(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.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Stats, Part 1
Well over 2.5 years into game play, thought I'd take a closer look at my stats, and where they are going from here...
Part 1 of I dunno... looking at a few at a time.
Harvesting
Holy crap I've harved a lot. And in variety too, hehe. 9.4 million items harvested total thus far.
1) Iron of course at the top due to motherloads of S2Es (iron/steel bars), energy essence, and so forth. Will likely continue to rise heavily.
2) BSFs have been heavily used for both the usual SRs as well as Blue Dye for leveling Tailoring. Won't be rising so much in the near future as I'm not focusing on potion and planning to try other methods for tailoring leveling.
3) Sunflowers got there primarily due to BRs when I was heavily leveling Potion. Though a chunk of course went to mixing LEs. They may continue to be harvested in the near future, though for tailoring, otherwise they'll be stagnant for a while.
4) Silver is always needed. I've mixed over 400k HEs which alone explains the harvesting. I've obviously bought a lot as well if I've mixed that much. Add to that silver for bars to make rings and a motherload of moon medallions when I was leveling Crafting... this will continue to heavily rise.
5) Coal - The necessity of bars. I harvest when I need it, which is regularly.
6) Chrysanthemums - HEs... will continue to rise in extreme amounts.
7) Red Rose - My days of mixing FEs myself are essentially over, so these are no longer harvested. However, I may need them for tailoring so they may go up a bit.
8) Red Snapdragons - No longer mixing FEs, so no longer harvesting these.
9) Sulfur - May go up in small amounts as needed for things outside of FEs. Blackpowder and such. No remarkable amounts will be needed though.
10) Lilacs - Of course, mixing as many magic ess as possible to work on alchemy level, but not dependant on those for leveling. These, along with impatiens and emeralds, will continue to be harved at steady levels.
I have a use for most everything, so only a handful of things won't continue to be regularly or ever harved.
Kills
Rather than list out everything, I put green dots next to creatures that I regularly attack these days.
Some for training (desert chims and things on that level), some for drops (still need a rare book that pandas and pumas drop for example), and still others I regularly kick because they happen to be on the same map as something else I'm attacking.
These days my "training" is not really happening, with most a/d coming solely from dailies.
Of course I'll get back to it in the future, but for now mixing is top priority.
Enough for now...
Part 1 of I dunno... looking at a few at a time.
Harvesting
Holy crap I've harved a lot. And in variety too, hehe. 9.4 million items harvested total thus far.
1) Iron of course at the top due to motherloads of S2Es (iron/steel bars), energy essence, and so forth. Will likely continue to rise heavily.
2) BSFs have been heavily used for both the usual SRs as well as Blue Dye for leveling Tailoring. Won't be rising so much in the near future as I'm not focusing on potion and planning to try other methods for tailoring leveling.
3) Sunflowers got there primarily due to BRs when I was heavily leveling Potion. Though a chunk of course went to mixing LEs. They may continue to be harvested in the near future, though for tailoring, otherwise they'll be stagnant for a while.
4) Silver is always needed. I've mixed over 400k HEs which alone explains the harvesting. I've obviously bought a lot as well if I've mixed that much. Add to that silver for bars to make rings and a motherload of moon medallions when I was leveling Crafting... this will continue to heavily rise.
5) Coal - The necessity of bars. I harvest when I need it, which is regularly.
6) Chrysanthemums - HEs... will continue to rise in extreme amounts.
7) Red Rose - My days of mixing FEs myself are essentially over, so these are no longer harvested. However, I may need them for tailoring so they may go up a bit.
8) Red Snapdragons - No longer mixing FEs, so no longer harvesting these.
9) Sulfur - May go up in small amounts as needed for things outside of FEs. Blackpowder and such. No remarkable amounts will be needed though.
10) Lilacs - Of course, mixing as many magic ess as possible to work on alchemy level, but not dependant on those for leveling. These, along with impatiens and emeralds, will continue to be harved at steady levels.
I have a use for most everything, so only a handful of things won't continue to be regularly or ever harved.
Kills
Rather than list out everything, I put green dots next to creatures that I regularly attack these days.
Some for training (desert chims and things on that level), some for drops (still need a rare book that pandas and pumas drop for example), and still others I regularly kick because they happen to be on the same map as something else I'm attacking.
These days my "training" is not really happening, with most a/d coming solely from dailies.
