Guild Wars 2

So it’s no secret that scribing is basically super ultra crazy expensive. I’m definitely no master of scribing, being at level 267 right now myself, but I feel I’ve done a fair amount to understand exactly what’s wrong with it.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Finishing Kits. Finishing Kits are a core component to almost every single decoration you can make and they get pricier and pricier the higher and higher you go. The problem is, finishing kits often throw back to older kits (see the dye component and the Resonating Fragments, Slivers, etc.). The problem with this is that it gets harder and harder to climb your way up and ultimately more and more expensive.

For this proposal, I’m going to take the Kit I’m currently on to display the issues. It’s only a mid-range Finishing Kit, so it can get much, much worse.

The Journeyman’s Finishing Kit Requires:
200 Coarse Sand (currently ~13g-14g)
75 Hard Wood Logs (Currently ~2.5g)
10 Linen (currently ~50s)
12 Linseed Oil (currently ~9g)
5 Resonating Fragments (currently ~14.5g if you upgrade slivers)
5 Luminous Dust (~30s)
10 Blue Pigment (~30s)
10 Orange Pigment (~30s)
10 Yellow Pigment (~60s)
10 Red Pigment (~74s)
10 Brown Pigment (~3g)
Then some other bits and bobs that are basically negligible.

Now if you’re like me, you can see a few select components here that are causing problems.

The Pigments
The higher you go, the more and more you need. At the journeyman level this is ~5g itself. If we cut out the need for older pigments, this goes down to just 60s.

Coarse Sand
This is the most expensive part and it only gets worse the higher you go! This part could be avoided by dividing the total required amount per piece of paper by 10. You’d need only 20 for the total sand in this kit, leaving it at around 1.3 – 1.4g

Linseed Oil
This stuff is just crazy. We either need more in the economy or for scribing to require far, far less. A simple solution would be to slash the required Flax for each oil. Lower it to maybe 5 and we’re talking. Currently we’d only be looking at maybe 15s per Linseed then. Oh and allow scribes to make it below 400. 12 Linseed at 15s each would be 1.8g

Resonating Fragments/Slivers
These are crazy expensive right now and it just gets more and more expensive the higher you go. I propose reducing the cost by from 5/3 to 1/2. This means for a Journeyman kit, you still need around 6 Slivers, which ends up being just under 6g, but it’s still a great deal better than 15g. A further step might even be to reduce the upgrade cost from 3 -> 1 to 2-> 1, but with Guild Missions still broken, the cost is likely still inflated a bit.

The Pulps
For some Kits this ends up being fairly cheap, for others it can be insanely expensive. I propose just 2 pulps instead of 5. For a Journeyman Kit this would bring the cost from 2.9g down to 1.16g.

Conclusion
I know ArenaNet wants to keep scribing somewhat pricey to prevent everyone and their Grandmother having really neat decorations, but it needs to be brought down a bit. Based on my suggestions, a Journeyman kit would go from a bit over 45g down to a bit under 12g and that’s just for the kit itself. Some decorations are still going to cost 15 – 20g at this level, but it’s still fairly low considering what they actually are.

One thing you also need to remember is the Finishing Kits don’t just stop at each decoration, sometimes you require multiple kits because a single decoration will require previous ones, sometimes multiple of them. Even at lower levels of scribing. By adjusting Finishing Kits, it makes scribing as a whole far more approachable.

Regardless of what happens with scribing, it needs to change. The costs are simply way out of control where getting to 400 is costing thousands and thousands of gold, with the rewards being able to simply spend thousands more on the decorations (or should I say, Finishing Kits) there. While I understand the market is in “fluctuation”, it’s been over 2 months since HoT released now and I’d expect things to have settled enough for us to have a decent view on where they’ll lie. Even if the costs go down slightly, it’s still too expensive and needs to be adjusted.

A-net is not driving the prices up its the players. We got a new crafting profession that everyone finds useful. So those items are in very high demand. Once more player max scribing the prices for all of those mats will drop. Still only the very rich players with 4-5k spare gold should have maxed scribing by now. A-net could increase the drop rate of those mats but what would happen when every maxes scribing? Those items would become worthless.

