About looting Amherst and making money 'whenever'.
As conjecture:
Let's say training at your level is terribly inefficient. You will always lose money. Training 10 levels below your own will make about 100k an hour.
You need 100k for a weapon upgrade. The upgrade will speed up your training by 10%.
You can train for a month at your level and never get your weapon upgrade, because it is not profitable.
Or you can train for an hour at 10 levels below your own, get your weapon, and start using it. You will end up 3 days (minus 1 hour) ahead of the person who never moves from their spot.
As actual example:
Slimes are poor money unless you have enough armor. This is because slimes deal a base 20 damage a touch, and the good places to train are basically wading pools.
Every 5 touches is base 100 mesos damage. And at that point you will lose money if you try to use potions, because you are not making enough mesos per-hour.
A quality suit of lv15 armor and a standard spear or polearm weapon is 25,000 mesos, and for most players it's the first armor you ever put on. Getting that much by the time most people want to train on slimes, can be very difficult.
This means players have to do one of three things.
1. They stop and make money.
That's killing snails, and killing snails is worth much less than 8k an hour money-wise, closer to 3-4k on a good day.
If a player just backs up and kills snails for 2 hours to make 8k armor money, he will also gain experience.
But it has to be compared to the player who loots Amherst 1 hour and trains at slimes for 1. Would he grow any faster?
And to make things more imbalanced, the looter will have money from 1 hour of slimes after 2 hours. The snail hunter will be broke. Money advantages snowball. If you get ahead, it's easier to stay ahead. Good money makes for good armor, which makes for good savings, which makes for good money.
2. They limp it with the relaxer. Every 100 damage (5 touches) equates to 20 seconds of training time lost.
If a player gets hit 5 times every 10 seconds (once every 2 seconds) he loses 2/3rds his training time recovering. This example is a little drastic because people will often avoid damage, and have a little better armor.
A person taking 15 damage a touch and getting hit 5 times a minute (which is pretty pro for a crowded place like slime tree) will take 75 dmg a minute. Every 2 minutes, he loses 30 seconds.
That's 1/5th of the training speed lost to the chair. The chair player gets 4/5ths the mesos and 4/5ths the EXP as a looter. If he trains at slimes a total of 5 hours or more, he will be flatly surpassed.
3. They use external funding.
It does not apply to the example, because everyone must start somewhere.
Most players eventually use armor to save and earn mesos...
the sooner you have the armor, the more you save and earn.
Having it as you start the monster is the best plan.
REAL-WORLD SCENE:
As my level 15 report will reveal, my extra money was spent on full armor (slimes now do 1 dmg) and a 40-dmg Fork I bought from another player.
And I still have money left over.
Leveling up is naturally advantageous.
But it is not the only advantage in the game....
I am not saying it is a good idea to stay in Amherst and try to make 100k, or fund your character to level 60 by looting Amherst.
I am saying it is a good idea to loot Amherst to cover a wealth gap which occurs from the needs of a character that has no money, does not make money quickly, and needs money to make more money in the future.
Crib notes from 15...
Slimes for 1 feels good, it's familiar. I'm going to make good loot.
Need to collect slime omoks now that you need 100 to make a set.
16 would be a good time to get branches for quests.
Buddylist: 7.
No training Friday, sushi dinner and a night on the town.