TOPIC: QTR 2025 Beta 4 (with recipes)

Endgame wrote:

Rob F wrote: Safehold 1&2 are way too light. 25% of what they should be.

What possible benefit would that have? They don't do anything, and if you price them too high it makes it an easy decision to just skip both the safeholds and the enabled lackies. As you've said in the past, there is really no reason to play with more than a rare build, so why would more than 1-3 people pay $16,000+ for a SH I?

I'd argue it's likely better to lower the cost of the Safeholds and add some cost to various lackies so you can get people in the door, and then get them to spend some TG to get, say, grunnel.

Agree. Jeff originally estimated that a Safehold II would cost $800 and Safehold I would cost $1000. Using full year average auction prices (which are lower than current prices of trade goods), the cost with these recipes comes to $1737 for Safehold II and $3204 for Safehold I. There's an argument to be made that these are too high.

A few recipe comments specific to the Enhanced and Exalted transmutes.
* It seems the recipes are inconsistent in their use of monster trophies. For example, the Enhanced Bracers of Carnage require a monster trophy, but the +1 Archer's Buckler does not. I think providing non-Fleece, non-Earcuff of Greater Glory uses for monster trophies is always welcome and would love to see them worked into more 3* and 4* recipes.

That said, I love that Crown of the Tavern is transmutable entirely with tokens you pull from 10 packs, so could be transmuted by a new player at their very first convention.

Earcuff of Thor's Bliss seems to be the only recipe that allows 1,000 GP in "loose change". Is that intentional?

Shirt of Modest Luck seems a bit steep for a token that players may outgrow. Is this an opportunity to bring in monster trophies in lieu of some of the Minotaur Hide, which could be difficult for newer players to gather? Perhaps also add in some Philosopher's Stone to the mix and decrease Plank/Silk accordingly, as 2025 seems heavier in Uncommon tokens that transmute to Stone.

These recipes broadly have way too much Enchanter’s Munition.

An 8k order contains around the following quantities of trade goods:

43× Alchemist's Ink
53× Alchemist's Parchment
12× Aragonite
115× Darkwood Plank
72× Dwarven Steel
12× Elven Bismuth
20× Enchanter's Munition
40× Minotaur Hide
134× Mystic Silk
10× Oil of Enchantment
93× Philosopher's Stone
45,000 GP

Note that among the trade 1 token types, EM is 1/2 to 1/5th as abundant as the others.

A Safehold II (Under Construction) token requires 40 AI, DS, EM, and MH.

To get 40 AI, DS, and MH from random token 10 packs one would need to buy around $8,000 of 10-packs.

To get 40 EM from random token 10-packs one would need to buy twice that, $16,000 of 10-packs.

To transmute the exalted +1 Archers Buckler requires 2 EM, one would need to buy $800 worth of random token 10-packs to get 2 EM.


I feel as though every year TD puts forward recipes with EM in similar quantities to other Trade 1 items, and eventually adjusts it down. Since it keeps happening, I’m going to stop commenting about it after this, as maybe I am missing something essential about how this will shake out, or maybe TD wants EM scarcity to be the gating factor for several transmute recipes.

Mike Steele wrote: It seems like there is a real problem right now with a glut of Ultra-Rares and prices falling through the floor. I'm concerned that might start impacting new token sales.

I know the Omni Cubes and Orbs have recipes designed to pull some URs out of circulation, but I doubt enough of them will be made to make much of an impact.

Maybe the Relic recipes could include one and Legendaries could include two "Any standard UR from 2018 or more recent" ingredients. It wouldn't add too much cost to the recipes, as URs are readily available for $20 or less now (some as low as $10). Maybe that would help put a bit of a floor on the UR prices.

A strategy to increase the value of URs by including arbitrary URs in legendary recipes would need to be much more aggressively costed than 1 UR per legendary.

To transmute a legendary one needs roughly $8,000 worth of random token 10 packs in materials. That same 8k order will kick out around 30 URs into the market.

I’d think 5 or even 10 random URs per legendary might be required to meaningfully change the value of miscellaneous URs in the secondary market.

But rather than doing that it might be better to make Legendary recipes always include some number of Omni-cubes and Omni-orbs as well as their other ingredients.

