Final Report: The Race To Home Ownership - 66 Hours for a Row Deed

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Vladamir Begemot, May 14, 2018.

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  1. Vladamir Begemot

    Vladamir Begemot Avatar

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    On Friday, later than I should have been up, my alt Vic purchased a POT Taxed Row Deed from a vendor in Novia Market, for 325,000 gold!

    It was a challenge I set for myself, to get a land deed using only in game means, and to do it basically as a hermit, making it harder than it needed to be. Since I tell people it is possible to earn land in game, I wanted to make sure I wasn't misleading people.

    I wasn't, it is totally doable, and if you don't hinder yourself in the way I did you can do it faster.

    However, you don't HAVE to do it faster. It's just as good to take 2x the time and enjoy the game as you go. It was fun to be living out of the bank for a while.

    You can read the day by day exploits in the 10 page "blog" thread I linked above. Here is a summary. It keeps turning into a wall of text, so I'll try the bullet point method to make it readable.

    Right after I was celebrating spending 325,000g on the deed, some guild mates pointed out that they knew where one was for sale for 300,000g. If I had been communicating with others, I would have gotten that one and cut 6 hours off my time.


    Lessons Learned:
    • As long as you keep doing things, you'll keep making gold.
      • Caveat; you need to know the market when selling crafted goods.
        • You can sell certain crafted goods for a profit on Public Vendors, pick popular items like storage chests, sell them for a hundred or two hundred gold profit (399 - 499).
        • You can make good gold by working at the S Mart Factorium (my town/factory). I hope to see others put up factories near the other starting areas, message me for advice. It's good for the new players, and for the veteran that doesn't have enough time to process everything.
    • Your account is front loaded with 500,000 gold work of Virtue Gear and Banners at the moment.
      • Banners are currently in the 50,000 gold and up range on private vendors.
      • Virtue Gear 10,000g per piece, plus or minus.
      • I only used a portion of that for Vic, but theoretically you could own land in a weekend if you just focused on getting and selling the gear and banners.
        • Everything goes down over time, this won't work forever.
    • Knowing the market gives you a big earnings boost
      • Public Vendors often have things go through at really low prices. Buying to resell or buying to use (and saving yourself a pile of gold) will fill your pocket book faster.
      • (almost) Everything (but beetles) trends down over time. If you get a Painting in a drop when it first comes out, immediately put it up for sale. What is 999g now is 299g next week. You can always get more later when they are cheap.
    • Don't spend all your money in one place
      • While working toward a goal, hold onto that gold! Unless you're buying something that you are sure will make you more gold, or is totally necessary to stay alive, hold off.
        • I was still using starter chest, pants, and gloves at the end. This is easier for Archers I believe, as they kite enemies very well.
        • Caveat: Do watch for a great weapon. You'll find one on a Public Vendor if you check regularly, and it will be a 50,000g weapon for 2,000g. Buy it and rejoice.
    • Using Public Vendors is a blessing and a curse
      • They get a TON of traffic. Owl's Head, Ardoris, Resolute, Aerie, in that order.
      • The downside is they will destroy your item in 7 days.
        • Set an alarm for 6 days later and pull anything that is unsold off to relist.
        • Best time to list is Friday.
    • It's kind of nice having no responsibilities
      • Not having to keep a store up and running, and instead using a Public Vendor, is nice. I didn't think it would be, but it frees you to just adventure, mine, and quest.
        • Move some of that business to Discord, don't do all the big stuff on the Public Vendors. You'll save a lot of gold by not paying fees for high ticket items.
    • I really enjoy mining!
      • But DO jump up to higher Tier mines as soon as you can. I spent lots of time in the Tier 2 mines because they are nice to be in, but the wealth output in higher tier mines is much greater.
    • I really enjoy "doing a scene!"
      • The new scenes are fantastic. Take your time to enjoy them. You don't have to grind your life away in one location! The wealth will flow no matter where you are.
    • For this purpose, sell rather than scrapping trash weapons and armor.
    • DO utilize the community and be part of it.
      • If you don't have your own vendor, go talk to town owners and ask them to post on theirs. Some will let you and you can start moving goods that way, often for free.
      • Watch Discord Trade, post on it if you feel like it. But at least watch. You'll get an idea of what things are worth at this moment. Everything fluctuates, but if you have a ballpark idea of prices for most things you will benefit repeatedly.

