Rob F wrote:
Mike Steele wrote: I would aim for $300 for Relics and $1000 for Legendaries.
These are the prices a Relic and Legendary typically sell for on the secondary market NOW, it's not the cost of what it would take to make the item by buying all of the components.
Historically, if you wanted to craft a Relic by purchasing it's components you'd be around $450 and for a Legendary about $1,500.
The sum of the components has always been higher than what the crafted Tokens sell for on the secondary market.
All that being said I think the current system of one UR + Trade Goods and GP for a Relic, and one Relic + two UR's + Trade Goods and GP/Wish Ring for a Legendary is ok, however if TD keeps loading the treasure boxes with them then it's not going to matter much what price they shoot for in Trade Goods because people will just buy them from other people instead of crafting them.
Yes. Crafting has gotten very skewed. It's almost always cheaper to buy Relics and Legendaries on the secondary market (because, presumably, the prices are driven down by people finding them in dungeon treasure). I ran the numbers for all my transmutes last year. It was cheaper, overall, to buy than to transmute, in every case. The only reason I transmuted anything was if I already had most of the ingredients. It was less efficient to do it that way, but a smaller immediate outlay. (Yes, I could have sold the ingredients I already had and just bought the transmuted item and come out ahead on price, but, that was slightly more hassle, and I like the idea of transmuting, even if it's gotten really upside-down price-wise.)
Typical relics sell for around $300, and typical legendaries sell for around $1000 (some are less, some are more). When you factor in gold pieces (especially the Eldritch ore bar), and a wish ring, and a couple of URs, and golden fleece, and all the other trade goods, the outlay to upgrade from a $300 item to a $1000 item is far more than $700. I feel like $300-$350 for relics and $1000-$1200 are pretty fair prices, and, as far as I know, those prices have been pretty consistent for a couple years and are mostly determined by the secondary market. But, of all the ingredients also have a price determined by the secondary market. To make transmuting even slightly competitive with the market costs, you'd need to drastically reduce the ingredients in the recipes (of course, that would make relics and legendaries far easier and cheaper to transmute, and that might drive their prices down a lot further). Even if new legendaries are on a similar power level to old legendaries, cheaper recipes would probably render a lot of old legendaries obsolete. What's worse than that, is a lot of newer legendaries are MUCH better than older legendaries. Some older items like TaMor's Bracers, Surtr's Girdle, and Pharacus' Cloak are only slightly better than more recent URs. A move that puts more legendaries in circulation would drive power creep at a disturbing rate. Power creep, if not dealt with soon will wreck the game. (I have some ideas about dealing with power creep, but that's a different topic.)