Zero to 100 Million in a Week

[Adeon Hawkwood]

So basically, this kind of method is fairly crash-proof, because I'm working most of the market, not just one niche.  You also learn more about the market, like the fact that certain Aegis IOs are in short supply at the moment.  >.>

Yeah, resist IOs (both Aegis and Unbreakable Guard) jumped up during the middle of the week so even the bad pieces were selling quite high (4million is a good price for the End/Rech, that one is normally in the 2-3million range). They seem to have dropped back down to normal levels now though (although certain pieces in those sets are always in higher demand for frankenslotting).

 

I don't pay much attention to how many people are bidding.  50 bids can mean the IO is in high demand, or it can mean one guy placed five 100-influence bids for stacks of 10.  :P

I think it's worth looking at the number of bids relative to the number for sale. If there are a lot more for sale than there are bids then you should price lower to sell quickly. However if there are a lot more bids than there are sales you can be a bit risky and price them higher since they're in high demand.

[Scientist]

 

I do think that I need to include a little bit more on how I price things, maybe.  Last 5 is a way to see how the IO is selling, but it can be very misleading.  I also pay attention to how many are for sale, to gauge whether to list a lot lower than the apparent sell price, or to list high (such as the Aegis case I mentioned, with only 2 for sale at the time).

 

I don't pay much attention to how many people are bidding.  50 bids can mean the IO is in high demand, or it can mean one guy placed five 100-influence bids for stacks of 10.  :P

 

I would agree with you that a lot of bids on something could be pretty meaningless, but I would argue that having only a few bids does tell you something useful.  You mention, for example, the Aegis that only had 2 for sale.  If it also had only 3 bids, that may be a sign of low demand, and you may not want to list at the high end of whatever last 5 range is showing.  If there are 50 bids, it may at least be worth looking at the set bonuses and demand for other IOs in the set and such to see if there may be legit demand versus someone trying to pump demand with lowball bid stacking. 

[Shinobu]

 

That's generally true, but most sets that go all the way to 50 are always going to be in at least limited demand, and I know resistance sets are always in demand.  Even if nobody's bidding for one now, I can be fairly certain mine will sell.

 

Where this helps more is in the low level IOs that you don't really know if people buy them often or not.  Like that Deflated Ego IO I had... it's a proc so I wasn't sure if it was worth listing or not.  Even if I'd seen it selling consistently for 1.5 million, it may be one of those IOs that only sell 3 times a week or something.  :P

[Yomo Kimyata]

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

[Robotech_Master]

Number of bids may not be all that significant, but number of sales can be. You can throw up a bid for random crappy reasons, but you can't have a sale without the item in question actually being on offer.

 

If there are hundreds of sale listings and relatively few bids, you can know something isn't selling quickly, so if you want your money soon, might need to burn another converter to try your luck with something else.

 

But if there are relatively few sales compared to number of bids, you can know it's in demand, so you might be able to get by with a higher price and still sell soon.

[Rainhall]

Thanks for all the contributions in this thread.  I've been lurking along all week and trying to get the hang of this.  But like a 90s Learn to Line Dance video, I've had to keep pausing and rewinding and peeking back at this screen.  :D

 

I've been modestly successful.  Here are two questions and observations from my side.

 

1.  Is 5M inf kind of the gold standard of sell prices we're looking for here?  Like, if I get a 5M, my work is done, if not I need to look at what my current IO is selling for and do a little risk/reward on further conversions?

 

2.  I tried an (expensive) experiment in the confuse sets today.  I found a L50 Perplex uncommon recipe that require no rare components.  I did a 50 in hopes of getting a category conversion into a purple (1 out of 3 sets in confuse that go to L50.)  I think I did 8 category conversions and it kept flipping back and forth between Perplex and Malaise's Illusions.  Are the purples locked out of category flipping?

 

3.  Shinobu, if you get a Miracle, do you always power through to a +Recovery?  If I'm mathing good, it seems like a about a 30% chance to whiff in 5 tries trying to get a +R.  I figure that at a cost of (15 converters x 100K) = 1.5 Million.  How much premium on the sell price of the +R do you want to see?  May or may not be asking because I have a Miracle in my inventory.  RIGHT NOW.

