Hello all, I’m a new player to Lineage 2 and a veteran to mmo’s in general. I have a few questions that don’t appear to be covered in most of the guides or help sites and I was hoping that someone could help me in understanding some of the following:
1. At what point does it become financially efficient to stop buying armor and weapon upgrades from a vendor and start looking for upgrades from player stores? An example of what I mean is, next weapon upgrade will cost me 200,000 adena, for a 31 p. atk weapon. Could I find better for cheaper through players? If not, about what level will the player stores begin to have prominence over the npc stores?
2. How do you use the merchant search option? I was assuming that it was a search system to look for items being offered by players? However, having to find specific items instead of a general search is a bit overwhelming for someone who really doesn’t know what he’s looking for yet. In addition to this, when I did do a search entry nothing happened. I even did a search for ancient adena (which the player was selling right next to me) and received nothing in the search results.
3. How do you enable the searching for group option? I played around with the party search(?) tool but was a bit confused with it’s interface.
4. Are pets worth it for a new player? This answer will probably vary based on class and such, but it appears that keeping the pet up-to-date may prove to be a bit expensive.
5. Are there any “must have” macros that are commonly used in everyday gameplay? If so, which ones? (and list the macro script if you could).
1.) The no grade weapons you can likely get slightly cheaper through a player, but it will require some travelling and patience. Until around level 50 or so, I honestly would suggest trying to buy as much from shops over players as possible, as there are many players about trying to strike profit out of people too lazy to do the shopping themselves, marking up off the NPC vendor price.
2. The findprivatestore option will highlight titles of private stores (I would suggest doing the quest that can take you to Giran and back to have a look at the bustling market) which contain the words you are looking for. It is really little more than a reading help, and won't help you get around looking at everything, as shop titles are often misleading or incomplete.
3. It is not generally used. Your safest bet to finding a group is shouting (use the ! mark before your line) "DD (Damage Dealer)/Nuker(attack mage)/Healer(durh :p ) LFG!"
4. No. Pets are not more than novelty.
5. Some people swear by macros, but they break too easily and are liable to causing more fuss than they're worth in my opinion. The most worthwhile macros are probably those for PvPing without holding your CTRL button down - simply add /force before a command (i.e. /forceuseskill backstab), save that as a macro and put it on your hotbar. Some people also use macros to activate several healing items at the time, but that's high end content and should not worry you overly at this point.
1. The only point is when there is usually when there is an item that is sold at the store or isn't very popular. For example, brigandine top and bottom you could find it cheaper being sold by another player than in the store. But craft-only items, like some top D armor, everything B grade and onwards you can only buy it from another player or try your luck and hunt the mob that drops it.
2. The merchant search option searches by the title of the shop and highlights all the matches. Using your example of the ancient adena, suppose the title of the seller was "AA ~ 5a". If you typed "AA" in the search box, that shop would appear with a different color. It works for both buy shops and sell shops.
3. That is something I don't have any experience with. Sorry.
4. Well, I think that is debatable. Pets in-game are a lot like real life pets. They give a lot of work but can be really fun. I guess it is more of a question if you like pets and want to have some fun with then rather than if they are useful or not.
5. I am not sure about "must have" macros. Some healers/buffers like to have macros to cast all buffs with one click. They are easy to setup, just drag the buff skills to the macro and it is done. For other classes I am not aware of any other useful macro.
Since the goal of the game is to have fun and since fun varies from person to person, my answer is 'It Depends.'
If you enjoy buying and selling, wheeling and dealing, and making money...buy and sell armor from the start. I like it, so I work the market a lot.
If you like programming, use a lot of macros. I don't, so I don't.
If you enjoy the pets, play with them a lot. I do when the mood strikes me.
...and so forth. L2 is such a well designed game (tho not all are able to recognize it) that we are allowed to make our own fun as we live in the L2 world. Some people slip into the default of getting levels and trying to be uber, but that is just one of the MANY ways that the game can be playes.
Welcome to L2. (Get your hip waders out, we fling it hard and deep here!)
1)Neither really. Buying from players is often the more expensive option. For All equipment (below B grade) except for some B grade Duals, it's usually cheaper to buy from a NPC/Store. This is partially due to some doing their best to make money in game, and partially due to the difficulty/expense of aquiring materials for crafting.
You will every once in a while run across a deal, so learn what various items are 'worth' to the game, (crystal value/NPC value) and try to have enough cash to purchase those when you find them. Be warned the converse is true also! That is, buyers can be just as picky when YOU are the seller.
On each server however, there is usually a 'market price range' that most items will be bought/sold at. What is overpriced and what is pretty standardized depends on item grade and demand/supply. Rough indicators based on my experience:
NG (Armor & Weapon) - Few buyers and sellers, thus you usually end up just using the 'Exchange option' to upgrade your NG equipment. You could buy top NG at a decent price and still lose money simply because selling your old lower NG only gets you the store NPC price. (Even fewer people buy/sell low NG than top NG) NG has no Crystal value, therefore the minimum price NG is worth is solely what a NPC will give you for it.
D grade Weapons - Costs are pretty solid. Up to second best can be bought in stores, and all weapons can be upgraded/exchanged with the Blacksmith of Mammon. All Equipment D grade and above can be crystalized, thus everything from this point up has a inherent 'base value' that is relative to the going prices of crystals on your server.
D grade armor - The best store equipment will get you to C grade easily. Set completers or Top D will be incredibly expensive due to difficulty in getting key materials. (Knowledge Gloves, Brigandine Helm, Half-Plate Armor, Necklace of Darkness.)
C grade Weapons - Buy from the Luxury shop using crystals. If you buy from a player expect to pay more for the conveience of not having to aquire the crystals at a reasonable price. You can still upgrade/exchange using Mammon using Ancient Adena. Market is fairly stable.
