Mystic Binding Agent

News of people purchasing the Mystic Binding Agents has started to come in on the forums (eg, here and here). The word is that they work as I predicted: one Mystic Binding Agent replaces one Elonian Wine in the Rare Materials promotion formula. But, wait! It is more complicated then that! You can used the Mystic Binding Agents to batch together promotions of lower tier materials. Today I would like to discuss the consequences for using these item and discuss whether the are worth buying.

*Edit* This article was revised on February 6th, 2013 based on new information that was learned.

Mystic Binding Agents

Firstly, a package of ten Mystic Binding Agents can be obtained from the laurels vendor for ten laurels. On February 6th, 2013 I purchased the Mystic Binding Agents to determine exactly how they work. I have since gone through and edited this article to reflect what I learned.

Is it worth using your laurels to get Mystic Binding Agents? Laurels can be converted into a number of different items which can then be converted into gold. Depending on the route you take you can end up with ten Unidentified Dyes (worth about 1.8 gold) for five Laurels, two pieces of rare gear (worth 80 - 100 silver) with a chance at an exotic also for five Laurels, 3 fine crafting materials (worth 15 - 45 silver) for one Laurel. Obtaining the Mystic Binding agents which each replace an Elonian Wine worth about 25 silver is comparable, but you have other options with the Mystic Binding Agents as well. The following formula are possible.

8 Slivers + 1 Mystic Binding Agent + 1 Crystal + 1 Pile of Radiant Dust = 4 Fragments

6 Fragments + 1 Mystic Binding Agents + 1 Crystal + 1 Pile of Luminous Dust = 3 Shards

4 Shards + 1 Mystic Binding Agent + 1 Crystal + 1 Pile of Incandescent Dust = 2 Cores

2 Cores + 1 Mystic Binding Agent + 1 Crystal + 1 Pile of Crystalline Dust = 1 Lodestone

This allows players to batch together promotions, thus spending less dust, and crystals to achieve the same results. Also not having the pay for the multiple Elonian Wine opens up a host of possibilities. I have done some calculations and currently, by promoting 6 Charged Fragments into 3 Charged Shards you could profit by 80 silver per Mystic Binding Agent or 130 silver per Skill Point. That is a largest profit I have seen, thus far. Thus, as a way to generate additional gold Mystic Binding Agents are viable.

Of course there are other things you can spend your Laurels on that you can not get any where else. It will be up to you to decide what you want to obtain with your Laurels, more gold or unique items like mini-pets, ascended amulets, infusions, etc. My article on laurels takes a look at all the things you can obtain currently and might help you decide.

I am interested to see if how these will effect the overall markets for all Rare Materials. Mystic Binding agents have made promoting the lower materials profitable which you can see in my promotions spreadsheet. You can also promote through multiple tiers to make a profit. For example, just doing some quick math you could promote 6 Charged Fragments, into 3 Charged Shards, into 1.5 Charged Cores, into 0.75 Charged Lodestone. Yes, I only made a fraction of a lodestone, so obviously you would need to run these promotions multiple times in order to get a full stone. We can use this to calculate how much it would cost to make a full stone though. Since 75% of a lodestone costs 3 Binding Agents and 120 silver in materials, 100% of one would cost 4 Binding Agents and 160 silver. If I had done this without Mystic Binding Agents it would have cost about 325 silver to make the same Charged Lodestone. A Charged Lodestone sells for about 300-350 silver.

As you can see the Mystic Binding Agents make the market much more dynamic and interconnected. At the moment, in my opinion, there are better things to spend your laurels on. If, however, you just want to convert your laurels into gold there are some extremely profitable channels available to you (see my spreadsheet below). In the future, though, this system will really come into its own. Eventually, laurels will be a less valuable commodity and more people will be looking to turn them into gold and then we will see large numbers of people playing the market converting one type of material into another.

Updated Spreadsheet

I made a quick update to my spreadsheet showing the profits to be made from promoting crafting materials to reflect your option to use the Mystic Binding Agents. On the detailed view I have added a column showing profits to be earned per attempt and per skill point if you were to use the Mystic Binding Agent. The formula needs some tweaks to properly reflect all potential profits, but right now it is the minimum you will earn.

I have also added another option to the risk assessment on the simplified view which will trigger if there is only profit to be made if you use the Mystic Binding Agent. You will see this as "See Binding Agent [6]". This means that there is only profit to be made using this promotion formula if you use a Mystic Binding Agent. Since this only applies to the Rare Materials I have left the cells related to Fine and Common crafting materials blank. Using this players should be able to spot opportunities to promote materials and gain the most for their laurels and skill points.

I have added a test page to the spreadsheet which attempts to calculate the profits from these new  promotions. At the moment, if my calculations are correct, you can make about 70-80 silver in the best case at the moment. Check the new tab on the spreadsheet titled, "*Testing* MBA Promotion Tables". This is very much a work in progress, but I am fairly confidant about the profit calculations now that I have got my hands on the Mystic Binding Agent myself and seen how it is used.

Conclusions

In general, I do not think people will be rushing to spend their Laurels on Mystic Binding Agents. Most people will still be interested in going after the unique items that are currently not obtainable any other way. Still though, I think enough people will be interested in obtaining cheap Lodestones or just making gold that we will see prices continue to come down just nothing dramatic. Over time as people obtain the unique rewards the laurel vendor has to offer gold making schemes will become relevant again. Arena Net has also stated that at some point down the road we will be able to obtain laurels from other achievements besides dailies and monthlies. At that point I would expect the Mystic Binding Agents to be much more relevant. 

