What is an hour worth?


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Goblin Squad Member

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The Dwarves of Forgeholm are trying to determine a fair value for our goods, whether they be raw, refined, or crafted, as well as our services. Services may cover many things, but include transporting materials (more on this later), escorting another player, gathering, guarding a tower, fighting an escalation or any other activity.

I'll list the first results of some testing below, but Sspitfire came up with a standard measure of the transport of goods of any type on the map, from one point to any other point. Hopefully he doesn't mind my sharing this standard measurement. His idea is "Copper Per Encumbrance Hex" or CPEH, or CPX, meaning the labor it takes to move one unit of encumbrance one hex should be valued at one copper piece. Or, moving 10 units 10 hexes worth 100 coppers, or hauling a full pack of 100 true iron ore (50 encumbrance) 20 hexes would be 1000 coppers, or 10 silver. It seems like a good standard measure to begin to use for calculations for transporting goods, cost of crafted goods when moving raw materials to an area with none of that resource type or simply moving refined or crafted goods to another site. Time is money!

So what's one hour worth? What should you pay another character to stand boring guard duty, or to watch a tower so it is not taken? To answer this you must know what that characters "Opportunity Cost" is, or, "How much could this character make is he/she were doing something else?"

The Dwarves of Forgeholm invite you to help us conduct a public experiment. Set a 60 minute timer, go out and do something (gathering, grinding, escalations) and when the 60 minutes is up stop what you are doing, list what you get and post it to this thread so we can all come up with a base value for an hour's labor.

He is my first result. A rogue started from day one, but with 45k unused XPs. Loose Warriors Shirt+0, 2 steel daggers +0, Hunter's Shortbow +0, mostly a gatherer:

Items on the left, estimated value to the right by total category, estimated total at the bottom. Debate the values as you see fit.

183 copper coins (183 coppers)

4 Bloodstone (105 coppers)
1 Freshwater Pearl
4 Moonstone
12 Onyx

16 Pine Logs (340 coppers)
1 Yew Sapling

5 Animal Pelts (100 coppers)
15 Beast Pelts

38 Esoteric Essences (38 coppers)

3 Iron Ore (45 coppers)

5 Wool (20 coppers)

5 Buckthorn Berries (195 coppers)
1 Chickweed
1 Coltsfoot Leaf
3 Dragoon Leaves
7 Foxfire
1 Lamp Oil
20 Laurel Leaves
1 Neversleep Sap

3 Introductory Holy Symbols (20 coppers)
1 Introductory Spellbook

2 Steel Greatswords (70 coppers)
1 Steel Light Mace
1 Steel Dagger
1 Apprentice's Charged Wand
1 Apprentice's Charged Staff
1 Acolyte's Battle Focus

3 Lesser Tokens of Curing (38 coppers)
9 Lesser Tokens of Dodging
7 Lesser Tokens of Freedom
3 Lesser Tokens of Parrying
3 Lesser Tokens of Riposting
7 Lesser Tokens of Striking
6 Lesser Tokens of Mind Blanking

1 Blood Crystals (Animal) (60 coppers)
2 Dead Prey (Animal)
1 Crude Knockout Gas (Bandit)
1 Target Marking Paint (Bandit)
1 Bag of Dreamy Stuff (Goblinoid)
1 Bag of Fiery Stuff (Goblinoid)
1 Basic Armor Scraps (Humanoid)
1 Nonstandard Silber Bits (Humanoid)
3 Torn Peasant Clothes (Humanoid)

1 Unresearched Book Page (10 coppers)
1 Unresearched Journal Entry

Recipe: Golden Crystal +1 (200 coppers)...............Grand Total is 1424 coppers for one hour of work.

NOTE: I did not include the adjective on the items gathered (smooth, perfect, intact, true, etc), as that only changes the encumbrance, not the quality, per se.

This seems insanely high and I would not want to pay another player anywhere near that for guard duty for one hour, nor could I afford to do so at this early date. Coin will change in relative value as faucets are turned on, drains are patched into the game, and the economy gains velocity.


Well the problem is that's not a reliable figure, depending on your drop rate it could vary wildly.

You need to pick a baseline material of some sort that has a high demand, something you can do reliably; we picked coal for ours. If I focus on just a coal heavy mining region I can farm on average about 130ish coal in an hour.

My combat volunteer with +2 Weapons and Heavy Armor solo farmed about 380 copper an hour in an easy escalation hex with minimal downtime between packs and very little time wasted hunting for packs.

So 1 coal has a base value of about 2.9c based on simple drop rate.

