La_Baldera

So ... basically ... if there is a range in the price that something sells for, expect that spread to get bigger. Probably won't hurt to have some lowball bids to catch the dumpers and some higher offers for when the Buy It NAO! group exhaust the available supply.

Kind of a bummer, but not unexpected. Oh well, I can work around that detail for now. Thanks for the replies, all.

I have a couple of ideas for encounters that would be fun to work into some MA story arcs I'm writing, but I'm not sure if it's possible in the MA system.

Basically the idea is that the heroes are walking the streets, up ahead they see a little old lady on a park bench. But when they get within a certain distance of her, a trigger fires and she changes into a shotgun wielding maniac. It doesn't really work if she's just a costumed enemy since most people would see the orange target outline and take her down from range, "just in case".

So is there a way to destroy a non-combatant npc and spawn a new combat capable one in it's place based on some trigger?

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3. You can't beat me if I heal faster than you hurt.

This is most often going to be the take that solo Defenders have.


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Alot of defenders don't heal. Thought you might want to know.

Otherwise an interesting article.

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Good point. I'd considered that after I submitted the article. I guess I let a bit of the stereotype (there HAS to be a "healer class", right?) slip in there.

Defenders and Controllers are probably the hardest Archtypes to solo. It will require careful selection of powersets since some of them are very poor in damage dealing powers.

My suggestion to new marketers is usually to listen around the AE sites for what archtypes / powersets are being requested. Then come back to the forums and read the build guides for those characters. That should help determine what recipes / enhancements are likely to be in higher demand.

[u]Interview with a Hero[u]

By Jonny Ray

Welcome, reader, to the first of my interviews with the ladies of Los Coyotes. This recently formed group of Latina superheroes has taken to the streets of Paragon City to fight crime in its many forms. I start off my series of interviews with the leader of the group, known as La Baldera.

I met Consuela Gurrera, her given name which she uses freely when not fighting crime, at a street café in Talos Island. The beautiful young Mexican-American girl arrives promptly for our meeting. She’s wearing casual jeans and a loose fitting cotton top, both in a burnt orange color. Her long black hair is pulled back in a ponytail and shines in the sun with red highlights. Her dark brown eyes flash as she spots a couple of young men wearing the crest of the Warriors gang, but since they are minding their own business, she smiles back at me and settles into her chair.

“Mucho gusto, Consuela.” I begin, quickly using up the small amount of Spanish that I speak.

“Mucho gusto, Jonny,” she replies with a smile, then thankfully switches to a thinly accented English for the rest of our talk. “Thank you for inviting me. I’m sure there are more interesting stories in Paragon City than me and my small group of friends.”

“I suppose that depends on one’s point of view,” I say, returning her smile.

She laughs lightly then asks, “What would you like to know?”

“Well, start with a little about yourself. Who are you? Where do you come from?”

“Ah. Start with the most boring then. Well, I’ve lived my whole life in Paragon City. I grew up in Steel Canyon. My father, grandfather, and both my uncles were firefighters. So it just seemed natural for me and my cousin Antonio to join the family ‘business’ as it were.”

“Did anyone have any idea of the powers you had at the time?”

“No. Nobody had a clue at all. I guess talking to some of the experts in the field that my particular powers didn’t show up as early as most. I went through school and even firefighting school before I realized there was anything special about me.”

“Can you tell me about the first time you realized you were different?”

“Well, my instructors mentioned several times that I didn’t seem to be as afraid of fire as most of the student firefighters. But I figured that was just because I grew up around guys who ran into burning buildings for a living. It wasn’t until the first time Antonio and I went into a burning apartment building that my abilities really became obvious.”

“What happened there?”

“Antonio and I had volunteered for the search and rescue positions on our squad. We entered the building with our team leader, Jason, because we had information that someone was trapped on the third floor. Antonio was leading, I was in the middle, and Jason was following.

“When we got to the top of the steps to the third floor, Antonio started down the hallway to find the trapped woman. He only took three steps before the floor gave way and he fell down to the second floor below. The flames came roaring up through the hole he’d made in the floor.

