Odin Crafters Alliance ready to go liveFollow

First off, I have to say that I am totally shocked at the amount of interest in a crafter's alliance. Since first posting the thread I have gotten at least 20 tells in game asking about it. So, finally, here it is.

Edit: After hearing Eclipe's points I have to agree that charging an entry fee is not going to provide enough benefit, so I took that out.



The Alliance in a Nutshell

The purpose of the alliance is to make money for its members. Initially this will be done primarily through providing materials to members at cost and later by price fixing. We have established a number of rules and guidelines that should help us to do both.

The Alliance will be two parts. First we will have the LS and secondly there will be forums. Randomscrub has offered to host these forums at his LS website for now until ours are ready.

The LS is not likely to act like the normal ones you are already a part of. People are welcome to hang out there if they want to, but the reason for the LS is mostly to host regulary scheduled meetings. We will have a weekly general meeting for all members, a weekly meeting for the representatives, and meetings as needed for all members of each specific craft (all woodworkers for example).

So what is a representative? Each craft will have one person set up as a representative. This person has several duties and its likely to involve some work so be aware before you ask to be one.


Representative Duties

Each representative is responsible for identifying final goods in their trade that we can manipulate prices on. For exmaple, the Cooking Rep may decide that Mithkabobs are the way to go. He will use the money collected to manipulate prices. (See below for more details on price fixing)

Reps will also be the only sack holders in the alliance. They will attend a weekly meeting to brainstorm new ideas and new ways for the alliance as a whole to make profit.

Finally, reps act as a contact point. If you need a Woodworker to make something for you, then you would contact me. As the rep I either make what you need myself, or I look through the list of woodworkers in the alliance and find someone to do it for you.


Alliance Benefits

Our primary benefit is cheaper materials. Right now I am at 62 woodworking. I need to make a whole crapload of demon arrows to get to 69 skill, but there is a problem with this. The cost of making 4 stacks of demon arrows is roughly 33k as of this writing. And they sell for 5,800 a stack. This means that I am going to lose around 10k gil for every 12 synths. Ouch.

Here is where the alliance comes in. I contact the Boneworking rep and ask her how much it will cost her to make me demon arrowheads if I bring her all the materials. She tells me she can do it for about 20k. Arrowheads are normally 30k, so all of the sudden I am breaking even.

Then I contact the Clothscrafting rep, and he tells me that he can make black chocobo fletching for 1000gil a stack. They normally sell for 2k so all of a sudden I went from a 10k loss to a slight profit. But wait, it gets better.

Instead of buying the demon horns I contact a few alliance members and ask them to group farm with me. We head out to Castle Zhval and start farming demons. These demons drop scrolls, gil and tons of other goodies that the members helping me get to keep. All I get are the horns. And if we have a smith with us all he gets are the skulls. Everyone wins.

EDIT: While price fixing is something I want to try to practice, I don't know how feasible its going to be unless we get very large...

The next benefit, and the one most people are interested in, is price fixing. Now, obviously we are going to start off small and even if we get large we don't control any of the Japanese market. So how are we going to price fix?

First off, each rep needs to identify items that this process will work on. I'll use mithkabobs as an example. The cooking rep decides to price fix mithkabobs. Most people might think this means buying out all the mithkabobs that sell below a certain price, and then relisting them higher. And that is one way to do it.

But with an item that sells as fast as mithkabobs, any change you have is going to be very temporary if you do that. So instead you go to the source of materials. Your rep will use your entry fee to buy out all the cockatrice meat for sale everywhere. Further, he will encourage other members of the alliance to farm cockatrice meat in the popular spots.

Then all we have to do is wait. Because we control a large chunk of the meat supply meat prices will start to rise. This will naturally cause the price of mithkabobs to rise, but since we have all the meat AND have it at a cheaper price we can pull an OPEC on the whole server and cash in when the time is right.

This has to be done carefully. We don't want your rep to buy up all the meat, then find out that you need some and can't get it. So these events will be posted on the forums in advance so you have warning.

The Forums

I don't know about you, but I level a lot. When I am not leveling I have a billion other things I am doing. This means that I am never going to be able to drop everything that I am doing to make something instantly for someone, and I don't expect other members to either.

If you need something made, then you post it at the forums. Your rep will watch the forums, and when he sees this will contact you in game and let you know who can help you out. You can of course contact the rep directly, but don't expect them to drop everything to help right away.

If you have an excess of materials the forum is the place to post it. Chances are no matter what you have someone in another craft needs it.

Abusing the LS

The number one problem I am anticipating thus far is abuse of the alliance. By that I mean somebody joining, asking for help and discounted materials, and then giving nothing back.

Thats not cool, and the reps will watch for this sort of behavior. One of the best reasons to have forums is so that you can see who is helping others, and who is not.

Ideally I would like to see members with a minimum of a 40 skill, but I know thats not realistic. So I have a compromise. We will accept people of a lower skill, but they have to raise that skill to 40 in their first month.


The Alliance Mule

Right now the alliance mule is Dolshuv, a little taru with 30 free inventory and 50 slots in his mog house. If you have any oddball items, instead of vendoring them send them to Dolshuv. I know this most often happens when someone has 3 insect wings and doesn't want to wait for a stack.

