Cypion Chronicles.... A Joy to be Anonymous, Part III

Day 2: Money making.

If there’s one thing you can’t afford to be when you’re starting out, it’s being lazy. Sure it’s easy to beg for money, to go around hounding your academy mates for help, etc… but have some pride! Wouldn’t you feel better knowing that you earned it all yourself? Here’s how. (I may hurt myself revealing some of these techniques, but hopefully it educates some of you.)

Deciding on a production skill:

It was already decided on day one that I would make stones and pots, and my partner would focus on scrolls and comp/decomp. Let me tell ya, in the early going, stone making is definitely the way to go for easy money. So many of your early level mobs drop dusts that you’ll be burning through elrue like crazy! A lot of early adventurers make the choice of using their created elrues to start enhancing their own gear to at least +3, then are deeply disheartened when that item breaks and they cannot readily afford a replacement. I would advise that you forego enhancing of your own items unless you have the money to do so or a back up weapon (bought cheaply or acquired via drop) or armor just in case. You don’t want to be the guy begging for money because you broke your only weapon trying to get it to +2 thinking it was almost impossible to do so. Or bought a replacement weapon but now can’t afford to restone.




Okay, so you can make elrue[1], now what? Well just keep burning through your dusts and selling your elrue in vendor to other players. This always puzzled me. I priced my elrue[1] at 250c because I know that Kenton in Elderine sells them at 270c. And yet(!), there are shops around me that price elrue[1] at 600c-1s. Do people not realize that an NPC sells them cheaper? I see some of these high-priced elrue sell, so I guess people just don’t know. Once you’ve acquired enough production skill points to make Lix[1], the money should start flowing in a bit more. Lix[1] pricing is a god-send to the upstart adventurer. On Cypion, I don’t normally check T1 stone prices on Bijou, Lix[1] sells normally for 3s-4s a piece. That’s quite a bit considering the simple materials needed to create them, 3 elrue[1] and 3 lq copper ores. So great, make some money selling Lix[1] off of the dusts you pick up while questing and grinding. But that’s not all…


Remember how I mentioned that an NPC sells Elrue[1] at 270c? That seems kind of high considering that the NPC cost to create an Elrue[1] is only about 9c, but think about it this way… what if you were to convert those purchased Elrue[1] into Lix[1]? You don’t have to worry about acquiring much dust anymore to keep your shop full and open for business now do you? So here’s the breakdown and how you can profit: a Lix[1] requires 3 elrue[1] and 3 lq copper ores as I mentioned above, right? Even if you bought all the elrue[1] from Kenton, that still only costs you 810c out of pocket for each Lix[1] that you create. The copper ores you’ll more than likely have to mine yourself, but spending an hour or so in Echo Cave can easily net you several hundred ores of varying quality. So 810c production cost on an item that you can readily turn around and sell for 4s? That’s a nearly 500% markup over cost. Easily enough money to keep yourself scrolled, geared up (in basic whites or cheap greens), and fully stoned (HP/SP, not the other stuff :P).



Taking advantage of the market:



Be aware before you set up your stone shop of the other shops around you. See what pricing they have and either match their price or lower yours to be more attractive. Heck, if they have cheap Elrue[1] you might as well buy them out and make some Lix[1] to sell also! When competitively pricing your goods, keep your production costs in mind. Remember how we only spent 810c to create that Lix[1]? That’s your bottom line. Anything over that is considered profit, so price yourself accordingly.


I’ve noticed Cypion’s population is significantly smaller than Bijou, even in lower leveled maps like Elderine. The shops aren’t as congested and there just isn’t as much traffic as what I was accustomed to. You can also use these factors to your advantage. Less population means less sellers. Best time to take advantage of this is right after maintenance. After maintenance, I priced Lix[1] at 6s each and sold out within 30 minutes. Perhaps I was lucky, but smart business people create their own luck. I was the only shop at the smith selling Lix[1]. There were others selling T2 and T3 stones, but holding the monopoly even for a few minutes can prove profitable.



Taking advantage of other people’s laziness:


I wouldn’t necessarily call it ‘laziness’ but I couldn’t find a better word. Basically this just means that you do the tasks that most people are unwilling to do. Namely, farming.


When you get into the 6x+ level range, you’re really going to tire of farming. You’re more willing to just set up a buy shop for stuff like toadstools and herbs than just going out and picking it yourself right? You’d rather spend your time questing, pvping, grinding or what have you, and I don’t blame you. At that point in your Fiesta career, you have enough money to not want to waste your time with these menial tasks.


Menial tasks are what newbies can best take advantage of. With some gameplay experience, you tend to know your farmable quest items, where to get them, the difficulty in getting them, and the general price range of said item. Take for instance, Apples. Apples are a somewhat uncommon drop from wood farmed in low level maps like FOM, SOG, FOT, etc. You probably get 1 apple for every 6-10 woods farmed. That’s not too bad of a rate when you’re a newbie farming those apples to simply make money. As a high leveled player, you definitely don’t want to waste your time on what, to you, now appears to be a pretty crummy drop rate am I right? You bet I am, I’ve been there!


I’ve kept track, so far in my one week of Cypion play time, I’ve sold 53 apples. Not so amazing you think? “Big deal, 53 apples,” you say. Well, get this, I’ve sold all of them at 10s each. That’s 530s in pure profit from just taking some time to farm here and there. 530s is no small chunk of change for a player below level 30, especially considering this isn’t my only source of income.


Other easily farmable quest/production items for players under level 20:



Flowers (sold petals at 5s each): maybe the 5s pricetag is a bit high, but I have sold several dozen of each. Problem is that there just aren’t enough quests that require petals and they’re somewhat easily attainable for most players since they all know they spawn in Roumen.


Herbs: Geranium sells surprisingly well @ 1s even though it’s not commonly used in productions. T2 HP pots require Geranium, but the cost of producing t2 HP pots is moderately high considering you need 2 MQ Fruit and 2 Sign of Trace to create them. Geranium is easily farmed near the Lumi Stone entrance in FOM.


Mushrooms: Plain Toadstools are what you are after here. Plain Toadstools are valuable in the production of both Vit[2] and Def[2] buff scrolls. These two scrolls are the most commonly purchased of all the T2 scrolls out there and each require 1 toadstool as part of their recipe. Toadstools can be farmed in large amounts in several different patches on the Elderine side of the Sea of Greed map. Pricing Plain Toadstools at 300c-500c is fairly common.


Academy Rewards: This was where I saw this biggest difference in early level playing vs. Bijou. Cypion’s early level academy rewards are typically quite a bit less than Bijou’s, which is understandable because the server is newer and there is just less money to go around at this point. Level 10-25 monetary rewards are anywhere from 3s-10s typically in Cypion and there were times when I leveled up and received no silver because the Guild’s coffers were dry. This can be disheartening to an up and coming adventurer especially one that relies solely on these rewards as income. That’s what makes my paragraphs above so much more relevant.


So where am I now financially? I’m much better off than I had anticipated. I’ve done some buying of gear, nothing over 70s yet, but haven’t vendored any gear I’ve picked up or finished using. After one week I’ve already topped the 1 gold mark in my bank. I’ve estimated that I’ve earned about 200s of that 1g in academy rewards. The only production items I’ve vendored are Elrue[1], Lix[1], and HP[1] and SP[1]. The pots I’ve sold were only about 2 stacks of each, 250c each for the HP[1], 150c each for the SP[1]. Nobody has given me money and again, I haven’t sold any equipable items other than whites to the NPC. I think that’s pretty decent so far... and hey, I even paid for the engagement ring

Congratulations!  You've discovered one of the Holiday Scramble Screenies!