From those figures you can get approximate base values for almost any weapon made from mostly iron. So your +0 Greatsword drop has a base value of about 47 copper in materials before you account for demand, XP costs, or delivery.

Repeat the 1 hour farming experiment for a couple of your more heavily used materials and figure out their approximate drop rate compared to your baseline material.

So in my example Yew is about 1:3 with Coal so a single Yew log is worth at least 8-9c due to it's lower drop rate.

Once you have your baselines you can adjust for demand, delivery, queue time, and XP sunk however you see fit.

Goblin Squad Member

Correct Thannon. So, in statistics, to get a 3% variation (+/-3% when you see a poll number) you need 1000 samples. This is just an idea, and over time it will tell a story. So, a sample only. Do not be alarmed.

Second run: A rogue started from day one, but with 45k unused XPs. Loose Warriors Shirt, 2 steel daggers +0, Hunter's Shortbow +0:

Items on the left, estimated value to the right by category, estimated total at the bottom.

88 copper coins (88 coppers)

3 Bloodstone (105 coppers)
7 Moonstone
10 Onyx
1 Tigereye

10 Pine Logs (300 coppers)
5 Yew Sapling

17 Beast Pelts (85 coppers)
2 Animal Pelts

26 Esoteric Essences (26 coppers)

1 Wool (4 coppers)

1 Buckthorn Berries (130 coppers)
1 Chickweed
3 Dragoon Leaves
9 Foxfire
3 Lamp Oil
8 Laurel Leaves
1 Neversleep Sap

1 Holy Symbols (25 coppers)
2 Rogue Kit
1 Spellbook
1 Trophy Charm

2 Hunter's Longbows (70 Coppers)
1 Steel Battle Axe
2 Apprentice's Charged Wand
1 Apprentice's Charged Staff
1 Acolyte's Battle Focus

3 Tokens of Awareness (34 coppers)
2 Tokens of Curing
5 Tokens of Dodging
6 Tokens of Freedom
5 Tokens of Parrying
4 Tokens of Riposting
7 Tokens of Striking
2 Greater Token of Healing

1 Bag of Bitter Stuff (Goblinoid) (25 copers)
1 Bag of Dreamy Stuff (Goblinoid)
1 Blood Crystals (Animal)
1 Dead Prey (Animal)
1 Basic Armor Scraps (Humanoid)

1 Unresearched Book Page (5 coppers)

Recipe: Silver Iron Light Hammer (400 coppers)
Recipe: Sepia Crystal +1..................................... Grand Total is 1293 coppers for one hour of work.

Goblin Squad Member

Another member of Forgeholm, a rogue using Footpad's Leather +2, Hunter's Shortbow +1, 2 Steel Daggers +1, Rogue Kit +1. Had 2 deaths losing an estimated 25% each time.
100 copper coins (100 coppers)

3 Freshwater Pearls (80 coppers)
2 Tigereye
8 Moonstone
3 Onyx

14 Pine Logs (280 coppers)

8 Beast Pelts (45 coppers)
1 Animal Pelt

7 Esoteric Essences (7 coppers)

1 Wool (4 coppers)

1 Buckthorn Berries (70 coppers)
1 Chickweed
1 Dragoon Leaves
5 Foxfire
6 Laurel Leaves

2 Spellbook (5 coppers)

1 Steel Short Sword (20 coppers)
1 Steel Spear

3 Tokens of Awareness (20 coppers)
3 Tokens of Curing
5 Tokens of Dodging
5 Tokens of Freedom
1 Token of Parrying
1 Token of Riposting
1 Token of Striking
1 Token of Mindblanking

1 Torn Peasant Clothing (Humanoid) (15 coppers)
1 Dead Prey
1 Knockout Gas

1 Unresearched Book Page (5 coppers)

Recipe: Pine Pole +1 (200 coppers).........Grand Total is 847 coppers for one hour of work.

Goblin Squad Member

How are you getting those estimated values? Some seem very high to me. Does anyone actually buy T1 +0 weapons? Pine logs are worth more than pelts?

Goblin Squad Member

The values depend on where you are on the map. Coal is relatively cheap near Talonguard or Ozem's Vigil, but expensive near Canic Castrum or Keeper's Pass. Iron Ore has been selling for 15c regularly in the south, but Forgeholm need not buy it at all, we have tons of it. (We know, we carry it around all day at 0.5 encumbrance per unit)

Regardless, it is an experiment. Ho out for one hour and see what you get. List it and post a reasonable value. See what your hour is worth. Decide what you will be willing to pay another player to guard your merchant caravan for an hour of escort duty.

