Gemdiver tells all - How to make plat

[Itek]

Howdy,

Ok, I'll admit I'm a masochist... I still read Caster's Realm. /em ducks thrown weapons and insults

And today they had what looked like an exciting article...

"How to Make Plat in Everquest, by Gemdiver."

I thought this would be useful as after my last month of twinking my new cleric (retired the enchanter) I need to recover some plat. I'm under 10k in the bank for the first time in years. (Lucky TheWife is still sitting on over six figures just in case.)

But, as I posted in another thread the only real way to make plat is off tradeskillers.

Here are Gemdivers suggestions.

1) Celestial Essence - rip off tradeskillers
He suggests a price of up to 5 plat an essence.

2) Blessed Dust of Tunare - rip off tradeskillers
Those silly smiths and their need for 7500+ dusts...

3) Omens Tradeskill drops - rip off tradeskillers
Apparently if you can farm Anguish there is another ton of plat to make off smiths.

4) Be 65+ to 70 time+ and you get money in end game zones rare drops
Gosh, I didn't figure that hunting end game zones and solo'ing/two-boxing would be profitable. Thanks for the tip Gemdiver.

5) Velious Furs - rip off tradeskillers
Those tailors have it almost worse than smiths. Oh well, they signed on for it.

6) Elemental planes - rip off tradeskillers
Now if I could just get someone to PoFire flag my 51 cleric, I'd be rolling in plat... After sticking a few tradeskillers who can't get flagged... Oh, wait...

7) DoN crystals - have gear that's already better
Had someone tell me that 51 clerics can ROLL in crystals. Either I'm reading things wrong or people actually think people under 60 are fighting pure red mobs. Meanwhile the 60-65 crowd is complaining that a lot of missions are impossible to single pull. I'd hate to see a mid-50's group after pulling 4 red mobs.

8 ) Reseller - rip off everybody
And -this- is why you see things like...
sm piece of velium x5 ... 25 pp
sm piece of velium x3 ... 40 pp
sm piece of velium x7 ... 45 pp
sm piece of velium x438 ... 49 pp
sm piece of velium x12 ... 52 pp

Gee.... think someone is trying to corner the market in sm piece of velium ?

There are 4 tried and true methods of making plat in EQ that can be explained simply.

a) Kill stuff. This is slow and smacks of effort.

b) Get it from tradeskillers. Make them earn the plat from mobs for you.

c) Buy low, sell high. Takes time but if you have the soul of a Wall Street mogul, this is for you.

d) Become uber. Charge whatever you feel like for gear you wouldn't dream of equiping. Meanwhile complain about lack of end game content.

Oh well... there really is nothing new under the sun I guess.

[Angelsyn]

Re: DoN Crystals.

The first two DoN missions are easily done by mid-50's groups. A level 51 Cleric can easily get into such a group, especially if they've got a Click-stick!

And yes, if you don't have a skilled puller (and/or good CC), some of the later missions can be tough... but the ones in Lavaspinner's Lair are cake-walks!

[Bauhb]

Supply and demand.

Whether you like it or not, Gemdiver is right. Unfortunately, his article isn't directly helpful to you. Tradeskill materials are always in demand, espcially by the minority of tradeskillers with a seemingly bottomless bank.

It's a question of knowing what sells, and farming it. At one time, it was ornate armor... now it's augments, oow runes, and so on. Tradeskill materials have always been in high demand in one form or another.

Like it or not, EQ runs on a mostly capitalist economy. It's going to be all based on supply and demand, with everyone out there trying to get a profit. Sure, it's frustrating at times, but what is the alternative?

The short version of a plat guide is this:
1) get to lvl 70, the higher level you are, the easier it is to farm
2) farm what is selling well in #auction and bazaar

And that's all there is to it. AoN's always sell very well, get a group to go into fear and farm the golems. Runes still sell well, although not nearly as well as they used to. The new expansion will be out in september, find out what it a big seller early on and try to exploit it. That's the nature of the beast.

Best of luck.

[Turlo Lomon]

These are my rules for making cash that I suggest to everyone who asks me in game.

1) Loot anything that isn't nailed down and can be sold.
2) Find a claw hammer.
3) Make sure you look up items in EQ Traders or Allakhazam to verify what they are used/not used for.

Rules for bazaar.

1) Know what your item sells to a NPC vender for. Never cut below this price.
2) If competitive prices drop within 10% of the NPC vender price, sell it to a NPC vender.
3) Do not tell people who your vender is. Do not guild vender. Do not join chat channels other then market with vender.
4) Rotate stock at least once a day if you have over 80 slots to sell. Let word get out that you always have new items available each and every day.
5) Set tells to their own window. This enables you to see haggle requests, etc. while AFK and can adjust prices according to actual demand, not what sellers price their items at.
6) Set up an AFK message notifying people that tells are sent to a seperate window.
7) Use the in game e-mail to respond if they are not on line when you check your vender.

One last important note.

Just because people price an item for 5,000 in bazaar does not make that item worth 5,000. Take poison ingredients for example. Tradeskill flag, so it must be valuable. However, no rogue I know would pay more then a pittance for it.

[eqNichola]

Is there a difference between a price higher than you are prepared to pay, and a 'rip off' ? Or is the latter just your own shorthand for the former?

[Elyssanda]

Is there a difference between a price higher than you are prepared to pay, and a 'rip off' ? Or is the latter just your own shorthand for the former?

ripoff... example common foraged items like vegetables (which can also be made completely vendor purchased) that are being sold from 5-10p EACH. total ripoff.

price higher than I am willing to pay? example chunks of condensed shadows, drop off of mobs in their mid 30's in shadeweavers thicket,
20P is a price I am willing to pay
40P each is higher than I am willing to pay,
ripoff is when that price hits 90P+ (and I have seen these try to sell at 150P each)

[Lickity]

The argument of ripoff vs. value of the product gets hashed and rehashed all day long. For example, someone used Vegetables (5pp) as a ripoff. Personally, as a non-forager, I pay 5pp just fine, because I can do an awful lot with a stack of vegetables, paying 100pp for them, and I can kill 2-3 mobs in Fire solo and get more than the money to buy it in less than 10 minutes. I consider that fair.

I agree that they are easily gotten, but there is also something to be said for the value of your time, both playing and in trader mode. If I am in a hurry, ill buy the veggies in the bazaar at 5pp a pop, or auction in PoK for 20pp a stack and get 4-5 tells.

There is a really fine line between ripoff and value of the product, and that is because the line doesn't really exist, its a free market, completely free market, a ripoff to you, as stated above, is a decent deal to me. When people stop buying things because they are "overpriced," you have found a "ripoff." If the product stagnates, it gets its price lowered. The people who are truly ripping you off are not the sellers, it is the buyers with too much money. There is a large portion of plat buyers in the game, when you get to a point where how much money you have doesn't matter, you will pay list price despite the item (as evidenced on a small scale by my buying vegetables for 'too much,') it is called inflation, /feedback to Sony to deal with it.

[Itek]

Edit: Please read my sig, questions sent to PM get answered within a day in most cases.

I'm not opposed to re-selling stuff in the bazaar. If you read other threads and posts by me you'd find....

1) I frequently buy stuff in the bazaar.
2) I frequently SELL stuff in the bazaar.
3) I've just spent nearly a million plat twinking my new cleric and TheWife's new beastlord duo. (We don't two box, but it's much better grouping then an Enc/Druid combo.)
4) That would, ipso facto, imply I've made a million plat, or have a friend who recently quit who did. (/wave Caralon) Or a combo of the two.

Buy low, sell high. Great advice.

You mean like buying Royal Kromrif Blood at 600 and 500 and re-pricing them at 5500 ? (Normal price in Bazaar is 6k)

Or buying Runed Sea Shells with Enduring Breath at 10 plat each and repricing them at 2500 ? (Normal price in Bazaar is 3k)

Gosh, Itek is an idiot who's never played this game. I thought about posting my credentials, but I discovered that, first, I don't care, second it wouldn't change YOUR mind, third it takes a while to list, fourth others have a bigger/better list and a contest isn't going to help my relationships here and fifth... my fingers get tired.

Velium Hound Fur for 1000 plat. That's a rip off. It's been, prior to the tailoring nerf, consistently selling for 400 - 500 plat for... lessee.... nearly 3 years?

Ripoff doesn't imply the bizare prices though... Ripoff in this case is speaking to the "the best way to make plat is to hold other players hostage" mentality of these "how to make plat" guides.

PERHAPS if the price of raw materials (discorant sicorae, and the stones themselves, sell in the Bazaar for MORE than what the combined items do) were to become more reasonable (e.g. people weren't focused on making their living off tradeskillers) then the prices for finished augments would drop.

350k plat for a 12 cha / HP regen 3 augment? Wow, I paid less buying the Cleric Epic 1.0

I'm not saying I'm -startled- by these -insights- as to how to make plat. I'm just disgusted everytime someone notable comes out and say "the way to make money is off the backs of tradeskillers."

If your local grocery stores got together and said "let's raise the price of bread from $1.19 a loaf to $2.29 a loaf, because people use a lot of bread" the hue and cry, not to mention legal battles, would be ... neigh on unimaginable.

But let someone say "tradeskillers will pay 5pp for a no-fail 1.7 plat combine, people make 100k a month ripping them off, and they are happy to pay it" (nearly a direct quote) and people say "supply and demand"

I -especially- love the idea, direct suggestion and quote from Gemdiver

Everything stacks so take some stacks of solvents, scents of marr and a mixing bowl off to your exp group and make some extra money.

Wow, I know I'd appreciate someone in my exp group doing 200 - 400 Celestial Solvent combines during pulls.

Monk: What are you doing.
Itek: Gemdiver told me to bring stuff along, so I can bank some plat.
Monk: I'm trying to pull here.
Itek: Only 300 to go, and I only do it while I'm waiting for you to get back.
Shadowknight: I'm a smith, what do you charge for Essence?
Itek: Well Gemdiver suggests 15pp, but I can take 7pp since I know you.
Mage: I'm a tailor, doesn't that stuff no fail combine and cost under 2 plat.
Itek: Well I have to make my plat somehow, by the way it's FFA rolls on the Murmite runes right?

NOTE: Itek isn't doing Murmite rune droping groups (yet, gimme time) but I think you take my meaning.

[Itek]

Just in case you didn't read all that.

I'm not talking about the PRICING of items in my original post.

I'm talking about the "hoard tradeskill components and jack up the price, Tradeskillers will pay thru the nose for stuff" -idea- as an industry as being ripoff artists.

Oriental Trading Company sells these straw'ish white 'cowboy hats' for 7 bucks a dozen, including shipping.

Go to a carnival / state fair and you will see people selling them for $14.99 each, with some purple/pink airbrush around the edges and some cheap edging and feathers.

Yeah, it's a free economy and the tourists are certainly able to go and make them for themselves. But I think we can all agree it's a ripoff, the people doing it are ripoff artists, and that's the name of that tune.

If you make your living re-selling junk to tourists I'd like to say no offense, but the reality is... yeah I'm willing to say I'm not that sorry I said it.

People pay $3.59 for a coffee.
Doesn't make it less of a ripoff.

On Comedy Central there's the comic that does a bit about Mexican food and the French...

Mexican food industry guy: The Americans are so dumb, we take 4 food items and repackage them into 10 different items.
French food guy: How dumb do _I_ think they are? I think they will buy WATER..
Mexican food guy: Now, come on, they're dumb, but they're NOT gonna buy WATER...

[TheCraftyBard]

/ooc Ubernoober "How much is (item) worth?"
/ooc Me "It's worth whatever someone will pay for it"

[mewkus]

Actually, I like the idea of more people going and farming more and more tradeskill components. Even if they do thinnk tradeskilles will pay a bunch for it.

[Angelsyn]

Actually, I like the idea of more people going and farming more and more tradeskill components. Even if they do thinnk tradeskilles will pay a bunch for it.

The only way to stop the high prices on Tradeskill components in the Bazaar is...

Stop buying them for high prices.

Example: There's a guy (on Xegony) who's been asking 12k each for Metallic Substances for 5 months now... Yet others have been asking 4-6k each for them. Personally, I only buy the 4k ones, because I know the finished armour isn't selling great... but I still like to make some pieces occassionally. And besides, I got another skill-up when I made some Inferno Plate Gauntlets the other night.

Metallic Drake Scales have been 30-40k each in the Bazaar... Yet I've picked up 2 for 23k each. Made one Bracer, and now I'm biding my time to pick up another Scale or two before I make something else.

[mewkus]

Tradeskillers not buying high priced components only drives 1/2 of the supply and demand My preferance is to drive it from both sides.

[Angelsyn]

Tradeskillers not buying high priced components only drives 1/2 of the supply and demand My preferance is to drive it from both sides.

Trust me... eventually people will lower prices if nobody buys their goods.

[eqNichola]

I do wish I had access to the Magic List Of Correct Prices For Everything For All Time And If You Charge More It's A Rip-Off, really I do, but I seem to have lost my password.