Why are blacksmithing tempers the most expensive?

Acsvf · February 2016

There doesn't seem to be a large difference in chance, given that people pay more for ore than other raw materials proportional to the temper prices(raw jute 13->dreugh wax 2.5k, iron ore 38->tempering allow 7.5k). Ore isn't much different in difficulty to find than the other materials though, so supply shouldn't be too different.
At the moment, I can think of two possible explanations:
1) Higher demand. If people use heavy armor, dual wield, 1h/shield, 2h etcetera a lot more than other things, then the tempers for blacksmithing would have a higher price.
2) It's expensive, because it's expensive. People by some bizarre reason started listing these for much higher than the other two, and everyone else just went along with it. And now that Master Merchant exists, it's the set price that is accepted by every player in the game. Then, because ore is now more expensive you can't really try and drive prices down by selling tempers for cheap.

I'm not really sure about either one. Heavy armor is probably not used significantly more at endgame than light or medium armor, and upgrading weapons uses considerably less tempers so weapon use probably won't be too significant. The second just rings too many alarm bells for me to actually think it's the case.
Does anyone have another possible explanation for blacksmithing tempers being more expensive?

anitajoneb17_ESO · February 2016

Acsvf wrote: »

There doesn't seem to be a large difference in chance, given that people pay more for ore than other raw materials proportional to the temper prices(raw jute 13->dreugh wax 2.5k, iron ore 38->tempering allow 7.5k). Ore isn't much different in difficulty to find than the other materials though, so supply shouldn't be too different.

The bolded part is where I believe you're wrong.
During a "standard" farming hour no matter in which zone, I seem to always end up with more clothing material than blacksmithing.

Another explanation would be that clothing does ONLY armor (7 pieces) , woodworking does only weapons (+ shields), that's only ONE piece (two if you consider weapon swap), whereas blacksmithing does both (potentially up to 11 pieces if you're dual wielding AND wearing heavy armor). So yes, not that many players use heavy armor but many do use melee weapons and many are dual wielding.

Slightly lower supply + significantly higher demand => much higher prices.

Elsonso · February 2016

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Acsvf wrote: »

There doesn't seem to be a large difference in chance, given that people pay more for ore than other raw materials proportional to the temper prices(raw jute 13->dreugh wax 2.5k, iron ore 38->tempering allow 7.5k). Ore isn't much different in difficulty to find than the other materials though, so supply shouldn't be too different.

The bolded part is where I believe you're wrong.
During a "standard" farming hour no matter in which zone, I seem to always end up with more clothing material than blacksmithing.

Another explanation would be that clothing does ONLY armor (7 pieces) , woodworking does only weapons (+ shields), that's only ONE piece (two if you consider weapon swap), whereas blacksmithing does both (potentially up to 11 pieces if you're dual wielding AND wearing heavy armor). So yes, not that many players use heavy armor but many do use melee weapons and many are dual wielding.

Slightly lower supply + significantly higher demand => much higher prices.

This. Blacksmithing does a lot of armor and weapons. The others are more one or the other.

Ashtaris · February 2016

Another thing you are overlooking is that I hardly ever get a Tempering Alloy from a hireling. It happens once in awhile, but probably not much more than every two weeks. But I will get a Dreugh Wax or two about every week, it not more often. And just like in the real world, the supply and demand determines the market value, like it or not

Acsvf · February 2016

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Acsvf wrote: »

There doesn't seem to be a large difference in chance, given that people pay more for ore than other raw materials proportional to the temper prices(raw jute 13->dreugh wax 2.5k, iron ore 38->tempering allow 7.5k). Ore isn't much different in difficulty to find than the other materials though, so supply shouldn't be too different.

The bolded part is where I believe you're wrong.
During a "standard" farming hour no matter in which zone, I seem to always end up with more clothing material than blacksmithing.

Another explanation would be that clothing does ONLY armor (7 pieces) , woodworking does only weapons (+ shields), that's only ONE piece (two if you consider weapon swap), whereas blacksmithing does both (potentially up to 11 pieces if you're dual wielding AND wearing heavy armor). So yes, not that many players use heavy armor but many do use melee weapons and many are dual wielding.

Slightly lower supply + significantly higher demand => much higher prices.

Right, that makes sense.
Thank you.

Mojmir · February 2016

weps are usually the first thing you upgrade to gold, its the most important pc, personally all of my charcters have at least one pc of heavy armor on(undaunted passive).