Of course I'll get back to it in the future, but for now mixing is top priority.
Enough for now...
Sunday, December 26, 2010
All Skills 40+!!!
Yesterday saw...
And with that, my "Jack of All Trades" goal of getting all skills at level 40 or higher is accomplished! \o/
Now, for the next goal, all skills 50+ ... hehe.
That would mean 10 more tailoring levels, and 5 more ranging levels, by the way.
Gotten more levels recently, but wanted to get this goal-accomplished one out there. Harvesting 105 among other things accomplished of late. :)
You advanced to level 40 of tailoring!
And with that, my "Jack of All Trades" goal of getting all skills at level 40 or higher is accomplished! \o/
Now, for the next goal, all skills 50+ ... hehe.
That would mean 10 more tailoring levels, and 5 more ranging levels, by the way.
Gotten more levels recently, but wanted to get this goal-accomplished one out there. Harvesting 105 among other things accomplished of late. :)
Thursday, December 16, 2010
The Road to 100
Had a lot of harvesting to do the other day. Out of sheer boredom, I decided to do something while harving... see what it would take to get my non-100+ skills to 100.
Particularly, cost-wise.
Att, Def, Alch, Pot and Harv are all over 100. That leaves 7 that aren't.
Ranging - Intentionally left out as it's not easily calculable. Way too many varying factors. And well, it would obviously be blatantly expensive anyway. There's a reason noone has reached Ranging 100 yet.
So with ranging left out, I still had 6 skills to check.
COST NOTE: Costs below are "ideal". That is, if there are no lost ings during the mixing. Of course there's always lost ings, so the actual cost is more than what is shown.
TOTAL ITEMS NOTE: Again, "ideal" using only one item. I of course mix things other than helms in manu (for the daily, for example). And I teleport and heal a lot which would reduce the number of spells needed for the leveling examples below.
Listed as determined to be easiest to hardest, based on cost, ings required, and time it would take to do it.
1 - Manufacturing - Current level 72
WITH MANU GOD!
Cheapest method to get to 100 was of course mixing helms and selling them to Trik. The cost of leather, thread, and food is more than Trik pays, so it's still a loss, but not bad compared to schools.
That leather, thread, and FPs are all NPC-purchasable made this the easiest of the skills left to level as well, as there's no concern on finding or self-harving ings.
Selling to Trik, I determined I'd need to make 526,178 helms. The cost of getting to level 100 would be 1,846,885gc. Oh, and it would take 4349 trips from storage to Trik to mix helms at the NPC.
School would be faster of course, with "only" 263,089 helms to make. However, the cost of poofing the ings for those is 6,185,222gc. More than triple the cost of doing them at Trik.
With a tight budget like mine, the cheaper though longer route is better.
2- Crafting - Current Level 69
WITHOUT GOD! (Determined that my god plans for the future had no way to include crafting god in any reasonable amount of time.)
Fastest route to 100 here is moon medallions, selling them to the NPC.
This would entail mixing 168,502 moon medallions, incuding experience from polishing the sapphires and making the silver medallions.
Purchasing all ingredients and food for the process would be an 18gc per medallion loss. That's a total of 3,033,636gc. Almost double the helms at Trik.
Of course, I do a lot of self-harving so that gc amount would be drastically lower.
Glacmor rings were considered but rejected as my craft level is about the rec level of making them, which means a motherload of lost ings. Maybe in the 90's...
Just polishing saps and selling them to the NPC was also considered but dropped as being too costly unless WEs were self-harved and made. And as a 121 alcher I don't want to waste all that time harving and mixing low-level WEs.
3- Summoning - Current Level 51
WITH GOD!
This one surprised me. I was expecting much worse than I determined.
Yeah, it's bad, but not as bad as I thought.
White Tiger Stones are the obvious choice here. It would take 105,034 stones ideally to get to level 100.
If gypsum was bought at storage, it would cost 2,730,884gc with selling the stones to the NPC.
That's less than the crafting! However, this is ideal. In reality, that much gypsum doesn't get sold at storage so there'd actually be a lot of self-harving.
Buying all ings except for the gypsum, there'd actually be a 74gc profit per stone, though it would also mean 5,252 trips from storage to gypsum to mix at the gypsum.
That's a total profit of 7,772,516gc.
Still, I ranked this one lower than crafting due to all the gypsum runs, which are a nuisance.
