PotBS Journal - 9-January-2008

Second day of Pirates of the Burning Sea (pre-order access), and my economic efforts already reached the first stable state, which I will probably be able to maintain and milk for profits for a while. I am now the proud owner of 10 granite quarries, the maximum I can get without paying for a second account, as players are limited to 10 structures per account.

I logged on that second night with my first production of granite ready, and several people of my guild complaining how rare and expensive granite was. You can produce 1 piece of granite for 6 doubloons and 0.4 hours of labor, but the auction house prices for granite were as high as 300 doubloons. I sold my granite to my guild mates for 60 doubloons each, which enabled them to get their economies going, and still gave me enough profit to expand my operation. Once everyone in my guild had enough granite, I sold the remainder for 200+ doubloons on the auction houses. It costs a bit over 2,000 doubloons to build a granite quarry, but by the end of the evening I had enough money to even demolish my starting wood and gravel production sites and my draughtsman's office, and replace everything by granite quarries.

I'd expect granite prices to drop over the coming days, but even if I keep selling the stuff for 60 doubloons I'll make enough money to prepare for a move and change of business. Granite is a great thing to produce early in the game and in the starting area where everyone is. But in the long run fewer people will be in that starting area, granite demand will be more distributed, and with granite being so easy to produce, there will be much more competition. So I will want to move to somewhere higher level and closer to the center of the map, Yucatan for example. And I will want to produce some intermediate goods for shipbuilding or consumables and ship outfittings. As these things require more complicated production chains, there is less competition is producing them. I don't think I will want to go into the production of ships or ship provisioning, as these need multi-player effort and coordinations. I'd rather stick to producing something I can "solo".

The disadvantage of playing a freetrader is that freetraders are weaker in combat. The general design idea behind that is that freetraders can make up for their lack of combat talents by having enough money for the best ships, outfittings, and consumables. But as the economy is still in its start-up phase, there simple aren't any ships, or outfittings available, and only the low-level consumables from the junk vendor. Well, at least I reached level 9 and replaced my starting ship with a civilian Bermuda sloop you can buy for 2,500 from the civilian ship vendor. Civilian ships are less good than the player-built version and need a slightly higher level to use. But there weren't any player-built Bermudas in the British starting area for sale, and those I could have bought at the other end of the map were priced expensively at 10,000 doubloons or more. Not worth it for these low levels, where you still advance quickly enough. I'd rather save my money for a Mediator Cutter at level 12, although I haven't seen one for sale yet anywhere. I'm making up for my lack of combat power by first having gained some levels doing the economy tutorial and by sinking pirate ships on the open sea, then going back to the starting town and doing quests a few levels below my level.
- posted by Tobold @ 9:24 AM Permanent Link