TOPIC: PART TWO: Possible New $8k Super Condensed Option? Trade 2 Option

Amanda’s suggestion to look at a longer average made me curious, so I ran the same 2027 Standard $8K TG basket through progressively longer full-season averages. The result surprised me. Pricing basis in this exhibit is the value of an identical 2027 Standard TG basket



The big takeaway for me is that it really doesn’t matter much which reasonable long-term window we use. The 2-, 3-, and 4-year full-season averages are all within $16, or less than 1%, of each other.
The anomalies are 2026—the high-water mark among the full seasons—and especially the Last 5, which reflect the unusual late-cycle pressures I mentioned earlier. And that effect is overwhelmingly driven by Bismuth and Oil:



So I absolutely agree that Bismuth and Oil need more supply. The standard 2027 pack already moves both from 10 → 13 (+30%), which should relieve some pricing pressure before the alternate option even comes into play. Both Jeff’s proposal and mine then take them to 20.

My strong concern is using the peak of that shortage to determine how deeply we cut everything else. That risks creating new bottlenecks and also makes the package much less useful to the people most likely to choose a transmute-focused $8K option.

I don’t think an $8K pack needs to hand someone a complete Mythic recipe. But someone personally spending $8K while chasing Mythics should probably come out reasonably close on the ordinary TGs. Likewise, many of these orders are splits—Amanda and I have done a lot of them—where several Nightmare/Epic players each take a share while chasing the new Legendaries. So I stress-tested both proposals against those two very plausible use cases.



Jeff’s proposal ends up significantly short with tougher TGs like Ink, Steel, and Hide. My proposal is primarily short on items like Plank and Silk where the secondary market or player supply out to be robust.

Ben’s “nuking everything else from orbit” comment keeps coming back to me. I think we can fix Bismuth/Oil without swinging so far that we manufacture the next shortage—especially with the Coin of Wealth, continued Mythic construction, and the new Legendaries all putting significant demand on the Trade 1s.

The Last 5 tell us where the shortage has been. The recipes tell us where demand is going. Given how incredibly stable the 2-, 3-, and 4-year averages are, I’d use the longer-term pricing signal and let the 2027 mix account for both.

Using the last 5 as part of the data to make this alternate Super Condensed option is really bad for trying to make this TG breakdown make sense. Once we remove the Super Condensed from using the set as a base, we really need to consider how the auction might break down for something like this year's set. For starters, if using the Last 5 data, how much did the Path Fragment 4 go for in those auctions? They were practically free, as the choke point on making that token was in the Fragment 2 and 3, which won't be the case when it comes to the Codexes, as you can use any 4 to make the Familiar, and they are Best in Slot if just being used as is. They will never get as cheap as the Path Fragment 4, so that would lower the cost of everything else in the auctions. We also have to consider that we have a brand new Treasure Enhancer token, and one that will be able to be used at the last 2 VTD's of the year, so people will be bidding up the PYP's to get their hands on those as soon as possible, as well as the UR's to make the very desirable Legendaries coming out this year.

I fell like we should really give Scott's version of the breakdown more of a look, as it takes a more long term approach to how to build out this alternate version of the Super Condensed, that doesn't cause further problems down the road.

Ben Krupa wrote: Using the last 5 as part of the data to make this alternate Super Condensed option is really bad for trying to make this TG breakdown make sense. Once we remove the Super Condensed from using the set as a base, we really need to consider how the auction might break down for something like this year's set. For starters, if using the Last 5 data, how much did the Path Fragment 4 go for in those auctions? They were practically free, as the choke point on making that token was in the Fragment 2 and 3, which won't be the case when it comes to the Codexes, as you can use any 4 to make the Familiar, and they are Best in Slot if just being used as is. They will never get as cheap as the Path Fragment 4, so that would lower the cost of everything else in the auctions. We also have to consider that we have a brand new Treasure Enhancer token, and one that will be able to be used at the last 2 VTD's of the year, so people will be bidding up the PYP's to get their hands on those as soon as possible, as well as the UR's to make the very desirable Legendaries coming out this year.

I fell like we should really give Scott's version of the breakdown more of a look, as it takes a more long term approach to how to build out this alternate version of the Super Condensed, that doesn't cause further problems down the road.

Is this statement correct?

"when it comes to the Codexes, as you can use any 4 to make the Familiar"

I must have missed that somewhere.

Since this is OPTIONAL, won’t it basically mean that super condensed 8k are likely to be OE and EB heavy until the supply evens out. Then people will go back to standard super condensed 8ks, especially in auctions where you still need to fund the 8k.

Rob F wrote:

Ben Krupa wrote: Using the last 5 as part of the data to make this alternate Super Condensed option is really bad for trying to make this TG breakdown make sense. Once we remove the Super Condensed from using the set as a base, we really need to consider how the auction might break down for something like this year's set. For starters, if using the Last 5 data, how much did the Path Fragment 4 go for in those auctions? They were practically free, as the choke point on making that token was in the Fragment 2 and 3, which won't be the case when it comes to the Codexes, as you can use any 4 to make the Familiar, and they are Best in Slot if just being used as is. They will never get as cheap as the Path Fragment 4, so that would lower the cost of everything else in the auctions. We also have to consider that we have a brand new Treasure Enhancer token, and one that will be able to be used at the last 2 VTD's of the year, so people will be bidding up the PYP's to get their hands on those as soon as possible, as well as the UR's to make the very desirable Legendaries coming out this year.

I fell like we should really give Scott's version of the breakdown more of a look, as it takes a more long term approach to how to build out this alternate version of the Super Condensed, that doesn't cause further problems down the road.

Is this statement correct?

"when it comes to the Codexes, as you can use any 4 to make the Familiar"

I must have missed that somewhere.

From the Q&A section of the final notes here: truedungeon.com/files/2027_Token_Notes_Final.pdf

Q. Must I have all the years of a Multi-Year
previously-released tokens in order to transmute
the Multi-Year token? For instance, do I need all
3 of the different 2027-2030 Ultra Rares tokens to
make the Mask of Easy Boon?
No. While you CAN make the Multi-Year tokens
with the all the different released tokens in the set, or
you may instead substitute any of the previously
released tokens so long as the total equals the number
of tokens in the set PLUS one additional token in the
set. Thus, “Any 5” can take the place of “All 4”, and
“Any 4” can be used instead of “All 3.”

The issue is, no matter what, the current perceived value of the alternate recipe, which is based off of averages of averages, which is never the best way to calculate data, (it heavily puts more emphasis on a small last 5 sample size than it does for the full year as a whole) is only going to look worse and worse over time, as OE and EB drop in price, which was going to happen anyway this year, and I think that the 2nd option is only going to cause alternate shortages down the road. Scott's proposal, which uses the historical data in a way that makes sense, will help out the OE and EB market as well, while not also causing some short falls in the future.

If the goal of the 2nd option is to try and fix a perceived issue, and we're breaking away from basing it on the actual set, and using the secondary market to base it on, let's at least do it in a way that makes sense.