This is the capstone analysis on Wealthy Yield missions and the prices to buy them at or below on the GTN to ensure either (1) unit cost parity with running Rich Yield and Bountiful Yield missions or (2) align with current GTN average low offer prices on the GTN for the materials involved.  The article builds on the modeling framework that was introduced in Wealthy Yield Missions (Part 2): What is “Fair Value” on GTN? and on some of the high-level concepts covered in Wealthy Yield Missions (Part 1): Unit Cost of Mission Discovery Item so you may want to check those out first if you haven’t already.  This capstone will be the finishing touch on a more than week long project to understand the economics of this part of the crew skills better, but even so there are small sample sizes in play here due to the limitations of my slicing mission returns and the Mission Discovery items available on the GTN, so if you have additional information that would clarify or contradict my conclusions I’d love to hear about your information to refine these models.

Underworld Trading

What is the fair value of each Mission Discovery that creates parity with Rich Yield and Bountiful Yield missions based on blended unit cost?  I decided that this was the most logical starting point for the analysis, but it took much longer than expected to get from that question to this analysis of the answer.  The first crew skill will be Underworld Trading since it was the trial run for the model in the previous post in this series.  The mission has a 15% critical chance which includes the assumption of a max affection companion in addition to the base 10% critical chance of the Wealthy Yield mission since it is an orange/hard difficulty at Underworld Trading (500).  The charts below list the materials returned by a successful and critical Wealthy Yield mission in the main section, along with their quantities, vendor liquidation prices, and the proceeds of such a liquidation.

The successful mission yields 3 Doonium while the critical mission yields 5 Doonium.  The quantity of Doonium is then multiple by its blended unit cost from running Rich Yield and Bountiful Yield missions in a 1:1 ratio over time, which is 3,139 credits per Doonium.  The subtotal of the liquidation proceeds is added to the value of the Doonium at parity with the blended unit cost and this sum then has the cost of sending a companion on the Wealthy Yield mission subtracted from it.  The critical chance is then applied to the respective implied fair values by outcome to complete the model.

As the first post about Wealthy Yield missions outlined, the unit cost of Mission Discovery items from running slicing missions is zero, so this aspect is only relevant to the decision to buy Wealthy Yield missions from the GTN.  If you buy a Mission Discovery: Underworld Trading from the GTN for 10,026 credits the expected value of the Doonium unit cost is equivalent to running the Rich Yield and Bountiful Yield missions already available.  This provides a baseline for the fair value because anytime you have the chance to buy the item for less than this amount you should do so immediately because it is the cheapest unit cost for Doonium available.  There are at least two economically valid reasons that come to mind to pay more than 10,026 for Mission Discovery: Underworld Trading on the GTN, but there could certainly be others as well.

First, the Wealthy Yield mission can be run in addition to running the Rich Yield and Bountiful Yield missions as you normally would, so you can generate additional Doonium per hour by having three missions running simultaneously.  Even though paying above the parity price would knowingly increase your unit cost, the same is true of running the Bountiful Yield mission instead of only the Rich Yield mission.  The logic is the same in this case, which is that the additional Doonium can be sold at such a high multiple to its unit cost that the additional marginal unit cost is far outweighed by the increase is total revenue that can be realized by sacrificing some profit margin here.  In addition to the first reason of the increased rate of obtaining Doonium, this price multiple effect is the second reason and provides the ceiling to the fair value estimate, which is the reasonable price at which Doonium can be sold on the GTN.  The average low offer price of Doonium across Jedi Covenant and The Harbinger is fairly consistent and stable at about 17,000 credits per unit.  This is about 5.4 times the blended unit cost used above, so if the same fair value model is adjusted to the unit cost that would be expected to break even selling the Doonium on the GTN later is below.

So we now have a viable range of GTN prices for Mission Discovery: Underworld Trading to be bought and sold.  Any price below 10,000 credits would be better used by the seller to obtain Doonium for sale on the GTN and liquidate the other proceeds at a vendor.  Everyone should be a buyer below this level whenever it is available.  The upper limit is more flexible because it is dependent on the GTN price that Doonium can reasonably be sold for later, but at current levels this puts an implied fair value ceiling on Mission Discovery: Underworld Trading at about 55,000 credits.  Anyone buying above that price either needs Doonium at any cost to craft gear for themselves or is hoping to craft something with the Doonium that will sell at an even higher multiple to input costs than Doonium itself, which is certainly possible but only applicable to a small number of highly knowledgeable crafters on any given server probably.  The price at which it is no longer attractive to buy the Mission Discovery: Underworld Trading on the GTN will vary for each player, but that’s true with the demand for any good.  For most players, a price that results in a 50% reduction in profit margin is roughly the point that it isn’t worth buying the mission from the GTN, which occurs is modeled by this parity value chart, the last for Underworld Trading:

