Material Trader Price Fluctuations

Hey guys.

I've been meaning to ask in the forums for some time in regards to this. I figured it was better to post it here rather than in Guru seeing as it won't be around soon

I have been attempting to speed run the guild wars games for some time now. It takes a lot of careful planning to do so. When planning eliminating inconsistencies where possible is ideal. However, buy/sell price fluctuations at these traders is a constant issue. My speed running projects mean that I need to buy materials to craft armor or farm materials to sell for gold.

For example, in my Factions speedrun, I need to buy exactly 50 bolts of cloth at Seitung Harbour, as I get there to craft armor with it. Getting the armor at this point of the game is crucial for time efficiency and progression. I usually have only enough money to buy them at 140g per 10 (perhaps 150 or so? I forgot exactly where the cutoff is). Should the price increase too high, it would make doing efficient runs impossible.

Another example is in Prophecies where I need to farm feathers from outside Lion's Arch to get enough gold to buy high AR armor as soon as possible. This is the most accessible way of farming at that point in the game whilst also power leveling. Now, if feathers start only selling for 500g per 10, that means that the ability at how fast I can farm is diminished, whereas if the price jumps up to say 800, it suddenly becomes much quicker to get the gold I need to progress in the run.

Being able to understand these price changes may or may not help in trying to find a solution to my issue, but either way I feel like understanding their mechanics would help regardless. A few specific questions I had regarding the changing prices were:

1. Are the prices the same at every trader in the game at the same moment, or does the price vary from trader to trader (ie. in Seitung Harbor vs in Lions Arch, between different servers, etc.)?
2. Is there a price ceiling/floor in place on prices (I don't think they can sell for less than 100g per 10, is there an upper limit)?
3. What causes a material's price to either increase or decrease (is it based on supply/demand)?
4. How often do price changes occur (daily, hourly, instantaneously, etc.)?
5. Is there an artificial way of manipulating the prices offered at traders?

Any answers or additional information you think might come in handy would be much appreciated!

Thanks for your responses. The state of economy threads were fascinating! I sent the author a PM about specific market mechanics, but thanks for answering my more general queries!

Update: I decided that for my own curiosity, I would collate data for the prices of cloth, hide (a cloth alternative) and feathers. Over the past 48 hours, the price of cloth has steadily risen from 140g to 220g. For me this is concerning, putting it well out of the range of what's affordable in a speedrun that early in the game (700g vs 1100g). I'm not sure why there's been such a marked increase in price so quickly, but the nature of this kind of market volatility endangers consistent speedruns.

I can't think of a reason as to why cloth would suddenly spike in demand, any suggestions there? I'm also curious to hear how high people have ever seen cloth go and if anyone knows how long periods of inflation of common materials can last. From what I have ever remembered, cloth seemed to hover from 140-150g pretty much every time I checked.

As for feathers, I guess 500-700 is a fairly common buying price range so there's nothing too weird about that one for me.

I only wish I had enough money/cloth to try and drive the price down myself!

Quote from Marty Silverblade

Maybe this would violate some kind of speedrunner code of ethics or something, but perhaps you could just determine the average prices of the relevant materials, then find a player who'll act as a merchant to buy/sell at those prices. I know speedruns always have random/uncontrollable elements that require luck to get the perfect run, but I wouldn't have a problem with someone fixing the economy like this. MMO's aren't typically speedrun material, afaik.

You know, although it might look pretty bad to do that, it probably isn't. You're right in saying MMO's don't make for good running material for the most part. GW's exploreable areas and low player counts these days mostly redeem that though, it's essentially a single-player game anyway.

The reason it's not the worst idea is that markets are player influenced, so to say prices are just randomness in the game isn't correct, especially after hearing the guy from reddit talk about it. The fact that some people have THAT much influence on price can be devastating. It also means that secretly pulling strings on another account to reduce prices just before I get to an area I need to purchase materials is essentially cheating anyway. The only real difference between that and doing a private, price-fixed trade is one is done openly and one is more dishonest (and complicated/expensive).

