It was actually surprisingly easy to get gold on Achaea.

I could get enough to buy 5 credits in a pretty short amount of time, via Inbhir Ness, even without completeing the main quest.

I've skimmed over this, because it didn't look like much to read.

Some people whined.

Some presented decent points.

Roark was right, as usual.

From what I saw from the poll, we have a number of people who buy credits ooc, (and likely sell them in game), and think that prices are too high. This means they have a brain. I would have expected people who didn't buy ooc to say they were too high, and the people who bought ooc and sold ic were going to say the price is too low.

I'm amazed.

If more people are resorting to buying OOC credits, then supply will increase as the excess credits are sold, which would drive the price down. The price seems pretty stable so I would suggest that people aren't really switching.

FInally credits are worth something!

The price of goods change as the value of currency changes, in a real world.

But this isn't the real world! Clans will always cost 500000 gold! If credits were at 1200 before, and 3000 now, the price of a clan went from 417cr to 167! That's 2.5 clans for the price of one.

I just saved up 20,000 gold from ratting (that's a lot for me, since I don't get infinite time playing Lusternia), and I hadn't checked the credit market for a while, and I was deciding to buy credits. So, I spent as much of my 20k as possible and got 6 credits. 6! That's the equivalent of about 550 gold/lesson. So, to trans a skill - at the current prices, they'll increase - it would take 550 * 1700+ gold (approx.), that's nearing 1,000,000 gold in total.
So, let's see how long that would take me to trans a skill... I'll just say I get about 1500 gold per real-life day, so including expenses, that would be around 500-1000 gold, but for arguments sake, I'll say 800. 1,000,000 / 800 = 1250 day, or almost 4 years RL.

I can get 10-15k an hour when lucky. More when my shop's lucky. When unlucky or lazy I get as little as 0 .

I've also gambled from 55k to 300k before. I've also gambled from 300k to 0 before. ::shrugs::

Edit: at my peak (which only lasted as long as I was the only one doing Estelbar) I was making 50-75k an RL day, without gambling. Since I'm playing very minimally until February, that'll be drastically lower (I just try to stay above 100k for expenses).

Edit2: And I'm saving up 'just in case' credit prices drop again. REALLY irritated at two mistakes of mine. Mistake 1: selling 150 credits at 1700 per to get my clan (already had a lot of gold saved, also). Two days later, prices jumped over 3k. Mistake 2: buying a paintbrush RIGHT before a bunch were given away for free (waste of 300 credits. well, 100 after I trade it in for a bunch of artifacts I wasn't inclined to get in the first place).

I have a friend who, numerous times, will start a character, rat day and night, and out of nowhere trans a skill. He starts a new character, and is talking about tri trans from RATTING.

No. Life.

What about those people who buy the credits on the market for cheap only to resell them at higher prices in order to control the credit market?

What if there was some time delay in buying credits IC and selling them back IC on the market?

I bought 500 credits in Achaea... it would be cool if I could transfer the lessons I got from converting those to Lusternia. Seeing as I dont play Achaea anymore. They should really lower the prices a little bit, so then not EVERYBODY, but atleast a few more people, like me can afford them.

Roark, I like your avatar... its cool. reminds me of, well, me! -beam- -flex-

oh yeah.

I suppose if you are into steroids and small potatos.

That would be countered by people who sell lower. It really is impossible to control the credit market. It's just like the stock market. Imagine what would happen if you tried to raise the price of a stock by buying low and offering to sell high. It soon reaches equilibrium where no one accepts your offer. The only way around this is to monopolize all the credits in the game, which is nearly impossible and poses tremendous risk, especially since others can create credits out of thin air by OOC purchases or by guiding. Thus a potential monopolist would have to compete by purchasing all of those credits as well. Such a feat would be probably the most difficult task in the game. It'd be like trying to corner the entire stock market.

Getting your skills without buying credits for cash isn't impossible, but you have to work much harder for it. (And don't give me the argument that you work hard for the cash to buy credits OOC, as I, too, work hard for my cash and only buy credits IC..) In Achaea, I managed to complete all of my skills and buy a small handful of artifacts without spending any real money at all.

I had the fortune of making friends with some generous folks and also being able to buy credits when they were relatively cheap. After prices shot up, I resorted to writing scripts for profit and found it to be a worthwhile pursuit and something I enjoyed doing. I suppose my point is that a little ingenuity and persistance can really pay off.

This is true! I once had a character who ran a player gambling business and was able to buy a shop with the profits. Though eventually others moved into the market and killed off all the profits due to competition.

Another point could be that we have to resort to OOC actions to earn credits.

You proved my point, ratting is not the best way to get gold in Lusternia.

It depends who you are.

No, it only matters if your smart enough to find the other ways. There are plenty of honours quests that one could do at level 1. And I know of more then one that are rarely done.

Or you can be like me, buy a shop for 100,000 gold and sell it for 420 credits.

Val, it's not about being smart enough or not when it comes to questing.
Not everyone knows all the quests, and if there are quests that one person knows, then you can be sure another would know, and another, then another, it'd be hard questing when people are bashing your mobs or when someone else is doing the same quest.

You're not trying to make gold -now-, you were making most of your gold through your jewelry tradeskill, and that's when everyone needed jewelry. The set of jewelry I have right now is the same set I had when I started out, and there's still quite a good number of months left before they decay.
I doubt jewelers now are or will be as fortunate as you were.

You can tell people to bash, tell them to quest, but there will always be competition. I'm not saying it's hard, but man, you make it sound like gold grows on trees.