As most people who mine peridot know, the price has been NOSEDIVING recently, especially in the past few days where the price went down from a stable 50k to about 45k, which is a 10% decrease in profit. Peridot mining is gaining popularity, as seen in the number of instasells on the bazaar. This will drop the price even more, and there are two more reasons why I think peridot mining will become even worse.
Divan's powder coating + Lustrous reforge will increase rates
Inherently, this is a good thing. It allows you to mine a gemstone while taking less time to break the block, meaning you can break more blocks per hour, and gets you more drops per block, which means even more gemstones per hour. This is GREAT if you're playing on an ironman profile. But this increases the SUPPLY, and with the DEMAND staying the same, the price will drop. The supply will be further increased by the mining fiesta's double drop feature, which only adds to the chance that the price will almost certainly never even come close to 45k again after this mining fiesta. Usually gemstone prices recover after a mining fiesta but the increased supply means it probably won't.
Now, you'd THINK that the price would probably stabilize a small fraction under what it currently is which would result in the prices staying the same. Nope. People will start putting more time into mining peridot unaware of this truth, plus the sheer number of people who think this means it's now more profitable will get into mining. The Garden Update, my least favorite update ever, is a prime example. When they multiplied the NPC sell prices of nether wart and sugar cane by 2.5x, people started macroing like CRAZY, although people were already macroing farming beforehand. More people started macroing and the people who already were macroing would make sure it was always running. It wasn't uncommon to catch multiple macroers in a hub after their garden server rebooted. The prices of most items doubled and were on their way to triple before the admins stepped in. The prices of a handful of items, such as scrolls, had already tripled at that point. The point I'm trying to make is that buffing a money making method will incentivize even more people to do it for longer, increasing the supply more than what the money making method actually multiplied the rates by.
Gemstone equipment might incentivize a more permanent solution
Glossy Gemstones also allow you to forge gemstone equipment. In the Glacite Tunnels, most people sacrifice the mining speed/fortune buff in the Dwarven Mines for Cold Resistance, opting to use Dwarven Handwarmers and 3/4 titanium equipment. Cold resistance is a non-factor in the Crystal Hollows, meaning most people will use the full set of gemstone equipment. ALL of the extra mining fortune you get for peridot from Glossy Gemstones can be applied in the Crystal Hollows and you get even more, since you also get 25 mining fortune anywhere in the Crystal Hollows with the full set. You get 30 additional mining fortune for jade, amber, amethyst, and sapphire. Jade is the only one I can see really being a big deal since most people don't bother with the other three gemstones. If that's not your thing, all of this will also buff ruby mining in the magma fields. So jade and ruby mining being buffed will encourage even more people to move away from peridot mining.
Ironically, people being encouraged to go back to the Crystal Hollows could keep the price of peridot from falling as much as I might have implied it will since the number of people mining peridot would decrease. In the end, though, I think the price of peridot will still drop quite a bit and never recover and ruby/jade mining will be even more incentivized, leading to peridot mining being seen as more of an old but still somewhat viable money making method.
Why did I say this might be a good thing?
The price of peridot dropping means early game players don't have to pay as much to fully max out their fermento armor. Most early game players are told to farm if they want money, not by anything official from the server (which is another issue most people think should be fixed), but by players who have been in their position and pretty much every early game tutorial. Farming isn't a good money making method once you get to a certain point, but it still feels like the only way. I tried farming for 10 minutes and multiplied it by 6 to see how much I could make per hour a while ago. I don't remember what the exact number was but I do remember it was so low compared to mining that I haven't touched the garden since.