C grade Armor - Again, the Luxury shop items provides a good baseline. Non-Luxury shop items will run a premium, due to craft book limitations. Some items are aquirable via quest and have a premium....but stable cost. (Full plate Helm/Demon Gloves)
B Grade Weapons - Prices are outrageous due to cost and lack of materials. Demand is also pretty high. You will have more luck finding an 'off' weapon than you will most others. Currently the most desired equipment tends to cost as much as low A grade does. (Top C isn't much worse than low B really, so don't let the difficulty in aquiring a B weapon be to big of a bother...skipping right to A grade isn't too hard of a stretch either if your not hunting reds all day.)
B grade Armor - Expensive and prices are extremely variable. Helms are usually the most expensive. That said, it's still far, far easier to get B grade armor than the weapons for a decent price. Some sets are much harder to complete though. (Blue wolf Robe set for example.)
A Grade weapons - Terribly expensive...but reasonable stable. More common than most B weapons also.
A grade armor - Helms are insanely expensive. (Prices are coming down, but slowly.) The rest of Low A is near B grade in Price, high A is more expensive but not outrageously so overall.
S grade Weapons - $$$ - By the time you reach the level to use it you can decide if it really worth buying or aquiring it yourself.
S grade Armor - $$$ - Ditto.
2) There is a shortcut button in general actions or you can use the command "/findprivatestore <text>". Both do the same thing however. For the area you are in the game just does a match against whatever <text> you enter versus what is in each stores 'message'. (The text above a stores head.) Thus if you want to see who is selling 'Avadon Leather Armor' you would be advised to just do a "/findprivatestore ava", as due to limitations on store headers, most will have an abbreviated description of their items instead of the full names. When a match is made the stores 'header' changes to a shade of green based on if they are a buy or sell shop. Redoing the command without a string to look for clears all 'colored shops'. I suggest making a L1 alt, running it to Giran, and spend a few minutes each day browsing the market with it to get a 'feel' for what the conventions and standards are in naming and pricing. (I leave it up to you if the prices are fair or worth it however.)
3)Most people simply don't use it. Usually people just yell, with LFG/LFR/LFP/LFC (Looking For Raid/Party/Group/Clan etc.). Often, just having the yellow LFP text above your head is fine, as few check the details right now.
4)NO. Pets are an expense for new players. They can be fair helpers played right. But their initial cost will be out of your reach for sometime yet. Baby pets will cost around 550,000a minimum to do the quest yourself, but are incredibly difficult to keep alive around mobs. (Food is cheap for them however.) Wolves and Hatchlings can be quested for free or very cheap. Decent equipment for them is horribly expensive however. You'll end up paying about 2,000,000 MINIMUM for decent equipment for either. Top Hatchling equipment is roughly 2x the cost of top Wolf equipment and Strider equipment is 4x-8x that. Also as the level of the wolf/hatchling rises the food expenses rise proportionally also...so a high level wolf eats a good portion of food in adena. The one exception is the Twilight hatchling whose food cost is very low. Otherwise in general:
Wolf - (Glass Cannon) Very high Patk, Very low Pdef Non-existent Mdef. Low HP.
Hatchlings Vary by type.
Wind = Fighter. Ok Patk, Good Pdef, Good Mdef. Very useful Atk and Defense skills.
Star = Mage. Good Attack skills, Low Defense.
Twilight = Economy. Cheap to feed. Low attack, Mediocre Defense.
(*Note: The wind is the only one I have leveled with personally. For the other two I am going by others words who I have talked with/watched for practical use/leveling...still working on getting those for myself.)
Striders - Can only be raised by leveling a hatchling to L55 and doing a quest. Dusk (Twilight hatch) is the most common one seen. Most just buy them from those who power level them, and don't bother to equip them at all. Just using them for their fast run speed.
Wyverns - Can only be ridden by clan leaders from a castle or Conquerable castle-clan hall. Costs Gemstones to ride. Can only be ridden by 'mounting' an existing Strider at a special location in the clan's castle/hall. ($$$)
5) Not really. Just the ones that you find useful. (Most people only macro Buff sequences. Some do Weapon changes/attack or text shout/tells. Overall, the macro systems in L2 is very, very limited. You can forget about 'scripting' anything really. Macro's are pretty much limited to 15 'chained' commands. And even that is limited by per line text limits and how easy it is to 'break' the execution of a macro. Either by clicking or getting hit.
Final TIP:
The XP Grind is inversely Proportional to the Money Grind in L2. At least until you have 'gotten rich'. Thus when XP comes easy you will be hurting for cash, and when XP slows to a crawl (7x's) you will have bought most everything you really 'need'.
Don't overly worry about XP to start with, work on making money instead and finding people you like to play with. (Clans) Also, don't be too aversive to making some 'alts' to just farm cash. Alt's in a clan academy can add reputation points to the clan when they class change, so 'alts' aren't looked down upon as much as in other games might be. Also just about everyone in the game has alts for fun/money making...if not entirely seperate 'boxed' accounts for buffing/selling/buying/crafting. (I tend to dislike those who 'box' extensively. Alas, L2 tends to 'encourage' such anti-social behaviour, due to people focusing too much on XP at the expense of $)
1. At what point does it become financially efficient to stop buying armor and weapon upgrades from a vendor and start looking for upgrades from player stores? An example of what I mean is, next weapon upgrade will cost me 200,000 adena, for a 31 p. atk weapon. Could I find better for cheaper through players? If not, about what level will the player stores begin to have prominence over the npc stores?
that is a very good queston
really its up to you and your own intelligence and hard work when that happens
look around gludin and you might find some cheap no grade that us highbies dont use anymore