Super Pack Strategies

[Gremlin]

As I've already mentioned I've been experimenting with the Hero and Villain and Rogues and Vigilantes Super Packs. I wanted to know the following:-

1. Is it worth opening Packs?
2. Is it worth converting ATOs?
3. Is it worth catalysing ATOs?
4. How many packs will the ATO market bear?

 

TLDR Answers:

1. Yes
2. Maybe
3. Yes
4. More than I can be bothered to open

 

To answer these questions, I opened packs in batches of 60 and then sold all the contents. If I needed to convert IOs I got the converters from the packs or used merits to buy converters. All remaining merits were turned into Boosters and sold. For catalysts, I first of all used the ones from the packs and then bought more with inf if required. All Brain Storms were converted to rare salvage. In all cases, I listed everything at "Sell It Soon" prices. i.e. I intended to get the highest price that would sell in 24 hours. I ran the first 3 batches with 3 different strategies. Here are the results:-

A) Mid week. Sell all contents without converting or catalysing anything. This generated a profit of 2.8 mm per pack. It took 45 seconds to open and list the pack contents yielding 3.6 mm inf per minute of effort.

B) Early week. Catalyse all 10 Brute ATOs that dropped. Convert all low value ATOs to more desirable ones. This generated 3.8 mm inf per pack but it took 80 seconds per pack to process. The result was 2.9 mm inf per minute. I think I was a bit slow processing these packs so the yield per minute could be higher with practice.

C) Weekend. Similar to A) except that I catalysed all the Brute ATOs that were converted from other ATOs. This meant I sold 21 superior ATOs instead of 10. This was the clear winner. It yielded 6.0 mm inf per pack and 4.7 mm inf per minute of effort. I'm not sure the market for superior Brute ATOs would be big enough to do this on a large scale.

 

So now I was left wondering how big the ATO market is. I decided to focus on the most active parts of the market; Blaster and Brute ATOs. For this, rather epic, experiment I opened 300 Hero packs and 300 Rogue packs. I converted all ATOs to Blaster and Brute ATOs and sold them. I didn't catalyse anything. I started with Hero packs and then moved on to Rogue packs. I didn't track my time because I felt that was already covered. The result was that I sold just under 200 ATOs a day. I'm pretty sure that less than half the ATOs that sold during that time were mine. I wouldn't be too surprised if it was 20% or less. My sales were mainly limited by other vendors that undercut me. On some occasions I just ran out of stock.

 

So the answers to my questions are:-

1. Yep. It's definitely worth opening Super Packs at current prices.
2. It's worth converting ATOs if you want to maximise profit per pack. It's not if you want to maximise inf per minute.
3. It's definitely worth creating and selling Superior Brute ATOs.
4. The Brute and Blaster markets are selling at least 10 of each IO per day. It's probably 50+. I don't know about Superiors.

 

 

Edited April 21, 2020 by Gremlin
Typo

[Gremlin]

I got interested in packs because of all the discussion about inflation. Super Packs are inf sinks so opening packs is doubly virtuous. You provide people with ATOs and fight inflation at the same time!

 

So how did I do?

• 1.99 bn profit in 5 days (3.3 mm profit per pack)
• 6.8 bn inf removed from the game

Or to put it differently; I neutralised 113 farmer hours and got rich in the process. 

 

(P.S. I really want to punch some Nazis now.)

[Yomo Kimyata]

Well done, and that helps explain prices and supply over the past few days.  33% profit is on the higher side of anecdotal evidence, but the converting and catalyzing undoubtedly helped that!

 

 

[hazygreys]

Good info! These commands can help when you buy a whole bunch of packs at once.

 

/salvage_open S_HVSuperPackSalvage (Heroes and Villains)

/salvage_open S_RVSuperPackSalvage (Rogues and Vigilantes)
/salvage_open S_WinterPackSalvage (Lords of Winter)

[Sakai]

Any idea how long that took?

[Gremlin]

27 minutes ago, Sakai said:

Any idea how long that took?

Processing a single batch of 60 packs took 45 to 80 minutes depending on how much converting I did.

 

The experiment to sell 600 packs took place over 5 days. I didn't measure how much time I spent doing that because I spent a lot of time keeping records and wrangling spreadsheets. If I'd skipped those bits it would have taken 2.5 hours a day. (12.5 hours in total.)

[Gremlin]

1 hour ago, hazygreys said:

Good info! These commands can help when you buy a whole bunch of packs at once

I didn't know about those commands. Thanks.

 

FWIW the most time consuming parts of the process were claiming the drops (about 12 seconds per pack) and converting ATOs. (About 13 seconds per pack.)

[Elmyder]

4 hours ago, hazygreys said:

Good info! These commands can help when you buy a whole bunch of packs at once.

 

/salvage_open S_HVSuperPackSalvage (Heroes and Villains)

/salvage_open S_RVSuperPackSalvage (Rogues and Vigilantes)
/salvage_open S_WinterPackSalvage (Lords of Winter)

I attempted these and I'm getting the error: "unknown command: salvage_open"

[hazygreys]

45 minutes ago, Elmyder said:

I attempted these and I'm getting the error: "unknown command: salvage_open"

Did you copy the text in the (....)? That is just for reference what the command opens. I normally make mine a macro, just tested and they still work. 

[Elmyder]

27 minutes ago, hazygreys said:

Did you copy the text in the (....)? That is just for reference what the command opens. I normally make mine a macro, just tested and they still work. 

ha...that was it. Now I feel stupid. Thank you for the clarification! (Strange it claims salvage_open is an unknown command though!)

[tidge]

Nice and Ebil. The only bit that surprised me was that Catalyzing ATO was worthwhile. I'm guessing that it is farming/PLing toons up to 50 that drives the demand?

[Gremlin]

8 hours ago, tidge said:

The only bit that surprised me was that Catalyzing ATO was worthwhile

There's definitely margin in making superiors but I suspect the volume might be too low to make it worth the bother. The only data I have about this is that I sold about 10 Brute superiors a day for around 18 mm each. I did this for about 3 days. Most superiors sell a no more than a handful of each IO a day.

 

I noticed that Brute ATOs are often in short supply. Maybe some people find it easier to buy superiors at that point.

[Unrandom]

"Is it worth catalysing ATOs?"

 

Is it possible to catalyze an ATO if the enhancement is not your character's AT? If yes, how?

 

EDIT: never mind. I figured it out. 🙂

Edited April 23, 2020 by Unrandom

[thunderforce]

Interesting. I used to do a lot of super packs, but ATO prices seem to be down, and boosters off the 1.5 million mark.