Scout Archive
Thread: WBs Guide to Starting Your Very Own Scout/ Ranger Business
WB’s guide to starting your own Scout/ Range business
OK. One of the most popular questions I’ve seen on the Scout board recently has revolved around pricing harvests. How much does what cost? It’s a tough question to answer; it’s especially tough when because each server has different demand for different resources.
Over the past few months, with some help from Delta’s scouting and rangering guides, I’ve come up with, and honed, my own process of pricing and selling my harvested hides, meats and bones. Below you’ll find an outline of how I’ve managed to raise a bank of 700k credits, and purchase all the supplies I’ll need to end the year, in just 1 month.
This method is a great way to get started if you’re not in a guild, or if you’re guild doesn’t contain artisans. Usually guilds with artisans provide fantastic markets that can circumvent this FAQ. If you need more cash than your guild is offering, then this is for you.
For my purposes here ‘harvests’ will refer to any/ all of the three harvest types.
Getting Started: (The Bazaar)
When you’re first getting started the bazaar will really be you’re best friend. Because it can be difficult to pull large amounts of any harvest for a low level scout you’ll be making most of your money here. I recommend at low levels concentrating on Avian and Herbivore meat, Insect meat will also do if you feel like nightspidering on Naboo or Rori. Hides and bones don’t seem to sell as well on the bazaars. There’s always a large market for these things in any quality primarily because it’s great for grinding. Nightspiders will also prove a great deal of XP for you while working your way up the Scout ladder.
For Avian and Herbivore meats there are three main stats to look for. OQ is the most important. It will help the Medics in either of the two experimentation forms they tend to look at. After OQ you can look at either PE or UT. OQ provides 2/3rds the value of both effectiveness and charge for medics. UT goes towards charges; PE goes towards effectiveness at about 1/3rd each. Keep this in mind.
to be continued ...
Here’s you’re equation. (OQx 2 + PE)/3 This value will help you determine pricing on meat. The maximum value this will come out to is 999.
999-900 15- 20cpu
899-800 10- 15cpu
>799 5- 10cpu
>500 3-5cpu
THESE ARE MINIMUMS… SOME SERVERS MIGHT HAVE HIGHER VALUES.
You can use the same scale on Insect but I can’t guarantee it will be as effective.
When you make a sale on the bazaar make sure you e-mail the person who purchased from you to offer your services if they ever need it. This leads to our next section…
(you can also use this pricing scheme on independent vendors if you feel like making offers to medics and doctors who have them.)
Making Contacts:
OK there are two ways to get this done. The first stems directly out of the bazaar. Whenever someone makes a purchase from you be sure to send them an e-mail. In the e-mail be sure to introduce yourself and offer your services for future use.
As a professional Scout (especially if your going Ranger) you’re main Customer base is going to be Artisans. So start cultivating friendships! These letters to artisans will help, but sooner or later you’ll realize that you’re just not making enough money on the bazaar. At 3k credits per purchase (max) that’s 20 maximum price sales just to afford a high end weapon … 100 maximum sales to afford good armor (if you’re on wanderhome where High Quality Composite is going for 300k.)
So what do you do? Well… If you’re reading this you’re familiar with the boards. I recommend going to your servers main board and placing an add.
"Are you looking for a steady supply of Meat, Hide or Bone? I’m a professional Scout/ Ranger looking for a buyer. Please send me the type of resource you’re looking for (be as specific as possible), along with a cpu price. I’ll get back to you with confirmation."
The first week I did this I received an order for Lokian wooly hide at 20cpu. The WS who was making this offer guaranteed an extra 100k credits if I could supply him with 10k units. In one week I made 700k and wiped out the langlatch population on Lok. I also maxed my Scout XP. I proceeded to stock up onT21s buying enough to last any resource drought that may put them into extinction. I also bought a few houses and furnished them etc. etc. I spent about 500k in a week.
The second week I raised an additional 200k, and this week I raised 200k more.
To be continued ...
Volsted has been very helpful with getting me started as an animal resource harvester on Tempest, since I moved out of the resource location service. (By the way, if any of you want to run around with survey tools and see the universe on someone else's tab, its a profitable business to be in... time consuming though. If you're interested in how I set up my business and what was involved in operating it, send me a message through these boards, or in game.)
Volsted has shared this set up for his pricing scheme, which I follow as well. I'll offer it here as an alternative to the one above.
Find the buyer's weighted average for the qualities on the resource you are selling.
Architects and Tailors don't need quality, so only sell them cheap quality resources. Usually 5 cpu is about the highest they'll buy for, as their customers aren't really willing to pay higher than that for the finished items
Armorsmiths use the formula (7*OQ+3*MA+3*SR+UT)/14
Bio-Engineers and Chefs use the formula (OQ+PE+FL)/3
Medics and Combat Medics use the formula (2*OQ+PE)/3
Doctors use the medic formula for most items, but use (2*OQ+PE+DR)/4 for enhance pack resources
Use the correct formula based on this average, x.
