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.