Why SALTPETER price to purchase from NPCs has been set so CHEAP ?

Considering how time consuming an activity it is, to mine for Saltpeter in the quantities needed to craft any decent amount of Charges and Fuse Cords, I find that the price set with NPCs to purchase it and, thus, save a whole bunch of time (and Mining skill/Luck suit necessary), is way too low.

For what it cost to buy it from NPCs, and compared to how much time one needs to invest in mining it, WHY BOTHER to mine it at all ?

I do not get it....

In order to have the 2 ways to get Saltpeter be balanced out with one another, eIther mining for Slatpeter should be much less time consuming OR the price for purchasing Saltpeter from NPCs should be a LOT higher.... I think....

Thankfully, you're not a game developer.Do you even read your posts ? Everything in this game doesn't have to be balanced out, it's by design, although sometimes those designs are painful. If you have tons of gold and no time to mine, you buy it. If you have tons of time and no gold, you dig it. It's not a difficult concept to grasp if you try Popps, and this is coming from someone who does quite a bit of complaining, but I never use the "i don't have time or gold" arguments.

I'm personally of the opinion that, even though ammunition spawns in ship holds in the form of fuses and charges, I also think there should be large quantities of Saltpeter that also spawn, and not 15 or 23 at a time, but 100s, it would only make sense that these things would be transported on ships coming and going throughout the market. Even though I like some of the High Seas changes, i think still @Kyronix and the others are being stingy with resources that common sense says, would absolutely be transported on ships between cities, but it seems they're so afraid that it will wreck and already wrecked economy. They will let PvPrs monopolize the most valued commodity in the game, Power Scrolls,(and before I get jumped on by PvPrs telling me to do spawns, I've done that, most of them solo, on the toughest shard to succeed on, and my characters are fully scrolled, it's not about that, it's about favoritism) but players that want to do High Seas based content only, might monopolize the Frostwood or Saltpeter market, oh we can't have that !!!, so a feared Dread Pirate who is so notorious that his name and evil deeds are spouted out of the mouths of every sea faring vessel and merchant/survivor, yet that same pirate doesn't carry a single Frostwood board in his hold, or a level 7 treasure map which was supposedly coded in 9 years ago and never happened. I could go on and on about how so many things have been left out of High Seas loot, but I won't, it's getting away from your original post which is about how Saltpeter isn't that easy to get for those of us that dont macro ship mine, or weren't lucky enough to buy it all up from the newly added NPCs at dirt cheap prices before it was driven up to unaffordable prices by most players (yeah Devs, how did you miss that this wouldn't happen), at least get up in the morning and add the code that resets the prices to normal every day. How hard is it to think of that ?

Garth_Grey said:

Thankfully, you're not a game developer.Do you even read your posts ? Everything in this game doesn't have to be balanced out, it's by design, although sometimes those designs are painful. If you have tons of gold and no time to mine, you buy it. If you have tons of time and no gold, you dig it. It's not a difficult concept to grasp if you try Popps, and this is coming from someone who does quite a bit of complaining, but I never use the "i don't have time or gold" arguments.

Nope.

To my opinion, it IS screwed up.

Why ?

Because, "if" it was balanced out, THEN, those with little in-game gold COULD also sell it to fellow players who have plenty in-game gold AND, thus, better their in-game finances in the process....

Instead, as it is, it is screwed up because it gives Saltpeter to those who can easily spend what it takes to purchase it BUT, instead, forces absurd and time consuming (and alienating) GRINDS in those who cannot afford putchasing Saltpeter....

Basically, at least as I see it, it FAVOURS those who are in-game rich and DISFAVOUR those who instead are in-game poor and cannot even get a reasonable return for their investment of TIME into mining for Saltpeter....

INSTEAD, if it was BALANCED out with either Saltpeter being more readily available (to reflect the cheap price on NPCs for it) OR, have it waaaay more expensive on NPCs to reflect the extensive time that it takes to mine for it, AT LEAST those willing to spend the time to mine for it would have a logical reason for doing it and spending their time mining for it.

But, as it stands, and with how cheap it is on NPCs to purchase, and how time consuming it is to mine for it, WHY BOTHER to actually mine for it ?

The time can be much better spent earning gold somewhere else and THEN spent on purchasing the Saltpeter from NPCs...