 

Cheers, everyone.

[Shinobu]

 

1.  Is 5M inf kind of the gold standard of sell prices we're looking for here?

 

My goal with this method is to hopefully hit on a few IOs that sell for 5 million, but I'm also selling stuff that barely sells for 1.5 million along with that.  With random conversions you have to kind of find a sweet spot between "everything is really good" and "everything is pretty much crap".  I'll usually do conversions until I get a damage/heal/endurance/defense/resistance IO.  I'll also stop at holds, and I like Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control (a to-hit set).  You really have to learn a bit through trial and error what can sell for you.

 

2.  I tried an (expensive) experiment in the confuse sets today.  I found a L50 Perplex uncommon recipe that require no rare components.  I did a 50 in hopes of getting a category conversion into a purple (1 out of 3 sets in confuse that go to L50.)  I think I did 8 category conversions and it kept flipping back and forth between Perplex and Malaise's Illusions.  Are the purples locked out of category flipping?

 

Ah.  I didn't go over this part since it's covered in other marketing/conversion guides, but no you can't get to a purple IO from an uncommon or rare.  Purples are in their own category, PvPs are their own category, all of the ATOs are their own category, Winter O's are their own category, and of course generic IOs and Hamidon-style Enhancements are separate categories that don't convert at all.  Also Overwhelming Force is its own category, but you can do an in-set conversion with that one at least.

 

 

3.  Shinobu, if you get a Miracle, do you always power through to a +Recovery?  If I'm mathing good, it seems like a about a 30% chance to whiff in 5 tries trying to get a +R.  I figure that at a cost of (15 converters x 100K) = 1.5 Million.  How much premium on the sell price of the +R do you want to see?  May or may not be asking because I have a Miracle in my inventory.  RIGHT NOW.

 

I did cover this one!  Miracle sells for about 5 million, and my personal believe (haven't really tested it much) is that people tend to slot just the +recovery IO rather than a set of Miracle, so most often if they're buying anything else in the set, it's to convert to the +recharge IO themselves.  Therefore I think this is a special case where converting to the +recovery IO is not only rewarding for the money you can make, but likely sells much faster than anything else in the set.

 

But yes, generally speaking for most sets I'm careful about doing too many in-set conversions.  It doesn't strike me as a great strategy for a Numina for example, because the special in that set doesn't sell for a lot more [note:  except I just noticed it's going for 5-6 million.  It was selling for about 3 million for quite some time.  It always pays to check your assumptions!].  I do it with Performance Shifter because there are two good results, and my usual attitude with Luck of the Gambler is that there are three pretty good results, although I really want the +7.5% recharge, I'll sell the defense or defense/endurance IOs too.  I think everyone will have their own rules/limits on how many times they convert something to get what they think will sell well.

 

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Enhancement_Sets

 

This wiki page is also very useful because it lists the level range for every IO set.  If you want to see why I'd craft a level 31 Lethargic Response Sleep recipe, for example, it's because level 31 is cheaper to craft than level 50, and it can only convert into a Call of the Sandman (rare) IO.  If I go one level down, a level 30 Lethargic Response can also convert into Hibernation or Induced Coma, and Hibernation is another uncommon so I could convert several times before I get my rare.

 

On the other hand, I have sometimes converted level 30 hold recipes/IOs because if I get a Basilisk's Gaze, those go no higher than 30 but they sell well, they grant 7.5% global recharge for only 4 pieces slotted and also grant recovery and ranged/energy/negative energy defense, so they're popular.  But you can wind up doing a lot of conversions to get one, and right now they don't sell for that much, so it's debatable whether that's really a good strategy at the moment.

 

 

[Shinobu]

 

Sales from last night.

 

 

Sales from this morning.

 

At this point I'm over 190 million, and I have already crafted/converted/listed/mostly sold all of the recipes I'd bought, so last night I put in bids for some taunt recipes, and some teleport recipes.

 

 

I bought 29 teleport recipes, and zero taunt.  I had a feeling even as I was bidding that 1,000 or 2,000 per recipe was too low for the taunt recipes, although I can't tell you why they're popular.  But I crafted 20 IOs from  the teleport (jaunt) recipes, and I put more stock up for sale.