“Despite Jason’s warnings to stay still, I jumped forward to help. I looked down and saw Antonio lying motionless on the floor below. The fire was surrounding him. Without really thinking about what I was doing, I took my hands and made a motion like I was pushing down the fire and spreading it out. To Jason’s surprise, the fire backed away and formed a circle around Antonio. I jumped down to help my cousin.

“But I didn’t expect to land facing Fyromania. Most of the firefighters knew him. He was a two-bit hood with delusions of grandeur. He used to like setting fires and then seeing if he could kill a firefighter or two in the chaos. He looked at me and said ‘Two for the price of one! Get them while they’re hot!!’

“I tossed my hand out, pointing at him. A small ball of fire leapt from my hand and struck him in the chest. He flew backward and yelled. ‘Hey! That’s not fair!’ He raised his hands as if to do something to me and I made the same motion that I’d used to protect Antonio from the flames. But this time, I raised my hands at the end and the fire got a lot hotter.

“Fyro started yelling, but he couldn’t get out of the circle. Just as he collapsed to the floor, Jason came back down the stairs. He put out the fire around Fyro and hauled him out of the building. I carried Antonio out. The PPD came and took Fyro into custody, and I had a lot of explaining to do.

“I guess the fire department wasn’t ready to have a woman on their team who uses fire as a weapon. So after a bit of soul searching, I voluntarily resigned. But I wanted to keep that connection to my family heritage, so when I fight crime now, I call myself ‘La Baldera’ ... meaning ‘The Firefighter’.”

“And now you fight crime on our city streets,” I interjected.

“Yes. Although I didn’t expect this to be my calling, my father and Antonio convinced me that I needed to use my ‘gifts’ in some positive way.”

We were just about out of time for the appointment I’d set, but I wanted to ask her a little bit about her Super Group.

“So how did you come to lead Los Coyotes?”

“First, I should say that I don’t really ‘lead’ Los Coyotes as you might mean it. Sure I own the charter and I take care of the base and all, but other than answering some questions and providing guidance, the girls all pretty much handle their own affairs.”

“Ok, fair enough,” I said. “But how did Los Coyotes come to be?”

“That started with when I literally bumped into Maria, you may know her better as Gatita Fatal. I was in Atlas Park, registering as a hero with Freedom Corp as required. This big oaf covered in armor pushed me aside and I stumbled into this short Rican girl. She called me ... well ... you probably shouldn’t print what she called me. But then she pulled out these two daggers like she was ready to fight.

“I lit my hands on fire and said ‘Realmente desea hacer esto?’ (Do you really want to do this?)”

“She sighed, put away her knives and apologized. We started talking and found out that we had a few things in common. Besides when you’re kind of an outsider like most Heroes, it’s nice to find someone else who understands where you come from.”

“Eventually we attracted others, just by hanging out and talking with people. Then they asked me to register us as a group so that we could lease some space for a base instead of being stuck in Atlas Park all the time. I wasn’t too sure, but since I had some connections in city hall, I figured I might as well.”

“Where did the name come from?” I asked.

“Have you ever been out in the desert at night and heard the coyotes calling?”

“No, I can’t say that I have.”

"As a little girl, we used to take trips to my Abuelita’s ranch in Arizona. When the coyotes call to each other at night, the desert hushes as if to listen for the ones who own the nighttime. I guess I liked the romantic idea that eventually, when the crime lords hear that Los Coyotes are on the prowl, they’ll freeze or run for cover.”

“So now Los Coyotes own the night in Paragon City?”

“Not yet. But I hope so one day. And, of course, being Latina we have to look good doing it!” she added with a laugh.

“Thank you for your time today, Consuela.”

“You’re welcome, Jonny. Thank you for the interest.”

[ OOC ]
The preceding is a bit of a biography on one of my City of Heroes characters, La Baldera on Freedom. She's a fire/fire blaster currently in her mid-20's level wise. The Los Coyotes super group that is mentioned is all filled with my alts; so it's a single-player, multi-character supergroup.
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I do miss my WoW Marketeer plug-in, though.

Prices are high. But remember that prices are set by the buyers, not the sellers. If nobody was willing to pay more than say 10M for anything, then we Marketers couldn't sell anything for 100's of millions. It's one of the factors that seems to be lost on most people who tend to complain about high prices.

