How to earn on spellbooks and amulets on a low-rate Interlude server: how to become the main seller, how to seat the traders, what prices to set, which books sell best and what to do with competitors.
Here I will tell you how and with which books it is most profitable to trade. The experiment was carried out on an x3 server with rather strong competition; on other servers there may be nuances of their own, but, comparing with how I sold books before, I think the differences will be slight. So that you can find your bearings in the prices: the Karmian gloves on that server cost 3kk, and the Homunkulus's Sword 10-14kk. On that server books drop rather hard, and even some simplest book can take more than an hour. But on such a server the prices can be raised to the ceiling too.
How to become the main seller
First of all remember this: you must become the main seller of books on the server, and it is you who must dictate the prices on the spellbook market. How to do it? You must always have at hand characters of the needed level, plus or minus 2 levels from the mob the book is knocked out of, that is, the mob must be white for you. My spoiler girls, who are on one account, suited this purpose ideally. If the server has a premium account, it must be switched on for these characters. You must arrange things so that at any moment you can load a character and knock out a book in the shortest time.
Do not get carried away with knocking out books to order, and do not pay much attention to those who shout in Giran "buying such and such a book". As a rule such buyers want so miserable a price for a book that there is no sense in running anywhere. Do not enter into long and tedious talks with buyers: in any case you will remain a huckster in their eyes; better busy yourself with keeping an eye on the competitors and on what is missing from the market at the moment.
In general nobody should know that it is you who trades in spellbooks. Absolutely nobody, otherwise you will get bogged down in eternally knocking out books for acquaintances (and in the end giving them away). So we create a new character that will not be associated with you one hundred percent. I nudged my husband and asked him to come onto the server and make a dwarf. The husband was given concrete instructions on what to do and how, and a week later the dwarf was known in Giran as a brawler and a hardened huckster. After that I could calmly log onto the dwarf and trade in books without fear that somebody would associate the brawler with me.
The only thing I will add: if you see that a real beginner is trying to find and knock out some book (and you can tell at once by the poor gear and the same kind of buff), do not be stingy, give the book as a present, even if you never meet that player in the game again.
How to sell
- Now about the process of selling itself; I had 60 dwarf girls for books alone. Do not try to seat all the traders in one heap: seat them at a sufficient distance from each other. Decide on the nicknames at once, so that by the nickname alone you know which books lie on a given character, but so that it is clear only to you and not to the competitors.
- Keep before your eyes a scheme showing how your traders are seated, so that if you come to the market and see an empty place in the row, you can quickly figure out which character had all its books bought. Be sure to write the names of the books you sell in the sale messages, so that people can find the needed book by search.
About prices: in the realities of the server where the experiment was carried out I sold books from 1kk to 15kk apiece, depending on how hard the book is to knock out and how much it is in demand on the market. The lousiest books, like Invigor and Forget, which really drop often, went for 1kk; the bulk of the books cost 3kk; books like Greater Might, Chant of Life, Might of Heaven and Body of Avatar sold for 5kk; and such as Greater Shield, Mana Burn, Clarity, Return, Party Recall, War Chant or Erase cost 10-15kk.
The best-selling books
First of all we start selling the cat summoner's book for the Feline Queen: the mob is level 40, the book is learnt at level 56, and nobody bothers to knock it out in advance; in short, 5kk and no discussion. The books from the location Bee Hive, the cubics for summoners, go the same way. Books for all buffers and rechargers sell well, and for the bishop too, since they will hardly knock anything out themselves; but there are nuances here: some books drop really well, and the buffs learnt with them are not that important. A vivid example of such a book is Invigor, which I sold for 1kk, and interestingly even that was bought.
Books from the location Frozen Labyrinth are in constant demand; for the rarest ones the prices at the end were no less than 15kk, and they were actively bought up. I will only note that we are now talking about servers where spellbooks really are hard to knock out; where a hundred books are farmed in one buff, it is hard to earn properly on books.
The books that drop from 70+ mobs (mostly in the catacombs) I did not farm and did not trade in, since a heap of destroyers runs around at high levels, and knocking out any book costs them no special effort. The only exception is the books for blocking Wind Walk and Shield (plus the mass block), which drop from one mob in the Ketra Orc Outpost. That is because most players are allied with Ketra and cannot farm the mobs there. Such little books I sold for 10kk. About third-profession books I will write nothing: you will soon understand yourselves why the Gate Chant and the Magnus' Chant can be sold for 10kk while the dome for a dwarf is needed by nobody.
I could tell you in detail about every book, how hard it is to knock out and at what price it can be sold, but I assure you it is far more interesting to study the market yourselves and change the prices depending on demand. Thus, in the course of this experiment I noticed an unhealthy interest in the book Return for the Prophet and the Elven Elder, which I sold very cheaply on previous servers; here, because of such demand, I never put it up for less than 10kk.
Competitors
About competitors: you must constantly study what your competitors sell and at what price. I kept coming across books sold by them at very funny prices. Thus, that same Return I collected from competitors for 500k and a couple of days later sold for 10kk; once I noticed a dwarf with the book Bless the Body for the Prophet, selling it for 1kk. I bought it, he at once put up another one; I talked to him and took 24 books at 1kk, that is, at his price. The dwarf was pleased, and a week later I sold all these 24 books at 5kk each. So you will have to watch the market, otherwise the competitors will eat you up. Only mind that it is the really rare and valuable books that should be bought up from them; if they sell all sorts of rubbish, let them sit with it, they will not make the weather on the market.
It is another matter when competitors sell valuable books, but rather expensively. Yes, it hurts to buy such books, it is easier to knock them out, all the more because you sell them dearer; but all the same they have to be bought up so that you remain the monopolist. An example: a dwarf trades in the book Erase from the Frozen Labyrinth, selling it for 5kk. I took 17 books from him at his price and sold them at 15kk each, and besides me nobody else was selling such books. It would seem, what could be simpler: go and knock it out instead of buying on the market; but they do not go and do not knock it out, they buy. And we, real hucksters, will make use of that.
In other chronicles you can also trade successfully in books, but there are some specifics: in C3 there are no books for summoners at level 56 (nor the skills themselves), in C4 there is no Frozen Labyrinth and many skills are missing, but that does not prevent selling other books.