How hard is it to come back?

[VisionAL]

Been gone for years. If I wanted to come back and get in to a crafter routine and sell pots and recall scrolls would I be able to get by ok or have things changed too much?

 

[Arch Magus]

If you already have a grasp of what you are doing, you should be just fine.

Welcome back!

 

[Arch Magus]

Let me elaborate a little by saying,

you could easily start your crafter with a swordsman onthe side.
work the swordsman a little so you can get leather and cloth.

I think you won't have any trouble at all doing what you want.

 

[Duskofdead]

Been gone for years. If I wanted to come back and get in to a crafter routine and sell pots and recall scrolls would I be able to get by ok or have things changed too much?

I'm 8 weeks back adn doing precisely what you want to do. And I'm doing fine. On a good Saturday I can even turn a few hundred k.

 

[VisionAL]

I'm 8 weeks back adn doing precisely what you want to do. And I'm doing fine. On a good Saturday I can even turn a few hundred k.

Thanks for the info! Do you have to setup in a vendor mall like I was reading about or do you just have your own little place?

 

[Duskofdead]

Thanks for the info! Do you have to setup in a vendor mall like I was reading about or do you just have your own little place?

My house is a totally normal house with four vendors in front. I can't stand malls... they look like Christmas Choirs to me when people have them all lined up, facing forward, with the same uniform on. It drives me nuts.

It is less eye-grabbing to just have a few vendors rather than a mall; however, as a newly returned player, it's not like you're going to have a house right in the middle of Luna anyway, which is virtually the only time someone would just "happen by and see your house" in all likelihood.

So, in any event, you will be advertising with runes. Once you get an established presence on your shard, you will be fine. Just expect to weather through a couple weeks of obscurity where the only people who visit your vendors are people who picked up your rune, and most of them won't buy something straight off. Once you have attracted the attention of people who regularly buy scrolls/potions/whatever you're selling, then you're good. You still have to advertise, but even on days you don't you will come back and find that things have been purchased.

Potions do really great at the moment, both because of the overpoweredness of greater cure spamming in PvP, the general usefulness of greater heal, and the fact that people can solo farm arties by spamming explosion potions made by a competent alchemist. I would advise, though, making your own tinker and lumberjack so that you can create your own potion kegs. It is VERY rare to find empty potion kegs for sale. (You might even consider selling them yourself once you get going!)

The problem with malls is... let's face it, someone's gotta stock all those vendors and then pay all the vendor fees everyday. My philosophy is maintain the absolute minimum number of vendors possible to hold all the things you want to sell. What's the sense in having 50 vendors of whom 43 are holding a ton of stuff that sits unsold for 3 months racking up vendor fees? Yet I see plenty of that. And I visit the same big vendorhouses often enough to have noticed that a lot of the items have sat there, at the same price, in the exact same location, for weeks/months. Having a huge wide variety of stock just to say you have a diverse vendor mall is pointless if it costs you your profit margin. I'd bet that the big majority of those vendorhouses are really making most if not all of their money on just a few items... either rares, arties or some kind of commodity people buy regularly (like ingots boards arrows potions whatever) and the rest is just bragging rights. (And expensive.)

 

[VisionAL]

What server are you on Dusk? I tried getting on Baja and almost every town is deserted I'd hate to create all new characters on Atlantic or something but I may need to do that.

 

[Duskofdead]

What server are you on Dusk? I tried getting on Baja and almost every town is deserted I'd hate to create all new characters on Atlantic or something but I may need to do that.

My advice, Vision, is to pick a sever "in the middle." There are some that are so deserted I wouldn't want to be there. But the thing that annoys me ist hat a lot of poeple who join on my shard, Napa, declare it "too dead" and immediately start talking about going to Atlantic or one of the East Coast shards that they've heard still have a lot of people.

I guess for one it annoys me because I like Napa and want to see it grow, and if people just want to join the 1 fullest shard only, then all the other shards are dead. For two it annoys me because even on fuller shards you are going to see 99% of the world totally depopulated 99% of the time, besides Luna. That's just the way the game is. And the town invasions have made the older cities location non-grata in terms of players hanging out to do their banking or purchasing or stabling or item dumping after a hunt. (Good job on that one EA.) People who join UO expecting to see teeming throngs of players everywhere are simply in for disappointment, period-- though I guess it shocks some people to come back and see how little any players use the cities or dungeons and they assume they must merely be on one of the dead shards. The truth is you're unlikely to run into another player at any given hour in any city other than Luna, and in any open-world location other than their house or Ilshenar.

The reason I would also dissuade you from joining a fuller shard is because of more competition. More people camping resource locations (in alchemy's case, Mage vendors.) More GM alchemists. More vendorhouses selling alchemy stuff. I am, as far as I can tell, the only house selling alchemy items in Homare-jima. (I haven't seen them all but I'm certainly the only one within 8-10 screens of the moongate.) I undercut Luna, advertise my house with runes, and do pretty well. You obviously don't want an empty shard (no market), but on a full one, I would imagine kegs sit on vendors eating vendor fees longer... because just so many darn houses are well stocked vendorhouses and there are more suppliers of everything.

 

[Fresley]

Been gone for years. If I wanted to come back and get in to a crafter routine and sell pots and recall scrolls would I be able to get by ok or have things changed too much?

Coming back is easy. Quitting? Now thats another story.

 

[Dragonchilde]

Coming back is easy. Quitting? Now thats another story.

Isn't THAT the truth?

I just came back a couple of months ago.

I have several thriving characters, a couple k in the bank, and an 18 x 18 house already.

Not hard at all!

 

[Cailleach]

If anyone is heading to Europa, feel free to look me up. Our guild will help you get started

A word to potion vendors. You spend ages making potions in bottles/kegs. You spend ages making kegs. What do your customers do when they buy your kegs? Why, they put the potion straight back into bottles! Cut out the middle man, sell pots in bottles, save everyone time, energy, resources and storage

 

[Basara]

If anyone is heading to Europa, feel free to look me up. Our guild will help you get started

A word to potion vendors. You spend ages making potions in bottles/kegs. You spend ages making kegs. What do your customers do when they buy your kegs? Why, they put the potion straight back into bottles! Cut out the middle man, sell pots in bottles, save everyone time, energy, resources and storage

Actually, kegs are much more convenient for the potions used by the plant-growers, IIRC. They can reuse the same bottles over and over. Plus, not everyone tosses their empties to the ground. Not to mention the COST of those empty potions. About the only way to CHEAPLY get empties is to buy the junk lessers in town, and put THEM into kegs to throw away, to reuse the bottles...

 

[jelinidas]

Remember you can get your old account back if you remember the log in info. I left for several years and came back to built chars and full bank boxes!

 

[Duskofdead]

I do OCCASIONALLY sell potions in the bottles. Unfortunately, even the cheapest bottles I've found on my shard, still increase the cost of selling 100 by 700 gold. Not a "huge deal", but it's one of the reasons I've avoided doing it entirely. Plus some people like to keep the kegs in their house and just reuse the same 10-20 bottles.