BODs - What is your strategy?

Obuw

e inI decided to dust off my legendary smith / tailor and start collecting BODs again, as I felt like I was wasting their potential. But there are so many overwhelming options now with bribing and such, and I simply don't have the time and interest to actually maintain a spreadsheet for this endeavour (I already maintain spreadsheets for way too many other things). So I'm kinda looking for some advice on how to best handle BODs, to get some decent return with minimal time investment.

I have all BOD skills maxed out, except inscription. So:

120 smithing, 120 tailoring, 100 tinkering, 100 carpentry, 100 fletching, 100 alchemy, 100 cooking.

I have a huge stockpile of most raw materials, so for all intents and purposes, we can assume I have access to infinite raw materials.

I'm mostly doing this to make some money. I don't really get any enjoyment out of it. So I'm only looking for stuff that have good monetary returns per time investment.

I play on Europa, which is basically a nearly-dead shard as far as trade is concerned, so anything that is not extremely popular (like runic tools, and powders) is going to be worthless.

So I'm trying to formulate a rough plan on what I should be doing... For example:
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- ignore all skills except smithing and tailoring
- ignore large bods (takes too much time, and rewards are worse than turning in 6 small bods)
- ignore bribing (I don't have the time or patience for it)
- just stick to exceptional small bods with colored ingots / leathers, which can be turned in for powders or runics.

- possibly use bribing for normal small bods with colored ingots / leathers to turn them exceptional?
- possibly work some other skills as well? Fletching or Cooking maybe?

I don't know... There is an overwhelming amount of information out there. Feel free to poke holes in my rough plan, or share your own thoughts!

Rock

Hi @Obuw. First check out a related thread, How do you organize you BOD books?  The replies were much broader than the question's scope.  Then, if you plan to ignore large BODs, the bribing system becomes especially significant.  First many small BODs are upgraded for free (bribe for 0 gold).  The bribe amount is semi-random, but if you frequently bribe the same NPCs I've noticed a tendency for them to start asking 100 or 200 gold for what other NPCs will charge 0.  So mix it up, even with vendors within the same shop.  Bribing can easily change a bod worth 20 points into 250 or much more, especially if you bribe up the same BOD multiple times.

BOD upgrades are random.  A 10-quantity, normal quality, normal material bribe might change its count, quality, or material.  I haven't gone all the way with a BOD, but there seems to be at least a tendency for a BOD, once its material is something other than normal, for the material to just keep getting rarer.  If the material is changed prior to count or exceptionality, the other two properties might be fixed.  I'm not sure, but it is what I have observed so far.

One of the rewards that got me into BODding was the scribe recipe for runic atlas.  The only way to get that is to turn in a large BOD, but you only need a single, low count one -- Clumsy, Feeblemind, Weaken. (You can use other large BODs too, but you waste more points.)  My tailor/smith on Origin also needs legendary skill scrolls, so large, exceptional, special material BODs will be almost necessary to obtain those.  Either that or turn in numerous BODs for banked points.  A small BOD only banks 2% of its immediate turn-in value (250 banks to 5), while a large BOD banks 20%. (250 banks to 50).  Unfortunately banked points are separate from immediate turn-in points.  I.e., if you have 100 points banked and turn in for immediate use a 400-point BOD, only 400 points are available.  The points do not add.  So eventually I could get enough banked points to earn a legendary skill scroll, but it would take a while with just banked points.

Obuw

Thanks for the reply. I have read that other thread a while ago, it doesn't reallt answer my question though.

I do know how bribes work. I just don't have the time and patience to teleport from shop to shop checking each vendor to see which ones will accept a bribe, and decide which recipe (out of dozens) I should bribe up. It becomes a full time job, and that's time I can spend doing more enjoyable (and rewarding) activities.

However, if a bod is already near the threshold between, say, a 5k reward and a 250k reward, sure, I can go find someone to bribe for that. I guess it's important to identify those edge cases.

TimSt

I try to bribe up as soon as I get the BOD that way I don't have to go around later to try to bribe things up.

Uriah_Heep

Runic hammers still sell fairly well, as do the dyes from cookinhg and alchemy