    The End stats:

    Total Time: 66:10
    Gold: 340,182g + A bunch of stuff in the bank, including Virtue Gear and Banners
    Weight: 82/224.9
    Str: 41, Dex: 42, Int: 19
    Ranged Tree: 517 Smithing: 59 Carpentry: 61 All Milling 70/56/56/77 All Smelting: 68/40/40/67
    Adventure Level: 50
    Producer Level: 49

    Here is the spreadsheet I was using to track my Public Vendor buys and sells. It gives you an idea of what is lucrative now, what I made the most gold on, and what you could copy to make gold. As with everything in the Shroud economy, it will change with time.
    • Note: It's not totally accurate;
      • I didn't start tracking right at the start, when I was selling tiny amounts of things (basically grey marble benches and wall torches)
      • It needs to be improved for when items are listed in a stack, because I'm calculating cost per item, but then that multiplied the fees x the number of items in the stack. I did a somewhat accurate correction by dividing fees by the number I usually sold by, but this wasn't always correct
        • Example, I always sold pewter in sets of 4, so dividing fees by 4 worked there, but sometimes sold benches by 1, 2, and occasionally 3 I think, so dividing fees by 2 was just a guess

    Final commentary:

    This is a doable and fun thing. The experience was totally worth it. It was fun to play new areas as a new player, areas that didn't exist when I started playing, and my main is too powerful for.

    It was also interesting being back in that state of having now gold. Back at persistence I was poor like everyone. I vaguely remember that feeling of getting to the point where I actually had some spare gold.
    I experienced that again. It's nice. It's fun not having anything for a little while too, but clearly it's more pleasant to not be counting pennies.

    On the other hand it feels great to just give all my stuff to my main instead of having to figure out how to sell it. Much will be used that would otherwise be vendored.

    But on the other other hand, Vic was always MAKING gold. Vladamir Begemot (my main) has a habit of giant fluctuations. Now I have to deal with it from a "whole enterprise" perspective for anything done with Vic, rather than "just turn it into gold in any way possible." I will miss that simplicity and the constant wealth it brings.

    Thanks for reading. I'm happy to answer questions, give advice, or listen to criticisms here in the thread (and you can whisper me in game when you need help too.)
     
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  2. Daigoji Gai

    Daigoji Gai Avatar

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    OUTSTANDING POST!
    [​IMG]
     
  3. majoria70

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    Great job. It would take will power too. I am always tempted by those pretty little fluffys in shop windows and gold does burn a hole in my pocket *sighs* So be strong if you are taking this route people, just be strong. ;)
     
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  4. golruul

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    This was interesting.

    However, new(er) players, do take note that this is a veteran that was already familiar with pretty much everything. More importantly, he/she knew how to effectively interact (i.e. knowing price ranges) with the market.

    So it took a veteran, with full knowledge of the game and how to price items on the open market, 60 or 66 hours to buy a row lot.
     
  5. Vladamir Begemot

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    Very true. Although my main advantage is just "knowing how to play the game." Just like with first play through vs. speed runs, you aren't going to be as fast if you're just starting out and figuring out the UI, etc. Shroud has a particularly steep learning curve, so one should understand that it's going to take some time to get up to speed on combat, crafting, using the public vendors, etc.

    As much as it gets knocked, you can use the BMC Price Guide, knock 20% off whatever their price is, and probably sell the item. One exception is iron/copper and maple/pine, for whatever reason they don't use the "Scrap" recipes for valuing the timber and ingots, so those are about 2x their market value.

    And as I said, I sandbagged the heck out of myself. If you participate more with the community you can really speed this up.

    But also, maybe don't be in a rush as a new player. This is a very long term game and if you get access to a community vendor or two, and have a room, you'll be set for a long time.
     
