TOPIC: What should a Relic and Legendary cost in 2024?

OrionW wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote: I tend to think of Relics and Legendaries in terms of how much I would need to order from TD to build the recipe.

I think you should roughly be able to craft a relic with a $1k purchase, and a Legendary with an $4k purchase.

Note: I do not think the crafting should take up all the resources of a purchase of that size - however the most constrained resource should still be covered by this size of purchase (other than monster bits / fleece).

I agree that an 8k order should have the components (outside of Golden Fleece) to craft both legendaries for that year (craft the relics and than convert them to Legendaries).

In general I would like to see the cost of relics come down, even if Legendaries go up a bit. It feels like crafting a relic should be less onerous to newer players. Ideally they would be closer to what you could expect in two $250 orders (or one $250 order plus a season of play).

+1 to the opinions of both players.

lazlo_hollyfeld1985 wrote:

Exbalz wrote: So yes there is a clear disconnect between the average prices of TG's and relics/legendaries, and I think that will always be the case, no matter how recipe costs are tweaked. I think there are a few factors that create this discrepancy:

1. Untransmuted items have flexibility. This DS can go into one of several different relics or any legendary. Once it's been transmuted, that flexibility is gone. There's zero demand for 0.5% of a legendary.

2. Power creep in token design may also be making players more hesitant to pay cash in the secondary market when an upgrade/reprint might be available next year. We know for sure that token design impacts prices of tokens. I personally held off for 2 years on buying Earcuff of Orbits, and while I know it's not a relic, it was priced like one prior to reprint.

3. Players value TG's differently, which is of course a no-brainer statement. However, the sourcing of TG's has wildly different costs including $250 pack purchases, $8K pack purchases and everywhere in between. Also, the dollar value of a dungeon run factors here as well. I track my tokens because I want to know what I spent on them. In order to do this, I have to assign a value to everything I receive in treasure because I may either sell it to someone else, which may or may not have tax implications, or because the token may become part of a trade or transmute. I allocate this based on the total cost of my tickets. Others will do it differently and may assign a $0 value to their tokens from treasure because they treat the money spent as the cost of the experience itself.

A couple example cases that illustrate this: Player A mainly sources their TG's through participating in auctions, so their additional cash outlay over their cost of tickets for a transmute will be towards the higher end of the "market rate X volume" equation that most people here are referencing. Player B pays for entire runs and mainly sources their TG's for that group from the dungeon itself. The net additional cash outlay to complete a transmute will be much lower and sometimes they pull Relics their team doesn't need or their builds evolve and they no longer need a token crafted previously.

The market situation we're in tells me that the net financial impact of Player B's significantly outweighs Player A's.

Also, we should ALL remember that this is a game and not a retirement plan. It's an expensive hobby and most of us here are fortunate enough to have disposable income that allows us to argue about the price of fun poker chips. At the end of the day, this niche market will dictate secondary prices through supply and demand.

ultimately what is missing is new players...With all the auctions and all the VTDs this has caused a greater supply. With out in person cons, getting new players to fall in love with the game like so many of us did ( for whatever reason one time or another) is not happening.

Agree, some of these reasons are the pandemic's effects on in-person events and lack of new markets. Origins, Pax South, Pax West, and Gameholecon all brought new players into the game. So perhaps we will start to see more new players with MomoCon this year. That said at Gencon and GHC the last couple years, probably less new players tried out the game as the existing player base was especially energized to run runs as they had been denied playing in person and might also have had a greater appetite since they have actually been playing more through VTD. Which has also greatly effected the economy as VTD as brought many more tokens into circulation than during the only in-person days of yore.

David Harris wrote: That said at Gencon and GHC the last couple years, probably less new players tried out the game as the existing player base was especially energized to run runs as they had been denied playing in person and might also have had a greater appetite since they have actually been playing more through VTD. Which has also greatly effected the economy as VTD as brought many more tokens into circulation than during the only in-person days of yore.

So to put this in supply and demand terms. Supply do to more treasure pulls and 10 packs from VTD + likely higher overall token sales (due to increase in auctions completed) has gone up. Demand which is harder to gauge has likely also grown, but at a smaller rate than supply. This has resulted in lower prices on the secondary market. Most trade goods (other than DS and MH) are lower than a few years ago, gold is lower, relic, legendary and even PYP values are overall lower.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Just the effect of the economic factors. Much like the stock market or gold prices, prices go up and down. So will token prices. However, most will want the overall value to go up in the long-term, not sure that is were we are headed or not. For prices to go back up we either need less supply OR higher demand.

David Harris wrote:

David Harris wrote: That said at Gencon and GHC the last couple years, probably less new players tried out the game as the existing player base was especially energized to run runs as they had been denied playing in person and might also have had a greater appetite since they have actually been playing more through VTD. Which has also greatly effected the economy as VTD as brought many more tokens into circulation than during the only in-person days of yore.

So to put this in supply and demand terms. Supply do to more treasure pulls and 10 packs from VTD + likely higher overall token sales (due to increase in auctions completed) has gone up. Demand which is harder to gauge has likely also grown, but at a smaller rate than supply. This has resulted in lower prices on the secondary market. Most trade goods (other than DS and MH) are lower than a few years ago, gold is lower, relic, legendary and even PYP values are overall lower.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. Just the effect of the economic factors. Much like the stock market or gold prices, prices go up and down. So will token prices. However, most will want the overall value to go up in the long-term, not sure that is were we are headed or not. For prices to go back up we either need less supply OR higher demand.

You're missing a key ingredient on why prices of trade goods and things like PYPs keeps dropping in 8k auctions.

In short, the "value" of the 8k auction keeps going up. Here is a potentially incomplete lists:

1) Starting in 2015, Dragon Orbs were added as a reward item. Auctions weren't really a thing back in 2015, so the effect wasn't as visible as other things on this list. If auctions were a thing back then, adding the dragon orb would have deceased the price of all the other things in the auction by a net of $500-1000. Dragon orbs have been replaced by Marks and are currently "using" about $600 in value from the auction.

2) Patron codes got dramatically more valuable. A Patron run used to only happen at Origins, and the patron token wasn't necessarily all that good. Now Patrons can book VTD earlier than anyone else, Patron runs happen twice virtually (no need to travel), and the reward UR is a top tier, better than PYP UR. Increasing value of the patron code means all the other things in the auction decrease by a net of around $400-500.

3) Grunnel Minor favors have been added, on and off, to auctions in the last year. They have been going for around, 150(ish), thus decreasing the new total for the auction to fund by that amount.

4) Auctioneers have been running supplemented auctions on and off. A supplemented auction generally adds around 300-500 in value of non auction items, thus further decreasing the price of the other items

All together, there are up to $1400 in "extras" in 8k auctions, and these auctions have had a pretty consistent closing price of 7500. If you spread that 1500 out evenly over the PYPs and trade goods, it's no real surprise both have dropped over the years.

lazlo_hollyfeld1985 wrote: 400-600 for relic to make
12200-1600 for legendary

All depending on many factors but that’s a rough estimate

Chad, assuming you mean either 1200 or 1220, I agree with you on the ranges, except I might put the Relic floor closer to $500. I think it will be easier for Jeff to just aim at a dollar value of the ingredients than to try to take all the other factors into account, many of which are probably hard to quantify.

Marc D wrote: Also, for those who just want to see some numbers... here's what I see for trade good costs for 2020-2023

Relics: $300-$450
Legendaries: $450-$700

Thanks Marc. This is great information.

Notes

• This is just the trade good cost
• This does not include PYP, gold, wish rings, or any other special tokens
• Legendary costs do not include the Relic

Thanks Marc. This is great information.

David Harris wrote:

lazlo_hollyfeld1985 wrote:

Exbalz wrote: So yes there is a clear disconnect between the average prices of TG's and relics/legendaries, and I think that will always be the case, no matter how recipe costs are tweaked. I think there are a few factors that create this discrepancy:

1. Untransmuted items have flexibility. This DS can go into one of several different relics or any legendary. Once it's been transmuted, that flexibility is gone. There's zero demand for 0.5% of a legendary.

2. Power creep in token design may also be making players more hesitant to pay cash in the secondary market when an upgrade/reprint might be available next year. We know for sure that token design impacts prices of tokens. I personally held off for 2 years on buying Earcuff of Orbits, and while I know it's not a relic, it was priced like one prior to reprint.

3. Players value TG's differently, which is of course a no-brainer statement. However, the sourcing of TG's has wildly different costs including $250 pack purchases, $8K pack purchases and everywhere in between. Also, the dollar value of a dungeon run factors here as well. I track my tokens because I want to know what I spent on them. In order to do this, I have to assign a value to everything I receive in treasure because I may either sell it to someone else, which may or may not have tax implications, or because the token may become part of a trade or transmute. I allocate this based on the total cost of my tickets. Others will do it differently and may assign a $0 value to their tokens from treasure because they treat the money spent as the cost of the experience itself.

A couple example cases that illustrate this: Player A mainly sources their TG's through participating in auctions, so their additional cash outlay over their cost of tickets for a transmute will be towards the higher end of the "market rate X volume" equation that most people here are referencing. Player B pays for entire runs and mainly sources their TG's for that group from the dungeon itself. The net additional cash outlay to complete a transmute will be much lower and sometimes they pull Relics their team doesn't need or their builds evolve and they no longer need a token crafted previously.

The market situation we're in tells me that the net financial impact of Player B's significantly outweighs Player A's.

Also, we should ALL remember that this is a game and not a retirement plan. It's an expensive hobby and most of us here are fortunate enough to have disposable income that allows us to argue about the price of fun poker chips. At the end of the day, this niche market will dictate secondary prices through supply and demand.

ultimately what is missing is new players...With all the auctions and all the VTDs this has caused a greater supply. With out in person cons, getting new players to fall in love with the game like so many of us did ( for whatever reason one time or another) is not happening.

Agree, some of these reasons are the pandemic's effects on in-person events and lack of new markets. Origins, Pax South, Pax West, and Gameholecon all brought new players into the game. So perhaps we will start to see more new players with MomoCon this year. That said at Gencon and GHC the last couple years, probably less new players tried out the game as the existing player base was especially energized to run runs as they had been denied playing in person and might also have had a greater appetite since they have actually been playing more through VTD. Which has also greatly effected the economy as VTD as brought many more tokens into circulation than during the only in-person days of yore.

Another big ding to getting new players is just the cost, if runs cost as much as they do now when I started I probably wouldn't have tried it. The cost per hr of enjoyment is quite high add onto that the difficulty of getting tickets at gencon. I understand the smaller cons are cheaper and tickets more available but they are still expensive. I would like to see the small runs come back, I loved into the viper pit. It was a good price point and there were no treasure modifiers so the tickets had good availability. Training runs like were at PAX would be good as well.

Trade good prices can vary pretty wildly and it isn't necessarily predictable. So depending on the month that you look at it, you might end up at different numbers. That also seems problematic for a Legendary recipe that never expires.

My suggestion would be to ignore the market prices and instead focus on "percentage of $8k order" and/or "number of treasure draws". In other words, perhaps a newbie-focused relic should be craftable with, on average:

Trade goods from a $1k order
AND
50 treasure pulls

For a more powerful Relic that is going to be more valuable to veterans, perhaps:

Trade goods from a $1k order
AND
500 treasure pulls

These are just some examples, not meant to be the specific numbers. But what I mean by this is -- how much Darkwood Plane should the recipe take? Well take the total DP from a $1k order (on average) and add the total DP from 50 treasure pulls (on average) and that's your number.

dokkaebi wrote:

OrionW wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote: I tend to think of Relics and Legendaries in terms of how much I would need to order from TD to build the recipe.

I think you should roughly be able to craft a relic with a $1k purchase, and a Legendary with an $4k purchase.

Note: I do not think the crafting should take up all the resources of a purchase of that size - however the most constrained resource should still be covered by this size of purchase (other than monster bits / fleece).

I agree that an 8k order should have the components (outside of Golden Fleece) to craft both legendaries for that year (craft the relics and than convert them to Legendaries).

In general I would like to see the cost of relics come down, even if Legendaries go up a bit. It feels like crafting a relic should be less onerous to newer players. Ideally they would be closer to what you could expect in two $250 orders (or one $250 order plus a season of play).

+1 to the opinions of both players.

I 100% agree that a single $8K order should be enough to do two new legendaries plus have some for the exhalted, etc.

