Scribing Guide

Terms:

The following terms are relevant to this Scribery Guide:

Charles - The spell book NPC.  He sells a random spell at a random level citizens - a paying player account

peasants - a non paying player account percent chance of success – the rate at which something has a possibility of succeeding.

source book - The book being copied. uprate - the difference between books of the same spell, but of a different level.  For example the uprate of greed is 25 gp per level with a minimum of 50.  This means lvl 1: 50 gp, 2: 75 gp, 3: 100 gp, etc

One:  Introduction to advanced scribing by Gateway.

            With all of the other skills, you can actively raise those skills when you have around 3 points above the minimum, this is called the rule of three, to make the item, cast the spell, etc, with scribery, it is more beneficial to wait until you have slightly higher points due to the cost of the materials. Guide to a new scribe:

NOTE:  I have not raised a new scribe in two years, so any numbers herein are guesses except for the advice that goes by percent chance of success.

1. Obtain as much venom as you can.  Do this by buying or selling.  You will want at least 200-500 to start a new scribe.
2. Obtain

either logs to make into lumber and then books or be prepared to pay 50 gp per each blank book at dashiva.  Note: if you are making them, make sure you train your skills char to 55 carpentry.  Note: as far as I know, the durability of a book doesn’t affect scribery.  I heard a rumor that it does affect percent chance of success, but I never tested it.  If you do make your own blank books, that will only take effect early on in your scribing career.

1. Train scribery to 25-30 points on lvl 2 holy aura book.  You should get to 70% chance of success or so by then.
2. Repeat training scribery until around 50 points.  At this point, levels 2, 3, and 4 should all have decent success rates.
3. At

95% success on a particular level, there will be around 70-75% success on the next level and 35% for two levels above.  Ex:  at 95% success on level 2 books, there will be around 70-75% success on level 3 books and 35% success on level 4 books.

1. My advice

would be to use books that are solely used for training when you have 25% success or greater on them.  This means that on average, ¼ attempts will result in a book, and each book has 5 charges.  100 books will probably result in 125 successful copies, which is a low estimate due to increases in skill during this training period.

1. According

to probability, at a 25% chance of success, on average, 75% of the time will result in a three failures for every four attempts.  When you have a high level of the book, it’s not advisable to attempt a book where you have only at 25% chance of success.  For a book that you are selling, you want as many successes as possible to increase the number of books that you can sell.  My advice would be to wait until you have 35% or greater success.

1. The rule

of fifteen for scribery involves the levels of the books.  If you have Y% success on a level X book with Z scribery skill, then at (z+15.00) scribery skill you will have Y% success on a level (X + 1) book.  In other words if you have 50% success on level 3 books at 40? scribery, then at 55 scribery, you will have 50% success on level 4 books.  You will also have the same success on level 3s as you had 15 points before on level 2s.

Two.  Obtaining books:

One source is Charles, but it is more practical to use the market (shift + F4).  Charles sells one spell at a time, where it changes once every 50 minutes.  The benefit of Charles is that he is the original source.  All other sources are scribes that have scribed down books from Charles and GMs who do not often give out spell books of any sort.  The market contains many books and due to the volume of spells that get placed on here these are usually cheap and naturally there are many of the same level at times.  The last alternative is to buy directly from a scribe.  Buying directly from a scribe can be very useful.  The scribe who is raising skill by getting you books may sell you these books cheaper (skill raising books only, cowardice, town portal, and greed are good examples of such spells that can be bought cheaply in bulk.  My price was around 75 gp per book of any level below 8.  Other scribes may charge differently, but this covered my costs for ink, blanks, and gave me a slight profit. 

Three:  Guides according to available money:

Guide to a scribe who has “unlimited” money:

1. Buy ink from players.
2. Buy blank books pre-made from players in bulk or from Dashiva.
3. Buy holy aura level 2 until scribery is at 30-35% or until a quantity of 50 books can be bought off a scribe.
4. Buy

books in a bulk group of 50 books at the highest level that you can handle at 25% or better.  Scribe that level and the following two levels down.

