Couple of Market Newbie Questions

[Golden Azrael]

Market.  Newby.

 

I had over 40 alts.  L50.  Built out.  Builds ranged from 500m-1.2 billion.  That's alot of 'influence' in AT Character assets.

 

But I had alot of 'junk' (so called) on each asset.  200-300 million on many builds.  Merits.  Converters.  Cat's.  Purple IOs (sometimes as many as 5 on most of the alts.  14 Purple IOs on my Farmer...)  I'd got down to my 'last billion' on a main character blew that on some Tank builds.  Then scavenged the remaining cash from all the rest of my builds and blew that on Tank Builds also.

 

I made the decision to put together an SG Base and consolidate all remaining assets.  ('Search down the back of the sofa' and 'hanging very alt upside down' for loose change.)

 

3 Storage tables for Attack Purples, Key Rare Oranges, Control based Purples.  1 storage for orange salvage.  One for Cats.  One for converters.  Two for Yellow Salvage.  Two for White Salvage.

 

I was down to my last 100 million on my most recent alt.  The Shield/MA which was built out which MANY AoEs. 

 

By the time I'd finished my 40+ alt Character Audit?

 

I had over 100 Purple recipes (from all the recipes I had to make).  100+ Cats.  100+ Converters.  Hero merits.  Merits.  Lots of decent 'Orange' Recipes (You know the ones...)

 

I've sold some of the control based Purples.  Farmed.  And consolidated my 'CoH wealth.'  And, following the general advice garnered from the market forum, have gone from 100 Million to 2 billion on one alt.  Played the market and added 1 billion+ to the next alt.

 

Basically.  I used to sell orange and yellow recipes for '1' influence on the market.  By not taking the time to craft all of these and utilise these?  I've probably 'given away' hundreds of millions to billions in wealth to other players who nabbed it and turned it into wealth.  Basically, I turned my hundreds of yellow and orange recipes that were lying around on 40+ alts and crafted them.  Ergo?  I turned it into enhancements.  I converted assets into influence.  Lesson learned?  Now?  I craft as I play.  

 

I have not 'played' the market at scale by buying stuff low and selling high in volume?  (I suppose I could try that next now I have the billions to try it.)   

 

What I build I sell below market rates. 🙂

 

It's free.  Well.  It's not.  I payed for it with my 'time.' 😉  But in CoH terms.  It's free.  Craft it and you can make 'money' from 'nothing.'

 

My general advice is this.  (And this includes 1st time to L50s.)  Get an AT that can deal damage whole sale and somewhat safely.  A tank or brute will do.  Or a defence capped blaster.  Or a War Shade (250 million made in two weeks of 'casual' play.)

 

Play it.  (PLAY IT.)  Within a week of casual play, loot, drops etc.  You'll have 100 million.  And the 1st billion is 'the hardest.'  Yes.  But if you do ten weeks of 'casual' play you'll have your Billion.  Some of the best money you make is by drops that come from your play.  eg. Common IOs.  Sell them at the vendor for 100k a pop.  Ten of those?  That's a million!  Then you have the yellow recipe drops.  Craft them!  (Make yourself a base.  Mine took me 30 mins to 1 hour to make and tweak.)  

 

When you roll other alts?  Store the wealth at your base.  Self invite all your hero alts.  Work together for a common cause.  Before you know it.  You'll start filling up those storage areas and ordering extra storage from CoH SG IKEA.

 

The OSMOSIS of play will get you to 1 billion over a couple of months.

 

As for playing the market.  Buy low.  Sell high.  Patience.  (If you want to do it RIGHT NOW, you'll pay RIGHT NOW prices.  That can add 500 million to a build.)

 

If you craft and store things as you go along, you can use pre-stored enhancements to build out your alt and the merits you earned as well.  Have a base amount on hand for that next project.  

 

USE/Play your current built ENOUGH to set aside an amount for your next build.  Your current L50 should be played enough to fund the next build.  Unless you are Mr. 2003 old school who likes to do things the hard way and 'earn' it the hard way by rolling the boulder up that hill with no starting cash.

