As it stands, sorcelglass caters to select few individuals who consider the cost worth the bother. It could be helping poor vellum-eating bookbinders more but it has barely made a difference due to costs and effort involved. I'll be going mainly with vials for this example.

The prime issue is the cost:

1 sorcelglass scroll (five uses) = magicscroll (1 gold + 1 leather) + 15 ink applications

Using average non-crazy prices:
1 gold bar (100 coins) + 1 leather (15 coins) + 15 ink (250 coins) = 375 coins / 5 uses = 75 coins per sorcelglassed item
^ - ink goes between 600-1000 per, using 800 here

If you have the quill artifact, it's obviously less but I'm trying to average it out here. Add like 100 coins per sorcelglass scroll as a fee to the bookbinder if you're not one. This ends up costing 75-100 coins per item.

Using vials as an example, and using an average non-crazy gem cost - 200-250 coins per vial.

1 sorcelglass use - 75-100 coins + 1 sorcelglass item - 200-250 coins = 275 - 350 coins

Now the commodities. The requirement is that we use 4 (!) commodities per. With vials it is extremely difficult because you cannot make any presumptions regarding the changed vials original gemstone, so you have to add it anyhow. Additionally, if you wish to make it glass, you are adding gems which are insanely expensive in larger quantities. There is a crystal vial design which ends up using 4 gems because it has nothing else significant about it to justify adding other commodities. To give some examples:

a glittering crystal vial - 4 gems - 432 coins
a glass vial wrapped in iron filigree - gems 1, iron 2 - 328 coins
a steel vial - steel 3, marble 1 - 400 coins

There's also cheaper designs if you're smart of course:

a black marble amaranth vial - wood 3, purpletint 1 - 190 coins
a nebulous vial of clouded amethyst - amethyst 4 - 200 coins

^- average prices off a list I am using for myself

We could also use corpses and just throw a tint on top, but that's not the point.

All in all, an average cost of a sorcelglassed scroll will be an average of 600-800 coins. Any sane person will charge a bit on top of that obviously to make any sort of profit whatsoever, in my case like 100-200 coins since getting all these random corpses, tints, commodities etc is a pain to me.

Thus we end with 800-900 coins per a sorcelglassed scroll and no one in their right mind will purchase these.

Don't get me started on bottles since bottles take 3 gems to create (324 coins), add a sorcelglass use (100 coins), add commodities to make the bottle (300-400 coins) and you end up with a bottle costing an insanity. Not to mention, GLASS bottles require gems to be used for the sorcelglass process when the bottle is already glass. I have discussed it via comments with the Charites at one point and they allowed me not to use gems for one bottle design that I made since I wasn't changing its shape, but I doubt anyone else is aware of that.

My ingenious solution ideas, pick 'n' mix at will:

• lower the amount of commodities needed per a sorcelglass design to 1-3 (1 for cups, 2-3 for rest, use self judgement)
• allow the use of sand for glass (add diggable regular sand to Toronada Tidal Flats)
• allow vials not to require cut gems to be used in sorcelglassing (even if it was a jade vial, allow it to be a stunning onyx vial)
• allow bottles not to require gems/sand to be used in sorcelglassing (use the glass already in the bottle to do the magic)
• allow sorcelglass scrolls to SHOW the design that's on them when stocked in a shop (heard they don't on purpose now >:)

I likely have a few more ideas but I'll need to look up some things.

Hey, I consider myself "in my right mind" and I got 70 sorcelglassed bottles when my vials all decayed... one, for the neatness of the bottle, and two for the "twice the decay time" thing (which was worth the extra expense to me, even though it costs more than two sets of bottles it means I have that much extra time until I have to worry about it again)

That said, if costs went down I would not complain... but my next set will also be sorcelglassed.

Yes, you are one of the select few I mentioned But I heard a whole long rant yesterday about how expensive it is and how the double decay time isn't worth paying almost thrice if not more the cost. It was really quite epic and vocal with chorus of 'who'd bother'.

Uh. Sorcelglass? New to me.

It's for this very reason that I made a group of sorcelglass vial designs that uses four of one gemstone for all gemstones. Sorcelglass is neat, but it is a bit too expensive. Cutting the amount of ink required would be one idea. Increasing the number of uses a scroll has would be another idea.

All of bookbinding is too expensive. Sorcelglass did nothing to fix this. Since sorcelglass suffers from the same problems that everything else in bookbinding does, it does not surprise me that it is just as unpopular.

I did it too all mine, was kinda expensive but I like it. Will probably do it again whether or not it changes. >_> Basically, what Xenthos said....

You guys aren't helping!

I won't pay 4x as much for double the time duration. Doesn't make sense at all.

Got 145 sorcelglassed vials myself.

can the amount of time added to the decay time by sorceglass be changed to a static amount as well?

using it on a vial that is about to decay doesn't add that much time so it only really makes sense to use it on new vials

For us newbs, what's sorcelglass do?

Sorcelglasses are basically a way to customize vials/bottles. They can be submitted via a cartel, and then applied to vials/bottles. It will double the decay time and make the object it's applied to look like the sorcelglass design.

it's a bookbinding ability that lets you change the look of vials and extend their decay time by wraping a scroll around the vial with some commodoties.

edit ninja'd

Seems like it would be a headache to implement, and the benefits don't outweigh the convenience of being able to just fuse your own vials.

They do to me. Especially since I fuse my own vials / bottles and then get their lifespan doubled as well as looking like neat things (and not having all kinds of gemstones in my hands to muck up the puzzles that use gemstone buttons).

The mechanism is already implemented and in place; sorcelglass scrolls are made by bookbinders, and can then be applied to vials (whether the scroll or the finished product is sold in the shop is up to the shopowner; as noted, sorcelglass scrolls do not show their design in WARES). Making the scroll costs a certain amount (as outlined above), and then furthermore using the scroll on an already fused gemstone vial costs comms (as outlined above), not including the price of the original vial. As a result, you get a customized design and the remaining lifespan on the vial is doubled.

What people are mainly asking for here doesn't seem that difficult - just a reduction in the commodities required at the various stages. I can't comment on how difficult it would be to make the design show up on WARES, however.

IDEA: Using a Sorcelglass scroll returns four of the gems used to create the original vial.

Myself I'd prefer if the commodity requirements for each scroll would be attatched to the scroll (just the four or possibly more commodities) in creation of the scroll and not each use, does that make sense? Would increase the price of the scrolls but dramatically decrease the overall price by 16 commodities or so, it makes a certain ammount of sense, it lowers the price and it reduces the hassle.