Enough Money from Playing Normally

In the weeks following the loot scaling update, I'd often heard people say that just playing the game normally gave a player enough money to get by on the basics. By contrast, I'd often find myself farming just to be able to afford skills and I often hear others say the same.

Faced with these two disparate view points, I thought I'd sit down and measure actual gold income compared with expenditure methodically. To do this I created a new character with the view of taking him through every mission and quest in a single campaign - Nightfall was chosen simply because dervish was the primary class that my account was missing.

Initially I set out with the following rules:

• No access to any funds or items obtained from other character
  Reason: A new player wouldn’t have access to these funds
  
• No Farming!
  Reason: The point of the experiment is to determine whether a player gets enough money without farming.
  
• All primary and secondary quests completed within Nightfall
  Reason: The full campaign should be complete
  
• No player to player trade
  Reason: Finding bargains or suckers relies on luck and factors outside the game environment
  
• Always play with a full party
  Reason: While many parts of the game are easily completed with smaller parties, it does not reflect the difficulty or rewards of the game as designed.
  
• Always use equipment of a level appropriate for the area.
  Reason: While many parts of the game are easily completed with substandard equipment, it does not reflect the difficulty or rewards of the game as designed. This does not include any vanity items. Pickup/collector items should be used when they function as well as the crafter equipment, and only when they don’t should items/armour be crafted.
  
• Pick up and sell everything to the merchant except materials needed for crafting
  Reason: Self evident. All items should be identified prior to selling from Kourna onwards.
  
• Do not use preorder items
  Reason: Not available to most players.
  
• No cheating through ferries etc
  Reason: Whilst the ability to exploit a game hole is there, it does not reflect the difficulty or rewards of the game as designed.
  
• Hero points should be used where possible
  Reason: Self evident.

At the end of each play session, I would record my character's financial position and any expenses he had. I started recording gold incomes from drops at the start, however this quickly became tiresome so I dropped that off (there are n-1 degrees of freedom, so the income figure can be calculated based on the data presented, if desired). I opted instead for just noting money "boons", such as opening the keyless chests or salvaging gems from daggers.

Early on in the experiment, I found myself unable to continue without breaking at least one of the rules I had set for myself. I had completed the Istan area and yet did not have enough resources to obtain collector/crafter level equipment or runes/insignias, so I was left with a choice of which rule to break:

• Stay in Istan and farm until basic equipment had been purchased
• Continue on with substandard equipment
• Take out a loan and continue

I opted for the last option.

And here are the results!
For those that understandably don’t want to read a ledger detailing the assets of a guildwars character, here’s a summary.
After completing all quests and missions within nightfall including getting a protectors title, I was 46770g in debt.

Whist 46k might seem like a lot of debt, most of the expenses were frontloaded due to the costs of setting up heroes, getting armour sets and whatnot. The amount of debt was definitely going down fast towards the end of the game, and if I had taken the character into Factions it would have disappeared very quickly.

Before starting this experiment, I firmly believed that playing normally gave nowhere near enough gold to equip a character with the basics needed to play, but after I’ll freely admit that that stance is wrong. By the same token, I still believe that saying a player can get everything they need by playing normally is also incorrect, and that the truth lies somewhere between.

If pressed for a new thesis statement, I would say that playing normally provides more than enough gold to fund an established character, but significant amount of farming or borrowing would be required to establish a new one.




A few caveats that may influence interpretations:

• I started with UAX, and as such was able to change hero builds on demand. A newer play would have had to spend significantly more money to gain skills for heroes.
• I knew all the quests before hand and as such did them in an order that minimised the number of times I had to enter zones and the number of creatures I had to kill.
• I reached Kourna around the time that GW:EN was release and as such the runes and material costs were quite high
• Having only 4 secondaries unlocked and only a handful of secondary skills, the character was far from being "PvE Ready".

I don't farm. I only play. I managed to get all the skills I want, and at least two sets of 15k armour on most of my primary characters, as well as all of them equipped with greens. I have more than what I need, and HEAPS of what I want and have never farmed once in my life. I have 13 characters in total, all who have greens and have had no issues getting them by.

