fiesta gold org game guides

8. Alchemy in the Desert of Flames Expansion
8.1. Harvesting
Harvesting in DoF zones is a little different from what it was in the old world. In these new
zones, nodes tend to be where nature would logically put them – there are rocks in rocky,
sandy areas, fungi in dark underground places, and you can find roots and wood in both
green grassy areas and hot dry ones. There are still plenty of great places to harvest of
course, it just means going to a couple of different places to find the best spots now.
For example, just after the expansion came out, I found a fantastic area for harvesting
rocks in the Pillars of Flame. It’s a little difficult to find but it’s very well worth it. This area
is a quite large cave at the edge of the zone. To get to it, you need to actually jump into
the water at the north eastern tip of the zone, and then swim to the east for around ten
seconds – then you’ll see the mouth of the cave that you need to get to. The water can be
a bit dangerous, as there are some level 50+ sharks in there. However they won’t follow
you on land so if you’re quick you should be quite safe. When I first found it, I spent about
three hours harvesting there and came away with around 25 stacks of fungi harvests
(when those nodes still existed) and a dozen stacks of rocks – not to mention four lambent
stones for extracts, plus a vanadium cluster and a cobalt cluster. Rare harvests are much
more common now, and harvesting your own resources is paying off much more than it
used to. To harvest in this cave you need to make sure you don’t go below threatening
faction with the Ashen Order monks (you start out at this faction level, so unless you go
around killing lots of monks you’re safe to harvest in here).
There is another nice area for rocks in the Sinking Sands. This is the area called the
crocodile caves, which you can enter through a tunnel near the crocodile camp by the
beach area. This isn’t quite as good as the monk caves in Pillars of Flame, because the
crocodile area is full of level 45-46 monsters, which will agro you until you are level 55 or
so.
Roots and wood are somewhat harder to get large amounts of; you do need to spend a bit
more time on these than on rocks. Wood and roots are plentiful around the Oasis of Marr
area in the Sinking Sands, which is probably the safest place to harvest. You can also
find them on Onerock Island and in the Two Tears area in the same zone. Two Tears is the most dangerous place to harvest – and the least worthwhile as well.  There are
definitely higher concentrations of root and wood nodes in the other places I mentioned.  
 
You can find roots and wood, as well as rocks, in the above-ground areas in the Pillars of
Flame as well.    When I am harvesting in this zone, I will generally start at the Swiftrider
camp, make my way through the Remnants of Lilfire and head out towards the Needle. 
Then I will head north around the central rock (Prophet’s Peak) and head back to the
Swiftrider camp (you can find some great maps of these zones here –
http://eq2.gamepressure.com/
).  It is pretty dangerous – a lot of mobs now stun and root,
and I did die while harvesting in this zone a couple of times, when those mobs were not
grey.  It is certainly becoming more difficult to do your own harvesting if your adventuring
level is much lower than your crafting level.
 
These are the only two zones you’ll ever need to go to for harvesting in tier 6 – there are
no other outdoor zones in the expansion, and, unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any
instances where you can harvest either.  I’ve added a harvest table for T6 to the appendix
as well, for a list of all the items you can harvest (including rares), and the types of nodes
you’ll find them in.

8.2. Obtaining T6 Advanced Recipe Books
 
In the DoF expansion you have two main options for obtaining advanced recipe books.  
You can of course get them in the usual way – by killing creatures in T6 zones, or buying
the dropped books from the broker.  
 
However, you can also buy them in Maj`Dul (t
he DoF city zone) if you are willing to spend
the time working on increasing your faction with one of the three main groups in the city. 
This city is controlled by three opposing groups – the courts of Blades, Coin, and Truth.   
You can choose to ally yourself with any one
of these groups.  To do this, you must kill
guards from either of the other two groups, collect the insignias they drop, and then turn
those in to increase faction with your chosen ally.  
 
During the DoF expansion I worked on increasing faction with the Court of Blades.  To do
this, I spent time killing guards of Coin and
Truth, then turned the insignias they dropped
in to the Consul of the Blades, who is  in the Tower of the Moon (along with Consuls who will accept insignias for the other two factions).  The guards can be found throughout
Maj`Dul, and the Tower is in the same city, quite close to the entrance.   
 
Once your faction is high enough you can enter the court of your chosen faction, and after
some further work you can buy the recipe books. I was able to buy advanced secondary
books and single scrolls at warmly faction, but needed ally for the advanced alchemist
books.  These books are no-trade, but the insignias are tradable so you are able to get
faction by buying insignias even if y
ou are too low level to kill guards.
 
These guards are all over level 50, so this is really only an option if you’re a high-level
adventurer.   It’s a nice way of filling in the gaps in your recipe book if you’re working on
the faction anyway, though.

7. Alchemy at the Level Cap
Once you hit level the level cap you are no longer combining for experience and things
change slightly. Before then you will want to make at least one of every item in your
recipe book for the pristine bonus, but at the level cap you are making items to supply
consumer demand.
As I’ve mentioned before, I rarely harvest, because it’s too time-consuming and resources
are readily available most of the time. However, I will always harvest my own resources
for leveling up in a new expansion, simply because the cost of resources is very high for a
couple of months after a new release. Whether or not to harvest at any level is purely
personal preference, either way you are spending time or money on resources, and either
way it detracts from your profit – so it doesn’t matter which you chose to do in the long
run.
All in all I’m very pleased that I chose Alchemy. I originally made my decision based on
my adventuring class choice. I am an Assassin, and I wanted to be able to make my own
poisons. I can do that and a lot more – I love being able to give my friends potions and
poisons, supply apprentice IV skills for fighter friends or alt characters, and do rare
combines as well. Alchemy has products that every class which is something that
appeals to me greatly.

6.5. Pricing Your Products
When deciding what to charge for my products I take several factors into account – the
time spent making each type of item, the cost to make it, whether or not there is high
demand for the product, and how readily available it already is. The first two factors are
the most important to me. I tend not to pay a lot of attention to what other people are
charging, and I charge what I feel is fair for the items that I sell. I prefer to price my
products reasonably so that they’re affordable for a large cross-section of people. In my
opinion handcrafted potions and poisons, for example, should be something that most
people can afford to use, while I will charge more for the rare varieties as they are trickier
to make and use more fuel and resources.
The first thing I do when deciding what to charge is calculate exactly what each item costs
me to make. This means calculating everything that went into making that item – the
resources, the fuel, and the liquids, as well as any other components such as suspensions
and solutions. As of Live Update 24, each different tier’s recipe sets use slightly different
amounts of fuel and resources, but even so it’s a lot easier to calculate costs now that
subcombines have been removed.
Of course, you can charge whatever you like as long as the market will bear it. You might
prefer to charge slightly more for your products, at the cost of selling more slowly. This is
a sensible method of selling if you don’t have a lot of time to craft (because the time you
spend crafting is worth something, and it’s one of the things to take into account when you
price your items), but bear in mind that your items won’t sell as quickly.
I tend to price most products at the low end of the scale, and therefore I sell a lot of items.
As a rule, I charge less for expendable items like potions and poisons than I do for
permanent items such as essences. This is because expendable items are things that
the same customers will buy over and over if the price is right whereas spell upgrades are
a one-time expense and you can afford to charge a little more for those.
Alchemy isn’t a tradeskill that you can make large amounts of money off of with a single
combine, unless you’re willing to outlay a significant amount of cash on rares and start
making and selling adept III essences on the market. The best way to approach Alchemy
is to expect that you will make only small amounts of money per item but that you will
have a high product turnover.

6.4.2. Adept III Essences
For the most part you’ll only make Adept III skills to order for other people. If you build up
a good-sized customer base this can earn you a lot of money, as making Adept III skills
will yield dusts to use in making Mastercrafted potions and poisons. Building up a good
working relationship with your customers will give you an advantage in new expansions as
well, because they will tend to return to you when they need the new items.
You may wish to get into making various Adept III skills and selling them via broker. If
you’re persistent and choose popular skills to sell, you can make a lot of money doing this.
It does require a decent-sized initial investment, as you need to buy rare harvests to turn
into Adept III skills.
If this is something that interests you, it pays to do your research first. Investigate fighter
class message boards and find out what skills in the various tiers people are the most
popular upgrades, and talk to people on your server as well to find out more, and then
base your first skill choices off this information. Once you start to turn a profit doing this,
you can branch out into making and selling other Adept III skills.
Final note for this section – always make pristine Adept III skills, because you get two
Dusts for a pristine combine, whereas for lower quality combines you get only one.

6.4.3. Potions and Poisons

The market for potions and poisons will be slow for a

while – some of the potions and

poisons that were available before the revamp have no

equivalents in the new system

(there are currently no new recipes for mitigation potions,

for example). Until stockpiles of

pre-revamp potions and poisons are exhausted it may

be difficult to sell some of the new

varieties. The same strategy works here the same as for

essences – make one of each for

the pristine bonus, put them all up for sale and see

which ones sell the best.

6.4. Alchemy Products and Choosing What to Sell
Once you’ve spent time monitoring the market and have begun making finished products
in your tier you can start to sell them. When leveling I would normally make one of every
finished product per level and put all those items up for sale. As long as I had the space
to do so, I would replace each item as it sold, noting down the name of the item I had sold
at the same time. At the end of each week, I would vendor whatever had not sold, and
continue to sell only those items that were in demand.
6.4.1. Apprentice IV Essences
As I’ve mentioned already, most of the app4 essences in a given tier aren’t in great
demand because adept I drops are common. There are a few per tier that will sell quite
well however and I strongly suggest you monitor the market on your server to find out
which those are. Essences provide a good profit margin and are definitely worth selling
once you figure out which are in demand for your server and tier.
If you can level up quickly at the start of new expansions you’ll find that apprentice IV
essences will sell well for the first few weeks, until adept I drops become more common.

6.3.3. Monitoring the Market
When you enter a new tier it’s advisable to spend some time each day looking at what
Alchemy products are already available on the market in that tier so you can begin to
decide what you are going to concentrate on to sell.
This is especially important for essences. Many of these are commonly available as
adept I drops so the app4 versions do not sell very well. There are a few essences in
each tier that do not drop as adept I versions, and these tend to sell much more easily
than those which have common adept I drops.
Those combat arts without common adept I drops are the only ones that I still make and
sell. This is partly due to space constraints – I don’t often set up a merchant and usually
only sell through my bank vault. If you are intending to have a merchant set up
permanently then you’ll have the inventory space to sell more items and can try selling
more than just the few essences in each tier that don’t have higher version drops.

6.3.2. Selling Via the Broker
 

Live Update 24 has brought with it a revamp of the broker system, and some big changes
in the way selling works. Instead of selling from your house, you now set up your vendor
and sell items using the broker window. This means that you no longer have to have a
home or inn room to sell, but as with the old system, owning a larger house gives you
more space to sell from. A normal inn room gives you one slot, and you get one extra slot
for each extra room in your house.
• To sell items, select the sell tab in the broker window, drag a bag or box into a free
slot, and then drag the items you want to sell into the bag.
• You can also fill a bag or box then drag the whole thing into the sell window.
• Items that you put up for sale are priced automatically at the highest price an NPC
vendor will pay for them.
• To re-price your items, click Set Price, and to put it up for sale, click List Item for
Sale.
• Right clicking on the item and choosing Search will list items of the same type
being sold by other people, so you can compare prices.
• Click the Take Coin button to receive the money you’ve made from selling items.

6.2. Tasks and Writs
Status writs and workshop tasks have been temporarily removed from the game – watch
this space for updates when the system is revamped.
6.3. Selling to Other Players
Selling finished products to other players is one of the most fun parts of tradeskilling for
me. It is great to know that there are people out there in Norrath using things that I’ve
made! If you’re smart and figure out what people want to buy there is a lot of money to be
made, too.

6.3.1. /LFW
The /LFW tag works just the same as /LFG. When you use this it lets people know that
you’re available to do tradeskill work for them.
There are a few things to be aware of when you put yourself on the market in this way.
The first thing is – decide on a price for your services before you even start advertising
that you’re available for work. Go through your product lists and decide what you want to
charge for each type of item that you can make (bearing in mind that people will usually
expect to pay less for items made in this way than if you had them for sale on your vendor
or vault).
Second, before you turn on the /LFW tag, it’s a good idea to make sure you have all the
resources you might need. It’s best to consider every possibility because you never know
what people are going to ask you for. I try to have a stack or two of each type of
resource on hand for all tiers so I’m prepared for anything I might need to make.
Third, remember that it is always your right to say no. If you’re not interested in making
low tier products, for example, then you don’t have to. I do not use the /LFW tag a lot, but
I often get unsolicited requests anyway. If they are for adept III essences I will always do
them, because making these yields the loams which are used in making rare potions and
poisons. When I get requests for lower tiers and I’m particularly busy I will usually
suggest to the customer that they ask a lower tier alchemist to make their items – an
alchemist who can get experience for the combines will get more benefit than I will, so I
am happy to give up some business to benefit them.
Also remember that you are free to set your own prices – but people are also free to
refuse to pay them. If you’re uncertain of the value of your services, talk to fellow
Alchemists to get an idea of what you should be charging. I usually base my prices on
the amount of time I spend doing a combine, and the difficulty of the combine. I charge
more for rare combines than handcrafted ones, as the combine is more difficult, and uses
more fuel.