I'm a big supporter of "camp it if you can". Learn not to rely on EC and you'll be a better/knowledgable player for it.

Right now we have a minority of people with characters in their 50s who barely know what spells they have, what they do, and just went ezmode and tooled up in EC.

Also, questing/camping your own gear is classic ;)

Good luck with that. I've peeked my head into the camp the last two nights. Someone always on it. Last night there were 4 people on the camp. I've decided I'll just save up the money to buy it, too many neck beards perma-camping the area.

The majority of gear on your first character should be looted not purchased imo. That experience is what makes the game classic.

If you could start from lvl 1 with all BiS gear, you'd be bored and quit in a week. It's about the adventure. Go camp it out.

Try camping stuff out on red server in all self looted gear, against super twinks... so much fun! No reason to EC quest life away

Yea but i played back in classic and got self looted gear and i need to pick up a CoS before the nerf hits which means ill probably have to buy it

There's nothing wrong with buying it. Like others have said, you'll be able to afford one before you can camp it. Though just to note, I did camp it later on when getting one for my SK, ended up walking away with idols and Gauntlets of Potence...and bought the second one anyway.

It doesnt get nerfed til many months (4+) into velious. Shouls have plenty of time to get levels and work your way down to the camp and get one that will eventually rot.

And to swish: EC and Gfaymart are classic as well. Just because you seem to not like EQ economy doesnt mean it wasnt classic.

There are a gargantuan number of manastones on this server; even with the huge number that are doubtless on now-banned characters, there will always be a live market for them. CoSs will be that times ten thousand. There are so many of the damn things that they're currently near-worthless. After the nerf happens there will still be plenty around but they won't be [virtually] free any more.

I have a hard time imagining a P99 were there's a real shortage of prenerf CoSs. They're a by-product of farming idols and gauntlets, which have much greater demand. Only necros and SKs need them, and we don't have THAT many SKs and necros here. All* current necros/SKs have theirs. I have an extra sitting in the bank and I'm sure plenty of others do too. I think that if P99 were to eventually progress beyond Velious, supply of CoSs would start to run short. But that's a big "if" and it would probably be at least 5 years from now!

If you have an unused extra would you be willing to sell it to me on the cheap?

There are probably enough circlets sitting in banks waiting for velious that every necro and sk on the server could have two.

A) they've been farmed to hell and back
B) everyone knows when they are going to get nerfed.

I vote the price drops when velious gets released and 1000 of them go on sale the first day.