I've noticed some have posted that the costs of the vendor materials (Orboreal Shard and Luminous Flux) need to be reduced. I couldn't agree more, but no one has posted some numbers to show how bad the problem is. Here goes.I'm only familiar with blacksmithing, so I'll show how much it costs to buy the vendor materials to level the Shadowghast Armguards (plate bracers) from Rank 1 to Rank 4, and then to make one Rank 7 Shadowghast Armguard. Shadowghast Armguards are the least costly to make, the other seven pieces take more materials.In order to get to Rank 4, you first have to craft 15 of each Armguard at Levels 1, 2, and 3. This takes 600 Orboreal Shards. Vendor cost for one Orboreal Shard is 125g. This can be reduced to 100g from a few vendors if you have exalted reputation with certain covenants. 600 Orboreal Shards times 100g to 125g equals 60,000g to 75,000g.You also need to buy Luminous Flux, for the Shadowghast Ingots, as well as to craft 15 of each Armguard at Levels 1, 2, and 3. This takes 4,500 Luminous Flux (3,000 for the Shadowghast Ingots and 1,500 for the Armguards). Vendor cost for one Luminous Flux is from 7g 20s to 9g. 4,500 Luminous Flux times 7.2g to 9g equals 32,400g to 40,500g.BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE:To make one Rank 4 Armguard takes an additional 30 Orboreal Shards and 240 Luminous Flux (160 for the Shadowghast Ingots and 80 for the Armguard). At the previously mentioned vendor costs, this is 3,000g to 3,750g for the Orboreal Shards and 1,728g to 2,160g for the Luminous Flux.AND LAST, and actually least:You need to craft a Vestige of the Eternal to bump the Rank 4 Armguard to Rank 7. This takes 30 more Luminous Flux, at the low price of 216g to 270g.Let’s sum this up.Lowest vendor cost to make a Rank 7 Armguard from the start is 60,000g + 32,400g + 1,728g + 216g = 94,344g.Highest vendor cost to make a Rank 7 Armguard from the start is 75,000g + 40,500g + 2,160g + 270g = 117,930g.None of this accounts for the subjective cost of the time spent to farm all of the many other required materials, or the actual cost to buy those materials from the auction house.When you check the prices of Rank 7 items for legendaries on the auction house, you should not be shocked at how expensive they are. You should be amazed that they aren’t more expensive.
In BFA I would craft thousands of items but I could scrapp them and send materials to alts and keep crafting. It could be boring sometimes because we need to craft LOTS of gears, but nothing would be wasted. And after a while I was managing an entire business with my alts one feeding the other and making gold, it was fun.For Shadowlands you made gold easier but crafting is much more boring. You need to craft dozens of low ilvl base legendary that is completely useless, will never sell them and even is not worth vendoring. This could easily be fixed if we could use the low rank base legendaries as a base to craft the higher ones, saving some mats.I´ve spent around 30% of my playtime managing crafting in BFA, I didn't have any joy crafting in Shadowlands. It may be too late to change anything in this expansion but I hope it is a lesson learned for the next one.
The issue isn't the price of mats now, it's the price that crafters had to pay in order to level up. Those who got into crafting in 9.1 would have made a profit from crafting the 190s, then the 210s etc. Anyone else it's a mountain (of gold) to climb over. It's only these players, on the largest servers with many active raiding guilds, and only those few willing to cancel-scan all day for hours, that will be "making millions". In fact, by increasing the drop rate now, which acted as a gate to how many can be crafted a day, they're making it worse for casual crafters as it is those who have the gold who can increase their crafting rate, pushing casuals out of the market with constant cancel-re-post-undercuts rather than running out of stock.As an example of how high this mountain is: to keep track, I've been posting all but one of my stock at current price (in some cases now as low as 2g per item) and one at the current crafting cost. Every one of those first 3 ranks, 15 items per rank, is a net loss of between 1000 and 8000g (more for Jewel crafting), compared to just selling the mats instead. This is on 19 out of 31 possible slots I've levelled so far. At a rough calculation, around a 10 million gold cost. Did I make this up in profit on sales? No. I've sold a total of four 291s so far. However it does mean my guild-mates can get their legendary at mat-cost price, less if they use mats they've picked up themselves. Also, if anyone asks from outside the guild, I'll craft for mats + tip (10% of the AH price, is the recommended "usual" when anyone asks), but sometimes I'll just ask for a flat mats + fee of 5-10K depending on the item, if they're already on my friend's list. Not all crafters are AH goblins out to gouge gold from players, but we would like to get something for the time and (virtual) money we've invested in levelling our crafts. IMHO, this expac's crafting systems are over-complicated, over-priced and unfair.
So because some peons are unable to get a very SMALL amout of gold during 8 MONTHS (which is very easy and done in a day or two for anybody without using professions), you penalize artisans who litterally spent MILLIONS gold ?Artisans who works very hard on the game to make some little profit when randoms players are just whinning because they're not assisted enough and uncapable to farm few golds. As always, let's assist more already assisted people.It's about time to walk with your own legs, don't you think ?
pog