Kev's 1 Meso FM Challenge

Goal:
Heavily inspired by kiwiz 's amazing FM journal, I'll be starting on a fresh lvl 16 character with 1 meso and trying to obtain max meso cap. Scrolling, merching, crafting, anything goes. I won't be anywhere as close of a storyteller to kiwi but I'll try my best to entertain you guys and hopefully share some knowledge with newer players. I'll also be keeping a spreadsheet of every transaction that players can look while the challenge is ongoing.

Rules:
1. Start with 1 meso and in Henesys
2. 1 shop limit
3. No donations or hand-outs, this includes looting drops off the ground
4. No grinding/farming/events
5. I can only use owls/smegas from the NX I get from daily voting, this account started at near 0 NX (~1k)

Spoiler: Day 1 to 10

Day 1: Chicken Or The Egg?
Day 2: Retracing Our Steps
Day 3: It's Raining Umbrellas
Day 4: Missed Opportunities
Day 5: Fortune on a Sleepless Night
Day 6: Finding Our Groove
Day 7: Momentum
Day 8: (In)consistency
Day 9: Moving In Silence
Day 10: Research

Spoiler: Day 11 to 20

Day 11: Our First Gamble
Day 12: Biding Time
Day 13: Lazy

 

Journey has already started, I'm on day 2 and will update here soon
Another thing I should probably add, I don't want people to just buy the items if they don't actually need it. Shop is in FM 3-17 if you want to check it out though!

 

Day 1: Chicken Or The Egg?

Initial thoughts:
Starting with 1 meso is kind of rough but the first mini-goal is to acquire 1 million meso! Scanning/merching is fickle, I won't always be able to use up my capital. Whatever meso I have left over at the end of the day is "wasted", at least when starting out. It would be nice if I had enough spare meso to gain passive income with pot/equip reselling (pet food, cider, bathrobes, earrings, etc).

Strategy:
I'll have to rely on luck and scan the entire FM for 1 meso items. Hopefully I can get some random scrolls, skill books, or ETCs to npc!

Find #1:

Starting in FM 22 and working my way backwards, I quickly stumbled upon a White Egg in what looked like a guild HQ in 4-20. There were 2 shops, so I bought one, and went to NPC it for a whopping 10 meso! I swiftly returned and bought out the 2nd egg. Bringing me to a total of 19 meso.

Find #2:

Next find was 2 Hypnotize 20 books for 1 meso each! Unfortunately with the skill being bugged and disabled, I don't even want to waste my time trying to sell this. I don't even have the skill unlocked on my own corsair. I probably can't afford to be this picky with 19 meso but I'm not losing sleep over this. Onto to the next find!

Find #3:

JACKPOT! The book for the bishop resurrection quest for 1 meso. Unironically, this one might've sped up my entire challenge by at least a week. After owling, the lowest was for 250k... HUGE. I'll look to list it at a nice 200k.

Find #4:

2H BW ATT 60% for 1 meso, I'll take that. (In hindsight, I probably should've just taken the cape scroll too but the Black Book find had me feeling RICH)

Find #4 & 5:

HSS 20 and Guardian 20 for 1 meso each! It's a weird feeling when I always drop skill books and now I actually need these for my challenge. Looking to flip these for below whatever lowest on owl is.

And that's everything I got from 1 full sweep of the FM! We're left with 15 meso and these 4 items to our name:


Closing thoughts:
It was pretty fun surfing the entire FM. I don't think I've ever done that before in my time here on legends. Definitely gained some subconscious knowledge on what's selling and in demand. 10% scrolls seem to sell often! I might be able to make a decent amount snagging low priced 10%'s and selling in bulk for WS projects. Also Pap cracks selling like hotcakes o.o Every single one I saw was sold out. I guess people are running for the mount!
This 1 meso challenge reminds me of all the trading challenges back in the day I used to watch. CSGO P250 Sand Dune to knife, TF2 1 scrap to hat, various GMS merching series. Fun times...

