I suppose to some extent it's my own fault. For example I don't follow the oft-repeated advice to not train all your new spells. I mean, who knows when Eagle Eye could suddenly come in handy? I want to be prepared for anything.
Also, while I don't tend to buy things from the auction house, I don't tend to make much money off it either. It doesn't help that all four of my currently actively played alts are crafters, so from cloth to leather to ore, there's always someone who can use whatever I'm picking up, so that many things that would presumably be a source of income for others just quietly disappear into my personal crafting machine.
It doesn't help that the server economy still feels weird too. I've never been part of a fresh start server like this (as opposed to a brand new game launch where nobody knows how to play the market) so I don't know if this is simply typical for this sort of situation, but there are way more people trying to make money from selling goods than players interested in buying them.
For the first week or so this made sense, as nobody really had anything to spend, but by now most characters should have at least a few silver to spare every now and then, yet there is still seemingly no demand for most trade goods, with many of the lower level ones lingering at buyouts of mere coppers per piece still.
The one upside to this from my point of view is that if you run into a slightly awkward crafting recipe while levelling that requires what you'd expect to be somewhat unusual materials, you can just go to the auction house, buy said "rare" materials for a silver and craft the thing anyway. I still haven't quite managed to wrap my mind around that, fretting whenever I see an engineering schematic requiring gems for example, but then I check the AH and everything I need is usually available for little more than vendor price.
I've actually had a bit more luck mining for iron on my hunter, despite of this being something that should be seemingly obvious and highly contested. There are two caves in Thousand Needles that are close to Freewind Post and contain two to three ore spawns each, usually iron, sometimes silver, gold or mithril (but never anything worse) and that few people ever seem to visit. I've taken to going there daily in the mornings, and while it's not the most profitable thing ever due to the aforementioned low demand for trade goods, iron is enough of a pain to find that it's got me at least back up to over thirty gold so far.
I haven't entirely given up on fish either and have mostly been hunting for Greater Sagefish on the coast of Lordamere Lake, but with mixed success. Fishing just isn't the insider's niche it used to be I guess, at least not on Pyrewood Village.
I'm undecided whether I should push onwards in terms of levelling at all while I still can't afford my mount or whether I should just keep grinding money. I suppose it doesn't technically matter, especially on a hunter who can travel at quite a steady clip with Aspect of the Cheetah anyway, but the thought of travelling everywhere on foot throughout the fourties because I can't afford anything else just feels kind of... shameful.
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I find it quite odd that people are so focused on gettign a mount as soon as it becomes available. My Hunter is 43, nearly 44 and I don't expect him to get a mount before 50. There seem to me to be far better things to spend the money on - weapons, armor, spells, food, drink, ammunition...
ReplyDeleteWhat does a mount actually get you, anyway? Unless you really hate the time it takes to travel, I can't see it does anything much at all. In EverQuest, when the first mounts were introduced (with the Legacy of Ykesha expansion, I believe, so several years after the game began) they were absolutely essential for anyone who used mana because being on a mount counted as "sitting", so you regenerated mana at a higher rate while still being able to cast spells. It also reduced aggro radius compared to actual sitting. No EQ caster would ever be without a mount for that reason but I've rarely found much use for ground mounts in any other games since. Flying mounts, now that's a different matter altogether.
As for the economy, I totaly agree. It's all over the place. I've taken to sending even the good green pieces that drop to my Warlock so she can disenchant them for mats. I generally give the ones with good stats a single try on the AH and about a third of them sell - if and only if I undercut the current cheapest equivalent by at least 20%. Otherwise they jsut sit there and I lose the deposit.
I currently have 37 gold but I haven't trained for a couple of levels so that won't last long. And I did buy Eagle Eye and I've used it a lot. It's great for finding out which camp has a particular quest ground spawn so you don't have to go into all of them and fight!
I generally like the travel but as you go up in levels the distances become longer and you need to go back and forth between distant places more often, so a bit of a speed increase while travelling is welcome. Like I said at the end of the post, it probably doesn't matter as much if you play a class with a built-in speed boost, but for those who are limited to normal walking speed until then it's a big deal.
DeleteOn a PvP server there's also the consideration of running away from / giving chase to enemy players I guess.
The rest of it is just psychological I think. It's a bit of a status symbol, and it can feel demoralising to watch people of the same level zoom past you on their mighty steeds.
Given the costs of training and the slowdowns on taking care of items for Professions (such as needing certain teeth for Great Rage Potions that do sell on the AH), I don't foresee my mount before L50 or so. Unless something else changes, that is.
ReplyDeleteI'm still aiming to get my hunter that mount at level 40, it's my number one thing to work on whenever I play her now - we'll see how it goes!
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