Counting alcohol drunk points

Having alcohol listed for sale, how does one count the value?

i.e. does level 5 alcohol count for 5 minutes or for 3 minutes toward the total?

If 3 minutes, then level 1 alcohol would not count toward the total at all.

Is there a standard for counting alcohol?

You need to be at 3 levels of drunkenness before you're considered drunk and start gaining title points. So if you drank a level 5 drink (like Spiked Eggnog) you'd be at level 5 drunkenness and you would eventually gain 3 points from it (because the last two are at level 2 and level 1 drunkenness which don't award points). Regarding level 1 drinks, you'd need to drink 3 at once to get to level 3 drunkenness and thus gain a point. What you should do is drink a level 5 drink to start and then drink a level 1 drink every minute to keep yourself at level 5 drunkenness and thus gaining points.

Does this mean I loose 2 drunkard points everytime I use a level 5 continuosly ?
And therefor level 1 alchohol is much better ?!?!

No. Drinking 1 level 5 drink is the same as drinking 5 level 1 drinks all at once. You'll only net 3 points towards drunkard tilte either way. (Being at level 2 or 1 drunken doesn't count.) If you get to level 5 drunk, you'll gain one point (minute) when you go from level 5 to level 4, one point (minute) when you go from level 4 to level 3, and one point (minute) when you go from level 3 to level 2. You do not get points going from 2 to one or from 1 to 0.

Here's the wiki on it: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Drunkard

If you use it like that, yes.

The only way NOT to lose alcohol points is to get drunk and then keep yourself drunk for a long time by topping off with a lvl 1 drink whenever you lose a lvl of alcoholization. This can only be done with the lvl 1 drinks. Lvl 5 drinks can't be used alone without losing points (as soon as you drop to lvl 2, you stop gaining minutes, and if you were to use a lvl 5 drink would be the same as using it from complete sobriety).

All interesting, but the question was not regarding the mechanics of using alcohol, but how is alcohol counted for a sale on auction.

I was chastised for counting the lvl 5s as 5, not 3. But were that correct, then lvl 1s should only be counted as a third of a point.

i.e. if I have 10 level 5 alcohol items... should I list that as 50 drunk points or 30 drunk points on auction?

You make a valid point, in that I never thought of it that way.

The fact remains that if I drink a level 5 drink, I still only gain 3 levels or minutes towards the title, if I don't top it off and let it run out.

The same goes for if I drink 5 level 1 drinks, I still only gain 3 levels or minutes towards the title as with the level 5 drink.

So, if I pay xx for a level 1 drink, then it stands to reason that I would pay xx (x5) for a level 5 drink.

I think the consensus is that no one would try and max the title with only level 5 drinks, because you would be wasting a lot of points and it's not a very efficient way of maxing the title. So you start with a level 5 and top off with level 1 drinks. That's why you pay xx for a level 1 drink and xx (x3) for a level 5 drink.

That's just my opinion however and someone else may have a different view.

Tom Swift below explains it very well.

It is 30 drunk points because no matter how you use it 30 points is the max you can get from 10 lvl 5 alcohol items. There is simply no way to get 50 drunk points out of it and so, yes, people will accuse you of scamming if you advertise it that way.

Use one lvl 5 yields 3 drunk

Use five lvl 1s yields 3 drunk

or

Use a lvl 5 and five lvl 1s yields 8 drunk.

Use ten lvl 1s yields 8 drunk.

effectively there is no difference.

Use one level 5 and 9 level 1 yields 12 drunk.

Just count level fives as 3s and you're fine. The most you can get out of it is 3 minutes. The most you get out of a level one is one minute.

A level five is only 3x the benefit of a level 1 toward the title.

If you don't use a level 5 to start your drinking (you use 3 level ones) you're wasting two level ones.

lol, my point exactly... take five lvl 1s OR 1 lvl 5 and the result is the same except the lvl 5 only costs the equivalent of 3 lvl 1s.

I guess it's accepted lore, but it isn't correct.

But then I guess I was asking for accepted lore, so there yah go

When pricing alcohol for sale, consider some of the following as well.

Level 5 was originally very rare in the game and was often priced at a premium over level 1. The standard was 100g/min, but level 5 could generally be sold for a bit more. (I used to be able to sell a stack of Firewater for around 90-100k in mid-2008.) The best and cheapest way to max drunk was to start a drinking session with a level 5 and then continue with level 1.

Within the last couple of years we've seen a flood of level 5 alcohols, with the addition of grog, Nick's Aged Hunter's Ale (pre- and post-), and Nick's kegs. This flood caused prices to drop, and most volume sellers were looking for around 80g per minute during the last year or more. With patience one could eventually sell a keg for 15k (100g/min), for example, but one could sell easily for 12k and within minutes for 10k.

