X3: Albion Prelude: From Rags to Riches in Under an Hour

Time for an interlude. The next installment of my X3AP Getting Started guide is compressing and uploading now, but while that's underway, here's a quick challenge: using the "Humble Merchant" start, reach 5,000,000 credits in-game as quickly as possible without using any cheats. Did it in 45 minutes without doing any missions or firing any shots.
Yes, it involves the Stock Exchange, so if that bores you, skip this one -- otherwise, enjoy the banter as I try to entertain myself while making my fortune!

[@--sql]

I bought biological micro-organisms at 104, and I've been waiting on it for over an hour. It's at nearly 170 now.

[@mikhailharris8480]

Nice guide/tutorial bro! for lazy viewer here is the--- Step-by-step Short version : 1. select humble merchant 2. sell frigate, use Discoverer travel to Seizewell. 3. buy trading system extension at Siezewell equipment dock( or you can buy it earlier any other station) 4. go to Teladi stock exchange, dock, pay the 10000c(u must), undock 5. click on sector map, click the teladi stock exchange, click view local stock exchange. 6. patient (i aim for biological micro, construction equipment, weapons interface, jumpdrive components,terran high goods) 7.profits = thx to video uploader

[@whiskizyo2067]

5. click on sector map, click the teladi stock exchange, click view local stock exchange. 6. patient 7.profits Cause that makes sense. Lol.

[@mintedcow]

8. auto dock at station9. auto pilot crashes into station, ship blows up10. rage

[@TurKlack]

Did they change the Stock a bit? It says I have to own a Space Station to do the Stock Market.

[@Dreadp1r4te]

I subscribed because you referenced Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. You win bonus internets.

[@willfe]

Nice :) Welcome aboard!

[@kamehamegamer]

just found your videos and getting back into X3 really enjoyed this stock exchange stuff :)

[@NixxNikoli]

5:26 "You can use SETA" sounded like Kryten from Red Dwarf :D Love your videos Will, very helpful!

[@Roobie01]

Thank you very much for this video - I really like the X universe, but I wasn't getting anywhere without money, I'm a real noob (bought the game yesterday) so I was really glad to find a way to make some money to get me started!

[@kanzy1]

When you sold your discoverer not the hauler I was like WTF!!! exactly the opposite of what I did, then after finishing the video I found out I was doing it the very slow way lol. Thanks for the enlightenment.

[@burningvenom]

These videos are so enjoyable to watch, Thanks!

[@willfe]

You're welcome! I'm glad you enjoy them!

[@greybadger3142]

Hiya. Inspired by your video this is my first time playing the market. I started at 48,000 and in two trades I'd made that 275,000! Small fish to many of you of course, but to me that's a huge fortune! The fact I described it in one sentence makes it sound as if it was done in seconds though. When in fact I had to sit and stare at my screen for absolutely ages while nothing moved. Finally though at 275,000 I'd run out of time and decided to call it quits, dock and save. This might be a quicker way of making money than trading or fighting, but the bill for this profit will be presented directly to my patience. Still.. money well earned right? Except that docking my Discoverer I somehow managed to smash into the stations hull, bounce off, smash into it again and blow up into a MILLION TINY LITTLE GREEDY PIECES!!! So I made NOTHING at all! Sometimes I hate this game. Badger

[@willfe]

X3:TC has more plots overall, while X3:AP has additional game engine features (higher draw distance, fleet command, some menu cleanups, new script commands (so mods can do more), etc.) but fewer plots. The 3.0 release adds some more plot stuff though. Of course X Rebalance Mod adds a whole bunch of new material anyway :)

[@alexandruracila7500]

Timeless and very helpful video! I've made 3 mil in approx 20 - 30 minutes :) I sincerely thank you for the idea, effort and video! Your time has been used for our gaming abundance and that counts a lot!

[@deLeonGuitarStudio]

Tried this out, and made my first few million. Was so excited, decided I needed to save my game before something happened. As I tried to dock to save, my ship just kept going, rammed into the stock exchange ship and exploded....I flew right into the green circle thing but it didn't go through the docking animation like it has done 100% up to this point. So incredibly pissed at this game right now.

