Guild Wars 2

There are many reliable ways to farm cloth. They are just very different from the ways you farm ores, lumber, and plants.

Many of those ways aren’t able to be quickly targeted though, which is what annoys many farmers.

Using buy orders to salvage requires you to wait. Buying karma armor and forging it requires karma. Running Silverwastes nets you a wide range of materials as well. Killing level-appropriate mobs for armor drops takes time.

I can appreciate the desire for quickly targeting farming, but I can also understand why they aren’t going to add that now. The methods in game right now allow us to achieve the farming result everyone is looking for, they just require you to go above and beyond normal “run to the node and wait” gameplay.

mtpelion.4562:

There are many reliable ways to farm cloth. They are just very different from the ways you farm ores, lumber, and plants.

Many of those ways aren’t able to be quickly targeted though, which is what annoys many farmers.

Using buy orders to salvage requires you to wait. Buying karma armor and forging it requires karma. Running Silverwastes nets you a wide range of materials as well. Killing level-appropriate mobs for armor drops takes time.

I can appreciate the desire for quickly targeting farming, but I can also understand why they aren’t going to add that now. The methods in game right now allow us to achieve the farming result everyone is looking for, they just require you to go above and beyond normal “run to the node and wait” gameplay.

All methods you presented can also be used to “farm” other baisc crafting materials like metal and wood. They’re not farming, they’re kludges to get around the fact that you cannot reliably farm cloth.

One reason for lack of supply is when they changed it to character appropriate loot and not zone level. Also a reason that the Damask is so high is because it’s needed for all weight classes of armor.

Tom Gore.4035:

mtpelion.4562:

There are many reliable ways to farm cloth. They are just very different from the ways you farm ores, lumber, and plants.

Many of those ways aren’t able to be quickly targeted though, which is what annoys many farmers.

Using buy orders to salvage requires you to wait. Buying karma armor and forging it requires karma. Running Silverwastes nets you a wide range of materials as well. Killing level-appropriate mobs for armor drops takes time.

I can appreciate the desire for quickly targeting farming, but I can also understand why they aren’t going to add that now. The methods in game right now allow us to achieve the farming result everyone is looking for, they just require you to go above and beyond normal “run to the node and wait” gameplay.

All methods you presented can also be used to “farm” other baisc crafting materials like metal and wood. They’re not farming, they’re kludges to get around the fact that you cannot reliably farm cloth.

Just to loosen your fixation on reliably farming cloth:

Leather cant be farmed reliably as well, yet its mostly worthless. So the fact that cloth isnt reliably farmable cant be the reason why Bolt of Damask is so expensive. Its expensive because its demand is higher.

Wanze.8410:

Tom Gore.4035:

mtpelion.4562:

There are many reliable ways to farm cloth. They are just very different from the ways you farm ores, lumber, and plants.

Many of those ways aren’t able to be quickly targeted though, which is what annoys many farmers.

Using buy orders to salvage requires you to wait. Buying karma armor and forging it requires karma. Running Silverwastes nets you a wide range of materials as well. Killing level-appropriate mobs for armor drops takes time.

I can appreciate the desire for quickly targeting farming, but I can also understand why they aren’t going to add that now. The methods in game right now allow us to achieve the farming result everyone is looking for, they just require you to go above and beyond normal “run to the node and wait” gameplay.

All methods you presented can also be used to “farm” other baisc crafting materials like metal and wood. They’re not farming, they’re kludges to get around the fact that you cannot reliably farm cloth.

Just to loosen your fixation on reliably farming cloth:

Leather cant be farmed reliably as well, yet its mostly worthless. So the fact that cloth isnt reliably farmable cant be the reason why Bolt of Damask is so expensive. Its expensive because its demand is higher.

its not black and white, there is a threshold. At certain thresholds of cost people will try to do it themselves.

basically when an item is in excess of its applicable uses, it will have no value.
but when an item is not in excess of its applicable, its value will now be determined partially, by how hard it is to get.

to simplify there are items which a lot of people want, but they arent willing to pay a lot for, because doing it themselves is available.

like the demand for home delivered pizza is high, but if they wanted to charge you 10 bucks, most people wouldnt pay it, because they can spend 8 minutes and get it themselves.
Now if it was going to cost them 1 hour to get it themselves, some people would start paying that price.

Tom Gore.4035:

Maddoctor, if Linen and Wool are so easy to get, tell me why they cost way more than Iron, for example?

I’m super surprised that Maddoctor gave up that method so easily. It was my secret way of making money for weeks now.

The thing about any money making method – other people don’t know about it. That’s why supply for linen stays low. But yes, it’s guaranteed linen.

Mirta.5029:

Tom Gore.4035:

Maddoctor, if Linen and Wool are so easy to get, tell me why they cost way more than Iron, for example?

I’m super surprised that Maddoctor gave up that method so easily. It was my secret way of making money for weeks now.

