Rapier Pricing. Requesting market data.

Valdus

So, I'm forging between 100 and 300 Rapiers a day (yes, with a Hammer), and getting some decent results. Still waiting for the really good ones to arrive, but that's normal with Forging.

What I'd like is for anyone who knows how much some expensive rapiers have sold for to post the results. I've had a few people approach me asking for 235+ speed rapiers if/when I create some, but I'd like to not get ripped off purely because I don't know what is considered a good price. I'd equally not like to get laughed at for overvaluing my work.

So, if you're a Forger or you know someone who's sold high end Rapiers in the past, please don't be shy. You don't have to name names if you don't want to. You can also PM me if you'd rather not post that information to the forums.

Achilles

It really is what you value your time at.  Most rapiers 243+ speed sell for 100+ credits (depends on the other stats).  Comm wise thats 2000 rapiers (counting smelting) to forge one 243 rapiers (and I'd ball park it closer to 1 in 5000 for a 243+ rapier).

My personal pricing has usually been something like but I adjust it based on the other stats.

223 - 25000

227 - 50000

231 - 150000

235 - 250000

239 - 500000

Cynlael

Or get 2 245 speed ones for free from @Earionduil.

Rangor

I cheat and buy soulpiercers every time I go runewarden. (really should stop trading them in.)

Cynlael

Rangor said:

I cheat and buy soulpiercers every time I go runewarden. (really should stop trading them in.)

Hi Earionduil alt.

Valdus

Do we have a list of breakpoints? Or is that what Achilles posted?

Antonius

There's never been agreed upon pricing for weapons and armour. People will pay what they're willing to pay, and that will reflect who is in the market for an item at the time and how much they have available to spend.

I'd say 25k for a 223 speed rapier is horrendously overpriced unless the other stats are extremely good because that speed's just really low.

Katzchen

Antonius said:

There's never been agreed upon pricing for weapons and armour. People will pay what they're willing to pay, and that will reflect who is in the market for an item at the time and how much they have available to spend.

I'd say 25k for a 223 speed rapier is horrendously overpriced unless the other stats are extremely good because that speed's just really low.

It's actually pretty rare to get a 223+ speed rapier. They are more expensive these days, because less people forging like crazy. I forged 10 223 out of 1000, and only 1 227, nothing better. That's 455k of steel, and many hours spend forging. Okay, clearly I didn't get very lucky, but even at 25k per you'd be forging at a loss just on materials unless you did get some amazing rapiers. I actually donate all rapiers of those speeds to my guild, so I'm losing a ton of gold on it, but I can see why everyone doesn't want to sell them cheaper.

223 speed is a decent rapier, the only reason people think otherwise, and see 25k is expensive is because they were spoilt by the likes of Peak, Trey, and Salik churning out tens of thousands of them, and bringing down the market value.

Achilles

25k is about 30 minutes of hunting by a knowledgeable motivated dragon.  Forging is really only cost effective for midbie knights but then those guys probably dont have a hammer of forging. 

Also in general the 223 rapiers will have better to hits and damage.  I see a lot of low to mid 80 damage rapiers with solid tohit (150ish) with 223 speed that are better than level 2 artie rapiers.

Valdus

Agreed 100% with Katzchen. The majority of Rapiers turn out at less than 200 speed. I'm willing to say at least 70% of rapiers forged do so.

I've been keeping a log of everything I've forged. I'll post the entire thing as soon as I get my first 230+ Rapier just to give the community a better idea of how much crap Forgers have to wade through in order to get something decent.

It takes me about 2-3 minutes per  Rapier, by the way. When Katzchen said it took her many hours to get 1000 rapiers, we're talking days, here. At 2 minutes per, 5000 rapiers would take 166.6 hours of nonstop forging.

Eld

Valdus said:

Agreed 100% with Katzchen. The majority of Rapiers turn out at less than 200 speed. I'm willing to say at least 70% of rapiers forged do so.

About 83% without a hammer, if Sena's calculator is accurate. Only about 2% with a hammer, though.

Katzchen

Eld said:

Valdus said:

Agreed 100% with Katzchen. The majority of Rapiers turn out at less than 200 speed. I'm willing to say at least 70% of rapiers forged do so.

About 83% without a hammer, if Sena's calculator is accurate. Only about 2% with a hammer, though.

Um, no. Most rapiers are under 200 speed with a hammer, or at -least- around half, with most of the rest being below 211 speed.

Valdus

Eld said:

Valdus said:

Agreed 100% with Katzchen. The majority of Rapiers turn out at less than 200 speed. I'm willing to say at least 70% of rapiers forged do so.

About 83% without a hammer, if Sena's calculator is accurate. Only about 2% with a hammer, though.

Are you nuts? I bought a hammer before I did any forging whatsoever, and I have the recorded forgings to back up my numbers if you want me to go ahead and post them.

2%? Ridiculous.

Eld

Valdus said:

Eld said:

Valdus said:

Agreed 100% with Katzchen. The majority of Rapiers turn out at less than 200 speed. I'm willing to say at least 70% of rapiers forged do so.

About 83% without a hammer, if Sena's calculator is accurate. Only about 2% with a hammer, though.

Are you nuts? I bought a hammer before I did any forging whatsoever, and I have the recorded forgings to back up my numbers if you want me to go ahead and post them.

2%? Ridiculous.

Like I said, just going by @Sena's forging calculator. Could be buggy.

Valdus

Eld said:

Valdus said:

Eld said:

Valdus said:

Agreed 100% with Katzchen. The majority of Rapiers turn out at less than 200 speed. I'm willing to say at least 70% of rapiers forged do so.

