Enchanting market balancing act
by Alex Ziebart 
Feb 1st 2008 at 2:30PM
Drysc, in response to a fledgling prophet, just made an interesting announcement regarding Enchanting, and certainly one that most people will love.Every 24 hours, an Enchanter will be able to split a Void Crystal into two Large Prismatic Shards. Good stuff! At least, for most people. I'll admit, my main is an enchanter and I'll miss tossing a handful of Large Prismatics on the auction house for 30 gold a pop every day or two just to line my pockets. In all honesty, though, that was a bit ridiculous and while I usually tried to give my guildmates a hand with shards, I always felt bad when they had to hit the auction house for their materials.
The price of Void Crystals will receive a nice boost from this as well, which is a good thing. With the abundance of epics in the Burning Crusade, the price of Void Crystals just tanked more and more every day. It seems the devs are working on a few others things to help out crystal prices, too. Right now, there's very little to take Void Crystals out of the market, so that will definitely be welcome, all depending on their methods. Like I said before, my inner enchanter weeps at the impending dive of shard prices, but its a possibility the rebalancing of Void Crystals will even that out. One can hope!
Filed under: Enchanting, Patches, News items, Enchants, Forums
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Alessandro Lopresti Feb 1st 2008 2:41PM
woot first
Matthew Feb 1st 2008 2:51PM
God, let's not start this idiocy here.
peaglemancer Feb 1st 2008 2:47PM
I think this is great news, shards are running regularly 28-36g on our server whilst Void Crystals barely command 14-16g.
@Alessandro Lopresti: Brilliant. You have managed to prove you have absolutely nothing valuable to say or add other than an ability to press the post button. An elevator attendant career awaits ye!
Blake Feb 1st 2008 2:51PM
This is amazing news. Our raid bank is stocked to the brim with crystals. We usually auction off the voids for prismatic shards. With auction prices of 2 void = 1 prismatic, this change gives us 4 prismatics for those 2 voids. Very nice. Thank you devs!
infection Feb 1st 2008 2:55PM
time to start buying the hell out of void crystals now....
Nogun Feb 1st 2008 3:02PM
a prediction:
Greater Planar Essence, will end up costing more than a Large Prismatic Shard 1 month after 2.4 goes live (maybe later depending on the Season4 release), the price of void crystals will only increase slightly, shards will be dropping in price massively and will keep doing so until majority is level 80.
Rydolomo Feb 1st 2008 3:07PM
I would like to see enchanters being able to enchant a stone or other token which they can sell or send to an alt just like pots.
Are enchants the only crafted items which cannot be transferred?
Unless Blizz have some policy of wanting to limit permanent enchants to those who can do them.
Rydolomo
Makros Feb 1st 2008 4:00PM
If I'm not mistaken Blizz has said that they have plans to do something similar to this in WotLK.
Alessandro Lopresti Feb 1st 2008 3:20PM
Sorry guys, I don't have an enchanter and saw the oppertunity to be an idiot, I did not mean to offend. I wish i did have something valuable to say about this article. I again apologize for being immature.
Arabelli Feb 1st 2008 3:31PM
Aw, that's okay! No one ever apologizes for being silly, so I think people will cheerfully give you a pass this time!
Don Feb 1st 2008 3:25PM
I was under the assumption that Blizzard was looking into the possibility of allowing enchanters to sell their enchants on the auction house just like any other item. Has this gone by the wayside or am I just making things up.
Alessandro Lopresti Feb 1st 2008 3:36PM
Although i agree i think Blizzard should consider making it possible to sell some type of enchentment stone or item for players to buy in the AH so we can enchant our itmes without having to meet up with an enchanter to get enchanted, would be win/win for both parties.
Vishop Feb 1st 2008 3:47PM
I dunno, I really enjoy the more personal aspect of being an Enchanter. It's pretty much the only professions where you really HAVE to find a person and really figure out a price, allowing the enchantee to get a better deal than they would have. I know I've cut people a break for being friendly or helpful.
That being said, it's a very two edged sword. If I'm not sitting in Shatt spamming my enchanting macro, I'm not making money, or even having the opportunity to make money. So an AH option would be kinda nice.
Killu Feb 1st 2008 7:43PM
Blizz is actually planing to implement a way to put enchants into the AH, but they also stated that the more powerful enchants will still require player interaction. (source: Blizzcon(not so sure))
Philip Feb 1st 2008 3:44PM
As an Enchanter, I'm excited for the change! Note, I'm an enchanter, not a dechanter! I don't sell my shards for profit. I use them for personal and guildy enchants. Having a stock of them has been absolutely horrible. Maybe now I can start enchanting a lot of my other off gear without having to pay through to snits for the shards.
I've actually had to stop selling my shards at a discount to guildies because I was loosing so much money.
Acceptable Risk Feb 1st 2008 4:53PM
So basically, what this news is saying is to start unloading our LPS stockpiles right now? Will do! Thanks!
Xeren Feb 1st 2008 5:50PM
Luckily, i unloaded my stock of about 60 LPS's during the last drought at about 29g a pop (server average is about 20g), so this will only affect me a little.
I'm sure prices will dive a lot once this change is first made, but they will come back up and steady out a little below what they once were. I can't see this thoroughly trashing the LPS market though.
Chadwick Feb 1st 2008 8:31PM
The sellable enchants will only be for the lower levels. The higher levels and the high demand enchants will still need to be done in person with the enchanter.
This is indeed a welcome change, with all the epics floating around and getting sharded for badge runs, this seems to be a very good idea.
Zali Mar 4th 2008 9:08AM
I'm sure that the top end for shards will move along with everything else once WoLK hits the stores. Prices for prismatic shards and primals will fluctuate a bit then find a nice steady spot for all those lvl 80's who are power leveling their *insert a trade here* up to 450.... or whatever the top level is. The new flavor shard of the day will be the Large Sparkley Shard or something, and we will all be DE'ing our lvl 78 greens into Flashy Dust and Greater Eterminium Essences or something. Then the planars and the arcanes and all the other stuff will become like the brilliants and radients and illusion dusts of today. In fact it will probably slightly over priced because EVERYONE is skipping that old lvl 70 end game crap along with Outland and heading up to face the Lich King.
Im sure that some enterprising lvl 80's will make a ton of money by going out and farming Outland because so many people will just skip much of it in order to get to Northrend. I mean, how many people are farming in Eastern Plaguelands these days? Or Winterspring? And I almost NEVER see anyone in Azshara when I'm fishing for Darkclaw Lobster to help some lazy lvl 70 skill up their cooking because they dont want to fish themselves. Aren't these the old end game locations Pre BC? Now they are ghost towns. Outland will be the same, and Outland mats will end up being highly prized, like Thorium is today. (Currently the most overpriced and highly selling ore on my server.)
You have to look at these changes from the vantage point of a lvl 80, not a lvl 70.