Yomo Kimyata

Q: What do you call 16 lawyers captured by the Devouring Earth? A: A good start.

That's three questions... One of my crafting toons, Ditch Digger (he digs ditches), has a very simple approach. It may not be as efficient as a lot of niches, and it can be very random, but it's profitable and easily replicated if you want to try it. He buys cheap lvl 30 yellow recipes and crafts them. Call that cost 50,000 inf. He converts by uncommon until he gets a good category (usually one conversion) or a good enhancement. Once he gets a good category, he converts by category until he gets a salable rare. In a few cases he will then convert by set until he gets what he wants (like a karma def/end into a knockback). I would say on average, that's 3-7 enhancement converters, sometimes more. Let's call all-in-cost on average somewhere in the 500k range. For your question 1, I will usually target anything that will sell QUICKLY in the 1-2mm range. The travel stealths are a good example of high turnover that I can make sales at over 1mm within a few minutes. I don't bother with melee rares anymore, since you may be able to get 1-2mm for one, but it may take a long time. 2. Shinobu covered it. 3. It depends on my mood at the time. Usually I will convert it to the +recovery, but not if the +recovery is selling for under 5mm at the time. It also depends on how many converters I have on hand. I always try to buy those at a discount (hey, he digs ditches, remember?) so if my bids haven't come through I'll put whatever I have on the market.

I like it a lot as is. I send my alts there from about lvl 8 through the mid teens. Much better content than most KR or Steel missions.

Read anything into a high number of bids at your own risk. I have blocks of crap bids out there all over the place. I have a ton of alts and each one has ton of market slots. And I doubt I'm the only one.

There's a lot of value-added here, and thank you for doing this. This is a great hands on guide on how to be involved in all aspects of the marketplace.

Definitely a Willpower brute. And if I know you at all, and I think I do, you should give War Mace a spin. Very satisfying.

If you are going for a speed run, there are three blocks to look out for. 1. Building up initial capital from scratch. I figure you need a few million to start, unless you spend merits for the converters. This is where the 5 merits from Atlas exploration badges comes in handy. You can certainly grab those merits and therefore 15 converters faster than you can build 1.5mm from zero. 2. Selling product quickly. If you are in a high demand time, then you are probably all right, but anecdotally I don't see very many, if any, low patient bids. If you offer your ToD triple at 5 inf to hit the outstanding bid, you very well may lose money on the trade. I rarely hit bids, so this may be less of a problem than I think, but there aren't many quality bids and very little depth on the bid side. So you need to rely on buyers coming to lift your cheap offer, which will affect how quickly you sell. 3. Acquiring supply. This is probably not a big deal at all, but I thought I'd mention it for completion's sake. It's relatively trivial to pick up yellow recipe fodder over time with good outstanding bids, but there may not be a lot of supply available waiting in the market at the exact time you are looking for it. That is partly my fault. Sorry.

You're gonna blow this out of the water! The only speed bump you might run into is waiting for buyers to come in. One thing I've noticed about the enhancement market is that there are very few "low and patient" bids. People are rolling in inf and want to buy when they want to buy, and as a seller you have no control over that.

This is what I'm trying to get my head around with respect to the market for enhancement converters. Let's say for the sake of argument that they trade at 100,000 each. I understand that many/most people feel that they are the most efficient way to convert merits into influence, so each merit translates to three enhancement converters to 300,000 inf. At the same time, I can spend 1mm influence to buy a merit, or to buy ten enhancement converters in the market. I call this "The Curious Case of Enhancement Converters." I totally get the bid/offer spread, but frankly I have a hard time with the idea of converting merits into enhancement converters. It seems like a real waste of merits, but at the same time I may have nothing better to spend merits on. I know that if I want ten enhancement converters, I can raise 1mm in the AH a lot faster than I can earn 3-4 merits. So I believe that enhancement converters are both wildly underpriced and wildly overpriced at the same time. I know I will always be willing to buy them, and I know that hundreds/thousands of people will be willing to sell them. I expect that sellers will gradually outnumber buyers, but who knows. I do know, however, that I refuse to flip them. I haven't observed a bid enough gap in bid/offer, and the dynamics certainly feel that sellers are more motivated than buyers. my two inf

I’ve never tried axe, but I’ll echo what is said here re: broadsword and war mace. I love broadsword. It’s my main and it was my main back in the good old days. But it definitely underperforms war mace in just about every way.

I picked this one for the name, then had to think long and hard about what AT to make it. Compound Interest

Great start! You'll get there in no time. I like to see other people's strategies. Every time I start a new toon I go through Outbreak, level to 2, kill one Hellion for the posting fee, and sell my two large inspirations. That gets me the seed money to start flipping to get my first 5-10mm. That might take a half hour, or overnight, but it's generally always there!

This is in respect to what happens when there are TIES in bids or offers across characters or accounts. And I'm changing my statement to "I'm not sure" based on my experience with common salvage. Often I'll have lots and lots of bids out at a low level that happens to be the highest outstanding bid, so when someone comes in to dump salvage, I'll have the best bid. On a single character, I've noticed that bids get filled in what seems to be a random fashion. A few here, a few there. When I use the same bid across characters, I notice that sometimes one toon's bids fill entirely while another's don't. That may be a timing issue or an observational error though. On the sell side, I will frequently dump large amounts of common salvage at 1 inf. Since that, by definition, is the lowest outstanding bid and guaranteed to be at or below any outstanding bid, I would expect them to sell instantly or close to it. However, sometimes the system doesn't process my offers instantly, and I'll often wait 10-15 seconds between sales, despite the fact that there are plenty of outstanding bids. I am guessing that is because there is at least one other person selling at 1 inf at the same time, and that the system is somehow allocating our offers in a manner that neither seems random nor in order of when the order was placed. It's curious.

Say hello to Hellion Keller, a Staff/Fire Brute.

1. Enter Outbreak. Change mouse settings. Add two power bars. Drag temporary powers onto power bar. Hit Sprint and finish up the tutorial. Exit to Atlas. Level and drag Rest to the right spot. 2. Kill one Hellion for the inf. Type “/ah”. Post my inspirations at 1 inf each. 3. Take proceeds and trade them to 5-10mm.

As a market maker, I can speak with authority that you certainly can have outstanding bids and offers on the same item at the same time. (In fact, it's particularly satisfying to buy and sell things at the same time -- it tells you that you are in the sweet spot!). You cannot, however, buy or sell from yourself. Pine, that may have been the case that you would have been selling to yourself and so the system didn't put it through.

I believe that if there are multiple equivalents then the sales are random. Example: I put up a handful of offers of common salvage at 5. I find that I’ll sell one or two from each block of ten rather than the first ten selling first, etc.

I cannot understand why converters are so cheap.

I believe that when there are two or more eligible bids for an offer or two or more eligibility blue offers for a bid it is random rather than by when the bid or offer was made.

The thing I’ve noticed about this server is that profit margins go away very quickly and that people are willing to work for almost nothing.