I am makin this post to bring the subject up and to start a discussion on SL costs. The problem I am having is that vast majority of the SL recipies cost 12p-15p to make in actual spent plat to vendor for mats, some cost considerable higher, for example a purple seal takes 20 special mats (superalloy, hardened madrosa, etc) that have a vendor cost of 3x 4.2 plat ea(magical oil, ethereal flux, etc) thats 240 plat in vendor mats plus 8 active flux at 3p ea, another 24, for a total of 264p out of the crafters pocket. this does not take into account actual foraged and dropped mats. i am currently workin on makin 3 stellar keen augments to fill MP orders, takes about 3 mauls to break for mats for each augment, while i did order al the mats for this on MP, i still have to spend 12p on flux for each maul , so 36p out of my pocket per augment again. Each, so another 100p in vendor mats to make MP orders. I bring this up not to cxomplain, but to start a discussion, i began SL with 3500 plat, and got down to 600p both makin stuff for me and levellin crafting, but also steadily draining from fillin MP orders, i have done 50k in vault credits in last 6weeks, that reflects how much i have made for guildies, and figure 12-15p each item, easily 500+ total. this isnt a complaint, i wouldnt fill orders if the plat meant that much, it doesnt, but the drain does make an impact on my ability to fill orders as many, or quickly as i would like to. In classic the only mat that cost more than a few pennies to make was the stuff from cooldowns, and they were 9p ea, and most used about 5, so in classic i would occasionally drop 50p to make something and most of the time the guildies would gather those mats themselves and then ask crafters to combine the recipies for item, so it was in general fairly painless to craft as much as possible as often as you wanted. i would myself toss out a suggestion that members can order the expensive mats like superalloy from MP and gather the stuff up so a crafter can combine it. that way everyone spreads cost around, and also to have a note on items for the actual out of pocket cost for anything over 10p so players know and can offer to contribute to the crafter if they are able, but not required.
sorry its a bit long winded, but the subject has been coming up more now that major catalyts are availiable and the ability to make seals is directly connected to ability to pay for them instead of availiablity of mats