gee, I guess you missed the point. colored ore yields colored ingots. with the prices tripling or quadrupling depending on color. a bot has an even easier time paying for gametime with gold.

Since the uogold download gives you access to colored ores, its bot miners for the win.

I hardly think I missed your point. My point was that I haven't seen any scripters mining on my shard although I've been actively looking to kill them and there are were colored ingots for sale in Luna. Not one. Zero. (update: there are now, but there weren't earlier and there are not many available)

Indeed, a quick search of FindUO reveals that there are far fewer ingots for sale across all shards than you'd expect in a scripter-rich environment. Most deeds for sale contain low numbers of ingots and are all concentrated on one or two vendors. I've done a quick breakdown:

I omitted plain iron.

Atlantic: 14 deeds for sale, most from one vendor
Baja: 4 for sale, all bronze
Catskills: Scads for sale for low prices from 2 main vendors, suggestive of heavy scripting
Chessy: See Catskills
Drach: None
Europa: Significant quantities of Copper, all from one vendor. Other than that, nothing
GL: Deeds with very low numbers of ingots. Very limited amounts of high-end ore. All ingots concentrated on one main vendor
LA: None
LS: Three vendors, all with high numbers available. At least one of these is selling primarily for cash.
Legends: Only two vendors. One claims to be a consortium of "non-scripted" laborers. Many ingots available at high prices.
Napa Valley: A total of 18K ingots for sale, all different colors, all the same vendor. Marginal, but not overly suspicious.
Oceania: 3K ingots for sale, 2 vendors
Origin: None
Pacific: Three vendors, one of which is may be benefiting from scripting with over 240K high-color ingots for sale.
Sonoma: 16K ingots for sale at very high prices, all from the same vendor, restocked in the last couple hours since I didn't find any for sale last night.

Overall, I have insufficient data here to support or refute my conclusion. However, I think that Chessy, Cats, LS, Legends and Pac probably have scripters selling in Luna. The other shards - the majority - do not.

Obviously, there may be people selling through other venues. A quick look at Tradespot didn't show anything suspicious, but I've only looked at 3 shards.

Very few shadow ingots available for sale. Imagine that.

~M

Please note: I am aware that one search on FindUO does not constitute a complete data set. I'll monitor for my own amusement over the next several weeks and perhaps change my mind.

Anywho, I still agree that the spawn rate of rare resources hurts the casual player.

~M