The Curious State of Charcoal in Module 15 [UPDATED]

Charcoal in Neverwinter has been a pretty common profession resource pretty much forever. It was so basic that it was obtainable for Gold at the most basic profession vendor in Protector’s Enclave and for little to no Guild Marks from the Bloomery. That however changed in Module 15. In fact, Charcoal might be one of the weirdest examples how a simple change can suddenly skyrocket the value of an item. We’re not sure you closely follow the Auction House. But if you were on PC, you would have noticed that stacks of Charcoal have gone up considerably from their initial value of [sc name=”astralicon”]3,000 in M14!

That of course doesn’t happen for no reason. One obvious change is that Charcoal now is a rare resource instead of a common one, selling for 70 copper instead of 15 in Module 14. This already means that players that bought mass stacks of Charcoal in M14 could sell them for twice as much during Heart of Fire. We all know how important gold is in the workshop system and that’s basically a free way of doubling your stock.

Guild Marks Galore

But that’s not even the weirdest thing that happened with Charcoal from Module 14 to Module 15. Because smart players do not sell Charcoal for gold, but turn it in for Guild Marks. The labor coffer as you might know was slightly reworked and in Heart of Fire takes on all profession resources. Five Charcoal net one GM. A full stack that players could buy in Module 14 for three gold turns into 200 GMs. That’s not bad! And hey, Guild Marks is basically printing ADs because you can buy Masterwork Charts and farm resources that sell well on the Auction House.

Players that were aware of the change stocked up on Charcoal before the release of Module 15 knowing they would be worth thousands of Guild Marks. Now you might say that it’s not as big of an issue because the corresponding coffer is capped in most guilds anyway? Well, all you need is four friends and you can create as many “dummy” guilds as you need! It’s a well known and frequently used method to work around full coffers.

Opportunity to Profit

We hope you realize why Charcoal is a great example how changes to an item can present an opportunity to profit:

  • 1,000 Gold invested into Charcoal in Module 14 equals 70,000 Guild Marks in Module 15.
  • 30,000 Guild Marks invested into Charcoal at the Bloomery in Module 14 equals 300,000 Guild Marks in Module 15.

It takes some time to trade them in, but that’s a massive amount of Guild Marks, basically. It’s certainly one of the weirder conceptional flaws we’ve run into. And hey, it’s not even an exploit or glitch (although some will surely claim otherwise). Rare resources are supposed to sell for the amount of gold and Guild Marks. And old resources are supposed to convert into their new versions in Module 15. Everything is perfectly working as intended, somebody just didn’t think through all the implications this seemingly little change would have.

Smart players however realized what happened and did grab all the Charcoal they could get for a free wealth increase.

*** UPDATE *** The article was fully revised in the wake of the Charcoal fix/nerf. It’s no longer hilariously profitable to stock up Charcoal, but still viable. There might be other resources that make more sense following the same logic.


Were you aware of the Charcoal change and piled up the resource before the Heart of Fire release? Share your thoughts and experience on our social channels, in the comments below, or visit our message board!

Neverwinter UN:Blogged is always looking for writers to contribute to the blog. If you are an active player and search for a way to spread your opinions, analysis, diaries or reviews to more than 75,000 regular visitors, then don’t hesitate and get in touch with us on our contact page or message board! We are currently especially looking for console and PVP content, but that’s not exclusive. There is no frequency requirement, you post how often you want.

NWO_Unblogged

We are always looking for people that contribute to this blog. For more information contact us via blog@nwo-uncensored.com or check the forum.

25 thoughts on “The Curious State of Charcoal in Module 15 [UPDATED]

  • December 23, 2018 at 3:04 pm
    Permalink

    Well, that’ll get nerfed now. Like Begum accepting Quicksilver for commissions.

    But going from 15 to 70 cp each means that a stack of 999 Charcoal will cost 1 gp 49 sp 85 cp in Mod 14 and sell for 6 gp 99 sp 30 cp in Mod 15. That’s not twice as much, that’s 4.667x as much.

    But how can charcoal be considered “rare”? They’ll probably make it Uncommon, or even Common.

    And 50,000 AD per stack? Damn, I have thousands of them.

    But that Guild Mark situation is ludicrous. That’s kind of like the Astral Diamond Fountain all over again.

    🙁

    • February 28, 2019 at 12:30 pm
      Permalink

      Except that everyone in the guild is unloading them so there’s no room to trade them for guild Mark’s. Now I have 500K charcoal and no where to put them. I guess I will convert to gold, seeing as no one is buying them in the tradehouse anymore.

  • December 23, 2018 at 3:40 pm
    Permalink

    Cryptic could stop this dead in it’s tracks before it even happens by announcing that the “dummy” guild creation method is now considered an exploit. Got a sneaking suspicion that is exactly what is going to happen. Hope I’m wrong tho….

    • December 24, 2018 at 8:22 pm
      Permalink

      @slyfox
      I don’t think that is likely or possible.

