Nuggetty Goodness

Merchant buys for nice profit: Yellow
Merchant sells: White

Do note that these maps presume you're 40+, or some goods won't be accessible.

Kalaires Plain

Sea of Oblivion

If you're wondering what that word is, it's 'coconut cake'. Yes, lazy nugget is lazy for non-work.

Lunagrant Woodland

Notes:

1. The green goods text in Lunagrant should be white - I was senile. >.>
2. Don't bother with Attar paste in Sea of Oblivion, although it's listed as a bestseller, the profit is terrible.
3. To cancel a trade run (for example, if you got stuck between a mountain and a back of castle, not that I've ever ever done that, never), go to your bag, press the trade tab, and press the button on the bottom right that says 'Trash'. Note that you'll lose Mercury rep if you do this.
4. Despite my providing all the maps here, I still find that I make the most profit, the fastest (at level 47) by staying within Kalaires Plain. Once you're level 40, use this series of buy/sell and repeat till done to get the maximum possible profit: 
   Freedom Harbour: Wheat Bread (If you have spare cash, Cotton Cloth)
   Valley of Whispers: Salt (If you have spare cash, Cloaks)
   Ironclaw Woods: Agaric Mushroom
   Heights: Bear Liver
   Windcry Farm: Wheat straw (If you have spare cash, Green Rum)
   Be sure to sell CAREFULLY as you get close to the minimum profit limit or you'll not be able to sell more.

 

Soooo having gotten past level 40 on my vampire chick, I've finally encountered the portion of FW that I'd been wondering about since I started.

PWE, as I've said before, is absolutely rapacious about slurping money out of your wallet - and they're very good at it. Which has had me feeling slightly uneasy since I started playing FW - this is all TOO reasonable, TOO possible to play... for free.

But now, after level 40, I've found the Pay2Win aspect.

And I like it. Yes, I like it.

I like it because it doesn't affect me at all, which renders FW effectively, truly F2P for me. It means I can spend money on fluff when I feel like it. It means that whatever cash I want to drop on FW won't be to counter the OMG PLZ LEMME SKIP THE GRIND PLZ.

Out with it nugget, how does the P2W aspect actually work!

Well, once you hit L40, you get to do two quests in the Arena of Souls in Lunagrant Forest - the area, not the instance. After you've completed those two quests, you go back to your class trainer, and you'll be able to train Masteries and Resistances. You'll need 15 gold (not soulgold, gold) on hand in order to complete the next quest - train a Mastery or Resistance level to 5 - but this quest is effectively a free 5 levels of either Mastery or Resistance, since upon completion, you're refunded with 15g.

Each level of Mastery or Resistance up to L20 increases the power of what you train by 1%. After that, according to forums (the game's not been out that long in English), it becomes 2%, presumably at L30 it's 3%, etc.

Masteries and Resistances increase your base damage for that given mastery/resistance independent of gear. They're a direct buff to your character. And in a fight which presumes gear and class are equal, the one with the higher mastery will always win. Hello, Pay2Win!

The pricing is as follows:

L1 Training: 1g
L2 Training: 2g
L3 Training: 3g
L4 Training: 4g
L5 Training: 5g (By which point you've spent 15g)
L6 Training: 6g
L7 Training: 7g ... and so on.

FW's mechanics control the 'base' worth of gold through another quest series involving a cash shop item. That cash shop item (Mercury Statuette) costs US$0.50 (20 Eyrda leaves), and, if you aren't lazy and go off and do a quest with it, will return 5 - 6g in well... gold. If you are lazy, it only returns 3g, but it's immediate and you don't have to do anything. Now, presuming that you aren't lazy, and you do your quests (which have a daily cap, even though they're associated / only possible with a cash shop item), you'll get an average of 5g per statuette, IF you buy the statuettes from the cash shop. (Players tend to sell the statuettes for anywhere from 3g 50s to 4g.) So what this means is...

L6 Training: 6g (US$0.60)
L7 Training: 7g (US$0.70)
L8 Training: 8g (US$0.80)
L9 Training: 9g (US$0.90)
L10 Training: 10g (US$1.00 - and by which point you've spent US$4)

But that's not really very much nuggeet! And that's true. At L10 it certainly isn't very much. But (I believe, not sure yet) masteries go up to L100. And there are ?8? masteries and ?8? resistances. Consider that the pattern continues, and I'm not sure that L20 = 20g, it may be 40g - basically no one who's trained that high has posted stats on it yet, so it's all up for speculation. But with that in mind, this begins to look awfully like the classic Wheat and Chessboard problem. Only the wheat is coming directly from your wallet.