 

At this point I'm crafting 20 recipes at a time, 20 in the morning and 20 in the evening, and buying all my converters from the market.  I think I'm averaging about 50 million profit per 20 IOs, roughly, doing that.

 

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

Thanks for all the contributions in this thread.  I've been lurking along all week and trying to get the hang of this.  But like a 90s Learn to Line Dance video, I've had to keep pausing and rewinding and peeking back at this screen.  :D

 

I've been modestly successful.  Here are two questions and observations from my side.

 

1.  Is 5M inf kind of the gold standard of sell prices we're looking for here?  Like, if I get a 5M, my work is done, if not I need to look at what my current IO is selling for and do a little risk/reward on further conversions?

 

2.  I tried an (expensive) experiment in the confuse sets today.  I found a L50 Perplex uncommon recipe that require no rare components.  I did a 50 in hopes of getting a category conversion into a purple (1 out of 3 sets in confuse that go to L50.)  I think I did 8 category conversions and it kept flipping back and forth between Perplex and Malaise's Illusions.  Are the purples locked out of category flipping?

 

3.  Shinobu, if you get a Miracle, do you always power through to a +Recovery?  If I'm mathing good, it seems like a about a 30% chance to whiff in 5 tries trying to get a +R.  I figure that at a cost of (15 converters x 100K) = 1.5 Million.  How much premium on the sell price of the +R do you want to see?  May or may not be asking because I have a Miracle in my inventory.  RIGHT NOW.

 

Cheers, everyone.

 

That's three questions...

 

One of my crafting toons, Ditch Digger (he digs ditches), has a very simple approach.  It may not be as efficient as a lot of niches, and it can be very random, but it's profitable and easily replicated if you want to try it.

 

He buys cheap lvl 30 yellow recipes and crafts them.  Call that cost 50,000 inf. 

 

He converts by uncommon until he gets a good category (usually one conversion) or a good enhancement.  Once he gets a good category, he converts by category until he gets a salable rare.  In a few cases he will then convert by set until he gets what he wants (like a karma def/end into a knockback).  I would say on average, that's 3-7 enhancement converters, sometimes more.  Let's call all-in-cost on average somewhere in the 500k range.

 

For your question 1, I will usually target anything that will sell QUICKLY in the 1-2mm range.  The travel stealths are a good example of high turnover that I can make sales at over 1mm within a few minutes.  I don't bother with melee rares anymore, since you may be able to get 1-2mm for one, but it may take a long time.

 

2. Shinobu covered it.

 

3. It depends on my mood at the time.  Usually I will convert it to the +recovery, but not if the +recovery is selling for under 5mm at the time.  It also depends on how many converters I have on hand.  I always try to buy those at a discount (hey, he digs ditches, remember?) so if my bids haven't come through I'll put whatever I have on the market.

[AboveTheChemist]

This has been a fascinating thread, to the point where I am considering trying this, and I would not have said that a week ago.

 

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Enhancement_Sets

 

This wiki page is also very useful because it lists the level range for every IO set.  If you want to see why I'd craft a level 31 Lethargic Response Sleep recipe, for example, it's because level 31 is cheaper to craft than level 50, and it can only convert into a Call of the Sandman (rare) IO.

 

In this case the Lethargic Repose to Call of the Sandman conversion is guaranteed to produce a rare, but I noticed that some of the "starter" recipes you bought (for example, Kinetic Crash) convert by type into a set (Force Feedback in this case) that still has one uncommon. Granted, the chance of not converting to a rare is low, but I was curious how you mitigated the risk of landing on that uncommon, or if that was even a consideration.

[Shinobu]

Force Feedback:  Knockback/Damage is actually rare even if it shows as yellow.  Don't ask me why it's like that.

 

There are a few uncommon recipes that require rare salvage to craft.  Soaring:  Fly/Endurance is one, it requires Reactive Gas, but it's still an uncommon recipe or IO.  There are also some rare recipes that only require uncommon and common salvage to craft, no rare salvage.  One of these is Kinetic Combat accuracy/damage, which displays as yellow but is still a rare recipe, but requires no rare salvage.  Another is Mako's Bite accuracy/damage, which displays as orange but also requires no rare salvage.  Then you have ones like the Force Feedback knockback/damage which requires rare salvage and is actually a rare recipe or IO, but for some reason still displays yellow.

