So you're finally done whining about tg this and tg that and coming up with ways tg can be nuked, congratulations.
Welcome, in this guide I will go over the basics of TG, trading, and possible ways you yourself can actually earn some tg.
What is Trade Gold? Trade Gold, also known as TG, is the main forum currency.
How do I obtain Trade Gold?
- Donations: you can donate to the site. Trade Gold is automatically added to your account after you do so.
- Trades: receive Trade Gold by trading with other players. Trade offers can be found in the Trade Section of the forum.
- Contests: official and unofficial forum and realm contests may reward the winners with Trade Gold
What am I allowed to do with Trade Gold?
- Items: trade it for items with other members of the forum, directly from their profile or from the TG Center.
- Donating: send Trade Gold to other members as a way of saying thanks.
- Auctions: bid for items in open auctions in the TG Center.
What should I not do with Trade Gold?
- Selling Trade Gold for real money is strictly prohibited and will lead to an account ban and complete loss of your Trade Gold.
- The sale of TSW and Forum accounts is prohibited.
- You may not offer Trade Gold for items if you don't have a sufficient amount.
(Taken directly from https://forum.median-xl.com/coc.php)
So as stated above Trade gold is a forum currency.
It is obtained via donating at a 1:10 ratio $:tg, trading items you've obtained in game with other players for their tg, and from contests run by the MXL Team as well as contests run by various members of the player base.
Trading
The action of engaging in trade.
There are currently multiple ways to engage in trade.
The first one we will go over is the Median XL - TG Center
The Median XL - TG Center
https://forum.median-xl.com/tradegold.php
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On this page you will see many things that will assist you on your journey to earn some tg.
We will go over each feature of this page one step at a time, starting with Features & Links.
Features & Links
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Under this section of the TG Center you can see how much tg you currently have.
You also can click $ Get TG to be taken to the donation part of the tg center.
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As you can see in this area you're able to support the mod through donations at a 1$:10tg ratio w/ various methods of payment, you can also become a Patreon which comes with it's own special benefits such as Notarmory features, a discord/forum rank/badge, beta access as well as some other benefits.
You're also able to view the Trade gold FAQ, Auction rules and the Median XL ToS under this Features & Links section.
IT IS ADVISED AND COMMON PRACTICE TO RECIEVE TG FOR YOUR ITEM BEFORE YOU DROP IT ON THE GROUND OR TRADE IT VIA TRADE SCREEN.
IN MY OWN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, AND DESIRE TO TRADE FAST AND EFFICIENTLY I SEND TG JOIN GAME GET MY ITEM TY AND LEAVE.
I ALSO ONCE THE TRADE IS CONFIRMED JUST DROP MY ITEM AND TY AND MOVE ON, I PERSONALLY DO NOT MIND DROPPING FIRST TY AND LEAVING.
I HAVE NEVER HAD A TRADE ISSUE, AGAIN IT IS ADVISED YOU DO NOT DROP/TRADE YOUR ITEM UNTIL YOU RECEIVE PAYMENT.
Go with your gut, most people playing and trading aren't trying to scam.
It's probably better to follow the advised way of trading and never drop/trade before receiving tg... most trades will go off swiftly and seamlessly.
Take note, sometimes people don't have 2 monitors or a fast pc so it might take a moment for them to send tg.
New Transaction
Moving on, we've arrived at the New Transaction Section.
This is where you will send tg to any user you are currently engaged in trade with.
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TG:This is the amount you and the person you're trading with have settled on for the goods you are purchasing.
User:This is where you will put the forum name of the user you are trading with.
Comment:This is where you will put a detailed description of what you are sending tg to this user for.
"ty", abbreviations, incorrect spelling, or other nonsense should be avoided when entering in the comment for your trade. The why to this will become more apparent and explained later, but for now your comment will be pooled together with all other comments for transactions to be queried through the Search / Price Check feature.
Recent Trade Topics
One of the best ways to advertise your goods is through having, maintaining and perfecting a trade thread.
Officially there is no way to easily create and maintain a shop thread.