 

If you study the Enhancement/Recipe wiki, you'll soon see what the best sets are.  And that should correlate with how much things cost on the market.  Eg.  Luck of the Gambler.  Eg. Purple Sets.  The more demand.  The rarer the set.  The MOAR value.  Global recharge on Luck of the Gambler will always be in demand because they are an 'easy' way to apply rechrage to a build.  You'll find them from 5-8 million.  There is a clue right there...

 

Azrael.

 

 

Edited June 6, 2022 by Golden Azrael

[Golden Azrael]

On 5/3/2022 at 12:01 AM, Infinitum said:

I know how the market works - to the ends of satisfying my build ambitions but never played the wealth game until recently.

 

Do you guys also track market wealth in terms of what your combined portfolio is worth on the mean?  Or is it just cold hard influence?

 

If the answer to the first part is yes, how do you calculate that? (i am guessing its a estimation?)

 

I currently have 40 decked out builds usually with Both ATOs and at least 2-3 Winter sets and more often than not 1+Shield Wall sets then top tier sets to fill the rest out.

 

Like i said i have been spending about as much time lately playing market games as the actual game just to shake things up a bit internally.  I currently have close to 4bn - goal is 80 bn - 2bn per maxed build.

 

If someone asked what would I tell them my portfolio was worth in game terms?

 

1 'Decked Out Build' x 1 week of play = 100 million.

 

x 40 'Decked Out Builds' = 4 Billion.

 

40 weeks of play.

 

Re: The Market specifically.

 

From the 'play above.'  If I had 'only' one yellow recipe drop per day. 

 

Bare Minimum pick up over those 40 weeks.  (Though, I'd expect 100 million a week from casual play...)

 

280 days x 500 Thousand (low ball price, could be a million) = 140 million (Low yellow) or 280 million (High Yellow.)

280 days x1.25 million = 340 million.  (Playing a L50, one drops at least a day.) 

280 days x 100,000 Converter = 28 million.  (Take off 30% as they usually go for 70k average.  So more like 18-20 million.)

280 days x 100,000 for Normal IO = 28 million.

280 days x 500,000 for Orange Salvage = 140 million.

 

That's just a single drop of each scenario.  And of course things drop way more than that in a 1-2 hour 'casual' session.

 

That's a 'casual' 676 Million with minimal drops and casual effort.  That excludes the raining influence you get from farming a L50 at +3 x 8.  (I count any mission as a farm.  Any tip mission can be a 'farm.'  For me, a farm might be my Warshade juicing Council Maps +3/4 x 8.  280 million made from a couple of weeks play on one map.)

 

This excludes having a 'specific' farmer.  An afk farmer.  A brute (which should be faster and MOARer.)  Excludes 'playing' the market buying low selling high.  It excludes Merits from TIP arcs.  It excludes Purple Recipe or Orange recipe drops.

 

 

Azrael.

Edited June 7, 2022 by Golden Azrael

[Ukase]

On 5/4/2022 at 8:44 AM, EmperorSteele said:

I concur with the "cash on hand", though I'll make an exception for Reward Merits. With enough of those, you can get pretty much anything you need. Granted, you're ripping yourself off if you're buying purple recipes at 100 merits a pop, but if you don't have the patience to sell 300 converters instead, well, good news, I guess!

@EmperorSteeleYou should be aware that I will buy converters from any Cosmic Council SG member (which you are) for 70k each, no limit to how many I will buy. So, instead of clicking in the AH 30 x 10 each, and paying a 10% fee, I give you the full amount. Granted, sometimes more inf may be made by converting to boosters or something else, for someone that's got a zillion merits and wants to liquidate them for a big pile of inf - I do have the big pile of inf. 

I have brutes that are recycled farmers. When they hit vet level 48, I respec the build out, drop the IOs in a bin and let the next alt get them. So, I accrue emp merits specifically to get converters. So, in a sense, they're free to me. I do this as a courtesy. (but you can bet I'll recoup the inf by actually using the converters.) 

I don't even actively farm anymore; but I do pl certain characters to get past certain levels (and vet levels), so there's always drops to craft, convert and sell. 

Same for you @Ironblade. 

