage the others — not taking the sales price of dyes into account, since that might be better than either for specific colors.

Looking at sales listings, the cheapest dyes are all green, then purple — not surprising, as those are the cheapest pigments. The cheapest non-green sales listing is periwinkle (a purple) for 3s73c, and then salvage for an expected 3 purple pigments, with a sales listing value of 5s85c — a return of 33% after TP tax. That’s a very nice return rate for something bought on a sales listing. It would be far better if you could buy on a buy order, but the issue may be volume. That is, the percentage is high, but the total return is low, on a volume of ~40 dyes sold per day. So, that’s under 1g profit/day. However, that’s only for 1 dye — there are a whole lot, but it’s also work for each dye you try to buy. At the same time, that’s assuming nobody else is outbidding you.

Of course, on the other end of the spectrum are rare brown dyes. I’m having some difficulty finding the cheapest rare brown dye, since there are so many cheaper rare dyes of other colors, so let’s randomly choose cocoa dye, with a sell listing of 2g28s95c and an expected return of about 2g73s sold on a sale listing. With TP tax, that’s a little more than 1% profit. This means that enough people know about this to set the sales price of rare brown dyes. There’s still profit for buy orders, but you’re competing against other bidders.

This looks like a lot of work with a small buy-in and a quick turnaround of a guaranteed profit for small amounts back. So, it looks like something good for someone who wants to get started making money on the TP, since a good stream of several guaranteed gold per day can be nice, but the exact amount would depend on the amount of work you’d want to do and how quickly you can tell if a dye is green or not. (I’m terrible at telling blue from green, personally.)

It has potential — since the game is giving a financial incentive for people to generate pigments scribing needs.

Anything you think I got wrong in my quick armchair analysis? (To be honest, it’s not uncommon for armchair analysis to miss something vital, so I’m genuinely asking.)

Well you are mostly correct in your analysis although somewhat underestimated profits.
I did a quick check of my market activity and after separating dye salvage from my other trade activities it looks like i got ~580g from salvaging after spring update went live.

Dav.9152:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Dav.9152:

Sounds like that market will even itself out in short order.

People have been posting this idea for a while. The prices haven’t matched up …yet.

I’m guessing that it’s because most players, like me, don’t come to the forums very often so even though it’s been posted it hasn’t caught on with the greater player population.

Additionally I expect most players don’t want to bother themselves with flipping items on the TP even if it’s easy, low-risk gold. Even knowing now about the salvage trick, I still won’t bother buying dyes to salvage.

Oh my apologies, I was agree with you that the market will eventually even out. I just meant that, in my opinion, it wouldn’t be in “short order”. As you say, most people don’t frequent reddit or the forums or even use gw2bltc or gw2shinies etc to find out that some things have more value than they realized.

Ah yes, not quite as “short order” as I had mentioned.

Cheers!

should be noted green dye doesn’t have profit, also there’s a site which using the api is always updated with latest prices for salvaging dyes and price you get back from them. (not sure if advertising sites is allowed here), and you can often times make 90-150% roi, I’ve used all my gold to 1g, and got back up to 300g in a day using dye salvaging.

Xbon.9086:

should be noted green dye doesn’t have profit, also there’s a site which using the api is always updated with latest prices for salvaging dyes and price you get back from them. (not sure if advertising sites is allowed here), and you can often times make 90-150% roi, I’ve used all my gold to 1g, and got back up to 300g in a day using dye salvaging.

People name 3rd party supporter sites all the time (just not gold sellers). That’s what the API is for — letting 3rd party supporters do that work so that Anet doesn’t have to provide those graphs internally.

I still don’t see how you can make more than 5-10 gold a day without having to constantly update 50-100 buy listings.

I tried, and it was a lot of work for 5-10 gold. Mind you, it required very little capital to start and gave very reliable income, so it’s great for people without a lot of money to burn.

As for sell listings, those look like they get picked clean fairly often.

The market won’t start to stabilize unless people create more pigments than get used by scribing.

