**I was originally going to post this under the skirmishes tab, but decided that is is much more general, as in this, I speak about the Auction House, the Book Quests, Cosmetic Equipment and suchm and believed, it was more general then just the skirmish forum. Please do not read this if you feel you do not want to, it's fairly long, at least for my posts, and therefore has a larger then regular chance to aggravate or irritate you, which I apologize for in advance, in case such an unfortunate event should occur.**
Hello Forum, I recently discovered something that a few people are telling me is a "Money secret", which not only does not seem very secret to me, but achievable by everybody.
Not long ago (Maybe a week) I had a look at the Cosmetic vendor, outside South Bree, in his (or possibly her) skirmish camp. I was not very interested in much, except for the Top Hat. (Which I am happily wearing now)
***Not Particularly Important, read on if you feel strapped for time, and have a good day ^^***
***I was particularly keen on this particular hat, and decided it looked so awesome on my Hobbit that a few days after this whole scenario, I ended skirmishing for a matching coat, dying that olive, bought some matching gloves, dyed those olive, and skirmished again for nice (On my small hobbit feet) gigantic (Biggest I've seen in the game so far to be precist) wooly boots, which I did not dye because they were so cosy. This of course is irrelevant.***
I saw that it was a meager 308 skirmish marks, and thought "Woohoo, great! I'll get started!", until I realized that the secondary marks needed were in fact, from a skirmish I had never heard of.
Not only did nobody in my kinship, Mirkwood, Moria, or anywhere else in fact explain what it was, everybody that I talked to seemed to have no knowledge of how to obtain these marks.
All fine so far, I did some research, and found that these dropped like all regional skirmish marks from particular skirmish(es), this one being a single skirmish, Rift Rescue. To run this skirmish, you must have completed Vol.3 B.1 Chp.8... "Great!" I thought, "I've already done everything in Vol.2 up until a couple of the epilogue quests, I'll get started on Vol.3!" and so I did.
During running around to all the rangers, I remember when speaking to Butterman (I believe that's his name)in the Prancing Pony, I just pondered around the auction house for about 10 minutes. This is what I thought was hysterical.
Eventually I decided to check out the cosmetic section, for sake's sake, though I would never pay for anything, not even a nice tophat, not when I found out it was part of the book quests. (I personally enjoy the book quests alot, but that's just me)
I saw two Tophats, from different sellers, both selling these for 6g 999s 99c each.
I thought these two were off their chairs! At first I wondered what they possibly could be thinking!
Upon further searching, I found that the Cape and Chest you can also buy with these marks, (Their names had something to do with flames) were also being sold at fairly high prices (5g to 9g each) and were not only less marks then the tophat (The tophat being 7 of these Rift Rescue only marks) but more then half in one case! (The chest being 5, the cloak being 3, if memory serves me well)
I decided to at least finish the instance to see what all the fuss was about.
Low and behold, the book quest gave me 2 Rift Rescue only marks for completing the instance, and I skipped BOTH optional encounters along the way. I went back, and in four runs I picked up the 5 needed marks, doing every encounter I found along the way. This is not a long instance, I remember a wave, attacking a large "Torch" (which looked more like a volanco) that was blocking mine and my buddy NPC ranger's path, him continuing on, me following, Watching for more waves. Two more waves came, and inbetween waves I would hit the torch once, adding to two total hits in order to "kill" the big unfriendly volcano torch. Then three waves, and as such, three hits, and so forth.
After this, I was able to take care of any encounters I felt like taking care of. Then I could take on the boss. All in all one of the much shorter skirmishes in my opinion, it took me MAYBE an hour to do all five runs of this, and that was while I was chatting to my kinship, and eating a bowl of peanuts. While no large hindrances in any way, I was not only not focusing on DPS, but I don't do great damage, and I'm fine with admitting it-(I'm a Burglar :P). Therefore I personally don't believe I'm very fast when it comes to doing damage, I wasn't trying to finish these as fast as possible, and I was distracted for at least 20% of the time.
As such, I found this a very short, and even easy skirmish to accomplish, the boss hurts a little with his fire, but as long as I save *maybe* an evasion for him, I'm fine. Of course, I can just concentrate a little and instead of blowing a 5 minute cooldown run him into the trap that Sir ranger friend sets down (Would make more sense if you had done the skirmish :)) and really I consider Rift Rescue to be a nice, fast-paced relaxed skirmish.
"Either I'm incredibly lucky, or something isn't right here." I thought to myself.
