February 13, 2000
The game of Medievia itself aspires to be as immersing as possible, and thus as real and believable as possible. In my opinion, one of the hardest things to do is to come up with a form of commodity system that is widely used, efficiently traded and properly accumulated. There are many ways to make money in Medievia, and I will try to cover as many of them as I can. Which ways are better, however, you'll have to decide partly for yourself.
The newer player does not have as many options to consider. Until you can run trade runs, or kill harder foes, money is very limited. There is usually a clannie who will loan you cash for a TR (common term for trade runs) or anything else if you really need it, but there are still ways to make a living. Looting corpses is elementary, since you always need experience anyway. Guardsman in Med carry about 100 gold, though they are pretty hard to kill till about level 18. Orcs carry some cash, and always take equipment you get from corpses too. Often players will just leave equipment they don't need on the ground - if it looks like it might be worth something, sell it at a shop. Remember that looting someone else's corpse is illegal, so get their permission first. Most higher level players won't bother to sell anything under a couple of thousand gold, and will just drop it and on the same principal. It's unlikely they will say no to you looting the corpses of their kills, but it's illegal unless you ask.
Selling potions on auction can get you some cash too. Single class warriors and thieves, when away from handy magic shops, can never get enough misty potions and everyone needs greens from time to time. I have seen bidding wars over misty potions up to around ten thousand gold - granted, not a pile of money, but you do little work. You have to be lucky, but to buy them for around 50 coins a piece at the mage's shop, requires little effort. Getting holy water in the Graveyard Church in the City of Medievia can also give you some good returns - prices can go up to fifty thousand gold a flask from the monks.
Trade runs area great way to make money and the pricing system is a little complicated. You have to check to make sure that the value hasn't gone down too much since the last time you went, and do an analysis of how much money you will make compared to the amount of time you will have to spend. You can learn a lot about trading from checking out help files, Mudslinger articles or asking a more experienced player.
There are a few different kinds of trade runs really. Short runs, and by short I mean about an hour or less, tend to yield under a million for newbies and under two-ish for more experienced players, and longer runs can yield upwards of three. But always remember to compare times, because often doing a shorter run twice can give more cash in less time. In these runs, you can use an approximate scale of one and half hour per million in cash returns, including checking or prices and any other problems that may arise.
There are also CPK trade runs, in which you have to be much more careful, and gie about three million and possibly more money per hour. Usually the increase in cash depends on the amount of time you spend in CPK. Try to have a goon mode, where you have mediocre statistics, with which you can defend yourself, but don't have a lot of expensive equipment. High HP is a good idea to be able to survive backstabbers and the like. Just remember that if you do die, there is a chance you will lose not only your cash or equipment, but more importantly you lose all of the experience points since your last level. I've heard of someone trying to do a cpk trade run the moment after they level for this reason, though I myself think this is being a little overly cautious. Don't be too afraid of a single room of cpk, you will rarely have anything to worry about. Ask experienced clannies for details of these runs.
Catastrophes make trade runs a lot more interesting - it all works on the basic economic principal of supply and demand. The city or town that has suffered is in desperate need of supplies. How could we not be kind enough to oblige? After a catastrophe has occurred, it takes between five and six hours for the shop to open and sometimes more. Check for catastrophes in the newspaper and take note of the time that they occurred. It is written according to eastern so make any conversion that may be necessary and add five or so hours to find out about when the shop will open. Make sure you have the time to make it, since many times you will see dozens of people waiting for the shop to open and being even a minute late can yield less then half the amount of money. Try not to bring the same item that many others are bringing since store buying prices will drop quickly and you may not receive as much cash if lots of people have the same commodity. Also, don't just run off to do a trade run if you see a catastrophe. Make sure to take into consideration the town to which you are running. A catastrophe in Riverton or Medievia is rarely worth it under any circumstances. You can get more information about types of catastrophes from trading articles and help.
Another way to get some cash in your pocket is to do equipment runs. Again there are two types of equipment runs - store runs and player runs. In store runs, you get lots of equipment that would be worthless on auction and instead sell it in a shop. There are no tweak issues to worry about and the profit is always about the same. One zone that is perfect for this is Alendora where each creature has equipment worth between ten and thirty thousand gold with the zonal bosses have equipment worth over one hundred thousand gold each. Store runs are more reliable and don't necessarily require a high level.
Player runs on the other hand are much more uncertain. This is the kind of run where a high level is almost required with the thief sneak ability being quite important as well. You usually have to kill hard creatures and then figure out how much the tweak is worth. The nice thing about these runs is that if you are lucky, and find a very special item, you can earn twenty million gold in no time. The cord in Derah is an example, since getting the item requires a complicated process of defeating certain mobs in a specific order - I have seen the cord sell for anything between ten thousand and twenty million gold. There is also the added risk of CPK equipment runs which tend to have the same implications as its trade run counter parts. To put it simply, more risk, more cash, as it should be. You can make just as much money if not more this way as you can through running Trade Runs except that you have to be high level.
There are almost always ways to spend cash, and there is no real limit to how much you should have, though make sure you don't waste too much time making profit and never level; find some kind of balance. As long as the price is right, you can do almost anything.
Herowagers let people experience gambling and it's even more fun since you are gambling on a person's talent. It's a lot like horse racing; you play the odds. Try not to carried away however, remember that you often lose money too. The odds tell you who is expected to win, and as in most transactions, the higher the risk, the higher the profit. In other words wagering on the underdog will give you higher returns if he wins (lower the number, better the pker). It may be worth picking people you know to be good pkers. Unless you know the players to have very good pking skills or have a lot of cash, I'd advice you not bet more then half a million.
Auctions let you quickly and easily gain access to a vast amount of purchasing power. Now that is no guarantee that anyone will want to buy what you have, don't waste auction time on a worthless item. You may not always get the same price you paid, because the prices all fluctuate - or you may get a lot more then it's worth because the buyer was desperate. Orbs, for instance, will get higher bids if a lot of people are online, but things like Dragon Crystals always sell for seven to eight million gold. Also remember that the majority of players are living in or near the US, so peak prices will probably during peak US playing time. Usually the best time to sell an item is evening US eastern time. You can even think of it as a stock market - if you see a low priced item, you can snatch it up hoping it will fetch more at some later date. I personally think that keeping setauction on 'some' is always a good idea, because you never know when you might pass up the deal of a lifetime.
Another major item is the egg. The exchange rate between the egg and the normal gold value varies anywhere from nine to thirteen thousand an egg. It depends on how much you are buying, from whom you are buying, and when you are buying. Eggs themselves can be used in multiple ways, such as buying practice sessions, increasing equipment time, and multi-classing.
Eggs can also be a source of income, though high level is a must. You can find eggs in the catacombs, which changes location every once in a while. Many heroes use eggs as primary supply of cash, because there are always people who are reclassing, or about to lose a valuable item to deterioration who are in desperate need of eggs. It is quite possible to run at about five million gold (worth of eggs) per two hours in the combs, but this is rarely the case when you have a few other people doing the same. The more people there are, the slower it is, and the cash return drops dramatically.
The major use of money is buying and acquiring items and equipment and calling dragons. Eggs for reclassing, buying practice sessions or getting the life of equipment extended also drain players periodically. There are also fees that take up a lot of money. By fees, I am referring to clan and town taxes, which can be very high depending on your affiliations. For most, these uses take up just enough money that every once in a while you have to do some money runs. If you're a heavy spender and plan to go around buying the best equipment with the best tweaks and decide that you like to fly rather then walk then you will end up spending a lot more of your time with a covered wagon hitched to the back of your horse.
In the end, there are many ways of making some cash, and you will have to decide which you find most profitable and fun. There is also a great feeling you get when you have a lot of cash in the bank and know you can do anything you want, but better that you find out for yourselves.