Saltpeter will be mined through niter deposits...

[Alvinho]

Commodity pricing has been broken for a long time, in that the shopkeepers would never offer to buy back an item for more than its base price. This created the problem that asking prices would inflate while offer prices would not, and therefore it would never be worth anyone's time to sell anything back. One place this is particularly problematic is with glass bottles, and the slow rate of sand mining.

With these changes, we are making it so the shopkeepers will offer significantly more gold when buying back commodities with high prices. This will make it worthwhile in many cases (like glass bottles) to sell these items back to shopkeepers. It also opens up opportunities to find creative ways to profit by trading items around, either by simple buy low/sell high, or by resource gathering and crafting coupled with trading.



I would not expect its price to climb as high as some think it might. It's not too difficult to mine, and if the price gets too high then it will be worthwhile to mine some just to sell to the NPC shopkeepers.

*stocks up on arrows and bolts to make a ton off Nix Again*

 

[Umfufu]

Commodity pricing has been broken for a long time, in that the shopkeepers would never offer to buy back an item for more than its base price. This created the problem that asking prices would inflate while offer prices would not, and therefore it would never be worth anyone's time to sell anything back. One place this is particularly problematic is with glass bottles, and the slow rate of sand mining.

With these changes, we are making it so the shopkeepers will offer significantly more gold when buying back commodities with high prices. This will make it worthwhile in many cases (like glass bottles) to sell these items back to shopkeepers. It also opens up opportunities to find creative ways to profit by trading items around, either by simple buy low/sell high, or by resource gathering and crafting coupled with trading.

I would not expect its price to climb as high as some think it might. It's not too difficult to mine, and if the price gets too high then it will be worthwhile to mine some just to sell to the NPC shopkeepers.

Will one be able to sell to the NPC from comm deeds, or do I have to make a gazillion trips with wood/bottles and such ?

 

[Babble]

I would not expect its price to climb as high as some think it might. It's not too difficult to mine, and if the price gets too high then it will be worthwhile to mine some just to sell to the NPC shopkeepers.

And the developers before you did not expect hat Felucca would be as abandonded as it was.

So you honestly say that mining, a very boring and annoying task, will be interesting and profitable enough that people will do it?

Optimist, most people these days don't hunt for gold, but for other items and things and gold is a byproduct.

But we will see how good your designs really are.

 

[Kas Althume]

Forgot to add. Miner booster accounts receive basement level at their house plots with additional 20% storage increase for sure.

Screw the rest fhe miner booster, but this one gets a big YES!

 

[kelmo]

I would not expect its price to climb as high as some think it might. It's not too difficult to mine, and if the price gets too high then it will be worthwhile to mine some just to sell to the NPC shopkeepers.

I suppose that depends upon where you play...

 

[Ralco]

I guess I don't see the problem here. You need 100 points for mining. If you can't survive in a dungeon location of your choosing with a 620 point template then hunting pirates is likely out of your ability range. Meaning you don't even need saltpeter.

Also you can mine from boat.

 

[Viquire]

Commodity pricing has been broken for a long time, in that the shopkeepers would never offer to buy back an item for more than its base price. This created the problem that asking prices would inflate while offer prices would not, and therefore it would never be worth anyone's time to sell anything back. One place this is particularly problematic is with glass bottles, and the slow rate of sand mining.

With these changes, we are making it so the shopkeepers will offer significantly more gold when buying back commodities with high prices. This will make it worthwhile in many cases (like glass bottles) to sell these items back to shopkeepers. It also opens up opportunities to find creative ways to profit by trading items around, either by simple buy low/sell high, or by resource gathering and crafting coupled with trading.

YAY! We just keep getting more and more Ultimy, uh, Ultima-y, *grimace*

Ultima-ier... regressive... No,no,no

Dammit all

Thanks for making this better, finally!

 

[puni666]

Commodity pricing has been broken for a long time

You know what else has been broken since September 8, 2009?

Mysticism

Throwing

 

[popps]

Personally, I do not see this change with favour.

I was happy to see Salpeter as purchaseable only from NPCs since it was a resource highly needed that was helping reduce the amount of gold in the game and, thus, reduce inflation.