[Ironblade]

4 hours ago, Ukase said:

@EmperorSteeleYou should be aware that I will buy converters from any Cosmic Council SG member (which you are) for 70k each, no limit to how many I will buy. So, instead of clicking in the AH 30 x 10 each, and paying a 10% fee, I give you the full amount.
.

.

.
Same for you @Ironblade. 

Yeah, but then I'd have to drag them over to Excelsior.  😛

 

It's Ironblade on Everlasting who's closing in on 10,000 rewards merits (for the third time, I think).  Ironblade on Excelsior is 'relatively' poor since he has already bought his purples and HO's.

[Hedgefund]

2 hours ago, Ironblade said:

Yeah, but then I'd have to drag them over to Excelsior.  😛

 

It's Ironblade on Everlasting who's closing in on 10,000 rewards merits (for the third time, I think).  Ironblade on Excelsior is 'relatively' poor since he has already bought his purples and HO's.

The quick and easy solution to aproaching the RM cap is to convert to hero merits.  Or vill merits if you prefer.

[EmperorSteele]

That's good to know @Ukase! I'll keep that in mind ^_^

[Ironblade]

On 6/7/2022 at 9:06 AM, Ukase said:

You should be aware that I will buy converters from any Cosmic Council SG member (which you are) for 70k each, no limit to how many I will buy. So, instead of clicking in the AH 30 x 10 each, and paying a 10% fee, I give you the full amount.

I guess you've actually done this and I'm curious - how many converters can you move in a single trade?  Thousands?

[Golden Azrael]

21 hours ago, Ironblade said:

I guess you've actually done this and I'm curious - how many converters can you move in a single trade?  Thousands?

 

Good question.

 

There is a range of values of any given commodity.  A low.  An average.  A high.

 

Obviously, the intent is to buy low.  And sell high.

 

The process of this can be quick or take some time.  Depending on what the market is 'moving' on.  And what those with billions are buying or dumping into the market.

 

Obviously, if you bought a 1000 Converters at 55k and sold at 85k.  That's 30k profit x 1000.  

 

Do that with 10,000 trades you can add a zero to your profit.

 

Azrael.

[Ironblade]

I think you've misunderstood my question.  I was asking how many converters can be traded in a single trade between two players.

[Golden Azrael]

I think that is something you'll have to test with someone...

 

Azrael.

[Ironblade]

1 hour ago, Golden Azrael said:

I think that is something you'll have to test with someone...

I guess you didn't notice that I was specifically quoting and asking someone who buys converters from people en masse.

[Ukase]

On 6/8/2022 at 1:11 PM, Ironblade said:

I guess you've actually done this and I'm curious - how many converters can you move in a single trade?  Thousands?

Sure. There are a couple of folks in the SG that have taken advantage of this offer. 

On the AH, as you may be aware, you can only move 10 converters per trade. 
From character to character, the limit is 10,000 in one trade, saving you potentially 1000's of clicks.

As a disclaimer, I make it very clear that actually using your converters will make you far more than selling them - if you've a general idea of what you're selling and are willing to take the time. I'm not out to take advantage, although it is an advantage for me. But, I'm willing to take the time to do all the crafting and converting.  May as well "wet my beak" a little. 

Because a patient bid (generally overnight) will get me converters for 70k each, that's the price I offer to buy them at. Any less, I'd feel cheap and dirty. Any more, and it would be over-paying, given how I can already get them at 70k. 

[Golden Azrael]

Test.  1 unit of Converter bought at 70k.  Sold at 90k.  20K profit on that unit.

 

20k x 10 = 200,000

20k x100 = 2,000,000

20k x1000 = 20, 000, 000.

 

I've made more from yellow enhancements.  Just takes the time to craft each time.  I got through my backlog of yellow, orange and purple recipes  over the last Homecoming year or so.  That was 'alot' of crafting to get through the backlog which I'd deemed 'junk.'

 

I managed to put back 3 billion after 5-10 billion spent on characters.

 

If you made 2-3 million a day, you'd be on a billion or so per year for 'casual' play.

 

Azrael.

Edited June 9, 2022 by Golden Azrael

[Andreah]

1 hour ago, Golden Azrael said:

Test.  1 unit of Converter bought at 70k.  Sold at 90k.  20K profit on that unit.

