Returning Player crafting questions.

[Dashiel]

I returned to UO briefly last year and worked on my fighting characters but I need to make some gold and would like to get my crafting account reactivated and making money. But, so much has changed that I now wonder which direction I should go. So I have a bunch of questions...

1. Is it still possible to sell enough crafting wares to bring in a decent income on Catskills? I'm able to do pretty much any type of crafter and have enough skills for Bowyer, Smith, Tinker, Carpenter, Tailor, Alchemist, Miner, Lumberjack already on characters. If I need other skills I'll just build them from scratch.

2. What investments do I need to make upfront on these characters to make skill gains quicker or profitability better? (soulforge, etc)

3. Is poisoning still a legit skill in the game? I used to make a decent amount of money selling DP kegs.

4. If you could just focus on one type of crafting to get your income stream started, what would it be, and what would you make and sell?

Thanks to anyone for any guidance you can provide. So much has changed (imbuing, etc) that I find myself feeling as lost as I did when I first started playing this game 20 years ago.

 

[Maldar]

I'm going to chime in here with my 2-cents' worth. The Rising Tide event has taught me one solid thing: I will never mine, lumberjack or hunt for leather again. The devs have the loot on merchant ships ramped up a bit more than it used to be, it seems. I have easily gotten MANY times more val ingots, for example, than I could have ever gotten mining blindly or even with spending points for mining maps. Same goes for leather and lumber. I suggest you concentrate on your tamer and buy a ship and sell the spoils on a vendor. I do, however, realize that preparing a ship for battle is costly and you may need to find a way to make money first. What I did was hunt leather and sell it to NPCs. In the beginning, I also checked NPC prices for arrows, bolts and ingots. You can sometimes find enough disparity in price to make buying from one NPC vendor and selling to another NPC vendor profitable. Just a month ago, I found someone had bought a ton of arrows from the Luna vendor, rather than shop around for the best price, and they had the price driven way up to 130+ gold/arrow. I ran around and bought up arrows from NPCs around 20-something gold each and brought them to the Luna NPC to sell. I made over 7-million gp that night doing that. Now in 22 years, that was the best trade difference I had ever run into and you will most likely never see that kind of return again, but you get the idea.

 

[Xris]

I returned to UO briefly last year and worked on my fighting characters but I need to make some gold and would like to get my crafting account reactivated and making money. But, so much has changed that I now wonder which direction I should go. So I have a bunch of questions...

1. Is it still possible to sell enough crafting wares to bring in a decent income on Catskills? I'm able to do pretty much any type of crafter and have enough skills for Bowyer, Smith, Tinker, Carpenter, Tailor, Alchemist, Miner, Lumberjack already on characters. If I need other skills I'll just build them from scratch.

2. What investments do I need to make upfront on these characters to make skill gains quicker or profitability better? (soulforge, etc)

3. Is poisoning still a legit skill in the game? I used to make a decent amount of money selling DP kegs.

4. If you could just focus on one type of crafting to get your income stream started, what would it be, and what would you make and sell?

Thanks to anyone for any guidance you can provide. So much has changed (imbuing, etc) that I find myself feeling as lost as I did when I first started playing this game 20 years ago.

1. I don't play Catskills but the answer is probably no. With legendary armor crafting is reduced to making filler pieces, luck pieces, and low end armor. Also lots of people buy there items on Atlantic (because it's the highest pop by far, which has any item you'd need)

2. You can use that new player token thing from the store to increase gains, and scrolls of alacrity.

3. You might make a little gold on cats with dp kegs, but the real bulk market is Atlantic (which you would have to compete with HUGE bulk dealers, and work the market)

4. My income stream has 0 to do with crafting. Powerscrolls, sots, reward turn ins, fighting high end monsters for drops. For the amount of work it takes to make 100m from crafting VS. Roof (or other high end mobs) is ridiculous. You can get lucky with drops and make hundreds of mils a week depending on how much you play. Crafting would take you forever. Make a tamer, sampire and invest in them, they will pay it off quickly.

 

[Xris]

And from someone who returned about a year ago, don't worry too much about gold. I've heard cats has an excellent and friendly community. There are people with unlimited gold now (which is a topic for a different thread). There are single pieces of armor that sells for multiple billions (platinum in UO gold now). Just enjoy your time playing, and do what you want. Of course you'll need gold to get items sometimes but you will earn as you hunt. Crafting is in rough shape right now. I use my crafters for repairs that's about it, maybe a sampire weap from time to time.

 

[celticus]

And from someone who returned about a year ago, don't worry too much about gold. I've heard cats has an excellent and friendly community. There are people with unlimited gold now (which is a topic for a different thread). There are single pieces of armor that sells for multiple billions (platinum in UO gold now). Just enjoy your time playing, and do what you want. Of course you'll need gold to get items sometimes but you will earn as you hunt. Crafting is in rough shape right now. I use my crafters for repairs that's about it, maybe a sampire weap from time to time.

Also, with a crafter you can make a luck suit and sell it, or at least you can try.

 

[The Doctor]

I returned to UO briefly last year and worked on my fighting characters but I need to make some gold and would like to get my crafting account reactivated and making money

, Since you have not activated the crafting account have you tried to log into it for free. With EJ you should be able to access all the characters on said account if it has been inactive for more than three months. You could do all your crafting for free in the shops and dual account to hand off items to your active account.

 

[Innoxicated]

You will def need the primary account handy, because the EJ will restrict you to only keeping enough bulk resources that you'll be able to carry. You have limited bank slots, so a stack of 60k leather, though one slot, will fall to the ground, assuming you could put it in the bank in the first place. You also cant use com deeds with EJ, and cannot log out with a loaded pack animal.

Definitely worth hoping on and having a look, but crafters have it especially rough on EJ accounts. And if you have a bank packed full from your previous time playing and crafting, you will be locked out of it.

If you have a real affinity for crafting, there are a few ways to make some money. You can craft commonly used slayer weapons, at reasonable cost for those players who have returned recently, or at more exorbitant prices for those wealthy enough to not mind paying and saving themselves the time to make them. Overcapped luck pieces would probably sell individually, or as a suit. Look for clean ssi jewels while playing on your fighter characters, as these most commonly drop from mid-level monsters. You could imbue these with +skills, hci/dci/di and probably sell them fairly easily.

You will need to add imbuing to you crafters as soon as possible. High end suits are not restricted to legendary loot, many sampires or other pvm melee templates use purely crafted suits to both help the pieces last longer and also making them easier to replace.

The problem there is most people craft their own gear, and most of these high end crafted suits are finely tuned to individual needs.


The flip side to everyone making their own equipment, is that runics are always in very high demand. My suggestion, if you really enjoy crafting, is use your crafters to fill BODs, get the runics (or the dyes for alchemy/cooking/inscription) and sell those. A good bit of money can be made that way!