As it has been established in earlier posts, it should not be surprising that I hoard consumables (gold, holy water, and now AP) for the mere satisfaction of knowing I have them to spend even if I never intend on spending them. (Un)fortunately for me, I will suck royal at Mabinogi forever without spending AP, so I had no choice but to finally rank up my Critical Hit, Ice Bolt, and Counter skills since they are essential to high-level combat strategies. It irked me to find I needed to "learn from the enemy's critical hit" in order to level up my new rank A Critical. Catching a critical hit from a worthy mob is a synonym for death in Mabinogi, so I had to look for a creative way to rank this skill without getting dragged out of dungeons in a body bag.
Watching Kazukikun practice his Defense by blocking Mimicks gave me the idea to do the same to rank my skill, since I've felt worse critical hits from mosquitoes. Ah, Mimicks, you give so much to me (gold, HP 30's, 6k fomor scrolls) and you ask for so little in return:
It seems that the Spring is a natural aphrodesiac (apologies to Will Smith's Summertime), with a flurry of romances and weddings having occured within the past 2 weeks or occurring soon. I've already posted my own wedding pictures, so here are the pictures I grabbed at Freaky555 and Tempestrage's wedding:
With a majority of attendees making funny faces, setting off bombs, and dancing their giant bears around the church in mid-ceremony, the chaotic circus atmosphere of the place was unreal. Through the perfect absurdity of it all, I couldn't help but burst into an uncontainable laughter at the blatant disregard for the occasion (and I'm very thankful everyone at my wedding managed to restrain themselves!). Despite people bouncing off walls, and through the magic of photo editing, I managed to catch this beautiful picture:
Not long after, I learned that Ashrayne (whom I had previously been engaged to), had eloped with Kazukikun at his request. While I'm happy they got together, I am kind of miffed I didn't get to go to their wedding. Plus, I now feel a little out of place as a 3rd wheel:
(Answer at the end of the post)
And finally, my super-helpful guildmate Venezzia is slated to tie the knot with a player named Gyokutei, whom I've had the pleasure of meeting and running 1 or 2 dungeons with. Their ceremony is Sunday at 2PM PST. I'll try to remember to take pictures with the bride and groom!
With the fun stuff out of the way, I just had to mention my latest idea for obtaining Mabinogi millions. After raising and re-raising roughly 1.4 million gold to get my Spaika Silver Plate Armor, I've been amassing another nest egg in the Erskin Bank. Long story short, I'm sitting on another million gold, and I wanted some way to grow it rather than spend it. I first conjured up the idea of becoming a bank, that way I can lend my riches out and make money off the interest. However, Mabinogi has no built in security features that can help me run a safe operation (read: how the hell would I get people to pay me back?). Then I thought about taking collateral and holding it until the customer paid up, or sell their item if they never did. This is a classic pawn shop.
For my amusement, here's the general plan I have to run this thing:
1. Get the extra storage service so I can own a house shop or player shop to sell items from delinquent customers.
2. Advertise my service on Channel 5, the current market channel, via the party ad method.
3. Limit my services initially to pawned items with very well-established values so I know exactly what I can recoup by resale.
4. Limit my loans to a total of 10% of my worth so if something goes wrong I am not financially ruined.
5. Mail customers' pawned items immediately back to them with a C.O.D. price at the agreed upon repurchasing rate, and give them X amount of time to reclaim their item.
Some things to note: I have contemplated whether or not customers would accept low-ball loans on certain items that are far too expensive for me to accept. For example, if someone pawned Arrow Revolver Page 8 (and lets say it never expired), it being an item with a value of approximately 1 million gold, I could not loan more than 100k for it lest I violate guideline 4. If he agrees and I agree, I could loan him that 100k and stand to make massive profit if he defaults on his end of the deal. Extending this practice to any and all items, I could feasibly accept every item as long as I loan way too little for it.
Of course, this leads to the biggest question mark of my business plan: having minimized my risk as much as possible, how will I get customers to trust that I won't scam them for their items and resell them ASAP without honoring a repayment agreement? Ashrayne has suggested I use the Artifex "brand" name on my service to lend credibility, which couldn't hurt. I also believe that by mailing customers' their items to them immediately at the agreed upon interest rate will help ease their minds by knowing exactly where their item is, how much they have to pay for it, and that they can reclaim it at any hour of the day. This still isn't a perfectly secure solution on their half of the deal, so establishing trust will have to be a major priority.
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