Goncourt simply

[wrathshield]

I don't attempt to make gold crafting and selling but I do craft for my personal pleasure.

I don't attempt to make gold betting in the arena (well I do but I always seem to lose)

I do make a little gold buying and reselling items from the market - if I am autocrafting a batch of whatever, i may sit and scour the market and buy and resell but we are talking about only $1000s in the single digits as profit.

I do think the simplest way I have made money and almost a guarantee is through Goncourt and trading books. I come out ahead every single time. Point in fact: last time I traded him 39 beg and int books I didn't need nor did I want to try and sell. I spent $39k or $1000 per book traded. I received back 2 adv books that I sold for $425k each and 1 adv that I sold for $110k. I got a few books I used for my hero and mercs, saved a few for later C class mercs I want to use, and then saved the rest for the next meeting with Goncourt.

$39k = $960k (granted I don't do this every day but I guess I could as long as I had the books to trade)

[jesada89237]

Goncourt has never failed me either...he's always good if you have a bunch of extra skill books lying around.

[Zpirit]

I have always been wondering, does he give you better chance at better boxes if you trade him int or adv books instead of beg books?

[Demon]

as far as i have tried it does not make a (significant) difference
this is thru running about 1000 books of [beg] and [int] each
i get roughly the same Ancient book boxes.

however as of right now Goncourt wont be very profitable in my server (Argos) as the market for the books isnt that great yet.

[Xyber11]

I never seem to be able to find him

[SparkGun]

I never seem to be able to find him

Theres a reason for Livingstone near Bucharest. Pay 1k to find any traveling NPC.:D

[ziv]

What kind of stuff can you get from Goncourt in general? Does it work that you give him a book and you have certain chances to get a box of a given quality, and between all the quality levels you can get any book?

[Axiom]

What kind of stuff can you get from Goncourt in general? Does it work that you give him a book and you have certain chances to get a box of a given quality, and between all the quality levels you can get any book?

When you trade in a book you randomly get either a Modern/Medieval/Ancient book box. When you open a Modern you randomly get a [beg] book of all available skills. Medieval corresponds to [int] and Ancient corresponds to [adv]. No matter what book you exchange you almost always have the same chance to get one of those books. From my experience it's been something like
Modern: 55%
Medieval: 30%
Ancient: 15%

[Flexor]

How i wish i could chain goncourt at one place

[meloku2]

i hate clicking books and click yes everytime i wanan trade him 1 book. They should make it like the gamble guy in rome saves time that way.

[A13x]

Yea same for me - im playing AO since first CB and only visit Goncourt 5 times or so. The clicking is just annoying, no fun for me - better fight and buy the stuff i need. ;)

[Demon]

clicking is annoying, but oh so profitable :)!
it pays off in the long run
you get $ gears = good pvp =D!

[Newell]

They make it nnoying so the bookworm quest takes 41 single days minimum to finish :P

My percent for Adv books is 10-12% of all trades regardless of what is traded. I've traded 10's of thousands of books before box limit which effects goncourt money making greatly. Lets hope the lazy people continue not findig goncourt.

[danicrai]

ofcourse goncourt is no fun with all that clicking .. but its worth it in the end for all the medieval and ancient boxes .. most of the books i use come from them .. even today i traded about 300+ books and now i got in my inv about 140 ancients and 240 medievals, the moderns i dont even consider since i sell them all

making him a gamble probably would cause a real shortage of books .. it wouldnt be the same if for 200 books u get 20 moderns, 10 medivs and 5 ancients

hopefully i'll get the 15 beast summons i need from the medivs and move on to only ancients :D

[kaiser99]

Lol, i found him once at a city.... wandering around....
Trade him 100 bk and tp-ed away.... The 1st time i saw him,. i court him for almost 1hour....

[Ferishi]

Lessee, you can spend millions on book crafting for the books you need, or you could go to Goncourt and MAKE millions while ALSO getting the books you need. Of course, the latter might take longer to get the books you need. ..........MAYBE. Because it's not like getting the materials to craft the books you need takes a short time, either.

[LtKillroy]

Stupid question: Who the heck is Goncourt. I take it some kind of traveling book trader?

[Kelnari]

Stupid question: Who the heck is Goncourt. I take it some kind of traveling book trader?

Yep- you pay him 1k gold and trade in any skill book to get a chance at one of 3 types of book boxes.

Goncourt is also known as Sugar-Daddy.

[olmec]

Found a use for those shammy DoT books! woo! As someone stated before, Argos is about 2 weeks old, not that much money and higher levels running around yet.

[Arietta]

goncourts the only reason why i have some skills past 20... freaking expensive books haha

[Ferishi]

I wonder if servers will ever mature to a point where people go to book crafters for books instead of Goncourt. Hard to imagine, though, considering how EXPENSIVE books are to craft...

