On my server I’m noticing that many quality two mats are cheaper on the AH than the level one versions. Especially Serevite ore, any ideas on why that would be? I always assumed better quality = more expensive.
This is just my theory but I think it’s because people are getting all rank 2 and 3 mats now when farming. I’m looking at my bags and I have 0 r1 serevite, 200 r2 and 100 rank 3.
This gives schmucky the clown more opportunities to undercut on the ah and forces everyone else to post at that lower price. So r2 and r3 mats keep getting lower in price where r1 mats don’t have as many posts and undercutters.
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Yeah it’s more or less supply and demand, with the added wrinkle that most volume sellers are using some kind of addon to sell, and that addon isn’t saying “hey, I should look at the price of 2* and 3* mats as well to price these 1* mats”. So they only undercut the 1* price, and the lower volume means it comes down slower in price.
If you try selling 1* mats you absolutely should look at the prices of the higher ranks too for a sanity check, or you’ll just get them back in your mailbox tomorrow.
Just less supply, less people competing.
The other oddity is with some professions ( Alchemy most notably ) Rank 3 crafts can only be done with inspiration. But the inspiration bonus is so large you don’t need good mats. And if you have a moderate amount of skill, you only need rank one or two mats for a rank 2 craft.
So you can craft with the lowest mats possible, for a rank 2, and inspiration gives you a rank 3.
So in the end either knowledge spent on skill was pointless, or higher quality mats are pointless.
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Sure you can craft with lowest mats and get top result with inspiration, BUT that is only under big assumption that lowest mats are cheapest one, middle ones a bit more expensive and top ones a bit more expensive.
Since this isnt the case with q1 mats often being most expensive, question is who is buying q1 and keeping its price high?
In herbs rank 1 and 2 were about the same. Sometimes rank 1 is cheaper sometimes rank 2.
But once you’ve leveled up your alchemy and phials to the point you can make phials, rank doesn’t matter. The cheapest will work. And this is probably why the prices are weird. Rank doesn’t matter so prices are entirely based on scarcity. And with it being impossible to farm rank one herbs shortly after you start leveling up your herbing, there’s not a constant influx of new sellers to drive the price down. But there is a influx of sellers on rank 2 herbs so sometimes the rank 2 price dips below rank 1 prices.
As for buyers for rank 1’s it could be people assuming rank 1’s are cheaper or it could be the sellers can price around rank 2 and wait out the fluctuations on rank 2’s.
And if rank mattered the prices would reflect the relationship between how many rank 1’s it takes to make a rank 2 and how many rank 2’s it takes to make a rank 3. That this relationship has no bearing on prices is kind of a smoking gun for the system being a mess.
Possible band aid would be being able reverse the mat upgrade process and downgrade herbs to get more of the lower rank.
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Thank you! This explanation makes a lot sense.
There are some specific uses for 1-star mats. Like, with ore, you can only refine 1-star to 2-star until you get to a certain skill. So, maybe people are buying those for that purpose to level the profession.
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