General

@stevechiu I'm actually reposting it, give it a few days

@nodiggityx: right, so why did you delete this screen? http://www.imgur.com/EbYxSZx

@stevechiu If you're interested in reading the guide and making 124b+ in one night, feel free to read the pastebin

why did you take this "merchant guide" down after deleting this screen? https://imgur.com/EbYxSZx

@chicken Hahah yeah I noticed there were two chapter 5s. It hasnt been letting me edit the post for quite some time though.

@Jacob9874 My pleasure! I'm glad that you enjoyed it.

Wow, thanks for the guide. The most detailed and educative guide I've ever seen in the field of merching.

I'm a dashing young man, apparently.

Also, World Transfer Merchanting can still be done during world transfer event. 25% boss nebs in my server dropped a couple billion during the last world transfer event because of it.

Also also there's two chapter 5s.

You mean, dupe, or buy from dupers then re-sell.

Bump.

nah i can do hard just fine thanks to their guild lul no problem making money now <3

@Blackinup Old post I know, but if you're killing Gollux on easy you get 11 coins a day. So yeah it's more so for people with some funded, as just going up to normal bumps your coins per day up to 21-22. And it goes up even more for hard and hell. Worth making some money off of still.

@NoDiggityx: lol alright and thanks again ^_^

Edit: just made a few bil scrolling Faf Equips so I'm gonna start there

Edit: (Again) I blew a lot of my mesos trying to scroll gear lol. I guess I still need to start small.

@Blackinup Hi no problem! & I think risk is what distinguishes some merchants from others. There's risk in everything. And a good merchant isn't afraid to take them.

& The Risk Holders are the least of my concerns. I just had an overflow of mesos so I needed something to buy. I'm not monopolizing them

Thanks for replying! I see. Yeah i just noticed the amount of CoGs in the FM my god. Thanks man!

EDIT: I see where you're getting at with the Chaos Scrolls. Doing things like that is sort of a risky move like what you did with the risk holders.
It can end up backfiring :o.

@Blackinup Hey man. Thank you for asking that. Unfortunately, nobody has a crystal ball so it's almost impossible to predict future drop rates. But our job as merchants, isn't necessarily to predict exactly what is going to happen. It's our job however to take advantage of fluctuations. A wise investor named JP Morgan was once asked to predict what will happen next in the stock market, and you know what he said? "It will fluctuate." This is the only certainty we have to rely on. There are no guarantees in trading. You can, however, minimize your losses.

I'm sorry if that doesn't answer your question but the only clear answer I can give you to the "what if Nexon increases that drop rate of that item?" is...

Well, you have to ask yourself this. Let's take Chaos Scrolls of Goodness 30%'s for example. They're currently running at about 125M+ in the FM. They're quite in demand. They're already ridiculously available in the market due to Elite Bosses, and not to mention the hackers that are stupendously flooding them into the market (Nexon why are you allowing this? Put a lid on it dammit!). Now let's take a look at Nexons point of view. CSOG's boost the statistics of your equipment, so it'll always be in demand. The current rate that these CSOG's are flooding into the market, I think we all can agree, is unusually high. Which leads to an unusually low price. Not to even mention that our population is suffering. Under normal circumstances (one by which the economy is not flooded with a crazy amount of bot-obtained CSOG's) I think it's safe to assume that at the same meso rates, the price of these CSOG's would be considerably higher. You'd then have to ask yourself, do you think Nexon would make it even EASIER to obtain these scrolls and break the game even further... hm I'd highly doubt it. I have faith in Nexon, and I know they're competent enough to do what needs to be done. So, with that being said... what will happen to the market tomorrow? It will fluctuate. To our favor? Maybe. But I guess it all comes down to Nexon?

Confused by the monopolizing part. Buying one item and selling it for more. What if Nexon increase the drop rate of that item? There are alot of ways of making money I just need one that guarantees mesos. Gollux is good and all but god it takes a while considering i make 10 coins a day or so. It seems this goes for people with high funding people in their guild to assist them with such bosses.
I've Scrolled Empress but tend to spend more on actually buying the traces then on actually selling the item. Lets Say I buy 5 empress gear scroll them and get +5 on all of them and I spent 5 (5000)traces No one seems to be interested/ or they can do it themselves. Spending 5 hours in the Evo lab just to get 120 items and hope to get superior crystals doesn't sound good at all aswell. 1-22FM is good and all but what if you're dead broke?
Damn Maple Economics

[quote=Jenno]AWE SO CUTE, I SHIP YOU GUYS <3[/quote]

One of Jenna's many OTPs.

