I’m leveling my Alchemy so I need 2-star herbs to complete the patron orders with the concentration I have. My herbalism is kind of low so I get mostly 1-star herbs. I have a spell to “refine” 1-star to 2-star at a cost of 5 to 1. However, 1-star sell for about 90% of 2-star on the AH so, I just sell all my 1-star an buy 2-star.
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It’s been that way for a long time. For most things you can craft it’s better to buy the final product as it’s usually cheaper than the mats to make it.
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it’s like that with most mats now, not just herb, rank 1/2 are about the same, rank 3 is typically more expensive unless the market is totally flooded. That means crafted consumables follow the same pattern as well, which is nice.
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Sometimes prices are just wonky.
I like to think it’s botters and AH moguls battling it out.
That’s the way it is for most materials. There’s no way that a 2 star will cost 5x a 1 star in most cases. This is especially true when most of the gatherers get enough skill that they don’t get 1 star anymore. 2 star almost becomes the new baseline.
There’s generally a jump from 2-3 star though as that’s much more difficult to do until towards the end of an expansion when the gap will close.
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I play on a high population server and it’s not unusual for rank 2 to be the cheapest version of a herb on the market. You only need the lowest quality if it’s for a quest particularly requesting that version. I think there has been some attempt to retain value in low rank herbs this expansion so even a fully maxed herbalist can still gather r1 occasionally but that doesn’t change r2 from being the most common herb and mostly results in disappointment/frustration for the maxed herbalist.
I personally do not like grading ingredients and especially enchanting mats. I think quality should be reserved for a finished product and even then not the way it is calculated now but sorry, I digress.
The longer the expansion continues, the more players are advancing their gathering trees and getting more two star or three star mats.
Dragonflight, at the end, there was plenty of gold and silver quality and even or less copper quality.
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I’m just wondering who is buying all the one-star herbs? I’m guessing people who have maxed out ink-making and the like.
1-star mats are required for the weekly quests that don’t accept 2 or 3 star mats.
Most patron orders are fine to do with 1-star mats.
I have a large warband and often worry more about my stockpile of 1-star mats than my 2-star mats (but I also don’t buy any from the AH)
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Refining has, from a profit perspective, never worked.