First Day in the Market

[JusticeBowler]

So far I've only popped on the market to ditch some rare salvage so I could buy SOs for my various alts (I have 10 in the 22-26 range now) and I did craft IOs for my first character that could slot 30s so I bought some salvage back for that. But I haven't tried to make myself useful or work for any real profit.

 

So at first I thought I'd be helpful. I simply took all the recipes I didn't want (most of them common IOs but a couple of lower end set items) and I crafted them all up and sold them. It cost me 2million more in salvage and fees than I got back. So much for being altruistic. I am not really all that upset about it as all the pieces sold so I figure someone's level 15 wanted that thing and I didn't. Though I wonder about driving up prices for common salvage making junk that probably isn't worth slotting even if someone thinks they want to use it. From now on I think I'll just drump the recipes and let someone else decide if the mess is worth it to them.

 

Then I tried something more serious. I mailed myself from all my toons all their set-IOs. There's too many common IO to do that of course (and my experiment was a bust on that), but I figured that was a good start. And I mailed myself my collective fortune of 10million. It looked like most of the low end stuff could be made for trivial salvage investment and sold for anywhere between 50-250,000 fair enough. The good stuff always required a big buy of a salvage piece costing between 650,000-850,000 and sold either for 1million or 2million (occasionally there was a price spike or drop). So I poured the 10million in salvage and fees to craft and post the lot.

 

Sure, it isn't the crazy merit-enhancement convert dice rolling, but it seemed both helpful and potentially profitable. I suppose I won't know for sure until sometime tomorrow whether those sales will go through. All my prices were reasonable, not even "edgy" but they didn't pop within 20mins, so I suspect most of the bidders are casting in a mess of low bids being patient and hoping to hit it lucky.

 

Still, if I sell the whole lot it looks like I'll almost double my money, somewhere around 18million. It was a lot of work and there were plenty of risks involved. Not sure if 8million is a worthy profit considering that's all the set drops all my toons have gotten so far in the game. Feels like it should have been more profitable than that. I couldn't turn around again and do it tomorrow as I don't have recipes anymore. So this won't work beyond the immediate windfall (if you can call it that).

 

So that's a bust. I mean, I hope I'll still clear my original investment at least and some progress toward badges and I'm glad some folks will slot of some things they are looking for. But I can't do it again so I've hit a dead end.

[Shinobu]

I am quite sure Robotech_Master will be along soon to preach his gospel about marketing, but here's his guide:

 

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,3161.0.html

 

The short answer is you use Enhancement Converters to convert uncommon IOs to rare IOs, and to things that will sell well.  Plus you buy uncommon recipes so you can craft them and have stock to convert.

 

The slightly longer answer is that a lot of people are doing this so that's why your rare recipe probably costs more to craft than you can sell it for.  But you can still make money crafting an uncommon recipe, converting it, and selling it for 1-2 million -- it just takes a lot more work to earn big money, unless you happen to come up with the stuff that still sells well (Luck of the Gambler +7.5% recharge will never go out of style).

 

The truly long answer is that you really need to know what will sell in order to make money, and you need some money in order to make more money.  But just as an example I made a couple of hundred million today from sales on the market (which... to be fair, I pulled down a lot of stuff that hadn't sold, more than 70 IOs, and relisted them, so a lot of the money I made was from stuff that I'd tried to sell two weeks ago at an apparently too-high price).

[Robotech_Master]

Shinobu said much the same thing I would have. Do read my guide; I wrote it for the benefit of people just like you. And at the bottom, I link to another market guide I wrote on ParagonWiki that may be useful to you as well.

 

Just to note: crafting rare recipes is a mug's game, now, because rare recipes require rare salvage. And thanks to the "bucketing" system the market uses, no piece of rare salvage is ever going to cost less than 800,000 Inf or so. So, there's no way you can make money that way. It's far better to list the rare recipes on the AH for what you can get for them--or sell them to an Enhancement vendor, because they'll probably pay you more than the auction house. (Though there are a few rare sets, such as PVP sets, that are are an exception, so maybe you want to check the going rate on any recipe before you dispose of it.) Likewise, you might as well just sell any rare salvage you get, because you'll get more out of it that way than if you used it in a recipe.

 

But Uncommon recipes might just net you something if you craft and convert them.  Good luck with it!

[JusticeBowler]

So the "rare" market is sort of broken? I mean unless you have a large pile of your own rare salvage lying around. In which case, the money runs out when the salvage does. If the crafting and listing costs weren't so high, a "crafter" could service the market by buying recipes and salvage and selling the IO result,  but the key to that right now is "jumping the list" by turning out a bunch of uncommon IOs and converting them.