As far as I can tell there's only three approaches to the issue. Treating it as if it were RNG when it can already be heavily exploited, price fixing, or just banning traders entirely and having to salvage the materials myself (no way in hell is that happening). I'll stay open to the idea and keep monitoring the market prices over a longer period. I'm sure that price fixing will grow on me more if the market stays out of control over a long period.

In response to your thoughts:

-Fluctuating prices has variable advantages. For feathers, because I'm farming and selling them to get a specific total, the sale price directly affects how fast I can complete this objective (pretty bad thing, far too swingy- from what I've already monitored so far, somewhere between 260 and 480 per 10). For cloth/hide, their prices matter less. I have a finite amount of money. A higher price means I have to deviate from the direct nature of the run to farm unnecessarily, a lower price means I'd have extra spending cash (which I'd probably just buy some insignias or something with). Having extra money isn't really crucial in that situation, you sort of lose time by buying something, but it increases the run's consistency by a little bit. Fixing a price in that situation would mean you could at least stick to a simple routing plan.

-I never liked the player dependence that came with your previous idea, this one seems much better. I could just deposit my cash into storage as payment and withdraw the materials. It's not a bad idea. The things that still bother me about this idea: 100g to access materials, the storage agent is found in a different location to trader, finding rule consistency with a 'no storage rule, except for this and that exception'.

-The conditions seem true, but I'm having trouble with categorizing what is and isn't allowed already. My first struggle was with /bonus- the weapons and fire imp ally. In the end I figured since the Imp upgrade came with all the games you purchase now it should be legal in every campaign, where as the game of the year upgrade for prophecies is specific to that and you should only be allowed to use those weapons in that campaign.
Now my issue comes in bugs/glitches. I always thought they patched a fix for jumping gates, which is true for shadow stepping and teleporting. However, it's not true for using a minion to clip. The other day I found out I'll be able to clip into Gyala Hatchery, allowing me to skip Sunjiang district and Befriending the Luxons among other things. This to me seems an acceptable glitch to use in any% runs and I intend to use it. Unfortunately due to not having hero access, I don't think I can do the same skips into Xaquang Skyway or Boreas Seabed (there is potential of using a nearby wallow instead of a masterless minion). If you know of any other potentially useful glitches/bugs I'm all ears! (Will probably make a new thread for something like this)
However there's also been a bug discovery that would be useful for speedruns called the ID bug (link here). It's apparently shunned in the speedclearing community. In the general speedrunning community, it's hard to say whether or not this would be allowed, but my gut would say yes on the condition you aren't using a third party program to macro it. I'm pretty sure this would be impossible to do without macros though (still need to test). There's no way third party programs are different from cheating- it's like using aim hacks in a shooting game speedrun.
TLDR: I'm not sure about where it would fit as a category, ie. any% fixed prices.

-It's never okay. If there was a current patch single-player version of the game, I'd 100% prefer it.

Good news!

I have come up with a routing solution regarding getting 50 cloth/tanned hide at Seitung Harbor that has really just been staring me in the face the entire time. I have four monastery credits after I finish the 'Choose your Secondary Profession' quest from that, 'Forming a Party' which I did for early experience (as it only takes a few seconds), 'Dual Strike' and 'Crop Thieves'.

The first thing I normally do after this quest is go talk to Headmaster Lee to get the Sprint skill. Conveniently, I can just talk to one of the two Monastery Quartermasters on the way and cash them in for four Scrolls of Adventurer's Insight and re-sell them to a merchant for 400g. This will pretty well cover the cost of any inflation, and if I know the price is already low, I can buy a few insignias/runes on the way through to Sunqua Vale which would only cost a few extra seconds to the run. In fact, looking at my notes, I believe when I routed cloth was often 100g each and I would have 250 gold spare in that case, meaning with 400g extra I could buy up to 6 different runes/insignias.

