Gearing up in TERA requires a ton of gold. You're constantly earning and spending gold and there's always more ways to spend it than there are to make some. I'm going to write down a few ways I found to make some gold and how to make the most of what you have. If you have advice or want to share your little tricks, go ahead and post a reply and I'll credit you when I update it. Here we go.
1. A few concepts
2. Farming
3. Using the trade broker
4. Understanding the market
5. Maximizing profit
Concepts:
Time is money: This may seem like an obvious concept but it's easy to lose sight of it. Every item, every crystal, potion, charm, enchantment fodder, everything has a gold value. When you can put up almost any item on the broker and transfer it into gold, it's easy to put a value on everything.
Because you can obtain any item yourself either by going out and getting it or by picking it up on the broker, what you're really buying is time. In any MMO (TERA more than any other), players buy and sell their own time. You want to sell your time high and buy other people's time as low as possible. This would mean you're making people work for you.
Perfection is expensive: You have to keep in mind that with a limited amount of time, it's important to get the most bang for your buck. When you're trying to improve your gear, you have to balance getting the best gear you can (what will last the longest) vs the difficulty of getting it.
Example: Each extra level of enchantment (+1 to +2) on an item is worth the same (bonuses aside) but it gets progressively harder to get an extra level the higher you go. What this means is that it gets more and more expensive to get the same bonus on your item.
Sometimes, you have to realize that pushing for a specific item or enchantment just isn't worth the time it would take to get it and you're better off focusing your efforts elsewhere.
Know what you're worth: It's important to know the value of what you're buying and selling (The vendor price, the extraction value, the crafting value, the high/low market value). An easy example of this is seeing items on the broker being sold for lower than the vendor price. Because people don't bother, not only do they get less gold than hey would selling it to an NPC but they also pay a listing fee.
Farming:
This list will change as content is added or changed within the game. Keep in mind that it's more time-efficient to buy low and sell high than to spend hours farming the same monster models all the time. That being said, there are areas where your time will yield the largest profits. Here's a few ideas:
Solo:
Three Towers - The Rage Transmission room.
How to get there: Val Tirkai province, teleport to Three Towers' Mindcrown Chambers camp.
Pros: Best source of gold for a new 60. Crystals
(Hunter's Crux) needed are relatively cheap. Blood Fiends are lvl 58.
Cons: Boring. Popular location means there may be people there. A fresh 60 can easily be pushed out by a geared character who decides to outlaw
(PvP).
Gold Rate: 400-800g per hour.
Balder's Temple Sloths.
How to get there: Either buy a scroll from any specialty shop or fly to Veritas District province and walk. Once inside, turn left.
Pros: Completely solo. Normal monsters with ridiculous drop rates. Can be cleared twice
(normal then hard mode).
Cons: Uses up dungeon cooldowns meaning it's impossible to queue for them
(2hr normal and 6hr hard mode).
Gold Rate: 100-150g per instance cooldown
(5 to 10 minutes to clear).
Nexus events.
How to get there: Events happen in 2 provinces
(Helkan District and Val Kaeli)
Pros: Can be completed solo since the game can auto-generate groups. High gold return for very little effort.
Cons: Very low FPS regardless of hardware. Can be hard to stay alive for some classes. Vulnerable to GvG. Boring.
Gold Rate: 300 gold per hour.
Group:
2 or 3 man Ebon Tower normal or Labyrinth of Terror normal.
Master Enigmatic Scrolls are in high demand now that Masterworking has been made more available. They'll stay that way because T14 gear will also require them.
Tier 11 gold weapons vendor for around 70g and can be extracted for a higher value. Badges can be traded for extra T11 gear.
Cruxes drop from every boss and can be worth from 1g to 200g. This is random like everything else in the game.
Ebon tower drops 1 Dark Matter used for Kelsaik's Nest that can be sold.
T11 gear will become templates in the next patch which may raise prices for certain items.
Temple of Temerity
Practicum badges can be sold on the broker.
Vendoring 3 dire badges get you 50g each.
Selling the crystalbind.
Fane of Kaprima and Balder's Temple Hard Mode
Drops T13 fodder items. Whites and greens fetch a good amount. Blue and Gold items earn considerably more.
Drops T13 Enigmatic gear. In the best case scenario, it can be worth a few thousand gold and in the worst, it's still enchantment fodder.
It's important to make good use of your time.
