Transmuting discussion thread

Rijacki wrote:

lol.. you got it. I have 4 alts that are getting locked at level 32 (fully adorned) just to see how high I can get their aa. They are all tradeskill alts basically but I think it will be fun having them 'capped' at level 32 with every adornment, masters and loads of aa.

Meirril wrote:

How can you be certain of that?
The general policy seems to be that whenever crafters make something desirable something even better is added as a quest reward, mob drop, station cash item ...
Adornments seem to be an exception, and seemed the best hope for many crafting classes.

Kigneer wrote:

With the new mentoring and achievement system there seem to be a lot more players playing in the lower tiers now.

Pauly@Befallen wrote:

I think levelling crafting classes should be more difficult that it is now.
Pauly@Befallen wrote:

That is not true. There are weapon adornments made by transmuters that are desirable.
Pauly@Befallen wrote:

I don't. Transmuters get the ability to make the rare components. That is where all the money is. Transmuting is also only a skill, not a class. The full crafting classes are the ones that should be crafting.

Terron@Splitpaw wrote:

Still isn't dropping the price, as folks aren't farming lower tiered gear to break down. EQ2 is a top heavy game, and that's where most items are, and will be sold.

Terron@Splitpaw wrote:

Historically I would say that isn't true. When I first got into transmuting it cost me 50p or so to level up to max transmuting and until about 2 months ago I had yet to get that back. Why because when the level cap got raised to 80 there were plenty of materials available at cap to mute. Thus there was a lot of frags/powders etc... on the broker pretty cheap. I bought those made my own and made adornments and made approximately 1500p in 4 weeks selling adornments of which only 10p was from transmuter made adornments, the other 1490 was from other primary crafters. I remember it well cos I found it so funny. During this time it was actually cheaper to buy a lot of fragments and sell your own Treasured items to the vendor, the frag price was aout 12g and many skyfire/jarsath wastes treasured sell for 17-22g if I recall correct. I do know I sold most of my treasured items and only muted adept III's becuase they sell for 9g. The only real money from transmuting materials that was viable at that time was in the mana and that for most people is not an option, as lets face it can you really afford to one break down that much fabled, or two not use the mana if you do get one?
However, as time has gone on the massive supply of materials has dried up and fragments and powders are now very much more expensive and so at present transmuting and selling the muted results makes money. That is until the level cap raises and the cycle begins again.
Incidentally, I have still yet to make as much plat in the last few months of selling materials as I have from selling adornments. Basically becuase adrornments still retain their value because the cost of material is put onto the consumer for the most part. Thus, adornments over the course of the lvl cap going from max 80 to max 90 will in my opinion always make more than the muted materials, much as I think they have since their inception to our current cap of 80.
Edit: This is of course server dependant so you results may vary. Vendor prices however arnt and therefore you should sell stuff to the vendor if frags and powders are cheap!

Terron@Splitpaw wrote:

Inherently the incorrect argument. Transmuters turn items into components used by crafters to make adornments. Inevitably the items they use for this come from adventuring. Anything a transmuter mutes was sellable to a vendor. Fragments, power and even infusions sell for slightly above (or below) the vendor value of the items that are being muted. The only real profit from the vendor is from fabled items. At best, your talking a 4 man group getting lucky with a fabled drop or two that they probably could sell for more than the 30p Crystalized Mana goes for on AB. Tack on to that you only have a 30% chance of getting mana and it becomes apparent that if you can sell the fabled item for more than 1/3rd of the crystalized mana price your better off doing that. How many fabled items would sell in level chat for less than 10p?
Sure, it makes more sense when your talking about raids. Raids don't generally try to sell drops in level chat. Thankfully most raiders have something called pride, and the rest sloth or (personal) greed. That provides material that could make it to the market. But even raids are a low return. Most raids are lucky to produce 6 drops. That's 24 people looking at 6 drops and the only ones that are going to get muted are the ones that everybody that wants one already has one. Then the mana they produce is more than likely going to go towards adorning the gear that they are getting as drops from said raid zone.
Anyway you look at it, its not transmuters that are producing the items. Its raids and groups getting fabled items to be transmuted. I.E. adventurer provided components.

I've seen it mentioned a couple times, but I don't want it to get buried . . .


