September 2014

Jury Duty

stargrace September 28, 2014 2 Comments

At level 30 you’ll be presented with a short series of quests from the honor NPC that awards you with the ability to serve on jury duty. Perform this task 5 times and you’ll get a cloak opened up to you. So far I’ve served on jury duty twice, with my third time upcoming at the time of this post. Jury duty is neat and annoying all at once. The quests to qualify were simple enough, you get to solve a murder mystery and do a bit of running around.

Then comes the longest part of jury duty, the waiting. You automatically wait in a queue (which you can turn off in options by auto declining jury duty) with your peers while players go to trial. There’s even a courthouse, where others can watch the proceedings (in fact it’s bugged right now, if you sit in a pew you won’t get kicked from the AFK timer).

A queue for jury duty only moves as fast or slow as the server does. On the weekend I’m often at 1500-1800 players ahead of me, which can easily take 8-12 hours to reach the front of. If you’re used to shorter play sessions (I tend to semi afk while I farm and do things on my other monitor) you may not ever see jury duty until the queue of jury members drops a bit. It’s also based on how many people happen to have crime points and how many of that group is engaging in PvP and getting killed. Remember the only time you’ll actually get sent to prison is if you have 50+ crime points and you get killed in PvP. I’m not a fan of this system because it promotes players to using lower level characters to grief, where they’re safe within the beginner zones. Evetually they’ll earn their 3,000 infamy and become pirates, but it takes some time.

The jury duty process itself is pretty neat. You’re presented with a screen of infractions from the player, complete with their personal details such as how much time they have spent in jail total, how many times they have appeared before the court, what guild they’re in, etc. All of these details help determine what judgement you want to pass. When the jury members have been ported to their seats, the defendant has time to voice their case. Most of the time it’s just simple jokes or insults because hey this is an MMO after all, but every so often you’ll recognize that a player is innocent. You’ll be presented with a selection of judgement options to choose from, make your selection, hear the verdict, and then get ported back to where ever you came from. Pretty simple.

The penalties for crimes are pretty lenient. Pirates who have been there many times before may face longer jail times (the most I have seen someone sentenced to so far has been 4 hours) but over all I like the system. Plus it’s just plain fun.

Sailing on a Clipper

stargrace September 25, 2014 5 Comments

Yesterday I took a break from doing trade runs, spent pretty much all of the money I had saved up, and decided to craft a clipper (pictured above). Instead of spending my gilda which I have been painstakingly saving up, I went to the auction house and bought the design for roughly 40 gold. I had already saved up the components for the fabric, iron, and lumber packs, so all that was left was placing a ship dock out in the water (cost is 10g plus it requires 10 iron ingots and 10 lumber) and to complete construction. Takes a handful of labor, and then tada, you have a ship.

I also customized it with the guild logo for Greymoon Trading Company. When I was done with customization I decided to purchase one of the appearance items from the market, and created a matching shirt.

Today I’m hoping to get back to trade pack runs and make up the coin that I spent yesterday creating the ship. I haven’t done a lot of leveling (except leveling through crafting) and it’s my weekend so I have some extended time to play.

I’m still really enjoying my time in ArcheAge, which I know is easy to say considering the game is still fresh and new. I have a feeling that a lot of people will grow frustrated with the 30+ game when it turns to pvp more than anything else, but I’m prepared for that. I’m hoping one day to afford a 24×24 and actually find a spot to place it, but in the mean time I’m content with exploring the world, doing trade runs, and generally having a good time.

As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!

A 16×16 Farm

stargrace September 24, 2014 No Comments

Even though I spent a pretty sum building my first house (it requires 2 stone packs & 1 lumber pack) I decided that the land would be of better use if I had a 16×16 farm, instead of a house. I decided to take the house down and place my 16×16 farm field instead. I also wanted to create the farmer’s workstation, but I didn’t want to lose the small farm on the right hand side beside my large farm. My alt (I have 4 characters, 2 of each faction) had her 8×8 farm plan still, so what I did was sold the large farm to her, then used the large farm to craft the farmer’s workstation. She placed it, and since all of your characters can access one another’s homes / farms without having to fiddle with permissions, I’m set. I have no house, but that’s alright. I still don’t own any land on the West, but it’s not a big deal.

One thing I learned is that if you’re looking for furniture items, check Mirage Isle first. Chances are those housing items you see on the broker are vendor sold. That was the case with the fencing in the screenshot above, along with other house items like plushies, candles, furniture, and there are also a lot of recipes for sale. Can’t find what you’re looking for? Try going inside of each of the display homes, they have all sorts of goods that show up as for sale when you approach them. Glad I figured this out, I honestly had no idea and was about to buy a very over priced bed from the AH.

My Daggerspell went from level 20 to 26 without doing a single quest. Instead I spent yesterday focusing on farming and crafting (processing materials, mostly). I’m eager to save up for a clipper (and to get it built). I have the cloth portion taken care of, but stone has been hard to come by as of late. Unless you camp right beside the iron nodes, I haven’t seen too much in the wild lately.