  6. Vladamir Begemot

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    Yes, this is the most important lesson! If you are saving up, save up!
     
  7. Elwyn

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    This is worth expanding on. Years of playing FFXI taught me that the new stuff in a monthly release schedule is usually worth more money when it's new and not everybody knows how and where to find it. Sometimes people paid more than they should, then realized that what they paid so much for was either junk or dropped like rain. Other times farming it caused other things that dropped with it to fall in price. Then there were fundamental game changes that caused things to not be worth anything anymore. I made my first million in FFXI harvesting one crafting material for a few weeks, just in time for a game change the next month to make it irrelevant forever.

    I started out in R20 with a basic pledge, and didn't have any lot deeds, so I spent three months living out of the bank first, then in the last week of R22 I had saved enough for a village lot, just in time for the next wipe. The economy was different, but the principles were the same. Then I got a Citizen pledge, with a village lot and a vendor, and concentrated on what I could do in three months *with* a vendor for the next two wipes.
     
  8. Stryker Sparhawk

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    This is a great detailed account with both the ups and downs of being in the game as a pioneer and developing a pattern to adventure and save for the first purchase.
     
  9. Vladamir Begemot

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    Yes, it's interesting that it is two different angles, both with their benefits. There's something to be said for being a homeless vagabond, it turns out.

    Speaking of which, I think we're going to see a continued rise in gold ore and silver ore prices.
     
  10. Kara Brae

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    @Vladamir Begemot
    Thank you for doing and documenting this experiment. It was fascinating to follow the progress of Vic as he worked towards his goal. I hope it was as fun for you as it was for your readers!

    It really is useful to have this documented test case to point to. I think that most people will not especially enjoy such single-minded buying and selling to make a profit, but as you mentioned, Vic had no help and did everything the hard way, so other players will find it much easier to reach their goal than Vic did.

    Congrats to Vic!
     
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  11. Earl Atogrim von Draken

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    Nice Vlad, really nice work. Grats!
     
    Last edited: May 15, 2018
  12. Kara Brae

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    It is true that Vic was a veteran’s alt.

    But new players will fnd a lot of help from other players if they are open to it and can earn gold more quickly than Vic did by being completely self-sufficient. Also, loot has got better since Vic started. Last but not least, guides like this one share the veteran’s know-how. The newbie only has to read it to profit from it and act as a veteran would. Heck, I learned a lot about earning gold from Vic’s blog, and I’ve been playing since 2014.:)
     
    Last edited: May 15, 2018
  13. Rhiannon

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    I will miss reading about Vic’s daily adventures. I learned a lot myself about things that never occurred to me. Excellent work and invaluable to the community.
     
  14. Kain Darkmoor

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    Having read a lot of your thread, I can honestly say you took much longer than I would have to get that amount of gold. You spent A LOT of time doing unoptimal things. On the one hand, that's probably closer to what a a new player might do, but on the other it made your time a lot longer than it needed to be IMO.

    Great project though and thanks for sharing the results.
     
  15. Adam Crow

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    Great work with this @Vladamir Begemot ! You did a really nice job with all the details and I'm sure new players (and veterans) have found your thread very informative and helpful. Keep up the good work!
     
  16. Baratan

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    I kind of feel like a taxed pot row lot deed should be easier to come by for a new player. But I'm sure this opinion will get me flamed.
     
  17. Oyjord Hansen

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    Not only should a taxed POT rowlot deed be easier to obtain for noobs, they should be MUCH easier to obtain.

    Getting players into housing ASAP will give them a reason to stay in SotA.
     
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  18. Gorthyn

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    I really agree with this. Row lots should be substantially cheaper if all those POT owners stand a chance of having the town's fill up with life rather than remain Ghost towns by and large.
     
  19. Baratan

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    This and This.

    Maybe have a special "first" taxable pot lot deed at the end of an extensive quest line at a discounted price available once per account and not tradeable.

    Even the rare, very populated pot has tons of empty row lot spaces that I'm sure new players would love to occupy.
     
  20. Daigoji Gai

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    IMHO, this was addressed with deed drops in the loot tables.
     
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