You manually have to click
, find your item format your thread etc.One tool that I currently know is updated and works to immensely help you in the process of creating and maintaining a shop thread is the Notarmory Shop Utilities. https://forum.median-xl.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=74505
The Notarmory Shop Utilities is a Chrome Extension.
"It basically dumps all the items of all provided characters into a BBCode formatted pastebin, which you can just copy-paste into the trade forum. Useful if you have mules for the items you are selling. Maintaining trade threads has never been easier!"
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Once you've installed the above chrome extension you will need to navigate to the Notarmory
To get your mules formatted into the above image you need to navigate to your https://tsw.vn.cz/acc/
Click on one of your mules.
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From here you will click the Notarmory Shop Utilities icon.
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You now will now click "load" on your first mule you wish to acquire all the items for.
If you have more mules, you will go to your next mule and follow the same steps for every mule you wish to load.
When you've used the extension to load all of the mules you wish to gather into a copy/paste for your forum thread you will click "Copy"
When you've clicked copy and are done, you will go to the Trade Section of the forums https://forum.median-xl.com/viewforum.php?f=34 and click "+New Topic"
If you've followed the above steps you will have on your clipboard copy/paste a very managable and formatted version of any mules inventories you copied for your forum thread.
It should and will look like this
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From here you are encouraged to personalize it further to your own liking.
Always follow the Trade Topic rules, which can be found under https://forum.median-xl.com/coc.php
Trade Topics, Your Shopfront!
- You may bump your trade topics up to once every hour.
- You may not have more than one topic appear under "Recent Trade Topics" at the same time.
Keep all of your buying and selling needs to one thread, your thread is not only a shop where you're presenting your items for people to search for via the forums search function, but also putting any items you're currently in search of as well.
- A nice tip I've realized when maintaining my shop thread is that although when you bump, your thread is bumped to the front of the recent trade topics, the actual item names (when searched for via the search function) aren't bumped on the search list. So say someone is searching for Asgardsreia, and in my forum thread I have one. The search function will find the searched word, but if 20 other threads have popped up after the initial original creation of mine, mine will be buried under the more newer created threads...regardless of the last time I've bumped my thread.
What I do to keep my items relevant and at the top or at least on the first page of searching, especially if I am actively and aggressively trading is to quote my first post of my thread...the whole meat of my shop when I am bumping.
This will put all of my items or yours if you do this when trading, at the top of the search function.
IF YOU CHOOSE to do this, any time you bump with quoting your original meat of the thread, your shop... you must edit your old bumps(just edit the text to anything "bump" "ttt" etc) which contain your whole post...or you will spam the fuck out of the search function and every single one of your bumps will flood out other members trading.
Example. I bump every hour for 11 hours in a row by quoting my original shop message. You search for Asgardsreia. I have one. The first 11 search results are my item (unless others have made a new thread in between this 11 hours) now because I didn't edit my old bumps to not have the original thread text anyone searching for this item, OR ANY ITEM in my original post has to look at the first 11 results being one persons items....which is ridiculous, and not very fun to sift through and unethical by the original poster of the thread using this method.
You can, and should bump your post every hour if you're active, You should have, maintain and perfect your shop thread every season, especially if it is early in the season and you want to make some tg.
Some people will tell you don't save sets, as a new player save them all, with the above utility it is easier than ever to just dump all of your mules item information into an easy copy/paste for your thread.
I've ended seasons with mules full of sets.
I've also made a lot of tg off of sets.
Sets sell well at the start of the season.
Even mid season you can still get some tg off of most set items, you never know what someone is searching for and might want, and if everyone isn't saving sets and you are... you will make tg.
Eventually sure, you will find out, "damn its been 4 seasons and I don't think I've ever been approached for this set item..." at that point you'll know you don't need to mule these set items etc.
People do and will search for items via the forum search or just browse Recent Trade Topics and find your thread. If you use any of the above information regarding Trade Topics you will make tg.
