Archie Gremlin

That's very impressive Heffron. I wouldn't have thought that anyone could learn the ropes fast enough to do it in 2 weeks. Well done.

Here's an interesting exercise: create 3 or 4 IOs for a popular niche with lots of bidders and then list them for 1 inf one at a time.

I did this with about 7 niches once 'cos I was trying to convert stock to inf in a hurry. What I found was that a few items went for 1/2 or 1/3 of the going rate. The rest went for less than the crafting cost. i.e. even though there were 100's of bids in these niches, only 1 or 2 were anywhere near the "going rate."

4's advice works because virtually all outstanding bids are stupidly low. Your bid only has to be slightly sane in order to outbid everyone else. Now all you have to do is wait for a seller to list stupidly low as well.

FWIW I've noticed that the market can take a minute or two to "notice" a new bid so waiting a few seconds isn't long enough to guarantee that it will fill your order even when it should have done.

Here are some tips for increasing profit per day:-

• buy in bulk to minimise the number of slots used for buying
• use a base to store excess stuff
• use multiple toons
• stick to niches that buy and sell fast
• check the market more often (every 3-4 hours is good)
• work more niches at once and only list 1 IO from each niche
• temporarily abandon niches when the prices drop

The down side is that most of these tips involve more work.

(P.S. I appreciate that you already know most of this stuff but I thought it might be worth stating them as this thread is quite a good guide.)

I was worried that that might happen when I did my race to the inf cap. That's why I hid the niches in my screen shots.

This.

I had a look at my niches yesterday and they looked a bit odd. IO prices were well down. I suspect that lots of people are dumping stock before GR happens.

Yes. Prices bounce up and down all the time but the peaks and troughs rarely last more than 24 hours.

Crafting commons is a really good way to learn the ropes. Set IOs have similar behaviour but the cycle time is much longer; days rather than hours. Oh, and mistakes with commons are much cheaper!

When I'm working commons, I tend to work 4 or 5 niches at a time. At least one of them will be stuck at any one time but the others will be moving. IIRC the big sellers are Acc, Dam, End Red and End Mod at levels 30, 35 and 40. There are also decent margins with some level 50's as long as you have the badges.

Having a base really helps. It gives you somewhere to dump stuff that isn't selling.

Have fun!
Archie

It adds 6% to your "chance to hit" roll which makes it (very) roughly equivalent to half an accuracy IO in each power. You can monitor what you get at the moment in the combat attributes. It appears under Combat Attributes | Base | Last Hit Chance. If you're already seeing 95% for most rolls then it won't make much difference. If you're seeing 90% or less then it's a useful buff.

FWIW all my damage toons have one.

Cool. It'd be nice to see a list of the high value drops you get as you do it.

Perhaps it would be better to track both unless he's going to list all drops for 1. It takes time to shift some things.

I concentrate on niches with fast turnovers. (Selling at least 5 IOs a day.) The prices in these niches tend to vary over the course of a week or two by -50% to +100% of the average. e.g. Usually sells for around 10m, sometimes drops to 5m, sometimes rises to 20m. I suggest you watch the stuck items for a week to see what happens. If you listed at the top end then re-list near the average to get rid of them.

If the stuck items don't sell 5 a day for several days in a row then I'd pull them and pass them to another alt and list them there at a low price.

Some people target niches with low turnovers. They buy very cheap, list high and check on their niches once a week. In this case I wouldn't re-list unless I failed to sell in a couple of weeks.

All the good niches have some bidders; often lots. Personally, I pay almost no attention to the number for sale and the number of bidders. I'm only interested in the profit margin and how many IOs sell in a day.

Good supply is handy because it means you can get hold of the recipes easily.

Sticking to the cheaper stuff is an excellent idea in my opinion.

Funnily enough, there doesn't seem to be much correlation between selling price and profit margin. Lots of niches up to about 40 million have good profits but some of the best sell in the range you're using.

The niches in the 100m+ range can have little or no profit. The consignment house fee of 10% eats most of the margin. I tend to avoid them.

When you haven't got much inf it's a good idea to watch the niche for a week before trading. Find the prices that you can expect to buy recipes and expect to sell IOs. Buy one IO to start with and list at medium price that will give you some profit but not lots. It should sell within a day or 2. Don't let your listing price creep up until you're familiar with the niche. If you get stuck, re-list much lower and try again.

