Eulora News Bulletin of today.

Remember how I said a few days ago that "Eulora had a foramen ovale" bla bla bla ? Well, there's one less now.

You see, previously every activity, be it exploring terrain to set up a claim, crafting, building up a claim to exploit the resources there etc took a little time. Two seconds, to be precise. Obviously, this is not sustainable : if a crafter can make any item, no matter how complex or intricate, in all of two seconds then there's scarcely need for more than one crafter on the entire server, is there ?

Consequently, starting today, all activities take some time proportional to their complexity (measured, of course, in copper value). Skills play a part here too : the higher the skill, the somewhatⁱ faster the job is done. It currently takes me a little under six seconds to braid together some Dry Clumps of Grass in order to make one Coarse Frangible Thread, a little over six seconds to explore with a common tool and about seven to explore with an improved one, and something between five and six seconds to build up a Small claim. On the other end of the spectrum, it takes about half a minute to braid together seven Braided Coarse Threads to make one Coarse Cordage, and a little less than that to make Base Metal Studs. A clear prize winner is trying to explore with the Chetty Stick, which clocks right around the ten minute mark.

In other news, much to my delight Eulora sports a thriving economy, I know I average between half a million and a full millionⁱⁱ worth of trade each day - buying miners' Basic Harvestables, supplying them with tools and thread, crafting the occasional item to order or buying the occasional desperately requisite precursor.ⁱⁱⁱ. There are of course a number of questions still open before the players. In no particular order :

• What is the correct price function by quality, call it f(x,q) where x = item type and q = quality ? Suppose I have eleven Shiny Rocks at quality 60 and some other fellow has six Shiny Rocks at quality 110. What would be the fair proportion of gold to be awarded us ? 6 * 1.1 / 11 * .6 = even money, on the grounds that that's what the NPC merchant offers ? More to the guy with more rocks, notwithstanding their lower quality, on the grounds that they can nevertheless be used to make more items^iv ? More to the guy with the better rocks, notwithstanding their scarcer count, on the grounds that they can be used to make recipes and other goodies ?^v This is a problem that requires some sort of resolution, eventually.
• Perhaps related to the previous, what is the best approach to crafting ? Obviously, if one makes his own precursors he will always craft with precursors just as good or slightly worse than the things he produces, quality-wise. This means he's never getting much in the way of recipes. If one were to use the services of an apprentice crafter, giving him high quality precursors in exchange for the resultant loot, one could certainly get some recipes, but would also end up saddled with low quality products. Which perhaps can in turn be recouped by being further crafted, but if the apprentice has a low skill, how badly does this ruin his loot ? And if he doesn't have a low skill, how badly does this ruin his loot the other way (ie, through a lower quality differential) ?
• What is the correct usage of Small claims ? For one thing, they allow the builder to put between one and seven threads in there. Is it better to use one ? Seven ? Something in between ? For another thing, they allow the builder to use any arbitrary quality threads. Is higher quality better ? Absolutely, relatively, never ?
• How does one go about controlling which kinds of resources he harvests ? There appears to be at least some area specificity, at least for some of the resources. Would a map be useful ?^vi
• Since the Chetty Stick is so drastically expensive, what is the best way to use it ? What does it do, exactly ? Rumour has it that MP himself indicated the things should be used in places where one fails to find stuff through other means, but how does this work exactly ?

As you can see, plenty of open questions, both for crafters and for miners. They do kinda require at least some sort of an approximation of an answer, so my dear players : Break out the Rs!

1. The impact of higher skill decays rapidly, so while you absolutely wish to get as close as possible to an averageish value, going much higher than that isn't as imperative. [↩]
2. One million coppers is still worth one Satoshi or 0.01 Bitcoin as far as I know. [↩]
3. Holy shit I need Wooly Mushrooms! Get me Wooly Mushrooms! Paying 1k each no quality questions asked!

   To not even get into the discussion of Slithy Tove, the last one I got was 50k for crying out loud. That's a 1000% base price! [↩]

4. Since a crafter's output seems largely invariant in relation to his inputs, using low quality items looks like practically free money. [↩]
5. On the other hand, a crafter that uses high quality inputs seems to sprout all sorts of side loot. [↩]
6. I hear Mod Six's workin' on one. [↩]