Using the trade broker:
The trade broker is a powerful tool. The game's economy was streamlined so that 99% of items go through the trade broker. Understanding how it works can make you a fortune thereby saving you hours of your own time.
Filtering results: Searching properly is crucial. There's the obvious text search bar that most people use but TERA's broker has a lot of different options that let the user search exactly for what they need.
Advanced Search. This lets you search using specific parameters like enchantable, wearable, item tier or item level.
Smart Search. This should actually be called Quick Search. It lists specific searches that people often use. Example: Enchantment fodder for my weapon or armor, a better weapon than the one equipped or an item from a specific dungeon.
Negotiable. This checkbox is fantastic. It only shows items whose lister is online and available to negotiate. Keep in mind that it's possible to filter out result that would be cheaper to buy now than the ones you would negotiate for.
Advanced Search
Smart Search
Negotiable
Sorting: Using the sort buttons is crucial to see relevant information. If you've done your search right, most of them are useless but sorting the price properly can make a big difference. By clicking on Asking Price 4 times, the button will display Bargain Unit Price. This will display the items in asending order by price per unit rather than total price.
Unsorted/Default
Asking Price
Bargain Unit Price
Why is this important? The lowest price for a given item may be 20g but sorting by unit price could reveal a price per unit of 15g simply because someone is selling them in bulk.
Negotiating: This is a feature not usually seen in MMOs. It gives a way for people to alter the price they originally listed and sell it at a lower price.
Why is this important? In other MMOs, people who spend their time standing next to auction house undercutting the competition would get the most sales. If their item is 1 copper cheaper, that's the item people will buy. Negotiation empowers people who want to go out and play TERA rather than those who play the Auction House game.
Recent History: Whenever you obtain a new item and want to get some gold for it, this tab is your best friend. The history tab tracks every sale made through the broker ever. You can sort the results by date and time which lets you see when the highs and lows for any given item are.
Why is this important? If you're buying or selling, it's always beneficial to know how much the item you're looking at is going for. This way, you avoid overpaying or underselling for items you're not familiar with.
Edited by: badchap 5 months ago
Badchap
#5 08/17/2012, 09:34 AM
Understanding the market:
The prices for just about everything fluctuate. They're affected by various factors like time of the day, events, patches, ect. Trying to foresee when the prices change can help you turn a profit. Here's a few examples of things to watch out for:
Time of day: During the day there's more farming going on, prices for consumables and crystals (among other things) goes down. During the evening, people get into dungeons and prices spike up as people stock up on what they'll need for dungeon runs and buy enchantment fodder.
Buying enigmatic gear is best done during the day. Late at night the market gets flooded and you can get things fairly low in the morning. On the other hand, selling enigmatic gear is best done early in the evening (before people get loot drops from their runs and flood the market).
Nexus: This generates A LOT of gold on the server. It's about 200-300 gold per person so do the math. Also, right after the nexuses close, people jump right into dungeons so they buy crystals and consumables with their new fortunes.
Another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of people get the reputation they need for new equipment right after nexus and, wanting to pvp, they'll try to enchant it right away. Selling white and green enchantment fodder is best done 2 minutes after the closing of a nexus.
Patches: They have a huge effect on the fluctuation in price of items. A great example is with the latest patch which sunk the prices for Fanesteel and Dream Bindings and spiked godsmarrow. You now generate more gold from a single run of a T12 instance by selling your godsmarrow than you would selling Fanesteel of Dream bindings from Hard Modes (this is excluding T13 enchantment fodder).
Maximizing profit:
Most people in MMOs can't be bothered to check market prices or haggle before buying something. In fact, this picture perfectly describes 99% of people.
Buy low and sell high: Never be in a rush. Get the most you can for your time and sell at peak time while buying when prices are low.
Tip: Check vendor prices before putting up your items. This is especially important for jewelry and T11 items.
Example.
Negotiate on everything: Seriously. You should never click the buy now button. Not only does it charge you an extra 10% for doing so but most people are willing to negotiate to secure the sale. Whispering people and negotiating directly is far more effective than spamming the button.
Predict the market: Check the main page of TERA's website, keep up to date on the forums and read up on what's going on in Ktera. You can make a lot of money by being ahead of the curve.
Tip: The prices for Godsmarrow are at an all time high right now. With the T14 patch being out next week, I wouldn't stock up on them because crafted T13 will go out of style instantly.