Actually, the OP is contributing to the very problem he seems to be unhappy with. The fact that he had 4.5B to spend on one character means that he did a lot of "Buy it NAO" purchasing, which contibutes to others thinking they need to spend 100M+ on one IO. Enough of such things happen and the "going rate" becomes that price.

Had nothing to do with what the sellers were asking, it's what the buyers were willing to pay.

For me, the most fun about soloing is figuring out how to best play my character when I'm an army of one. Eight years of soloing MMO's has taught me that nearly anything can be run solo. Some are just a bit better than others.

Right now I'm in the process of soloin'g my fire/fire. Run up to Fire Breath range ... Aim/Build Up, Fire Breath, Fire Ball, one shot the left over Lts. and move on to the next group. You don't need controls if they die before they can shoot you.

I predict ...

Things will change. Those who adapt will continue to be successful. Those who don't will preach doom and gloom and/or whine until they post an angry "That does it, you lost a dedicated customer this time." post; which will get several "Can I have your stuff?" replies.

Some people will try to anticipate what the changes to the market will be and will speculate wildly on what salvage / recipes / IOs will be worth stockpiling. This will cause a minor ripple in the market. During this time, here on the Market forum, we'll see a post about every 3 days about how the prices for XYZ have gone crazy.

When Issue 16 goes live, about a third of those speculators will have been right and will be back here gloating about the killing they made. The others will be sulking and trying to figure out how to make some of their losses back.

Four to six weeks after I16 launches, things will have re-established a new equilibrium. Marketers will keep making money, and the 6 or 7 hardcore PVP players will still be complaining that they can't get their PvP IO's at the price they would like to pay.

Well, I've only been here for 2 months. And in that time I took 2 characters to their mid-20's in levels playing the "real" game. And amassed over 300M in Inf on each. I think wiping out my current Inf balance would be a momentary pain for little long term effect.

On the other hand ... The fallout would be VERY interesting if the Devs should decide to make Architect Entertainment missions really about "entertainment". In other words, make them something to do just for the fun of the mission with it having zero impact on the "real" world ... i.e. no xp and no inf / loot / tickets. Now THAT would have some fallout.

Smurphy: Thanks for pointing out the missing info on the highest bid. I made some changes to make that clearer.

HaruoSan: Actually my point here is about selling, not buying. But to address your comment, I have two low-20's characters with about 300 Million Inf each. Neither one has set foot in an AE mission. Even my non-Marketer characters have a few million they're carrying about just by playing the game and paying attention to how I sell things.

Consignment Selling for the Non-Marketer

Intended to help non-marketer types understand how to sell items for a tidy profit.

This guide is intended to help the player who doesn’t really want to play the market mini-game in CoX. By understanding some basic info on how the market works both in terms of the programming rules as well as the psychology of players, you should be able to increase your profits on selling the salvage and recipe drops you accumulate.

This guide isn’t really for anyone who wants to get “hardcore” about making money on the consignment markets. There are plenty of other guidelines and helpful hints for that in the Market forums. If you are one of those types, don’t worry that I’m sharing too many secrets. First of all this is stuff any Marketer is probably already aware of (or should be). Second, you know as well as I do that a large percentage of our player base won’t read a guide like this; so they’ll still be dropping items for 100 Inf.

This guide also isn’t for people who want to buy things on the cheap. Although you could probably reverse some of the logic here and be able to lower your purchase prices a bit as well.

How Does Bid Matching Work?
There are plenty of guides that go in depth on the basics of how the consignment markets work. To summarize, a seller item tells the market what the lowest amount is that they’ll accept for their item (I call this the “sale offer” or just “offer” for short). Then a buyer tells the market what the most is that they are willing to buy an item for (the “buy bid” or just “bid”). The highest bid will be matched with the current lowest offer. If the highest bid is equal or greater than the lowest offer, then the market completes the sale at the [u]bid[u] price (minus 10% for the market fee).

