Metin2 SG Basics for Beginners

Vyenna wrote:

Marketing - the Art of Sale in SG Market

A controlled market like the one we have on SG knows three phases:

1. Expansion when a high number of players are building their items and the sales are going very good, prices are increasing and everyone is farming or upgrading;
2. Stagnation when the prices are high, players have built their items, sales are declining, new items are brought into the market every day by farming players;
3. Decline when there is almost no commerce, players are leaving the server because of too high prices and the Staff is going to operate harsh changes to revive the server.

Now, it's a technical impossibility for a market to be only in expansion. For this the number of players on server should keep increasing and the Staff should not only rain with events but also with updates to give a purpose to everything. Thus being said, sooner or later any market is going to face stagnation and if no changes are going to be tried, decline will follow.

Selling the items (pieces of equipment or upgrade materials) requires good knowledge of the existing prices and number of items from the market. Also players should keep on eye on the current updates and future updates thus farming what's needed the most.

The Rarity system gave market a new life, the high lv armours with avg dmg res and HP restore are the most wanted. On the 2nd place come the shoes with avg dmg res and skill dmg res, the shields with the same Rarity bonus as the shoes and then the vs monster helmets and avg dmg earrings and lv 75 weapons. Of course, drop is moderate but such items, already made, cost very much.

The upgrade+ system and the higher chance to upgrade, combined with generous events increased the number of refined items+9 and the price of upgrade materials. At the moment I'm writing this post the market is in stagnation, in recovery from a short period of decline. There are many upgrade materials available in the market, the price of blessing scroll is very very low, players have made the items so the sales are not great. However due to the recent update with alchemy drop, the price for green dragon bean has increased a little and they sell very good.

Poly marbles crafting at NPC Baek-Go in map 1 will always bring very good money. Probably the easiest to craft are esoteric fanatic and baby spider. This guide has maps with the drop places for both poly crafting materials. A lv 25 char with mall glove and 2 hours glove (I like body warrior for this and I can use my buff skills to kill even faster with relatively cheap items) can bring lots of gold in short time. All what players need to do is to put a good price on their items.

I would like to remind players reading me that main causes that are driving the market into stagnation and decline are over pricing and over farming. Sometimes over pricing is mentioned as a very good source for gold. It may very well be, but is not going to last for ever. As for the over farming, the SG is mainly PvM, it happens

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I never heard of poly marbles crafting before can you explain that more in detail?

Thanks in advance =)

Basically all you need to know is to check out Baek-Go in M1 dialog option "Making potions?" and scroll down. You will find different kind of poly marbles and what items you need to create them.

MrSoon wrote:

Basically all you need to know is to check out Baek-Go in M1 dialog option "Making potions?" and scroll down. You will find different kind of poly marbles and what items you need to create them.

Okay cool that was the information i was looking for.

Thanks a lot!

Vyenna wrote:

Farming Spider Eyes in desert - my favourite places. The marked spots in the map show the dominant type of drop, either spider eyes or spider web, but they both drop.

In about 2 hours, with a 2 hours glove and a lv 25 character (i like to use body warrior) the shop will look like this :

I tried it myself and it really works.

After 2 hours of farming i got this items:

Thanks a lot!

PrinzWayne wrote:

I tried it myself and it really works.

After 2 hours of farming i got this items:

Thanks a lot!

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try farm during hunters hour 50+ web, 200+ eyes in under 60min

1 hour farming with lvl 26

Rise and Fall in Population on SG Server

Time has come for a new post in this thread. Forum software claims this thread is obsolete. I don't think it is the case. What I will do here today is presenting the models I work with in order to predict the activity in the server. Second part will consist in a set of suggestions adressed to both players and Team to improve the quality of the game.

I spent five years on this server with good and bad days. I have seen the population rise and fall twice, first in summer 2016 and then a steady decline this year. Opening of 2nd server appears to seal the fate of SG server, with very few players still here while there the numbers are in the hundreds. There is now only 1/5 the shops there used to be and at peak hours the population of both kingdoms has an estimated "huge" number of 30 players. Dead Call chat and empty maps, plenty of room to farm and booming sales.

