Opening Statements[ | ]
There are a few guides on here on how to make gold. However, they seem to lack depth, only mentioning one method, and not really getting at the heart of how it's actually done. The game's economy is fairly dynamic, and as such, it is difficult to give buy prices and sell prices for items. Instead, this guide will not use them (with one exception) and will try to give the reader the information they need to determine for themselves what items they will try to profit from.
The guide will focus on the merchant's principle of buy low, sell high, or more specifically, sell for more than you bought it for, ideally, a lot more. It should be noted that through the following methods I have over 1.5 million gold (actually more, but I've spent a fair amount of it), that number increasing by about 5-15% each day. Since these methods could be used in conjunction with valuable drop farming (such as gold ore), as such this guide might be better thought of as "making more gold".
I've created the Making Gold Table for use with this, although it should be noted that purpose is not to tell you what prices to buy and sell at (based on the market price), but rather, to show which items may be profitable and warrant further investigation.
Vindictus Economy[ | ]
The Vindictus economy is centered around the Marketplace. Here, things are bought and sold, with the price set by the seller. The result of the sales leads to a Market Price, that is determined on a daily basis. Depending on the demand for the items sold, and the price range for the buyers, the Market Price will fluctuate, sometimes by a large margin, on a daily basis. It is wise to remember that the marketplace has fees, and those fees should be factored in when it comes to profit. Otherwise, if the profit margins are low, then there is a chance that you'll be losing gold.
The prices for items vary widely depending on the items usefulness, rarity, and how "new" it is in terms of how long it has been since it was released. A very useful, very rare, new item, will typically have very high price (10,000s to 100,000s of gold). While an item that isn't very useful, and isn't very rare, and is from episode 1, will have a very low price (under 100 gold).
A key thing to remember is that items bought cannot be traded back, unless you craft them into something else, although there are exceptions. This was wise on Vindictus's part, as it prevents people from simply buying up everything below their sell price in order to make a lot of money, which can be very, very profitable, but is extremely risky as it only takes additional sellers to leave you with dozens of unsold goods that you paid a lot for.
Making Gold[ | ]
There are several ways to make profit in Vindictus, each have varying degrees of risk, and each vary in the "practical" amount of gold that can be made in a given amount of time. Below I've included a general outline of the methods that can be employed, arranged from first to last by risk.
Buying from the Marketplace to sell at a shop[ | ]
Overview: It's surprising the number of people who don't know that items can be sold at the shops during "trade" by right clicking on them from your inventory. You can't really blame them though, the only hint that is given is that there is a Sell Price.
Profit can be made by buying an item from the market and then selling Vindictus makes this a bit easier, as when you hover the mouse over items it shows both the Market Price, and the Sell Price. While it's profitable to buy at any price under the sell price, it is wise to remember the fees as well as the fact that buying above the Market Price may raise the Market Price, and reduce long term profitability.
Risk: Virtually none. The reason there is virtually no risk using this method is that the sell price is fixed. By having a fixed sell price, it's simply a matter of making sure that you can buy the item at a low enough cost to make a good profit, unless for some reason you buy something from the marketplace, neglect to sell them immediately, and the sell price for that thing coincidentally goes down due to a game patch the next day.
Profitability: Low Actually can vary quite a bit, but generally low. Typically, the only things that this method will work for are low level things, since as players level, they get more experience as to how much to sell an item for on the marketplace. Since low level items don't sell for a lot at shops.
Recommendations: The chance of coming across an item with a high sell price and low marketplace price for a high level item is pretty minuscule, so although you may make some money keeping this method in mind, don't expect anything over 1,000 profit per item.
Buying from a shop to sell at the marketplace[ | ]
Overview: Another way to make a profit is by buying from a shop and then selling for a higher price at the marketplace. I really have to wonder why people bother to buy them from the marketplace, when they can get them at the shop for less. Then again, the way you buy things in bulk at a shop is a real pain, so I'm not too surprised that they would rather buy from the market.
Risk: Medium. Once again, you have a fixed price, in this case, the buy price. So it's a simple matter of ensuring that you can sell above the buy price, but the low profit margin may force the price under or very close to that fixed shop price.
Profitability: Low. The issue here is that the profit each isn't very high (generally under 100 gold). So while you might be able to afford 1000 Empty Bottles (100,000 gold), and use your 10 slots at the market. They go for around 125 each, so your only making 25*1000 = 25,000 gold profit.