Oh, and a tool would make the process much easier. I just made a quick search of the usual suspects and found one had been added in the past month.

Looking at the tool, I can see how people are making money. The hard part is finding the cheap brown dyes, which is hard to do by hand. With a tool, it’s easy and you could maybe get up to 50 gold a day by doing this, but that would be a lot of work.

You could still get 5-10 gold a day with significantly less work.

Brown pigment was expensive before because of the way ink sets nested, but they were going down as people were giving up crafting. Now, there’s a surge because lots of people are trying scribing again. Eventually, that will fade and the market will resupply. Most of the profits do seem to be coming from brown dyes to brown pigments.

You are correct. Most profits come from a brown dye salvaging.
Average salvage rates for masterwork dye ~6.5 pigments
rare dyes salvage to ~10.5 pigments per dye
That means that with a current brown pigment price 25-26s you will gain profit if you bought rare brown dye for less then (25.5*10.5-15%)=2.27g per dye bottle and
for masterwork browns less then (25.5*6.5-15%)=1.41g per dye bottle
Some masterwork brown dyes are:
Walnut, Lemon shade, Wheat, Cashmere, Cream shade, Refresh, Nickel, Dark chocolate, Mocha, Truffle
Rare dyes: Mithril, Cocoa, Charcoal, Chocolate, Ivory etc

If you notice that buy orders fluctuates wildly in a short amount of time that means another round of trade pvp going on when several traders try to force each other out of market.
Easier way to deal with it either wait a little or dedicate hour or two to force them quit/got a stroke. Best way for that either monitor price closely and overbid by 1copper or when they try to clear field by posting high buy bid post yours 1 copper less locking their price and forcing them either buy on unfavorable terms or back up.

I will argue that. While the most money from salvaging a single item is from brown dyes from a % profit perspective it’s far from being the most profitable. For example lets say you can get Charcoal Dye for 1g20s, your profit is roughly 1g. However if you get 33 Scarlet Dyes (red pigment) for the same 1g20s your profit is 3.8g.

And since fine dyes drop more frequently than rare, there is a greater likelihood that you can get lots of inexpensive fine dyes for your coin.

So, my experience is that this market is drying up quickly.

Plus, I hit a plateau on scribing at 350, so I cannot advance and aren’t using the pigments myself (which is why this interested me in the first place).

every1 smart knows this,why are you trying to ruin it by informing the commoners?

Once a “market” imbalance is known, it vanishes relatively quickly. This imbalance was due to scribing being cheaper so there was an influx of new scribes leveling so real demand for pigments shot up. Add to that the two dye packs from the 80 booster if you own HoT and that’s an immediate influx of raw materials. If you know which dyes make which colors and the amount of pigments each quality type produces on average, it’s then just math to find the dyes with the largest returns.

This is why TP mavens rarely talk about a new hot market until it’s been picked clean of the easy money.

I’m sure most folks recognize this, but one of the ways that I was previously slogging through my Scribe leveling was by crafting the cheapest brown dyes, then salvaging them. with the two easy to reach potato farms in Metrica Province and Plains of Ashford and the only other ingredient being bought with karma it can be time consuming but seems to be worthwhile. Now I could never indulge in selling the pigments because I’ve had to stockpile, but it seems like it might be a good way. I am sure some of the other dye colors are similarly craftable with little effort and may be worth exploring as well.

ekarat.1085:

So, my experience is that this market is drying up quickly.

Funny enough it is still unbalanced. Actually it became even better then it was month ago.
Currently average profit from fine brown dye increased to 10-15s per dye (25-30s per dye that salvages to 3 (average) pigments that sells for16s 16*3-15%=40s )so with 24 different fine brown dyes and their daily supply around 100-150 units per color you can get ~300g/day if you relist buy orders fast enough to stay on top. Strangely enough ANet still not nerfed that salvage business.

i didn’t know…. good info….

Babai.7531:

ekarat.1085:

So, my experience is that this market is drying up quickly.

