rothmans
21-05-2008, 20:50
There are a few guides relating to this but nothing complete and that severs the purpose of explaining how to manage your finances at lower to mid lvls.
First of, your sources of income:
1. Quests. This is the main and steady source of alz throughout the game. The rewards may seem small at first but they get bigger as you increase in lvl, reaching sums towards 1-2kk per quest towards the end. Main line story and additional quests end at lvl 99, so don't count on them as a permanent source of income. You will get a few quests after that but they're either for a map code or just a free entry item type quest.
2. Drops. This is the permanent source of income but it's not steady because all drops are based on luck in Cabal and the drops will become scarce as you increase in lvl.
Here is a list of stuff you should keep and a list of the stuff you should NPC:
Keepers:
- All types of cores. Some you will want to sell, others you'll want to keep for later use.
- Chaos lamps. If you're feeling lucky, open them. If you want pure cash, sell them/NPC them. I'm including them here because I personally open them all but looking back, NPCing would have brought same if not more alz.
- Raw platinum, royal fixer, event formula card. You can combine these with 100% success rate and sell them as entry items, or sell the materials individually.
- Items with filled slots. Something like x2.5 2 slot item drop is pretty good even if it's really low grade.
- DT cards. The drop rate for these has went down and the demand has went up.
- basic craft materials. Hard shell, blue feather etc.
- professional craft materials, disks and shapes
- Formula cards. If it's not in NPC, it's probably worth a few good millions, so keep it for yourself or sell it. Most valuable/ in demand ones are .050 and .075
- Rings of Luck +2, even +1, and Critical rings.
- Odd circles. Free users can get these now from a few helper quests. Don't use them at low lvls, it's a waste. Either save them for chaos arena or tougher dungeons, or sell them to other players.
- Slotted titanium armors and weapons and phyrestine orbs and crystals. +0 is needed for crafting and +1 or higher for filling the slots for crafting. Something with +0 and 2 clean slots can be worth quite a lot as it's needed for crafting the proof item and passing to the next lvl of crafting.
- Extract potions. You're going to need some of these for yourself and in case you don't, someone else will buy them from you.
- World entry items. Map parts, Muster Card Ruina Station, Epaulette of the dead b1f/b2f, Seal of Darkness, Muster Card Forgetten Temple. Personal use or resale
- Plate of honor, which you might get at lower lvls from openning a chaos lamp.
- Epaulettes, of fighter, guardian or sage. If they're too low for you to use them, sell them to other players.
- Slot extender low, medium or high. Low is pretty sought after, medium is pretty commom now, and the high version is worth a lot of alz on all servers.
- Plasma coating kit, this can also be found in a chaos lamp at lower lvls now and you'd be temped to NPC it for 2 mil, but you can sell it for up to x10 on the market
- Astral board. Not much to say here. Everyone pretty much knows what they look-like and it's the reason why many sell everything they have to get one.
Not worth storing:
- regular armor or weapons, even slotted or upgraded. Until lvl 50, you can only NPC these kind of drops, however after that you get your transmuter and you can crush the items to get material cores and 1/4 of the NPC buy-back value. Lowest grade of armor you can crush is aramid or shadowsteel, citrine orbs and crystals, and lvl +30 jewels.
- NPC formula cards. If you're really desperate for alz, you could try to sell them, but my advice is to save time and NPC them.
To find out what drops where, check out this community-made drop list:
http://forum.cabalonline.com/showthread.php?t=38333
3. Crafting. At lower lvls, crafting is cheap because materials are affordable and common and selling the crafts is relatively fast. But that's as good as it gets. It can get very expensive at higher lvls, but if you're lucky or perseverant, you can get a nice return of your investment. Here is a starter crafting guide:
http://forum.cabalonline.com/showthread.php?t=2706
Secondly, expenses:
1. Skills and upgrades. Each rank and the upgrades that are available with it cost up to tens of millions so you'd be advised to save some money in advance. Read your class section for skill guides and upgrade picks from more experienced players. http://forum.cabalonline.com/forumdisplay.php?f=14
2. Armors and weapons. Don't worry much about armors or weapons until about lvl 40, when you can start wearing adept. Get a full adept set and the matching jewelry as soon as you can wear it. It pays to get a +4 skill exp set or +3 with a slot and upgraded it to +5/6 and wear it until you reach trans. It's cheaper to upgrade aramid/shadowsteel than it is to upgrade bluestine or titanium. +4 skill exp is also cheaper with aramid/shadowsteel than it is with bluestine or titanium, but if you can craft yourself a better adept set or someone in your guild or buddy list will give you a discount, go for it.