Auctions
In this section we will go over a somewhat newer addition to the trade center, the Auctions part of the TG Center
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The auction rules taken directly from the median code of conduct are as follows.
https://forum.median-xl.com/coc.php#auction-rules
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When listing an item for auction a fee is taken directly from your currently available TG.
The current fee of the auction house depends on how many people are posting items on it.
The minimum fee is 1tg, I'm unsure if there is a maximum fee but its quite common for the fee to be roughly 10tg per item listed on the auction house at peak times.
Auctions last for 8 hours.
Listing an item costs a fee, it is advised to not list common items, or low quantities of items such as Arcane Crystals.
If the fee is 10tg, and you're posting an item for 10tg and someone puts the minimum bid up raising the auction to 15tg you will end up getting 5tg.
You want to utilize the auction house when you have big ticket items.
Posting an auction.
Item: Describe the item. It's rolls, you can check rolls of items on the corresponding documents page. https://docs.median-xl.com/doc/items/sacreduniques
Example: You droped a very nice SSU Helmet - Asgardsreia
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As you can see this item has varied rolls, some rolls are more desired than others depends on the item.
It would be advised when posting this item to include relevant rolls, if you're unsure which rolls are relevant feel free to include none or all of the rolls of the item in the title. Say this item rolled -35% all and 40% dex...the most desired of the rolls, and they rolled max, you shouldn't add any opinions.
So for this we would put as a title Asgardsreia -35% all/40% Dex.
Or something to this effect.
After settling on an appropriate title for your auction you're then able to select the starting price of your auction.
You can use the Search/Price Check Feature on the same page to search "asgardsreia" "asgard", or any other abbreviations etc...
Sometimes people don't correctly spell or detail their comment when sending tg for an item...
The Comment section of the New Transaction section is very important for the search function to work well and properly.
BE VERY Descriptive and accurate with your comment when conducting a transaction.
Setting a price too high might end up losing your auction fee and getting no bids, too low and you risk underselling your item.
You're also able to attach an image to your auction.
Windows key + shift + s key will allow you to snip a selected area of your screen to clipboard copy/paste, open paint ctrl + v, resize the outer area if white, and save as "asgardsreia" or whatever you'd like to name the picture.
Click Image, select your saved picture, your auction now has a relevant attached image.
+ Auto Transfer, this should be always used.
If you opt out of this you have 48 hours to track down the winner of your auction and meet up with them in game and trade.
This can be a hassle for both parties, especially when a lot of median xls player base comes from all around the world.
You are able to completely avoid this by selecting auto transfer.
To utilize this feature, you will take your asgardsreia helmet, put it on a mule...lets name it BowzoneROCKS.
You then go back to the TG Center, where your Auction is already named, priced, and has a relevant image associated with it.
Click the +Auto Transfer.
Under Auto Transfer select BowzoneROCKS.
If you are a patreon subscriber you are able to set a schedule for your auction.... say you know EU Waking up in 6 hours, and there was a eu bowzone player looking for asgardsreia set the auction for 6 hours from now... etc.
Once the auction is up for some time you can not cancel it, you may cancel it very swiftly if you've made a mistake.
Once the auction is up you have no control over the outcome, if you set the auction for 20tg and no one bid, then you lose the fee.
If you set the auction for 20 tg and only 1 person bid 5tg you are getting 25tg for that item. (less fee)
Sometime the auction house is a good idea on very big items, very popular items might have multiple people bidding on it a "bid war" might ensue...this is very good for the player that placed the auction... this situation happens on very popular items some times.
Search / Price Check
Briefly mentioned above is the Search / Price Check feature
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Very similar to not putting your shopping cart back where it belongs.
When you conduct any transaction which exchanges tg from one player to another, you use the new transaction section.
In this section as we went over previously there is a section for a "comment".
This comment should very well describe what this transaction is for.
Correctly spell the items name.
Example: Asgardsreia
Do not use abbreviations.
Example: asgard
If you do use abbreviations use them with the full correct spelling of the item as well.
