A Meandering Path to a Billion Inf

[Yomo Kimyata]

(EDIT: tl/dr:  A great way to make consistent bank, no matter how often you play a given alt, is to put in a bid for 10x a yellow recipe that doesn't require rare salvage as the last thing you do before logging off.  First thing you do when next logging on is collect them and put in bids on your salvage.  Play and you should have bought your salvage by the end of your game session.  Collect salvage, craft, play some rare roulette, and post your items.  Put in a bid for 10x yellow recipe.  Repeat ad infinitum.)

 

So, I decided to start a new alt, explore Praetoria, and document a solo path from zero to a billion inf in detail, and not at a breakneck pace.  I expect to demonstrate a lot of ways to accumulate inf without spending very much effort and to do it in real time.  I think a lot of this will be old news to long-time readers of this forum, but I hope someone finds it useful

 

So welcome Miss Terrigen 1.1, a mutant Poison/Radiation Blast Defender.  After running through the tutorial, I ended up on the streets of Nova Praetoria at level 2 with nothing but the wings on my back, 25 information in my pocket, and two large inspirations in my, um, I'm actually not sure where I'm keeping those.  So they've got to go:  open up /AH and post them each for 5 inf and BAM there's my seed money. 

 

Since I heard a rumor on a Reddit board, I decide to look up Ancient Artifacts and see how they are trading.  Color me surprised to see that there are over 10mm for offer and zero bids.  I'm no evil genius (in this incarnation) but I realize that I'm pretty likely to buy me some common salvage if I'm willing to put some bids in.  Since I'm not greedy, let's bid 55 inf a piece for as many as I can carry, then do some work for Praetor Barry White.  A few missions later, I'm dinging level 4 and going to the vendor to sell my inventory of ancient artifacts, then refill my bids for more.  You can repost them on the AH as well, but I'd rather take the sure money right away from the vendor.  Don't forget that when you open the vendor window, you can right click on the stack (I think it was 124 deep at this point) and sell the entire stack at once.  So, I've quadrupled my initial stake, and I'm going to keep doing this while I go pick some roses.

 

Soon I ding 5, get a new contact, clean out my inventory again and now I've got low six figures of inf.  Let's try out something else that I wrote a guide about a long time ago and see if anyone is selling any cheap SOs.  So I set filters on the AH for levels 40 to 54, click the For Sale toggle, and I'm bidding on any accuracy and damage SOs available.  Again, since I'm not greedy, I'm bidding at 10k a piece.  Let's give people a little love, right?  I can sell all for them for about a 5k profit, so we're good.

 

At this point, I'm going to invest a little bit in myself at the P2W vendor or whatever it is called.  Spend 10k on Reveal, 5k on a jetpack, get Athletic Run and decide to pick up Inner Inspiration as well.  The last is another great way to get seed money -- every 30 minutes you get three medium or large inspirations.  The larges are generally good for at least a few thousand inf in the AH.

 

I'm not sure how long I've been playing now, certainly well under an hour.  I'm going to log, but before I do I put in bids on three recipes at 10x apiece (I'll reveal names and prices next episode).  I've got 340,939 inf left over, and I hate leaving that unused.  Remembering that brainstorm ideas trade at 20:1 for a rare salvage, I put in bids for enough to buy one rare salvage worth and hopefully make a small profit.

 

Until next time!

 

 

Edited February 28, 2021 by Yomo Kimyata
Added a tl;dr

[Aeroprism]

More please.

 

Seriously.  This is entertaining.  I want the next part 🙂

[Yomo Kimyata]

So in today's episode, Miss Terrigen 1.1 meets BV and realizes that +2 ghouls are no fun at all.  I start all my characters at +1/x1 with bosses on, and it's not that I regret it, but I'm going to have to do something in order to stop missing so much.  Anyway, I've now run two story arcs for 10 merits in total, and am just short of lvl 8.  

 

The first thing I did when logging on was hit Inner Inspiration and sell the large yellow inspiration for 3,000.  Then I asked myself, hey, why are large yellows so cheap compared to reds and purples?  Demand!  So let's put in some bids for the ones that are cheap, transform 3 of them into a red or purple, and resell!  It's not a super fast endeavor, but it's a great way to turn 10k into 50k on a relatively short turnaround.  Remember, in the AH, time is your friend.  By playing the slow game, you are trading convenience to others at the price of their inf.

 

They say the first million is the hardest, but I'd actually say the first 10mm are the hardest, because that's what you need to buy the portable workbench from the P2W.  Until then, I need to find a place to craft!  Fortunately, the wiki tells me of the C.D.E.C., which is apparently the equivalent of the University goldside.  So, take me down to the Imperial City, where the pints are Imperial and they sing this ditty.  Oh, but before I do, I need to go to the Merit Vendor and trade in my ghoul-blood soaked merits for those magical animals -- converters.  30 in my pocket.

 

So first step, let's take the 20 brainstorm ideas and craft them to a Hamidon Goo.  It cost me 20 * 16k = 320k to make this, and I can make a profit as long as I sell it for over about 356k.  Remember always that selling is going to cost you 10% in total of the sales price.  I like to refer to this as the 9/10 or the 10/9 rule for breaking even.  For acceptable profits, I tend to look more at a 5/10 or 10/5 rule, but you can work as cheap as you want.  Just make sure you don't lose money on the trade unless that was your intention.  Anyway, looking at the current market for rare salvage, I choose my sales price and in short order sell it for 450k, which was more than I expected.  Good, I need some posting money.

 

Now let's look at the 30 recipes I bought overnight:  lvl 20 Quickfoots (running) 10 Endurance, 20 Run Speed, and paid 10,005 a piece for them.  Why Quickfoot, and why level 20?  I'm glad you asked.

 

We (or at least I) talk a lot about rare roulette, and there are great guides out there, but it might be easier to give simpler examples.  I use rare roulette as a phrase that covers changing cheap recipes or IO enhancements into more expensive IOs through using converters.  "Rare" because usually the most expensive IOs are rare/orange, and "cheap" usually means uncommon/yellow recipes or IOs.  It's easy to turn an uncommon recipe into a rare IO through conversion, and it's a lot cheaper (generally) than crafting a rare recipe that requires expensive rare salvage.  So why Quickfoot?  Well, it's one of two Running recipes, and if you spend two converters to convert a Quickfoot by Category (Running), then you will end up with a Celerity, which is the rare Running IO.  One of the three Celerity IOs is the +Stealth, which consistently sells well and has decent, if not spectacular, outstanding bids.  I generally find this a great way to get my characters kick started.  Why level 20?  Well, the lower the level, the cheaper the crafting costs.  Quickfoot/Celerity starts at level 15, but I've found that level 20 has a much better variety of IOs that I can transform to.

 

So, let's buy my invention salvage.  A total of 60 common, paying 250 a pop, which fills almost immediately in the AH.  A total of 30 uncommon.  At this moment, there appears to be someone bidding 1,001 on large amounts of yellow salvage so I can't buy it at 1,000 right now.  Fortunately they also seem to be offering large amounts at 1,002.  That's a decent way to get your sales badges for the AH, but as far as I'm concerned I'd rather pay 1,002 to get it right now than to wait for a lower bid to fill.

