The new tool of the trade for alchemists has a significant effect on your crafting costs and setup. In this post I’ll look at the implications of the new tool and how it should change how you approach alchemy.
The tool
The alchemy tool will turn into one of four random variations when you use it with a 1 hour cooldown for the transformation.
One of the four variants will allow you to get a 10 minute buff to the chance to proc extra flasks and potions. This has a 20 minute cooldown which means you will get two 10 minute periods for that hour to craft as many flasks and potions as you can.
The uptime would then be about 8.33% of the time assuming you use the item on cooldown.
Maximizing crafting yields
To maximize your crafting yields you need to stock up materials ahead of time so that when you get the crafting buff you can craft continuously for the full 20 minutes (two 10 minute periods).
If you have the crafting enchant you can craft a potion or flask in 1 seconds. Depending on your preference in crafting you will need materials for 1200 flasks or potions to maximize your crafting yields every time you craft with the stone.
That’s a lot of flasks. If you include procs that would be on average 2100 flasks per crafting cycle.
On a longer time frame you need to figure out how often you will do this on average per week.
Impact on your crafting cost
The impact this has on your crafting cost depends on how much you craft and how often you can activate the stone. The big question is going to be which percentage of your crafts are done with the extra buff. The higher this percentage is the lower your crafting cost.
If you do all your crafting with your tool which is about 2100 flasks or potions per activation then you average crafting cost is the cost of materials divided by 1.75.
If half your crafts are with the tool and half are without then your average crafting cost is the cost of materials divided by 1.625 assuming you have the rank 3 recipe.
For most of you one crafting session per week will probably cover the majority of your crafts unless you are doing heavy battle potion crafting, 2100 flasks is a lot.
Microeconomic effects
An interesting side effect of this change is the effect this has on suply curve dynamics. The most efficient production of consumables is now capped by the cooldown and uptime of the new tool of the trade. If you try to craft more than what you can do with the buff active you will get a higher crafting cost. That being said the cap is fairly high, I expect the vast majority of crafted flasks and potions will be crafted with the buff active for an effective 1.75 proc rate.
Long term this will lead to the optimal production being exactly what you cna do with the up-time of the stone. Hardcore crafting more items than this will drive your costs up and will probably make it unprofitable to sell your goods.
Implementing in TSM
To implement the best strategy in TSM it depends on how much you use the tool. You should craft as much as humanly possible with the tool buff active. If you do 100 % of the crafting with your tool active your average cost is the cost of materials divided by 1.75
This is very easy to implement in TSM by just dividing crafting by 1.75. If you are using my flask settings you would just change the 1.5 divisor to 1.75 and it is good to go.
This market now requires a more thoughtful approach to your minimum price and your crafting to ensure you profit. You could try just continue to use 1.5 and have the extra procs as pure profit assuming you can sell them.
I’m not active in the market so I’m not sure which approach will work best, so just experiment. You will probably want to start with the higher price point and lower it gradually if your sales are too slow.
Just a note: you would get 3 uptimes per 1 hour period of the proc version. You transform it, 1 hour remains as you activate it the first time. 20 minutes later, you activate it the second time, 40 minutes remaining on transformation. 20 minutes later, you activate it a third time, 20 minutes remaining on transformation.
That’s what you get for not testing I guess. For some reason I thought the CD didn’t start running until the buff ran out. Must ahve misread the wowhead comment.