      Anyone can form a guild with a party of 5 over level 15
      Any player can have an Alt in multiple different guilds
      There’s no requirement to stay in the same guild forever
      There’s no requirement preventing you leaving and joining another guild or forming your own
      Anyone is free to guild hop, or get temporary invites to a higher guild to buy Company Cloaks etc
      An account with multiple Alts could have one or two, or three, in their own low level guild, just for inviting your mains to donate to the coffers when your Rank 20 Guild Mimic is full.
      Having multiple guilds for multiple mimics is no different to having multiple alts just for invoking, professions and bag storage.

      It seems to me that forming a guild to take surplus gear for Guild Marks is no different to buying the Dragonborn Legend pack when it was released, rolling new characters and claiming the bag, just to have an Alt with extra space.

      It is not an exploit, it’s not abusing broken code, it is not taking a specific bunch of weird steps in order to make broken code do something it was not intended to do. It’s all WAI.

      The only thing that smells of an Exploit to me is using the term “Dummy Guild”, as the very name implies dishonesty and scam, and then advising “delete guild”. No. Having several alts in different guilds is absolutely WAI.

      So stop calling them “DUMMY GUILDS”. And don’t call them “FAKE GUILDS”. If you form a guild with an Alt and some friends with Alts, it is absolutely a REAL GUILD. It just is not going to rank up very fast. And you can invite anyone you like, and they can leave any time they like. Call it a Minor Guild, or Sub-Guild or something.

      Of course, they are more likely to CALL having extra, minor guilds an exploit rather than fix what is broken in the professions system. But allowing a bunch of junk green professions materials to be turned into 24 million Guild Marks, just because they cannot get their in-game prices right? That is just retarded.

      🙁

    • January 7, 2019 at 9:15 am
      Permalink

      Cryptic is reactive and not pro-active. With this becoming such an issue they will probably make some type of announcement stating that anyone who does the dummy guild thing will receive corrective action, etc… similar to how they handed the hunt exploit.

      IMO this exploit is worst than the hunt as this one players can generate much more AD than with the hunt exploit.

      I even warned my friends who are MC not to do this but they did. If I was in charge I would perm a ban anyone that uses this as it is worst than the hunt exploit.

      1K golf = 5M guild marks and than if used properly that would turn into crazy amount of AD.

      I see another round of a ban hammer coming to players abusing this.

  • December 24, 2018 at 1:19 pm
    Permalink

    I saw people posting about this on the preview shard weeks before 15 released. If it STILL hasn’t been fixed, it’ll probably get overlooked when the mod releases on console.

  • December 24, 2018 at 8:04 pm
    Permalink

    It’s senseless, isn’t it? Charcoal was 75k AD per stack when I last looked, after reading this.

    I checked on some characters for old stuff that was not deprecated and found that several prices are inconsistent.

    WHITE Quality
    Rock Salt 29 cp
    Quicksilver 43 cp

    GREEN Quality
    Primordial Goo 5 cp
    Residuum 200 cp
    Lanolin 2000 cp

    BLUE Quality
    Charcoal 70 cp

    EPIC
    Ebony Log 50 cp
    Enchanted Fleece 74 cp

    So, basically, any old wood that has been slow-burned in a pile for days to make charcoal is worth 40% more than high quality, masterwork level Ebony Log?

    Who knew that medieval charcoal burners were so wealthy?

    😉

  • December 26, 2018 at 5:00 pm
    Permalink

    They could fix problem easily for consoles. They could just convert stocked charcoal to “wet charcoal” or something like it and be done with it. So all that stacked charcoal will be converted to new resource currency.

  • December 28, 2018 at 12:27 pm
    Permalink

    You are the one spreading this information. Because of you the problem will be 1000% worse. Everyone will buy stupid amounts of coal and it will be worthless and all profession resources will be worthless and all the new mastercraft items will sell for nothing because 100’s of players will all be selling items that cost them nothing. Thanks for continuing to ruin NWO. Why do you hate Neverwinter?

    • December 28, 2018 at 12:56 pm
      Permalink

      Afaik we didn’t code in the Charcoal changes, did we? If your scenario becomes true then because the dev’s felt no need to step in for two+ months, not because we “spread”. Don’t shoot the messenger my friend. This is what honest coverage looks like and we’re not getting derailed by those that want filtered information that fits their opinion.

      • January 1, 2019 at 1:19 pm
        Permalink

        You clearly hold back data that would negatively effect the PC community but when it comes to console you are completely irresponsible and get players banned (huntgate).

        • January 1, 2019 at 2:01 pm
          Permalink

          We got contacted by different endgame console players with the request to get this out in the open. We discussed it internally and agreed. Now it’s on the devs to decide how to handle it. In case they won’t, they clearly don’t care enough.

    • December 29, 2018 at 5:26 pm
      Permalink

      I assume you think it would have been better if just YOU and all your friends would have known about it?

      • January 1, 2019 at 1:26 pm
        Permalink

        Unblogged consistently holds back information about the PC that would have a negative impact on the game. But when it comes to console Unblogged could give a rats ass. Many players were banned because of following the advice on this site about hunts in Mod 14. Many times there have been bugs or exploits that Unblogged refused to cover until they were fixed on PC. Then the information gets out to console because of Unblogged and players take advantage and the community gets screwed over. Why aren’t the same standards held in regards to information that will have a negative impact on the consoles? Oh that’s right you all play on PC so you don’t care about the console plebs.