Funny enough it is still unbalanced. Actually it became even better then it was month ago.
Currently average profit from fine brown dye increased to 10-15s per dye (25-30s per dye that salvages to 3 (average) pigments that sells for16s 16*3-15%=40s )so with 24 different fine brown dyes and their daily supply around 100-150 units per color you can get ~300g/day if you relist buy orders fast enough to stay on top. Strangely enough ANet still not nerfed that salvage business.

While you look at coin profit per dye I look at profit percentage and brown dye isn’t the best investment if you have X coin to spend on dyes that you will salvage and sell for profit, it’s best to get the best percentage profit rather then going for the windfall from an individual dye.

That is correct if we have unlimited dye supply. Then profit percentage beats coin profit. But with pigments we have limited supply per day. Because of that 100 fine dyes priced at 10s with 50% profit percentage will give us 5g profit. And 100 fine brown dyes even with lesser % will gave us 10-15g.
Also sell rates for non brown dyes much slower and their supply usually 2-3x times more then browns.

Babai.7531:

That is correct if we have unlimited dye supply. Then profit percentage beats coin profit. But with pigments we have limited supply per day. Because of that 100 fine dyes priced at 10s with 50% profit percentage will give us 5g profit. And 100 fine brown dyes even with lesser % will gave us 10-15g.
Also sell rates for non brown dyes much slower and their supply usually 2-3x times more then browns.

True but you need a larger stake to start with. As I said, if you have X amount you can spend buying dyes, then profit percentage is the key. I’m looking right now and the most profitable dye to brown pigment is a rare dye that’s roughly 95s – 1g buy order that will yield 40-45 silver profit. I can take that 95s -1g, buy immediately a range of 20 or so fine dyes that yield pigments in colors other than brown and double that 95s – 1g after TP fees.

And I’m going to do that right now.

EDIT: bought immediately a total of 22 fine dyes, 11 different color dyes for 1g6s67c. Cost 66c to salvage into a total of 64 pouches of pigments of two different colors and place sell bids well under the current low bid for each that will yield 2g6s8c after posting fees and tax for a total profit of 98s75c or 92% of my investment. I could make more if I was a little more selective with the dyes I bought and not undercut the current low sell price by as much as I did.

Not bad for a couple of minutes and twice the amount a similar capital investment in the most profitable dye that yields brown pigments.

Behellagh.1468:

and place sell bids well under the current low bid for each that will yield 2g6s8c after posting fees and tax for a total profit of 98s75c or 92% of my investment. I could make more if I was a little more selective with the dyes I bought and not undercut the current low sell price by as much as I did.

There is no real point to undercut sell bids more then 1c. Brown pigment sells extremely well even nowadays.

Babai.7531:

Behellagh.1468:

and place sell bids well under the current low bid for each that will yield 2g6s8c after posting fees and tax for a total profit of 98s75c or 92% of my investment. I could make more if I was a little more selective with the dyes I bought and not undercut the current low sell price by as much as I did.

There is no real point to undercut sell bids more then 1c. Brown pigment sells extremely well even nowadays.

I don’t completely agree with this point. Last night, I undercut someone on Brown Pigments by 1c, only to be undercut myself by 1c, then they got undercut by 1c, then they got undercut by 1c. So I cancelled my order, undercut the lowest seller by 1s, and my items quickly sold by a bargain hunter with a keen eye.

I perhaps could have been patient and waited, but I wanted the money fairly quickly. I tend to find if I place the price approximately half-way between the lowest seller and the highest bidder, I can still sell fairly quickly on most items, rather than risk being undercut in a stagnant 1c bidding war.