1. Search the market for any cheap books that you

can train off of.  If someone places too many of one book for the same price, then the books tend not to be bought until the prices drop significantly. Guide to a scribe who has limited money:

1. Kill

spiders and get your own ink, eventually in the hope of being able to buy ink off others when your scribing skill is higher.

1. Chop

your own logs and use carpentry to make the logs into lumber and then books.  Do this on a separate character unless it is on a citizen account and you expect to keep it that way.  Eventually try to buy blank books because these can be made “instantaneously.”

1. Use holy aura level 2 until you have 75-90% success on it and then move onto the next level.
2. Attempt

to buy bulk books from a scribe in as large of quantities as you can afford and have the ink and blanks to use.  You may want to buy extra books and just store these on a separate character until you have either the time or the supplies to train off them.

1. Eventually try to buy blank books and/or ink because this saves time.
2. Search

the market for any cheap books that you can train off of.  If someone places too many of one book for the same price, then the books tend not to be bought until the prices drop significantly. Note:  not all of my trade practices are given away here, there are a few that I choose to keep secret because I do not want the specific positive points removed.  One example of a previous effect that was helpful and removed was the “worldwide” bank.  It used to work that you could be anywhere and still put items into and out of a bank screen that was open, now banks are specifically located at a place and only that bank can be accessed from within 25 squares of the banker. 

Four:  Intro to Selling:

            There are two ways to sell spells, either on the market or directly to players.  When using the market, it’s advisable to not sell multiple copies of the same spell for the same price.  More about this will be explained in the following paragraph.  The other way is to sell directly to players.  The market operates as an intermediary between players.  It takes an item and keeps it available to buy by any player.  As time passes, it decreases in its sale price automatically.  By applying the law of supply and demand to Faldon’s market system, then an intelligent way to market books is to create your own supply and demand.  If there is only one copy of a book at a specific level for the lowest value, all demand for that book at that level will go to that book.  A buyer wants to pay as little gold as possible and if all of the copies of a book are in a nice line, its easy to comparison shop.  If there are multiple copies of a book at a level for the same value, then a buyer can wait for the price to drop before buying it.  For example, if there are twenty copies of a book at level 5, then a buyer can wait until 18 or 19 of the other copies are sold and thus pay a decreased price.             When marketing spells, you should not sell the same spell repeatedly for the same price.  For example, if you were to sell ten copies of level 5 summon slimes, you should include an uprate for each book (initial price + copyNumber*uprate).  The first book could go for 2000, then 2400, 2800, 3200, etc.  You may also want to include an increasing uprate such as:  2000, 2400, 2900, 3500, 4100, etc.  This second method is good if you put the spells above what you expect to get for them.  While the first book decreases 400 gp, the second will decrease 400 + x gp, and the third will decrease by 400 + x + y gp.  I have never tested how much x and y are, but for any item, the greater you put the initial cost, the greater it will decrease by over time.  This “fixes” items that are put on for 999999999 gp or some other insane amount of gold pieces. 

            When I was actively selling spells on the market, I used two different formulas for selling my books, the one was level * 400 + uprate and the other was level * 500 + uprate.  Also for level 1 spells, I sold them as 200, 400, 600, etc.  My usual uprate was 400 or 500.  At times, I increased this uprate by 100 gp for books level 5 +.  This would result in:

1: 200, 400, 600, 800,

2: 400, 800, 1200, 1600 etc.

3: 1200, 1600, 2000, 2400, etc

etc.

or

1: 200, 400, 600, 800,

2: 400, 800, 1200, 1600 etc.

3: 1200, 1600, 2000, 2400, etc

4: 1600, 2000, 2400, 2800, etc

5: 2000, 2400, 2900, 3500, etc

6: 2400, 2800, 3300, 3900, etc

etc.

