Iron Ingots for Warlord Plate

Warlord Plate is expensive: 100k plus 15 Iron Ingots (150 coal + 75 Iron Ore) plus another 30 coal for a whopping 180 coal, 75 iron ore and 100,000 gp. If we buy coal at an average of 2,000gp/coal it would cost 360,000 gp (without even getting iron ore which averages more per unit). Finding coal can be a pain. I spent an hour killing Mogguns (which drop coal) and in that hour collected 12 coal. If we say that 12 is an average per hour it would take 15 hours of game play to collect enough coal for the armour. Again we'd then need to hunt for iron ore. So what's a player to do? 6 hours and 180,000gp just to get coal, but the problem is then getting the money.

I spent about 15 minutes hunting red slimes this evening and came up with about 6,000gp worth of items I sold. The problem is that for the most part I was alone. A couple of players dropped by and killed a few slimes, but I had at least 10 of those 15 minutes alone. If more players drop in when you're hunting red slimes the chances of getting a higher amount of money goes down. But let's assume it's 3:30am in the morning and few people are about. If we spent an hour it would translate into 24,000 (4 x 15 = 60 minutes, 4 x 6000 = 24,000) gold pieces. To make 360,000 we'd have to hunt for 15 hours (360,000/24,000).

Either way, collecting the coal, or collecting the money, it's going to take an average of 15 hours to get the coal.