Daniel P. Barron

Eulora had a major update a few weeks ago. Here's what's changed:

• Items of the same name no longer have to be in the same pile in a craft container before you click combine. ⁱ
• Sometimes it is possible to stack containers.
• Output quality from exploration markers now varies.
• BLUEPRINTS SAY DIFFERENT THINGS TO DIFFERENT PLAYERS.

That last one is the big deal. I can drop a blueprint on the ground, have us both look at it, and we will see different instructions. Same blueprint. Same quality. Different instructions. The result of our characters having different ranks in whatever skill(s) used in the craft. So what's the difference?

Input

Different characters will need more or less of each ingredient depending on their rank. Higher rank: more ingredients. The resulting bundle's quality still reflects the value going into it based on previously known base values. This means higher skilled characters can more easily create high quality bundles, and low skilled players can more easily create low quality bundles.

This opens up a market for bundle-making, as the ideal bundle quality on any given click is more dependant on the quality of the blueprint being used, and less on the rank of the charcter making the click. Consequently, your ideal quality might be cost-prohibitive to create on your own. Also, almost all ingredients are now specified as a range; that is, you can use X to Y many of each in the list. As a result, it's much easier to combine a bundle to some desired quality. You can vary both the quality and quantity of ingredients in your quest to finding the crafting sweet spot.

Output

Your rank also determines how many things you get as output from the craft. When I do a tinkering click, I get 4 items. I should say I get at least 4 items; that is, in an undercraft. If you do the same click, you'll probably get 1 item. And if Foxy or Mircea do it, they'll get more. That's why inputs vary! I get 4 times more than you because I had to put in about 4 times as much.

It used to be the case that greater input meant higher quality on the ouput, and this is still true to a degree. But rather than my super high quality bundle turning into a similarly high quality item, it turns into 4 so-so quality items. Since I get 4, the value of the bundle is divided into 4.

Well... not really. There's this this thing called undercrafting, where you use high quality blueprints to turn low quality ingredients into higher quality products. High and low are relative terms here: generally the blueprint quality being greater than the bundle quality consitutes an undercraft. Since the output from high skilled characters is multiplied now, it's quite easy to find a combination in craft runs where the output total value exceeds the input total value, in terms of what the server will pay to get the item back.

A New Era For Noobs

Here's a job idea: get a craft-table, a used bandar toolkit, and one of each of the most commonly crafted blueprints. With them you will turn raw resources into craft bundles. You then sell the bundles in public auction. The way you get the resources doesn't matter. You can gather them yourself, or you can buy them from other players. Just make sure that the bundles sell for more than the cost to make them, which they should, because elders cannot make such low quality bundles. Not only that, there is a built-in profit when you turn quality 1 stuffs into quality 1 bundles. ⁱⁱ Even if quality 1 bundles aren't the ideal for whoever buys them, he can simply mix in a few high quality bundles to hit whatever target.

When you aren't running your own show, you can also make money doing odd jobs as they pop up. This is worth doing even if you don't consider the profits disscussed to be substantial. You can think of it like a public service to the republic, which as of late has become a pressing concern. Eulora is a very easy way to get involved: it forces a crash course on somewhat more sane computing environments; it forces onlookers to actually say something; it's a great way to start programming. There is no excuse. If you want to get involved: go, get involved.

1. Mostly to allow using multiple Doubtful Tomes. But what blueprint asks for multiple tomes?? Ohhohohoho. ^
2. This is because ever since the update, not only can elders use many more times the ingredients, noobs can use less than what is considered by the server to be the true number of ingredients. True meaning, the number of ingredients at quality 100 to produce a quality 100 bundle. That means a noob can use quality 1 ingredients worth less than the coresponding bundle's value at quality 1. Since no item can have 0 quality, and since quality must be an integer, it gets rounded up! I think this has been fixed. If you try to do this now, you'll get an error message and lose the ingredient. ^