[quote=CherryTigers]For the people who aren't motivated to read the whole thing, SilentTM is the best merchant I've met in all my Maplestory career. Although he denies it due to humility, he's done some of the most large-scale things I've never even had a chance to do.

When I was a beginner merchant, his actions and his unique take of the market allowed me to observe and see things I would have never seen with any other merchant. Although he denies it, he is my mentor and the things I learned from him allowed me to pave my way to making a net worth of over 1 trillion.

Alan and I differ in our ways of investments though. That deviation doesn't mean anything significant. We both have our own ways of generating profit which work. Learn from this guide and when you can, form your own brand and mold the guide into your own.

Read the guide, re-read it, and read it again. Strive for [b]progress[/b], but never for perfection.[/quote]

AWE SO CUTE, I SHIP YOU GUYS <3

@NeoShinron

Your insight definitely contributes to my guide & helps future merchants understand some of the roots of Economy and how it works. I thank you. I'd also like to add some insights to this for the rest of Basil readers, since the topic has been brought up.

I agree MS 2 will affect MS 1 economy but to what extent it's really hard to say. Similar to the relationship of stocks & bonds (Bonds generally do good when Stocks do bad), the affect on our MS 1 economy relies heavily on the success of MS 2. I believe prices will fall due to a sudden slight population decrease, but I don't think it'll go to an extreme depression. A loss of 25% of our players out of a total of XXXXXX players shouldn't drop the prices by more than 25% on that factor alone. That's 25% less people willing to bid up the price on equipment but also 25% less people selling them. And technically when they cash out, the mesos that they have (assuming they convert to $) will still be rotating in the economy (and assuming they did not just drop the mesos to let it disappear). Someone would have bought those mesos (possibly at an extremely cheap meso-$ rate considering the amount of people moving out, also considering the already cheap meso:$ rate right now), but I'd say the economy will endure. & Over time, (depending on both the success of MS and MS2) it will recover. I see the meso-$ rate going down when MS 2 comes. But the items in game, MIGHT stay the same. Hell it might even go up (a long shot of course). Why could it go up? Maybe because of temporarily and extremely cheap meso:$ rates, and it's not like the quality of those items will decrease. This of course would be temporary.

Let's use an example. It may be relevant or it may not. I don't know. All of this is [b]speculative[/b] and I'm not making myself out to be an Economic Guru.

Ex: If you have 1 Million homes in the US, and there are 400 Million people living here, and suddenly 40 Million of these people move to Asia to live, see how it is, see what the climates like. The remaining 360 million people decide to travel back and forth between Asia & US, and decide US is their home sweet home, they can't imagine living elsewhere. Besides, the homes are pretty, the [b]quality[/b] of these homes (ie. our MS 1 items) hasn't decreased. With that said, will the population remain at 360 million people? I'm certain that more will find their way here, the land of oppurtunities. As long as Nexon continues marketing both games, the population will recover. Maybe not overnight, but I'm prettttty sure it'll recover. But you are most certainly right, in the [b]early[/b] phases of the... let's call it "switchover" to MS2, people might be lowering their prices because of 1) people focusing on their characters in MS2 and testing the waters with MS2, leading to less active market and less active bidding and 2) their impatience. Let's also not forget that MS 1 and MS 2 should be and may be considered two different niches. Let's not let the names fool us. Why wouldn't Nexon continue marketing both games? MapleStory has a strong foundation, it's been around for about a decade. It's also one of Nexon's strongest revenue sources, I'd assume.

What about the merchants in MS 1? What will happen in our MS1 economy while the "switchover" occurs? We merchants of course can stay behind, and look at this as an oppurtunity to buy at temporarily low market levels, or we can, as you said, reallocate our assets to MS2. I'd say that's a very good idea. The MS2 economy, like the US when the stock market barely began, will be at extremely low levels, and like the US economy (1,000$ back then would be SO MUCH MORE now) it will grow.

