When I was looking at market prices in Conqueror’s Blade I noticed that some resources have a very low minimum price such as 0.02 for various lumbers while iron is 0.12. You do get a larger quantity of lumber when gathering so there is a reason behind these things.
Still, the silver tax for refining raw resources into Materials is the same for all resources so I was looking at Seasoned Wood to understand what is more profitable – to refine the material yourself or to buy it directly from the market?
Seasoned Wood – to Refine or to Buy?
I am using a quantity of 2000 Seasoned Wood for this analysis.
In the table below I present the cost of the production of Seasoned Wood (refining resources to Material). Here we can see that there is a small difference depending on which type of Timber, however, we also see that this is negligible and the major cost is the Silver tax.
| Timber Type | per 1 Wood | Silver Tax per 1 | Total Wood needed | Total Silver tax | Minimum Res cost | Res cost Total | TOTAL COST |
| Pine Timber | 10 | 2 | 20,000 | 4,000 | 0.02 | 400 | 4,400 |
| Ash timber | 8 | 2 | 16,000 | 4,000 | 0.04 | 640 | 4,640 |
| Oak timber | 7 | 2 | 14,000 | 4,000 | 0.05 | 700 | 4,700 |
| Cedar Timber | 6 | 2 | 12,000 | 4,000 | 0.06 | 720 | 4,720 |
Comparing with Price of Seasoned Wood
Minimum price:
If we were to sell the Seasoned Wood at the minimum price allowed by the market then we would have to sell it at 1.44 per piece. Using the 2000 pieces of this analysis this would yield only 2,880 Silver (from which still 10% market tax of 288 should be paid).
This is a complete loss! (-2,128 silver) So the first conclusion we arrive at is that it is completely not interesting to Refine timber into Seasoned Wood and sell it at minimum price.
Profitable price #1?
Next I checked at which price others were selling (ignoring small amounts – focusing where the big volume is) and I saw the price of 2.88 per piece.
Would we make profit at this price?
2,000 x 2.88 = 5,760 silver
less 10% market tax of 576
less the cost of production 4720
yields a net result of +464 silver.
So it is a profitable price as such. However, there are 2 problems with this:
- The profit is too small to bother with (in lots of 250 that’s only 58 silver per lot).
- And 2.88 price is not even guaranteed (anyone can undercut you at any moment) and/or does not even bring large demand so we cannot make up the small margin with a big quantity.
Conclusion
Point 1: we learn that it is a complete loss to try to sell Seasoned Wood at the minimum price.
Point 2: even at a higher price of 2.88 there is only a tiny profit (and no big demand either).
Point 3: this then means that if you are crafting artillery and can buy Seasoned Wood from the market for anything less than around 2.60 then it is more profitable to do that then bother refining the materials on your own.
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