Goblin Squad Member

Does anyone buy tokens? I have literally thousands of them. Book pages... 100's.

If you can earn 8s in an hour, I'm going to have to put up my prices.

Let's turn it around. How many hours should you have to work to earn the money to buy a +2 Longbow (which takes ~30 resources) or Footpad's leathers +2 (which take ~50 resources). I think those are both lvl 1 free recipes so require little to no xp to craft, however, some of the refined materials required do need a few levels.

Goblin Squad Member

Save those bookpages, Kradlum. They are actually used by a Sawyer for a Tier 2 refining recipe. They are T2 Wood.

The recipe is Recycled Paper Sheets using Scrap paper and Weak acidic. I am pretty sure you can use the recycled paper sheets in the same crafting recipes as the regular paper sheets, which would be T2 Spellbooks.

Do not let King Theodem read this though, he would consider recycling these snippets of Lore as the most severe Blasphemy.


For the basic recycled paper+0 recipe, you need 80 scrap paper and 23 weak acidic to get the same result as you would from 5 oak logs; both these recipes get you 50 paper sheets. Considering that one T2 spellbook takes only 5 or 6 paper sheets, you can go a loooong way with just a few oak logs. I'm not so sure recycling in pfo is worth it atm.


<Kabal> Kradlum wrote:

Does anyone buy tokens? I have literally thousands of them. Book pages... 100's.

If you can earn 8s in an hour, I'm going to have to put up my prices.

Let's turn it around. How many hours should you have to work to earn the money to buy a +2 Longbow (which takes ~30 resources) or Footpad's leathers +2 (which take ~50 resources). I think those are both lvl 1 free recipes so require little to no xp to craft, however, some of the refined materials required do need a few levels.

See my post above for calculating an individual item's base value before compensating for non farm rate factors.

According to my notes a Hunter's Longbow +2 has a base value of about 102c. For comparison a Hunter's Longbow +3 has a base value of about 173c. And I will admit those values are probably a little lower than they should be as I do not think we have an accurate ratio for Adhesive right now, I think it's a bit more uncommon than we currently have it set.

Then adjust those values for XP sink, demand, gathering distance, and delivery to figure out your final price.

You should be able to earn a Hunter's Longbow somewhere in the range of 15-30 mins assuming decent mob density and low difficulty. Possibly less if you are in a group tearing through a hex or taking on higher level mobs that straight up drop silver.

Goblin Squad Member

<Kabal> Kradlum wrote:
Does anyone buy tokens? I have literally thousands of them.

Another testament to the uselesness of these ultra-short and weak buffs.

Goblin Squad Member

New refiner recipes that turn stacks of tokens into essence? Or maybe a sharpened token can be used as an arrowhead...

Goblin Squad Member

Even if you can parse some effect of these, applying 5-second buffs is just cumbersome. You have to double them up with an attack every time. That gets old fast, especially if you have to refill your slot again after 9 uses. Bad MMO-design.

The 5-second +20 to reflex buff is useless in the sense that you will never know if it did something. Because of the short duration, the player does not get tangible feedback from his actions. Did you just reflect a big hit to something smaller? Have to probably spam the tokens and then read the parselogs for that.

This is something that may look good on a spreadsheet but it does not translate to fun gameplay.

Buffs should be "fire and forget" for a reasonable amount of time.
Debuffs can be shorter, but basically same thing. I can do nothing with a 10 second Buff against Fire. Well, I can, but it is certainly no fun to apply this every time I shoot at an Ogre Shaman, and hope it lasts for the duration of the fight.

People should use them strategically, rather then tactical. The fact that you can only slot a limited amount of Expendables and Attacks already asks for strategic decisions.

Goblin Squad Member

Perhaps tokens deserve their own thread?

Goblin Squad Member

Received a PM from an ally who wants to share their experience as well.

"Dwarf with Scavenger 3 (40), Forester 7 (90), Miner 7 (90) but no mineral nodes where I was. Only killed a few bandits and wolves when they got in the way of me accessing nodes. (local 30, Nature 30)
(And I ignored Sparks because I have no dowser training.)"