[@CaptainShack]

I almost spit my coffee all over my monitor laughing with the beves and butt head comment . Thanks :D

[@noodlestheasian5832]

Man it's weird to see someone you've subscribed to and then seeing them in a old video comments

[@officerdonut7066]

@@noodlestheasian5832 Not really lmao

[@gaston-alegre-stotzer]

6+ years later and I'm finally getting into this game... thanks for this, it sure help having 7M in ma' backpocket.

[@sporadicidiocy]

Cool, nice guide. I'm pretty new with X3AP and this helped a lot, thanks! I bought Rebirth but I'm really having a hard time liking it, tried to play through the plot, but am now stuck at the boarding mission getting blown up by 20+ drones every time I try lol. So now I bought X3AP and followed your guide. Made a good amount of credits from this. I'm planning to get some stations set up to have a steady cash flow. Also bought a boron M4 and did a few combat missions with it to raise my argon rank/notoriety up so I can grab a Heavy Centaur.

[@willfe]

Excellent! X3:AP is a wonderful game. I'm glad to hear you're enjoying it (and my guides). I've probably sunk 1,000 hours into the game by now. I think X Rebirth has *boatloads* of potential and just needs some polish. I did successfully board a ship eventually, though it did take quite a few attempts. I suspect in my case it had to do with hiring bottom-of-the-barrel freshling idiot marines instead of well-trained ones (because I was almost broke :P). Egosoft are on a roll with the patches for X Rebirth -- they've machine-gunned four updates out for the game since it was released just one week ago and fixed a *lot* of bugs. I'm sure they'll get things ironed out quickly. I still enjoy X Rebirth now anyway (exploration is particularly fun -- folks who are upset about there being "only" four systems don't seem to grasp the enormity of the four systems present in the game), but I can't wait to really dig in deep as things stabilize.

[@sporadicidiocy]

William Ferrell I may give Rebirth another go after a few more patches. I wanted to like it and to some extent I do, the trade lanes reminds me of Freelancer which is good but the boost draining shields is just silly. That among the myriad of minor annoyances I find in the game makes it hard to get much fun out of it as I am with X3AP now.

[@anthraxman]

At first i thought you were shorting those stocks but now it's clear. Excellent vid I can't wait to get started on this game :)

[@frankalfisi1972]

I have to try this game. I love space sims. I read up that it has an extreme learning curve. Great video William.

[@ThanatosDMC]

Awesome tutorial. I'm glad there's a lot of youtube vids that teaches us how to play the game. I was so confused.

[@lekrotal3544]

Thank you for all your tutorials,i'm new in the X universe,i play X Rebirth but too buggy so i try Albion Prelude and i really like it,so thank you for the help sorry for my bad english

[@Ironfist2211]

I love the humor, man! Quick bit of advice, if you are really near a station, but not docked, you can just request permission to dock, and it will automatically connect you!

[@yoshyusmc]

Really enjoy your X3 videos, especially the rags to riches. Been away from X3 for a while and this stock market trading video is great. I went from 40k to 2 million in no time. Earned a sub from me.

[@willfe]

Heh! Sweet -- I love it when somebody catches more than one reference in an episode :) Glad you liked the B&B impression ;)

[@FreedomPLMarcin]

After all this years, this game is still so damn good.

[@atransientpreacher]

Thanks a lot for posting this, Will! Massively appreciate it. Now I have a much better idea of how to go about the trading networks :D

[@chrisville25]

Much appreciated. All your videos are very helpful, with a side of comic relief. Hopefully you will be returning for X Rebirth (X4).

[@DarknessOverpowering]

I tried what you suggested above, and it worked much better. I am not sure if i was extremely unlucky in my first time (sounsd plausible), but as i tried again i made 25 millions in a few hours. Now I am off to figuring out how to get enough reputation to buy anything, because everything is red everywhere. :) Thanks again for your videos, it's a huge help!

[@willfe]

Actually I think you can. Assuming default keymappings, hit [F2] to get an external view. You can then use the number pad to control the camera - [0] switches among several automatic camera angles, [+]/[-] zooms in/out, [2], [4], [6] and [8] rotate. [F1] returns to the regular cockpit view. There's probably other keys; I didn't test them all just now but "lots of buttons" is one of this game's main features :)

[@kiiro712]

Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. Awesome video.

