Packrat

Adeste's guide to making money
by Didi

I just did a little test this week.

• I created a new character on a new server I have no alts and no friends on. It happened to be a half elf troubadour, though I could have made anything.
• I did the first quest on the island then ran around getting location discoveries, and dinged 5. Then I left for Qeynos.
• Once in Qeynos, I headed for the KOS spire in Antonica. Ran through Tenebrous Tangle to the Ravasect Incursion Point teleporter, picking up 2 sparklies on the way.
• Ran through Shattered Weir in the Bonemire, picking up another couple of sparklies on the way, to the teleporter to Barren Sky.
• Arriving in Barren Sky, I sprinted down the slope towards the cloud platform. This was my first death, but I got far down enough that I revived at the cloud platform so I was able to take the cloud to Whisperwind Isle.
• I then ran around Whisperwind Isle for a while picking up sparklies. It's actually possible to circle the entire island even at level 5 without getting killed, if you time the wanderers right. Or, you can play it safe and stay in the areas by the cloud platform - but that's not much fun, is it?
• Once my very limited bag space was full (one 12-slot newbie bag and one 4-slot purchased bag) I gated back home to Willow Wood, got an inn room, and dropped my bags directly on the broker. Set the prices, camped for the night, exactly 1 hour played time in the entire life of the character.

Today I logged in to check - about half the items sold. Total income: 1 platinum, 20 gold, 81 silver. Total /played time, 1 hour and 2 minutes, level 5 character.

Now that I have coin to work with of course, I can greatly increase my earning capacity - if I wanted to continue I would buy a severed fir/oak/cedar whichever is cheaper, and hunt up a friendly carpenter to make a salesman's crate to sell from. I'd also buy some cheap backpacks so I could hold more harvestables at a time without having to return home. I won't bother on that alt since I have no intention of sticking around that server, but that's essentially how I started my first alt off on a brand new server, and I had my nice 40% speed horse by the time I was level 20, and plenty to spare too.

So. I keep hear people in guild chat complaining they have no money. But it's easy! How do you make money? Read on for Adeste's lecture on EQ2 economics.

The theory behind all money making is simple in EQ2 (or anywhere really) - figure out what people richer than you will pay money for, and sell it.

Exactly what they may want to buy varies from month to month and server to server so there's no one hard and fast rule, though there's generally some things that are always popular. But if you understand WHY people buy things and what they want, you'll always have a way to make money.

Collectible sparklies are a great source of income for all levels. Once you know which ones sell and where they come from, it's easy enough to run around and pick them up. Rich, high level people who just want to complete a collection and get that achievement XP, and who need only one more item to finish, are generally more than happy to hand over 50g or even 1p for certain of the rarer items, or the ones that are found in zones they don't feel like running around in. Ask yourself, would a level 70 adventurer with 100p in the bank really rather spend 3 hours running around Antonica/Commonlands looking for that elusive cracked Iskar bone fragment? Or would they rather spend 50g and pick it up instantly from the broker? There's a lot of people who'll choose the second, I can assure you. Check the prices of cracked iksar bone fragments on the broker if you don't believe people will pay that much.

To see collectibles from as far away as possible: Open your display options (Alt-O), go into Particle Effects, and change the two "Particle Level of Detail" sliders to max.

What collectibles happen to be selling well varies a bit depending on where people are hunting lately - prices tend to drop in zones that are very busy, and rise in zones where fewer people are hunting lately. At the moment people are paying ludicrous prices for the collectibles in the "Expert Recognition: Faydwer Collections" set. There are tons of people in the Faydwer zones looking for these collectibles, however, which means that all the other collectibles you'll find which are NOT in this collection, are worth next to nothing. If you're high level and can grey out a zone like Klak'Anon, it may be worthwhile to run around it hoping for the rare ones to sell - and they do still sell for large amounts. On the whole though in my opinion it's probably more time efficient to go to another zone where they'll all sell for a bit, even if nothing sells for a spectacular sum. Zones like DoF and KoS areas are full of collectibles but fairly empty of players since EoF came out, so while you may only get 5-25g per collectible, if you can sell most of them at those prices you'll still make a steady income. Antonica and Commonlands have good sellers too - the leaves sell well, coins of Erudin sell very well, and many of the cracked bones are the last item people need to finish off a collection and can sell for large amounts.