FriedEggSandwich · February 2016

Acsvf wrote: »

There doesn't seem to be a large difference in chance, given that people pay more for ore than other raw materials proportional to the temper prices(raw jute 13->dreugh wax 2.5k, iron ore 38->tempering allow 7.5k). Ore isn't much different in difficulty to find than the other materials though, so supply shouldn't be too different.
At the moment, I can think of two possible explanations:
1) Higher demand. If people use heavy armor, dual wield, 1h/shield, 2h etcetera a lot more than other things, then the tempers for blacksmithing would have a higher price.
2) It's expensive, because it's expensive. People by some bizarre reason started listing these for much higher than the other two, and everyone else just went along with it. And now that Master Merchant exists, it's the set price that is accepted by every player in the game. Then, because ore is now more expensive you can't really try and drive prices down by selling tempers for cheap.

I'm not really sure about either one. Heavy armor is probably not used significantly more at endgame than light or medium armor, and upgrading weapons uses considerably less tempers so weapon use probably won't be too significant. The second just rings too many alarm bells for me to actually think it's the case.
Does anyone have another possible explanation for blacksmithing tempers being more expensive?

Does it? Staff user 4lyf so never upgraded a metal weapon. Takes 8 rosin to upgrade my staff though, which is the same amount of dreugh wax it takes to upgrade a light armour piece.

Sunburnt_Penguin · February 2016

Respectfully, it's incorrect to analyse (if I have understood your OP) the price differences between basic raw materials and their respective epic tempers: as the people who'll be purchasing the latter (Vet1-16) won't be purchasing the former and vice versa. You'd have to price up higher level raw materials in order to get a fairer correlation. However, even then, I'd argue that it's unlikely that the majority of Vet1-16 players would be regularly buying raw materials from Traders as they'd either:
1. Have an abundance anyway due to accumulating drops through completing content,
2. Just buy them once per level up (which is a much bigger gap and duration compared to non-Vet)
3. Do a few laps of the merchants to steal the gear and deconstruct rather than farming for nodes - as this is much more efficient.

Personally, I'd argue that they're more expensive because:
1. There's less high level Blacksmithing Tempers being found by Hirelings and Writs and
2. More people may have skill points to reduce the use of Clothing Tempers
As less people are Master Blacksmithers compared to Clothiers, due to:
1. More demand (market and personal) for using Light/Medium armour than Heavy
2. Buying two weapons from the Traders is much cheaper than buying a full clothing armour set
3. There's a lot of emphasis and perks to Crafted sets.

This is all obviously conjecture, though. Although it makes sense to me.

nordsavage · February 2016

They are expensive because ZOS keeps nerfing drop rates since the games economy is based on relatively few of the items in the game.

lolo_01b16_ESO · February 2016

Weapons are the most important to upgrade and most builds use at least 2 metal weapons.
When thinking your armour, upgrading your heavy chest will provide much more extra protection than upgrading a light sash.

anitajoneb17_ESO · February 2016

Sunburnt_Penguin wrote: »

Respectfully, it's incorrect to analyse (if I have understood your OP) the price differences between basic raw materials and their respective epic tempers: as the people who'll be purchasing the latter (Vet1-16) won't be purchasing the former and vice versa. You'd have to price up higher level raw materials in order to get a fairer correlation. However, even then, I'd argue that it's unlikely that the majority of Vet1-16 players would be regularly buying raw materials from Traders as they'd either:
1. Have an abundance anyway due to accumulating drops through completing content,
2. Just buy them once per level up (which is a much bigger gap and duration compared to non-Vet)
3. Do a few laps of the merchants to steal the gear and deconstruct rather than farming for nodes - as this is much more efficient.

Personally, I'd argue that they're more expensive because:
1. There's less high level Blacksmithing Tempers being found by Hirelings and Writs and
2. More people may have skill points to reduce the use of Clothing Tempers
As less people are Master Blacksmithers compared to Clothiers, due to:
1. More demand (market and personal) for using Light/Medium armour than Heavy
2. Buying two weapons from the Traders is much cheaper than buying a full clothing armour set
3. There's a lot of emphasis and perks to Crafted sets.

This is all obviously conjecture, though. Although it makes sense to me.

I agree that trade prices of raw material are not significantly correlated to temper availability. Each of them have their own market with various things influencing their respective supply and demand situation.