 

I can afford to craft 10 Quickfoots right now, and I have 30 converters.   On your Enhancement bar, you should see options for Manage and Convert.  If you don't see Convert, you don't own any converters!  It only shows up if you have some in inventory.  So I open up Convert, drag a Quickfoot into the interface, select the Out of Set radio button, and use the pull down menu to select Category: Running.  I do that ten times (yes, you have to use the pull down menu each time.  It's a real drag) and end up with 10 Celerities, and three of them are stealth.  I post one for 500,000.  I expect it to trade for more, but I never post for less than I want to accept.  It sells for 1,755,000, which is more than satisfactory.  I sold one more for 1,500,000 and posted the third one at a price I believe will sell in short order.  I've now got almost 3mm in inf, which I am going to plough directly back into converters.  Right now, the last five trades for converters are all at 75,000 and that is well more than I want to pay.  Generally, I pay somewhere between 60k and 70k and it's time to take a break anyhow.

 

Currently level 7, sitting on about 175k of uninvested inf, and 7 level 20 Celerities.  Invested time about 25 minutes of game time and about 5 minutes of marketing.  Next time, I'll do some rare roulette on those seven (and the other 20 recipes)  once I buy my converters.  See you soon!

[Black_Assassin]

Its like the old skool Fury Flechette or Organica threads. Do love reading through these 🙂

[Yomo Kimyata]

I'm going to cheat just a little bit in doing once-a-day posts, because I had literally two minutes to log on this afternoon.  I had bought about 60 converters so I crafted and converted my remaining 20 Quickfoot recipes into Celerities.  Five of them were +Stealth so I posted them at prices that would move quickly.   I'm still buying cheap yellow, blue, and orange large inspirations, converting them at 3:1 to purples and selling them.  I've moved past common salvage for the time being.

 

When I logged on this evening, they had all sold, so I'm sitting on over 10mm inf that I immediately reinvested in converters that were trading at my price.  I'm now sitting on about 150 converters, 22 lvl 20 Celerity (non-stealth), and I'm itching to make some cashish.

 

NOTE:  this session I'm about to describe at length took five minutes, tops.  That's because I've had a lot of practice, but I cannot imagine it would even take Slowy McSlowerson more than 15 minutes.  This was purely a marketing session -- no game play other than upgrading Miss T a bit with some enhancements which I will detail later.  This writeup is taking *MUCH* more time than actually doing that voodoo that I do so well.

 

Playing rare roulette is part art, part study in statistics.  I usually budget 10 converters per IO to make it worth "something" but I rarely use anything close to that.  In this mini case-study, I have 22 IOs that I want to hit my sales price bogey.  I usually set that bogey at around 2mm, but sometimes more, sometimes less.  This takes a bit of practice and knowing what can change into what easily.  Generally, I will convert a random rare once by rarity (pull up the Convert menu, drag the Celerity to the top, select the Out-of-Set Conversion radio button, and use the (default) Rarity: Rare setting).  But how do I know if it's valuable or not?  A good shortcut is to ask yourself if you have ever slotted it yourself or if you find it useful.  A slightly longer cut is to move it to the AH and check the trade history.  At this point in my career, I have a pretty good idea of what items are worth "something".  But sometimes I'm wrong.  I've never slotted a Rectified Reticle, but I've sold oodles of them.

 

Sometimes you will get an item that isn't very valuable in and of itself, but it can be converted in set to something valuable.  Or it can be converted by category to something valuable.  Example:  I roll a lvl 20 Impervium Armor Resistance IO.  That's probably worth something by itself.  If I convert it in set, I can eventually get the +psionic resist IO which is generally worth a fair amount more.  If I convert it by Resist Damage, I can end up with a Steadfast Protection or an Unbreakable Guard.  You can run the odds if you like, but often either way will be ok.  I'll talk a lot more about converting in set at a future point in time but I'll tell you this one right now:  I always convert a Steadfast in set until I get the Defense, and I always convert a Kismet until I get the Accuracy.

 

If you really have no idea what something is worth, think about what your bogey is.  Then see if it has traded for less than that amount in the last five; if so, reroll.  Just don't set your bogey too high or you will be rolling a long, long time.

 

All you need to know about what can turn into what can be found here:  https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Enhancement_Sets#Overview  (EDIT:  that's the old wiki page.  See this one for current stuff with new HC sets and all:  https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Enhancement_Sets).  Remember, PvP sets can only turn into PvP sets, ATOs can only turn into ATOs, purples can only turn into purples, WOs can only turn into WOs, and vice versa.  You cannot get a Shield Wall from rolling a Reactive Defenses, no matter how hard you try. 

 

Here's what I ended up with out of the 22 lvl 20 rares, which took me 106 converters:

 

Blessing of the Z knockback

Call to Arms proc

Celerity stealth x2 (yes, these converted away from Celerity and then back to Celerity)

Cloud Senses A/E/R

Energy Manipulator Endurance x2

Gift of the Ancients run speed

Impeded Swiftness proc

Impervium Armor +psi res

Kinetic Combat D/R

Kismet accuracy

Reactive Defenses x2 (not proc)

Rectified Reticle to hit buff

Regenerative Tissue regen

Steadfast Protection Def x2 (this is a common.  I converted a rare Resist Damage by category and got to Steadfast)

Unbreakable Guard x3

Winter's Gift slow resist

 

I've got a good idea where to post these to sell most within 24 hours, so doing that now.  No need to be greedy.

 

Now, time for a little self love.  At level 7, I'm going to need some accuracy SOs, so I'll buy 5 of those.  I'll probably start loading up on some sets soon, but not right now.  I do need a Kismet Accuracy, and despite the fact I just made one (wrong level), I can make one a lot cheaper than I'm going to sell this one for.  And I also like them in attuned form.  So my plan is to buy some different attuned Kismets and convert them to Accuracies.  Bids placed.

 

Until next time, gentle readers!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 20, 2021 by Yomo Kimyata

[Ukase]

Can I just say I enjoyed this? And I learned something! Me!  A player who did similarly, got a billion in a week without really trying hard, just about 15-20 minutes a day, twice a day. 

While you bought common salvage on the cheap from the AH, I've been scouring the AH for cheap rare recipes. Buy 'em for 100 to 3K and sell them for 5k-10K. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

At level 10, some observations about Praetoria:  I like it!  It's different and I'm not sure I'm really getting the "choose your own adventure" part just yet.  I mean, some missions tell me I can rat out my people to Marchand, but I've never met him yet.  I guess I am supposed to just find him on the map and introduce myself, but I can do that with Miss T 1.2.  I'm fighting groups that look like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, I just finished a mission that seemed to be full of characters from 90s tv shows and video games, and ghouls, lots of ghouls.  The last are the most interesting, and I secretly like how one is just sitting there so you want to go up and punk him, and then two more drop from the rafters to punk you.  At some point I need to run this at x8 to see what happens, but I'm not there yet!  I can't bring myself to halt XP to experience more content, so I plan on making more alts, as I am wont to do.