Collectibles aren't the only thing you can sell of course - any treasured or better loot is selling well since transmuters need it to skill up on. Rare harvests always sell well too. Loams and ore common harvests in all tiers sell well, especially now tinkers need so much. Roots are a popular harvest also, especially in tier 6, so if you're 70 and Pillars of Flame is all grey, you can fairly easily acquire these while you run around doing other things. You don't need to dedicate a whole hour or two to making money either - pick up collectibles as you pass them, whatever zone you're in. Harvest nodes when you see them, between kills. It all adds up. If you're high level, of course, you have more options - if you can solo named, you can hope for masters and legendary loot; you can spend hours farming trash mobs for drops that vendor well. Personally I find that boring as anything so I don't bother, but it works well for some. It's definitely optional however.

Whatever you're selling, you can maximize your sales by the following:

• match (NOT undercut) the lowest seller. Undercutting just speeds up the spiralling price drop.
• use salesman's crates so people don't have to pay the broker fee -- if you're selling something for 1p and so is Ranger Bob, but you have a salesman's crate in your home, people will buy from YOU - since Bob's price will effectively be 1p20g with the broker fee included - quite a lot more expensive.
• check your prices once a day, go through every item you have for sale and ensure you're still matching the lowest price. Unfortunately people do undercut, especially with collectibles that don't have a vendor sell price. Just keep matching them though and they will sell.
• don't use stupid prices like 49g99s99c -- a lot of people will actually buy from the guy selling for 50g just on principle. 1cp undercutters are despised by many.
• if there are no others of what you're selling up for sale, look for comparable items - other pieces of the same collection, or other bits of equipment for that class, and try to estimate its worth that way. If in doubt you can price high and then start to drop the price slowly if it doesn't sell in a few days.

I observed one bright fellow in the level 1-9 channel a couple weeks ago who was clearly new to the game but not MMO's and had this principle down pat. He asked around, found out what people thought he could obtain that would sell well, and obtained it. Within a day after leaving the Isle of Refuge he was riding a 9p horse. What did he do? He harvested a ton of leaded loams and rares on the newbie isle, and kept and sold all the Treasured loot he acquired. Leaded loams were at the time selling for about 20s each on the broker on my server - 1 stack of common loams therefore = 10g or more, the rares were selling for 1-5g each, and the treasured items for 3-5g. Certainly doesn't take long to add up. That worked particularly well for him since at the time, not long after the EoF release, there were tons of low level tinkers and transmuters buying up the stuff; prices have dropped a little since then, but you'd still sell leaded loam for 10-15s easily enough, I think.

The message is NOT that you have to be level 5 - t's even easier to make money if you're 70 -- the point is just that you don't HAVE to be 70 to make this kind of money. The message is also NOT that you have to go up to KoS and run around there -- that's just one option, a place I happen to be familiar with and where the collectibles are currently selling for a reasonable average price each. There are many other zones you can go to, Sinking Sands has plenty of collectibles also, and even Commonlands and Antonica have some quite valuable collectibles in them. You will generally do better in a zone you are more familiar with than getting frustrated somewhere you don't know your way around and die repeatedly. What zones are most valuable now will most likely not be the same ones that are most valuable next month or next year, so the lesson is to understand what comes from where and what is currently in demand and why. Ideally, look for zones that not too many people are hunting/collecting in recently, which have collectibles with rewards that are still desirable.

The final message is that it doesn't really matter what you sell - and what I've listed above is true now, but will no doubt change again in a couple of months. All that matters is that you look around you and figure out what people will PAY for, then supply it. Keep up to date with the patch notes and read the dev tracker, those are often good hints. Watch out for things coming up on test server. If you hear for example on test server that jewellers are going to get a new recipe for bellybutton rings, which will be made from rare gems and will give really nice stats, well, good time to start buying up any rare gems you can find at low prices, and then resell them for much higher once the change goes live. The more time you're willing to invest in thinking about what people want to buy, the easier you'll find it to make money.