Keys are, surprisingly, pretty expensive although the rewards from opened Strongboxes are not that good. Since
the keys sold in the Mall are only sold for cash and Strongboxes are dropped much more frequently than Keys when fighting monsters, people tend to "need" Keys quite a lot. When I started getting Strongbox and Key drops from the occasional monster, I just tried to open as many of the obtained strongboxes as possible. Even if it meant buying keys for sale in the auction house. But the rate of drop is much higher for Strongboxes than for
Keys for a reason - the makers of the game want to buy the keys for cash (which you probably bought with real money). And so I kept picking up so many strongboxes that I couldn't open because after buying the keys in ah, there were none left. I mean, sometimes bunches of 1 to 3 keys would appear randomly and I would pounce, quickly buying them so I could open a couple of extra strongboxes.
But after a month or so, I realized that there was a much more profitable side to the fact that keys aren't bound. I'd
seen other people sell keys but they didn't do it consistently. When I noticed that I could sell keys myself without having competition most of the time, I knew my time of opening strongboxes was over. And that was a very true hunch - selling keys proved to be very nice to me. I just put myself on Auto-Combat for most of the day and check the game every 5 to 20 mins to see if there are any keys to collect. Unluckily, I'm not a Star3 (well, I'm not even Star1 to tell the truth), so I can't auto-collect... That would be very handy. But, on the other hand, I also pride myself for not resorting to paying real money just to get priveleges in the game.
My guide to setting the Keys - Normal, Refined and Exquisite - prices is very simple. In the mall, Normal are sold for 15 cash, Refined - 40 cash and Exquisite - 150 cash. Now I just multiply the cash price by 10,000 to get the coin price. Accordingly, my Key prices used to be: Normal - 150,000 each, Refined - 400,000 each and Exquisite - 1.5 mil each. Unluckily, I've only been able to keep one of these prices at this level. The price for Exquisite Keys remains 1.5 mil per key because not many of these keys are dropped. They're rare
, so people can't complain that the price is too high. I've only found 5 in total and foolishly used one instead of selling it, just out of curiosity.
I must have made 50 to 70 million off of Keys by now, if not more. It's quite easy to do - 5 normal keys, even at a reduced price of 100,000 coins each, generate half a million coins. I used to sell refined keys for 400,000 coins each and at that price, 5 keys was 2 million. But now people have become accustomed to the fact that there are always keys for sale in the auction house, so I was forced to reduce the price by a fourth to keep the keys selling. Still, 300,000 coins is a pretty nice pay for one key, seeing as 250 runestones usually only sell for half of that. (I
used to sell runestones because I'd gotten many runestone packs out of the Easter Event. But everyone sells runestones all the time and it's a pain to always lower your prices because you know, in two hours or so, someone will probably put up more and your price won't be cheapest anymore.)