Recommendations: Although you wont make a lot of money quick, you won't lose a lot either if you screw up, so this method may be worth using, but it shouldn't be a main focus in any case.
Buying materials to sell crafted goods at the Marketplace[ | ]
Overview: Profit can also be made by crafting items. Buying the materials from the Marketplace, and then selling the crafted goods at the Marketplace. The trouble is finding items that this can be done with, as there aren't that many. Typically the items that this can be used on are crafted goods that either get used by the player, or as finished goods, that are used again in crafting higher level armor and weapons. In this case, the people who buy them are those willing to pay extra so they don't have to grab the materials and craft it themselves, and that extra ends up your profit.
Risk: High. If you're new to this, be prepared to lose a lot of gold learning which items are profitable, determining ideal buy/sell prices, etc.
Profitability: Medium. After you get some experience, you'll be able to make some nice money buying materials, crafting items, and selling the finished goods.
Recommendations: If you're willing to do the micromanaging, it's a good method once you have about 100,000 gold on hand that can be spent. A good idea is to try to minimize your buy price, so you can sell the crafted item at just below what everyone else is selling at, while still making a nice profit. However, if you sell your product at 1 gold below the next price (e.g. Light battle mail boots are going for 10,000 and you list yours for 9,999) then many players will go out of their way to buy the (very slightly) more expensive one. Not only do you lose the chance to make a profit, you'll also get a bad name and players may hesitate to buy your items in the future, even if you stop using cheeky tactics.
Marketplace Buy and Sell Strategies: The Marketplace is a rather unforgiving place when it comes to using this strategy. One needs to first look at the prices to determine if they can profitably craft an item. Then they need to decide on the max buy and sell prices, which the difference, minus fees, will determine the profit. Buy below the max buy price, and you make addition, buy above it, and you'll be able to buy more items for more total profit, at the cost of profit each. Set the sell price too high, and the items won't sell, incurring a fee, that cuts into profits, and could end up actually costing gold in addition to simply profits. Too low and you won't make a profit.
The exact buy and sell prices you use are purely up to you, the prices shift so much, that I need to change the buy and sell prices on a daily basis. The reward for such micromanagement is of course large amounts of profit. A key thing to keep in mind is that the lower the sell price, the faster things will get sold, and the faster you can reinvest the money for more profit. So while it's nice to be making a 1000 gold profit each item sold, if you only sell one a day, then perhaps you should consider lowering the sell price so that you might be making only 100 gold each, and selling a 100 items a day.
It is very important to be wary of the prices that other people are buying and selling at when it comes to the items you are looking to buy and sell. Generally the most common price at the Marketplace for an item is it's Market Price. This is because it's the price that automatically comes up when selling, and a large number of people will simply hit the "list" button. You can except to find most items at or below Market Price. This works out well when it comes to buying, as you can except to buy a fair amount of items at this price or somewhat above. Which makes it pretty easy to find a baseline buy price. However, it causes some problems when it comes to determining a sell price. In order to sell the most of what your trying to sell, the sell price should be lower than the others. The problem is that you'll have people selling items at Market Price, selling items below Market Price sometimes at low prices just so they will sell (these are easy enough to spot as generally there aren't going to be very many of them selling), as well as people selling well above the Market Price in an attempt to make as much money as possible.
Consequences of Merchanting[ | ]
A good merchant also takes note of the effect their actions are likely to cause, if for no other reason then long term profits. The consequences of merchanting show up mainly in the form of price manipulation. By buying large amounts of items at or below a certain price, the Market Price is likely to go closer to that price. The same applies to selling items. In order to sell large volumes of items at the Marketplace, the price needs to be low enough for buyers to buy your items, instead of those of someone else. This means, unless the item is in high demand, you'll end up almost always selling for at least a little below the Market Price, and as a result, the Market Price will tend to go down when selling large amounts of items. The good news is, that the materials that you buy at the Marketplace, are also likely to go down in price, so the profit levels are going to stay fairly consistent, even if the prices aren't.
Consequences of buying outside of the game[ | ]
One of the most common aspects in this type of game, is the market sellers outside of the game. Places like MMOAUCTIOS, or SELLERS AND FRIENDS among others offer the chance to buy and sell items, gold, and more. While this is a common practice, the true is that the game developers have not approved this and many players suffer from penalizations because of it. Mainly they get them if the buy from forums or other players in the game, while there are some steps to follow in order to not get banned im not gonna explain it here. Some of the oldest players have argue, that to get gold or items they need more free time to play and with a full time job that is not possible. You can see more about that in the official forums.
