crafting Yellow Salvage Prices

[Sir Myshkin]

Two days, four simple bids at 10,000 inf went unfilled. Got fed up, started dropping 50k bids to get recipes crafted. Got me thinking about the math on all this because there is definitely some... uh, "investing" being done.

 

Right now there's an overflow of common salvage beyond the seed volume of ~650k. Assuming that the majority of that overflow could be filled at 500 or less INF a piece, I could buy the whole lot at 322M, and if I relisted the entire lot at 5k a piece, I would net profit 2.7B INF (assuming I could actually find a way to store 650,000 pieces of common salvage).

 

Considering Uncommon salvage has a wide swinging door of 1,000-10,000 of original average pricing, and is already below original seed volume, it stands to reason that someone could actually make an appreciable return if they bought enough and flipped it back, but the time investment would be pretty ridiculous compared to just going out and grabbing a few recipes, crafting them, converting them, and selling them.

 

195 starter slots, at 10,000 INF stack 10 bids, 19.5M to bid out, relist at 25,000 and loose 2,000 INF per piece listed, 8K profit per piece, net 15.6M on 1,950 pieces.

 

And the time it takes to grab and return to the auction listing 195 slots?! I can't even.

 

On 3/4/2020 at 6:59 AM, Snarky said:

Also it is literally paying it forward.

I share this sentiment with you. If I have the free-floating INF on any given character, whenever I hear about a player trying to build up the money, or talking about a specific IO they're trying to get, I'll pop onto the Auction House and grab the item and e-mail it to them with a little /tell giving them a heads up to check (so it can be a bit of a "surprise" finding it). What's the point of having billions of INF in this game and not sharing it, knowing that it could disappear tomorrow and I've had hoarded it for nothing.

[Yomo Kimyata]

7 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

 

 

Right now there's an overflow of common salvage beyond the seed volume of ~650k. Assuming that the majority of that overflow could be filled at 500 or less INF a piece, I could buy the whole lot at 322M, and if I relisted the entire lot at 5k a piece, I would net profit 2.7B INF (assuming I could actually find a way to store 650,000 pieces of common salvage).

 

 

As I try to distract myself from the crazy show that is the real life markets...

 

In terms of basic supply and demand, I can understand the rare salvage market.  I can even understand the uncommon salvage market.  But the thing about common salvage that I don't understand is that somehow people have posted almost 650k for sale at what are (presumably) above market prices.  One way to look at it is that every active account has 20-25 for sale.  Another way is that 650 characters have 1000 each for sale.  And that for sale number keeps going higher!  IIRC it was about 450k during the summer.

 

That's a lot of salvage!

[Ura Hero]

I think this is related to the February 18th drop rate "nerf".   Drop rates in AE declined immensely with the February 18th patch.  Since then the amount of salvage and available recipes for purchase has decreased considerably and Wentworth's prices have risen.  Supply and Demand; it's not just a suggestion, it drives the market.

[MunkiLord]

1 minute ago, Ura Hero said:

I think this is related to the February 18th drop rate "nerf".   Drop rates in AE declined immensely with the February 18th patch.  Since then the amount of salvage and available recipes for purchase has decreased considerably and Wentworth's prices have risen.  Supply and Demand; it's not just a suggestion, it drives the market.

I was not aware that drop rates have been lowered. Interesting.

[Blackfeather]

5 minutes ago, Ura Hero said:

I think this is related to the February 18th drop rate "nerf".   Drop rates in AE declined immensely with the February 18th patch.  Since then the amount of salvage and available recipes for purchase has decreased considerably and Wentworth's prices have risen.  Supply and Demand; it's not just a suggestion, it drives the market.

I don't seem to see anything about changes to AE drop rates in the patch notes. Maybe it'd be best to report it as a bug if that's the case?

[Lines]

I can't find any evidence or discussion of that. Where are you finding that information?

 

That'd be a pretty substantial thing for devs to try and sneak through, and I'm not sure why they would.

[Ura Hero]

It is anecdotal, but I can tell that I am not getting nearly as many drops as I used to.  I'm not the only one who noticed.  

 

At first I thought someone was manipulating the prices, but since then I have noticed that the available amount of items for sale in Wentworth's has decreased considerably.   I am a fairly active marketeer so I tend to notice when folks tamper with the market.  Something has definitely changed where availability of recipes and salvage is down and prices are way up.

[Mr. Vee]

definitely anecdotal. mine seemed perfectly normal past that patch, and i was afk farming pretty heavily until a few days ago when i finished my last all tier 4 alt.

[Mr. Vee]

ok as an experiment i thought i'd buy all the yellow listed below the seeded threshold of 100k and relist for 11. thought it'd take forever and i'd give up. took 5 minutes. were only a few hundred listed and all of them sold for 10k+. so evidently if i really wanted to get them lower i'd have to start buying the seeded ones and relisting for pennies. i don't have the patience to buy/relist 3600 of the things to fill the existing bids. i'd be glad to if we could do 100 at a time but at 10 it's just too much effort. got them down to where mine sold for 12k/each. which i'm pretending didn't all go to the flipper/s 😄

[Apparition]

I agree with @Ura Hero .  As I posted in the Bug Reports section, I've noticed that both recipe drops and salvage drops have significantly decreased as of the February 18th patch while AE farming on my Fire/Rad Tanker.  Before the February 18th patch, I would normally have about a dozen non-common IO recipe drops and about 160 salvage after running a friend's asteroid map AE farm five times.  After the February 18th patch, after running the exact same farm five times, I find that I normally have about five non-common IO recipe drops and about 110 salvage.

[WindDemon21]

Several sg mates have noticed this too. The other day on a 6 man team which always lowers drop rates, but in the attack map my one alt got ZERO rare/pvp/purple recipes and that is a huge map.

[Sir Myshkin]

3 hours ago, Veelectric Boogaloo said:

ok as an experiment i thought i'd buy all the yellow listed below the seeded threshold of 100k and relist for 11

I was curious on this myself and messed around with buy rates late last night (within an hour of my last post). Started with a stack of 10k bid, and incrementally went up 1K until the bids started to fill, hit 18K before they finally started to fulfill, but then I strangely cascaded all the way down to me 12K bids (which had been sitting there for a good ten minutes). Wanted to see what I had to beat from a bid perspective, and where the listing was sitting. Unfortunately because of how awkwardly it just sort of "mass filled" everything (80 bids) within ten seconds of my last insert (waited about a minute between each posting), I didn't end up coming out of that with anything worthwhile beyond "server is super delayed on Uncommon processing." I highly doubt that someone dumped 80 UC salvage on the market at 3:00 AM and that I was the highest bidder consistently for a mere 10 stack from 10K to 18K, when prior to my post of the first 10K, the last highest bid submitted was 50K, which occurred within the time frame of what I'd been posting.

 

Edit to add, since I hopped back on and dumped what salvage I ended up with, it all got picked up from what I presume is the same player bidding out at 25,555.

 

Ironically I'll have made money even with the intent of lowballing my relistings at 10INF. Now I'm thinking about just intentionally buying up Brainstorms to dump UC salvage and let this player Venmo me INF via the Auction House :3

Edited March 9, 2020 by Sir Myshkin

[MunkiLord]

I think to get prices back down it will take significant work by a group since most people tend to just go by what they see in last five. 

 

For example, I've been tracking my sales via spreadsheet the last couple months. I've moved about 850 Miracle+ Recovery. I always post them for 4.5 million and some change. When the display bug is not active the average sell price is 4.8 million, with 581 sold. When the bug is active the average sell price is 8.4 million, with 259 sold. Note that I post and collect in batches of 20-100 at a time, so I don't have individual sell prices, just averages. So of those 259, I'm not sure how many sold at 10-20 million compared to normal. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

36 minutes ago, Sir Myshkin said:

I was curious on this myself and messed around with buy rates late last night (within an hour of my last post). Started with a stack of 10k bid, and incrementally went up 1K until the bids started to fill, hit 18K before they finally started to fulfill, but then I strangely cascaded all the way down to me 12K bids (which had been sitting there for a good ten minutes). Wanted to see what I had to beat from a bid perspective, and where the listing was sitting. Unfortunately because of how awkwardly it just sort of "mass filled" everything (80 bids) within ten seconds of my last insert (waited about a minute between each posting), I didn't end up coming out of that with anything worthwhile beyond "server is super delayed on Uncommon processing." I highly doubt that someone dumped 80 UC salvage on the market at 3:00 AM and that I was the highest bidder consistently for a mere 10 stack from 10K to 18K, when prior to my post of the first 10K, the last highest bid submitted was 50K, which occurred within the time frame of what I'd been posting.

 

Edit to add, since I hopped back on and dumped what salvage I ended up with, it all got picked up from what I presume is the same player bidding out at 25,555.

 

Ironically I'll have made money even with the intent of lowballing my relistings at 10INF. Now I'm thinking about just intentionally buying up Brainstorms to dump UC salvage and let this player Venmo me INF via the Auction House :3

I looked into that.  It's way over the cap.

[Troo]

I'll repeat.

On 3/2/2020 at 5:56 PM, Troo said:

I buy a lot for crafting and never pay that much. Even this past weekend, but, am also never in a hurry.

 

Is someone manipulating the price? I dunno, if someone is manipulating salvage, both hands should be cut off and then burn them at the stake, slowly. Don't try and grief people's free time.

The longer this goes on, the lower the incentive to craft, which helps many and keeps inflation low.

Buy 100 @ 2500, sell 100 @12,500 = 100x10,000=1,000,000.. nope

sell @52,500 = 100x50,000= 5,000,000.. nope

sell @102,500 = 100x100,000= 10,000,000.. still doesn't work out. Each one of those 100 uncommon can help craft something that can result in a 2-4M sale.

 

I'm going to stick with, the level of manipulation is simple griefing and should be dealt with. It's likely not profit driven.

[Lines]

Seems like a heck of a lot of effort for a very low impact. Even if I started buying at the seeded value, I'd still usually spend more on the actual crafting fee and still make plenty of profit. All it means is that it can take a little longer to fulfil bids.

 

Lord knows the effort of this manipulation can't be worth it. I wonder if someone's made a script to do all the clicking for them?

[Yomo Kimyata]

5 hours ago, Veelectric Boogaloo said:

ok as an experiment i thought i'd buy all the yellow listed below the seeded threshold of 100k and relist for 11. thought it'd take forever and i'd give up. took 5 minutes. were only a few hundred listed and all of them sold for 10k+. so evidently if i really wanted to get them lower i'd have to start buying the seeded ones and relisting for pennies. i don't have the patience to buy/relist 3600 of the things to fill the existing bids. i'd be glad to if we could do 100 at a time but at 10 it's just too much effort. got them down to where mine sold for 12k/each. which i'm pretending didn't all go to the flipper/s 😄

Yeah, I've done that too.  

 

EDIT: If I had the time and the clicks, I'd buy 10mm salvage  at 100k per, and offer at wherever.  It's the clicks that stops me.

Edited March 9, 2020 by Yomo Kimyata

[skoryy]

6 hours ago, Ura Hero said:

I think this is related to the February 18th drop rate "nerf".   Drop rates in AE declined immensely with the February 18th patch.  Since then the amount of salvage and available recipes for purchase has decreased considerably and Wentworth's prices have risen.  Supply and Demand; it's not just a suggestion, it drives the market.

Except if there was a nerf, prices would be going up across the board and that's not happening.  Common is still at <500 and rares are still at 500k.

Edited March 9, 2020 by skoryy

[Saikochoro]

I’m starting to agree with market manipulation. Last night I wanted to list a purple drop from a market crash task force. I didn’t have the yellow salvage for it so I bid for it on the AH. 

 

First bid, 25k. Nothing.
 

Rebid at 50k. Waited a few minutes while getting the other white and orange salvage and getting a drink. Not filled. 

 

Rebid at 75k and still not filled. So I ended up bidding the 100k for the seeded items. 
 

I tend to agree that this is griefing as opposed to profit seeking as there are much easier ways to make a profit. 
 

I know it doesn’t make much of a dent, but I’ve been dumping all my yellow salvage on the AH for 1 influence to try to help. 

Edited March 9, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 minute ago, Saikochoro said:

I’m starting to agree with market manipulation. Last night I wanted to list a purple drop from a market crash task force. I didn’t have the yellow salvage for it so I bid for it on the AH. 

 

First bid, 25k. Nothing.
 

Rebid at 50k. Waited a few minutes while getting the other white and orange salvage and getting a drink. Not filled. 

 

Rebid at 75k and still not filled. So I ended up bidding the 100k for the seeded items. 
 

I tend to agree that this is griefing as opposed to profit seeking as there are much easier ways to make a profit. 

Veelectric posted that he cleared out everything under 100k.  I've done that in the past but I'm far more willing to wait util my bids get filled.

 

 

[Saikochoro]

11 minutes ago, skoryy said:

Except if there was a nerf, prices would be going up across the board and that's not happening.  Common is still at <500 and rares are still at 500k.

I’ve seen the buy it now price for rares go up slightly. Used to get them instantly every time for 500k. This last week it’s been 600-700k when I’ve tried. I’ve even had to go for the 1m seeded one a couple of times if I wanted the buy it now price.

 

I agree that you can still get them for 500k though if you wait a bit. 

[Sir Myshkin]

2 hours ago, Troo said:

I'm going to stick with, the level of manipulation is simple griefing and should be dealt with. It's likely not profit driven.

The weird part about this, as I've been watching it this afternoon for a couple of hours, and the inventory (thus far) doesn't appear to be getting replenished, especially not compared to last night when there wasn't someone stack-bidding 25,555 INF (or so I can probably assume their bid stacks filled and they had nothing left pending by that point in the night). I'm going to poke back and check it again later this evening out of curiosity and see where it stands. I was still never able to fill any stack of 10K bid UC Salvage though, after 11 hours.

 

Right now supply is 9,998,636. It was maybe ~200ish lower than that a couple of hours ago when I checked before now. If there's a massive spike (1,000+) from this point, we'll have a pretty good notion then, but if it just continues to dwindle, than we've moved past marketeering/flipping, into straight griefing by absorbing the inventory excessively. The downside at this point is that if we out bid and return it to market, the other stacked bids will just get filled anyway and we'll have done nothing but flush INF in the attempt. I think we're at a point where if it is forced manipulation than a GM would need to be involved, but by technicality the player isn't necessarily breaking any rules.

 

It's been about a week, maybe they'll get bored, eh?

 

[Mister Mass]

Sir Myshkin, yeah, I am beginning to wonder if someone is buying the yellow salvage simply in order to destroy it.  I have seen this happen on crafted common IOs (like mez IOs) that badgers craft for the badges, then list, but then almost never sell because the demand is simply to low to clear out the inventory.  I actually did this once myself on Hold IOs because I was tired of seeing them every time I checked on an alt's sales.  Buying the crap was easy, but deleting them all was painful. 😝

[Mr. Vee]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Veelectric posted that he cleared out everything under 100k.  I've done that in the past but I'm far more willing to wait util my bids get filled.

 

 

yes, but only long enough for me to relist them at 11. i then bought a few hundred of the seeded and also sold them for 11. i didn't leave any bids up.

[THEDarkTyger]

10 hours ago, Ura Hero said:

I think this is related to the February 18th drop rate "nerf".   Drop rates in AE declined immensely with the February 18th patch.  Since then the amount of salvage and available recipes for purchase has decreased considerably and Wentworth's prices have risen.  Supply and Demand; it's not just a suggestion, it drives the market.

I have not seen any difference in the salvage drop rates since 2/15 and none of the patch notes or dev posts mention any such nerf