THE MERCHANT’S BIBLE v1.0 Humble Beginnings When I first started this game, it was just something to take my mind off the pain of a recent foot injury. As with a lot of things with me, it turned into an addiction/obsession. Finding the newer, better way of making a credit was my mantra and the merchant flag became my god. Yes, I like to be overdramatic too. Anyhow, I logged into this weird alien game that seemed to have no specific goal in mind for the players, so I did what any good newbie does, check the FAQs. Playstation's helpguide was my manual of play for quite a bit. I even read up on Jdude's FAQ posted on the GAMEFAQ site talking about fishing back when fisher kings gave off tails instead of scales. Anyhow, Playstation noted that mining was the best way to make credits, so I said what the hey, put down some mot into mining and started mining good old Pabite A's for credits. I wasn't really interested in joining a clan/guild at that time, I just wanted to use up the 30 day trial, doing something mindless, and then find some other game to haunt while I waited to have surgery. So back to mining Pabites. I put my daily mot into it and then sold them, and then thought to myself, "Ok, now what the F am I supposed to do?" There's not much to do for someone who has used up his mot and isn't interested in chatting. So I just watched the Pabite A market, trying to sell my ore for the best price. I noticed that it had fluctuated between 500-800 creds, so I sold as high as possible and then tried rebuying the cheap ones and selling them over again. Pretty slow going but I had nothing better to do. Anyhow, about 3 days in, someone randomly QP'd me. The messages that I sent him are still saved on his alien. [Will you be my friend?] To: BodBod (76796) From: kakxy (13862) Sent: 02/24 00:30.32 sorry, buddy. i don't swing that way. [I'll give you credits if you be my friend] To: BodBod (76796) From: kakxy (13862) Sent: 02/24 00:32.17 haha. thats ok. i think i'll be alright. [I'll give you 7 million credits if you say you're my friend.] To: BodBod (76796) From: kakxy (13862) Sent: 02/24 00:34.24 heh. that's ok. i'm no gigolo. Then he gave me all his credits anyway. I had wanted to see how far I could get in the game on my own, so I was thinking, "What the heck am I gonna do with this? Screw it, I'll just invest it." So I put some into the stock market. That lasted for about a day. Price went down and the broker charged a 5% fee just to take out the cash. So I searched for the best market to my credits into. The Market With the Greatest Margin for Profit I stumbled across a market where people would just dump their items for about 100-300 credits each in the morning, and as the day went on as people bought and sold more, ended up selling 900 credits at night. If you haven't guessed it yet, it was the fish market. So I dumped all my credits into buying out the fisher king market. Whenever I didn't have class during the day, I'd check the market and buy up what I could, and sold it at night for a 100-1000% profit, sometimes up to 1.5k each. If there are any oldbies reading this, they'd realize that the sudden spike in the fish market and troop prices coincided with my alien's birth. So basically, I was double-quadrupling my wallet every day for the next week (without spending any mot) before fishermen started getting smarter about it and raising their prices. They raised their prices, so I did too at the end of the day - I just had to make sure I had bought every fisher king that was available. I knew the high fisher king prices wouldn't last so I had to think up a new gimmick. The Eel Gimmick During my fish buyouts, sometimes I was afraid that I might have stocked too many fish so I sold them off at only a 50-100% profit. One fisherwoman was always quick to snatch them up. Eventually I continued to sell her my excess fish and she answered all of my questions about the game. I knew I needed to learn more about the game if I was going to get ahead and like I said, the fisher king gimmick wouldn't last. I asked her questions, she always answered. She taught me almost everything and she eventually let me bounce ideas off her about what I was trying for every market that I took over. In fact, I am kakxy the Motherless because she refused to take me as her son :P. She taught me that fish were used to turn into medleys and then turned into troops and more importantly, that each fish had a different medley value. This is what she gave me: Fisher King 0.1 Bull Head 0.1 Cutterthroat Trout 0.2 Char 0.3 Trout 0.4 Rainbow Trout 0.5 Minnow 0.6 Smelt 0.7 Lukefin Trout 0.8 Black Bass 0.9 Catfish 1.0 Giant Trout 1.1 Darter 1.2 Loach 1.3 Crucian 1.4 Ayu 1.5 Dace 1.6 Sculpin 1.7 Rudd 1.8 Blue Gill 1.9 Dark Chub 2.0 Salmon 2.1 Spotted Trout 2.2 Snakehead 