Batmud Guide to Earning Gold

 

Introduction:

Intended Audience:

• This guide is aimed at low and mid level players who have not advanced enough to participate in equipment raid parties but are at the point where they are trying to purchase better equipment. E.g. Levels 30 - 60.
• There is no "best way" to earn money. The key is to pick an approach that fits into your playing style.
• The other thing to keep in mind is understanding your goals with how you intend to spend your money.
• To put this another way, playing this game is a balance between exploring, earning EXP, socializing, idling, earning money, etc. If you know how much money you need to enable other aspects of your playstyle, that can help influence how much you focus on earning that money vs. doing other fun things.

General Disclaimer:

• This guide will be in a permanent "work in progress" state
• I'll add to it as I learn more strategies
• Feel free to message my character, or leave comments here with your own strategies!

Common expenses:

• Equipment:
• Each piece of "newbie" level equipment normally costs around 50k gold
• Medium level equipment normally costs 200k - 500k gold
• There is no real cap on top level equipment. Sky is the limit, but you are likely looking at several million gold for a high-end piece of equipment and/or weapon.
• Day to Day Costs:
• Paying tolls and other miscellaneous expenses usually costs around 1k a day depending on how much you travel
• Renting a Player City Room:
• I need to look into how much this costs. I usually bury my chests...
• Buying a chest to store your equipment:
• Chests normally cost around 600k for 8 slots. You can buy smaller chests for less.
• Chests become important as you start to reincarnate your character into a different guild. That way you can have a melee equipment set and a caster equipment set.
• Reincarnation Potions:
• Why: These provide a bonus to your next reincarnation which can really help out
• Average cost: 400k - 600k gold for a potion that provides a "medium" stat boost
• Note: If you skip the potion and find a player Druid to cast reincarnation on you, that can cost significantly less. But you don't get any bonuses if you do that.
• Racial Shrines (Advanced):
• Why: Sacrificing equipment to racial shrines can provide a random bonus to your character for the day. This is something that more advanced players tend to do since they have the money to spend on it.
• Average cost: You are likely looking at sacrificing a newbie piece of equipment a day. So around 10k - 50k gold a day.

Common Pitfalls:

The Merchant Guild is NOT for Earning Money:

• This is really counterintuitive. It would seem like the whole reason to join the Merchant Guild would be to earn money. They drive the Batmud economy!
• While there are money making strategies as being a merchant, they require a lot of experience and a lot of friends. It also likely requires a secondary character to help get equipment to sell.
• The other challenge is that Batmud is an old mud, and there are super long time players. Those players tend to have a merchant character so they dominate in their money making strategies.
• Merchants have a lot of gameplay loops (such as mining) that are fun for high level players, but aren't feasible/available for newer players.
• Long story short, as a newer player (which you probably are if you are reading this guide), you can earn more money with some of these other strategies by playing a character with combat skills.

Don't Focus On Picking Up Every Mowgles (E.g. Pennies):

• As a brand new player, 100 gold can be a big deal. As a more experienced player 100 gold isn't worth spending time and pack-space on.
• Money is heavy in Batmud! Just like how you wouldn't carry around 1k pennies in real life, having your character carry around lots of low value coins to deposit them in the bank usually isn't worth interrupting your gameplay to make those frequent hikes to the bank.
• Same goes for equipment. Trying to find the right store to sell items you pick up takes time. Also some items are worth less than 5 gold so hauling it all over only to make 5 gold by tossing it into a trashcan isn't worth your time.
• Finally, while this guide will list several techniques (such as tossing trash, and donating blood), that offer a low amount of gold since they are helpful to know, you'll likely skip most of those except for novelty reasons.

 Don't Focus On Grinding Out One Strategy:

• Batmud should be fun. That's the whole reason you are playing it! Therefore don't get caught in the grind of following one strategy for earning money and then get bored with the game.
• Earning gold in Batmud shouldn't be work! Mix things up, explore, and socialize!

Core Tips for Earning Gold:

Set your "rip_action" Trigger:

• THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT TIP IN THIS ENTIRE POST
• The "rip_action" command allows you to script your character's actions when they kill a monster.
• You'll be killing a lot of monsters, so making sure you collect all the loot you want from them is super helpful.
• Setting up the trigger can be complicated, but luckily Ralmaz created a webpage that will walk you through some common options and generate the trigger script for you. Here is the link
• Common rip_action commands:
• "rip_action on", "rip_action off": This allows you to toggle your rip action on and off. Sometimes you need corpses for other things so turning this off temporarily will keep your character from automatically digging graves for them.
• "rip action set [action]": Allows you to set your rip_action. Copy/paste the command from Ralmaz's webpage into this.
• "rip action order <player 1> <player 2> ...": Allows you to set the order that players apply their rip_actions when in a party. This is very helpful for players to set to ensure players who need to use corpses get them first.
• Make sure you include the following in your rip_action:
• Dispose of the corpse
• Pick up all high value coins
• Pick up any essences of unknown origin (you can sell these for around 2k each)
• Pick up any Orb of Infizinity that drops (worth 1 million gold when selling to players!!!)

