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All That Glitters Is Not Gold (Rant)
So, feel free to call me oblivious on this since I have no idea when this happened, but I've recently noticed that there are less things that one can resell back to a merchant for money these days. I came across this when I was leveling some new characters and realized that the mountains of DPS crystals I got from dailies sold back for literally nothing. Not only that, but extra glyphs accrued from crates and the like are also selling for all of not a [filtered] thing.
Clarification: This is not my main source of income. This simply is something I noticed off-hand during the last 2 or so weeks.
I find it ironic that a game that actively calls you out on playing for long stretches of time would be built in such a way so that the only real method of making some sort of progress in regards to personal wealth (for want of a better term) is to spend every moment of your day grinding your socks off, preferably with multiple characters having a very low threshold of resistance in regards to clearing content.
This is largely hyperbole on my part but have gold resellers and the like really become such a malignant tumor in the game that it will get to a point where the only way to make some sort of capital is to just hammer away at the peanuts given away by the daily quests? People already thought things were bad when gold literally disappeared from the open world upon hitting level 60. Then came the "fix" to Ghilliglade drops that attempted to solve a problem that never existed. Then came massive decreases to gold drops in dungeons themselves (aside: is it me, or do you actually get less gold when there's more people in a dungeon?). I could go on, but I think everyone sees the point by now.
I don't know about anyone else, but I find it increasingly difficult to even keep up with the game itself when I'm constantly struggling to obtain the funds necessary to purchase the items I need for my character(s), never mind min-maxing or optimizing personal effectiveness. At the risk of sounding like a complete jackass, I can't afford to spend every moment of my day/week/whatever playing this game (much to my own chagrin I assure you; for all its flaws, of which there are many, I [filtered] love TERA). So why does it seem that with each (major) patch, earning funds becomes more and more difficult?
Apology: That ended up being far more drawn-out (and probably nonsensical in some areas) than originally intended. Still, does anyone else have any concerns (or even possible solutions) about gold acquisition, or am I making a far greater deal out of this than necessary? Thoughts?
Clarification: This is not my main source of income. This simply is something I noticed off-hand during the last 2 or so weeks.
I find it ironic that a game that actively calls you out on playing for long stretches of time would be built in such a way so that the only real method of making some sort of progress in regards to personal wealth (for want of a better term) is to spend every moment of your day grinding your socks off, preferably with multiple characters having a very low threshold of resistance in regards to clearing content.
This is largely hyperbole on my part but have gold resellers and the like really become such a malignant tumor in the game that it will get to a point where the only way to make some sort of capital is to just hammer away at the peanuts given away by the daily quests? People already thought things were bad when gold literally disappeared from the open world upon hitting level 60. Then came the "fix" to Ghilliglade drops that attempted to solve a problem that never existed. Then came massive decreases to gold drops in dungeons themselves (aside: is it me, or do you actually get less gold when there's more people in a dungeon?). I could go on, but I think everyone sees the point by now.
I don't know about anyone else, but I find it increasingly difficult to even keep up with the game itself when I'm constantly struggling to obtain the funds necessary to purchase the items I need for my character(s), never mind min-maxing or optimizing personal effectiveness. At the risk of sounding like a complete jackass, I can't afford to spend every moment of my day/week/whatever playing this game (much to my own chagrin I assure you; for all its flaws, of which there are many, I [filtered] love TERA). So why does it seem that with each (major) patch, earning funds becomes more and more difficult?
Apology: That ended up being far more drawn-out (and probably nonsensical in some areas) than originally intended. Still, does anyone else have any concerns (or even possible solutions) about gold acquisition, or am I making a far greater deal out of this than necessary? Thoughts?
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Comments
If you can't run the end game dungeons yet, you can farm island of dawn BAMS, the vanguards gives gold, feedstock and crystals where you can buy and resell VM materials ( eau for 2.3 k ~ and horns for 180~ depending on the day lol ). You can make fast gold that way and also farm LKNM, RMNM and other mid tier dungeon.
