Zanadu

Funny you should add this. No, an iron sword will never be valued at 100k nor should it. Its a newbie weapon, or at least it was when I started and was stoked to have an iron sword. Guess what tho? We quickly come to learn that hey.. in this game it is better to not fight with a weapon while training. However, its not about the iron sword needing to have some high ticket price - its about having the iron sword reflect the value of work that was placed into it. But guess what? it doesn't. In fact, the player whom would even consider buying the iron sword wouldn't even be able to afford it. In fact, its doubtful that consumer could even keep up with Trik's price. Though, I think the point he is trying to make is that now the "newbie weapon" is used for something other than it was before and the price should reflect. 1.) It is a game. In fact, I think the game itself is beautiful and unique. That doesnt mean I agree with the economics. In real life I wouldn't buy something from a friend and expect my friend to take a loss. If my friend works at a grocery store and every time I come into the store I expect him to give me my food for free and money from the til than I am pretty crappy friend, right? 2.) You might not be aware of this, but many players in mmo's tend to like to make a profit. And that is also fun for them. Don't assume that your kind of fun is always the same for everyone. In fact, in aggressive games price cutters would often drop their prices in order to push someone out of the business. Problem in this game that the prices in this game do not flux much. Once a price drops it drops and stays. Someone says the price of an essence is 7gc and noone ever questions it. If I dared tell someone I was charging them 8gc they would freak out! O'well if thats what it was worth to me than they either buy or go without. 3.) Your last statement didnt make a lot of sense to me. Being stubbern and experiencing all you can in the game does not relate in any way to the subject. Merchanting is as much apart of a game as anything else. As far as the poor man point of view goes-- hate to break it to you but the rich generally have the most friends even more so than the person who gives and gives.

From what I noticed in EL-- the core players have no complaints of the economy. In fact, it works very well for them and alas as long as that core group is still playing there will still be a game to play. Check your top 50's page periodically and you wont see a lot of movement in that. The same names are there. They might slide in rank slightly, but not by much. And more often is if one of those names is listed in one skill.. its listed in another if not more than even 2. The majority of your top players can make anything and everything with an occassional exception. Its a basic dead lock in the economy. Those players set the prices regardless if anyone cares to admit it or not. I'm not sure if you check the 'players online' page, but there was an increase of bot players and a decrease of playable characters since I started. If there is only 200 players online at any given time the chance of a demand in economy is also slim to none. There is not much to combat the overflow of the infinate supply without causing a direct loss to the person mixing. "Fighting Game" is quoted because of the fact that the majority of players I interacted with had little to no interest in fighting. Fighters tended to taper off and most would rather to be mixers. In truth that was one of the unique aspects of this game is because one could have a role in the game without fighting. Full circle tho and everything that is made is geared to support fighting. As a manufacturer tho, you will need to make at least a thousand swords to level.. but you dont have a thousand players who will weild such sword. And as stated above, more often that "pure fighter" can barely afford to even train. The drops fighters get generally directly effect the overflow because swords, armors, rings, etc drop too. More dead-lock. I would be curious to see what changes would occure to the game if for every monster that dropped a pair of leather boots was changed to drop the raw items such as the leather that can only be obtained via npc. Gem paper via the orcs that drop rings. Something of which the fighter could offer to the mixer as certainly they cannot sell the book that can only be used once unless that book is extremely rare. People place the spot light onto crafting, and yet they dont break down the true problem. The cost to make is too high. Too difficult to afford the value of the ring. It's also cheaper to use magic. The gem paper doesn't, imho, reflect well on the economy. And thus it becomes a hobby skill. You mentioned harvesting as being a social skill. Imo, it was more or less the afk skill of choice. I think many would also agree to this. Don't get me wrong, I have had many great conversations with harvesters while harvesting and it can become quite interactive to a point. Harvesting is the only skill that has a decent "dump price" which directly effects the profit in harvesting. If Trik and Mira were offering competative wages like the flower shop and the npcs that buy ore there would be a sense of worth in taking the nexuses. Disagree or not, but there is a HUGE problem when the most profiting thing in the game requires no skill. The only advantage someone has at higher level is their emu. There should be more bonus than that.

