Arelith

Hi. The money you earn from heads with a Leadership skill dump recently got nerfed. Now you get about 65% percent of the money that you used to get with a full leadership dump. My SOURCES (Discord) tell me that selling iceberries and flameberries have also been nerfed. Now they only sell for 1 gp to the peddler.

EDIT: Berries did not get nerfed, it was a bug.

This both sucks. Let me explain why.

Being a Caster With Scribe Scroll or Craft Wand is Basically Printing Money

Let us first imagine two characters. A rogue with a full dump in tailoring, and a cleric with craft wand. They both go to Sibayad and find four adventurers preparing to set off into the tombs.

The rogue asks the group if they need gem pouches, which she has been stitching. The adventurers politely decline because they already have their own gem pouches.

The cleric asks the group if they need wands of negative energy protection. She'll even sell them for less than she usually sells them at about 7,000gp, because she's Neutral Good and hates the undead. Hells yes, the adventurers say excitedly, making a quick detour inside the Merchant's League building to grab some $$$. Assuming they each pay 7,000 gold for a wand, and it takes 6,000gp to make the wand, the cleric comes home with 28,000gp, and receives a net gain of 4,000gp. The rogue comes home with nothing.

When I say it's easy for casters to make money with wands and scrolls, I'm told that mundanes can just make money from crafting (4hed). "Even if they don't have a shop, you can just walk up to people and cold-call them!" Yeah, you could, but what most people tend to miss here is that caster stuff is generally always in demand. People always need an extra wand of freedom of movement, bull's strength, lesser spell breach. Buffs are a thing that people are constantly using and running out of. Even though a gem pouch is always in demand, every character only needs one gem pouch. Every character needs many, many buffs.

Building Off That... (The Cost of Being Mundane)

Casters do not need to pay for their buffs. Most of the time, they don't even need buffs. Some bear's endurance, a bull's strength if they need to carry something, the occasional haste. This, combined with their ability to make a lot of money because their stuff is always in demand, makes them a lot richer than your average mundane.

But mundanes need to pay for a lot. Healing kits to spam in case you're brought low. A couple lesser resto scrolls. Your buffs-- not just your basic zoos, but also NEP, FoM, ultravision, protection from alignment, shadow conjuration (I prefer it over mage armor since I think you get more AC out of shadow conj), lesser spell breach, shield, see invisibility, haste, the list goes on for as long as there are wandable spells. Obviously you don't need each and every one of these every time you go into a dungeon. But as stated prior, you're going to be using these, and you're going to be using them constantly if you want to do content. Especially if you want to do endgame content and earn endgame loot for your endgame gear.

It gets even more egregious if you're some sort of peasant a class that doesn't have access to UMD. You can purchase basic zoo wards from various NPC merchants in various places (that is, if you don't find the Thayans or the Amnians or the palemaster morally objectionable, whoops). These are about 84gp a pop, which seems inexpensive on paper. But not every consumed potion will give you max stats, and you want to stock up anyway. Let's say you buy 10 potions of bull's strength. That's 840gp! Not to mention your potions of endurance, cat's grace, and fox's cunning (for language lessons). Buy ten of each of these, and that's 3360gp you're spending on wards.

Did I mention loot matrix pots only last 60 minutes?

Then you also have to supplement that with your other buffs. Again, NEP, FoM, ultravision, protection from alignment, shadow conjuration, lesser spell breach, shield, see invisibility, haste... repeat ad infinitum. I generally see these pots sold for about 300-500gp a pop, depending on what they are. So, ten pots of shadow conjuration would be about 5,000gp, probably a little less.

You (hopefully) see my point. It all adds up, and adds up fast. Writ rewards just mean you're staving off the inevitable bankruptcy, especially in the Underdark.

Rapid-Fire Counters to Common Arguments

Just join a faction. This is about allowing a certain degree of self-sufficiency, as well as a large gap between the money that a mundane makes versus the money that a caster makes. Not everybody gets the RP opportunity to join a faction immediately that pays for everything. A mundane will still need money to adequately supply themselves in the early game, and even in the late game if they choose to go their own way. Which isn't to say that cooperation shouldn't be the goal (as this is an RP server), but rather that the average person generally doesn't want to rely on another player to get them everything they need.

Just go grind with other people. Picture this; I, a monk, a paladin, and a barbarian go through the endless battlefield and Manor Manfried to help the paladin with his writs. We come out with about 21,000gp. Split three ways, this comes out to about 8333gp. See my prior figures on how much being a mundane costs.
* Just take more money from the loot split. Not everyone plays selfish characters or wants to be selfish.

Take an appraise dump. Not every class has the room for such. It's mostly rogues and bards that can fit a full dump in appraise or search into their build.

Mundanes were making too much money. Again, see my figures on the cost of being mundane, as well as the lack of need a caster has for such spendings-- and the opportunities casters have to make so much more money.

