PSA: Alchemy scammers buying ingredients

Carbonised

Alright, I'm not one to rat about other people, but seeing as the tendency just keeps on going, I think it's about time that someone makes a PSA info post about this, so people can make an informed decision.

For a while there have been buyers in zone chat that will buy all your seemingly trash ingredients such as fleshfly larvae, spider eggs and cheap mushrooms, and they will usually offer the MM price or around there, which is rather low for these ingredients.

Seemingly a good trade for you, right? Thing is, you're basically selling away free profit for these people, as they will use the many thousands of ingredients to craft large quantities of poisons that they sell off for good profit to NPC vendors.

I believe that people have the right to make an informed choice and decision, and I think this is falling in the category of a dupe or scam, as essentially one party is privy to information that the other party has not got, meaning that what seems to one party to be a nice and good deal, is in fact a scam where you're being duped into selling away your profit. If you knew about it, you could just have used those ingredients yourself to make profit by selling the poisons to the NPC vendors.

Ultimately Zeni should fix this by making crafted poisons and potions have a 0 cost or 1 cost per item instead of the current value. After all, people craft poisons and potions to use them not to sell them th vendors.

Anyway, feel free to sell off your larvae and eggs and whatever to these people, at least now you have the relevent information to make a deliberate choice about it.

Brrrofski

That is not a scammer in the slightest.

It's up to people to know the value of the items they sell.

Also, some people can't bo bothered making poisons to sell so it's cheap easy money.

mikeabboudb14_ESO

Brrrofski wrote: »

That is not a scammer in the slightest.

It's up to people to know the value of the items they sell.

Also, some people can't bo bothered making poisons to sell so it's cheap easy money.

he said its coming close and this is the OPs attempt ti inform people hence the PSA in the title. I for am thankful i have a lot of those things and dont know what to do with them now i do

Carbonised

Brrrofski wrote: »

That is not a scammer in the slightest.

It's up to people to know the value of the items they sell.

Also, some people can't bo bothered making poisons to sell so it's cheap easy money.

It's a scam when one party is privy to information the other party has not. Essentially it's the same as an insider trade, which is actually an illegal practise. Feel free to disagree if you like.

SickDuck

Some people sell full soul gems for 25pp in guild stores. I buy and re-sell them to NPCs. Am I a scammer now?

SydneyGrey

A scam is when they offer to trade for another material, and then end up giving you a crap material instead of the nice, quality material they'd promised you. Buying goods for a price you agree to, then delivering the price they promised you, is not a scam. So what if they use the ingredients to make something else?

That would be like a company that processes raw cotton getting upset that people bought their cotton to make bed sheets to sell.

Sheezabeast

Uh....asking to buy something then paying for said item is kind of the opposite of getting scammed

Waffennacht

Carbonised wrote: »

Brrrofski wrote: »

That is not a scammer in the slightest.

It's up to people to know the value of the items they sell.

Also, some people can't bo bothered making poisons to sell so it's cheap easy money.

It's a scam when one party is privy to information the other party has not. Essentially it's the same as an insider trade, which is actually an illegal practise. Feel free to disagree if you like.

What information are they not privy to? It's all available to the public

Buffler

Best thread ever!

IcyDeadPeople

How in the hell is that a scam?

And even if Zenimax changed vendor price for you, this doesn't affect the market price at which people are willing to buy / sell poisons.

Lots of items with 0 vendor value have much higher market value. If you want to sell below avg market price there is nothing stopping you.

Roovin

.................How on Earth is this scamming people?

Roovin

Carbonised wrote: »

Brrrofski wrote: »

That is not a scammer in the slightest.

It's up to people to know the value of the items they sell.

Also, some people can't bo bothered making poisons to sell so it's cheap easy money.

It's a scam when one party is privy to information the other party has not. Essentially it's the same as an insider trade, which is actually an illegal practise. Feel free to disagree if you like.

lulz, then this entire game is a scam.

Since not all guild stores are connected, people that belong to different guilds will have varying prices on certain items.

jlboozer

Not a scam at all...just a good way to make gold imo!

Tandor

I guess it must be a poor day for thinking up new complaints about ZOS and the game, so this is the best available one. How anyone thinks that transparent trading of the requested items for the agreed price can be called scamming is beyond me. Still, when people have run out of other things to complain about I suppose anything goes...

mesmerizedish

Buying raw materials at market value and then using them to make finished goods which are sold at market value is a scam?

I hate capitalism as much as the next millennial, but come on.

bebynnag

your post is designed to ensure people are making informed decisions

i believe the player base is already informed and continues to sell their materials over zone chat regardless,

let me enlighten you as to why

i have 10 max level characters, i do various things to ensure i have the alchemy ingredients i need to make the potions/poisons i need.

