La_Baldera

To be honest, I find "flipping" to be a bit too hard and too risky for a casual marketer. You really need to understand the values of items or you can easily get fooled by a "Last 5" that looks like a good profit margin, but in reality someone just really wanted those items NOW and paid way more than they're worth. The one time I tried flipping stuff, I ended up losing several hundred thousand in Inf. So I stick to buying recipes and crafting for the less risky, but somewhat lower profit margins.

Personally, I started out using FourSpeed's guide. I still use that recipe vendoring method for all my new characters because I can easily get up to around 1M inf with little work and for a level 6 character, that's more than enough for a while.

Then I moved to crafting common IO's. Take a look at Paragonwiki and see what it takes to earn some of those memorization badges. If you're not going for Field Crafter, focus on the ones that you'll be able to make money on once they're memorized.

For example, in a game where AoE attacks are king, people usually don't care much about buffing a skill like Fear that makes the mobs scatter. On the other hand, pretty much everyone wants/needs to buff their damage output.

The calculations at this stage are preety simple. A common IO that sells for 300,000 and only costs 100,000 for crafting fees and materials will net you 170,000 in profit (allowing for the 10% WW keeps).

One tip I'd add here, be wary of devaluing your IO's by overselling. Putting up 10 level 40 damage IOs creates the impression that supply is high, and so the price people are willing to pay will drop. Two ways to counter this: 1) Craft 10, but only put a fraction for sale at any one time. 2) Take advantage of the tiering of ingredients.

What I mean by #2 is that since level 35 and level 40 IOs use the same ingredients (and require the same memorization badge), if you make 5 of each, you decrease the perceived supply levels and keep each level range at a decent price point. This is how I do it when I don't want to have the check the market several times a day.

Finally, once my marketers hit 100M, I moved to crafting the orange recipe IO's. Again the calculation is simple. Recipe for 20M, 2.5M in ingredients and crafting fees, sale price of 35M and I'm making a profit of 9M on the transaction.

Figuring out what IO sets might sell can be a little challenging; so here's what I did. I spent some time sitting in Atlas Park listening to the "LFM" requests. It doesn't take long to figure out that Stone tankers and Fire/Kin controllers are popular to have on teams. So then I came back to the forums and read the latest guides on how to build out those characters. This was able to tell me what sets are going to be popular based on what archtypes/powersets are popular at the moment. Of course as the game changes through updates and expansions, this can change what the "build of the day" looks like; so you'll need to pay attention how new Issues or expansion sets affect the popularity of marketing items.

Could be bad timing to judge this just after the long holiday weekend here in the States. Prices went crazy this weekend. I saw the amount of Brass on hand drop below 50 units, which made the "Buy-It-Nao" price jump to crazy levels.

Since, other than a few months just after launch, I've only been back playing for 2 months, I'm a bad person to judge overall effect on the market of the MA stuff.

I love the market stuff, though. My two highest characters are in their low 20's and both just tipped over the 100M Inf level.

My feeling is that collecting tickets and rolling for bronze recipes increases the supply of those items, therefore dropping the cost. However the flipside is that with people reaching level 50 with tons of money, and no concept of how the game works outside of AE content, crafters like me are able to make money off people who don't want to bother understanding how to craft things themselves.

I've got my own base on both the blue and red sides, just because of the convenience factor mentioned above. If all you're doing is flipping recipes and salvage, it's not necessary. But if you're going to do much crafting, you can save yourself a LOT of travelling time.

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No, I even used trial accounts to pad my villain groups to get prestige to make sure I could have bins for storage.

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Warning that this doesn't work anymore. I tried it. Trial accounts aren't allowed to join Super/Villian Groups anymore. I had to subscribe a second account for a month to do my padding.

Related question...

I'm starting out building my base for my single-player SG. I open up the edit base window. My base plan needs to have the entrance in the middle of the plot, but when I try to "Move Room", nothing happens. It doesn't seem to let me relocate that room (which has nothing but the teleporter in it).

Anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

I think Space Goat is onto something. I'm not so sure it is the constant trickle of rewards, as much as it is that when travelling around DA slaughtering mobs you're actually doing something. As opposed to "fighting" a dual-boxed arena duel with yourself.

Think about this ... For the same money ... Would you rather have a job where you sit in an empty office with no windows and just have to push a single button on the desk when it glows red ... or ... a job where you walked around the building picking up mail from designated mail drop locations?

Neither one is very challenging, but I'd be willing to bet you'd feel happier at the end of the day as a mail clerk than you would a button pusher.

Here's the problem as I see it ... how do you adjust the drop rate for "real" teams without also benefiting the solo farmer who fills his team with dummy members, maps the mission, then goes solo?

I think that adjusting the drop rate for teams would really only have the net effect of making it even MORE worthwhile for the solo farmers out there.

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...But then again, i've discovered this when I would try to reply to a tell and ended up typing "no, i dont want to be in your AE group please stop blind inviting me" in the search text.

**I wonder if they could create such an anti-spam IO?

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Not to derail this, but as a hard core solo'r, I've set the Team options on all my characters to "Do not accept team invites". Bingo! No more blind invites to things I don't have time for anyway.

You hit on my favorite reason to make money by crafting in MMO's. I would rather spend my time working the markets, jumping back and forth between WW and my crafting base; knowing that the common IO's I'm selling are helping others enjoy the game than spend all day farming AE's hoping to cash in big on some random drops.

One of the most satisfying market sessions I had lately was when I was posting some mid-level common Health IO's and the sales were closing about 30 seconds after I posted them. Realizing that someone was thinking "I hope I can find this for my next upgrade..." and they were able to get what they needed because I spent the time to understand how crafting works and to create the IO's was very cool!

My problem, however, with the "lone bidder" is that I tend to have a somewhat cynical view of such things. I worry that if I offer up something to them and they buy it for a couple thousand that they're just going to turn around and put it up for sale at 10x (or more) what they paid. I guess on the positive side, even if that's all they do, they're still advancing their goals because I helped out.

That's the attitude I have when I'm clearing random salvage off my characters for 9 inf each. Sure I know some of it will be flipped, but since it wasn't doing me any good, finding a "good" price for one Ancient Artifact (or whatever) isn't worth my time.

I think he's using "flopping" because "flipping" normally is done for a profit ... so this is going the other way.

I think the overall problem would be that you'd have to keep doing it. Even if you start at the Inf cap, I have a feeling with the numbers of bids and offers that you may run out of Inf before the Luck Charm market is stabilized. On the other hand in the short term, it would have a beneficial effect for those people who actually need the Luck Charms for their IO's.

Just make sure you don't have any open bids when you're relisting for the lowball price. Wouldn't want to be buying up your own products and therefore negating your work.

2.5 years old and still the definitive guide on the subject!

Thanks for making my life of herding hyperactive preschoolers (aka "ninjas") so much more enjoyable!

Well, over 2 years past the original post date, and this is still brilliant stuff!

MM is the only reason I went redside. I love pet classes in games. This is going to make controlling those hyperactive children that pass for ninjas a lot easier.

One workaround I found ... right-click on the recipe and choose "info". This popped up a window that I could keep open and then shop for salvage. However it doesn't update with quantities on hand.

As has been demonstrated, it's pretty easy for 1 or 2 people to force prices higher. But it's much harder to bring prices down.

First of all, you may offer an item at 100 inf, but if someone buys it for 50,000 inf, that's the price that shows on the last 5 display.

Second, even if someone did buy it at 200, on items with high transaction volumes, that sale price won't be in the Last 5 for very long and the momentary dip in prices will be erased.

I wish I could buy a Ferrari for $25. But I can't. It's not Ferrari's fault. It's not the dealer's fault. Nobody needs to change anything about how cars are manufactured and marketed. I'm certainly not expecting anyone to "nerf Ferrari" or force them to flood the market with their cars so that it's so oversupplied I can pay however little I want.