The thing about any money making method – other people don’t know about it. That’s why supply for linen stays low. But yes, it’s guaranteed linen.

I wonder how many people read the forums and will start using the method to get their tailor mats! :X

phys.7689:

its not black and white, there is a threshold. At certain thresholds of cost people will try to do it themselves.

John Smith probably just rolled over in his cold dark bedroom, because there was a great disturbance in the Force. (Someone got it!)

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

Tom Gore.4035:

mtpelion.4562:

There are many reliable ways to farm cloth. They are just very different from the ways you farm ores, lumber, and plants.

Many of those ways aren’t able to be quickly targeted though, which is what annoys many farmers.

Using buy orders to salvage requires you to wait. Buying karma armor and forging it requires karma. Running Silverwastes nets you a wide range of materials as well. Killing level-appropriate mobs for armor drops takes time.

I can appreciate the desire for quickly targeting farming, but I can also understand why they aren’t going to add that now. The methods in game right now allow us to achieve the farming result everyone is looking for, they just require you to go above and beyond normal “run to the node and wait” gameplay.

All methods you presented can also be used to “farm” other baisc crafting materials like metal and wood. They’re not farming, they’re kludges to get around the fact that you cannot reliably farm cloth.

Just to loosen your fixation on reliably farming cloth:

Leather cant be farmed reliably as well, yet its mostly worthless. So the fact that cloth isnt reliably farmable cant be the reason why Bolt of Damask is so expensive. Its expensive because its demand is higher.

its not black and white, there is a threshold. At certain thresholds of cost people will try to do it themselves.

basically when an item is in excess of its applicable uses, it will have no value.
but when an item is not in excess of its applicable, its value will now be determined partially, by how hard it is to get.

to simplify there are items which a lot of people want, but they arent willing to pay a lot for, because doing it themselves is available.

like the demand for home delivered pizza is high, but if they wanted to charge you 10 bucks, most people wouldnt pay it, because they can spend 8 minutes and get it themselves.
Now if it was going to cost them 1 hour to get it themselves, some people would start paying that price.

I was shortly contemplating to report your post for being off topic, when you started talking about black and white and pizza deliveries.

Tom claimed that the reason for cloth being so expensive is because it isnt reliably (directly) farmable, and I argued against it.
We were discussing the root of the problem, while you propose a solution.

Josh.5392:

Hey guys, so I want opinions. I understand the reasons for bolts of damas being as expensive as they are, but do you think they’ll ever drop in price? The main reason I’m wondering is because I’m considering making a full set of ascended light armor eventually, so I’ve quit making zojjas insignias for profit and instead started saving all the spools of silk weaving thread I make daily while I decide how I want to go about this. If damask is likely going to stay steady in price, then I should just start making it now. If, however, damask will eventually fall in price, I should continue selling damask and just buy damask whenever it drops in price. Opinions?

I don’t see that happening, unless anet reverts the change and make 1 bolt of silk require 2 silk scraps like it used to be.

Mirta.5029:

Tom Gore.4035:

Maddoctor, if Linen and Wool are so easy to get, tell me why they cost way more than Iron, for example?

I’m super surprised that Maddoctor gave up that method so easily. It was my secret way of making money for weeks now.

The thing about any money making method – other people don’t know about it. That’s why supply for linen stays low. But yes, it’s guaranteed linen.

thats because the truth is using karma is not really actually a good way to get mats, most of the time. Because even though some people feel karma is in infinite, it has other uses, other values, and is a resource you have to earn.

lets say you spend 1000 karma to get 2 scraps of linen, lets say thats 3 dynamic events, + the time to go to the guy, mystic forge it, and then break it down.

lets say you need 40 linen scraps for your daily craft, thats 50 dynamic events, at 4 minutes per dynamic events thats 200 minutes.

dont forget though you need 25000-63000 in karma for obsidian shards per ascended piece, so maybe you dont want to burn up 20000 karma a day just for linen.

point is, karma aint free, when you actually break down the costs, you are probably not winning time there

xDudisx.5914:

I don’t see that happening, unless anet reverts the change and make 1 bolt of silk require 2 silk scraps like it used to be.

Or change the recipe to use only 50 bolts instead of 100.

phys.7689:

thats because the truth is using karma is not really actually a good way to get mats, most of the time. Because even though some people feel karma is in infinite, it has other uses, other values, and is a resource you have to earn.

lets say you spend 1000 karma to get 2 scraps of linen, lets say thats 3 dynamic events, + the time to go to the guy, mystic forge it, and then break it down.

lets say you need 40 linen scraps for your daily craft, thats 50 dynamic events, at 4 minutes per dynamic events thats 200 minutes.

dont forget though you need 25000-63000 in karma for obsidian shards per ascended piece, so maybe you dont want to burn up 20000 karma a day just for linen.

point is, karma aint free, when you actually break down the costs, you are probably not winning time there

9000 karma = between 20 and 30 scraps of linen.
Tequatl gives 20 000 karma daily alone.

