So
@yrsillar, there is a question about Pill Crafting economic, because, well, what we know and what it means kind of contradict with how a lot of us feel it
should work, and given you are revisiting rules when the thread end sometime this week (hopefully) I guess now is a good time to bring it up. The question came because of
@Thor's Twin recent omake.
Here is what we know of how someone in the outer sect needs to do pill crafting unless they are an outlier:
- Need a spirit beast core of the appropriate grade and type
- Need secondary ingredients
- Need access to a pill furnace
- Need to spend time doing pill crafting
Now, we don't know how long (4) is needed. It could be "4 pill crafting sessions is one action", or even "2 actions is one pill crafting session". The below calculations would change quite a bit depending on that. Spirit core wise, we know that a grade 1 spirit core is a minimum of 5RSS, and a grade 2 one is a minimum of 25RSS or so (can climb to 50 or so). For non-outlier disciples, they need to pay 5 sect points to get access to a pill furnaces, though it is unknown if access to production hall means "for one session in the week" or "for as many sessions as you want there".
So, if we assume pill crafting for cheap 2nd tier pills, which should be what the majority of pill crafters focus on, they would need 25RSS + 5~RSS in secondary ingredients + "Time for Crafting" + 5 sect points as investment each time they do so. Now, a decent early yellow
can do hunting missions that would net them both 10~ sect points as well as a second grade core in a single mission, though it's worth pointing out that a lot of the hunting missions might mean giving said core away (so it would need to be named monster hunting missions where you can keep cores, and those might not be reliable).
So, if we assume a session = 1 action, and access to production hall =for one action, and unless we assume a pill crafter operate at a loss, they'd need to recoup more than 1.5 action monetary gains + 30RSS each time they do a pill crafting session. There are significant assumptions here that could change things, though the price needed core/ingredient wise can't be changed. In that case, in order for the pill crafter to not operate at a loss, they'd need to gain at least 30RSS + 1.5(50RSS as they can do a 10 sect point mission in one action) = 105RSS for each pill crafting session.
Now,
some loss, especially early on, is completely acceptable, simply because a lot of outer sect crafters are doing this as "practice". However, the rule should hold that pill crafting should bring in more money than the equivalent time spent doing other things that do not need a specialised skillset that the same person could do (E.G, if said outer sect disciple can easily bring in 80RSS in 1.5 actions, then if they have no way to bring the same 80RSS in pill crafting even once they master a receipe that just means pill crafting is actually a skillset not worth learning).
In fact, I believe that better outer sect pill crafters that do not yet have their own pill furnace
should be able to make a benifit, or else the sect is set up such that most crafters will give up very early as continuing to do something that has no way to actually give you a benefit through the couple years they are in the sect (not counting permanent pill crafters) is not very encouraging.
This is the list of second grade pill we know of
- Base Cultivation
- Sturdy Oak Pill: Adds eight dice to physical, spiritual and Qi cultivation. 18 Red Spirit Stones
- Bear's Heartsblood Elixir: Adds six dice to physical cultivation. One third of successes are added to Qi increase. 10 Red Spirit Stones
- Soul Concentrating Elixir: Adds five dice to spiritual cultivation. One third of successes added to Qi cultivation. 10 Red Spirit Stones
- Qi Sea Pill: Causes all successes on Qi cultivation to be rerolled once. Rerolls do not proc additional rerolls. 35 Red Spirit Stones
- Heavy Rains Pill: Adds six dice to meridian clearing attempts, eases penalty for failures. 15 Red Spirit Stones
From what I can see of the price they could sell pills at, what would make sense, to me, is that a good crafter can make between 10-20 pills per batch, or else Bear's Heartsblood/Soul Concentrating would always be made at either a loss or non-profit no matter what in the outer sect if you don't have a personal pill furnace. This does mean that someone
good at making those should have a profit (compared to if they did something else) of 50RSS+, and for the more expensive pills like Sturdy Oak/Heavy Rains it could easily climb to a profit of 200RSS.
However, what does that mean for someone who
does have their own pill furnace like Su Ling? Well, they don't need any sect points, so they don't need to spend that extra 0.5 action for it. They still need the 30RSS minimum investment into each pill furnace, but the "punishment" for making few successful pills is much lower, and the threshold for a profit is much easier, though by now an action of Su Ling can trivially get 100RSS, as we have seen with Suyin doing 20+points sect job.
So, for someone like Su Ling, their "investment" of 1 action +30RSS minimum would be a minimum of 130RSS (more, really, because sect points), and their potential reasoning for pill crafting would be
- Make money
- Do pills to learn or master a receipe
- Create a pill receipe
Of those, I believe 2 was the most important for Su Ling from week 20-35~, and 3 the most important from weeks 35-now. While Su Ling has invested a
lot of time in pill crafting, she has also been making pills that brought her money incidentally, even if a lot of her money gained was at a "loss" at first. Beyond actions spent pill crafting, her investment has been mainly in ingredients/cores, and Su Ling is actually better than most at getting those (so she probably can find them for a lesser investment than the money needed to buy them, though once her 'time' got more expensive buying them was probably better, at least for common ones).
As she considered her pill crafting to be in good part for learning, even a "break even" pill furnace from a less fortunate disciple would bring her 70~RSS, and by now she should have accumulated quite a bit of all the basic pills she need until her breakthrough, going full in "master receipe for practice (incidentally making all the money) or create new receipe and master them (incidentally making all the money)".
