I saw six cakes dropped at the Matrix. This change hasn't stopped people from dropping large amounts of smaller food items at Nexii really. I really could see cooking and lower end jewelry increased, but some items, ESPECIALLY Artisan, Bookbinder and Forger goods, should have the same old commodity requirements. Artisan and Bookbinder goods are used so rarely, and when they are, they either replace other items which would perform the same object bloat *sorcelpipes* or is bought once, then "forgotten" *instruments*, with forging goods only ever being bought by those who need it, and no one else.

I'm not really seeing any patterns indicative of commodity production leveling out and evening. It actually looks more bonkers than it's ever been before. I'm hoping "a couple days" was meant to mean longer than three?

Do you know how hard I have to work for 558 gems? Die in a fire.

It's okay.

Everything else was pretty tame.

Especially Rikenfriez. That village is broken in so many ways. Its largest tithe (in quantity) was twelve fish. Woo fish.

Those gems didn't just make themselves either. I invested around 7 hours over the last weave trying to see if it was possible to drop Angkrag's gem price down to 1gp via rockeater genocide, with the closest I ever got being 800 gems at 102gp per... and then someone bought 250ish gems, which I partially replaced before another 130 were bought (grr), then I managed to get back to 710 gems before the weave hit, and boom!

But then again, for the same effort invested in Ixthiaxa, you'd have to keep buying the gems back since it would hit 1gp way too fast, and while you'd get a nice bundle of cheap gems for yourself, the tithe would come out to less than 100, and the amount you'd be able to buy back for yourself doesn't really bridge the gap.

I'm just happy that tithes don't have a hard cap anymore (one was put in place when commercial governance was changed, and it was icky), and I would prefer if more villages could achieve this kind of gem output compared to Ixthiaxa. I'm thinking Ptoma might have similar potential, but not as close...

Can you explain how tithing works?

... I wish. I used to have a feel for it, in the old system, but the new system is just now starting to settle. I think.

But I'll share what I'm working off of:

Basically, the more you turn-in, the more is tithed, and this is compounded by the village having a high stock of said comm at the time of tithing. This is why the option to sell finished comms directly to the villages was removed. This is also why, when the weave comes around and tithes are sent out, the villages lose some of the commodities in stock. Diminishing returns over time without effort invested or somesuch.

Possibly. Maybe. That's how it looks, doesn't it?

Though there are still some odd things surfacing, like a village losing more stock of a commodity if their tithe was low, which has resulted in milk and poultry at one point dropping down to a stock of 1 in Paavik and becoming a non-existent production force without stimulation. That was observed a few days ago, so that might have been some residual wonkiness, but without any information being provided from elsewhere, it's pretty difficult to decide. Additionally, spamming the slave driver quest in Angkrag appears to be making steel production go down instead of up, with the production of every other metal, coal, and marble increasing instead... which doesn't really make sense in relation to how the quest is presented by Nasir.

Nevermind that none of the players know how the system was supposed to function in the first place.

I hate this new "feature," by the way. It makes my life very, very sad.

I am not a fan either, but apparently this is how it was always supposed to work, and it was a bug in the original system that allowed the commodity stock to remain constant.

This is why I don't like the lack of explanation on how things were supposed to work.

Speaking as an artisan-

I have yet to sell anything besides kegs since this new change. I've had one person interested in a bench, but she had a stasis gem for the room it was going in. Artisan wares are as good as dead. I'd hate to have a bookbinder.

Also (perhaps a bigger problem), what about Gaudi bookbinders and artisans? How are they supposed to get comms now that warehouses are getting more expensive, and buying in bulk from villages isn't an option? With no villages (and a really hard time getting any), I can't imagine them doing business at all for very long.

Speaking as an artisan and as a shopkeeper, though, the change that bites the most is the lack of bulk buying. If I want to make anything as an artisan- instruments for young bards, for instance- it'll take hours of work to get the wood at a decent price from a village.