 

Some observations about Poison/Radiation Blast defenders:  I'm not unfamiliar with either set, but slow playing against decently tough opponents demonstrates that this is hardly easy mode.  I know that this will develop into a PBAoE monster, but right now, with minimal slotting, it's a bit of a slog.  My main attacks are ranged with Neutrino Bolt and X-Ray Specs, and both my debuffs are ranged with Weaken and Envenom.  I own Irradiate, but find it underwhelming for now.  Eventually I will proc it up, but (by my calculations) an under 40% chance of a 3.5PPM trigger is less than awe inspiring.  Things will pick up, I know it!  This is also the first character I really have tried hover blasting on.  I am not a big fan for two reasons.  One, it seems kind of unsportsmanlike.  Two, it keeps me spinning right round like a record and that makes me dizzy.  So I do back and forth between hovering and just running around blasting things from my eyes.  It's a good time regardless!

 

So, on log in I've sold all 22 of my roulette spins (the Cloud Senses just sold as I was writing this) and I'm up almost 60mm for very little work.  If we wanted, we could just play rare roulette in packs of 30 nineteen more times and call it a day at one billion, but why be boring?  There's this beautiful city to explore and a lot of nooks and crannies in the AH that I'm gonna share with you.

 

First step is to reinvest in converters.  Always be reinvesting in converters.  For my more active marketers, I get nervous when I have less than 1,000 converters on hand, but I think a couple of hundred on Miss T should be sufficient.  Ooh, they are trading at 100k right now!  I am tempted to flip some of the ones I currently own for a profit, but by now we should all know that just because there are a few high prints on the trade history doesn't mean the next trade will occur anywhere near that level.  I'm pretty much done converting large inspirations at this point as well.

 

Last time, before I logged I wanted to make myself a Kismet Accuracy attuned, so I put bids on one of each of the other Kismets in the set at 1.5mm and ended up buying three of them.  Now I'm going to convert each one of them in set until I get the Accuracy, slot one in Hover, and sell the other two.  Is this profitable?  Well, there are five different IOs in the set, and if you have one that is not your desired outcome, you have a one in four chance of getting the exact one you want in one roll (using three converters).  That means *on average* it will take 4 conversions and 12 converters to get exactly what you want.  It could happen with one roll.  And it is *possible* that you could keep rolling until the sun goes cold and never get it, but that is very unlikely.  I'm a big fan of probability, and I've never had any reason to doubt that the RNG is fair in this case, so I'm going to roll.  On average, I spent 1.5mm on the IO and spent (assuming 70k per converter) an average of 840k worth of converter for cost of 2.34mm.  I feel very confident that I can sell it for 4-5mm.  Why not do this on a large scale?  I do!  One of my marketers does indeed make Accuracies for profit, and I'm definitely not the only one, although I'm pretty sure I'm the best looking one.  Or at least that's what my mom tells me.

 

For self-love, I could start investing in ATO sets, but for now I'm going to stick with Yomo(tm) SO slotting (accuracy, damage, endurance reduction, damage, damage, recharge in that order) and upgrade them every two or three levels because I'm made of information, baby!  For next time, I want to work on some converting that I like to call "cracking" so I'm investing in some particular recipes and the aforementioned converters.  Time to go buy the portable workbench as well -- no point in being in the Underground and not being able to craft! -- so that's a 10mm investment from the P2W vendor.  And I'm ready to invest in some super useful PvP IOs (in attuned form):  Panacea proc to go in Health and Shield Wall proc to go in the other slot in Hover.  I can either buy them directly, buy something else in the set and convert in set, or buy another PvP IO and roll that by category until I get the set I want and then roll i set for the procs.  In this case, I believe that I'm best off with the first option, because there is generally not a huge price disparity within the sets, and the variability of random rolling PvPs is not what I want right now.  (Oh don't worry PvP IOs, your time in the spotlight will come).  So I'm putting in some low but realistic bids on those two.  That leaves me with a little over 5mm inf in cash that I'll think of some way to put to work.  Maybe my bids fill and maybe they don't, but it don't cost nothing if they don't and I cancel the bids next session.

 

Until next time.

 

 

 

 

[Aeroprism]

This is amazing read.  You put useful info into pleasant form, really nice!

 

Edit: You know what?  I have a few alts parked goldside and your story made me wanna give them a spin.  And I think I can follow in your example and instead of having just one almighty cash purveyor, my alts can all be self sufficient.

 

So many awesome ways to play this game!!

Edited February 21, 2021 by Aeroprism

[Yomo Kimyata]

So, today Miss T is 12 and change.  She's currently working for Luke Larson, who lives in Imperial City (he works in the lumber mills there).  I can see that my offense is going to be sparse for the intermediate future.  I'm getting a little tired of fighting the Destroyers, what with all the Tank Girls and Master Blasters.  Remember back in the good old days when we fought ghouls in the Underground?

 

This morning, I hovered up to the top of a building next to a billboard overlooking the park and spent a few minutes doing some cracking.  Wait, you are all petrochemical engineers, right?  Cracking is breaking down crude oil into its more lucrative components, and we are about to do the same thing.  I had put in bids at level 20 for 10x of every set member for Harmonized Healing and Triage at 110k a piece yesterday, and by today I bought a total of 60 recipes across sets.  In general, if I'm going to mix marketing with play-play, I like to spend a few minutes at the beginning of the session setting things up, then running missions, then crafting and selling and setting up for next time.  So I put in bids for my common and uncommon salvage (still at 250 and 1,002 respectively), run a mission or two, save a few lives, and come back to business.  Pull out the portable workbench, get my salvage from the AH, craft and convert.

 

Level 20 common healing recipes are fun for me -- they are not *incredibly* lucrative, but they are profitable in a lot of different ways.  Again, I've done this a lot, so it moves quickly for me.  At level 20, there are five different possible Healing IOs:  Triage, Harmonized Healing, Regenerative Tissue, Preventative Medicine, and Miracle (the last three are rare).  Or as I like to call them from squinting at the screen at their green icons:  band-aid, fat football, skinny football, lizard eye, Hands Across America.  Starting with either a band-aid or a fat football, I convert once by category: Healing.  If I get the other uncommon, then reroll until you get one of the rares.  Once you have all rares, then the cracking continues.  If I get the lizard eye, those are all worth something, so I sell them as is.  Sometimes I'll price each one, but I usually offer them all at the same price.  If I get the skinny football (Regenerative Tissue), if it is the +regen proc, I sell it.  Otherwise I play rare roulette until I get something I like.  If I get the little hands, then I reroll the Miracle until I get the proc.  Remember:  there are six Miracle IOs, if you have a non-proc you have a 20% chance to roll the proc.  That's an average of 5 conversions by set, or 15 converters, or 1mm in inf if you are paying 66,666 per converter.  Miracles procs are notoriously buggy in the AH interface in terms of posting false history.  And they are also extremely useful and extremely valuable.

 

Today, I had 60 uncommon recipes which I crafted and converted into 20 Preventative Medicines, 5 Regenerative Tissue +regen, 20 Miracles (which all became procs), and 15 rares (I'm not going to break down what I ended up keeping anymore unless you really want to know).  Six hours later I log in and they are all sold.  I'm doing a poor job of strictly accounting for profit, but that's 150mm in the bank not counting what I'm already putting away towards the next lesson.