I asked around, this time with the higher-leveled and more experienced of my kinship, and found they drop just as commonly as other certain skirmish only marks, though somebody (who I will not name) tried to argue that they drop less, because you have less choice in what skirmish you are able to choose from...
Anyway, while I've found no evidence to detest that these drop fairly easy, I have no concrete proof that everybody I talked to in-game and out was not either lying or wrong, and that I wasn't incredibly lucky.
So, back to my main point.
I went back for an hour or so, and tested my luck again. No dice. I got around a mark a run, and decided that the day after I would try again for an hour, possibly two, and see if it was just me. Still nothing. Around a mark a run. I'm sitting on quite a few marks, and even if I was generous in my sales, and sold at half the price of the people selling these goods bought with these rift rescue marks I would have around 20g, maybe a couple more.
What Astounds me, is how mind-bogglingly easy it is to pick up these marks. I don't know who buys these things for such high prices, because they've been there for at least four days now, or so far as I've been checking them, and different sellers are sometimes up there, sometimes the same ones. I've seen a couple get sold, at least a couple that were set to 48 hours, and came down around 6~ hours later.
I'd imagine that anybody who was 65 would just go and do the book quests if they wanted something like this that badly, and that anybody who hadn't reached the level cap wouldn't be able to afford something so extraordinarily pricey. I understand it's completely possible for someone leveling to be careful with their money, and sell the right things doing whatever, and reach that much money quite easily.
But it's not exactly a small amount of money, with two tophats, two cloaks/hauberks of the flaming deep (Unsure on name) on my server I could buy a Scroll of Empowerment, or failing that, A symbol of Cerleinamor-(Not sure how to spell that, the blue symbols that are used in Second Age legendary creation) and still have a little change left over.
Has anybody else checked this out? Is this the case on your server?
Please don't get me wrong, terrific members of the forums, this is NOT a complaint, I'm simply curious, maybe very much so, on how something that seems fairly easily to get, could be worth so much. I've been away from the game for awhile now, and reached level 65 barely two weeks ago, and am definitely NOT up to scratch with what everything is worth.
I may have a basic understanding, such as a second age weapon for 10g is an absolute bargain, and that a scroll of delving isn't worth 150g, but I don't REALLY know exactly how much 10g is worth, but that's not really my point. My point is that the knowledge of how much a gold is worth now doesn't seem to fit in well with these particular cosmetic items.
If anybody sells/has seen these being sold and knows ANYTHING at all that I don't, I would love to be enlightened, thank you.
I understand that was a long post, and I thank you for bearing with me until the end, have a great day everybody :).
Hello Forum, I recently discovered something that a few people are telling me is a "Money secret", which not only does not seem very secret to me, but achievable by everybody.
Not long ago (Maybe a week) I had a look at the Cosmetic vendor, outside South Bree, in his (or possibly her) skirmish camp. I was not very interested in much, except for the Top Hat. (Which I am happily wearing now)
***Not Particularly Important, read on if you feel strapped for time, and have a good day ^^***
***I was particularly keen on this particular hat, and decided it looked so awesome on my Hobbit that a few days after this whole scenario, I ended skirmishing for a matching coat, dying that olive, bought some matching gloves, dyed those olive, and skirmished again for nice (On my small hobbit feet) gigantic (Biggest I've seen in the game so far to be precist) wooly boots, which I did not dye because they were so cosy. This of course is irrelevant.***
I saw that it was a meager 308 skirmish marks, and thought "Woohoo, great! I'll get started!", until I realized that the secondary marks needed were in fact, from a skirmish I had never heard of.
Not only did nobody in my kinship, Mirkwood, Moria, or anywhere else in fact explain what it was, everybody that I talked to seemed to have no knowledge of how to obtain these marks.
All fine so far, I did some research, and found that these dropped like all regional skirmish marks from particular skirmish(es), this one being a single skirmish, Rift Rescue. To run this skirmish, you must have completed Vol.3 B.1 Chp.8... "Great!" I thought, "I've already done everything in Vol.2 up until a couple of the epilogue quests, I'll get started on Vol.3!" and so I did.
During running around to all the rangers, I remember when speaking to Butterman (I believe that's his name)in the Prancing Pony, I just pondered around the auction house for about 10 minutes. This is what I thought was hysterical.
Eventually I decided to check out the cosmetic section, for sake's sake, though I would never pay for anything, not even a nice tophat, not when I found out it was part of the book quests. (I personally enjoy the book quests alot, but that's just me)
I saw two Tophats, from different sellers, both selling these for 6g 999s 99c each.
I thought these two were off their chairs! At first I wondered what they possibly could be thinking!
