FAQ & MISC. INFORMATION
Q: Why did you make this/what does this offer that other guides don't?
A: I actually got inspired by Throatspiders guide
here! But I always found it a bit lacking. The biggest problems I had with it were:
1. It was only based on one run, so luck was a huge factor
2. It isn't really updated, so many of the places have changed, either gotten better or worse
3. You aren't going to be auto selling familiars, swipp items, apparel, and some battle items generally.
4. It did not take into account uncommon drops, which I believe may not show how good some places are where the uncommon drops are particularly good (ex. capes and the morganite jewelery are incredibly good to sell, and are specific to certain areas)
So, I wanted to set out and create a loot guide that solved these problems, and also just calculated a bunch of different statistics both for my personal curiosity, and to really compare the different places on very small levels, depending on what a person may need when grinding. Someone who isn't looking to sell swipp items, for example, might not want to farm someplace where 70% of the profit comes from swipp items.
Q: How do you calculate AH values?
A: Well that's the million dollar question. Auction House values are CONSTANTLY fluctuating, so there's no way i'm going to be able to keep up with hundreds of items down to the eact treasure, however that's not really my goal.
For most items, I went to the AH at the time of data collection, looked at the lowest values (counting bulk prices), and then reduced that total by about 10% to get the total you see on the spreadsheet. I do the undercutting both to take into account the AH tax and to try and account for a potential drastic lowering in price due to people undercutting in the AH. So, in reality, you could actually probably make a lot more treasure than the values on the spreadsheet- but I wanted to be safe.
There are a few exceptions for this. The first was food. People don't buy food for the specific food items (save, of course, for swipp items), so for any non-swipp food items, I use a treasure per food point system. The values for this however I got using the same type of system as above.
The prices are as follows:
Meat, Seafood, and Insects: 23 per FP
Plants: 12 per FP
Next, might and acuity fragments that are worth more than Autoselling fluctuate so much just taking one example is not enough. For this, for about a week or so I took prices once/twice a day and averaged them out. I'm not gonna list all them here, but you'll see it on the spreadsheet. I recommend waiting on selling these till they are higher than the prices listed on the spreadsheet, as you can often find a single might fragment can shift 5k or more in price between days depending on availability.
Materials or Others that are not swipp items I list the AH price for their autosell price. This is because these items only have two uses- selling to crim or making baldwin goo. You are most likely going to have bulk of these items however, so selling them on the AH consistently is incredibly difficult and probably not worth it. I also do this for treasure only chest items. For chest items with treasure and items, I subtract the AH value of the items from the AH value of the chest for the AH value. Finally, I do not count gems.
I plan to update all of these totals once a month, the week right before festivals.
Q: What isn't counted on the spreadsheets?
A: I don't count unhatched eggs because you can get a good spread of them in each area, and they are just so rare that they would throw off the totals. I think I got one unhatched egg in the literal 22 hours of farming I put into the original spreadsheet.
I also do not count skin chest, mostly because I just can't get a decent consistent AH value for farmable skins, and because I have no idea what I would list the AS total as. They are just weird and confusing and also fairly consistent across all areas like the eggs are.
Q: What build do you use?
A: I use 3 dragons with all the same build:
129 Str/13 Vit/50 Qck
Shred/Eliminate/Rally/Sap
3 Berserkers
2 Ambushes
However, you probably don't need Rally or Sap unless you farm Rainsong Forest, Mire, Kelp Beds, and/or Golem Workshop.
Q: What happens when there is an update?
A: Depends on the type of update!
For certain mobs no longer dropping certain items, I just delete the item off the listing.
If certain mobs gain a new drop, i'm just going to continue doing runs, only now including the new items. This isn't a perfect solution, but it's not worth redoing all the runs just to include one new item.
For bigger updates, like new mobs, I will redo ALL of the runs if there are 5 or less runs. Any more and I'm just going to just add the new drops, since with enough runs it will slowly even out as certain items appear more and others appear less due to the change.
I will also be doing analysis's of big updates!
Q: How does festival currency play into area values?
A: As of this time of writing, usually festial currency is worth about 1000 treasure. So, what you want to do to figure out the best area to farm in is use Maki's Festival Coliseum guide
here, divide the currency per hour by 2, multiply that by 1000, and add it to the area totals. The highest area total is the best place to farm!
Just because a place has a higher chance of currency does not make it the best place to farm- if you are making more treasure farming, you could buy the festival currency with the extra treasure you are making.
The only time this might not hold true is if the best place has very few skin chest drops. In that case, go with the 2nd or 3rd highest total that has good skin chest drops.
Q: Want to help?
A: While I want to keep the runs to only myself ...running them to try and keep reaction times and lag as consistent as possible, there are a few ways you can help!
The first is please let me know if AH values of anything have drastically changed. If there's a huge change, I want to have that recorded even if it's not around the time I would be checking.
Going off of that, during the week before the festival, if you want to help me look up AH totals, that would be greatly appreciated! You can just post the totals using the system I described above for calculating the AH value!
Finally, please let me know of any spelling or math errors on the sheet!
Thank you for your support :D