A lot of people feel let down by the Mystic Binding Agents as they assumed they would be a quick fix to the high prices of the Lodestones. It is understandable to be disappointed but often players need to check their expectations. Seeing how much gold could be earned per Laurel for the other items should have led players to the conclusion that the Mystic Binding Agent would be worth a similar amount. 

Players also need to start checking their expectations regarding any "fixes" coming to the Lodestone prices at all. It is still debatable whether there is a problem in the first place. Arena Net has not stated any plans to attempt to lower prices of rare crafting materials. I would advise players to think realistically and expect that any changes that are made to these markets will be small and measured. Also, start thinking longer term. I do not think we have seen all the implications of the laurel system on the prices of lodestones yet.

What do you think about these new items? Will you be spending your Laurels to obtain them or are you saving for something else? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks to TobranEarnwood's video below for setting me on the path to realizing that there was more to these Mystic Binding Agents then we first thought.

Skill Points to Gold Spreadsheet Update

I recently released a dynamic spreadsheet that calculates the expected return you could expect to receive when promoting crafting materials from one tier to another and keeps its data up-to-date from GW2Spidy.com. I am happy to announce that I am ready to share the newest version of this spreadsheet with my readers. This spreadsheet is the culmination of the work I did writing blog posts about promoting common crafting materials, fine crafting materials, rare crafting materials, and piles of dust through the mystic forge. The new sheet has a number of new features, such as, a simplified view, Tier 1 - 5 Rare Crafting Materials, faster updates, and an update log. With that said here is the spreadsheet,

Egg Baron Material Promotion Spreadsheet - Last Updated February 16th, 2013.

* Feb 4th, 2013 - Posted Publically
* Feb 5th, 2013 - Added column showing profits using Mystic Binding Agent
* Feb 16th, 2013 - Added the rest of the fine crafting material promotions (tier 1-2, 2-3, 3-4, and 4-5). Also, split simple view up into three different sheets, one for rare materials, fine materials, and common materials. Access the different sheets via the tabs at the bottom of the screen. For more details see this post.

A special thanks goes out to ZoCks for helping me collect data!

Simplified View and the Risk Column

The new simplified view.

The most obvious change is the simplified view. The simplified view was designed to give readers an easy way to view the most important information about the various promotions. It shows the formula used in the Mystic Forge, the expected output, expected average profit per attempt and per skill point, and a risk assessment.

The risk assessment is based on how likely it is for you to turn a profit. "No Profit" means that even in the best scenario you will not profit. "Extreme" means that only in the very best scenario will you profit. "High" means that you will only profit in cases above average. "Average" means that you will only profit when you perform at the average or better. "Low" means you will profit in all cases expect the worst results possible. "None" means that even in the worst case scenario you will still profit. Keep in mind that none of this takes into account the fluctuations in the market while you perform transactions. That is a risk you need to access for yourself. This risk assessment only takes into account the fluctuations in the output from the Mystic Forge.

You can select a sheet to view from these tabs.

The simplified view should be the active sheet when you open the spreadsheet. If not you can access it via the sheets tabs towards the bottom of the window. You will also see three other tabs; "Detailed View", "raw data", and "log". The detailed view looks the same as the old spreadsheet showing calculations and cost/profit/revenue breakdown. For instructions on reading this sheet see my old blog post. I will talk more about the raw data sheet and log sheet below.

Other Updates

I have also added the rest of the rare crafting material promotions. Currently, none of them are profitable but recent market shifts have opened up possibilities. Now it should be easy to watch for opportunities. I hope to follow this change up by eventually adding the rest of the fine and common crafting materials but more research is required into output quantities. Also, if it turns out the new "Mystic Binding Agents" effects profitability on promoting rare materials I will attempt to factor this into the spreadsheet and make an update.

Next, I did a lot of work on how the code gets the data from GW2Spidy. Formerly, I made a series of tiny requests to GW2Spidy for each piece of data then updated each cell one at a time. You may have seen this happening as you used the old version. The new spreadsheet makes one large request for all the data. This data is then cached for use for a variable amount of time (currently, 15 minutes the same amount of time GW2Spidy keeps its data). Updating the cache with 20,729 items from GW2Spidy takes roughly 30 - 60 seconds, however, this sheet only grabs the 1,019 crafting materials as this is quicker taking roughly 5 seconds. Once the data is cached it can be accessed instantly. 

I have also moved all the raw data to its own sheet called "raw data". This sheet gives me a central place to select which items I am interested in and get all the information about them. Updating all the data in one central location is much faster then updating individual cells. Now, if the cache contains fresh data, the spreadsheet will update nearly instantly.

Finally, I have added a log. The log records each time the spreadsheet is updated, each time the cache is updated, and any errors that occur when connecting to GW2Spidy. Now it is much easier to tell if the data being displayed is fresh, or if there is some sort of error holding the update process up.

Fair Warning

Please report bugs or errors in the comments or via e-mail.

