Magical goods don't lend themselves to mass production, so it is pretty much a cottage industry. Yes, megas can have mages on staff making reagents and foci, but they can't crank them out like that can cell phones on a production line. That is part of the reason why those things are expensive.


You don't necessarily have to be in complete wildlands in the NAN or Amazonia to find raw materials, especially plant and animal varieties. You could probably find materials in a state park or a woodland between farms that hadn't been harvested for a while. One of my mages would search mainly in the watershed set-asides in the forests where loggers weren't allowed to cut. He carried a rifle too, just in case he saw likely animals.

Metals and Minerals are the ones most likely to be contaminated. They are in the ground and the easiest way to get to them is with explosives and machinery, which taint the land. There are some places where minerals and such are on the surface and people today still prospect with pans, but those are likely to be well known and competition fierce, not to mention how long it would take to get enough gold to be of use.

Now, I know of a few places in the real world where there are exposed fossil beds and probably some minerals that no one else knows about. If a mage had similar knowledge, they could take advantage of that, too.

But anyway, my mages would also specialize in plant and animal materials since those were comparatively easy to find without having to go out into really dangerous lands.

The draw down in price is kind of annoying now. It used to be that a mage could make a good living refining materials. In SR4, its has gotten harder. However, this should mean the price goes back up as more mages drop out of the business because they can't make a living at it.

SR3 and 2 had those kinds of charts. Another thing I miss are the cost of living charts between the different nations. My characters used to make good use of those. The mages would go the UCAS to buy raw materials then go back to the CAS to process them into Orichalcum and sell it there where prices were much higher for magical goods. Made a lot more profit that way.

SR3 had those charts? Where? I was just reading MitS and it had nothing to indicate that this stuff takes any amount of time to buy or sell. No availability or street index means to me it's immediately available for the stated price.

Street Magic lists Availability ratings for reagents.

A very common attitude: any enchanter worth their salt is going to be raking in the nuyen, why bother running?

Part of the answer is investment-it takes cash and karma to get an enchanting shop, starting reagents, and an Enchanting skill high enough to be worthwhile. This is more pronounced in SR4, where a starting character isn't be able to lock themselves in their basement for a month or so and make orichalcum or radicals off the bat.

Another aspect is selling the goods. General fencing rules usually apply-after all, you don't expect a talismonger to make a profit if he pays what his customers pay for it-unless you sell direct (at which point you have to deal with all the fun parts of a business-including getting stiffed for payment, finding out that there's a lack of demand, etc.)

Megacorps, natch, have more efficient means to abuse the magical goods market than most player characters, hence the way they can stay well in the black.

I just looked at MITS and they do have charts in the back with availability and street indexes for most gear, but not raw materials. Strange oversight there.

Had to go all the way back to first and second editions to find the cost of living charts. The designers really should have kept those, or should release an updated version of them. Without them, the world really is a uniform place where clearly it isn't.