TOPIC: Endgame 2019 Transmuted Recipes

Canteen of Quaffing (***)

Looks good


Figurine of Power: Dog (***)

Looks good


Belt of Ogre Mage Power (****)

This is about on par with the Shirt of Blessed Strength


Charm of Treasure Boosting (****)

This seems steep to require half a Golden Fleece. I would rather add a Darkwood Plank since it is a charm, and have any 2 bits. You could throw 300GP on there as well if it wasn't enough.


Enchanter's Whetstone (****)

This seems a little expensive to get someone to a Rare+ weapon. I would say 1 Aragonite and 2 DS to lessen the transmute cost.


Bead of the Lucky Traveler (***** Story Arc, aka "4C")

I think to be in line with previous years, the final requirement should be Any 4 Unique 2019 monster bits


Lute of Free Fury (*****)

Reduce Fleece to one, and consider reducing some AI/AP and adding more DP.


Necklace of the Sneak (*****)

Reduce Fleece to 1
Consider lowering some of the AI/AP costs


Shaman's Greater Necklace (*****)

Reduce Fleece to 1
Consider lowering some of the AI/AP costs


Kilt of the Dungeonbane (Eldritch Relic) - Update to Kilt of Dungeonbane

I would advocate removing all Fleece since this is both unprecedented and the same year as story relic requiring almost 2 fleeces. But I would be ok with 1 fleece.


Legendaries

Reduce Fleece to 2 (1 for second Lute recipe). Rebalance some of the heavy costs that are being repeated directly from the Relic.

Going from 0 to 2 on Eldritch is not "general acceleration."

More like

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote: Why would Eldritch Relics be immune to the same general acceleration of recipe cost we've seen at Relic and Legendary?

Increasing a recipe from 3 URs + 1 of each trade good to all that plus 2 GF is "extreme?"

Prior to today you could have gotten pretty much anyone to trade you 2 GFs for 1 PyP. I have a hard time seeing an increase in recipe cost of less than 33% - probably closer to 25% as extreme.

For one, something this extreme should have been announced before everyone embarked on saving up for them.

For another, unless you’re a HP user, this one sucks.

You know, I remember people saying the same thing about Tooth of Cavadar back when it was announced. You could buy (I know because I sold at this price) the first tooth for less than $75. Now they go for $200+.

Time well tell.

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Hawk Fingle wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Fiddy wrote:

Hawk Fingle wrote: I'm against any relics needing any Golden Fleece, and any legendaries needing two or more need some serious justification other than "more pulls at the box means more fleece!", especially in a year where there is a recipe requiring 18 monster bits and another recipe requiring 4 bits.

I didn't like it last year, and I doubly don't like it this year.

I blame the maybe half-dozen people complaining about having too many monster bits and lamenting that they couldn't sell them for prices as high as they used to.

Price of Golden Fleece has gone from 80+ to under 40 in about a year, and stayed there.

Monster bits are a substantial value component of each treasure pull.

As a result the value of treasure pulls has dropped substantially, which hurts everyone who pulls treasure.

And yet the price to attend a con and the price to play TD has gone up.

I don't see more bits being available as a valid argument to increase fleece requirements in recipes when the price to gain them in the first place goes up each year.

Relics should not have fleece, legendaries should have 1, and any more than that needs to be debated on a per-recipe basis that is based on the power of the token and not on current speculation of fleece pricing. I understood the reasons for the hammers last year. I didn't agree with it, but I understood it.

This batch of recipes is ridiculous in its bits and fleece requirements, and I'm going to say so.

I think you've got this exactly backwards.

Your cost to run TD is:

Cost = Ticket price - value of treasure pulls - value of completion tokens.

If the value of treasure pull declines, the cost increases.

The value of treasure pulls has been declining due to the booming supply of monster bits (AoTF in 2015, CoA in 2015, ISSN in 2017, Going from 1 con to 4 in the last few years), and pretty much nothing to increase demand for monster bits.

I agree it may be an overcorrection, but it is a step in the right direction, if a step too far.