I think it depends on the individual player and what they do with the drops they get. Your thesis may agree to your play style, but such sweeping generalizations cannot be applied to all GW players.

BTW, how does one get in debt in a game? :S

i cleared my account 2 or 3 months ago, all money, mods, armor, chars. after playing through a bit of tyria, i bought 1k armor and runed all my heroes (not with sup vigors or anything, but it was sufficient)
if you aren't whipped on getting full runes and perf weapons for everything, you have PLENTY of gold just playing.

Very, very well done. I commend you on your fortitude, I know I would have said screw it and given up quickly.

That is a very interesting outcome you had. I would have thought that the game would have provided for the neccessary expenses, but you certainly proved that incorrect, at least in your case. And that doesn't mention the fact that after you played all the missions with a masters reward (As per your blog postings) and did all the secondary missions, you were still in a pretty good amount of debt, especially for a new player.

However, I wonder if you had played through Prophicies or Factions and you didn't have to outfit heros, if that figure would have been more in keeping with the arguement that people could pay all their expenses just from playing through the game?

im actually surprised by this, i believed that playing through the game, would net you enough gold to create 1 set of armor, and 2 sets of weapons crafted (though good drops will come and expect you to keep them creating more sets).

Also, i think what set you in debt was your limit of "completion", im sure you had a supeior vigor, which in pve this is not on every char. same with a supeior rune of your scyth mastery ill assume.

im sure if you oppted to not upgrade armor and continue in game, you would not be in debt, yet find your seling being a hassle to yourself or pug/guild groups.

either way, very interesting information this has brought up, and will easily agree with your statement, a char will have no problems with gold if it is already established more so then creating a char from scratch.

Very nice, I'm impressed by your thoroughness. Surprising results...

The only issue I see is this.

If you have done all the free Prophesies skill quests for all 6 professions, you are very likely not to ever need to borrow any gold at all, as your heroes should have the skills to pull you through. Even if you bill all the costs for skills to your new character, you should be doing fine.

But that kinda weirds up your experiment. I think not having skills on your heroes is probably the biggest stumbling block, and likely the most expensive hurdle to overcome.

Having said that, I think it will be hard not to do anything resembling farming. I think that some 8-man farming for collector drops is required to outfit your heroes, not to mention the character.

The issue with new characters vs new players, is that new players will likely end up spending a heapload of gold on skills that they will not use regularly. It can be really efficient if a player knows the exact builds they want and just pays for those specific skills/caps only.

Much like any conclusion drawn from a sample size of one, its meant for qualitative discussion rather than a statement of fact.

As I said in the OP, lot of the expenditure happened around the time of GW:EN's release. If you rebought the same equipment at today's prices, you'd probably halve the final debt figure.

Nightfall had the free chests which payed for ~1/3 of the hero's equipment, however one thing I did find was that the collectors in nightfall were sorely lacking. The vast majority of them were simply unuable due to rubish mod like -2/stance focii and 15^50 wands. Factions collectors are much more practical and located early in the game, having access to them would have reduced the costs quite a bit. Additionally, I picked up only a couple of peices of usable equipment once off Istan, so while nightfall has the inscription advantage it did not factor into the results at all.

I knew that I, as a player with 2.5k hours under their belt, could have comfortably finished the game with newbie island armour and half a skillbar*, the problem with doing this would be that I would get to the end and I'd have a log of someone that was scrimping, not playing normally. Using the collectors and crafters available to define "standard equipment for the zone" gave me objective limits to define how difficult the game should be.

*(well maybe not all, even with a fully equiped character and heroes I only scraped through "the troubled keeper" on my third attempt).

With regards to runes, I believe the game can be completed without expensive runes, and stuff like Sup. Vigor just distorts the experiment. If this character just happen to find one, the story is ~15k different from if it could not.

How one defines "normal" changes one's results at the end. For me, I would define it a little differently.