 

 

[Shinobu]

 

 

 

If I've taught myself anything with this experiment, it's that there's absolutely no reason not to buy converters from the market when you've got enough cash going.

 

I've been buying at 90,000 per, which usually requires waiting half a day for the bids to fill.  So long as you plan things in advance this works very well, and as you can see I'm making good money crafting 20 recipes at a time.  Since it's the weekend I've done more than 20 in the morning and 20 in the evening, I've been doing at least 60 in a day I think.  I'm close to 300 million influence now, even with buying all of my converters from the market.

 

One weird thing I've noticed this weekend is with the Miracle +recharge IO -- the last five sales often show it selling for up to 20 million influence, even though there are lots for sale (317 at the moment).  I can't decide if this is a visual bug.  None of mine have sold for much more than 5 million, but I haven't tried listing one for a lot higher to see if it would sell.  It doesn't seem to me that over 300 IOs are listed for 10 million plus, so I assume it's some sort of display error.

 

 

Here is what I'm talking about.  Less than an hour later there are 305 for sale, and it shows it selling for as much as 30 million influence.  I'm having a hard time believing these numbers the game is showing me.

 

 

And apparently I stand corrected.  Very strange.

 

 

[Guffnat]

Yeah. There seem to be huge inflation spikes during the weekend. I was buying "Brass" for about 500 each ... a few minutes later the search shows that the last few "Brass" went for 10.000 inf. So I tried and listed some of mine for 9,500 inf and they sold immediately. An hour later they were back at 770 inf each.

[Rainhall]

One weird thing I've noticed this weekend is with the Miracle +recharge IO -- the last five sales often show it selling for up to 20 million influence, even though there are lots for sale (317 at the moment).  I can't decide if this is a visual bug.  None of mine have sold for much more than 5 million, but I haven't tried listing one for a lot higher to see if it would sell.  It doesn't seem to me that over 300 IOs are listed for 10 million plus, so I assume it's some sort of display error.

 

I saw one of these spikes, created some M +R's, went back minutes later, and it was showing 5M-ish prices again.

 

Barely related question:  What does everyone here do with rare salvage now?  Just sell it for as much as you can?  Do you still craft 50IOs out of it for your own use?

[Yomo Kimyata]

Yeah. There seem to be huge inflation spikes during the weekend. I was buying "Brass" for about 500 each ... a few minutes later the search shows that the last few "Brass" went for 10.000 inf. So I tried and listed some of mine for 9,500 inf and they sold immediately. An hour later they were back at 770 inf each.

 

This sounds like a bug.  I believe that the 10mm seeded common salvage are listed at 5,000 each, so you should not have been able to sell brass at 9,500 until all the seeded common salvage have been bought.  Which is something I dream about.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

Barely related question:  What does everyone here do with rare salvage now?  Just sell it for as much as you can?  Do you still craft 50IOs out of it for your own use?

I generally just toss it on the market. I'll use it if I happen to get one of the rare recipes that's worth crafting but mostly I just sell it.

[Mr. Vee]

Yeah. There seem to be huge inflation spikes during the weekend. I was buying "Brass" for about 500 each ... a few minutes later the search shows that the last few "Brass" went for 10.000 inf. So I tried and listed some of mine for 9,500 inf and they sold immediately. An hour later they were back at 770 inf each.

 

This sounds like a bug.  I believe that the 10mm seeded common salvage are listed at 5,000 each, so you should not have been able to sell brass at 9,500 until all the seeded common salvage have been bought.  Which is something I dream about.

 

iirc they were seeded at 10k, 100k, 1mil

[Yomo Kimyata]

 

iirc they were seeded at 10k, 100k, 1mil

 

I think that was the initial seed for common, but I think that they reseeded to 5,000 a few weeks ago.

[wyrm]

One weird thing I've noticed this weekend is with the Miracle +recharge IO -- the last five sales often show it selling for up to 20 million influence, even though there are lots for sale (317 at the moment).  I can't decide if this is a visual bug.  None of mine have sold for much more than 5 million, but I haven't tried listing one for a lot higher to see if it would sell.  It doesn't seem to me that over 300 IOs are listed for 10 million plus, so I assume it's some sort of display error.