The price in a market like the one in CoX is simple. It's the price that a seller is willing to accept that matches what a buyer is wililng to pay.

If the purple set is selling for 160Mil, its because someone is willing to pay that much for it. If you aren't willing to pay that much, then you'll probably need to look at another set for your skill that's more in your price range.

One of my favorite things in MMOs is crafting. I enjoy taking the time to learn how to make things that other players will use to make their game more fun for them.

I was here before IOs and the market. And got bored pretty quickly with nothing to do but fight more mobs (or worse fight the same mobs over and over again with alts).

As what I call a casual player (<10 hours per week) the market allows me to make money that I don't have time to earn any other way. And it allows me to enjoy the extra benefit of some income through selling my crafted items without having to spam Market chat channels and find people to trade with.

So, yeah, without the market I'd probably have already cancelled my account like I did the first 2 times I tried CoH.

BTW, in my opinion, the design of the market crossing servers was brilliant. It helps to even the economy across the entire population. Otherwise heavily populated servers see vastly differenct prices for the same items than less busy ones. But that's probably a different topic of discussion.

It seems that this week the price of materials for Common IO's has gone up by a factor of 5 and the going price for the Enhancements has been cut in half.

Lots of people decided on earning their badges? Or is this a somewhat normal fluctuation in the market?

What I'm Looking For...

An SG with an active (and mature) membership. I don't need a lot of help. I just like to have fun people to talk with while I'm running around the sewers blowing up zombies. Since I've been out of college longer than the average gamer has been alive, I like more mature people to chat with as well.

A base with a crafting table. I make my influence by doing invention crafting. Even better if I don't have to run through a maze to get from the entrance to the table. Major bonus if I can access my salvage vault from the base as well.

Who I Am...

I was an original beta tester for CoH. I played for several months after launch, but then the group of friends I was playing with got bored and we moved en masse to another MMO.

I've been back playing the game for about a month now. Having missed all the issues between 2 and 14, a lot of things are new to me now!

Because of RL commitments I play solo 100% of the time. That way if I AFK for 30 minutes in the middle of a mission and get wiped out, the only one having to deal with the xp debt is me.

I make all my influence on Wentworth's. My two top level girls are 16 and 15, but both have over 20M in influence. So I can play in SG mode all the time.

I have a tendency to create a lot of alts. Although I'm focusing on 2 characters right now, I have 6 more rolled up and waiting.

You can reach me at "La Baldera" or "Gatita Fatal".

I'm not at a point to play with the big time marketers like most of you. I've only been playing the game for 2 weeks and my highest level characters are both level 15. But they do both have about 20M in influence.

I went from low-balling recipes to sell to the vendor to making Common IO's. By paying attention to the invention badges and stuff my profit margins are doing much better now.

At night, at the end of my playing session, I'll make two sets of 10 IO's (say Damage and End Modification). Then I put half of each set in storage while I put the other half on the market. That way I'm not flooding the market with one type of IO. The last thing is to pick up the stored IO's so that I'm carrying a full tray of 10.

In the morning before work, I login real quick and collect any influence I made, then refresh my stock on WW with the stuff I was carrying.

In the evening before I start playing, I get my influence, put the last of the 20 crafted IO's on the market and play for a while, then I repeat.

I'm not flipping recipes for 10's of millions inf each or anything. But I'm making a steady 2-3 million every 24 hours. Add to that the "windfall" when I get a rare salvage or recipe drop during my levelling and I'm doing just fine.

I've played the markets in most MMO's that I've played, it's a fun side game. For some reason I typically end up being better at the Market game than the MMO. Now if I could only turn those skills to Real Life...

Started doing this earlier this week. I'm basically on the same pace as the OP. I've played the markets in most MMO's I played. There are always people who don't take the time to realize the value of what they're selling.

Heck, the same thing exists in real life. My partner spends a lot of time on Ebay and is constantly amazed at people willing to buy something on the auction for more than they would spend on the same item at Walmart.

As my dad used to say, any deal where the both seller and the buyer are satisfied with the terms is a good deal. So I don't feel bad at all.