And all of the mechanics Deigned to mine Slatpeter would remain unused because there simply is no reason to spend the extensive time it takes to mine it, much better earn that time to make gold elsewhere and then purchase Slatpeter from NPCs...

I think the 2 ways SHOULD be balanced out with one another....

The devs always justified Saltpeter as a commodity that players would trade or sell, but it never worked out that way. yes, if we had miners that simply love to go out and mine for saltpeter, then they could turn around and sell that to players or back to the Alchemy NPCs (which never happens by the way, don't believe it, go check the prices on production shards), but greed always gets in the way and the real UO doesn't work that way. Players that are really into the High Seas will need lots of ammunition, if I need to buy saltpeter from a miner, I'm going to need it in HUGE quantities because I don't like to mine, well in order to get huge quanties and I don't mean 1500/hr which is apparently a lot when you're mining, someones going to have to be out all day and night mining and they're going to want to be compensated for their time which in the end will still make it unaffordable to the buyer, unless the miner is just a lunatic that sits at their computer all day mining, or they're a scripter, which is a different argument that still needs to be had. Bottom line, put NPCs out that sell the damn ammunition already and be done with it.

I am currently selling cannon supplies on a vendor on Europa. To maintain supplies, and do my own pirate hunting, is requiring me to spend 30 minutes per day mining saltpeter - that's all.

I guess this is what you have decided is the topic for today's discussion. It is a non-issue.

200+ per salpeter cheap?
It's not balanced now they are to expensive.

Either you hunt for gold and buy them at these extremely high prices or you spend the time and get them for free while gathering ingots.

I bought my stack of them for 5 gp each before they changed them to commodite resources so they always had 500 for sale. Spent some hours buying it up in quantity to 999 but after that it went rather quick and not to costly.

LMAO
The more people that buy it from NPCs the higher the price will go, I bet people on Atl wish they had your problem on Cats and I can already see it 6 months from now you complaining that the price is to high and needs to be reset.

Chrille said:

200+ per salpeter cheap?
It's not balanced now they are to expensive.

Either you hunt for gold and buy them at these extremely high prices or you spend the time and get them for free while gathering ingots.

I bought my stack of them for 5 gp each before they changed them to commodite resources so they always had 500 for sale. Spent some hours buying it up in quantity to 999 but after that it went rather quick and not to costly.

Yes, I think that even at 200 gp per Saltpeter it is cheap and let me explain why.

With some 1,000 Luck, in about an hour of Dungeon Mining and at GM Miner using the +5 Mining gloves, "on average" one can mine about 500 Saltpeter.

At 200 gp per, that would mean a return for 1 hour of gameplay, mining Saltpeter, of 100,000 gp worth of Saltpeter.

Now, wouldn't many players be able to get way more then 100k gold using 1 hour of their gameplay?

If this is the case, then either Saltpeter is too time consuming to get OR the Saltpeter sold by NPCs is sold at too cheap a price, IMHO.

I am mining, daily, 1k saltpeter in 30 minutes.

Petra_Fyde said:

I am mining, daily, 1k saltpeter in 30 minutes.

Hmm... how much Luck are you wearing ? And where are you mining for it ?

Luck 1070 - where I prefer not to say 😂

Luck 1500 average 1500-2000 in little over an hour and no I will not say either.

popps said:

Chrille said:

200+ per salpeter cheap?
It's not balanced now they are to expensive.

Either you hunt for gold and buy them at these extremely high prices or you spend the time and get them for free while gathering ingots.

I bought my stack of them for 5 gp each before they changed them to commodite resources so they always had 500 for sale. Spent some hours buying it up in quantity to 999 but after that it went rather quick and not to costly.

Yes, I think that even at 200 gp per Saltpeter it is cheap and let me explain why.

With some 1,000 Luck, in about an hour of Dungeon Mining and at GM Miner using the +5 Mining gloves, "on average" one can mine about 500 Saltpeter.

At 200 gp per, that would mean a return for 1 hour of gameplay, mining Saltpeter, of 100,000 gp worth of Saltpeter.

Now, wouldn't many players be able to get way more then 100k gold using 1 hour of their gameplay?

If this is the case, then either Saltpeter is too time consuming to get OR the Saltpeter sold by NPCs is sold at too cheap a price, IMHO.

So what you are saying is that everybody in UO regardless of what they are doing should make the same gold per hour, shakes head and walks away.

