For example, I’m sure the average joe doesn’t know just how expensive calligraphy pens can be, or how deep the rabbit hole goes on video game speedruns.
I don’t think the average Joe would know how expensive Warhammer 40k or model trains are.
Is it cheaper if you 3d print your own minis?
Short answer is probably not, it depends.
If you have a printer set up and ready to go, it certainly can be. But for me to get a printer and all the fixings (printer, cure/wash station, resin, tent and ventilation for fumes) I was out about 700 Cad. And then you gotta get stls, some are easy others are way harder. Some of those are free and some are paid. And then I myself am paying for lychee pro, so that’s around a Netflix sub down the drain. Once that’s all clear there is the insane time investment. I can easily spend 30-60 min processing a job and prepping the printer for the next print. Finding, prepping an stl to print if everything is good can take as short as an hour, but can take much longer if things are hard to find, or if it’s a complex object to support. And then if you fail that print, all that time and resin (not too terrible, my large prints are like 5 bucks, small minis are under a dollar) is wasted.
After all that, there is still things I plan to buy. I lack the patience to try printing void dragon c’tan, and there’s only one source that I could hope to buy a decent imotekh stl, and it’d be more expensive than buying the model (I regret buying it. That is the first and last time I ever get a finecast model).
For me the fun is in the journey not the product. I’ve had a lot of fun printing my necrons. I don’t plan on playing in anything official, just friends so that angle isn’t an issue. I went into it wanting to take up 3d printing as its own hobby and I do not regret going this route, but building a single 2k army like I plan to is not worth it. Past that I imagine the savings will roll in, but I don’t really care for another army. Ethics wise I’m happy to vote with my wallet by diverting money to printing VS. paying for overpriced models.
I feel like learning how to 3d print is a skill that could be very useful. Maybe I’m trying to justify it 😅
I’m not sure if that’s viable for 40k. You might not be welcomed to play with fake minis. You could surely do that with friends though.
My understanding is that you’re only allowed to play what you own, no stand ins.
So literally pay to win?
Well, more pay to play.
But if you want to participate in a battle with a large army, you need to have that army.
It is a bit more complicated than that. Basically, people you play with won’t care so long as you’ve painted it to a reasonable standard and there isn’t some massive size difference that’d give some notable advantage or disadvantage compared to official minis. The same is true of official ones where people are picky about unpainted plastic but its likely more a thing with printed ones. Independent game stores also won’t really give a shit since you’re likely buying paints and stuff from them anyway.
GW stores are the ones that will have a problem with it, along with tournaments they host. I have heard stories of people getting shit for using forgeworld stuff (which is GW’s speciality site basically, they sell the really big models and some more niche like, regiment-specific stuff) in stores because it isn’t something the stores themselves will specifically sell. This is because of corporate policy though, no one wants to lose their job.
Onepagerule is cheaper.
I’ll do the reverse - I think most people would expect homebrewing beer to be quite hard to get started with, but for $50 you can get everything you need to start making a really quite good beer, and save money at the same time (homebrewed beer is usually much cheaper than store bought)
If you want to get started search for “brew in a bag” and buy a kit beer mix. You’ll need a handful of equipment like a brew bag and fermenter, but that stuff is really cheap.
Then you can indeed go down a massive rabbit hole of refinements, but it just amazed me that the first beer you make will already be a good one.
From my experience, it’s not that much cheaper, especially after considering time cost. One issue with it though is that you get a lot of the same type of beer, which isn’t totally bad but also somewhat puts a stopper on trying new beer. It’s great if you’ve got plenty of people to share it with though, but I don’t have enough that enjoy beer.
Keyboards are generally known about, but the ergo part of it is a rabbit hole within the rabbit hole. Some people literally design, 3D print, wire up, solder and program one-off keyboards because they don’t like the ones made by other people.
Oh hey, you called? https://imgur.com/a/INk7FzQ
that is a fantastic build. and the wax lacing! It’s such a lost art, but it works so damn well! Next PC build I do I’m lacing all of my cabling.
You’re very brave showing your wiring.
Just built a simple 3x3 macropad and I spent several hours trying to keep every last bit of the wiring clean and I still have a rats nest…
Love the wires (that are hidden) also fit the color scheme
Woah…
O good lord, the way those wires are bundled is porn to me.
It’s infectious too. I REALLY want to get good with one! and don’t get me started on the absolute craziest style: chorded keyboards! Insane!
Have you tried one? I’ve been pretty curious about them
Not yet but I am seriously considering building a badass ergo keyboard at some point once I see a good enough design to copy.