In Conclusion

Leadership doesn't have to go back to the figures it made before this change, and flameberries/iceberries can have a fixed cap of selling if this is really such a serious problem that it needs to be nerfed this hard. But please. The gap of money is so big. I don't want to be broke.

I agree mostly though I do think there's a bit of "grass is greener" here-- crafting wands and scrolls isn't really that lucrative unless you're well connected to have regular customers or have a high profile shop, and if either of those is the case you can make money in plenty of other ways too. These things pay off most at end game and especially if you're semi-retired, already rich and can eat the cost of spamming wands and scrolls that may take a while to sell. I don't think when you're pre-epic the crafting feats really help you all that much outside the convenience factor since wands, scrolls and potions aren't free in xp or gp to make and you'll easily cancel out any progress from writs if you do too many.

Also arcanists need spell components which is a constant time or financial drain.

That said I agree money, especially early on, is short and mundanes do have it worse. Gift of Wealth, especially now that is was made a minor gift and is easier to justify taking, might help a bit if there's not some other skill you desperately want and you don't have time for or enjoy crafting. Making repair kits seems a good way to generate cash if you can find customers and if you're strength based playing the resource game with settlements can pay off pretty well.

I recently played 2 casters to lvl 30, and before that I played 2 mundanes (one of which is also 5-stat build with difficult gearing) and honestly? Leveling casters to 30 requires little to no gear. It's just as effortless to level a caster to 30 with +1 gear of prime stat that you find in loot by lvl 5. On top of that, casters buff themselves, but it's not like mundanes dont have to use about the same buffs to survive the content, so mundanes need to upgrade their gear every 5 levels or so early on pre-epics and then again at lvl 30 with an end-game gear, and need to fund their own consumables which casters dont have to.

I have no idea how pve is balanced for casters and mundanes at the same time. And my current conclusion that hasnt changed for years - it just isnt.

Duchess Says wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 11:00 pm I agree mostly though I do think there's a bit of "grass is greener" here-- crafting wands and scrolls isn't really that lucrative unless you're well connected to have regular customers or have a high profile shop, and if either of those is the case you can make money in plenty of other ways too. These things pay off most at end game and especially if you're semi-retired, already rich and can eat the cost of spamming wands and scrolls that may take a while to sell. I don't think when you're pre-epic the crafting feats really help you all that much outside the convenience factor since wands, scrolls and potions aren't free in xp or gp to make and you'll easily cancel out any progress from writs if you do too many.

Also arcanists need spell components which is a constant time or financial drain.

That said I agree money, especially early on, is short and mundanes do have it worse. Gift of Wealth, especially now that is was made a minor gift and is easier to justify taking, might help a bit if there's not some other skill you desperately want and you don't have time for or enjoy crafting. Making repair kits seems a good way to generate cash if you can find customers and if you're strength based playing the resource game with settlements can pay off pretty well.

Reasonable. The crux of my argument largely relied on casters having access to create something that was always in demand; not necessarily immediately accessible to them, but once they hit the stride of being level 30 and having a ton of free XP (which was something I actually forgot about!) it's a lot easier for them to retain money.

As for repair kits, I would argue they're not as convenient nor as easy to make as crafting wands are. Smithing repair kits at the very least require you to grind for oil flasks, buy them, or have an alchemist on hand to make more of them. For a tailor, you need a smith on hand to make your bronze ingots, and you're going to need to blow through 32 cotton per 10 repair kits just to make something that's really worth about like, 1,000 a kit.

The settlement game is not a bad argument, actually, though you do have to keep up with changing prices.

I can't add much to this since I am not really feeling it myself at Epic. Maybe when I create a new character, I can feel this.
Before a 1 hour dungeon run can net me about 50-70, depending on luck. That is with only an investment in leadership and a pimped up gear on uninvested appraise.
Now, its reduced to 30-40k. Which is fine by itself I think. Not like I really need gold in epic levels.

I think the problem here is the economy, with players valuing their sellables at a market price that seemed fair when gold was easier to get. Now that it isn't that common, all those grinding starting at level 3 will feel the market crash. I hope with time it will be remedied with players adjusting their prices rather than changes mechanically. This will take RL months to adjust or maybe, not even adjust, with players viewing their sellables at previous market price and will not change it since most of stall holders are epic and doesn't really need gold all that much aside from the 5% farming some of them are doing.

As someone who's played 50 different casters and now embarked on the mundane adventure, yes, true, I can't argue with this. I only wish that the Arelith potion/scroll/wand calculator was consistent with it's algorithm. That way you would see scrolls being sold cheaper than what you can get from NPCs, and that would greatly benefit mundanes.

It's no secret that casters, mainly, make or break the economy.

One small correction though: The zoo potions sold by NPCs or gathered through loot last an entire 60 minutes.

That is because they have a caster level of 3, and each hour lasts 20 real minutes. When the time change happened, the potions went from lasting 18 minutes to 60 minutes, which was a huge boon for especially mundanes (but also for casters who like to free up their spell slots for something else).

