Ragnarok Online Renewal Market Guide

Ragnarok Online Renewal Market Guide by Ceer

It’s been a while since I’ve posted my market entry guide. Since then, renewal has come out. Many of the mechanics of skills have changed, creating a shift in what items are important to have. The goal of this guide is to introduce the reader to ways of making zeny in RO with relatively little up front cost. I will cover my items in more general terms because the specifics of marketplace mechanics are subject to ebbs and flows, just like real life.

Step 1: Humble Beginnings

To start, each RO player is equipped literally with only the shirt on his back and a knife. He has no money, no experience, and no friends that he hasn’t come into the game with. As an adventurer, part of your job is to create and manage wealth, an inventory of equipment and items, and create social connections that make your game fun and enjoyable. For the beginner, I advise to save everything unless other players that you trust confirm it to be worthless. As you go, you should develop a sense about what items cost both by your interactions with other players, and by consulting market pricing websites.

Of your first three characters, one should be what you intend to play normally to high level, one should be able to vend, and the third should be a character geared for hunting items.

Step 2: Making Friends

Quite a lot of RO is dependent on your ability to make friends. Friends do a number of things to help you out. They can provide people to party with. They can inform you of server news or opportunities to buy and sell. They can even team up with you in a guild. Since friendship in RO is so powerful, it’s always a good idea to look for new friends and reconnect with old ones.

Step 3: Item Finding

Item drop rates no longer apply equally to all characters. Item drops can be drastically impacted by the level of your character. This makes having an item hunting alt more important than it was in the past. Rogues are a good option for hunting items because of their mix of high flee, improved mob killing via Sightless Mind, and the Auto-Steal skill Gank. Other good options are Hunter because of their ranged attacks, trap skills, and flee, and Monks because of their mix of self-supporting skills.

Before choosing your class, you may have in mind items you like to hunt. Here, I will list out some of the higher value items worthy of special attention. This list is by no means exhaustive. Keep in mind, hunting ranges are no longer as subjective as they once were. The drop system is now based on your level relative to the monster’s level. The butter zone for good drops is when you are +9 levels to -10 levels above your monster.

Items for WoE
*Trunk
*Panacea
*Yggdrasil Seed
*Yggdrasil Berry
*Blue Herb
*Yellow Gemstone
*Red Gemstone
*Speed Potions
*Elunium
*Oridecon

Alchemists Need These
*Stem
*Poison Spore
*Blue Herb
*Witch Starsand
*Cactus Needle
*Fabric
*Maneater Blossom
*Empty Bottle
*Immortal Heart

Assassin Crosses Need These
*Karvodailnirol
*Cactus Needle
*Bee Sting
*Horn
*Poison Spore

Sages Need These
*Scorpion Tail
*Snail’s Shell
*Horn
*Rainbow Shell

Leveling items from Repeatable EXP Quests are no longer implemented.

Step 4: Vending

This has gotten more complex since the previous guide. There is a new Buy Store feature for you to set up shop in town and have your character buy items from players. The classic vending store is also still there to liquidate unwanted or unneeded items.

Step 5: Adding Value

The concept of adding value to a product is important, because without it, you will find quite a few players willing and able to jump on the bandwagon and get lots of zeny for very little effort.

Here are some ways you can add value to your products:
A) Hunting Drops for use or raw materials
B) Doing repetitive activities other people find boring
C) Creating finished reagents from raw materials
D) Placing and timing your stores for customer convenience

Element A: Hunting Drops
Drop Hunting is the classic way of making zeny to get by in RO. Because of the consumable nature of many items by players, these will always be in high demand. On the premium server, bots aren’t very common, so most of these items have to be manually hunted by players, as the game was designed.

Element B: Repetitive Questing
This can include hunting drops, but is more geared towards running through quests that some players find boring, or simply can’t find the time to do. A reasonable way to collect your zeny is to run through an item making quest, such as speed potions, while engaging in some distracting activity. Be creative. Switch your setup around. Take breaks every so often.

