Jobs of Zalanthas - aka things you spam for coins

[Ath]

I enjoy the chance to 'argue like a little shit' politely about the game.

It's fun because I can do so back and give a bit of an explanation.

I like your topics, Ath. This last spring or early summer I felt like some of the discussions got a big bogged down with griping. I couldn't figure out what to do about it. Nauta did some nice posts to redirect. I think this helps more though, because you're on staff and you do a nice job keeping the discussion moving.

Why thank you.  It was my hope to keep it moving and also keep it interesting, all the while keeping people on track.  (I'm betting our Player Moderators were happy about that.)

[Lizzie]

I'm glad we can spam more things for smaller amounts of sids in a longer period of time. Previously, it was just the silk braes, strapless lilac gowns, a couple of components, the carved chests, and a couple choice pieces of jewelry. Most of the values on those have been dropped so people aren't "stuck" becoming filthy stinkin rich making just one of each every RL week, and these new "Jobs" have filled in the void of "people who need something to start out before they're actually any good at anything profitable."

I'm also glad for these topics. You can see the collective input from players, rather than a "them vs. us" mentality that is often felt on other threads.

[Ath]

I'm glad we can spam more things for smaller amounts of sids in a longer period of time. Previously, it was just the silk braes, strapless lilac gowns, a couple of components, the carved chests, and a couple choice pieces of jewelry. Most of the values on those have been dropped so people aren't "stuck" becoming filthy stinkin rich making just one of each every RL week, and these new "Jobs" have filled in the void of "people who need something to start out before they're actually any good at anything profitable."

I'm also glad for these topics. You can see the collective input from players, rather than a "them vs. us" mentality that is often felt on other threads.

Yeah, I know it's been a goal to normalize object values as much as possible and I think we've gotten most of them, there are likely some others out there, but it can be difficult to find them unless players let us know.

As for the "them vs us" mentality, I hope these can help eliminate that.

So I'm going to open the floor to some questions...  but they must be directed towards the topic of Jobs or the Topic Threads in general.  Don't expect answers that are going to give away any secrets of the game, nor anything that is going to give away future or current plans.  I really don't want to get hopes up when something may or may not happen.

[a french mans shirt]

Currently, being a rock grebber is something that either wasn't meant to be a thing or hasn't really been looked at. You could greb/mine jasper, onyx, etc. other large chunks of stone and sell five of each to the only coded greb shop in Allanak, but you couldn't do this on a daily basis because of the five item limit. Its a low-paying job that one would think would be a thing, and I'm wondering what staff's position is on automated-paying rock grebbing.

[Riev]

Actually, that's a decent idea. What if the Trade Ministry opened up a shop that only bought, say, block-sized stones? Four to five coins a piece. You're "helping build the city" and making a bit of coin off it as well. Surely, finding a vein of jasper, then, wouldn't be as useless as it is right now.

[Jihelu]

Actually, that's a decent idea. What if the Trade Ministry opened up a shop that only bought, say, block-sized stones? Four to five coins a piece. You're "helping build the city" and making a bit of coin off it as well. Surely, finding a vein of jasper, then, wouldn't be as useless as it is right now.

If you have crafting abilities finding a vein of jasper isn't useless at all.

[Riev]

Actually, that's a decent idea. What if the Trade Ministry opened up a shop that only bought, say, block-sized stones? Four to five coins a piece. You're "helping build the city" and making a bit of coin off it as well. Surely, finding a vein of jasper, then, wouldn't be as useless as it is right now.

If you have crafting abilities finding a vein of jasper isn't useless at all.

Along the same 'vein' (heheheheh), if you're a guild_merchant you can make coin and don't require any of the coded jobs in game whatsoever!

[Jihelu]

Actually, that's a decent idea. What if the Trade Ministry opened up a shop that only bought, say, block-sized stones? Four to five coins a piece. You're "helping build the city" and making a bit of coin off it as well. Surely, finding a vein of jasper, then, wouldn't be as useless as it is right now.

If you have crafting abilities finding a vein of jasper isn't useless at all.

Along the same 'vein' (heheheheh), if you're a guild_merchant you can make coin and don't require any of the coded jobs in game whatsoever!

Or you could do both jobs and craft things at the same time!



I feel like just raw 'grebbing' is such a hard life tho. The surrounding hides of things you'll probably normally find around Nak can't easily be sold so you have to slightly rely on players.
Sometimes I just buy things to make people feel better.

