Alchemy - Easy as 1-2-3!

You advanced to level 123 of alchemy!

\o/

Alch levels aren't simple these days. I'm estimating it'll take mixing 70k Health essence to get the next level... that's 70k mums, 140k silver, and of course the bones to mix 'em. Fun! ;)


Yeah, health essences. Not bars. I make bars as needed of course, and other essies as well. But my primary focus has been HEs simply because they're easy to sell, or trade for ings. Which in the end makes leveling using them a lot faster.



I got a little web project I'm developing that'll be used to help increase my leveling. Coming soon...



Back to mixing. More work on the alch levels planned. Also looking to get my gc up a bit so I can mule some leather/thread and get my manu helm mojo going again.

Eng level, Quests, Lenny, and Such

Gotten a bit done in-game of late, though I've been off more than on...

1) Quests ... finished the medallion quest, and gotten a start on the latest Novac critters. 4 of the 5 have been kicked, only 1 to go on that.

2) Helped Lenny kick the bucket twice while out hunting Novac critters. ;)

3) Found a new Joker location in the process as well to add to my limited list of those.

4) Got an Engineering level, mostly from Eng dailies and as well exp from finishing the above-mentioned quest. (Screenshot not available unfortunately.)





Most of my time has been working on Alchemy. Tons and tons of health essies as well as energy essies when I have the iron. Down to just 1.7 million exp needed for an alch level now, which isn't bad considering the full level is about 6.4 million exp! Focusing on getting ings and bones for mixing the essies rather than gc.

Though I've kept some essies stocked on my bot for sale for gc... had to buy some more books, and will need to again before the week is up.


Continuing to do dailies, attempting to finish the latest Novac, hopefully finally break my damaged iron greaves (gah!), and mix-mania for alch leveling.

Latest status update, done. ;)

The Art of Mix Leveling - Some Points to Consider

(By now if you've gotten anywhere in a mixing skill, you should already understand most if not all of this article. This is geared more towards newer players who may think that "doing the highest recommended item" in a skill is the best way to level that skill.)


Leveling a skill in Eternal Lands is not as straight-forward as most new players may think. The thing looked at the most is the "recommended level". There are, however, several other factors involved that need to be considered when looking for "the best item to level a skill with".

Consideration 1: Fail Rate

(rec level, astro)

The "recommended level" for an item is approximately 50% chance that you will successfully create the item. The lower your level is below that, the more your chance is to fail. And of course, the higher your level, the less likely you will fail.

This may not seem to change much as your levels increase, but it is, albeit slowly. I as a 100+ alcher and potioner have very few fails on essences and potions, even on very bad astro, so getting those levels does eventually help immensely in reducing failures.

But the point: If you're losing a lot of ings just to stick to the "rec level", you're not helping yourself.

Instead, doing something that gives less experience (a lower rec level) but causes less fails and ing loss can very well get you more experience at less cost.

If your alchemy level is 20 for example, you can very well do much better and level faster mixing level 14 life essences (or even level 1 fire essences) than you will level 20 magic essences, even though they provide more experience each.




Consideration 2: Getting the Ingredients

What kind of ingredients are you looking at? Are they easily bought or will you have to harvest them all yourself? How fast does each ing harv?

The speed of leveling a mixing skill isn't so much determined by the experience per item or its level as it is how fast you can get the ingredients to mix.

Do some calculations, see how much time it takes you to harvest ingredients for item X. Compare to how long it takes to getting ings to item Y, which may give less exp for mixing.

You just may find a drastic difference where the item that gives a bit less exp in the end will help you level faster.

Life essence, for example, gives less experience than Magic essence. However, it takes a lot less time to harvest the 1 silver and 2 sunflowers than 1 emerald, 1 lilac, and 1 impatiens.

Fire essence even, the lowest exp of any essences, can still turn out to be faster to use to level than Matter essence since matter has 4 different slower-harving ingredients. Even mixing Matter essence in a bag at the ingredients won't change that.

You must definitely take the time it takes to acquire the ingredients in your decision as to what to use to level.


3. Cost/Profit, sellability

Besides just mixing the items, you need to be able to sell them if you're not using them yourself.

And not all things sell easily. There are certain items that are constantly needed, while others you'll be lucky to find a buyer.

Take some time to get to know the market channel. Study what players (not bots) are buying and selling. You'll soon learn what items are more readily sellable.

Those Earth essences may give you more experience, but they are a hard sell compared to Fire essences.

It does you no good to be making a bunch of something that you'll have a hard time offloading later. You could have been making a profit with something giving slightly less experience instead.



4. Food hindrances

Also determining the speed you mix is food, more specifically the cooldown on food.

If you're a bone eater (perk) or learn to safely use toadies (newbies, wait a bit before trying) this isn't as big an issue.

But if you're relying on cooldown-hit foods, how much food it takes to mix an item can determine the rate you make them.

You'll suffer a cooldown wait time on food with bread, veggies, and fruit no matter what you're mixing. (exception of bone powder which doesn't require food at all.)


Fire essence and other 1-food-point items can very easily be mixed on Cooked Meat with the cooldown not taking away from time.

Anything that takes 2-6 food points per mix can be mixed with Feasting Potions with no cooldown wait. (Essies up to Energy Essence, for example.)

Anything requiring 7 food points or more will have some wait for food cooldown even on Feasting Potions.

This wait time should be included in your calculations on mixing speed vs. experience if it is relevant to you.

The Latest Round of Price Whining

Seems to be a new wave of complaints about more recent price changes.

Focus: 1) Instance drop item prices dropping. 2) General use fighter items such as HEs and SRs costing more. 3) Nexus Removal stone price hikes.