First model I want to describe is the Greed Model. Players are aiming for state of the art items to farm faster, better and solo if possible, thus getting the max rewards for their investment. Over time it creates a huge gap between old and new players and it takes to the elimination of the latter from game. I will give as example Orc Maze at two different moments in time in SG server and Orc Maze in SG2Global. At its creation in SG server in 2015 Orc Maze had the requirement to run into the maze full with mobs, kill the bosses and get the green adder and changers (that was the only source for them). It was later changed into killing all its mobs before advancing through the maze and for a while now, mobs have been nerfed and drops improved. Needless to say we, players, contributed big time into the elimination of competition from the server, by farming the run solo and increasing the price of green adders and changers to the point beginners were not able to buy them in any way. No items=no play. In SG2Global Orc Maze runs were the main activity in the first days after the opening and now, as the model predicts, not so much.

About second model I spoke in the past, it has a dedicated post in this thread on page one. It is the PvP Model. This one states players are seeking the power to dominate over other players, forcing them away from the best farming spots. PvP players don't fight among themselves, they fight against weaker players. Probably the best example is the opening of SG2Global, those potential players back in March stated they don't want to stick around dinosaurs like me, to get killed and play in an old server with sharks lurking at every corner. Little they know the sharks are now playing SG2Global, doing business as usual.

Last one is the Supply and Demand Model. Prices in the market will continue to rise, what is cheap will be bought and sold again for more money, until it reaches the point nobody will be willing to buy it. If you take into account the gold drop from Plagued Run and Erebus Run, there is a lot of potential to keep the scamming for a long time. I am sure new players are happy af to pay 60kk for a white pearl or 105kk for an odin.

The combination of these models help me predict the activity in this server with a success rate of 70%. The migration of players from here to SG2Global was something I was expecting. Now I have to farm more and sell cheaper and after 2 weeks of almost nobody online, my sales are booming. Of course, there is no PvP but this is not something to get me worried. I have learned over the years that players will go to great lenghts to avoid building any PvP items.

This game is a set of tools players have at their disposal to spend some time. It is the way players use these tools that drive new players away from SG server, not the quality and quantity of updates.

Remaining players should farm more and sell cheaper if they want to see new players around. Metin2 is a game and not a capitalist society, stop doing here what you see around the world.

SG Team should analyse the balance between requirement for items and quantity of drops in all maps. Removal of most drops from mobs because players couldn't see what they were farming is something I would like to be reversed. In the same way, the chance to drop higher tier stones from metins should be the same, not higher for high lv metins. If you place too much power in the hands of high lv players, they will wreck the game. In the same way, remove the gold drop from Plagued Run and replace it with clams and completly remove gold drop from Erebus.

If you managed to read until the end and you are like wtf, WTF indeed. I spent 2 years working to understand these models at my best. I constatly adjusted my game play and my way of understanding the game. My conclusion: there is no possibility to develop a server if players are not constrained in a way they don't use the power and their knowledge to ruin every single update, patch and fix.

Kind Regards,

Vyenna

Clams from plague sounds like a dream :o

Your models are spot on

clams from plague run? bad idea, there are many ways to get clam

adding clams instead of gold at plague would make plague run useles as orc maze nowadays, noone go orc mazy to farm green changer anymore because they can kill metin and who will do full plague eq for farm clams inside

Haha thats kinda sad. Guys, from the whole text she wrote are clams the problem?

jureczek Farming gold is the problem, not the clams or the drop in itself. Players like you and me can complete the run very easy and get our hands on lots of gold, which is increasing our purchasing power. This will lead to major increase in prices for certain items such as TP and pearls to the point new players will not afford to play anymore.

I put clams as example because I am interested in a drop in price to a max of 5kk and a flood in the market with pearls from opening the clams, to cut the price in half. I don't know any new player who can afford to upgrade armour, boots, helmet or earrings at the current price the clams have. If you want to have players around, you as old player have to work in ways to stabilize the market. I can't say for sure new players will find the server more attractive if they find stuff they need at affordable prices. The way we are now is not very encouraging, I would not start on a server I can't develop my chars easy enough.

You may not like the idea to see gold removed and I can understand it. I don't have much hope to see any suggestion applied, even in a modified form. But I want a fair answer to the following question: farming mechanics is the same and the drop rate good/very good. Why have the prices doubled in the last 12 months?

Playing server 1 when server 2 is up and so much fun is just ridiculous xD

Vyena yes, you right. Its huge money when we compare new players and gold from plague dungeon. But I think it isnt reason why people dont want start this server. In my opinion server doesnt offer new things wchich are at other metins in 2019. If people dont play at Metin2 Gameforge, they choose private servers of their countries wchich offer almost same new systems at GF with other changes.

idc bout the gold it's something i've always thrown away, I care about upgrade materials and utility items, gold drops everywhere and prices tend to adjust to even if items sells for very little.

