Nice post Yade!
Ref:
"#2 an NPC vendor, those of us who gm'd smithing long before there was smelting remember selling our junk to the blacksmith. and if you will remember that the blacksmith would almost always offer different amounts for the items. this was how we old players originally determined that an item was exceptional or not. kind of primitive "BUT BEWARE!!!!!!!!" the prices offered by the NPC vendor and the PLAYER STOCKED vendor are not compatible. they are a different scale. so when you hear people saying i have a 51 katana, they are referring to a PLAYER STOCKED vendor not an NPC vendor. you will have to establish your own new rating system for those prices. "
I use NPC vendors for quality control exclusively. Have done for ages.
What the NPC vendors sell, is priced at average durability (+whatever). I don't know anyone else that realises, that the price they offer to sell their items, does not reflect the value of those weapons! Buy 10 of the NPC kryss for instance, and offer those 10 back for sale - there will be a large range of prices offered for them too. I use this to get new warrior characters up and running with reasonably priced, reasonably good kit, when I start on a new shard. Just by filtering their own stuff back to them. As I am more into fencing than swords, most of my experience with weapons is with the kryss.
A bit more detail on the NPC filtering.
Ok, so what the NPC vendor is offering is the price for "average". A warning... that price can change very quickly even on the same NPC vendor. So each time you filter a batch, ask for their offer price first, so you have the latest price (belive me, a long time ago I got caught out on this one). If you are doing a kryss, more often than not they are offering their kryss at 40 - 41. So to get the price for your average kryss offered to them, you divide that by 2 - that means they will offer me 20 for "average" as a buy in. I then look at the percentages above that as my guide.
Most prices offered with a lowly smith, seem to be in the 17 - 22 region, with not many at 22. The 22 are 10% above average, and roughly (to me) in the ruin class. Fairly common are those at 24 (20% extra), less common at 26 (30% extra), fairly rare at 28 (40% extra), very rare at 30 (50% extra), unbelieveably rare anything much higher. The most I have been offered over many, many 1,000's of kryss, was one at 38 (90% extra!!!). In common with several exceptionally high weapons (% wise) that I have done, it WAS NOT MARKED EXCEPTIONAL!! Weird or what? I tell you what though, that kryss was awesome. The same fencer I used it with had a massive accurate kryss of vanq (brand new, complete with charges) that I was saving for comparison purposes, and it outperformed it substantially.
Remember, the important thing with NPC pricing, is the PERCENTAGE they offer you over and above average (which is half their selling out price), so the actual price is not that significant if it changes from transaction to transaction - the percentage they offer always holds true.
The way I NPC filter, is have a separate pack for the items. I place the items in neat rows of 6 in that pack. When I offer them for sale, the last item into the pack is the first listed, the first item is the last listed, they are listed in the reverse order they are placed in the pack. I jot down what is offered for what, then smelt down the substandard items. A bit time consuming, but fairly simple. Since the bods have come in, I have found I can do them in 10's to the smithing guildmistress (could do more, but the pack gets a bit complicated for filtering - I still like 6's really).
A friend ran UOX server and we checked some stuff out. He made me a GM smith, and supplied me with a vast amount of ingots. I made a lot of armour items and he checked them out for me as the Game Master. For instance, I made maybe a 100 platemail arms. He checked them all through for me. Numbers ranged from a durability of 40, to a durability of 140, and all had the makers mark on them (for convenience anything else I immediately smelted). I suspect very strongly that variation holds true in UO as well (probably much wider, as only doing a 100 items would not likely have found the rarer ones and there were a few at 140, which says that is not unusual), but time was limited as we had so many things to try) . Everything I have experienced points to it.
A non-GM smith CAN make these excellent products - the only difference GM seems to make, is the dramatic reduction in the number of substandard ones made (though a GM can make the very worst quality as well, it must be borne in mind), and the increase in the number of the better ones made. The truly high percentage ones are still rares though. You definitely won't find them unless you filter . . Same goes for armour, same goes for shields. And yes, it WOULD be nice to have that facility with potions too.
I hope this is a help, and good luck to you all.
I now play GL shard, and my new almost GM smith there is ArmaLite, who lives in Delucia.
PS - a technique that seems to be doing great (for me) in the 90's skill powerhour - eat until stuffed, make 9 Plate helms, make 3 Plate legs, make 3 Plate tunics, smelt, eat, make 9 Plate arms, make 3 Plate legs, make make 3 Plate tunics, smelt, eat, then repeat. Amazingly I am getting most of the gains between 90 and 97, on the plate helms. 2 more power hours to go . . *crosses fingers*