Should I make DoD Spells?

[GnekroeGnomicon]

When I did 227-243 research, I was paying up to 100pp per saltpeter on Drinal but that was before the drop rate increased. If you put a buyer up, you should be able to get all you need for 25pp or less, or just farm them yourself..

My buyer on Drinal at 50pp doesn't get nearly enough saltpeter (which is up probably 20 hours a day 5-6 days a week - can you guess who my buyer is Taa?). To get any significant number of combines done, you need to fork over the cash, again in the price range of 100-200pp each from what I see and spend unless you want to wait a long, long time

As for the store bought components on the parchment solutions, you can either save the solutions and use them for spell combines later, or sell them to a vendor for 90% of the gem / metal bar costs.

Or better yet put them on a trader... I would gladly spend a little more money on solutions (now that I don't need any for subcombines) if they were tastefully priced.

The number of subcombines is painful, but not as painful as trying to collect components for hundreds of attempts at the 51-60 spell research recipes

This is true only because there were so many different recipes and each recipe had a rare (or at the very least, very uncommon) component. So it was hard to come up with a significant number of combines... I think I gave up at around 212 doing old research, solutions are much faster and if you are going for the 300 mark you will be using them all.

[Zacatac]

Prices on saltpeter and crystalized sulfer are coming down.
Saltpeter is 50-100p each, Sulfer is 20-40p each
But the costs of other vendor bought items will still be rather large. Stacks and stacks of star rubies, platinum bars, gold bars, etc.

And the number of subcombines is still rather huge. For every skill up combine, you'll need 10 subcombines.

Let's say you get a 1 skill up per 12 combines. From 200-243 that gives you 516 final combines to do, which means 5,160 subcombines. And each final combine cost 100's of platinum to do. So take 516 x 400 plat = 206,400 plat.

Now that saltpeter & sulfer are dropping more, yes, it's certainly a way to go. But it IS expensive and it DOES take a LOT of clicks.

I'm at 229 now, with nearly a backpack full of 64 & 65 level parchment solutions. It will take me years to find enough 65 parchments for all of these solutions, so you are essentially just tossing money away unless you sell the solutions.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

No... you are investing that money to make back huge piles of it selling level 65 spells.

I'm approaching 2 million pp in sales personally.

[GnekroeGnomicon]

I am sure I am well beyond 2 mill, but most of that didn't come from 65 spells

[Qaladar Bragollach]

What the heck are you making money off of then?

There's no market for PoP spells on my server... they've already been tradeable for what... 2 years now?

[Dranul]

What the heck are you making money off of then?

There's no market for PoP spells on my server... they've already been tradeable for what... 2 years now?

The recent change to the researchability of certain spells will enlighten you as to how the noam, and many of us, made his cash

[Qaladar Bragollach]

I said I've made 2 million from new research... I however made it all off of GoD spells.

He said he's not making level 65 spells... so I'm curious how he's making money then.

[GnekroeGnomicon]

As Dranul said, the non-level 65 cash machine is no longer available due to recent changes in combinable spells. A few people on each server made a killing from a not so private (posted on every board I read) way to make some mad cash quick.

Now it is on to 63-65 spells to fund the journey to research(300). 65 spells have sold all right for me, but the actual supply of runic parchments in the bazaar is lacking to make a true "killing" for me.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

Ah... the crystals thing.

Seemed a bit of an exploit to me. *shrug*

Oh well... 65's sell quite well if you are picky about what you make. I stick to only GoD spells that have no tradeable OoW upgrades... that is... ones that have either no upgrade, or ones that are only upgraded by a no-drop 69 or 70 rune.

[GnekroeGnomicon]

Seemed a bit of an exploit to me. *shrug*

I wouldn't go that far. It is good to get it corrected, but really you still had to farm/buy the parchments/sulfurs/saltpeters and pay decent cash for the combines. If it was considered an exploit, I would assume in the 2-3 weeks (minimum) that the Dev's knew about this the recipes or the npc buying said spells would have been changed. It's not like you could make a million pp in an hour or two. The only reason I had made so much money as that even before I had learned of the combines I was purchasing parchments like mad for my guild. I easily had 80ish each of Used and Fine parchments when the recipes were made known.

Honestly, I kind of see it as one of those "let's get a lot of excitement early on" things in research. Only if you worked hard at finding the drops (not that many parchments actually enter the bazaar each day) and paid good money to get all the subcombines together were you making a profit. It isn't like you sat infront of a merchant and bought 100 stacks of something and immediately sold it all back to the same merchant for a profit.

IMO they actually made the wrong fix (though I suppose the Dev's could argue that the spells were not meant to be researchable) but I would've rathered them make the recipes into versions of the spells that were not sellable back to the DoN merchants (just make a 3rd version of each of the DoN spells) either that or make it so that spells are not sellable back to the DoN merchants at all - ie. How many cases do you think people buy a spell scroll from a DoN merchant and then come back a couple of weeks later without having memmed the spell to sell it back because they don't need teh spell.

Compared to the LDoN spells, the DoN spells that are merchant sold really don't have any reason they shouldn't be researchable since the radiants and ebons are tradeable anyways... it would just give more demand to researchers.

[Zacatac]

Well at 229, I'm not making any level 65 spells to sell yet. And I wasn't doing any crystal exploiting either. All my money so far has been outgoing, I have yet to make or sell a single spell.

[GnekroeGnomicon]

Outside of 65 spells, that is all that you will see with Research me thinks

I have ~150 level 63 spells for sale (15ish spells with 10 copies a piece), they sell at about 1 per day... not going to make much money from skilling up on <65 spells me thinks as the demand just isn't there, and the cost of combines is pretty high (I buy any vellum that drops <=2500pp).

I don't think the road to 300 is going to be fast for anyone (except the 2 or 3 uber ubers that are already there) unless you have millions of pp to burn. Maybe someone knows of a place, but I haven't seen any camp that drops parchments with any consistancy enough to sit there and camp for hours on end.

[Dranul]

Is there anyone serverwide that has hit 300 research yet? Gnek knows more people than me, but that would shock me. And I'm pretty jaded.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

Theres 1 person on eqrankings who lists 300 research... its not a verified magelo account... but the person is in Township Rebellion... so I doubt he's lieing.


There might be others... its pretty unlikely though.

[GnekroeGnomicon]

Gnek knows more people than me, but that would shock me.

Ah come now Dranul, you and I lurk on the same boards and I have little to no social circle outside my guild on Drinal (since moving to Drinal I have done very little outside-of-guild-grouping). I just use eqrankings to see who all has made it to the elusive 'last leg' of researching.

Last I checked EQ Rankings, there were two accounts that were flagged as 300 research. The one in Township Rebellion and one other that I can't remember... the second one didn't look like a fake magelo (ie. was a very nice equipment set, something that someone would almost have to have to know about) and lots of aa's but not quite max (~1200ish) so didn't really look fake to me. Either way there is then just a bunch of us in the 250's... because after you hit 243, there isn't a lot of combines you can make to really do a large number of skill ups quickly...

* Edit * just looked again and it appears that the second one that I saw is gone for whatever reason... A guild like TR could probably get a max researcher if they put their efforts into it so I don't have much doubt there.


I mean, my last skillup run was 252-258 on 134 iirc lvl 63 parchments... I would venture to say that was probably 2.5k a combine at least... not very nice for one that needs to do soooo many more combines... I dunno how someone would actually reach 300 without the help of a guild even if they were purchasing every parchment that came into the bazaar you would be pressed to get to 300 since dodh released. I guess if you got every parchment that dropped from a guild and any that were farmed you could probably make it, but that is a big IF.