CaveCrafterGuide 01 · Prices
Read the price before comparing production
Prices brings together the market values used by the planner. It helps you distinguish the cost of acquiring a resource from the revenue from selling it, and spot recent changes without treating history as a forecast.
Purchase and selling prices are not interchangeable
Buying an input creates a cost. Selling a factory's output creates revenue. CaveCrafter uses the value corresponding to each operation, adjusted for fees when configured, rather than assuming buying and selling happen at the same price.
Hypothetical example: one resource, two values
Consider a resource with a purchase price of 2.10 COIN and a selling price of 1.90 COIN. Buying 10 units costs 21 COIN; selling 10 units generates 19 COIN.
Using 21 COIN as the sales revenue would overstate the result by 2 COIN. In your calculations, always check whether a value represents a purchase, a sale or a market reference.
The COIN icon identifies the unit of these values. A token's price is not a factory's profit: the inputs and power required to produce it still need to be considered. Open Profit Loss for that comparison.
The 4H change and TREND answer different questions
| Indicator | What it represents |
|---|---|
| 4H | Compares the current price with a historical reference close to four hours earlier. Without a suitable reference, the change may be unavailable. |
| TREND XH or XM | By default, summarizes the latest 17 available price points, collected every 15 minutes, or fewer if there is not enough history yet. The suffix shows the actual period covered by the received timestamps, in hours or minutes. |
| 4h candles | These are the intervals in the external GeckoTerminal chart. Each candle summarizes trades within that interval; it does not correspond to a CaveCrafter collection point. |
At a regular 15-minute cadence, 17 points span 16 intervals: 16 × 15 = 240 minutes, or 4 hours, between the first and last point. Both the collection interval and the number of history points can be changed in Admin. Missing or failed collections, fewer available points, delays or a different configuration can change the period; TREND always shows the actual window of the data received.
Likewise, a positive 4H change only describes a historical comparison. It does not predict the next price or guarantee that the product will keep gaining value while you manufacture it.
Open the candlestick chart
On the website, hover over or tap a TREND cell to open the interactive chart. CaveCrafter uses the token's registered pool and requests four-hour candles. On Android, the chart can be opened externally.
The chart is provided by GeckoTerminal. Check the axis unit: it may start in USD and offer a COIN selection. Comparing a dollar price with a COIN column without converting the units leads to an incorrect conclusion.
CaveCrafter's collection and the external chart may also reflect different times. If the chart does not load, use the retry option or the external link shown. A chart failure does not, by itself, mean the entire table is unavailable.
The row above the table contains the view selector. In Custom view, Drag to reorder appears before it, separated by a divider, and Reset view follows it. The update time, price source (On-chain when applicable) and number of recent fetches are aligned to the right on the same row. On narrow screens, scroll this row horizontally. Category is a compact column; hover over truncated text to read the full name.
Purchase amounts use blue and sales amounts use blue-violet. Green and red indicate positive and negative changes or profit and loss, including 4H and TREND. Displayed values have at least two decimal places; very small values extend to the second nonzero decimal digit. This display rounding does not change the calculation.
A useful sequence for deciding what to compare
- Find the token and confirm the unit and price used for the operation you want to evaluate.
- Check the recent context using the 4H change and TREND's actual period. Avoid interpreting a short line as a long history.
- Open Profit Loss to see whether the estimated revenue covers inputs and power at your factory's level.
- Try the chain in Simulation if other resources produced in the same batch could supply this production.