The Alchemy Dead Zone I: The Wolfram Bar

There's several items in alchemy that are just never made, at least not without some sort of insanity being involved.

Having worked so heavily in alchemy, I've thought about these time and again, wondering if it were possible to change that.

The primary reason being that the NPC price is cheaper (in some cases much cheaper) than the ings. The NPC prices were set way back when many items cost a lot less.

They do, however, keep the price down in some cases for certain items.

I wondered if an ingredient change might make the actual construction of these items worthwhile again, without upsetting the delicate price that in some cases is only held down by the NPC price.

The first item I decided to look at is the one that is the absolute worst bar to self-mix...

Wolfram Bar


Current ings:
- 10 wolframite ore
- 1 serpent stone
- 30 fire essence

Suggested change:
- 15 wolframite ore
- 10 coal (approx.)
- 30 fire essence

Reasoning: The combo of wolframite and serpent stone makes ings valued at over 18kgc. The NPC sells for 15kgc. The serpent stone being in the mix completely disrupts the value of the ore itself. The serpent stone is currently worth about the same as 10 wolframite ore, whereas it was nowhere near this value back when the NPC price was set.

As such, there is no real reason to mix this bar, and most all of these bars enter into play solely from NPC purchase.

With the above-suggested change, the cost of the ings get brought down to just a bit below the 15kgc NPC price, despite having 5 more wolframite ores.

Benefits: While people could still just buy the bars directly for 15kgc, they could also choose to mix the steel longs (or buy them from other players), harv the wolframite, and mix the bars.

This would not only encourage the mixing of wolfram bars (with the option to buy still), but would also put more value for manuers to mix steel long swords for harvesting the wolframite.

Steel longs cost 900gc directly from the NPC, putting the price of the changed ings at a bit under 15kgc, however there's plenty of places here for lost ings which would likely result in the bar cost from players staying at around the same as the NPC price.

And as well, people would actually have a reason to harvest wolframite again.

The NPC price (and thus the market price) would not change, so this wouldn't affect the current price of items that use wolfram bars. It just allows for more possible mixing to go along with the ability to directly buy from the NPC.