Requesting guide for creating and growing your economy. (updated)

changelog (9/27)

-clarification about event monsters question
-added three new queries
-re-worded my first query for more clarification

Foreword

Spoiler:

Getting to the Point

Now that I have at least a somewhat decent understanding of the concepts and mechanics of the meta-game, I want to be able to take it to the next level. If possible could someone write an in-depth guide on advancing in the game going from casual play to being an elite summoner/collector. I've tried to find info about this but the only things I found were way too situational to really be of much value. I want to learn how to play the stock market (auctions); to be able to buy/trade/sell monsters/EP and make a profit. My ultimate goal is to be able to upkeep a healthy supply of free EP's without immediately pouring like half of my checks into DS as soon as I deposit them.

I'm sure there are at least a few different methods of doing this. Topics I would like included would be:

-Around what level should one start focusing on trading/selling and farming EPs? Then, what is the next step and how does one know when to do so? (so on and so forth)

-What sort of methods or what to type into the comment box to help your auctioned mons/pots and offered mons/pots to help achieve a higher success rate?

-How long should a player hold on to rare event-only requisitioned monsters before selling them for the biggest The wheel of fortune? By this, I'm not referring to event progress monsters, but the ones gained through event summons.

-How to recognize and anticipate global trends for the value of all or specific monster types

-raid crystal farming optimization- For instance, would it be more effective/efficient to sell the crystals straight up as opposed to using them to make skill stacks and gold to sell?

-What are all the ways people use to obtain free EPs (other than ones from events and missions, obviously)? So far, this is what I can come up with:

-selling raid crystals (stated earlier)
-selling gold
-selling skill stacks
-selling unused A/A+

-What are the profit margins of different ways to sell monsters? As an example, let's say a lvl 1 A+ monster sells for about 10 EP. How many EP would it be worth to sell it at lvl 70? Furthermore, how many EP would it be worth to sell it at lvl 70 and skill lvl 20?

I am sure there are many more facets of the system but these are all i can think of at the moment. If I think of something else, I will add it in to the list.



If you are too busy to undertake such an epic task or only know a little bit of this or that, just a few tips and pointers would be appreciated as well. I'm sure there are a bunch of other people wondering the same thing. This guide could very well be the most useful information about this game that I will ever read.




P.S.
PLEASE HELP ME! I just spent another sixty in the middle of typing up this thread. It's compulsive.

Ok first of all u should get some patience. Thats one of the most important aspects of this game. U really dnt need to spend My teacher said good "job".

Secondly the key to understanding a monster's value is to know the viable teams. Most guilds have 3 or so teams that can achieve at least 4x combo and have agility. Monsters on these teams will hold their value much better. Other than that new monsters prices will typically plummet so unless u think they will become viable in the future sell them asap if u can. Btw the auction system sucks it's easier to find people to trade with.

Ep is the currency and there are a few ways to farm it. Farm raid crystals and sell for something like 12:1. Second you can sell gold for about 100k:1.

Also if u The wheel of fortune attention you will notice price trends. During the mobious event skills were common so they sold cheap. Now no skills r dropping so if you waited u could make great profit on that.

The end game of ep profit is events.once your energy is up around 450+ and you can try to rank in an event. It will take a lot of ep, like 180 to 200, depending on the guild but you can sell the monster for 300ish for a 100 ep profit. Rinse and repeat.

Just slow down The wheel of fortune attention and set goals for yourself and make sure everything u do contributes to that goal and it won't take as llong as u think.

I'm pretty new to this game only played for 5 weeks but now have 60 ep pure and 200 or so in monsters investments. The economy here is actually fairly predictable and flipping for profit isn't actually hard. Knowing the values is most important and if you do it right you can buy cheap and sell high to profit most of the time.

Great thread! I would love to see a guide or some more help regarding these questions.

Karma wrote:I'm pretty new to this game only played for 5 weeks but now have 60 ep pure and 200 or so in monsters investments. The economy here is actually fairly predictable and flipping for profit isn't actually hard. Knowing the values is most important and if you do it right you can buy cheap and sell high to profit most of the time.

Could you reiterate what you said about the 60 ep pure and 200 mon investments?

He means he has 60 ep and 200ep worth of monsters. Biggest problem in this game is actually selling those monsters for ep.

Yeah, I'm pretty new to the game and I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm trying to get more involved in the community without spending anything (quite frankly, I'm broke, though I begin work next week, hooray), but it seems really difficult to actually get anywhere in this game without doing so, but after doing so for a month, even if I would have You know you're beautiful available, I'm interested in getting a somewhat reasonable team (I'm using a Naga in my team if that tells you anything) without having to use any currency.

When your best monster is a Naga+, you know there's a problem, lmao.

The key mostly seems to be starting small and collecting/conserving EP. I got 1 from trading a guy a monster with Defense down 4 (though I have at least 8 "My" EPs), and I'm having a hard time thinking about how to turn that into 2 without just trying to play the field with guys buying skills (getting the skill guys through days of farming 1st/2nd dark lord crystals) since I have no monsters of real value because, well, I can't use dark traps, dark summons or pretty much anything else that would improve my standing.

