I made a trip two days ago to the Crystal Caverns in Velious. This was kind of a trip into the unknown, although I'd been there once before. Back then Velious was new and there were tons of people up there hunting everywhere. This time, there was no one. At all.
I wouldn't have wanted to do this at the appropriate level for the zone. I was swarmed by orcs as I made my way down into the depths of the cavern. I had trouble finding the area with the spiders, but once I did, I finally recognized something. The only time I was ever here, I came with friends and guild mates who quickly guided me to that specific area to hunt spiders. We spent several hours there, and I never really learned much about any other part of the caverns.
Anyway I hunted crystal spiders for a good long time and the arachnid creatures at the end of the hall as well, and I gathered nearly 100 pieces of crystalline silk. That was my goal, but I also picked up a bunch of rare robes and weapons that were once considered very good, but are now mostly vendor trash. I saved the best of them to try and sell for a few extra plat on the market, one blackened crystalline robe has actually sold so far.
Afterwards I made silk swatches and then crafted crystalline silk hats and shoulders until I was trivial on both, and then some pants I think until I ran out of silk. The highest trivial items require 3 swatches of crystalline silk, so 1 attempt per 6 crystalline silks collected. I need to go back and gather a lot more silk in order to skill up to about 136 in tailoring, and then I can move on to the Wu's fighting gear. Tailoring is turning out to be still pretty difficult, compared to how fast I got to 200 in baking and alchemy. But the skill increases paid off -- I almost never fail on my colored backpack attempts now. I've sold a lot of colored backpacks!
I'm at 220 alchemy now, maxed out on the spirit of wolf level V potions. I've sold some at the bazaar, and I sold a bunch of the skinspike potions as well. I made some of the illusion potions but none of those have sold so far. With baking I'm at 207, fully maxed out on smoked freshwater fish pies now and I've been making Halas 10 lb Meat Pies, which have resulted in a lot of pies but not a lot of skill increases just yet. But I can make those for quite a while, just need someone to buy some of the ones I've already made.
I've been selling a lot of stuff on the market. I was up to nearly 20,000 plat, then I spent a lot on alchemy and buying updated gear, and I was down below 10,000 again. Now I'm back up to almost 29,000 plat. Backpacks and alchemy potions and various defiant armor and weapon drops have been selling well for me.
Last night I saw someone advertising in the main channel that he was looking for a "usable 2 hand weapon for a berzerker, 6plat". 6 platinum is nothing, I earned over 100 plat before I left the tutorial, so I figured he was a poor newbie. I was going to offer him a crude defiant greatsword that I had (level 10 required), but when I checked he was level 6 and still in the tutorial, so I didn't reply. But he kept advertising that he wanted to buy a 2 hand weapon for 6 plat. I checked again, and he was still level 6 but now was on the plane of knowledge, quite close to the bazaar, so I sent him a tell saying I could sell him the weapon that he could use at level 10. He never replied. I wondered if he was so new that he didn't know how to reply. He kept advertising, and I was about to say something else when he suddenly appeared in front of me.
I hadn't even told him where I was at, so this surprised me. I started to type "hang on a sec", but by then he'd already bought a 2 handed blunt gloomsteel staff from me for 5 plat. This is a weapon I used for the first two weeks in the game, so it's not really a bad weapon (for a shaman anyway), but it's a tutorial weapon. I hadn't really thought there was much chance I could sell it.
I lowered the price on the greatsword and told him, but he just stood there looking stupid for 10 or 15 minutes, gloomsteel staff in hand. It's actually a nice looking weapon, long brown staff with a skull on the end. He was a newbie ogre with very little armor, only 1 or 2 pieces of the newbie tutorial armor. I was wondering why he'd left the tutorial so early, that was a mistake I made my first time too though.
Eventually he ran off, never replying to me or my attempt to sell him the greatsword. I shrugged and moved the price on it back up. But later he started advertising in the global channel again. He wanted to sell 20 bone chips. This was a clue that he was a very old player who had just returned, because way back in 2002 necromancers used bone chips by the ton to summon their skeleton pets, and would buy them off newbies for good money. But these days you can use an AA skill to eliminate the need for bone chips, something I only found out from people replying to this guy. Nobody pays for bone chips. I checked the market, and there were none for sale there either, so that confirmed what people were saying.
Despite this, the guy kept advertising a growing collection of bone chips (he was up to 57 last I saw) and also spiderling silk, which is not very useful in trade skills that I can remember (spider silk is what you really want). I also checked on him again and he was back in the tutorial, something I hadn't realized was possible. He was level 8 last I saw. But essentially he spent the whole evening getting enough money to buy a weapon he could have found in the tutorial, and collecting stuff to sell for money that nobody actually wanted to buy. All instead of just playing the tutorial and getting gear, weapons, and money (not to mention levels) the easy way.
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