 

I did read the guide, but I felt like I needed to get into the market the way I remember doing it on live years ago to pay for my alt-habit. I don't even have a lvl 50 toon yet (because so many alts so little time). So farming and the usual "high end rewards" aren't really available to me yet.

 

But converters only come from merits right? so when I run out of merits, I run out of converters and I'm back to being unsustainable. But at least in the meantime I could make some dough. Looks like I'll be zone badge hunting to get a few more to start this.

 

Of course, you know what this is doing. It is driving up the price of uncommons because fewer people will be selling them but more people will be buying the salvage needed to make them (so it is more expensive to buy or craft them for your toons) but driving down the price of rares. It seems like the difference between the two in the mechanics of the game drop system is far too great.

[Mr. Vee]

No need to worry on the salvage end since they seeded tons so they're price capped. Also no need to really worry on the uncommon recipes. If the prices on those start to inflate the profit margins will decrease and demand will go down. Also if they go up more people will market them rather than vendor.

[Robotech_Master]

So the "rare" market is sort of broken? I mean unless you have a large pile of your own rare salvage lying around. In which case, the money runs out when the salvage does. If the crafting and listing costs weren't so high, a "crafter" could service the market by buying recipes and salvage and selling the IO result,  but the key to that right now is "jumping the list" by turning out a bunch of uncommon IOs and converting them.

You could look at it as "sort of broken," or you could look at it as more accessible to players who don't have the wherewithal to save up hundreds of millions of Inf for just one recipe. I like it better how it is now.

 

I did read the guide, but I felt like I needed to get into the market the way I remember doing it on live years ago to pay for my alt-habit. I don't even have a lvl 50 toon yet (because so many alts so little time). So farming and the usual "high end rewards" aren't really available to me yet.

The thing is, the way you did it on live years ago won't work, because the I25 market is an entirely different ballgame. Sorry, old dog, but I'm afraid you're going to have to learn some new tricks. :)

 

But converters only come from merits right? so when I run out of merits, I run out of converters and I'm back to being unsustainable. But at least in the meantime I could make some dough. Looks like I'll be zone badge hunting to get a few more to start this.

Actually, no, converters can be bought on the Auction House for 100 to 150K each, depending on time of day. You can buy more with the profits you make from using the other ones, easily.

 

Of course, you know what this is doing. It is driving up the price of uncommons because fewer people will be selling them but more people will be buying the salvage needed to make them (so it is more expensive to buy or craft them for your toons) but driving down the price of rares. It seems like the difference between the two in the mechanics of the game drop system is far too great.

At the moment, the salvage market is seeded by the devs, so common, uncommon, and even rare salvage are effectively infinite. And recipes drop often enough that there will usually be plenty of those to go around in any case—and if not, specific uncommon recipes only cost 20 merits each from the merit vendor, so they can easily be had by anyone who really wants them.

 

[Adeon Hawkwood]

Of course, you know what this is doing. It is driving up the price of uncommons because fewer people will be selling them but more people will be buying the salvage needed to make them (so it is more expensive to buy or craft them for your toons) but driving down the price of rares. It seems like the difference between the two in the mechanics of the game drop system is far too great.

At the moment, the salvage market is seeded by the devs, so common, uncommon, and even rare salvage are effectively infinite. And recipes drop often enough that there will usually be plenty of those to go around in any case—and if not, specific uncommon recipes only cost 20 merits each from the merit vendor, so they can easily be had by anyone who really wants them.

Also I would say is this a bad thing? Previously uncommon recipes were basically vendor trash. With a handful of exceptions even good uncommons (like Thunderstikes) weren't really worth that much. Whereas now a lot of uncommons are selling for a reasonable (but not excessive) price so people's drops are more valuable.

[JusticeBowler]

You could look at it as "sort of broken," or you could look at it as more accessible to players who don't have the wherewithal to save up hundreds of millions of Inf for just one recipe. I like it better how it is now.

 

The thing is, the way you did it on live years ago won't work, because the I25 market is an entirely different ballgame. Sorry, old dog, but I'm afraid you're going to have to learn some new tricks. :)

 

Actually, no, converters can be bought on the Auction House for 100 to 150K each, depending on time of day. You can buy more with the profits you make from using the other ones, easily.

 

At the moment, the salvage market is seeded by the devs, so common, uncommon, and even rare salvage are effectively infinite. And recipes drop often enough that there will usually be plenty of those to go around in any case—and if not, specific uncommon recipes only cost 20 merits each from the merit vendor, so they can easily be had by anyone who really wants them.

