While on my anti- farmer / bot crusade I started thinking that anyone can cry foul but in my (RL) career field one is expected to not only find deficiencies but solutions as well.

So after looking at the problem of the bot/farmer I really have to ask “why does anyone really need to buy the currency in first place?”

One of the most common complaints about Lineage II is its difficult economy. I agree that it is out of whack in SOME respects but it is a player driven economy. I started to look a bit closer. The revelation that struck me was that there is very little need for a great portion of the player driven portion of the economy to begin with.

“WHAT, are you insane?!” You cry out.

Let me explain. I will approach this from the new player prospective.

From levels 1 – 25 there is the Newbie helper. He trades the value of your gear and then charges the difference in price for newer gear up to top No Grade Gear.

This works out very well in the favor of the player. Also in each starter area there are quest to do that provide Soul Shot. The amount provided is enough to get a player to about level 17 or so. That eliminates a large expense up front.

The helper also provides free “buffs” to speed up the lower level grind. There are also “Weapon Quests” to do at roughly level 10 in most of the starter areas that provide a fairly nice weapon for the level range. I used my “Silversmith Hammer” until level 22 with my first character but that is another story lol.

Quote from the Lineage II official page _________________________________________________

1. Additional Quest Rewards
Characters designated as new characters, if they perform certain quests, will receive additional quest rewards that are not given to the other characters.

Fighters receive 13,000 No Grade Soul shots, and Mystics receive 6,000 No Grade Spirit shots.

They receive Soul shots and Spirit shots twice: when they begin the game for the first time, and when they perform the weapon quest around level 10. In addition, these new characters will receive more rewards in many quests. ___________________________________________________

Once at level 20 and after doing your first class transfer quest, a player is eligible to start doing the “Seven Signs” event.

This ongoing event allows you to hunt in dungeons where the mobs drop “Seals” These seals can be traded in at the end of the week for what’s called “Ancient Adena”. What can you do with Ancient Adena?

Well you can find an NPC at the end of the event week named the Blacksmith of Mammon. He will take your current weapon and trade it for a better weapon with a cost difference, not in regular "adena” but Ancient Adena.! Basically its free weapon upgrades for as long as you can stand to hunt in the Catacombs. (See event descriptions)

I would strongly recommend that anyone read up on the “Seven Signs” event that is interested in playing or just plain old “stuck” on the economy of Lineage II.

That’s all fine and dandy but that only solves the weapon portion, what about the rest, You say? The biggest recurring expense of ANY character is Soul Shot. Soul Shot can run you millions into the hole. Now I am not going to tell you to hunt without it, especially solo. I feel your pain with the grind. So how can you help alleviate that expense?

It’s a simple answer some of you may not want to hear: Make a Dwarf. At level 20 a dwarf gains the ability to craft D grade Soul Shot. At level 36 they gain C grade Soul Shot and so on. You can cut you Soul Shot cost by roughly 55 - 60% by crafting it yourself. Can you use that sort of discount?

Example At level 30 I got a D grade Pike as a drop. By crystallizing it I got 1170 D grade crystals. Each Crystal yields 154 DSS. That comes out to 180,180 DSS.

Now to make those I need to buy Soul Ore from the NPC shop. 3 soul ore (the base unit for 154) cost 876 adena. That works out to 1,024,920 total cost. (Now, of course you can not craft 180k DSS in one day lol it’s going to take a long time to craft that much) Compare that to the cost of buying DSS from a player at 12 adena each, it works out to 2,162,160.

On my server the price of DSS is averaging around 13 each which is 2,342,340. That’s a pretty big savings. Roughly 1.3 million adena, I don’t know about you but I could always use that sort of extra adena rather then handing it out to other players.

Needless to say, you won’t ever need to buy DSS from another player again!

The main problem with this is getting the initial drops. Drops really start happening for players starting in their mid 20’s or so and its usually lower D grade items like Puma Armor and things like that. Fine, crystallize them. The point is to get away from paying other players the market cost of SS. You will still need to do it, especially starting out but I am here to tell you that I have never ever bought SS from another player once I did this consistently.

The other reason you may want a Dwarf is this. Drops are fine. Had I taken that D Grade Pike and tried to sell it I would NOT have gotten the value of it. It sells in NPC shops for about 800,000 adena.

Now unless a no – brain ebayer buys it at that price, you are NOT going to be selling it at that price. You will need to sell lower, especially if you expect it to move in a reasonable amount of time. The fact of the matter is the weapon has a very low “street” value. D grade crystals however have a much better and CONSISTANT value because they are consumable. They are always in demand.

Crystallization is a very important skill to have access to. The math basically replicates itself throughout the game at every grade. The obstacle you are likely to hit at C grade is the availability of drops at first.

Everything else you do at this point simply supplements your income. I found that selling Weapon Enchants is very profitable. You get them by using “blank” scrolls from the Seven Signs dungeons and, once again, Ancient Adena.

If you follow this, all that really remains is Armor as your main Adena expense and some of the consumables like “healing potions” and “Scrolls of Escape” which are more or less negligible. Armor is comparatively inexpensive. A C grade suit of “Composite Armor” cost on average two million Adena. That is a level 40 suit.

Here are some other tips.
• Do not buy anything from players at D grade. It’s a total and complete waste of money. You will not use D grade long enough to justify buying over enchanted top D grade weapons at 3 to 6 million apiece. Save that money for C grade.

• Do not buy weapons from NPC shops. Why buy weapons from NPC vendors for regular Adena when you can trade up with the Blacksmith of Mammon for Ancient Adena? Leave you regular adena alone, stop wasting it.

• Wasting money on top D grade gear. You see a lot of people running around in D grade “Brigandine”. The suit (breastplate and pants) run about 550,000 (give or take) plus the cost of the shield. The suit gives a very nice bonus but here is the catch.There is NO bonus until you have the FULL suit which includes a Brig Helmet. Brig helmets are crafted by players and run anywhere from 1 to 2 MILLION adena. So…the suit is a waste for a starter character.

You can easily use/buy a full Mithril suit (mid D grade) for half the price and get all the parts from the NPC shop. (Breastplate, pants, shield and helm) and it has a nice “Hit Point” bonus on it as well.

• Watch your TELEPORT cost!!!! Porting around carelessly can kill your savings pretty damn fast. Pick your level area town and stick to it. Run if you have to, the world of Lineage II is fairly safe to traverse if you stick to the roads.

Really what you are doing is becoming self sufficient.

Hopefully at this point you have done THE most important thing in Lineage II along the way and that is to make some friends and contacts.

I can’t teach you to be social, either you are or you are not. If you plan on being anti-social and soloing Lineage II, I wish you luck, enjoy the free first 30 days because you aren’t getting much farther then that.

All of this takes Time and a bit of Luck. There is no fast and easy way in Lineage II. There are many other games on the market if you want “fast and easy right now” style of play.

This, by far, is not the only way to do things in Lineage II. Part of what makes L2 great is that there is no “one” way of doing things. There is no single best hunting spot, there is no single best town, there is no single best dungeon there are no single best items to sell and there is no single best class.

It’s a large living world that you must carve out your own way. What works for me, may not work so well for you.

Good Hunting!