Make tons of plat doing Jewelcraft fast! (This needs to be fixed!)

[Rynnia]

Messing around in the game this afternoon I was asked for my e-mail address by some anon person I had never heard of before. So thinking it was about guild stuff or whatnot I gave my address to them and forgot about it.

Checked my e-mail tonight and inside was an e-mail asking me to buy some program that would make me nearly 300k plat a day.

They said it needed a 52 enchanter. So, I did a few hours of investigation and found that the Jewelcraft skill is a money making MACHINE. (No I didn't buy this clown's program, I just went into the game and talked to some people and tried some combines until I got this to work).


Nearly everything, Silver-Jade on up, if made with enchanted bars will sell back for more money to a vendor than the cost of the components.

For instance Silver-Jade rings are +183 copper each. Silver-Topaz are +251 copper each. Plat-Ruby is a whopping +10181 copper each combine! The fail rate with JC mastery and the new trivial level is EXTREMELY low to non existant, meaning you get + plat every single click.

With the mass enchant spells, this is even more pronounced since a good enchanter can regen mana so fast that doing this will net you 5k plat an hour without a program that does it for you.


Why am I posting this? Because it should be fixed, and FAST. The last time there was a for plat combine out there, I e-mailed Verant to no avail, and it ended up going on for months. My hopes is that they will see this here, and fix it promptly (next patch would be great). I believe this to be a very serious problem for the EQ economy. Try it out for yourself on the combines if you do not believe me. Let your GMs know about this. /feedback the problem. One guy doing this for an hour a day and making 5k or so as he wears his wrist out isnt a big deal, but Joe Macro, or 20 Joe Macros running this on their 5 computers each making 1500k a day makes all your hard earned stuff worth less. Let's get this stomped out.

[Rynnia]

.

Also please note I don't think this is some exploit or cheat, but perhaps an oversight on SOE's part when changing the trivial rates combined with the speed one can hammer out jewelcraft items with the mass enchant spells.

I'm of the firm belief that nothing should be a simple + plat combine in game, and that anything that yields + plat should require interaction between two or more people. MMORPG economies are quite fragile. EQ has the best out there and is in great part why the game has been so successful. Let your GM know your dissatisfaction with this and get it fixed ASAP.

[Filur]

This isnt exactly something new that has happened. We have known from almost the beginning that you can sell back to vendors for a profit if using enchanted bars. What you forget to take into calculation is that sometimes you fail the combine and loose both the components. The profit margin is so small that i dont really think i makes a difference to the economy of EQ as a whole.

When i skilled up to 250 in JC with my enchanter i think i was break even at best for the larger portion of my skillup attempts.

[Lothay]

This has been know since the begining.

Enchanted jewlecraft combines do sell back for more than the cost of materials, and over time, failures cause you to break even.

JC Mastery does change the equasion somewhat in favor of the enchanter, but...

Anything that requires a level 59 (Can't get JCM until 59) level character and over 30 AA points to make mere coppers per combine is still a win for Sony.

After all, you had to play those hours.

[Rynnia]

.

The new trivial rules, though, make this a problem.

Any time you can click two things together and make money in the game, that is a bad thing.


That said, a person with 250 in JC can make anything 50 JC skill and under, with no fails.

Silver Opal is 50 trivial. This is a no fail combine for a 250 jewelcrafter, and the enchanted product yields nearly a platinum of profit.

While this does not sound like much, and you may say if someone wishes to sit there and combine this stuff at a rate of 1 every couple seconds for a plat each, all the power to them, the fact is that people do use programs which can speed up this process by 5x or more.

5 plat every few seconds, is over 3k plat an hour or nearly 100k plat a day.

Like I said, the problem is not the guy doing a few combines for a few plat. The problem lies with those cheating the system and using a machine to do combines at a rate faster than the normal person can. Or 100 people using 200 machines to do the combines at a faster rate than a normal person can.

Somehow, this needs to be fixed quickly.

[Rynnia]

.

The new trivial rules, though, make this a problem.

Any time you can click two things together and make money in the game, that is a bad thing.


That said, a person with 250 in JC can make anything 50 JC skill and under, with no fails.

Silver Opal is 50 trivial. This is a no fail combine for a 250 jewelcrafter, and the enchanted product yields nearly a platinum of profit.

While this does not sound like much, and you may say if someone wishes to sit there and combine this stuff at a rate of 1 every couple seconds for a plat each, all the power to them, the fact is that people do use programs which can speed up this process by 5x or more.

5 plat every few seconds, is over 3k plat an hour or nearly 100k plat a day.

Like I said, the problem is not the guy doing a few combines for a few plat. The problem lies with those cheating the system and using a machine to do combines at a rate faster than the normal person can. Or 100 people using 200 machines to do the combines at a faster rate than a normal person can.

Somehow, this needs to be fixed quickly.

[Rynnia]

.

Apologies for the double post. Not sure what happened.

[eqNichola]

Well, qv this thread, in which it was generally thought that there was insufficient profit available for this to be worth it. I think we need to see actual numbers to be sure of the situation here. From Rynnia's posts:

Nearly everything, Silver-Jade on up, if made with enchanted bars will sell back for more money to a vendor than the cost of the components.