2.3 Great Carp 2.4 Eel 2.5 So as you can see, 1 eel priced at 25k is equivalent to 250 fisher kings priced at 1k each. In the same respect, 10 fisher kings at 1k each = 1 catfish at 10k. If you want to figure out how much you are paying for each medley, divide the price by the reference numbers listed above. I started trying to capitalize on this by convincing any newbie fish seller that QP'd me thanks for buying to start fishing and selling me eels. I also had to educate the buyers at night about eels making more medleys (although I didn't tell them how much more). So I started buying eels from 10k-20k and selling them at night to buyers for 25-30k each. That's why Mongo™ is one of my biggest supporters and asking me how I made my money - because he was my best eel buyer :D. Fish sellers are probably asking me now, "What about fish going rotten?" True, I never had a guild treasury to hide my fish in like everyone does today, so I zoned in on a buyer that was always on near reset and sold him "discount" fish. §horty always bought them, and I always made a profit. Eventually, my pocket book began to outgrow the amount of fish available in the fish market so I had to expand into the next most profitable market. The 2nd and 3rd Most Profitable Markets Almost everyone should know about King of Bling™ or at least heard of him. He was arguably the best reviver A3 ever had. He also liked to stock and overstock on blue and scarlet herbs - the 2nd and 3rd most profitable market. So I began buying up blue herbs for 100-350 credits each in the morning (with luck someone would drop a crapload for cheap) and priced them anywhere from 450-600 credits and all I had to to was wait for KoB to buy up the market, up to and including mine for roughly 100% profit. I made a considerable profit on scarlet herbs too, but not as much as the blue herbs. However, the volume on scarlet herbs is a lot greater than the blue, just less margin for profit. At about 30 days of age, I had about 250 mil to my name so I decided to try a few byte offers - I needed a few things anyway. That catapulted me to more than half a billion credits at which point I exploded into every market I could lay my hands on. About same time, I finally had enough mot to put 390 mot into mining (thanks to miccy's advice) and make it to the last level for the pit to mine scarlets so that put even more credits into my pocket. The Mining Gimmick I had 3 days to go before I had enough mot to get 390 mining, so I popped a few syn to head down to the bottom of the pit (using the map). That gave me an idea so I did some calculations. 1 syn makes an average of 24 mot so, 1 syn x 24 average mot per syn x 2.5 average scarlets per mot x 29k credits - 800k credits per syn = 940,000 credits per syn used. So for every syn you use, if you mine it all, you make 1 million profit. I have been popping 10 syn each week just to mine on the weekends. I also calculated the minimum amount of credits you need to be able to earn per mot and still be profitable out to be: 800k credits / 24 mot = 33,333 credits per mot. Scales and eels will only net you about 25-30k per mot used so popping a syn for those would be a waste. Scarlet herbs and constructs make about 5k per mot. Scarlet mining makes almost 75k per mot of course. There's only one job that rivals scarlet mining and would make using a syn worthwhile. The 2nd Most Profitable Skill (Mining being #1) The only skill that can make as much or more than mining per mot is smoking fish. If you can buy 100 fisher kings for 1k each (total 100k credits), smoke them for 1 mot (1 mot per 10 medleys) and sell the 10 medleys for 15k each (150k total credits), you make 150k medleys - 100k fish = 50k profit. If you find cheaper fish, you make even more profit per mot, sometimes even more than mining. If you pop a syn to smoke your fish, just remember to tack on at least 3.33k (since you make 10 medleys per mot) to the price of your medleys and you'll still make a profit despite using a syn. If you happen to have leadership, you can make even more profit by turning medleys into sentinels for 0 additional mot. In addition, if my fish didn't sell, I could smoke them myself (although Bubblicious charged a 10% fee for me which is 23% less than the cost of the overhead of using a syn). Making Something Out of Nothing At one point, I wanted to build a huge army and have a multi start decimating people's sentinels so that they would come buying sentinel's from me so I bought up almost half a billion worth of troops (they were about 10-14k each at the time). I tried it out a little but had to re-evaluate and found that to lose the least amount of troops, I'd have to build an army costing at least 1.5 billion so I just decided to sell off and try to invest elsewhere. So I plopped down tons of medleys for 12k and sold my troops off for 13-14k. However, I noticed that all the medley sellers kept undercutting me, but troop sales were still decent even though I couldn’t really get rid of them as fast as I had originally liked. So I just kept buying cheap medleys for about 10k each, converted them into troops for zero mot (with leadership) and sold the troops off for 13-14k each for 30-40% profit without using any mot at all. My medleys never sold.. and I took them down once the wars started. But I still buy medleys convert them to sentinels and make profit out of zero mot. So essentially, I would sell my fish at 900-1000 credits per .1 medley unit and then rebuy medleys at about 10-11k each (since using a syn to smoke them myself adds 3.33k to the price of each medley, I saved about 2k each medley), turned them into troops and sold them for more. The Woong Gimmick I thank Bugly for helping me think up this one. He tried to bring down the price of scarlets and rubies by selling off a boatload. I didn't have enough cash for the scarlets so I bought his cheapie rubies. What the heck do I do with all those rubies? I make them into Woongs. Out of all the ore markets, Ruby2's are the cheapest for their price to ore ratio. You can commonly find rubies selling for 19-20k each and in large quantities. A ruby2 is 150 ore points and a scarlet is 200 ore points. So if I were to make a woong all out of rubies, it would take 6666.66 rubies at 20k each = 133.33 mil. Or if you prefer to put it in terms of scarlets, each ruby2 is worth the price of the ruby x 200 ore point per scarlet / 150 ore point per ruby= equivalent scarlet price. More simply, multiply by 4 and divide by 3. So basically, a Ruby2 worth 20k is equivalent to a 26.66k scarlet. 20k cred ruby x 4 / 3 = 26.66k cred scarlet. BARON was kind enough to forge all my woongs for free so I sold each woong anywhere from 145-160mil (an easy 20 mil each woong) each or traded the woongs for scarlets and sold those instead. Here is the ore list that I received from my favorite fisherwoman: Pabite A is worth 1 ore 125 Pabite B is worth 5 ore 625 Pabite C is worth 10 ore 1.25k Mana is worth 50 ore 6.25k Dark Crystal is worth 100 ore 12.5k Ruby2 is worth 150 ore 18.75k Scarlet is worth 200 ore 25k The numbers on the right were my reference point for me when ore was only 25k. They are how much each ore is really worth on a 25k scarlet reference scale. In other words, if I bought a dark crystal at 12.5k or enough to forge a woong, I knew that it was the same as buying a 25k scarlet in terms of ore value. If you divide the price of the ore u see on the market by my reference, the lowest number is the best value, which happens to be rubies. The Fish Charm Gimmick I bought up fish scales throughout the week and sold lots of fish charms. At one point people wondered how I had so many charms and still had enough to buy more scales. Truth to tell, I didn't always have enough money to buy scales all week and fish charm prices were always up and down. (Before bytes were purchasable, people didn't hawk over scales as they do now). After Wednesday, prices for scales always dropped steeply so it sucked away the rest of my cash when I bought them because I hadn't sold enough charms yet. To solve this, after converting my scales at the fisher hut on Wednesdays I sold my charms for relatively cheap prices (the best prices come on Saturday and Sunday), while I continued to buy scales with the proceeds. Then when I ran out of charms and pluses, Halmatrix and Prospector were kind enough to exchange their charms that they had in storage for my scales which left me with more charms to sell for the rest of the week and to keep my cash fluid enough to buy even more scales. So basically, I'd sell real cheap around 10.7 mil on Wednesdays and Thursdays so I'd be able to keep buying scales for 20k each, trade them for charms (10 mil) and sell more later for ~11 mil+ each as my suppliers started running out of charms and the price increased due to the coming tax day. Only 10% profit, but the volume and price was high enough to accommodate my cash and I never jacked up the price unless my suppliers completely ran out of charms. Near the end, I was running through about 70-100 charms every week for roughly a mil profit each and I wasn’t afraid to share the profits either. Fish Prizes For the Ignorant Now that bytes are purchasable, there are a lot of newbies with a lot of cash and little sense. They don't know that fish prizes can be made any time out of fish charms at the prize shop so you can gouge them with prizes priced at crazy premiums. For example, even if there are charms priced at 11.5 mil on the market, they'd buy my prizes for 52 mil, so I'd just buy more charms (46 mil) if i don't have any left and wait for the next newbie. LF Plus is NOT For Losers Contrary to popular belief, an LF plus is NOT a waste to buy and use. LF is one of the most important survival factors for a new alien. It's the most critical when you are levels 1-7. Anything after that is a waste. You are better off buying a Strength Plus or any of the other prizes. An "other" prize is worth 20 AP's and an LF Plus is worth 200 LF which is worth 20 APs only if you are level 10 since you would get 10 LF per AP used and it is worth more APs the less levels you have and hence more valuable to the new alien. Endurance Pluses and Panic Pluses are Sellable Newbies with bytes like Endurance to equip weapons faster. Panic Pluses are for the hard core Loza Arena addicts. Endurance and Panic pluses carry the same value as Strength and Speed (20 APs) and are roughly worth the same amount of time in the gym as Strength and Speed. The only difference is that Endurance and Panic are needed only at certain points in an alien's development - Endurance is used early and Panic is used late while Strength and Speed are used throughout. Constructs for the Speculators I've been buying constructs at 20k and selling them off in bits at 24k for a 20% profit. I have been stocking mortar cannons though because those seem to be the first things that Webby is going to finish. The description leads me to believe that it will be the primary tool used for the Artillery Bombardment attack phase in the clearing. Spaceship Parts and Marks If you are going to buy into the spaceship market, only buy into Long Range Scanners/AWD Engine/Mining Probe. Those are the tools used for mark mining and are the only ones with decent trade volume. In general though, I'd stay out of the space market because the volume is too low so the turnover for profit blows. Every once in a while, someone is dumb enough to try to buy the market out and then realizes his mistake and sells low. It's too erratic. That goes the same with the mark market. Syn and Bytes For the Lazy Syn and Bytes are the easiest ways to make money so whenever someone is selling, and you notice they sell a lot lower than the rest, you can almost always cut a deal with them that's in your advantage because they just want a quick sell. I like to buy my bytes for less than 600k each and my syn for 700-750k each. And because I always keep my cash fluid, cutting a deal isn't a problem. Cash Fluidity and Penny Pinching Keeping a large sum of cash on hand can be achieved by several ways. Become a merchant - You can't get mugged and you can keep all your cash on hand so you don't have to pay for the 1.5% bank fee of manually withdrawing. You also don't have to pay for marketplace listings. NEVER use the BOW card unless you are a guild leader. It costs 3% to use it - that's twice as much as doing it yourself. When your merchant time runs out, it's easiest to transfer the cash to a multi's hand who is also a merchant, and then transfer back to the original's hand once you rejoin the merchant guild. [Note: The game has been changed to allow merchants to rejoin the merchant’s guild 10 days prior to the merchant guild membership’s expiration]. Sell for maximum profit on Sundays - People like to invest in syn, scales, and charms, mainly to avoid taxes, but in general, purchases are across the board. As long as you sell for more than 2.5% of what you paid, you are still making a profit even though you get taxed. Divide the price you paid by .975 to find the lowest price you have to sell for. There’s a way to avoid the tax and bank fees. Donate the credits in your hand to a guild treasury on Sunday and have the credits returned on Monday to avoid the Sunday night tax. Additionally, by using the BOW card guild donation sweep vehicle, you can transfer money from your bank account to the treasury at the end of the day and then have it re-transferred to your hand without paying the bank withdrawal fees. The donation takes place after taxes are assessed on Sundays so if you want to avoid taxes too, you’ll have to use the BOW card sweep Saturday or before. [Note: Fee evasion utilizing guild resources has been deemed illegal]. The Cash Reserve I said I like to keep my cash fluid for quick trades, but there's also another reason. Every once in a while someone tries something "less than intelligent" like trying to drive prices down or put things up on the market just to brag. Once, Bounty Hunter put up almost 40k scarlets up for sale at 25k each. At that time, I was only 200 mil credits short from buying him out. It happened again when Fangy tried to force prices down by putting up 25k scales for 22k each. That time, I bought him out outright. I could have made a tidy profit if I didn't give in to his begging. But if you truly have a pure business sense, show no mercy. Denominations for Sale The denominations that you sell your items at are just as important as your price. You can sell herbs at a higher price if you put them in stacks of 1k, you can sell troops and scarlet at a higher price if you put them in smaller stacks for those that don't have enough money to buy a lot but still need some. Recursive Buying and Selling If someone puts down a lot of herbs that no one is willing to buy, I would price all of my inventory for 5-20 credits higher than the huge stack in smaller denominations. I would still buy any cheap herbs that popped out, but if all my herbs are bought away, I'd just buy the huge stack and then price for even higher. This can be applied to the byte market too, except sometimes it's better to sell in stacks of 60 instead. The trick is to find the denomination that works best and then replenish when you are out. It helps if there is a decent demand in the market you are buying into and not enough demand that people would buy the stacks less expensive than yours. Hawker's Delight It's not always in your best interest to buy the lowest priced items. If you are trying to hoard something like scales, herbs, or fish, buy the cheap items that come in large stacks and let the small stacks remain on the market. Oftentimes, the next seller will undercut the lowest price on the market and if it happens to be another big stack, you've hit the jackpot. Note that this only works if you are constantly hawking over a market which is almost as boring and painful as mining. Wall of Syn The fact that most people put money into syn for reset because of it's price stability gave me the idea of buying a lot of cheap syn and then putting up a wall of cheap single serving syns the following monday. Since prices used to be inflated for syn, the resellers never wanted to undercut my prices. But the normal sellers didn't mind undercutting my prices so I just kept buying more syn and maintaining the wall for most of the week. The wall locked up people's money in syn and gave me free reign to make cheap purchases across the board thanks to my cash fluidity. The Marketplace Cloud (This only applies if you have a large amount of items on the market). Aggressive sellers giving you a problem by constantly repricing lower than you? Make him or her work for you by putting one or a few of the items up on the market for cheaper. Then let him reprice 10 or twenty items and undercut him again with only a few entries. The point here isn't to sell your items, but let the other person do the work of forcing the price lower while you buy up any items that pop up a lot cheaper than what either of you are selling for. So if you really wanted to, you could eventually sell fairly cheap and lower than what the other person is willing to go while still making a profit since you bought all the super cheap stuff. You need to have a lot of items elsewhere for sale so the aggressive seller doesn't realize that you are only putting up one at a time instead of a large stack. This is a variation of the "Wall of Syn" tactic. Stealing Suppliers If you see someone successful in the marketplace or someone bragging about buying things cheap in the chatroom, check their received history. Magus X used to sell 14 syn to Deity for 700k every week. What can I say? I offered him more. Buying Things Fast A lot of people have questioned how I buy things fast. Here's how you do it. Download Mozilla Firefox browser from the mozilla site, install it, login, then right-click on marketplace and then open in new tab. Change the window to the next tab and then put it on the market you want to hawk. Open more tabs for as many markets as you want to keep track of. Make sure you open up the tabs in the same order for each market so that eventually you will be able to memorize which market is which. You still have to manually refresh but it'll make searches a lot faster. It's perfectly legal since it's the same thing as opening multiple windows and there's no rule against using lots of windows. Also, program back/refresh/forward into your mouse so that you can buy stacked items really fast with just one hand. The Wonderful World of Public Transportation Don't waste your mot. Each mot is worth potentially 75k credits. Buy the bus pass and use it. The bus from Georgetown to Imperium works from XX:00-XX:30 and the bus from Imperium to Georgetown works from XX:30-XX:59. In other words, if you are fast, you can go both ways at XX:30 - hop to Imperium, smoke your fish, and hop back to Georgetown within a minute. I also use this when I run out of mot smoking fish - Use some syn to get effort, hop to Georgetown and Cid's lab, DanceDanceMagic away, hop back to Imperium, smoke my fish, and hop to Georgetown again. Synthetics Are For Suckers or the Really Weak If you have a lot of cash, do NOT buy synthetics. Synthetics add 50 points to your troops for 1 set of 100 troops. Although it is true you don't have to worry about them dying, if you have a lot of cash and troops, you dont have to worry about them dying anyway. The absolute maximum I would pay for synthetics is 2x the cost of the 100 troops. 