[@magiCHRiS82]

Very nice video. And i love your Beavis and Butthead impressions :)

[@hvypetals]

thanks for sharing man. great stuff

[@danchristophersonson4986]

yeah man your coming in loud and clear on my pc thanks for the vid persuaded me to buy the game

[@Auzze]

You had me at 0:55 with that evil laugh, in coming sub

[@Timster480]

I skipped through the video and I just hear you talking to yourself pretending to be Beevus and Butthead like you're insane. This is my first impression of you and it will never change.

[@willfe]

I'm perfectly fine with that :)

[@girard7827]

is a fking pre pubert kid lol

[@willfe]

Sir, you offend me! I'll have you know I've got _at least_ two pubes! :)

[@girard7827]

William Ferrell i refer to the kid not for you

[@PragmaticTornado]

Never tried the stock market, and I've built a huge empire from the ground up on my first save. Started again last weekend on the Anonymous Argon start (M5 with no weapons). Had a blast avoiding pirates and picking up missiles until I could outfit some weapons and do some easy missions. I've played the X3 games to death though, so I think I'll give this a shot so I can move up to an M7 right away. Already have the necessary reputation.

[@themax2go]

Nice trick, I was fully immersed in X3 years ago on a Mac, now that I've got a PC I got it again. Started with trading and yeah it's slow as xxx, even with maximized trading. At least I had a bit more (a few 100k) more start capital, so I got me the Discoverer Hauler, which, when upgraded, is quite a bit faster. Anyhow, I somehow doubt stocks trading gives you the rep you need to buy Teladi ships... I continued on for a few hours, now sitting at 45m and ships are still all red (just to make sure, I docked, didn't change anything). Oh well, time to get a Boron freighter and start getting them reps up there and then in Teladi space...

[@AlanDarkworld]

This is working perfectly. I do not recommend this method to anyone getting started playing the game, since it pretty much skips the entire startup-phase. However, if you played X3 or X3:TC before and don't want to build everything from scratch again and go straight into the fun part instead, this is definitly the way to go.

[@MrSteveseiler]

cheers mate good walkthrough

[@4tech69]

I've never been able to get a real start because of how obscure most of how to get going is. Even with all the stuff online. I was against being AP because I really see it as a money grab from Ego to help with Rebirth. But when I saw you series I thought why not. Made allot of headway since.

[@KatInkura]

You do Beavis and Butthead impressions VERY well!

[@illtypehuman]

Wow, a video of a large list that is changing somehow. What a game.

[@salesv]

Well, it makes more sense to me, but I think i can get used to this one too, thanks!

[@lordslyboy]

Thanks mate! Very useful!!!

[@spiscHiPs]

Alrighty. Thanks for the reply, and the lovely videos :3

[@coolings9788]

i brought this game after looking at your vid mate thanks

[@willfe]

They're an arbitrary "index." Buy at 100 or higher (max is 200), sell once it drops (anything below 70). There's an interface option to flip the meaning of those index values around, so you end up doing the more traditional "buy low, sell high" thing with them if it makes things easier for you.

[@willfe]

It's been awhile since I played (sorry for the lack of updates, btw) but I believe it's the [End] key on the keyboard that maxes that out. Works on any field where you set an amount like this, including buying/selling/transferring wares, adjusting prices, etc. [Home] sets it to the minimum, btw.

[@kioshiki4519]

It's true, learning to trade on a virtual stock exchange ain't the most interesting video. It did help me a lot so thanks for posting it. I'd tried 3 or 4 times with X3R to get started with the normal game and a couple with humble trader. I didn't get very far. I installed X3AP to since I got them all at the same time on steam. I tried again the normal ways and still didn't get very far. I think I made about 90,000 credits at most. That was after maybe 4 or so hours. It took a bit longer since I'm still new but I made over 1 million. I can earn some more then start building some kind of trade empire *cue evil laugh*.

[@SuperCowplop]

Thanks for the help! :)

[@willfe]

The shipyard is sort of "below" everything else in the system. The easiest way to find it is to look at the sector map, fly to the center of the system, then fly straight down. It's very big :) No need to fly around manually to find it if it's already on your sector map btw. As for selling the Mercury, you can only sell a ship at a shipyard, so that's why the other stations in Argon Prime won't buy it from you.