Asgardsreia asgard
While the above is better than just an abbreviation, some people don't put correct full names of items, so sometimes you will find yourself using incorrect spelling and or common abbreviations to accurately find items with the search / price check feature to gauge the price of an item.
Include relevant rolls of the item.
Asgardsreia -35% all/40% Dex
This allows any user searching for items to try and price their item with a given roll.... higher rolls are more valuable, lower rolls are less valuable.
Include quantity of items traded.
You're trading 50 arcane crystals for 150tg.
Include that in your comment so others can search and see that earlier today or yesterday or last week, 50 arcane crystals went for 150tg.
It takes a little bit more time and effort than just typing "TY" but it goes a long way.
It's something very simple that you can choose to do to help out the community.
THE PRICE CHECK FEATURE IS SOMETHING ANYONE WHO TRADES HAS USED, THE COMMENT SECTION OF NEW TRANSACTIONS IS DIRECTLY TIED TO THIS FUNCTION. IF YOU ACTIVELY APPLY SUBTERFUGE, OR SLACK OFF WHEN USING THE COMMENT SECTION OF YOUR TRANSACTIONS YOU ARE A NET NEGATIVE TO THIS FEATURE. THIS FEATURE IS ONE OF THE MOST SIMPLE WAYS FOR US TO BE BETTER AS A COMMUNITY AND HAVE ACCURATE AND EASILY ACCESABLE ACCESS TO GAUGE PRICES OF ITEMS, OR AT LEAST SEE WHAT THEY HAVE SOLD FOR IN THE PAST.
Latest Transactions
Lastly and probably least, the Latest Transactions section.
This area is just showing you the most recent transactions that have taken place through the New Transactions section.
It shows you from who tg is coming from the amount and to whom it is going to, is also is showing you the "comment" they've chosen "ty"
and how long ago the transaction took place.
pretty self explanatory here...
To Summarize
So far we've discussed the basics of the Median XL - TG Center
You should have a basic knowledge now to start trading.
- - You now know how to acquire tg.
- You've been shown where the Trade Forums are located, the FAQ, Auction Rules, and Median XL: ToS.
- You've been shown how to properly conduct transactions under the New Transactions section.
- You've been made aware of the importance of properly and accurately describing your trade with the correct "comment"
- You've been shown how to create, populate, and maintain a trade thread.
- You've been shown how to properly bump and keep your wares relevant in the search function.
- You've been shown how to properly title, price, attach an image to and enable auto transfer on your auctions.
- You've been shown the risks and rewards of properly identifying and auctioning items.
- You've been made aware of the search / price check feature and how to accurately populate it and search through it.
Trading on Discord
https://chat.median-xl.com/
The second way to trade that we will be going over is trading using the appropriate channels on the Median XL Discord Server
The Discord has three separate channels for trading, Trade-Offer, Trade-Need, and Trade-HC
Trade-Offer
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This is where you will come when you have some items you want others to be able to see and potentially message you for.
This Channel is for Selling of your items ONLY.
The proper format of your posts should be no more than 8 lines, and 3 items max per line.
A correctly formatted post and within the rules of the trade section would look like this.
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Now when sent into the channel will look like
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Possibly a little overboard with the bold on text, but there's 3 items per line max.
Items I know or think are valuable or highly sought after items are the items you want to post here in discord.
You do not want to be advertising the same 20 items here for weeks.
You want highly movable items blasted here every 15 minutes.
You should also post the rolls of items too, people want good rolled items.
The price of an item can be drastically increased or reduced based off the roll of an item.
Most people have their DM's open to people sharing a discord server with them, so its not always necessary to send them a friend request.
If you're interested in someone's item right click their name and hit message, send them a message regarding the item, either offer or ask what they would like.
Some people will just link a bunch of their mules via notarmory links... while this works and isn't against any rules, you will find actually listing highly movable items directly in the discord will result in inventory moving much faster.
People are far more likely to open the Trade-Offer section see an item they need and message you, rather than seeing a mule link and going and browsing there.
People still will browse mule links, but again they are far more likely to just see an item, or search the discord for an item via the search than going and clicking random mule links.
