I am a crafter. i have a vast alt army that i use for crafting and i craft every day. i am one of the only crafters that is regularly active on my server. and many of my clients wait for me to log in or tell me they have been looking for someone to craft for hours and hours.
and while i am happy to craft almost anything. i am running into a serious artisans metal shortfall this patch. the 150 i get each week from Thomas covers exactly 3 insight crafts and the extra 100 from weeklyâs covers exactly 2, so a total of 5 crafts, per week is covered. i can squeeze out an extra craft if i loot a dragons hard of knowledge or if i trade 20 knowledge points at the metal vendor so 6 crafts a week. per cha are covered.
the issue is i do close to 100 crafts every week with JC and Blacksmithing by far the most popular. and what happens is increasingly my metal reserves are being depleted. i have had to start charging a 5k surplus on my jc to craft gems or lariats because players are not interested in gambling with inspiration even when i offer to let them pay afterwordâs to reassure them i am not scamming them
so now i am at the point where my jc has exactly 20 insight left before he is dry. with no was to get a large influx of metal unless i drop his professions and grab something else.
what this will mean is that the players who currently rely on me to craft for them wont be able to get items crafted. and on a small server where half the population have quit due to a lul in the content pipeline that means no one gets crafts.
we are a small server. there is not a vase bank of crafters here ready to snap up every order. please dont leave us in a position where we cant craft anymore
please blizzard. for the love of creation give us a better way to obtain artisans mettal on mature crafters.
let me trade it from my alts. or make dragonshards account bound. because fairly soon im going to have to start retiring maxxed professions just because i cant afford to make 100% guaranteed crafts anymore
Mettle is rare material and it keeps crafts valuable, if we all swim in mettle, everybody could do it at all times and price would go down to worthless.
It does not matter you are on small server, all crafters get same amount of mettle per week. Your customers need to learn about that and rely on inspiration as everybody else does, let them use their mettle, whole system is based on soulbound mettle.
Gems canoot be recrafted and need an insight to guarantee. how do you prepose i explain to a client that they need to send me multiple orders with empty materials so i can send them back 1 rank 3 gem and a number of random rank 2 ones
additionally you have hit on another issue. people do not understand inspiration crafting. today i offered a client a 3k discount to let me use inspiration to craft their item. they declined even when i offered to have them pay me afterwoulds.
finally. i am not suggesting we should be flooded with insight. i am however stating categorically that 250 a week is no where near enough. and i personally will have to start retiring crafters who are running out which i do not believe is the intention of the system. not do i relish the idea of making 3 JC to keep up with gem demand
in theory i could drop my professions and cycle through all the others for 1 time sources but again i do not believe this is the intention of the system
specifically my issue is the exchange rate of 10 knowledge for 25 metal.
At the end of the day insight as a concept is fundamentally flawed and results always in a confusing and terrible experience for the client, who just want their items crafted
If you are the only crafter on the server, you really need unlimited number of mettle if do only Insight crafts.
You can just say your customers that you are guaranteeing max craft, but you are actually recrafting their item to max on your side with rank 2 mats. Just make a calculation what rank 2 mats cost, multiply it by 5 or 6 (to cover for failed procs) and add your fee. Ofc, sometimes it wont be enough, but sometimes you will proc 1st try.
That is what other crafters do. Only items crafters put insight to is gems and that mail bracers that use cobraskin.
Isnât this a JC problem in that you canât recraft a gem? A better fix would be to keep the insight stuff rare but make the system able to guarantee you an r3 gem with sufficient skill / gear.
Well, since this particular craft didnt get hotfix after a year, it is probably intended and serves as a gold sink. We probably dont see all aspects here.
The forced RNG outside of mettle is a joke. No craftsman works like this. Oh itâs either a masterwork or a piece of junkâŚlolâŚletâs see that dice rollâŚoh sorry mate, itâs R4
People just need to realize that if they want guaranteed max rank (aka the crafter popping Insight), they need to pay for it because itâs a limited resource.
I am a crafter and I still have like thousands of mettle.
But yeah I donât partake in the come get your swords from me yelling party.
And public orders are very scarce.
Also the hours put in collecting knowledge and recipes and all the gold used to level up.
And for what?
To be excluded just cause I donât wanna spam.
The point was mettle though.And as I said I have plenty cause there are no orders to use it on.
At this point I donât understand why anyone would want to âwasteâ insights. The mats are dirt cheap for recrafts and you only need 5 mettle afaik.
It really is a customer problem if they are unwilling to understand that 1000g of mats for a single gem craft is the better option than to force the crafter to spend 50 mettle on a guaranteed. Itâs like 33-40% to make it a rank 3 gem each try anyway.
For real, some people rather pay 10k + mats cost to some Goblin whoâll use his insight for a guarantee than to pay maybe 3000g in mats to craft by chance. These people canât be helped and deserve to get their wallet emptied.
increase your prices: 50 mettle for insight (r3 gem) be 12-14k if there is that much of a shortage as you say OR 1000g per try with R2 mats for inspiration gamble, and after 4 tries rest are free just mats. When i got free time to do craft or i actually bother to answer people at trade chat i offer these two services.
I understand that people might be lazy but you need to explain that have they to provide their own mettle and mats and you recraft no cost after initial fixed X fee till it procs. Like what we did at expansion start.
for sure it is a problem with understanding. i would also just add to this one of the big pain points i come up against a lot is people who think im trying to scam them when i ask them to set a min of rank 4. usually i can get around it by telling them to pay me afterwordâs. but its difficult to explain to someone why its ok for them to set a rank 5 minimum for everything except the one craft that i am doing for them
for many clients they engage with the system fleetingly. they arnt super in the know on how it all works and they donât really want to know. they just want their item crafted. so really ide argue that any scenario where i have to send them a paragraph of text explaining a system to them is a failure of design.
i had one client 2 days ago ask me to craft them a new item using a spark because they didnt have 5 metal for a recraft. and no matter how much i explained to them that i can provide 5 metal they just didnt want to hear it. and preferred i crafted a new item from scratch
to provide some context to the amount of crafting i do.
this season i have spent a combined 26,000 mettal on crafting
in season 1 i made 35M from crafting commissions
season 2 i made 10M
unfortunately my accounting addon corrupted so i dont have accurate data for so far in season 3
yes these numbers are insane. and yes i understand the system isnt designed for this level of bulk crafting. but the reason i am doing so much crafting is because there are simply no other options. i have players add me randomly on battle net to tell me they need me to do crafts. i get sent messages in the mail from prospects telling me they have spent days trying to get hold of a crafter. i get a slew of random orders / whispers from word of mouth. i have guilds message me asking to add me to their discords so i can help with crafting.
i am not interested in min maxxing my profit. i am very interested in providing a better user experience for my clients. and minimising the friction in getting their items crafted