Also I get majority of my shards from fractal relics as those are raining out of my ears.

Damask Bolts have dropped a lot. In fact, they may be rising now that the excess Wintersday supply is being worked out. Time to buy.

I’ve found a reliable way to get Linen Scraps is to leave an alt at level 56 and send every single loot container to it for salvaging. Since mid-level materials sell for more, I sell that and then buy my Silk Scraps, etc.

Or ANet could just make it easier and remove that silly restriction from being unable to salvage Equipment bought with Karma, because then would have players a good way more to get on Mats like Silk and Linen, which are two of the biggest cost factors for making Bolts of Damask in the first place.

If it becomes easier to get Silk and Linen, prices for Bolts of Damask will naturally fall down.

Or anet could add simply in the future more useful rewarding thigns into the game with giving players more options to receive as rewards craftign stuff like bolts of Damask, Deldrimor Steel and Elonian Leather as part of loot somewhere, as part of chest rewards somewhere, as part of map trading rewards for some kind of map specific currency, like silverwates/dry top, as loot from Jumping Puzzle chests every xx JP’s per Character

Or like said above , change the craftign recipe and make it normal and more on par with the recipes of the other 2 material types, what would also result directly in bolts of damask becoming cheaper, cause of the production costs becoming also cheaper by alot.

Or ANet could add ways, how players can reduce that silly time gating for their accounts, what results in players becomign able to craft faster more of these items, so that the supply simply becomes bigge,r what will also lower the prices, if the demand stays the same.

rotten.9753:

Anet’s economy guy needs to wake up from his winter sleep and corrects crafting formulas. Changing soft wood plank to 4 logs was maybe a good temporary solution when the game was launched and everyone and their mothers were gathering that but it’s a long time since then. Same with silk, it takes more than a stack to get one bolt of damask, it’s hilarious to think they even monitor it. Or their charts have a resolution of 2 years. Yikes…

John Smith (Anets economy guy) has stated several times that silk is working as intended and by design, and yes they do monitor it, and found this is be a good long term solution.

People are forgetting that silk is still super easy to come by. You can get silk from almost every mob in all level 58-80 zones. Either in “pure” form from bags, or from salvaging light armor, or salvagable items. Heck I was able to get 60 scraps (20 bolts) just from salvaging alone doing an hour in Silverwastes. At that rate it will take ~5 hours to make 1 spool of silk weaving thread. Now using all the karma you can get farming SW, you can easily use the conversion to get the linen, wool, and cotton. So you can make 1 bolt of damask in a few days (depending on your play time) just farming all the mats needed. It’s not really that bad.

Mirta.5029:

phys.7689:

thats because the truth is using karma is not really actually a good way to get mats, most of the time. Because even though some people feel karma is in infinite, it has other uses, other values, and is a resource you have to earn.

lets say you spend 1000 karma to get 2 scraps of linen, lets say thats 3 dynamic events, + the time to go to the guy, mystic forge it, and then break it down.

lets say you need 40 linen scraps for your daily craft, thats 50 dynamic events, at 4 minutes per dynamic events thats 200 minutes.

dont forget though you need 25000-63000 in karma for obsidian shards per ascended piece, so maybe you dont want to burn up 20000 karma a day just for linen.

point is, karma aint free, when you actually break down the costs, you are probably not winning time there

9000 karma = between 20 and 30 scraps of linen.
Tequatl gives 20 000 karma daily alone.

Also I get majority of my shards from fractal relics as those are raining out of my ears.

i think it should be between 10-30, since you can get 1-3 scraps per salvage. but if you say it averages out to 25, i can be with that

sounds like tequatl is a special case then, because far as i remember, nothing else gives you anywhere near that. i remember fractals giving a lot for being high level and doing one 10 levels under your max, and that was like 9k or 12k or something, and that would take probably at least an hour to beat a level 40 fractal, and you would have to already have earned credit for level 50.
which i didnt mention as a method, because it really isnt a viable one for a lot of players.

kinda sucks for a lot of people though since he only spawns 3 times a day, which may not be when you can play, and your map may fail. (if it requires your map to win)

regardless, karma is a resource you have to earn, so i wouldnt consider it to be an easy answer, i mean yeah you could farm 16k extra karma a day for your linen, or you could spend 2 gold, but you are still looking at a lot of work for a decent amount of players, whose regular play isnt earning them a lot of gold, or karma.

A direct method would probably be better.

I have a feeling in hot they will drop due to maybe new ways of crafting ascended

Damask wont drop until there is a new and reliable way to farm silk.
Linen doesnt even matter, the numbers are small.

But using 300 silk scraps per damask is just stupid.

Personally I never understood why Anet made Damask take 300 silk scraps from the start when the other corresponding materials where at 100 mithril ore, 150 elder logs or 150 thick leather sections. Then consider how much Damask is actually needed for an armor set (thanks to the insignias) it was painfully clear that what at release of ascended armor looked like a flooded silk market, would go totally ballistic.

