Dust to Dust

Shards of Glory, my guild on Butcherblock (formerly Highkeep) continues to work hard on leveling and fundraising for our guildhall. We have about 10 active members at the moment, so raiding is out of the question for us.

One of the things we've been doing to raise funds involves dust. Since Phritz is an alchemist, we've handed over all our dust to him, and he's making potions and poisons, for a very nice profit, since raiders use these items pretty heavily.

So, it was quite disappointing to read in the Test Notes:

Rare cure potions have been removed and standard cure potions have been upgraded to cure the appropriate levels of effects. This in turn should help reduce some of the demand for dusts.

As Tipa pointed out:

Raiders are thanking you. Note to self: Put all rare dusts on the market TONIGHT.

This will put a serious dent in our fundraising efforts. I'm getting tired of raiders getting all the love. I pay the same amount per month as any of them.

It's not any one thing. It's the pattern that raiders get the best of everything and those of us who don't raid four nights a week aren't considered at all.

Mind you, I like raiding, and I've been on several. But I can't and won't do it as a new part-time job. Others in my guild feel the same, and have been sought-after by raiders to fill important slots, just as I have. So I laugh at any attempt to call me gimp.

So here's the thing, a single named in Protector's Realm drops about 19 plat. Given that there's five of them, plus trash, that's about 100p for the night. There are repair costs, to be sure, but as a guild gets better they can cruise this zone in about an hour with minimal deaths.

That translates to 10 passes through PR to finance the purchase of the top-tier guildhall. 240 person hours. Pulling in plat at about 4p/hour. Is there any other activity in the game that comes even close to that? And that's completely ignoring the Fabled gear that's being dropped and used or transmuted.

This could result in a situation that was win-win for everyone, provided we non-raiders could make something that the raiders wanted to buy. That something is certainly not going to be jewelry or armor, since they are now into stuff that is much better than we can make. Most of them have their adept 3's now and are into Masters, so making spells isn't all that profitable either. And we're about to hit a new expansion that doesn't raise the level cap, so that means there will be little opportunity for sales of crafted armor, jewelry and weapons, except to alts.

What we're left with is consumables. And now they are going to reduce the demand for dust. Which we are sitting on a stockpile of. Sigh. I can even see the point. I don't think that this particular tweak is the problem, the problem is that raiders get too much money.

Make 'em farm or craft for money, like the rest of us.

Update: I chatted with a friend in Lineage, who says that Protectors Realm drops 120p minimum, sometimes 130p. And they can run it twice a week. It's worse than I thought.