[crazynjay]

you can also get a good tittle BOOKWORM ^_^

[Wraythe]

so many people use goncourt on macedon now book crafters abandon their skill. INT/DV books have dropped 50% or more in price on some skills

[synd]

I wonder if servers will ever mature to a point where people go to book crafters for books instead of Goncourt. Hard to imagine, though, considering how EXPENSIVE books are to craft...

in my opinion, book crafting will never profit solely because of goncourt. Most equipment crafters' biggest competition in the market are the "boxes" and given that goncourt is virtually a limitless supply of book boxes, book crafting should have never been invented in the first place! :p

[kaiser99]

But book crafting will 100% give you the book you want.... while our mr. goncourt over here.... is... random.

I have been in the book trade... and it really need time, the box limit is also gd in the sense that you use your box limit to make moeny, this way the price of the bk cant go down the drain in like on day or so..

[methane]

Box opening limit is easily counted by having an alternate account. Just get the account to level 3 and he can start selling items for you and also opening your box. Also if you're going to do that be sure to go to a market with a 1% tax rate. Most books on the market right now has very random price and i believe this trend will go on. Also i do believe book crafting has some redeeming points which is the part where you will definitely get the book you want.

[Ferishi]

But book crafting will 100% give you the book you want.... while our mr. goncourt over here.... is... random.

Considering the absolutely LUDICROUS material requirements you need just to craft a Warcries INT book (I mean, seriously, the amount of materials you'll need in the end probably won't fit on an entire page!), I'm pretty sure most people would rather just take their chances with Goncourt.

[Arietta]

if you absolutely must have a certain book, then go for it. I dont goncourt that much anymore because im sick of my inventory being filled with int and adv princess books tbh...

[Kelnari]

Not to mention you have to keep chasing his arse around if he's not parked in town... Fun times.

[Teesa]

Some books like deadly strike can only be crafted thats why people choose to craft books

[MiaFLSurf]

I traded books today for the first time... got tons of Advance books...sweet!

[bakedpotato]

So this is why people asking for Goncourt every half hour on my server. Maybe I'll give it a go too :)

[Demon]

Some books like deadly strike can only be crafted thats why people choose to craft books

not true. you can get deadly strike from goncourt too

[D4NY0]

you can get all skills from goncourt as far as i know (and i'm pretty sure about that)
But yea... i hate Goncourt - he got thousands of books from me and mostly gave me crap.. i prefer to buy the books now.

[MiaFLSurf]

Hes definitely worth finding and trading....if you have the patience of trading one by one

[A13x]

I hate Goncourt - if you could trade all books at ones then it would be okay. :)

[Ruggan]

It may take a while but it's quite a good investment. Ended up with 4 meteor strike adv books from last night, that alone made it worth it.

[Vrael]

i'm still not positive on the profit i make from goncourt, because i always end up spending thousands getting rid of the crap princess books. but overall i've come out with a few books worth 200-400k each so it's the best investment i can think of so far.

[kaiser99]

I got 1, ONE toxic sword only from 700 beg boxs....
unlucky or lucky lol?

[Keats]

I make profit on main skills and deadly shot/strike

[danicrai]

lol .. traded and opened so many books that it fills my inv .. and the selling is slow, and thus the inv in rome is always full .. but every now and then u get some really rare books ..
4 warcries - spartan
5 toxic sw - sailor
and omg only 1 shooting stance - jannisary ... from around 500 medievals

anyway .. i still got 200 ancients .. 200 medievals .. and 1500 modern to open

most of the useless books go back to goncourt .. and the usefull or main char only ones go on the market at the cheapest price .. as long as they sell for more then 3k a book

[AtsushiHayami]

a rather useful npc i'd say if your lucky you can gain rare books :) for a small fee ofcourse

[Marisa the Rainmaker]

Never failed to make money with goncourt. I usually don't exchange lots of books at once; I prefer opening one book from boxes, exchanging that book, and keep on exchanging that one book until I get what I wanted (meteor ints, deadly strike, chaos wind) or something that sells for a decent amount. Then, I open another one and repeat; this way, my inventory never gets filled, and I know it's time to stop when my market slots are all filled.

[Spydermage]

any idea exactly what kind of book drop from each category: modern, medievil and ancient?

[Entice]

^ I think it is beg, int, adv in that order.

[Marisa the Rainmaker]

It is Modern = [Beg], Medieval = , and Ancient = [Adv] books. Each book box can give you [i]any book in that category, ranging from deadly strike to flame sword to guard dispel to toxic sword. Only difference between the three is that Ancient will never give you Guard Dispel [Adv], as the book doesn't exist in the game.

[FrozenFury]

I know trading worthless books to Goncourt is worth it, but what about exp and crafting books? From what I see he is scamming you. I mean he wants 20 xp/crafing books of a certain level + 2k gold for xp or 3k gold for crafting for 1 book of the next level.

20 small xp/crafting books = 2000 xp or 2000 workload for a 200% will cost.
but 1 reg xp/craft book = 1000 xp/workload but only costs 10% will.

So from what I'm thinking, the only reason to even trade with him on xp/crafing books is the darn 10% will cost.

So is it worth trading xp/crafting books?