Nugget, you crazy thing, you LIKE this?!?

Well, yes, I do. You see, I'm playing on Storm, which is a PvE server. No world PvP, all PvP is duels or guild 'wars' - which are consensual affairs. I don't have the mindset where I need to 'keep up' with other people - I just need to keep up with *myself* to an extent where I am happy. And that whole thing about the whales in F2P models applies - I really don't care what the whales do, as long as they do the spending that makes PWE say yes, yes, we shall continue this, it is indeed viable - leaving me able to potter around the rest of the game.

If you care about being the biggest kid on the block, and care that it isn't 'fair' that people can buy power, you won't like this. If you play on a PvP server, you probably won't like this (PvP kinda goes out the window once you are PvPing with your wallet). But as far as I'm concerned, I don't care if someone spends US$100 to kill mobs faster than I do. All gear in FW is Bind on Equip, so though you could say, 'But eventually it will inflate until you HAVE to cash shop to do instances!' well... that's not true. You can just buy the gear. And again, the whales principle applies. And really, there aren't all that many whales out there.

What's more, if this works out, it means that FW will NOT constantly drain my Willpower Resource to not buy stuff to make the grind less horrible - precisely because there's a steady stream of income for PWE from masteries and resistances.

And what's best of all, to me, is that this system is honest and transparent. You get exactly what you pay for. You don't play lottery after bloody lottery at $0.50 in the HOPE that you'll perhaps get a stat upgrade.

Pay2Win - long live the honest whore.

Also, while she does still appear to have been injection moulded into her clothes, for the first time in 40 levels, my vamp isn't flashing cleavage, midriff, or panties! Zomg! XD

This is just brilliant. Or should that be sparkly?

For both 1st and 2nd trade runs, buying and selling stuff in this order should fill you up to the max, and over, pretty quickly:

You start to buy in Freedom Harbour and continue to buy as listed, selling whatever you bought in the previous place.

First Run:
Freedom Harbour: Wheat Bread
Valley of Whispers: Cloak
Ironclaw Woods: Agaric Mushroom
Heights: Bear Liver
Windcry Farm: Wheat straw

First Run (full profit 12000/10000 but takes longer): 
Freedom Harbour: Wheat Bread
Valley of Whispers: Octopus Drinks
Heights: Nothing
Ironclaw Woods: Agaric Mushroom
Heights: Bear Liver
Windcry Farm: (Make SURE you do not go over 10000, be careful and sell slowly) Wheat straw

Second Run: 
Freedom Harbour: Wheat Bread
Valley of Whispers: Cloak, Octopus Drink
Ironclaw Woods: Agaric Mushroom (Don't sell Octopus Drink yet)
Heights: Sell all (Should have 26k, if not, buy Bear Liver and continue on)
Windcry Farm: Wheat straw
Repeat the run.

Then it's back to Freedom Harbour, sell off your Wheat Straw, and you're done!

If, at any point, you get a message saying something about 'maximum currency', and you have over the number of mercury coins you were supposed to make (e.g. 23444/20000), then just head back to Freedom Harbour and hand in the quest.

I'm not sure if the money changes by server, so for now, take it that this is just for Storm.

Alas, the FW server I've been playing on for the past week or so has been hit by a DDoS that PWE is still trying to squish. And so, in true altaholic fashion, I've gone off to the Lionheart server to explore the joys of pink, manly dorfs.

Introducing... Peevesbury. The pinkest, most manly beard-bearer in the... west? (Well, Lionheart IS a west-coast server and all...)

I haz new MMO toy!

After a week or so of playing Forsaken World, including checking out their cash shop and comparing prices, I've come to the conclusion that if you're currently playing WoW (or DDO, or LotRO, or EQ, or Aion, or... well... you get the idea), and want to tour other MMO places, but aren't really looking for something new, Forsaken World is just the ticket.

