Ticket Spreadsheet

Due to the CoH outage last night, I finally had time to finish my ticket spreadsheet. This is an attempt to figure out the most efficient way to spend tickets on random recipe rolls.

Along the left side I have every IO recipe listed, along with minlevel, maxlevel, table, price, and weight. Near the top I have the 4 drop tables, Uncommon, Rare, Mission Complete, and TF. At the very top I have the Bronze, Silver, and Gold tables. The main body of the spreadsheet has the weight and weighted price of each IO if it appears in a table. Ideally I'll be able to figure out the most efficient way to spend tickets. Let me go into a little more detail on these things though, for those who care.

The left side has every recipe sorted by set name. I also include the minlevel and the maxlevel for the recipe, so the the main body of the spreadsheet can determine if the recipe exists in a specific level range. I include the price at the highest level, assuming tickets will be rolled by a level 50 farmer. Is anyone aware of any niche markets where below-maxlevel IOs sell fast enough and high enough to warrant examination? I believe someone mentioned level 10 for things like Steadfast: Res/Def and Regen Tissue: Regeneration.

Each IO has a price, which I will fill in from the average of the Last 5 Market prices. I'm assuming that a farmer doing high volume will simply list the recipes directly. For Gold and maybe even Silver rolls that may not be appropriate. After making up my price list I'll take a look at crafted Enhancement prices, and personally profit off any that are really off. ;-) Or maybe I'll make a copy of the spreadsheet and list Recipe versus Enhancement prices to show people where they should be "crapping" (Crafting & Flipping). I'm not going to bother with low priced or slow moving IOs. Those get a price of 0, because they simply aren't worth wasting market slots on.

Each IO has a weight between 1 and 5, and this is a big problem for me. I started the Rare Recipe Weight project long ago to try and identify which recipes were more likely to drop from TF rolls. The results were gathered up by Leandro and put on ParagonWiki. Some things are obvious, like Confuse recipes appear to always have a weight of 1. Others vary by level, like the Impervious Skin: End/Rech/Res which goes from 5 at level 10-14 to 3 at level 30-34. The Numina proc appears to go from a 2 to a 1, and that's a major dip in availability. I'm thinking I should really set weights by level, but I don't know if I can get reliable data for that. Thoughts? Plus the ParagonWiki data is only for TF recipes. Should I generalize those weights to all IOs? Do all Confuse recipes have a weight of 1? Well I'm going to assume so. Right now my table has 3 for everything, and I'll only make changes when it seems like there's a good reason.

I include the table that each IO shows up in as a number, 1=Uncommon, 2=Rare, 3=Mission Complete, 4=TF. This is taken from ParagonWiki. I use that with the level range in the main body of the spreadsheet to determine if an IO is present in a specific table at a specific level.

In the main body of the spreadsheet I have 2 columns for every table and level range. The first column is for the weight (or 0 if not present), while the second is for the weighted price. I need both in order to figure out the total weight for a table, and I can divide the total weighted price by that to determine the average price per roll.

Once I have the average price per roll, I can use that to fill in the very top tables for Bronze, Silver, and Gold rolls. Gold rolls are easy, just divide the average price per TF roll by the ticket cost in that level range. For Silver rolls supposedly Rare drops are 50% more likely than Mission Complete drops, so I use (3/5*Rare+2/5*Mission)/TicketCost. The estimate for Bronze rolls is that 1/8 of them are rare, so I'll use (7/8*Uncommon+1/8*Rare)/TicketCost.

Once I'm all done, it should be easy to determine which table is the best one to roll on for tickets. So I'm going to test it by spending an hour or so on one of my CEBR brutes farming tickets and rolling. Note that I can earn around 40k tickets/hour, so that's a lot of rolls. If it turns out that there are a lot of worthwhile recipes, I'm probably going to have to 0 the price on the lowest performers. That 40k tickets/hour is 571 level 35-39 Bronze recipes/hour, or 72 level 35-39 Silver recipes/hour. I want to be able to list everything after that hour, which means at most 20 or so different recipes.

When I'm all done I'll post the results. Yes I know that may change them, as tickets farmers wanting better returns may flood the market with recipes from the best range and force prices down. But for a while the spreadsheet will be accurate. And I can always update the prices and find the next best range.

Does anyone have any bets on which is the best table and level range?

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to make the spreadsheet better?

Does anyone have any stats on Uncommon versus Rare probability on Bronze rolls?

Does anyone have more stats on recipe weights?

No
No
Nope
Nope

Neat.

I'd wager that the most proftable table is the one I am currently rolling. 9000 tickets averages out around 200-300m.
I don't want to mention it because no-one else seems to supply those recipes currently and I don't want to ruin my monopoly.
Also, I really really hope your spreadsheet finds other results and doesn't send everyone into my business...

Feel free to email me privately then, if you're willing to share. I'm interested in the type of roll, level range, and about how many recipes you sell or craft. I'd like to see how the spreadsheet compares to real world results.

And also, will your results be on my spreadsheet? They won't if you do something like level 10 farming, or level 33 farming, or something else. I assume max recipe level due to a level 50 farmer.

Sent you a PM!

The only niche markets where under-max -level-recipes sell regularly (that I know of) are the Big Three at min level (esp. LoTG). My recent experience suggests that midlevel demand is currently higher than supply, compared to maxlevel, but both are so low that they'd be easy to flood. -

Grats on 20,000 posts fulmen lol

Posts: 20,000

You talk a lot!

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

The results are in...

My weights aren't necessarily perfect, in fact they're probably way off. But the best table is Bronze rolls, level 15-19, at around 15k/ticket. Congrats to the person who PMd me with that table, you were right.

Gold rolls turn out to suck. Not just a little, but a lot. You can earn around 5 times as much rolling Bronze 15-19 as you can rolling on most of the Gold tables. The 45-50 is the worst at around 1.9k/ticket. It's oversupplied and lacks some of the lower level money makers like Miracles and Kinetic Combats. 40-44 is slightly better at 2.3k/ticket only because of the level 40 recipes, and it's about the same as the 15-19 rolls. There are some decent rolls in 10-14, so it's about 3k/ticket. Going up to 15-19 just adds junk so the returns go down, but every other level range is around 3k/ticket. I was honestly surprised that Gold was so bad.

I'd previously said that Silver was for Suckers, but it turns out there's some decent value in there at the lowest level. Due to the higher XP requirements as you go up in level, there's a higher supply and thus lower price for Mission Complete recipes as you go up in level. The values make a pretty simple curve. The 10-14 Mission Completes are worth about 5 times as much as the 40-44 and 45-50 ranges. The Rare recipes which also make up a slightly larger part of the Silver rolls bounce up and down a bit. Silver 10-14 rolls are worth around 13k/ticket. Level 15-19 Silvers are 9k/ticket, and it goes down from there to about 6k/ticket at 45-50. But given that Bronze beats Silver at every level range, I still think Silver is for suckers.

Bronze rolls are the best, though as above 10-14 Silvers aren't all that far off. Bronze 15-19 is the best. Again the Rare recipes that you get about 1 in 8 times bounce around, so the difference in value is mainly the Uncommons. A lot of them are junk, and the higher level ones are again oversupplied due to the XP curve meaning people play longer at higher levels, so the price generally goes down as level increases. It's Reactive Armor opening up at level 15 that makes it the best. There aren't really many recipes that are worth much, mainly Reactive Armor, Steadfast: Res/Def, and Rectified Reticle: ToHit. There are a few more than you can sell for a million, but that's about it.

Here are my results.

Level Bronze Silver Gold
10-14  14.0   13.0   3.0
15-19  14.9    9.4   2.4
20-24  13.0    8.5   2.9
25-29  11.6    8.4   3.1
30-34  11.0    8.0   3.0
35-39  12.0    8.0   3.0
40-44   8.5    5.6   2.3
45-50   6.2    5.9   1.9

Ugh that spreadsheet sucks.
I roll 10-14 silver.
Looking at your table I expect most people would realize it is far more efficient rolling 10-14 silver and taking the 1.9k loss than spending the extra 5 minutes rolling Bronze.

I forsee a significant cut in my profits I spent a long time trying to push the prices of those recipes up.

Smart people knew bronze 15-19 was awesome and specifically because of reactive armor.

I have a few toons that are in and out of RR pieces, so that niche may be poisoned for a while but oh well I wasnt in it atm anyway.

That figure of 12 to 14 K per ticket on bronze rolls makes me smile a little. People often casually advise that people not waste inf on "over priced" uncommons and use spare tickets on them instead.

At 80 tickets, grabbing an uncommon is like throwing away 960,ooo inf. Considering the worst uncommons top out at closer to half that, it's somewhat vindicating to me that my instincts said "spend the inf, roll the recipes".

At 8 tickets for a common (A random one mind you), it's about 96,ooo, a figure that seems much more reasonable considering the 10k to 200k price range on the mid level ones.