MissEvelyn wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 11:29 pm As someone who's played 50 different casters and now embarked on the mundane adventure, yes, true, I can't argue with this. I only wish that the Arelith potion/scroll/wand calculator was consistent with it's algorithm. That way you would see scrolls being sold cheaper than what you can get from NPCs, and that would greatly benefit mundanes.

It's no secret that casters, mainly, make or break the economy.

One small correction though: The zoo potions sold by NPCs or gathered through loot last an entire 60 minutes.

That is because they have a caster level of 3, and each hour lasts 20 real minutes. When the time change happened, the potions went from lasting 18 minutes to 60 minutes, which was a huge boon for especially mundanes (but also for casters who like to free up their spell slots for something else).

That would probably be very helpful. Also, whoops-- I heard just today while I was Discoursing in the development chat that it was 40 minutes. Teaches me to trust word of mouth.

Leadership and Flameberries in a one-two combo, huh?

I have two slight issues that I hope have been discussed already by the powers that be, but I will bring them up just in case they haven't been.

One, the motivation to move on to a new character is decreasing not increasing. None of the awards are worth anything anymore save flavor. Even races no one was jumping at the chance to play were recently nerfed mechanically, and ecl means absolutely nothing anymore. So basically you are left in a position where you have to hope someone is so bored with their current character that they are willing to give up all the gold they amassed just to play a new "broke at 30" character, with no award to speak of.

Two, the speed of leveling since the writ change was already a really huge nerf on gold. Sure, some people are shameless and will go jam out lower level dungeons for gold despite their level, but most people will likely stay in their lane. This is going to lead to a lot of frustrated people in the late teens/early epics who don't have the gear/consumables to survive the harder dungeons.

So, like I started with, while I totally get the motivation behind killing the easy gold making stuff I do hope you have a plan to address the issues that are going to arise.

As for the main topic of this thread, if you are a mundane alchemy and herbalism are your friends. Make your own consumables, and you will likely be better off than your lazy wizard friend who can make his own spell components but would rather buy them because he can't be bothered

Won't disagree with this.
My mundane characters essentially survive off hand-outs and faction group earnings that are making use of max skill appraisers.
Headhunting was basically the only thing I could do alone and now it doesn't even break even because I have to pay for buffs.

Anyone who thinks money-grind is not a consideration hasn't tried to run a settlement or a bid on a property. How much gold you have is actually important in context to the overall server design if you want to compete with the politics games.

Meanwhile there are warlocks and palemasters out there that are soloing pausch daily and effectively walk away with endless runic drops that they don't have to share with anyone. The difference in earnings is actually palpable since there are arelith builds that don't even require a party to solo level 30 runic dungeons.

This is something that should be looked at in time.

Fix berries please.
Leadership made appraise fairly irrelevant but that nerf was kinda overkill.

Casters also have it really easy to gear, even if you are a battle-caster who does not get a pre-fab staff as BiS, most of the rest of your BiS gear is stuff like 5% Bronze plate, some casters get a lot of leeway from GmV or their respective buffed weapons via bless weapon and whatnot. The rest needs to keen MDMask weapons or buy a 1-3mil bladerune that is super rare.
I played Clerics, Wizards, Bards, Barbs and a WM and an SD and I have to say that the clerics can just churn out runics, epic content and general gear with little to no issue, Wizards to a lesser degree because some things are nerfed specifically to screw their solo mode in certain dungeons, SD can solo dungeons due to their shadow and the safety button of hips (rip when both of that gets yeeted into the trashbin) and even they can only solo a small amount of dungeons before you enter the realm of 'dedicated RP/PvE build'.
Some people on certain casters can solo Pausch even for free 2x Mithril Dust.
Just look at the shops, its usually Clerics churning out endless runics.
No, they dont even need to be healer.
The time change upped the QoL of Mundies by a magnitude that I cannot actually put into words. Zoo pots lasting an hour? Death Ward not running out mid dungeon? NEP actually lasting 2 encounters? Very nice. Especially since some dungeons are really long.

But mundanes get the nice feeling of clicking and doing 150dmg and more per turn?

I get it that there is a need for a money sink but it kinda feels bad being the money sink.
It's also lame to only be BiS if you grind hard or settle for suboptimal.

Pls fix berries though.

98lbs of sad carryweight wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 12:11 am Fix berries please.
Leadership made appraise fairly irrelevant but that nerf was kinda overkill.