1) From my experience with other RPG's, I know to pick up every item that drops and there are titles to earn, like Vanquisher. So, it would not be out of the ordinary to kill everything in an area to accumulate items that would be merched and enhance ones take. Also, since some materials are necessary for upgraded weapons and armor, salvaging some things while playing would be acceptable and necessary once my slots are all full and I can't carry any more items. That would keep me from having to buy iron, etc. at the high merchant rate.

2) I would allow for the occasional sale of items to other players. Sometimes, through luck a player gets an item that, for various reasons, is worth more than one could get from the merchant, like certain dyes. I differentiate between posting a WTS and reading a WTB. A new player may not know the price of certain items so posting a WTS would be illegal, but, reading a WTB at a certain price would be acceptable in my world. I would make one exception, and that is, a new player could determine the buy price and sell price of, lets say, a black dye, by checking at the dye trader and then offer the dye at the price halfway between the buy and the sell price. Also, if I am lucky enough to have a desirable weapon drop, I should be able to sell it to someone who posts a WTB for that item. After all, the trade section is there for everyone to see.

3) One thing I noticed early in the game, that made a big difference is the price of runes from rune drops. After IDing the rune, most of the time it is better to sell the unsalvaged rune to the merchant, as is, instead of salvaging it. The rune trader only pays 25g for most runes.

4) In the course of the game, a person learns necessary things to be a better player. Accumulating Lightbringer points is one of those things. And, when one gets to the Remains of Sahlahja any "normal" player learns to join a group and accumulate LB points in a Worm. Is farming LB points, really considered farming? The secondary benefit to leveling up ones LB points is more and better items to take to the merchant. Having a higher level of LB skill, in the later missions makes that game a lot more fun and almost necessary.

The first time I played the game, I did all the quests and missions with just heroes and henchies. I didn't know the price of things and all my items went to the merchant. I ended up with about 40K, even after upgrading all my armor and purchasing skills for my char. I did this in prophesies with pretty much the same rules you used for your test and my additions, except for #4, which didn't allow for the accumulation of LB or SS points.

Great experiment. However, subsequent chapters were designed in a way to be much less starter-friendly in terms of learning curve and growth curve. Furthermore, runes or perfect weapons aren't going to be needed for a new player. Only an experiment done in tyria would truly reflect whether or not a starter would have enough money.

I think your problem was you put runes into your heroes. I've never done that besides a major or superior rune here and there and I'm still successful at the game. Also I don't see how it would cost that much money to get 1k armor, that's all you need really. With the free chests, doing all the secondary and primary quests you should have made around 100k.

But maybe I misread something, somewhere.

I have legendary skill hunter, few 15k armors, nice weapons, fully equiped heroes, and I never farmed to get all this stuff. I only started farming when I decided I want FOW armor. Anything you need you can get from playing the game. You only need to farm for elite stuff (fow armor, high end weapons, chaos gloves, etc.)

Collector weapons and cheap runes will go the distance. They only thing you cannot cheap out on are skills, for yourself and heroes.

I am not sure what the real objective of the experiment is though. I have only ever funded one character, and that was to fast-track him into getting me all the free Prophesies skills for 2 professions. He is now a level 16 mule. I have hardly ever solo/dual farmed, and hardly ever traded. I do not think that I have bought or sold anything over 5k.

I could not afford a full set 15k armour upon the completion of Protector of X by the storyline route. But max armour and all the max stat weapons and runes for the character and heroes are definitely affordable. (Again, unless you want rare skins and Sup. Vigor on all your heroes...)

You shouldn't have used heroes or equiped them as other chapters only use henchmen. Thus your study is flawed by you using your cash to outfit something else besides yourself. Heroes are not a necessity because there are always henchmen to fill any open slots without ever using heroes. Now go back and do it without ever using heroes as you would have had to do had you started in Factions or Prophecies.

A couple of other points that bear mentioning:

SS reached L8 before I'd even finished Vabbi and LB finished at L3 (2,094 - almost L4).