I have been running most of the new code for about a week and I believe I have eliminated all the bugs and errors. Every time my spreadsheet scripts generate an error it is logged and once an hour I am e-mailed a report. The only error I can not eliminate is a timeout error associated with Google's URLFetchApp. Sometimes when I attempt to retrieve data from GW2Spidy I am unable to complete the transfer but instead of receiving an HTTP error the fetch function times out and crashes the script. This can happen because of a slow transfer rate between GW2Spidy and Google or when the connection is interrupted, for example.  Looking into this there does not seem to currently be a work around and Google is working on a solution. There is nothing I can do as it is Google's function that causes my script to stop running. I can not even catch this and report it in the log. The only way to tell that this is happening is if you see a message in the log stating a cache update started without a reciprocal caching completed message. I tell you all this to let you know about the sheets limitations. It is not perfect. It is not fully tested. Use this sheet to look for opportunities then follow up with research in game. If you see any error or problems please do not hesitate to let me know via e-mail or through the comments below.

Using my code

If you would like your own version of this spreadsheet you may copy it to your Google Docs for your own private use and modify it an anyway you wish. When you copy the spreadsheet you will also copy the script I wrote. If you would like to use this sheet or my script to publish your own material please leave a reference  to my blog somewhere within your body of work. I also would like to see how people are using my spreadsheet so please let me know about your modification whether private or public. You can add me as a collaborator via my e-mail address if you do not wish to make your work globally public.

With that said, yes it is now possible to modify this sheet to your hearts content. Simply add your own ID numbers to the first column of the raw data sheet in a copy of this spreadsheet on your Google Docs. The next time the spreadsheet updates the GW2Spidy data for this item will be added to the raw data sheet in the columns to the right of the ID column. I will have more details about creating your own spreadsheet using my code in the future. For now feel free to play around with it and ask questions in the comments below. I believe I have clean code that is well commented, so you should be able to make out alright yourself.

Legacy version of the Old Sheet

I will be turning off the old spreadsheet in about one weeks time. The sheet will remain shared in my Google Docs folder but the script will no longer run and the data will no longer update. I have placed warnings in the spreadsheet about this cut off dating instructing people to come here to obtain the new spreadsheet. If you would like a copy of the old spreadsheet please copy it before February 8th, 2013. At this time I will also add a warning to my blog post on the old spreadsheet indicating that it is no longer active and linking to the new spreadsheet.

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As always let me know what you think of my content. It helps me decide what to do more of and what to do less of. If you are a regular user of this spreadsheet be sure to come back to my site every now and then to check for update and to get your Guild Wars 2 news.

Promoting Common Crafting Materials

This is part of an on going series where I show the reader how to promote crafting materials and talk about the possibilities of using this method to convert skill points into gold. I have previously done articles on promoting rare materials, fine materials, and piles of dust. Today I will be discussing common crafting materials.

What are common crafting materials

There are an absolute ton of common crafting materials. According to the common crafting materials tab in your banks collections tab there are 62 of them. If we search the Black Lion Trading Post for common crafting materials we get 641 search results. Luckily, I will be simplifying this and I will only be talking about the 51 common crafting materials that can be promoted. The common crafting materials, like the fine and rare materials, come in a number of categories and a number of tiers. In all there are eight categories of materials in six tiers. The categories of materials include, Ores, Ingots, Scraps, Bolts, Leather Sections, Leather Squares, Logs, and Planks. Most of these materials follow the normal promotion paths, you take a lower tier material and turn it into a higher tier materials. There are two exceptions, the Ores and the Ingots.

Ore Promotion Path

The Ores are one of the materials that follows a strange promotion path. You promote Copper, to Iron, Iron to Platinum, Platinum or Mithril, and Mithril to Orichalcum, but you can also promote Silver to Gold and then Gold to Platinum. Thus, both Gold and Iron promote to Platinum with Gold being considered a higher tier material for the promotion.

Ingot Promotion Path

The Ingots also follow an odd promotion path. Firstly, you can promote Copper to Silver, Silver to Gold, Gold to Platinum, Platinum to Mithril, and Mithril to Orichalcum, however you can also promote Darksteel into Mithril. Thus, we have two materials promoting into Mithril with Darksteel considered a lower tier material for the promotion. This is not it for the Ingots though as there is a separate promotion path for Bronze to Iron and Iron to Steel. In this case Steal is a dead end that can not be promoted into anything else.

The other categories of materials follow the normal promotion paths as each category only contain one material of each tier and that material simply promotes into the material one tier higher than it. For completeness sake those promotion are as follows. For Scraps and Bolts; Jute into Wool, Wool into Cotton, Cotton into Linen, Linen into Silk, and Silk into Gossamer. For Leather Sections and Squares; Rawhide into Thin, Thin into Coarse, Coarse into Rugged, Rugged into Thick, and Thick into Hardened. Finally, for Logs and Planks; Green into Soft, Soft into Seasoned, Seasoned into Hard, Hard into Elder, and Elder into Ancient.

The Formula

The formula for promoting common crafting materials is simple and takes the following form for Ores, Scraps, Leather Sections, and Logs,

     250 Tier X Material

   + 1 Tier X + 1 Material

   + 5 Tier X + 1 Piles of Dust

   + X Philosophers Stones

   = random # of Tier X + 1 Mats

This may look confusing, but trust me it is not. Simply allow X to be the tier of the material that you are promoting. This means that you will need one of the materials that your are promoting too, 5 Piles of Dust of one higher tier than the material you are promoting, and a number of Philosopher Stones equal to the tier of the material you are promoting. For example, if you wanted to promote Mithril Ore (tier 5 material) into Orichalcum Ore you would use the following formula,

    250 Mithril Ore

  + 1 Orichalcum Ore

  + 5 Piles of Crystalline Dust

  + 5 Philosopher Stones

  = random # of Orichalcum Ore

If you are promoting Ingots, Bolts, Leather Squares, or Planks then you simply need to double the number of Philosopher Stones you need. Therefore, the formula for promoting these materials is as follows,

     250 Tier X Material

   + 1 Tier X + 1 Material

   + 5 Tier X + 1 Piles of Dust

   + 2 * X Philosophers Stones

   = random # of Tier X + 1 Mats

I think this is straight forward. There is an example in the image to the right. If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments below.

