Hi! I did a little analysis I think some of you may be interested in. As a long time pumpkinhead I went by the rule that I would end up making $12k-$14k with a max axe on pumpkins. My method was a bit wrong and I didn't have speed; but with a slightly better method and speed I've heard reports of $16k/hr. So taking $14k as a somewhat reliable figure, as we are all human, I noticed that it would take me about 100 hours of max axe pumpkin farming to move up to a melon sword. So the funny thing is, I noticed that it took me about 100 hours of farming with the max axe to get a melon sword, more or less, but that when I got the melon sword I would have zero dollars left. A melon sword ahead, sure, but zero dollars. I then noticed if I farmed an additional 100 hours with the melon sword, I would end up with $2.8 million -- pretty much the same amount of money I would have had if I had just stuck with the pumpkin axe. But wait, there's more. With that amount of money I could have bought flying and speed with ECD, thus increasing the amount of money I made with the pumpkin axe. Thus I came to the end figure that I would only start making profit with a melon sword after about 250 to 300 hours of farming with it(!!) versus farming with the pumpkin axe. This kind of surprised me, since it represents almost an entire year of farming 1 hour daily or say 3 months of 4 hrs a day, which is an incredibly grueling schedule. So I did another test. After farming for ONLY 10-12 hrs I was able to get a downpayment on a star pick. I was then able to use the melon sword to pay it off in only about 50 additional hours. Thus I shortened the cycle down to about 60 hrs to pay off my first star tool (from zero; or anyways, from a max axe). This got me thinking to what it would take to buy a magic tool at current prices. First, the going rate according to what I can tell is $140k/hr for a money making magic tool. Second they cost $80 million. This represents 575 hours or so, say 600, which is an order of magnitude increase from the star tool rate. Is this fair? Given that star tools themselves are an order of magnitude increase from max tools it's probably in the ballpark. But the fact that it would take 600 hours to pay one off is daunting. Let's look at it another way. When you rent a star tool you essentially give up an hour of farming for the right to farm with it and make money; but since you have to cover the cost of rental over and above the max tool you dont actually make money until the third hour of farming. This means it does not make sense to rent a star tool unless you can actually farm with it for 3 hours every day. The situation is different with magic tools; it does not make sense to rent a star tool unless you can farm a minimum of four or five hours a day; say $450 rent, and the first three hours are just covering the rental; the fourth covers the opportunity cost over the star tool, and then you are making real profit from the fifth hour of farming onwards. This strikes me as unfeasable because in order to pay for a magic tool it suggests the majority of the price is actually you working for it. When I run the numbers I get something like this; Rent a star tool and farm 6 hrs a day: profit ~$400k Cost: 80 mil Time: 350 hours This actually looks pretty fair -- the issue being that farming for 6 hours a day for almost a year is unfeasable. If the price was set at 1 hour a day as it is with star tools, you would only need to farm 1.5 or 2 hours a day over the same time to pay it off at 80 mil, which is probably a bit more reasonable. The question is where to find that kind of deal because I don't think anyone is offering it right now. Farming 3,000 hours with a msword: ~80 mil Farming 350 hours with a rented magic rod: ~80 mil profit So what happens if you skip star tools altogether? Well if you farm for 30-35 hrs with a max axe you can then rent your first magic rod. Then you can step up to an owned magic rod after an additional 300-350 hrs. Which is the same time for the opportunity cost of buying a star tool. Star tool average payment timeframe; $150-$200k/week for ~8 weeks Magic tool payment timeframe: 6 months of farming 6 hrs a day solid After some thought I guess I don't have a solid conclusion, everyone's situation is different so you would have to make a choice based on how much time and money you have.
