Syntax’s Guide to Pricing Converted Pets
I see a lot of people asking for price checking on converted pets, and I thought I’d make a guide to help out cause the other one is really outdated. This is not a BD pricing guide; I believe Yung wants to write one so I’m not covering it. Plus the BD values are all outta whack cause of the new BD/Battleground/Skirmishes, whatever. This is my first guide, so please go ahead and offer any constructive criticism, feedback and whatever.
This guide comprises of two parts; the explanation part (so you can price things yourselves, you lazy asses) and the general guidelines for each colour, with notable exceptions. If you want to skip ahead to the guidelines, go right down there. I’ll spoiler everything and also put in pretty pictures. If you want to learn, keep reading.
Anyway. Pricing converted pets is actually really simple. There’s five factors I take into consideration when pricing pets. Ranked roughly from the most important to the least important, these five factors are:
- Popularity
- Rarity
- Paint brush/MP price
- Name
- Clothing/Stats
Popularity: How popular a pet is determines its supply. This is similar to rarity of a pet, but slightly different. Popularity of a pet can be gauged on two fronts: its species and its colour.
Popular species would be those easy to customise, or those deemed cute. Examples would be Kacheeks, Usuls, Xweetoks. Unpopular species would of course, be the opposite. Those that are literally blobs, or ugly-looking, such as Buzzes and Chias.
Look at how pretty and easily customisable we are!
Similarly, popular colours would be those hard to get, or unique colours. Examples would be higher end colours, like water, wraith or royal. Unpopular colours are basically colours that make your pet look ugly. Spotted, mutant and snot are examples of unpopular colours.
We're pretty too... on the inside. /silently sobs
Rarity: Rarity of a pet is slightly different. It all depends on how easily you can get the colour/species combination. For example, a Robot Poogle can be considered rarer than a basic Draik, simply because it’s a lab-only colour, and it’s also a LE pet (though at the price of a Red Poogle MP a Poogle might as well be a basic pet). Similarly, a Jelly Kacheek could be considered rarer than a Faerie Kacheek, cause Jelly is a lab-only colour and Faerie can be painted.
To a lesser extent, rarity still comes into play when it comes to basic species. A Draik, for example, is rarer than a Kacheek, cause you can’t simply magic a Draik from the Create-A-Pet page. I’ll give you a cheat sheet for this:
- Expensive, un-makable pets: Draiks, Krawks, Lutaris*
- Limited edition pets: Kiko, Hissi, Cybunny, etc.
- Everything else that can be made.
*Do not be stupid and try to sell a Lutari. They cannot be transferred. Unless you want to go to the hassle of selling your account WITH the Lutari, I suggest you don’t bother even advertising them.
But Syntax! you shout to your computer screen. I DO NOT GET THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RARITY AND POPULARITY. They seem the same to me!
Why yes, discerning and/or confused reader, they’re basically different sides of the same coin. Some species/colours are both rare and popular, and some are rare but unpopular, or popular but not so rare. For example, Kikos are rare (LE pet) but they are not popular at all. Kacheeks aren’t rare, but they’re very popular. Similarly, the Jelly colour is rare (lab only) but it’s not as popular as say, Royal.
Surprisingly the Royal Boy Kiko's awesome Zeus concept doesn't go over well with people, but the Royal Boy Uni's horse thing is VERY popular.
Combine both popularity and rarity to determine what I like to call the base value of your pet. Popular species + popular colour = popular pet. Vice versa. I’ll assume you’re older than 5 and know how to stack factors, so we’ll move on.
Spoiler for people who are truly lazy:
Of course there are exceptions to the rare/popular rule. I’ll cover those in-depth in the general guide (that I'm in the midst of writing so please no freak outs thanks), so don’t worry.
Now. The key thing about pricing converted pets that most people completely disregard is the paint brush/MP price. It’s pure business. You cannot price your pets higher than its paint brush/MP price, because no idiot would pay more for something they can make themselves. Especially when they’re making it legitly instead of in a shady black market.
Don't be an idiot and price this pretty face as 600k because the price of a baby PB is 600k. Seriously.
There’s no straight rule to how much you knock off for each colour. Check the rarity and prices against the TP. Colours with a set price (Baby, Royal) should be priced about 50-75% of what they are. Others, you should use their popularity/rarity as a gauge to how expensive you can price it at. Consider PB prices as variables to be added/subtracted from the base value of the pet.
You also need to consider names. There’s three different levels of naming.
- Very Well Named or Well Named
- Decently Named
- Badly Named
Before you ask, no, there’s not a lot of objective difference between VWN or WN. When the name is capitalised and looks like a normal name (ie Xxxxx formatted) it mostly comes down to your own personal opinion of the name. Some people consider shorter names VWN, some people consider more than 6 letters WN and less VWN… it’s just a huge mess, so don’t get into it. The point is, when it comes to VWN/WN and your pets, just go with WN. If the format is Xxxxx, it’ll be around the same price anyway. Unless your buyer absolutely loves the name, don’t bother trying to bump the price up cause you consider it VWN.
Decently named and badly named are far easier to categorise. DNed pets often have either underscores or numbers in their names, and BNed pets often have both.
Names do affect the pricing of the pets; you get to price it higher if it’s V/WNed and of course you’ll need to make it cheaper if it’s DN/BNed. Exceptions to this rule are avatar pets, because literally no one cares what the name of an avatar pet is, they’re just greedy and want the avatar.
And there’s the last and most headachey level of naming: Real Words and Real Names. Any PCer will know my pain when trying to explain this. Often abbreviated as RW/RNs, pets with names like these might and might not get a higher price. It all depends on how common/character-y the RW/RN is. A name like Jane will net millions vs a name like Chair. I’m not going to go into this insane rabbit hole of explaining RW/RNs to you. Bottom line is; if you have a RW/RN pet and you’re not sure how to price it, go to the PC (it’s not that scary) and ask what kind of UCs you can get for the pet. If the answer is no UCs, sorry, your RW/RN is not common enough to up the price of your pet. If the answer is HELL YES *flings UCs at you* then congratulations, use a corresponding UC guide to see how much you should be pricing your RW/RN and go away from here.
Lastly, clothing and stats. This is actually pretty minor, but it’s just common courtesy to knock off a bit of the price if the pet doesn’t come with its paint brush clothing. It’s also common courtesy to tell the buyer if there’s PB clothing or not, so be a polite trader and remember that transparency is key.
For stats, I’ll link a stats guide to here one day when it’s up. For now, just keep posting stats in the PC thread and I’ll take a look.
NOTE: Part 2 isn't up yet. I'm in the midst of writing the general guide but it should be up when I find a nice way to format a table on forums.
Edited by Syntax, 11 July 2013 - 07:31 AM.