Gold dropping in a dungeon just means im giving up on farming materials since I can simply farm all the gold there and sit in town then buy all the odins and materials a few others farm and inflate the market even more. I even saw ppl bragging on how they did plague 10+ times in a day while overpricing everything then complaining polymarbles are too expensive

I loved the 1st boss in orc maze, he dies and a fountain of upgrade materials shows up, would love the same in plague including clams/pearls in some way. I rather see that than a bunch of gold bars

Ochao looked pretty rewarding in the terms of utility items and yet I was flabbergasted by the amount of items that get left behind because they aren't worth picking up for high levels and yet super useful for the lower level ones

you're right bout the new things..

PaliPali wrote:

you're right bout the new things..

the servers go in different ways, that wont happen in this. hopefully also apply those changes here but personally i think this wont happen.

Hiumi wrote:

the servers go in different ways, that wont happen in this. hopefully also apply those changes here but personally i think this wont happen.

Ofcourse some of the changes wont be applied here.

The pearls were added to those bosses because that server does not have pearls in the Item mall nor does it have the lv 100-120 content to drop pearls from the higher level bosses.

Other Updates will be applied here too - however - only those which are fitting will be added.

1. My views on the latest update on the November Patch;

2. The future of SG Server;

3. The Art of Fail: the only way SG community of players will work to ruin current update.

Before I start, I have a request to all of my readers (I know I don't have many readers): please refrain from posting in this guide if you only want to argue with me about certain parts of my posts. Also, the talk about x or y update doesn't belong here. So please, if You want to bring more information to future players, write it here or make your own guide. Don't add useless replies when you can create a debate post under general section of this Forum.

A huge change came to our server few days ago. At this moment, SG server and SG2Global have pretty much the same content. This prepares the way for a future merge of both servers in maybe 1-2 years. For now, starting and playing on SG has become extremely interesting and a pleasant experience. The Pay2Win character of SG server is gone. An active player can reach end-game content in a decent amount of time.

The list of all the changes made is on the link above. I will not review them all, since is a huge list. I will only offer my impression on them.

There has been an improvement into the farming mechanics and character development and this is the most important change. Maps are now full with metin stones and the drop of them is oriented into building items and making skills. Better drop rate for adders and changers, hermits and exo scrolls. Faster skill books reading and improved bio quests mechanics. Almost anything can stack and the extra inventory makes farming easier. And maybe what most players love, the shop search F11 function. Mages and Assassins have 35% more pvm damage but it is not like they will be as effective farmers as Warrior and Sura. It can help in certain runs but this is pretty much it.

If playing is easy now, it is time to go to 2nd point of my post.

Metin2 is an old game which is still played here and there. Not as much as it has been in the past and over time the number of players is going to decrease. The life of the server can and will be increased with patches and updates but is not going to last forever.

For now, the current changes will have a huge impact on the gameplay. Some players who went to SG2Global can now play both servers. Other people from that server will be moving here to experience a better gameplay. And I expect new players who are strange of SG concept to start and attempt to develop here. For now the server population has tripled, so we now have an estimated number of over 100 at any given moment in time. This however will not last very long and this will be the subject of 3rd point.

The market is going to change slowly, with the introduction of massive drops from metins - changers, adders, hermits and exo scrolls. The drop rate is pretty high, so there will be plenty of them available in most shops. Their price is going to get low and very low, so everyone is going to afford them. Of course, making huge amount of money by selling these materials is going to prove difficult. Players will search now for blessing scrolls and upgrade materials to build their items, skill books are going to be on the top list for skills' build. There is going to be an increased need for stones for items (pvm stones mostly). Higher the player population going to be, the faster market saturation with items is going to happen. From that point, less and less players are going to enjoy the game so the population will get lower.

There is not going to be any increase in PvP activity, this is something that belongs to the past. Even though PvP has been nerfed to the max possible and is now accessible to everyone, no major battles are going to take place. Farming is much more relaxing than trying to respond to all kind of threats from different players. The game AI is predictable, players aren't.

