Fulmens

I've said this before- I'd like to see merit buying on a 24 hour timer: first merit half a million, second a million, third two million, fourth five million, no fifth: something like that. If you're more than four merits short, you're not there yet.

This may help.

What is your goal with this character? Are you taking an existing Empath and kitbashing it into a solo beast? Or are you starting from scratch?

... my personal choice for a solo defender would be Rad/Sonic, but nobody actually asked me.

An excellent point comes up, nearly peripherally, in the previous post: How much effort and influence would you like to spend on this character? Frankenslotting is a 10-to-50-million inf process, gets you quite good results. Or you can spend 10 billion [that may be rhetorical, I'm not even sure any more] and get a character that plays utterly unlike its former self. There are several steps in between.

Eryq2 was quoted as saying

If you've burnt a billion and been promoted, we can't technically stop you. (I suppose we could undo your work.) Check with Teutonic Rogue for a corner he's not using. I like to think we're going so fast that we need a second firepit for rush hour.

There should, in theory, be a steady state solution, Shred. But it may take a long time to get there- months instead of days, in which case the system is changing long before we reach equilibrium. I don't have any good guesses as to how to estimate this.

Additionally, as Uberguy mentioned, you need a constant rate of making money and a constant ratio of money to stuff for equilibrium. Farmers have gotten faster and more efficient since issue 9 hit.

Back when I worked some of Topdoc's numbers, it looked like he was adding about 20% net inf to the system; I attempted to take his change in personal level of wealth, figured how much was from selling things on market vs. how much was from vendoring and cash. Subtract 10% [or 20% if he got flipped] of the on-market sales from the cash numbers and you get the total he was adding into the system.

Let me make up an example: Farmer Alpha makes 60% of his inf from recipes sold on market and 40% from vendoring L50 generics and actual inf from beating guys up. We would subtract 6% [wentfees removing inf from game] from 40% [inf added to game] and conclude that 34% of Farmer Alpha's earnings are new inf to the game.

Farmer Beta farms at level 50 and gets purples- 80% of his inf is from Went-sales and 20% is from vendors and critters. We subtract 8% from 20% and only 12% of Beta's earnings are new to the game.

We can have other examples- Farmer Gamma does PVP and so 100% of inf is from Went-sales , and they actually remove inf from the game and add none. Farmer Delta runs AE farms and 80% is direct pay, so 78% is new inf. And so forth.

I guess my point is that until you're making 91% of your inf by selling stuff at Wents, you're still inflationary.

There are people raising their children to be native Klingon speakers. That's right, they speak Klingon at home so their children will pick it up .

This gives me great hope for the survival of dying languages.

... all we need are more Osage nerds.

The actual progress bar is tiny and goes across the top. It's a mistake many people have been made. Of which I was one.

Gratz, Lord Cyclones!

As others have said: from the standpoint of the MARKET there's nothing wrong with selling too cheaply.

From the standpoint of your personal economy, if it bothers you that someone bought a thing for less than it cost you to make it and sold it for fifteen million, then you shouldn't list for near-zero prices. The advice I heard [and repeated] in the early days of the market was, never list for a price you'd be unhappy to actually get.

... and I'd list the crafted for 160M.

I can only think of one thing that would really hurt the market: a supply shortage. If there isn't enough stuff out there, that's a problem that nothing can fix. I think Ego's Shadow described it as the KING OF NOTHING feeling when she had a billion inf villainside and couldn't fill her slots.

Arbegela, quoting Blue Centurion, said

How am I supposed to catch up? It's nearly time to donate to the base builders! (Man, between base builders, enyalios, and the two [!] Crazy 88s... good thing I like cheap builds. )

If you can't imagine how ONE flipper lowers prices... what do you think happens when you have TWO flippers working the same niche?

The Sell It Nao price goes up, the Buy It Nao price comes down, and people get stompy mad.

It occurred to me today that I have, on my 3-4 main market characters, an awful lot of things that meet the following criteria:

1) I bought them, crafted them, and listed well below market price

2) The market price has collapsed

3) They've been listed for weeks.

According to *cough* some people, flipping RAISES prices. So today's rhetorical question: How can this be? (all are crafted, max-level)

Miracle: Healing, listed for 40,100,908. Apparently this was going for 50M + at one point. Now it's around 25M, high 30 and low 15.6.
Blessing of the Zephyr: KB reduction. Listed for 30-31M, so apparently in the 35-40M range. Now selling for 25-30M. (I have four. Oops. )
Reactive Armor: Res/End, listed for 35.3M, selling for 10-25M.

Eradication Quad: listed for 41, selling for 40. Apparently that was 50 million at some point.

Steadfast Res/Def: listed at 30, selling for 20-25.

I'm going to have to pull these things down and *gasp* lose money on some of them! That's unpossible! I'm told I RAISE prices on things! With my market mind control!

(... in other news I left Celerity: Stealth alone for a couple weeks and it kicked back up to 50 million.)

So, friends, share your tales of woe. What's stubbornly sitting in YOUR slots?

A lesson I keep having to relearn: You can spend half an hour crafting a well-written, well-supported argument and the person you're talking to can go "NO U" in 30 seconds. That's why I try to /ignore the write-only devices on these forums.

There's something really enticing about this particular troll. The bait... so tasty.