 

Day 2: Retracing Our Steps
I woke up ready to tackle the market with my newfound riches. Unfortunately nothing sold overnight at the prices I listed... Re-owled and had to re-adjust my prices to hope for a quick sale. Even a couple thousand meso would give me a ton of momentum right now. I already passed up a ton of good deals yesterday since I was limited on meso

I started a partial sweep of FM as I was limited on time this morning and here's what I got:

Find #1:
FM 4-20 restocked the 2 eggs from day 1! Another 18 meso profit, bringing us to 33 meso. An egg a day keeps the doctor away... or something like that. I'll be back

Find #2: Frostprey 30 and 2H Axe Acc 60% for 5 meso each

It's funny how many Frostprey 30s I've dropped or npc'd from ML5. I should be able to sell this for something right? MM buff plz
I'm also eyeing those mispriced Aquamarine Ores... According to the library, they npc for 150 meso each. Nice margins on this if I'm able to circle back to it after selling something.

While I was surfing, the 2H BW ATT 60% from day 1 sold for 5k! Looks like the price drop worked and this opens up many more options. You already know I circled back for those ores which netted me a profit of 2,280 meso.


Find #3: Crystal Ores

I turned around the wisdom ores for a profit of 603 meso and considered npc'ing the dex ores as well but figured I didn't want that to go to waste if it goes for more on the market. (I eventually circled back for these after getting some more meso)

Find #4: 2H Sword ATT 60% & 1H Axe ATT 60%


Find #5: 2H Axe ATT 60% & 1H Axe ATT 60%

The one on top was a 2H Axe ACC 60%, which didn't seem profitable. I already have one on sale for 500 meso with no bites so far

Find #6: 2H Axe ATT 60%


Find #7: Tobi for 1k

Another underpriced npc find! I think there's listings for 5-10k unsold, I can try listing it for now but will probably end up being npc'd.

Went to touch some grass after this and came back to a few folks telling me to post this journal on the forums. Krythan, Regrets...
So I made the journal and posted Day 1 shortly after.
HV showed some support and bought the black book for 200k. They probably did need it for their army of bishops... Thank you!

A few other sales throughout the day:



Now that I got a nice injection of 200k, lets look for some more things to stock up our shop overnight. I'm actually realizing now there might be too many images to post so I'll just put a list of what I found:
6 Steel Ore - 999 ea
4 Gun for Attack 60% - 3 x 25,555, 1 x 25,000
Silver Battle Grieves - 12,000, NPC'd for 15,000
2 Two-Handed Sword for ATT 60% - 1 x 10,000, 1 x 11,111
Claw for ATT 10% - 50,000
Vital Bullet - 3,333
1H Axe ATT 10% - 69
Bunch of skill books for 1 meso - i smell paid actor

Found all of the above in just channel hopping FM 1-6. Since I was out of NX/owls, I used owlrepo and previous knowledge to determine that I could most likely profit from these.

Built up quite the inventory with just 160k! Feels like thrifting. Let's hope the scrolls sell overnight and we can move onto some more liquid items

Found this quite funny, paintbrush meta is still alive from kiwi's journal

 

Day 3: It's Raining Umbrellas


Woke up to a few sales this morning! One of the better finds from yesterday, could've probably fetched a little bit more out of this but we ball. A good amount of the 1 meso skill books sold for 10k each, not bad for free 99. With about 200k in my inventory, that's more than enough to start my FM surf.

With a suggestion from Krythan, we started off with an owl for Dark Crystal Ores.


For some reason, there's always at least one person selling them for below 3.5k npc price, and this was a whole stack too! This nets me a quick 30,100 meso. Seems like a decent strat for anyone else starting a similar challenge. I'll eventually stop doing this as I increase my capital and I need to use my owls more wisely.


Found this shop that was selling various goods for 69 meso. Sadly there was an onyx apple and prestigious coin already sold out. NPC'd that wand for 2,500 meso though!

Picked up a few more things that aren't important enough to warrant precious journal space:
- 2H Axe ATT 60% - 69
- Wand M. ATT 60% - 99,999
- 2H Sword ATT 70% - 9,999
- 1H Axe ATT 10% - 1

Then I found what might've been the best deal so far in the challenge:

GFA 60% for 100k! Sadly I couldn't afford it. Why couldn't I find this before I spent my meso on that wand scroll?!? Many regrets... I made a note of where the shop was and hoped I could make 25k through some other NPC arbitrage finds.


Within only a few minutes, I found a pair of Pansy Earrings (scrolled with a 60 or 70) for only 50k! This seemed suspiciously low so I looked it up in the library and I was pleased to find out that it npc'd for 65k! But it wasn't enough for the 100k I needed... I had a few things to liquidate via NPC: the dex crystals, tobi, and vital bullet. I ended up taking a loss on the vital bullet but that's okay since I was able to afford the GFA 60% now! It does pain me that I had to NPC this earring, definitely could've sold it for more or finished scrolling it myself in the future.