Five:  Advanced player selling tips

            You can make multiple accounts and a good way to organize them will be covered in the record keeping section.  There is another way to use extra accounts to your benefit.  For a peasant who cannot mail book orders for free, they can make a “throwaway” account and use this account to store the books to be given to the buyer.  Ex:  Mage King wants level 1 through 6 of chain lightning, but he logs offline before you have the books finished (assuming he pre-paid).  Now you can either mail him the books at a cost of 25 gp per book or you can put all 6 onto a new account:  thrower1 pw throwaway char: etc, char pw etcPWD.  After this character is made and the books placed on character, email Mage King from the scribe and say his books are on acc: thrower1, pw: throwaway etc… and all of the rest of the info to get on that acc.  After the buyer picks up the spells, you can either log back on and change the password or wait until the next time that you use that character.  I refer to these accounts as thrower accounts because if someone finds out the acc/pw etc of it, then it will cause virtually no harm.  My advice would be to reuse these characters later, but you just need to change the character password each time you use a character.             One other version of this would be to set up multiple characters with different passwords on the same account that would have some commonly bought spell books.  For example, you may have lvls 1-8 chain lit on one char and 1-7 chain lit on another char on the same account.  If someone buys 1-8 they get the pw for that char and if they buy 1-7 they get the pw for the other character.  This makes for “quick” sales, but requires lots of time setting up differing levels of spells.

            There are two ways to make money selling books to scribes.  The first would be to sell the training books to another scribe who is training their own scribery skill.  At most times, these spell books that you are selling may be ones that you would have thrown out yourself.  The other way is to sell books for another scribe to make money off of. 

Six:  Record keeping

            The key to being able to scribe massive amounts of books is quick access to those books and knowing their locations.  I do this using a spreadsheet and by arranging the accounts as shown in the table below.  Take note on how the spells are put into a quick and easy to read format.  I generally use 2 or 3 letter combinations for each spell book. Lightning uses three because it’s a single word and chain lightning uses CL which are the beginning letters of the name of the spell.  Most people probably already use my short combinations because that’s how I announce the spells that I’m selling.  There are three ways to name non-spell items.  The first would be to just say the name.  The second is to say the name and its stat modifications, which makes it quick to search for a specific stat modifying item and to search for how much you need.  The final way has it tell the equipment type with that also.  Note: only search for str and not for 14 str, because something that adds 20 strength would still be wanted as an item if you need an item with at least 14 strength.             Record keeping is essential to massive scribing and this creates problems, but its strengths outweigh its weaknesses.  This makes for quick and accurate determination if a spell or a spell level is in a bank character.  Its problems are that it is time consuming and must be constantly updated or it will not work very well.  It is only as accurate as the record keeper makes it.  Here is a sample spreadsheet on word.  I would advise using excel or some other spreadsheet program. 

Example spreadsheet coming ; Have to make it fit and I'm to lazy (Rob)

Seven:  Percent chance of success

            Percent chance of success involves multiple factors.  These factors include the spell book, amount of scribery skill, constitution, and the numerical value of the skills.  Percent chance of success is modified by the difficulty of a book.  The more expensive the uprate at Charles, the more difficult a book is to scribe.  I do not have any figures for this.  Naturally as you increase in scribery skill, you will have increased success rates.  One of the factors that raised skill gain when I was raising scribery was constitution.  I believe that it still works the same way, but I’d advise you to test it yourself to find out if you think its worthwhile to put points into constitution mainly for this effect.  Percent chance of success is also modified by the skill point numbers.  If you have 8.88 scribery skill, you have 3 +3 modifiers (the half point of 0-10 is 5).  At 9.00, you have 1 +4 modifier, so even though you gained some skill points, you will have a slightly decreased chance of success.  This is VERY apparent when you hit 100.00.   I am not exactly sure how these modifiers are accounted for, but it’s the reason skills start at 1.0 instead of 0.0.  This “fix” worked around the near impossibility of raising skills starting at 0.00.  This is very important:  NOTE:  the item printing press has no effect upon skill gain or percent chance of success despite possible rumors, so do not waste time on it.