...

Silver Opal is 50 trivial. This is a no fail combine for a 250 jewelcrafter, and the enchanted product yields nearly a platinum of profit.

Let's assume 'nearly a platinum' means 900cp, and that the common assumption that a 200 point trivial combine is now no fail is correct.

Mass Enchant Silver has a casting time of 10 seconds (plus 2.5s spell refresh time) and a mana cost of 180. The best mana regen you can get on a suitable enchanter is 25 (meditate)+18 (voq)+9 (SD)+15 (FT)+3 (MC) = 70, a sufficiently high level bard can easily supply 20 mana/tick, so our mana cost of 180 per 12.5 seconds (2 ticks) can be met.

So with a suitable enchanter/bard combo we can produce enchanted silver at the rate of 5 bars every 12.5 seconds, indefinitely (ignoring time for rebuffing / buying silver / trading ench silver to the JC character). 5 bars of silver combined with Opals by a 250 JC (200-pt trivial combine hence no-fail) will produce a profit of 4.5pp. So our *theoretical* maximum profit here - on an ongoing basis - is 1296pp per hour. Let's say 1kpp / hour to account for human inefficiency, and the trading / combining time.

(Note: using a macroing program may well make your combine-clicks faster, however it won't help with the limiting factor here which is the rate of production of enchanted silver)

1k an hour, sounds like a big old leak doesn't it? Well... not really. The fact of the matter is that if you have access to that enchanter mentioned earlier, you can do far better than 1k an hour, in any pp-farm you like (see other places for these). The reason that cheese, pie tins, tumpy tonics and all the other economy leaks we remember were such problems were that in those cases, *combine time* was the limiting factor, because all ingredients were directly vendor-sold, hence they could be macro'd, as Rynnia mentions, and made into plat factories. *This* leak, by contrast, cannot produce more than 4.5pp per 12.5 seconds - because that is the fastest you can make *enchanted* silver - so I don't think it will be seen as such a problem.

I'm gonna finish with a repeated point because it's my main point and bears repeating :

Using a macroing program may well make your combine-clicks faster, however it won't help with the limiting factor here which is the rate of production of enchanted silver

[Moonlilly]

Some of us have always thought that the sell back price of JC combines should be fixed. Thats all I'll say till the thread gets moved to rants.

[Taraddar]

Originally posted by eqNichola
Mass Enchant Silver has a casting time of 10 seconds (plus 2.5s spell refresh time) and a mana cost of 180. The best mana regen you can get on a suitable enchanter is 25 (meditate)+18 (voq)+9 (SD)+15 (FT)+3 (MC) = 70, a sufficiently high level bard can easily supply 20 mana/tick, so our mana cost of 180 per 12.5 seconds (2 ticks) can be met.

You forgetting some things for mana regen. most obviously your missing 8 a tick from 9 from a druid. Also there are some clicky buffs that can add as much as 5 more mana regen on top of that too.

More importantly your forgetting mana pres effect. Specialization, SCM and a good mana pres item can cut about 30% off the cost of the spell. That drops the cost to about 125 mana or so. Also remember that any time your combining you aren't casting and are medding. Figuring about a second per combine your looking at roughly 18 seconds to do 1 cast and 5 combines. Thats 3 ticks of medding per cast and if you figure 150 mana per cast thats only 50 mana a tick regen. With a horse, c3 or better and some additional mana regen it isn't hard to get 50 mana.

So with a suitable enchanter/bard combo we can produce enchanted silver at the rate of 5 bars every 12.5 seconds, indefinitely (ignoring time for rebuffing / buying silver / trading ench silver to the JC character). 5 bars of silver combined with Opals by a 250 JC (200-pt trivial combine hence no-fail) will produce a profit of 4.5pp. So our *theoretical* maximum profit here - on an ongoing basis - is 1296pp per hour. Let's say 1kpp / hour to account for human inefficiency, and the trading / combining time.

(Note: using a macroing program may well make your combine-clicks faster, however it won't help with the limiting factor here which is the rate of production of enchanted silver)

1k an hour, sounds like a big old leak doesn't it? Well... not really. The fact of the matter is that if you have access to that enchanter mentioned earlier, you can do far better than 1k an hour, in any pp-farm you like (see other places for these). The reason that cheese, pie tins, tumpy tonics and all the other economy leaks we remember were such problems were that in those cases, *combine time* was the limiting factor, because all ingredients were directly vendor-sold, hence they could be macro'd, as Rynnia mentions, and made into plat factories. *This* leak, by contrast, cannot produce more than 4.5pp per 12.5 seconds - because that is the fastest you can make *enchanted* silver - so I don't think it will be seen as such a problem.

I'm gonna finish with a repeated point because it's my main point and bears repeating :

Using a macroing program may well make your combine-clicks faster, however it won't help with the limiting factor here which is the rate of production of enchanted silver

I don't think thats accurate. Mainly because you forgot to account for mana savings from specialization, SCM and a mana pres focus item. Additionally you don't account for the medding that occurs while doing combines.