 

Also, at the end of yesterday's session I had 10mm or so left over, so I put in bids for 5 lvl 41 Red Fortunes at just over 2.1mm a piece (only bought 4).  That's a lot of inf for what Red Fortune does, but not a lot for what it can become.  Yes, it's time for us to talk about the 800 lb gorilla in the room:  LotG.  But my battery is low and it's getting dark, so we will discuss that at length another time.

 

Excelsior!  (And Everlasting, Indominable, Reunion, and Torchbearer!)

[Ura Hero]

Very enjoyable read.  I love it when folks post stuff like this.  It has started making me think about how I approach my alts.  Thanks Yomo for taking time to write this!

[Yomo Kimyata]

Just hit lvl 14 on Miss T, and I've been doing some work for this doctor guy, didn't quite get his name.  Dr. Hfuhruhurr?  Something like that.  So I get jumped by a bunch of ghouls!  Remember those guys?  I love those guys!  And then I had to fight some Seers and I did not like that very much, no, not at all.  Hoverblasting doesn't work as well when your enemy is doing the same thing to you.  Speaking of hoverblasting, I've started to come around to it.  Irradiate will hit people 20 feet below me, so I can start using that power again.  And it is absolutely hysterical using a targeted AoE with knockback like Electron Haze straight down.

 

But all that said, I need to step up my game offensively, and I figure it's time to indulge in the ultimate act of self-love.  Not that you pervs!  I mean time for a respec.  I realized I've been thinking ahead as to what my character is going to be rather than to be who she is now, so picking up Kick in order to get Tough really isn't that important in the grand scale of things.  Another ranged attack would really help, and I still haven't given the Experimentation power pool much/any thought, so let's give Toxic Dart a whirl.

 

Thanks to this respec, I'm also going to start picking up some IO sets, which leads us to the game:  "How Do I Get There From Here?"  Case in point, I'm going to need an attuned (attuned because I like the aesthetics.  A non-attuned would work just as well) Eradication proc for Irradiate.  But they're so spendy!  Just for kicks I bid crept to just short of 5mm.  That's a lot, and I smell an opportunity for profit!  So, How Do I Get There From Here?  Some options include:

 

Buying an Eradication proc IO

Buying an Eradication proc recipe and salvage and craft it

Buying an Eradication non-proc IO and converting by set until you get the proc

Buying an Eradication non-proc recipe and salvage, craft it, and convert by set

 

Wow, that's a lot of ways, why I could...

 

Hush you, I'm not done yet.

 

Buying something in the same category that converts easily to an Eradication!  Hey, at levels 10-19, a Cleaving Blow will directly convert by category:  PBAoE to an Eradication, and then I can roll it in set.  Again, either buy it as an IO or buy it in recipe form and craft.  

Buying any "normal" IO set IO or recipe at level 10-30 (Eradication's range) and doing a combination of conversions to hopefully get to Eradication

Buying an Eradication recipe from the Merit Vendor

 

And so on.  I've probably even missed some ways.  And in order to get the attuned version, I can either start with an attuned IO or I can spend 1-2mm on a catalyst to attune it.

 

Well, let's try a few options, make some Eradication procs, keep what I need and sell the rest.

 

Since last session I bought 8 lvl 15 Cleaving Blow recipes at 10,005 each (don't bid on the ones that require rare salvage by accident!!!), 16 lvl 10 non-proc Eradication recipes at 10,005 each (these all require one rare salvage), and four attuned non-proc Eradications at around 500k each.  For the Cleaving Blow, convert once by category for 2 converters and now I've got 8 Eradication IOs, 2 of which are the proc.  Now I have a total of 22 non-proc Eradication IOs that I'm going to convert to the proc, at an expected cost of 5 conversions x 3 converters = 15 converters.  And I have 4 attuned that I'm going to convert as well.  You can run the numbers on the expected cost for each of these and they're all well below the going price in the AH.  Now I slot one of the attuned, put the other 27 up for sale at some usurious price that I still expect will sell in the near future. 

 

Here I demonstrated three different ways to get where I wanted to be.  Some ways are more cost-effective than others, but all are much cheaper than buying that attuned Eradication straight up.  

 

Anyway, I also bought a respec recipe as I was typing this, so I'll go through that process.  In other self-love news, I'm going to pony up for a full set of Vigilant Assault (defender ATOs) and split them between two attacks for the recharge bonus.  A few other things as well, and believe you me, I'm going to ask myself, "How Do I Get There From Here?"

 

Enjoy your morning, afternoon, evening, and night!

[Yomo Kimyata]

So, I finished up Seer 1381's arc, had some laughs, and have finally made it to the big leagues in Neutropolis!  Good story arc, nice Elite Boss at the end.  Now that I've gotten some IO slotting under my belt, things are getting a little too easy.  I really don't want to rush xp, or to turn xp off, so instead of increasing number of mobs, I'm going to move up to +2 missions.  I just picked up Proton Volley at lvl 16, so I now have four single target attacks (the mandatory Neutrino Bolt, X-Ray Beam, Toxic Dart, and Proton Volley) and two kind of crappy targeted AoE (Irradiate and Electron Haze).  Only Envenom and Weaken from Poison, and I'm a-ok with that.  

 

Last time we talked about "How Do I Get There From Here?"  Today, I'm going to clean out my inventory and play the counterpart game, "What Do I Do With That?"  I've been vendoring all my enhancement drops and all my regular IO recipes, and I assume everyone else does the same.  But by lvl 16 I've ended up with 8 uncommon or rare recipe drops, and I've been wondering, "What do I do with that?"

 

Basilisk's Gaze Rech/Hold lvl 15.  That's probably a net money maker if I craft it, but I need rare salvage (which has been creeping higher lately) and the IO would not be *that* valuable.  The past 5 recipe trades indicate sales of 10,005 (and I have to wonder if I have an alt buying them somewhere.  Probably.) so I post it at 5,000 and insta-sell at 50k.

 

Everything else gets crafted:

 

Hibernation A/E lvl 10.  I will craft any yellow recipe that doesn't need orange salvage.  Convert once by category to get a rare Induced Coma.  Roll by rarity 4x to get a Regenerative Tissue +rech.  Cost:  6 converters.

 

Reactive Armor Res/Rech lvl 15.  I can probably sell that for 2mm+ as is, but not quickly.  Convert 3 times by category to get Imperium Armor +psi resist.  Cost:  6 converters.

 

Kismet Def/End lvl 13.  In set until Accuracy!  And I get it in one.  Cost:  3 converters.

 

Achilles' Heel proc lvl 10.  No brainer, and it's an orange recipe but doesn't require rare salvage.  Cost:  zero converters

 

Deflated Ego lvl 11.  Also an orange recipe that doesn't require rare salvage.  So after crafting, I can convert by rarity as a rare.  Score!  Four rolls by rarity later I get an Explosive Strike proc.  Cost:  four converters.