Diversify: As you get to know the market for a specific item you may start to focus on it and try to control the prices. DON'T! No one can accurately predict what's going to change all the time. Don't put all your eggs in one basket and diversify without ever stocking up on items. Short term profits are much better than long term gains 99% of the time.
1. A few concepts
2. Farming
3. Using the trade broker
4. Understanding the market
5. Maximizing profit
Concepts:
Time is money: This may seem like an obvious concept but it's easy to lose sight of it. Every item, every crystal, potion, charm, enchantment fodder, everything has a gold value. When you can put up almost any item on the broker and transfer it into gold, it's easy to put a value on everything.
Because you can obtain any item yourself either by going out and getting it or by picking it up on the broker, what you're really buying is time. In any MMO (TERA more than any other), players buy and sell their own time. You want to sell your time high and buy other people's time as low as possible. This would mean you're making people work for you.
Perfection is expensive: You have to keep in mind that with a limited amount of time, it's important to get the most bang for your buck. When you're trying to improve your gear, you have to balance getting the best gear you can (what will last the longest) vs the difficulty of getting it.
Example: Each extra level of enchantment (+1 to +2) on an item is worth the same (bonuses aside) but it gets progressively harder to get an extra level the higher you go. What this means is that it gets more and more expensive to get the same bonus on your item.
Sometimes, you have to realize that pushing for a specific item or enchantment just isn't worth the time it would take to get it and you're better off focusing your efforts elsewhere.
Know what you're worth: It's important to know the value of what you're buying and selling (The vendor price, the extraction value, the crafting value, the high/low market value). An easy example of this is seeing items on the broker being sold for lower than the vendor price. Because people don't bother, not only do they get less gold than hey would selling it to an NPC but they also pay a listing fee.
Farming:
This list will change as content is added or changed within the game. Keep in mind that it's more time-efficient to buy low and sell high than to spend hours farming the same monster models all the time. That being said, there are areas where your time will yield the largest profits. Here's a few ideas:
Solo:
Three Towers - The Rage Transmission room.
How to get there: Val Tirkai province, teleport to Three Towers' Mindcrown Chambers camp.
Pros: Best source of gold for a new 60. Crystals
(Hunter's Crux) needed are relatively cheap. Blood Fiends are lvl 58.
Cons: Boring. Popular location means there may be people there. A fresh 60 can easily be pushed out by a geared character who decides to outlaw
(PvP).
Gold Rate: 400-800g per hour.
Balder's Temple Sloths.
How to get there: Either buy a scroll from any specialty shop or fly to Veritas District province and walk. Once inside, turn left.
Pros: Completely solo. Normal monsters with ridiculous drop rates. Can be cleared twice
(normal then hard mode).
Cons: Uses up dungeon cooldowns meaning it's impossible to queue for them
(2hr normal and 6hr hard mode).
Gold Rate: 100-150g per instance cooldown
(5 to 10 minutes to clear).
Nexus events.
How to get there: Events happen in 2 provinces
(Helkan District and Val Kaeli)
Pros: Can be completed solo since the game can auto-generate groups. High gold return for very little effort.
Cons: Very low FPS regardless of hardware. Can be hard to stay alive for some classes. Vulnerable to GvG. Boring.
Gold Rate: 300 gold per hour.
Group:
2 or 3 man Ebon Tower normal or Labyrinth of Terror normal.
Master Enigmatic Scrolls are in high demand now that Masterworking has been made more available. They'll stay that way because T14 gear will also require them.
Tier 11 gold weapons vendor for around 70g and can be extracted for a higher value. Badges can be traded for extra T11 gear.
Cruxes drop from every boss and can be worth from 1g to 200g. This is random like everything else in the game.
Ebon tower drops 1 Dark Matter used for Kelsaik's Nest that can be sold.
T11 gear will become templates in the next patch which may raise prices for certain items.
Temple of Temerity
Practicum badges can be sold on the broker.
Vendoring 3 dire badges get you 50g each.
Selling the crystalbind.
Fane of Kaprima and Balder's Temple Hard Mode
Drops T13 fodder items. Whites and greens fetch a good amount. Blue and Gold items earn considerably more.
Drops T13 Enigmatic gear. In the best case scenario, it can be worth a few thousand gold and in the worst, it's still enchantment fodder.
It's important to make good use of your time.
Using the trade broker:
The trade broker is a powerful tool. The game's economy was streamlined so that 99% of items go through the trade broker. Understanding how it works can make you a fortune thereby saving you hours of your own time.
