GrendelsBane

A while back I had an issue with Auctioneer’s disenchant search. I kept loosing money at it and wondered why? Especially since Auctioneer always said I could make a gold or 2 from disenchanting the item.

I spent the next week breaking down the numbers, reading forums and websites just trying to understand why. I think I finally figured it out and hopefully I can show you why and how Auctioneer calculates the information that you see.

First things, I hope that you all know already that there is a lot of money to be made from disenchanting. I am going to go into the basics a little and show some screen shots from my disenchant search.

Auction house with the disenchant search up.

Note:
1. make sure your Auctioneer scan is recent
2. right click the eye glass to bring up this new window.
3. click disenchant to que up the disenchant search (then click search)
4. we will look at the Nightscape Pants for out number crunching
5. as you can see, if I bid on these and win I’ll make little over a gold

Screen shot of the tool tip when you highlight over Nightscape Pants

Now with this information we should be able to start placing the big picture together. What Auctioneer tells us is that the disenchant value for the Nightscape Pants is 3.79.59 (3g 79s 59c) and it looks like we can bid on the pants for 2.25.00 and that leaves us with a profit of 1.54.59.

Let’s talk about what this disenchants into for a bit, then we will get back to these numbers.

Dream Dust

Market Price: (seen 14034) 0.30.10
Simple Auction 0.24.08 bid/ 0.30.10 buyout
Purchased Price: (7 day average) 0.20.54

Greater Nether Essences

Market Price: (seen 4116) 9.79.99
Simple Auction 7.83.99 bid/ 9.79.990 buyout
Purchased Price: (7 day average) 8.34.23

Large Radiant Shard

Market Price: (seen 903) 10.34.78
Simple Auction 8.27.82 bid/ 10.34.78 buyout
Purchased Price: (7 day average) 10.41.50

Confused Yet?

If you have been paying attention, you would say that Auctioneer says there is a profit of 1.35.61 (not 1.54.59), or you would have noticed that this disenchants into 1-2 Dream Dust (woh wait a minute) Dream Dust only sales for 30s and the tool tip said you only get 1.5 dream dust. Now this is where I was really confused … because how does 1.5 Dream Dust (worth only 45s) equal a 1.35.61 profit off of a 2.25.00 investment. To answer that question we will need to look in to some of these numbers.

Disenchant Value (AucAdv)
So how does Auctioneer figure that Nightscape Pants is worth Disenchant Value (AucAdv) 3.79.59? Let’s break it down but to do that you will need to remember what this disenchants into.

Disenchants into:
75% Dream Dust x 1.5
20% Greater Nether Essence x 1.5
5% Large Radiant Shard x 1.0

Each are worth:
Dream Dust x 1.5 is worth (1.5 × 0.30.10) = 0.45.15
Greater Nether Essence x 1.5 is worth (1.5 × 9.79.99) = 14.69.85
Large Radiant Shard x 1.0 is worth (1 × 10.34.78) = 10.34.78

But none of these add up to the Disenchant Value (AucAdv) Sorry to say but we need to break this down even more, we have to take the % chance times the price each is worth.

Disenchant Value (AucAdv) breakdown:
75% Dream Dust or (.75 × 0.45.15) = 0.33.87
20% Greater Nether Essence or (.20 × 14.69.85) = 2.93.98
5% Large Radiant Shard or (.05 × 10.34.78) = 0.51.74

That is a lot of work but it will be worth it. So we take (0.33.87 + 2.93.98 + 0.51.74) and what do you know this does = 3.79.59 So now we know how auctioneer figures out the Disenchant Value (AucAdv) price.

But that doesn’t tell me why there is a difference between the Disenchant Value (3.79.59) and the bid price (2.25.00) plus the profit of (1.35.61) of 3.60.61 there is a difference of 0.18.98. The price difference is because of how Enchantrix Price is Calculated. That formula is (Average Disenchant Value = (HSP + Market Value + Base Value) / 3 ) where HSP is the Highest Sellable Price from Auctioneer, Market Value is the Auctioneer IQR Median value (usually reliable), Base Value is a hardcoded static value (taken from allakhazam at some point in the past, and may not be accurate for your server). See How is the Enchantrix Price Calculated for more information on this calculation.

So how does this help me? Well let’s get back to our original question How does Dream Dust x 1.5 = 3.79.59? As we can see it doesn’t. But isn’t that what I most likely get when I Disenchant this item? You’re right it is but only 75% of the time, and this is only an average. What you’re missing is the other 25% of the time is the greater and the shard.

The Pessimistic View

Yes there is a lot of money to be lost DE Nightscape Pants well as a mater of fact there is a loss of -1.94.90 if you get only 1 Dream Dust and only if you can sell that at the 0.30.10 market value.

The Optimistic View

It all comes out in the wash. We know we will loose money on some items but we will also make money on others. Just take a look at the 25% of DE mats this can DE into. If you get an Greater Nether Essence you will of made 7.72.99 profit, and if you get the Large Radiant Shard that’s 8.09.78 profit.

To make the math easy lets say we bought 100 Nightscape Pants for the 2.25.00 that we seen. That’s an investment of 225g we know that 75% or 75 of the items we will get 1 to 2 dream dust at a profit of 25g the other 20 will disenchant into 1 or 2 Greater Nether Essence at a profit of 294g, and the other 5 we will get a Large Radiant Shard at a profit of 52g.

So that’s -225 +25g +294g +52g = net profit of 146g

It looks like the only way to make money and a lot of money is to DE a lot of items so your losses are made up in the huge gains.