 

This may not be the price at which buying Mission Discovery: Underworld Trading on the GTN stops being profitable, but if you are paying more than 30,000 it might be good to pause and consider whether you have more profitable alternatives available to you, because the Doonium derived with such a high unit cost of acquisition would require average of better market prices to remain profitable when resold on the GTN.  A range is always less appealing than a single, definitive number, but in this case I think that would be unfair to assign a single value to something that is going to vary in fair value based on your situation, what you intend to do with the Doonium, and what your alternative options are that might warrant more consideration.

Treasure Hunting

These values are specific to Underworld Trading, so with less explanation of how and why, here are the same models and fair value estimates applied to Treasure Hunting and Diplomacy.  The fair value parameters of Treasure Hunting are actually more similar to the ones we’ve just explored for Underworld Trading than I anticipated, because the Wealthy Yield mission returns are very different.  The chart for blended unit cost parity is as follows:

Any Mission Discovery: Treasure Hunting available on the GTN for less than 11,826 will actually reduce your aggregate unit cost of Midlithe Crystal overall and should be purchased under all circumstances.  Using the same methodology as above, the next charts will recalculate the implied fair value using the average GTN lowest offer of Midlithe Crystal in my data from The Harbinger and Jedi Covenant, which has been 17,500 credits per Midlithe Crystal so far.

The upper limit of the fair value range is nearly identical to the value for Mission Discovery: Underworld Trading but the value is derived from a very different average GTN price and a very different return profile from the missions.  Someone can try to convince me that there is enough of a time value advantage to obtaining the Midlithe Crystal sooner, but I can’t rationalize buying Mission Discovery: Treasure Hunting on the GTN for more than this price under any circumstance because the math says you are almost certainly going to lose credits compared to just buying Midlithe Crystals at normal GTN prices.

The final chart for this crew skill takes the same approach as the prior series of three charts for Underworld Trading.  The implied fair value above is at the point of a 50% reduction in profit from reselling Midlithe Crystal obtained via this purchase and subsequent Wealthy Yield mission compared to simply running Rich Yield and Bountiful Yield missions.  It is not a hard and fast rule like the previous chart is in my opinion, but if you are pondering a purchase of Mission Discovery: Underworld Trading on the GTN for more than 33,500 I would recommend you stop and consider all of your options if your goal is to make money selling the results back on the GTN.  Even if crafting an item for sale is the goal and increases that inflection point where it becomes more expensive than you can recoup, it is still relatively worse than focusing on the Rich Yield and Bountiful Yield missions.

Diplomacy

 

This analysis has already taken way too long to complete and is now taking way too many words to express to you here.  If you have questions about Diplomacy I’m happy to circle back on them, but here’s the chart for blended unit cost parity that gives that lower boundary to fair value:

Again, buy all Mission Discovery: Diplomacy (Light/Dark) being sold for this price or below because it is more cost effective than your Rich Yield and Bountiful Yield missions.  The average GTN lowest offer to sell Autoimmune Regulator on Jedi Covenant and The Harbinger is 25,500 in my data, which gives us the following upper limit to fair value:

First and foremost, the number that jumps out from that chart is the much higher implied fair value upper limit, just keep in mind that it is much more GTN sale price dependent than the other two purple materials have been previously.  If the resale price of Autoimmune Regulator falls just 25%, which is normal for short-term price oddities on the GTN, the value would fall significantly.  My goal is to post these tables as interactive tools later so that you can enter the current price of the purple material and find out the implied fair value ranges dynamically for that days actually GTN market situation.

The final of our 9 charts for this behemoth of a capstone analysis to this three part look at the Wealthy Yield missions applies the same 50% profit reduction value for Autoimmune Regulator on resale.  In conclusion, I hope that this has been informative and that it was not unbearable long since the charts broke it up some.  The reason Slicing is not presented at this time is that I have not been able to see a critical result yet due to a lack of chances, so if you can help me fill in that missing data I will run the model on Slicing missions too and add an abbreviated fourth entry into the series.  I am also planning to create a summary table with only the implied fair value low, high, and midpoint values similar to the unit cost reference table to post in the days to come.

As always, thank you for reading and I hope you’ve enjoyed this deep dive into Wealthy Yield mission skills!

– Andrew | SWTOR Economics