To Cube or not to Cube?

Just for the sake of a friendly argument...... Your work glove example is not valid. In the case of scrolling items, you are paying for the scroll as well as the fact that the scroll passed. With each successive scroll passing, the value of passing scroll will go up exponentially. With cubing, there is no risk of destroying the item or wasting slots on an item, so each cube carries the same cost.

With all that being said, please note that for the most part I agree with you. I do not believe that ANY market is "perfect" much less the Maplestory FM. If you were only to consider the massive amounts of meso exploits that can distort prices at any time, it is enough to throw my market analysis out the door.

I agree that the value of each passing scroll causes the value of the item to go up exponentially. However, in a surreal hacked Khaini, assuming you have infinite White Scrolls that cost 0 mesos (therefore having zero consequence of an item losing value if you were to fail a slot), constantly throwing GFAs on them would burden them the same cost property of inflating the item exponentially. The price regarding pre-cubed items exists the same manner and do not carry the same value. Rare items, no matter how many times you cube them, will carry similar low tier costs. Epic items, be they cubed three times or 40+ times, will carry an exponentially higher cost than their rare counterparts. Unique items have the same price property and will carry an even more exponential value than their rare and epic counterparts. Since you're talking about the Windian market, let's do some price comparisons with say 3 lined earrings just so we can have a ballpark figure we both can understand given familiar market grounds.

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3L clean generic Rare Earrings - 15m on average. 30-50m with good stats tops. 0 to maybe 5 cubes to get good stats. This is 75m value regarding cubes using a 1:15 NX to meso ratio on 5 cubes used at most. No matter what you do here, it's a loss if you decided to cube. Can be comparable with scrolling 2,4, 6 attack WGs and losing profit.

3L clean generic Epic Earrings - 250m on average. 300-400m with good stats tops. On average, 20 cubes used to acquire. This is an even 300m value using the 1:15 NX to meso ratio on 20 cubes used at most. So far, things look like they match. However, when we get to Unique, that's where things inflate drastically. Can be comparable with scrolling 8 attack WGs and almost breaking even.

3L clean generic Unique Earrings - 1b even with craptastical stats. 1.5b with good stats tops. On average, 40 cubes to get to unique. This is a 600m value using the same 1:15 NX to meso ratio on 40 cubes. This is at minimum a 400m difference for simply having unique and at least a 900m difference of having good stats alongside unique. Can be comparable to scrolling 10 attack WGs and profiting.

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The price "inflation" from epic to unique isn't a consistent property where each cube carries the same cost. The reason behind this cost inflation is the difficulty factor in fighting that initial 5% (unconfirmed) to raise rarity rank as opposed to a promised and predictable outcome.