On a recent post in this guide i talked about the models that decide how the server population is increasing or getting lower. They for a theoretical model that blends the real world with the game world and predicts players will react in this game as they see in the real world. The market is of a capitalist type, everyone can and should own a business (shop) and perform a list of activities: farming, mining, fishing and fighting. Players are going to be in a constant search for perfection with better and better items, always searching for ways to make gold and ways to crush new players. Market saturation is going to happen really fast this time, since there is very much available to farm and the number of potential consumers is still low. One of the things I am asked about is the price of certain items or ways to make gold. You are not supposed to make gold, you are supposed to play and enjoy the game and later on, when you will have several years on the server, you will also understand the game. This is the part where most players fail, because they will like to solo everything, obtain maximum advantage from their investment (time and money) and always be the best players, uncontested.

It doesn't really work like this, I predicted the server will get to a point the Team is going to drastically change the game and the change has happened.

For the future of the server, players should learn to play together and make runs together, regardless of rewards the most runs have NOW. If there is going to be better cooperation instead of competition the drops might be changed. If players are going to keep doing everything solo the game will be boring again and everyone will whine and quit. However, I will not hold my breath on such a change coming from player community. Past experience showed me who has the power will not hesitate to use it, to farm more, decide the prices and who should farm in a spot and who doesn't.

So, to conclude this post, changes are good, there is only need of some will from the players to understand the reason of those changes and to reconsider their way of playing. My best guess is that it is not going to happen, population will get lower again because it is not the updates that keep us here but the community of friends and enemies.

Thanks for reading, if you will ever bother to reach to the end

Kind Regards and all the best!

Vyenna

At the moment I am writing this post SG2 Global is being merged into SG server, increasing the potential number of players. This move will have a certain impact in the near future and I will try to highlight what will change. So, let's begin:

1. The server population since the 4th of November - estimation on the number of players and predictions for the future;
2. Market Situation since the 4th of November - analysis over market evolution and predictions for the future;
3. Focus points for beginners and advanced players.

1. The server population since the 4th of November - estimation on the number of players and predictions for the future

As I said in the previous post, the big changes brought to live server in november increased the server population to 100-120. My biggest surprise came with the incompetent reaction the governments had facing the medical crisis unfolding over the world. I don't think I have seen so many players for so long time in this server. If i were to guess a number, I would say over 300 players were actively playing on SG in the months of lockdown. But with the summer season advancing in northern hemisphere and the easing of restrictions, that number did melt quite fast. Now, some active players from Global have the chance to continue their journey here. So, for a while, we will enjoy again the presence of over 300 players in total, but it is not going to last for ever. Obviously, there are several factors which influence the number of players:

• interest in playing the game for more than several weeks;
• interest in developing the characters to reach end-game content;
• basic knowledge of marketing and economics;
• the presence of a friendly or hostile community already playing the game;
• the features of the game and the guarantee of future updates.

If I take these into account, not everyone who starts playing here will keep playing. The community is not always friendly, especially the dinosaurs and not everyone has the tools and the patience to play here. What are we going to have today will start decreasing in about 3 months and no update will make it better. Mainly, next updates are for high lv players and contain stuff a mid lv player will never need and won't ever use. I don't think there will be another incompetent response from the authorities again so no, we won't have more players.

2. Market Situation since the 4th of November - analysis over market evolution and predictions for the future

What most players do is basic farming and upgrading items. Many of them don't intend to lv up and they usually farm the same stuff over and over again. This gets to market saturation and the crash of prices on farmed items. Obviously, most players don't understand somebody has to use what they farm. Getting items is too easy, upgrading is easy, getting perfect stats is again too easy so there are many farmers and not enough players to use the available stuff. The merge will solve this problem for a while, since the new players will need better stones and some new items with new stats. Again, this is only a temporary relief, since we will go back to a market crash in a short time, of 3-6 months the most. Future updates, like Meley and Zodiac won't do it, higher lv items won't do it. Players should lv up and build PvP gear, that will solve the situation but it is not going to happen.

3. Focus points for beginners and advanced players

This game, after all its updates, after all its patches, it is still meant to be played over a large period of time. It is easy to get good items, for perfection some effort is needed. All you need is a good understanding of the game and some good items. Over time, as you get higher lv, you will need some farmers because higher you go, there is much more work to do. Farm upgrade materials, store some for later use and put some for sale. Farm poly marbles because they will get you good money, I made a guide about them, use it. Lv up, don't keep the same lv for way too long. Don't forget that somebody has to consume what you farm. Build good and very good items with what you farm, sell the excessive stuff. The server is quite generous with its drops, you should become very good very fast. The PvM aspect is very easy and pushes players to maximize their profit by playing alone. Don't be that type of player, create and maintain a constant team play even if you cut in half your profit.

I wish you all to have fun, patience and only good luck.

Kind Regards!

Vyenna