[CRAFT] Transmutation Alchemy - Nonprofitable?

[Necalli]

Alright, I've been doing a bit of experimentation with merchandising components made via alchemy.

While alchemy is a good way for a wizards to supply themselves with components, trying to merchant them effectively is a monster. My PC knows a good amount of formation locations, but even then, supplying himself and more than one other wizard is nigh impossible to do (In a timely fashion, without logging an insane amount of hours).

What is even more interesting is, most of the time, it is just him hitting the formations to make a grab at the shards. Imagine if it was not only him, but two, or three, or ten other alchemists vying for the shards. Bloodshed. War of the Shards...

What I was trying to do was create another source for components (mainly for the races who do not have access to many cities or are otherwise enemies with the few PC's that are active merchants) and become filthy rich, but that is beside the point. With alchemy and foraging alone, again, a wizard can supply themselves and *maybe* one other. (effectively that is)

This is the reason most of the wizards who know alchemy mainly just use it to make components purely for themselves. Calculating the time it takes to mine enough shards to make a decent amount of stones, then dividing the profit by the time it took, you get far less than you would by simply going somewhere and camping out to bash mobs all day. To actually make a reasonable profit, the seller would have to charge unreasonable prices. (Somewhere along the lines of ten platinum per stone.)

Maybe bump up formation repops a little bit? Or add more formations? Or some sort of system like you did for teacher/scholar feats and - Merchant licenses easier to get, but some sort of restriction and a quest (like trades have) to get it - let the dice just fall how they will.

[Nysan]

Speaking on behalf of Gilain, a long.... long time PC merchant, I'll try and tackle this.

1. PC merchants: Hard road to walk. Anyone can sell something they looted off that last gobbie, but to make a life out of buying, selling, trading, stocking, and locating items of interest is a full time job, not to mention any other activities your character may be involved in: trades, faith matters, adventuring, organizations, ect. I'm not complaining. Gilain is my favorite character and I think I have pulled of the lil trader bit fairly well. But it is a hard road to walk and not for everyone.

2. Liciences: To the best of my knowledge, only 2 characters actually possess the liciences to buy from component warehouses and unfortunately they are not really around any more. Far as I know, no new ones are being given, I forget why off-hand... and I have tried hard to get one.

3. Shard amounts: We have asked for shard amounts to be addressed before. Far as I know, it is still under discussion. I do agree that collecting shards for personal means is hard enough, let alone any surplus... especially if someone else is gathering at the same time. Also asked for new recipes, such as black onyx gems and lodestones, but thats another issue.

4. Out-of-city means: Always been on the side of non-shop means to attain every component in-game. Its one of the many reasons why old Gilain stocks many spell bits.

Hope this was helpful...

[Gwain]

Speaking on behalf of Gilain, a long.... long time PC merchant, I'll try and tackle this.
1. PC merchants: Hard road to walk. Anyone can sell something they looted off that last gobbie, but to make a life out of buying, selling, trading, stocking, and locating items of interest is a full time job, not to mention any other activities your character may be involved in: trades, faith matters, adventuring, organizations, ect. I'm not complaining. Gilain is my favorite character and I think I have pulled of the lil trader bit fairly well. But it is a hard road to walk and not for everyone.

I agree and I say from experience that it is difficult, but the rewards outweigh the hardships.

[Nysan]

Speaking on behalf of Gilain, a long.... long time PC merchant, I'll try and tackle this.
1. PC merchants: Hard road to walk. Anyone can sell something they looted off that last gobbie, but to make a life out of buying, selling, trading, stocking, and locating items of interest is a full time job, not to mention any other activities your character may be involved in: trades, faith matters, adventuring, organizations, ect. I'm not complaining. Gilain is my favorite character and I think I have pulled of the lil trader bit fairly well. But it is a hard road to walk and not for everyone.

I agree and I say from experience that it is difficult, but the rewards outweigh the hardships.

Very true. Wouldn't give up old Gilain for anything!

[Eltsac]

Well I have no personnal experience in this as I still need take lessons from Gilain, but I have always seen alchemy as an alternative way to get components, not as a trade to make money. But then it's just a personnal feeling.

I don't know what was the staff plans when they added alchemy in game.

El

[Gwain]

It was originally a plan to supplement components available in stocks as a self-sufficient means of resupply. Before that, the majority of components were in player run shops that were semi abandoned or administered by admins. These shops often ran out or in some cases components were purchased in bulk, repeatedly. One reason for the change was a desire for self sustaining component culture, meaning that players made their own components, but at a rate that slowed down hoarding and allowed for some ic effort to gain them. The idea was to train some player characters after lengthy rp the means of creating the components and to have them discover the recipes necessary to create them. They would in turn train others and those others would train others, thus self sufficiency. This was also accompanied by a way through the process of creating things other than components which I won't go into detail about here, because of ic info. These would work in tandem with spell effects and reduce or compliment the reliance on components in some cases. Its a complex system that I find works well depending on how you approach it. If you buy your components from pc merchants that donate their time exclusively to alchemy, you usually have little difficulty gaining components. This is of course based on how often you use the components themselves. If you use them a lot you may disagree. The other benefit is that you become self sufficient. The natural negative is supply and demand. Depends on how often you use things up and so.

[Isolrem]

The natural negative is that any spell will not be used if it has a reasonable alternative with a cheaper cost, by except all but a few of the most hardcore characters, and consequently the effective number of spells commonly seen in game is half or less than the number of actually coded ones, and there is much less diversity amongst spellcasters because of it.

which is a shame, imho.