1 troop = 1 combat point, so 100 sentinels=100 combat while synthetics only add 50. 100 troops = 1.5 mil while synthetics = 6 mil. See the disparity? For the amount of money synthetics are currently going for, you are better off investing in troops. Buying Weapons/Armor for... Unless you are a guild outfitter, don't do it. Weapons and armors other than Woongs have very low volume and usually fetch prices lower than the ore value because most guilds carry enough for their needs already. Hagaromo and Evascythe. The Fool's Dream. Never ever buy a Hag or an Eva. The Woong gives you +500 STR bonus, and the Hag/Eva gives +800 STR bonus. That means that you only get a 300 Strength bonus for all the extra money you pay. Let's pretend we are in a fantasy world and scarlets cost 25k. A Woong costs 5000 scarlets and a Hag/Eva costs 50000 scarlets. 50k - 5k=45k scarlets. So you are paying 45k scarlets (1.125 billiion credits) for 300 Strength to your attack OR defense. Let's see how much strength costs if you buy pluses that will supplement both attack AND defense. 300 strength / 20 Strength points per prize x 50 mil credits = 750 mil. So which would you rather have? 1.125 billion credits for 300 strength that can only be used attacking or defending or spend only 750 mil on both? The only reason you might want it is if it is going to be a shared item - between multis, friends, or guild. Mobbeh’s Multi Mayhem Ever wonder how people like Canadian Mobbeh can afford to have more than 10 multis? If you ever get to the point where your on hand cash is more than you’ll ever need, try spending the excess on bytes to start aand subscribe a multi. Making syn per multi takes 2 seconds and nets you about 50 mil per month (84 mot per day x 30 days / 40 mot per syn x 800k credits = 50.4 mil credits) and fishing for eels and scales can net you a little bit more than that (~70 mil credits if you’re lucky) but takes quite a bit longer (5-10 minutes a day) and sucks if you have lots of multis. If you time your byte purchases right, it should cost you around 36 mil credits (60 bytes per subscription x 600k credits per byte = 36 mil credits per subscription). That’s a handy dandy extra 14 mil per multi every month per multi (50 mil from syn – 36 mil subscription cost = 14 mil) for just 2 seconds worth of work each multi. Unfortunately, this is a bit of a long term moneymaking plan because on average, it takes about 100 days to learn the leet language needed to learn quantum wokking (the skill needed to make the syn). NOTE: The following are just answers to miscellaneous questions that people have been QP’ing me about so I thought I’d include them in the Bible even though they have nothing to do with domination by credits. Gamble Away! Just do it, but don't waste mot learning skill in it. It's a free 6000 credits for 15 minutes of playing cards, plus it's non-taxable. The higher level you are, you can bet more (10 more tokens per level per max bet) so it takes a lot less time to max out (still only ~3000 tokens maximum winnings with 0 gambling skill). Play blackjack. Just hit on 15, surrender on 16, unless the dealer has 12-16, then just let him bust out. The odds are in your favor. Leveling and Bots Want to level up fast? Just put 5 points or more into defense and a little LF doesn't hurt and fight Bots. Do an advanced trace in your battle menu and check the "is an Imperium Frankie." Fight the bots that have less than 200 LF for the easiest wins. They all have level 1 stats - 5 Speed, 3 Strength, .2 Endurance. You just have to pay them to revive and you can attack bots up to 20 levels higher than you. Maximize Your Training Stat Nothing like effortless experience and credits. The trainer gains max out at level 200 and you can earn roughly 500k credits every day if you maxed out the stat to 25. Buffing Up at the Gym Do it every day. Skip doing warmups until you are 60 days old or unless the personal trainer only wants you to do a very light warmup. As long as you can do 3 extreme exercises, warmups are worth it. Here are the workouts you should do when the trainer asks: Very light :: Quick Stretch Light :: Short Jog Moderate :: Short Jog + Quick Stretch Heavy :: Weight Lifting very heavy :: Weight Lifting + Quick stretch Than'Dor: Do You Believe In Luck? Personally, I don't believe in luck. I trust the statistics and statistically, if you use Than'Dor, you'll end up with the same LF you started with in the long run so I don't use him. Than'Dor can be found in room 3,3 in the Housing Complex. Take one of the pills and you'll get a random LF change from anywhere between -100 to +100. If you are a believer, go for it. Maximizing Fishing If you are going to fish, you should know that the fish move depending on how many people in the whole game are fishing at the same time. So the best thing to do is to fish at off peak hours, and when you fish, get a hint (in another tab), then fish and refresh real fast until you have 10 fish total. Then get a hint again. If it's in the same place, fish one more and then get another hint. Keep doing that until it changes and then repeat the cycle. That way you don't waste your mot on misses. The Miner's Equipment These are no brainers but I'll include it for the newbies. The only two pieced of equipment you'll ever need from the mining camp store are the map (to find your way to the bottom of the pit) and a shovel (to double your ore output from 1-5 to 3-7 ). Only buy the shovel if you are mining Dark Crystals or above, possibly Mana too. You'll almost always lose money if you buy shovels for pabites. Carry spider roots to kill yourself to get back home quickly. Easy Switching Between Multis Use this page to login and be sure to disable cookies http://a3.alienaa.com/cgi-bin/view.fcgi? This way, you can switch tabs back and forth between multis to do your evil deeds without the need to constantly relogin. Remember, it’s illegal for unsubbed aliens to have any type of transactions with another unsubbed or subbed multi (coming from the same IP or sometimes IP range) and the “it’s my brother/mother/daughter/cousin/doggy’s alien excuse won’t fly with the Admins.” Sub them before giving them anything or buying anything from them or get ready to do some time with Big Bubba. Mugging, Reviving, and Suiciding I won't explain it but their fairly profitable too. My Skills People have been QP'ing me about what skills I had in the end. Here they are: Horticulture (0) Religion (0) Fishery (0) Mining (392) Smithing (0) Leadership (92) Spacefaring (0) Tech (0) Chemistry (0) Drink (0) Rocket Science (0) Gambling (0) Meat Curing (52) Quantum Wokking (0) Robotics (0) You need 390 mining to be able to avoid all monsters in the pit. I studied an extra 2 points in each just in case I forgot to study up again on Mondays. It really sucks to buy a shovel and then get attacked by the Archangel just because of two measly mining points. Once you get 200 STR, you no longer need 390 mining, though. Just put all your Strength into attacking and you can forgo having 390 mining and let it drop to 0. Credits and Tributes Thanks to miccy and my favorite fisherwoman for teaching me the game. Thanks to Deity who annoyed me in the marketplace. Thanks to BARON for forging my countless woongs and being a friend. Thanks to my three wonderful daughters, hatch, Nintonen, and E m i l y, for being great people to wile the time away with. Each of you are special in your own way and I regret I'll probably never meet you in real life. Thanks to Apothercy Cold and Danski for helping me figure out what's legal and what's not. Thanks to Playstation for his guide. Thanks to kuja killer for putting all those illegal multis in jail. Thanks to Oda Nobunaga and Citisphere for trying to help me out when I needed it. And finally, thanks to Webby for making a good, if somewhat unsecure game. I think I've covered about everything except for the really advanced strategies, but those are mainly theoretical and tough to prove. Note that the market is always changing week to week and sometimes day to day. In fact, I used to update a chart every so often to keep track of which markets are the most profitable by looking at the range of prices items sold for or prices that I made test sales with. A few of the tactics I used haven’t been applicable for a while and the moment that I first introduced this Bible into the game, the market changed. However, if you take these examples for what they are, a guide, and are able to discern the underlying strategies in each, you’ll be well on your way to discovering the 5 General Strategies and 2 Principles of Mercantilism and will be successful regardless of the market climate. In all likelihood, you’ll probably figure out more strategies than I. If you still need a hint, think about sidewalk fencers selling jewelry, mom and pop stores, Sax 5th Avenue, and Walmart. Contemplate what they have in common and then figure out their different approaches to sales and how it affects their successes and failures. Who knows? You might finally understand the reason behind Walmart greeters. Good luck and happy bartering. Laters, -kakxy COPY, REPRODUCE, OR PLAGIARIZE THIS TO YOUR HEARTS CONTENT.