If you plan on heavy skilling at lower to mid lvls, don't upgrade your weapons so that you can combo more on the same mobs. Upgrade your jewelry as soon as you reach the lvl for it and go for a guardian epaulette rather than a fighter/sage one.
I'd suggest to skip bluestine completely. Titanium is only worth getting if it's a good or max craft, or has amp in gloves. Titanium is cheap to upgrade and to extend, so it's not a bad investment. Shadowtitanium is also skipable unless it's good/max craft or amp in slot. Osmium is what almost everyone focuses on because of good def/def rate and because it's easier to craft than higher grades. Shineguard, Terragrace and Mystic are mainly used because of higher def/def rate in places where it's harder to stay alive than it is to kill. Mihtril is the last gear, pretty rare, and almost impossible to get anything good crafted or in slot. Very expensive to upgrade and so far impossible to extend, it's mostly for reaching a defense threshold after which a particular mob does minimal damage on you.
Titanium and phyrestine weapons can be pretty good if they're max craft, +7 and extended. Aqua and shadowtitanium deathblow are the most affordable higher grade weapons at the moment. Lapis and osmium are better but the spike in price is pretty high and few can afford them. Topaz, redosium and mithril are mostly used to compensate for the lower attack/magic from a lower grade weapon with a good craft bonus.
3. Things you think you need but really don't.
- An astral board. If you can afford to buy one from cash shop, it's ok, but wasting a few weeks or more to gather alz just to buy one from someone else in game is a waste of time. Skills and armor are far more important than buying this.
- Makeovers. Again, if you can afford to buy it from cash shop, no problem. But if you can't, don't throw away alz just to change a few pixels. Personally, I'd only consider buying a hair kit if it involved removing all the hair from my character's head.
Hope this guide will help you make a few decisions about what is worth buying and what is worth chucking away.
First of, your sources of income:
1. Quests. This is the main and steady source of alz throughout the game. The rewards may seem small at first but they get bigger as you increase in lvl, reaching sums towards 1-2kk per quest towards the end. Main line story and additional quests end at lvl 99, so don't count on them as a permanent source of income. You will get a few quests after that but they're either for a map code or just a free entry item type quest.
2. Drops. This is the permanent source of income but it's not steady because all drops are based on luck in Cabal and the drops will become scarce as you increase in lvl.
Here is a list of stuff you should keep and a list of the stuff you should NPC:
Keepers:
- All types of cores. Some you will want to sell, others you'll want to keep for later use.
- Chaos lamps. If you're feeling lucky, open them. If you want pure cash, sell them/NPC them. I'm including them here because I personally open them all but looking back, NPCing would have brought same if not more alz.
- Raw platinum, royal fixer, event formula card. You can combine these with 100% success rate and sell them as entry items, or sell the materials individually.
- Items with filled slots. Something like x2.5 2 slot item drop is pretty good even if it's really low grade.
- DT cards. The drop rate for these has went down and the demand has went up.
- basic craft materials. Hard shell, blue feather etc.
- professional craft materials, disks and shapes
- Formula cards. If it's not in NPC, it's probably worth a few good millions, so keep it for yourself or sell it. Most valuable/ in demand ones are .050 and .075
- Rings of Luck +2, even +1, and Critical rings.
- Odd circles. Free users can get these now from a few helper quests. Don't use them at low lvls, it's a waste. Either save them for chaos arena or tougher dungeons, or sell them to other players.
- Slotted titanium armors and weapons and phyrestine orbs and crystals. +0 is needed for crafting and +1 or higher for filling the slots for crafting. Something with +0 and 2 clean slots can be worth quite a lot as it's needed for crafting the proof item and passing to the next lvl of crafting.
- Extract potions. You're going to need some of these for yourself and in case you don't, someone else will buy them from you.