I think we need more items that are needed and only purchaseable from NPCs so that they can all contribute, each a little but all a lot, to drain gold out of the game to help contain and reduce inflation.

The problem experienced at the beginning of its scarcity was because of the novelty, I think and because noone had a stock.

I think now things are easier and now it is not as difficult to buy salpeter from alchemists as it was initially.

So, I really do not see why it has been made a mining resource.

 

[Babble]

The mining resource came as we asked for it when it was very limited and they found out it was not too hard to implement.

For making it viable for mining they decided to put a limit on it like for wood and ingots.

It will really depends how much of a nuisance this will be in how much salpeter you get from mining.
After making a gm miner again I have to say let me have 4 ingots of one ore, as mining is boring as hell and coloured ingots way to rare if you want to make bods,

 

[Harlequin]

I think it is a great idea to make it available as a mining resource.

There are several ways to mine unmolested in dungeons, plus, each dungeon have levels with weak spawns that miners should have no problems dealing with.

Having it tied to luck is a good idea, though care must be taken that miners that do not have luck gear do not find it impossible to mine up the the saltpetre. Hopefully, if this works, it can be implemented for other resources too.

Question, do the elven mining bonus play a part here?

Now, my concern is with the 500 quantity with dynamic pricing on npc. I see that you are addressing the issue that makes it not worth players' while to sell back resources to vendors. I am all for this, don't know why you thought it was such a game breaker initially and had to nerf it.

Possibly because some player vendors find it more profitable to sell things like arrows to npcs instead of on player vendors.

I see that you have put a lot of thought into this, making it hard for script miners to get saltpetre, making npc buyback at only a fraction of the selling price, making sand mining always succeed etc.

So for other things, like bottles, this will work great. But for saltpetre, with the restrictions to mining, less people will mine for it. Coupled with the actual amount of saltpetre that is needed, I still think not enough people will sell it back and that the cost of saltpetre will skyrocket and be unaffordable to many players.

Not a good thing when one of the selling point of the latest add on is ship combat. You want people to participate. Not to avoid it because it costs too much or is too tedious.

I guess it is still contingent on how easily you can mine saltpetre. Though I would suggest reducing the amount of saltptre required for making required components.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[Aran]

Personally, I do not see this change with favour.

I was happy to see Salpeter as purchaseable only from NPCs since it was a resource highly needed that was helping reduce the amount of gold in the game and, thus, reduce inflation.

I think we need more items that are needed and only purchaseable from NPCs so that they can all contribute, each a little but all a lot, to drain gold out of the game to help contain and reduce inflation.

The problem experienced at the beginning of its scarcity was because of the novelty, I think and because noone had a stock.

I think now things are easier and now it is not as difficult to buy salpeter from alchemists as it was initially.

So, I really do not see why it has been made a mining resource.

I don't think you understand how farming gold to buy things works.

There will never be less gold in the economy, there will simply be higher flow in to support a higher flow out.

 

[Ralco]

As long as it goes up to maybe 50k-100k on npc venders I'll be find with it. Other than that it's messing with my time to ore ratio.

Unless you currently mine from a boat or in a dungeon it will do no such thing.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

so is this the one & only use for luck, or is luck fixed, or does James not know it's broken?

@OP - soulstones... My dexxer is my miner now - All I'm missing is the fire beetle - bring back portable forges for the backpack

 

[jaraxlebaenrae]

been mining for hours on TC and recieved no SP...720 luck, set to just ore...then ore and stone....boat and dungeon...and still nothing

looks like i will be buying as much SP as possible before the publish comes out..

 

[popps]

I don't think you understand how farming gold to buy things works.

There will never be less gold in the economy, there will simply be higher flow in to support a higher flow out.

Well, that depends on Design choices.

If the Developers introduce more items that are needed in large quantities (for example like salpeter...) that players have to buy from NPCs as their only one source, then this plus that plus that other also "could" help reduce the amount of gold in circulation in the game.

Gold decreases when it is spent NOT in players to players transactions, but in players to NPCs transactions......

The more player to NPCs transactions there are, the more gold gets out of the game and thus helps reduce the inflation problem.

That's at least how I see it.

 

[QueenZen]

I suppose that depends upon where you play...

