Stromm and Tradeskills

[pennyrose]

I don't know how many of you have made characters on this new server, but it is a very interesting experience in many ways, including the aspects of game related to tradeskilling. I made my first character Friday evening not long after the server opened (Erudite wizard, now L6) and my second yesterday morning (Ogre SK, now L4). I am thinking about several others I would like to make.

For me the whole experience has been a revitalization and a reminder of what EQ used to feel like. I will keep this post to tradeskills with some of the IMHO positive and negative aspects of what is happening on Stromm.

First, it is wonderful doing low level tradeskills with stuff that you loot as you are getting experience. It is exciting to get a jungle spiderling with 3 spiderling silks on it because I can add that to my pile and that is another silk thread and a half worth of skill. There are tons of things on vendors that I could use, but after one glance, I realized I couldn't afford to buy stuff to skill up, I need to get it for free. I am just starting baking with one of my guys. I have half a stack of batwings and am now fishing because I remembered I would need lots of fish eventually. Of course, everything is held up for lack of storage. I am gradually getting a few containers together so I can both fight longer without selling and store stuff in the bank.

My wizard succeeded on some silk gloves Saturday and on a couple of pieces of patchwork on Sunday. It was wonderful because the gloves I could use and the patchwork I could give to my nearly naked druid friend. Yesterday my ogre sharpened some rusty weapons, kept one for fighting and made the others into ore which she sold (need the pp for bags).

What I'm trying to convey here is how satisfying and exciting it is to be able to succeed at these skills to make something someone really, really needs and that is not available other ways. I find both characters doing a variety of tradeskills just because they are so useful. Somehow I'm sure this is the notion the creators of the came had in mind when they included tradeskills.

On the other hand, by late Friday evening, folks were auctioning banded and patchwork armor, and by Sunday night /ooc had filled up with buying and selling, especially with crafted items and components for tradeskills and/or quests, and I was surprised to realize that made me very sad. EQ has somehow turned from an adventure game into a game that could be named Capitalism and that is going to infect the new server very quickly. Not only will there be folks rushing to be the "uber" guilds on the server or to have the highest level characters or the first good buffs (for donation), but there will also be a drive by some to skill up as a pp-making proposition that will leave regular crafters in the dust.

I'm not making judgments here. I have a second account with a 24-hour Bazaar mule and rely almost entirely on my tradeskills to support my many alts. But the experience on the new server made me realize how much this whole approach has skewed my experience, leaving me often feeling like I can't do what I want to in game because I have to "work." I stopped making PotC earring kits, even though they were still making a decent profit, because I was beginning to feel guilty if I wanted to go play by L16 gnome necro instead of working on tailoring.

For the time being, I am gonna trudge along with my little guys on Stromm and keep tradeskilling for myself and friends and because it is just a nice part of the game.


Rambled more than I meant to here, but I am curious if you are all happy with the commercial parts of tradeskilling in game or if some of you have had reactions similar to mine.

Pennyrose

[Lilosh]

I like the Capitalistic trend, to a point.

When people are skilling up on banded collars, and selling for 2 plat, thats harsh.


I didn't anticipate the "I'll throw away plat to skill up quickly" quite so soon.

Oh well, c'est la vie.

-Lilosh

[kaledin]

I too was disappointed...

I got and made a halfling Ranger and ventured forth into Misty Thicket. Trying to get to level 3 was a task and a half. (Got my tailoring up to 10 making silk thread though =P). Fighting was a pain because of the 135 some odd people in the zone, so it made it harder to get what I needed just to do the newbie armor quests. I felt like I was in Gfay before they implemented the Bazaar LOL . But overall it will definately be interesting, especially since there were mid 30's characters after only 3 days.
I will have to see how it breaks later on and see if I can break the level 10 barrier and hit PC to make some serious levels

[Zeralenn]

Heh -- well, some people have no life, which is how you get to 30 in 3 days. They also aren't doing the newbie quests or smelling the roses along the way.

My wood elf druid Richeldys started out on the first day of the Stromm server and I've played her quite a lot since. She's just shy of level 12 now. She has three pieces of her newbie armor finished (including the tunic, which is the hardest piece) and has the pieces for two others, short the woven silks. I fought for and looted every piece for my newbie armor, including a very lucky drop on the orc ribcage and pristine forest drakeling scale.

I also have been working on tradeskills -- my baking is now 130, my tailoring 31, and my smithing 45. I'm selling my goods in the bazaar for not much over cost, with pricing I think the economy can support.

I decided to concentrate on baking rather than smithing this go-around because (a) everyone and their brother seems to be getting into smithing, seeming to believe it's a "get rich quick" scheme, and we are already seeing a glut of the banded armor market, and (b) as a wood elf druid I can forage stuff to bake with -- not to mention that meat is a natural byproduct of killing stuff for pelts. I carry my spit with me and employ the "kill 'em and grilll 'em" strategy.

I am working slowly on my smithing, but mostly because my first tradeskill love is smithing. Besides, it would be nice to get up to cultural needles at least; I already have foraged ingredients piling up in my stash for essences.