Less than 500 weighted average, price is 5 credits per unit
500 to 800 weighted average, price is (x-200)/60 cpu
800 to 900 weighted average, price is (x-700)/10 cpu
900 to 1000 weighted average, price is (3x-2500)/10 cpu
For fish resources, multiply this price per unit by 4 to account for the limit on how many fish can be harvested per hour.
For those of you who remember your pre-calculus, this function is piece-wise continuous. 
As a rough guideline, this gives a price per unit of
5 cpu for a 500 weighted average resource
6.67 cpu for a 600 weighted average resource
8.33 cpu for a 700 weighted average resource
10 cpu for a 800 weighted average resource
15 cpu for a 850 weighted average resource
20 cpu for a 900 weighted average resource
35 cpu for a 950 weighted average resource
50 cpu for a perfect 1000 weighted average resource
ByroTimere wrote:
For those of you who remember your pre-calculus, this function is piece-wise continuous.
Correct. Thus, it is not differentiable over the entire domain.
That's a great pricing guide! I was working on some equations that looked similar though not the same. I was going to add the fact that mostly what Scout's will end up selling is hide and meat. Hide to armorsmiths and maybe tailors (though tailors really don't care about quality right now). And Meat to Medic classes, bio-engineer and Chefs (though currently chefs really don't seem to care about quality). I say this about tailors and chefs because at the point where I did my last stint of research it seemed that quality wasn't affecting their final outcomes. They could use "grinding" materials to accomplish the same goal. Things may have changed since then.
My armorsmith equation is slightly different. Using the same pricing scale I listed I suggest the following.
Ok there are 4 stats that are important here. OQ, UT, SR, and MA.
Based on the ratios I found in the Armorsmith board the equation should look something like this.
((OQ+SR)/2 + (OQ+MA)/2)/2
OQ is a universal 50% in the threearmor values (HAM, Resists, Durability). SR is 50% of determening resistance, MA is 50% of determining HAM costs, and UT is 50% of determining Durability.
Treat the UT as a way to bend the price higher. If your UT is above 600 bump your final score 50- 100points.
now... I know some armorsmiths that concentrate on high SR and OQ only. This will result in high Resist armor withheavyHAM costs and low durability sometimes, but the combat classes that would use this will be buffing anyway so they really don't care. I'm including MA and UT because it will greatly raise the cost of your harvests.
Granted this equation is very different from Volsted's.Mine is still in the experimentation phase.But itjust seems to be working right now. Both seem to accomplish the goal though.
Anyway, thanks for the great reply!
-WB
VolstedGridban wrote:
ByroTimere wrote:
For those of you who remember your pre-calculus, this function is piece-wise continuous.
Correct. Thus, it is not differentiable over the entire domain.
/GollumVoice
Puhleease... no maths... it hurts us.... precious....
/endGollumVoice
Please, I play this to get away from pre-cal homework. Please nerf all the math imediately. Jk 
Thats great info. On Bria we have an informal, non PA ranger group. We have established ourselves as a very successful harvesting group, for high quality resources in large amounts. For the solo hunter you are correct, know what has to be hunted, and don't commit to large amounts. Even for us we say we can't gaurentee anything.
We didn't used to use a priceing formula, but just recently started using this one. Basically 1cpu for every 100 on a stat for the resource. Not just the stats that are cared about, but all stats. So for example a meat with 700, 400, 300, 500, 900 so this would be 27cpu. Our prices have ranged from 15-30cpu. Our most popular customers are BE, Medics and AS. We get orders for say 50k or the best insect, so we agree on a price, find out whats dropping it, and organize a hunt to collect it. We get rangers and scuots on our hunts, so everyone harvests. We then pay our hunters the price we are selling it for at time of hunt. So we put it all in a stack and drop it on vendor. Last Sunday we hunted for about 6 hours on Yavin and we totaled over 86k meat.
Great Thread Guys!
I recently moved up to Novice Ranger and until recently have never even worried about selling my wares. My advice is to find a player city that doesn't have a steady supply of Organics. I'm pulling in about 20K a day just off of the resources that I have been holding since day one.
The trick was simple, I found a player city that was comprised almost entirely of Artisans and Tailors. None of them have the Skills to pull major organic resources. Think Scout level 1. Because there are manyTailors and Armorsmiths trying to grind massive amounts of xpthey will look to you for their supplies rather than go to a major city and search the bazaars. Right now I am selling Avian Bones of 800 OQ for 45 cpu a piece and I cant hunt fast enough. Also, Nabooian Wooly hides are going for 50 CPU for 800 OQ.
This has worked for me and hopefully it will work for you. I have been a Scout since my first day on Bloodifn and there has been no looking back. Good luck and Happy Hunting!