I’ll repeat this because it’s so important to the rest of the guide. If I offer an item for “S” inf, and you bid “B” inf to buy it, as long as your B is the highest outstanding bid and is greater or equal to my S (assuming I'm offering at the lowest price), the sale will complete and I’ll receive B inf (minus 10%).

Here’s the most important part as a seller ... if someone else had offered up the same item for “S – 1” inf, then that person would have been the one to make the sale for B -10% inf.

Corollary to this is that if two people put up a sales offer at the same “S” Inf, then the market randomly selects which bidder wins.

So, you’re goal as the seller is to have the lowest offer price when the buy bid is placed.

So, I Just List Everything for ‘1’ Then, Right?
Well ... No. That would be a bad idea. The reason is that if someone if the highest bidder had only offered 2 Inf they would win your item and buy it for that piddly amount. Now if you’re just dumping stuff on the market, you may not care. But if you’re reading this, then you’re probably trying to make a little money off what you sell. So a bid higher than 1 is going to be in your better interest.

Oh, Ok. Then I List Everything for 1 Less Than I Want to Make, Right?
Well … No again. Remember that the lowest offer is matched to the highest bid. So if you list for “S” Inf and I list for “S-1” Inf, I’ll win. When the price you want to make is very close to the “going price” for that item, listing for one under your target will almost guarantee that you get undercut by other offers for a long time.

So Somewhere in the Middle Then?
Exactly. And preferably toward the bottom end of the middle. But before we go further, let’s understand the human aspect of this. There are patterns to how the average buyer bids.

Note: Marketers know these patterns too and so usually come up with their own oddball pattern on how they bid for things. You won’t use this info to trip up the experienced market player. Thankfully, there aren’t that many of us in the grand scheme of things; so the following still applies.

Avoid the Void
Among the Marketer community, there is an axiom that you “Never buy or sell for a value ending in zero.” The reason is pretty simple. Most people who don’t think about how this system works will list offers and bids for a round number. So if I’m selling something that has a market value of 10,000; I will assume that most neophyte sellers are listing theirs for 10,000. If I list for 9,999 then I’ll win the bid matching before they do.

The same goes for buying. If I’m putting in a bid for a 10K item and I post my bid at 10,001 then I’ll win before other buyers who are only offering 10,000.

Counting by 5’s
The first bidding pattern to keep in mind is that most people when they are “creeping up” on a bid price will do so in increments of 5’s (either 500 or 5,000 depending on the total cost). In other words, if a buyer bids 10,000 and doesn’t win, their next bid is probably going to be 15,000. So, if you want to make 15K, then any offer between 10,001 and 14,999 is going to be your best bet. Of course, for every rule, there is an exception...

First the 1’s, Then the 2’s, Then the 3’s...
There is an oddball bidding pattern that you’ll see a lot. If an item goes for 10’s of thousands of Inf, you will see bids where all of the digits are the same. So you’ll see bids for 11,111 then 22,222 then 33,333, etc. “Why?” you ask. Laziness. It’s easier to place your bid by just bouncing your finger on one number key for the proper number of digits than having to change which keys you’re pressing.

Sometimes you’ll see something similar, but with 5’s at the end from time to time as well (e.g. 10,555 then 15,555 then 20,555). But that isn’t as common.

But How Much is it Worth?
One thing that we see fairly often on the markets is that people forget that salvage and recipes have an intrinsic value. That value is set by what a vendor is willing to pay you for the item. If your goal is to make a healthy profit on your item, you need to be aware that for some things, selling to the vendors makes more than on the markets.

For salvage, the table looks like this:

Common: 250 Inf
Uncommon: 1000 Inf
Rare: 5000 Inf

For recipes, the calculation is a little harder. This is because the vendor value for a recipe varies by level range. For Common IO recipes, divide the cost to craft the recipe (listed in the info on the recipe) by the following factors:

Level 1-25 : crafting / 8
Level 26-40: crafting / 5.3
Level 41-50: crafting / 4

For other IO recipes (i.e. the “non-common” or “set” IO recipes), the calculation is a little easier:

Uncommon: 100 * level
Rare: 200 * level

Ok! Enough Theory!
You’re probably about full of numbers and patterns now and wondering how to apply it. Well, the answer is simple, you want to find a sales offer (S) that allows you to make a sale for your target amount (T) while avoiding nasty bidding patterns that can foil your plans and being aware of not selling too short. Let’s use some practical examples to help out. In each case I’m going to assume you’re selling a piece of common salvage.