Returned for the scroll and I'm left with less than 1k... I listed it for 500k and AFK'd next to my shop. ~5 minutes later, a supporter famed me and bought the GFA 60% and a skill book. Thanks for the support, this gave me a ton of momentum so I went for another surf

Found a few more deals:
- 2 Pet Equip HP 70% - 22,222 & 5,000
- 2 White Egg, 1 Fly-Eye Wing, 1 Viking Helmet (thanks Juicy Guild in 4-20)
- 2H BW ATT 30% - 25,000

I stopped here for now as I almost had a full inventory of items to sell. I had 2 more spaces in my shop, so I decided to just fill it with 400 pet food to see if that would sell while I was out for the day.

I got back on later that night to see if anything had sold. The 2H BW ATT 30% sold for 100k and Pet Equip HP 70% for 50k each (Didn't get a screenshot, I need to improve my record keeping skills)
With a fresh batch of owls from voting, I looked for more Dark Crystal Ores, not having any real plan with my funds of ~660k.

Of course, another stack for below NPC price, although just barely. Free 16k though, I'll take that any day.

If I'm ever able to catch a live sale, expect a thank you 100k is a nice chunk of meso added to the bank, bringing me to ~770k.


Picked up a few more cheap scrolls:
- 2H Sword ATT 10% - 1 meso
- Cape STR 30% - 10,000
- Cape LUK 70% - 11,111
- OA LUK 70% - 99,999

and NPC flips:
- 1 Wisdom Crystal Ore
- 1 Amorian Rice Cookie
- 1 Reindeer Milk
- 1 Mushroom Miso Ramen
- Juno


But the real highlight of the night was not 1... not 2... not 3... but 4 yellow umbrellas for 130k each!!! I remembered from kiwiz journal that early on in their journey they had flipped yellow umbrellas for close to 1m! If this is true and they're able to sell, I might've just made 3-4m from a single find! Suspiciously, every single umbrella was 52 att 52 m. att...

I ended tonight's search with a bunch of goodies and 140k meso. Time to put everything up for sale!

Closing thoughts:
With the capital from the GFA 60% sale and hopefully the yellow umbrellas, I need to formulate some actual strategies. Surfing the FM for <20k scrolls isn't going to cut it anymore. Although the profit margins are good on these cheap scrolls (upwards of 100% ROI), the time and shop space makes it unsustainable. I'll need to move on to more expensive and higher volume items. After a majority of my shop clears, I also want to look into bathrobes to fill up my empty slots. I've always seen other people do it, now its my turn to try it! It's essentially what I'm already doing with buying these obscure scrolls for <20k and selling for 50k.

Some more sales while writing up today's journey:




Thanks everyone for the support!

 

LMPQ, interesting. I've never done it here on legends, it was a fun PQ from what I remember.

Thanks, I'll look into another alternative

 

Days 1-3 have been updated with more permanent image links! For anyone curious, I'm hosting them in a public read only AWS S3 bucket.

 

Day 4: Missed Opportunities

I woke up this morning hoping some of the yellow umbrellas sold for the listed 800k, I wanted to move on to bigger and better things. I was quickly let down as the umbrellas stayed unsold and so were most of the other items. We did sell the 2H Sword ATT 10% we found for 1 meso, for 50k though! I left the meso unclaimed in the shop, hoping it would give the impression that I had a busy and well-priced store.

With ~308k to my name, I started a quick surf. I found a Bottomwear for DEX 10% for 11k. From my experience with these scrolls, I knew they could easily go for around 100k. Nice start to the day!


Then I found a GFA 60% for 300k. The bot dex purchase I had just made put me just under 300k, not again... But I remembered I had 50k sitting in my store. I quickly retrieved it and bought out the GFA. I listed it for 400k and it was picked up instantly. Another easy 100k flip, we take those.


Picked up a few more things that were well-priced but not an absolute steal:
- 2H Sword ATT 60% for 8k
- Wand M. ATT 60% for 100k
I was just hoping to make 10-20k each on these... maybe not the best use of my meso but I just wanted to buy a few things


chimken

I stopped my search at this point and was afk'ing at my shop when I caught someone buying the Bot Dex 10% for 100k. Love a fast turnaround.