I guess the part on Stromm that amuses me most is the mercenary aspect. I saw a guy on PoK today advertising he would make 1 raw silk piece for every 5 spider silks brought to him (!!!). But that's hardly it.

I told this story on the channel: I was on PoK and a gnome was shouting for a disease cure -- he was on death's door and would die any second. Four or five people answered the shout, asking how much he would pay for the cure. I sent him a tell, found out he was sitting in the library near the paladins (he was an SK and also lost, but sitting meant the disease didn't progress), and I went up and cured his disease, healed him to full, and showed him the way to the shadowknight spell vendors. He thanked me profusely and apologized that since it was a spell level for him he wouldn't be able to donate. I told him I would not have accepted it even if he had given it to me. There is such a thing as common decency, after all.

...Zera

[Duane]

Been slaving away

I have been a smith on the Stromm server since it started. It was rough in the very beginning, but I received excellent advice along the way from Keplar, and he's the reason I joined the guild.

I never did a tradesperson before, and I decided when this server was going live, I was going to make a dedicated tradesman for the first time ever. It's been a lot of work, but I'm now starting to feel success as I was probalby one of the first to make ornate chain armor, on the third day, and I'm now pushing to start making my first plate pieces.

It's a lot of fun, and I've enjoyed helping out the other players as much as possible, so that I now have a stable group of players who see me as the person to turn to for their smithing needs: weapons and armor.

The only problem I've seen so far is this desire of people to undersell us, and it's making it harder and harder to maintain strict standards on pricing so that everyone doesn't suffer in the long run. Sure, I could drop my prices big time and not be hurt a bit because I've made a lot of money just in the first four day. But I don't want to cause other young smiths to get discouraged or turned off because of this. I'm really not sure what can be done about this because I want us to have a striving, thriving community; not one that dies on us because greed made it so it's not worth continuing.

Duane, Ranger blacksmith

[Gargazon]

[/quote]I told this story on the channel: I was on PoK and a gnome was shouting for a disease cure -- he was on death's door and would die any second. Four or five people answered the shout, asking how much he would pay for the cure. I sent him a tell, found out he was sitting in the library near the paladins (he was an SK and also lost, but sitting meant the disease didn't progress), and I went up and cured his disease, healed him to full, and showed him the way to the shadowknight spell vendors. He thanked me profusely and apologized that since it was a spell level for him he wouldn't be able to donate. I told him I would not have accepted it even if he had given it to me. There is such a thing as common decency, after all.

...Zera [/quote]


/shout PRICE CHECK ON COMMON DECENCY PLEASE?!?!

***** shouts Your mama!

@@@@@ shouts I sold that last week, not worth having.

&&&&&& shouts all your price check are belong to us!!!!

[Windlord]

*nods* agreed to the above. I've got a couple of characters on the new server now, a necro gnome (lvl 9) and started a human mage (lvl 2 now ) Certain things are really neat and back to when I first got EQ (just as Kunark was released), but others arn't.

The thing that has struck me is how people are playing, a few are playing really nicely and all that, but a large portion are just being rude. Money seems to be behind all of these people, which I think defeats the point of the game.

I was in Qeynos newbee area last night, which not surprisingly was packed, and there was me tootling around blasting all sorts of creatures, when somebody came along and blitzed the area around me, leaving a trail of dead rats and snakes. Blimey, though I, whats up here. Well, doing a quick /w the person in question was a level 7 player and was basically just slotting everything for quick cash (plague rat tails and king snake sacs/skins/jaws). Normally I wouldn't mind and I've even done it myself on another server, but when there are loads of people trying to get exp for their next level then players like the above just make life hard.

The thing that I enjoy most about the game is the tradeskill elements, and have already got plans for my mage in tradeskilling, but before I can start I need a few levels and then some cash.

So if you're one of the irritating people who do the above, please wait for a while, until the number of low level characters in the newbee area has dropped so that you're not going to intefear in anybody else's game

[Calabar]

I’ve never understood rude behavior in online games. There’s a living, feeling person behind every one of those player characters and they should be treated as such. I love getting loot as much as the next materialistic person, but if that was all I was interested in I could go play Diablo. What I love about games like EQ is the interaction with other people. That’s one of the main reasons I like playing buffing/healing characters. Unless I’m in a hurry to meet someone I always stop to buff people whenever I can, especially lower level characters. Having been on the receiving end of such buffs when I first started playing I know how good it can feel to be so much more powerful for a brief period of time. So it makes me feel good knowing I can help someone else feel that way.

EQ can be an endless grind for money and experience if you let it. But I would much rather take the time to have fun. Sure, I level a lot slower than most of my friends, but there’s nothing like the feeling of being thanked by that new player who is now having a blast slaughtering those killer orc pawns that they had just spent most of the day running from. Or making that half naked level four ranger a few pieces of banded armor and giving him a low level magic weapon. Its things like that which make the game worth playing.