A) You check the “last 5” and see that sales vary from 20,000 to 30,000 Inf. You just want to make a tidy profit without being too greedy; so you set your target to be 25,000. Because of the By 5’s rule, you know you want to be over 20,001 and the 1-2-3 rule says you want to be above 22,222; so you list for 22,223.

Note: In reality, you should choose some random value above 22,222. The reason is that we ebil marketers know you may try cheating by "just 1" and swoop in to save ourselves 4,998 inf by using that against you. Make the random increase above that and it's not worth the time anymore.

B) The “last 5” values range from 50 to 100 inf. DON’T SELL IT! Take it to a vendor and make 250 since the going market rate is below the vendor price.

C) “Last 5” ranges from 25,000 to 200,000 with most of the sales around 100,000 … Wait. Don’t do anything. Watch to see if things calm down a little. It could be that someone came along and just bid really high because they have deep pockets. Or that 25k bid could have been a lowball that someone is going to flip around and sell for 200k. Unless you know the market well, you can’t tell. If you really don’t want to take the time, offer something between 22,223 and 24,999 and see how you do.

That last example is why most marketing guides tell you not to use the “Last 5” to judge selling or buying prices. And they’re absolutely right if you want to take the time to track market trends on your item(s). However, if you’re reading this (and I hope you’re still reading) you probably don’t care to take the time; so use the Last 5 as well as you can.

Now Go Forth and Profitfy
I hope this helps some of you who aren’t really “into” the whole marketing game to understand a little bit about how to make more money from your sales. If you have questions or if this intrigues you to travel the dim path to ebilness, join us over at the Market forums. We’re a pretty friendly group (as long as you’re not trying to complain that prices are “too high” for purple recipes).

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Wait a minute, let me get this straight. (I a noob ww person)...if you post your salvage at 1, not only will it sell faster (duh, minimum bid) but you'll actually sell for more? Like, if someone bids 1mil on salv but yours goes for 1...you'll get 1mil-ww charges?? o.o

There's a catch somewhere..
Sick of being poor.

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More info (maybe more than needed after the other replies)...

If there are zero outstanding bids for whatever you want to offer, then if you put it up for 1, you will be among the lowest sellers. When a buy bid comes in (for any amount) your offer will be randomly matched among anyone else who offered at one.

Note this means you may sell it for 1,000,000 ... or you may sell it for 5. As long as the buy bid is more than your sell offer, you could be matched up with the buyer.

If there are already bids that are outstanding, then nobody else is selling for 1. In that case, when you offer for 1, you'll be auto-matched with whatever the highest current bid is. This may still only be 5. Or it may be higher.

I only use a sale offer of 1 when all I'm trying to do is clear out my salvage inventory for things that I really need to collect from the market (i.e. I don't care if I make any money or not). There is zero gurantee on what you'll sell for with an offer of '1'. In all likelihood if the item is popular, you'll end up selling for lot less than market value because there will be some "flipper" out there with a bid of 50 or 100 per item that will snatch it up.

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I pay BUY IT NAO prices for anything under a hundred thousand Inf because it isn't worth my time to bid creep.

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I hear that. When I was sitting on 250,000; I tried to do everything I could to keep my costs down. Now that I have about 400,000,000; saving 20K on an ingredient isn't worth the hassle of typing numbers over and over again.

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Dumple is right, though. You have the basic idea. Find something you can buy cheap and sell expensive. But don't expect many people to come saying "Hey, everybody, try flipping ABCs! The margin is amazing!!!" After all, if everyone starts, the margin (and profit) dry up.

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This is exactly why my first post says I was flipping [common salvage] instead of actually letting you know I was flipping ancient artifacts.

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So YOU'RE the one! Well, you're welcome for the Inf then. I was working on some recipes for badges that needed those. Was kinda irked that I couldn't pick them up on the cheap like I normally do.