My Trials

I performed a number of promotion trials in order to attempt to determine the average number of materials that you can expect to obtain from promoting one tier into another. My first trial I converted Silk Scraps into Gossamer Scraps,

    4500 Silk Scraps

  + 18 Gossamer Scraps

  + 90 Crystalline Dust

  + 90 Philosopher Stones

  = 332 Gossamer Scraps

This means that I produced a net 314 Gossamer Scraps over 18 trials which means I made an average of 17.4 Gossamer Scraps per 250 Silk Scraps. The raw numbers for each trial were as follows; 20, 20, 16, 18, 18, 15, 21, 15, 15, 16, 17, 14, 19, 15, 22, 32, 22, and 17. Costs per trial were, half a skill point for the Philosopher Stones, 25 silver for the Silk Scraps (10 copper each), and 25 silver for the Piles of Crystalline Dust (5 silver each). Revenue is roughly 53.5 silver for the gossamer scraps (3.7 silver each less 15% TP fees). Thus, there was a profit of 3.5 silver per attempt, or 7 silver per skill point.

I have an assumption that all promotions from tier 5 to tier 6 will yield the same number of materials per attempt. My results from converting Silk Scraps into Gossamer Scraps showed similar results to what I obtained promoting Incandescent Dust into Crystalline Dust. Thus the next obvious step is to try to convert another tier 5 material to a tier 6 material to see if this assumption holds. I choose to promote Bolts of Silk into Bolts of Gossamer,

    2000 Bolts of Silk

  + 8 Bolts of Gossamer

  + 40 Crystalline Dust

  + 80 Philosopher Stones

  = 147 Bolts of Gossamer

This means that I produced a net 139 Bolts of Gossamer over 8 trials thus I made an average of 17.4 Bolts of Gossamer per 250 Bolts of Silk. The raw number for each trail were as follows; 15, 19, 19, 14, 11, 20, 33, and 16. Costs per trail were, one skill point for the Philosopher Stones, 50 silver for the Bolts of Silk (20c each), and 25 silver for the Piles of Crystalline Dust (5 silver each). Revenue is roughly 114 silver for the Bolts of Gossamer (7.7 silver each less 15% TP fees). Thus, the profit per attempt is 39 silver which is the same as the profit per skill point.

Conclusions

I think it is safe to assume that converting all tier 5 materials into tier 6 materials has the same random chance involved. The results from my Silk Scraps to Gossamer Scraps, Incandescent Dust to Crystalline Dust, and Bolts of Silk to Bolts of Gossamer are all very similar with averages of 17.4, 19.0, and 17.4 respectively and all attempts falling between 10 and 38 materials produced per attempt. If I average together all of my attempts I come to a value of on average 18.0 materials produced per attempt.

We can also generalize a profit formula from this,

  Profit = (A * X * 0.85) - (B * 250) - (C * 5)

    where,

      A = price of tier 6 material on TP

      B = cost of tier 5 material on TP

      C = cost of Crystalline Dust on TP

      X = number of tier 6 mats produced per 250 tier 5 mats

I choose not to promote any of the lower tier materials into the higher tier materials as they did not look to be profitable as most tier 1-5 common materials are the same price for their individual categories. From what I have read you can expect to receive, on average, more materials when doing these promotions. Perhaps, in the future when I have some spare silver I will do these trials as well.

Promoting common materials can be profitable. The key, as with any venture, is to buy your input materials low and sell your output materials high. Remember the profits I am showing in this article use the current market prices as of the time I wrote this article. The profits you can expect will vary based on the market. I hope to write an article this week, time permitting, that takes all the articles I have written, thus far, on promoting materials and combines the results into an easy to use spreadsheet. Check back for this, but in the mean time check out my articles on promoting rare and fine materials as well as Piles of Dust.

Promoting Rare Materials

If you have been following my blog, than you know that I have been doing a series of articles on using your skill points to earn gold. I have already discussed promoting fine materials including promoting piles of dust and today I would like to discuss transmuting rare materials.

The Rare Materials

There are a number of different rare crafting materials, 49 in all if we go by the collections tab in the GW2 bank, 106 if we search the trading post for rare crafting mats. Today I will be discussing the rare materials that can be promoted from one tier to the next. These are often called the tiered rare crafting materials and come in eight categories and five tiers much like the fine crafting materials. The categories are; Charged, Corrupted, Crystal, Destroyer, Glacial, Molten, Onyx, and Piles of Essence. Although the Piles of Essence can be promoted, the market is just too saturated with them to currently make a profit plus it is easier to just talk about the other seven. These seven materials all follow a naming convention based on their category and tier. The tiers are named. from one to five, are as follows; Sliver, Fragment, Shard, Core, and Lodestone. So, for example;  Charged Sliver, Charged Fragment, Charged Shard, Charged Core, and Charged Lodestone. The same applies for each category and tier. These rare materials have a number of uses including as components for legendary weapons and awesome looking exotic weapons. Today I will just be talking about promoting them and making money doing it.