Bilbo said:

popps said:

Chrille said:

200+ per salpeter cheap?
It's not balanced now they are to expensive.

Either you hunt for gold and buy them at these extremely high prices or you spend the time and get them for free while gathering ingots.

I bought my stack of them for 5 gp each before they changed them to commodite resources so they always had 500 for sale. Spent some hours buying it up in quantity to 999 but after that it went rather quick and not to costly.

Yes, I think that even at 200 gp per Saltpeter it is cheap and let me explain why.

With some 1,000 Luck, in about an hour of Dungeon Mining and at GM Miner using the +5 Mining gloves, "on average" one can mine about 500 Saltpeter.

At 200 gp per, that would mean a return for 1 hour of gameplay, mining Saltpeter, of 100,000 gp worth of Saltpeter.

Now, wouldn't many players be able to get way more then 100k gold using 1 hour of their gameplay?

If this is the case, then either Saltpeter is too time consuming to get OR the Saltpeter sold by NPCs is sold at too cheap a price, IMHO.

So what you are saying is that everybody in UO regardless of what they are doing should make the same gold per hour, shakes head and walks away.

If not, how can we talk about tasks being balanced ?

Designing something like mining for Saltpeter takes time and resources, right ?

If one then is better off just purchasing it from a NPC because it comes cheaper as compared to the time invested in mining it on one's own, why would then a player want to bother minining it ?

Just earn that gold doing else in UO in that same time frame, walk up that NPC and purchase with that gold obtained elsewhere the Saltpeter and forget about mining it...

It would be more efficient of one's own use of time in UO, right ?

But then, if all players where to do this, who'd mine for Saltpeter and, thus, make good use of that Designed mechanics which took time and resources to implement ?

At least, that is how I see it.

popps said:

why would then a player want to bother minining it ?

 who'd mine for Saltpeter and, thus, make good use of that Designed mechanics which took time and resources to implement ?

At least, that is how I see it.

The thing is, not everyone sees it the way you do. 

I buy nothing I can get for myself. Buying stuff is no fun, it's the easy way out. I'd much rather dig my own saltpeter.
Believe it or not, some people LIKE mining. Buying everything isn't playing - not for me at least. I sheer sheep and spin wool too. With some thought I have created an EC macro that will use 3 spinning wheels at 2 second intervals and actually like watching them spin in sequence.

Petra_Fyde said:

Luck 1070 - where I prefer not to say 😂

Bilbo said:

Luck 1500 average 1500-2000 in little over an hour and no I will not say either.

@Petra_Fyde & @Bilbo

While I can understand that, from these 2 answers do I need to acknowledge that not all places are "same good" for mining for Saltpeter ?

That is, "some" locations are "more likely" to spawn Saltpeter ?

If so, what locations would more likely to spawn Saltpeter then ?

Fel Wind is good and so is the cave where the teleporter to swoops is.  then the mountainside outside of that since there is no aggressive spawn for a long stretch.  i also do fel Fire dungeon. 

They're more than likely ship mining. Get on a ship and start mining mountainous areas. The fact that they're so secretive doesn't even strike them as being part of the problem..lol. Human nature

popps said:

Petra_Fyde said:

Luck 1070 - where I prefer not to say 😂

Bilbo said:

Luck 1500 average 1500-2000 in little over an hour and no I will not say either.

@ Petra_Fyde & @ Bilbo

hile I can understand that, from these 2 answers do I need to acknowledge that not all places are "same good" for mining for Saltpeter ?

That is, "some" locations are "more likely" to spawn Saltpeter ?

If so, what locations would more likely to spawn Saltpeter then ?

There is no "better spot" it is all based on luck, Real and in-game.  Fel is better due to the luck bonus.  best practice is mine  a couple of times if you do not get a Niter deposit, move 8 tiles and try again. if you also want ingots, mine the spots empty.

Garth_Grey said:

They're more than likely ship mining. Get on a ship and start mining mountainous areas. The fact that they're so secretive doesn't even strike them as being part of the problem..lol. Human nature

My understanding is, though, that Saltpeter "Ship Mining" is worse in yield as compared to actual, regular "foot" Saltpeter mining....

At least, I gathered this from reading various sources around about Saltpeter....