If you can afford elite then go ahead, it helps a bunch.
Other then that... it's pretty easy to get gold in Tera.. but of course you gotta grind it out.
The glyphs being worthless I believe was an undocumented change in the valkyrie patch and came as a huge shock to everyone in my group leveling one. I still don't understand where that one came from and why it was never mentioned.
The lack of gold only hurts if you want to but Elite and customes from broker. Mid Tier gear is not that hard to get once you get the gists of it. When you complete all your red quests and some lvl 65 yellow quest you get more than enought to try to have a Slaughter +12 with Still Accesories, Fine Niveots, Several Glyps, a Basic Inner and a Flawless Brooch. With that you can do dungeons up to 417 item lvl if you rolled properly your gear.
I admit that the mid tier dungeons and end-game content is something casuals get hard to be in but at least end-game content and BiS is not for everyone.
Keep in mind what kind of player you are (casual or hardcore) and think about it if the content you can run with your own free time is enought to make you satisfied.
Step 2. Reapers, Reapers and more Reapers.
Step 3. Profit.
Again, at the risk of sounding like a jackass, I've been playing for almost 3 years. I can say with abject confidence that I'm seeing the exact opposite happen. To wit, once upon a time you could buy a 30-day Elite Status scroll off the broker for around 30-35k (on CH). These days, you're looking at - on average - twice that price for the same item.
That aside, interesting points so far everyone. Thanks for the input.
At endgame the amount of ways to make money for your average player has dropped ... an insane amount. Used to be you could craft (and don't tell me crafting was useless before; I knew alchemists who made steady cash just selling potions made with their excess gathering rewards), or sell the MWA from your mwa boxes for a real nice amount of gold, or dismantle equipment for feedstock when you got it from a dungeon, or grind BAMs in the open world for the gold that they dropped (though, admittedly it wasn't much -- it was still something) or if you were lucky you'd run a dungeon and a bind on equip set piece would drop that you could sell for quite a lot.
Today, alchemy is dead. Almost everything you could make with it is gone. Etching is just not worth it anymore, since the things are super cheap compared to what they used to be, but the RNG walls are still present at the same abysmal crit rates. Weapon and armorcrafting have their own niche market still, thank god, but even those're gonna really go out the window when brooches become a thing you get from dungeons, leaving everyone to craft caprins and [filtered]. Guess what happens when there's excess supply? Prices dip. So that's on its way out soon, too. Since the majority of people trade their vanguard credits for crystals or mwa boxes, those are now incredibly cheap. Crystal boxes that you get from dungeons have gotten cheaper as well since one is given to everybody in the group. Feedstock is the only thing you can get away with selling for a nice amount of gold, but let's be real -- thanks to how scarce it is, you're probably saving it for your own gear. Oh, and if you happen to find a bind on equip piece of armor (good luck there, the chance has got to be below a single percent), good luck finding a buyer when gear comes from boxes that fit whatever class happens to open it.
Crafting is like the gold standard for an economy in my opinion. It creates a system where everyone relies on each other to get their stuff accomplished, and so a back and forth system of trading is created. This game actively works to destroy its crafting system, so the only thing average players trade in are enchanting materials, costumes, and combat consumables. I just know someone's gonna bring up "selling runs" or something, but dungeons like harrowhold are -- in the developers' own words -- designed for a small fraction of the community. Telling people to "just do harrowhold" is like telling people to just eat cake or something.
My only suggestion to you, OP, is to wait for events and then take advantage of them. Then just coast on those earnings until the next big thing comes along, while making meager amounts of dosh from the dungeons you run every day. That's what I do. When it was announced that we'd get an enchanting event, I bought as much feedstock as I could. Then, at the height of diamond inflation and enchanting hysteria, I resold it for a decent amount. If an EMP costume is just released for a limited time, buy one and save it and forget about it. Wait a few months after it's disappeared from the game and the market. Then resell it for a ton. I really hate to admit this, but a majority of my profits nowadays come from selling items that don't even have a practical use in the game itself. Investing in costumes is a great way to make money but it just feels so hollow. I miss the days when I could just craft hijka oils and make a decent amount but now those're so cheap it's pointless. Definitely not a bad starting point if you have nothing, though.