[@ChrisHall145]

I'm waiting for both :D

[@brighty7109]

Looks like you got lucky here with the stock exchange. I've been at it now for a few hours and only made 200k lol. Things just aren't going up into the 100s as often. Whether it's an update or not I'm not quite sure but I'm not having as much luck lol. I'm really enjoying it though. I did also give EVE another go this week and although i do like it, I just didn't want to pay monthly for the sub so I'm probs just gonna stick to X3

[@ineednochannelyoutube5384]

I am personally very glad this is in the game. Grinding credits early game gets very boring very quickly, especially after your first playthrough, and not only do automated moneymakers take hours to get into without stockmarketing, they also take hourst to start paying for themselves. The ability to start playing the actual game after an hour of trading is alamost as good as being able to do so immediately.

[@willfe]

Make sure your ship has the Trading System Extension installed, and that you have access to the stock exchange you want to work with (i.e. you've met their prerequisites; the Teladi just require a one-time payment). With that done, you can access the stock exchange whenever you're in the same system, or from anywhere in the universe if you leave a satellite in the system. When you access the exchange from your ship, the regular SETA hotkey works normally.

[@willfe]

I thought about this some more and I think you're right -- trading on the stock exchanges just increases your *trade* reputation, not your rank with the given faction. The exception to this, I believe, is the Teladi, who are profit-driven and thus are impressed with you whenever you sell shares at a net profit. Thus I think you *can* increase your Teladi ranking by trading at their exchanges. The rest of the races aren't so easily impressed, however :)

[@DrowChyld]

Thank you for your reply, Will. I've been playing a lot and I think the 1st arrow is related to buying and the 2nd to selling...I think? The index is a formula caluated from the supply and demand so I think each arrow gives you an indicator. I also notice you can manipulate an index slightly. So if you have 20,ooo shares in something that is 200 then sell a bit every stock change and it seems to usually promote growth, of in this case to lower the index. I could be wrong but its what I've seen.

[@outlaw0987654321]

this game is freakishly addicting. if they added a multiplayer element at least on the trading level in a persistent world, this game would be over the top.

[@willfe]

Park at an equipment dock, trading station or corporate HQ and buy whatever upgrades they're selling that 1) you can afford and 2) fit on your ship. Upgrades get installed automatically.

[@s0nycz3kk]

Nice guide mate! Can I ask you what is your rig's spec? I run the game w/o problems but when I stop out in the space and trade my FPS drops (which I solved by using RadeonPro) and my the stock list doesn't seem to refresh properly (which kinda sucks and I can miss opportunity to profitssss :-( even tho I made 6 millions so far >:D)

[@willfe]

X3TC has more plots overall, while X3AP has additional game engine features (higher draw distance, fleet command, some menu cleanups, new script commands (so mods can do more), etc.) but fewer plots. The 3.0 release adds some more plot stuff though. Of course X Rebalance Mod adds a whole bunch of new material anyway :)

[@CaptainShack]

It was a feature in AP's release.

[@evilreddog]

This works like a charm! Had arround 40k ish left and made it in to 7mill after about 1 hour. Found a nice spot away from traffic and just about to make 1 mill more, a Supply mammoth decided to have suprise butt sax with my discoverer.... i almost flipped my table after 1 hour of stock exchanging and the loss of arround 8 mill....

[@willfe]

The "Great Prophet Zarquon" bit? Yeah, that's Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Great book :)

[@R0MMAH]

Quick! Get this man some coffee!!! Less sleep = more videos = moar profitsss!!

[@666bonedragon]

Great advice I'm making very good money by this. Only thing is every single time (6 times now) I hit the half million mark I blow up. Either pirates, hitting the wall hiding or auto pilot. So thus far I haven't truly made any profit I die before I can save

[@willfe]

Heh. Yeah. Damned autopilot is drunk in this game, no question. It's at its worst when it's at the helm of a really fast ship, like a Kestrel (or a group of them like in my case). Order it to launch from its base and follow you ... dumb thing smashes right into the opposite side of the base and explodes :) Gotta love the crazy autopilot :)

[@siriusounds]

Yes. Snowball is definitely the right choice if you don't want to mess and invest at the audio interface and professional grade microphone, which in some cases, can be cheaper comparing to some current gaming headsets at the market. You would be amazed how much difference and the character change in the sound. Cheers ;)

[@MIC132MIC]

Heh. About that reference. You got great taste in books I must say! (And I didn't have to look that up..)