Casters also have it really easy to gear, even if you are a battle-caster who does not get a pre-fab staff as BiS, most of the rest of your BiS gear is stuff like 5% Bronze plate, some casters get a lot of leeway from GmV or their respective buffed weapons via bless weapon and whatnot. The rest needs to keen MDMask weapons or buy a 1-3mil bladerune that is super rare.
I played Clerics, Wizards, Bards, Barbs and a WM and an SD and I have to say that the clerics can just churn out runics, epic content and general gear with little to no issue, Wizards to a lesser degree because some things are nerfed specifically to screw their solo mode in certain dungeons, SD can solo dungeons due to their shadow and the safety button of hips (rip when both of that gets yeeted into the trashbin) and even they can only solo a small amount of dungeons before you enter the realm of 'dedicated RP/PvE build'.
Some people on certain casters can solo Pausch even for free 2x Mithril Dust.
Just look at the shops, its usually Clerics churning out endless runics.
No, they dont even need to be healer.
The time change upped the QoL of Mundies by a magnitude that I cannot actually put into words. Zoo pots lasting an hour? Death Ward not running out mid dungeon? NEP actually lasting 2 encounters? Very nice. Especially since some dungeons are really long.

But mundanes get the nice feeling of clicking and doing 150dmg and more per turn?

I get it that there is a need for a money sink but it kinda feels bad being the money sink.
It's also lame to only be BiS if you grind hard or settle for suboptimal.

Pls fix berries though.

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Is berries broke? Cause... It doesn't look broke.

Perhaps mundanes should have gone to Wizard College if they wanted to make a real salary. If they didn't want to gather ore, delve dungeons and pick herbs all day, they should have learned some magic.

Serious side, I think it's an attempt at lowering the power level of mundanes and such without directly nerfing their stats. Make it so they don't have the funds for timestop books, Gresto scrolls, etc. I get the feeling the staff believes there's too many martials from these changes.

I'm always interested in getting feedback on the economy, so thank you.

I can only add there is speed of levelling issue here too. When it was much slower, GP was still the same, so characters might build up large amounts by mid level. With mid level happening after a week, or just a few days? It's a constant struggle to gear for one's level (not that I'm sure it is any longer worth gearing at all for anything less than epic - why fork out 50k for something that it will already be redundant by the next weekend?)

La Villa Strangiato wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 10:38 pm Hi. The money you earn from heads with a Leadership skill dump recently got nerfed. Now you get about 65% percent of the money that you used to get with a full leadership dump. My SOURCES (Discord) tell me that selling iceberries and flameberries have also been nerfed. Now they only sell for 1 gp to the peddler.

To corroborate the poster who showed the screenshots and logs above, iceberries and flameberries still sell for their normal prices on the Surface server as of writing this.

(To any devs reading: don't nerf berries please).

This isn't to distract from the validity of the rest of your concerns. Balancing consumable costs with making money and progression has always been a problem for mundane characters. Previously, repeatable writs helped in this regard. On top of a dungeon's rewards, each writ run would grant you a stack of extra GP to cover consumable costs.

Gear / gold progression hasn't kept pace with how fast XP is granted nowadays. Characters frequently hit high teens / low epics while being dead-broke and woefully under-geared. You don't even have to rush levels to get this result, it just happens as a result of playing normally.

Of course, balancing consumable expense / loot reward feedback loops and gear progression is a lot harder than just tweaking some XP values. But it does feel like the larger half of character progression has needed work ever since the single-run writ XP changes hit.

Nintendo Entertainment System wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 12:28 am
To corroborate the poster who showed the screenshots and logs above, iceberries and flameberries still sell for their normal prices on the Surface server as of writing this.

(To any devs reading: don't nerf berries please).

This isn't to distract from the validity of the rest of your concerns. Balancing consumable costs with making money and progression has always been a problem for mundane characters. Previously, repeatable writs helped in this regard. On top of a dungeon's rewards, each writ run would grant you a stack of extra GP to cover consumable costs.

Gear / gold progression hasn't kept pace with how fast XP is granted nowadays. Characters frequently hit high teens / low epics while being dead-broke and woefully under-geared. You don't even have to rush levels to get this result, it just happens as a result of playing normally.

Of course, balancing consumable expense / loot reward feedback loops and gear progression is a lot harder than just tweaking some XP values. But it does feel like the larger half of character progression has needed work ever since the single-run writ XP changes hit.

Oh thank god they're not nerfed.

Wands aren't really a huge money maker. The most popular wands usually cost more to make than the caster makes from them. Stocking scrolls is a gigantic cost investment, I generally price my scrolls for about 800g profit, where popular scrolls take anywhere between 842 to 4000 per scroll to produce.

Some price examples, animal wands cost 4000 to make and you usually need to use 2 charges to buff to hit +5. 3 if you're unlucky and absolutely need +5 and not +4. Haste is also 4000. Negative energy protection wands cost 6000 to make. Freedom of movement, improved invisibility, improved invisibility, and death ward are 3696.

I've talked about this before and people have brushed it off saying wands are cheaper than potions, you get a whole bunch of uses. But it really adds up, especially when you're first starting out a character. It might be good to lower the cost of things like animal buffs. And improved invisibility is absolute misery as a mundane to keep applied if I am trying to stealth around. I wish it lasted longer. I don't think it'd impact balance, a lot of dungeons have invisibility purge enemies.