But I kinda disagree with the rest of your analysis :
1 - Less tempering alloys from hirelings than dreugh wax or resin ? Really ? Are you sure you're just not suffering from bad-luck-RNG ? (only asking, I haven't used hirelings in ages).
2 - Less people having skill points in smithing ? frankly I don't think so. Admittedly, SP are scarce but with the price of tempers, people would really prioritize those passives and invest the points. If they don't, they'll ask a guildie to upgrade the stuff for them, so that the issue is restricted to BoP gear for the very few people who don't spend those skill points. I think it's only marginally relevant, and not more or less relevant than for clothing or woodworking crafts.
3 - Buying two weapons from the Traders is much cheaper than buying a full clothing armour set => I don't understand what you meant there
4 - There's a lot of emphasis and perks to Crafted sets. => I don't get this one either

And there's one thing I forgot to mention in my previous analysis : clothing raw mats come from two sources (nodes AND mobs), while smithing raw mats come only from one source (nodes). Which causes dreugh wax to be very significantly more available than tempering alloy.

I think the prices for all three gold tempers will continue to rise, because there are quite a lot of new sets that people will want to try and eventually adopt, because nirncrux is less FOTM than it used to be, and because the prices for VR15-16 raw mats continues to drop. These two last factors lead to less farming, and less farming of nodes automatically leads to less gold tempers available.
.

Acsvf · February 2016

Sunburnt_Penguin wrote: »

Respectfully, it's incorrect to analyse (if I have understood your OP) the price differences between basic raw materials and their respective epic tempers: as the people who'll be purchasing the latter (Vet1-16) won't be purchasing the former and vice versa. You'd have to price up higher level raw materials in order to get a fairer correlation.

I reasoned that because the refiners(a word I made up on the spot for people who buy raw materials to sell tempers for a profit) are buying raw materials at a proportion roughly equal for both types of material that the chance was the same.
7500/38 is 197, and 2500/13 is 192. Raw materials not in the upper end of the spectrum are significantly more expensive than refined materials, so if you were looking for materials to craft with or fill up your guild bank you would likely purchase the refined materials. Refined materials not of the upper extremity are worth roughly 4-6 gold each, to further support the idea that raw materials are mainly purchased by refiners.

anitajoneb17_ESO · February 2016

Acsvf wrote: »

Sunburnt_Penguin wrote: »

Respectfully, it's incorrect to analyse (if I have understood your OP) the price differences between basic raw materials and their respective epic tempers: as the people who'll be purchasing the latter (Vet1-16) won't be purchasing the former and vice versa. You'd have to price up higher level raw materials in order to get a fairer correlation.

I reasoned that because the refiners(a word I made up on the spot for people who buy raw materials to sell tempers for a profit) are buying raw materials at a proportion roughly equal for both types of material that the chance was the same.
7500/38 is 197, and 2500/13 is 192. Raw materials not in the upper end of the spectrum are significantly more expensive than refined materials, so if you were looking for materials to craft with or fill up your guild bank you would likely purchase the refined materials. Refined materials not of the upper extremity are worth roughly 4-6 gold each, to further support the idea that raw materials are mainly purchased by refiners.

While I cannot back it up with numbers, I don't believe that people who want to refine mats for tempers are going to actually buy those raw mats. They're far more likely to farm them. I don't think either that people who want to craft stuff will buy raw mats, since refined are much cheaper. I think the people who buy raw mats are the ones who want to level up their crafting skills. That is not correlated with the market for gold tempers.

.

code65536 · February 2016

As someone who has, over the lifetime of this game, obtained hundreds of each type of gold mat...

First, these are not the reasons why tempering alloys cost more:

The gold drop rate from refining raws is the same for all three material types. Any variation you see is just RNG. Do enough refinement, and you'll see that it's the same.
The gold drop rate from hirelings is the same for all three material types. Months of hirelings on multiple toons.
The gold drop rate from writ bags is the same for all three material types.

Second, the real answer is that it's a matter of relatively higher demand coupled with lower supply.

Demand:

Woodworking has the lowest demand in the game simply because each character can equip, at most, just two pieces of wooden gear. There just isn't a lot of woodworking gear in the game.
Clothing demand is driven by DPS and healer gear and is the highest. The VR15/16 medium/light mats sell at higher prices and for more volume than other types, and that's a good estimate of the demand for gold clothing mats, too.
Blacksmithing demand is also high, but not quite as high. The greater importance of golding weapons (vs. golding gear) does drive the demand up a bit than what one might expect.

