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Friday 2 December 2011

How-To Use CG's Herb Calculator

Yesterday's post was the release of my special special herb/glyph costing calculator. Nothing complex, just a whole bunch of equations mushed together. Critical eats his own dogfood, this is exactly what he uses.

Lets get started!

Step 1 - Work out your Blackfallows to Inferno ratio. This figure is basically, how many blackfallows is one inferno worth to you? Personally I set this as 10 because infernos convert into DM trinkets which sell highly well but everyone is different. For example Foo, at time of his comment, would use 4.5.
Step 1

Step 2 - Use Auctionator and search for Whiptails. Focus only on auctions that are full stacks (20) or at least multiples of 5. Ignore all other stacks with funny sizes including singles. Look at the single item price (circled in red). For this example lets use 1.6g.
Step 2

Step 3 - Look at the Whiptail pricing row and find 1.6g. Raw material cost is 6.5g (labor not factored in).
Step 3

Step 4 - Decide the max Glyph Cost price you want to work with. Lets say for example you are ok with 8g per glyph. Go back to Auctionator and snatch (buy all quickly) all the full stacks of herb below that price.
Step 4

And there you have it, that's how you use Critical's secret secret costing calculator! Sorry if you were expecting something super fantastically amazing. Critical doesnt do amazing =/.

10 comments:

  1. As ever, a good post Critical. So, i am right in thinking that you are effectively lowering the construction cost of your glyphs by giving Inferno inks a value on the assumption that you can use these inferno inks and at least recover their value? and therefore you have made an assumption of the whiptail to inferno ink conversion?

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  2. @Crit : See - I am not the only one who thinks you are subsidizing glyph costs.

    Same arguments; different day.

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  3. Croda: Yes.

    Foo: Yes.

    Because I "cheat", as you can see, i can get glyph cost down super low which helps with the objective of snuffing out competition.

    Its basically combining equation 1 (3bf+0.5=glyph cost) with equation 2 (i=xbf) to come up with a super equation.

    Yes Critical is an algebra geek.

    ReplyDelete
  4. If I can start getting enough herbs again I will give this a shot and push lower than 14g floor just to see what happens.

    Currently most glyphs have gone over 100g each and the herb supply is really tight, im guessing patch day breakage of bots.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hmm...maybe it's because I don't operate in the herb/glyph market, but I am curious about why an arbitrary ratio (self selected, it isn't based on actual milling output) is needed/used in determing cost and establishing price? Is that what Foo means when he says you are subsidizing or cheating on cost? :P

    Not that I'm trying to pimp my own blog, but here is my article on costing. It's specifically about prospecting and gems in my case, but the methodology is solid for anything milled (I think).

    http://www.vendohgold.blogspot.com/2011/10/cost-and-pricing-learn-to-do-it-right.html

    Warning: It's not short. Brevity isn't my thing.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Am I completely missing something here...What does the second reow of numbers represent? I follow the calculation, and see that it is 62.5% of Row 1 (Whiptail/Jasmine price), but not sure what/how to use it. Is this the price you should buy the lower herbs (Cinderbloom & Stormvine) as well as the Whiptail & Twilight?

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  7. Easy question first.

    @Azz yes. If i buy whiptail at 2.4g and squash, i will get the same amount of bfs as if i buy cinderblooms at 1.5g. The logic is that you should not only buy whiptails only, but all 4 herbs. This "calculator" tells u the crossover/matching/equivalent prices.

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  8. @Vendoh the ratio is a personal choice. I choose 10 because i value maximum value of 1 inferno = 10bf. Someone who says infernos are free and dont factor them into their costing equations, would have a ratio of 0.

    It is required because it affects the costing calculations. Read here for a little more info:

    http://criticalgoblin.blogspot.com/2011/10/golden-ratio.html

    At the end of the day infernos are an unavoidable byproduct when milling, that still have value depending how you handle them. The lowest return is selling them raw on AH. Max return is DM trinkets.

    The easy answer would be to say its a glyphing thing and u get it if you are a pro-glypher. But Critical doesnt like talking down to Readers like that.

    Just keep in mind everything on this blog is basically how Critical does glyphs. Everyone does things differently, all i am doing is opening my books so you can see how one pro-glypher does it. So the above calculator is what Critical uses, but I am not saying this is the only and best calculator u should be using.

    ReplyDelete
  9. So looking over this again and trying to completely 100% understand it before I dive in and start wrecking glyph prices again.

    lets say I have a ratio of 9BFI to 1 II (some fortune card seller on my realm will trade me his for 7:1, average that with the vendor 10:1 and rounded up from 8.5) and I want to push 10g glyphs.

    The cost sheet is telling me to buy everything whiptail 2.3g and cheaper, or 46g a stack.

    I get to this point and I'm a little stuck connecting the dots to the next step. I assume that I make up the value in DMF sales, but I don't get how to value my II to get my break even point.

    info for my realm:

    Hurricanes at 5k
    Volcano and Tsunami at 6-7k
    II are on the AH regularly for 15g, in sizable amounts.
    VLife are 8-10g each.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Ahhh. I didn't realize these "infernos" were something that you got as by-product of producing your main inks. That makes a lot more sense. I would have accepted your "it's a glyph thing" answer lol.

    As I said, I'm not a glypher (yet!) but I enjoy your blog.

    ReplyDelete

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