And since brown pigments are still the most expensive pigment, remember they’re really easy to craft: 25 potatoes & 100 nutmeg with your chef. Park a character or two at one of the two potato farms or just visit them daily to get your potatoes for the low low cost of whatever time you spend. Provided you have karma for the nutmeg and a few minutes to gather potatoes you can either fund your own scribing or sell for profit.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unidentified_Brown_Dye

I undercut by more than one not to sell quicker but to do my tiny part in making scribing slightly more affordable to others. After all, I’m “taking” money they could have earned themselves if they just thought about it for a moment.

khani.4786:

And since brown pigments are still the most expensive pigment, remember they’re really easy to craft: 25 potatoes & 100 nutmeg with your chef. Park a character or two at one of the two potato farms or just visit them daily to get your potatoes for the low low cost of whatever time you spend. Provided you have karma for the nutmeg and a few minutes to gather potatoes you can either fund your own scribing or sell for profit.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unidentified_Brown_Dye

Here’s the thing about that. You could sell your 25 potatoes for, at the moment matching low sell, 39s. For the cost of a salvage plus 140 karma for the nutmeg you will get on average 3 brown pigments that you can sell for 48.69s.

You just have to be aware of the pigment and potato price because earlier in the week you could earn more selling the potatoes. Also doesn’t take into consideration that the salvage may yield only 2 pigments for a “loss” but there is also a chance you could get 4 pigments for a “windfall”.

If you want to craft brown dyes then somewhat more efficient will be crafting masterworks.
25 potatoes + 25 portobello mushrooms+ nutmeg for karma. While chance to get masterwork not that high if you craft in bulk you will get more then 4 pigments in average.

List of all fine brown dyes.
You can evaluate flipping profit that way
profit = A x B x 0.85 – C
where A current price for brown pigment
B average amount pigment salvaged from dye ( 3 for a fine dyes)
0.85 trade post fines
C – price for dye
example
rawhide dye
12.079s =15.49s*3*0.85-27.42s

Babai.7531:

If you want to craft brown dyes then somewhat more efficient will be crafting masterworks.
25 potatoes + 25 portobello mushrooms+ nutmeg for karma. While chance to get masterwork not that high if you craft in bulk you will get more then 4 pigments in average.

Well with a little basic 8th grade algebra and the knowledge that masterwork dyes yield 6.5 pigments while fine dyes yield 3 on average, an average of 4 would mean there’s a 2 in 7 chance for a masterwork dye. Since I never saw anyone who I normally follow for such research do the homework in establishing that number, I’ll take your word for it.

Portobello’s are cheapish on the TP, compared to Potatoes at least. Still you are comparing the value of selling the ingredients, which is 49.75s for 62.72s in brown pigments, if you hit average. Which is why you would need to do it in bulk to minimize coming in under average (law of large numbers). More than 20% under average is a loss vs just selling the ingredients which is a sure thing.

And by bulk I mean more than a stack of potatoes and portobellos and 1,400 karma for nutmeg. Crafting only 10 (a stack) with the first RNG to get quality and then the 2nd RNG from salvaging to get the number of pouches, it may not go … well. Or may go too well so you go nuts to try to get that windfall again.

Babai.7531:

List of all fine brown dyes.
You can evaluate flipping profit that way
profit = A x B x 0.85 – C
where A current price for brown pigment
B average amount pigment salvaged from dye ( 3 for a fine dyes)
0.85 trade post fines
C – price for dye
example
rawhide dye
12.079s =15.49s*3*0.85-27.42s

And for my example this morning. Bought 10 fine blue dyes imediately for 48.45 silver. Salvage them and got 36 (good RNG rolls) blue pigments which I sold at the ridiculous low price of 4.14s each (5 copper under the going rate cause I’m crazy or ants in my eyes) for 1.4904g. In the end after fees and taxes I made 78.23s. Even if I hit average yield of 3 I would have made 57.12s. Adjust so the costs are the same I made 32.32s with blue Vs 12.08s with brown.

That also assume someone would sell you that rawhide dye immediately rather than them putting it up for sale at roughly 10s more. Could I make more with bids and not just undercutting for a copper, sure, but markets like this I like to get in and out of quickly. Go for the quick strike and run away until the prices are excessively favorable again rather than the long term investing that has to deal with the constant over bidding on a valuable commodity like brown dyes because players are looking at the profit per item rather than ROI.

Two different approaches.