I wonder if someone could outperform a Stenographer with a chorded?
Steno machines are also “chorded”, and they type in a form of shorthand where sounds, words, and phrases can be represented by just a few characters. My guess is that given equal skill levels, a steno machine would still be faster.
yup. [email protected]
The nice thing is that it’s possible to find your “endgame” where you are satisfied without spending a TON. I’m happy with my Drop ALT, stock key caps, and Zeal Zilent v2s. Mind you that was my 3rd or 4th board of varying “depth” in the scene. 🤣
Maybe not as expensive as the others, but crochet/knitting/sewing all start off fairly cheap, and then the next thing you know you’re offering to service old men behind a Joann’s fabric because you need this particular fabric and you need an entire bolt of it, and it’s the one fabric in the entire fucking store that isn’t on their amazing buy one get 73 free sale for the week.
The problem is not the price of the yarn, the problem is that none of us have self control and will hoard thousands of dolars in yarn in a closet and not use it because “it’s too pretty I need the perfect project for it”.
…and then we go out and buy more yarn
I do not appreciate you spying on me and posting about it. Rude.
Yep! Especially buying like ethically sourced yarn and stuff. It’s why I buy acrylic yarn because buying yarn from local dyers is difficult as.
Same boat. I’m poor as fuck. I hate that I make so many decisions to buy things I know aren’t the option ethically, and that applies so hard to yarn. Really anything in the textiles industry. I try not to buy animal fiber at all unless it’s thrifted.
I just started crocheting this week 🥲
It’s a wonderful habit! Don’t listen to me. Haha. Fiber crafts are seriously awesome. I’m a total novice at crochet, an intermediate knitter (Portuguese style), and I sew half way well. It’s so much fun, and so worth it. … Just read your coupons carefully.
After one project I’m already feeling that about the coupons 🙃 But it’s really fun and I enjoy it a lot! I can’t wait to dive deeper into it
Aquariums. It’s shocking how much money you can spend on fish and how easily you can kill them all if you don’t know what you’re doing. Even worse, if you’re really into it, you can’t have just one aquarium.
We had one for years. I cleaned it one day just like I had done a hundred times before. The next day the water turned cloudy and all our fish died. Sold the tank and cabinet a few days later. Having an aquarium is a 2nd job.
We had all the fish die in our aquarium once when I was a kid. Was random and unexplainable at first. Then I found out someone had run a powerful ozone machine to combat mold in the house and no one thought about the fish tank.
As much as I’d love to have a nice live coral aquarium to look at in my living room, fuck everything about taking care of one.
Racing drones.
It turns out when you crash your $500 drone into a brick wall at 50mph, shit breaks and you get to spend more money if you want to fly it into another wall
This has both, really. People also have no idea how hard it is to pilot the quick, expensive little bastards. You’re gonna spend a good chunk of time in the simulator before you can do anything with a real one. But hey, at least you can fix them, unlike DJI stuff where at the smallest little thing it’s bricked.
Oh definitely. DJI is good for photography and some types of video, but that’s about it. I’d avoid DJI for just about everything else.
I feel like a lot of people might think miniature building/painting could be easy - or at least quick.
It isn’t.
From my understanding it’s also expensive as hell.
As an alternative, the game Moonbreakers has a really impressive model painting tool. You paint your figures that you play the game with (though there are defaults you can choose from also). It’s an under-appreciated game with top tier voice-acting also. The story is told in audio form you can play whenever in the game, so you can just chill out painting while listening to the game’s story too.
Another Moonbreaker player!
That’s the one from the people who made subnautica, right?
Yep.
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I was going to say it’s a lot less expensive if you don’t need espresso. An aeropress is around $40, I bought mine nearly two decades ago, and still use it daily!
…then I realized I spent $160 on the grinder right next to it. So I’m not totally immune. :P
You can get a French press for $10 - $20. Get the beans from a coffee shop and ask them to grind it.
You now have great coffee for a month.
I have an aeropress for solo coffee at home and a deltapress at work, espresso machine for batch coffees.
I am still amazed about how much money you can spend on making coffee at home. 300€ for a manual grinder - “that’s the cheao chinese stuff” wtf
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I’ve purposely avoided getting into espresso because my wife already thinks i’m crazy for wanting to spend $6-700 on a new grinder and drip machine when our current ones “work fine”.
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Yea, I have extreme fomo when it comes to hobbies, so i inevitable “have” to upgrade. I think it’s better I stick to my coffee. But, it’s nice to know I can start lower if I ever change my mind.