 

 

And apparently I stand corrected.  Very strange.

 

Yeah, I sold one for 15m and another for 10m, listing them targeting a 5m sale, but when I listed one for 5.2m it just sat all weekend. My attribution was that someone with more inf than they could use was playing some silly market PvP and "painting" the last 5 window periodically by buying high to make it look like the IO was going for way more than it consistently was, to trick people into eating big listing fees.

[Neuronia]

This is a great guide.

I'm too lazy and parsimonious to use converters an so on, but I went well past 100 mil recently.

 

Don't do what I did, it's super ineffiicent.  ;D

I rolled a Kinetics Defender, because people love Speed Boost and Fulcrum Shift and I get those earlier than on a Controller.

 

I sold all salvage for 1 inf.

I crafted rare recipes with what salvage I had on me or in our base bins (I run a 2-player SF with an irl friend), then listed then either for 1 inf or for x11,231 if they sold for more than 1 million.

Once I got to 50, I just ran ITFs, LRSFs, Hami Raids, and farm runs and sold the drops.

If you play on Excelsior, you may have seen my "Still not a Centriole!" after getting a Hami-O or a Synthetic one. They get dropped on Market if we don't need them for builds.

 

Any purple picked up on our farm runs that wasn't going to get used in our builds hit the market, generally getting us 20 mil or so.

 

Reward Merits have been unspent so far. I am currently at 1,639 Reward Merits. Hoping to pass 2,000 by end of week. Once I hit 4,000-5,000 I'll spend a bit.

 

Not sure if this is "a lot", but I've converted all Vanguard Merits into Reward Merits, and the odd Empyrian into them, for rounding purposes. I'll have to do this today to get to 1640. I detest unrounded numbers.

 

If I need a "quick hit" I just buy an ATIO proc with reward Merits (100 is trivial, it's 2 Positron TF, 1 Synapse and some change) and that generally gets me 11 mil or so.

 

I used a bunch of my inf to finance my friend's Stone Melee/Invuln Brute, King Stone Wolf, and still have tons left over.

I've long passed the point where I got upset at people with tons of inf. There's just too many ways to get it. And once you hit 50...it's an endless tap of income.

 

I have been super lucky on drops. I got a Panacea proc killing Hellions, an Unbounded Leap + Stealth killing Jurassik.

ALL PvP IOs I cannot use on my Ill/Emp or Stalker get crafted and sold as well.

 

Since I'm lazy, I also drop millions (super inefficiently!) for pretty meh stuff like Titanium Coatings and so on.

Edit. I am running on Single Origins only, with my only IO's being a Karma, KB protect and a Karma Defense on my Defender.

I might have a Numina proc on him too. Currently at Tier 3 on all Incarnate stuff because S o l a r i s is a great leader. :-)

 

And the money still rolls in!

 

(I don't consider myself wealthy ingame, that will happen once I hit 600,000,000 inf or so, which would allow me to get most of a build off the Market.)

 

[AboveTheChemist]

I dipped my toe in the marketeering pool yesterday afternoon. I spent several hours studying the wiki page for enhancement sets and researching prices on the AH until I felt comfortable buying six recipes. I had 8 converters on hand from drops, and a Babbage pop right before I planned to start converting netted me a quick 6 merits which I used to buy 18 more converters (although I had plenty on hand, I just like killing giant monsters).

 

I started with 4M inf and spent less than a million (not counting the value of the converters I used), much of which went to listing fees. I was conservative, and after the initial conversion by type to get a rare, I think I did at most two conversions by rarity per enhancement, using 19 converters total. In each case I ended up with enhancements that listed for a minimum of 2.5M. I figured for my first time out, that was a pretty good result, and I didn't want to throw too many converters away chasing something better. I didn't write down the enhancements I ended up listing, but as of this morning 3 had sold for a total of 11M, and the other 3 are still waiting to sell. I know that is chump change to the hardcore, but for someone who would not have even considered this a week ago, it was an encouraging success.

 

Force Feedback:  Knockback/Damage is actually rare even if it shows as yellow.  Don't ask me why it's like that.

