The SPIDER economy, BY V1ZK. Keep in mind this is just a theory… A GAME THEORY!! I did this to help struggling player across this game that I love and if you can help me make a better economy guide for everyone leave suggestions or data on the post. I know that for most people this new system sucks and I decided to plan instead of complaining, maybe the system will be easier on the future but for now, I want to help people enter the upcoming RAID with their choice of gear. THANK YOU ON ADVANCE FOR READING MY POST. D2 Forsaken brought some controversial changes to the economy of the sandbox to say the least. Here’s something that might just help you pull through. 1) ECONOMY Infusions now require high amounts of glimmer, planetary materials, gunsmith parts, legendary shards and 2-3 masterwork cores. Masterworks, although not as relevant have a similar situation. In normal terms of gameplay this would be straight up BS but there’s a way around the system. Normally the usual grind system was… Activity -> Glimmer -> Shards -> Cores Forsaken’s new system works something like a tree that changes daily… (Dealing with RNG) Activity-->|Shards -> Cores/Materials/Glimmer -----------|Materials -> Shards/Cores/Glimmer -----------|Glimmer -> N/A -----------|Loot -> Glimmer/Shards/Parts To really understand the table, you must know about the role of every part…. ACTIVITY: This corresponds to Patrols, Chests, Lost Sectors, Strikes, Crucible Gambit, Raid, Etc. Basically, all the ways to earn consumables for the economy. And are organized in 2 Tiers. Low Tier Activities = Patrols, Chests, Lost Sectors, Public Events, Adventures, Simple Bounties High Tier Activities = Heroic Public Events, Heroic Strikes, Advanced Bounties, Quests, Normal Strikes, Crucible, Gambit, Raids LOOT: Your base grind system that generates Glimmer, Legendary Shards, and Gunsmith Parts. Sometimes Masterwork Cores but due to RNG will not be considered. GUNSMITH PARTS: Will only be considered for Infusions and you will never be lacking on. GLIMMER: Glimmer now functions as the base for all transactions in the sandbox, thus must only be considered when talking about Infusion, Masterworking, Quests, Bounties or any means to obtain a new activity. MATERIALS: Coming from all destinations, materials are essential to infusion but must importantly will be the better currency to acquire masterwork cores. LEGENDARY SHARDS: The bases for advance economy transactions, but most importantly your new base for Materials. MASTERWORK CORES: Only really obtainable through SPIDER, RNG will not be considered. 2) THE SPIDER Now that we got the table out of the way, we can talk about spending. SPIDER has a very interesting method of “Economy Consumables Delivery”. The way it works is that every day, SPIDER will have Cores, Shards and Glimmer for sale, with 4 out of the 8 Materials. The trade for the items will change every daily reset. Example, today Shards go by… 5000 Glimmer -> 1 Shard, tomorrow Shards go by… 10 Simulation Seeds -> 1 Shard. The only real exception for the rule is that every time you buy 1 Masterwork Core the price will double and reset the next day. If you were to play the game like you used to… you’re never going to get to use the infusion system and thus you going to get stuck using whatever the game gives you that has a better power level. Now the problems of the economy are the high cost of masterworks and infusions, understanding the previous table we can use SPIDER’S Economy to use our resources in a smart way and get the most out of the new Economy. 3) CHAIN OF PRIORITY The SPIDER ECONOMY SYSTEM works around using Legendary Shards in a smart way on this chain. Low Tier Activities = Glimmer = High Tier Activities = Legendary Shards = Materials = Masterwork Cores Low Tier Activities provide a healthy amount of Glimmer/Parts that we can use to buy High Tier Activities that provide POWERFULL GEAR, those High Tier Activities also provide a good number of Legendary Shards and with the use of gear scraping we can get even more Shards. Then on specific days we can go for the good SPIDER TRADE of… “1 Legendary Shard = 5 Planetary Materials”. Buying big amounts of all materials will allow you to buy Masterwork Cores from SPIDER every single day without having to pay ridiculous amounts. If you are lacking on something from the chain, you can use the table to see where to stock up. 4) MATERIALS FOR CORES Then we get to the good part, “HOW DO I GET MASTERWORK CORES?” follow this guideline. As for the first day of forsaken the best SPIDER TRADE is… 1 Legendary Shards = 5 Simulation Seeds / Sheraphite So, getting an amount of 995 Materials will cost 199 Legendary Shards. Then, your objective would be to use the chain of priority to get the shards through High Tier Activities while also getting new POWERFULL GEAR. Once we have the trade done then we get to the equation. Given the hypothetical case of “1 Masterwork Core = 10 Planetary Materials” then “5 Cores = 310 Planetary Materials” due to the rule of the price doubling every time a core is bought on the same day, doing this tradeoff 5 times a week with 5 types of Materials will give you 25 Cores plus all the random ones that fall while doing the process, with luck let’s say that you get 20 more Cores due to RNG. At the end of the week you can have 45 Cores/Week. 45 Cores = 17 Infusions (Approximate) 45 Cores = 3 FULL Masterworks (Approximate from Tier 1 to Tier 10)