Talk:Identification

Statistics on price increases after identification

It would be helpful to players like myself if some statistics were compiled about the value increase when identifying. It says on this page that it's a good idea to identify if an item is worth 25 g or more, but no numbers are shown to back that claim up. Elsewhere I've heard claims that the break-even point (once you subtract the 4 g cost of identifying) is near 40 g.

I would like to see something similar to present drop rate tables elsewhere, with item rarity, price before ID, and price after ID listed.

This would be nice to see as I wondered that at first too, and you could easily copy/paste the code for a research table onto a subpage or your user-page if you were interested in gathering results. But I don't think that effort is needed for such a low value difference. Do a few vanquishes, or even NM quests/missions, and I think you'll find that anything worth more than 25g is almost guaranteed to make at least a 4g increase from an ID. ~FarloTalk 00:10, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Short story: use a 40g cutoff or a 50g cutoff; it's not going to make that much of a difference to you in the long run. It's more important that you have a convenient rule-of-thumb so you spend more time playing (and therefore earning) and less time mini-maxing the NPCs...at least as far as this goes.

It's too much of a pain to collect this data reliably; there's just not of enough incentive for even data-freaks like me to collect it...when there are so many other areas in which the data is poorly understood.

Anyone claiming there's a known break-even point lacks the data to back up that claim. And there are three factors involved:

• The cost of IDing (which varies depending on your source of ID kits, but 4 is close enough).
• The amount of the increase...and the chance that it's worth more than the ID costs.
• The Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and annoyance factor. It might be worth money to ID or sal some white items, but it sure is boring, too.

You can get close enough to the useful truth in this way: I know that 50g whites sometimes ID to 90g. If only one of 10 whites has a price spike like that, it will pay to ID all of them. At least one white always has a similar price increase → It's always worth it to me to ID 50g whites. In contrast, I have richer friends who hate double-clicking (well, triple-clicking in this case); they never ID whites.

What about 40g? Well, I dunno. But: I very rarely get < 50g whites from HM areas... and (except for Nick farming) I rarely do much in NM anymore. Therefore, I'm not losing much money by selling those off. What about 25g (the default price for mods). Well, I very rarely see them spike in price, so I never bother — too much trouble for too little gain.

On the other hand, when I first started playing, money was horribly tight...and it seemed to me that this kind of data was important to making my first 100k. Turns out, by playing more and theorizing less (on this topic), I hit the first 100k sooner than I thought.

Many people would be happy to offer advice on maximizing your income at various stages of the game. IDing whites is a good idea; worrying about whether the efficient cutoff is 40g or 50g isn't cost-effective in itself. — Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 03:29, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I can offer this observation after doing a fair bit of logging for my own curiosity. A white or blue item, once ID'd, will increase in value by 1g up to an amount equal to its pre-ID'd merch value. Purple items use the same formula as a base, which is then doubled (ex: if 10g un-ID'd, ID'd range will be 11*2 - (11*2)*2g). As for golds, although I haven't ID'd anywhere near enough to build what would be termed a "valid dataset" I did deduce a formula that is consistent with the 120 or so data points I have logged: ID'd value doubled twice (ex: if 50g un-ID'd, ID'd range will be 204g-400g).

One other important aspect of this is that an ID'd item doesn't just randomly gain anywhere from 1g to (un-ID'd merch value)g, rather, there's a fairly significant chance IDing will add only 1g, with all other results randomly spread up to the un-ID'd merch value. As I'm not ejookated enough to deduce more complex math, I'll just drop these examples: 2g un-ID'd items gain 1g value 77.3% of the time, otherwise +2g. At 10g, the odds of +1g falls to 37.8%. At the fabled 25g point, the odds of +1g is about 30%. At 35g +1g rate is 22.5%. These numbers are derived from data groups of about 40-60 ID'd items with the same un-ID'd base value, so are very rough. Higher un-ID'd value items look to diminish more and more slowly, and may bottom out at a 20% to yield only +1g.

As a last bit of info, at the 25g un-ID'd value point, my numbers show a gain of ~7.5g per item, on average, or ~3.5g after ID kit use overhead (assuming a 100g 25 use kit). So, this does seem to be about the lowest to bother with even for the seriously gold-challenged. Judging by somewhat smaller data sets, it appears 20g is a probable break-even point. Kruhljak (talk) 12:18, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

About inscriptions

A few notices about upgrades. As it's known, the merchant price of any blue upgrade is 25g. Identification improves this value to 26...50g. The most impressive effect may occur with inscriptions: a useless dropped blue weapon with inscription can have a value 3g, but inscription itself after salvaging and identification can give 30...40g, sometimes more. Because of this, I usually pick up any low-level blue drop in NF and sell inscriptions as described.
Another interesting thing is with the inscription Show me the money!. Recommendation in the article is not to salvage it and sell the item as is. Maybe in many cases it's true. However, I got a blue low-level flatbow with this inscription, which had a value 70g after identification. When I salvaged the inscription, price of bow itself was dropped to 10g and price of inscription was, as usual, 25g. Obvious lost? Not exactly: after identification of this inscription its price became 99g (!) So, separate selling to merchant both bow and inscription would give 109g, noticeably more than original item. When I applied the indentified inscription back to that bow, its price became 70g as before.
Result: Show me the money! is able to increase its own price. --Slavic 20:37, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Except it becomes less worthwhile when you take into account the price of usage of salvage kits and ID kits? --File:User Chieftain Alex Chieftain Signature.pngChieftain Alex 20:55, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, if we take the mostly used superior kits for their standard price, then 2 identifications and 1 salvage will cost us 2x5+20=30g (but we can buy the less expensive kits or get them in other way for quest rewards or from some gifts). Strictly speaking, we need to do a fist identification anyway, so the difference will be 25g. For my example, the profit of described operation in best case will be 109-70-25=14g, and in worst case (broken bow) 99-70-25=4g; of course, such small profit should be counted unreasonable. Also, 99g for an identified inscription is a random value too, it's possible to get a less value (I suppose to do some tests). I only would like to show a possible unobvious option and unusual property of "Show me the money!" inscription. --Slavic 21:15, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Fun fact

If you manage to Expert Salvage an unidentified blue item with an upgrade component - before IDing it - when you id the mod it goes up to 49g :D --Chieftain Alex 00:48, 26 January 2013 (UTC)