The basics or click to move to making money with Alchemy
Have you ever had trouble making money in Silkroad? This is a guide for old players or new players, then this is the portion you should read.Hope it can help you...
1/ First step : stall your drops
First, this will earn you more money than selling them to NPC's.
(A "drop" is an item that falls from a "mob" when it dies. A "mob" is a "monster". A "NPC" is a non-playing character, here a merchant like the blacksmith or the alchemist.)
When selling drops to NPC's, you barely get enough gold to buy potions and NPC gear for your character. Many people play that way and whine about being poor.
Second, you will learn prices. Learning prices is the hard limit to moneymaking. I mean once you know prices, you can buy and resell. If you don't, you cant. And it's very hard to learn prices. You learn some prices because your character is playing at this level range and with this type of items. I've been playing the market for 6 months on Venus and I still don't know shit about prices way above my level range. Can't learn. Would take huge work. I wouldn't even know where to start.
So, value your prices' knowledge. It is your best asset.
And how do you get this? Simply by... stalling your drops. And of course by browsing stalls. But browsing stalls isn't enough, at all. Otherwise I would know all the prices in SRO.
OK you've stalled your drops for a while and you've come to learn a few prices. How did you do this, well you've first tried a certain price range for a certain type of item, you saw in how much time it sold if at all. You adapted your price to that selling-time and in a few tries you learned the price for that type of stuff.
But there is a catch here.. a little secret :
1bis/ Have a big gap
(those who don't know what a "gap" means will find a short definition at the bottom of this guide)
Having a gap means you will level up very slowly, up to about 9 times slower than with no gap at all at low level. When you level that slowly, you grab much gold and drops from your hunting and you gather therefore much gold to buy your equipment with.
Suddenly it's like magic, you have 300K for that sword that you thought was outrageously expensive before. And that's where it matters in this guide : you start seeing prices differently. You start to understand the hidden side of the market as well.
It's as if there were two markets : an apparent market for people who don't have much gold and don't know how to make gold. The prices are low, and the items suck.
The hidden market is different : in this market that you start to see once you have gold and time on your hands, items are way more expensive but also of much better quality.
Why am I making a weird story out of this? Because this is really how it happens in your head when you start having a big gap and studying the market a little.
How can there be these "two markets"? Simple. People who play on the easy market will buy low whatever they find, sell low whatever they have and be bewildered at the high prices of pro stallers, wondering whoever buys such junk... thinking it may be gold buyers or something.
Well, no. Just have a big gap, you'll have much more gold and you'll be able to buy that stuff that used to look way too expensive to you AND you'll start pricing your own stuff that high, just as high as you would be willing to buy it for.
I'm not talking about SOX stuff here. I'm talking about your +1 +2 +3 weapons, or your +3STR or +3INT protections. Suddenly paying tenths or hundreds of thousands of gold pieces for these seems not only doable, but a good opportunity. Suddenly you start understanding that the people who price these items low just don't have enough gold to imagine that other players do have enough gold yet got this gold without even buying-reselling.
See the magic? The secret?
You wouldn't price a sword 300K that you wouldn't buy for yourself for over 50K, would you?
Now, if you'd be ready to pay 300K for that sword with money earned from killing monsters only, why would you sell it any lower?
You start imagining that other people like you have enough gold to buy stuff even in the lower levels in the noob town, even just from the gold they grabbed and the drops they sold at low prices.
And yes, they do. And they jump on the good deals. And the other people rarely see these good deals. And if they see them, they can't afford them.
So having a big gap is kinda essential to start learning moneymaking.
It teaches you that the market you see may not be all the market there is.
It teaches you that your idea of prices is conditioned by your game-play and by the money you earn through this game-play. It's largely psychological.
It teaches you that even by playing humbly your lowbie character, without buying stuff to resell it but just by grabbing your gold and selling your drops at normal prices in your stall, you can have much more gold than most people. And you can therefore buy good stuff. And you can price your own junk just as high as you'd be willing to buy it if you needed it. And it's at a way way higher price. Like 5 times higher.
And another positive side of having a big gap is that you'll spend so much more time on a given level that you'll have plenty of time to browse the market and find rare and good items for your character.
Playing on hard-mode (gap 9) was a determining step in my learning how to make money in SRO, and I suspect it played an important part in many moneymakers stories as well.
2/ Buy low sell high
Alright you've learned some prices, you've earned some gold, now it's time to start buying to resell. It happens naturally by the way. Once you've stalled a certain type of item and you suddenly see it being sold way too cheap in somebody else's stall, you grab it and reprice it in your own stall... at the higher price you know it will sell for without problem.
I started with +3STR protections and accessories. I had a STR chinese char and of course +3STR stuff was the shit because my character was so much better with it. I realized I was ready to pay much more for a +3STR piece of clothes than for a normal one. Much more than for a lvl+3 one, for example. To give you an idea, say a blank pair of gloves was worth 5K, i would be ready to pay 30 to 50K for one that would be +3STR. And then I would start seeing in other people's stalls that they didn't know this. At all. They would price the +3STR items just like if it had no such bonus. Or maybe twice its price, whereas it was worth 10 times its price, not 2 times.
So... that's when I started buying to resell. Sounds obvious, and I'm feeling like I'm being silly explaining this in details, but I've come to see that there really are overall few people who ever buy to resell.