Anyone have any tips for a guy like myself?

It's funny. I frivolously searched the internet (including many forums) for hours on end. However, it seems no one has really asked, put into words, or touched base on the subject, surprisingly. I have found tiny hints and snippets along the way, but saying that what I found was only scratching the surface would be an overstatement.

If only I knew all the stuff I was asking questions about, I'd love nothing better than to create a comprehensive guide on it because I feel that would be the most respected article for DS so far, and for a long time, more than likely.

Perhaps maybe it's just so that the people with this information don't want to give away their secrets as to have an edge over others.

I think if u just search the forum you can find an answer to just about any team/ stratedgy question.

Yeah. That's a good idea. For the past few days ive been browsing the trade section trying to learn as much as I can about monster cost and such. It's hard though, as the type of answers I'm looking for in regards to that might possibly be there, but just scattered all over the place.

There is a price check thread, a beastiary, and a search function. The work has already been done, ur making it harder than it needs to be.

I think the biggest issue most people have is the idea that the be-all-end-all for trading is Energy Potions. As an example, I've been playing for about two months now, haven't spent any m0ney on this game, the greatest number of Energy Potions I've had at any one time is fifteen(and I used them, rather than trading them), and my current team is:

Lethargic Belphegor Lv 70 (9)
Sekhmet Lv 70 (10)
Death Call Covenant Lv 70 (
Lewd Twist Lologi Lv 70 (
Evilmot Lv 70 (9)
...with a regular(non-plus) Kotone currently being leveled to replace my Evilmoth.

The point I'm trying to make is, you'll likely have better luck trading monsters you don't want/need for monsters that you do want/need than trying to sell everything for Energy Potions...

To add onto this if your merching it's better to have say 10 seperate investments than 1 big (AA) investment cause lets say your aa is where all your ep has gone into. That means you have no more ep to spend on flipping stuff and ur stuck with your "worthless" AA so to speak.

Also flipping progs has been really profitable. If you look at the average price of the day and find good deals and resell high you can profit quite a bit. I made 50 in a day off just this events progs .

I've been playing for 82 days... but I have gotten some tips and things along the way:

Starting out, I used all of my "My Energy Potions" from starting out right away. Being PATIENT (I have so much trouble with this) would have allowed me to use those potions toward an event later on which would have been a much more valuable use of the potion. So I'd recommend saving those potions.

At Level 20, I would recommend spending a little real life My teacher said good "job" for potions. By being patient, you can find specific monsters for deals. I'd recommend with your beginning summons, if you get anything that would be part of a major team, build off of it. A Marbas or random useful demon can save you a fair amount of energy potions, as A versions of monsters aren't always half of what the A+ value would be, in my experiences. Basically, I'd say your objective would be to get 4x or higher combo team with agility (as mentioned above), and start leveling them. I'd minimize deposits to a guild, and focus on leveling the team. It's cheapest to sac 10 monsters at a time, and I made another mistake in doing the story missions as far as I did.

I'd recommend ignoring the default "story"(?) missions after mission four. Mission 4.4 gives a good amount of gold per Energy Point, relatively, and the monsters that you get are all 4 bp. Ten of those monsters sell for 4k gold, or they can be sacrificed if you're good on gold. Some of the other missions give a good amount of gold for the energy, but because Mission 4.4 only costs 1 energy, the likelihood of obtaining monsters is much better. Basically each of those 4bp monsters is worth 400 gold. Level your team, using skilled B or cheap skilled A's (you'll learn what these are), skill your team whenever possible, with a focus on your Agility monster, whatever it is.

I started by stacking Energy. I gave very little care to Battle Points while leveling my team. Once my team was maxed, and skilled enough to start winning, I started shifting more toward BP, because I found that fighting battles was one of the best ways to obtain gold. A lot of times you'll get between 0 and 8k, but occasionally you'll get the nice 20-40k win. Also, as you fill out your achievements, the time it takes to regen battle points is significantly shorter than the time it takes to regen Energy.

With a maxed team, you can focus on making incremental changes to it. I started with Asura+, had just started playing when the Spite+ event came out and got it, Endless Night+ (cheap AH deal), Pit+ (I'd been using Nidhogg for agility until I realized how much better Pit was), and Blunt Blade Devil (had used various things like Ladon+ and Hellfire Talos+ before putting a final demon in. Again, I would have saved a lot of time and effort by working on a team chosen in advance). Right now I'm slowly leveling a Paimon+ to replace the blunt blade, because the Covert Down and higher attack is more valuable to me.

