HumanPirhana Posted September 18, 2012 Share Posted September 18, 2012 Has anyone done any serious analysis of average cost to acquire various mats, particularly purple mats via companion missions? I realize there are opportunity costs involved, but some of the GTN mat prices seem wildly inflated relative to my own rough mental calculations. Not pointing any fingers *cough* Lamanoid going for 1k per and up *cough* Just curious if anyone has done this kind of math nerd accounting type stuff or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psandak Posted September 18, 2012 Share Posted September 18, 2012 You are 100% correct that the credit costs are far less if you do the gathering/missions yourself. However, time and in game money in ANY MMO are interchangeable resources. Further, it boils down to personal preference as to which is more "valuable" and that value may (and usually does) vary over time. a stable example of this in SWTOR is the "crafting materials" materials in crafting (e.g. Cortosis Substrate, Conductive Flux, etc). These items can be bought off of a vendor for a fixed price. You can buy as many you want whenever you want. However, you do pay a premium for that ability. If you have the time and patience it is FAR more cost effective to use the missions to acquire these materials. But for some the convenience of being able to buy these parts far outweighs the credits saved. The same concepts apply to all gathered materials (whether through actual gathering or missions). You can either take the time and spend far fewer credits sending your companions on missions), or you can effectively pay someone else to send their companions for you. But you have to pay a premium to again get the materials you want in the quantities you want when you want them. In short, in all MMOs the proverb "time is money" has a literal meaning in the game economy: With regard to crafted goods and the materials to make them...you can spend your time acquiring stuff you need, or you can pay someone else to acquire that stuff for you at a higher cost to you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumanPirhana Posted September 18, 2012 Author Share Posted September 18, 2012 True, and I understand what you're saying about time vs money. I fully expect there to be some level of premium over CTA for mats sold on the market, otherwise why would anyone bother? But even taking that into account, there sometimes seems to be pricing levels that make little sense, even relative to other sold mats. The Laminoid I mention being a prime example. It's a tier one mat for scavenging, the mission to obtain it is up with a good deal of frequency (at least pub side), takes all of four minutes to run, and costs I believe less than 250 credits, while almost always yielding at least two laminoids along with silica. Even if one considers the silica worthless, 1k a pop seems a bizarre price level compared to mats that take much longer to acquire in terms of mission time and with correspondingly greater mission costs. Maybe I should just shut up and keep selling my laminoid like hotcakes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skodan Posted September 19, 2012 Share Posted September 19, 2012 Maybe I should just shut up and keep selling my laminoid like hotcakes. lol at this, its definitely nice having multiple companions on Tier 1 Compound missions, you can get a full stack of them really quickly that way Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sharita Posted September 19, 2012 Share Posted September 19, 2012 Some time ago I found this site SWTOR:Crafter .I'm not sure if it has been updated lately but even so the amounts should be fairly close if not exact. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sharita Posted September 19, 2012 Share Posted September 19, 2012 You are 100% correct that the credit costs are far less if you do the gathering/missions yourself. However, time and in game money in ANY MMO are interchangeable resources. Further, it boils down to personal preference as to which is more "valuable" and that value may (and usually does) vary over time. a stable example of this in SWTOR is the "crafting materials" materials in crafting (e.g. Cortosis Substrate, Conductive Flux, etc). These items can be bought off of a vendor for a fixed price. You can buy as many you want whenever you want. However, you do pay a premium for that ability. If you have the time and patience it is FAR more cost effective to use the missions to acquire these materials. But for some the convenience of being able to buy these parts far outweighs the credits saved. The same concepts apply to all gathered materials (whether through actual gathering or missions). You can either take the time and spend far fewer credits sending your companions on missions), or you can effectively pay someone else to send their companions for you. But you have to pay a premium to again get the materials you want in the quantities you want when you want them. In short, in all MMOs the proverb "time is money" has a literal meaning in the game economy: With regard to crafted goods and the materials to make them...you can spend your time acquiring stuff you need, or you can pay someone else to acquire that stuff for you at a higher cost to you. This is true for Tier 3,4,and 5. Tier 1 is cheaper from the vendor than a crit from missions. Tier 2 is about a wash on price depending on crits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheWookiee Posted September 19, 2012 Share Posted September 19, 2012 I can say it costs me just over 5k credits through slicing missions to aquite 1 grade 6 neural augmentor. For me, I have averaged about 1 out of every 7 missions to crit fro 3 augmentors which gives me close to 15%. Some days are obviously better or worse than others, but over the last 3 months, this is what ti averages out to. At a cost of around 2200 credits per slicing mission over 7 missions is 15,400 credits per 3 augmentors. divide the 15,400 by 3 and you get 5,133 credits per augmentor. Pop your premium on top of that for your cost per on the GTN. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kerensk Posted September 20, 2012 Share Posted September 20, 2012 There is also an element of demand on top of the time-is-money equation. Laminoid is usually pretty sparse, and since I craft rather than farm mats I may be in a pinch an pay a premium just to get some now. Also I don't have alot of time to play so I'll pay huge prices so somebody else will do the work. I have about an hour free per night or about 3-4 PvP matches. And PvP is so balls to the wall I can't stop every 4 minutes to send my companions back out. It all works out, the items I craft use 2 laminoid and sell for 8000 so I'm still making profit if I buy at 1000 credits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
parmie Posted September 20, 2012 Share Posted September 20, 2012 It's a difficult question to answer because you can vary success rates - a full affection companion with a crit bonus in the gathering skill should have a significantly improved rate of return on purple materials. I don't think we know the base chance with certainly to do proper nerd calculations. I'd estimate similar rates of return as others have said, probably a 1 in 5 rate for a max affection but no crit companion. From the credits perspective, the other thing to factor in is how you dispose of your excess mats from non-critted missions. I've been selling blue 22 augments for 12.5k a go, certainly means those non-crit missions are not costing me anything (accepting that some other skills may struggle to have high demand items that don't require purple). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts