About Jewelry Crafting economy

karpok · July 2018

I was gathering my thoughts about Jewelry Crafting. At the beginning I was really thrilled at the idea of this new and long awaited art. But now I feel disappointed and I really feel it's not worth investing in it as its economy seems to be completely screwed up. But feel free to convince me it could be worth.

To develop my points. Jewelry crafting was meant to be harder than other crafting. Ok that's fine. But maybe it had gone a little too far.
Basically you need 10 more raw materials to customize your creation (traits + quality). So you could think it is 10 times harder to craft a piece of a ring.
But actually loot rates of pieces of jewelry in the wild or in dungeon is much lower than for other objects. I didn't make a precise calculation but we should not be far from a 1 to 10 ratio.
So in the end rafting a basic arcane/robust/health jewel is something like 100 times harder than crafting a wooden shield.
To a lower extend it also applies to ore materials. Loot rate is lower than silk for example. Usually doing a couple of undaunted dailies, I can sustain the daily writs for tailoring or woodcrafting. This don't apply to jewelry crafting.

Now is it really an issue if the benefit of crafting a good necklace is higher ? I guess no. But it is not the case today.

Let's take the example of a cp160 Julianos Arcane Necklace (I choose a famous set for the demonstration). If I consider the average price of the raw materials given by TTC :
* a grey necklace costs 120k to craft
* a green necklace costs 125k to craft
* a blue necklace costs 135k to craft
* a purple necklace costs 210k to craft
* a gold necklace costs 950k to craft

At the same time the highest cost of this necklace on the market is at the moment:
* 22k for a green version
* 25k in blue
* 140k in purple
* 490k in gold

And I am already surprised of such high price, since you can easily replace jewel by other items much less expensive.
So unless being a full time lucky grinder, its not worth becoming a professional jewelry crafter today. You would lose money

The same would apply to improving dungeon/trial jewel quality.
Once again let's take the example of trial jewel:
* improving from blue to purple is around 70k (the equivalent of 5 successful veterans hm run of the trial)
* improving from purple to gold is around 700k (the equivalent of 58 successful veterans hm run of the trial)

So in the end you will probably loot the jewel you are looking for much faster then you will get the money to improve it.

So for now the only little interest I can see in leveling jewelry crafting would be transmutation. But that is not a huge thing.

To conclude there are really good opportunities behind jewelry crafting. But for me raw material costs and end product values are still too unbalanced to make it nice to invest into.

I would be glad to hear other point of views on the topic.

John_Falstaff · July 2018

I'll agree that jewelry crafting right now is hopelessly broken (and upcoming update that halves the upgrade material requirements won't change the big picture). But I think your crafting cost calculation for white through blue is off - platinum ounces cost very little (thanks to everyone and their dog grinding for upgrade materials, and little demand for base crafting materials - people can't afford to mass-craft jewelry), it's the upgrade materials that make up the cost for the large part. So, white necklace can't cost 120k to craft, and green can't cost 125k (and blue - 135k). Crafting cost of a blue arcane CP160 Julianos ring would be around 10-12k.*

* On PC/EU, maybe your numbers are valid for console platforms or NA server - then I stand corrected.

Elwendryll · July 2018

John_Falstaff wrote: »

(and upcoming update that halves the upgrade material requirements won't change the big picture)

Could you provide me with a source on this claim please? It looks like I can't find this piece of information in the recent PTS patch notes.

The_Protagonist · July 2018

ZOS_MSchroeder wrote: »

We’ve heard your concerns about Jewelry Crafting, and we’ve been working on a few changes to help address them. The change to the value of Master Writs was a big part of those changes, but it isn’t the only part – or even the biggest! We’d like to inform you of some of the changes we’re currently working on for Jewelry Crafting.
First, we’ve noticed that some players will leave Blacksmithing resources alone in their search for more Jewelry Crafting materials – which can result, in the long run, in a zone having too few Jewelry Crafting Seams for players to find. To help alleviate this, in an upcoming PTS patch, we’ll be adding a small amount of Jewelry Crafting raw material to some (but not all) Blacksmithing ore nodes. Not only will this encourage players to harvest both Blacksmithing and Jewelry Crafting resources, it will also result in more Jewelry Crafting Dust being mined overall (as we are not affecting the yield of existing Jewelry Crafting Seams at all).

Second – and this is the big one – in an upcoming PTS patch, we’ll be significantly reducing the number of Platings it takes to upgrade a piece of Jewelry. At maximum rank in Platings Expertise, it will take you only a single Terne Plating to upgrade a ring from White to Green, and it will take only 4 Chromium Platings to upgrade a ring from Purple to Gold – both of which are half of what it takes currently on Live.

With these changes, we aim to make the experience of obtaining Jewelry Crafting materials, upgrading Rings and Necklaces, and completing Jewelry Crafting Master Writs more enjoyable and economically beneficial. They should arrive on PTS sometime soon – and be included in the final Live release of the Wolfhunter DLC pack.

Elwendryll wrote: »

John_Falstaff wrote: »

(and upcoming update that halves the upgrade material requirements won't change the big picture)

Could you provide me with a source on this claim please? It looks like I can't find this piece of information in the recent PTS patch notes.

There you go. Link

Elwendryll · July 2018

Thanks a lot.
I found it by myself just after posting '-'

It's really exciting, and I'm glad I haven't crafted or upgraded anything yet.

karpok · July 2018

Well my computation was basic:
* 80 gold in average for platinum powder
* so an once of platinum for 800 gold
* 150 once for a raw necklace : 120k gold
* 100 gold for cobalt power
* so 1k gold for basic cobalt

Here how I get 100k for a raw necklace.

John_Falstaff · July 2018

Hm-m, which platform you're on? On PC/EU, platinum ounce (not unrefined dust) costs around 15-20 gold apiece, which would result in raw material cost of 2250-3000 gold for a necklace. (Taken from https://eu.tamrieltradecentre.com/pc/Trade). Cobalt fluctuates around 300..600 gold.

Mind, you do -not- want to take the price of unrefined platinum dust for the purpose of those calculations, because ore sells for much much more than refined ounces: refining it gives the costly upgrade materials everyone's so crazy about.

jaws343 · July 2018

karpok wrote: »

Let's take the example of a cp160 Julianos Arcane Necklace (I choose a famous set for the demonstration). If I consider the average price of the raw materials given by TTC :
* a grey necklace costs 120k to craft
* a green necklace costs 125k to craft
* a blue necklace costs 135k to craft
* a purple necklace costs 210k to craft
* a gold necklace costs 950k to craft

At the same time the highest cost of this necklace on the market is at the moment:
* 22k for a green version
* 25k in blue
* 140k in purple
* 490k in gold

And I am already surprised of such high price, since you can easily replace jewel by other items much less expensive.
So unless being a full time lucky grinder, its not worth becoming a professional jewelry crafter today. You would lose money

I think this is looking at things the wrong way. For example, the 120K to craft a grey necklace is only true if you have to buy the mats. If you are farming the mats and never intend to sell mats, the cost to craft a grey necklace is really 0. And the same goes for upgrading. If you already have the mats, the cost is 0. Now if you are buying mats to then resell the jewelry that you are making, then yes, you are losing money on that transaction, and you are doing things wrong.

And it doesn't really take luck to grind the normal mats. With just passive node looting I am already over 1K platinum and I have already been able to craft a number of purple jewelry pieces for a few builds and I have some blue pieces for other builds. And that is within a month.

Now gold jewelry isn't worth it. I have found it far more beneficial to just sell the gold grains and forget about making gold jewelry.

karpok · July 2018

I agree refined material are cheaper. But once again this tend to prove that it is more interesting to sell raw material instead of refining them for sell or craft.
This was exactly my point about the broken economics of jewelry crafting.

SilverWF · July 2018

Just crafted 1 purple necklace (Torug's and swift) for my guildie, it took ~130k
To make it gold it would cost ~ 730k
But yeah, this is EXTREMELY high price.

Jewelry crafting was created by former NC-Soft staff Koreans - there is just no other thoughts about that

Jaimeh · July 2018

So far I have used the JC system for transmuting, and to upgrade some blue rings to purple from trial sets that I won't be doing on vet anytime soon, I haven't tried any crafting, mostly because I didn't need it for my builds, but I wouldn't be looking forward to the prospect if I ever had to, because the cost is just too astronomical. I haven't even crafted any items for Master Writs because again the cost/reward ratio was too hugely skewed. It's too bad the main feature of JC which is the crafting itself, was really underwhelming given the costs, so that only transmuting and upgrading (at least to purple tier) seemed like viable fearures, but hopefully this will change with the new update.

Jayne_Doe · July 2018

The_Protagonist wrote: »

ZOS_MSchroeder wrote: »

We’ve heard your concerns about Jewelry Crafting, and we’ve been working on a few changes to help address them. The change to the value of Master Writs was a big part of those changes, but it isn’t the only part – or even the biggest! We’d like to inform you of some of the changes we’re currently working on for Jewelry Crafting.
First, we’ve noticed that some players will leave Blacksmithing resources alone in their search for more Jewelry Crafting materials – which can result, in the long run, in a zone having too few Jewelry Crafting Seams for players to find. To help alleviate this, in an upcoming PTS patch, we’ll be adding a small amount of Jewelry Crafting raw material to some (but not all) Blacksmithing ore nodes. Not only will this encourage players to harvest both Blacksmithing and Jewelry Crafting resources, it will also result in more Jewelry Crafting Dust being mined overall (as we are not affecting the yield of existing Jewelry Crafting Seams at all).

Second – and this is the big one – in an upcoming PTS patch, we’ll be significantly reducing the number of Platings it takes to upgrade a piece of Jewelry. At maximum rank in Platings Expertise, it will take you only a single Terne Plating to upgrade a ring from White to Green, and it will take only 4 Chromium Platings to upgrade a ring from Purple to Gold – both of which are half of what it takes currently on Live.

With these changes, we aim to make the experience of obtaining Jewelry Crafting materials, upgrading Rings and Necklaces, and completing Jewelry Crafting Master Writs more enjoyable and economically beneficial. They should arrive on PTS sometime soon – and be included in the final Live release of the Wolfhunter DLC pack.

Elwendryll wrote: »

John_Falstaff wrote: »

(and upcoming update that halves the upgrade material requirements won't change the big picture)

Could you provide me with a source on this claim please? It looks like I can't find this piece of information in the recent PTS patch notes.

There you go. Link

I hadn't seen that post, thanks for providing. I'm uncertain as to whether including JC dust in some of the BS ore nodes will actually increase the looting of BS nodes. It will certainly induce players to open all BS nodes, but whether they'll actually take the ore along with any dust is less certain.

Lirkin · July 2018

One of the biggest problems with Jewelry crafting is that the required supplies are not widely available. Example: I can't make some of the new traits because I don't group. I don't do trials and group dungeons.

John_Falstaff · July 2018

I suppose it's a clumsy attempt at giving people incentive to try other aspects of the game (much like stamina is bound to go to Cyrodiil for basically only good class-agnostic self-heal and one of strongest AoEs, or PvP people do dungeons for Undaunted passives and collect books for MG skill line).

NeroBad · July 2018

karpok wrote: »

Well my computation was basic:
* 80 gold in average for platinum powder
* so an once of platinum for 800 gold
* 150 once for a raw necklace : 120k gold
* 100 gold for cobalt power
* so 1k gold for basic cobalt

Here how I get 100k for a raw necklace.

Altough PC/EU has a little lower price (70-65g for powder) dont forget that you get average 8,5 refined piece from 10 powder (minimum 7) and you calculated with 1 which makes it atleast 7 time more expensive. Also as others mentioned the refined material is 15-20g in PC/EU so with that it's much cheaper.

JHartEllis · July 2018

The jewelry crafting economy was always destined to be relatively small. For the most part, you can get the sets you want without crafted jewelry (and the exceptions would be niche, non-BIS builds). Or jewelry upgrading was a way to bypass vet content that gives higher quality jewelry, so you'd expect to be penalized for that through high costs.