With the glut of MS, DP, AP, and PS from VTD - we keep seeing increases in the costs to do the transmutes. The relative increase has been dramatic over the past five years (almost doubling the amount of trade goods.) This, in turn, blocks out newer players from gradually getting to legendaries as the relics are too expensive to build before the transmute window ends out of just $250 annual orders and treasure draws.

I would recommend having any relic be possible with just a $1K order or a $250 order and 150-200 treasure draws (simulating 2 years of runs with help on TE’s from others to get near max treasure.)

I also want to +1 on Mike’s note that MH and DS aren’t plentiful right now and are the hardest parts of making the transmutes.

Let’s keep finding sinks for trade goods like the maps. If the Safeholds are community contributions, those can be great sinks as well. Please don’t increase legendaries and relics further (and possibly come down to make them more appealing to newer players.)

Fred

Fred

To be clear, two legendaries out of an 8k not including about 31000gp as 8k never gave enough gold for two legendaries?

At 5k for a relic and 40k for a legendary, then end result of one legendary (from scratch) and one relic is 50k, leaving 9k for miscellaneous.

lazlo_hollyfeld1985 wrote:

Exbalz wrote: So yes there is a clear disconnect between the average prices of TG's and relics/legendaries, and I think that will always be the case, no matter how recipe costs are tweaked. I think there are a few factors that create this discrepancy:

1. Untransmuted items have flexibility. This DS can go into one of several different relics or any legendary. Once it's been transmuted, that flexibility is gone. There's zero demand for 0.5% of a legendary.

2. Power creep in token design may also be making players more hesitant to pay cash in the secondary market when an upgrade/reprint might be available next year. We know for sure that token design impacts prices of tokens. I personally held off for 2 years on buying Earcuff of Orbits, and while I know it's not a relic, it was priced like one prior to reprint.

3. Players value TG's differently, which is of course a no-brainer statement. However, the sourcing of TG's has wildly different costs including $250 pack purchases, $8K pack purchases and everywhere in between. Also, the dollar value of a dungeon run factors here as well. I track my tokens because I want to know what I spent on them. In order to do this, I have to assign a value to everything I receive in treasure because I may either sell it to someone else, which may or may not have tax implications, or because the token may become part of a trade or transmute. I allocate this based on the total cost of my tickets. Others will do it differently and may assign a $0 value to their tokens from treasure because they treat the money spent as the cost of the experience itself.

A couple example cases that illustrate this: Player A mainly sources their TG's through participating in auctions, so their additional cash outlay over their cost of tickets for a transmute will be towards the higher end of the "market rate X volume" equation that most people here are referencing. Player B pays for entire runs and mainly sources their TG's for that group from the dungeon itself. The net additional cash outlay to complete a transmute will be much lower and sometimes they pull Relics their team doesn't need or their builds evolve and they no longer need a token crafted previously.

The market situation we're in tells me that the net financial impact of Player B's significantly outweighs Player A's.

Also, we should ALL remember that this is a game and not a retirement plan. It's an expensive hobby and most of us here are fortunate enough to have disposable income that allows us to argue about the price of fun poker chips. At the end of the day, this niche market will dictate secondary prices through supply and demand.

ultimately what is missing is new players...With all the auctions and all the VTDs this has caused a greater supply. With out in person cons, getting new players to fall in love with the game like so many of us did ( for whatever reason one time or another) is not happening.

+1. More physical Cons please. VTD is cool, but in person Con's are where it's at and IMO will play a bigger part in driving growth vs. VTD.

I'm an invested player/volunteer but not one who spends more than $300~ a year on tokens.

The more recipes have gone up the less incentive i feel to even try to transmute. I really like the crafting mechanics and love the feeling of taking the treasure i get from dungeon runs/volunteering and putting them towards tokens i'll use. I don't have glut of trade goods that apparently so many folks around here have and again the more recipes go up (and fact ticket prices go up) just increasingly feels like a why bother.

I'd like to see relic crafting requirements come down a bit (even if that means legendary goes up a bit) so it feels more obtainable and if i really want a legendary i can save up for it.

More general 'good stuff' or universal tokens can be a bit pricey in quantity of goods vs the specifics/more narrow use case. Encourage folks to craft for alt builds or stuff only to be used in theme runs.