Estild Answers Questions About Those Shimmer Trinkets

I was happy with the way things were previously.

Open the shop with low prices, offer a grace period, have them scale up.

The prices started high this time. And then seemed to double after 5 are sold. Couple that with no arena, it means you apparently want people to spend twice as much this time around.

Also could you consider 1 dig gets 1 box?

215k bs for 12 setting ring today.. which used to cost 125k to start with and 192k~215k near the end during last duskruin.
I was short 3.8k bs to getting it this run, so even if I had the urge to spend my $500 dollars worth of bs on one single item, didn’t even have enough.

Funny thing is I had enough last run and thought I’ll just wait till next time to get it for cheaper. This time I can’t even afford it with more bs than I thought I needed.

/flip table
Prices are ridiculous, no one is buying the band, still 5 on the table. I got rid of all my bloodscrip, good riddance. I give up on everything Gemstone related.

I think this DR is the last straw for me. Over multiple DR’s i’ve slowly built up an ok stash of BS to work for what I want. This constant increasing of BS costs for items (exactly what Fyrentennimar posted) has made it all but pointless.

The inflation on all these items and services are now running faster than I can build without spending hundreds of dollars. I’m done. My 3 accounts will be closed soon.

This is incredibly disappointing how you’ve catered so much to whales that you’ve now lost most of the fish you used to catch.

I havent even LOOKED at the HESS stuff. Im much, much happier that way, I think. HESS was always whale food, imho. The normal OTS in the shops is where its at for Fishies like me. On that note, the pricing of the Shimmer Trinket is spot on, Im so glad it was as cheap as it was!

So thanks for that 🙂

Berbels shrilly exclaims, “Ise takings hims tos secretses lairses!”

Berbels grabs you and drags you east.

“the Shimmer Trinket” — FudgeHJ

Well, the GSWiki for ‘shimmer trinket’ says that it’s in Spellbound…
…but the page itself has only a mention of it (no listing) when you Ctrl+F(ind) ‘shimmer’, and while there are ten found ‘trinket’s, none of them appear to shimmer.

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Any chance you could wander over and update that page, with ‘where it is’ and ‘what it costs’?

KRAKII

Well, the GSWiki for ‘shimmer trinket’ says that it’s in Spellbound…

…but the page itself has only a mention of it (no listing) when you Ctrl+F(ind) ‘shimmer’, and while there are ten found ‘trinket’s, none of them appear to shimmer.

Any chance you could wander over and update that page, with ‘where it is’ and ‘what it costs’?

The Shimmer Trinket and its unlock certificates are in Spellbound on the dilapidated wooden shelf (be sure to specify “get trinket from shelf” to avoid referencing the other trinket in the room). The trinkets cost 5,000 bloodscrip and comes with 3 charges. The unlock certificates cost 1,000 bloodscrip and add 1 maximum charge to the trinket. Each charge lasts for 30 days (so by default, you only have to recharge the trinket every 3 months), then can be recharged by monks via Shroud of Deception (1212) or recharging merchants. You can realistically unlock it as many times as you want (i.e. with 9 unlocks, the trinket will last 12 months between full charges). Once on the last charge and it will expire in 7 days or less, you’ll get a warning a few seconds after every login. Elemental Detection (405) and loresinging can provide details on the current and maximum charges the trinket has, with the latter providing the most information. I’ll add this information to the wiki later tonight.

GameMaster Estild

Well… wow. 🙂

Awesome info; thanks!

> This is incredibly disappointing how you’ve catered so much to whales that you’ve now lost most of the fish you used to catch

That’s not catering to whales. You think whales want to spend a lot?

I do think they are a bit trapped by wanting to distribute items in a better way while not allowing too much of an influx…hence the rising prices. I don’t buy the idea they are raising the costs because they make more money if we spend more on them. I think they really ARE trying to keep things balanced for the longer run health. I don’t envy their situation.

