Before I begin this mild rant, let me say that I find pretty much everything in the game priced fairly. I am a person with an income, and I don't think playing this game in any sense exceeds my entertainment budget. Housing, henchmen, gear, etc, are all priced within reasonable expectations. The two exceptions: rank 4 and 5 pest spells for higher-level gardening. The spell for rank 4 pests is 12,500 gold. For a spell that kills both rank 4 and 5 pests, 25,000. That's as much as a house. And of course it's silly to buy the former, as you will eventually need the latter. I have recently dug up white desparagus, white laf-o-dil, and maelstrom snap dragon because they got rank 4 or 5 pests. Now let me be clear. I could pay this much. I have the means. But I will not. Because it's just not a fair price. I really liked gardening before I hit this Wall of Gold, if you will. I am a Master Gardener, and love the cool plants the people at KI have come up with. But I urge them to rethink the pricing on these spells. I would pay half that much--13,000 or so--for the combo spell. I won't pay the price as it stands now. It's the principle of the thing. So I guess my gardening days have reached an end. :-( I would urge KI to re-calibrate their algorithm, or whatever, and consider this again. Thanks for hearing me out.
Before I begin this mild rant, let me say that I find pretty much everything in the game priced fairly. I am a person with an income, and I don't think playing this game in any sense exceeds my entertainment budget. Housing, henchmen, gear, etc, are all priced within reasonable expectations. The two exceptions: rank 4 and 5 pest spells for higher-level gardening. The spell for rank 4 pests is 12,500 gold. For a spell that kills both rank 4 and 5 pests, 25,000. That's as much as a house. And of course it's silly to buy the former, as you will eventually need the latter. I have recently dug up white desparagus, white laf-o-dil, and maelstrom snap dragon because they got rank 4 or 5 pests. Now let me be clear. I could pay this much. I have the means. But I will not. Because it's just not a fair price. I really liked gardening before I hit this Wall of Gold, if you will. I am a Master Gardener, and love the cool plants the people at KI have come up with. But I urge them to rethink the pricing on these spells. I would pay half that much--13,000 or so--for the combo spell. I won't pay the price as it stands now. It's the principle of the thing. So I guess my gardening days have reached an end. :-( I would urge KI to re-calibrate their algorithm, or whatever, and consider this again. Thanks for hearing me out.
Tabitha M., Master Gardener (Ret.)
You do realize that Rank 5 pest spell is the best in the game? An equilivant Grandmaster Artisian pays much more at the same end tier for their "master spells". Also, since these spells are offered at the end game, most wizards should have the means to farm 25,000 in gold. There are mutltiple threads asking KI to increase the gold limit, because wizards have too much gold. Well, KI implements these higher gold costs to offset all the gold floating around in the Spiral.
Additionally, there is a huge difference between Rank 4 and Rank 5 pest spells. Fly Swatter costs 5 more precious energy when I only have Rank 4 pests.
Finally, you still become a Grandmaster gardener without planting plants that would develop Rank 4 or Rank 5 pests. It will take longer, but you can still reach that level with pink dandelions.
I guess I fail to understand the reasons to "barter" with KI on the price of a one time purchase spell???? I could understand if you had to pay that price multiple times like pet hatching, but you don't.
kingurz: Thanks for the info on the difference between these spells. I have only been at this game a couple of months, and am still learning. I am not "bartering," however. Bartering with multinational corporations would be an exercise in futility, don't you think? :-) This is a community forum, not a market bazaar. I am simply stating what I take to be the value, given how much everything else costs, of these spells. I think there is a psychological/economic aspect to this as well. You don't find out what rank pests your plants will get when you plant them. They grow up and start looking pretty, and boom--rank 5 pests. At this point, you are paying to preserve something, not to get something. To me, this is like (forgive the hyperbolic analogy) paying "protection money." I mean, I paid 12,000 gold for a grand piano for my Necromancer's Death House. It looks great there, and every time I see it, I feel like--wow, that's a cool thing. Worth it, I guess. Upon discovering these pests on my little laf-o-dil, I was unwilling to run off to Mooshu, empty out my gold (which, being a rather underpowered myth wiz, I'd rather use for treasure cards and gear upgrades) just to keep something from being wrecked. It felt...wrong. Like acceding to a system I didn't agree with. Working to save something from ruin, not getting something new. To address your other point, about becoming a Grandmaster Gardener without planting these fancy, pest-infested plants: why on earth would I do that? The whole point is to be able to plant cool-looking stuff, not a hundred dandelions. I could care less about the title. Well, anyway. It's not a big deal. I don't have to garden. Just a little disappointed. As I said, a mild rant. Thanks for your input.
I do know where you coming from. The jump from Rank 4 to Rank 5 is a ridiculous amount of money. More of a jump than any other "job" in Wizard101. Hopefully, you saw my point about the comparison between all the "master levels" between the jobs. If you look across the board, that price makes sense. However, if you were to ONLY garden (or look from the garden perspective), that price begs to ask the question, "what's so great about it?"
The two exceptions: rank 4 and 5 pest spells for higher-level gardening. The spell for rank 4 pests is 12,500 gold. For a spell that kills both rank 4 and 5 pests, 25,000. I have recently dug up white desparagus, white laf-o-dil, and maelstrom snap dragon because they got rank 4 or 5 pests. Now let me be clear. I could pay this much. I have the means. But I will not. Because it's just not a fair price. (Ret.)
I have few thoughts about this. First I will encourage you by saying that gold will become a problem of the past once you reach CL or WT. Really, you can earn 25k there is about 30 minutes or less. Second I will point out that the biggest headache with Rank 4 & 5 pest spells is not the initial cost but that they require 20 & 25 points of Green energy (whatever that bottle is called).
In fact I would even be so bold to say that in my experience any plant that requires a Rank 4 or 5 pest spell is not worth gardening. And yes I have grown quite a bit. My latest (2) wizards are GM gardeners and they only have the 1 & 2 rank pest spells. So yeah, I am boycotting those pest spells too... lol. King Parsley (crowns) if you got some drops are excellent mid level plants and relatively easy to grow & drop more King Parsley seeds at elder. Silver Trumpet Vines (crowns) also drop frequently and are good too though tend to wilt faster for some reason. My current favs are Fickle Pickle, harder to grow but only rank 2 pests and excellent variety on harvests; and Honey Sickle, easy to grow and harvest blades. Malstrom Snap Dragon, actually any snap dragon - too much trouble. Although you may want to grow some yourself just to have the experience or because they look cool; just don't do it for the harvests.
kinda agree with you. one time, i was happily farming a frozen fly trap and it got infested with garden imp at young. i was shocked as i didnt have fly swatter yet and i just panicked because i sold my gear at the bazaar but still couldnt afford. i bought fly swatter and punished that imp right when the fly trap had almost full on "progress to dead". thought it would die, but it reached elder. phew