Maybe if you’re a farmer. If you’re a player, it’s more like:

Cost = Ticket price - value of what you can transmute with your pulls - value of completion tokens

Tickets are way up
These recipes mean what you can transmute has gone way down, because you can only make a fraction of what you could have.

So fewer people play, and fewer people want your high-priced Fleece. Prices still drop because you’ve made the cost to play TD even higher.

These recipes are outrageous and a tragic mistake.

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote: Why would Eldritch Relics be immune to the same general acceleration of recipe cost we've seen at Relic and Legendary?

Increasing a recipe from 3 URs + 1 of each trade good to all that plus 2 GF is "extreme?"

Prior to today you could have gotten pretty much anyone to trade you 2 GFs for 1 PyP. I have a hard time seeing an increase in recipe cost of less than 33% - probably closer to 25% as extreme.

For one, something this extreme should have been announced before everyone embarked on saving up for them.

For another, unless you’re a HP user, this one sucks.

You know, I remember people saying the same thing about Tooth of Cavadar back when it was announced. You could buy (I know because I sold at this price) the first tooth for less than $75. Now they go for $200+.

Time well tell.

Really, because I brought my first teeth the year they came out and I had trouble finding the for near 100, something about everyone knowing what would happen to a 1st collectable.

Also if the bead is going to need 6 bits next year I am now in favor of it giving +3 saves

Aothos wrote: Then this process is still forgetting about the free market's basic ability to correct itself. Its simple really;

1. Price drops, players that couldn't outright buy them before can now purchase them more easily.
2. New player base has access to cheap trade goods, they buy them with the intent to use them.
3. Jeff creates a few recipes that are accessible to new players that now have cheap fleeces.
4. Fleeces filter out of circulation.

The problem isn't that high end transmutes need to require more fleeces. Its that fleeces need to be used in lower transmutes by new players. Then once the fleeces filter out after a year or two of low level transmutes containing fleeces, the price will go back up as long as TD chokes bits out a bit more on TPs.

i.e. Change the Belt of Ogre Mage Power from 10× Mystic Silk to 1× Golden Fleece.
Idk about everyone else, but I don't know any silk weaving ogres, but I can definitely see one using a sheep's pelt to hold its clothing together.

We seem to agree on the supply and demand fundamentals.

You want supply to be picked up by new players.

I don't think new players have the ability to pick up that much supply.

We'll see how it shakes out!

Arnold wrote: If you're worried about the value of your treasure pull, sell your gold treasure chips. Don't complain about an increased supply of bits.

AFAIK, the value of the pulls themselves has never dropped. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Actually, I do both (sell my treasure pulls and express concern about the health of the secondary economy vis a vis monster bit supply outstripping demand).

The value of the pulls has dropped, as measured by eBay sales price in the period after the bonus tokens get sent out but before Gen Conn.

In 2017 they were going for $6+ and sometimes as high as $10 each. In 2018 they went for $4-5 per pull before Gen Con.

I myself have stopped caring about treasure pulls very much, I gave away probably 2/3rds of my pulls to new players in the storyscape or check in area this year.

But I'm not worried about the value of treasure pulls because I care about the money, I'm worried about it because I think it's bad for players in general.

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote: Why would Eldritch Relics be immune to the same general acceleration of recipe cost we've seen at Relic and Legendary?

Increasing a recipe from 3 URs + 1 of each trade good to all that plus 2 GF is "extreme?"

Prior to today you could have gotten pretty much anyone to trade you 2 GFs for 1 PyP. I have a hard time seeing an increase in recipe cost of less than 33% - probably closer to 25% as extreme.

Actually, yes. I think most people would call a 25%-33% increase in cost for just about anything "extreme".

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Arnold wrote: If you're worried about the value of your treasure pull, sell your gold treasure chips. Don't complain about an increased supply of bits.

AFAIK, the value of the pulls themselves has never dropped. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Actually, I do both (sell my treasure pulls and express concern about the health of the secondary economy vis a vis monster but supply).

The value of the pulls has dropped, as measured by eBay sales price in the period after the bonus tokens get sent out but before Gen Conn.