This is something that should be fixed. Any situation where you can make money purely from vendors is a problem for the economy. This isn't as bad as say cheese or bows with tinkered cams but it still should be fixed.

[Rynnia]

.

I understand that at the very least, you can make around 1k an hour without some macro doing the work for you and using the absolute LOWEST combine. That is the LEAST you can make. 24k a day without a single bit of work on your own part.

But, consider plat ruby veils are a +10 plat or so a combine (little more). Also consider a test run of 200 combines yielded only ONE failure with a JCM enabled enchanter. That is the same as having 180 successes in the same timeframe, or a bonus of 1800 plat, and this can be done in far less than 1 hour. Actually, figuring 15 seconds for 5 combines (cast with spell haste, combine, and sell. If using a program to do the work for you)
yields 1200 combines an hour, or with the success rate above, 1800x5= 9k plat per hour. This is with 1 combine per 3 seconds, an accurate estimate of capabilities.

9k*24= 216k plat per day. This is for each person who is doing this, and I have seen 2 characters so far in game doing this exact thing, and this is in ONE spot on ONE server. AFK and casting away right at the jewelcraft vendors. Unresponsive to tells, and moving like robots.


This is a serious problem and needs to be fixed fast. I urge you to let your GM teams know about this problem. Keep an eye on the jewelcraft vendors and watch for people standing between the bar and gem merchants like robots mass combining and unresponsive / afk yet still casting. There are people exploiting this in game right now. And not just one person, but likely tens per server, many of whom are running several computers doing this.

[Shere Khaan]

Re: .

Originally posted by Rynnia
Keep an eye on the jewelcraft vendors and watch for people standing between the bar and gem merchants like robots mass combining and unresponsive / afk yet still casting. There are people exploiting this in game right now. And not just one person, but likely tens per server, many of whom are running several computers doing this.

I have done this exact same thing. Had an enchanter druid and my Beastlord all standing around the jewellry vendors in PoK robotically casting and doing combines. I was, however, skilling up.

Originally posted by Taraddar
I don't think thats accurate. Mainly because you forgot to account for mana savings from specialization, SCM and a mana pres focus item. Additionally you don't account for the medding that occurs while doing combines.

I think you may have missed the original point, when listing mana regen, eqnichola was saying that standing mana regen could keep up with casting the spell. The limiting factor was the cast time on the spell and not the mana problem.

Shere Khaan

[eqNichola]

Re: .

Thank you Shere Khaan, that is exactly my point. I wasn't entering into an examination of the maximum mana regen possible, I was ssaying that the cost of the Mass Enchant Silver spell CAN be met. And my point is that WHATEVER your mana regen, a single character CANNOT create more than 1440 bars of enchanted silver per hour. OK OK Spell Haste maybe, let's allocate the time that saves to the time taken to trade or combine. The point is it's the enchanting time that limits you, NOT mana regen.

Originally posted by Rynnia
I have seen 2 characters so far in game doing this exact thing, and this is in ONE spot on ONE server. AFK and casting away right at the jewelcraft vendors. Unresponsive to tells, and moving like robots.

Acting just like... people skilling up JC. ARREST THEM!

This is a serious problem and needs to be fixed fast. I urge you to let your GM teams know about this problem.

Haha.

Keep an eye on the jewelcraft vendors and watch for people standing between the bar and gem merchants like robots mass combining and unresponsive / afk yet still casting.

So now not responding to another player's tells is evidence of macroing?

There are people exploiting this in game right now. And not just one person, but likely tens per server, many of whom are running several computers doing this.

Now you're starting to sound a little silly. Tell you what, why don't YOU use the Contact your GM link yourself?

[Xenephex]

I can take a level 35 character and make a minimum of 600 plat an hour farming stuff on any server in EQ. Toss a GM brewer and/or baker into that mix and I can do a lot better than that.

It is extremely difficult for me to believe that any level 59 chanter in the game would be jumping at the chance to make 1K an hour through this method.

High level enchanters can make money by casting spells? That's a real news flash.

[drael]

Ack, I may have been one of those 'robot' characters. When I'm tradeskilling, I go anon and afk. I ignore all chat - even guild chat. (I do warn my friends first)
Simply because I do not want to be disturbed - for any reason. I get into click frenzy, usually with a great show on tv. The only times I move is to dump stuff on a vendor or get stuff from one. The only time I 'come to' and focus on eq is when I need to get more ingredients and arrange them in my own superstitious layout, lol. (just finished enjoying a thread on superstitions)

The alt near me is usually a mule from my other account. He is on auto follow, afk and usually under level 10. He isn't going to talk to anyone cause the only time I look at his screen is to exchange stuff with him.

If the mule just needs to hold the stacks of finished product for my trader (not hand me ingredients) I may use an alt that needs to cast for skill ups. I hotkey a spell and make em chain cast. (I turn my X-key pad around so I can hit it without moving the finger constantly mashing ctrl) So, both of me could be casting, afk and act very robot like.

That said - huge amounts of platinum are being offered on 'ebay' type places. I still marvel that anyone can accumulate 100k, lol, much less offer several lots of 100k. That is the leak/bug/macro/whatever I'd like to figure out and send to gm's.