Get an Equipment Frame (or other backpack related gear):

• Backpack like items go into your character's "rig" equipment slot, and reduce the weight of whatever you put in them.
• Since most methods for earning money include hauling a lot of stuff to sell, being able to carry more stuff is always helpful.
• Equipment Frames are the best type of item to go in these slots, but as a newbie you can pick up a free Backpack by killing the scavenger in the Dortlewall Crystite Mines which are a newbie only area.
• The longer term option is to buy an equipment frame from players. They will often show up for sale in merchant carts, and you can also use the broker command and/or ask on the wanted channel.
• The material that your frame is made out of influences how effective it is. Just like in real life, a frame made out of leather will be better than a frame made out of iron.
• If your character requires light/dark though you can get your frame made out of other material like nullium which darken the room automatically. While this is heavier and provides less of a bonus to reducing item weight, it's still lighter than carrying nullium rocks in your pockets.

Get a Money Purse:

• Coins weight a lot in Batmud. A money purse acts much like an equipment frame in that it reduces the weight of coins in it.
• This is a huge deal! A coin purse will totally pay for itself in the more coins you can collect, haul around, and deposit in the bank.
• A coin purse will also protect your high value coins such as mithril and batium coins.
• You can't accidently spend coins that are in your coin purse
• Also some monsters cast "Money is Power" which will convert all your coins NOT in a purse to EXP. While this sounds cool, these monsters don't have the spell trained to a high level so the exchange rate is horrendous. Basically they nuke all the money on your character that isn't in a purse.
• You can buy a coin purse for around 5k gold from a player city's furniture store.
• Note: Player city purchased purses are different from purses you may find after killing a monster.
• Monster dropped purses will not hold money over reboots. So that gets annoying real quick. It is better to just buy a player city purse.

Armor is Generally Worth More than Weapons:

• When choosing what equipment to lug back to a shopkeeper to sell, pick armor instead of weapons if you don't know anything else about them.
• This is a rough rule of thumb, but most generic weapons that monsters drop are not worth that much compared to their weight, while armor can often fetch a very good price
• The difference is huge. Many times a monster will drop a piece of armor that sells for 2k while the weapon they drop will only net you around 20 gold.

Strategies for Earning Gold:

Kill Monsters and Collect the Coins they Drop:

Overview:

• Some monsters drop a random set of coins when they die. This ranges from hundreds/thousands of mowgles coins to a single mithril coin.
• It is hardcoded which monsters drop coins. In some areas all of the monsters drop coins. In some areas none of the monsters drop coins.
• If you prioritize running areas where the monsters consistently drop coins, you can earn a "passive" income to go along with the EXP you are earning.
• The key is to have your rip_action set, and to only pick up coins that you are willing to carry.
• For example, if you pick up all coins you'll quickly find your character burdened with 100k mowgles coins, which sounds like a lot but is only 1k gold.

Areas Where Mobs Drop Coins:

• Circus
• Dark Castle
• Dortlewall Crystite Mines
• Drawbridge
• Giantkillers
• Mage Apprentice Training Area
• Mithil Stonedown
• Revelstone
• Wrebie Forest
• ... I really need to keep track of areas where most of the monsters drop coins... This list is woefully incomplete.

Sell Area Specific Items that Monsters Drop:

Overview:

• Some monsters always drop a particular item or piece of equipment that can be sold to NPC vendors for a decent amount of money.
• Ideally, these monsters are killable by a single mid-level player.
• The money made from this is usually modest but impactful for newer players.
• This has the added bonus that more experience players may not bother with this equipment, leaving it on the ground for you to pick up and sell
• One thing to keep in mind is that NPC shops will reduce their payout for items they already have a lot of.
• As an example of that, Dortlewall miner hats are one of the most commonly sold pieces of equipment. As the day goes on, they will be worth less and less in the city of Dortlewall's armourer shop.
• This reduction in sale price is per boot, so it will reset every day.
• Important Point: This reduction is unique per shop. So if you are willing to travel to a nearby player city or a different town you can often get full price for all your loot.

Common Areas:

• Arelium Sewers:
• It's tricky to deal with the maze, but if you have a good mapper program and a way to carry equipment you can make around 20k gold a maze run.
• Burning Village:
• The armour pieces that most invaders drop can be sold for between 1k and 4k gold.
• Cornfields:
• The carrots dropped by the invading mantises can be sold for 500 gold each
• Dortlewall Crystite Mines:
• The miner hats that most dwarves drop can be sold for 500 gold each
• Drawbridge:
• One of the most popular areas to earn gold. Many of the creatures drop equipment you can sell.
• Giantkillers:
• It's off the beaten path which makes things complicated, but there are a few pieces of equipment that sell for over 1k gold each.
• Mage Apprentice Training Area:
• This is an amazing place to earn money. Most of the monsters drop random equipment, and it's a popular place so you can often wander around picking up and selling equipment other players left behind.
• Newbie Mines:
• Special Highlight: If you are a newbie (Less than level 30) and can reliably kill black puddings, running the Newbie Mines and grinding black puddings until they drop a scroll of enchant armour is a great way to earn money. Players will often pay 5k - 20k per scroll to max out their equipment.
• Note: The scroll doesn't do anything besides make your equipment glow red. But it is a mysterious glow (some players think it may have hidden benefits) so there is always a active demand for these scrolls.

Other Ways to Earn Money:

• You can earn 15k (ish) gold farming in Medowshire every boot
• I actually haven't explored this yet, but it's something to look into!
• You can hunt outerworld monsters for Dr. Livingstone. [Guide Link]
• This will get you several thousand gold for the easier targets
• Another bonus is this will help you complete Level Quest 47.
• You can get several hundred gold donating blood at the Arelium hospital every boot
• You trade hitpoints for gold
• This usually isn't worth the hassle, but it can be nice if you need some money for a ferry ride
• You can toss trash into trashcans found in most shop vendor rooms for 5 gold per piece of trash