I'll look at each of those individually...

1) Instance drop items - With the load of people farming instances, this is just simply "No shit, Sherlock".

Start flooding the market for an item that is only an occasional buy at best, there's too many, people have to lower their price to be more attractive for a sale compared to others.

The people complaining about this primarily are of course the instance farmers, since they're the ones losing money with each trip they make.

With any luck, instances will hit the point of unprofitably soon enough and the farmers will actually have to do something in the game instead.


2) Basic items (HEs/SRs/EnEs/MatEs/etc) prices going up.

I warned you people about this last year, but only few paid attention. The rest were too driven by greed to care. Now they're paying for it, and whining about what they did to themselves.

How were you warned? The boneheads that caused the sudden hike of silver prices from 2 to 2.5 are the reason for this.

I started a campaign to boycott these people. I along with others continued to sell silver at 2gc in an attempt to keep this from happening, as we understood what it would mean to the economics of the game to have such a hike on a base item.

But in the end, there were too many greedy boneheads. I have since had to accept the price hike as it became the standard.

You greedy boneheads who helped increase the cost of this one base item are at fault for all essie/bar price hikes. Even stuff not including silver.

And as such, you have no right to complain about price hikes of mixed stuff.

Silver increase directly caused price increases for HEs, LEs, and EnEs. And of course, silver bars.

Because silver became more profitable to harv than things like diamonds and iron, those things got harved less, until their prices also got hiked making them more profitable.

Which in turn increased the price of AEs as well as iron/steel bars, which in turn increased the price of S2Es, which in turn increased the price of hydro bars.

That one silver ore price hike caused price hikes around the board.


Add to this: The primary used essies such as HEs and EnEs give no chance of a rare item. This alone makes them less made than some other lesser-used essies. Fighters pushing to get these essies at lower prices get pissed when they can't, but don't grasp that they caused the hike selling silver for a higher price before, and there's not so many people providing these essies in the first place.

Matter Essies alone have seen a drastic hike due to both iron price increase and lack of quartz ings available forcing them all to be harved. (Anyone using the "well, there's places you can harv all 4 ings together" line to excuse wanting a cheaper price on these needs to be shot. The time it takes to make these is from the harving, not their location.)


So for things like HEs... the boneheads who increased the silver price, the lack of players massively making these, and the overwhelming need for them for fighters has all combined to increase the cost of them.

Similar combos of reasons can be found for other items as well.

Next time you wanna whine about the increased cost of essies/bars and such, figure out what you were doing when some of us were trying to keep this from happening by boycotting the 2.5gc silver sellers.



3) Nexus Removal Stone price drastically increasing.

I've read it all... there's people actually claiming it's the "greedy harvers" who find them that have caused this hike.

The truth: It's the buyers.

Many moons ago, I decided that Human 10 wasn't worth the cape and removed 3 to get Human 7 instead. At that time, I paid 350kgc each for the Human Removal Stones.

350kgc. This was less than 2 years ago.

Along came a bunch of gc buyers and such, buying up all these stones. Setting their bots to buy at the (at the time) outragous price of 700kgc, keeping that increasing as others battled to buy them as well.

Those price hikes? Certainly not the harvers. Those who find a nexus stone sell it at what they can best get for it. And it was the buyers offering to buy them at these prices, without the finder even having to set a price.

Those prices being offered to buy them just kept going up. Add to that, some other greedy types who'd buy them at the current high price on their bot, and sell them on the bot for yet another 100k. Again, not the person who found the stone's doing but greedy in-betweens.

A couple months ago I found a nexus stone. My very first and only in 2.5 years of harvesting with over 9.5million items harvested.

It sold for 950kgc. I set that as a buy-it-now price, but offered it in auction at 700kgc start. People hiked their bids directly up to 850kgc without trying lower first, until eventually the stone sold at the 950kgc after only a few hours available.

My fault as the person who found it? Hardly. Auctions allow those who are buying to determine the price. If it gets sold at an outrageous price, it's the player who bought it at that price to "blame", not me.

And these same players complaining about the nexus stone cost also tend to be instance-farmers, where we're starting to regularly see nexus stones come into the game. Funny, the price isn't going down because of them.

Eternal Alchemist...

Been off and on a lot of late, but still regularly playing.

Seem to have gained a primary focus on alchemy, even though it's the hardest skill for me to level these days. (Takes about 65k HEs to get a level, for example. With goddess.)

Been pumping out essies like a madman, trading them for various ings, pumping out more.

HEs and EnEs being the primary ones since they go fast. Matter, Life, and even Death essies to a smaller extent.

Yeah, bars give more exp, but getting the ings can take more time. I trade essies for whatever essie ings I can get and mix those instead.


To good work... Just got Alchemy level 122 yesterday. (Sorry, no screenie.)

Got more plans that will see to more alchemy exp (and even exp in other skills) in the near future. Whatever that can be done to reduce the amount of time spent harving ings.


GC is not a priority in this, trading primarily for ings. However, I do still sell some essies on my bot to keep some gc coming in. Still have to buy things like books. Less than 40 left to read!


BTW... I am not a heavy chatter. I have a select few people I normally talk to, and of course my fellow moderators. Otherwise I'm heavily occupied trying to actually play when I have time. I do not have time to play "500 questions" with anyone. Just because I write this blog doesn't mean I want to sit and chat about it all day, every day. If you have comments on a post, there's a means of posting those here. I have had to take to ignoring people who constantly pester me about this in-game. Which could be detrimental to such people should they actually need me for a moderator issue.