I haven't been playing the game lately-- whether or not that makes my opinions invalid or not is beside the point. (Irony is I was coming to the forum to figure out why I was having trouble installing the new client ) With all due respect, I think that the developers put together a very unique game. Exceptional moderation to the point its borderline overly moderated. Aside from this strange problem I am having updating the new patch, I would say that every update has been smooth as silk. Better than games you pay for. I've never encountered down time longer than a few minutes. Is the game perfect? No. Not going to find a game that is completely perfect. Most likely why gaming is big business, lol. Also, the game has a very wonderful community. To the point that some are -too- nice. And that -too nice- sentiment is where the problem lies. The arguement of you should not expect to make profit in crafting items (not singling crafting skill, but alch, manu, potting, etc.) is perhaps the one thing that I disagree with most. In fact, that was the last straw for me. I clocked myself being able to farm lupines faster than I could make anything from scratch. Why on earth should I lose money selling something to someone else?! My time is as valuable as the next guy. Why should I put 20 nexus into my character when someone can farm lupine with no skill and make more profit? The arguement of "more education and more experience" and you can make more profit later is moot. The noob spinning out fire essence is most likely making more potential profit than the guy spinning bars. And then we go full circle and state that the reward is the experience. That reward generally only leans towards those who are aiming to see their name on the top of the page. I will admit that I am not used to games that do not have some sort of a cap or a sense of supply and demand. However that, in itself, is what makes the game quite unique and also frustrates me as well. Potions, for example: Only so many can be consumed at any given time. Vials became available via the npc and many flooded to the potioning skill. Customers had absolutely no problem with the price before. It went down a few gc and the customers were happy and buying and consuming even more potions. Still, steady profit on making potions. Then oops, a potioner just made 1k sr and goes to market looking to sell. Ok, so the guy doesn't get any pm on anyone wanting to buy. Rather than being business savvy and thinking 'oh, i guess noone needs any potions right now...' he lowers the price. How low do you have to make the price? If -noone needs- potions right then... hold them until someone does. The price isnt going to change the demand. But, no.. that guy wants the quick sale.. the other guy like Ralloz wants to be like number one potioner. (Dont mean to call you out, but its true) so he doesn't care how low he puts the price because he has no care what so ever if he makes profit or not. His main goal is to not lose money. And guess what?! At his level he doesnt have to account for fails or anything that a rising potioner might have. Players like myself then suffer. Not only do we suffer we are generally labeled as greedy. Usually greedy if we just simply dont want to lose money to make something for someone else. God help us if we expect to some how make a profit so that we can buy something from someone else. The person with absolutely no value in money is just as greedy as I could ever be especially if they are only intending to raise their name on a web page. /end rant. And like this game is for Ent, to most high level mixers it becomes their hobby to be the highest leveled of thier "proffession". And thats how I look at mixing skills: profession. Which is generally what it is in most other games, and alas that is why there is such division. Time is money, end of story. If it were not everyone would make their own pots including fighters. In fact, there goes full circle.. if the guy crafting rings cannot make money crafting his rings.. he can't buy potions from the person making potions so thus has to make them him/herself. I logged in one day just wanting to mana burn. To do so I would need to go farm diamonds, flowers, silver. mix them into essence. Ok, got that done.. then I needed magic potions.... gather the stuff for that find someone who could make... and by the time all that was done.. there wasnt even time left to mana burn. Why do you have to go through all those steps? Cause if you cant make profit you have no other choice. But wait! A trip to the lupines bush and I can make the gc to buy all that in much less time...... moral of the story all the time invested in skill is a waste aside from the higher emu aspect, but even that is questionable when you consider the potential exp in fighting. People say that harvesting is boring, I ask how is mixing not? Too much work for a "fighting game" imho. Takes far longer to make an item than to consume it. i.e. the busted ti plate in a few hours of use. There is much need for a solution outside of the easiest of buying rare items from the game store to resell to other players. And blee-- with all due respect, it would be nice if you could be able to make a profit on a book drop. But, like everything else there is infinate supply. You can barely give monster drop books away. We all know which monster drops hold any chance of profit and even then it barely breaks even at the end. LadyReni: As much as I agree with your intentions, I have to agree with Mire on many points. Where as I might be willing to make something for a friend/guildie for free I would not wish to extend that to everyone always, especially with which I consider to be mundane. To Ent: Please do not take my words as offensive, as thats not truly my intent. There is a lot of heart and talent invested into this game, but being a beta I offer my words to you to do with what you will. I haven't had the chance to check out the newest changes in the game, but so far it seems the game gets better each update. However, an update in the economy system is something worthy of consideration and you might find that it appleases the less vocal masses who either fear you or are not willing to take the time to state so. I'd offer suggestions, however I am not too sure you would even wish to hear them.