 

Explosive Strike KB/Accuracy lvl 10.  ALSO an orange recipe that doesn't require rare salvage.  Craft and convert in set (2 rolls) for the proc.  Cost:  six converters.

 

Gift of the Ancients lvl 16.  Needs a rare salvage, and I can sell it as is, but let's go for a Kismet or a Karma.  And I screw up and convert by uncommon instead of by category.  Stupid pull down menu!  And I convert by uncommon again to roll a Karma KB.  Talk about Karma indeed!  Cost:  2 converters.

 

Generally, I think everyone should periodically go through their recipes and craft and roll anything that doesn't need rare salvage.  Possible exception:  at lvl 50, the crafting cost is about a half million inf, which is more than twice what it costs at lvl 49.  

 

Also, we've talked about rolling in-set in order to get a specific outcome.  But what about the opposite?  What happens when a set has one real dog and the rest are worth something?  In that case, if you start with the dog you can spend 3 converters and are guaranteed a good outcome.  A good example is Kinetic Combat Chance for Knockdown.  Kinetic Combat has a very good melee defense set bonus at 4 slots, but I've never even considered using the proc, and I don't see a lot of others using it either.  So on Sunday I put in bids for lvl 20 Kinetic Combat procs at (you guessed it) 10,005 and bids for crafted IOs at 1mm.  I only bought 6 recipes and 10 IOs, but keep in mind the recipes only drop from content lvl 20-35 -- a range lots of people zerg through.  The recipes take *TWO* rares, so I'm approximating the all in cost of crafting the recipes to be about 1mm.  Anyway, with 16 crappy IOs I'm going to roll each once in set and will end up with something worth 3-5mm that cost me 1mm and 3 converters.  

 

In the land of self-love, I picked up my ATOs overnight.  I still need a Achilles' Heel proc, and I was fruitless in my lowball bids o/n so I'm just going to put in a low bid under where I just offered the one I made.  I expect to transact both by morning.  I also want a Fury of the Gladiator proc, so I put in really lowball bids for the others in the set and got 4.  One I will roll in set for the proc.  That took me 15 rolls, or 45 converters!  That's a LOT!  And yet it was cheaper in total that if I had bought it outright.  The other three I'm going to roll by PvP until I get something tasty.  Nine rolls later (that cost 9 converters in total) I end up with a Shield Wall, a Panacea, and Glad Jav proc that are probably going to sell at about twice what I paid for the FotG.  There's a lot of markup available in PvPs, just saying.

 

I'm a little light on cash right now since I'm tied up in bids, so I'm going to rare roulette a block of 10 Kinetic Crash lvl 21 that I bought for 1,005 each.  Kin Crash converts by category to either Force Feedback or Sudden Acceleration, both rares, and both with good procs.  I was going to use them as another example of "cracking" but meh, you probably already found six other examples you prefer better.  That should get me 20-40mm in cash by tomorrow, on top of the other things I'm also selling.  Not bad for a few minutes work and a lot of typing on my part.

 

Go get 'em!

[Captain_Paragon]

I think this thread needs to be pinned. Its insightful, funny and an easy read. Definitely best thread on forum! 🙂

 

 

Edited February 23, 2021 by Captain_Paragon
Grammar and spelling 🤫

[Yomo Kimyata]

I'm not going to have time to play Miss T today, but I did have 93 seconds to log in, collect all my loot, log out, and start typing.  I think it's time for a reality check for everyone.

 

I've been posting for six days now, and hopefully passing on some good information.  Truth be told, it's killing me to go so slowly, but I want to go back to my guiding principle which is "make this accessible to everyone".  Well, everyone who reads this forum.  So over six days, I've run missions solo for, um, five hours?  That feels high but I'm just guessing.  I'd ask an NPC with the right letter name, but I'd have to look that up, and besides I have a pronounced tendency to multi-task so I'm grinding time on HC while I'm grinding time on other things.  I'm at level 16, have about 220mm in cash inf after collecting yesterday's sales and about 100mm "face value" investment in my character.  Far short of 1bn, but the whole point of this is not to push any limits.  But to see what any and every person can do.

 

I just pulled up an old lvl 50 of mine and he has 94 slotted IOs.  Call it 100.  At 5mm average cost per IO, a pimped-out build would cost 500mm.  Even that looks high.

 

Anyway, I feel that we've already gotten to the point that anything I want on Miss T, I've probably already paid for it.  Homecoming is great in a lot of ways, but one of the greatest is that they make it simple for you to get everything you want with a very small amount of effort.  Not no effort though.  That works for me.  So from here on out, I'm just making inf for the sake of making inf.  Give it away, fund other characters, make a big bonfire.  But we've proven the concept.

 

Anyway again, we talked about rolling in set for one out of the (three/five/six) and we talked about rolling in set away from a stinker.  There are a lot of cases that fall in between, and that's today's case study.  Do you have a Performance Shifter proc slotted?  If you are 17+ and the answer is no then boo on you.  Booooooo!  How about a Performance Shifter Rech/Acc?  Probably not.  I would rank (and the marketplace backs me up) that the value for Perf Shifters by IO range from (high to low): proc, End Mod, End/Acc//End/Rech, End/Rech/Acc, Rech/Acc.  The top four sell a lot more quickly and a lot higher than the lower two.  So let's make some money!

 

On Sunday, I put in bids on lvl 21 Perf Shifter E/R/A recipes at 10,005 and by yesterday bought 39 of them.  Let's craft them and convert them in set until they are NOT an End Mod/R/A or an R/A.  They cost you a rare salvage and 3 or more converters.  Yes, it is extremely annoying when you convert in set from an E/R/A to an R/A to an E/R/A to an R/A and so on.  But the odds are in your favor.  Sort them by type, and sell 'em!  You could convert all of them to procs.  Some people do.  

 

You're not going to make a fortune on these, but let's say it costs 600k to buy and craft the recipe, and 100-200k to convert it.  And you will sell every one of these, so long as you don't price it too dear.

 

Until next time.  May all your dreams be full of easily debuffed Council.

 

Edited February 24, 2021 by Yomo Kimyata

[Troo]

you can make it to 30. i believe in you.

[Yomo Kimyata]

Let's talk about mistakes.  I make mistakes ALL THE TIME.  I already documented converting by rarity instead of by category.  Happens all the time.  Or accidentally converting in set because you had the wrong button pushed.  It's no big deal -- there's lots of inf out there and losing a little on user error is not a bid deal.  Another thing I do all the time is not leave myself enough inf for posting fees, which are 5% of your offer price.  Sure, you *can* offer at 5 inf, but then you take the risk you *do* sell it at 5 inf.  Or pricing something too high -- if it doesn't sell in your time frame, don't be afraid to eat that posting fee and a little pride and take it down and repost.  There are so many ways to make errors.

