A call for organization?

[Josh]

Okay, here's what I'm thinking.

Right now, at current rate of expenditure, I would be able to finance roughly six more clan mega-buffs (at the habit of covering half the cost, roughly 1.2 million meat for a megabuff, six hundred k out of my closet) before going broke.

On the positive side of the ledger, if I really work it I can maybe pull a hundred and fifty K a night, selling meatsmithed items, primarily chrome staves. (My best profit-maker in terms of buying and smithing the components.)

So at current rate I'm incurring some hideous losses, and I'm thinking its time that we started pondering a way of bringing more wealth into the clan as a whole, so we can start buffing more regularly.

This caused me to develop... a plan... of sorts. Goes like this-

The most profitable items in the mall are consumables. Booze, food, and to a lesser extent the components thereof. Especially profitable are the high-end specialty consumables.

However, component acquisition is a royal pain in the posterior, and thus our efforts in this regard are haphazard and totally uncoordinated.

My proposed solution is two-tier. First, in addition to allocating some of our profits back to the clan, I would also propose allocating one quarter of our adventures to clan profitability. At the low levels, this would consist of gathering ingredients for food, drink, and smith production. Also, everybody in the clan should make daily purchases at the Never-Ending Ten Meat sale for basic ingredients.

We would create a list of our targeted needs for profitable items, all of which would be deposited with a an NPC character account that somebody in the clan administration runs, who would then disburse the ingredients to the producers, who sell produce the items (utilizing their quarter of their adventures contribution), then return them to the dummy character, who then unloads them at a clan store, continually undercutting the market in our chosen areas.

Now, the producers would be responsible for keeping track of the profitability of their items and shifting production as needed to stay ahead of the market.

Profits from these sales would then feed back into the purchase of clan buffs, and the producer/item contributer roles would shift as the higher-level members ascend and get recycled back down to lower levels.

In the meantime, clan members still run their own stores and build their own war chests for private purchases, which would mostly sell items gained while adventuring and thus not be in competition with our store. Furthermore, by keeping our prices at the bottom of the market clan members can purchase mixed products from the clan store and keep our money internal.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Gripes and complaints?

[Soontir948]

At my present state of having an annoying headache and not really thinking straight. I'm all for it; I'm starting to gather ingredients from that place for the day.

[The Dark]

I will contribute what I can, but currently the only real ingredients I'm getting are the occasional lemon and ice-cold beer, which aren't great sellers. I should also be able to provide balloon equipment (possibly a monkey or two if I get lucky), but I'm still buying my drinks.

[edit] You could also probably raid the Clan Stash. I would think anything we have more than 15 or so of would be fine to reduce to that number.

[Mayabird]

Ditto on raiding the stash. There are something like 20 gift certificates in there, each of which nets between 400-500 meat.

Maybe we should start a list of good sellers here. I've made quite a bit of meat on selling bulk numbers of bean burritos, pretty bouquets (by buying the flowers, slapping them together with meat paste, and selling), and goat milk from the Goatlet. Goat cheese is also a perennial good seller, and there you can also get whiskey and sabre teeth (sabre teeth can be combined with a lime to get one of those sabre-toothed lime familiars, which I think sell well).

I could thus focus on the Goatlet and the Airship, since there I can get cocoa eggshell fragments, and those make cocoa eggs, which can also make lucky eggs, and everybody wants those.

[The Dark]

I'm working on box-in-the-box-in-the-box, which sell for about 10k each. Those come from the "Fun" House, and require three boxes, two springs, and four meat paste.

[Josh]

Yeah, I was the one who dropped the gift certificates, as a hand for those in need of quick cash.

Okay, thing to remember is that we can affect the market here, so we're going to have to stay agile with this, and once the prices start dropping below the profitability level we'll have to switch products. But with that in mind, I'll start a thread for good sellers.

[Josh]

The other things I'd like to do is get us organized with regards to player buffs, so we can maximize how those are distributed, as well as optimize distribution of extra-turn items, such as Chrome Swords, Dead Guy's Watch, and Imitation Nice Watch. The first two are relatively cheap, whereas the Imitation Nice Watch is something like 90K. Part of the communal fund could go toward equipping members with these items as a clan benefit.

[Josh]

The other thing that's selling hot right now is anything related to the Naughty Sorceror's Quest. A lot of players got reset back to redoing it with an advent of Ascension, and that's been driving the prices up on those items.

Also, anything that's only available after Ascension sells for murderously high prices, such as Supertinkered items.

[Pure Sabacc]

I approve of this plan.
I have accumulated a good deal of meat that I plan on depositing in the stash, although its hard to keep track of which meat is to remain in my personal stock. Have you set up the NPC account yet?

[Josh]

I'll set one up tonight.

[Josh]

The Clan NPC has been set up, Meatdump. Player number 547236, a Pastamancer.

As soon as I can, I'll level him up and get him into the clan.

[Soontir948]

You want every single item that can be cocktailed, meatsmith, etc in that account?

P.S.- I've mistakened Sabacc's post as to mean that meatdump was to be given meat, but that's what I get for not taking a nap. @ self. (I gave a gift of a thousand meat to it)

[Skadi]

Is it better to give meat to the stash or the NPC for buying raw ingredients? My new store is doing very well. :)

[Josh]

I'll get the meat back to you when I log on next, Soontir.