Another thought: You know what would help is if tailoring, smithing, and carpentry had more consumables than just repair kits. I've not done those crafts but they seem pretty difficult to turn a profit from compared to art, alchemy, and herbalism. I think it'd be easier for mundanes to earn some gold if they could make consumables people want, or could use for themselves. Maybe tailoring mystical handkerchiefs that could each have some sort of spell attached. Smithing could make weapon polishes that act like temporary essences. Carpentry mystical wood figurines, like a bull figure or a cat figure.

Weapon polishes/sharpening stones that provide x-benefit is an old standby for "stuff mundanes make" tbh. I'd be for that.

Party in the forest at midnight wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 12:53 am Another thought: You know what would help is if tailoring, smithing, and carpentry had more consumables than just repair kits. I've not done those crafts but they seem pretty difficult to turn a profit from compared to art, alchemy, and herbalism. I think it'd be easier for mundanes to earn some gold if they could make consumables people want, or could use for themselves. Maybe tailoring mystical handkerchiefs that could each have some sort of spell attached. Smithing could make weapon polishes that act like temporary essences. Carpentry mystical wood figurines, like a bull figure or a cat figure.

I like the idea of carpentry getting more consumables. I'm currently playing a carpentry craftsman/merchant and I'm struggling to find good "general use" items to stock. All of the carpentry craftables are pretty specific to a class (like the magic staffs) or something that needs to be custom-ordered (like furniture).

As far as tailoring goes: I ran a dedicated tailoring merchant on the surface and I can say - at least anecdotally - that while tailoring may be improved by craftable consumables it's by no means in a bad state. I made absolute bank with my tailoring business because tailoring has so many items that most characters need. Repair kits, book bags, gem pouches, herbalist bags, spell component pouches, fine elven boots, runes, CLOAKS (mostly displacer beast & sargeant's, cloaks are the real tailoring moneymaker), the lines of fine silk shirts and fine leather armours, armor of immolation and more all sold well and frequently because everyone needs those basic bags and repair kits, and so many different class combinations can use the cloaks, boots, and armours. Like you can stock all those must-haves and THEN if they haven't sold yet you can start to think about stocking more specific items like high-level caster robes. With carpentry I hit the point of stocking must-haves a lot quicker; the consequence is much more of my stock consists of those specific items that only certain classes want (and thus the whole store turns less profit, yadda yadda yadda mundane money grind to try and tie this back into the original post ).

What is a 'mundane' in the context of this thread? That seems to remain undefined.

Is it someone without craft wand, or someone without basic zoo spells? Is a Ranger a mundane? Blackguard?

This will be a long post, but as usual for economy threads there is a lot of misinformation (berry rumor a surprise this time around) and I will try to throw in some tips at the end to both make money and, more importantly, save money.

Time and game knowledge are of far greater importance to wealth on Arelith than having a magic crafting feat. Game knowledge is especially important - this thread is already predicated on false rumors, bad info, and indicators of wasting money.

First: What is Wrong? Character Turnover. Easily.

Party in the Forest has already touched on this, but the rate of return on wands and scrolls is absolutely abysmal - though it can get better depending on local market factors. If you happen to have the market cornered on a product you can make a killing, but this isn't limited to wands and a mundane can get in on any shortages if they also have a shop. More on this in a sec.

I've done wand sales for a few years and it takes actual months/years and a huge time investment to turn a noticeable profit compared to how much time you spend sifting through what sold, getting together the things, resting, making them, pricing them, and then doing it again and again for months. It's a task that often needs to be done daily as soon as players start relying on your shop and clearing the shelves daily.

Still - it is an option that mundanes don't have...but it isn't just effortless free money out of nowhere. The player has to put in a lot of time, as well as have a shop and the wherewithal to actually price things to sell them. Clearing an entire shelf of wands seems like it's netting some huge profit, but really it's within a very small margin.

I've been operating a shop for the last few months and selling a lot of things (mostly loot, ore, craftables) at a very clear loss just to get items to move - so something is going on out there in the economy. I've sold wands at a clear loss just to get them off the shelf. I've recently sold some high tier basin gear for just 2000 gold. That's an almost 18k loss. I sold at least 10 pieces for around this price at a loss of at least 1-2 hundred thousand gold.

They simply would not sell for weeks until marked down basically for free.

Why is this happening? Character turnover.

Character turnover is probably the highest it's ever been. I go to work for a few days and come back to like a whole new cast of characters I have to get to know again. Constantly leveling characters want wands and consumables, but they don't want end game gear or runes.

I think character turnover has the highest impact on the mundane economy. Mundanes are more likely to rely on selling rune materials, high tier smithing/carpentry/herbalism craftables, and assorted dungeon loot - but with Arelith's mass character exodus on a weekly basis these characters don't care about any of that.

Characters don't last long enough to care about spending money - they're going to roll in a day or two so they clearly don't need masterwork runes or accursed chains or another mdamask to explode in the basin. This is the mundane market!

So we have a situation where non-mundanes work the leveling market but have a hard falloff to characters that hit 30 and no longer blast through wands every day, but there are few to no characters intending to stick around at 30 to warrant spending on the mundane market to get their best gear.