However, the option to upgrade does bring down the cost of all other gold jewelry, which is a big market benefit (unless prices drop so much as to undermine the Golden Cyrodiil vendor's scarcity incentives). I've seen gold Rings of the Sun go for as much as 2-3m on PC/NA, but players will now be able to upgrade from purples for a fraction of that market price.

Otherwise, there's just not a lot of demand for crafted purple/gold jewelry--it sells so slowly that sellers eventually try to sell it below crafting cost, and usually that's not even enough. After craft costs effectively halve, we'll see if demand is elastic or if there will still be little interest.

Transmuting to different traits, while another benefit that lets players play around with their builds, is outside the market since players have to earn the crystals themselves.

In the end, jewelry crafting as an economic market will primarily be related to earning and fulfilling sealed writs from the crafting dailies.

Crafts_Many_Boxes · July 2018

I've been keeping a close eye on things, and jewelry crafting will be fine-ish once the changes go through.

Halving the upgrade costs and adding small amounts of dust to BS nodes wasn't quite enough, but if they increase the drop rate of gold tempers for max level writs like they say they will do, then that will lead to an eventual reduction in price.

I'm predicting we'll eventually hit the 275,000 - 300,000 cost point for gold jewelry, which is in line with gold vendor / the difficulty of vet trials.

We all would like it to be cheaper, but to do so would require them to further incentivize vet trials and make the gold vendor prices cheaper.

I'm also predicting zircon prices will drop a bit, as the market fills up with more and more form deconning vet dungeon rings. Hell, we might see a bit of drop as a direct result of these new dungeon style page events.

Overall, I was skeptical that JC would ever be in an "okay" state, but I think once wolfhunter hits, we'll be well on our way. I'm really happy that ZoS eventually came to their senses on this one.

John_Falstaff · July 2018

As an admittedly crazy thought (that's not going to happen, I assume), I would welcome increasing the significance of gold jewelry. The situation right now is a bit inconsistent:

Legendary armor doesn't give significant stat advantage. Upgrade cost is cheap.
Legendary weapons give significant stat advantage. Upgrade cost is cheap, same as armor.
Legendary jewelry doesn't give significant stat advantage. Upgrade cost is through the roof.

All right, so jewelry crafting is made purposefully and ridiculously expensive. Maybe give people some bigger incentive to gold the jewelry, other than just vanity? Make transition from epic to legendary a significant stat increase?

Soella · July 2018

John_Falstaff wrote: »

As an admittedly crazy thought (that's not going to happen, I assume), I would welcome increasing the significance of gold jewelry. The situation right now is a bit inconsistent:
Legendary armor doesn't give significant stat advantage. Upgrade cost is cheap.

Legendary weapons give significant stat advantage. Upgrade cost is cheap, same as armor.

Legendary jewelry doesn't give significant stat advantage. Upgrade cost is through the roof.

All right, so jewelry crafting is made purposefully and ridiculously expensive. Maybe give people some bigger incentive to gold the jewelry, other than just vanity? Make transition from epic to legendary a significant stat increase?

For me it is pretty logical.

Significant improvement is available to anyone who cares.
Next step - armor - gives less, far less people need it.
Next step - jewelry, gives even less, strictly for bragging purposes.

newtinmpls · July 2018

karpok wrote: »

But actually loot rates of pieces of jewelry in the wild or in dungeon is much lower than for other objects.

That has not been my experience.

I think jewelry is just slightly below cloth as far as how often I see a node.

karpok · July 2018

I was not mentioning harvesting nodes, but item loot you can deconstruct. Jewel loot less often

@Crafts_Many_Boxes I hope you are right and it would be a good news for crafters. Let's wait and see what wolf hunter will bring.

stitchesofdooom · August 2018

I have about 6 or 7 jewelry writs, most of which are for legendary quality. I have exactly 2 Chromium plating and about 2 Chromium grains.