It's also a good idea to link your shop thread here as well, it will eat up a line of your 8 line maximum, but it will get traffic from the discord to your forum shop, which if you've been following this guide should be quite beefy and formatted well.
Trade-Need
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Essentially the same thing, and the same rules apply.
This Channel is for BUYING of items ONLY.
You're coming here with your list of items you're looking for.
Again 8 lines max, and 3 items max per line.
Trade-HC
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This channel is for HARDCORE ONLY.
The same formatting rules apply.
8 lines, 3 items max per line.
HC Trading is wildly different from standard trading.
There is a small but very helpful HC community, but HC is very unforgiving as far as I understand in MXL.
Temporary Trade Site
The last currently available method of trading we will be discussing is a quite new and temporary trading tool
Taken directly from aahz' post,
https://forum.median-xl.com/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=80132
Few tips/guidelines:
- use your main TSW account to login - you'll have access to your other (mule) account(s) as long as they all have same (e-mail OR password) AND last used IP as the main account.
- use ⚙ set-up your mules & info link to fill your trade info/need/offer/mules first.
- use main page to search for items in registered mules or need/offer list
if you set your need list correctly (exact item name using autocomplete) you can use "Search all I need" button that search for all items on your need list in all registered mules - click on magnifying glass icon next to username (in mule search results) to do see if your mules have any items that user has on his need list
- click on item name (in mule search results) to see item's stats
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This is the layout you will be greeted with upon following the above link and clicking the cog to set up your mules and info.
Pretty self explanatory, in here you are going to fill out your About info, I chose to link my forum shop, after editing your about make sure to click update.
Your mules, add any mule you want the items on to be indexed into the search feature of this trade website.
Contact info, feel free to enter your discord name, forum name and continent if you choose to, it will help with time zone differences.
Accepted Currencies, here you can select Trade Gold, Arcane Crystals, Signets of Learning, and Item for Item Trading.
Your need list should be populated with correct item names to ensure people are able to properly and effectively see what you need.
You can choose to populate an offer list too, again correct item names are key.
After setting up your mules and putting in some of the above information you can click "back to trade" and be directed back to the main search area and see active accounts and what they're looking for, have for trade, and their mules.
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Say we're looking for Asgardsreia, and we want to see what mules people have listed currently have this item.
We're going to type in the "type to filter" section the name of whatever item we want to search for.
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We're then going to click "Mules"
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Every mule that has been listed with the above process that has Asgardsreia will populate this list
You can see when they're last online, hover over their name or click it to see their info and contact information.
You're also able to click their mules name and browse the actual inventory of the character.
Clicking the item name under the item section also brings up the actual item they possess, with its rolls etc.
You can also opt to click "need" or "offer" on the main trade section, this will search other users needs or offers (given they've populated a list in their mules & info section)
Say you Have Asgardsreia and are looking for a potential buyer, you do the same as above but click "need" and it will populate a list of users who've listed this item under their mules and info as an item they need.
Earning TG
The best time to earn tg is at the start of a new season
I started with 0 tg, 3-4 years ago.
I don't have as much as some people.
When I had 0, I saw someone with 75k tg.
If you start playing with the mindset that you have 0 and someone has 75k or 50k or 20k, it will hinder you.
I saw someone with 75k tg and sure thought "damn that a lot"
I didn't let such a major number impede my progress or my ability to earn tg.
When I started I could only farm Nihlathak.
Storm shaman kill me all time.
I was a bowzon.
I still am.
What someone else has for their tg number means nothing to you.
Very early in season there are a few things that will bring you guaranteed tg.
Arcane Crystals
Signets of Learning
Shrines
You can directly and quite effortlessly target farm Arcane Crystals via Shards.
Whether it be Normal Mephisto or Nihlathak
You can directly and with a little more effort target farm signets.
Hell Nihlathak, Torajan Jungles.
Arcane crystals are very valuable, and hold their value a lot longer than signets and shrines.