Supply:

Raw woodworking and blacksmithing mats are the hardest to farm. You need to travel between and harvest nodes, and you are competing against other farmers.
Raw clothing mats are very easy to farm because you can get medium scraps from grinding mobs. Back when I was grinding my alt to VR16, I'd come out of certain grind areas with multiple stacks of scraps. It's much more plentiful than harvestable nodes. Furthermore, if there are multiple people, instead of competing against each other over the same nodes, you're farming cooperatively if you're grouped together. So when a creature dies, instead of granting one scrap to one person, it will grant one scrap each to a dozen people. So for a group of 12, each kill will inject 12x as many scraps into the economy because each person in the group is getting their own private copy of the loot. This multiplicative effect is huge, and the result is that, despite being in higher demand than blacksmithing, the extreme ease with which groups can farm for scraps mean clothing tempers are dirt cheap.

TL;DR: The question really should be, "Why are woodworking and clothing gold mats so cheap?", and the answer is, "There's far less demand for woodworking mats, and raw clothing mats are many times easier to farm than harvestable raw mats.

Acsvf · February 2016

code65536 wrote: »

[*] Raw clothing mats are very easy to farm because you can get medium scraps from grinding mobs. Back when I was grinding my alt to VR16, I'd come out of certain grind areas with multiple stacks of scraps. It's much more plentiful than harvestable nodes. Furthermore, if there are multiple people, instead of competing against each other over the same nodes, you're farming cooperatively if you're grouped together. So when a creature dies, instead of granting one scrap to one person, it will grant one scrap each to a dozen people. So for a group of 12, each kill will inject 12x as many scraps into the economy because each person in the group is getting their own private copy of the loot. This multiplicative effect is huge, and the result is that, despite being in higher demand than blacksmithing, the extreme ease with which groups can farm for scraps mean clothing tempers are dirt cheap.

code65536 wrote: »

[*]Woodworking has the lowest demand in the game simply because each character can equip, at most, just two pieces of wooden gear. There just isn't a lot of woodworking gear in the game.

That makes a lot of sense, actually. Woodworking tempers being very low in demand, that much was obvious, but the availability and sharing of natural resources between players for medium armor materials drastically increasing the supply of clothing tempers was certainly something that I hadn't thought of.

Sunburnt_Penguin · February 2016

@anitajoneb17_ESO

Regarding the second set of points that I made:
1. Has nothing to do with RNG, just less of the player base completing writs and investing 3 SPs in to hirelings for the rewards on Blacksmithing compared to Clothing.
2. In hindsight is completely incorrect because if someone's going to be crafting Epic gear then they're likely to be Master (or near) Blacksmithers and have skill points invested (In my tired state I was thinking about lower level Tempers)

However, both above points (second is now incorrect) were due to my assumption of less people having levelled up Blacksmithing compared to Clothing (due to the third set of points which I made).

Regarding points 2 & 3 of the third set of points that I made which are the reasons for my assumption of more Master Clothiers than Blacksmithers:
2. It's cheaper to buy two or three quality weapons at your level from a guild Trader than it is to buy an equivalent L/M armour set. So there's more of a financial incentive to level up Clothing over Blacksmithing for those that wear L/M armour
3. Crafted L/M armour sets give more benefits to the player than a weapon in a crafted set. So there's more of a performance benefit of levelling Clothing up

Acsvf · February 2016

Sunburnt_Penguin wrote: »

2. It's cheaper to buy two or three quality weapons at your level from a guild Trader than it is to buy an equivalent L/M armour set. So there's more of a financial incentive to level up Clothing over Blacksmithing for those that wear L/M armour

I considered that when I was planning out my character, figuring that if I only went for clothing, I could just ask someone else to craft the one or two pieces of woodworking and blacksmithing that I would use.

Sunburnt_Penguin · February 2016

@Acsvf

Yeah when I first started I focused on Clothing because I knew that's the type of armour I'd want for the majority of my first few alts (when I would get around to creating them). However I also researched the Blacksmithing and Woodworking traits when I found them just in case I ever needed to pass them on to other characters or friends.

eliisra · February 2016

You get way more clothier materials to refine from a normal play session. Because both leather and plants give Dreugh Wax when you refine.

But you only get Tempering Alloy from refining ores. You have to find and dig those up. There's no monster drops equivalent to leather.

That's the main explanation, all the leather you get automatically from playing the game.

Wax, rosin and temper droprate/rng from hierlings and writs are the same.