- World entry items. Map parts, Muster Card Ruina Station, Epaulette of the dead b1f/b2f, Seal of Darkness, Muster Card Forgetten Temple. Personal use or resale
- Plate of honor, which you might get at lower lvls from openning a chaos lamp.
- Epaulettes, of fighter, guardian or sage. If they're too low for you to use them, sell them to other players.
- Slot extender low, medium or high. Low is pretty sought after, medium is pretty commom now, and the high version is worth a lot of alz on all servers.
- Plasma coating kit, this can also be found in a chaos lamp at lower lvls now and you'd be temped to NPC it for 2 mil, but you can sell it for up to x10 on the market
- Astral board. Not much to say here. Everyone pretty much knows what they look-like and it's the reason why many sell everything they have to get one.
Not worth storing:
- regular armor or weapons, even slotted or upgraded. Until lvl 50, you can only NPC these kind of drops, however after that you get your transmuter and you can crush the items to get material cores and 1/4 of the NPC buy-back value. Lowest grade of armor you can crush is aramid or shadowsteel, citrine orbs and crystals, and lvl +30 jewels.
- NPC formula cards. If you're really desperate for alz, you could try to sell them, but my advice is to save time and NPC them.
To find out what drops where, check out this community-made drop list:
http://forum.cabalonline.com/showthread.php?t=38333
3. Crafting. At lower lvls, crafting is cheap because materials are affordable and common and selling the crafts is relatively fast. But that's as good as it gets. It can get very expensive at higher lvls, but if you're lucky or perseverant, you can get a nice return of your investment. Here is a starter crafting guide:
http://forum.cabalonline.com/showthread.php?t=2706
Secondly, expenses:
1. Skills and upgrades. Each rank and the upgrades that are available with it cost up to tens of millions so you'd be advised to save some money in advance. Read your class section for skill guides and upgrade picks from more experienced players. http://forum.cabalonline.com/forumdisplay.php?f=14
2. Armors and weapons. Don't worry much about armors or weapons until about lvl 40, when you can start wearing adept. Get a full adept set and the matching jewelry as soon as you can wear it. It pays to get a +4 skill exp set or +3 with a slot and upgraded it to +5/6 and wear it until you reach trans. It's cheaper to upgrade aramid/shadowsteel than it is to upgrade bluestine or titanium. +4 skill exp is also cheaper with aramid/shadowsteel than it is with bluestine or titanium, but if you can craft yourself a better adept set or someone in your guild or buddy list will give you a discount, go for it.
If you plan on heavy skilling at lower to mid lvls, don't upgrade your weapons so that you can combo more on the same mobs. Upgrade your jewelry as soon as you reach the lvl for it and go for a guardian epaulette rather than a fighter/sage one.
I'd suggest to skip bluestine completely. Titanium is only worth getting if it's a good or max craft, or has amp in gloves. Titanium is cheap to upgrade and to extend, so it's not a bad investment. Shadowtitanium is also skipable unless it's good/max craft or amp in slot. Osmium is what almost everyone focuses on because of good def/def rate and because it's easier to craft than higher grades. Shineguard, Terragrace and Mystic are mainly used because of higher def/def rate in places where it's harder to stay alive than it is to kill. Mihtril is the last gear, pretty rare, and almost impossible to get anything good crafted or in slot. Very expensive to upgrade and so far impossible to extend, it's mostly for reaching a defense threshold after which a particular mob does minimal damage on you.
Titanium and phyrestine weapons can be pretty good if they're max craft, +7 and extended. Aqua and shadowtitanium deathblow are the most affordable higher grade weapons at the moment. Lapis and osmium are better but the spike in price is pretty high and few can afford them. Topaz, redosium and mithril are mostly used to compensate for the lower attack/magic from a lower grade weapon with a good craft bonus.
3. Things you think you need but really don't.
- An astral board. If you can afford to buy one from cash shop, it's ok, but wasting a few weeks or more to gather alz just to buy one from someone else in game is a waste of time. Skills and armor are far more important than buying this.
- Makeovers. Again, if you can afford to buy it from cash shop, no problem. But if you can't, don't throw away alz just to change a few pixels. Personally, I'd only consider buying a hair kit if it involved removing all the hair from my character's head.
Hope this guide will help you make a few decisions about what is worth buying and what is worth chucking away.