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Mike Steele wrote: It seems like there is a real problem right now with a glut of Ultra-Rares and prices falling through the floor. I'm concerned that might start impacting new token sales.

I know the Omni Cubes and Orbs have recipes designed to pull some URs out of circulation, but I doubt enough of them will be made to make much of an impact.

Maybe the Relic recipes could include one and Legendaries could include two "Any standard UR from 2018 or more recent" ingredients. It wouldn't add too much cost to the recipes, as URs are readily available for $20 or less now (some as low as $10). Maybe that would help put a bit of a floor on the UR prices.

A strategy to increase the value of URs by including arbitrary URs in legendary recipes would need to me much more aggressive than 1 UR per legendary.

To transmute a legendary one needs roughly $8,000 worth of random token 10 packs in materials. That same 8k order will kick out around 30 URs into the market.

I’d think 5 or even 10 random URs per legendary might be required to meaningfully change the value of miscellaneous URs in the secondary market.

But rather than doing that it might be better to make Legendary recipes always include some number of Omni-cubes and Omni-orbs as well as their other ingredients.

I'm totally OK with upping the amount of "any 2018 or later" URs above what I mentioned. Even if Legendary Recipes had five required, that's still only around $100 or less. I do agree with you that the numbers might need to be higher than I'd recommended to make a meaningful impact.

Dave wrote: Jeff originally estimated that a Safehold II would cost $800 and Safehold I would cost $1000.

Do you by chance have a source for that?

Druegar wrote:

Dave wrote: Jeff originally estimated that a Safehold II would cost $800 and Safehold I would cost $1000.

Do you by chance have a source for that?

Will go searching. I know I copy/pasted it from something Jeff put out.

Dave wrote:

Druegar wrote:

Dave wrote: Jeff originally estimated that a Safehold II would cost $800 and Safehold I would cost $1000.

Do you by chance have a source for that?

Will go searching. I know I copy/pasted it from something Jeff put out.

And did those costs include the “under construction” step, taking things all the way from Safehold III to Safehold II? Or just from Safehold II (Under Construction) to Safehold II.

Dave wrote:

Druegar wrote:

Dave wrote: Jeff originally estimated that a Safehold II would cost $800 and Safehold I would cost $1000.

Do you by chance have a source for that?

Will go searching. I know I copy/pasted it from something Jeff put out.

Still looking, but this is what it looked like and I copy/pasted it into a document I worked on.

Dave wrote:

Endgame wrote:

Rob F wrote: Safehold 1&2 are way too light. 25% of what they should be.

What possible benefit would that have? They don't do anything, and if you price them too high it makes it an easy decision to just skip both the safeholds and the enabled lackies. As you've said in the past, there is really no reason to play with more than a rare build, so why would more than 1-3 people pay $16,000+ for a SH I?

I'd argue it's likely better to lower the cost of the Safeholds and add some cost to various lackies so you can get people in the door, and then get them to spend some TG to get, say, grunnel.

Agree. Jeff originally estimated that a Safehold II would cost $800 and Safehold I would cost $1000. Using full year average auction prices (which are lower than current prices of trade goods), the cost with these recipes comes to $1737 for Safehold II and $3204 for Safehold I. There's an argument to be made that these are too high.

SH2 is about what I expected. SH1 is too high in my opinion. It’s about double SH2, I think it should be more like 1.5x the cost of SH2.

Remember Mythic tokens are coming in 2026. We won’t know those recipes until next year but I expect they will be even higher than SH1.

Matthew Hayward wrote: These recipes broadly have way too much Enchanter’s Munition.

An 8k order contains around the following quantities of trade goods:

43× Alchemist's Ink
53× Alchemist's Parchment
12× Aragonite
115× Darkwood Plank
72× Dwarven Steel
12× Elven Bismuth
20× Enchanter's Munition
40× Minotaur Hide
134× Mystic Silk
10× Oil of Enchantment
93× Philosopher's Stone
45,000 GP

Note that among the trade 1 token types, EM is 1/2 to 1/5th as abundant as the others.

A Safehold II (Under Construction) token requires 40 AI, DS, EM, and MH.

To get 40 AI, DS, and MH from random token 10 packs one would need to buy around $8,000 of 10-packs.

To get 40 EM from random token 10-packs one would need to buy twice that, $16,000 of 10-packs.

