Rent or buy which is better

[Nasomie]

Hi i am having a tough time getting money together, two straight in game night and and and I only got 150k, should i just rent all new mechines and buy later?

[Nabong 나연]

Buy but if you Rent you pay tax tax is not good for business

[Secondchance]

Depends on what it is and how much you can afford. If it is something you need that will help you make money or you will own and use all the time and you have the money for it, buy it, the cost of renting will be more expensive in the long run if it is something you need. If it is something you will use only a few times, or just every once in a while, or something that isn't needed and you clearly dont have the money. Rent it, (example is the drill, early on a day rental for the drill is much better than buying it and having it sit around) also if there is something you want to try but don't know how you'll feel about it, then rent it. I rented the front loader and didn't like it and gave it back. saved up and got the big ex. Saved a bunch of money and enjoy my ex more.

[Nasomie]

Thank you for the response.

[Combat Wombat]

Just my opinion (only 130 hours in so I'm a complete noob really):

First off it's worthwhile looking at damage replacement costs, something like the duplex jig is cheap to hire but expensive to repair if the parts break (which they do).

Secondly you can balance this against the winter clear down costs, hired equipment does not need to be stored and then moved at a double cost, you just off-hire it. If you only need a piece of equipment for a short while, it can work out cheaper than buying.

Thirdly consider cost vs return, you need to be able to cover all your costs and still make a profit, if you are over leveridged from claim fees, hire costs, loan costs and worker costs it can end in disaster. If you run out of money and cannot pay your workers, they flat out quit.

Plan your progress, have an aim, something like 10 cleanouts will net me enough to offhire this excavator and buy one, or offhire the T3 trommel when i have enough to buy the T4 one.

Bottom line I would say hire is a short-term option until you have enough to buy or a short term option to cover the gap between tiers. Hire and rent is all dead money, but it can be the best option to get your claim humming at certain times. Early on it's handy to race to the T3 set-up and get dirt moving, later on it's helpful to get Frankies in and working long before you could ever afford to buy them.

In the end it's all down to your play style really, there is no real right or wrong answer unless you are min/maxing like the top LB players do, even then they tend to disagree on some aspects of the buy vs hire debate.

[arcademan]

The core part of the game is the percentage of gold you're getting from the same patch of ground. Tier 1 to Tier 5+ machinery increases that percentage. There's probably some calculations to be made in renting to achieve X% more gold recovered and it's value versus the cost of the machinery and repairs to do so... Dollar mode could be a testing spot.

[Noxtreme]

Rent expensive stuff at the end of the season (1 day to permafrost). Buy the cheap stuff throughout the season. Make sure you have enough fresh drilled dirt coming into the new season so you can just start pounding dirt through your new plant. You need at least 4 days of expenses saved up coming into the new season because the ground will be frozen 1-2 days.
Then buy each thing as soon on as you can
298 HRS

[arcademan]

I'm working T3 on Old Arnold. I upgraded one Duplex Jig to a Planter. After a full 100% clean-up the tier 3 Duplex's 2 buckets yielded 8.91 oz and the tier 4 Planter yielded 11.61 oz. Full clean-up across everything was 69.2 oz. Need to move to River Town for higher grade dirt probably. Makes me less interested in renting the 2nd Planter after buying the first for now.

[Noxtreme]

GET DEROCKER if you want to upgrade the plant. It has the largest gold catch increase and you can fit an entire hopper in it dry. This means you can run 3 dump trucks per run instead of 2....
First trip fill hopper. Second trip turn on the big generator and let the hopper empty to derocker. Turn off the big generator and dump the second load in. Third load run all three.
Fit things in like washing matts and refueling while you are filling the derocker on trip 2 and while running everything on trip 3.
RiverTown is garbage honestly. I had to move there because I ran out of dirt on OA and that was all i could afford, but if you can manage, jump right to nighthawk. You won't be sorry.

[Combat Wombat]

Was very disappointed with River Town as well.

[M.Stranger]

Good Advice from all, I am on my second play thru.

The first thing I would recommend is to turn off Auto Save and then you can save by Season and Day. So you can experiment. And figure out your play style.
Lots of decisions to make to manage your money and resources, and get the best return on the pay dirt you run through your wash plants, and how you get it there.

[Metallos]

Originally posted by M.Stranger:

The first thing I would recommend is to turn off Auto Save and then you can save by Season and Day. So you can experiment.

You can also make manual saves if autosave is on.

[M.Stranger]

Buy the Parcel, you have just improved your yield by the percent you were paying rent.
Upgrade your wash plant before buying another Parcel. (Higher Tiers, Higher Yields).
Add Workers to your Wash Plant, utilize their performance boosts.

Have fun!

[arcademan]

I'd disagree on buying the parcel unless you plan to reset it. Let's say the parcel costs $1,800,000.00 and you're paying 30% to lease. To cover the cost of $1.8 million you'd have to extract $6,000,000.00 worth of gold just to break even. Otherwise if you leave the lease and move on you'd actually paid a higher percentage in cost. Pay $1.8 mil for the claim and leave harvesting $3,000,000.00 in gold and you've paid 60%. That's proportional as you move through the claims with even higher lease fees and higher buyouts.

[M.Stranger]

But I bought the claim, for 1.8 mil, and earned over 26 mil in gold, and if you divide that out, it is 0.0692%. So only 7% cost to earnings, is a good investment. (btw, second play through, Tier 5, 100% experienced wash plant workers)
And yes, I can reset parcel, for a measly 1.0 mil.