What is a better prospect: Fel Iron or Adamantite Ores?

Opioid · 06/13/07, 12:11 AM

(pun intended)

Okay on my server a 20-stack of Fel Iron Ore sells from 10g-15g, or 2.5g to 3.75g per prospect. A 20-stack of Adamantite Ore sells from 25g-35g, or 6.25g to 8.75g per prospect. I know that Adamantite Ore has a better chance of netting blue gems. My question is whether the chance is more or less than the additional economic expenditure (which can be from 2.3x greater to 2.5x greater for the adamantite.) What balance should one pursue to maximize blue gem discovery for the coin?

I know prices are pure anecdotes and not terribly useful, but if some sort of math could be compared and a ratio derived I'm sure it would help everyone to apply the ratios to determine the fair market value of auction house ores and what cap to stop at on their server as well, once they substituted their appropriate values.

heel · 06/13/07, 12:23 AM

Wowhead is your friend.

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23425#m0Rzc
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23424#o0Rzc

The conclusion that I would draw is that as long as Adamantite Ore's cost is less than triple Fel Iron Ore's cost, the Adamantite is the better choice to prospect.

Opioid · 06/13/07, 12:46 AM

Originally Posted by heel

Wowhead is your friend.

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23425#m0Rzc
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23424#o0Rzc

The conclusion that I would draw is that as long as Adamantite Ore's cost is less than triple Fel Iron Ore's cost, the Adamantite is the better choice to prospect.

Are those results exclusively after the implementation of at least 1 gem per prospect?

Is there anyway to sort by total payload of prospect, to see, for instance, which returned single G or GB or GGB in which proportions?

(this matters because with just the simple statistics, the probabilities can cover the same prospect; they aren't guaranteed to be independent attempts. I know it shouldn't matter with a broad enough sample size but I have my uses for the statistic)

Burg-Hyjal · 06/13/07, 2:15 AM

Got bored one day and farmed up about 80 fel iron ore and 100 ish adamantite, had a guildie prospect the entire batch. Ended up with 4 blue gems out of the adamantite, 0 out of the fel iron. Not a large sample or really mathmatic, but just my experience.

Brakar · 06/13/07, 2:23 AM

Originally Posted by Opioid

Are those results exclusively after the implementation of at least 1 gem per prospect?

Is there anyway to sort by total payload of prospect, to see, for instance, which returned single G or GB or GGB in which proportions?

(this matters because with just the simple statistics, the probabilities can cover the same prospect; they aren't guaranteed to be independent attempts. I know it shouldn't matter with a broad enough sample size but I have my uses for the statistic)

I've generally found www.thottbot.com to be more useful for things like this and DEing results. Knowing you have a 75% chance of getting 2-5 Arcane Dust doesn't tell you how many you can actually expect per DE* while having a 276% chance of Arcane Dust means you expect 2.76 Dust per DE. Used Netherweave Robe for the example:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=21854
http://www.thottbot.com/i21854

Adamantite Ore: http://www.thottbot.com/i23425
Fel Iron Ore: http://thottbot.com/i23424

The only part I don't know is when the data is compiled from. Digging around elsewhere you may be able to find if it includes pre2.1 numbers though.

*If you assume equal distribution you can calculate it from the numbers given on wowhead but I'm not sure if they actually are equally weighted.

♦ blindworld · 06/13/07, 3:08 AM

As far as I know you can't prospect more than 1 blue gem at a time, or else wowhead would list them as 1-2.

Very roughly, it seems 2.6% for each individual gem, or 15.6% chance of getting a blue gem with adamantite. With fel iron, it seems slightly below 1% per gem, so say 5.8% for any blue gem. Assuming the %ages are correct, you get a factor of 2.69, and after that you can just check prices. If Fel Iron Price * 2.69 < Adamantite Price, go with the fel iron, if not, adamantite would have the best chance for your money.

songster · 06/13/07, 3:44 AM

I have no recent experience with Fel Iron ore, however I can tell you (based on prospecting 600+ ore per day) that the net expectation for blue gems is around 1 per stack of ore. My suspicion is that it's actually 4% per colour per prospect, since this comes out as a nice round number on the drop table, and comes out to a total of 0.96 blue gems per stack on average.

Furthermore:

Inscribed Flame Spessarite has an (incorrect) vendor value of 1g rather than 25s
Ditto for all Golden Draenite cuts
Ditto for all Azure Moonstone cuts
Ditto for all Shadow Draenite cuts

All Deep Peridot and Blood Garnet cuts have the presumed correct vendor value of 25s.

So if you've got more green quality gems than you can dispose of on the AH, for most of them it's worth cutting them before vendoring.

Opioid · 06/13/07, 4:03 AM

Originally Posted by blindworld

As far as I know you can't prospect more than 1 blue gem at a time, or else wowhead would list them as 1-2.

I wanna say I have, I can swear I have, but I have no proof and a sense you may be absolutely correct. I'm interested in what you say here, how can see what came out of one prospect on wowhead?

Originally Posted by songster

So if you've got more green quality gems than you can dispose of on the AH, for most of them it's worth cutting them before vendoring.

I feel guilty for admitting to dumpster diving but for flame spessarites/azure moonstones/draenites, I buy out all of the ones under 80 silver there because its basically free money =P

♦ blindworld · 06/13/07, 4:12 AM

If you look here: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=23425#m0Rzc it lists green gems as "1-2" meaning you can get 2 of the same gem in one prospect. If you could get 2 different blue gems in 1 prospect, I see no reason why you wouldn't also be able to get 2 of the same blue gem in 1 prospect, which in turn would cause wowhead to also call the blue gems "1-2" but it doesn't. I don't have too much experience prospecting myself, but I'd take that to mean you can only get 1 blue gem per prospect. Either that, or the odds of getting 2 of the same blue gem are so low that in 135723 prospects it never happened.

Kunzite · 06/13/07, 5:07 AM

WoWHead did not reset their prospecting data when the patch hit so their data is not reliable.

Since patch, I've done over 600 prospects of Fel Iron and Adamantite Ore. For prospecting drops, there is a 100% chance each prospect of Fel Iron or Adamantite Ore will drop grey vendor dust and one green gem. There then appears to be a chance that an extra green gem will drop (which may be a different type as the guaranteed gem that dropped) and a chance that a blue gem will drop. I have never seen more than one blue gem or more than two green gems drop in the same prospect (however, I have many times seen vendor dust, 2 green gems, and a blue gem in one prospect).

I've been recording my prospects since the patch. While this is not yet a large enough sample, I will post it here for those interested:

Fel Iron Ore 313 prospects
Extra Green Gem 25 (7.99%)
Blue Gem 24 (7.67%)

Adamantite Ore 321 prospects
Extra Green Gem 29 (9.03%)
Blue Gem 67 (20.87%)

Azaziel · 06/13/07, 5:25 AM

Just support Kunzites obervation. I have done around 300ish prospects and his numbers is very close to mine. I have a slightly higher blue gem droprate (22% ish) but otherwise my numbers match his.

BFG · 06/13/07, 6:51 AM

Originally Posted by Opioid

I wanna say I have, I can swear I have,

Yes, same here. I can swear I've prospected a green and 2 blues once. No proof except my memory of course.

Dirich · 06/13/07, 7:27 AM

Originally Posted by blindworld

As far as I know you can't prospect more than 1 blue gem at a time, or else wowhead would list them as 1-2.

Very roughly, it seems 2.6% for each individual gem, or 15.6% chance of getting a blue gem with adamantite. With fel iron, it seems slightly below 1% per gem, so say 5.8% for any blue gem. Assuming the %ages are correct, you get a factor of 2.69, and after that you can just check prices. If Fel Iron Price * 2.69 < Adamantite Price, go with the fel iron, if not, adamantite would have the best chance for your money.

According to Kunize and Azaziel, and assuming that all the gems with same rarity have the same drop rate (this is supported by wowhead data). I would use the following percentages

21% drop rate for blue gem from adamantite, which is 3.5% per any single type
7.5% drop rate for blue gem from fel iron ore, which is 1.25% per any single type

Due to the fact that all the "weights" in our probablity problems are the same, we can easily sum all the average prices (check AH), divide the result by 6 and than multiply by .21 (adamantite) or .075 (fel iron) to obtain the average gain from that kind of ore.

To be precise, we should include green gems in the model, and we should know how the system really works (I presume there's a fixed range of drops per each rarity type (0-1 or 0-2 for blue gem I guess), because otherway it would be theorically possible to get a lot of loots from bosses), this means my calcualtions are bound to be incorrect because I'm modeling the system in a, for sure, uncorrect way. Anyway, in the end, I think this mutual exclusive probability model (with 0-1 blue gem drop) can be fair enough for some count.

Back to the numbers, if you are not "Friendly" with the "Math" faction, the next step is to check the average cost of 5 pieces of ore and compare "average gain"/"average cost" for Fel Iron and Adamantite. The higher wins.

Of course we could simply ignore the blue gems' costs and use the ratio of the drop rate in fel iron and adamantite cases to compare ore prices, but I think it's a better idea to check if our prospecting is worth (and how much it is). I play on a server (90% dk people :S) where, usually, refined goods are worth less than raw one, this means that most of the time it's better to sell the reagents and buy the crafted items (and, trust me, you have a gain this way... when it should be the other way around...), because of this I'm interested in knowing if I should prospect or sell the ores and buy the gems.

P.S.
Without including green gems, on my server/faction it's a loss to prospect fel iron (at least with our current average prices, but I'm pretty sure someone will find the way to lower them even more).

Kapuras · 06/13/07, 8:32 AM

Since 2.1 i was prospecting

760 Fel Iron Ores (152 prospects) and 2415 Adamantite Ore (483 prospects)

My prospecting results are:

~ 7,89% to get one blue gem per 5 Fel Iron Ore

~ 20,70% to get one blue gem per 5 Adamantite Ore

The conclusion is:

To geht at last one blue gem you need

63,37 Fel Iron (100*5 / 7,89)

or

24,15 Adamantite Ore (100*5 / 20,70)

Taking the AH prices on your Server it means:

1 Blue Gem from Fel Iron Ore will cost between 31,685 Gold (63,37*10/20 ) and 47,5275 Gold. (63,37*15/20)

1 blue gem from Adamantite Ore will cost between 30,1875 (24,15*25/20) and 42,2625 Gold (24,15*35/20).

So I would prefer prospecting Adamantite Ore then Fel Iron Ore.

songster · 06/13/07, 11:51 AM

Bad calculation. You cannot neglect the money you get for the low quality gems, even at vendor prices. Nor can you neglect the vendor price of the powders you get.

Four our of the 6 colours of uncommon gem sell for 1g if cut right. Two of them vendor for 25s. Average vendor price for an uncommon gem is thus 75s. You get ~5 green gems per stack of ore (same chances for Fel Iron or Adamantite). That's at least 3g50s even vendoring the green gems. I can usually make at least double that if I sell them on the AH.

Fel iron powder vendors at 15s each - 60s per stack of ore prospected
Adamantite powder vendors at 22s50 each - 90s per stack of ore prospected

What does this mean? It means that even if you vendor all green gems rather than selling them on the AH, the effective price of a stack of fel iron ore is 6-11g, and the effective price of adamantite ore is 20g50-30g50 per stack.

1 blue gem from Fel Iron Ore will cost between 19.011 Gold (63,37*6/20 ) and 34.8535 Gold. (63,37*11/20)

1 blue gem from Adamantite Ore will cost between 24.7535 (24,15*20.5/20) and 36.82875 Gold (24,15*30.5/20).

Conclusion: fel iron ore gives you the better deal overall.

In general, fel iron gives about 1/3 the number of blue gems as adamantite ore.

Therefore, if (fel iron price - 4g) < (adamantite ore - 4.5g) / 3, then you should buy fel iron ore.

Starfire · 06/13/07, 12:45 PM

Really dumb question, but I haven't been able to find the answer anywhere online... (I do believe its somewhere in the wiki, I just haven't been able to figure out where to look)

What level JC is required to prospect adamantite?

thaen · 06/13/07, 1:10 PM

What level JC is required to prospect adamantite?

325, iirc.

DoboY · 07/12/07, 11:37 AM

I need that prospecter addon, can you tell me where i can download it? i searched the net for hours looking for it but cannot find it.

Marroc · 07/12/07, 11:42 AM

Originally Posted by Opioid

(pun intended)

Okay on my server a 20-stack of Fel Iron Ore sells from 10g-15g, or 2.5g to 3.75g per prospect. A 20-stack of Adamantite Ore sells from 25g-35g, or 6.25g to 8.75g per prospect. I know that Adamantite Ore has a better chance of netting blue gems. My question is whether the chance is more or less than the additional economic expenditure (which can be from 2.3x greater to 2.5x greater for the adamantite.) What balance should one pursue to maximize blue gem discovery for the coin?

I know prices are pure anecdotes and not terribly useful, but if some sort of math could be compared and a ratio derived I'm sure it would help everyone to apply the ratios to determine the fair market value of auction house ores and what cap to stop at on their server as well, once they substituted their appropriate values.

From my personal experience (well over 1,000 prospects of ore on my JC since the prospecting changes):

# prospects to get a blue gem in fel iron: 16 (4 stacks of ore)
# prospects to get a blue gem in adamantite ore: 4 (1 stack of ore)

This has held true for me for the last ~500-600 prospects of adamantite ore. I tend to do them in 20 stack batches and come out with anywhere from 17-25 blue gems per batch.

Baros_Medivh · 07/12/07, 1:25 PM

You can prospect double blue gems in Adamantite Ore but of course it is very rare. I've personally done it a few times at most. Almost always not my ore but oh well. Double gems are also viable as seen from Kunzite's information.

I'll see if I can recreate the double blue gem drop as I know I have friends who need some prospecting done.

Bury · 07/14/07, 2:23 AM

Originally Posted by DoboY

I need that prospecter addon, can you tell me where i can download it? i searched the net for hours looking for it but cannot find it.

You could probably PM the guy here:
Nethersturm Legion - Profil ansehen: Sylvon

(After you find out, share the link!)

mikebro · 07/14/07, 7:44 PM

Originally Posted by songster

Inscribed Flame Spessarite has an (incorrect) vendor value of 1g rather than 25s
Ditto for all Golden Draenite cuts
Ditto for all Azure Moonstone cuts
Ditto for all Shadow Draenite cuts

All Deep Peridot and Blood Garnet cuts have the presumed correct vendor value of 25s.

So if you've got more green quality gems than you can dispose of on the AH, for most of them it's worth cutting them before vendoring.

This seems to be fixed, atleast Inscribed Flame Spessarite. I could have made like 50g off of alone.

songster · 07/15/07, 4:19 AM

Yeah, they fixed them all a while back.

crimsonsentinel · 07/15/07, 4:28 AM

I've prospected thousands of ore, and from my experience, fel iron is never worth prospecting. I'd suggest making felsteel bars and selling those, it should give you the biggest profit margin. You just have to find some poor sucker who wants a felsteel reaper badly and gouge him =D.

songster · 07/15/07, 5:33 AM

Originally Posted by crimsonsentinel

I've prospected thousands of ore, and from my experience, fel iron is never worth prospecting.

Yes, but that's on your server, and isn't really relevant to someone asking a question about their own. The only thing that matters is:

A) Average price of an ore stack
B) Flat rate returns from selling powder and green gems
C) Average price of a blue gem
D) Average number of blue gems per stack of ore

If A < B + (C*D), then it's worth prospecting ore rather than selling it.

For adamantite ore, B ~= 2g
For fel iron ore, B ~ 1g75

For adamantite ore, D ~= 1
For fel iron ore, D is ~= 0.25

A and C are server-dependent. Run Auctioneer, or just eyeball a few pages of searches, and plug in your own values.

If your server is in a state where green gems are regularly sellable, you have a slightly better chance of turning a profit. I doubt that's the case for many servers these days - market for green quality gems is so small that it saturates easily.