How is ANYONE supposed to be able to comeplete these master writs? 10 plating grains and pulverized trait materials should be refined into up to 10 platings or trait items. The horrificly low drop rate is appalling.

Smitch_59 · August 2018

Folks in my guild are dumping the JC master writs in the guild bank because they are worthless. The JC system is pretty much a joke, IMHO. The only thing I envision using it for will be to make furnishings.

My_Treehawk · August 2018

stitchesofdooom wrote: »

I have about 6 or 7 jewelry writs, most of which are for legendary quality. I have exactly 2 Chromium plating and about 2 Chromium grains.

How is ANYONE supposed to be able to comeplete these master writs? 10 plating grains and pulverized trait materials should be refined into up to 10 platings or trait items. The horrificly low drop rate is appalling.

I have the skill and material to create a 123 voucher jewelry writ but I have no intention of completing it. The investment to return ratio is completely unacceptable at this point (though the aforementioned changes to upgrading may change this). Why would I waste that much value on a voucher that I could gain thru another skill (cloth or wood writ for example) for a fraction of the investment value?

On the other side of your comment - I have 10 crafting characters, all of which have skill 50 in jewelry, though 9 of them have no skill points allocated so they are performing JC writs for the purpose of gathering surveys. These 10 average 1-2 surveys a day. Between the rewarded -grains from the writs (I usually get 1 gold dust a day) and the refining done, this has allowed me to gather up enough dust to create 4 purple and 1 gold item at this point in time.

TBH - I destroy any JC writs I get with a value under 100, and bank those that 100+ simply on the investment return value. I see no reason to perform them until they are given an economic overhaul.

method__01 · August 2018

if ever the leg jewelry master writ,pay up to 400 vouchers -as zos claimed in another post-still is worthless to craft
for ps4 you need about 800k+ only for gold mats

decon,waste of bank space

Panomania · August 2018

Agreed. The JC update for masters rewards was a total waste of their time. I just got an epic that gives 30 vouchers. GREAT! But even with reduced upgrade cost it takes 92K gold in mats to craft whats needed. Not anywhere even remotely close to worth it.

John_Falstaff · August 2018

@Panomania , wait, it's already post-Wolfhunter master writ, one that should provide "dramatically" more voucher reward according to patch notes? Epic jewelry for 30 vouchers? Or it dropped before the patch landed?

My_Treehawk · August 2018

Panomania wrote: »

Agreed. The JC update for masters rewards was a total waste of their time. I just got an epic that gives 30 vouchers. GREAT! But even with reduced upgrade cost it takes 92K gold in mats to craft whats needed. Not anywhere even remotely close to worth it.

Do you recognize the writ as one you've seen before and if so, what was it's former value? Just curious.

I agree though, at current market values, that is still not a viable reward. Hopefully as the market settles and JC becomes more stable economically the changes will bring this skill in line with the others, but until then...

Panomania · August 2018

Yes, this dropped after patch, and before the voucher reward would have been 7 vouchers. I hope ZOS finds someone to run this kind of stuff that actually uses their head. I mean its not hard to figure out: if the upgrade mats are bare minimum 10 times more rare than any other crafting upgrade mat (and its actually closer to 12 because no hirelings) then what does that tell you voucher rewards should be compared to other masters? And currently its 4 to 5 times more than other trades rewards.

redspecter23 · August 2018

I received a few new JC master writs today and from my small sample size, it appears that the trait carries a rather large multiplier if it's not one of the 3 base traits. I got one legendary healthy for 126 which I will scrap as I have prior to the update. I had 2 similar epic level master writs. One was healthy for 30ish vouchers and one was triune for 65. The 65 seems potentially reasonable, but I can't see doing the 30 voucher one. The prices on trait stones is still slowly creeping down and I don't think any of them are 30k+ anymore, at least on PC/NA. I'd be interested in seeing what you might get from an infused or bloodthirsty piece as those trait stones are relatively cheap now and if they carry a large multiplier, they may be very useful.

kringled_1 · August 2018

I had an epic infused JC master today, 88 vouchers.