Wolf/bear hat nerf - profits somewhat misleading...

I was beginning to wonder if having hundreds of dead animal heads in my bank were normal. But now I see that I'm just a beginner.

 

I would rather leave my "own desires as a crafter" out of the equation, thank you. Come to think of it, you have no way of knowing anything about them, because I have not shared any of them in these forums. The same applies to assumptions about grounding the thought process to "real-world economies". I do not do that. Just please do not put words in my mouth, or thoughts in my head, thank you.

Basically I agree. However, firstly, I do not think anyone has claimed that every single item under the sun should be profitable, i.e. talked about "completely eliminating" anything.

Ammo and reagents are most definitely not the only drains. In fact all the biggest sinks in this game relate to making of better items. These currently include, but are not limited to the following, and are designed to often work in parallel:

• Compound material weapons and armor. These are HUGE material sinks. For example, a simple grey pine long bow with hardened leather bowstrings requires insane amounts of wood, leather and special expensive materials. It's worth noting that these kinds of things are always made at an extreme loss, in the context of NPC sales (they are always sold to players, or made for personal use).
  
• Item decay, aka permanent durability reduction. This eventually takes the item out of service, never to be seen again.
  
• Masterworking, which consumes large amounts of silver (possibly other expensive and rare materials later) and, comes with assured item decay, and carries an immense risk of immediate item destruction, never to be seen again. When combined with items made out of compound materials, this is a very big sink.
  
• Enchanting, largely similar to masterworking (item decay, item destruction).
  
• Engraving, material sink and comes with assured item decay.
• Other direct and indirect drains (both present and upcoming) include food, item repairs, item salvage (instead of selling), housing decorations, clothing.

Certainly, if people are content with lowest possible gear, this game "economy" will go down the drain. It's based on two mutually contradictory assumptions, namely assumption of growth combined with assumption of perpetual scarcity. So the goal is basically to make obtaining better gear actually worthwhile and interesting, while various aspects of game mechanics attempt to create artificial scarcity at every opportunity. So it's not fear of "inflation" - actually it's fear of abundance, fear of perfection, fear of contentment, fear of boredom. Paradoxical? Certainly, but no more than it is already in the so-called "real life" - we make our collective lives miserable, so as to avoid the anxiety of boredom (of happiness). But I digress.

So I agree that sinks and faucets are important, perhaps among the most important, concepts. But there won't be scarcity of either. It's all a matter of tuning. Therefore, any design decisions for and against certain playstyles (for example the decision against the possibility of being a pure crafter) are not dictated by insurmountable game mechanics, but they are simply designer attitudes and opinions. I'm mostly not a crafter, but there appear to be many crafters who feel pure crafting should be allowed, and this also means reconsidering the functionality of some of the sinks. Deducing from the latest patches, it looks like something like this is already happening.

 

In order for there to be an economy, there has to be a source of gold. To use the wolf head as an example, I used to buy the heads from vendors (as well as farm them). Which means that some of my profits were going to other people. I would pay up to 30gp for a head.

I also bought a lot of ore with the money I made from selling hats. I spent 50k gold a couple days ago.

Now I wont buy any more heads, unless they sell for 10gp or less per head. I wont be buying anymore ore, since doing so only saved me time. Time I will have to spend on my own getting my own ore.

I already craft my own armour...mastercraft and enchant my own stuff. Bought I knew from the beginning there wasn't going to be any economy since the writing was on the wall for that. Plus it seems more rewarding to make and enchant/mastercraft my own stuff.

But to buy something from a player vendor? Why? I can spend a few hours grinding the gold for an item, or I can spend the gold on the stuff I need so that I never have to grind for gold again for that same item. Much less grinding just for the stuff to make it...even incidental mining/harvesting (which makes it seem like no time)

I accept the fact that there will be no economy. Doesn't bother me really since gold only represents time, and I can spend all the time I want in game. Gold just buys me time.

 

Okay..for fun I spent an hour farming wolves in ulfheim.

I killed around 50 wolves. I gained 18 heads. 7 suet. 9 Aortic Thrombus. 114 Animal Hides.

I will turn 18 of the hides and the heads will net me 864 gold.
Vendoring the suet and Aortic Thrombi will gain me 512 gold.

The remaining plus a little gold from a few skellies gives me another 700 gold.

So roughly 2000 gold for the hours work.

 

How is anyone getting those prices selling to NPCs though? That's the "full" value but when I vendor I get like 8g and 2g, respectively. Is there something I don't know about selling to vendors?

I'm fairly new, been playing about a month.

 

Martin the Merchant

 

I have to wonder. What if all these skins and granites and woods in player housing had an impact on npc pricing? So if a player erects a house, the world has to come up with X amount of materials. after its all used up in stock, npc starts buying mats 'and hats' at higher prices to accomodate. that stuff sinks gold and can all happen behind the scenes with more immersion.

and if housing isnt enough sink, then announce undead are overrunning trinsic, now pots and cloths are needed and worth more. etc

it would be less time consuming to try it for a week than us talk it to death. Not being a negative, it would be really good useful conversation. economics is hard enough, game economics is like another set of rules. Probably make a good card game or app.

THE HENDOMAN

 

Martin the Merchant is the one I'm getting 8g and 2g from...?

EDIT: Ok just checked, he's giving me 3g for corpse wax. Still nowhere near 15g.

 

maybe he was fixed?