Fast forward to the night, unfortunately nothing had sold. Unmotivated, I decided to do another surf, just hoping to gain some more knowledge on the market.
I found 100 white potions for 49 meso each, which seemed suspicious. I always remembered NPCing them for more... and I was right! Library says 160 meso each. Free 11k profit!
This put me in the NPC arbitrage mood so I tried the Dark Crystal Ore method again, and it paid off!

286 total ores for a profit of 74k, not bad at all!

Kept up the momentum with a nice Wisdom Crystal Ore find, 55 of them for half the NPC price. Another instant 55k profit.


Made a few purchases, these should yield around a 50-100% ROI:
- Earring LUK 10% - 10k
- OA LUK 70% - 100k
- OA STR 60% - 177k

After these, I was left with 290k in my inventory. But I stumbled upon an 8 INT-scrolled cape (4 60s/70s passed on 5 slots) for ONLY 400k meso... I knew this was an INSANE deal but I just didn't have enough. The price of a single Cape INT 60 or 70 already exceeded the 400k listing price... I tried a last ditch effort and smega'd my shop hoping for a quick sale to make up the difference. Unfortunately, there were no bites, only 1 visitor. I made a note of the shop location and hoped it would still be there tomorrow morning after some sales. Maybe it's not such a bad idea just sitting on a chunk of meso for occasions like this...

I continued browsing and found another scrolled deal that I could not afford, this time at a 1 million meso price point. A poorly scrolled dex thief bottom that would for sure go for more than its current price. (yes, I'm keeping details vague to hopefully reduce the chances of it being sniped)

On the topic of scrolled budget items, I saw this 14 dex bathrobe that sold for 10m. Not too familiar with bathrobe prices, this seemed kind of insane? Maybe I should crunch some numbers on this...


Ended the night with setting up shop with re-owled/better prices. Those damn yellow umbrellas got flooded, there were a few for 400-500k. Hoping to offload them for 300k each, they didn't turn out to to be the gold mine I expected.

Closing thoughts:
Although I'm having fun with this challenge, I find myself spending a bit too much time on it. I think I was even dreaming about merching this morning... As of now, I think I'm spending roughly 2 hours in total per day which cuts into my regular play time on my main characters. I'll be looking to optimize the time spent on this character, aiming for 30 minutes to an hour of total play time. There were a few things in kiwiz journal that could help me optimize, one being this heatmap of the FM rooms. Searching through the whole FM isn't sustainable so I'll most likely be sticking to channels 1 and 2 for my manual surfs.

 

Added titles to the previous days and linked them to the original post for better organization and navigation

 

Day 5: Fortune on a Sleepless Night

I tossed and turned in bed as I thought about the 2 missed deals. To be specific, it was a pair of 11 dex 4 luk red pirate pants for 1,111,111 meso! Anyone could recognize this was a phenomenal deal with clean perfects already exceeding that price and bot dex 60s being 1.3m.

With scrolling on my mind, I had thought about a specific strategy I've employed before: Scrolling clean 1 dex 4 luk red pirate pants with bot dex 10%s.
I had always noticed that -1 dex pants went for pretty cheap on the market for around 300k, while the perfect version easily fetched for 1.5m. With bot dex 10% scrolls being plentiful from Chao and other sources, they easily go for 100k each.
If you wanted to make a +1 4 dex 4 luk pants, you'd usually buy a perfect one and throw a 70% on it. But that one attempt alone can already cost at least 4m. Factoring in the 30% fail rate, the production cost becomes ~6m.
Alternatively, attempting 10 -1 dex pants with 10%s would cost ~400k per attempt or 4m total. The kicker however is that if it fails, you can NPC the pants for 120k, recouping a huge chunk of the attempt cost. This brings the production cost down to ~3m.

Just wanting to confirm prices on this theory, I booted up my laptop at 3 AM and used my last owl. Disappointed, there weren't any -1 dex pants at the 300k price point I was expecting.


Oh? What's this? A PERFECT clean pair of pants for 300k? And I barely had enough from a wand 60 sale in my shop. I quickly scooped it up and listed it in my shop for 1.5m. This just potentially became my biggest 1 item profit in the challenge so far, with the other being the GFA 60% for 100k.


But someone IMMEDIATELY bought the pants I just listed?!? Talk about timing! Thanks for the support!


