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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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