So it has been a lot of crafting, farming, and more crafting. A perfect way to spend a gaming session, if I do say so myself. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

So You Want to Run Trade Packs

stargrace September 23, 2014 1 Comment

One of the best ways to make money in ArcheAge if you’re not wanting to focus on PvP is to run trade packs. Those who are interested in PvP can make a lot of coin by intercepting trade pack runners from opposing continents (or if you’re a pirate), but that’s a post for another time. Anyway. Trade packs. There’s a lot more involved than simply making a specialty pack and delivering it, at least if you want to get your monies worth from the pack. There are a few starter pack runs you do to get your donkey and eventually your large scare crow, but none of those reward big money (especially since so many others are doing the same run).

I’m going to talk about my own experiences here, and yours may vary. First, my housing zones. I own a house in Arcum Iris, which is great because there’s a specialty workbench there. It allows me to craft two things currently. One uses 60 turmeric and 50 dried flowers, the other uses 50 dried flowers and 30 eggs. Now, you get paid based on a few factors. One is the distance you have traveled. Since you can’t port or use gates or other means of instant transportation ideally you’re looking for carriage rides, blimp rides, a fast ship, or as a least resort, your donkey. If you’re just looking to do a handful of runs a week, the donkey option isn’t so bad. You’re not going to be incredibly wealthy, but you’ll make more than enough for yourself.

You’ll also earn more depending on what sort of zone you drop off at. I tend to look for PvP zones that are in peace time. That includes Cinderstone and Sanddeep  on the West, and Ynystere on the East. I also have a non-pvp alternative if the zones are not in peace time. You CAN also go during times of turmoil but I wouldn’t suggest doing that unless you are well prepared.

On the East, carriage rides are in abundance. You’ll want to use those to get to where you need to go. Link shows all of the carriage and airship rides on that continent. On the West you’ll find a surplus of airships. Remember the goal is to try to get to where you’re going in the shortest amount of time possible (and alive). The more people who are dropping off your particular product at that destination to the gold trader, the less value your items will have. I get on average 5g-8g for a 20 minute walk, so I try to run 4 trade packs a day on average.

There are of course other ways of doing this. You can go cross continents and trade to alts if you want (I have not attempted this). You can go with a guild outing. You don’t NEED to do trade packs at all, but it’s a fun relaxing way to make some extra coin.

I’ve dedicated portions of my farm to each type of trade pack I want to make (for now), to earn some money to afford supplies for a clipper. Once I have the coin for that I’ll probably swap the crops around some. I also have a few spare items growing, like yata (trying to get them to breed) and pine in the hopes of RNG shining down on me and giving me a thunderstruck tree (I doubt it).

Have no idea where your trade pack can be turned in at? Open your map, go to merchants (make sure all is clicked) and put a check by gold trader. That’s the person you’re looking for in whatever zone you want to deliver at. Remember, generic trade packs don’t have a quest. You just make a specialty pack (at a workbench, you can also mark these on the map) and pick a trader to deliver it to. If you don’t want gold, and you want tokens or resources, you will need to look into cross continent trading.

A few other handy posts I read up on before making my trade pack exploration runs. Remember most of the information is actually NOT for the NA version of the game, so it may be outdated, and wrong. For example the pack values, and the names of the packs.

• Commerce Guide
• Trade Routes – The Risky Road to Fame and Fortune

Have fun, and good luck!

Time for Trade Packs

stargrace September 22, 2014 No Comments

In ArcheAge the economy is mostly player driven. People who like to kill mobs but don’t like to craft can put their goods up on the broker and those who adore crafting will scoop them up and create items with them and put them back on the broker. Or maybe you like to craft, and don’t like to adventure, so you buy items off of the broker that require adventuring to obtain, and then you craft those and put them back up on the broker after to sell. Or maybe you enjoy both. Whatever your preference, there’s something to do. One of the main money makers in-game is to create and deliver trade packs. The amount of coin you earn back varies depending on the zone you deliver the packs to. Each zone has a specialty pack that you can create and drop off at a Blue Salt NPC in a neighbouring town (you can’t drop it off where it was created). The less supplies that are being dropped off to that NPC, the better. Of course more dangerous zones are worth more money. I wasn’t interested in delving into PvP territory or pirate land, so I decided to craft from Marianople (cloth), and then deliver it to Cinderstone Moore during their peace time which lasted for an hour. Walking with a donkey took me approximately 12 minutes to complete the rout, with a few minutes to spare waiting for gate to pop back up. Then I repeated this a few times.

Each pack I turned in netted me 5g and some change, which I’ll get tomorrow morning after 22 hours has passed. Once Cinderstone turned into a War zone (ie: PvP) I decided to drop off a few packs in Solzreed Peninsula but the reward wasn’t quite as good (it’s not a PvP zone). In the mean time I’m hoping Sanddeep turns to war (and then peace time) so that I can drop off a few packs that way too. It’s brainless and time consuming, but a good way to make some coin for future adventures and gear.

Plus the view is just absolutely amazing.