About 83% without a hammer, if Sena's calculator is accurate. Only about 2% with a hammer, though.

Are you nuts? I bought a hammer before I did any forging whatsoever, and I have the recorded forgings to back up my numbers if you want me to go ahead and post them.

2%? Ridiculous.

Like I said, just going by @Sena's forging calculator. Could be buggy.

If it's saying people wiht a Hammer only get 2% of their forgings under 200 speed then it's flat out wrong, not buggy.

http://pastebin.com/DDhFpkSR

That is with a Hammer of Forging and the Master Forger trait.

Also @Antonius if you actually look, you'll notice there's only 4 223's in there with the highest of the batch being a 227, and it's got accuracy that I wouldn't use. 66/146/227

505 Rapiers. 252500 gold worth of steel. Over 1000 minutes of solid forging.

Eld

Valdus said:

Eld said:

Valdus said:

Eld said:

Valdus said:

Agreed 100% with Katzchen. The majority of Rapiers turn out at less than 200 speed. I'm willing to say at least 70% of rapiers forged do so.

About 83% without a hammer, if Sena's calculator is accurate. Only about 2% with a hammer, though.

Are you nuts? I bought a hammer before I did any forging whatsoever, and I have the recorded forgings to back up my numbers if you want me to go ahead and post them.

2%? Ridiculous.

Like I said, just going by @Sena's forging calculator. Could be buggy.

If it's saying people wiht a Hammer only get 2% of their forgings under 200 speed then it's flat out wrong, not buggy.

http://pastebin.com/DDhFpkSR

That is with a Hammer of Forging and the Master Forger trait.

Also @Antonius if you actually look, you'll notice there's only 4 223's in there with the highest of the batch being a 227, and it's got accuracy that I wouldn't use. 66/146/227

Ah, no, just user error, I think. Forgot to halve the number of refining steps for the hammer. So 17% at least 200 without a hammer, 23% with.

Valdus

That's much more realistic.

So 77% under 200.

25k definitely isn't expensive for something that's hard to get.

Antonius

You're making the mistake of thinking that hard to get equals worth buying, and for a 223 speed rapier without very good other stats it really doesn't. I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult to sell a 223 speed rapier for 25k, but that doesn't mean I personally think it's worth that much.

Valdus

Antonius said:

You're making the mistake of thinking that hard to get equals worth buying, <snip>

Sorry, that's how it works. The fact that a 223 is less than easy means that the 227-235 range is going to be expensive, and the 243+ range utterly crazy.

Jules

It all boils down to how many poor bastards from the player base at a given time are willing to tink tink away for countless hours... It's the reason we have so many truly exceptional forged weapons and it probably also means the cost of production in terms of time and money isn't favorable to forgers. I sure wouldn't want to try to make bank off it.

Jules

The way to make any decent money seems to be batches from what I read around here. As a buyer, I'd sure want to have absolute trust that the forger wouldn't be tempted to keep prime rapiers himself though. You'd want to have a sterling rep. EDIT: I'd take heart that Antonius seems to be saying there aren't many "sweatshop forgers" right now.

Valdus

Jules said:

The way to make any decent money seems to be batches from what I read around here. As a buyer, I'd sure want to have absolute trust that the forger wouldn't be tempted to keep prime rapiers himself though. You'd want to have a sterling rep. EDIT: I'd take heart that Antonius seems to be saying there aren't many "sweatshop forgers" right now.

Of course, if there's someone who doesn't mind forging forever for nothing in return, it's going to be harder to sell forged goods at a reasonable price.

My point is that since a 235 rapier is a 0.003 probability, it should be expensive.

Jovolo

Forging/Weaponry overhaul can't come too soon. Rapier pricing is dumb in the way that you want it to be and the way that it is currently for both purchaser and forger. 

Two years ago, I could get a pair of 70/150/235 for 30k, 15k each. A year or so ago, I had to pay 35 credits for an 82/158/231. Nowadays, I'd have to pay an extortionate amount of credits for something resembling those rapiers. Neither situation is reasonable for both parties.

Jules

Oh those will be. Whether the actual payoff will be "fair" for the amount of time and comms I'm not sure, but everyone will perk up at those, even when there are are ridiculous amounts of rapiers being forged.

Antonius

Most of your market doesn't know, understand or care about the probability of forging a particular rapier though. They only care about how effective it is, and for a 223 speed rapier the answer is usually "not very". A 235 speed rapier is a totally different matter, and they're worth considerably more - not because there's a lower chance of forging them but because the gains from using them are higher.

For the small number of forgers who own, or at least stock, shops then they get to set their prices; for the majority of rapier sales by other forgers the price is dictated by the buyers, not the seller.

Valdus

Antonius said:

Most of your market doesn't know, understand or care about the probability of forging a particular rapier though.

Then these people wont ever get a fast rapier from me and I'll end up using it myself. I'm not too worried about this.

Tesha

You should not expect to pay anything less than 100 credits for weapons with 239+ speed and decent to-hit. Hopefully the weaponry changes will come with some kind of plan to prevent absolutely screwing people who bought super expensive weapons!

Jules

If you're talking forged, I assume the plan is that they go poof.

Katzchen

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a pair of say 70/150/223 rapiers. They're not amazing, but they'll do fine in combat. They are effective. Anything higher just leaves more room for error, and starts making pure damage kills an option.

Jules

Any updates on when forging changes will come and what they entail yet?

Tesha

What is this 'go poof' silliness? I really hope there is some kind of better plan, or that this never actually happens. Perfectly fine with paying a hundred credits for a good rapier every few rl years.