Greedy Goblin

Monday, July 4, 2016

Timber crates: my misfortune and your guide

A commenter informed me that those who stockpiled fir, cedar and birch timbers aren't morons since they need no market to sell, they craft Calpheon Timber Crate which is a strange kind of trade item. It stacks, it has no duration, but it has origin. It costs 5 of fir, cedar and birch plywoods (about 70K opportunity cost if you sell the timber and spend the plywood processing time to make steel). A trader gives 50K for a crate in the same town.

However if you transport them far enough, you get a better price. Much better. According to the guides, the Trent-Altinova transport pay over 100K. Valencia is even further. So I started making them and now that the Valencia update is out, I delivered them. Or, that was the plan and so my misfortune and suffering started:
  • You can't just fill them in a cart and offline travel, as it's forbidden with trade items.
  • Warehouse transport don't go from any town to any other. Luckily I can transport with one stop: From Trent to Epheria Port for 790/crate and from there to Ancado Inner Harbor for 4100. Transporting takes about two hours with ship.
  • You cannot warehouse-transport more than 100 items at once and crates don't stack during transport. I had over 700 crates.
  • Both for trading prices to not be terrible and for transporting cost not be tripled, the nodes must be connected. That's a lot of nodes between Trent, Epheria and Ancado. I had to shoot down my whole Velia node farm. Which is opportunity cost and time to reconnect after crate trade is done. Also, the last nodes aren't easy to reach. I saved some future connecting by leaving Bambu Valley, Iris Canyon and Kmach Canyon forever connected to Shakatu and run their work nodes. To reach these I had to do much running and climbing. The last three (Ancado Coast, Ancado Inner Harbor) cost 2 points. You either commit these points permanently or you have to claim them every time you transport.
  • You can get the "Failed to receive transport" bug and then have to wait some more.
  • Even if you leave at least the Coast connected, you must get yourself there and you can't even offline travel to Valencia/Ancado as it's beyond the desert. Instead of walking trough the desert, I bought a boat and sailed from Shakatu harbor to Ancado (and explored the islands nearby).
  • If you just leave an alt there, you have to wait 10 mins after log in to use trade. Also, the alt won't have high weight capacity, unless it's leveled, strength leveled and purchased weight extension.
  • The "market price" at the trader decreases as you deliver more and more items. At first the Ancado trader offered me 130% (133542 silver), but it went down as shown below. It returns to 130% slowly. Except when many players are online and selling, keeping the ratio low.
  • I tried Valencia, but it has 93% distance bonus against the 102% of Ancado, it doesn't worth going there.
  • Even if you have a high level cart, you are limited by the weight of silver you get for the crates. No, you can't route the silvers directly to the storage like you could with a shop.


I totally wouldn't do this hassle again. However I don't have to, nor you. Here is a guide how can you make good money (50-60K profit per crate):
  1. You must permanently connect the nodes. If you can't or don't want to, just forget the crates and do something else. If you plan to work in batches and connect the line every time and transport and sell at once, your head will explode. Way too much hassle!
  2. Forget Epheria! 8 Contribution points to connect it to Calpheon.
  3. Since your node line is permanent, you can transport any time it's available during your normal play, so it stops being a limiting factor. Move the crates on the Trent - Calpheon - Tarif - Altinova - Ancado Inner Harbor route! Check the warehouses for arrived transports (as only 100 can be en route), claim it and grab one batch randomly and send to the next stop.
  4. Keep an alt and a cart in Ancado Inner Harbor. Every now and then log to that alt, wait out the 10 minutes and go shopping. Spend 1 pt on residence and keep a bed there, spend the waiting by replenishing energy for bargaining. You can also send some materials to process while waiting.
  5. A lowbie alt has no chance passing the desert. But he can go by boat. There are routinely cruising ships from Altinova if you just want a one way trip. Or you can bring your own boat. The nearest warfmaster is in Shakatu Abandoned Ferry.
  6. You can, and due to the high price, probably should bargain for that approximately 10% bonus. You must win a silly minigame for it which costs 5 energy each try. Remember your bed, that's where the energy comes. A crate has 30LT weight. You can't carry too much at once to the trader and you must re-bargain every time. While you can fill your cart with many, the silvers you'll get will limit you.
  7. Every time you make 10M, use the currency exchange feature of the storage and buy a 10M ingot. Put it to the storage and transport to Altinova where you can pick it up without ever setting foot in the desert.
Remember, you don't have to do this, you can earn good money without making a single crate!

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello, i was that commenter, so let me add a few tips to spare some time (even if selling crates remains quite time costly).
- Park an alt with a cart in the town where you intend to sell (when you want to sell, park the cart near then banker, load 40 crates in the cart at once, ride the cart near the trader, bargain once and sell the 40 crates at once, you can sell what's in the cart directly to the trader if the cart is near enough).
- If you sell from the cart you can sell 40 crates at once so you will get overweighted from the silver you'll get but it won't be a problem because you can still ride your cart at full speed, just remember to stop near the bank enough to be able to unload it. No need for a high weight limit.
- Prices at the trader are based on the channel you are in (On Jordine EU, i mean channels like Veliah J1, Veliah J2, ...), so you can swap channels to "reset" the prices once you're done selling on one and the prices are low (I was selling in a few nodes in Mediah and right after selling the last batch at the farthest node from the bank i would switch channel so the 10min would be done after coming back+picking a new batch+ going to the trader).
- The bonus price you get from bargening would be higher with higher trade skill level (I read that in a few guides but never found an evidence and never had time to test it myself)
- You can load and unload transport between city even if you're not in that city just by doing it from the world map, so you can make your transports when doing something else.
- At last as Gevlon said, it is important to find the faster and less CP costly road. For exemple I used Calpheon as start instead of Trent because I thought the cost in CP to connect Trent and Calpheon was to much compared to the little distance bonus added by starting from Trent (except if you already have Trent connected for other reasons).
- With a good planning it can go quite fast, I was selling about 400 crates every 2 days and that was taking about 1 hour mostly afk traveling on the cart.