For me, the items I’d intended to buy had increased enough that I just didn’t buy. I’d expected to pay ~250k BS before the announced changes…and the costs rose to ~500K BS. I had the BS from past runs…I just chose not to buy. But I understand why they changed the pricing.

Obviously it doesn’t make me happy to not get what I’d intended…but it’s not a crisis for me either.

>>Re: Pricing.

While I understand some of the pricing has made a few things unobtainable to some of you, the pricing we used was always less than what someone paid last year. Here’s an example.

RotFlares was priced at 250,000 bloodscrip last run. It sold 4 of the 5 we wanted to sell. Should the last one have sold, it would have been 610,351. But someone did pay 390,625 and 488,281. So we reduced the price below the last one that sold and it’s pretty close to the second from last one. We priced it by taking the total bloodscrip spent as 2,051,788 (rounded to 2mil) and dividing it by 5 (the number we’d sell) to price it at 400,000.

We tried to tackle the issues of scaling prices in a way that worked in terms of expected bloodscrip and quantities. I know acuity is probably a lot more costly than last time, but many more have sold this time around already.

Prices weren’t going to be reset this run, we reset them in 2017 for a couple of reasons. One being we killed the shop on a new version roll in.

Lastly, I need to fix the shop, as we are now at about 13 refunds/exchanges for wrong certificate purchases. I need to add back quantities and drop some of the scaling back down. If you think you paid too much for one after I get done with this, shoot me an email.

Wyrom, PM

I think where part of the frustration factor for folks figures in [THERE’s some alliteration for you!] is the case when they are sitting on <what they regard as> a fairly good-sized stack of scrip, but just not quite enough to pick up <the item they want> at the current event.
So they take away the expectation that they will be able to get it at the next event, for the Price-Reset amount.
(Of course, this presupposes that the item is actually present, rather than being retired.)

Meanwhile, everyone else has found out how great those items are, so they’re acquiring scrip during the interval, and now there’s a whole bunch of folks ready to stand there and “get fantabulousgizmo” when the shop opens. Thereby jacking the price up in a hurry, and possibly keeping our exemplar player from getting one during THIS run, either.

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Shifting to a higher starting price, that does NOT scale (or scales a lot later, or by smaller delta) during that run, I think may help people achieve items more reliably, thereby lowering stress levels.

Then the price rises/falls by a little at subsequent runs, depending on if the merchant sees those moving or not.

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TL:DR: give them one run’s worth to see how things pan out, but work with Wyrom’s changes. They’re probably headed in a good direction.

Could we get numbers for previous runs of an item example? Reason I ask is if I use just the 8x bromim potion that Fyre has already mentioned, some of the GM statements don’t add up. It’s been said that previous runs that pricing did NOT reset. But looking at historical data from the WIKI it shows that it was done EVERY time it was offered. I know wiki data isn’t always 100%, but if it is I’ll use the bromim potion as an example and post details below.

2016 April – First Offering – 40 Pours
75000 bloodscrip – 40 pours – 1875 bloodscrip per pour
Chart shows it ended at same price, likely due to none purchased

2016 August – Second Offering – 40 Pours
Starting cost – 60000 bloodscrip – 1500 bloodscrip/pour
Ending cost – 93750 bloodscrip – 2344 bloodscrip/pour

2017 April – Third Offering – 40 Pours
Starting cost – 60000 bloodscrip – 1500 bloodscrip/pour
Ending cost – 93750 bloodscrip – 2344 bloodscrip/pour

2017 August – Fourth Offering – 10 pours
Starting cost – 20000 bloodscrip – 2000 bloodscrip/pour
Ending cost – 59719 bloodscrip – 5972 bloodscrip/pour

2018 February – Fifth Offering – 10 pours
Starting cost – 40000 bloodscrip – 4000 bloodscrip/pour

The reasoning looks unrealistic. Also without knowing the true numbers of how many sold and at what pricing, it’s hard to average out the true cost per pour. But I’m sure if the math was done for each potion sold, averaged out the bloodscrip per pour, it would likely not come close to the current offering of 4k BS/pour that we have now. But again, no true numbers are ever released for events like this so it’s hard to know from our perspective.