I find myself unable to pay less than vendor prices for things like salvage. The lowest I'll bid on salvage is:

Common - 278
Uncommon - 1111
Rare - 5556

In some cases, it means that I fill my bids as soon as I post them. I just feel bad buying things at less than "fair market value" just because the seller doesn't know any better.

Great points!

So maybe I'll stock up on some stacks of salvage and keep buying the recipes one by one. With the upcoming DXP weekend, the Ritiki returning, etc. things are bound to be a bit volatile this month.

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I'm at the crafting orange (and lately a couple of purple) recipes myself. Since I'm not very patient on waiting for the salvage, I tend to invest around 23-25 million into making a level 50 Enhancment that sells for around 30-35. Netting me about 5-7 Mil profit per transaction.

I could do better if I were more patient.

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I'm not big on going by margins by percentage in this game because we have no economies of scale (making absolute profit per slot the big factor), but if I can make 4 mil by investing 1mil or make 5mil by investing 23mil, I'd sooner go with the lower risk option.

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Totally get that. I just happened to stumble on this range where I can consistently make 7M every 24 hours and sometimes as fast as 12 hours.

The thing I really need to do is figure out how long I think the niche will hold and try to stock up on some low-balled salvage and recipes. The sale price has been pretty consistent for 2 weeks; so to eek out some more profit, I need to lower the supply cost.

I'm not truly "ebil" yet. My two low-20's characters that are handling the markets are each around 200 million in capital.

I do it for three reasons. One is that I find playing the markets fun. I always have in the games I've played. Especially since I got to the point where I was controlling the Enchantment market on the WoW server I was playing on.

Second, I tend to Alt a lot. And knowing that my new girls will never have to be wanting for equipment because of their "big sis" takes a lot of pressure off my shoulders.

Third, my method of playing is mostly by doing crafting. So I'm not just making money, I'm making items which are enhancing someone else's gameplay. When I sell an enhancement for 35 million or something, it's not just the rush of the sale, it's also knowing that I was able to give someone else something they wanted.

In other games where it was more practical, I would do things like craft a full set of low-level armor and give it away to newbies in the startup areas. Just because I had fun helping. Here that isn't so practical to try to do, but I still like that the things I sell help someone else.

I'm at the crafting orange (and lately a couple of purple) recipes myself. Since I'm not very patient on waiting for the salvage, I tend to invest around 23-25 million into making a level 50 Enhancment that sells for around 30-35. Netting me about 5-7 Mil profit per transaction.

I could do better if I were more patient.

Remember that you can get stung by flipping too. Most guides suggest you watch the price ranges on an item for a period of time before beginning to flip it. That way you won't get fooled by a one time spike when someone is urgently trying to outfit their PvP character and doesn't mind burning through 100's of millions to do it.

Personally, I get too nervous on flipping and don't care to take the time to trend prices accurately; so I stick to crafting and other areas where the results are more predictable (but therefore also potentially lower return).

Dumple is right, though. You have the basic idea. Find something you can buy cheap and sell expensive. But don't expect many people to come saying "Hey, everybody, try flipping ABCs! The margin is amazing!!!" After all, if everyone starts, the margin (and profit) dry up.

Rather than trying to figure what return % you're getting, better to approach it slightly differently.

Let's say you have 100M now and your goal is to reach 1B in 100 days (to keep the numbers easier). That's 900M you need to make in 100 days, or 9M per day. If you have 9 market slots to dedicate to this, then you need to make 1M per slot per day.

At that point it doesn't make any difference if you're making 2X your investment or your profit is 10%. As long as you're making the goal of 1M per slot per day, you're on track.

Trying to maximize profit on each and every transaction will pretty much guarantee that you'll lose your mind in the numbers.

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What you want to do La_Baldera is upgrade your plot. When you do this you can select the same size plot that you have now so select that and then move the plot around so that the entrance room is in the middle where you want it. Hope that helps you.

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This worked perfectly! Thanks.

It occured to me later (when I was trying to move some doorways) that I might have been able to work around the issue by temporaily creating "bridges" of rooms that would let me move the entrance and keep it connected.

But the upgrade plot technique worked really well.