A-net thinking about it in the long term not short term. They want items to still be valuable and not have a stockpile of mats on TP that have a higher vendor value the sell value. Like silk/thick leather were before ascended gear or Blues/Greens before Luck.

Ulion.5476:

A-net is not driving the prices up its the players. We got a new crafting profession that everyone finds useful. So those items are in very high demand. Once more player max scribing the prices for all of those mats will drop. Still only the very rich players with 4-5k spare gold should have maxed scribing by now. A-net could increase the drop rate of those mats but what would happen when every maxes scribing? Those items would become worthless.

A-net thinking about it in the long term not short term. They want items to still be valuable and not have a stockpile of mats on TP that have a higher vendor value the sell value. Like silk/thick leather were before ascended gear or Blues/Greens before Luck.

Of course Anet is driving the economy, by setting the droprates and creating the demand by setting the recipes. Calling GW2 a player driven economy when everything is handcrafted by Anet is nonsense. I bet John Smith can predict the stabilized price of an item by +/- 15% in prior to any update happening.
Levelling scribing should not cost a fortune. Making high quality furniture (such as lets say a gilded marble table) should cost money. Not basic tables or chairs.
Currently a guild hall can hold 1000+ items of furniture, but it is no use if filling it with the most basic furniture of the game would already cost 50k+ gold. Dont get me started about the highest quality furniture (which still looks like crap for its price).

Malediktus.9250

Of course Anet is driving the economy, by setting the droprates and creating the demand by setting the recipes. Calling GW2 a player driven economy when everything is handcrafted by Anet is nonsense. I bet John Smith can predict the stabilized price of an item by +/- 15% in prior to any update happening.

Just like they predicted that silk would grow to an enormous price after ascended craft? That has kind of been balanced with HoT but it increased the price of leather and the overall cost of ascended armor. You can make prediction but it does not always work out the way you plan.

It takes a couple of month to max level a guild even an large active one. Do you want scribing to be max within a week like the other crafts, when it takes longer to even max level a guild hall? Scribing is more of a guild donation craft than a solo player one. I am not worried about scribing that much. It mostly has cosmetic items not immediately useful to me. I have only read about the prices of some of the high level items.

I dont know about your guild, but in our the “guild donation craft” thing is not working out at all. I am basically upgrading the whole guild hall by myself (90% of the funds coming from me). If there would not be for our small weekly guild tax (5g) you can bet it would be ~100% of the funds coming from me.
People want all the rewards with the least amount of personal effort.
So you can count on people being selfish with scribing, too. I expect that I will have to fund 100% of that myself.
The majority of people in this game are selfish. Why should they donate their hard earned materials and currencies to the guild if they need those very same materials for their own use (mainly legendaries)?

Ulion.5476:

A-net is not driving the prices up its the players. We got a new crafting profession that everyone finds useful. So those items are in very high demand. Once more player max scribing the prices for all of those mats will drop. …

Okaaaaay, it’s all on the players. Sure, because people want stuff. Guild halls require metric tons of flax in linseed oils, kegs, and other items. It also takes an awful lot of sand to make enough mugs for tavern upgrades— which certainly is a factor in the price since a scribe uses sand in large quantities in many of their crafts. Then the new stat weapons and armors require linseed oils, flax blossoms and fibers. Again, scribe needs those too. So, there’s plenty of demand beyond a scribe’s craft. You think that’s going to cease when a few more ultra-wealthy players max scribe? I don’t. The demand will stay steady. Anet planned it that way.

Guilds come and go; some will max out eventually and their upgrade needs will cease, while many will take a long time to get there, but new ones will continually be stepping in … still needing the same upgrade materials scribes use.

The expense issues with scribe are not going to go away in a few months “as the market settles.” Prices have stabilized since HoT’s release and they remain quite high. The scribe craft requires more than ten times the materials of any other craft at comparable levels. I believe it’s past time for Anet to step in with some adjustments.

Ulion.5476:

… It takes a couple of month to max level a guild even an large active one. Do you want scribing to be max within a week like the other crafts, when it takes longer to even max level a guild hall? Scribing is more of a guild donation craft than a solo player one. I am not worried about scribing that much. It mostly has cosmetic items not immediately useful to me. I have only read about the prices of some of the high level items.