I avoid niches where the profit is less than 10% of the selling price however much it is because it makes re-listing so painful.

P.S. A base makes this much, much easier. It doesn't have to be fancy, just one workshop with some storage racks and a table to store IOs.

Quite. It took me a few months to find out how to really work the markets and I was really interested. I made my first 100m by crafting commons. It was quite fun in a mad way. Sometimes they were selling faster than I could run back and forth to the university. (No SG then!)

When I did start crafting sets I nearly gave it up. The first couple of things I crafted just wouldn't sell! I expected to sell them in a day and ended up stuck with them for weeks. I got hit by a particularly bad shift in market prices!

So I agree with Neuronia, crafting is "easy" but you do need to know what you're doing. If you've only got a few million inf to your name then it feels like a horrible risk and it is. You can end up with all your inf tied up in stock that won't sell.

The single biggest piece of advice I'd give to anyone who wants to start crafting is "start slow" and expect the price of a niche to collapse at any moment.

Start slow means watch your chosen niche for a while (preferably a week) to see how it behaves. Then buy and sell 1 IO. If that works, buy a couple more. Don't risk more than 10% of your capital on any one trade 'cos you'll probably lose big on at least one of them! Don't buy lots of stock just because the profit margin is so big at the moment. It probably won't last!

The other big bit of advice is, "do the maths". You've got to work out the likely profit. It's often not what it looks like. I'm always surprised by how little margin there is on big ticket items. Aim to double your money on your early trades and use a lowish listing price. That way, you're unlikely to get stuck.

Of course, some people just don't want to mess with the markets. That's fine.

Sure. The short answer is that I farmed for startup cash and then crafted IOs to make the bulk of my inf.

Here's the long answer...

I make the bulk of my inf from buying recipes, crafting them and selling the IOs. i.e. the same process as Fury Flechette.

I won't give you a list of the niches I'm using 'til I've finished the experiment but here's how I pick them.

I look for niches with a high turnover and a decent profit margin. This means at least 5 sales a day of the crafted IO and a margin of 5 million+. Remember to factor in the cost of salvage, the bench cost and the Wentworth's tax when estimating the profit.

Nearly all my niches cost less than 10 million to buy and craft and sell for less than 30 million. This gives me a net profit of around 50%. I ignore the more expensive niches because they turnover too slowly or because the profit margin is too small. The profits often look good but fade away when you remember the 10% Consignment House fee. I also avoid anything where the net profit is less than 20% of the sale price. They're too sensitive to price changes.

I try to keep as many different IOs up for sale as I can. I only list one of each type at a time. About 12 or my 21 trading slots have listed IOs. The others are buying recipes or salvage.

I buy around 6 recipes and 8 pieces of salvage at a time and store the excess in my base. This gives a stock level of between 1 and 6 IOs of each type at any time.

If an IO fails to sell for 24 hours I pull it and re-list at a lower price. Likewise, I don't attempt to buy recipes for more than about 8 hours without getting any. I'll up the price or abandon the niche to avoid this.

My goal is to turnover each slot a couple of times a day. I've been logging in between once an hour and once every 4 hours to keep it rolling.

This is quite hard work and takes around 4-6 hours a day. I wouldn't normally spend more than around 1 hour a day trading and aim to turn over slots once a day or every other day.

As for farming, I'm really a newbie. If you're interested you should really ask others for advice rather than me.

I've got a Fire/Kin/Earth with a couple of farm maps. I use one of the Battle Maiden maps if I'm after drops. ("Save Warrior clan's village" from Maria Jenkins) My AE arc is on "City Map 02". The enemies are "Bobcat followers". You need to buy packs with tickets to get access to both of these. I play at +2x8 without bosses.

So far I only farmed on day 1 to get startup cash. I mostly went for tickets and bronze recipe rolls. You can see a full list of my ticket rolls here. I vendored anything that didn't have bidders.

I made about 40 million inf from defeats and about the same from recipe sales on day 1. I haven't done any farming since.

I found that recipe rolls are very awkward when my Wentworth's slots are already full of trades. I'll probably move out of AE for the rest of the week in the hope that I get a lucky purple drop.

Feel free to ask for more info if you've got any questions.