We did have a shock to the supply of cloth during this Wintersday but it was just a temporary thing. So prices will most likely rise again, unless there is a more permanent change in supply of cloth, or the recipes changed.

I don’t really understand why Anet “balanced” it this way to start with, or why they decided to throw in a shock after 1 year of existance. Who knows what they will bring tomorrow. Maybe we will see an overhaul at a future feature pack or when the expansion comes, maybe not.

My guess is that the cloth scraps will continue to rise in price for a while now pushing the price of damask up.

Sure, when silk shows up as often as thick leather and cost as little as leather recipes. Honestly stupid design choice, why the hell are leather components less used but more available???

Nick.7259:

Personally I never understood why Anet made Damask take 300 silk scraps from the start when the other corresponding materials where at 100 mithril ore, 150 elder logs or 150 thick leather sections. Then consider how much Damask is actually needed for an armor set (thanks to the insignias) it was painfully clear that what at release of ascended armor looked like a flooded silk market, would go totally ballistic.

We did have a shock to the supply of cloth during this Wintersday but it was just a temporary thing. So prices will most likely rise again, unless there is a more permanent change in supply of cloth, or the recipes changed.

I don’t really understand why Anet “balanced” it this way to start with, or why they decided to throw in a shock after 1 year of existance. Who knows what they will bring tomorrow. Maybe we will see an overhaul at a future feature pack or when the expansion comes, maybe not.

My guess is that the cloth scraps will continue to rise in price for a while now pushing the price of damask up.

There was a time where silk prices were on the floor, no question about that. But it got thrown out of balance in the other direction after Ascended armor hit. All three professions use it, and it’s unbalanced in relation to the other materials.

Funny thing is, mithril ore is doing fine, even though it’s easily farmable. 100 ore per ingot, but those ingots get used in every weapon profession and armorsmithing.
Leather is still pretty close to the floor because it’s only used in a few professions, but I’m noting I have a little trouble getting it naturally. (Not a huge complaint. If I get impatient, the Trading Post is there.)
But silk and other cloth is out of hand, and the prices on all cloth goods are artificially high because cloth is only generated by world drops (loot bags or salvage). The karma workarounds aren’t terribly efficient, and using laurels for T5 loot bags is a wide gamble, so I can’t even count those as options.

I’m not even championing a full revert, though that would have the most equity as a solution. Changing the 3:1 rate back to 2:1 or making the 100/bolt normal at 50/bolt would bring prices down more reasonably and give some relief to light armor classes making Ascended.
Of course, what I see just as likely is making ore and leather take 100/bolt, out of some weird spite and call for “balance.” :\

From what I could tell, most of the answers of possible price dropping is based on the assumption of an increased supply. There are no indications that this will take place. The pricing statistics for the past 6 months show that Bolts of Damask are at their cheapest price due to high demand. Based on economic norms, it is more likely that they will increase in price. If it does drop, it will most likely be minimal. I would not chance it with those statistics. September 28th, 2014 was their highest price selling at 18 01 47. They have slowly decreased to as low as 13 29 01 on February 11th, 2015. More likely to start going back up soon.

Oh I just think it will drop a little but not to silvers on the piece.

And not everyone is willing to buy the cloth

Some players will completely ignore the trading post, and only consider what they get from drops, nodes and other gameplay sources.

Most of the cloth comes from salvaging, not everyone has light armor characters at all tier ranges to salvage cloth from drops, but everyone can get wood and metal of all tiers, and since leather is less used and “hunting game” creatures drop salvageable leather fairly often, leather has no problems either.

Why should be cloth the “bottleneck” material halting progress? It’s a basic material. People should not craft slower because they keep running out of cloth, but because they need more fine materials or better.

Tom Gore.4035:

Fixing their mistake of requiring 100 bolts of silk instead the standard 50 would obviously help some.

I’ve often wondered why silk thread needed twice as many bolts of silk as the other time-gated items required for their constituent items. Lowering it to 50 would help, or making bolts only require 2 scraps instead of 3 would help.

Doggie.3184:

I’m never gonna be able to change my armor.

I know what you mean. Having ascended armor be so time-consuming to craft is at odds with the game’s apparent goal of giving a player build flexibility and encouraging folks to experiment. With things as they are now with stats so strongly tied to gear, you need to figure out that build you like because you’ll likely be stuck with it for a while.

MithranArkanere.8957:

And not everyone is willing to buy the cloth

Some players will completely ignore the trading post, and only consider what they get from drops, nodes and other gameplay sources.

That’s honestly what I do, or try to do. I’ve lately bought a few helpings but mostly because my time is more important than my gold. (Limited play time will do that.) And as a medium-armor main I rarely run directly into the bottleneck of Damask. But I do nonetheless notice it – I need 3 pieces for each insignia after all!

