Celtic Heroes

No need to gear 8 toons, use 1 main and 7 level 1 alts

...just wanna add my 2-cents of mild experience;
Although-
Setup effort:
difficulty of placing camping toons; invisibility potions, maneuvering through carrow etc < time setting up merching; building customer base, getting started with relatively decent amount/value of items/gold

However-
Maintenance effort:
logging between toons; even with precise timers and multiple devices/accounts > keeping up with merching; keeping up with consistent customers, playing the AH.

Therefore-
All other things being equal, merching seems like less effort (long term), especially for a casual player...
(edit: grammar/clarity)

Both are viable, merching is just more reliant on luck and a preconceived idea of a very flowing economy.

No need to gear 8 toons, use 1 main and 7 level 1 alts

You could do that, but then you'd need to either move around said alts everytime(which would take time), or make a tonnage of accounts(which would be difficult to keep track of, with 7 per) for every spot. You'd also have to be someone who could solo said bosses(hopefully without wasting too many consumables). It's more of a high level tactic if anything. To me at least, it seems like a bad use of time, as merching can be done alongside anything(including farming). Though the main point of gold is to progress though the game, which merching allows you to do, which is why I leveled bossed and merched(without farming) in 2013. Now... I just do it to keep myself occupied when I have nothing to do.

As a player who's toon is not far off the level of the op, I'm also interested in this thread. However I feel that 2 of the main contributors of advice are coming from somewhat extreme angles that have come from many years of playing. Please don't take this slight criticism the wrong way. Your input is still interesting and has merit to others, but to me and, I assume, the op some of what you say is hard to relate to.
@Chaotic You talk about how it's easy to get 1 - 2 mil a day camping gold bosses, but then talk about doing so with 8 accounts. I'm assuming then that you are playing all accounts simultaneously. This then requires considerable investment for either 8 devices or a PC powerful enough to run 8 emulated devices. I'm not sure how many people are prepared to go to those levels for farming gold. Do you have advice for people with just the one account, or maybe someone with a spare old device who could dual device at most?
@Furyion You talk about how easy it is to make a couple of million in 5 - 30 minutes. What you're failing to take in to account is that you are in a pretty rare and privileged merching position. I don't imagine there's many players with 2500+ items worth 200mil sitting in their inventory and 100 mil sitting in the bank. (I know that's based on a couple of months old data now, so the figures may have changed now). If you need cash, the hardest work is looking what you have that you believe should be quick to sell at the right price. If your knowledge of the current market is correct, then the selling should be easy. Your talk of how easy it is fails to take into account your obvious years of hard work getting such a large inventory of stock in the first place. You have shown that in the long term merching is the best way to make gold, and that after some initial hard work, you can get in to a position like yours where it becomes very easy. Now you have both a massive amount of stock that it's readily saleable and a massive amount of gold to continue buying the right stock at the right price as and when it becomes available. Luxuries relatively new players don't have. If you where to start a new toon on a new server, what would do in the beginning to kick start you marching career?

To both you guys, if you can remember that far back , what advice can you give to players who are still newish to the game, and so aren't yet prepared to use multiple accounts and devices to go farming, and don't yet have a large gold supply to bankroll their start in becoming a merchant.

I would talk about it now, but a lot of it is explained in my upcoming guide(which is almost done, sorry for the wait everyone). I think it would be kinda pointless to say it twice when its already explained in depth in the guide.

I haven't been a noob in 6 years but I came from old money. Back when I started, 600k would get you almost fully maxed with heroic gloves, boots, ammy, bodkin and a golden camo charm for running to places.
Sleds and brooms were a luxury not many had when boots were much better in combat.

Since the progression of gold started getting higher it was too easy to sell off some old rares here and there, (bloodlust helm 500k) (golden camo 3-5m) and adapt to whatever gold price was needed at the time.

I would talk about it now, but a lot of it is explained in my upcoming guide(which is almost done, sorry for the wait everyone). I think it would be kinda pointless to say it twice when its already explained in depth in the guide.