Sigh...why is it other shards DO have more npc saltpeter vendors on the other docks and Siege had none ?

My miner is not going to be mining up saltpeter when mining is time consuming enough as is to try to get mere granite for my masonry furniture making, and the tons of ingots we need now to make ...blackpowder etc.

Wouldn't it just be more logical to BUY saltpeter off npcs on the other piers and docks that...other shards got added to their docks, but SIEGE ...got none nada, so far ! ?

I duno I am about ready to give up...tired of one shard being off the radar if not forgotten it exists entirely ! some folks get last years jackolanterns dyed up THIS year...when an EM or game master.... could be slappin a saltpeter on Siege instead of dying last yrs. jackolanterns for folks on other shards taking time to ...do that instead of npc saltpeter vendors for Siege even.

*my apologeez.......but geez why can not a booster expansion just be simple and fun and not dreging more work just to get us saltpeter, and net us some equality for all shards' customers that pay EA to play UO High Seas Adventure and etc. ?

 

[Aran]

Well, that depends on Design choices.

If the Developers introduce more items that are needed in large quantities (for example like salpeter...) that players have to buy from NPCs as their only one source, then this plus that plus that other also "could" help reduce the amount of gold in circulation in the game.

Gold decreases when it is spent NOT in players to players transactions, but in players to NPCs transactions......

The more player to NPCs transactions there are, the more gold gets out of the game and thus helps reduce the inflation problem.

That's at least how I see it.

I see that you have an ability to think, it's just not the right one.

 

[kelmo]

I understand what you are saying, QZ. I was referring more to selling to NPCs when prices fluctuate.

 

[Harlequin]

Sigh...why is it other shards DO have more npc saltpeter vendors on the other docks and Siege had none ?

My miner is not going to be mining up saltpeter when mining is time consuming enough as is to try to get mere granite for my masonry furniture making, and the tons of ingots we need now to make ...blackpowder etc.

Wouldn't it just be more logical to BUY saltpeter off npcs on the other piers and docks that...other shards got added to their docks, but SIEGE ...got none nada, so far ! ?

I duno I am about ready to give up...tired of one shard being off the radar if not forgotten it exists entirely ! some folks get last years jackolanterns dyed up THIS year...when an EM or game master.... could be slappin a saltpeter on Siege instead of dying last yrs. jackolanterns for folks on other shards taking time to ...do that instead of npc saltpeter vendors for Siege even.

*my apologeez.......but geez why can not a booster expansion just be simple and fun and not dreging more work just to get us saltpeter, and net us some equality for all shards' customers that pay EA to play UO High Seas Adventure and etc. ?

Now that you mention it, Siege is going to be a totally different monster altogether. Extra npcs now may help, but there is no chance that it will be sustainable when they put in the new code coz the npcs do not buy anything back.

Coupled with the 3x pricing, your saltpetre costs is going to skyrocket and will have no real way to come back down.

Perhaps they are looking at an alternate solution for you?

 

[Petra Fyde]

Commodities aren't active on Siege for anything, so I'm assuming they won't be for this either. Everything spawns in 20s and has to be worked up, if npcs sell it at all. They don't sell balls of wool, cloth, boards, ingots, arrows, bolts etc anyway.
Before you can make match cords and fuse cords you must first shear your sheep and spin the wool.

 

[kelmo]

Petra nailed it. This is basically my concern. The commodity system is foreign to the Siege rule set.

 

[Petra Fyde]

I'm not worried. The other shards have lobster traps by the 500, Siege crab fishers sell 20. At 414gp mind. Good job my treasure hunting is up to funding my fishing

 

[Babble]

Hehe, making it hard to get supplies for cannons will help the NPCs pirates to thrive.
So Siege is a Piratefriendly shard.

 

[cdavbar]

Commodities aren't active on Siege for anything, so I'm assuming they won't be for this either. Everything spawns in 20s and has to be worked up, if npcs sell it at all. They don't sell balls of wool, cloth, boards, ingots, arrows, bolts etc anyway.
Before you can make match cords and fuse cords you must first shear your sheep and spin the wool.