As to which insignias/runes are best, I'm not sure (advice on this?). The 400 extra means that depending on the price of both materials and insignias. The price of insignias has not really changed- I looked them up months ago and the same cheap ones are still 100g now. The cheapest ones are Rune of Purity, Vanguard's Insignia, Infiltrator's Insignia, Saboteur's Insignia and all the Assassin runes except for Minor Crit Strikes and Minor Dagger Mastery.

The cheaper insignias all give a flat 10 AR bonus to a piece + 10 AR for either blunt, piercing or slashing damage. I'm not sure on the damage breakdown in factions exactly an which insignia would be best. My guess is maybe the piecing one seeing as I'm more likely to die while running past big mobs rather than fighting alongside henchmen, and it's more likely I get damaged by range attack than melee ones. It might just depend on the kinds of foes I encounter post-Seitung Harbor. Does factions have an abundance of one of these damage types?

Rune of Purity is the only cheap rune available for all professions. Not sure how often 20% less in poison and disease will come into play on the route, I don't remember these conditions being a specific problem. I'm judging that from its price it isn't used as much, and there's probably a reason for that- it seems pretty useless.

The assassin specific runes, all major and superior kinds are available for 100g each, as are minor deadly and shadow arts. I feel like the health deficit of major and superior runes don't outweigh their benefits, especially when I'm under levelled already (unless I'm missing something).

Just a guess for order priority (assuming they stack), I would say:
100 Spare: 1x Infiltrator's Insignia (on chest)
200 Spare: 1x Infiltrator's Insignia (on chest) + 1 minor rune of shadow arts
300 Spare: 2x Infiltrator's Insignia (on chest and on legs) + 1 minor rune of shadow arts
400-650 Spare: 3-5x Infiltrator's Insignia + 1 minor rune of shadow arts

I'm neglecting dagger mastery and critical strikes because they are more expensive and I don't have high enough damage output anyway, nor am I often using overly offensive builds. The +1 it would give is likely negligible.

Of course this all might help my problems in factions, but the selling price varience of feathers/buying price of iron ingots for Prophecies still remains. I think for the most part prices are pretty reasonable though. The person I spoke to on reddit rightfully told me that it's in the best interests of feather bot farmers to keep the sale price of feathers as high as they can. Not only that, but I am also trying to level at the same time. I will have to check what comes first, hitting my target level or getting the money I need (of course it comes down to item drops, but I mean on average). Another thing I'll have to make sure to ask about/figure out later in more detail is the most efficient way of farming in North Kryta Province.

On a related note, how and where should I post my speedrun related questions? Should I just make one thread for all campaign questions, or just post individual threads on new topics? I feel like the latter would make it easier to follow specific questions/problems, but I don't want to clutter the forums unnecessarily either. I'd guess that it's probably more suitable to post in Forums -> Plains of Ashford -> General?

Cheers

Piercing it is

I only use daggers in missions that are too difficult to just run through or require killing enemies/escorts i.e. Vizunah Square, etc. I use any shields I pick up for running areas or in difficult to survive areas of missions. When I have dagger skills it's usually only Golden Lotus Strike (energy management), Golden Phoenix Strike + Death Blossom. I felt like it was an effective attack chain, but I might have to look into a sword or axe one. I don't have too many spaces to give up is part of the issue. Usually only 2-3 and the rest have to be survivability/speed running skills. I'd be interested to hear if you have any other alternates you think might be more affective (again, digressing from what this thread was initially about).

I might look into making those forums shortly and then leave this forum for any additional general Trader concerns. I'll try the PvE thread I guess

I've decided to take all my factions posting to a new thread to keep this thread topic relevant, it's too easy to deviate

Quote from Misty

...then why use the material traders? You're still trading with actual players; just using a NPC middleman. If it was truly single player, you would have to farm everything for yourself.