I don't think grebbing should make you rich or anything but I would greatly appreciate, even if I don't use it, a vendor that buys an endless (Or high cap) amount of raw materials from the surrounding area. Or maybe a bit farther out to give incentive to go find fancy stuff.
Like the mining templar but for something else.
Not necessarily stones tho.

[evilcabbage]

i am mostlyin the vein (hee hee) of buying things to make people feel better too.

[nauta]

On this point in particular (grebbing for stones):

1. I wonder if we couldn't change the vendor code to purchase items after the big five at a price of one or two sid.

I find the urge to -sell- my items overwhelming.  I mean, you could just go in, sell the five, and RP selling the others while junking them.  But I can rarely get myself to do this, because urges.  But for some reason if I find a vendor willing to pay just one sid for it (in Luir's there is a vendor that pays an outstandingly terrible price for things), I'll do that instead.

Also, callout to path, grebbing for rags in the rinth is MY favorite too, and it does get you ridiculously rich, but only under certain conditions:

1. If there is a low PC population.  If there is a high PC population, then there is competition, and potentially dickheads who will murder you while cleaning off the corpses -- which is awesome.

2. You have to get the goods during a certain time period after a reboot.

But yeah, I think Melissandra, she should pay a lot less for these things.  And if you go southside to sell them: shame on you!

[Riev]

That is why I suggested maybe a city-building office, just off the Office of the Mines, that takes only blocky-sized stones, and pays a near-pittance for them. Let City artisans shape the stone into what sizes they need, they're getting near-slave labor off the citizenry and don't have to pay for food or water.

[path]

But yeah, I think Melissandra, she should pay a lot less for these things.  And if you go southside to sell them: shame on you!

Shame on me, but like, nauta, I'm often scared of the elves on the east side. I dig Mel's gear (wish some of it were differently sized) but those sharps through! They're everywhere, gathering around trash fires, their eerily elongated shadows wavering against the graffiti-smeared sides of crumbling buildings. I mean, for sure I would be lucky to get back westside with my life intact, much less with the coin from whatever I'd sold.

I don't think the rinth is meant to be a stand-alone economy. Is it? I want to drag southies down into the dark alleys with me. I like interchange.

[Synthesis]

(Note:  I'm assuming this is all around Allanak)

1.  Dung-collecting.  This one is great for a noob PC, if nobody else is competing with you.  Minimal risk.  Hunger/thirst status decline minimally.  Payoff is decent for the amount of time and risk involved.

2.  Clay-digging.  I wouldn't ever do this with a noob PC.  The risk of running into a tarantula that will instagib you is just too high.  They don't spawn nearby, but they get kited (unintentionally, I presume) nearby all the time.  Payoff isn't that great.  Hunger/thirst go down quite a bit.  Totally not worth it around Allanak, in my opinion.

3.  Salting.  Haven't done it much since the changes.  It seems really difficult to find salt even when your foraging skill is at (journeyman).  Also, the payoff isn't anywhere near what it once was, now that the herbalist doesn't buy components.

4.  Foraging stones.  If your foraging skill is decent, you know where to look, and nobody is competing with you, you can make a decent amount of 'sid per reboot on raw gemstones.  More, if there's an active jeweler PC.  Much more if -you- are a jeweler PC.

5.  Obsidian mining.  My go-to once my foraging skill is up, and I can ride well enough to remount and flee.  If you don't fart around, it will pay the bills.  If you spend a lot of time emoting and draining your thirst meter, though, it's significantly less useful.

6.  Glass mining.  Great payoff once your foraging skill is up and the risk of instagib tarantula death is low.  However, once you're that much of a badass, you probably don't -need- to mine glass anymore...you're just being lazy.

7.  Food foraging.  Great for a noob ranger or food-foraging subclass.  You rarely have competition for it, and the wide variety and cooked/uncooked variants mean you almost never max out the shop.

My suggestions:

1.  The clay pits need a "hangout," with cheap food, reasonably-priced water, and a quit-safe room.  (If they have this already, my bad.)  This way you'd only have to run the scrab/spider gauntlet every once in a while.

2.  Implement an active-foraging system where you don't have to/can't "spam" commands for this basic stuff.  You should be able to type "use pickaxe obsidian" once, and just continually mine it, with chunks breaking off periodically and your stamina draining appropriately.  Set an automatic cutoff so that when the PC hits the "very tired" mark, it stops and you have to force it to continue.  Same with all of the other jobs.  As a noob PC where every 'sid counts, it is far too tempting to ride out to a deposit, spam the command until tired, and ride back in as quickly as possible, to avoid depleting your thirst meter.  Timing should be roughly 40 stamina per IC hour...so with a little gear, the average human would be completely exhausted by grebbing from dawn until high sun.

3.  Granted, I haven't played with it much recently, and people were complaining vociferously about it, but I still kinda think salting should be de-nerfed.  I don't ever recall making vast amounts of 'sid from it, except with magickers.

[path]

My suggestions:

1.  The clay pits need a "hangout," with cheap food, reasonably-priced water, and a quit-safe room.  (If they have this already, my bad.)  This way you'd only have to run the scrab/spider gauntlet every once in a while.

2.  Implement an active-foraging system where you don't have to/can't "spam" commands for this basic stuff.  You should be able to type "use pickaxe obsidian" once, and just continually mine it, with chunks breaking off periodically and your stamina draining appropriately.  Set an automatic cutoff so that when the PC hits the "very tired" mark, it stops and you have to force it to continue.  Same with all of the other jobs.  As a noob PC where every 'sid counts, it is far too tempting to ride out to a deposit, spam the command until tired, and ride back in as quickly as possible, to avoid depleting your thirst meter.  Timing should be roughly 40 stamina per IC hour...so with a little gear, the average human would be completely exhausted by grebbing from dawn until high sun.

3.  Granted, I haven't played with it much recently, and people were complaining vociferously about it, but I still kinda think salting should be de-nerfed.  I don't ever recall making vast amounts of 'sid from it, except with magickers.

This is awesome! Especially love #2.

[Lizzie]

Actually, that's a decent idea. What if the Trade Ministry opened up a shop that only bought, say, block-sized stones? Four to five coins a piece. You're "helping build the city" and making a bit of coin off it as well. Surely, finding a vein of jasper, then, wouldn't be as useless as it is right now.

If you have crafting abilities finding a vein of jasper isn't useless at all.

Along the same 'vein' (heheheheh), if you're a guild_merchant you can make coin and don't require any of the coded jobs in game whatsoever!

...eventually. Start-up "guild_merchant" can very well make excellent use of "jobs" until they've become better at their coded crafting skills. Unless you're in the north and buy a lumber axe with your starting sids, or show up and get clanned immediately out of chargen, or get lucky and come across some dead guy's pack full of craftable materials, you won't be crafting much at all at first, because the materials are expensive until you are able to acquire your own (or can afford to buy your own, which you can't do til you sell something, which you can't do until you have something to sell, which is difficult to do if you have no materials to make something worth selling).

[Jihelu]

Actually, that's a decent idea. What if the Trade Ministry opened up a shop that only bought, say, block-sized stones? Four to five coins a piece. You're "helping build the city" and making a bit of coin off it as well. Surely, finding a vein of jasper, then, wouldn't be as useless as it is right now.

If you have crafting abilities finding a vein of jasper isn't useless at all.

Along the same 'vein' (heheheheh), if you're a guild_merchant you can make coin and don't require any of the coded jobs in game whatsoever!

...eventually. Start-up "guild_merchant" can very well make excellent use of "jobs" until they've become better at their coded crafting skills. Unless you're in the north and buy a lumber axe with your starting sids, or show up and get clanned immediately out of chargen, or get lucky and come across some dead guy's pack full of craftable materials, you won't be crafting much at all at first, because the materials are expensive until you are able to acquire your own (or can afford to buy your own, which you can't do til you sell something, which you can't do until you have something to sell, which is difficult to do if you have no materials to make something worth selling).

I disagree with this.
One of your starting crafting skills, involving stones, is pretty useless but getting them is pretty easy, it's just a matter of knowing what stones.

Then it gives you something else and by that point your forage is good enough that you make loads ofm oney.

[Ath]

Alright, so there hasn't been many questions, so I am going to close this thread up here soon.

[RogueGunslinger]

Currently digging dung costs more stamina than hacking obsidian, which feels off. Perhaps hacking is too easy, or maybe dung-digging is too hard. Not sure.

[a french mans shirt]

Hacking a quarry or deposit is dependant on your forage skill. The better you are at foraging, the less energy it takes.

[Ath]

Alright folks, this one has died out.  I'm closing it.  Thank you again on your feedback.  Might be a bit before I start another thread, but this was greatly appreciated.