Most of the cloth comes from salvaging, not everyone has light armor characters at all tier ranges to salvage cloth from drops, but everyone can get wood and (metal) of all tiers, and since leather is less used and “hunting game” creatures drop salvageable leather fairly often, leather has no problems either.

. . . you meant metal.

As for needing light armor classes, never really noticed. I did drop research twice for myself on how often I see light armor versus someone else with a light armor class and my warrior. The difference was (if I recall) 2-5 pieces over the course of 100 drops. With most of my gear loot coming out of Silverwastes, though, and loot boxes not being affected by this weighted drop mechanic . . . so I was given to understand anyway . . . it became irrelevant quickly. I want gear to salvage? Silverwastes for half an hour doing events. I rack up quite a lot.

Why should be cloth the “bottleneck” material halting progress? It’s a basic material. People should not craft slower, but because they keep running out of cloth, but because they need more fine materials or better.

Really, I found Tier 4 a worse bottleneck and it was in Fine materials. But yeah, cloth nodes or some way of getting scraps would be nice. Too bad it’s a bit late to work it in well.

Nick.7259:

Personally I never understood why Anet made Damask take 300 silk scraps from the start when the other corresponding materials where at 100 mithril ore, 150 elder logs or 150 thick leather sections.
…..

My guess is that Silk was WAY WAY WAY undervalued and over supplied when Ascended Armor was designed (less so when it actually released and players had been hoarding and buying it up for weeks). The prices shot up and have been relatively stable (with small spikes and rebounds when items requiring Demask were released). I guess that is where they want the prices (despite the “fairness” of requiring many times more raw materials than the other 2 armor sets).

Cloth nodes are not needed as every enemy target in the game is a potential node for cloth & leather (as are the loot bags many of them drop). Now the fact that enemies all drop items leveled for current character level is an issue for the T2-T4 mats, but loot bags and the TP can solve that issue easily enough.

The T2-T5 issue could be addressed with Forge demotion recipes (but that would cause some significant price shock to those materials when introduced).

Karpee.6308:

From what I could tell, most of the answers of possible price dropping is based on the assumption of an increased supply. There are no indications that this will take place. The pricing statistics for the past 6 months show that Bolts of Damask are at their cheapest price due to high demand. Based on economic norms, it is more likely that they will increase in price. If it does drop, it will most likely be minimal. I would not chance it with those statistics. September 28th, 2014 was their highest price selling at 18 01 47. They have slowly decreased to as low as 13 29 01 on February 11th, 2015. More likely to start going back up soon.

Increased demand does not cause prices to fall.

I’d take a look at the components used to craft bolts of damask before making assumptions about damask bolts themselves.

pdavis.8031:

John Smith (Anets economy guy) has stated several times that silk is working as intended and by design, and yes they do monitor it, and found this is be a good long term solution.

People are forgetting that silk is still super easy to come by. You can get silk from almost every mob in all level 58-80 zones. Either in “pure” form from bags, or from salvaging light armor, or salvagable items. Heck I was able to get 60 scraps (20 bolts) just from salvaging alone doing an hour in Silverwastes. At that rate it will take ~5 hours to make 1 spool of silk weaving thread. Now using all the karma you can get farming SW, you can easily use the conversion to get the linen, wool, and cotton. So you can make 1 bolt of damask in a few days (depending on your play time) just farming all the mats needed. It’s not really that bad.

Ye, by design silk costs 5 times more than mithril and like 20 times more than a leather and you need it 3 times more than mithril. By his design sure. But the next time he’ll change it, it’s also gonna be by design. Everything they do is by design.

rotten.9753:

pdavis.8031:

John Smith (Anets economy guy) has stated several times that silk is working as intended and by design, and yes they do monitor it, and found this is be a good long term solution.

People are forgetting that silk is still super easy to come by. You can get silk from almost every mob in all level 58-80 zones. Either in “pure” form from bags, or from salvaging light armor, or salvagable items. Heck I was able to get 60 scraps (20 bolts) just from salvaging alone doing an hour in Silverwastes. At that rate it will take ~5 hours to make 1 spool of silk weaving thread. Now using all the karma you can get farming SW, you can easily use the conversion to get the linen, wool, and cotton. So you can make 1 bolt of damask in a few days (depending on your play time) just farming all the mats needed. It’s not really that bad.

Ye, by design silk costs 5 times more than mithril and like 20 times more than a leather and you need it 3 times more than mithril. By his design sure. But the next time he’ll change it, it’s also gonna be by design. Everything they do is by design.

Precisely. However, I took your comment to imply that the change was unintended and/or a mistake. The cost of the silk is solely based on what people are willing to pay for it. As of now (according to GW2 spidy) there is a surplus of 138,881 silk scraps in the TP alone. Thats not inlcuding any people have in their banks at any given time. The stuff is FAR from rare and hard to aquire. Although it is very desirable, there is no reason the price couldn’t reflect that. However people are still willing to pay 2s 6c for it. Now if everyone in the game all got together and said “we are not going to pay more than 80c for a scrap of silk and set the buy and sell orders at 80c” Then the price will change to 80c per scrap.