 

There are a few uncommon recipes that require rare salvage to craft.  Soaring:  Fly/Endurance is one, it requires Reactive Gas, but it's still an uncommon recipe or IO.  There are also some rare recipes that only require uncommon and common salvage to craft, no rare salvage.  One of these is Kinetic Combat accuracy/damage, which displays as yellow but is still a rare recipe, but requires no rare salvage.  Another is Mako's Bite accuracy/damage, which displays as orange but also requires no rare salvage.  Then you have ones like the Force Feedback knockback/damage which requires rare salvage and is actually a rare recipe or IO, but for some reason still displays yellow.

 

I'll add to this, and it will likely not be news to any veteran marketeers but for other newbies like me it may be helpful. There are a handful of recipes that appear as a rare within an otherwise uncommon set. For example, Dampened Spirits: Recharge shows up with the orange (rare) name, but does not use rare salvage and when converting, it is listed as uncommon. I thought I was being clever and buying a cheaply crafted rare recipe (and thus saving myself 2 converters), but that wasn't the case. I apparently wasn't the only one fooled, though, because the "Bidding/For Sale" ratio for that recipe was MUCH higher than the rest of the pieces in that set, although the recipe itself wasn't overly expensive (10k or less). There are similar instances in the Undermined Defenses, Mocking Beratement, and Kinetic Crash sets (which I know from personal testing), and I think Adjusted Targeting and Efficacy Adaptor also have recipes that fit this category, but those recipes were too expensive for me to try them.

 

One other oddity I noted was that my very first conversion by rarity netted me a Winter's Gift enhancement. I assumed this was a winter enhancement so it threw me that I landed on it, but it must be coded as a rare IO. It didn't have an impressive list price so I converted it again for something better.

 

Anyway, thanks again for such a great guide (and for others who have written marketeering guides). I quit live way before the invention system even came out so learning about IOs and sets and conversion has all been new, and working through this process has been a good way to help get up to speed on a big aspect of the game that I missed the first time around.

[Mr. Vee]

Friday afternoon I fully slotted my Water/Time corr at buy it now prices so my banker was down to 27 million. Yesterday afternoon I decided I'd bite the bullet and spend some time doing crafting/converting rather than just casually converting drops (which was enough to make 4 expensive builds so far). Long story short that 27 million is now 870 with 22 more IOs still up for sale. I probably spent a max of an hour and a half, on and off. It's boring but there's no reason someone couldn't do 10 minutes a day and have more inf than they know what to do with.

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

 

 

Barely related question:  What does everyone here do with rare salvage now?  Just sell it for as much as you can?  Do you still craft 50IOs out of it for your own use?

 

Rare salvage I would usually sell, unless you want to trade it.  I "rarely" need it and when I do, I know I can buy it in bulk.

[Shinobu]

One other oddity I noted was that my very first conversion by rarity netted me a Winter's Gift enhancement. I assumed this was a winter enhancement so it threw me that I landed on it, but it must be coded as a rare IO. It didn't have an impressive list price so I converted it again for something better.

 

The Winter's Gift and Blessing of the Zephyr are Universal Travel sets and can convert into each other.  They were introduced into the game at the same time.  At one time it was a good idea to craft Winter's Gift, which you could get cheaply from the elf in the ski lodge for candy canes, and which I think all craft for uncommon salvage / no rare salvage even though the IOs are considered rare, and then convert them into Blessing of the Zephyr which, back in the day, sold for a lot.  But here on Homecoming even the one with knockback protection barely sells for 3 million so I never bother converting from Winter's Gift.

 

It's boring but there's no reason someone couldn't do 10 minutes a day and have more inf than they know what to do with.

 

I know why it would be considered boring, but I still like the process of getting a cool rare IO by random chance, and I like seeing the money come in.  I enjoy playing the game more of course, but I have a goal of stocking my base with ATOs and then Winter O's, and I made a lot of progress towards that goal this past weekend.  :D

[Robotech_Master]

You know, the best way to convert merits into Inf is to buy and sell Enhancement Converters.

 

100 Merits = 300 converters = 300 * 100,000 Inf (on average) = 30 million Inf. That's triple the return you get from selling an ATO.

 

(Plus, you know, you can put some of those converters to use yourself, instead, while you have them in your inventory...)