4- Engineering - Current Level 61
WITH GOD! (Because I already have this god)
The cheapest method here is surely the slowest one. That is, Harvest/Degrade Indicators where turqoise is self-harved. Turq however is extremely slow to harvest, and you can plan almost an hour doing a full-emu trip to harvest and mix at the turquoise.
It would require mixing 235,992 H/D indicators.
If all ings (and food) except turqoise were purchased, there'd be a profit in that.
However, harving over 1.1 million turqoise doesn't sound like a good time to say the least. If you could "ideally" buy it on market instead at the common 4.5gc price (which, face it, you'll never find that much on market) it would be a loss of 4,129,860gc.
I decided a second option to be better, though a bit more costly... Point Defense mixed in the Eng school.
269,923 point defenses in the Eng school would have an ing cost (at current market prices) of 4,723,653gc.
I chose this as the better option because, being a 121 alcher, I'd harv/buy ings and mix the EnEs required myself. Even buying the ings and food for those, I'd save 1,349,615gc bringing the point defense cost down to "just" 3,374,038gc.
Still, ranking it below some of the other skills at that would still take a lot of time. (Of course, School Days getting 3x exp would be nice, but I don't rely on such days actually happening when I'm online.)
5- Magic - Current Level 73
WITH GOD!
Mana draining by itself is of course the well-known cheapest option. However, that's a PvP solution, and as most know I do not do any form of PK or PvP.
There's always MD-ing desert chims while training on them, but that's still incredibly slow and I just don't train that much these days anyway.
So I came up with an alternate option, one which I have already used before to get at least 30 magic levels.
That is: Grizzly Spawn - MD 30 mana from the bear, kill the bear, Radiation Shield which takes 30 mana. Repeat.
This works great as the bear gives the exact amount of mana needed, and bear respawn time is incredibly fast.
At my level, it would take doing 60,732 grizzlies. That's 60,732 mana drains and 60,732 radiation shields.
Total cost of the essies: 9,170,532gc
However, that's a lot of bear furs to sell too ;) The essies used provide enough space to pick up the full bear drop.
Of course, as a high-level alcher I'd wanna mix all the essies myself, which would make the cost much less. That would mean 240k+ magic essies mixed, a sweet alching thought for experience as well as EME chances.
BTW, if I did MD-ing like most PvPers, it would be 138,678 mana drains at a cost of 8,320,068gc for the essies. Less than 1 million difference.
6 - Tailoring - Current Level 39
(No god exists at this time.)
Wow. Yeah, ranging is probably more expensive. But Tailoring was more expensive than all 5 of the above skills combined!
It would take 1,073,053 blue dyes, or 1,430,737 orange dyes to get to 100 ideally.
Orange Dyes are considered as they're the only ones that don't require saltpeter, making them easier to mix.
Blue Dyes were considered because their flower ingredient is the easiest to harv. Doing these would mean a lot of engineering as well due to the saltpeter.
In the end, I decided to kill thoughts of blue dyes as I determined I'd be better off cost-wise doing orange dyes, and doing the aforementioned point defenses in the eng school to get my eng level up.
With all bought ingredients, and selling the orange dyes to the NPC, the total cost would be: 44,352,847gc
Holy crap...
It would also mean 20,030,718 each of red roses and sunflowers.
The cost of course could be brought down by self-harving, but hell, look at the number of flowers to harv!
And yes, that's sadly the cheapest way to level tailoring. :P
The blue dyes, btw, buying ings and mixing own saltpeter, would cost over 63 million gc.
Well, that's it for that fun. Not really a necessary entry, just something trivial I did for giggles.
Particularly, cost-wise.
Att, Def, Alch, Pot and Harv are all over 100. That leaves 7 that aren't.
Ranging - Intentionally left out as it's not easily calculable. Way too many varying factors. And well, it would obviously be blatantly expensive anyway. There's a reason noone has reached Ranging 100 yet.
So with ranging left out, I still had 6 skills to check.
COST NOTE: Costs below are "ideal". That is, if there are no lost ings during the mixing. Of course there's always lost ings, so the actual cost is more than what is shown.
TOTAL ITEMS NOTE: Again, "ideal" using only one item. I of course mix things other than helms in manu (for the daily, for example). And I teleport and heal a lot which would reduce the number of spells needed for the leveling examples below.
Listed as determined to be easiest to hardest, based on cost, ings required, and time it would take to do it.
