As for consumption, excluding general basic maintenance, the consumption of the essence itself should be considered the largest. According to the element level of the magic weapon produced to link the magic network, one primary essence can only be used to supply 4 nodes.
The magic weapon is linked to the magic network.
In other words, taking the four-linked essence automatic networking device currently designed by Xia Duo as an example, if a primary essence is used, nearly eight sets of essences need to be replaced a day.
If you use intermediate essences, you will need to change about three groups; if you use high-level essences, it will take almost five days to change the essences.
In terms of comprehensive cost, a basic essence will consume more than 9,000 gold coins a day, an intermediate essence will consume about 6,000 gold coins a day, and a high-level essence will only cost about 800 gold coins a day!
If you just go by your feelings, it seems that it is more cost-effective to use the elementary essence. But after actual calculation, Xia Duo realized how unreliable his intuition is. The cost of using the advanced essence is less than one-tenth of that of the elementary essence!
This does not take into account the reduction in production capacity caused by downtime when replacing the essence. With this comparison, the cost-effectiveness of the high-end essence has reached a new level!
After careful analysis, Xia Duo figured out the difference. The reason was that elemental essences were consumables here, and they were consumed at a fixed rate based on the energy of the essences.
Compared with the elementary and intermediate levels, the price of high-level essences does not increase linearly with the energy of the essence, but the energy increases faster, and the price is not that outrageous.
A basic spirit costs 300 gold coins, an intermediate one costs 500, and an advanced one only costs 1,000!
As for the energy consumed by the essence to link the magic network with the quasi-magical items to maintain its own stable existence, the energy consumed by the advanced essence is nearly 40 times that of the elementary essence, and more than ten times that of the intermediate essence!
In fact, if elder-level essences can also be mass-produced, as long as the price does not exceed ten times that of high-level essences, it is actually more cost-effective to buy elder-level essences!
Xia Duo now has a set of four-element elder-level essences given by the Mairead family. During his research, he found that as long as a certain energy of the elder-level essence is not completely exhausted at once, he can just put it in the corresponding place.
In the elemental environment, it will slowly recover!
In other words, as long as there are enough elder-level elemental essences, the cost of the essences can be completely ignored as the essences are automated!
He was not sure how many times such recovery could be done, but as long as the total number was large enough, the cost would be close to nothing if it were evenly divided.
It's just that he only has these four elder-level essences in his hands now, and he is reluctant to use them for extreme experiments.
During the experiment, Xia Duo also guessed what the elemental breeding model of Calimshan was. From the perspective of essence energy, this kind of pricing was actually unreasonable. The price of primary essence was too high!
And from the perspective of breeding costs, it is unreasonable. If the breeding cost of advanced elements is only more than three times that of primary elements, it is not as good as cultivating primary element organisms alone. The cycle is short and the results are quick, and the benefits are easier to maximize.
He speculated that the reason why the price of Calimshan's elemental essence is so high may be related to the formation of elemental essence. Not all elemental creatures can produce essence after being killed.
The lower the level, the lower the output rate. However, in this case, there is no need for Calimshan to maintain the production of elementary elemental essences and just focus on high-end products.
The reason why there are still primary essences produced may be that there are too many primary elemental creatures, which crowd out the resources of other levels of elemental creatures. They must be harvested regularly to maintain the normal operation of the elemental ranch.
Or maybe Calimshan has some special needs for primary elemental spirits, which is why a certain amount of production is maintained.
But again, for people like Xia Duo who treat elemental spirits as pure consumables on the spot, the price of low-level spirits is simply too high.
Referring to the price of high-level essences, it is more reasonable to set the price of a junior essence below 20 gold coins.
In this way, when producing some lower-level magic items, it is more cost-effective to use primary essence.
Of course, Shado didn't want Calimshan to increase the price of high-level souls based on the price of junior souls. That would be too exaggerated, and a high-level soul might be sold for more than 10,000 yuan.
But no matter what, even if all primary essences are used for production, and the cost of more than 9,000 is shared equally among 120 node magic weapons, the average cost of one node magic weapon only increases by 80 gold coins.
If this is a normal magic weapon for sale to the outside world, and the cost is only 80 gold coins, he can completely offset this cost by increasing the price by 200.
In fact, the price of a high-level magic item has to be at the level of one thousand gold coins. Regardless of the true cost, the price has been relatively stable in the past.
In the past, the bulk of the cost actually came from the high-level spellcasters themselves. If the essence production was automated, high-level mages would not be needed.
Which high-level mage is willing to link 80 gold coins to a quasi-high-level magic item?
Moreover, with the use of Jingli Automation, the production efficiency has also increased. No high-level mage can come here and produce for him without eating or drinking all day long.
The piece-rate salary is only 80 gold coins per piece. Even fools are not willing to do it. But if you can become a high-level mage, are there any fools?
Therefore, at this stage, no matter how high the price of elemental essence is, Xia Duo can accept it, because no matter how high the cost is, it is still higher than hiring a living high-level mage.
The machine can be turned on as much as it wants and turned off as it wants, and high-level mages need to be paid regardless of whether they work or not.
…
Of course, at this stage, Xia Duo is not planning to apply Jingso Automation on a large scale, or even make it public within the Tower of Time.
If this were made public, most magic technicians would probably be in despair. Although not all magic technicians have no potential for further advancement, relatively speaking, these people have been screened and have low overall potential.
They must be given a suitable place to go. At this stage, the territory's magic-related industries are still very immature, or just in their infancy. This is a good opportunity for these magic technicians to show their talents.
If Jingpi Automation is launched now, it will undoubtedly interrupt this process. Only when most industries have developed to a certain level can they be upgraded on this basis.
A mature civilization, or a mature society, must provide enough relatively suitable employment opportunities for most members. If it cannot, it may be the beginning of chaos.
Of course, Xia Duo does not want the territory he has high hopes for to go into chaos. As long as there is no internal chaos, everything can be slowly adjusted and improved under his control until he finds out the civilization development model that is most suitable for this magical world.
…
In the next two days, Xia Duo worked overtime to complete the final form of the Jingspiri automation networking device, and then spent another day manufacturing the first batch of ten devices.