We're finally starting to get some gold into the game. Quite frankly we've been starving for it and it's been hard to sell some items for anything close to what they're worth. I'm talking mostly about the black market items from CC3 of course. It's a gamble what you'll get from there and you have to sell off the items you don't need in order to get your gold back. Because there has been so little gold in the game, most players haven't been willing to buy anything that they don't absolutely need, and need it right now.

In some ways that's been good. Players have been forced to think about what they actually need, right now, and they aren't being foolish about spending gold on items that obviously have a stupid price in the stand.

As of the Chinese New Year event, and now the Valentines Day event running at the same time, we're getting 3 items that drop reasonably well and they are actually worth something to sell to the NPC. Our double drop-rate event over the weekend helped too.

A few of our experienced players remembered that old trick, farming the haystacks for these things. I must admit I went and did that too for a couple of hours. The dried rice, red flowers and white flowers can be sold to your clan map NPC for 60k gold each. Please take your stuff back to the clan map even if you have to run a little further. You get 10% more for your drops there. If you sell your drops to an NPC on the Hangzhou or Nanchang maps the owners of the fortresses there will get that 10% extra gold.

You're being lazy and making the enemy rich at the same time.

Still, it was sure nice to suddenly have 20 million gold in the bag. I bought a mini defense relic, some 300 CK damage wristbands and a VE hat that I haven't been able to get in Wild Tower dungeon runs. These were all things that I "wanted" for my nuker, but never had the gold to buy them.

I was able to sell a bunch of stuff this weekend too. People have some gold in the bag, and they're in a buying mood. Collectible items for the Wan Daye blue jade sell like water now, and manuals go pretty quick too. Even the 110 dodge ornaments sell fast. I didn't raise my prices on those things. I just wanted them out of the bag.

A few people have complained that we'll see some price inflation, and I agree that we will, at least on some items but I don't think that this new gold coming into the game is going to be all that bad so long as it's not permanent. You just have to look at some stands and you can see more black market items for sale. A LOT of gold was taken out of the game this weekend too. Those weapon ornaments are 2.1 million each to buy from the black market, and that's a lot of red and white flowers!

Prices for blood essence and experience cards will no doubt rise, and like a lot. People no longer have to sell precious items like that to make a small amount of gold, so they are holding on to them longer. That's too bad. I've been buying both those items every chance I got. I wont be doing that for the next little while. Hopefully prices will come back down.

So, what did you buy this weekend?

- AxtTreiber