That's fair enough. I remember you suggested you might do a guide in your 'I did it' post. Nice to know it's in progress and I look forward to reading it. Hopefully you have remembered to include enough detail on how you got to your current position and don't concentrate too much on how to be a merchant that already has a large stock and bankroll. Hint, hint.

Reading Chaotic's post had left me thinking.

I haven't been a noob in 6 years but I came from old money. Back when I started, 600k would get you almost fully maxed with heroic gloves, boots, ammy, bodkin and a golden camo charm for running to places.
Sleds and brooms were a luxury not many had when boots were much better in combat.

Since the progression of gold started getting higher it was too easy to sell off some old rares here and there, (bloodlust helm 500k) (golden camo 3-5m) and adapt to whatever gold price was needed at the time.

Had you got in to your stock collecting whilst, to paraphrase Chaotic, it was in the old money era? That is, was you able to capitalise on what Chaotic has talked about? If so, this leads to an interesting question as to whether you think it would be as easy, or even possible, to build a vast collection like you have done in today's game, without buying any plat?

Had you got in to your stock collecting whilst, to paraphrase Chaotic, it was in the old money era? That is, was you able to capitalise on what Chaotic has talked about? If so, this leads to an interesting question as to whether you think it would be as easy, or even possible, to build a vast collection like you have done in today's game, without buying any plat?

I wouldn't call it the old money era. Even though I started in 2011, I didn't figure out merching til 2013. So I basically merched from nothing and picked up the rare items, then I single handedly increased the demand on all of them so that they were worth more. At one point in 2013, I had 2 brooms of doom, 6 avalanche sleds, 4 sultans carpets, 2 divine brooms, 2 thunderstorm clouds, 3 celestial dragonstaves, 2 diabolic fellspines, and 3 arctic stormskimmers. I only sold my spares, as I am a collector as well as a merchant.

Now, in todays world there is a tradeoff between then and now. I believe the gold is more plentiful today, and that the items roughly cost the same(at least on lugh), so the items are cheaper then they were before. But the problem is they are only getting harder to find. When I stand in the castle and shout, Buying extremely rare items, and someone trades me and puts up a white charm token I just get sad lol.

Additionally, merching is always a viable non-plat way to get by. Even if the whole world knew about merching it would still be possible, as there are always good merchants and bad ones.

My advice is just level through quests... you don't need plat.
By time quest line ends each lix will pay for itself, if not give you a profit.

Had you got in to your stock collecting whilst, to paraphrase Chaotic, it was in the old money era? That is, was you able to capitalise on what Chaotic has talked about? If so, this leads to an interesting question as to whether you think it would be as easy, or even possible, to build a vast collection like you have done in today's game, without buying any plat?

I wouldn't call it the old money era. Even though I started in 2011, I didn't figure out merching til 2013. So I basically merched from nothing and picked up the rare items, then I single handedly increased the demand on all of them so that they were worth more. At one point in 2013, I had 2 brooms of doom, 6 avalanche sleds, 4 sultans carpets, 2 divine brooms, 2 thunderstorm clouds, 3 celestial dragonstaves, 2 diabolic fellspines, and 3 arctic stormskimmers. I only sold my spares, as I am a collector as well as a merchant.

Now, in todays world there is a tradeoff between then and now. I believe the gold is more plentiful today, and that the items roughly cost the same(at least on lugh), so the items are cheaper then they were before. But the problem is they are only getting harder to find. When I stand in the castle and shout, Buying extremely rare items, and someone trades me and puts up a white charm token I just get sad lol.

Additionally, merching is always a viable non-plat way to get by. Even if the whole world knew about merching it would still be possible, as there are always good merchants and bad ones.

I don't understand why brooms and sleds are so expensive. The purpose of a mount is to travel. Thr faster the better. So other than a broom looks cool, it defeats the purpose of what a mount is intended for by selling it higher than faster but newer mounts. Maybe because I don't care about collecting or if my items gain value I don't get it. But I'd take a much faster but cheaper mount than a slower more expensive mount.