What about the hackers? They will be in both markets. Without a shadow of a doubt.

So in conclusion, when MS 2 hits, meso-$ rates can drop even further than it already is, for a little while as players lean towards MS2. Items in game may drop temporarily due to the suddenly quick decrease in population, but will recover slowly assuming the Market & Nexon does it's job.

These are just my theories, I may be totally wrong. We are all entitled to our own opinions. But I think you and I see things on more or less the same page. =) Anyone else who would like to contribute please feel free to do so!

This is (unfortunately) the best merching guide ever written ("unfortunately" because something like this should have been done long ago). The concepts are sound.

The bad part is... It's to late in the game for anyone who read this (and learned a great deal from it) to ever reach a high tier of "asset valuation".
The biggest thing on the horizon for Maplestory's economy is the release of Maplestory 2. I am gonna go ahead and make the bold prediction:

When Maplestory 2 hits, Maplestory's player-base drops off by AT LEAST 25%.
Your dead world... Just got deader. And guess who sticks around? The people who are already more invested than you.
The guy with 700mil and a Superior Gollux Ring in his shop, will be much more likely to start again as a "Pro N00b" in Maplestory 2, than any of you guys
with trillions. (No... I am not stating that anything from Maplestory transfers to it's sequel, I am stating that knowledge of the game Maplestory will be of SOME BENEFIT
in Maplestory 2).

Basically... There's not really enough time to merch very much before Maplestory's economy enters a depression. One from which it most likely will never recover from.
Do you know the people that will still be playing maple when 2 comes out? People like me. People with single-core computers, that are 10 years old (their computers, and yes, sometimes the players themselves). That player-base has one attribute that goes with it... We are generally poor in real life. We not too often buy NX, and even less get to convert NX into Mesos.

So basically, the whole part about long-term investing, is a bit m00t. It's too late in the game to be doing anything besides flipping, unless you are already rich, in which case, you didn't really need this guide.

The clock starts now, and ends on the day that Maple 2 goes live.

In fact the smart move may be to somehow move your assets around. Can you turn your wealth in Maple into a form that can somehow transfer over to maple 2?
Mesos into direct dollars would work. Mesos into NX MAY work, if maple and maple 2 both use the same NX pool. At the end of the day, if you are semi-rich, you need to plan ahead.

What effect will half the player-base leaving have on the value of 1 meso? Will it inflate? Or Deflate?
Do you live in a world where everyone is a billionaire but Power Elixirs cost 1 mil a pop? Or will the big money players take my advice and cash out of Maple? Taking Trillions out of the economy and making the value of 1 meso go UP instead of down?

I really don't know. I do know that a lot of the people that will stick around maple will do so because (like me) it's the only MMO they can play, and I know that we, the poor masses, are often rather poor in real life. It's more likely for you to have 10 trillion mesos, if you stay in a house that costs $500,000; than it is if you are in public housing.
And those people, the people with 10-year-old hand-me-down computers, are the one group of people that are guaranteed to stay on good ole Maplestory. Of course, when the worlds go dead, a lot of the stragglers will leave because said world is dead. And of course some of the big merchers will remain. But they will be kings of a wasteland.

What the hackers will do I do not know... I guess they will follow the money, wherever and in whatever form it's in.

What a grim reply to the best Merching guide ever written.

Currently working on adding more chapters. Stay tuned

i bought a raccoon mask for a few hundred mil I pray to god it sells

Not as long than cherry's guide he gave me like 10 pages of it :0

damn.. XD

@Blackinup: Bolshy is also in our alliance. He initially joined my guild. We were just two YouTubers who met.

[quote=CherryTigers]For the people who aren't motivated to read the whole thing, SilentTM is the best merchant I've met in all my Maplestory career. Although he denies it due to humility, he's done some of the most large-scale things I've never even had a chance to do.

When I was a beginner merchant, his actions and his unique take of the market allowed me to observe and see things I would have never seen with any other merchant. Although he denies it, he is my mentor and the things I learned from him allowed me to pave my way to making a net worth of over 1 trillion.