1 - Manufacturing - Current level 72
WITH MANU GOD!
Cheapest method to get to 100 was of course mixing helms and selling them to Trik. The cost of leather, thread, and food is more than Trik pays, so it's still a loss, but not bad compared to schools.
That leather, thread, and FPs are all NPC-purchasable made this the easiest of the skills left to level as well, as there's no concern on finding or self-harving ings.
Selling to Trik, I determined I'd need to make 526,178 helms. The cost of getting to level 100 would be 1,846,885gc. Oh, and it would take 4349 trips from storage to Trik to mix helms at the NPC.
School would be faster of course, with "only" 263,089 helms to make. However, the cost of poofing the ings for those is 6,185,222gc. More than triple the cost of doing them at Trik.
With a tight budget like mine, the cheaper though longer route is better.
2- Crafting - Current Level 69
WITHOUT GOD! (Determined that my god plans for the future had no way to include crafting god in any reasonable amount of time.)
Fastest route to 100 here is moon medallions, selling them to the NPC.
This would entail mixing 168,502 moon medallions, incuding experience from polishing the sapphires and making the silver medallions.
Purchasing all ingredients and food for the process would be an 18gc per medallion loss. That's a total of 3,033,636gc. Almost double the helms at Trik.
Of course, I do a lot of self-harving so that gc amount would be drastically lower.
Glacmor rings were considered but rejected as my craft level is about the rec level of making them, which means a motherload of lost ings. Maybe in the 90's...
Just polishing saps and selling them to the NPC was also considered but dropped as being too costly unless WEs were self-harved and made. And as a 121 alcher I don't want to waste all that time harving and mixing low-level WEs.
3- Summoning - Current Level 51
WITH GOD!
This one surprised me. I was expecting much worse than I determined.
Yeah, it's bad, but not as bad as I thought.
White Tiger Stones are the obvious choice here. It would take 105,034 stones ideally to get to level 100.
If gypsum was bought at storage, it would cost 2,730,884gc with selling the stones to the NPC.
That's less than the crafting! However, this is ideal. In reality, that much gypsum doesn't get sold at storage so there'd actually be a lot of self-harving.
Buying all ings except for the gypsum, there'd actually be a 74gc profit per stone, though it would also mean 5,252 trips from storage to gypsum to mix at the gypsum.
That's a total profit of 7,772,516gc.
Still, I ranked this one lower than crafting due to all the gypsum runs, which are a nuisance.
4- Engineering - Current Level 61
WITH GOD! (Because I already have this god)
The cheapest method here is surely the slowest one. That is, Harvest/Degrade Indicators where turqoise is self-harved. Turq however is extremely slow to harvest, and you can plan almost an hour doing a full-emu trip to harvest and mix at the turquoise.
It would require mixing 235,992 H/D indicators.
If all ings (and food) except turqoise were purchased, there'd be a profit in that.
However, harving over 1.1 million turqoise doesn't sound like a good time to say the least. If you could "ideally" buy it on market instead at the common 4.5gc price (which, face it, you'll never find that much on market) it would be a loss of 4,129,860gc.
I decided a second option to be better, though a bit more costly... Point Defense mixed in the Eng school.
269,923 point defenses in the Eng school would have an ing cost (at current market prices) of 4,723,653gc.
I chose this as the better option because, being a 121 alcher, I'd harv/buy ings and mix the EnEs required myself. Even buying the ings and food for those, I'd save 1,349,615gc bringing the point defense cost down to "just" 3,374,038gc.
Still, ranking it below some of the other skills at that would still take a lot of time. (Of course, School Days getting 3x exp would be nice, but I don't rely on such days actually happening when I'm online.)
5- Magic - Current Level 73
WITH GOD!
Mana draining by itself is of course the well-known cheapest option. However, that's a PvP solution, and as most know I do not do any form of PK or PvP.
There's always MD-ing desert chims while training on them, but that's still incredibly slow and I just don't train that much these days anyway.
So I came up with an alternate option, one which I have already used before to get at least 30 magic levels.
That is: Grizzly Spawn - MD 30 mana from the bear, kill the bear, Radiation Shield which takes 30 mana. Repeat.
This works great as the bear gives the exact amount of mana needed, and bear respawn time is incredibly fast.
At my level, it would take doing 60,732 grizzlies. That's 60,732 mana drains and 60,732 radiation shields.