You also pay a 10% market fee. So that's only 11k profit each.

 

Flipping can be profitable, but once it's evident someone is flipping, another flipper usually moves in to flip inside their margin. And those who're listing converters for sale might start listing them a little higher, too. The purchase volume would drop, and those listings would cut into sales, too.

 

Most of the commodities flippers would be interested in end up having margins that are pretty tight -- probably no more than the market fee itself. 

 

I doubt this happens much on converters since they're so cheap. The flipper is only making 100k on a stack taking up a market slot, and on a per click-basis, it's low profit.  The problem with relatively low value commodities in our auction is it's hard to scale up to larger amounts. And if you try to go for a lot of stacks simultaneously, you'll be risking the non-refunded 5% market listing fee if the market responds to your flipping activities by changing prevailing listing/buying levels. Your other alternative to is constantly be bidding and listing in small amounts trying to stay on top of the fluctuating market.

 

There are probably already casual flippers working these markets; but doing so only in small amounts or sporadically to try to stay under the radar.

 

I think a person would do better flipping rare salvage. For a short time, and then the market pvp would drive you out of it. Which is probably what would happen with converters, too. 

 

I encourage folks to give the idea a run and see what volume can sustained over, say, a week or two. It can be a lot of fun. It might even make some money. 

[Golden Azrael]

The real money (or more rewarding money) is still to be made from playing the game.  'Free stuff' (drops from the sky) in Generic IOs, cats, convs, Orange Salvage, Yellow Recipes, Orange Recipes.  Vendor it.  Craft it.  Put it on the market at a 'reasonable' price.  There's a couple of million there.  Most of that drops from playing a Council 'farm' mission on +3x8 for about 10-15 mins.

 

From somebody who used to respec on live (following a Volta respec mission) just to get 'up' on the cost of next round of SO upgrades, that's a lot of money to me.

 

Though if you sell a Global LoTG and somebody gives you 28 million for it when you were only asking 6.2 million (10%-ish below it's current market price today...) then that's a bonus.

 

I find after a casual session I can get 8-10 million.  A dedicated farmer can probably do way more than that.

 

As for Converters.  Looks like the commodity buyers have bought up the stock of them on their 5-10 different CoH accounts.  Buying them is a lot slower than it was a few days ago.  The answer to that is still to play the game, though.  Given that yellow recipes can be made from practically 'nothing' then you don't need Converters if you're prepared to craft and sell the yellow enhancements for 'reasonable' prices. 

 

Converters are, for me, more for 'aggressive' crafting.  If you want to take that yellow recipe/enhancement to the next level it can be just a few converters.  And quickly find something that will give you a couple of million or so.  If you are after something specific for higher rewards than that?  You can spend alot 'influence' 70k per converter to get what you want to 'guarantee' that sale for a juicy millions.  When you've done the best part of 100 x 70k of them...'just' to get that potential reward.  It can sometimes be like flipping coins.  Heads or Tails.  Do that for 100 times and lady luck plays her part.  When ever you gamble, sometimes you lose.  So, the use of them worked best for me with a more measured approach though given the current market, things may sell more slowly.  Over a day or two rather than 'instantly.'

 

Yes.  The Market takes its cut.  What yo sell for - market cut eats into your 'profit' margin.  That 'range' of potential profit.  If you're working on 5%-10% profit margin, that's cutting it fine.  There's no point doing a transaction just to break even or make a loss.

 

Azrael.

Edited June 10, 2022 by Golden Azrael

[Andreah]

I think the real money is in the market.  It would not be so if everyone were to work it, of course.

 

I make about 2.5 to 3 Billion per week using fifteen marketing alts each taking about 30 minutes of my time per week. That's about 5 or 6 million per minute. A more dedicated marketeer could probably double that with more lucrative niches or more efficient production lines. I like to watch help, and sometimes general chat while I market.

 

An AFK farmer could do better if you only count their hands-on-keyboard time, I'm sure.