Alan and I differ in our ways of investments though. That deviation doesn't mean anything significant. We both have our own ways of generating profit which work. Learn from this guide and when you can, form your own brand and mold the guide into your own.

Read the guide, re-read it, and read it again. Strive for [b]progress[/b], but never for perfection.[/quote] Oh I read the entire guide. I did the run and found a pair of unique boots for 50mil I use one cube it went 21% luck and I sold it for 700Mil (Keep in mind I'm still a noob)
There are other great merchants like Greatbolshy that guy is ridiculous. o.o
Still thanks for a new guide really appreciate if I ever see you in fm +1 fame<3 bump.

no matter how many guides i read

i always manage to get less than 100mill, and blow it all off because I bought something overpriced

coming from a 2007 player.

P/c on chat ring im a noob at merchanting its luxurious pearl chat ring I bought it for 300M

@BoredAF Right?

@Snowed: Hahaha why thank you. IF I ever do you'll definitely be the first to know!

@Spiderrexe I apologize for the length, and I hope it helps!

Great guide by the way, you make a fine entrepreneur!

Next thing you should do is host Who wants to be a Trillionare TV game show.

Ed;it For all those who are sitting at level 4 must we all be young men...one they smell funny and two I'm not even a male...but I like how you added dashing, guess I'll have to deal with the gender change for now and keep running towards the finish line, then I might be able to grow my very own The-Man-manly mustache.

Posting here so I can read it later

@CherryTigers Dennis, it's people like you who make me proud and happy to be a Merchant. Your honesty and willingness to help others, most of all. You're just as good if not [b]better[/b] than I am.

For the people who aren't motivated to read the whole thing, SilentTM is the best merchant I've met in all my Maplestory career. Although he denies it due to humility, he's done some of the most large-scale things I've never even had a chance to do.

When I was a beginner merchant, his actions and his unique take of the market allowed me to observe and see things I would have never seen with any other merchant. Although he denies it, he is my mentor and the things I learned from him allowed me to pave my way to making a net worth of over 1 trillion.

Alan and I differ in our ways of investments though. That deviation doesn't mean anything significant. We both have our own ways of generating profit which work. Learn from this guide and when you can, form your own brand and mold the guide into your own.

Read the guide, re-read it, and read it again. Strive for [b]progress[/b], but never for perfection.

@lazypando Thx Joy, I haven't touched perm NX in ages just thought it was a nice example from the past. I'm a year behind on these things so I need more updates from you you pro mercher you

I haven't read the whole thing yet Alan, but I just wanted to add some thoughts to the PERM NX hoarding. Nexon has been greedy lately. They release seasonal PERM NX boxes every two months or so. And these boxes will sometimes contain re-releases of old items. TONS of people buy these boxes and the FM is currently flooded with all sorts of NX items. There are so many sparkly, pretty choices now days that demand for that super-old, super-rare NX is not as desperate. I lot of people have also caught on to this method of waiting for NX to inflate. This, combined with the free owl sites, makes it so that only the lowest priced item will ever sell. No matter how rare the item, if there are two in FM, you had better price your lower otherwise it will not sell. Not as many people browse FM these days, buying whatever catches their eye. Instead, they will check owls. So selling perm NX is a slow, slow process. Last Halloween, when the first seasonal box was release, I could hoard anything, and 3-4 months later, most items were over two times the release price. This was back when, very few people saved NX items. Now, you have to be very careful about what items you hold onto. Take the Spring NX box for instance, I saved quite a few deluxe rainbow rings, butterwands, and dreamy candy pillows. The pillows were a good decision; their prices have more than doubled since. However, the rainbow rings are still hovering around 1.2-1.4 times the prices I bought out. That over some five months is rather mediocre.

And of course, Marvel will always mess up your prices when it gives out all sorts of old seasonal NX boxes.

@BlueBattler99 Hi, glad you like it. I apologize for the length

This would've been great years ago.
Now there are too many "dead" worlds for this to be completely relevant
#khainirepresent

Oh my god the detail.

It was actually so nice since it was like a story with levels and stuff - interactive. I haven't read my section yet for my level but without doing so it already feels real amazing lol.

By chance, are you over 1 Trillion now?

you're the best alam