Lately NMT seems like a hoax. You think that's bad? damaged brand new titan plate first time out training in it. (I should've known better.. but, it was new.. so wanted to test it.) Oh well, easy come easy go. :<

Aww, as odd as it is for me to say this, I'm too strong to participate. Although, sounds like a fun contest. Clarification on the being guildless though.. can you be of a guild and removed via the leaders to participate? Or do you have to be of no guild affiliation what so ever?

Some other, perhaps useless tid bits: Ran into an issue with the local chat tab. Doing : before text was flagging my other channel as having active message. Would have at any given time a GM msg flagged, chan 0, etc. No actual msgs, but was reproduced via the : command. Also, I had trouble creating a character via the new client. Seemed a bit buggy, and would state 'invalid character' so, am not sure if there was a human error or a code error.

Really enjoying this new client, seems to be working even smoother for me than the old. I'm making bone powders now, lots and lots. Sometimes, at random, I will stop mixing without any effort of my own. Harvesting used to do this for me also-- stop without an actual game event. Is this intended to do this or a bug? As long as I have another pestle in inventory I do not stop mixing when one breaks? (I like this, but not too sure if it is a bug or not so figured I would note it.) Chat window! Now this I think is also a wonderful add-in. Seems to jump when scrolling through old msgs when new msgs are added.. maybe intended, idk but annoying sometimes. Also though, there are times the window is just in the way like say a manu window, spell window.. is there a cmd that I can do to close the window and open it? (without having to go through the options menu?) If there is not one I would like to suggest it if possible as I think it would be good to have. That's all I have so far.

On side note: I really, really like the way that Hyper's turned out.

Very nice guys! Shoq you have the paintshop skills that I wish I had. That's an awesome elf rendor too. now to figure out how to use it Thank you guys so much

Hey that's pretty cool. I wonder if I could tweak it. Its just screaming color though.. especially with so much empty space. hrm.. don't think i have gimp anymore tho ;x or can you make that into a top layer and make it transparent with the prog that you're using?

It's not confusion as certainly I made "some" gc while I was exping. Its simply the arguement of those who say you can make gc with manu. No, they most likely made gc via their alch skill. Break it down further and the profit in alch is via harvesting. You're accounting for your exp as your profit bonus which is not a bad wave of thinking until you get into the fact that you can make more exp via training a/d. In fact I can now profit from training a/d when I do it right. Steel bar is 8 iron.. make an essence with that iron on site and you turned that iron into 56 gc when you replace the coal and fe for silver and tiger lilly and you eliminated cooldown problems so you got even better exp and used an even less food cost and can out put even more product. You can turn anything into profit, although some methods are a bix more taxing than others and some will have a faster profit. Though I don't recommend crunching numbers too much. If you enjoy making steel bars go for it. If you enjoy making swords, make swords.