These wings will sit on Dolshuv until enough show up to make a stack. Once we have full stacks I will post Dolshuv's inventory on the forums, and if you see something you need ask and it will be sent to you.


Going live 8/16

Tonight I am buying the LS, and naming it Crafter's Alliance. If you want in send me a tell, and I will get you a pearl. If you are interested in becoming a Representative let me know.

Right now the following people are interested. This list is far from complete, and if you don't see your name just post below and I will add it:

Arkelias (Woodworking)
Randomscrub (Clothcraft, Cooking)
Vitra (Boneworking, Cooking)
Anora (Clothcrafting)
Elipse (Clothcrafting)
Vengesim (Alchemy)
Cursedestroyer
Sketchballs (Smithing)
Yuniko (Cooking)
Darya (Cooking)


So there it is, the Crafter's Alliance. What do you guys think? Still interested? Anything I missed or anything that you would change?

Edited, Mon Aug 16 15:33:35 2004 by Arkelias

Hey Arkelias,
Its Elipse. I've got mixed feelings about the set up of the shell.

What I like:

1) Helping each other with cheaper materials

2) Helping each other farm materials

3) The ability to share advice and get to know other crafters on the server. Not to mention that there is still plenty that is as of yet unknown and having a larger group will allow for more of that information to become revealed.

4) At least level 40+ in any craft. (your suggestion of someone having to become 40 within a month seems fine but I have some suggestions I'd like to make but I'll put that in the "what I don't like" section)

5) Forums to help organize who needs what and when.

6) The idea of the mule. Though there might have to be some lotting on the materials that 2 people both want ^^

Those a some of the things I like about what you wrote. The other benefits are obvious.


The things I don't like:

1) I don't like the idea of people pre-40 joining the LS. 2 Reasons.
A) Most people don't know much about crafting pre-40 (almost like leveling a job class) and its incredible simple to just follow a guide to get it there.
B) You said its an alliance for profit, not for helping new crafters out. And frankly, a level 70 crafter can most often make materials cheaper than a level 25 can. (Desynths and HQs are the differential factors) In my opinion this will create one way streets for the members of the linkshell. Advice and help flowing one way and not much coming back.

2) Price fixing and the fees for joining. I think if you haven't learned by now, the AH is nearly impossible to control. I've spent many hours thinking about it and its not going to work. There are so many factors you can't even begin to control that its mind boggling, not to mention the fact that if it was as simple as buying up the supply of meat for example it would cost you alot more money than the 5k fee. Lets say you have 100 people join LS you get 500k to play with. Which in my opinion is barely enough to control one material on the AH. Thats if you get 100 people joining (not going to happen) and frankly what benefit is it to me as a clothcrafting mage if you increase the price of mithkabobs by buying out all the meat or what have you? Nothing to me. I don't use the mithkabobs as a mage and I don't sell them as a clothcrafter. So now my 5k isn't benefiting me in any way. Now, I'm not a cook but I know there isn't much desynth in it. Which would make it possible to do such things as controlling meat perhaps but in clothcraft, there is absolutely no way to control the price of materials. There are jsut so many different ways for me to get say... cotton thread that it would be impossible to stop the flow of it. If we're talking the control of the finished product. There will not be enough money in 500k to even consider doing that. (which we won't even have anyways). And again, it goes back to even if you do dump all that money trying to control a product in cloth, it doesn't help the other crafts.

Anyhow, I've got to run off to work or I'd put even more thought into it. There is a reason I did what I like first. Its cause I like alot of the ideas we have here. I like this LS and what its foundation is. I just think that some of the Ls's ambitions are out of reach. I'd love to hear some comments on what I'm saying.

Arkelias,

I think organizing the crafters is a great idea too.

Level 40 is actually really easy to get to in most crafts. I don't think that's too high of a bar for entry. If you let a lot of folks in below that, we'll spend most of our time telling people how to make carrot broth instead of really focusing on serious crafting.

I am skeptical on the price fixing, mule, and entry fee...

But -- crafts are very inter-related, and often the output of one craft is the input to another. I think hooking up suppliers and consumers is ultimately what the value of this LS/Website will be.

I noticed that you left fishing off the list.

I would like to volunteer for that position as a Representative.

Fishing Consumes: Culinary (Bait), Alchemy (Lures/Rods), and Carpentry (Rods)

Fishing Produces: Fish for Alchemy (Cobolt Jelly, Yellow Globes, Nebimonites), Fish for Cooking (Fish kabobs, etc) and I even think there are fish used to make some armor at high levels.

Please consider me for that post.

- Ruuki

When I get back aug 29 I want to be a part of this, im a 55smithing and 49leather

Sup guys. I'm gonna have to run the forum concept by my guys in LS. But I'm thinking it shouldn't be too big a deal for short-term. I'll keep everyone posted

Good luck guys (-:

Here is something that would be beneficial to your guild and to farmers on the Odin server, set up a public page listing LS player names and raw materials that they have a constant demand for. It seems kind of inequitable if you required your guildmates to make raw materials for cheaper, but if you posted for everyone then you'll have more suppliers and it wouldn't be compulsory. I've got a bunch of ram skins I need to unload... ;p

when I get back I can use up those ram skins

Ok there we go. The Crafter's Alliance Open forum is up at www . sobrigade . com / phpbb