Making Gold Table[ | ]
Just wanted to briefly go through the significance of the columns in the Making Gold Table. I'll be adding column information when I can.
Prices[ | ]
Sell, S[ | ]
This is the sell price of the item as defined in the game. Indirectly, it also represents the low end of an items value. Should an item's market price be below this, then it could be considered "undervalued", and as such can be bought from the market to sell at a shop.
Buy, B[ | ]
This is the buy price of item as defined in the game. It seems to be 10x the sell price. Which is why most items have a buy price. Indirectly, it also represents the high end of an items value. Should an item's market price be above this, then it could be considered "overvalued", and as such, one should be wary when buying or selling these items from the marketplace. The reason being is that there is a good chance that the prices will dramatically drop at some point in the future.
Market, M[ | ]
This is the recorded Market Price of an item. This value varies a bit depending on how one defines the Market Price. In game, it's defined as the average price paid for an item, the day before. However, for the purpose of the Table (and merchants) the effective Market Price varies depending on whether you are buying or selling an item. In the case of buying, it is more accurate to consider it the price at which one could buy a large quantity of the item. In the case of selling, the Market Price is what you can expect to sell an item at. In that case, it's difficult to say for sure as when I checked the Market Price, I only saw what had yet to be sold. As such, the Market Prices for such items aren't as accurate, as the value generally reflects the lowest price that was being sold.
Craft, C[ | ]
This is cost to craft the item. Based on the Market Prices. Actual crafting cost will vary depending on how much you paid for the materials. Ideally, it should be lower than expected.
Profit, per item[ | ]
These values are blessed used with the corresponding profit values (replace - with :).
S-M[ | ]
This is profit made using the "Buying from the Marketplace to sell at a shop" method (link needed). As can be seen there isn't a whole lot of profit to be made. However, it's a good method if you need a few 1,000 gold, and don't want to do any battles. Just remember that you'll need to try several items. Very rarely can you buy enough of a single item to make more than a 1,000 gold.
M-B[ | ]
This is profit made using the "Buying from a shop to sell at the marketplace" method (link needed). It should be noted that not everything can be bought from shops, and not everything that lists profit in this column can actually be bought from a shop. Essentially I haven't gotten around to explicitly putting the information into excel to say which items can and which can't. Instead I've used other methods to eliminate the bulk of them.
M-C[ | ]
Now we get one point of the table. This is the profit that can be made by using the "Buying materials to sell crafted goods at the Marketplace" (link needed) method. There are a lot of things that can be crafted for profit at pretty much all levels of free cash. The only issue is ensuring that the materials are still cheap enough to profit from.
Another interesting thing is that it can also be used to see which items may be profitable. As long as the materials are bought cheap enough and the item is sold for enough a profit can be made.
Price Ratios[ | ]
A quick introduction. The price ratio is a comparison of the Sell Price to the Buy Price. Typically anything over 1.05 is fine in terms of just making a profit. At that point it should cover any fees you might have. Above a 1.10 is good, and provides a small buffer in case things don't sell well, or material prices are too high. Above 1.20 starts getting into good margins, and the odds of not at least making some profit are small. Anywhere above 1.50 is very good ratio and is almost guaranteed to make profit. Above a 2.00 is golden.
These values are blessed used with the corresponding profit values (replace : with -).
S:M[ | ]
Ratio for Sell Price to Market Price. Indirectly shows the degree, by a higher value, to which a item could be considered "Undervalued".
M:B[ | ]
Ratio for Market Price to Buy Price. Indirectly shows the degree, by a higher value, to which a item could be considered "Overvalued". High values are likely to drop dramatically at some point in the future. Example: From the first table to the second update of the table, gold ore's value almost halved in only a couple weeks.
M:C[ | ]
And so we reach the other point of the table. This columns show the ratio of the Market Price to the Craft Price. Combined with information from the M-C column it shows which items are most profitable to craft. Sadly it seems Evie has the most profitable items to craft for now.
Closing notes/To Do[ | ]
These are a list of things that you should be aware of as well as things to look forward to in future versions of the guide.
- Eventually include links to making profit through other means, such as farming various things.
- Possible section for terminology, which I may not be exactly right on.
- Possible addition of section for the math and calculations for profit and such.
- Links to other articles
- A small section on variations due to time of day and usage.
- An additional profit method (buying up an item at one price or below to sell at a higher price)
--Nuclearman 02:43, 28 December 2010 (UTC)