Tuesday, April 3, 2007

How item prices are determined

Different things have different prices. Obviously. This is just a basic guide as to how and why different items are priced.

Lets first start off with some REALLY obvious catergories.
(Difficulty of the) Mob: Of course.. the harder it is to kill.. the more its worth
Restrictions on the Mob: If it can only be killed by a certian class.. say mages... its probably worth more than an item from a mob that can be killed by any class.
Stats: of course.. if its good its worth more. but in reality.. this doesnt play much of a role in pricing.
People required: the more people that have to share the loot.. the less you are getting out of each kill.. of course, this means its worth more since you have to do more kills to get one thing.
Pops: This is the one I hate. Randomness will screw you over or rain gold on you.. depending on your luck... the lower the pop rate the more its worth of course.
Repop times: How long it takes the mob to repop is proportional to the amount of kills you can make on the mob.
Knowledge required: what do you need to know to get to the mob and kill it... obviously for mobs like.. say seth... which require knowledge of the chaos maze.... costs more. Than say.. the cost of a mob that doesnt require specific knowledge say... shade the dark.
Time taken: the longer it takes the more its worth... duh?
Now some less obvious catergories.
Potential threats: DT's, random deaths on the way in, large aggro mobs that guard the mob you are wanting to kill, even down to things like.. etching your eq which will seriously devalue it. The more threats on the way or possibly in the way, the more it costs.
Large Randomness: the other random things. For example... low pop rates can often lead to 0 yield runs. Like danbala sights... most regular runners will never pop one. Also equipment from randomly opened areas like tummult and midway are also pricier.
Unusual size: Simply takes a large amount of people. This mainly applies to quest prizes where it takes possibly 20+ people to kill the mob but only one person gets the prize.
Equipment required: with mobs constantly being upped, mobs tend to take equipment worth MORE than what they have to kill them. In short, you need to be rich enough to afford it before you can run it. Stupid? yes. But its true. Seth runs require seth'd thieves with more than the eq is worth to keep the run consistent. (you need a buncha throwaways, or renamed banes, then you need morphs to go with the seth set.) Whats more, its required of most if not all the runners. (Given you cannot supp corpse in the fortress.. the potential threats part is pretty high too as imms like to eat seth once you pass the chaos maze.)
Volume on the market: How much is already in game HEAVILY affects prices.
So basically think of each catergory as something each item fufills. For example... lets take the signet of the darkhaven guard.

Difficulty: about level 15 warrior can kill them.
Restrictions: none.
Stats: crap.
People required: Half a brain or more really does the job.
Pops: 100% of the time
Repop times: Dh is what.. 15 minutes? and there are 2 guards per gate so thats 8 + a bunch that wander around randomly.
Knowledge required: how to attack.
Time taken: up to a minute if you really suck at level 20.
Threats: street peddlers pwning your ass while you attack the guard. BEWARE!
Unusual size/randomness: no
Equipment required: really basic stuff.
Volume: 0 on the market cause no one in thier right mind keeps this trash But thats ok. it just means the item isnt wanted. not that its so hard no one can get it.

So we can work out the price for the signet. umm.... worthless.
What are then the conclusions we can draw from this?
a) its worthless
b) it should not be kept
c) its not worth its weight to store/keep in a container/bid/auction for.

I hope this post was valuable to help those who auction random items in hopes of getting 10k bids. Just dont. Stop wasting your time and everyone else's. Auction something thats worth SOMETHING if you want a bid. All that means is you have to auction something that fufills any or all of the above catergories.

2 comments:

Glowing Face Man said...

Hey, looks like this page hasn't been updated in awhile. Anyway, not on topic with this post, but there are a bunch of SMAUG areas, including some "RoD exclusive" ones, available for browsing in a frozen snapshot at the Aethar project. It's even got Seth's Fortress, though it's a split evolution from RoD's copy (the Aethar copy was maintained by Dominus while the RoD copy was maintained by Kali). Here's the Aethar project: Aethar, a frozen SMAUG MUD over HTTP

xenapan said...

Thats actually pretty cool! interesting way to see some cool stuff but with how much RoD has changed the stock stuff, interactions with rooms and mobs and even items are alot deeper now.