Some Tips

However it isn't just about making money, but also saving money. There's a lot of little tricks you can pick up over time to save money and stay in the black. Things like...

Party in the forest at midnight wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 12:44 am animal wands cost 4000 to make and you usually need to use 2 charges to buff to hit +5.

You don't need to do this. Potion first -> then wand = max roll for max time, and doubles the wand's life. It's a small saving, but since the rest into zoo routine is so frequent the savings add up. It also keeps you from having to go wand shopping so much. Critical money saver for a mundane!

Save Money

Not spending huge wealth on every run is important. I've seen people go through a whole suite of buffs to take on enemies that don't even threaten the things the character is warding against - or even worse they use wands like circle of protection from alignment not realizing its turns/level and won't even last the RP it takes to get to the dungeon in the first place.

Characters waste insane amounts of money every day and it boggles my mind to see a party of 5 use every single ward imaginable to blast through a dungeon with overwhelming force when they could have used half, or less, with the same result.

La Villa Strangiato wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 10:38 pm shadow conjuration (I prefer it over mage armor since I think you get more AC out of shadow conj)

This is false (it does last way longer, though), and more -

La Villa Strangiato wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 10:38 pm So, ten pots of shadow conjuration would be about 5,000gp, probably a little less.

This is a huge waste of money. Both variants of mage armor gives +1 deflection, armor, natural, and dodge. It doesn't stack with: shield spell (and helmets, rings, etc), barkskin, or any non-bronze armor. For anyone not level 3 it's basically just +1 dodge.

A scroll of mage armor is 50 gold, lasts about 30 minutes, and gives the +1 dodge. These scrolls drop in huge abundance, and can basically be used for free.

Additionally - shield (+4 deflection) is 50 gold too and lasts for a few encounters. 300 gold can get you a fistful of these and get most characters through a dungeon with almost full uptime. This costs almost nothing.

Since mage armor is breachable, which is semi-frequently used by mobs, shadow conjuration potions is a monumental waste and mostly a rich-flex QOL than efficient gold expenditure. More often that not, because of breach, shadow conj lasts just as long as the scroll because the spell likely ends by breach than it does by time.

La Villa Strangiato wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 10:38 pm EDIT: Berries did not get nerfed, we can all calm down.

Berries are not just the only item to sell. Here is a short list of garbage many characters pass over:

Blade Orbs
Brass Gears (there are multiple variants. Some are worth just 80, but others max the vendor)
Brass Cogs
Scrap
Semi-Rare Crafting Mats (Spider Silk for example sells to cities for a decent sum)
Chest Junk (iron daggers, everfeathers, gold-mob drops)

La Villa Strangiato wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 10:38 pm Take an appraise dump. Not every class has the room for such.

Don't need to do this. With appraise +6 gloves, and two merchant ring +4's a mundane can increase their income by almost 50% without spending a single skill point.

La Villa Strangiato wrote: Tue Jan 18, 2022 10:38 pm NEP, FoM, ultravision, protection from alignment, shadow conjuration, lesser spell breach, shield, see invisibility, haste

No character should be using even half of these regularly. NEP drops for free from many mobs, and one should be able to go for quite a while without using up a whole wand. Couple with very frequent lesser restore potions and a character can easy avoid using NEP by just restoring out of it on the rare occasion they are affected by something. Places like the Manfred manor are definitely the exception rather than the rule here.

Ultravision has no use in any dungeon unless you're with a character that uses darkness. Any character with darkness can also use ultravision, so this is a pure waste to use.

Prot from Align is +2 deflection which doesn't stack with shield, half of mage armor, or any helmet with +2 or more. It's use lies in that it isn't breachable, and comes with a will bonus, making it definitely not a spell that needs to be constantly up.

FOM has some uses, but can easily be passed over in most engagements by sucking up a little slowness, but yeah this spell has more frequent use than many others.

See invisibility is super cheap to make (like 900 gold), so this might be on the buyer to buy at a decent price. Either way it's easy to survive pve without ever using it.

Spell breach wands are important, especially in pvp, but a mundane can actually avoid using it in pve by switching to ranged damage to kill whatever has an acid sheath (presumably those super annoying slimes). Bone Bows can be found in loot or player shops at a super decent price and have mighty +4, and going in for a stable template isn't a very big cost for how much milage one can get out of it. Good output for any fighter looking to save money.

I hope some of this helps. I wrote a guide on this a while ago (because of threads like this), though some of it is out of date, but the turning a profit section is still mostly accurate.

TLDR;

> Yes casters have a bit of an advantage, but it isn't free and effortless money. Casters, strangely enough, have the least use for money.
> No mundanes aren't crippled, but they do need to control their spending and have more game knowledge. This is a disadvantage made up for in other fields such as PVP. There's a reason falchion barb spam is still overwhelmingly present.
> Character turnover, I think, absolutely brutalizes mundane character income more than anything else.