Element C: Finishing Products
This includes activities like Potting, Forging, Converter Making, and Poison Making. It focuses on your own characters using production skills to craft finished products from drops or quest items.

Element D: Adding Convenience
This one is more subjective than the others, because it’s based on adding perceived value, rather than crafting something that didn’t exist before. Basically, you can create convenience by moving product from one location in game to another, creating a reliable store that people can always come to for your products, and setting up shop on location where lots of your product is being used.

Element E: Providing a Service
The idea here is to assign value to your actions. There are a few legal ways to make your zeny off of your character’s abilities. You can charge for exp leeching, healing in a non-share exp environment, or delivering replenishment items to a party who finds it unwise to abandon their location.

An effective general strategy should combine two or more elements together in a way that will be unique for your customers.

Example 1: To create a WoE store, I would like to place my store on location on the Juno WoE Map. The items I have identified for sale are Speed Potions, Acid Bottle, Bottle Grenade, Earth Converters, and Green Potions.

Acid Bottles and Bottle Grenades require an Alchemist, so I either have to borrow one, make my own, or pay someone for the potion creation step. Once I have identified my method of production, I can go out and gather my items. If I have 2 accounts, I can go leave one with a buy store open, say for stems, while I go to a map that drops poison spores & horns. Once I have collected my items, I can check my buy store to see how much product I’ve gotten. If people have sold me enough, I can keep my shop there, or move on to the next phase. If not, I should look at where I’m placing my shop, to make sure it’s convenient for the item hunter.

After I gather enough items, it’s time to make my reagents. Potters typically do best with a combination of gears, Marionette Control, and priest support, so I should make sure to pot when I have these available. Typically, I try to pay a support about a third to half of the difference in success rate that they demonstrate, or else to do some production for them if they need it.

When my reagents are ready, I’ll set up shop on the woe map on my alt account and price them to maximize my income.

Full Lists of 2nd Class Creation Reagents:
Anything here can probably be sold to another player. The lists are lengthy and items typically go in and out of popularity for both hunting and consuming. If you’re leveling in an area, it may be a good idea to cross reference items you’re collecting with items here in case they can be sold off in bulk.
Archer: Arrow Crafting
Alchemist: Potion Creation
Blacksmith: Axes, Daggers, Swords, 2 Hand Swords, Maces, Knuckles
Sage: Create Elemental Converter
Assassin Cross: Create Deadly Poison

3rd Class Items:
If you all like, I can include a list of items needed by 3rd class characters. I would like to keep the list relatively short and include only the more valuable common drops. As a first draft of that list, I’ll include some items for Genetics and Rune Knights. Those of you who play these classes, any input as to which items are the most widely used would be appreciated.

Genetics: Mixed Cooking, Special Pharmacy, Bomb Creation – Black Powder, White Powder, Dark Powder, Smoke Powder, Explosive Powder, Tear Gas, Oil, Savage meat, Drosera Feeler, Cold Broth, Blood of Wolf, Petite Tail, Cold Ice, Ice Crystal, Coconut, Pineapple, Mandragora Flowerpot, Maneater Root, Maneater Blossom.

Rune Knights: Rune Mastery – Blood of Wolf, Destroyed Armor, Elder Branch, Blue Hair, Claw of Desert Wolf, Burning Heart, Light Granule, Tangled Chains, Dragon Canine, Round Shell, Dragon Skin, Ogre Tooth, Horrendous Hair, Honey, Armor Piece of Dullahan, Red Gemstone, Worn Out Magic Scroll.

Conclusions:

The purpose of this guide is as a primer to those who may be new to how the market in RO runs. The principles here are supposed to be general enough to apply as the game changes, but also be useful enough to provide the reader with some specific ideas about how things should be run.

I am open to comments and additions to this guide. There are many factors of renewal I’m not yet aware of, so please feel free to tip me off on anything you feel should be included or edited.

— Ceer