 

For example, when setting up my example from yesterday with the Perf Shifter E/R/A recipes, I originally accidentally put in 5x10 bids at 10,005 on the End Mod/Accuracy recipes.  It would not have been a big deal, but I wanted to drive home the point about converting away from garbage, and End Mod/A are not quite garbage, but are not quite gold either.  Regardless, I also crafted 50 of those yesterday.  Now, when I can, I like to work in bulk.  Blocks of 10 at a minimum, blocks of 30, 50, 60 are preferable.  And I like to deal with things that will sell quickly between sessions.  I would much rather sell 50 IOs for a 2mm profit each than sell 10 IOs for a 5mm profit each.  (Now, 50 at a 5mm profit, THAT'S worth getting out of bed for!)  And the End/Acc would take a while to move, in my opinion.  So what did I do?  Well, I put 10 of the 50 up for sale as is, then converted the remaining 40 to the proc, the End Mod, the End Mod/Rech, or back to the End Mod/Acc.  This gets me some diversification at the cost of some converters, and that's a trade I'll take.  Instead of selling 50 End/Acc I'm now selling 10-15 each of 4 IOs, which will hopefully sell out between sessions.

 

So don't sweat mistakes.  Or have regrets.  But egrets?  I've had a few.

 

And sometimes you get little happy coincidences, like when you put in a place holding bid on something x10 at 5 inf each (that is what I use to get around the display bug.  If I can't see the trade history, I put in a lowball bid, and then refresh my bid to see the actual trade history.  That is, unless the trade history is bugged...) and you end up buying x10 at 5 inf each.

 

Just earlier, I made a mistake by not having enough inf for posting fees.  So I rare rouletted a block of 10 Kinetic Crashes that I had "accidentally" bought at 5 inf each while I was pricing it out.  C'est la vie, and that should get me enough inf for posting fees, possibly even by the time I'm done typing up this synopsis.  

 

But wait, didn't you just have 220mm inf?  Well, the problem I have is that I'm always looking at new gigs, so I thought I would give purple recipes a look see.  So I'm looking at Gravitational Anchors, since I'm not sure I've ever slotted one before at 50 and I see this:  

 

 

I'd say the odds of being able to buy this a little under 10mm are good.  So good, that I'll bid on a block of 10.  And it's not the only one in the set.

 

But I admit I did a little math first.  Let's say it costs about 10mm to buy the recipe, 600k to craft it, 3 rare salvage, and 2 uncommon salvage.  Can we round that to 2mm in costs?  So my breakeven would be 10/9 * 12mm or 13.333mm.  Going rates for the crafted are well above that, but they aren't exactly selling like hotcakes.  So, how about a system where we buy purple Immobilize recipes, craft them, and convert them into a different purple IO?  And that's what I do.  My personal system is to convert by rarity:  Very Rare until I get what I consider to be the best selling four (Apocalypse, Armageddon, Ragnorak, and Hecatomb; or as I like to call it, "red, but not the red pentagram".   Then I offer them all at the same price, which is what I consider "cheap, but not ridiculously cheap".  Diversification means that I'm not trying to move a block of 10, but 1-2 of many different types.

 

This is not a huge profit markup, but it's good for at least a couple of mm and often more.  But it *does* take a significant investment in bids, so I thought I would play around with it.  It's something I do on a few alts that I normally check out every few weeks, but for Miss T, I'll see if I can get some faster turnaround.  Learning new things, burning new neural pathways, it's all good.

 

So Miss T has done some work with Crow, and it has earned her level 17 status.  The last story arc wasn't particularly challenging, even at +2, but it's a good story.  Also, the missions where Crow fights with you make me realize I would much rather have him on my side, because that dude hits hard!  Normally at level 17, I'm over the moon about upgrading my IOs, but since HC instituted low level SOs, for the most part at this level I'm better off using SOs rather than, say, moving to Entropic Chaos for the set bonus.  So basically, the only thing I'm buying for myself right now is an Performance shifter proc.  

 

May the odds ever be in your favor.

[Aeroprism]

I was inspired by your adventure.  "Wrong Answer", my Ill/Traps Redside controller has been inactive for too long so I loaded him up. Level 15, perhaps 75K inf to his name.  One yellow recipe in his stash and three merits from an earlier story arc.  

 

This was all I needed to implement...  The Miss T. Method! 

Fast forward 1h of game play, Wrong Answer is level 16 (The Dollface arc was AMAZING) and now sits on 46 Million Inf.

 

I am a fan.

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

So Miss T has finally dinged 20 after finishing Helix's and Aaron Walker's arcs, and they were great!  Why?  GHOULS!  Fat Bottomed Ghouls, the Ghoul from Ipanema, Ghouls, Ghouls, Ghouls!  Every arc needs more Ghouls!  I'm very much enjoying running all these arcs for the first time slowly, but I can't imagine running them more than once each.  Nowadays, I like redside missions, and I vastly prefer the other content (like TFs or radios) either redside or blueside.  And I'd really like to see more elite bosses. 

 

I still have some missions from Calvin Scott, and I can run the Penelope Yin arc, so I'm going to wrestle between doing those or moving on to First Ward.  And oh, I learned something today.  PRAETORIANS GET UNIQUE TITLES!  WHY DID I NOT KNOW THIS!!!  Every once of my Praetorians will be known as Sweetcheek from here on out.  Well, only the Resistance.  

 

Once you gain interest in the AH, it really helps to keep an eye on things and try to take advantage if flows change.  And then you have to ask yourself if things have really changed, or if someone is just screwing around.  Example:  when selling all the Performance Shifters I've made recently, I noticed that a lot of the procs were selling at 2mm.  That seems low, very low.  So I put in a bid for one just over 2mm and bought it.  And I put in a bid for 10 there and bought 10 there.  And put them up for sale and sold them for 4-5mm each.  Generally, they trade somewhere in between, but if you see a buying opportunity, take it, you notorious flipper you.  I also ended up buying 10 Endurance Mod/Recharge recipes at 5 inf each from my price-finding bid, so I figured that I really needed to craft those and convert some of them in set for the sake of diversification.

 

Speaking of diversification, I noticed something with the purples I crafted and converted.  I ended up with about 25-30 of them and converted all to one of the damage types as detailed in last issue.  Soon, everything sold at my price except for the Apocalypses.  Normally, I don't look at my purple sales on a daily basis, and I would let it sit for a few more days.  But no, I need those market slots!  So I convert them to a non-Apocalypse damage type and relist.  Moving quickly.

 

One thing I hoped to get out of this documentation was to try and start up a new market niche for kicks, and the first step is to learn more about potential candidates.  Basilisk's Gaze is a very useful low-level rare with good set bonuses, but it ranges in price a fair amount based on supply.  Run your own analysis on this, and ask yourself if you were to make BGs, how would you go about it and which ones in the set would you target to sell?  I also started a new project for the next lesson that took some working capital but I guess I'd be up to about 400mm in profits right now if I weren't invested.

 

A great way to make consistent bank, no matter how often you play a given alt, is to put in a bid for 10x a yellow recipe that doesn't require rare salvage as the last thing you do before logging off.  First thing you do when next logging on is collect them and put in bids on your salvage.  Play and you should have bought your salvage by the end of your game session.  Collect salvage, craft, play some rare roulette, and post your items.  Put in a bid for 10x yellow recipe.  Repeat ad infinitum.

 

May the odds always be in MY favor.