In 2017 they were going for $6+ and sometimes as high as $10 each. In 2018 they went for $4-5 per pull before Gen Con.

I myself have stopped caring about treasure pulls very much, I gave away probably 2/3rds of my pulls to new players in the storyscape or check in area this year.

But I'm not worried about the value of treasure pulls because I care about the money, I'm worried about it because I think it's bad for players in general.

Let’s just take the Bead

So forcing players to play 50% more times to finish the Bead they’ve been saving up for for three years is good for the players?

Sacrificing the players to protect the profits of farmers is obscene.

I’m just not sure you’re looking at this from all perspectives.

At this rate, you’ll have to sell a CoA to pay to transmute your Teeth.

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Aothos wrote:

Xavon wrote: That's a lot of Fleece, especially considering its a Story transmute year and extra especially on the Kilt.

Apparently we only cater to the token hoarders these days; further alienating the newer players.

The falling price of a trade good is just part of the open market system.
It should not be Jeff's prerogative to secure the market price of any token.
At best the kilt should only require a single fleece.

I disagree:

True Adventues controls the supply of monster bits / fleece by deciding what the treasure mix is.

True Adventures controls the demand of fleece by deciding what recipes are.

If the price of bits/fleece goes to 0, the value of a treasure pull declines by:
old_price*odds_of_getting_bit

As treasure pulls get devalued:

A. Total effective cost to play the Dungeon increases
B. Demand for URTEs would be predicted to decline
C. Demand for PyPs and tokens would be predicted to decline

Under basic economic assumptions.


It is good business for TD to monitor the value of a treasure pull, and managing the value of monster bits is an effective way of doing it, as player behavior changes in token purchases don’t impact the supply of bits.

Yes, supply is going up. You’re ignoring that more cons equals more players equals more demand.

Many people have been saying this about the price of Monster bits / fleece for a year now, and yet I picked up a Golden Fleece on eBay for $34.99 2 weeks ago.

That new players will generate sufficient demand to absorb the supply of monster bits is a hypothesis.

That the demand generated by new players will be insufficient to absorb the increased supply is another one.

The data is in, and at least thus far, it supports the hypothesis that new player demand is insufficient to absorb the increased supply.

Brad Mortensen wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Arnold wrote: If you're worried about the value of your treasure pull, sell your gold treasure chips. Don't complain about an increased supply of bits.

AFAIK, the value of the pulls themselves has never dropped. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Actually, I do both (sell my treasure pulls and express concern about the health of the secondary economy vis a vis monster but supply).

The value of the pulls has dropped, as measured by eBay sales price in the period after the bonus tokens get sent out but before Gen Conn.

In 2017 they were going for $6+ and sometimes as high as $10 each. In 2018 they went for $4-5 per pull before Gen Con.

I myself have stopped caring about treasure pulls very much, I gave away probably 2/3rds of my pulls to new players in the storyscape or check in area this year.

But I'm not worried about the value of treasure pulls because I care about the money, I'm worried about it because I think it's bad for players in general.

Let’s just take the Bead

So forcing players to play 50% more times to finish the Bead they’ve been saving up for for three years is good for the players?

Sacrificing the players to protect the profits of farmers is obscene.

I’m just not sure you’re looking at this from all perspectives

I don't understand your comment. Isn't the bead recipe what we were all expecting, with the exception of 2 additional monster bits due to there being 6 total instead of 4?

I was expecting to spend 16 monster bits to make the bead. It looks like it will be 18 instead.

Where is 50% coming from?


I also fundamentally don't understand your comments about "sacrificing players to protect the profits of farmers." Could you elucidate some?


Also, in case you think I'm a farmer, I very much doubt I am, but perhaps you could define that term and I'll let you know if I meet the criteria.

New players lag. It takes them a couple of years to go insane. My annual purchases went from 10-30-100-8000. We’re only in the second year of all these new cons. You have to give them time to catch up to us maniacs.

But with something like this, I’m afraid they’re going to give up. We think these recipes outrageous. A newbie is going to say “I’ll never get to that level.” So they’ll walk.

Why wouldn’t they? There are some veterans thinking about.