        • January 1, 2019 at 1:59 pm
          Permalink

          First of all, stop spreading wrong facts. Nobody gave advise to exploit on this site. We hand out unbiased information that everyone can process as they please. Second, the ones responsible for completely mishandling every aspect of Huntgate is PWE. If someone points at us then only to cover up their own shortcomings.

          • January 16, 2019 at 1:26 pm
            Permalink

            There is a difference between unbiased information (“Here’s the facts”), and potentially harmful information (“Here’s exactly how this exploit works – first…”). With Huntgate, you fell into the latter.

            You want to say you don’t like something about the game, and give reasons why? Fine. Want to say “Hey, from what we’re hearing, there is an exploit involving hunts in Barovia” – also cool. Detailing how to take advantage of the exploit, though? That’s got exactly zero to do with bias, and is a de facto endorsement of exploiting (“Look, I’m not saying do X, but if you were to do X, you’d need to take these *exact* steps….” (later) “Well, how I was to know they’d follow the precise steps I gave them to do X?!) You didn’t *make* anyone exploit, but you certainly made it mighty easy for a lot of players to do so, didn’t you?

            And the OP does have a point about how this information only seems to appear after it shows up on console, but nary a peep was heard when it was (obviously) active on PC. It’s valid criticism that also has nothing to do with bias or bugs. Do you not have sources on PC? Or, as is being implied, are people reaping the benefits from it on PC, before leaking details when it shows up on console and hiding behind the wall of chaos that ensues on all platforms (see also: Caturday)?

        • January 1, 2019 at 2:19 pm
          Permalink

          Many PC players and Uncensored affiliates got banned in Huntgate btw. Your point makes no sense.

          • January 16, 2019 at 8:31 pm
            Permalink

            Also, as the Astral Diamond Resonator AD Fountain exploit showed, Cryptic often do nothing until something goes public, no matter how many times it’s reported. They prefer to delete threads and block comments and pretend nothing’s wrong, thinking that heavy censorship combined with apathy is the better approach.

            But in this way, only a minority of people can exploit such bugs and they get away with it for months. But as soon as you link a video on the official forum on how to do the AD exploit, you get banned from the forum, probably the game, and they fix it pretty damn quick. Like that day.

            Unblogged’s approach is tell every one, so there’s a level playing field, and maybe Cryptic will pull their heads out from up their arse long enough to do something positive about it in quick order.

            And I don’t see how the Charcoal thing could hurt Cryptic. They sell Zen for cash, not gold. If they put something decent on the Zen Market instead of relying on gambling addiction and keys, maybe they’d make more money.

    • January 7, 2019 at 9:21 am
      Permalink

      The charcoal can also be used to generate gold which is needed for crafting going forward. Anyone who is a MC is buying charcoal not only for guild mark but also to swap over to gold. It is a win win win situation if you have charcoal to sell for gold or trade for guild marks.

      If it ends up as guild mark it will drop the pricing of the mats and than the MC will have extra gold gotten cheaply and this can in return hopefully reduce the price of goods, though I don’t see to many MC dropping their pricing, so they will continue to profit.

      The players who bought guild mark with the charcoal will earn some profit.

      The only ones losing out in all of this is Cryptic, it is why I think they will come back with some type of corrective action after the fact, that is very Cryptic like and my bet is another ban hammer and who knows how many players will be impacted this time around.

      I know I won’t be impacted as I stay away anything that seems to good to be true, like this or the hunt exploit.

  • January 1, 2019 at 3:54 pm
    Permalink

    You evil, wicked, naughty people at uncensored should be ashamed of yourselves. /S
    Fuck PWE and fuck Cryptic

  • January 2, 2019 at 8:53 am
    Permalink

    It’s a simple price change. … Like six numbers get changed and this becomes a non-issue. …. if the devs can’t be bothered, then they really don’t care.

  • January 10, 2019 at 3:32 pm
    Permalink

    do you own a time machine? you always talk about “buy in m14 sell in m15” but pc is already on m15. do you wanna reach to the console players?

    • January 11, 2019 at 12:29 am
      Permalink

      It might sound weird, but it’s super difficult to write articles when PC already has the content and consoles not yet. We decided to make this sound like M15 was already live to not have it edit again in like a week. Sorry for the confusion.

      • January 21, 2019 at 5:35 pm
        Permalink

        What I really wish right now, is for the upcoming patch to give players the ability to rename their equipments or at least their weapons. It will give off a sense of uniqueness for every players that have achieved the gears that they have achieved up to now. It will be cool just to think about it haha.

  • January 23, 2019 at 3:29 am
    Permalink

    This new change of charcoal is just stupid. For the players who basicly just got in to mastercrafting and and are stuck becous of this shit. I’m not gonna buy charcoal for rediculus amounts of ad. I want to buy it from the Material supplier like it says in the description for the charcoal with the gold I’ve saved up. This game is getting on my nerves more and more. First the game was simple and fun to play and now with every frickin Nerf and bans and shit, I’m surprised this game even lasted this long.

Comments are closed.