Skibbles wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 4:33 am
Said a bunch of things, some right some wrong. Will elaborate below.

I'm just going to get to the wrong. Sorry, my back hurts and this needs to be short.

-Wands are not some super hard investment. You take 4000 gold, invest it in a wand, and eventually make around 7 hundred each wand assuming you are pricing them competitively after taxes. If you have a shop where there are no taxes, that profit goes up to 1k each wand. And at those prices they will sell, and sell fast.

-Caster brewed potions however are in an awful place, as I am sure most of the folks that have a shop stocked full of them are begining to realize. And it's not just because wands are so much cheaper, although that is a big factor, because there are people who can't use wands. But just to start with the animal buffs, it was always more expensive to brew a cl 15 bulls strength potion then it was to just buy 5 cl 3 potions from an npc. The only benefit was that you never really had to worry about them wearing off mid fight. With the time changes, that is no longer an issue. Other commonly used potions like shield are cheaper as scrolls, and everybody should have access to 5 lore no issue especially since most people start at +2 with their base int. That leaves the the more pvp focused ones, like cl 10 haste, remove blindness, and true strike as well as the two potions that people are slowly figuring out are great in pve content like knock and displacement. But with both of those you still have to compete with the price of the scrolls, the second of which is easily found just about everywhere on monsters. Yeah, this had nothing to do with your post but i thought it was a good place to compare it to wands because I was talking about wands above.

-character turnover will never be a bad thing for the market. Every new character needs new gear, new bags, new consumables. You want to see a dead economy? have a bunch of level 30s standing about for years on end fully geared up, that will be a dead economy. The new characters need runic stuff too, which brings me to my last point that sorta ties into this one.

-Its not turnover that killed the runic market, its people spamming these dungeons over and over again. And its not just 30 or so players doing it anymore like it was a few years back, thus controlling the entire runic market and gouging the players that didn't know any better. Now just about everyone has a favorite runic dungeon. I know, because I tend to see a lot of the same players in a lot of the same places night after night because hell, I'm there doing the same thing. All this being said, it's not a bad thing that these things are more readily available. The rarer these items are, the bigger the odds are that the rich and powerful old characters will be able to choke the lesser connected players out of reaching their full potential. Its what used to happen (euklian clay used to go for 80k!), and I would hate to see it go back to that. That being said, in particular with the lesser runic stuff, it would be good to find other uses for them via crafting and stuff. It is rather sad to see stacks of 50 of the baby runic stuff going for 1k each and no one is buying.

The rest of what you wrote is solid advice on how to navigate being a non caster. I would add making your own consumables and letting someone else make your metal work, carpentry, and tailoring needs as the way to go. But doing that requires a bit of planning that some people just can't be bothered with, and that's fine too.


Also, A+ to whomever started the berry rumor. Even if it was just a mistake, I would totally take credit for getting the entire server into a twitchy knot over it.

I have really only played one caster, a feylock, and that was the only time I had a mildly difficult time getting enough gold for equipment.

Getting money really is easy, as long as you have a faint idea about what you are doing. And even on a mundane, yes. Level 3 potions now last for RL hours and cost nothing, same with the essential mage armour and shield scroll that everyone with a minimal lore investment can use.

Search will certainly help you, but even a dumb fighter can run dungeons with auto-loot on and make back a lot more from gems, jewelry and scrolls than they would spend on buffs. Undead dungeons comes to mind where you can just spam your bless weapon wand and do legal tomb-raiding til your bags burst with loot.

Another option is to sell gathered stuff to settlements. You don't even need to go anywhere dangerous. Just get a small axe and deforestate the local woods for the glorious Navy of your hometown. Or find that lazy NPC that will pay you oodles for iron ore. Which you find everywhere.

Better yet, make friends with a shady rogue who has taken the time to invest in Appraise. That is literally picking money of the street.

Skibbles wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 4:33 am snip snop

A mundane, IMO: A class that cannot rely on spells to do the legwork of content for them. To use solely the classes I've played; a rogue/PDK/BG is a mundane. A monk is a mundane. A rogue is a mundane. A druid, a cleric, a wizard, all casters. Rangers I would consider closer to "mundane" because while they have spells, they don't extensively rely on them to complete a writ.

I have no idea what I did to you for you to throw out the implication that I am deliberately spreading rumours, but let's address the parts of your post that aren't kind of condescending.

1. The whole potion routine is something I straight up don't do since the time change; I just rest to 100% in a tavern, throw on zoo buffs + barkskin if I have it, and I'm PvP and PvE ready for the rest of the night. The time change is actually really good for saving gp on wands and pots-- it's just that they still tend to add up as a mundane, if you're the type who likes doing dungeons whenever you log on (as I am).