19 copper coins (19 coppers)

10 Perfect Tigereye (50 coppers)

41 Smooth Pine Log (820 coppers) (Note: Many places, including Forgeholm, simply trade pine for yew)

34 Superior Wool (170 coppers)

30 Solid Silver Ore (450 coppers)

28 Potent Belladonna Berries (140 coppers)

1 Introductory Holy Symbol (5 coppers)

1 Steel Light Mace (10 coppers)

1 Lesser Token of Riposting (2 coppers)
1 Lesser Token of Striking

Dead Prey (Animal) (10 coppers)
Target Marking Paint (Bandit)

Tier 2 gathers

33 Potent Coriander Fruit (33) (1010 coppers, if priced at 10 coppers each)
41 Potent Woad Leaves (41)
27 Potent Yarrow Flowers (27)

46 Smooth Oak Log (920)........Grand Total is 3606 coppers for one hour of work.

Now Tier 2 changes the whole ball game. If you could gather Tier 2 raw materials, or do one hour of escort duty, you would probably gather. Easier, less chance of getting attacked for the goods on the wagon, but a higher chance of getting ganked in the wild. And the attackers will soon all be Tier 2 attackers requiring Tier 2 guards, which, as this shows, will be far more expensive since their opportunity cost is so high.do escort duty

Would be helpful to fire up the thread in GW about "Your friend the token" if you want them to change. I have found them useful on occasion, sometimes they saves my ass, sometimes not. But priceless when they do!

Goblin Squad Member

Same toon as previous, second run:

"Only killed a few bandits and wolves when they got in the way of me accessing nodes. (local 30, Nature 30). Dwarf with Scavenger 3 (40), Forester 7 (90), Miner 7 (90, but no mineral nodes where I was). Ignored sparks because I have no dowser training.)"

18 copper coins (18 coppers)

1 Unresearched Prophecy (5 coppers)

1 Perfect Tigereye (5 coppers)

19 Potent Belladonna Berries (205 coppers)
22 Potent Neversleep Sap

1 Smooth Beast Pelt (5 coppers)

24 Smooth Pine Logs (480 coppers)

16 Solid Silver Ore (675 coppers)
29 True Iron Ore

11 Superior Wool (44 coppers)

Recipe: Piecemeal Brigandine (500 coppers-a guess)

Tier 2 gathers

47 Smooth Oak Log (470)

49 Potent Ground Ivy (780 coppers)
12 Potent Woad Leaves
17 Potent Yellowcap Mushrooms..........Grand Total is 3187 coppers for one hour of work.


Fanndis, excellent explanation of CPEH. Thank you!

This is the tool I have shared with a number of different individuals in the community, to date, that Fanndis may be partially basing his valuations on.

Public AH Pricing Guide

Two important notes:
1. The raw materials Base Prices are exactly that: prices. They are my gut estimate of the value of a given raw mat based on time to gather it and demand for it in the game. They are prices, in the truest sense of the word.

2. Refined and Crafting "Prices" are actually cost estimates- that is, they do not take into account the demand for the final products. The Cost estimates do take into account the time required to craft the item.

One thing I would say about what Fanndis is trying to do is this: don't gather anything while you are killing mobs and don't worry about any of the dropped items. Yes, they have value; but their value is highly relative and varies from person to person. Just focus on how much coin you get in an hour as that is a much easier metric to work with across the game. Anybody can look at 10 copper and think, "That is worth x of this to me." When Copper fees for feat training come into the game, that will make Copper coin even more valuable AND relate-able across roles. Conversely, a Wizard could care less about Coal while a Fighter has no use for Moonstone.

I like Thannon's approach- kill mobs for an hour and see what you get, coin wise, then gather for an hour. Divide gathered goods into the coin to get an estimate of its value. That said, keep in mind that you need to use the exact same relative skill levels between gatherer and fighter, and then use the exact same skill levels across gatherers and fighters- something which is very difficult to do without a high degree of coordination (this commercial).

At any rate, all of this will require thousands of man hours of work to do. So yeah, I prefer Hammar's and my approach: put an idea of a price out there, then let the market decide where to go with it (hurray Dutch Auctions!). Feel free to use my Pricing Guide for inspiration.

Goblin Squad Member

G&S Thannon Forsworn wrote:


My combat volunteer with +2 Weapons and Heavy Armor solo farmed about 380 copper an hour in an easy escalation hex with minimal downtime between packs and very little time wasted hunting for packs.

So 1 coal has a base value of about 2.9c based on simple drop rate.

this is exactly the type calculation i've been asking for. Thanks :-)

key message: prices of 10+ copper per gathered T1 item are high.

Goblin Squad Member

Only if you believe that all economic activity is equally productive and valuable, and ignore the relative inflationary tendencies of coin vs mats.


randomwalker wrote:
G&S Thannon Forsworn wrote:


My combat volunteer with +2 Weapons and Heavy Armor solo farmed about 380 copper an hour in an easy escalation hex with minimal downtime between packs and very little time wasted hunting for packs.