Anet doesn’t control the prices on the TP. Players do. You can argue that Anet does influence the prices through the drop rate, but in the end it comes down to what players are willing to buy and sell for. And silk, being so common, has no reason to be at the price that it is. It is the current price simply because of what people are willing to pay for it. Nothing more.

pdavis.8031:

rotten.9753:

pdavis.8031:

John Smith (Anets economy guy) has stated several times that silk is working as intended and by design, and yes they do monitor it, and found this is be a good long term solution.

People are forgetting that silk is still super easy to come by. You can get silk from almost every mob in all level 58-80 zones. Either in “pure” form from bags, or from salvaging light armor, or salvagable items. Heck I was able to get 60 scraps (20 bolts) just from salvaging alone doing an hour in Silverwastes. At that rate it will take ~5 hours to make 1 spool of silk weaving thread. Now using all the karma you can get farming SW, you can easily use the conversion to get the linen, wool, and cotton. So you can make 1 bolt of damask in a few days (depending on your play time) just farming all the mats needed. It’s not really that bad.

Ye, by design silk costs 5 times more than mithril and like 20 times more than a leather and you need it 3 times more than mithril. By his design sure. But the next time he’ll change it, it’s also gonna be by design. Everything they do is by design.

Precisely. However, I took your comment to imply that the change was unintended and/or a mistake. The cost of the silk is solely based on what people are willing to pay for it. As of now (according to GW2 spidy) there is a surplus of 138,881 silk scraps in the TP alone. Thats not inlcuding any people have in their banks at any given time. The stuff is FAR from rare and hard to aquire. Although it is very desirable, there is no reason the price couldn’t reflect that. However people are still willing to pay 2s 6c for it. Now if everyone in the game all got together and said “we are not going to pay more than 80c for a scrap of silk and set the buy and sell orders at 80c” Then the price will change to 80c per scrap.

Anet doesn’t control the prices on the TP. Players do. You can argue that Anet does influence the prices through the drop rate, but in the end it comes down to what players are willing to buy and sell for. And silk, being so common, has no reason to be at the price that it is. It is the current price simply because of what people are willing to pay for it. Nothing more.

surplus has to do with a budget, how do you determine if the supply is more than is needed exactly?

maddoctor.2738:

darkace.8925:

Player B needs some linen. He grabs his weapons, armor, and Magic Find consumables and heads to a zone where mobs drop level 50ish gear. He kills mobs. With each kill he’s hoping for loot…armor…light armor…level 50ish light armor.

Player B can use karma (that he can get anywhere) to get his Linen rather easily.

Or as an alternative, Player B can open bags (for example from SW) with a level 50 scholar alt, giving very high chances at getting that Linen

Both ways do not require that player to roam a level 50 zone to get it, they can basically do other types of content and not be restricted. Play how you want at it’s best?

Of course more choice would be nice but with the current systems it’s not as hard as poeple making it out to be to get your Linen

So your solutions are to either dump copious amounts of karma in an tedious loop of converting vendor items into mystic forge items to be salvaged or to create and level a character to level 50ish for the sole purpose of opening bags? Those are both inefficient and presumptuous.

The former presumes the player doesn’t have other things to spend karma on, it relies on flushing a currency that takes both time and effort to acquire, and it assumes there will never be anything added to the game that requires karma to purchase.

The latter presumes the character has an empty character slot or that they delete an existing character and it depends upon the player halting all progression once the character hits level 50-something. At that point it essentially becomes a dead character slot.

What both of your solutions show is the inequity between cloth accumulation and that of ore and lumber. Neither ore nor lumber require the players to jump through so many hoops. And the kicker is that cloth is not only more difficult to obtain, it’s also required in larger amounts than other materials.

Edit: You lower-level character opening bags has another major flaw in that it requires you to forfeit any chance at ectos since your rares will be too low level to yield them when salvaged.

phys.7689:

pdavis.8031:

rotten.9753:

pdavis.8031:

John Smith (Anets economy guy) has stated several times that silk is working as intended and by design, and yes they do monitor it, and found this is be a good long term solution.

People are forgetting that silk is still super easy to come by. You can get silk from almost every mob in all level 58-80 zones. Either in “pure” form from bags, or from salvaging light armor, or salvagable items. Heck I was able to get 60 scraps (20 bolts) just from salvaging alone doing an hour in Silverwastes. At that rate it will take ~5 hours to make 1 spool of silk weaving thread. Now using all the karma you can get farming SW, you can easily use the conversion to get the linen, wool, and cotton. So you can make 1 bolt of damask in a few days (depending on your play time) just farming all the mats needed. It’s not really that bad.

