Loam pricing.

[Tarlok]

Its been a while and I have all but given up on tinkering.  Was curious if its even worth the effort to try it again.  I remember the nightmare of harvesting for hours just to see those mats used up in minutes, as well as seeing obscene prices for loams on the vendor.  What I am wondering is has the situation improved enough to put any time into tinkering now.

[Rijacki]

I've been ill and I almost always go on a crafting/harvesting blitz while sick because I can be completely anti-social and if I mess something up from inability to fully concentrate no one gets hurt; plus, if I am feeling too woozy to play much I can go lay down for a bit and not affect a group (30-60 min play sessions).  From the end of last week to last night, I went from around 60 to 160 (not a lot, I know.. I didn't play a lot since I was feeling that ick). On AB, in T1 the price of loam is insane (and it's not -that- hard to harvest).  In T2, the loam fluctuated between 2c and 1s+ in the past week or so but the ore was generally cheaper.  In T3, loam also fluctuated between 2c and 1s over the past 4 days and the ore was generally about 1s.  In T4, last night, the ore was several silver, the loam around 1s, and the other two minerals near to 1s each. I'll most likely go back to harvesting since I dislike paying a bunch for harvests and I don't mind harvesting all that much since I can get rares (8 blackened iron, 3 coral, 2 steel, 1 jasper, and 1 palladium during this blitz) and shineys (I finished 2 EoF collections, got a few old world bones I was missing, and got several to sell).

[dartie]

<p>When the devs halved the T1 loam cost, the boards were abuzz with economic theories about how the price of loam would go down.  I remember seeing several posts to the effect that the price would initially surge up in response to all of the people who would suddenly want to tinker thanks to the reduced loam requirements, but they agreed that prices would fall within a month or so of the change.</p><p>I waited the month.  And then another month.  </p><p>When I finally decided that I didn't care to wait anymore, I bit the bullet and paid anywhere from 18s to 50s for each leaded loam.  I once cleared out all the loam at 36 silver, and the only stuff left was 1 gold each or more.  When I came back to check, someone else appeared to have bought those.  </p><p>This would have been early June (long after the loam reduction was introduced).</p><p>So my opinion is that the prices are not falling as dramatically as expected, but the thing to remember is that once you push through the leaded loam phase of tinkering, the rest goes fairly painlessly.  I found plenty of the loams for the higher tiers for 2c each.  There were some pricy metal clusters along the way, but they were *never* as costly as the leaded loams.  </p><p>It took me forever to get through the leaded loam phase, but once I got through it, I cruised all the way to 350 in one weekend.  (I two-boxed and had my tinker just grinding recipes while my main was reorganizing his store, so it went very painlessly.)</p><p>Of course, I don't have much to show for being a 350 tinker.  I love the overclocked harvesting tools, but I could have bought those on the broker for 15 gp instead of leveling up my tinker to make them myself.  </p>

[Tarlok]

Thank you for the replies and I have decided at this time that there being no real way to make any money or usefull items with tinkering its not worth the hassle of harvesting/buying loams and metals, and then leveling one up.  Now if they were to drop the tinker requirement and the no trade bull then I would consider it.

[Armironhead]

<cite>Tarlok wrote:</cite><blockquote>Its been a while and I have all but given up on tinkering.  Was curious if its even worth the effort to try it again.  I remember the nightmare of harvesting for hours just to see those mats used up in minutes, as well as seeing obscene prices for loams on the vendor.  What I am wondering is has the situation improved enough to put any time into tinkering now. </blockquote> last night on vox salty was 2c while bonded was 1g or so.  Guess which one i needed to tinker?  Anyway I guess that most tinkerers on vox haved lvl'd up enough that the low lvl loams are stablized in price, but the mid range and higher ones are still obscene