The Recipe

The mystic forge recipe for promoting the rare materials involves no luck, and no randomness. You put in two of the lower tier materials, a Bottle of Elonian Wine, a Pile of Dust, and a Crystal and always get one higher tier rare materials out. The tier of dust required is the tier of the rare material you are promoting plus two, so if you are promoting a sliver to a fragment you use Radiant Dust, fragments to shards require Luminous Dust, shards to cores need Incandescent Dust, and finally, cores to lodestones use Crystalline Dust. Otherwise you always need a bottle of Elonian Wine and one Crystal. Thus the generalized formula is,

  2 Tier X Rare Material
+ 1 Tier X+2 Dust
+ 1 Elonian Wine
+ 1 Crystal
= 1 Tier X+1 Material

Simply replace X with the tier of the rare material you are promoting. Place these materials into the mystic forge and out comes one material of the higher tier. It is nice to not have to deal with randomness and because of this I can go straight to calculating our expected profit.

Expected Profit

As I mentioned above, without any randomness we can move straight into calculating our expected returns. Our revenue is the market value of the higher tier materials minus the 15% market fee. Our costs are the price of the dust, the price of two rare materials to promote, and the Elonian Wine. The dust and rare materials can be bought from the auction house or farmed and the Elonian Wine can be bought from Miyani by the Mystic Forge in Lion's Arch for 25 silver 60 copper. This fixed cost is what will determine if a material is worth promoting. We can generalize our profit formula (in silver) as follows;

Profit = (A * 0.85) - (B * 2) - C - 25.6
  where,
    A = price of Tier X+1 Material on Trading Post
    B = price of Tier X Material on Trading Post
    C = price of Tier X+2 Dust on Trading Post

Take for example, promoting Charged Cores into a Charged Lodestone. A Charged Lodestone should sell for 360 silver (A), a Charged Core could be purchased for 145 silver (B), and a Pile of Crystalline Dust could be bought for 5.3 silver (C). If we put these values into the formula we find that currently promoting Charged Cores into Charged Lodestones would not be profitable and we would lose roughly 15 silver per transaction. However, Destroyer Cores can be bought for 35 silver, and Destroyer Lodestones sold for 130 silver. If you do the math there is 10 silver profit to be made there. That may not seem like much but each attempt only takes 3/5ths of a skill point. If you want to use the above formula to calculate profit per skill point simply multiply the result by 1.67. You can also buy input materials when the market is low and sell output materials when the market it high to increase your profits.

Conclusions

At first glance promoting rare materials may not seem as profitable as promoting fine materials, but you have to consider a number of things to come to an equal comparison. Firstly, the fine materials promotion includes and element of change and risk that rare material promotion does not. Secondly, the tier 5 rare materials market is highly volatile as there are not a lot of the materials available for sale. That means you can take advantages in the peaks in the market and act as a stabilizing force to balance out rare material prices and make a profit while doing so.

I hope this discussion and my other discussions on promoting fine materials and piles of dust has helped you make some silver. I plan to continue this series of articles with one of promoting common crafting materials and then a final article bringing together all the knowledge and determining the best way to convert your skill points into silver and gold.

Dust Promotion

Before the holidays I talked about promoting fine crafting materials into higher levels. Of the 8 different classes of fine materials I talked about 7 of them and said I would discuss the 8th, piles of dust, another day. Well today is that day. I have earned enough skill points to run a number of conversions to attempt to find the average number of tier 6 dust gained from a single attempt at promoting a stack of tier 5 dust. 

Tier 1-6 Piles of Dust

The Formula

The formula for converting dust is a little different than the rest of the promotion formula. For starters you need to begin with a whole stack, 250, of the lower tier dust and you need to use crystals and philosophers stones. The formula for dust promotion is as follows;

  250 Piles of Tier X Dust
+ 1 Pile of Tier X+1 Dust
+ 5 Crystals
+ 5 Philosopher's Stones
= random # of Piles of Tier X+1 Dust

If that looks complicated do not worry it is not. Simply pick which dust you wish to promote. It will being anything from 1 through 5. This is the value of X in the above formula. If you wish to promote tier 5 dust to tier 6 dust, as I will in my trails below, than the formula you should use is as follows;

250 Piles of Incandescent Dust
+ 1 Pile of Crystalline Dust
+ 5 Crystals
+ 5 Philosopher's Stones
= random number of Piles of Crystalline Dust

The mystic forge, loaded and ready to go to convert
250 Incandescent Dust into a random number of Crystalline Dust

My Trails

For my trial I had 4250 Piles of Incandescent Dust which I converted into Piles of Crystalline Dust. Each attempt costs 5 crystals and 5 philosophers stones or in other words 3.5 skill points. The cost of 250 Piles of Radiant Dust is 62.5 silver or 25 copper each. Here are my results,

4250 Piles of Incandescent Dust
+ 17 Pile of Crystalline Dust
+ 85 Crystals
+ 85 Philosopher's Stones
= 341 Piles of Crystalline Dust

Removing the Piles of Dust required for the recipe leaves us with 324 piles of Crystalline Dust. Averaging this out results in about 19 piles of dust per pull. I would be able to sell my Crystalline Dust for about 5.66 silver each at the moment. Selling each Crystalline Dust for 5.66 silver I would take 107.5 silver on average per attempt before trading post fees. After the fees I would have revenue of  91.4 silver. Taking into account my costs (62.5 silver per pull) I would make on average 28.9 silver per pull or in other words 8.25 silver per skill point.

The most common result on promoting Incandescent Dust.

We can generalize the profit formula for converting dust as follows;

Profit = (A * 0.85 * X) - (250 * B)
  where,
    A = Current Sale price of Crystalline Dust
    B = Current Purchase price of Incandescent Dust
    X = # of Crystalline Dust per 250 Incandescent Dust

This formula merely needs you to go to the Trading Post and fill in the values for A and B. Than if my trials are to show anything you will average roughly 19 Crystalline Dust for each stack of 250 Incandescent Dust. If you are doing smaller trails than you could end up with more or less. The most I gained from a single attempt was 38, where as the least I gained from a single attempt was 10 (here are the raw numbers, 14, 34, 15, 20, 12, 18, 17, 38, 10, 13, 15, 18, 15, 21, 33, 18, 13). If you wish to determine your profits per skill point divide the above formula by 3.5 as that is the number of skill points needed per attempt.

Conclusions

As you can see from just comparing the two articles promoting dust is no where near as profitable as converting the other fine crafting materials. If you are looking to purely make gold from your skill points, thus far, the best option is to promote the most expensive tier 6 fine crafting mat from its tier 5 mat. I hope you found this discussion of promoting of dusts interesting even if it did not end up as being a profitable venture.

I have still not tried converting Cores into Lodestones to see if there is profit there; however, since there is no random amounts involved in the Core or Lodestone promotion I will be able to simply do the math to determine the profits from those conversions. I will write this article up later in the week and then follow up next week with a general article on converting Skill Points into gold.

Promoting T5 Fine Crafting Mats

If you read my article on obtaining Mystic Clovers then you know I am working towards crafting the legendary sword, Bolt. Today marks another milestone in my quest towards this sword. I have obtained all my Tier 6 fine crafting mats. I got some from the Trading Post, some from farming, but most I obtained by promoting Tier 5 crafting mats in the mystic forge. For a number of the T6 mats this is the most cost effective way of obtaining the materials. It is also a great way to convert your extra skill points into gold. Today I would like to review the options open to you for promoting materials, as well as, sharing my experiences.

Tier 5 on left, Tier 6 on right.

The list of Tier 5 Fine Crafting Material is as follows; Vial of Potent Blood, Large Bone, Large Claw, Pile of Incandescent Dust, Large Fang, Large Scale, Intricate Totem, and Potent Venom Sac. Each of these materials has a corresponding material for each of Tiers 1 through 6. For example, the corresponding Tier 6 materials are as follows; Vial of Powerful Blood, Ancient Bone, Vicious Claw, Pile of Crystalline Dust, Vicious Fang, Armored Scale, Elaborate Totem, and Powerful Venom Sac. If you are interested in viewing the other tiers check GW2 Hub's article on fine materials, or open the collections tab at your bank in game and scroll down to Fine Crafting Materials.

All of the Tier 5 materials can be converted into their corresponding Tier 6 material via a Mystic Forge recipe. There are two recipes, one for the Piles of Dust, and one for the other seven materials. Today, I am just going to deal with the seven core materials, and I will talk about the dust when I have more data on the conversion rates. The formula for promotion is as follows;

  50 tier X fine material
+ 1 tier X+1 fine material
+ 5 tier X+1 Dust
+ X Philosopher's Stones
= random amount of Tier X+1 materials

If this looks complicated, do not worry. Firstly, Philosophers Stones are purchased from the merchant  beside the Mystic Forge named Miyani. Secondly, in the above formula, X, represents the tier of the material you want to promote from. Thus, if you want to promote from Tier 5 to Tier 6, X would equal 5 and the formula would be as follows;

  50 tier 5 fine material
+ 1 tier 6 fine material
+ 5 tier 6 Dust
+ 5 Philosopher's Stones
= random amount of Tier 6 materials

You can do the same for any tier material from tier 1 through 5. If you are looking to make a legendary, an ascended back piece, an infusion, or make gold than promoting tier 5 materials is the way to go. The cost of the dust is going to make other conversions costly, and your limited amount of skill points would be better spent promoting tier 5 materials. Today I did a number of promotions to obtain the last of my T6 Totems, Sacs, and Bloods. Here are my results;

  1750 Intricate Totems
+ 35 Elaborate Totems
+ 175 Crystalline Dust
+ 175 Philosophers Stones
= 234 Elaborate Totems (+199 Totems or 5.7 / pull)

For this transaction my costs were 14 gold for the Intricate Totems (~80 copper each), and 9 gold for the dust (~5 silver each). After taking into account the Elaborate Totems used in the recipe I am left with 199 more Elaborate Totems than I started with. These should easily sell for 29 gold (~17 silver each) after posting fee. All in all that is a 6 gold profit or 34 silver per skill point.

  1000 Vials of Potent Blood
+ 20 Vials of Powerful Blood
+ 100 Crystalline Dust
+ 100 Philosophers Stones
= 147 Vials of Powerful Blood (+127 or 6.4 / pull) 

Breaking this down into costs for Potent Blood, 8 gold (~80 copper each), and the dust, 5 gold (~5 silver each). Revenue on the 127 Powerful Blood works out too 15.7 gold (~14.5 silver each) after trading post fee for a profit of 2.7 gold or 27 silver per skill point.

  1000 Potent Venom Sacs
+ 20 Powerful Venom Sacs
+ 100 Crystalline Dust
+ 100 Philosophers Stones
= 166 Powerful Venom Sacs (+146 or 7.3 / pull)

Breaking this down into costs for Potent Venom Sacs, 8 gold (~80 copper each), and the dust, 5 gold (~5 silver each). Revenue on the 146 Powerful Venom Sacs works out too 19.9 gold (~16 silver each) after trading post fee for a profit of 6.9 gold or 69 silver per skill point.

