Game Over

[Alec]

So, I lost another game (second game) but got a little further than the first game, Although the change was hurdling over another check, it was finger-breaking for me, I did a bunch of dungeoning, and I sold them all for profit. I really don't understand how people get to one hundred days with millions of pixes; some people said to just buy from stores and spend less time in the dungeon. I don't like this ideas because I think it defeat the purpose of the game and it is too boring.

[cearn]

Messaggio originale di yin.justin:

So, I lost another game (second game) but got a little further than the first game, Although the change was hurdling over another check, it was finger-breaking for me, I did a bunch of dungeoning, and I sold them all for profit. I really don't understand how people get to one hundred days with millions of pixes;

Waypoint did a really nice comparison between adventuring vs market profits, but I can't find it anymore :\ I'll try to explain why adventuring for profit doesn't really work.

It is true that selling dungeon items is all profit, while buying from the market and selling those will give only 35-40% (assuming a 105-110% selling price). However, there are other things in play that make a sale-by-sale comparison kinda useless.

There are 4 stats that you need to consider:

1. Money. Gained by selling stuff
   
2. Merchant XP / level. Gained by successfull shop transactions, but really I should say by combo and pin bonusses.
   
3. Customer reputation / budgets. Gained by being sales, but especially by not gauging customers. In other words: pin bonusses. This is a hidded stat, and can only be traced by counting the hearts that customers sometimes get. The first rep level increases the budget 10-fold, so it's really important to get that quickly.
   
4. Item tiers. More expensive (much more expensive) items are unlocked by reaching certain merchant levels
[/b]

Selling loot does a lot for money, but next to nothing for the others. Say you have a successful dungeon run of Amber Garden, and you got, what, a 20k worth of items? Assuming you can sell all of those immediately, you'd end up with another 20k pix. Because that's pretty much the only thing you can do that day, you have earned 20k that day.

Now look at the profits from the market. In the morning, you can buy yourself broke with the most expensive items. At the end of week 2, you can already have access to tier 3-4 items. Let's say you buy 50k worth of items. You then sell it in the next 3 time slots for 40% profit, and you've earned 25k that day.

Admittedly, this isn't entirely realistic. By going adventuring, you miss out of 2 timeslots of sales. In other words, you'll have about 50% fewer transactions than staying home. This also means you level up merchant levels, customer budgets and item tiers twice as slow. So even if you got a lot of expensive loot, you probably wouldn't be able to sell it because the customers are too poor.


The bottom line is: selling a cheap item at 100% profit is not necessarily better than selling an expensive item for 40% profit. But for the latter, you need to maximize your shop throughput -- something adventuring seriously hinders.

[Protocol27]

For me, this is my advice. Focus on your merchant level.

The higher it is, the more items you can buy, and fusion. It'll help you carry more stuff in dungeons, get better deals with adventurers(for dungeons), etc. At least thats my advice.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Thing with customer reputation levels is that -- and there are actual deterministic calculations for these -- they can drastically increase the amount of money that customers are willing to spend. For some customers, such as the Guildmaster, this isn't very relevant since they already have huge budgets, but you will learn to absolutely love little girls when they suddenly stop saying that a 1000-pix book is too much for them and instead start demanding 3000-pix books.

[Berahlen]

The gist of my long post however long ago was that a dungeon effectively takes up three time slots (two in the dungeon, and one to actually sell anything from it) whereas you could have spent all three just buying and selling stuff, dungeon loot is low-tier garbage all the way until Obsidian Tower (which you likely won't unlock until the postgame), and the fusion items are absolutely terrible for profit (way too many runs gathering mundane materials and rare boss drops, the end products are typically in the low 1000's compared to tier 3-4 items that easily get into the high 1000's, and most of the fusions are mechanically impossible until Obsidian Tower anyway). Even the bonus dungeon after the end of the game is questionable at best compared to just buying and selling tier 5 stuff and sticking random furniture in a vending machine. There was some tedious napkin math demonstrating it that I guess I can dig up if you really want to see it.

Keep in mind that when you buy from the guildmaster or market, you're only paying 70% base price -- very slightly more or less if it's red or blue. Even selling white items at a hair over base price, you're already making a profit of half of what you paid (if it's red, nearly twice -- vendors sell red items at 80% and you can safely sell them in the shop for 230%-ish), and rapidly gaining customer reputation and merchant level through Near Pin bonuses and chains in the process. That means you very quickly get get customers bringing in 10-20 times the money they started with, and access to higher tiers of goods to take advantage of it. By the third week, little girls casually drop five digits for expensive rings and heavy armor that I can only assume they use to play REALLY extreme dolls.

Pretty much the only dungeon run you'll ever expect to turn a healthy profit from is a full clear of Jade Way on the very first day, which gives you a full shelf when you don't have enough pix for more than a couple items, and a vase at the very end which does not appear on subsequent runs. After that, dungeons are for free time.

Let's put it this way: I'm at the point where all I'm doing is full runs of the postgame bonus dungeon to fill my encyclopedia. I'm lucky if I find more than 2-3 items worth noticeably more than generic guildmaster merch, and even if I sold my entire Crystal Nightmare haul all at once at gouged prices I'd still usually earn less than in either of the two equivalent time slices playing middleman for guildmaster weapons and market furniture I had access to before the end of the main game. I tend to see customers selling me more valuable things more often than I find them in dungeons.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

FYI, the stats on pricing:


*************| price down | normal price | price up
base price*|****50%*****|******100%***|***200%
wholesale**|****56%*****|******70%****|***84%
buyback***|*****24%****|*******30%****|***36%

[Alec]

Thank-you guys for all of your help; I will definitely use them all.
@ Quint Monroe (and cool diagram by the way; how'd you do that?)
@Waypoint
@Protocol27
@Cearn

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Makeshift chart that I typed out. I put it under a spoiler in case people don't want to see it.

[Alec]

Cool and how would you make this "makeshift chart?" Thank-you for your help.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

I just typed out literally what you see, and then slapped a [][/spoiler] tag (without the spaces) around it.

[hanwayc85]

As stated above, don't dive into the dungeon's too often. It eats up too much time to make the profit truely worth it. The only times it really makes it worth it is if you don't have enough money to fill your selves as is.

Buying multiple days worth of stock in one trip quickly grow your bank.

[Alec]

@Quint Aguacate : and how would you do this spoiler tag? Thank-you

[cearn]

Messaggio originale di yin.justin:

@Quint Aguacate : and how would you do this spoiler tag? Thank-you

There is a "Formatting help" button next to the post button. That shows you what tags are available. For tables, using the [] tags are probably more useful though:


Still in spoiler, for the same reason it was before:

           | price down | normal price | price up
base price |    50%     |      100%    |   200%
wholesale  |    56%     |       70%    |    84%
buyback    |    24%     |       30%    |    36%

(side note: it's a damn shame they switched to these forums. The old forums had way more options and a better interface, including a wysiwyg editor and a preview)

[Alec]

@cearn thank-you, I see it now.

[Alec]

[Alec]

blah blah blah