It is quite feasible to max the drunk title using only level 5 drinks, and many prefer to do this because it's easier just to set up a three-minute timer and take a drink every three minutes with no consequences for imperfect timing. (Forget any nonsense about "wasted points", because there aren't any, as Urass has shown.) So level 5 alcohol became very popular and level 1 alcohol started becoming very hard to sell.

Then last Wintersday hit and the alcohol market went into a total tailspin. Prices seem to have recovered a bit, but I have found that kegs can be a hard sell even at 8k these days, and level 1 alcohol just isn't worth bothering with. It's hard to even give away to my allies, since everyone working on the title wants level 5.

I don't know how far prices may eventually rise again, but I doubt we'll ever see 80g/min again, much less 100g/min. Lots of people held on to their Wintersday spiked nogs in the hopes that the market would come back to normal in a few months, and that nog is still out there waiting to come onto the market, which will keep prices down as it shows up. (I have 16 stacks myself, waiting for the right time to sell. My allies are telling me to just forget it and use it to get the title on one of my own characters. They may be right, but I could use the cash.)

Just MHO, based on my own experience, but I think you'll find that trying to offer alcohol for the pre-Wintersday prices is going to have you standing in Spamadan for a long, long time.

Use a lvl 5 and 55 lvl 1s = 58 minutes

Use 60 lvl 1s = 58 min

Use 12 lvl 5s = 36 minutes

There is a difference if you are efficient. Obviously no one's going to drink everything in one sitting, but if you are trying to be efficient, then you'd drink a lvl 5 and then 3 lvl 1s every 3 minutes. One hour seemed like a fair drinking session.

As BrettM mentions though, it's become something of a buyer's market, so prices are what they are.

Personally, I agree that a lvl 5 should = 5 minutes as you are actually drunk for 5 minutes. I guess you could argue that you are buying title points, not drunk levels, and the first two minutes of a lvl 5 drink will never count to the title, but a lvl 1 usually will (unless the player regularly lets his drunk level go too low to top up without waste.)

As it is, its impossible to gain the full 5mins from the level 5's where as you can get close to 100% efficiency from lvl1´s.
Think of drinking for 100 minutes (to make calculation easier)
Using lvl5´s you will have to drink 1, and then drink next every third minute. 33 lvl5´s will net 99minutes, 1min missing. So you actually only gain 3mins per drink.
Using lvl1´s you start by drinking 5 and then 3 every third minute meaning you need 102 lvl1´s to gain 100 minutes.
That´s near 100% efficiency while lvl5´s are only two thirds efficiency thus reducing them to 3 times the value of a lvl1.
One could say it would be fair to have it count for 1 minute if you drink a lvl1 alone and for full 5mins while drinking a lvl5.
But im sure its designed to be realistic too.
In real life normal people do not get drunk by drinking 1 bottle of regular beer or one small glass of wine.
It takes 3 to get just a bit drunk.
Similarly if you drink a larger drink fast (lets say 50 cl or a pint of red wine or strong beer) you will get more drunk and after some times it wears off a bit to the point where you are no longer drunk but not entirely sober either. That is similar to the 2 lost minutes from drinking a lvl5 in GW.

Conclusion: lvl5 alcohols are worth 3 times a lvl1 and not 5 times.

This conversation is interesting, though we are probably flogging a dead horse as my original question was how to list a 5 minute alcohol, and right or wrong I detect a trend.

As to your discussion, I do not accept the basis of your premise, that lvl 5 alcohol can only be imbibed with other lvl 5 alcohol. If one uses a lvl 5 to start a binge and lvl 1s to continue the binge, maximum efficiency can be attained.

I assume we all have our own methods, but when I helped my dotter achieve drunk title on her primary toon while doing some VQs & such... I often had breaks in the sequence, so restarting with a lvl 5 was useful.

No, it is not efficient to use lvl 5s only, but I suspect there are inefficient ways to use only lvl 1s as well.

As to my auction listing? I simply removed the total and listed the quantities of the various alcohols along with their lvls... the bidder can determine how it adds up

Sure it is, so long as you accept the premise that you can only get a maximum of 3 points from a lvl5. You shouldn't think of them as lvl1 and lvl5, you should think of them as 1 title point and 3 title points. Drinking lvl5 drinks only is just as efficient as drinking 3 times as many lvl1 drinks (excluding the 2 start-up drinks), i.e. 250 lvl5 drinks will net you 750 points, the same as 750 lvl1 drinks (+2 startup drinks). The reason that lvl5 is wanted is that you don't have to worry about staying drunk. You can just drink a lvl5 3+ minutes after the previous one, while you need to count the title points and drink lvl1 drinks at proper times not to lose drinks to start back up. For example, in the previous example of 250 lvl5 drinks or 750 lvl1 drinks: you will always get 750 minutes from 250 lvl5 drinks, so long as you wait at least 3 minutes between them, while you can lose efficiency with the lvl1 drinks by waiting too long.

As for the listing: you list them according to maximum possible title points: lvl5 3 points, lvl1 1 point.

Sry for hijacking your thread, with my question up there, Urass ;-)