[Golden Azrael]

And how (enquiring minds need to know) do you make 2.5 billion to 3 billion using 15 'marketing' alts each taking 30 minutes?  (That's 15 Alts times 30 minutes?  So it's... 450 minutes total?)  🙂

 

I have an AFK farmer.  I like to run the Shiba Fire Cave.  Very hot.

 

As for my play.  Very casual.  But I did recently make the best part of 3 billion 'in a week' using the market to do the heavy lifting and some farming to feed that marketing.  That also included selling a backlog of recipes from the last year or so.  Back of the sofa stuff.  It took best part of a week to craft it all.  It came from 'nothing' but the 'revenue' of game time.  But it taught me how to craft.  One you do something 100 times, you get 'ok' at it?

 

I'd consider myself a student of the market after following the advice of many marketing luminaries on this part of the forum.

 

40+ alts.  When I added up a minimum spend of 500 million (often far more) spend on all those.  It appears I've blown alot of influence (20 billion, I can't have...) on builds.  I guess you can't take it with you.

 

I guess I could have made 'far more' and banked moAR if i'd 'played the market.'

 

Azrael.

Edited June 10, 2022 by Golden Azrael

[Bionic_Flea]

It's about an 15-60 minutes or so a day.  Log in to alt, hit /ah, collect sales and purchases, then craft/convert/list new stuff and put in new bids.  Then either go play or log into second alt and repeat.  The time range is based on how much stuff you craft/convert and how lucky you get with your conversions.  Some days you are lucky and almost every conversion is something that sells, other days the RNG gods feel like torturing you and your clicking finger wants to fall off.

 

Sometimes I just run through several alts and do that and also move them for day job badge purposes.  It's fairly mindless, needs no team, and sometimes it's just nice to visit old characters and see what they have or might need.  Other days I just log in and play a character and do the craft/convert/sell at the end of the play session before logging off.

[Golden Azrael]

Bionic Flea,

 

The pearls of flea wisdom?  Laser printed into my Hive Mind.

 

A wide-screen picture.

 

*Doffs Cap to you, Sir.

 

Best Regards,

Azrael.

Edited June 10, 2022 by Golden Azrael

[Ukase]

I'm sure I've shared this before. 
Please keep in mind, I no longer do this routinely because I believe I've reached that point where I have more inf than I will spend. Indeed, given the ATOs and Winter-Os and purples I have stashed, a top end build barely costs me 100M, and that's because I don't wish to use my farmer/marketer alt to sell a level 50 Unbreakable Guard and have the alt that's leveling up purchase the same IO in the attuned form. I could do that - and technically, only spend a pittance on a build some of the more impatient folks spend "a billion" on. 

That said, 
I've four accounts. 
Each account has a farmer. 

Sometimes, only two farmers are active - providing the other two alt accounts with vet levels, either for emp merits to craft incarnate parts, or vet levels for emp merits to convert to reward merits to convert into converters or boosters. 

I don't think I need to say that while these farmers do their thing, both the farmers and the alts get free salvage and free recipe drops. I craft what can be crafted. What can't be crafted, I wait until the next mission for those salvage drops. 

Occasionally, the rare salvage doesn't drop as often as I'd like. Back in the first year, I'd just run a quick ticket farm and acquire the salvage that way. 
It's not how much inf you make, but rather how much inf you save. Every 5M inf you save is at least one farm you don't need to run, if not more. Saving inf saves me time - but it also costs me time, too. But, most importantly, by running a ticket farm - I am keeping my inf out of the hands of the salvage flipper. I do not wish to arm my competition with seed money. 

But, times change, and I have more than I used to, so I don't sweat it much anymore. I will get annoyed at uncommon salvage costing over 2k, and when that happens, I'll log in alts that I play to see what they have and trade them to the crafting alt, or if they're a different tier, I'll sell them, and watch the crafting alt's bid come through.  (usually - sometimes, someone outbids me, and that's fine, I still made something.) 

Eventually though, the 2k for uncommon goes through. I tend to waste about 24 AH slots with incarnate salvage, stored for hard times when folks do that bidding war stuff with the salvage. 