In the end though, put my voice down as another that would rather just put it back to a scaling cost the way it was before with a grace window at open of event. I’ve yet to hear someone say they prefer this current method over the previous method. Sure, there’s more acuity certs sold this run. But the limit was also removed for how many services can be done on a single item. So you have some individuals buying multiple certs for a single item whereas they couldn’t before. I also know of at least one person that bought an extra acuity cert just for resale knowing the price would go higher than the initial pricing due to no grace window this run.

I haven’t bought anything from the HESS this run, but I’m supportive of this change. The bloodscrip hoarders/buyers are always going to slide up and grab what they want immediately, but with this change, people can still buy the items they want for the same averaged out price without the price skyrocketing after the hoarders buy what they want. It makes good sense to me.

I’ll talk with Estild and Coase about the enchanting potions.

Wyrom, PM

>I’ll talk with Estild and Coase about the enchanting potions.

>Wyrom, PM

Thanks.

Sweet is the sound of the pouring rain,
And the stream that falls from the hill to plain.
Better than rain or rippling brook,
Is a mug of beer inside this Took.

I’m disappointed that the smithy invite is so hard to get (many sewer runs) and that it also costs a lot in terms of bloodscrip. The same thing happened at Ebon Gate (Very high silver cost in addition to entry cost of ebon gate and winning a 50/250 spinner).

I think there should be one barrier to obtain it but with multiple layers it is just becomes too costly and burdensome for the minor improvement it provides and not worth it which in the end defeats the purpose of allowing more people to get it.

Shop is back open and was announced in game (with advance notice).

Okay, shop has some been restocked where items were returned.

I went ahead and reverted the enchanting potions to the same cost last time, which means they scale upon every purchase.

Nothing else changed at this time. If you feel you spent too much on scaling pricing on acuity tickets or enchanting potions, please shoot me an email. Those were the only 2 sets of items that would be affected for pricing at this time.

Wyrom, PM

Since you mentioned specific items being retired in the February run (back in #8583), but did NOT mention the RotFlares, is it safe to assume that they’re going to continue?
(Hey, I need an eight-event goal to pursue…)

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I’m still bemused by the Ironwright note, specifically about the comment that a popular combination has been Web & Fire flares. I have an Ironwright weapon, and I don’t recall it being able to flare both at once. (Which would result in being Webbed, then getting set on fire. This, I agree, would be awesome.)
Is it, in fact, the case that they DO flare both at once? Maybe you have to bless & then cast to load it up, for each spell, and someone just forgot to tell me?

Can Ironwright work on armor? Shields? (For those CMan-beasts out there.)

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After redeeming my certs (thanks again!) you had commented that the runestaff was “at max”, and I said sure, but how about making them more frequent…

(Then I remembered the quote from Dave Duncan’s excellent, “The Reluctant Swordsman”, about there being ‘no upper limit on Seventh rank’.)

…so, seriously, how about opening up the “+1” certs (both Mana and Acuity) to no limit, but anything over 5 (mana) or 10 (acuity) affects only the LIKELIHOOD of flare. +20% chance (OR a second d100 chance, checking at 20% of the normal chance to flare) for mana, or 10% chance (same rules) per for acuity.
Do 20x on your Acuity staff, get TWICE the chance for it to go off bang.
(But it only pays the 10x benefit. Higher work is only affecting how likely it is to happen.)

Would it be at all possible to improve off-enchant items of any enchant? Say +2 to an off metal like eahnor. I know someone came in for EG to do this but there was a restriction to only 8x and below, maybe not even 8x. Would it possible to get a cert or a merchant to perform this service on any enchant?