Is it so or is that an unfounded Myth and Ship Saltpeter mining yields just the same as any other way to mine Saltpeter ?

Saltpeter mining in cave/fel/ilsh is the deposit will show on first hit only where ship mining rolls the dice every hit so it is not unheard of getting multi deposits of saltpeter from the same spot.  The main problem with foot mining is you have to guess if the spots you mined before has refreshed where ship mining is you mine out the spot and go to the next spot and the next and the next then you go back to the beginning and do it again.  

And as far as your "Balance" for all players, sorry UO does not have a balanced pay system where all players are paid the same amount of gold every month no matter what they do or how often they log on.  UO is total capitalism to the max, you earn every gold coin that you make.

When High Sea 1st went live NPC’s saltpeter was the same price as mage shop black pearl, 5 gold per. ~10 days (Dev changed price) later it jumped to around 1500 gold per & still got bought up to ~1700 per on Alt.

Currently it’s 385 gold per on Atl.

Last week I finally ran out of the 2m saltpeter I bought the 1st week HS went live

Never sold any, all was used pirating 🙂

Cheap?  

Pawain said:

Cheap?  

Imo, the shoulda just added the double resource bonus to fel for it.  But meh, can still just sell my potions.

Just put vendors everywhere that sell all the cannon items for like 5gp each and call it a day already. Just let people play.

So I tested this just out of curiousity and it's been coded so you can't make a profit off of buying and selling to NPCs, in fact you lose quite a bit of gold. I bought 500 sp from one NPC for 132g each, I then sold it back to the other NPC who was selling it at 170, and he only buys it back for 124. This is the greediest game coding I think I've ever seen in UO. But I can't say I'm the least bit surprised. You can dupe til your hearts content, you can scam all you want, you can script until there's nothing left to script, but you can't actually use game mechanics to make worthwhile gold because that might unbalance the game.

They buy at 75% of the sell price, so you need to find a larger difference in prices.

If I were inclined to do such a thing, I might mine or buy saltpeter on a slow shard, and transfer to LS and triple my money...hint hint, since the devs won't fix this insanity maybe a really tired, bored miner will.

Garth_Grey said:

If I were inclined to do such a thing, I might mine or buy saltpeter on a slow shard, and transfer to LS and triple my money...hint hint, since the devs won't fix this insanity maybe a really tired, bored miner will.

Or already has, several times . . .

Garth_Grey said:

I bought 500 sp from one NPC for 132g each, I then sold it back to the other NPC who was selling it at 170, and he only buys it back for 124. 

Ill buy then for 270 GP up to 5M on LS. 🙂

popps said:

Considering how time consuming an activity it is, to mine for Saltpeter in the quantities needed to craft any decent amount of Charges and Fuse Cords, I find that the price set with NPCs to purchase it and, thus, save a whole bunch of time (and Mining skill/Luck suit necessary), is way too low.

For what it cost to buy it from NPCs, and compared to how much time one needs to invest in mining it, WHY BOTHER to mine it at all ?

I do not get it....

In order to have the 2 ways to get Saltpeter be balanced out with one another, eIther mining for Slatpeter should be much less time consuming OR the price for purchasing Saltpeter from NPCs should be a LOT higher.... I think....

Oh wow. "Note to self" I need to go buy Saltpeter before the price goes up.I do too many Plunder Beacons. Hehe.

It's not rocket science to mine up saltpeter...  Petra has it right 30 minutes to 45 and you got 1k of it.  I will not buy it from an npc… when I can mine it easy

I do a lot of other content in the game from house deco, spawns,crafting ,and resource gathering to name a few, so I don't always have time to mine saltpeter. Most of the stuff you get from attacking and killing Pirates there crew or from scuttling merchant ships, I have noticed that the amount of Powder charges per ship is lower than the other items for cannons in the ships hold. I have mined some saltpeter and also boought some as well so I can have a ready supply of ingredients to make Powder charges and Fuse cords. The reason I sometimes run low is because I do a lot of Plunder Becons which do not give supplies only trade cargo.

Popps said :
With some 1,000 Luck, in about an hour of Dungeon Mining and at GM Miner using the +5 Mining gloves, "on average" one can mine about 500 Saltpeter.

I have no luck at all, it's 0, I get about 1000 saltpeter in an hour or so. Depends if anyone else has been around the area right before me, if it seems they have I come back later.