Gevlon said...

There is one problem with riding a cart overweighted from silver: if the game reloads (and it does a lot lately), you'll be sitting far from your cart with extremely low speed.

Anonymous said...

I'll trust you on that, and it could be a problem, the solution to me would be to make that alt a sorceress (who can use the teleport skill even overweighted), and then run to nearest town with shift+right/left or even better find a mob near you and die to resurrect in town

Anonymous said...

what does this net a day/week (if it is possible to wait and haul once a week)?
it sounds like alot of hasle.

Anonymous said...

tamer would be even better... riding heilang removes weight speed restrictions and would be perfect to solve this problem :)2 mounts ftw

Gevlon said...

Once a week IS a hassle. Once a day is much better: you log in, wait 10 mins while doing something else, sell, log off.

Anonymous said...

Once a week IS a hassle. Once a day is much better: you log in, wait 10 mins while doing something else, sell, log off.
ok thought, ty for clarification. what about the processing involved? you have to process the wood at some point. So it's a bit more time than that I guess per day. Or do you batch process the wood over hours at some point in the week? artisan goblins produce from the 9 wood nodes, what ... 400-500 timber per fir,cedar and birch a day? that is already a good amount processing time standing around.
is this at all a good way to get rid of ore and timber for a resonable price or is there a better way?

Gevlon said...

I process timber while asleep. Just wear max weight limit gear and let the processing go.

E'dyn said...

Another thing you can do, although it takes things longer. Is to have workers from another city make the crates.
Since if you have a worker from city A work in city B, he'll bring whatever he makes back to city A.

But this would mean more travel time and maybe less crates in between, thus might not be worth the hassle.

Unless they changed it since I last played BDO since I stopped playing a while ago.

Anonymous said...

I don't have the CP to invest trent to arcando would cost me 28 extra plus another couple CP for lodging and connecting the 9 timber nodes. right now I'm still producing grade 3 armor and weapon reform upgrades for the next couple weeks until my gear is ultimate (you can upgrade your heves now if you didn't already). because shards are a pain in the ass I don't use the 10*grade 3 + 1*shard heating recipe to get 100% ultimate stones. What ever the preorder is for shards it is buged for me or I'm to cheap to speend 20m+ for a shard.
anyway.
I understand your misfortune, how is this profitable at all? for a test run I could connect calpheon to altinova it gets me a distancebonus of 38%. I sold the crate to 113% market price. 88777
The raw timber+blackstonepowder for a crate would net me 174487,3 silver right now current lowest marketprice. Volatility seems fine for birch,fir and cedar, so it would sell fast all day long.
how is this profitable?
I didn't include the travel costs the crate would have. calph-tarif-altinova:612 silver per slot make that double or more if you want to haul from trent-calpheon-tarif-altinova-arcando

and how can you process while sleep? 2k stack is done under an hour. ok make it an 3k stack if you use a LT set and have loyalty LT maxed too ignoring sucess proc from silver embroided gear. so maybe 2hours at most. while at sleep isn't it more profitable to afk fish with a +10 balenos rod? I get about 2-4 relics a night (5-7h)

this loses money. at least my test did horrible. and I can't see this reaching 180+ what the distance? 100% and you have to fish 120%+ marketprice? Also I don't get proceccing XP from selling raw timber ... but I get more silver for less hassle. Or am I missing something?

Gevlon said...

Calpheon-Alti is not profitable.
Trent-Ancado is profitable. Check the screenshot how much money I got for a crate.

Anonymous said...

ahh forgot the screenshots. ok, ty. not even double, this doesn't make any sense to me at all.
I see ~140000 crates < net 178062 current lowest timber (market timber nets atm cedar:182 birch:251 fir:274)
plus wasted time accumulated over transport slot fu, keep processing going whenever possible, trade "market price %" channel-fishing (more time spend doing crates). Plus on that the wasted CP. what is it? 30 CP or more for connecting everything together .. better spend in resource nodes and lodging for prof/artisan goblins.

this starts to make sense if timber starts to fall in price.

Maybe that is the misfortune you are talking about.

Gevlon said...

??? 1 plywood needs 8 timber. So the material cost of a crate is 29K with your numbers.

Anonymous said...

1 fir plywood needs 10 fir plank
1 fir plank need 5 fir timber
so 1 plywood need 50 timber.
one crate needs 5 plywood so it needs 250 timber, not counting processing material procs. even when I run the numbers against 1,35 material procs it isn't worth it, unless timber market drops under 140k.

Gevlon said...

1.35 material procs??? I have 2.5, meaning 2 timber for a plank and 4 planks for a plywood. Get that processing up to artisan!

Anonymous said...

thanks for the questionmarks. I was blind and didn't notice that I went from 1.35 to 2.05 (prof 3). sry my mistake. On the correct skillelvel a crates raw timber materials nets 43168 with above prices. I didn't lose money in my calpheon-altinova testrun and could get 90-100k profit per crate if I could invest that amount of CP for Trent-Ancado. ok. If I had the spare CP.

I'm on the way to artisan. it's painfully slow tho.
Also contribution is painfully slow too.

Joshua Porter said...

What nodes did you invest in for timber?

Unknown said...

Hello Greedy, how many crates can you produce per day? I have enough cp and workers for the setup but I cant seem to produce enough crates to make 10 mil+ per day. Artisan 8 proccessing and process timber 7 hours a day. Make serendia, mediah and calpheon crates at trent then sell them with an alt at arcado inner harbor.