Ye, by design silk costs 5 times more than mithril and like 20 times more than a leather and you need it 3 times more than mithril. By his design sure. But the next time he’ll change it, it’s also gonna be by design. Everything they do is by design.

Precisely. However, I took your comment to imply that the change was unintended and/or a mistake. The cost of the silk is solely based on what people are willing to pay for it. As of now (according to GW2 spidy) there is a surplus of 138,881 silk scraps in the TP alone. Thats not inlcuding any people have in their banks at any given time. The stuff is FAR from rare and hard to aquire. Although it is very desirable, there is no reason the price couldn’t reflect that. However people are still willing to pay 2s 6c for it. Now if everyone in the game all got together and said “we are not going to pay more than 80c for a scrap of silk and set the buy and sell orders at 80c” Then the price will change to 80c per scrap.

Anet doesn’t control the prices on the TP. Players do. You can argue that Anet does influence the prices through the drop rate, but in the end it comes down to what players are willing to buy and sell for. And silk, being so common, has no reason to be at the price that it is. It is the current price simply because of what people are willing to pay for it. Nothing more.

surplus has to do with a budget, how do you determine if the supply is more than is needed exactly?

That is a great question. One that none us can ever really answer with any certainty. I am sure JS has the numbers and metrics to determine how much silk is in “rotation” at any given time, and how much is needed to maintain a healty surplus. It would be interesting to find out though.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Cloth nodes are not needed as every enemy target in the game is a potential node for cloth & leather (as are the loot bags many of them drop). Now the fact that enemies all drop items leveled for current character level is an issue for the T2-T4 mats, but loot bags and the TP can solve that issue easily enough.

Since the exact same thing can be said for metal and wood, I ask you why there are ore and lumber nodes in the game.

Tom Gore.4035:

Fixing their mistake of requiring 100 bolts of silk instead the standard 50 would obviously help some.

I assumed it was 100 because silk cloth was useless and everyone had thousands of it, it sold for more to NPC than TP. Now that it’s price has been fixed and all those thousand of silk have been used up, as well as silk actually having a use, it should be reduced to 50 like everything else.

I have no idea why they think it’s ok for damask to be more expensive than every other ascended mat.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Nick.7259:

Personally I never understood why Anet made Damask take 300 silk scraps from the start when the other corresponding materials where at 100 mithril ore, 150 elder logs or 150 thick leather sections.
…..

My guess is that Silk was WAY WAY WAY undervalued and over supplied when Ascended Armor was designed (less so when it actually released and players had been hoarding and buying it up for weeks).

As far as i remember, nobody bought up silk before ascended armorcrafting got introduced with the 2013 wintersday patch. Everybody bought up Gossamer, Silk only saw added demand gradually over the next couple of weeks after the patch (as daily demand was capped by the the time gate on the spools).

darkace.8925:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Cloth nodes are not needed as every enemy target in the game is a potential node for cloth & leather (as are the loot bags many of them drop). Now the fact that enemies all drop items leveled for current character level is an issue for the T2-T4 mats, but loot bags and the TP can solve that issue easily enough.

Since the exact same thing can be said for metal and wood, I ask you why there are ore and lumber nodes in the game.

Because metal and wood have a huge sink in crafting rare lvl 80 weapons for the forge.
Cloth and leather dont have that extra sink.

Wanze.8410:

darkace.8925:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Cloth nodes are not needed as every enemy target in the game is a potential node for cloth & leather (as are the loot bags many of them drop). Now the fact that enemies all drop items leveled for current character level is an issue for the T2-T4 mats, but loot bags and the TP can solve that issue easily enough.

Since the exact same thing can be said for metal and wood, I ask you why there are ore and lumber nodes in the game.

Because metal and wood have a huge sink in crafting rare lvl 80 weapons for the forge.
Cloth and leather dont have that extra sink.

You make a good point. Note to self. Stock up on metals and wood when Legendary crafting comes out the price may go up.

anzenketh.3759:

Wanze.8410:

darkace.8925:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Cloth nodes are not needed as every enemy target in the game is a potential node for cloth & leather (as are the loot bags many of them drop). Now the fact that enemies all drop items leveled for current character level is an issue for the T2-T4 mats, but loot bags and the TP can solve that issue easily enough.

Since the exact same thing can be said for metal and wood, I ask you why there are ore and lumber nodes in the game.

Because metal and wood have a huge sink in crafting rare lvl 80 weapons for the forge.
Cloth and leather dont have that extra sink.

You make a good point. Note to self. Stock up on metals and wood when Legendary crafting comes out the price may go up.

Expect a much larger increase in other materials than just those if we find out that the new legendary weapons follow the same crafting formula as the existing.

Tom Gore.4035:

rotten.9753:

Tom Gore.4035:

Um… Pretty much all of them? I have for my warrior all ascended weapons except the warhorn.