 

 

 

 

[Troyusrex]

On 2/25/2021 at 4:57 PM, Yomo Kimyata said:

Let's talk about mistakes.  I make mistakes ALL THE TIME.  I already documented converting by rarity instead of by category.  Happens all the time.  Or accidentally converting in set because you had the wrong button pushed.  It's no big deal -- there's lots of inf out there and losing a little on user error is not a bid deal.  Another thing I do all the time is not leave myself enough inf for posting fees, which are 5% of your offer price.  Sure, you *can* offer at 5 inf, but then you take the risk you *do* sell it at 5 inf.  Or pricing something too high -- if it doesn't sell in your time frame, don't be afraid to eat that posting fee and a little pride and take it down and repost.  There are so many ways to make errors.

 

I love this entire paragraph. It's totally true! I, too, make these mistakes all the time.

[Yomo Kimyata]

So Miss T decided to run Penelope Yin's arc and I found it, sadly, unimpressive.  But I figured that I'm a completer and since I'll be moving on to greener (grayer?) pastures in First Ward soon, I might as well.  I've now run all the arcs for the Resistance: Warden storyline (except Dark Watcher, which I outlevelled) and overall, two thumbs up.  It's s good story, and it's a story I'm new to, so great!  I will certainly run the other three storylines (I've already made a Loyalist who is hooked on Rikti fan "fiction" named Boy.Fan, Battle Axe/Bio Armor scrapper, modelled in part on Comic Store Guy).  My main complaint so far is that although the play is nicely difficult, there is very little challenge in the way of end bosses.  I like my story arcs with lots of Elite Bosses, and maybe I'm spoiled, but 1 1/2 EBs in that entire storyline is too light for my tastes.  To each their own.

 

I also took some time to do some exploring and to pick up all the exploration badges in all six zones.  There are some really nice vistas (visit above ground during the day though!) and I like the color scheme.  It's not as dismal and hard on the eyes as redside, and not as saturated bright as a lot of blueside.  I also read all the plaques for Headjuiced; well, look, maybe I didn't read every single little tiny syllable, no.  But basically I read them, yeah.

 

How'd you do on your homework assignment on Basilisk's Gaze?  Personally, I would buy Paralytic recipes in the level 10-19 range.  Convert them once by category: hold and you either have a BG or a Neuronic Shutdown.  The NS proc sells well, and you can play rare roulette with the other pieces.  Sadly, over the past two days I'm really not seeing a ton of interest in BG, despite the low supply.  I've been flipping or buying and converting in set for small profits, but this is not the new niche I was looking for.  Sometimes though, it really takes off, so it's useful to keep that in the back of your head.  I've also been flipping some Perf Shift procs, buying around 2mm and selling 3-4mm.  Not ridiculous money, but good flow.  I've still got a bunch of Paralytic and Kinetic Crashes I should get rid of.  All my spare marketing slots are going into bids on something I'll tell you about next time.

 

The real project occurred when I was thinking ahead about my snipe power and how I wanted to slot that eventually.  So I go looking at the snipe PvP recipes and was astounded, ASTOUNDED at how cheap they were.  Don't people know that PvP IOs are all topologically equivalent?!?  So I put in bids of 10x for each recipe in the set and within two days bought 60 of them.  I guess a lot of people get a PvP drop and think, "Wow, great drop, I can sell this right now for 3+mm!".  But I think, "Wow, great drop, I can craft this and convert it and make 8-10mm!"  There's so much juice in PvPs as some of you know very very well.  So I crafted them all and converted until I got something I wanted:  all the Panaceas, some of the Shield Wall, some, but not all of the procs.  And rather than set individual prices on each of them, I picked my price and listed them all at that price.  Some insta-sold, which always makes me stop and wonder if I'm really selling things too cheaply.

 

That reminds me of some of the fundamentals of the marketplace that I wanted to discuss.  Now it is clear that every transaction has a buyer and a seller.  But did you also ever thing about that every transaction has a passive counterparty and an active counterparty?  By that I mean that every trade occurs when someone enters a new bid or a new offer in the system, and that bid is high enough (or the offer low enough) that it will cross with an existing order in the queue.  That existing order was the passive counterparty -- they put in their order to buy or sell and were willing to wait for transaction.  The new order was the active counterparty, and they either bid higher or offered lower than anyone previously in the system, which means that they paid up a little in order to instantly transact.  This may not seem the least bit interesting, but it demonstrates how the passive counterparties will tend to get better prices because they have given up time in the form of how quickly their trade occurs; in exchange they get a slightly better price.  There is nothing wrong with being the active counterparty or the passive counterparty, and both are necessary for trades to occur.  Ok, thus endeth the boring part.

 

Miss T is now at level 21 and we are very excited about the next part of her journey.  Both for exploring a new zone, with new stories and new enemies, and for the wonders of soon dinging 22, which opens up a whole raft of new slotting choices.  I'm gonna have to think on that.  Most of my PvP IOs have sold, and I'm sitting on over 600mm in inf that is just burning a hole in my pocket.  Can you guess what comes next?

 

See you later, alligator.

[Aeroprism]

15 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

The real project occurred when I was thinking ahead about my snipe power and how I wanted to slot that eventually.  So I go looking at the snipe PvP recipes and was astounded, ASTOUNDED at how cheap they were.  Don't people know that PvP IOs are all topologically equivalent?!?  So I put in bids of 10x for each recipe in the set and within two days bought 60 of them.  I guess a lot of people get a PvP drop and think, "Wow, great drop, I can sell this right now for 3+mm!".  But I think, "Wow, great drop, I can craft this and convert it and make 8-10mm!"  There's so much juice in PvPs as some of you know very very well.  So I crafted them all and converted until I got something I wanted:  all the Panaceas, some of the Shield Wall, some, but not all of the procs.  And rather than set individual prices on each of them, I picked my price and listed them all at that price.  Some insta-sold, which always makes me stop and wonder if I'm really selling things too cheaply.

 

This had me wondering.  Considering the academic quality of your tale, I love to try a lot of the things you suggest in order to enrich my own marketing strategies.  Though this time, either I completely failed to understand, or I completely missed the mark.

 

I was skeptical about this whole PVP thing so I bought a handful of 31 cheap sniper PVP recipes, crafted them and checked conversion possibilities. Converting to uncommon left me with other regular, non-uncommon results and converting by category gave me other, non-pvp sniper sets.  

 

How were you exactly able to keep a pvp - pvp linearity in your process?

[Yomo Kimyata]

3 minutes ago, Aeroprism said:

 

This had me wondering.  Considering the academic quality of your tale, I love to try a lot of the things you suggest in order to enrich my own marketing strategies.  Though this time, either I completely failed to understand, or I completely missed the mark.

 

I was skeptical about this whole PVP thing so I bought a handful of 31 cheap sniper PVP recipes, crafted them and checked conversion possibilities. Converting to uncommon left me with other regular, non-uncommon results and converting by category gave me other, non-pvp sniper sets.  

 

How were you exactly able to keep a pvp - pvp linearity in your process?

