I am following this whole MOC developement for more than two years and ever was so stoked to one day build it myself. Even though I don't have the time yet, I decided to do the step and purchased the instructions from Mr. Dvorak. This whole thing, the preparation, thorough planning and as gigantic as perfectly detailed instruction is just outstanding and a great gift to the community! Thanks for this MOC!
Unfortunately, I am totally busy with the big bricks - meaning that we currently are building our home at it will definitely be engaged with other things until May this year. But why not preparing everything already? :D
Well, as getting the instruction somehow started the avalanche, I couldn't stop and begun creating an excel table, based on the bricklink lists - and with a little workaround managed to get a pretty neat overview (including a calculation script, and a xml converter to put the current situation into bricklink and brickowl, to make it more visualized). The reason, why I decided to do a table followup is, that from my experience the wishlist and update function, after I'd bought some bricks - did not always work properly and led to double listings/purchases in the past - and since double purchases in this dimension would be quite pricy, I decided to change my approach.
So this is what my list looks like (or at least a part of it):
Part ID, Color Code and Set Quantity are fed from the basic MOC set file. The quantity of the ordered items comes from a "ordered-items" tab, which I combine from xml's of several brick-list pages and manual purchases. The "CrosslinkID" is some sort of primary key. Consisting of Part ID and Color, to ensure that each line is unique and corresponds to the set-item. This actually makes most of the organisational work. To ensure, that PartID and Color in my "ordered-items" tab is merging with the CrosslinkID of the requirement list. But I worked it out quite good.
The corresponding xml code is generated simply via excel formula
to make it easier for me, setting up a "to buy" wishlist by filtering all the items I still need, copy the generated xml column, paste it into a *.xml file (certanly with appropriate header and footer) and upload it to brickowl (or any desired database).
It was quite a hustle, getting rid of all overpriced items by manually altering the max. value or searching for alternatives but sometimes (and all the ones who already built this beast know it!) theres rare bricks, which could make the whole set incredibly expensive.
Top of the rocks is this one
the famous 4215b in reddish brown, which is as rare as pricy and since you need 93 of them, you better sell all your stock :D
Since Lego isn't the only molding company on the market anymore I started to look for an alternative. It took me a couple of days to find a competitor, who offered this item in this particular color and so it came, that I ordered 100 of these for the current fan-price of one (!) Lego item (shipping included). I don't know the quality or color match yet, but the company has a huge portfolio and good experience, wherefore I hope to make good use of this bargain.
For all the other rare, expensive pieces I place an significantly cheaper order at another competitor from Germany who already proofed worthy to be 100% compatible to Lego.
In total, with only 204 bricks missing, I paid less than 1600€ for the whole set.
Keeping you updated :)
