Ohh my, how b.net has changed.....for the worse.

[Amaethon]

I have just returned to LoD after an extended hiatus of about 16 months, and I cant belive how bad its goten on b.net! I was just in the trade channel looking to pass off a load of chips, when this guy comes in saying hell give 5 stones to the first person to bring him 10 ptopaz! Shortly after someone offered me 4 stones for my load of 40 chips, which last time I played would barley get you one. I thought that things would be marginally better after reading the post about all the accounts geting deleted and banned. Ohh how nieve of me! Guess I better hurry up and finish norm so I can start playing HC, Soft has gotten so bad its rediculous.

[TaiDaishar]

Advice: Move to Hardcore, the economy there is a lot less messed up.

and 131k accounts are nothing... prolly every duper/hacker has more than 5 accounts full of mules, I guess 25% of the population are hackers/dupers (out of around 1M people) so in short, a lot of hacked/duped stuff are still on the realms

[Albion Child]

Basically P rubies are worth more than Sojs now. (on USEAST anyway) and chippies will get you almost anything buit the uber godly stuff. I have seen, on several occasions, items like windforce and the Grandfather being traded for 40 P rubies.

Thatkfully, most of the hackers only trade their bugged stuff for other bugged stuff and it seems that most anyone who wants chippies and gems is legit (why would you want chippies to make cruel swords if you are using an ITH ccb or something????) I suppose this is a turn for the better, as it puts some space between the hackers and the legits.

It's funny how not all that long ago every post in the trading channels ended with "sojs only." Now almost every one ends with "no sojs." It's a good thing too, cause I have 2 sojs and 90 some chippies right now... :D

[Dozer]

Because the new currency, which is 290 damage poison S. charms, 3 Max/20 AR/20 Life S. Charms, and 40%ed/15% ias (or +15 max) are actually USED in some form.. the charms are used but not "devoured" into items like the jewels.

trading ratio for these 3 things in above order, as i can tell(it changes almost every day, *sigh*) is 3 : 2 : 1. (1 40/15 to 2 3/20/20 or 3 290 psn)

[Amaethon]

Yeah the way things are now is somewhat better than any other time in the past. At least there are things that "rich" people want that newbies have in abundance, and readily available with little or moderate work. (chips & p-gems) As for "uber godly" I traded 40 chips monday for a Barnar's Star, I dont know if you consider this godly but I was shocked when this guy said hed trade it for my chips. Especially since I was only askin for an Aldur's Mace, there is a good chance it was a dupe, but it beats using deaths touch in hell mode. On the other end of the spectrum some other guy offered to give me blood fist for the chips (yes all of them!) I had to laugh at that one. After questioning him about the extremely high price for such a piddly item he said that he could get soj/s for them from duelers that specialized in lvl9 duels...go figure.

[Archon_Wing]

This applies to life, forums, relationships, and anything else you can think of. The first slump and every one after : AHH!! THE WORLD IS ENDING! Nooooo! [/paranoia]
:D

[BlackLightning]

Good.

It makes me feel a bit better to know that other stuff is being traded now besides SOJ's.
How many chipped gems do you need to get semi-good stuff like War Traveler?
It's because my friend still trades SOJ's, and I'm trying to convince him that there's other stuff out there, with little success.... :(

[Griselda]

We choose not to have a trading forum here, and we appreciate not having trading or item valuation posts on any of our forums.

Just a heads up to everyone in this thread as it meanders towards that line. :unsure:

-Griselda

[Olon97]

I also just returned to LOD after a long haitus (~10 months), and after adjusting to the fact that yes, they really did delete my 3 accounts stuffed with cookie cutters and variants from 1.5 years of play, I rediscovered the joy of untwinked play.

The main trading channels are downright scary, but the gem channels have been very helpful for rebuilding and filling in missing pieces of a character.

When I tired of having no mana steal, I counted up the chipped gems I had collected struggling around in normal and offered them in exchange for a manald. Instant trade, someone who cared about trading values probably thought they were ripping me off. All I knew was I was getting something I needed for a bunch of things I didn't need.

Since then, I've used chippeds to trade for some exceptional unique/set weapons, a Duriel's shell, chance guards, raven frost, and several other useful items that would have been next to impossible for a new player to trade up for during certain periods of the D2 economy. When things were soj or nothing, I kept my single monster-dropped soj and resigned myself to using only the items I found. While only using what you find is noble (and the only way to be sure you're 100% legit), it's nice for a returning veteran/addict to jump start an account simply by collecting chipped gems and asking for a few sub-Uber items he/she wants to anchor a particular build (or at least to make solo leveling in hell a little more feasable so I can shop for magic elites again).

Despite the rampant cheating going on in the realms, I feel like I stumbled onto a sub-culture of people who are just playing the game. As someone said earlier, why would someone with tons of l33t ith CCBoQs (or whatever the latest 'thing' is) want anything to do with small lots of chipped gems?

There is still a sense of the ever-present divide between "haves" and "have-nots", except the "haves" are even more of an inbred community of silly cheaters ruining the game for themselves, and the "have-nots" actually have reasonable methods of distributing items to each other without using a duped (or CD2 bug-exploited) item as a trade intermediate.

Still, a clean slate 1.10 ladder economy will be a breath of fresh air (at least for a few days/weeks until the hackers get rolling).

[Albion Child]

If you want to avoin the trading channels, I suggest using the battle.net trade forum. People trade everything there, from godlies to chips. Thus far it has proven to be THE BEST place if you want to find a specific item (like, say, a 2 socket druid helm with +3 to armageddon to make lore).

As far as what I've noticed in trading, chips will get you anything but the most godly items. P-gems are the same (though having many of the same kind seems to increase their value, especially rubies). And lastly comes 290 psn small charms (are these legit??? I thought 175 was max)

[Amaethon]

I just want to clarify something here...I didnt start this thread asking anyone to trade for anything, and I havnt since. My intent was to point out how devalued things had goten on bnet, and I gave some examples, I wasnt aware this was taboo...my appologies.

[Occhidiangela]

Go to the bottom of his post, and read his sig.

That sums up the Bnet Economy, such as it is. In any case, I hope your are having fun, which is the whole point, right? :)

[Obi2Kenobi]

What economy? :P