 

I think I like it better now too, but I can like something better and still recognize all the bizarre externalities of the exchange. There are so many odd ways that the Devs have provided to take another stab at keeping enough salvage and recipes going around. You'd think it would have been easier to just increase the rate of drops compared to the rate of influence folks were earning. That would force deflation. But of course, each change in the system gets locked in so every time the Devs came up with something new (Vanguard Merits) they had to figure out how it could be fungible ultimately with things people actually want to buy.

 

In that sense, I am committed to my "new trick" learning. I frankly wasn't very good at the old way either. I had a number of uncommon or rare sets on my level 50s but never had any of them maxed out and I don't think I ever had a full purple set of anything. My toons were playable, strong, and fun. So I suspect I can do that all over again... but in a new way. This is just my first attempt. When I've been at it a few months I'm certain I'll have a different tale to tell about what I've been able to accomplish.

 

For example, I didn't know you could buy converters on the market for Influence. So that's another important piece of the puzzle. At some point I need to write it all down on a piece of paper... how all the different "tweaks" interact with each other. It wouldn't be a big chart, but it would make my brain happy to make it all visually clear. Ultimately profit is made only two ways, play the game at a good-to-better pace absorbing a cross section of the more lucrative rewards, or provide arbitrage for all the people that don't do that.

 

"At the moment" is interesting. I wonder how long and for what rate those seeds will hold out? It doesn't really matter though. I'm sure they will continue to keep the community reasonably supplied. But it does seem so much faster now doesn't it? And one wonders how many lvl 50s tricked out with purples and how many billions of influence some players will have until they reach the finish line and move on. It'll be different for each of them I suppose. But there is still the problem that Statesman couldn't solve so long ago... some people are just way more powerful, way more into it, way more ... more and keeping the spectrum interested and involved is a real trick.

 

In my opinion CoH was the only place to do that, though folks still playing Everquest or EVE or any of the very old titles might disagree. CoH certainly seemed the most newbie / casual friendly place and I hope the Homecoming continues to be.

[Silk]

You don't have to pay 600k+ or 800k+ for rare's to craft them goodies...is all I will say.

[JusticeBowler]

You don't have to pay 600k+ or 800k+ for rare's to craft them goodies...is all I will say.

I don't have Merits to buy them that way either. I'm not farming, I'm playing, and I don't have a toon above 40 yet (alt-itis).

 

The market is way screwy! So I've had a lvl 30 Unspeakable Terror: Fear/Range on the market for 1m for 3 days now. It is probably the lesser son of an OK set, but he had a history that included selling for as much as 2m. Two of them have sold in the last two days for 2m... how is that possible? How are people selling "first" when their price is more than my offer?

 

You have 11 sellers and 11 buyers. If none of the transactions have gone through that's because all the sellers want more than 1m and all the buyers are offering less that 1m. How can someone sell for more than I'm selling? I suppose we could all be selling for exactly 1m and his post was older than mine... is that how it works?

 

Because of the "bucket" system of IO sales am I seeing sales of lvl 50 UT:F/R mixed in with lvl 30s?

[Mr. Vee]

The lowest listed price is the first bought. So someone had theirs listed cheaper than yours. They got more than you're listing because the person who bought it wanted it now and so just checked purchase history and bid the 2m rather than bid creeping.

[JusticeBowler]

The lowest listed price is the first bought. So someone had theirs listed cheaper than yours. They got more than you're listing because the person who bought it wanted it now and so just checked purchase history and bid the 2m rather than bid creeping.

So I'm certain they listed for 999,999 or less but got lucky when a big buyer walked in the door. Got it.

 

So patience is not much of a virtue in selling. I'll be waiting forever as long as there's one person undercutting me in price no matter how big the big bucks are because they'll get the booty.

 

But it IS a virtue in buying because you can post a large number of low value bids and leave them for weeks, if you want,  when someone somewhere "dumps" something on the market fast or by mistake, you get the binky.

[Mr. Vee]

Exactly. Keep in mind there are a good number of folks who put everything up for 1 inf. On high volume sets this doesn't make much difference but in a low volume like the one you mentioned it can really add to the time you have it listed, especially if you listed right at the going rate.

[Silk]

You don't have to pay 600k+ or 800k+ for rare's to craft them goodies...is all I will say.

I don't have Merits to buy them that way either. I'm not farming, I'm playing, and I don't have a toon above 40 yet (alt-itis).

 

.....snip...

 

I don't use merits for salvage either, there's another wildly unused currency that's easy to get and btw I have  2 toons one lvl 15 and a lvl 31.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

You don't have to pay 600k+ or 800k+ for rare's to craft them goodies...is all I will say.

I don't have Merits to buy them that way either. I'm not farming, I'm playing, and I don't have a toon above 40 yet (alt-itis).

I think his point was that you don't need ot buy rare salvage at all. Most of the rare enhancements on the market were gotten by crafting commons and converting them. That's part of the reason why the price of rare salvage has been taking a nose-dive in the last few days.

 

The market is way screwy! So I've had a lvl 30 Unspeakable Terror: Fear/Range on the market for 1m for 3 days now. It is probably the lesser son of an OK set, but he had a history that included selling for as much as 2m. Two of them have sold in the last two days for 2m... how is that possible? How are people selling "first" when their price is more than my offer?

 

You have 11 sellers and 11 buyers. If none of the transactions have gone through that's because all the sellers want more than 1m and all the buyers are offering less that 1m. How can someone sell for more than I'm selling? I suppose we could all be selling for exactly 1m and his post was older than mine... is that how it works?

 

Because of the "bucket" system of IO sales am I seeing sales of lvl 50 UT:F/R mixed in with lvl 30s?

Chances are someone has them listed for a lower price than you but the people who are actually buying are just bidding 2million because they don't care about wasting a million inf or so.

 

Regarding transaction order when multiple sellers have the same prices, from what I recall the answer was is "it's complicated". Basically when the market was first released some people did some experiments and found that the sale order was consistent but not predictable. Essentially under experimental conditions bids would execute in the same order but it wasn't as simple as "first in, first out". Maybe someone who has looked at the code can give more info than that.

[Shinobu]

If I see something is selling in the 2 million range, I might list for 1.6 million, unless it's a IO that I know sells well then I might list for 1.9 million.  I rarely list for a round number that I expect it to sell for.

 

Also pay attention to how many are for sale.  I sold some Brute ATOs over the weekend, they were going for anywhere from 9 to 15 million, but there were none for sale when I listed mine so I listed them for close to that 15 million price, and I got what I wanted.  ^_^

 

(Mind you, 15 million for something that comes out of a pack that costs 10 million... if only I could sell ATOs endlessly at those kind of prices!)

[hastened]

Shinobu said much the same thing I would have. Do read my guide; I wrote it for the benefit of people just like you. And at the bottom, I link to another market guide I wrote on ParagonWiki that may be useful to you as well.

 

Just to note: crafting rare recipes is a mug's game, now, because rare recipes require rare salvage. And thanks to the "bucketing" system the market uses, no piece of rare salvage is ever going to cost less than 800,000 Inf or so. So, there's no way you can make money that way. It's far better to list the rare recipes on the AH for what you can get for them--or sell them to an Enhancement vendor, because they'll probably pay you more than the auction house. (Though there are a few rare sets, such as PVP sets, that are are an exception, so maybe you want to check the going rate on any recipe before you dispose of it.) Likewise, you might as well just sell any rare salvage you get, because you'll get more out of it that way than if you used it in a recipe.

 

But Uncommon recipes might just net you something if you craft and convert them.  Good luck with it!

 

Note, there are specific instances where crafting rares can still be significantly valuable as part of an overall plan.  Specifically, I found that people are buying all the Red Fortune recipes, probably to use as feed stock to turn into LotG +7.5% enhancements.  However, there are a ton of lesser used reactive defenses up for basically nothing because they need rare salvage to craft.  Level 41 reactive defense enhancements have a 50/50 shot of transforming into LotG per 2 enhancement converters.  All the LotG pieces slowly sell for 3-4 million and can be transformed into a LotG +7.5% recharge for an average cost of 2 million in converters that will sell very quickly for 6 million.

 

There are a few other spots like this where you can take advantage of recipe availability differences in a particular band created by people avoiding the 700k charge incurred by needing rare salvage.

[Robotech_Master]

The market is way screwy! So I've had a lvl 30 Unspeakable Terror: Fear/Range on the market for 1m for 3 days now. It is probably the lesser son of an OK set, but he had a history that included selling for as much as 2m. Two of them have sold in the last two days for 2m... how is that possible? How are people selling "first" when their price is more than my offer?

In that circumstance, I think I would have listed for a hair over a million, say 1.1 million. Fear and other mez sets are pretty low volume, and someone listing theirs for less than yours will get the sales every time.

 

I generally don't bother with mez sets, except as fodder to convert to some other, more valuable rare and then sell that.