Well.. am not entirely sure what I want and am hoping that someone might be able to come up with something via some basic information of my character. Name: Zanadu, Female Elf, w/black hair. Potioner, alchemist, and now becoming fighter. So maybe a sensual, elvan female, fighter alure to it might be good if someone can find an appropriate image to add in. If not an image perhaps a nice font with a vibrant abrastic color background. Eh, not much to go on but if you are good and want reward perhaps I can work that out too

Harvesting level doesn't affect harvesting speed, as long as you are over the recommended level and have positive food level. And even if you don't have positive food level the slowdown is minor. 2x as fast may have been an exaggeration to a degree, however I have noticed a difference in speed on some things when I advanced levels. Something that I picked up on when doing tree mushrooms, since I do not do it often. I was actually getting to where I was cutting the time down by actual minutes. Something that I most likely would not notice with lesser items, but since I only harvest them on occassion and they are already so slow to harvest its noticable. Also noticed when doing projects with higher level harvesters-- Almost every time they will have harvested more ore than me in the same amount of time. If there is a cut off level on speed of harvest, it's not completely based on recommended level. Maybe like mixing and fail rates? Hmm.. not too sure and not even enough patience to clock it. Hmm, maybe piper would be one to test it with since he has a really, really high harvest level.

Trinity is good for getting an estimated price, but does not always accurately reflect market value. Would be glad to know of these PC's also.

Its not true. Of course, if you are freight hauling iron ore to storage and mix the bars there, it is true. But who is such an idiot to do that after the first week of play? You go to the right iron mine and pile up coal next to the iron spot, then mine iron while making bars, sure you know this. All it takes is FE and FP's or raw meat and mining supplies and you'll turn out 70-80 steel bars per hour. And thanksfully all these good iron mines are overrun with skeletons and stuff that keep bagjumping n44bs out, so you don't lose bags either. If you go the extra mile of turning steel into anything except hydro bars, you lose money. Mining tit is faster and better if you have large emu and high inorganic nexus, but not raw materials. I could've sworn I covered this in my post. Ever occure to you why coal is such a high seller in the market channel? Why iron sells for 3gc? They're not making earth essence with that coal I'm sure. Yes, ppl do buy ingri to make their bars. Why do they do it? Because while you are making 70-80 bars they're making more bars faster with the convience of not having to work on site. Yes, there are some mixers who prefer only to work at storage. Steel Bar 3x 8 =24 Iron Cost 2x5 = 10 Coal Cost 3x3 = 9 (At a good fe price) 3x3.5 = 10.5 (Normal Fe price) That's a 44 base raw good cost on a bar that sells for 39-40gc and you haven't even accounted for food cost yet. Titanium Bar 8x2.5=20 (That's how much I am going to get just selling that ore to npc) 3x2= 6 coal 7x3 = 21/ 7x3.5=24.5 Cost even without food is 50.5 If you make a titanium bar (and are not anti) I really hope you are making it to use or just like the exp. Yes, almost everyone sees the price of the bar and thinks Wow!? I can make that much?! EXP is usually what triggers people to buy the raw goods on a continous basis. Of course you can bring your raw good price down by harvesting your own items. I covered that already so there is no point in disagreeing there. However, there is still the high chance that I made just as much harvesting titanium while prolly surfing the net, cleaning the house, etc than you made in the time of hauling resources to make bars. Depends greatly on harvesting skill believe it or not. Which brings you to full circle back to the innitial point that harvesting has the most potential to make the most profit. Someone with a harvesting skill of 100 is going to harvest that iron well over 2x faster than someone with a lvl 30 harvesting skill. On site or hauling to storage is not the issue at all. Harvesting skill is. Toss in a high alch skill and your fail rate is down. Tried and tested: Essence have the most potential for profit gain in alchemy and also imho the most potential for the best exping session also. You might be quick to say hydro is best for profit, however, on the contrary you're not just using swords when you go to hydro mine. That trip to hydro might cost you additional gc that you are not configuring into that 10k amount of the finished bar. I would go into further details but discussion of hydro, but it is not appropriate for public I don't think. Aside from those additional risks, there is also that always possible fail on a bar. No pain, no gain though. ^.^ You can make money in every mundane task you do in the game. Be it making bars on site, harvesting, essence, cotton/thread, whatever. But there is no doubt that some methods are easier(requiring less effort).