So 1 coal has a base value of about 2.9c based on simple drop rate.

this is exactly the type calculation i've been asking for. Thanks :-)

key message: prices of 10+ copper per gathered T1 item are high.

While 'high' it does seem to be directly correlated to demand. If material was sitting on the open market not moving then I would be more inclined to agree the price should be lowered. For local selling I'm valuing 1 coal close to around 5c given gathering distance and encumbrance. I would charge more if I was hauling it out of our area to sell.

The interesting thing about copper farming per hour is that build and # of players can have a very strong effect on the outcome. We specifically choose someone with a decently strong and durable solo build that 2 shot most weak mobs while taking little damage. A light armor rogue may not be able to accomplish the same rate. But it's entirely possible that even a group splitting the coin could generate more per individual than a solo player. He actually destroyed a bunch of +0 gear to reduce downtime. We also got another 15 or so recipes from his efforts. We haven't timed a small group in a similar hex yet.

Something I'm not sure about is if Knowledge skills effect coin drops or not.

Gol Guurzak wrote:


Only if you believe that all economic activity is equally productive and valuable, and ignore the relative inflationary tendencies of coin vs mats.

Agreed, all economic activity is not inherently equal, that's why you have to adjust for other factors after you establish your baseline. If an item's value falls below your baseline it generally means it's not particularly useful or has minimal to no bulk value. Right now I would classify almost half if not more of the chemicals as not particularly worth focusing on.

Inflation isn't a direct issue if you track ratios instead of direct coin translation. You just update the coin value of your abstract 'material unit' as needed. If they doubled the coin drop rate tomorrow my figures would take about 10 seconds to update.

Goblinworks Founder

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I like this discussion, but i should point out that in order to establish a global commodity value for raw materials, a best practice is that the gathering be done by someone with the minimum skill level required to do it. That keeps the data gathered apples to apples and rewards those who buy higher skill. (Forester 0 for T1 wood, forester 7 for t2 wood, etc)

The true value of any single material or good is going to have to also include all the market forces involved: supply, demand, CPH, a surcharge for the minimum ability to make a thing etc. which is a much more complicated issue.

The work that you are all doing to gather this data is very important to creating an accurate pricing model for materials and goods. so please continue and thank you for taking the initiative on it. it benefits us all. I just wanted to keep the data more scientific.

here is another question that should be discussed along with this thread, what is the value of XP for crafters? Should there be a value on a finished good based on the minimum level required to make an item, and what should that value be? I feel that 50XP/1CP is a nice ratio, but I don't know how that would effect the price of something that takes 1 yr xp to reach.

Grand Lodge Goblin Squad Member

Tyncale wrote:

Save those bookpages, Kradlum. They are actually used by a Sawyer for a Tier 2 refining recipe. They are T2 Wood.

The recipe is Recycled Paper Sheets using Scrap paper and Weak acidic. I am pretty sure you can use the recycled paper sheets in the same crafting recipes as the regular paper sheets, which would be T2 Spellbooks.

Do not let King Theodem read this though, he would consider recycling these snippets of Lore as the most severe Blasphemy.

Blasphemy - why hasn't this been brought to my attention earlier. This has to STOP immediately.

Goblin Squad Member

The values of items in the list(s) are a guess, based on my personal experience gathering and selling items. The values vary across the map, as they are designed to do. Coal is cheap in the northwest where it is abundant, and very expensive in the southeast where it is rare. Yew saplings are cheap in the south and pricey in the north, again, as designed. Once carts/wagons/caravan tech is in materials will begin to move, and the prices will, over time, level out across the map as rarities lessen.

The key thing though, is to generate a baseline value for a character's labor. If you are transporting lots of T2 raw materials, should you not have decent guards? T2 armored bandits are more likely to hit a caravan than a bunch of recruits from Rathglen, so it seems obvious you would want decently trained and equipped T2 guards with some combat experience and the willingness to fight. That will not be cheap, but what will it cost? What else could the guards do to make some coin? (Hint: Not gather, as they are investing in combat skills.) But the opportunity cost for the guards is they spent their XPs on combat skills and not gathering skills. Good for the caravan, bad for the guards if there is no guarding to do. The expense of hiring caravan guards makes the merchandise cost more of the caravan master wants to cover his costs. A sloppy caravan master might try a few times to run product without guards, and he might get away with it a few times, but will lose the entire load eventually and he will have to re-evaluate his business plan.

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