Regardless of the other changes made, we DESPERATELY need the ability to Transmute multiple items at once. If I want transmute everything in Bag X, I should be able to do so. It is time consuming for no good reason. No other class is forced to harvest twice to get ONE raw.
I would love if transmuting could yield 1, 3, 5 or 10 per transmute. That would make a lot more sense, though it would flood the market. But frankly, the market needs to be flooded.
As others have already said, if someone can sell an item to the vendor for 20g, any resulting transmutable raw needs to bring 20g, and that sets the minimum cost of a treasured adornment over a plat. That's just too much. A treasured adornment should run around 20g, including fuel costs for crafting it.
Finally, we need a recipe or skill or something that will simply remove all adornments from an item.

Banditman wrote:

I'd like to see similar...and maybe if possible if you have an adornment on, you replace it with a different one, you can get that first adornment back to reuse elsewhere or give to a different toon
That's what I dislike about adornments besides their 'omg' on components: you can't get them back if replaced to use elsewhere or a diff toon.

Inherently transmuted products are suppose to be expensive. Your making them out of stuff you normally vendor for good cash, not out of stuff the vendor wouldn't give you 1 copper for. Fuel is the cheap part of making an adornment, not the whole expense!
The cost is being slightly addressed by a lower component cost. Its still going to remaine expensive and a primary method of removing some of the mudflation that goes around.
Being albe to reuse adornments would hurt the economy even more than making the adornments cheaper. After a while, the general price of all adornments would start falling. That may be in your best interest, but it isn't in the best interest of the server economy and not in the interest of crafters. Especially adorners, if anyone can remember back to before everything was made "attuneable". Crafting came to a stand still because when people were done with a set of crafted equipment, they'd broker it back to other players. New armor + old amor = lower prices. After a while it was selling for less than the fuel cost. Lets not forget our own history here and learn our lesson.

Meirril wrote:

You are right. I was forgetting about selling fabled items.

Meirril wrote:

Wrong, wrong WRONG!
The *only* way to address mudflation is to take money out of the economy!
Look, if I have 10 treasured items, I have two choices: I can sell them to the vendor, and receive perhaps 2 plat, or I can transmute them.
Assuming that the RNG doesn't hate you, you can make two Treasured Adornments out of those 10 items. Once you factor in your fuel cost, those adornments you just made *must* sell for 1 plat+ each. The *value* of those adornments however, is just not 1 plat. 16 to a stat? Pfft. 100 to a resist? Just not worth the cost.
The cost has to come down - a lot - or the value has to go up - also a lot. Honestly, I think the value is what needs to change to make adornments a more common sight.

Banditman wrote:

You certainly make the argument for why they shouldn't be removable and why they should remain expensive.
If after you made those adornments, even if the first one made was worth 1p because the stats were just -that- good, if it could be used and then re-used, what value would the second use of it have, how about the 3rd, the forth? when you have no more use for it, put it on the broker with ones that are newly made, how much would you sell it for then? you would have no incentive to get even the fuel cost from it because you would want to sell it quick quick and already got the use from it you wanted.
The only way transmuting remains as an item sink (and indirectly as a money sink.. if you count the opportunity costs of selling the items to an NPC vs transmuting them) -and- ALL adornments don't drop down to below fuel costs to sell is if they continue to be one use items.
Yes, I think the stats on the adornments really need to be readdressed, but having them removable (or removable at no cost), no matter what the stats, will devalue them to nothing.
However... having a substance (crafted, of course) which would allow the removing of an adornment, breaking it down into a portion of the components used to make it, and having -those- components be either No Trade or Heirloom would be, in my opinion, a good compromise.
It could even be done in 2 steps:

1. Remove the adornment to a non-usable no trade lump of the particular quality and tier. (i.e. removing a fabled hand adornment would result in a fabled lump).
2. The lump could be dissolved into a percentage of its former components, i.e. 1 infusion, the minimum # of powder, 1/2 of the fragments.

I just want to say that "worth" is based on the opinion of the buyer. For the target market of adornments, a few plat is not a big deal even if it only gives you +100 hp.

I really think a revamp is needed. My main issue is that some slots just dont have any good adornments and I think transmuters should be the only ones making adornments.