It's the least rapacious PWE game I've played, and it's very much tailored for the English-speaking market, which is reflected in every aspect of the game. Most of PWE's games are obviously developed for China, because that's where they always launch first - which is entirely reasonable considering China is their home base, then adapted for English-speaking markets. Forsaken World, however, was obviously developed from the ground up with the English-speaking market in mind, with nods to China, with full intentions of trying to grab a substantial piece of the English micro transactional pie. (I refuse to call it Free2Play, since that term covers so many styles.) And from 1 week of FW, I think they have a pretty good chance of succeeding.

FW is the first PWE game where I'm saying, "Hmm... This is good enough and I'll play it for long enough that I WANT to spend 15 dollars on it this month, because I'll get as much worth as a subscription. But... I don't know what I want to buy." All the other PWE games that I've tried are NOT like that.

What's more, FW has some interesting mechanics in and of itself for the classes. Unique mechanics - which is why I said it's sort of a WoW clone - but with different classes. For instance, the bard class actually *gasp* uses a rudimentary form of *GASP* music, actual music. Or, well, chords, anyway. XD Which is not the same as music, but still... Basically, you can play sets of different chords to trigger different effects, and the chords really are accurate. For example, C and D sound like C and D based chords. It's really quite cute. So, er yes, this is the new toy!

So while FW is not really something new - Guild Wars is something new, Eve Online is something new, Atlantica Online is something new. Forsaken World? Nahhhhhhh... But it is VERY polished, and PWE even wrote the quests all properly in English this time. (Most of PWE's quests, if you READ them, are bizarre when rendered in English - but in FW, are properly done.)

PWE is also experimenting with a triple currency system - important in a F2P game - which I've never seen done by another studio before. It's very impressive actually. It's what makes FW much more interesting (and playable) to me than the other PWE games I've played. Basically, there's your cash shop currency (which you can exchange for in game gold); there's in-game gold, which can be traded between players, is gotten from a very few quests, and is limited in circulation (at this point) because the control of the creation of it is intentionally highly limited - inflation is always a killer in F2P games because money in this genre of games literally falls from the sky; and the third currency - which makes the whole thing intriguing - soul coins - which are quest reward gold that you can ONLY use on NPCs and cannot ever be traded with other players. It's the third currency that holds all 3 together, and makes FW really playable.

In other F2P games from PWE newbieness is a horrible scraping hardship when it comes to gold, thereby pushing you towards the cash shop. But in FW, I'm actually enjoying it enough that I WANT to pay PWE money, I just haven't decided on what yet. And I find that fascinating. It's precisely because, unlike other PWE games, FW doesn't make you go through Hell and high water if you want - oh, a mount, for instance. You can get one through pure in-game means. Which in turn, leaves me feeling a lot less blackmailed than PWE games usually do, and reinforces my awe at PWE. I didn't think they could truly adapt to an APPEALING model for the English-speaking market, but FW is exactly that.

PWE is obviously experimenting with different degrees of monetisation thoughout all their games. They used to do a top down model - what works for the flagship, Perfect World, they then reproduce throughout all their other titles. But now, they're changing/tweaking for each title they publish, some to a greater extent, some to a lesser extent. Jade Dynasty is their apotheosis of the virtual lotto world, but not all of their games are like that. At least, not anymore.

By implementing the three currency system, PWE has given players a kind of welfare system - but not exactly because players still have to earn it. It definitely gives players a playability buffer. Which also makes me wonder what effect the third currency is having on their direct profits. Oh, they run the lotto system at the same time, but it also alleviates the OMGthisisunplayable without forking over cash initially. So I'm wondering if it brings more cash long term, because it eventually converts more freeloaders into paying customers. Certainly, it makes their games a lot more pleasant to play - the ones of theirs I've tried without it are a bit insane at lower levels due to the money issue. Not even having enough to buy basics from AI, or having to watch that like a hawk is no fun. Whereas in FW, I have almost no money I can trade to players, but I don't really care and am happily running around watching my vamp chick's boobs bounce (yay boobies), because I have a break-even-not-stressed amount I can trade with AI. This makes me a happy little noobie nugget.

Which leads me to the most interesting point. With FW, PWE has earned my goodwill for the first time. I want to pay for stuff from them, not because I feel forced to in order to progress, but because I think the game is entertaining enough that they deserve it. As someone who works in marketing, one of the things I've learned is that customer goodwill is invaluable. It'll be fascinating to see how FW, and other PWE titles continue to develop.

And for those of you who care about such ratings, in ze nuggetty opinion, Forsaken World is an AAA MMO title.