Converting Easier than Crafting?

Well of course it is! Or maybe not. Here's what I was thinking:

Nearly across the board, crafted IOs have always sold for more than recipes. Not because of the crafting cost, but the convenience. That's why there's almost always been a market for buying recipes, crafting, and selling them (with some exceptions).

Prices on purples have already rebounded a bit, but it still seems cheaper to buy, say, a sleep or pet damage purple than an Armageddon or Ragnarok.

So I was wondering... how much of an inconvenience is it to buy an off-set and then use converters to get the set you want? Perhaps more importantly, getting the one single purple you want -- Armageddon triple, for example -- it's much easier to just buy it, yes?

I mean, you could buy an Absolute Amazement for less than 300 million, say, convert it a couple of times, and even if you get that Armageddon set you want, it might be an Armageddon dam/endurance reduction. So then you waste a lot of converters trying to flip it to the triple, or you sell it for enough money to buy the triple that you want.

Or, if you're an average player that doesn't like wasting time at the market, you just buy the Armageddon triple to start with, for 400 or 500 or whatever the actual price is. Which will probably always be more money than the Absolute Amazement.

End result = there will always be a market for buying the off-brand purples and converting them to something people like better. Yes?

It rarely makes any economic sense to try to convert to a specific IO. Which isn't to say people won't CONVERT IT NAO the same way they BUY IT NAO, but one bad luck streak where trying to make a specific purple eats 45 converters (easily possible) is going to really discourage that behavior. So converting will largely be done for profit or hoarding.

I ... hmm.
I guess if you're shopping for a set of six Hecatombs (or five) you could CONVERT IT NAO for the first two and you'll probably get things you want.

On the other hand, none of us is safe from irrational shopping. I've only purpled out two builds and the second one, I spent 200 million over "reasonable market price" to get the last item RIGHT NAO.

Then I found out it wasn't the last item... /e facepalm

It has worked for me on purple sets where I had multiples of the same type. That's all I can say on it here.

That's an interesting thought; this could be a better way to convert merits to wealth than previous ways.

Sometimes, your luck varies. From my rolling with 7 different PvP recipes into a Gladiator's Armor 3% def (none of the original recipes were Gladiator's Armor), the shortest one took 4 converters, which was two rolls (one to get to Gladiator's Armor, one to get to 3% def), while the longest took 25 converters (I lost count of how many rolls :3).

Remember to factor in reward merit and inf cost of converters along with the cheap recipe to convert towards the balance of outright buying the recipe itself though.

I can confirm from first hand experience that the temptation to CONVERT NAO is pretty strong. I've been IOing out three characters recently, all with a few purples and one with a significant investment (all 4 damage sets, 20 purples total). I was needing just a Ragnarok dam/end to finish my build, and when one of the absolute amazements that I'd bought turned into a different Ragnarok, I decided that I have a lot of merits still in e-mail from the super packs, and I was going to finish my build NAO. So I did. ^_^

Sometimes, waiting until tomorrow is just no longer an option!

So far I've had such horrible results with converters that I won't be buying any of them. When I get them as drops I will take the chance but otherwise I'd rather keep my merits for other uses.

What is the ballpark value for an AM these days if one is rolling five random recipes? I wonder how that stacks up vs. something as mundane as converting Titanium->Aegis, Doctored->Numina, Red Fortune->LoTG. In each case you'd wind up with five inventions, but in converting you'd cut out much of the chance of rolling undesired recipes and you'd also save a little by not needing to use rare salvage (in most cases).

I've been figuring ballpark for an AM is about 100 million, but that was before the recent flood of merits, followed by 2XP, followed by converters. It's at least 50 million.

Figure that Doctored Recipe-> Doctored Crafted is about 5 million inf.

Maybe if you turn a Doctored, like, endurance into a LoTG you will do pretty well. Looks like an LoTG averages about 30 million. Red Fortune: Endurance (craft your own) will run you under a million. So 1.5 million and two converters in, 30 million out, that's like 140 million per converter. Your raw material costs are under your market fees.

Interesting!

Randomly converting with a single converter can have exceedingly good response, if you know how to target it. It is possible to make it very... unrandom.

As with a lot of things, I think it depends a lot on the player's perspective.

There are only two motivations to convert anything: A: To slot something you want
(either now, or for a future toon), or, B: Raise the profit value of an undesirable
IO.

In the case of A, the relative economics are substantially reduced. In fact,
odds are good that it definitely won't be the most economical approach, but
clearly, convenience and expediency are trumping economics here.

A perfect, similar idea: How many of us have thrown an A/V merit at an IO
(20-40M range) you wanted now, that was in short supply on the market?

I sure have - several times.

Clearly, that was poor economic use of the merit, inf-wise, but excellent use
of a renewable resource to obtain an otherwise unavailable item.

Additionally, converter cost factors in as well. In my case, the bulk of my converters
have been drops (I've not exchanged any merits for any yet), so for me, they've
been free by-products of whatever I was doing anyway.

I think mechanically it is also easier (slightly) to convert rather than craft, especially if
you already have the initial IO's on hand. If you have to buy them from the market
though, I doubt it saves you much of anything at that point.


Regards,
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