I am in no way advocating re-use of adornments. I *am* advocating a way to simply remove them, with no residual items after removal. This was the mistake EQ1 made, where adornments were removeable and re-useable.
As a small cash sink, I'd even say crafters should make the item used to remove adornments. Call it "Smoldering Acidic Applique" or some silly thing, based on the tier of the adornment you want to remove. One shot use, removes the adornment, with nothing returned.
Conversely, you could create a direct plat sink by deploying an NPC who will, for a fee, remove adornments from items.
If you want to fight mudflation, you can do that by making the adornments themselves more valuable. At +32 per stat and maybe +400 per resist, you'd see some action. The point is that the perceived value of the adornment must be greater than the perceived value of the raw materials required to make it.
Adornments are terribly niche right now. In order to bring them into the mainstream, either the cost must go way down, or the value must go way up. With an increase in value, you can maybe do a little mudflation fighting.

Banditman wrote:

Ok, something isn't adding up here. What exactly do you mean by remove? It sounds like your saying "take an adorned item and unadorn it and the adornment just disappears". Or did you mean "Remove the adornmet from the item and be allowed to use it/sell it/whatever I want to do with it afterward like it was never used on an item before"?
The first is pointless. There are no adornments that lower the utility of an item. The second is exactly what I ment in the arguments above.
As for fighting mudflation, raising the usefulness of the adornments will raise the perceived value by getting greater benifit. However, it won't make adornments that much more valueable. Quite simply put, those that can already transmute just about everything in sight anyways. I don't see more things getting transmuted, just more plat shifting from one player to another for the same amount of product that is already out there.
What fights mudflation in transmuting isn't the amount paid for the items. It is the items that never make it to the vendor to be turned into cash. Right now your average t8 adornment takes 9 treasured items out of the economy. That's 9 x 14g = 1p 26g that goes in nobody's pocket per adornment.
What needs to be addressed more than the small benifit from each adornment, is what kinds of benifits are available. The resist adornments see no use. Quite frankly, the bonuses are anemic and any other adornment is considered better. Even at 10 times the current amounts, they would still be considered too narrow ranged and useless. The resist adornments are a wonderful opportunity to spread a little love to a primary crafting class as a temporary adornment. Adding even 500 to each slot of the resist of your choice would be much perferable than what we could reasonably do with permanent adornments of any kind.
More HP/Power bonuses. More power regen items. More proc items. More spell/melee/heal crit. Some kind of benifit that works against 80% of the mobs we come across instead of the 10%. Skill bonuses. Heck, +5% run speed or +10% alcohol tollerance. Anything.
+5% zone speed...

Banditman wrote:

Why remove it? If you want to change an adornment, you simply put the new one on and the old one disappears.
The only removal to 'nothing' that -might- be needed is on items which can fit 2 slots until they are adorned in which case they're locked to that adornment. I don't know off-hand if they can then be switched to the other slot with a different adornment.

They cannot be moved to another slot once adorned. You would have to either, ahem, *remove* the adornment or put an adornment on the item which matched the slot you wanted to use it for.
Now, that could easily get costly, just to move an item around. Especially if what you've got is a situational item, which most of these multi-slot items are.
The "locked to slot by adornment" mechanic was actually patched in after the fact to prevent some rather borderline tactics for using adornments. Initially, you could put an adornment on a multi-slot item and continue to move the item around in the various slots which were "legal" for the item.
This is especially important with the expansion on the horizon. These multi-slot items may begin their life as "primary" gear, but as itemization progresses for a character, the item becomes situational. Now, if the character has adorned the item, the situational item becomes even more restricted or worse, expensive, to move around.
It's silly, when such an easy fix can be implemented.

CoLD MeTaL wrote:

Do you seriously complain and nitpick at everthing SOE does to try and make things a little better or easier in this game? I don't think I have ever seen you saying anything truely positive on any of these forums....

That said my only concern is I have a muter that can mute the lvl 80 items I just want to be sure that she can still do that once this change goes into effect, it would be heartbreaking to log in and find out that I needed to level that skill back up to max again. I don't know how this would even be possible to grant and if someone already posted an answer to this effect on here I do appologize, I haven't read all the posts yet. If its not possible maybe the skill ups will come fast enough that I will no longer mind, I am just worried that it wont be as easy as its being made out to be.

Shruikan@Nektulos wrote:

It's in the very first post:
DominoDev wrote: