It hit me. As I’m now crafting my 2nd precursor, Colossus, I realized how stupid I’ve been. My first precursor crafted was Howl, which only required a fair 8 or so Spiritwood planks and equal amount of Deldrimor. It roughly equated to it’s precursor price on the TP.
However, with the Colossus, I am now around 70% through completing only the second tier of the collection, and I’ve seen that I’ve now spent over 700g (and I’m not even finished) worth of items, to craft a precursor that is currently 600g on the tp.
I don’t have the exact numbers because I’ve forgotten and didn’t take note, but let’s start with what I do know: The legendary inscription alone asks for 10 Elonian Leather Squares, averagely valued at 12g (was 15g when I started the collection). Our total currently stands at 120g worth of items spent. Next, the first experimental weapon asked for 10 Spiritwood Planks and 15 Deldrimor Steel. 10 Spiritwood are averagely valued at over 15g (150g) . 15 Deldrimor steel, valued at 9g, (135g)
Our current total is 405g. Next, the 2nd tier asks for 5 more Deldrimor steel (or was it 10?) That’s another 45g — 450g. After that, it requires 15 more Deldrimor Steel; our total is now 585g. It’s also going to ask for more spiritwood I’m 100% sure for the Large Hammer Haft requisition, which is most likely going to be 10 more spiritwood. My total is now effectively 735g.
Only about 50g over Colossus’ average price, fair enough — I get AP as well. Wait a minute, I forgot to factor in the 1,000 or more Elder Wood Planks (not logs) and 2,000 Mithril Ingots (not ore). I’ll just go ahead and top the price to 900g even though I’m far sure that the price exceeds 900g. Factor in the time spent hunting for the collection items; money spent using WPs to get those collections as well as things like 25 Stabilizing Matrices, 25 Passion Flowers (almost 30g alone), 1k Bandit Crests (how much are 1,000 bandit crests worth if you translate it into time spent? and 400 Geodes. Yes, you can get those for mapping Dry Top and Silverwaste now, but that is still time spent.
Let’s make the total 1,000 gold minimum. I’m not even on the third tier yet, and hopefully if its like the Howler, it doesn’t ask for an unreasonable amount of items. Now I ask the question, why am I crafting the precursor? I could save 100g if I custom-ordered everything, sure; it doesn’t change the fact that crafting it is extremely overpriced.
This relates to buying as well as farming the items required, because either way, you’re spending something. I found it was quicker to farm something and sell, then buy what I need, than to actually farm what I need (which is horrible, because it’s sapping the already elusive gold from my wallet).
I don’t appreciate this giant resource sink when, in the end, I come out dumber than I was when I started because I somehow thought I was saving money by crafting it myself. Now, new legendaries come out requiring even more? (The first tier of HOPE asks for 5 bolt of damask — not for the experimental weapon, but for something to cover a jar of honey with. Wtf, are you serious? Not even from a lore standpoint does this make a lick of sense.)
Of course items are inflated right now because everyone wants this stuff, but now Legendary armor is coming out and is going to require even more silk and leather than is already in too-high demand.
What is the point of crafting the precursors at all? Even if I had loads of materials saved up to where I didn’t need to buy anything, all of it would be gone when I finished one precursor that apparently wasn’t an offhand.
This has made me seriously agitated as I’ve roughly calculated how much money I threw away that could have been spent on T6 materials or things needed for the actual legendary and not the precursor.
I don’t understand how everything seems to have been aimed at re-designing the economy; it’s not very smart to make drastic sinks and changes into an already-established economy whatsoever.