[@willfe]

Running missions for that race will improve your relations with them. I'm pretty sure though that trading *does* actually help with race reputation, just not as quickly as doing missions does. I could be wrong there, but I know I didn't fly many missions for any of the races in my current game, and just did lots of automated trading (commercial representation, etc.) and I've got great relations with them all (even the pirates :)).

[@Lorenzo222]

thanks man for the tips! i've just made my first million and guess what? A BAND OF PIRATES JUST KILLED ME! and of course, the save is when i was on 44k credits. :D

[@KnivesOut72]

Great tutorial. After 30 minutes I was up to 10 million, pretty awesome.

[@TheHereticalOutcast]

Do you prefer the commodities stock exchange over the company stock exchange? I find the company one to be slower, but a little easier for me since it caps at 100 on the index and I don't have to worry about it going as high as 200.

[@pantlesswanderer3366]

I did this a couple of days ago and it worked great! Well, after I realized I should fly out for a few minutes to get out of the normal range of raiders. Now... I've bought a small fleet of the Teladi ships including the Osprey (loaded with 3-4 stations at the moment). I really haven't found a sure direction in which to lead at this point. No markets seem to have any laser or guns in stock, and I'm more or less stuck using mosquitoes ;) I'm a noob with a fleet and no clue what to do with it :P

[@Dojan5]

Yeah. I ended up getting the entire X3. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm going to stand here banging my head against this brick wall until I get somewhere.

[@cameltoe4565]

Remember that your reputation with a race is separate from your economic rank. When buying ships, only the race reputation matters. You can be a bigshot-businessman-gargantuan-billionaire-Mr.Hugedeal-McFuck but if you haven't dealt with the race before, they aren't going to trust you with their destroyers. BUT. Good news is that the high eco rank lets you do all those high profit sidemissions, which in turn grant HUGE reputation boost. The bigger the credit reward, the bigger the rep boost.

[@simdimdim]

Basically you wait something to reach it's lowest then buy then wait to fall in the yellow (under 50(usually 30-40)) it's around half a day ingame time for that to happen, but when it does you sell and mark a 5-15mln. profit.By observation 2/5 of the companies reach the 99-100 mark soon after you start then they shall fluctuate for a while then go down in an avalanche 1-3 at a time also you should know when this happens there is already some other share at 99-100 or very close to that so buy it.

[@willfe]

Indeed; see my current X3AP playthrough series that features XRM. It's quite fun!

[@Arcomatik]

Requirements : 1 - a few units of Nividium (I think 24 would work but I was seeing that with my Caiman Miner @ full cargo) 2 - acces to any stock market that buy Nividium, like PTNI HQ (they sell 12 so I think there's more shares than everywhere else) 3 - one ship with XL goods, Nividium in it. Jump drive is optional. 4 - one dummy ship or one satellite. Next is how to do that.

[@davidklima5607]

With this *trick* i made 63 millions credits in 1d 10h ingame time with speed booster 1000x . So that is around (if i do not forgot all from based mathematic :D ) 2 hours . So soon i will have enough credits for capital ship from argon side , off course i still need alot mission for them then i get permission to buy but thanks alot for this .

[@themax2go]

Btw, anyone know if NPCs (such as fighters for the purpose of protection, set to "attack all enemies") and you have them protect you and you do nothing but just stand there or fly around with your NPC bodyguards killing off enemy NPCs in Teladi space, does that get your rep with Teladi up? Or only if you are directly involved via combat or trading?

[@arseyrc]

the stock exchange at the end of the universe: I've surprised myself by watching all of this...

[@ayhanalagoz1085]

Hello,i'm new to whole x3 series and i started x3 albion prelude yesterday.I had no idea what to do then i found your videos (thank god) well i made good money with this trick yet i've no clue what to do afterwards.I tried to buy good trade ships but i couldnt do that aswell :(

[@willfe]

Money isn't the only requirement for buying the better ships. Reputation is also needed. You start out with a neutral reputation with most of the factions, so your buying options are limited. To improve your reputation with a given race or faction, you need to fly around in their territory looking for stations offering missions (look for icons next to their name in the system maps), and do some missions to improve your reputation. As you do so, you'll see your buying options improve.