[LtKillroy]

I'm not sure how worth it it is par se, but I have about 80 small exp books right now, and there is no way I am going to use them all, my will is much better used gifting. So getting these down to a useable number, for me, is worth it, even with a slight loss.

[Marisa the Rainmaker]

The trading is and isn't worth it: if you use the small exp books that costs 100% will for 1k experience, you must wait another 10 minutes or so before you can use the next 10 exp books. On the other hand, if you use normal experience books, you only use 10% will for 1k experience, allowing you to get 10k experience before you have to wait for will again.

However, a recent trade-in revealed that trading for 40 normal experience books costed me a total of ~70k in gold. At my level, that much is a small sum as I spend 5x that much in my crafts alone, though it would be quite a significant sum for lower levels or casual players. In the end, it's up to you to decide whether the trade-off is worth it and decide in accordance.

[bakedpotato]

The trading is and isn't worth it: if you use the small exp books that costs 100% will for 1k experience, you must wait another 10 minutes or so before you can use the next 10 exp books. On the other hand, if you use normal experience books, you only use 10% will for 1k experience, allowing you to get 10k experience before you have to wait for will again.

However, a recent trade-in revealed that trading for 40 normal experience books costed me a total of ~70k in gold. At my level, that much is a small sum as I spend 5x that much in my crafts alone, though it would be quite a significant sum for lower levels or casual players. In the end, it's up to you to decide whether the trade-off is worth it and decide in accordance.

Yea, it costs about 2K and 20 small exp books to get a normal one. It's not as bad as I previously though, but if you have Will to waste, then using small exp books is definitely cheaper.

[leawen]

I knew I loved these boards for a reason .. I forgot that sometimes it better to save that book to trade then try and sell it on the market :) ... course I have traded a flamesword beg book .. only to get ...... thats right another flamesword beg so sometimes it doesn't work out but over all I read here that its worth to trade hehe

[Marisa the Rainmaker]

Books are getting harder to sell on Thebes lately, with so many people goncourting and undercutting each other =x. I feel really sorry for the book crafters now.

[thailehuy]

Well so far book crafting is the most expensive and useless since there is always goncourt. Unless you dont have time

[HardcoreGamer]

Yeah... goncourt is the way to go. Not to metion the ADV and INT books tat can sell for 400-500k a piece in most servers.

[LtKillroy]

Here's my thing with goncourt, if everyone goncourted for a few minutes every day, the book market would crash. Currently, it is impossible to lose money with him, nearly. I withdrew 50k from the bank today to use for goncourt, bought 20 brutal will (beg) and went to him. A few minutes later I had exchanged them for almost entirely various INT things and an ADV concentration that sold for 500k. Not a bad investment if you ask me, me being level 37. If everyone did this, there would simply be a flood of better books in the market. Maybe should be fixed, maybe since it ain't broke, don't fix it 'till it is.

[olmec]

I take back my last comment about my server (argos) not being mature enough for people willing to dole out the dough for higher level books. Beast summon and flame sword were going for 500k each when I sold mine - prices will be SURE to drop when more people get to higher levels. And if they dont - well, I'll have enough money to pick and choose the ones I want. I'm already buying an large stack of commodity box[beg] which are under 200g - whenever I'm bored or hear that Goncourts parked in a city - I go book tradin!

[wraith75]

Yes, since it only costs you 1.000 gold for one exchange, the fact of selling a highly desirable adv book repays the whole exchange procedure.

Even better, I recently sold a toxic revenge adv book I got from Goncourt for a mere 4.5 million :D

[Locksley]

you mean toxic sword, or blood vengeance? or is it a new pirate move i never heard of? lol

the best thing I had was the spartan war cry book ^ ^.

[Prima]

toxic vengeance ftw!

[wraith75]

Oh, it's a new one : noxious plastic dagger, very rare, that's why it sells so good :D:D:D

[Flabble]

Oh, it's a new one : noxious plastic dagger, very rare, that's why it sells so good :D:D:D

Oh! I love that spell! :D

[wraith75]

and don't forget the next patch, which will introduce the fabled "little toothpick of burning death"...

[Darusame]

Does anyone know of a way to automate the mouse actions for Goncourt?

And is that against the Terms of Service?

[Zpirit]

Does anyone know of a way to automate the mouse actions for Goncourt?

And is that against the Terms of Service?

Yes and yes.

[C3nsoredAx3]

I know trading worthless books to Goncourt is worth it, but what about exp and crafting books? From what I see he is scamming you. I mean he wants 20 xp/crafing books of a certain level + 2k gold for xp or 3k gold for crafting for 1 book of the next level.

20 small xp/crafting books = 2000 xp or 2000 workload for a 200% will cost.
but 1 reg xp/craft book = 1000 xp/workload but only costs 10% will.

So from what I'm thinking, the only reason to even trade with him on xp/crafing books is the darn 10% will cost.

So is it worth trading xp/crafting books?


sell small crafting secrets/exp book to the hospital. They buy them for 10 gold each.

[Sawatana]

I got a book worth 2m from Modern