The whole time through, I did not need to spend a cent on either ID kits or salvage kits, despite id'ing everything and salvaging when appropriate. Additionally, I finished with enough quest reward items to see myself through 2 more repeat performances. If you're finding yourself spending large amounts of money on kits, you should look to the quest reward items for a good source.

Also loot scaling had no impact on your experiment at all as full parties are not affected. In fact, all of us at one time or another pretty much did that (new players aren't going to solo farm until VERY late in the game if for no other reason than getting the needed skills) and as of right now the income is *exactly* the same (loot scale doesn't affect full parties) and prices are at an all time low. All you did was show that a new player can not equip his character as fully as an experienced player would like and, well, I can't say I'm terribly surprised.

Next time try and play with only what you *need* and there is a good deal of stuff there you list that you don't need that cost quite a bit (especially on your heroes). You should be able to even afford some stuff you *want*.

Heck, I started Prophecies back in the day that the vast majority wax on about for hours upon end about gold flowing in - when I made it to thunderhead keep I was able to purchase my *first* superior rune because I couldn't come close to affording a 105monk build, didn't have access to the skills needed to farm all but the lowest areas, and everything was *extremely* expensive. Those times were only good for the farmers, for the new players it was bad - MUCH worse than now. the only reason I could get my 1.5k armor was because I had read on the forums to begin storing up materials otherwise I would not have been able to afford anything past Maguuma Jungle for much the same reason (I used collectors before droks). Had I done your experiment back then I would have been well over 46k in the hole just purchasing the 1.5k armors let alone runes and such (remember that back then when you expert salvaged you only had a chance at the runes in the armor so those tended to be re-purchased fairly often). If I had heroes it would have been even worse. Of course, it was also easier to get a lucky drop - but then many of us were not terribly lucky.

Since we are coming up on three years it is probably a bit late to complain about new players not making enough.

You outlined some things you did and did not.

But reading your blog...

* you put RADIANT insignia that you bought on almost all your heroes. Survivors were a better choice IMO, but also cost some money.

*Plus attunement runes. This is quite on the expensive side. Add in MAJOR Vigor Runes for the Heroes.

* You spend 90% of your money on your heroes. I know richer players that equip their heroes worse.


We could also make another calculation: Not how much money you spent, but how much you really need.

* Let us assume 20 player skills, 1K per skill (it is much less initially) = +20K
* For our heroes, let us assume 20 more, +20K = 40K
* Player armor and Insignia: Let us assume 1.5K per armor piece (including Insignia) and 1.5K for Minor Vigor, 6x1,5K => +9K = 49K.
* Weapons: Player plus Heroes, max stuff, 2K per weapon and maybe a shield ~ 10K = 59K.
* Add in Minor Vigor for 6 Heroes: +9K = 68K.

Would have been nice to see what money you MADE, not only the +/- result. I think you lived over your abilities, I could not afford a Major Vigor rune for my Warrior in Prophecies as I entered Droknar's Forge.

This calculation above is for the early phase, and nobody really says your heroes need to be maximized in equipment right after you leave Istan. This also assumes you never used hero skill points to save money and stuff like that.


You also steered as quickly as possible to the last mission, to the end of the game. It seems you gained zero money from strolling around.


Your heroes are well equipped, and I think you are right, equipping them well should also be considered very important. But you have overdone there and totally skewed the result.

I started a rit in Factions with the same purpose. After I got away from the island I had max armor (a combination of collectors (the chest piece) and crafters). When I passed Nahpui Quarter I had 10k in the bank. After that I stopped because it had proven the point actually. You can do it easily on drops.

I think the reason you did not have enough money to get 1k armor after Istan was because you kept upgrading your armor at every turn. I can remember when I first started a character, it did not have armor equivalent to the area it was in all the time. I actually hunted for the armor collectors stuff to equip my character(s). I made a nice sum of money selling the leftovers in the Maguuma Jungle (these where the pre-factions days).

Another point is equipping your heroes with runes. What for? They are more than powerful enough without anything but good weapons (even then they dont need perfects). For example the staff Zhed is carrying when you get him will serve very well in all of NM. If you do want more from them (or don't have UAX) there are always henchies.

