post-OB leagues, currency values

After doing a read of the Big Thread (regarding alch matching) I think I'm comfortable with GGG's vision here. First, let's pretend OB released a month ago. There's a small group of people beginning to trade for fusings, and most of them have lots of stash space. The web trading interface just launched, too, so we're not relying on trade trends from chat anymore. We can finally buy stacks of orbs from vendors.

Big assumptions, but just stick with me here.

In that kind of environment, the obvious way to generate a very large stack of fusings would be to make tons of alchs, then sell alchs on the market for alters and fusings. If more than 10 people are auctioning alchemy orbs in bulk at once, and continuously? There will be a constant downward pressure on the value of an alch. Its floor becomes whatever wealth you'd earn just vendoring those two rares - because that's how buyers are paying for them, with drops and by vendoring items.

What happens? The price of an alch drops until supply just barely out-paces demand.

I'll make a prediction here. The condition is that we NEED a way to facilitate mass trading - without that, the market won't adjust and we'll just have more griping about "fairness". But, if we do facilitate mass trading, alchs should be worth about 2 alters each in any market with plenty of people trying to stockpile tons of fusings. I.E., any league older than a month.

How does the game change when alchs get really cheap? Well, it's much more accessible to casual gamers. Problem? Not for me. Bumping the alch recipe to 3 items only does 2 things: makes things fairer NOW (which arguably doesn't matter) and boosts the final resting value a bit (to more like 1 alch : 3 alter)

The Big Thread makes a much more dire prediction, on the order of 5 alch:4 alter. I don't buy that because one person matching alchs won't be able to completely supply the hordes of free players who can't match at all.

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lethal_papercut wrote:

The stash recipes are currently set up in a way that when compared to drops crafting is by far the quickest way to make high currency. The low level currency works as it takes many rares to make just a few alts, the vendor rates also mean that making low orbs is never gonna be an efficient way to make lots of cash.

Anything Alch and above should primarily come from drops though. Crafting them should be an added bonus that's even more rare than finding one. It shouldn't be a case of where you can basically turn yourself into an alch factory and pump them out like a Chinese sweat shop. The current system is already being abused but just wait until there is an automated way to do it, the way things work now is just making their lives easier.

Removing the alch recipe which we already said it out of wack. I disagree.

I get more chaos off drops than recipes, by far hands down. I dont wear IIR gear though, so maybe that's why.

Regal is close but still IMO good bit more from drops than crafting.
Chisels by far more common on a drop than someone selling a 20% map or x=40% maps.
GCP? by far is more common dropped than crafted.
Divine? Really anyone selling a 6L to a vendor should be shot.


So I dont really see your point being valid here. Again its about balance. With a good balance then even with "farming" of sorts with massive amounts of people doing it. It will work out. More people = more demand too.

I am mostly talking about alchs, regal, chaos here, higher orbs than that are pretty much rare as rocking horse shit & have been fairly stable within the market place as even their crafting values are very high.

For me with only 1 tab dedicated to it I get around 2-3x more chaos from crafting than drops (I wear MF gear), I refused for the longest time to get involved in the alch/regal recipe as I don't wish to support the stash tabs business model but I recently tried it and had 2alchs from 1tab of hats, needless to say I quickly confirmed it's true potential.

In all the time I have played I have only ever found 2 regal, that's it. Maybe I have just been very unlucky but I actually found more ex(4) than I have gcp(3) & divine(1). I have also crafted 4 gcp so I am currently ahead there.

I still think increasing the name pools will work better.

I am not concern about the availability of the recipe, but rather focusing more on the generation of alch orbs as well as advantage of the stash tab, (also something to reward the hoarders)

Decreasing the name pools will certainly pump in a lot more alch orbs into the system; which will lower alch orb's value in comparison with other orbs, and it will in term hurts chaos orb's value too, as now you can simply use a scour and alch (which has become cheaper) to achieve the same effect.


Making the name pool bigger will do three things:
(1) people who doesn't have an insane amount of stash tab will have to limit their equipment choice, like collecting only rare amulets/rings/belts to match name. Only those who have insane amount of stash tab can get 1 alch once in a while, and due to the high variety of the name, the process of it is slow.

(2) lower the amount of alch being pumped into the system from this recipe.