[@Dojan5]

Wow. I have no idea what's going on. This game seems really complex. So much fun!

[@StonedAF101]

after exactly 23m and 12 sec. I went to corner store, bought a prepaid card. went on steam bought X3 TERRAN WAR PACK 19.99$ . now im going to watch the rest while this Downloads.. thnx this looks like an awesome find, kinda like eve online but singleplayer.. :D

[@MysticBoy91]

you have to have it installed in your ship. Theres even a column for it, when you put your mouse over the HUD on the left side of the screen. Its called Best Buy Locator and the other is Best Place or something like that, cant remember now. Anyway, you buy that stuff, and then press 5 for the best sells and 6 for the best buys. Hope i´ve answered your question, if not just msg me! :)

[@BBsealful]

me too! I am playing XRM mod in the mean time. SO much challenge in the mod its great!

[@willfe]

I've seen similar "weird" behavior where if you've bought all of a given stock, the price drops and more shares become available. Buy those immediately, and the price will drop again and more shares will become available again. Repeat until it's at its minimum, and you'll have more shares than you'd expect to ever be available. Naturally once the price goes back up, it rains profit because of all the low buys.

[@torq21]

Cool video. As a first time player playing a merchant how long would it take to discover this stock market through gameplay ie missions and exploring?

[@Zamolxes77]

Depending where you start and how thorough you are, a long long time ...

[@chrisg801]

I just learned about Xrebirth i found this video. Wow! i didn't know this existed. I am sold on PC games.

[@liamdudeeee]

1) this is an RPG and 2) This is one part of a massive game.

[@jecjoker]

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe right? Also has a few references other places I think but thats what rung a bell with me lol.

[@CapitalGearGaming]

Well technically my friend a spacecraft is a vehicle, regardless of whether you had a car in space going 70 m/s or a spacecraft on say, earth going 100km/h. Why? Because speed relative to objects around it like our sun or earth do not change only the measurements do, thus 70 m/s is insanely fast it's just that space is really freaking huge! ^.^

[@willfe]

Yeah :( I think it got fixed in the v2.0 update. There's a challenge going on right now on the Egosoft forums to see who can reach 2 billion credits the fastest (from a fresh start), and they've got it down to about 2 hours so far. I need to study their methods (and link to their videos on this video's description, too) and practice it so I can duplicate it myself to record commentary.

[@ingecaps]

The arrows reprecent the trend of the stock at the last 2 updates. so 2 green up arrows means that at the last 2 times the stock has increased both times.

[@BrljoMrljo]

I am kinda late.. a bit, but you in general huy when index is high and sell when it is low?

[@willfe]

The stock exchanges have different requirements per race. For the Argon, you have to have a station built in an Argon sector to access their exchanges. I forget what the Paranid requirements are, but the info panel for their exchange will tell you what they are.

[@chrisville25]

Hey Will, I have a small question, what was the keyboard shortcut you used to max the quantity to buy/sell? I fine arrow key takes forever, and manually typing it is too slow. Mouse clicking the end never gets it far enough. Thanks in advanced.

[@THEBOSSKING5164]

What made me get into the X series

[@mechanicalfluff]

Thanks a lot for the getting started guide. I tried for the longest time to get going on my own. Seems pretty impossible without a guide. Are you planning on doing some videos on the new X Rebirth later this year?

[@arentak2773]

How do you get all stocks on a single list? I can't seem to break up Weapons, Shields, etc....

[@junkiexl86]

Thank you for you videos, as being new to X universe, these help so much! I have been doing the stock market for about an hour now and made around 18m credits. I am Master Broker rank but still cannot buy anything from shipyard...Also how do you max the buy/sell slider out instantly like that? I've tried everything but I have to get it close to max with mouse then use the arrow keys to slowly slide it to max... EDIT: Found out buying/selling at stock markets only affects your Merchant rank and not the actual factions reputation...

[@willfe]

Yeah, you need to fly missions for the various factions to improve your ranking with them. To max out the buy/sell sliders with a keystroke, press [home] or [end]. I really wish they'd kept those keys in X Rebirth.