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 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!

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