Upon further searching, I found that the Cape and Chest you can also buy with these marks, (Their names had something to do with flames) were also being sold at fairly high prices (5g to 9g each) and were not only less marks then the tophat (The tophat being 7 of these Rift Rescue only marks) but more then half in one case! (The chest being 5, the cloak being 3, if memory serves me well)
I decided to at least finish the instance to see what all the fuss was about.
Low and behold, the book quest gave me 2 Rift Rescue only marks for completing the instance, and I skipped BOTH optional encounters along the way. I went back, and in four runs I picked up the 5 needed marks, doing every encounter I found along the way. This is not a long instance, I remember a wave, attacking a large "Torch" (which looked more like a volanco) that was blocking mine and my buddy NPC ranger's path, him continuing on, me following, Watching for more waves. Two more waves came, and inbetween waves I would hit the torch once, adding to two total hits in order to "kill" the big unfriendly volcano torch. Then three waves, and as such, three hits, and so forth.
After this, I was able to take care of any encounters I felt like taking care of. Then I could take on the boss. All in all one of the much shorter skirmishes in my opinion, it took me MAYBE an hour to do all five runs of this, and that was while I was chatting to my kinship, and eating a bowl of peanuts. While no large hindrances in any way, I was not only not focusing on DPS, but I don't do great damage, and I'm fine with admitting it-(I'm a Burglar :P). Therefore I personally don't believe I'm very fast when it comes to doing damage, I wasn't trying to finish these as fast as possible, and I was distracted for at least 20% of the time.
As such, I found this a very short, and even easy skirmish to accomplish, the boss hurts a little with his fire, but as long as I save *maybe* an evasion for him, I'm fine. Of course, I can just concentrate a little and instead of blowing a 5 minute cooldown run him into the trap that Sir ranger friend sets down (Would make more sense if you had done the skirmish :)) and really I consider Rift Rescue to be a nice, fast-paced relaxed skirmish.
"Either I'm incredibly lucky, or something isn't right here." I thought to myself.
I asked around, this time with the higher-leveled and more experienced of my kinship, and found they drop just as commonly as other certain skirmish only marks, though somebody (who I will not name) tried to argue that they drop less, because you have less choice in what skirmish you are able to choose from...
Anyway, while I've found no evidence to detest that these drop fairly easy, I have no concrete proof that everybody I talked to in-game and out was not either lying or wrong, and that I wasn't incredibly lucky.
So, back to my main point.
I went back for an hour or so, and tested my luck again. No dice. I got around a mark a run, and decided that the day after I would try again for an hour, possibly two, and see if it was just me. Still nothing. Around a mark a run. I'm sitting on quite a few marks, and even if I was generous in my sales, and sold at half the price of the people selling these goods bought with these rift rescue marks I would have around 20g, maybe a couple more.
What Astounds me, is how mind-bogglingly easy it is to pick up these marks. I don't know who buys these things for such high prices, because they've been there for at least four days now, or so far as I've been checking them, and different sellers are sometimes up there, sometimes the same ones. I've seen a couple get sold, at least a couple that were set to 48 hours, and came down around 6~ hours later.
I'd imagine that anybody who was 65 would just go and do the book quests if they wanted something like this that badly, and that anybody who hadn't reached the level cap wouldn't be able to afford something so extraordinarily pricey. I understand it's completely possible for someone leveling to be careful with their money, and sell the right things doing whatever, and reach that much money quite easily.
But it's not exactly a small amount of money, with two tophats, two cloaks/hauberks of the flaming deep (Unsure on name) on my server I could buy a Scroll of Empowerment, or failing that, A symbol of Cerleinamor-(Not sure how to spell that, the blue symbols that are used in Second Age legendary creation) and still have a little change left over.
Has anybody else checked this out? Is this the case on your server?
Please don't get me wrong, terrific members of the forums, this is NOT a complaint, I'm simply curious, maybe very much so, on how something that seems fairly easily to get, could be worth so much. I've been away from the game for awhile now, and reached level 65 barely two weeks ago, and am definitely NOT up to scratch with what everything is worth.
I may have a basic understanding, such as a second age weapon for 10g is an absolute bargain, and that a scroll of delving isn't worth 150g, but I don't REALLY know exactly how much 10g is worth, but that's not really my point. My point is that the knowledge of how much a gold is worth now doesn't seem to fit in well with these particular cosmetic items.
If anybody sells/has seen these being sold and knows ANYTHING at all that I don't, I would love to be enlightened, thank you.
I understand that was a long post, and I thank you for bearing with me until the end, have a great day everybody :).