Filtering results: Searching properly is crucial. There's the obvious text search bar that most people use but TERA's broker has a lot of different options that let the user search exactly for what they need.
Advanced Search. This lets you search using specific parameters like enchantable, wearable, item tier or item level.
Smart Search. This should actually be called Quick Search. It lists specific searches that people often use. Example: Enchantment fodder for my weapon or armor, a better weapon than the one equipped or an item from a specific dungeon.
Negotiable. This checkbox is fantastic. It only shows items whose lister is online and available to negotiate. Keep in mind that it's possible to filter out result that would be cheaper to buy now than the ones you would negotiate for.
Advanced Search
Smart Search
Negotiable
Sorting: Using the sort buttons is crucial to see relevant information. If you've done your search right, most of them are useless but sorting the price properly can make a big difference. By clicking on Asking Price 4 times, the button will display Bargain Unit Price. This will display the items in asending order by price per unit rather than total price.
Unsorted/Default
Asking Price
Bargain Unit Price
Why is this important? The lowest price for a given item may be 20g but sorting by unit price could reveal a price per unit of 15g simply because someone is selling them in bulk.
Negotiating: This is a feature not usually seen in MMOs. It gives a way for people to alter the price they originally listed and sell it at a lower price.
Why is this important? In other MMOs, people who spend their time standing next to auction house undercutting the competition would get the most sales. If their item is 1 copper cheaper, that's the item people will buy. Negotiation empowers people who want to go out and play TERA rather than those who play the Auction House game.
Recent History: Whenever you obtain a new item and want to get some gold for it, this tab is your best friend. The history tab tracks every sale made through the broker ever. You can sort the results by date and time which lets you see when the highs and lows for any given item are.
Why is this important? If you're buying or selling, it's always beneficial to know how much the item you're looking at is going for. This way, you avoid overpaying or underselling for items you're not familiar with.
Edited by: badchap 5 months ago
Badchap
#5 08/17/2012, 09:34 AM
Understanding the market:
The prices for just about everything fluctuate. They're affected by various factors like time of the day, events, patches, ect. Trying to foresee when the prices change can help you turn a profit. Here's a few examples of things to watch out for:
Time of day: During the day there's more farming going on, prices for consumables and crystals (among other things) goes down. During the evening, people get into dungeons and prices spike up as people stock up on what they'll need for dungeon runs and buy enchantment fodder.
Buying enigmatic gear is best done during the day. Late at night the market gets flooded and you can get things fairly low in the morning. On the other hand, selling enigmatic gear is best done early in the evening (before people get loot drops from their runs and flood the market).
Nexus: This generates A LOT of gold on the server. It's about 200-300 gold per person so do the math. Also, right after the nexuses close, people jump right into dungeons so they buy crystals and consumables with their new fortunes.
Another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of people get the reputation they need for new equipment right after nexus and, wanting to pvp, they'll try to enchant it right away. Selling white and green enchantment fodder is best done 2 minutes after the closing of a nexus.
Patches: They have a huge effect on the fluctuation in price of items. A great example is with the latest patch which sunk the prices for Fanesteel and Dream Bindings and spiked godsmarrow. You now generate more gold from a single run of a T12 instance by selling your godsmarrow than you would selling Fanesteel of Dream bindings from Hard Modes (this is excluding T13 enchantment fodder).
Maximizing profit:
Most people in MMOs can't be bothered to check market prices or haggle before buying something. In fact, this picture perfectly describes 99% of people.
Buy low and sell high: Never be in a rush. Get the most you can for your time and sell at peak time while buying when prices are low.
Tip: Check vendor prices before putting up your items. This is especially important for jewelry and T11 items.
Example.
Negotiate on everything: Seriously. You should never click the buy now button. Not only does it charge you an extra 10% for doing so but most people are willing to negotiate to secure the sale. Whispering people and negotiating directly is far more effective than spamming the button.
Predict the market: Check the main page of TERA's website, keep up to date on the forums and read up on what's going on in Ktera. You can make a lot of money by being ahead of the curve.
Tip: The prices for Godsmarrow are at an all time high right now. With the T14 patch being out next week, I wouldn't stock up on them because crafted T13 will go out of style instantly.
Diversify: As you get to know the market for a specific item you may start to focus on it and try to control the prices. DON'T! No one can accurately predict what's going to change all the time. Don't put all your eggs in one basket and diversify without ever stocking up on items. Short term profits are much better than long term gains 99% of the time.
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