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Workflow? Jesus Christ I just want a coffee that’s nicer than the instant powder.
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Where $50 for a small bag of coffee seems reasonable.
Yeah because it apparently tastes like blueberries, moss and the left knee of Mussolini’s grandma after a late afternoon walk in the summer rain
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I agree of course. It is just nice to have a variety and it is also worth the money to a degree.
Although, I must say, I use rather cheap coffee (not more than 10€-12€/250g with the price resulting rather from fairtrade and organic labels than from it being high quality) if I want to make a milk based drink. I personally don’t think most of third wave/specialty coffee tastes good with milk. So using it on a latte macchiato seems like a waste to me.
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In general, I personally don’t think milk and coffee go well together at all, to be honest. I don’t drink milk drinks often, but when I do, I add tons of sugar and sirup and consider it a dessert and not “coffee”.
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Love coffee as a hobby for this reason. You can start with $20 to get simple pour over equipment or even nicer venas but you can go far and high with it eventually or stop at the $20
Apparently fur-suits are ~$15,000. You could buy a car for that and still have enough money left over to drive for a year.
That’s about the most expensive fursuit you can buy, it goes much lower than that. Still low car money though
I just ordered a second one a couple months from a top-tier maker and it was pretty expensive.
The first one I got back in 2008 was $1450. I don’t think it’s possible to get a descent one for under $3000 these days
Warhammer 40k. I heard about the game years ago and thought it sounded pretty cool. Didn’t realize that unlike D&D, it’s not something generally played without minis. And it’s a massive war game. So you need a lot of minis. And it’s a massive war game. So you need to know how to strategize or you’re gonna suck. High cost and high skill.
I just read the lore instead. 🤷🏻♂️
Wargaming is something I’ve always wanted to try but don’t want to spend the time and money to actually try it. It’s just way too high of a barrier.
There’s a cool game called Moonbreakers that has great model painting tools. I hope someday Warhammer 40k gets a tabletop accurate video game with model painting and everything. I can see why they wouldn’t, because it may take away from tabletop, but I’d bet it’d work the other way. It’d create a way for people to try it before committing that much to it, instead of seeing the barrier and backing out.
Modular synths, eurorack is where you find the most accessible modules than the other formats. Sometimes you go and spend 600€ in a module without batting an eye.
Also you have to count the case, patch cables, etc.
It gets expensive quickly if you can’t fight the GAS (gear acquisition syndrome)
Also it is a musical instrument so you need to practice many hours to play it affectively.
It is really cool, I do enjoy myself playing with my modular, but would love to have more time to spend with it.
From what I’ve seen, modulars tend to attract people that love to tinker but aren’t necessarily very musical. They spend 30k and years on their setup but when they actually play something it’s just space soup. There are exceptions of course, some respected producers do use them, but that’s just my casual observation.
Absolutely. I love audio design, synthesis and making music, but I have rarely released anything. It took a long time for me to realize and accept that I do this for my own entertainment and not to be a successful musician. Its just a hobby.
And there’s nothing wrong with that! Music has also always remained something I did for fun, I have a different creative field as my day job and I don’t want to do the same with music nu-hu.
Mountain biking.
Why would you not expect that to have a high ceiling either monetarily or in sheer skill? I mean bikes are expensive, and it’s a sport practiced on a professional level.
Because you can get a basic bike for like a couple of hundred quid and commute for years. It’s just a basic transport type. Yet it grew into quite an absurd, dangerous and expensive hobby.
The bike is one thing, but you also need a mountain.
That too.
I think it’s a question of how high the ceiling can go. There are people who helicopter to the tops of mountains to drop into a downhill, and their ridiculously expensive bike will need many parts replaced at the end of it.
You can get started homebrewing cider or mead for like $50, especially if what you’re brewing isn’t carbonated so you can just store it in whatever. You can also buy home garage versions of fully automated brewing and canning lines that will run you into the tens of thousands, not accounting for consumables. It escalates fast.
I imagine the ceiling here is a full production facility rivaling that of Coors or Budweiser.
There have got to be a few microbreweries where a home setup just got out of hand. Or, Rather, there were. Lots of microbreweries go out of business.
Camping. Whether it’s at a campsite, where a family might spend tens or hundreds of thousands on an RV and all the gadgets in it, or deep in the woods, where an ultralight backpacker might spend thousands of dollars upgrading perfectly good gear they already had because it could save a few ounces.
To be clear, camping is actually really accessible, and few people go THAT extreme with it. Just… no matter what budget you set for it, there are ways to spend it. :P