Now, my savings in terms of making these T5 Mats vs buying them on the Trading Post is actually higher as the TP fees would be included in the cost to purchase. Thus, I saved 26.6 gold promoting these materials over buying them from the trading post, where as if I were doing this for profit I would have made 15.6 gold or 42 silver per skill point. I averaged 6.3 Tier 6 Fine Materials for every 50 Tier 5 Materials put into the forge, or 12.6 per skill point. We can generalize a profit formula from these statistics. In general it would be;

Profit = (A * 0.85 * X) - (B * 50) - (C * 5)
   where,
      A is the sell price of the T6 mat on TP
      B is the buy price of the T5 mat on TP
      C is the buy price of Crystalline Dust on the TP
      X is the # of T6 mats received per 50 T5 mats

The above formula can be used to get a rough idea of the profit you will make from promoting a particular material. Promoting materials offers a slight gamble, but in general this is going to be a gamble between a small profit and a larger profit. If you do some math before you make your purchases you should be able to determine whether you will profit or not. I personally use a conservative estimate of 6 for the value of X. Since each try takes 5 philosophers stones, and 10 stones are 1 skill point you can multiply the results of the above formula by 2 to determine your profit per skill point.

In the future I hope to compare this to using Cores to make Lodestones as well as dust promotion. All offer good chances at turning a profit for those unused skill points. Then, I will make a spreadsheet to let you enter TP prices to determine best skill point to gold conversion. Let me know how this works out for you.

Spending your Tixx Rewards

Today is the final day of Tixx's Wintersday journey to each of the racial cities. After today, if you have completed each of the events in each of the cities, you should have 500 Mystical Cogs, 1250 Drops of Magic Glue or Wads of Enchanted Stuffing (or some combination adding to 1250), and five different "frames" for each of the toys featured in the five different events (Plush Griffon, Princess Doll, Toy Golem, Toy Soldier, and Ventari). If not, do not fret. Starting tomorrow in Lion's Arch you will be able to repeat all the events from all the cities, as well as, participate in the new event.

You may be asking yourself what you do with all this stuff. Well, you have two options. You can either make an endless tonic which will turn you into one of the toys as many times as you want, or you can obtain a mini pet. The choice is yours. Below I will show you the recipes, and throughout the article I have placed images of the various toys. I personally obtained all five endless tonics, as I would rather turn into the creature itself over have a mini one follow me around.

To obtain the endless tonics you must go to the mystic forge and combine the following; 50 Wads of Enchanted Stuffing, 50 Drops of Magic Glue, 1 Pile of Glittering Dust, 1 Frame of your choice (see image to right). You will not obtain the endless potion automatically. There is a random chance involved. If you do not get the potion, do not worry. You will obtain a gift instead, and inside the gift will be some one time use potions, and the frame you used in the recipe. You will be able to try until you get it, or you run out of mats. Luckily, these mats are obtainable on the trading post. It took me twenty five tries to get all five. I got the Toy Soldier, and the Golem on the first try, I got the Princess Doll on the 11th, the Ventari on my 7th, and the Griffon on my 5th try. This means it took 1250 of each Glue and Stuffing, and 25 Glittering Dust. Expect to pay around 5-6g for these materials from the Trading Post.

You can also combine the four of the five endless tonics together. If you watch Dontain's video about these tonics you can see when he does this he obtains the 5th tonic he did not put into the forge. I suppose the purpose of this would be to allow players to obtain the tonic and the minipet of the same toy. Like Dontain, I was sure this recipe would yield the Endless Toy Tonic, which definitely would have been worth doing. Either way, these transformations are pretty cool. A lot of them have full animations for emotes; ie, dance, salute, sleep, etc. The dolls transformation even has a new dance! You can see all these animations in Dontain's video on youtube.

If, instead, you would rather have the mini pet than you can make that too. Note, however, that you will only be able to make two of the mini pets as each takes 250 Mystical Cogs, and you will only have 500 by the end of the event. Pick two that you like and put the following into the forge; 250 Drops of Magic Glue, 250 Wads of Enchanted Stuffing, 250 Mystical Cogs, and 1 Frame of your choice (see image at right). This will produce the minipet, I am told, first time and every time. So, those are your options for spending your Tixx rewards.

Now, I am curious as to how the markets for Glue and Wads will react now that there is no more supply, only demand. As far as I know the only way to obtain these materials is from these five Wintersday events and only the first time you complete them. Perhaps, there will be a future way to get more, but keep an eye on this. If there is no new way to get these materials then the prices should rise quickly. I've been buying and selling these mats since the start of the event, but I will be sure to start holding on to some. The first big rise in prices came on the third day on Tixx when people had enough materials to try to make a minipet. I was hoping for another rise today when people obtained enough to try again, but I have yet to see this rise.

Personally, I am really enjoying this Wintersday events. I would have liked some more challenge in the events and the jumping puzzle, but the sheer quantity of things to see and do is amazing. It is crazy to think that they put all this work into these puzzles and events, then we only get to play it for a couple weeks. It would be cool if they made some sort of Hall of Events that let you travel to previous holiday events and redo them for fun, or if anything, just to showcase the great work that has gone into these. I know a bunch of people that missed out of the Halloween dungeon and would just like a chance to give it a shot. Either way, great job Arena Net! If you would like to read my thoughts on the other Wintersday events check out this article where I talk about the events, and this article where I talk about the patch.