The only PvP sniper recipes are Experienced Marksmen.  You can ONLY convert these to other PvP sets (or convert in set, of course).  I'm guessing you used different sniper recipes?  No problem!  There are (in my opinion) too many sniper recipes and the only one that's any good is Sting of the Manticore.  Ask yourself, "What Do I Do with That?".  My answer is (for uncommons), convert by rarity: uncommon until you get a different set from sniper, then convert by category: whatever that set is until you get a rare, then play rare roulette.

[Aeroprism]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

The only PvP sniper recipes are Experienced Marksmen.  You can ONLY convert these to other PvP sets (or convert in set, of course).  I'm guessing you used different sniper recipes?  No problem!  There are (in my opinion) too many sniper recipes and the only one that's any good is Sting of the Manticore.  Ask yourself, "What Do I Do with That?".  My answer is (for uncommons), convert by rarity: uncommon until you get a different set from sniper, then convert by category: whatever that set is until you get a rare, then play rare roulette.

Aaaaannd you are absolutely right.

 

I CHECKED for PVP recipes, misclicked and bought nine of ANOTHER sniper set. (Exploit weakness)

 

What was that about silly mistakes?  Yeah...

 

Still, enhancement roulette, I recovered and profited. Just, not as much 🙂

 

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question, you rock!

[Yomo Kimyata]

Today, I'd like to discuss market pvp (lol).  I really only think of two types of market pvp (lol):  large buyers competing against other buyers, and large sellers competing against other sellers.  Compared to Live, there is blessedly comparatively much less of this on HC.  But it exists, and there really isn't anything to be done about it.  If you are buying something in bulk (like rare salvage), it helps to periodically check the last five history to see if your bid is still the best one.  Sometimes, someone sees a bunch of trades at (for example) 475,000 and so put in mass bids at 475,001.  It's annoying, but all you can really do is to outbid them, or wait until their bids get filled.  If you are selling something in bulk, and you haven't made any sales in a while, check to see if someone is under-offering you.  that's harder to see because trade histories print at the bid, and you don't really know where the offer is.

 

There is, of course, a foolproof way to see what the highest outstanding bid (HOB) and the lowest outstanding offer (LOO) is, but you may not like it.  First of all, you bid creep on an item until you buy one.  In theory, you would increase your bid by 1 inf each time until you bought one, but that's hideously impractical.  I normally start at a low number then increase bids by 100k until I buy it.  Keep in mind that people also like round numbers or repeating numbers or numbers that are easy to type.  So by bid creeping you can find the approximate (or exact) ceiling.  There's no guarantee that the next one is at the same level, but it's a decent guess.  Then, in order to find the floor, all you need to do is what I tell people never to do:  sell the item at 1 inf and see where the trade occurs.  Again, no guarantee that there are more bids at that level.

 

But you may be asking, what about the market pvp (lol) between buyers and sellers?  I don't really consider that pvp, because it's getting two parties together for (hopefully) mutual gain.  But that said, there are some tricks and traps, some dirty, some not-so-dirty that people will use.  I'm not going to detail them there, but it's handy to remember that buyers always want you to sell things for cheaper, and sellers always want you to buy things more expensively.  Also, I want to talk about what I call "stupid market tricks" after the bit from David Letterman many years ago.  There is a lot of inf out there, and there are a lot of items out there.  Not every trade has to make economic sense, and sometimes people will do things just for the lulz.  Also keep in mind that the devs hold the keys to the Fed and can change anything they want at any time with no warning.  So don't count on things staying the same forever.

 

Now that I've gotten that ray of sunshine out of the way, let's look at our latest project:  Hero Packs!  There have been tons of threads about these and about Winter Packs, so I'm going to ask you to read there for greater detail.  But I had some spare inf lying around and wanted to demonstrate a real time strategy.  This morning I bought a total of 40 packs (20 Hero and Villain, 20 the other one) at 9,999,999 and 10mm each respectively.  I always check to see if someone is selling at less than the seeded price, and sure enough, I saved myself 20 inf in total.  I opened them all and tracked what I got:

 

51 ATOs

48 insprations

460 Brainstorms

450 merits

54 converters

59 unslotters

8 boosters

3 catalysts

 

and a bunch of temp powers, a respec or two.  Now all these items go into an account-wide grab bag named Character Items that is on your email tab.  Character Items is a magical place, and you can take items off of it on any one of your characters at any time, even in an instance like a mission (where you normally can't access the AH).  My Character Items is a big mess, but for the sake of clarity I made sure to claim every item that came from these 40 packs with the exception of the inspirations.  I have so many freaking inspirations on my Character Items that I just ignore them at this point.  Then I created a system.  Systems are very good for making inf.

 

Step 1:  put every ATO, regardless of type, on the market at the same price.  That price was not 1 inf.  That price was also not 10mm.  That's all I'm giving you for now.

Step 2:  (this is where we are now) wait a day.  Some sold instantly, more trickled in over time.

Step 3:  pull every unsold ATO, convert it once by category:  ATO, and put it back on the market at the previous price.

Step 4:  wait a day.

and repeat steps 3 and 4 if necessary.  

 

This means I'm listing brute ATOs at the same price as dominator ATOs, but who knows, I may get some people who are building dominators!  

 

Everything else, I'm keeping for now, except brainstorms, which I'm converting and selling as rare salvage.

 

Ever since the first post when I talked about buying 20 brainstorms, I've been keeping an eye on them.  Remember that you can convert 20x brainstorm to one random rare salvage, so if the going price is low enough, there is a pure arbitrage opportunity.  And yes, as we've been watching rare salvage prices move higher (IMO stupid market tricks), brainstorms have remained low enough that I could buy 20, convert, sell the rare, and make over 100k profit.  I've been engaging in market pvp (lol) for a week and a half now before I got tired of it and just put in a bunch of bids just over 20k.  It has been quite profitable.

 

Miss T finished her first arc and I really enjoyed it.  First Ward is visually interesting, stories are engaging, it's dope stuff!  She's now at level 22, and I'm doing a reassessment of slotting.  Now is the time where I'm going to be swapping out SOs for IOs for the most part.  I'm also regressing to a tactic I used to use in Live:  put in a bid for 10x on something I want, slot one, sell the other nine.  Working well.  I'm sitting on about 100mm in cash inf and the rest is invested in a few other things, including possibly our new niche.  The anticipation is terrible!  I hope it lasts.

 

In a while, crocodile.

 

 

[Andreah]

6 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Ever since the first post when I talked about buying 20 brainstorms, I've been keeping an eye on them.  Remember that you can convert 20x brainstorm to one random rare salvage, so if the going price is low enough, there is a pure arbitrage opportunity.  And yes, as we've been watching rare salvage prices move higher (IMO stupid market tricks), brainstorms have remained low enough that I could buy 20, convert, sell the rare, and make over 100k profit.  I've been engaging in market pvp (lol) for a week and a half now before I got tired of it and just put in a bunch of bids just over 20k.  It has been quite profitable.

 

... I may have been market-PvP'ing with you over those 😃

 

But I quit too, it was fun, but not a lot of profit/effort.

 

In another game, I recall doing that kind of dance with the intent of driving my competitor up to bidding high enough to beat me, that I could suddenly dump my inventory into their lap at a profit.