Anet said it will take a minimum of six months to max out a guild hall. It is not possible to max scribe within a week. Scribe is gated by guild hall upgrades, which are gated by aurillium mining, guild participation, material donations, etc.

As for scribing being more of a guild craft than a solo player one… well, that’s another issue that Anet should settle. If the guild donates, they don’t own the scribe. If the scribe switches guilds or quits, the guild has lost its investment in that player. Right now, scribe is in a weird place since he cannot keep any of the things he made; they belong to the guild. If the guild doesn’t donate to him, then he’s out thousands of gold. That is not an exaggeration.

By your own admission, scribe is not useful or important to you and you haven’t even tried it. You have only read about it a little. I challenge you to give it a try — say, level it to a mere 50-- and see for yourself how the costs and products compare to that of other crafts.

to OP,

275-300 is the most horrible chunk I came across.
Every piece of deco there is like 3 items deep.
EXCEPT snow makers which are expensive in their own way.
There are no wvw things to make that are lvl 275.

My solution, gems. I’m working 4 hrs on new years eve because it was simple math that told me to do that wrather than grind my eyeballs out for the next 3 months to go from 288-300 after I had already made 4 snow makers.

If you know other guilds or maybe are a decent salesperson you can convince other guilds who may not have a scribe to assemble the materials needed for a snow maker and you can go in a make it for them. Whats great is that its base deco is something not tied to guild hall upgrades so they don’t need to get deco1/2/3 first. Whats not so great is that the deadline for buying snow piles for the guild halls is ending soon.

275-300 I made backpack earlier when people didn’t know and dumped the components on TP for cheap. Now is super expensive lol.

Kumion.7580:

Anet said it will take a minimum of six months to max out a guild hall. It is not possible to max scribe within a week. Scribe is gated by guild hall upgrades, which are gated by aurillium mining, guild participation, material donations, etc.

As for scribing being more of a guild craft than a solo player one… well, that’s another issue that Anet should settle. If the guild donates, they don’t own the scribe. If the scribe switches guilds or quits, the guild has lost its investment in that player. Right now, scribe is in a weird place since he cannot keep any of the things he made; they belong to the guild. If the guild doesn’t donate to him, then he’s out thousands of gold. That is not an exaggeration.

By your own admission, scribe is not useful or important to you and you haven’t even tried it. You have only read about it a little. I challenge you to give it a try — say, level it to a mere 50-- and see for yourself how the costs and products compare to that of other crafts.

The first paragraph is an answer to my question? I was stating that scribing should take around the same amount of time to level as it takes to max level a guild. Not sure of the max max guild level atm the biggest one I have is at 42.

Both you and Malediktus.9250 make a good point about scribers and the guilds they are dedicate to. It is at an interesting you can be a part of 5 guild and be the scriber for all of them and get donation from all of them. A guilds loyalty come into question with how you use those mats.

Its not that I do not have the gold to get scribing upto 300-350 its more that it not useful to me atm. I looked at everything it could make and nothing was worthwhile to me. The consumable were useful but I can just get them from TP. Their is a nice sigil I can ask my friend to make it for me. Just not worthwhile for me to use gold on unless it is to help my friend.

The thing that is expensive is not scribing itself, but wanting to have it right now. Think
6 – 12 month ahead, things like coarse sand, linseed oil, resonating slivers and pigments are only used for guildhall upgrades and scribing so the price will inevitably drop to an acceptable level.

Macilien.3078:

The thing that is expensive is not scribing itself, but wanting to have it right now. Think
6 – 12 month ahead, things like coarse sand, linseed oil, resonating slivers and pigments are only used for guildhall upgrades and scribing so the price will inevitably drop to an acceptable level.

I dont think they will drop much further unless Anet intervenes one way or another (droprate or recipe changes). The demand will stay high for those items since you need them for everything in large amounts. Even linseed oil barely dropped in price even though they can drop from wintersday gifts and those get opened in masses. Linseed oil might even go up after wintersday is over.