So all in all, I agree with your statement that it's not enough IF you follow your rules. I do not agree on a general statement though because it's easily doable in my experience.

Edit: I'm wondering what you mean by stating your char was not pve ready because it had only a few secondaries and skills unlocked. I have a necro who has finished 2 out of 3 campaigns (still at ring of fire because I'm too lazy to finish). He has done a couple of vanquishes in Elona/Cantha and has only 2 secondaries unlocked. For most of PvE you only need 1 or 2 combos, the rest is just for show IMHO.

I've tried this experiment before.

The only thing an experienced player has over the new player in this discussion is knowledge of what to buy.

You do understand that a character can be fully equipped with half decent gear for 15k?

It's true. I did it half a month ago, with a dervish as you did, except...my expenditures came out a little below 15k. I also got survivor r1 on this.

Screenie coming, with /age and equipment pics :P

Hero skills are free, IF you play pvp ofcourse

When I think about it now I have five characters with full maxed out heroes (that I use) on every one of them including superior runes of vigor on most now. Starting over for me would be very boring an unfun. It's nice to be rich. But, we all were poor once and we all made it to wealth I would believe. The game isn't meant to be played in a day anyways. I really believe that the developers intended us to play areas over again even during the storyline because of unique weapons to be aquired from boss mobs along the way that are useable by our main characters an even hour heroes. Of course when Prophecies first came out there weren't green weapons, but, now there are aplenty and I believe they are part of the mission goal and storyline as well now. So, just going from A to Z is really bypassing the intentions of the game now as it offers up much more than just collectors items. I'm still after a sceptor in Kourna for my curse necro and I'm not going to move on until that npc drops it for me.

I see couple of problems with this:

a) you don't reflect how game is played by newbies because you want to reflect how game was intended to play (silly rule like having ot have equipment on par with area taken). Refusing to play with underequiped heroes is kinda ridiculous.

b) you don't have clear focus - are you playing to determine whether newbie can get basics? Are you determining if one can max PvE char? are you determining if one can create PvP-ready pve char? Because you are doing lots of WTF stuff:

* Superior monk and fire runes on heroes, Major vigors, etc. Spending on heroes like drunken sailor.
* Superior HP rune for self
* Buying secondary skills you are not really using
* You subscribed to some gold sinks (Keys).

Lol zewi2stein you didn't cut him any slack did you? hahahaha

I had a go at this kind of experiment not too long ago. I just wanted to see how much I could make without farming and playing the bare minimum. I started a Sin in Factions, and a paragon in NF. I made sure that:

- I didn't access storage;
- picked up all drops which were either salvaged for crafting materials or sold to merchants;
- equipment and runes for myself and heroes were salvaged from drops (no buying from trader or other players);
- upgraded my armor only when I needed to and can afford to;
- used full team throughout;
- used monestary credits and whatnot to trade for id and salvage kits.
- purchased skills I felt that I really needed, most skills heroes needed were already unlocked by other chars.

The only farming of sorts I did was with my Sin when I jumped to Kamaden to get the early heroes to level them up. Didn't do SS/LB rank farming for my Paragon, unless it was needed to progress the story.

For each char, I just did the primary quest/missions. Got protector title for each char for their continent. They finished ill-equiped, that is, no max weapons (or max mods) and not fully runed up.

Sin completed Factions with less than 20K, and Paragon finished NF with less than 60K (this would include all the free treasure chests).

I've been considering doing an experiment like this with my alternate account, which currently has Prophecies and Nightfall and only the starter skills. Might be a good way to try it because of the limitations. I'm betting that getting the skills is going to be the most expensive part. Equipment for heroes? Well, there is collectors for the weapons/off-hands, and they don't really need runes. Also, hidden treasures will be giving me really nice stuff the first time through.