I do this on GL anyways, the price of cloth skyrocketed the last couple weeks!!! much cheaper to just DIY lol

 

[lucitus]

Commodity pricing has been broken for a long time, in that the shopkeepers would never offer to buy back an item for more than its base price. This created the problem that asking prices would inflate while offer prices would not, and therefore it would never be worth anyone's time to sell anything back. One place this is particularly problematic is with glass bottles, and the slow rate of sand mining.

With these changes, we are making it so the shopkeepers will offer significantly more gold when buying back commodities with high prices. This will make it worthwhile in many cases (like glass bottles) to sell these items back to shopkeepers. It also opens up opportunities to find creative ways to profit by trading items around, either by simple buy low/sell high, or by resource gathering and crafting coupled with trading.



I would not expect its price to climb as high as some think it might. It's not too difficult to mine, and if the price gets too high then it will be worthwhile to mine some just to sell to the NPC shopkeepers.

I thought this was intended by the devs in the past, i remember the days one doom travel can get me one million gold only in selling bandages to the vendor. It was cool so you could do gold only with trading.

 

[Phoenix_Mythic]

I thought this was intended by the devs in the past, i remember the days one doom travel can get me one million gold only in selling bandages to the vendor. It was cool so you could do gold only with trading.

The original intent of the commodity pricing system was basically to bridge the disconnect between the NPC shopkeeper economic simulation and the player-driven economy.

The theory behind it is, if a shopkeeper's asking price is lower than the real value of something, then people will buy that item from the shopkeeper. If the shopkeeper's offer price is higher than the real value of something, then players will sell back to that shopkeeper. So, shopkeepers adjust their prices upwards when people buy from them, and adjust their prices downwards when people sell to them, and over time the shopkeeper price reaches equilibrium with the player-driven value for that item.

In its first iteration, the system used a minimal margin between the shopkeepers' bid and ask prices. Then, at a later time, some exploit with the system was discovered and to fix it the system was altered so that offer prices would be capped at a low value and asking prices would have a floor. This made it so when an asking price got adjusted upward, the offer price would not follow suit, so you get situations like the NPCs charging 100 gp for a glass bottle but only offering 3 to buy it back. Since no one in their right mind would sell a bottle at that price, none got bought back from players, so the price never got adjusted downward. Instead of adjusting to a sensible price, shopkeeper prices would adjust to the upper limit of what a player would be willing to pay for the item, and stay there until the next time vendors got wiped and re-spawned.

The Doom vendor case was a very interesting emergence from the system. People were perfectly happy paying overinflated prices for supplies there because gold is readily available there. It was faster to just pay the super high prices in the dungeon, rather than leave, restock, and return. And, of course, it was extremely profitable for those who chose to spend their time carting supplies down to sell to the shopkeeper. It was basic supply and demand economics, creating a nice opportunity for a merchant to profit.

Now, with this change, we're removing the caps again, but widening the margin between the shopkeeper's bid and ask price. The shopkeeper will offer to buy back commodity items at 75% of their asking price. So, if the ask price of a commodity gets adjusted up to 100 gp, then the offer price will be 75 (where originally it would have been 99). This will prevent exploitation, while still making it worthwhile to sell commodities to NPC shopkeepers. That, in turn, will allow NPC shopkeeper price to adjust to something near the real value of these items.

 

[Babble]

So a commodity like salpeter which is necessary for fully enjoing a booster content gets thrown in.

If the price is high you either earn lots of cash or train a miner.


For a designer you guys really have strange ways to theoretically limit the content to your customer base, but maybe it will work out.

 

[ziggy29]

Not sure if I'm doing anything wrong, but I've mined in couple different dungeons and on a boat with 105 mining (with the +5 gloves) and a suit with over 400 luck. I've pulled up over 3,000 ingots but not a single niter deposit.

 

[Paldrion]

ummm... The original idea was to enable ship battles.

Now that saltpeter is an incredibly rare mining find and only 1 alchemist sells it for an incredibly inflated price, there won't be many boat battles or pirate quests. That was the who;e purpose of this whole expansion. That kind of ruins a whole expansion with one minuscule change.