Portfolio Management: Part 2

Yesterday, I showed how to setup a spreadsheet to track your portfolio of products that you are trading on the Trading Post. Today I will quickly go over some of the key things you should be tracking, and how to easily go about it.

Trading Post Fees

Trading Post fees are easily to calculate. The cost of posting something is five percent of the sale price. Thus, if you post something for one silver, the cost of making the post is five copper. If you cancel the sell order you do not get this fee back. The Trading Post also takes another ten percent when you make a sale, so for then item we posted at one silver, we will be charged another ten copper when the items sells. All-in-all the TP takes fifteen percent of the final sale price, with five percent being upfront. Now, that means that you will essentially take home eighty-five percent of what you post an item for. In other words/, to make a profit selling at one silver, you have to buy at lower than eighty-five copper, or in general, you need to sell for at least, 17.6% more than you bought for.

Trading Post Fees.

It is important to know this fact, because this is your only expense. This expense will determine whether you make money or loose money. A calculator is enough to figure out your break even points, and my spreadsheet factors this in automatically. Another handy tools is tpcalc.com. It simply does the calculation describe above showing you your costs and profits.

COGS and Inventory

When we talk about Cost of Goods Sold we must also talk about how you calculate your inventory. There are a lot of different ways you can do this, and a lot of different ways it is done in the real world. There are three major systems, First-in, first-out (FIFO), last-in first-out (LIFO), and average cost. My spreadsheet uses average cost, because it is the easiest to implement on a spreadsheet. I simply add up the amount you have paid for a certain product and divide by the number bought. This is the average price per unit used to calculate Cost of Goods Sold.

Average cost inventory.

Intuitively, most probably use a FIFO approach. This means that the first price you buy at is the cost you take into account when you go to sell. If you bought eggs on Monday for 20c, on Tuesday for 25c, and Wednesday for 30c then you started selling your eggs on Friday you would first consider the price you paid on Monday and would have to sell at 24c to make a profit. As you work through your inventory your costs would rise and you would have to raise your prices.

LIFO on the other hand would have you sell the eggs you bought most recently first. Thus you would sell those you bough on Wednesday first and work your way towards the cheaper eggs you bought on Monday. In general costs of goods rise as time goes on. Inflation, in general, is driven by an increase in the money supply. As there is more money available people are willing to pay more for things. Thus, in general, FIFO will have you selling your cheaper goods first, and LIFO will have you selling your more expensive goods first. This is a general statement though for the long term, and doesn't apply to the short term, nor necessarily to the long term either.

It does bring up an interesting thing to consider, though. Do you sell your more expensive inventory first? or the cheaper stuff? If, in both scenarios you sell for the same prices, than it has no affect what-so-ever on your profit. In the real world, companies use different methods to make their business looks more attractive to investors. In this game, it really only matters to you. If you prefer to get the expensive stuff out of the way first, then do that. If you prefer to see big profits quickly sell your cheaper stuff first.

In the end, use the inventory system that works for you. Then use this system to arrive at the Cost of the Goods you are selling. This way you can effectively evaluate your trading post fees and profits. Even if you do not apply this to your trading in game, I hope you learned something about real world accounting.

Percentage of Inventory

Another important statistic I like to track is the percentage of a certain good as it relates to my total inventory. For example if I have ten gold in eggs, how much as a percentage is this of my total investments of one hundred gold? In this case ten percent. This is a good thing to track, because it shows how diversified your investments are. Having 100% of your inventory in a single good means that you have not diversified and your future hinges on a single market. If, however, you are invested in twenty different commodities and each makes up roughly five percent of your total inventory you know that any markets that bottom out will be covered by your other investments. 

My current inventory, as a percent of the total.

This is not to say that there aren't markets you should invest heavily into. It is a judgement call you have to make. Charts and graphs can help you make these calls. They can also give you signals as to when you have bought enough, and when it is time to think about looking for opportunities to sell.

Profit

The final, and most obvious stat to track, are your profits. For starters it is a moral booster to see this number slowly growing and to know your efforts are paying off. Secondly, once you break profits down to margins and start examining them on the basis on each commodity you will see where your efforts are meeting the most reward.

Based on current (Dec. 11th) prices
 my expected ROI shown per commodity

Simply, profits equal revenue minus costs. Sometimes this is also referred to as gross profits and since we have no other costs this is also our net profit. Above we talked about how to track your costs. Your revenue is simply what you sell the good for. If your revenue is higher than your costs, you are in the black and making gold. Otherwise, you are in the red and taking a loss.

Next, you can calculate your return on investment (ROI) so that you know how well your money is working for you. The calculation for this is simple, take your net profit, and divide by your costs (Cost of Goods Sold, and TP fees). This is the percentage of what you invested that has been returned to you. The higher the ROI the more lucrative the trade. ROI is not the be all and end all though. Trades with a low ROI, but a high turn over may be more lucrative than a high ROI with slow turn over.

Conclusions

The point here is to give yourself the tools to analyze the strategies you are using going into the market. This way you can re-double the efforts that are proving successful, and abandon those that are not. You can also examine the numbers closely and see where you went wrong and how to avoid future disasters, and on the flip side you can see how you succeeded and apply those strategies in other areas. Not only that, but the morale boost given by seeing your numbers rising, bars on graphs growing, is quite telling. Instead of abstract numbers in your head, it starts to become a real thing you care about and want to grow. Either way, the point is to have fun. If this is not fun to you, than do not do it. Continue with whatever systems you have in place that are working for you.