When I had nothing, I farmed signets over and over, all I did was log in and go kill Nihlathak, for literal hours.
Signets have been made more easily accessible, meaning their price doesn't hold as well as it did in the past.
Farming Arcane Crystals isn't necessarily fun, but if you can kill normal Mephisto or Nihlathak you have access to make tg.
The time to farm AC is very early, Some people will pay 5-10 tg per 1 ac early.
If you're new, and unsure how far you can push there is a lot of tg to be made doing something as easy as these two bosses.
Duncraig can and will be one of your biggest sources of tg early on.
As you play more and accumulate tg you will also be able to push your character further into the game.
Places like Duncraig, which might be considered low tier or entry level content, are very lucrative.
Once you've accumulated enough tg or have a build that can come here effortlessly and farm this area is one of the best places to get Sacred Uniques(SU) and Super Sacred Uniques(SSU).
Not every item that will drop is worth much, but this game is diablo 2.
Farming is for me at least one of the biggest selling points this game has always ever been about.
Eventually after Duncraig you might find yourself in somewhere called Bastion of the Triune.
Cycles are another big source of tg once we step up from farming Arcane Crystals and Signets.
Cycles may look familiar, they're an item that comes in 3 sizes. Small, Medium and Large.
They are used in the areas charm, The Wormhole.
All cycles are valuable, and most if not all players will assemble a Wormhole, which requires multiple if not many cycles to complete.
The wormhole is essentially a stat charm that you get to decide what stats you want on it.
Small Medium and Large cycles can roll 1 of 8 stats.
Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, Energy, % Gold Find, % Magic Find, % Combat Speeds, and Life/Mana.
Large Cycles can also roll with +1 to a specific class' skills.
This isn't a guide for cycles but they are also an excellent source of tg.
As I mentioned above every character will build a Wormhole.
Wormholes require many cycles.
Say you spend a session or multiple sessions farming this area, The Triune.
You get many small and medium and a couple large cycles.
People will buy small cycles in bulk. 5,10, or even 20 at a time.
Small cycles can go for 5tg each, say someone sees that you've kept up with your forum thread, mentioned you have cycles in said thread, updated your mules on the temporary trade site, and approaches you for 20 strength cycles at 5tg each. That is 100 tg.
100 tg you did not have before and earned from quite a common item. Even at 2 or 3 tg each that's still a lot of tg to be earned.
If you progress your character, use the info I've provided here, come up with your own techniques, play the game and want to earn tg, you will earn tg.
SAVE EVERYTHING IF YOU'RE NEW, Sets/Sacred Uniques, etc.
Send them to a mule.
You will eventually know and learn which items are utter rubbish and which ones are worth keeping and which ones are really big finds.
I save sets almost always until I get tired and have 5 set mules, people will get in contact with you to purchase items if you have a healthy pool of items to be browsed.
I personally end up with multiple mules for sets/sacred uniques/UMO's Miscellaneous items.
With the above mentioned techniques you can swiftly and easily get all of these items to a place where they will be noticed.
It is better to have many items some of which will never sell, then have no items.
The Notarmoy Shop Utilities will take all your mules and format it for your trade thread.
The Temporary Trade site will easily also list all your mules and populate your wares for others to easily search.
Don't compare yourself to other players.
Don't get discouraged that you have 0tg.
If you want to earn tg you can and will.
Feel free to comment other ways you personally have found that help you make tg, or ways I've not mentioned etc.
I make this in 1 night cause bored.
I wish I knew how to make a nice table of content with clickable link like in wulf ssf 1.8 bowzon guide but I dont.
If 1 tg is earned from someone who utilize what has transpired here, ty and it worth.
I like to thank admin, and all admin helper and team.
This game is fun, feels safe and is very therapeutic, it doesn't go unnoticed all the work everyone has put in.
I also say thank you ty to Wulf because I miss you Wulf please come back.
I've (re)started with 0 tg on a bow ama after 2.0 hit and made 1K tg on the first season alone. Playing for 3 ish hours 5-6 days a week. Never had another character. 