Pocket change for the real rollers, but for the people the "good" advice was meant for, well, not so good.

I hadn't really laid this out in a spreadsheet but it was pretty obvious without even having done so. My bronze rolls were consistant money earners. Sliver stunk (the RNG hates me) and gold, well gold there are far too many clinkers in the pool especially considering how many tickets they require.

That said I doubt that this post will change the market much. Most of the serious marketeers have all ready figured most of this out. I think the effects will be minimal. The people interested in farming tickets are all ready farming tickets.

There may be a few exceptions. That would be those folks who enter the ticket farming market and those that leave the ticket farming market.

I myself am a member of the later. With few exceptions my toons are all ready outfitted with all the IOs that I want (including seconds builds). I have several storage bins filled with high value IOs that I may use in the future on new toons/builds.

What am I rolling now? Gold. Not because they are the best sellers. I have enough influence to pretty much buy what I want and I'm not an OCD marketeer interested in hoarding influence. My influence has a purpose when I have enough (or a little more) to meet that purpose I don't "need" more and my focus shifts. Right now I have all the rare Pool As that I want (actually a huge surplus) from rolling bronze. It doesn't take long at all to get to that point. Silvers are cheap. They are usually over supplied by the market anyway and can be had for a pittance. Even the ones that are expensive aren't all that expensive.

Gold is my bottle neck. In an hour of ticket farming I can roll gold 6-7 times. Even on my fastest TFs or solo flashbacks the best I can usually do is about a merit a minute (this gets worse after the first TF due to diminishing returns) that translates to 3 gold rolls per hour.

Time is also a factor on A-merits. 3 days (because it is artificially limited by the devs) and 40 million influence allows me to produce 15 gold rolls (don't forget to include in this opportunity cost the 90ish minutes it takes to run 10 solo tip missions and a morality mission over 2 days, the additional 100 minutes spent earning 100 merits, and the 4ish non-marketeering hours that it takes to earn 40 million influence from farming to convert the merits into Amerits). I can roll gold 15 times every day in less than 3 hours.

So either people are reading this or I just picked an odd time to check the market.... I decided to take my new (never done before) AE farmer and roll some tickets in the 15-19 Bronze range. Two of the first 6 were KB protection. JACKPOT!!! Of course being a higher level toon I knew it wouldn't be as much as say a lvl 15 but still good, right?!?! WRONG. Both recipes had almost 200 for sale and were selling for 1-2 million. So I check the crafted items because that's usually where the money is... Wrong again. They were going for 5-8 million. Not a bad profit after purchasing the salvage(yeah I could have just used tickets but I didn't think about that at work).

So I'm going to hold off on that bronze 15-19 for a little bit until this post finds it's way to page 2 or 3. (Of course I'm posting and moving it to the top) But great work as usual TopDoc and while trying to wrap my head around the numbers hurt a little it was informative.

Oh I also learned I don't have the patience to be a marketer...

Funny it always seemed that when I needed one of those IOs they were priced high. Also I just realized that TD even said it was the reactives that were worth more. See what happens when I try to read and work and play games during work hours! All that alt-tabbing when the boss walks in makes comprehension hard! :-P

Here's an interesting observation. When leveling up, between level 30 and 39 you're better off rolling Silver 10-14. All of the recipes worth anything in that range top out at level 30 or below, so you'll get recipes that will actually sell for normal price. That includes Basilisk's Gaze, Call to Arms, Energy Manipulator, Rectified Reticle, Regen Tissue: +Regen, Achilles' Heel: proc, Clouded Senses: T/E/R, and Eradication: E/D/R. Rolling Bronze 15-19, you'll get a lot of Reactive Armors that aren't worth top dollar because they aren't level 40. Time to update my CEBR arc.

I'm noticing a big spread opening up between a LOT of raw and crafted IO's. Are marketeers ceasing with the crafting and just running CEBRs instead?

My wife has been selling level 35 crafted commons and many of them go for as much as 1,000,000 each.

I didn't believe her at first and had to look at her market screen over her shoulder. Sure enough she'd sold a dozen of them on Labor Day for 1,000,000 each.

If you think of it as "renting the market slot" it makes more sense. A market slot can be used for a common IO (guessing 3/4 of a million profit turning over twice a day, for 1.5 million a day) or it can be used for, oh, certain orange recipes (20 million profit turning over about once a day.) If someone's generous enough with their crafting time and market slots to sell common IO's, a nice tip is about the least you could do.