You know, for a lot of the things, all you have to do is be lucky once.
I've never had more than 20 million gold, and both times I was in that neighborhood, I bought 120 PS scrolls (Magery the first time, Eval the second).
However, my first two doom arties were Spirit of the Totem and an Ornament of the magician (a year apart from each other, and didn't get another doom arty for 2 years) - I kept them and USED them. Does that make me rich? No, just lucky, and able to resist the urge for a quick buck.
I've got a fairly large collection of vet rewards - 20+ reward statues (counting duplicates), 8 ethys, 3 red soulstones, 8 dye tubs, and 5 deedable items (banners, displays, etc.)
Of those, I've spent eight vet reward choices, on 3 accounts (well, 10, if you count the two tubs I lost due to the old chest issues where some of the fishing and T-map chests would spontaneously decay, years ago). I've bought 2 more tubs, and 2 ethys. That's 12-14 rewards out of 45-50 I own.
The rest? Well, I got lucky.
I was doing a run to get my first BODs of the day on my primary tailor/secondsary smith, who rides a giant beetle, at 10 AM eastern one morning - a time where I would usually be at work or in bed (depending on what day it was, back when I had that job).
A friend told me, just in passing, that they were heading to Tokuno; a house was about to fall. I'd not got anything worth much in previous IDOCs, such as the great house collapse, years ago, so I mainly went there to chat with them while he and a couple others grabbed stuff.
When the house fell, I just grabbed a few high-item-count, low weight, containers that had sat ignored for over 30 seconds AFTER the house fall. I managed to fill myself and my beetle, with no competition - and without even looking at the contents.
Out of room, I started dropping decorative plants and bonsai on the ground from one of the containers (there were some other things, including the container, I wanted to keep), and was able to grab a couple more containers.
After dropping about 90 plants, I ended up with
5 ethys (2 I wouldn't even be able to use for another 8 months)
all of the afore-mentioned vet reward statues (several of them 4th & 5th year)
3 or 4 deeded rewards (Swords, shields, etc.)
over 100k regs in deed form (enough to get my alchemist & scribe to GM)
and a number of other things (pieces from the evil item collection, etc.)
I've not done an IDOC since, and that was about 15-16 months ago.
One doesn't have to be rich, or even a veteran, to have a lot of vet rewards. One just has to be lucky, and know which ones to buy/trade/look for in collapsed houses, as opposed to actually using a reward choice.
Most of the established stuff, 5 year or less, a person should never actually use a reward for (with the exception of soulstones, if you really need one). A frugal player should be able to save up and buy any of the tradable 1st-5th rewards in a few months, and even a low-population shard like Lake Austin almost always has most of them for sale either on vendors, or via word of mouth. Even better is actually trading stuff with the word-of-mouth types for rewards - sometimes you have what they need, and a vet reward can be a lot cheaper acquired through a barter.
It's typically new additions, and the 6th & higher stuff, one has to get on your own (and even the existing stuff can be found occasionally). Hopefully, by the time a person has 12 & 24 "official" months (10-22 months of game play), they'll have learned this, and start saving choices for greater things.
Then, there's IDOCs - and no matter what you might hear, ones outside Fel & Luna can and often are worth going to, especially for those with less means, and no desire to "plot-grab". As my own experience shows - you only have to be lucky at one of them, ONCE.
