A Guide To Resource Collecting: The Value Of Your Work & Maximizing Your Profits.

Prices-4/24/18

I see a lot of new people that are resource collecting to make money. It is a great way to get started to even maintain a good level of income. I will be breaking down how most of it works and the values you can expect. Please feel free to engage in the conversation with your outlook on these facets of the game.

Battle Mining
Economic State - Under Appreciated, High Demand
Items Sought After - Stone Crafting Ingots
Collecting mass amounts of stone crafting ingots is not an easy task. Most people do this by utilizing at least 2 accounts. One to mine and another to kill the elementals. Sometimes people will farm in packs to make it easier. The pay off is in the ingots. Unfortunately, you only get 2 ore per elemental. The going rate has been stuck around 500 per ingot, but should be higher. I value these ingots between 500-1000 per ingot. If you decide to go this route, make sure you get paid. Out of all the resource gather direction you can go this is the only one you can directly die from

Leather Gathering
Economic State - Spot On, Medium Demand
Items Sought After - Spined Leather
If you are working up a dexer then this is the direction for you. Spined leather is needed for Bulk Order Deeds. It is best to sell in commodity deeds (bought from the banker) starting around 500 pieces. Spined leather is best obtained from killing lizard men. Alligators, & giant toads are super easy to kill and give spined leather as well. Spined leather runs anywhere form 25-30 gp each.

Mining Metal Ore
Economic State - Declining Prices, Low Demand
Items Sought After -Iron & Colored Ingots
Mining for profit is great, once you are at GM. Getting there takes some time and patients, but has a great consistent pay off. I would primarily focus on Iron, Dull Copper, & Shadow Iron. these 3 ores make up the majority of what you will sell. These 3 ores are mostly needed for Bulk Order Deeds. The Bulk Order Deed system is more complex for blacksmithing so the BODs are harder to come by. I am sure that is partly to do with why people haven't been consuming as many ingots. Additionally, the reward system has been the same for almost 6 year. Many of the rewards have been distributed throughout the economy making them less and less desirable. Iron ingots are around 8 gp each and colored range from 17-23 gp each.

Wood Gathering
Economic State - Slow Growth, Low Demand
Items Sought After - Regular & Oak Wood
Wood gathering is a lot like mining ore, except with more draw backs and less pay off. It is only around 80 in skill points will you start finding oak boards. Oak is the most valuable and is needed for making counters, house ladders, & boats. So as there is a definite need for the resource, it is on the lower side of resources I would spend my time gathering. Resell of wood can be slow. Regular wood is around 2-3 gp each & Oak wood is around 25 gp each

Cloth Gathering
Economic State - Consistent, Medium to High Demand
Items Sought After - Sheep, Cotton, & Flax
Talk about boring as hell. This has to be the worst way to resource gather in the whole game. I mean you can literally start the game and go collect cotton, spin it on a wheel, run it through the loom and BAM you got cloth. Yes, it is easy to come by. Yes, people do need it, but it only sells for 2 gp each. Making it the cheapest resource you can gather and resell. Not to mention there can be some strong competition in gathering. If you are going to spend time gathering resources, I advise looking at some of the other areas I have already highlighted.

Bulk Regents
Economic State - Fairly Consistent, Medium Demand
Items Sought After - Bulk Regs
OK so I am not up to speed on this as a few others are. I know you can make millys doing this. You are basically making 1-2gp per reg you resell. So obviously you need money to get this area going, but the demand for bulk regs is pretty good. @Hydrox is the most famous person I know for selling bulk regs. The best way to sell bulk regs is to set up a faction vendor and buy them that way. It is the cheapest way in the game to obtain them, and there will be less buying pressures from other players.

Battle Mining:

Out of all resource gathering, this is the only one i can stand doing. Since i have been here, marble ingots have sold 500-550gp per while sandstone and stone ingots sold for 500gp per. After spending some time with battle mining, i started to question why marble was worth more than the other 2 masonry types. Marble elementals drop significantly more gold than the other 2 and increased chance of better weapon modifiers (have recieved on multiple occassions silver power/vanq) so you're already making more gph while farming. Stone ingots are the most appealing to market imo, but marble ingots will still always sell. And if you're set up to kill stone elementals, marbles are not that much more difficult.

So as a seller, why would i not focus on marble ingots that would yield me much more gold along the way at more than 4x more per marble elemental vs stone corpse?

Is there a reason I am not seeing as to why marble has always been valued slightly more than the other 2?

Good thread btw!

Marble only has the advantage of the pedestals. The hue when dyed is much lighter/brighter so all depends on your preference. Stone give darker hues when dyed and has chairs. I think sandstone looks great dyed as well, but is not appreciated nearly as much. Maybe with all the dye tubs out there people will start getting, there never seems to be enough dyed furniture in UO.

- Amendment This is a bit long, but can be trimmed up to the liking.
The key behind reagent selling is almost entirely based on marketing value. Honing in on your customers or having a good vendor is a great opportunity. However, that being said, the biggest issue most seem to deal with is consistency. On weekdays for example, I typically restock my vendors at least once a day. Weekends sometimes up to 3 times. One could argue that it's due to the high traffic nature of the shop we have in occlo, however I was very successful when I started off primarily through utilizing the forums and irc to advertise the service. It's really about always having goods, all the time, when they're needed.

Reagents are sold at 4 & 5 GP to people not in the Mages Guild, which can be a hassle for certain players that might run main's that are in other guilds.
However when part of the guild, you can purchase regs at 3 and 4 GP. Allowing you to make a fews piece of gold inbetween the lines.

Personally I sell reagents at .75 over cost, thus making it a few pieces cheaper in bulk to players that don't have the time or want to deal with the whole mage guild aspect and just want to buy regs, but also not excessively high enough that most will be concerned with paying for convenience.

Now many people have tried to make attempts at selling .3 or .4 over cost in hopes that they'll be able to dwindle market value and gain customers, however most fail to really do the math. So i'll break it down for you.

A stocked vendor selling 1k increments of reagents charges roughly 900-1300 gp per earth day.
A single stack 1k regs will sell for 3750 or 4750 making a profit of 750 gold.
So right off the rip, you need to sell two stacks a day to cover your vendor expense and make 200-400gp.
Selling in stacks of 1k will only really allow you to sell two in that instance because they will hit weight limit, so being near a bank is extremely beneficial to the consumer that wants to purchase goods in bulk.
I cannot tell you how many times I've seen members of our UOR society, take 1000 stacks, and put them in commodity deeds.. Thus making each of the 1 stacks you cost only net 250 gp, the sad part of this is that I've seen people do this, and try to undercut the market selling at .4 over cost. Which I'm sure you've realized, is now costing them money not to mention the vendor fee's.

With anything that's sold, finding your customers and being available is the most important part of being a seller, let alone a high volume merchant in itself.

@Larloch was correct in stating that faction vendor purchasing is the best avenue for stockpiling.

and just to clarify, at the market value of .75 over, which is a conservative markup.. You would need to sell roughly 170k of EACH reagent just to make 1 million gold pieces.
So if you have about 4.42 million to invest, don't cut anyone any deals, and don't mind a long term return, reg selling is certainly an option.

Also, i'll totally remove this post as I was not attempting to hijack your thread, but have been meaning to comment on the whole subject for some time anyways Great write up Larloch!

@Hydrox no your feedback is exactly what I wanted in this thread. I don't have the deep knowledge of bulk regs. I didn't know you were running such a thin margin! Taking into consideration the vendor cost and to use commodity deeds or not is something that most people don't think about. Thank you for adding.

I recommend adding more colored text.

Ummm hello what about fish steaks!!??

The economy always needs them steaks-o-fish! High Consistency, High Demand is what I say!

/sarcasm

Great thread though. Very informative.

Actually fish steaks sell amazing on pot and reg vendors.. 100 stacks for 999.. keeps the vendor costs low too

+1 for fish steaks as standard currency.

And while we are at it: Let's implement a blockchain based currency too - fishcoin!