Ascended weapons are far more “worth it” than armor, because they come with a higher base damage than exotic, making the damage increase from upgrading your weapon alone by about 10%.

In contrast, by upgrading only your full set of armor you increase your stats by a mere 5%, while spending ginormous amounts of money compared to just upgrading your weapon set.

They increase your damage by about 6% iirc.

Could be. Never done that math myself. Still. About the same amount of damage increase with maybe one tenth of the investment.

A bit above 10% if you ignore crits. More than 10% if you include crits.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Nick.7259:

Personally I never understood why Anet made Damask take 300 silk scraps from the start when the other corresponding materials where at 100 mithril ore, 150 elder logs or 150 thick leather sections.
…..

My guess is that Silk was WAY WAY WAY undervalued and over supplied when Ascended Armor was designed (less so when it actually released and players had been hoarding and buying it up for weeks). The prices shot up and have been relatively stable (with small spikes and rebounds when items requiring Demask were released). I guess that is where they want the prices (despite the “fairness” of requiring many times more raw materials than the other 2 armor sets).

True, there were over 2 million silk scraps available on the market and the TP price where around 12-13 copper when ascended armor was released. I myself I had bought enough silk to make the armor I planned to and luckily enuogh had converted them to bolts because of the space they took in storage. Hoever I calculated 50 silk bolts as the other recipes.

Not only did Anet change the recipe to 100 silk bolt, they also changed the silk bolt it self requiring 3 scraps instead of earlier 2 scraps. Since even the leather/metal armor requires 25 damask it stood clear than 2 million scraps in the market would not be enough for the comming demand. An armor set requiring at least 7 500 scraps. 2 million scraps would just be like 250 sets of ascended armor.

When I did this math I used all my money to buy as much silk as I could. Price raised from those 12-13 copper a piece to over a silver in a week and has just been climbing after that. The only dip we had was when Anet raised the supply during Wintersday but now silk is climbing again…

It makes no sense that it takes 100 silk per damask.

Why is anet OK with one ascended item being over triple the price of the other ones?

Khisanth.2948:

A bit above 10% if you ignore crits. More than 10% if you include crits.

We’re talking about weapons only. 9 more power and 6 more precision and ferocity will not change that difference from 5% (due to weapon strength) to 10%.

Damask is required on all ascended armor. This makes it the most needed refined ascended material of the three. This means all cloth scraps are in high demand.

Silk Bolts recipe was changed from 2 to 3 scraps.

The Damask recipe requires 100 refined T5 mats instead of 50 the other two refined ascended mats require. The 300 Silk Scraps are 56% of the material costs for crafting Damask followed by Linen at 20%, Wool at 13% and Cotton at 7%.

Combine all three of these facts and silk scrap demand exceeds the supply feed by a wide margin.

Shiyo.3578:

It makes no sense that it takes 100 silk per damask.

Why is anet OK with one ascended item being over triple the price of the other ones?

There was a 4 million glut in supply for silk scraps before ascended armor came out. I’m guessing along the line of setting up the recipe they forgot that Damask is required in every ascended armor weight, twice in light, as well as forgetting the change in the silk bolt recipe and instead doubled up the refined T5 requirement from 50 to 100.

Maybe there were initially trying to balance according to the price at the time, silk scrap was at vendor+1 price but within a month it went from 8c each to 1s80c and rose as high as the mid 3s range.

Now compare that to another glut T5 common mat, Think Leather Section. It’s price barely budged. It also needs 3 mats to refine but it’s ascended refined mat is not needed by every armor weight in similar or double quantity like Damask and you only need 50 T5 refined instead of 100 as you do with silk.

Shiyo.3578:

It makes no sense that it takes 100 silk per damask.

Why is anet OK with one ascended item being over triple the price of the other ones?

It does make sense though. Silk, as stated above, was way over supplied. Having 100 bolts, and 3 scraps per, makes a very effective silk sink. And there is about 3000 different sources for silk, the stuff is super easy to come by. Even more so with gear weighting loot on the light armor professions. However, people dont want to farm it, so they look to the TP to speed up the process, which is fine, but leads to an increase of prices on the TP. If you farm it, its not nearly as expensive, but does take time. Time that people arent willing to spend.

Don’t forget that there are recipies that require loads of Bolts of Damask to make, while there is no special recipe for the other materials.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chaos_of_Lyssa
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Light_of_Dwayna
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_of_Grenth

15 Bolts of Damask for each is a very high amount making these items very expensive.

Judging by the Gift of Blades recipe which requires 15 of either of the Ascended materials, it was “intended” by Arenanet for those 3 to be “equal”

the main problem is you need the double amount of silk which is harder to farm than ore or wood. i really dont know what they thought by doing it this way (ok i think they wanted to get rid of the huge amounts of worthless silk in the beginning, but these times are long gone now)

I’m stacking Bolt of Damask and await the moment when price will go above 15g/unit.

:v