The problem with playing under-equiped is that there is no line in the sand you can draw as to what is appropriately equiped means. A number of other posters have raised the same point. If I had performed the experiment according to what I needed to get by, all it would have demonstrated was that the cost of establishing a character is inversely proportionate to the player's ability - I tried to create an objective baseline from which extrapolations could be made. If you think a major vigs are too much for heroes, subtract 6k from the total and you've got your result and so on.

I'm aimed to create a "PvE ready" toon. One that can swap to any "reasonable" build on demand and have appropriately spec'ed equipment to match. During the experiment I didn't actually achieve this, having nowhere near enough skills or equipment sets, in hindsight its not surprising - it took me the better part of 3 campaigns to get my warrior to that point.

Running superior runes on heroes suits my playstyle as it lets me use the the fact that the ai will target them to shepherd the red-dots into bodyblocks, and in most cases the superior rune is actually cheaper than the minor due to the fact that most people are opting for higher hp these days.

Not seeing the WTF here. Sup vigor is basic equipment for any toon.

Didn't happen.

As stated in the blog, these were required due to a lack of a weapon mod merchant that upgrades could be purchased from. If I hadn't the game would have been finished without even having upgraded equipment.

I think the confusion in the post starts here (bolded part is mine).
As indicated by your later posts, you define basics as:
Whereas I (and it seems more people do this) define basics as being able to finish the game. So I guess we are both right. It's impossible to get a toon PvE ready from just fully finishing a campaign (as you said it took your warrior 3 campaigns). But it's more than doable to get all of the equipment to finish the game.

Newer players do not have past experience to tell them what to do. Many players put superior runes on everything; believe that max weapons and armours are a necessity, buy keys and every useless skill available. And don't forget skills increase in cost the more that are bought.

Far too many players understand that loot scaling is damaging Guild Wars.

Some real facts on this from A-net would be welcome. But anything factual from that source, which may help the community, is like rocking horse pooh.

Cellardwellar; It’s very good that you made the effort to clarify this.

This rule really skewed you're final total. Player to player trade is a game mechanic used by everyone, including new players. You can get anything that the traders have - runes, materials, etc. for much less than the merchant prices. Conversly, the NPC traders will not pay as much for items (dyes, etc.) as will players. That would have saved you a significant amount.

Edit: just peeked at your list. Superior salvage kits? Why? they cost 25% more to use than Expert salvage kits. (20g per use vs 16g per use) That, and a few other things makes it seem that you were being very economical going through things.

The problem is that a lot of a newbie making money is linked to how quickly that player learns and becomes skilled. They still need to be able to "play through the game," which does take some amount of skill, and some trading skills to figure out what things are worth and take advantage of the occasional lucky drop. There really isn't much of a baseline involved here because everyone has different levels of skill. The more skilled/intelligent will likely make a lot more money quicker than the less skilled/intelligent.

The best baseline to figure out how much money is possible to make is not purchasing anything, except for max armor/items/cheapest runes for the job, and nothing for the heroes. Hell, if need be, take henchmen instead. There's your baseline. No buying skills, not even cap sigs (there are quests to get 2 free ones). Whatever money you have by the time you beat a campaign can then be used to buy stuff, and you can then find out what you can buy to make yourself, and even your heroes, "PvE ready."

For this complaint:

Like he said, he got salvage & ID kits from the quest reward items (Kournan Coin, Imperial Comendation, etc). When you're doing it that way, Sup Salvage Kits are a much better deal. They cost 5 reward items, compared to 3 reward items for the regular salvage kit. They are also the most valuable thing you can usually trade for a quest reward item.

(More general comments on the original post)
Most new players are using pretty sub-par equipment. They do this as much because they don't necessarily know what to get yet (as far as runes, insignias, mods), as that they are cutting corners by using mostly dropped items. I remember "back in the day" I would only ever use the runes I found, and would sell the more valuable ones (like the better vigor runes). On the other hand, runes were a lot more valuable when I was a newbie, and good runes like Superior (and even major) vigor were well beyond the price range of most normal players.

The biggest concern I have is that you said you switched to only noting major sources of income, like the free chests. I know I usually make quite a bit off the merch fodder. Often times when I fill my backpack on an outing (quest, skill cap, mission, etc) and merch everything, I'll have made about a plat. It's not a trivial amount of money at all, and should be tracked.