I'm willing to give it time, but unless something changes, I won't have any use for artisan. Musicboxes are over 15k per right now, as are watches, for the most part. As far as I can tell, nobody- even top combatants- are buying musicboxes, they're just too expensive.

Basically there are new, higher base prices that Estarra posted earlier in this thread. You -can- buy in semi-bulk in villages, at least the ones where the prices have reached or exceeded that village's required stock. I was able to buy 120 steel in Rockholm the other day without too much variation in the price, as there was a lot in stock. Even though the price was more than twice what I might have paid previously, it was on target with the 'new' baseline prices. If you do shift your mindset to the prices she outlined, it does seem to be coming together. If at this point you haven't taken the prices she put up into account, it will forever seem 'broken'.

That the prices in general are higher than what we have paid previously is maybe a separate issue. It seems like they really do want comms to be more of a gold sink... though as it is now, between the increased commodities requirements, and the cost of comms themselves, things have become at least four times more expensive, and in many cases much more than that.

As for tinkering items... if you were ever doing a swift trade in them aside from immediately following their introduction well, you were the only one.

This is really the part that bugs me.

Seconded.

I haven't noticed a single doubling or tripling of gold output from quests or mobs to make up for that.

I've recently restocked my shop with tailored goods that in total used up 1400 cloth and 1000 silk to make, which I had from good ol' times. As it stands, I won't be able to do that pretty much ever now unless I charge 100gp per cloth and 150gp per silk and take a few months gathering them. Any takers for a shawl costing 3300 coins?

I recently had to rebuild a cabinet for Nariah, and had to purchase about 200 wood plus other commodities. Basically for a wooden cabinet I had to pay about 45k, about 6 credits. If I had to buy credits to make this cabinet, I would be paying about four bucks for this cabinet. Come on, Admin. I shouldn't have to buy credits to make things.

I've lost business, a crapload of business due to this. (also Terentia's tdf, but that's another gripe.) Frankly, this system is ruining the economy of Lusternia and reducing the reasons I have to play here.

I've been tossing around the idea that we should up gold drops and rewards across the board. At the moment we've got a smaller supply of comms and higher prices, if we knock out the higher prices by inflating the amount of gold in the IG economy then we're going to at least feel less hurt when we buy comms and items. And it is not as if we will have more physical comms, those numbers appear to still be lower and can reasonably be lower, it will just cost relatively less and be easier to buy and work with what we do have.

Edit: Admittedly this does rest on the idea that the players wouldn't jack up the prices to match the new amount of gold in the game, just jack them up to match the new prices of comms.

I'm sure it's been fixed at some point since, but back when I played, stockroom limits were gotten around by a) throwing items into your stockroom with hypersensitivity as to whether or not people were around, and holding items like herbs in your hands when logging out so they'd drop in the stockroom. People got around limits creatively, regardless of their imposition.


I find it relatively difficult to make more than a few thousand gold per real life day without either a) doing the BIG village quests, or spending my entire day online. As a 50-some Pyro on one, I can probably make no more than 10,000 gold a day before I lose interest. As a jewelry shopkeeper on another character, my gold income varies largely, but given how long it takes to get reasonable prices on gems right now, I'm thinking I may end up either giving up my shop or simply taking up herbs instead. At least I know they will sell.


As for the real topic at hand... I'm waiting to see how the latest changes affect it once the week is up. I do believe that the increases in commodity costs for items feels like a punishment for taking on a creative tradeskill, as opposed to a gathering one. I believe I've submitted as many as 200 designs in my time on Lusternia since beta went public, and I know others have submitted far more. I love the tradeskills. I hate feeling like they're worthless. And right now, 95% of each of the creative tradeskills feels worthless, when there were definitely points where 95% of them were actually used.

Tae'dae eat a lot, don't hate. They probably have few natural resources!

Ice, snow, fish, ice, ice water, and ice are their chief exports.

Could we please have a reconsideration of the base prices? The entire economy of the Basin has been working like it had been based on 'our' prices so a doubling of commodities required and then, in many cases, doubling of their prices, coupled with halving, if not more, of the commodity outputs has really led to a very unhappy playerbase.