Back when Yomo was suggesting...okay, he was outright stating he had a zillion inf, I did set out to try and catch up. Lord only knows why. Maybe my e-peen is too small. Anyway, I reached my 500 billion goal, and figured that was good enough. Now I wish we had a bank where I could stash it and compare to other accounts (no need for globals to be displayed - not trying to embarass or boast, I'm just curious. I suspect there's at least 20 folks out there who never play the game and all they do is craft, convert and sell. And they have a trillion or more. But who can say? 

I can say, that I've never deleted any uncommon or rare recipe - aside from the respec recipes. I just sell those. They're worthless to me. The packs have given me more than I'll ever need, and mids almost makes a respec a thing of the past. 

Flipping converters, as opined by Andreah isn't a real great way to go in my opinion either. You'll always make more by using the converters. And if you don't have anything to convert - you're not playing enough. At least, that's my opinion, for all that will get you. 

[Ironblade]

So much work.  I basically just play and do a tiny bit of farming and marketeering.

 

My most recent farming was a few weeks before Dr Q TF came up in the rotation.  I normally solo it on my main, each time it comes around, for the merits.  It occurred to me that I didn't have a character high enough for Dr Q on my 3rd account so I farmed one up.  Log in all 3 accounts plus my girlfriend logs in.  Then I solo it on Ironblade.  Took me about 4 hours of lackadaisical play to earn 732 merits for me and 244 for her (obviously plus inf and drops).  I do one or two weeklies each week if it's stupid ones.  If it's something I enjoy like the ITF or Penny Yin, I might run it a half dozen times on different characters.  I always have multiple characters who can uses the Notices - the merits are a bonus.

 

I actually hadn't marketeered since live until just recently.  I decided to have Ironblade on every shard with the same build and I decided to have the one on Reunion self fund.  So I started buying trash recipes that didn't use rare salvage, crafting them, and converting in category to stuff that sells.  That was easy enough, so I had a new tank on Everlasting do the same.  After paying for his build, I figured I'd keep at it until he was fully incarnate (I built him for the Underground trial).  At that point, I won't be playing him as much so he'll retire from marketeering.

So, minimal marketeering (30-45 minutes per week) pays for my characters - since I don't PL any character I intend to play.  I play them level 1 to 50 so there's loads of time to accumulate funds for their builds.  Then with the weeklies and a few Hami raids per week, I'm swimming in reward merits.

 

Anyone doing any one of these things in moderation should have plenty of funds.

[Golden Azrael]

2 hours ago, Ukase said:

You'll always make more by using the converters. And if you don't have anything to convert - you're not playing enough. At least, that's my opinion, for all that will get you. 

 

Here, here.

 

Azrael.

[Golden Azrael]

14 hours ago, Ukase said:

I will get annoyed at uncommon salvage costing over 2k, and when that happens, I'll log in alts that I play to see what they have and trade them to the crafting alt, or if they're a different tier, I'll sell them, and watch the crafting alt's bid come through.

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one that finds that really annoying with uncommon going for 2,400k. 

 

You're trying to craft something and the market is waiting on some bidding war supply and demand thing.  'I just want a yellow uncommon eg. Sapphire, so I can craft this thing for my build or to sell it.'  It's been similar with the Orange salvage being pushed up to 600k+.  I think that's the one that sent me over the edge to make the base.

 

That's part of the reason I set up my own SG.  I got fed up of the price gouging.  I now put all my alts 'uncommon' salvage in a couple of storage racks (I have two for common and 2 for uncommon.  I may add a 3rd one for uncommon and common.  It's surprising how quickly it goes down when you make a bake a bunch of recipes. 

 

Azrael.

Edited June 11, 2022 by Golden Azrael

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 6/10/2022 at 3:59 AM, Golden Azrael said:

 

 

As for Converters.  Looks like the commodity buyers have bought up the stock of them on their 5-10 different CoH accounts.  Buying them is a lot slower than it was a few days ago. 

 

I've been buying a *lot* lately.  This whole "cannot open superpacks or claim items from Character Items" has been really grating on me lately.

[Golden Azrael]

On 6/7/2022 at 2:06 PM, Ukase said:

You should be aware ...

 

Just as an aside.  Do HC put a limit on accounts?  It's one email address per account?

 

Azrael.