I can dump any Seal Clubber smithable items over to my main character, but we need to grab a Turtle Tamer for other smithable stuff.

But yeah, once I get him to level nine, he'll sell consumables.

The way I'm handling it is to count my boozing adventures as clan adventures, and dumping materials gained/smithed/mixed during those as clan sales.

[Mayabird]

Okay, so I send Meatdump my extra consumables for selling for the clan, right? I can do cooking (basic cooking) for the clan. I can handle burritos and pizza and pie baking and things like that.

I think I have all the buffs, so tell me if I can do anything to make Meatdump hit the big Lvl 9 faster.

[Josh]

Okay, so I send Meatdump my extra consumables for selling for the clan, right? I can do cooking (basic cooking) for the clan. I can handle burritos and pizza and pie baking and things like that.

I think I have all the buffs, so tell me if I can do anything to make Meatdump hit the big Lvl 9 faster.

S'okay, save the buffs for clan members. I got him up to level five the first night by judicious use of Dulces and Key Lime pies, so I should have up to level nine by night after tomorrow at the latest.

[The Dark]

As soon as I get the money for it, I'll get the ability to make Scrumptious Reagants and toss a few of those (or items made with them) your way.

[edit] If I can acquire a supply of them, gr8ps or dill would be the best things to add, cherries are almost as good.

[Josh]

I'll run my main through the Chasm and see if I can run you up some gr8ps. Dunno where to get the Dill or Cherries, have to look that up.

[The Dark]

Cherries are Cobb's Knob Menagerie Level 1 and Fruit Insanity.

Dill is the Spectral Pickle Factory, so that's unlikely for now.

+http://forums.kingdomofloathing.com/vie ... +locations is a very useful thread.

[Josh]

New thoughts along these lines-

What we need is some internal clan positions to divide the labor a bit. Somebody who keeps track of the holidays and special events so we can be ready for them. For example, I would recommend that we make a clan outing to the Spectral Pickle Factory for Brine when the next KOL Halloween hits, because if we can corner the market on it, we'll be rolling in cash.

We also need somebody to be a market maven, compiling the best sales items and keeping on top of hot sellers so we can exploit the Mall to the fullest.

That person would work hand in hand with the merch organizer, who keeps track of who can make what and distributes those materials accordingly, so we can deliver finished product to Meatdump.

So, who's volunteering for what?

[Josh]

Also with regards to ingredients, I'm just busy goofing around at this point and meandering around before ascending. So anybody who wants specific ingredients, just tell me what you want and where to go, and I can get you some.

[Josh]

Need a Pastamancer to manufacture some stuff for Meatdump.

[Josh]

Ingredients, folks, that's what we need now. The market is fluctuating like crazy right now, but I just dumped every goddamned spare bit of stock I had into the store to take advantage of the price hikes.

(I bought a shitload of beer at like thirty bucks a can, over three hundred cans, as preparation for ascension. With my advertising boost, I'm now the top of the beer sales list with a bit under three hundred beers at a going rate of a hundred per. This is sweet.)

[The Dark]

I'll do some of the market research, but it's going to be highly volatile while the effects of this change filter through. I'll also need to know what we're planning on selling; it would probably be best if we started looking at the "exclusive" items that only one class can make.

Hell Ramen might be good to carry, since it requires both Scrumptious Reagant and Dry Noodles, so that's either two lucky drops or a Sauceror and Pastamancer working together.

OK, very quick look at the market:
ice-cold beer, salty dogs, and penguin skins are the fastest moving tems. PPU is 101 for beer, 130 for dogs, and 194 for skins. Meat paste is going for 995, and selling quickly - over 8000 so far today. Skewered cherries, bodyslams, and dirty martinis appear to be name-your-price, as each has gone for 8 million, although only one of each has sold. Cherry bombs are going for about 7.8 million, and have sold multiples. Sangria del diablo is going for just under 7 million.

Meat stacks and Dense Meat stacks are going for oddly inflated prices - 7299 and 33825 respectively. I think it's going to crash, though, because those are spikes of 1079% and 2776% respectively.

If anyone gets a Mob Penguin Cellular Phone, they're selling for over 150k a piece. 334 and 668 scrolls are decent for price. Acoustic guitarrrs are going for over 3000 a pop...price spiked today.

[Josh]

Mob Pengiun Cellular Phones are no longer dropped, so unless somebody knocks somebody over the head, they aren't available.

I'll tell you what right now... cogs, sprockets, springs, seal tooths, anything that was previously a totally chump low-end item, feed it to me. I'm selling the damned things for a 100 a pop, and people are buying them, for whatever reason. I'm holding off on selling basic components like olives- better to stock those for mixing and cooking, because the price bump is going to ripple up to the mixed items. But junk that's laying around, by all means, hit it to my account or Meatdump. I just raided the clan stash for a lot of the spare crap we weren't ever going to use, though I didn't exclusively clean out anything.

I just topped 50K in sales in a bit under seven hours. The rich are definitely going to get richer out of this one.