This resource needs to be very common. We should be able to mine it in any mine, dungeon or sand. Make it so that it always is found with 0 (zero) mining and chances go down as mining skill is increased. This way we can use our non-crafter to obtain it. We also need the black powder output to be 8 instead of 1. We put 8 items to make it, we should get 8 items out. This will enable plentiful ship battles like there should be.

 

[Lokida]

Re: ummm... The original idea was to enable ship battles.

This resource needs to be very common. We should be able to mine it in any mine, dungeon or sand. Make it so that it always is found with 0 (zero) mining and chances go down as mining skill is increased. This way we can use our non-crafter to obtain it.

That's just crazy talk....make a crafter, or in this case a miner.

 

[Paldrion]

Okay, Just put a luck suit on my miner and got 73 saltpeter in one hour. This is just not enough. It is taking a few hours a week to make the black powder needed with my crafter. It was enough just to buy the 12,000 saltpeter in an hour or two, so I could craft it for 3-4 hours and have a one week supply. Now we will have to mine for 4 months solid to have enough saltpeter for a one week supply of ship battles.

 

[Paldrion]

Hmm now I cannot find any saltpeter anywhere.

Maybe they are following this story line and we have to find the special saltpeter deposit:

Saltpeter Shortage

 

[Babble]

Just buy it from the vendors?
It is nothing else than a huge gold sink anyway.

 

[whiterabbit]

flaoting dock only has salt peter vendor now, last nite(thur) it was 85 per. tried mining found none yet

Grumpy of Chessy

 

[Phoenix_Mythic]

Not sure if I'm doing anything wrong, but I've mined in couple different dungeons and on a boat with 105 mining (with the +5 gloves) and a suit with over 400 luck. I've pulled up over 3,000 ingots but not a single niter deposit.

If you are a GM miner and have an easily-imbued 750 luck suit, the odds of finding a niter deposit while mining from a boat are 1.25% per mining attempt. I personally have no issue digging up several hundred saltpeter in an hour on a boat, and boat mining is the easy way. I figure it's not too difficult to average 5 to 6 deposits per hour, averaging 60 or more saltpeter per deposit, and those are very conservative estimates. With a really good luck suit both the frequency and average size improve significantly.

In a dungeon, the odds are a bit different. Depending on how you go about it, you could find niter deposits at least three times as frequently and their average size would be at least twice as large.

Note that if you don't have the High Seas booster, you won't find niter rocks at all...

 

[Martyna Zmuir]

So, in otherwords, what your telling us is that mining niter isn't really much a viable way to get saltpeter...

Since you need massive quantities of it to make all the shot, match cord and fuses we will still find outselves either unable to enjoy most of the High Seas booster OR will be paying through the nose to enjoy it.

Why don't you save yourselves the headache and put all the alchemists back on the docks so we won't be screaming at you again in another two weeks when people's stockpiles run out.

Why you feel the need to artificially limit this required resource is beyond all logic.

 

[Paldrion]

If you are a GM miner and have an easily-imbued 750 luck suit, the odds of finding a niter deposit while mining from a boat are 1.25% per mining attempt. I personally have no issue digging up several hundred saltpeter in an hour on a boat, and boat mining is the easy way. I figure it's not too difficult to average 5 to 6 deposits per hour, averaging 60 or more saltpeter per deposit, and those are very conservative estimates. With a really good luck suit both the frequency and average size improve significantly.
In a dungeon, the odds are a bit different. Depending on how you go about it, you could find niter deposits at least three times as frequently and their average size would be at least twice as large.
Note that if you don't have the High Seas booster, you won't find niter rocks at all...

I'm just not finding it that plentiful. My miner is GM mining and has 1200+ luck suit on and I haven't found any in the last 4 hours of boat and dungeon mining. The price at the one vendor that has it is at 150 gp per saltpeter. I wish they would resupply it at all the docks again.

 

[Babble]

As the developer, use a suit at about 700 or so luck, as luck may be broken at higher levels.

Some say at about 700 luck you have the best results, though this is just player rumour and not confirmed by development.

 

[Paldrion]

As the developer, use a suit at about 700 or so luck, as luck may be broken at higher levels.

Some say at about 700 luck you have the best results, though this is just player rumour and not confirmed by development.