After +3STAT gear I went on to weapons. Easy tip, weapons are what people are most ready to spend all their cash on. Weapons are what sells the easiest. I also took a good look at accessories. Did you notice how they're much harder to find than protections? That's of course because accessories fit all characters, whereas protections fit only 1 in 6 types of characters (2 genders and 3 protections types). On the same note, female protections are way easier to find than male ones because most characters are male. So you can price male protections higher than female ones.
I realized that if accessories were so hard to find, therefore they should be priced higher. Now if you get your hands on an accessory that has +1 +2 or +3 STR or INT... think well before you price it. These are, I swear, way rarer and harder to find than you imagine. I find them very rarely for sale at the price they deserve : that is the price at which they will sell no more quickly than the rest of your stall's stuff. It IS high.
From then on, by collecting +# weapons and reselling them I was soon able to buy some lowbie SOS that were under-priced as well as any good deal that passed my way and wasn't too expensive.
Soon appeared the two components of buying-reselling : the time to sell, and the benefit.
Each slot of your stall is money. Earning a certain percentage or margin isn't enough of course, you need to make a minimum amount in benefit for it to deserve a slot.
In practice I like selling lowbie gear to help people out, but when I want business I'd rather NPC these items than waste a slot that could be used to earn much more.
The time is critical and that's where I still have much to learn. You got to have high prices on you valuable items for sale but not too high or you will sell too slowly and end up therefore earning less. Because once you sold some stuff you can buy some more to sell it again.
Good stallers (BTW it's by watching and talking with these people that I got the desire and will to start doing the same myself) know how to price their items just right, making a good profit and selling quickly. I'm a lazy and greedy staller who will accept seeing an expensive item remaining in his stall for a week... or even more for some stuff that is very expensive to me. But I know that my prices are too high usually.
3/ Refrain from buying stuff for your char
Sounds easy? It may be the hardest part.
Don't feed your hungry little inner monster who wants über stuff.
When you see über stuff that you need, buy it if it is way below average market price... TO RESELL IT RIGHT AWAY.
Train yourself to do this.
If you can't tame that inner greedy pokemon you won't ever build cash and won't ever earn enough money to buy this same good stuff with... once you really can afford it.
Because do not think that you can afford it when you have enough cash to buy it, oh no no no...
You can afford it only when buying it won't lower your investment-cash in a significative way.
Yes, your cash-pile is your investment cash now. It is no longer your candy-buying spending cash-pile anymore. Get used to it and this pile of cash will grow high.
Money with Elements: Breaking npc items with destroyer rondoin ECSRO, wind 2 and 3 is quite expensive.For the elements demand list check 9D Stones requirements guide1.Theory
blades lvl8 at NPC in jg cost 3,5k of Silk Road and when they are destroyed whit destroyer rondo they have about 50% chance of giving 4 to 6 units of wind lvl2 which i hope cost's 2k each on all servers(it does on Athens)..if it does not then u lucky Athen's players listen up becouse u will find this very usefull .As i was saying lvl8 blade has 50% to give 4~6 wind lvl2, for example well take average of 5 so it gives ~10k of gold
in this exaple i will destroy 100 blades lvl 8 bought from npc in theory: about 50 blades should give me 5 units each so thats
50x5=250 units of wind lvl2=500k...nice right
Now lets see how much we need to spend on this:
we need 100 blades lvl8 which cost 3,5k each and we need 100 units of destroyer rondo so that:
100x3,5k=350k(for blades) & 100x400=40k(for destroyer rondo)
350k+40k=390k...oh look we have 110k of profit from those 250 units of wind lvl 2 alone..u get other elements as well and they have some price for example wind lvl1 can be selled for 500 Silk Road Gold each easy
In theory works fine now let see how it works in game...
2.Ingame experiment
this is where u buy destroyer rondo
theres a 100 pices i take
there is 29 blades in my inventory
ok now we do some alchemy
and we get those nice elements that cost soo much
and oops now i have no more space in my inventory need 4 spots in order to work properly
do not make this kind of mistakes they can cost...start have 8 spots for elements and4 free spots so alchemy can work now if u were dumb enought to make this mistake sell it or put it in storage
ok now we finished first round let see results:
28 blades used, 75 units gained meaning 15 blades gave 5 pices each
15 blades are a bit over 50% of 28 that was totaly used so we scored good
round two lets go same thing whit one diference i use 25 blades in this round(nned those 4 spots for first blade )
and here are results of 2nd round:
we used 25 blades adn we gained 62 units of wind lvl2 meaning 12~13 blades gave us wind which is exact 50%
3rd round (bored to death here )
and results:
we used 25blades adn gained 63 ubits same as round before this one 50%
4th and LAST round(thank god )
we are useing only 22 blades this time as that how many has left until 100 that i told ill be destroying
and here are results of 4th round:
22 blades and 59 units gained meaning we got ourselfs anotehr 55% one
TOTAL SCORE:
we used 390k in doing this and gained 259 units of wind lvl 2=518k of Silkroad Gold from wind 2 only let say u get 100k for ALL other elements( and u will get more)
u get 618k-390k=228k
it took me 25 min to do this and let asume ill need 15 min to sell it that 40 min in total.
I would like to see some1 (whitout silks) and under lvl 30 to make 228k of Silrkoad Gold for 40 min.
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