Is that wasteful? I guess. But I ain't ever caught lackin'.
2. Do we have a different definition of "stack" (we probably do this isn't meant to be a hypothetical)? Barkskin + mage armor + shield will still add up your AC, even if by the time you add shield it's just one AC, so I tend to use shield right before a boss fight. Also I guess there are enemies that use breach a lot, but in the dungeons I ran most regularly (endgame runics, yes), I rarely encountered them.
3. Regarding picking up a bunch of other stuff to sell at the vendor, you could and it's not an invalid strategy. Usually I don't pick up random vendor trash unless it's over 200gp at the peddler, though, because I already twitch and froth at the mouth if my inventory is too cluttered. Heads + berries + any yellowmob drop, alongside any chest loot that isn't projectiles, is what commonly gets sold on my loot runs.

Also while I understand it takes time to get to level 30 and settle in a spot where you have the spare XP for it, how aren't you guys making thousands of gp off wands? I ran a faction that had an entire shop dedicated to wands and we would almost sell out in a matter of days (RustingWithYou can testify on this, given the numerous harassing messages I sent him to "LOG ON VEL'ZINNIA AND RESTOCK THE SHOP" *). Even if you only charge 1,000gp above the cost of the wand, you're still turning a profit of thousands. To be fair, this shop of ours was in a highly-trafficked area (Dis), which probably contributed to the amount of wands and later scrolls that we sold.

I feel like in this entire cope-post I wrote I probably should have clarified I've never actually had trouble with staying afloat on any of my characters. My first two characters either founded or were part of a faction that became extremely rich, and the rest were in large roleplay groups that shared their money, worked together to stock a shop, or partook in roleplay-related contests that they won prizes for.

I also probably should have clarified what this post is actually about; that I think breaking up the mageconomy with Leadership was actually a cool thing to do and I would like it back. Is "literally being able to solo two of the hardest and most profitable dungeons in the module" a decent exchange for "roleplay in the Fugue, caster"? Maybe, maybe not.

I dunno about ~character turnover~ I'm not that smart but you all knew that already.

* Disclaimer: I did not actually harass RustingWithYou to make me the funny wands in the funny elf game.

Leadership being unnecessarily nerfed, I agree. There is actually no point to gearing up on it. If the devs were too concerned on how easy it was to enchant +2 Leadership, then get rid of it like with the Heal treatment. Let the special items that can be crafted or found keep their Leadership bonuses, but remove it from the basin.

But capping bounty gold is hurting those who invested a lot of points in Leadership tremendously. You can now have a Charisma of 4 (-3) and max out your leadership, and you will earn just as much as the Paladin with +12 in Charisma, maxed out Leadership, even geared for Leadership. For the purposes of bounties, Leadership is not an attractive choice anymore.

I think the saddest part about the nerf was really the cap. Nerfing the numbers, I'm sure there was good reason for it. But straight up capping it means it only requires the minimal investment of 1 skill point per level up, and in turn it punishes those who have taken any foci, gear, or those who have a high Charisma.

Leadership still works well outside of bounties, but if the devs are too concerned with one skill doing too much (*cough* Lore *cough*), decouple bounties from Leadership and give us a skill exclusively for that. Call "Bounty Hunting" or what have you, and it can have its own uses and boons. I know for a fact that I'd rather pick that over Leadership on 90% of my characters who have maxed out their Leadership skill.

Put simply, Leadership (Bounty Hunting) is a quality of life investment. Now that quality of life has been nerfed severely. Or as I famously like to put it, "nerfed to the ground"

MissEvelyn wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2022 9:53 am Leadership being unnecessarily nerfed, I agree. There is actually no point to gearing up on it. If the devs were too concerned on how easy it was to enchant +2 Leadership, then get rid of it like with the Heal treatment. Let the special items that can be crafted or found keep their Leadership bonuses, but remove it from the basin.

But capping bounty gold is hurting those who invested a lot of points in Leadership tremendously. You can now have a Charisma of 4 (-3) and max out your leadership, and you will earn just as much as the Paladin with +12 in Charisma, maxed out Leadership, even geared for Leadership. For the purposes of bounties, Leadership is not an attractive choice anymore.

I think the saddest part about the nerf was really the cap. Nerfing the numbers, I'm sure there was good reason for it. But straight up capping it means it only requires the minimal investment of 1 skill point per level up, and in turn it punishes those who have taken any foci, gear, or those who have a high Charisma.

Leadership still works well outside of bounties, but if the devs are too concerned with one skill doing too much (*cough* Lore *cough*), decouple bounties from Leadership and give us a skill exclusively for that. Call "Bounty Hunting" or what have you, and it can have its own uses and boons. I know for a fact that I'd rather pick that over Leadership on 90% of my characters who have maxed out their Leadership skill.

Put simply, Leadership (Bounty Hunting) is a quality of life investment. Now that quality of life has been nerfed severely. Or as I famously like to put it, "nerfed to the ground"

Leadership is actually pretty sweet when you make a character with a Leadership dump the leader of the party-- the party members run slightly faster, earn an extra point of AB, and I think they get +1 saving throws? Some other effect. There's also that ability to influence elections in your favour. Sadly, though, it's still niche when you take away the money factor.