Okay, I knocked the luck down to 722, even went to a Felucca dungeon. I'm still getting about 75 saltpeter per hour. That is very slim for the amounts that needs to be used to enjoy the aspect of battle shipping.

I am not a UO developer, just a UO player.

 

[Kas Althume]

I just got a gigantic salpeter nite ... got 260 salpeter out of it. 5 minutes into mining @ 1538 luck.

edit: 30 seconds after writing this i got the next gigantic niter deposit.

183 salpeter on this one.

160 salpeter on the thiurd gigantic nite.

Thats 603 salpeter while mining 1 hour in shame, trammel, shoevels set to ore only.

 

[Old Man of UO]

Getting about 1,000 saltpeter each hour with 1,475/2,225 luck suit. I was hoping for more, but see that it's not nearly as bad as others have been getting.

If you are going to mine caves, use the EC client; you won't do as well with the CC.

 

[Tazar]

I just got one block that gave 295 saltpeter. I wonder what is the max that a block can give...

 

[Old Man of UO]

I just got one block that gave 295 saltpeter. I wonder what is the max that a block can give...

Good question... that's the highest I've seen so far.

 

[Lady Storm]

Oh idk ... I been doing ok mining it. It's slow finding but you do get a a bit more then I first expected.
Siege is a Tough place... as it was intended to be. This shard was made to give the player a more challenging enviroment. No sales to vendors, limited, if no base items on NPC's you had to get it yourself. And 1 character per account. You had to make friends to live. Siege had a nice community once, It still can be. If I get any saltpeter when I mine ill toss it in luna bank.

 

[Bill Gates OSD]

So, in otherwords, what your telling us is that mining niter isn't really much a viable way to get saltpeter...

Since you need massive quantities of it to make all the shot, match cord and fuses we will still find outselves either unable to enjoy most of the High Seas booster OR will be paying through the nose to enjoy it.

Why don't you save yourselves the headache and put all the alchemists back on the docks so we won't be screaming at you again in another two weeks when people's stockpiles run out.

Why you feel the need to artificially limit this required resource is beyond all logic.

Agreed! I get precious little time to play UO anymore and I'll be damned if I want to spend that precious little time mining for saltpeter while wearing a luck suit that I have to gather or buy the resources to make!

 

[Old Man of UO]

Agreed! I get precious little time to play UO anymore and I'll be damned if I want to spend that precious little time mining for saltpeter while wearing a luck suit that I have to gather or buy the resources to make!

So, how many saltpeter do you want? You can buy it from a miner, like me. What's a reasonable price that you are willing to pay for their time to gather the resources for you? I mean... you are Bill Gates, after all.

I've got enough for my needs in my sea kit and will put the rest on my vendor. I don't mind the mining and will help supply the market as long as it is worth my time and effort.

 

[Bill Gates OSD]

So, how many saltpeter do you want? You can buy it from a miner, like me. What's a reasonable price that you are willing to pay for their time to gather the resources for you? I mean... you are Bill Gates, after all.

I've got enough for my needs in my sea kit and will put the rest on my vendor. I don't mind the mining and will help supply the market as long as it is worth my time and effort.

While I do appreciate the offer, that's not the point. They started with vendors all over the place and then took them away. The usual suspects undoubtedly camped and stockpiled while those of us who don't have a lot of time to play didn't realize that it was needed and now they are gone so I have the choice of either paying through the nose (or other bodily orifices) for it or being forced to mine it myself.

 

[Trebr Drab]

Agreed! I get precious little time to play UO anymore and I'll be damned if I want to spend that precious little time mining for saltpeter while wearing a luck suit that I have to gather or buy the resources to make!

So, how many saltpeter do you want? You can buy it from a miner, like me. What's a reasonable price that you are willing to pay for their time to gather the resources for you? I mean... you are Bill Gates, after all.

I've got enough for my needs in my sea kit and will put the rest on my vendor. I don't mind the mining and will help supply the market as long as it is worth my time and effort.

I think this is exactly where the Devs want to take UO. I think they want to get rid of the self sufficiency that players have begun to expect, and turn it into a thriving economy.

 

[Babble]

Good luck

That idea really worked 10 years ago (bought my first house with selling ingots), but I doubt it will work today.