I reveled in my 1.5 million meso for a little bit but then quickly went to buy the 11 dex 4 luk pants. My gut says these can fetch easily for 5-10m but it might take a while to sell. I listed them for 10m and went to sleep. I'm hopeful about these


I woke up to 400k in sales, a nice addition to the 450k leftover from the night. With almost a full million meso again, I went on a surf and picked up a few things:
- Topwear HP 60% - 12 meso
- Bow ATT 60% - 120k (sold for 200k)
- Wand M. ATT 10% - 200k (sold for 300k)
- 99 Dark Crystal Ores - 3.2k each
- GFA 60% - 350k
- Bow ATT 60% - 2 x 100k (sold for 200k ea)
- Polearm ATT 60% - 11k

Went for another small surf a little bit later:
- CSS 1% - 65k
- OA DEX 60% - 150k
- Spear ATT 60% - 50k (sold for 100k)
- 2H Sword ATT 60% - 10k
- GFA 10% - 50k
- Spear ATT 60% - 10k (sold for 100k)

I had gotten some advice the previous night about focusing on a few 60% scrolls like bows, wands, claws, spears and staff. The bows and spears have turned out to be really good so far! Near 100% ROI and it's pretty easy to find them underpriced!

Some sales:



In anticipation of the server reset, I thought it would be worthwhile to try to snag a 1-1 spot. Surely that would boost sales with more foot traffic right? I was able to get a spot on the far left, not bad! Let's see if we can inch closer to the entrance as the days pass. One interesting note: With the usual scramble to set up shop in FM's 1 to 6, I found quite a lot of 1 meso ETCs. In total, I made around 3-4k. If anyone ever starts a similar 1 meso journey, a server reset would be perfect to get a nice chunk of change.



Later that night, quite a few things sold and I had another million back in my inventory! With a fresh 12 owls from voting after reset, we put our focus on learning the market of some more 60% scrolls as well as targeted OA DEX 60%, OA LUK 60%. From the past few days of surfing, I'd frequently see them sold out in shops. Makes sense, as many new players need 10 scrolls for their first bathrobe. I also targeted wand and staff 60s to experiment with since mages are the recommended class for newer players. Maybe that could contribute to fast sales?


Here's a look at our inventory so far:

About 2m in scrolls, some shabby pirate pants and the dreaded yellow umbrellas...

Honestly I'm pretty satisfied for our fifth day in! We consistently have 1m in our inventory to play around with on our daily FM surfs, so many more options now. No more 1 meso days...

I'll also be blocking out names from sales as not everyone may be okay with me posting. If I have an interaction with a supporter, I'll ask if I can put it in the journal.

 

Day 6: Finding Our Groove

Switching it up today, it's going to be less of a play by play and more of a meta analysis on our journey so far.

Strategy-wise, I started off with buying anything cheap I could find when I was limited to less than 250k meso. This didn't allow me to sweep any one particular scroll. But as we reached the 500k - 1m mark we were able to specialize in a few scrolls in the 100-200k range and reset the lowest price to the floor.

We're starting to see very profitable and consistent sales on a few scrolls:
- OA Dex 60%: strong floor at 250k, easy to find for 200k on owl
- GFA 60%: strong floor at 450k, occasional 350-400k on owl
- Claw 60%: strong floor at 250k, easy to find for 200k on owl
- Wand 60%: decent floor at 150k, easy to find for 100k on owl



I don't see myself doing this forever but most likely up until the 5-10m range. At that point, I'd focus my transition to sniping more expensive scrolls. One prospect is GFA 70%. I've noticed they're at an unusually high price right now, close to 8m. If I'm able to owl and snipe 1 scroll for <7m, it's a lot less mental bandwidth than sweeping a bunch of 60s. Same goes for other scrolls in the 2-4m range.

The journals have been quite messy in my opinion since they've been in a timeline fashion. I list out my sales and purchases in the order that they happen throughout the day. As I scale up the number of scroll purchases, it's becoming very messy when I do my book keeping of sales and screenshots. Going forward, I'll probably limit my playtime to just the night so I can get 1 clean snapshot of sales and purchases.

Currently we're around a consistent 1.5-2m mark in liquidity. I was at 1.8m at one point today, should be at 2m tomorrow if all our scrolls sell.
Here's what I'm ending with, most of these being purchased ~50k below their floor price: