"any GM *insert tradeskill here* in bazaar?"

[Bumkus]

I've done Arctic Wyvern armor. I agree that it was a royal pain in the rumkus. Happy was the day when I finally got to destroy that Coldain Tanner's kit.

What I suggest is that the expected time committments for tradekills (as well as other forms of EQ character progression) have things like the bazaar, pok books, velium weapon conversions factored into the equation. By no means did I suggest that tradeskills were easy back in the day. Just as I am sure you would not suggest that tradeskills are easy today.

What I questioned was the suggestion that "if you want something bad enough, get it yourself", referring to inflation in the bazaar.

I do not believe a person starting tradeskills today, at any level or of any class, could farm and/or vendor purchase his way to 300 in any of the skills, much less multiples skills.

I believe the bazaar is a necessity, not a convenience. Perhaps this is where we differ Wyvern. As a tradeskiller still on the way up, the bazaar is my lifeblood, both as seller and buyer. Inflation has a tremendously destructive effect on someone still skilling up, because most of their purchases are still going to pure-loss combines.

One's view of inflation in the bazaar probably depends largely on where you are in the tradeskill curve. I admit, I don't care how much arctic wyvern hides cost anymore. But I am very sensitive to how inflation affects other items I need. If you are a buyer, then inflation is bad. If you are a seller then I suppose inflation is good.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

I do not believe a person starting tradeskills today, at any level or of any class, could farm and/or vendor purchase his way to 300 in any of the skills, much less multiples skills.

I must disagree with this statement

Anyone of any race/class can easily get baking to 300 vendor purchased and farming. Might need to make a level 1 druid alt to forage some fruit for MTP's... thats about it.

A level 24 enchanter can vendor purchase to 300 in JC(the usual route to 290 then gem studded chains to 300), pottery (star ruby steins only need magic clay, all the way to 300), and brewing (champagne needs enchanted gold).

Anyone else can pretty easily make a level 24 enchanter and swap enchanted silver/gold/clay through the shared bank.

Fletching can be vendor purchased to 282 by anyone. Wood elves and Karana worshippers can go to 300.

Smithing can be vendor purchased to 300 via Mistletoe Cutting Sickles provided you can manage to level a druid or cleric to 29 to imbue emeralds.

Poison Making and Alchemy can be vendor purchased or vendor farmed to 300.

Really the only skills that cannot realistically be vendor purchased are Tailoring (although some races can certainly solo farm to 300 using DoN recipes) Tinkering, and Research.

Of course, the bazaar makes much of this easier but it is by no means required.

[Bumkus]

Thank you for correcting me, Qal. I am currently wrestling with Tailoring, so my mind is a bit poisoned. Eventually i will push forward with the other tradeskills and these lists are very helpful.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

I feel your pain.

Tailoring sucks.

It sucked back in the day and it still sucks.

[Phantron]

Something that isn't bought simply does no good to an economy. In a real free market economy if I keep on price a can of coke at $20 and no one is buying it, it'll eventually come back to haunt me because I got stuff taking up room that can be used to sell other stuff. There is no such problem in EQ because inventory space is essentially free. Also in a real economy you usually need to rent wherever you're selling, so if my overpriced coke is never selling, I'll be losing money due to rent and would be motivated to bring the price down to something more reasonable.

I've said this before but there needs to be a fee that's perhaps 1/1000th of what you're asking per real day that's charged as soon as you list anything on the bazaar. If you're expecting to actually selling this stuff, 1/1000th of your total sales per day isn't very much. And if you're not expecting to sell this stuff and hope to prey on some guy who doesn't know what's going on, well, it's a risk you take to try to take advantage of people. You might sell your Diamond Dust (which I assume is sold hoping people will mistaken it for Crushed Diamond Dust) for 10k to a stranger or you could end up fooling no one and lose 10pp a day. The choice is yours. Faced with a penalty for prolonged no sale, you'll see prices go more toward what they ought to be, or tributed, and either is better than seeing some overpriced good that has no possibility of selling besides to the most uninformed/gullible.

[Wyvernwill]

Bumkus, I fully understand how tailoring is. I've done it twice between two characters... The first was before the Velious furs ever even stacked. Having 2 accounts (primarly because of tailoring), just so I had a way to swap items to and from my storage alts just to skill up.

My post above did come off a bit more harsh than it should have, I guess I am just jaded lately on how many tailoring is too hard posts I have seen over the time here. Yeah, I fully agree that the nerf to the only vendorable means to 300 in tailoring alone hurt, heck, it made life hard for my primary who I am currently trying to work tailoring up on. But, then again... smithing has also had multiple trivial nerfs in it's life to keep people from easily skilling up also. So far, they have been the only two tradeskills that has happened to.

I work in Black Gold Inlays to raise the final points of my smithing skill, along with GM DoN armors. It's extremely slow going and one fail will crush my bank account for a long time as I try to recoup that loss. In the same respect, I hunt Creator, Nest and RCoD and other OOW zones to get freebie combines along with it that make me more money than they should. In some strange way it balances out.

What I have noticed works well is finding a place the items you need drop plus there are good vendor drops as well. Shimmering Ukun Hides drop fairly well in NC, and so do runes. I usually duo pack/pixxt with a friends shaman and myself, usually two boxing, and pick up 3 to 4 in a couple hours + runes and tribute loot. It's slow going, yes, but atleast that way you are doing something productive + getting drops you need. Tradeskillers now days have to be able to meet both ends of it vs just farming the drops they need.

Inflation is harsh, but it's the way of the game. When nothing comes out, inflation gets really bad. Cost of the items needed stay the same, price of the end goods plummets. Atleast with attunable, things have remained in check. With DoN GM and Drake scales for example, the demand for the scales exceeds usually the supply, while the demand for cultural remains the same. Once dod came out, prices skyrocketed because scales were no longer hitting the market as fast. Switching to a system that taxes you for not selling can hurt the tradeskiller even worse than those farming the items.

A couple of my guildmates are farming their way to 300 tailoring as is. They have been killing Holgresh and Othmir constantly. Yes, it's a hard, annoying means, but they are going that route. Tailoring is not impossible, it's just as hard as it was in the pre solstice robe days.

[Phantron]

If you charge 1/1000th per day, even if it takes you a month to sell something that's only 3% of your total sales.

And if it takes longer than that to sell something, the seller probably needs to reevaluate either the price or the selling strategy.

[Angelsyn]

Something that isn't bought simply does no good to an economy. In a real free market economy if I keep on price a can of coke at $20 and no one is buying it, it'll eventually come back to haunt me because I got stuff taking up room that can be used to sell other stuff. There is no such problem in EQ because inventory space is essentially free. Also in a real economy you usually need to rent wherever you're selling, so if my overpriced coke is never selling, I'll be losing money due to rent and would be motivated to bring the price down to something more reasonable.

I've said this before but there needs to be a fee that's perhaps 1/1000th of what you're asking per real day that's charged as soon as you list anything on the bazaar. If you're expecting to actually selling this stuff, 1/1000th of your total sales per day isn't very much. And if you're not expecting to sell this stuff and hope to prey on some guy who doesn't know what's going on, well, it's a risk you take to try to take advantage of people. You might sell your Diamond Dust (which I assume is sold hoping people will mistaken it for Crushed Diamond Dust) for 10k to a stranger or you could end up fooling no one and lose 10pp a day. The choice is yours. Faced with a penalty for prolonged no sale, you'll see prices go more toward what they ought to be, or tributed, and either is better than seeing some overpriced good that has no possibility of selling besides to the most uninformed/gullible.

This sort of thing severly punishes someone like me.

I don't sell components for the most part... Some Sacred Tunarian Silks, random hides that I vendor-mine, etc. All at very reasonable (almost always lower than others) prices.

My real market is selling GM Moonglade, Feran, Murkglider, Firehide & other armours. Due to the competition on finished tradeskill combine stuff, my profit margin is very low on the tailoring side, yet still decent on the Moonglade side.

If there were some "tax", then I simply wouldn't be able to put most of the things I sell out there. If I'm lucky, I get 1 GM Moonglade sale a month & 1 or 2 Tailoring sales a week. My Trader is online almost 24/7, since I only have 1 account and don't get a lot of play-time in.

Just in 7 pieces of GM Moonglade armour, I have a selling price of over 600kpp. Add in the 4 remaining GM Augs I have (made by someone else to help sell the armour) and it crowns 800kpp.

So you think I should have to pay 800pp a day (24k per month), just so I can get that lucky sale once per month? Not to mention the Feran Tunic of Ice, Feran Leggings of Ice, Robe of Strife (80kpp each) and all the other gear that I sell at fair prices. I should get hit with a tax, just 'cause some other Trader on my server (Fellow Xegony players should know who) prices stuff like Livestone Plate Boots for 158kpp & Trilounhide Tunic for 175kpp? (Which he bought from me when I was selling it for 22k!)

It bums me out when he buys stuff from me, 'cause I know then that it won't actually get used by anyone. But I refuse to accept that there should be some kind of externally imposed punishment on sales.

Want something cheaper? Set up as a Buyer. Metallic Drake Scales run an average of 22k in the Bazaar on Xegony, so Buyers offer 16-19k each for 'em.

The BuySell channel & the Buyer/Barter area are the counter-balance to the "overpriced seller" syndrome.

I used to buy Essence of Discord for 8-12k each... now the lowest price in the Bazaar is 35k. So what do I do? I don't buy 'em! And every once in awhile, I do see one for 10-12k and I pick it up then.

[Flehmen]

Perhaps a good comprimise might be made in increasing the vendor worth of certain items? People with what are in essence trash drops would be more likely to verdor them off if they were worth more. Hopefully increasing some of the supply coming into the baz.

True, those in the know would send this "trash" to their mule, but I've heard of many people saying things like... "Gee, wish I had know it was worth that much I destroyed it for item X"

Anyhow, due to limited levels I pay about 350 per small brick of yttrium, for example. People laugh at me when I try to charge 1500pp for my failures, time, effort in making a piece of DoN master's gear. Why? Because they have alternatives.

As a TSer, pretty much I don't have alternatives *IF* I want to TS first and mindlessly kill blue mobs in my spare time. What does that get us? Guides on what to sell to TSers to make money. Luckally I'm still low enough to not know the horrible pain of High skill tailoring or smithing....

Take care, look for fellow TSers to help, and keep clicking combine!
Ten.