• sewer runs
• writs/survey collection
• bequeather
• and old fashioned running around in a circle collecting materials open world

all of these thing take time to complete, what time i have left i spend running content

now if somebody want to buy alchemy ingredients i have absolutely no use for, then spend hours making those items into poisons, and selling them to an NPC - all power to them.

you propose that ZOS should prevent this by reducing the value of crafted goods when vendered
i completley disagree
i would be surprised if experienced players/traders were partaking in this activity, since there are much faster/easier ways to make much more money
I think you will find that the people doing this are probably new to the game, in need of money and this is lets be honest an amazing way for them to do that.

MissBizz

Carbonised wrote: »

Brrrofski wrote: »

That is not a scammer in the slightest.

It's up to people to know the value of the items they sell.

Also, some people can't bo bothered making poisons to sell so it's cheap easy money.

It's a scam when one party is privy to information the other party has not. Essentially it's the same as an insider trade, which is actually an illegal practise. Feel free to disagree if you like.

How do they have knowledge others don't? Anyone can see they can make poisons and sell them.

This is like saying that any crafting for profits is a scam. It is not.

otis67

This is in no way a scam. In fact thanks for the heads up, Ive seen them in chat but never knew why they buy those ingredients. Now I'm going to have to go out there and try this.

Carbonised

There are lots of people who don't know you can make money off selling cheap-to-make poisons to vendors.

If this wasn't profitable, you wouldn't see people in zone chat all the time asking to COD them hundreds of eggs and larvae.

This is not the same is refining goods since:
A: you're not using the poisons themselves, you just selling them
and B: you're not selling to players or on the market, you're selling to dumb NPC vendors who have no choice to buy or not, who will buy an eternal supply, and who have an eternal amount of gold to buy them with

Regardless, I don't care if you see this as a scam or not, and I don't care how many ingredients you sell to these people or not. My post was a PSA to inform about what they used the ingredients for, and why they are buying them at these prices, so people can make an informed choice. Mission accomplished as I see it.

supaskrub

Hurrah for free enterprise... people sell, people buy, people make a profit.. how on earth is this a scam?.. and the dumbest post of the year award goes to....

Adenoma

I'll also try this. I already use my provisioning ingredients to recycle things into money. Just make the green CP150 food and sell to NPCs for 5g a piece. Two ingredients makes 4 food which is 20g a piece. If you have an add on like multicraft I just sit back and make a thousand X or Y, fix a drink, and then pocket an easy 5k. Lord knows I don't go through enough food to run out of things on my own.

Hempyre

Wtf this is basic commerce.

Buy raw materials, refine, sell finished product.

There's no scam of any kind. [snip]

[Edit for Flaming]

X3ina

Every single trader that relisted their divines "sun" stuff is a scamer. confirmed.

Dasovaruilos

This forums is getting waaaay to liberal with the expressions "pay 2 win" and "scam".

I hate scamming, but this is not scamming.

I know plenty of people that would be glad to sell those ingredients even knowing that. It is just a matter of convenience.

It is okay if you want people to know that and have a more informed decision, but it is not a scam.

MADshadowman_

So, if a newb gets a nice sharpened weapon drop in a public dungeon that is worth a lot and sells it for only 5k gold because he doesn't know the market value of this item, does that make me a scammer for buying and resellling it?

SanTii.92

Brilliant post @Carbonised like always, keep it up!

Mazbt

Thanks for the good idea i have tons of certain alchemy mats that I am not planning on using for anything. Might as well make trash poisons and vendor. I have thousands of those poison solvents as well and it's a good way to make gold by selling them to the vendor.

leepalmer95

Basic economy is a scam now?

Everytime i think i've seen everything on this forum it always surprises me.

Carbonised

Mazbt wrote: »

Thanks for the good idea i have tons of certain alchemy mats that I am not planning on using for anything. Might as well make trash poisons and vendor. I have thousands of those poison solvents as well and it's a good way to make gold by selling them to the vendor.

That's basically why I made the post. I'd rather people sell off the poisons for gold from their own ingredients, than fooling others into selling theirs to them, not knowing there is a possibility for profit here.

Carbonised

leepalmer95 wrote: »

Basic economy is a scam now?

Everytime i think i've seen everything on this forum it always surprises me.

Actually this scheme is very much akin to insider trading, which in many countries is an illegal activity, so no, not really basic economy. Let me quote: "A person who becomes aware of non-public information and trades on that basis may be guilty." This is exactly what's going on here, trading on the basis of non-public information. I'm simply making the information more public with this.

Tan9oSuccka

SickDuck wrote: »

Some people sell full soul gems for 25pp in guild stores. I buy and re-sell them to NPCs. Am I a scammer now?

I do this and also with Alkahest. People throw up a stack of 200 for 200 gold.

Buy and vend. Duh