I salute the people who can do this but I tried it and got way too bored about halfway through.
Hey, you literally proved his point!!!
OK back to topic, I would say 2 things: Gold has gotten easier to obtain on Lv 65 in huge amounts. I do recall being proud of having like 50K in bank. Now I'm like "Jeez I've got like 60K there, gotta save some pennies here and there....". It did get easy for Lv 65s. But for the leveling players in other hand, albeit gold is coming also at an increased rate, so are the expenses. Skills end up costing a whole lot, potions are costly when you need them, teleport scrolls seem cheap on the proportion but that's another added cost, and so is alkahests and feedstocks for enchanting.
I feel like leveling is costing more, to compensate the added gold income.
I have the exact same issue with my Valkyrie, I literally have 70 [filtered] Fine Hardy Cruxes.... If I could take 50 cruxes to fuse into a random niveot I would be happy already (ye I know about the niveot structures but screw those, success ratio is LOW, 1 every 3 at best case, they don't compensate their cost).
Getting gold in this game is a mixed bag. I do it by grinding BGs for the bonanza boxes, and it gives me enough gold per fun ratio. Tho for who's not into that, alchemy is deader than the dodos, gathering directly affected by that, mobs give peanuts, grinding IoD BAMs for the credits seem like the option, dunno how well end game dungeon drops sell as I'm too lazy to do this.
I feel like during leveling you've got BGs or nothing, and at Lv 65 you have still BGs but also IoD mindless grind and some other random stuff, it's not "hard" to earn gold here but sure it's limited in how you do it.
The inflation is caused by several factors, not only the lack of a big gold sink (for who doesn't know: when your gold disappears into the system, like buying stuff from merchant or broker taxes: gold that doesn't go to another player), but also the ease of obtaining it, tho this later one is a mixed bag in my opinion.
Yup, that was from the Valk patch. Plenty of other things lost their gold value, too (like most of the equipment you can get from the levelling tokens), and that was a change we didn't need.
Tried that once, lasted a week, and it got me to stop playing for a couple of years because it was so boring.
Events are now a joke as materials offered crash in market and anything decent is only 7-days. Seems no more permanent items will be given anymore after the tantrums over previous giveaways. Gold resellers purchase Elite and are listened to far more than those of us playing for free. It is what it is. Just leveling up my character before event is over, and then, will be moving on.
I posted something similar in the Bug Report forums, as there was a thread started about world drop rates being decreased since the last patch or two, yet no official word on it. I confirmed this myself over the weekend... an estimated 75% drop. After 15-20 kills, I'd see 3-4 drops... on average. The direction the professions have taken (as stated above) after recent updates have severely affected income levels for casual to mid-level players & perhaps even RP-style players who don't want to have to grind the toughest dungeons all day long to make a "virtual" living.
Add to that... the fact that there are exorbitant costs involved for skill leveling, npc vendor consumables & enchanting materials, yet no real money coming in from questing and/or leveling. I agree that buying/selling costumes is a way to make decent cash, if you know when to buy and sell & have the capital to do so. But if you are finding more frequently that you need to spend money in the cash shop to earn money in-game, then (to me) that says the economy needs to be fixed.
Idk if the boting is still the case in KTera, but this seems like that trend is catching up with the 60+ content. honestly, the few cases you told us about (i haven't paid attention to all that yet) seem like minor setbacks. if that is your main source of income then, litteraly, poor you. These 5g at most per should hardly make a dent in your income if you do even the most basic dailies.
Elite at its current price is due to inflation and the fact Elite was rewarded in more than one event back then which kept prices below the standard EMP value anyways.