If that were the case it wouldn't be much of a speedrun and more of a sped up normal play through. In a factions run, there is no point where you have to stop and farm anything, it's just go go go. It's better to just plan around potential fluctuations- even the most expensive of the expensive prices at the trader is more efficient than waiting for items to salvage into 1 or 2 bolts of cloth, as well as because of how abundant gold is comparatively (especially in Factions compared to other campaigns). After all, you need 48 of a material to make a full armor set- I just would craft legs and chest and keep on going. Farming crafting materials yourself would be too slow and you'd probably just try and progress through the game with starter armor and hope for the best. It would just be incredibly tedious and you'd have to take a lot of running zones slow or fight your way through with henchmen. That or die and reset the run a lot

On another note, I'm still collating data on feather, cloth, tan hide and iron ingots prices 4-5 times a day, for almost two weeks now. I'm able to see some neat little relationships between buy and sell prices- I might even be able to derive the formula if I was bothered, but I'm probably not because it won't help me much. Has few practical implications anyway. I'm hoping to keep collecting data to get a better idea of an average price of these materials. I might post the results later if you're particularly interested, but it's nothing too riveting.

One is a direct interaction with a single player whilst the other is a more random interaction with a wide network of players- one where a single person struggles to make a game breaking impact on their own. One that isn't a set outcome. Someone giving you a bunch of items designed for you to break the game is a very specific and set player interaction. Using a material trader that the entire population influences is far closer to just a random interaction/outcome wouldn't you say? And technically, I'm not interacting directly with a player, the material trader is an NPC. But by that weak arguement, so is the storage agent and there are obvious faults there.

Unfortunately player influence is 100% unavoidable. For example, I use a series of deathwarps specific to outposts that are controlled by Kurzick (Breaker Hollow, Leviathan Depths). I have more Luxon faction than Kurzick and so by dying outside those outposts, I warp to the next closest neutral/Luxon shrine across the map. That's only possible if the Kurzick-Luxon boundary stays where it currently is. Would dying then constitute as a player interaction? What if it was unintentional? It often can be. Either way, that's a time save that comes as a direct consequence of other players. Granted, the border is very stable, I've been monitoring it for a long time now and it hasn't and likely won't ever move.

I think my current rule set is about as fair and logical as the 'find the crafting materials yourself' mentality. The death warps mentioned above are perfect examples of that.

It's not to get into either of those places. It's just to save running time from having to walk across an entire explorable area. For the two examples above, it's coming through Breaker Hollow into Archipelagos, then dying just across where the border crosses over which then spawns you outside of Cavalon. If you die too close to Breaker Hollow, you end up resurrecting at Jade Flats (Luxon). The other time I use it is going from Leviathan Pits through Silent Surf and into Unwaking Waters (Luxon) where I run south to the island guardian monk boss mob and die. That spawns me in the island in the middle of silent surf which saves a cute little chunk of time. From there I can run the rest of the way to the mission outpost.

Random aside: A skip into Arborstone won't be useful for a run because Luxon is so much faster and has more skips, but how do you do it? Just for funsies
[hr]
I thought of another way of justifying the material trader. The rule set I came up with was meant to be as if you just booted up Guild Wars for the first time and pretending there's not a single soul online. Without anyone online, the material trader NPC (and the other traders) will still be there and still sell materials. Not using the trader is kind of just like neglecting part of the game that helps you out I feel. The only difference is that the market would be (almost) static in that situation whereas it currently isn't. If ArenaNet decided to shut down their servers and happened to make Guild Wars single playable, they aren't going to remove those NPCs from the game.

This situation does still mean you can't access storage because nothing would be in there. There would be no other players to trade with and you can only buy skills from where they offered them initially, etc etc. But I think assuming there's no other players online does technically (by definition) make it a single player game- you'd be the sole person playing it! At the end of the day, for something that's an MMORPG, I think my rules just about do their best in minimizing other player interactions. You'll never be able to fully remove all of them anyway, but is still enjoyable to watch. Materials aren't free anyway, you still have to have the gold to pay for them.

Quote from Misty

Surely to get into Unwaking Waters, you have to bring Togo with you as part of the quest? Are you using a dialog hack to get in??