While making small changes, you can focus on beginning your EP cache. Collect sets of 5 skills to sell for 3-6 EP. Some events will give you tons of skill monsters, like the Mobius Event did. You can stack the skills to (4) to make them more valuable to people who are trying to max skills on their teams (see these forums for more information on leveling skills). You can also use your gold and energy (when there aren't events going on) to level desirable A+ monsters for sale on the auctions. At this point you'll probably have an idea of the monsters that people want and will be willing to The wheel of fortune for. It only costs you some time, and overall the difference between a level 70 A+ and a level 1 A+ can be as much as 15-20 EP. I'm somewhat at this point right now, but I keep cancelling my leveling of random monsters to make small upgrades to my team, and because I'm spending energy on event stuff rather than mission 4.4 for monsters.

It seems that once you get a decent collection of EP from selling skill monsters or desirable A+ monsters, people tend to wait for a ranked event and push for a high enough rank to rake in AA rewards. It seems like many of the ranked event AAs are going for 200+ EP, and selling one of those can allow you to put more EP's toward the next ranked event, building your stockpile. I'm only speculating, because I still haven't reached this stage. When doing event missions, getting progression monsters is vital to ranking highly.

In a nutshell:
1) Get a team.
2) Level/skill team.
3) Start building EP.
4) Use EP to benefit from events.

As far as farming raid crystals... In my opinion, I'd rather do mission 4.4. It's boring as hell, but when farming raid crystals, you'll get lower BP monsters that don't sell/sacrifice for as much value as the solid 4bp monsters. From the raids themselves, you might end up with the actual raid boss (which is with much less valuable), 10k gold (nice), or a rank B summon (random). The rank B can be nice for the possible skill monster, but it's also possible that you might get a crappy vanilla B (I'm talking of you, Bone Smash Ettin). If you're going just for the gold, I'd estimate the mission 4.4 to be more reliable, from a purely anecdotal standpoint.

Also, it seems like Dark Summons have a pretty high percentage of getting a progression monster during the beginning of an event. I'd love to see the numbers on this.

Hope that was helpful, I think I answered most of the questions that the original poster asked.

I haven't checked back on this thread for a while lol. Eventually I plan on making a guide like the one I requested.

I've been playing 59 days now. I've got my max lvl sin demon formation, just working on the skills. I'm lvl 90, have 549 energy points and 444 EP saved up for the next good event.

I must be doing something wrong, I'm on day 57 but am only level 70 and am totally out of EP (finished getting a aa+ team though!). Any hints? Maybe I shouldn't be trying to play the events?

somepersonoverthere wrote:I must be doing something wrong, I'm on day 57 but am only level 70 and am totally out of EP (finished getting a aa+ team though!). Any hints? Maybe I shouldn't be trying to play the events?

Trust me, you're not doing anything wrong. I'm somewhat of a compulsive buyer, so I have tossed like 200 ish into the game. And the only reason I got so much EP was cuz I got lucky and summoned a Tlon trying to get a prog monster lol. But hey, the only AA+ monster I have is rot cast+

i have not tossed 1 coin in the game,and i got 5 aa+

But the price is my outragedous telephone fee

I have some opinion in build ur ecnomy for newbie

1.farm crystal then sell--------a no life way,but a sure way

2.fast buy and fast sell--------for example buy 2 sin prog in 22 ep each,then sell prog+ in 50.u got benefit of 6.

3.do some long term invest--------for example,build a low bp team,and sell it in low bp tournament event

4.do some trick in bp->ep->bp convert

5.atk other for gold----------if u can beat a 5 aa+ team,u can got at least 100k gold once,for these player seldom bank

But how to build a a+ team that can beat 5 aa+ team ,it need u have deep understand to this game

lasthuhu wrote:

5.atk other for gold----------if u can beat a 5 aa+ team,u can got at least 100k gold once,for these player seldom bank

But how to build a a+ team that can beat 5 aa+ team ,it need u have deep understand to this game

i atk ppl with high bp teams(100+), a lot of them(i would say 65%+) are actually pretty easily to beat with my lvl'ed A+ team and i find they give more gold in general than ppl running team <90 bp.

lasthuhu wrote:i have not tossed 1 coin in the game,and i got 5 aa+

But the price is my outragedous telephone fee

lol. What I've been doing the past 2 days is just going through the AH looking for people offering up EP and to see if I have what they want and if it's a good deal. I recently got 10 EP from a guy for 1.5 mil that I had collected doing this event. I eventually plan to actually make a guide like the one I asked here when I first got into DS.

lasthuhu wrote:

5.atk other for gold----------if u can beat a 5 aa+ team,u can got at least 100k gold once,for these player seldom bank

But how to build a a+ team that can beat 5 aa+ team ,it need u have deep understand to this game

That's not necessarily true. Alot of the AA+ team are in the top rank, if they are they get attack so often that they bank all the time. I yo-yo between 10-20 overall and get attack all the time and I attack them back. Its just for honor farming and little to no gold change hand since we banked all the time. I know I'll get attack at least 5 times a day and that's during this event when most people are using their bp to get bells. On pure ep event I get attack 15-20 times a day.

Kyan