Thank you!
As a respone to
@LavaSparks: amps, Shadow, DOA etc dropping regularly in 2007 is probably a bit of an overstatement (think you need to go back to at least 2005 or so, from what I understand), but either way I wouldn't really have been capable of taking advantage of it as a noob that first year.
Long story short, I have always tried to
1) be as eco as possible
It IS a thing and always has been. Trust Mindark when they say efficiency matters, for example. I am slightly above 98% tt return since coming back last summer, defense included (however I made sure to hover at or below 1% defense even when using Argo Claw, I try to still keep it low in loot 2.0 since it's not clear exactly how much of defense costs actually are returned, even if way more now than before).
2) strictly follow the markup
I remember targeting armor foot guards when that just had been implemented (full set was only 6 parts with no foot guards in the past) and everyone was paying up to "re-finish" their sets. Gradivores for Vigi feet was my niche as a fairly new player if I recall correctly. Then bigger (L) weapons (HL12 from Itumatrox, HL14 from Frescoquda and Cersumon, LR53 from Sumima etc) was selling for up to 250% for a few months after implementation in 2008 or so. Slowly tapered off but was very good income for quite a while. 2014-2015 I spent a lot of time on Marcimex grinding for chadriak mushrooms when that was new, and so on.
Even if there was, in general, more significant and perhaps longer-lasting markup opportunities coming up ten years ago, they still absolutely do come up. RX weapons from bots was a goldmine for a while, gazz from Big Bulks, ELM weapons from migration in somewhat recent years. Today boxes and stars during Mayhem is pretty much as steady as it gets as far as guaranteed markup, just as an example.
For the record, I'm not even close to taking advantage of opportunities to the same extent as some other real hardcore grinders do and have done. I wasn't quite skilled enough to take advantage of SGA, had a lot in real life during pretty much entire FEN event. I know people who made many tens of thousand ped profit one intense summer grinding for mushrooms, for example.
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I do of course realise everyone can't have (financial) success at the same time, but it is a real cash economy after all, it's not possible in real life either. I'm just saying it's still possible to profit, since I see many posts around these forums claiming it's not. But it takes perseverance, discipline and careful choices. Staying up to date with the market. Just like in real life. Not everyone wants to spend their ingame time on that and I'm totally buying that, of course. But it just doesn't rhyme all that well when those same people complain and shout that EU is a scam. With loot 2.0 Mindark already did a lot to close the gap in terms of cost to play between those who just see it as pure entertainment and those with uber gear who are just in it for profit.
Sorry for the wall of text lol, but I figured some kind of follow-up was probably needed. Again, thank you all!