To get into Arborstone and Altrumm Ruins early, leave Tanglewood Copse with more Luxon than Kurzick faction, and die anywhere you like - right outside the portal will do. You'll res in the middle of the map, from where you can run to either outpost. This doesn't allow you to skip Boreas Seabed, since you need to do Sunjiang District before you can get into House zu Heltzer the front way (then again, perhaps you can dialog that too). However, it does give you access to Kurzick areas without having to do the whole Luxon side or Tahnnakai Temple, which you might conceivably want to do.

I intend to do a gate clip to get into Unwaking Waters. Sure, you can escort Togo, but to do it safely with henchmen takes about 6 or 7 minutes, whereas warping and then glitching through takes 2-4 depending on your luck. I'm not sure I know what a dialogue hack is- should I know? I am fairly sure it's possible to clip on that gate, but I haven't attempted it yet. It's the same kind of gate as Boreas Seabed and Gyala Hatchery and I already know it's possible for those, so I don't see why it wouldn't work. The only reason I might decide to still escort Togo is if skill capping Spoil Victor ends up being too good to not do, which at that point in the game it might not be worth doing. Spoil Victor helps but it doesn't guarantee getting Kuunavang low enough to skip all the gates in Unwaking Waters. It only saves like 15-20 seconds on Imperial Sanctum too. I'll make those optimization decisions later.

That early Kurzick trick is simple enough. Only thing is for a speedrun you would technically need to start the run with 0 faction of each if it mattered to the outcome of the run. In your case, you'd need more Luxon than Kurzick faction from the natural progression of the game to perform that warp res. I do the gate skip into Boreas so opposing faction isn't ever an issue for this run- it has no impact because at no point do you even get Kurzick faction (as far as I'm aware).

Still good to know more things though! I won't be doing all the missions. Prior to knowing about the gate skips I did runs that by the linear nature of Factions, did all the missions. I'm excited to be able to improve my time with these new skips. Doing all the missions could warrant its own category but it just seems much grindier and I don't really see the appeal

Quote from Misty

As for glitching through the gate, you might have an unpleasant surprise when you attempt that...

Oh really? I'd love to hear ahead of time I'll still try regardless of course, but is there something I'm missing here?

Quote from Misty

well it might work, but I don't think reef lurkers spawn close enough to the gate, you can't aggro the Luxons koz you'll have no Kurzick faction, and the only other way I can think of to pull an enemy would be coin dropping, which I have to assume you're not doing... anyway, the real nuisance is that in order to test the gate, you'll need a character that hasn't already been to Unwaking Waters, or the gate will already be open

If the reef lurker is the only problem then it's not a problem. Some of them spawn closer to the shrine which are able to be pulled to the gate. In that case the run across Silent Surf is about 90-120 seconds. If one doesn't spawn I have other more unconventional methods involving masterless minions which takes up to about 3-4 minutes to pull off in total.

As for it being annoying to test, I'm going to have to do several full game runs for practice and route optimization anyway, so it won't be an issue. I estimate a good full game run might take a little under 3 hours to complete if all the theorycraft routing I'm doing is correct. I won't have the time to do the real optimization for another week or so.

I've started a Factions speedrun thread in PvE builds and I'll probably discuss my progress in there when I really get the ball rolling.

Quote from Misty

aye, I've seen the other thread - I only responded to this one koz my question related directly to this thread's topic, but we've clearly digressed a lot xD

Assuming it's possible to get a good reef lurker spawn (I don't think it is), wouldn't you have to restart your entire run if you got an unfavourable spawn?
How does the minion trick work? Kill something, make a strong minion, bring it to the gate, sacrifice yourself to death, and then run from the shrine before the minion dies? Or trust a henchie to res you without stealing aggro? xD

It's definitely possible because I've had them before (I have tested Silent Surf, just without a gate being there).

Yes, I kill something, usuallly a reef lurker that I aggro as close to the gate as I can and then run to it and glitch through. The nearby saltspray dragons also can catch the aggro of the Luxon warriors at the shrine if they use ride the lightning to me. I usually have around 15 or so seconds before the minion dies, more than enough to do the glitch
The gate is close enough to the shrine that I don't need to bring a henchmen, they just slow the whole process down. It's doable, it's just annoying because it involves a lot of extra flagging.