 

[Fedifensor]

Just to note: crafting rare recipes is a mug's game, now, because rare recipes require rare salvage. And thanks to the "bucketing" system the market uses, no piece of rare salvage is ever going to cost less than 800,000 Inf or so. So, there's no way you can make money that way.

Saw rare salvage going for 600-650k the other night.  As more people use converters to get rare set IOs instead of crafting them with rare salvage, the price of rare salvage is going to continue to drop because of high supply and low demand.  It will probably continue to drop until enough recipes are worth crafting with rare salvage because they’re a better deal than rolling the dice with enhancement converters...

 

(22 in-set conversions last night to get a LotG Defense/Recharge to convert to a Defense/Increased Global Recharge.  Should be a 1 in 5 chance.  The random number generator hates me.)

[Robotech_Master]

Saw rare salvage going for 600-650k the other night.  As more people use converters to get rare set IOs instead of crafting them with rare salvage, the price of rare salvage is going to continue to drop because of high supply and low demand.  It will probably continue to drop until enough recipes are worth crafting with rare salvage because they’re a better deal than rolling the dice with enhancement converters...

There are certain Uncommon IOs in certain ranges that are 100% guaranteed a conversion to a Rare IO, because there are exactly two sets of that particular type in that particular range—an uncommon and a rare. At that point, it's not a matter of "rolling the dice" to get a rare IO. The only dice-roll is a question of which rare IO it converts into—and it's only 100K to 150K to convert it again if it turns out to be something that doesn't sell well.

 

I don't think it will ever become economical, by comparison to that, to craft rares directly instead.

[Shinobu]

That all depends on the rare.  It's always been quite worthwhile to craft certain rares.

 

Mind you, all you really need is to be able to craft for less than you sell.  If you can craft for less than a million influence and sell for more than a million, you'll make a slim profit.  Not as great a profit as someone who crafted for maybe less than a hundred thousand, but still, worth the effort to craft that rare recipe you already have, especially for anyone who doesn't want to mess around with converters.  :D

 

Still and all... I've been working on a new fire farmer, self-PLing at +2/8, up to level 42 now, and I hit my cap on AE tickets, so I bought a bunch of random junk recipes and then crafted and converted them all, and I made 100 million influence by morning.  That still seems pretty magical, like I'm making money from nothing.  I didn't borrow any money to do it, so I had to sell one IO to finance the next couple, and buy converters to convert more, but I still wound up well off in less than 24 hours, and with over 7,000 AE tickets still to spend.

 

 

 

 

 

[hastened]

Saw rare salvage going for 600-650k the other night.  As more people use converters to get rare set IOs instead of crafting them with rare salvage, the price of rare salvage is going to continue to drop because of high supply and low demand.  It will probably continue to drop until enough recipes are worth crafting with rare salvage because they’re a better deal than rolling the dice with enhancement converters...

There are certain Uncommon IOs in certain ranges that are 100% guaranteed a conversion to a Rare IO, because there are exactly two sets of that particular type in that particular range—an uncommon and a rare. At that point, it's not a matter of "rolling the dice" to get a rare IO. The only dice-roll is a question of which rare IO it converts into—and it's only 100K to 150K to convert it again if it turns out to be something that doesn't sell well.

 

I don't think it will ever become economical, by comparison to that, to craft rares directly instead.

 

Yes, but a lot of the time you want specific IO sets, not just generic rares, so you can do a transform into something that sells well where there is a guaranteed or at least very likely guaranteed transformation path due to the levels of the recipes in question.  That will continue to provide a point to rare crafting.

 

Also, if there are certain uncommon recipes that fill the same need as a rare ones in this way, people will buy up the uncommon recipes until they're enough more expensive that it is equally cost effective to build the rare IO.  It has been my experience that this is the case with Red Fortune and Reactive Defenses, for example.  They're both good for the same main thing (tranform to LotG +7.5% recharge), but one is uncommon and one is rare.  So the uncommon one is selling for around a million, and the rares are selling fro 100k-500k.

[Robotech_Master]

If you're going to want to Attune the IO, though, it's usually more cost-effective to buy it that way, given that the Market Attunes for free but it costs 4 million Inf to do it yourself.

[Snakebit]

Can someone inform me a little on Attunement?

 

 

In my uniformed opinion, it seems like the devs are pushing for easy market access relative to Live. And it's much appreciated. The entry floor was so fucking high on live.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

Can someone inform me a little on Attunement?

Basically Attuned IOs are equivalent to the store-bought enhancements back on Live. So their stats are determined by your level and when you exemplar down they keep their set bonuses until you go more than 3 levels below the lowest level of the set. The only disadvantage they have compared to regular Set IOs is that you can't use level boosters on them.