EC spent Questing?

snowywinter • 25 September 2022 at 11:35 PM

Someone answered this a while ago, but I can't find it; is anyone keeping track of how much they're spending in quests to get one VEND creature?

I've been generally curious, but also as of late I've been contemplating what I personally would consider a fair offering price (not going off of Budgie's or creature popularity; but a base for compensating someone not only for the creature and giving them a profit, and for the time they spent questing. Popularity, rarity, etc could be factored in after.)

minnie298a • 26 September 2022 at 12:26 AM

@snowywinter
I keep a notebook of all sorts of my stats for EggCave, but this is one I never thought to record. It would slow me down, as I generally work my way through from Baked to Toys in roughly the 5 minutes it takes for the cooldown timer. The concept is intriguing though, so I may end up recording a questing session or two out of curiosity.

However, while I've never recorded my purchases, I have a limit on what I am willing to spend per token. If it's going to exceed that, I reject the quest. As a result I can work out the maximum I would have spent.

sulvas • 26 September 2022 at 1:51 AM

@snowywinter
For me when I quest, I'd guess my average would be 6000ec to 15000ec per token. Obviously if I can get the item without using a user shop its much cheaper but that doesn't happen very often.

I find baked bun quests and miserable meltdown the cheapest with more of a range of 6000ec or less for meltdown and 6000ec-12000ec for baked bun. Before the vend update toybox and speed reading tended to be the same as baked bun, but i have had bad luck with them recently so am unsure.

Going global is strange because there are a lot of cheap travels, so i have completed it for like 4k ec but i find i get a lot of quests that ask for like 10k ec or higher travels. So I'd probably put this one at the average of 10-20kec per token

I think the time spent doing quests, rejecting overpriced quests, and waiting for quests is more of a pain than the cost of the items.

I'd guess it'll cost probably 550k-1.5mil for each vend creature for me personally to get through questing. Take this with a grain of salt as I don't buy vend creatures to profit. If I were to sell them I'd probably value most of them at 1 to 2 mil ec or equivalent cave cash.

heatherm19 • 26 September 2022 at 3:06 AM

This is such an interesting question, I never thought to keep track! I guess it'd be pretty complicated to really keep an accurate total, since I tend to buy a lot when I'm not doing quests and therefore often already have at least one of the things asked for.

Like @sulvas I've found that some quests are just generally more expensive to complete than others. Miserable Meltdown has been my favorite simply because it's usually fairly cheap *and* I can usually complete one quickly. Strangely I've had to cancel more quests from Gourmand Quests than anywhere else, too many times I've gotten ones asking for things that I never see in the regular shop and only in user shops for 'don't actually buy me' prices. Lately I've been more lenient on what I'll spend on a quest, but generally I'll balk at paying more than 7-10k for any one item. I'm less willing to spend even that on a food item, and more willing to go higher for toys and travels. (And now I can't help but wonder if that has anything to do with my outlook/experiences in real life, being willing to pay more for certain things... Hmm)

sapphire12 • 26 September 2022 at 3:26 AM

@snowywinter @sulvas @heatherm19

Going at this from a different perspective, I run two medium sized user shops for books (300 slots) and travels (200 slots).

Because of the EC expansion amount and their specialisation (so I'm more likely to stock things you need), I've put:

Books at 4k EC
Travels at 6k EC

So that would put completing the quests at about 8k - 12k EC with user shops which is a price I personally would pay.

Given that the max is 100 tokens = 1.2m EC on average for a valuable VEND is a steal.

As you can imagine, they're selling like hotcakes right now but even pre VEND update, the prices were fair enough to generate some sales (though less often because of the interest in quests)

There are people out there selling the VEND creatures for 400 CC/4m
EC which I think is fair as they need to be compensated for their time spent actually doing the quests.

With the fact that the VEND can still run out, the unavailable creatures will shoot up in a value again. I'm surprised if the asking price for VENDs like Foos and Hallos aren't going to shoot up now.

snowywinter • 26 September 2022 at 3:33 AM

Appreciating the perspectives so far ^^
@minnie298a, @sulvas, @heatherm19

I've recorded every one of the quests I've done... where my notes are is another matter (and three isn't enough of a data set.)
Good idea in these things to set a maximum. Could easily go broke otherwise.

Agree that's it more the time involved than anything that seems the valued commodity.

Stockpiling before questing has definitely been helpful to me in keeping down costs and saving time. (I really planned on starting back up in earnest again before the VEND surprise dropped. Was hoping to be on that leaderboard this month... *throws virtual plans over shoulder*)
I've been awful about buying from Finley... I've been trying to do better, but I almost completely ignore that shop. (Maybe because I have to avoid ice cream in real life for multiple reasons.) Good to know those items are generally fairly inexpensive for the quests.


Sidenote: For personal reasons I bumped the price of items in my shop the past couple months. Not sure who ever reads shop profiles, but I'm more than willing to negotiate by PM (I know not always convenient when questing, but the option is there.)
I find that most people are willing to when they find out someone is on a quest. At least I've had good luck most of the time asking people. ...It's having the patience to wait for a reply >.<


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Edit
@sapphire12
Hear ya there on having to adjust prices to accommodate for shop expansion.

sapphire12 • 26 September 2022 at 3:41 AM

@snowywinter

When I used to do the ice cream quests I've always found it the easiest because it's only 1 item and @/asi runs a 300 slot ice cream shop where they stock them for 6k each. So it's quite easy to get and not that expensive. Wouldn't worry about Finley 😊