Total cost of the essies: 9,170,532gc
However, that's a lot of bear furs to sell too ;) The essies used provide enough space to pick up the full bear drop.
Of course, as a high-level alcher I'd wanna mix all the essies myself, which would make the cost much less. That would mean 240k+ magic essies mixed, a sweet alching thought for experience as well as EME chances.
BTW, if I did MD-ing like most PvPers, it would be 138,678 mana drains at a cost of 8,320,068gc for the essies. Less than 1 million difference.
6 - Tailoring - Current Level 39
(No god exists at this time.)
Wow. Yeah, ranging is probably more expensive. But Tailoring was more expensive than all 5 of the above skills combined!
It would take 1,073,053 blue dyes, or 1,430,737 orange dyes to get to 100 ideally.
Orange Dyes are considered as they're the only ones that don't require saltpeter, making them easier to mix.
Blue Dyes were considered because their flower ingredient is the easiest to harv. Doing these would mean a lot of engineering as well due to the saltpeter.
In the end, I decided to kill thoughts of blue dyes as I determined I'd be better off cost-wise doing orange dyes, and doing the aforementioned point defenses in the eng school to get my eng level up.
With all bought ingredients, and selling the orange dyes to the NPC, the total cost would be: 44,352,847gc
Holy crap...
It would also mean 20,030,718 each of red roses and sunflowers.
The cost of course could be brought down by self-harving, but hell, look at the number of flowers to harv!
And yes, that's sadly the cheapest way to level tailoring. :P
The blue dyes, btw, buying ings and mixing own saltpeter, would cost over 63 million gc.
Well, that's it for that fun. Not really a necessary entry, just something trivial I did for giggles.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
The Brief Update...
Had another short period of offline time, but back today, heh.
I made some changes in my path since I last wrote.
1) Focusing on mix skills.
I may go kick chims as a break from mixing and harving, but not planning to do any a/d training for a while. Sometimes as an all-rounder some skills get prioritized over others, and I got a ton I want to do with mix skills. So taking a break from a/d training.
2) Dropped Defense god, took up Manu god.
To go along with my mix focus. I really wanna get the perk that comes with finishing the manu tutorial. In order to get it, I need at least 20 more manu levels, and as well I'm reading a ton of manu books (dragon armor construction) to prepare for it.
3) "Burn found an Animal Removal Stone."
Found one, sold it for 950kgc the same day. Spent the majority of the gc the same day...
a) Bought 30 Archery AP potions (which will take me to the maximum 60 AP when I use them. Waiting for the special day to use them so I might save a few, sell the remains on my bot.)
b) Bought 120kgc worth of manu books.
c) Bought a steel set to eventually degrade and break for the armor breaking quest.
d) Stocked some NPC-only supplies.
In the end, was left with about 100kgc of the 950kgc, 2 hours after getting the gc. :P
All-rounders just can't keep money around, hehe.
I've also killed Lenny about 8 times since my last entry, with hopes that a Lenny achievement had been added. No messages.
But, I haven't logged in yet, and I see that there's new achievements on a server update today. Here's hoping... :P
I made some changes in my path since I last wrote.
1) Focusing on mix skills.
I may go kick chims as a break from mixing and harving, but not planning to do any a/d training for a while. Sometimes as an all-rounder some skills get prioritized over others, and I got a ton I want to do with mix skills. So taking a break from a/d training.
2) Dropped Defense god, took up Manu god.
To go along with my mix focus. I really wanna get the perk that comes with finishing the manu tutorial. In order to get it, I need at least 20 more manu levels, and as well I'm reading a ton of manu books (dragon armor construction) to prepare for it.
3) "Burn found an Animal Removal Stone."
Found one, sold it for 950kgc the same day. Spent the majority of the gc the same day...
a) Bought 30 Archery AP potions (which will take me to the maximum 60 AP when I use them. Waiting for the special day to use them so I might save a few, sell the remains on my bot.)
b) Bought 120kgc worth of manu books.
c) Bought a steel set to eventually degrade and break for the armor breaking quest.
d) Stocked some NPC-only supplies.
In the end, was left with about 100kgc of the 950kgc, 2 hours after getting the gc. :P
All-rounders just can't keep money around, hehe.
I've also killed Lenny about 8 times since my last entry, with hopes that a Lenny achievement had been added. No messages.
But, I haven't logged in yet, and I see that there's new achievements on a server update today. Here's hoping... :P
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