I do agree with your conclusion about starting up new characters. My new characters usually end up "in debt" (they've cost me more money then they've made) around the time that they get their max armors and first complete skill bar, though they become somewhat self sustaining not too long after that, and begin generating more income then they are taking.

That figure can be determined from the data if you desire it: 144,655

Disagree with this whole heartedly. I personally only ever used player to player trading for trading anything worth less than 100k even back in the day when 100k was a lot of money and certainly have never sold anything to a player that could have been given to a trader. The extra 10% that you might get is never worth the hour it takes you to sell it.

Loot-Scaling (For The Loss). Anet dried up gold so bad and yet boosted their ebay prices so that anet's profiting more from it. Does this not make sense to anyone? Let me explain it in simple terms: "They're banking off of YOU." Anet has a long list of things they don't care about, and making money is definitely NOT one of them. Drying up gold for players (on the other hand) and making them go bankrupt (unfortunately) IS on their "don't care" list. It's standard sharking, well-known in the business of money-making. For those that don't care about being broke in-game, good on you, and for those that do, prices on ebay only go one way (...UP!).

*The above statement reflects a mere opinion and should not be taken personal in any way... So don't /wrists on me please xD*

Well, knowing that, do you know how much it would cost to deck you and your heroes out and made "PvE ready?" That would get your real answer.

I started my first character in Prophecies, over two years ago (no heroes at that time). I struggled paying for better armor, but I managed to have armor that was good enough to keep me going. I survived off of what dropped. No other source of income. As I got further along things got easier.

All subsequent characters had things waiting in the storage vault when they got to post-searing.

In summary I would say 'You can survive just playing the game'.

To OP: Good job on actually doing this as an experiment.

I did not read through all the details, but my understanding of the overall conclusion is that if you equip your characters and heroes with max weapons and best runes at the point in the game where that is needed, you will not be able to fund that through normal gameplay.

You say you will craft a weapon or offhand as needed for a hero if no drop occurs prior to the point you need it. Crafted weapons cost 5000g plus mats.

You say you did not engage in trading as external factors affect the price of things and then merched everything else.

I assume that means you occasionally got max item drops you had to merch because you already had that particular item equipped across your character and heroes.

Here is a concern with the overall methodology. If we assume that the average price (player-to-player) of a max gold weapon/offhand is less than 5000 gold - which it is - that means you could have purchased your hero items for lower prices and saved money. If we assume that max golds go for more than 5000 gold, you could have easily sold the excess max gold items for a good profit and offset some of your costs. By ignoring player to player trading and crafting things you needed, you inflated your costs regardless of whether the unpredictable market was high or low.

That is, if prices are low, you spent too much on crafting and if prices are high, you merched stuff at a tremendous loss. It so happens that prices are low, so crafting items is a money waster.

I'm not totally sure how you could have kept your experiment fair given that different market conditions would have saved you different amounts of money, but I would say there is a built-in bias to things costing more than they would for the average player in your analysis.

For me - about 1.5M , for others probably less. That was the point in having full disclosure of expenditures within the blog - so people could adapt it as necessary.

Very nice experiment...I can just say that nowadays I am making a new character, a paragon; I'm totally exploring every area I visit , doing always master missions and I had like 15k cash at venta cemetery, without ferryes and all. You cannot pimp too much your char, but you can provide him what he needs.

I had forgotten about that. I retract my statement regarding the use of Superior kits.

Ahhh, but you're looking at this through jaded eyes. Look at it from the perspective of a new player, starting from scratch, which is what I presumed you were attempting to show. 100k is a lot of money for a newbie & every bit of gold helps. And you're 10% estimate is very, very low. For example (don't have time to give a rundown on all the stuff), in player to player trade, Common crafting materials generally sell for twice what the merchant/trader will give for them, and cost half as much. As far as time spent goes, that's more of an issue for farmers, not newbies playing through the first time.