(3) promotes people to change to chaos recipe, which doesn't require a lot of stash tab, because the effort to get alch orb is simply not worth it anymore. And we all know chaos orbs are being consumed much faster than alch orbs.

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wxyjac wrote:

Decreasing the name pools will certainly pump in a lot more alch orbs

You're simplifying the suggestion.

The suggested course of action is twofold:
- Require a triple match for an alch turnin, and a quadruple match for a regal turnin.
- Reduce the size of the name pool significantly, to about half its current size.

These two changes go hand-in-hand and cannot be separated if you are to capture the effect they'll have. The goal is to make alchs more costly and reduce how quickly we can craft them; at the same time, requiring the same amount of stash space to match names as now.

Of course we aren't advocating any notion that alchs should be more common? The central gripe here is that alchs are too easy to make. We're trying to make alchs LESS common. Secondary to that is trade being bottlenecked by global chat, and that part really drives the imbalance home.

Read my most recent post, above, though - I'm not convinced it'll have any long term effect. We need a system that facilitates mass trading. Everything will change once that happens, so this all may be completely pointless.

Haven't seen it mentioned but why not add a few more names to the alch shard recipe & have them generated that way?

I'm all for that, but it doesn't address the big problem. Even with alch shards you're looking at around 10 rares per orb. Again the player that can't name-match spends way more items per orb.

Matching names will always be way more efficient.

Yes I mean drop the name match and add more names to the alch shard generation instead.

You do realize that completely dropping the name matching pumps a lot more alts, jewelers, and fusings into the economy right?

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wxyjac wrote:

I still think increasing the name pools will work better.

I am not concern about the availability of the recipe, but rather focusing more on the generation of alch orbs as well as advantage of the stash tab, (also something to reward the hoarders)

Decreasing the name pools will certainly pump in a lot more alch orbs into the system; which will lower alch orb's value in comparison with other orbs, and it will in term hurts chaos orb's value too, as now you can simply use a scour and alch (which has become cheaper) to achieve the same effect.


Making the name pool bigger will do three things:
(1) people who doesn't have an insane amount of stash tab will have to limit their equipment choice, like collecting only rare amulets/rings/belts to match name. Only those who have insane amount of stash tab can get 1 alch once in a while, and due to the high variety of the name, the process of it is slow.

(2) lower the amount of alch being pumped into the system from this recipe.

(3) promotes people to change to chaos recipe, which doesn't require a lot of stash tab, because the effort to get alch orb is simply not worth it anymore. And we all know chaos orbs are being consumed much faster than alch orbs.

1)Is a major problem. The haves (the ones with say 200+ tabs) will start to flood the market with alchs. How? WTB ALL rares at 5 to 1 alch. Profit for them of 1.5 alchs per trade. However, if you require say 4 rares matches per alchs. You cut the # of alchs out there by a factor of 2. While your version keeps it at 2 rares = 1 alch. or double the amount of alchs on the market compared to mine.

2) Your way keeps it the same. Not sure how you see a lowered amount, do you think that people wont do the recipe?

3) So you increase the # of chaos thats ok with you? Next also, is I disagree that chaos are being used more than alchs not sure where you think this is a fact but I surely use more alchs than chaos. I alch rings and amulets (which you can make both of them) all day long. Getting chaos for every 2 rings I make.


The only surefire way to lower the # of alchs is to increase the # of rares it takes, or remove the recipe. I still see no reason why it should be 2 rares = 1 alch.

Worse this has a major effect on economy, as any rare can never be sold for less than 1/2 an alch because people will end up buying them to make an alch (assuming the profit of time is there)


If I had to brake it down I would say.

1 rare = 1Alt, 8xAlts = 1Fusing, 4xFusing:3xAlchsvalue (sold straight to vendor for alts, very fast)
4 rares = 1Alch (recipe match, takes some tabs, and a little time good value)
8 rares = 1Chaos (using current recipe, needs to be sorta special rares 1 of each type slot with 2x rings)
6 rares = 1Regal (using same name recipe as alch only +2 more named, maybe change one of the rares to be required to be a special type of item. Like a chest.)

Cut the names of items down by 75%. This allows normal people to be able to trade named items. Also allow all items to be of any name, instead of being special groupings.