To transmute the exalted +1 Archers Buckler requires 2 EM, one would need to buy $800 worth of random token 10-packs to get 2 EM.


I feel as though every year TD puts forward recipes with EM in similar quantities to other Trade 1 items, and eventually adjusts it down. Since it keeps happening, I’m going to stop commenting about it after this, as maybe TD wants EM scarcity to be the gating factor for several transmute recipes.

+1 I noticed this when I presented an alternate legendary recipe in a prior post. When I did the list, I made Trade 2 uniform and seriously thought about treating EM as if it were a trade 2.

I can 100% confirm that EM seems to be the blocker for most bigger transmutes now. I just set aside everything for 2 SH3's and the only pieces I didn't have enough of were elven bismuth and enchanter's munitions (and EB was my fault having burned through a bunch on a trade.) In general, I find out of treasure draws and 10 packs from runs (as well as from 8k orders), that I have about the same amount of Aragonite as Enchanter's Munitions (likely a little more Arag.)

Looking at the most recent 8k order super-condensed, it only provided 20 EM compared to 40 Minotaur Hides (the next fewest trade 1.) By comparison, the same 8k order had 12 Arag, 12 EB, and 10 OE. Trade 1 was 43 AI, 53 AP, 115 DP, 72 DS, 20 EM, 40 MH, 134 MS, and 93 PS. That makes EM twice as scarce as any other trade good, and three times as scarce as the average trade 1 (a 2024 8k order had an average of 71.25 each of all the trade 1 goods.) The ratio was .28 EM for every 1 trade 1 token.

I'd recommend the recipes be adjusted to have a ratio of approximately 1 EM for every 3 to 3.25 of the average trade 1 and max at 1/2 the DS/MH rates. I'd recommend adjusting the recipes as follows (using the ratio of .28 EM to the average single trade 1 per recipe):
Archer's buckler reduce from 2 to 1 EM
Bibwick reduce from 5 to 3 EM
Greater Bead reduce from 5 to 3 EM
Greater Eyepatch reduce from 5 to 3 EM
IS Sapphire relic reduce from 5 to 2 EM (10 fewer trade 1's than the eyepatch drops the ratio slightly)
IS Sapphire legendary has the correct ratio so stick with 5 EM (since there are 130 non EM trade 1 goods required) (seems high but that's a different topic.)
Odin's eyepatch legendary reduce from 5 to 3 EM (yes - the math works out to 3.6 but EM is still scarce so I rounded down this time )
Safehold 2 (under construction) reduce from 20 EM to 12 EM
Safehold 1 (under construction) reduce from 40 EM to 22 EM
Sidekick reduce from 10 EM to 4 EM
Omni Cube reduce from 5 EM to 4 EM
Omni Orb has the correct ratio at 2 EM

Overall the recipes with the most significant hurdles on EM (by ratio) are the Archer's Buckler (2x the ratio of trade 1 v availability), IS Sapphire Relic (2 1/2 times the ratio of trade 1 v availability), and the Sidekicks at 2.5x the ratio of trade 1 v availability.

The Safeholds and Sidekicks alone would create pretty substantial market problems exacerbating unusually high EM prices and make it much harder for everyone to do transmutes. The secondary market and 8K auctions are selling EM for $8-$10 - just a hair less than Aragonite.

Ironically, my biggest concern on the Enchanter's Munitions increase in requirements is for the Archer's Buckler. Even at 1 EM, it will price out most new players as their first transmute. If an 8K order has 20 EM, then a single EM will require 48 ten packs (more than a $250 order.)

It becomes a pretty unrealistic transmute for a new player without hitting the secondary market. Any recipe with 2 EM needed is closer to a 1K order in trade goods to get there. Unless recipes are adjusted, the EM market will likely get even worse increasing the cost to well above Aragonite.

Dave wrote:

Dave wrote:

Druegar wrote:

Dave wrote: Jeff originally estimated that a Safehold II would cost $800 and Safehold I would cost $1000.

Do you by chance have a source for that?

Will go searching. I know I copy/pasted it from something Jeff put out.

Still looking, but this is what it looked like and I copy/pasted it into a document I worked on.

I seem to recall Jeff saying when he posted that, that the Safehold I, II, and maybe III costs were just placeholders, but I'm not positive.