capped character the best investments?

[Orcus]

Hello friends. An old player considering returning. I’ve been lurking here a while and I’ve been intelligence gathering. I want to play the game for free, at least I can’t justify paying out of pocket for a 80’s text game. Is the best way to do this is make silvers with a capped character? Also should I buy a bard for gem purifying and best hunting?

[Tgo01]

Hello friends. An old player considering returning. I’ve been lurking here a while and I’ve been intelligence gathering. I want to play the game for free, at least I can’t justify paying out of pocket for a 80’s text game. Is the best way to do this is make silvers with a capped character? Also should I buy a bard for gem purifying and best hunting?

There is a F2P option, although it's severely limited.

By "play for free" I gather what you mean is you want to earn enough silvers to sell them for real money every month to pay the sub cost?

Honestly capped isn't necessary, I don't think there is a huge difference in amount of silvers you can earn from hunting at cap compared to like level 40 or 50 what with treasure pushdowns and all.

[kutter]

My 70's mage makes more than my capped mage. Capped hunting areas tend to be overhunted since there are so few. TGO is right, you would spend a lot less money buying something in the 40-50 range and still make about the same amount since there are so many places where you can hunt that you would never see a soul.

[Orcus]

Interesting. Can I get an average per hour silver take for a capped character hunting capped areas? So I can get an idea of what I should be making.

[Izzy]

You can't justify paying a monthly sub, but you can justify several hundred dollars to purchase a capped character? Assuming you found a capped character extremely cheap at $500, you could play for almost 3 years on a standard sub for the same price.

On that note, I'd argue you'd never really enjoy the game as much on a purchased character. You don't get the same kind of attachment, and you'll likely lose interest quickly. Start a F2P account, or reactivate with one of the 90 day promo codes if you had an account before. See if it's still something you like before investing anything.

[Orcus]

You can't justify paying a monthly sub, but you can justify several hundred dollars to purchase a capped character? Assuming you found a capped character extremely cheap at $500, you could play for almost 3 years on a standard sub for the same price.

On that note, I'd argue you'd never really enjoy the game as much on a purchased character. You don't get the same kind of attachment, and you'll likely lose interest quickly. Start a F2P account, or reactivate with one of the 90 day promo codes if you had an account before. See if it's still something you like before investing anything.

Interesting viewpoint. However, since the capped character will have value even after being bought I’m effectively playing for free. In fact, after 3 years I could possibly sell the character for a small profit due to enormous exp gain over that time.

The beginning parts of the game have no interest for me as I am as forementioned an old player and especially these days there would need to be some serious pull for me to return to GemStone. GemStone itself is ancient and no longer fun but I enjoy games of chance and participating in event and such without cost is enticing.

[drumpel]

I made millions with my rogue between level 25 and 45 with the hunting areas I used. He was okay at skinning, which helped some, and could open all his own boxes (which helped a lot). The right hunting spot and 3 major loot boosts over a 45 minute hunting session he could easily pull in a million in silvers. Generally around 4 dozen boxes in that hunting session that usually gave around 600k in gems/silver/jewelry/scrolls/armor/weapons, tack on around 100k in skins and another 250-300k from silver/gem/item drops from the creatures. It wasn't hard pulling in a million silvers an hour or so, but it was tedious and I found it really boring with the constant grind. It wasn't something I did very often and I found after 3-4 hours of hunting an area hard like that the amount of silver I could earn started to taper off and it went from around a million an hour to 500-700k an hour.

My capped wizard doesn't come close to what my rogue made in terms of silvers from hunting.

Best levels for earning silver, in my opinion, are level 25-70. Before that creatures are too young and the loot isn't that impressive. After level 70 the hunting areas are fewer to hunt between all the higher/capped level players so the loot pressure means you get less in return for you work.

Pre-level 25 there are some creatures that can give a good return on skins, if you're good at skinning. I know of a couple off the top of my head that can bring in around 500 silver a pop. Skin a few hundred of them in an hour while you hunt other creatures that drop coins/gems/boxes and you can probably pull 250K an hour. I'd say that're pretty good for a hunting area under level 25