Stillhart

Care to sum up what the deal is for those of us too lazy to read 25 pages and who don't know what level pact is?

Well admittedly I'm a noob here so most of this is going to be based on what I've read, not what I know to be true (in the game I mean) so feel free to correct any incorrect assumptions.

It seems to me that the lack of inf sinks does undoubtedly cause inflation. However, I don't think it's a major problem for several reasons:

1 - Most of the money is in the hands of a very few. Either those who have been in the game for ages, or those who put forth the effort to farm/grind/marketeer their way into the billions. These few are going to be spending much less money (because they have everything they want) so they don't really affect the market (they are already purpled out so by holding inf, they're essentially lessening the money supply like a central bank would). They may cause minor perturbances in the high-end markets when they start an alt and spend 1b inf on getting them kitted up, but that passes.

2 - Inflation fears in video games usually end up with people scared of barriers to entry for noobs. While the money is out there and in the hands of a few, there are now new tools to redistribute that wealth. Tickets, for instance, let you get recipes you wouldn't necessarily be able to get otherwise. This lets people sell for a ton of money and become "rich" themselves.

3 - At the end of the day, we're talking about an electronic currency. Paying 10x as much for the same goods isn't an inconvenience...you're not going to have people with wheelbarrows full of $1 bills buying their $1mil L30 Common IO. You just type an extra zero. As long as noobs have equal access to all this cash, the fact that it's out there isn't a huge deal, especially since many of the inf sinks are percentage-based.

Just some thoughts to consider...hastily jotted down at work when nobody's looking....

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since it (figuratively) falls from the sky, it's fun for many of us to help our fellow players make as much as they can carry.

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Pet peeve fixed. Remember boys and girls, the word literally is not an intensifier. This public service announcement was brought to you by the letter e, and the number 5.

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LOL! I was thinking to myself when I read it, "Inf literally falls from the sky? It must be in some zone I haven't been to like Grandville..."

So I've been reading on this forum for a few days now...and WOW you guys really do give away all the secrets. And amusingly there's still money to be made even for noobs to the game. It's pretty funny how much you guys give away.

Now the last thing I really need to know before I make my first billion is what IO's are the desirable ones and which aren't. I've seen a few mentions here and there and I'm keeping the info in the back of my head. But man it'd be great to just know off the top of my head like you guys.

Then again, maybe my random flailing around the market is a better way to find a relatively untapped niche...

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If you are optomising purely on earnings, average inf per slot-day is the metric, based upon your own login patterns

If you find a ncih which can make 12 million once per week or one that can make 3 million twice per day.

Someone who basically only plays at the weekend, the 1st option is right
Someone who manages inventory morning and evening will make more from the 2nd.

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I was pondering this very point in the shower this morning. I sold approx 5x of a common IO for 300% profit. I also sold a stack of common IO recipes (via arbitrage) for 75% profit. The thing is, the 300% profit was less inf on an absolute level than the 75% profit. So even though I wasn't making as much ROI, I was still making more money.

Normally, I'd just scale up the 300% profit item production, but with slot limitations this is not feasible. I'd be willing to bet that this is the prime reason that so many of these opportunities stick around even though everyone knows about them.

So now I need to stop looking at profit as a percentage of investment and look at absolute levels of profit. It's gonna be interesting changing my mindset on this...

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EDIT: Except things that are "Buy one, craft, sell, pocket twelve million."

[/ QUOTE ] However, I've yet to find this situation and raises a question. At what level of profitability should I feel is good right now? Are you guys finding that a 1-2M net INF trade is too low? Should I *generally* keep searching till I find a 12M net INF trade? Or are 12M trades fairly rare?

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It takes money to make money. There's no way to "get rich quick". Find a steady stream of income that YOU'RE comfortable with and milk it. Then when you feel you have enough, try finding more expensive stuff to work on.

I already have a goal in sight for my next tier of trading, but I'm gonna need something like 50m to get it going safely. Until then, I'm happy making something like 3m per day currently. That number will rise when I get a little more time to play...currently I'm real busy and have only been playing like 30 mins in the morning and like 60 mins in the evening. Even with just that tho, I'm makin 3m per day from the market. When I have more time to play and run some numbers and explore the market a bit more, that number WILL go up.

Oh and thanks to whomever pointed out that the 25/30 crafting badges give salvage slots! I've gotten two of them done so far and it's helped noticeably. Also I made some decent money on the L30 ones, not much, but enough to offset the losses from the 10/15/20s that I started doing as well.

D

Arbi-whatty? Next you're gonna tell me that that's only one kind or arbritrage and that in a perfectly efficient market it's not possible and that we have to account for opportunity cost when calculating cost:benefit ratios!

Look, we don't need your voodoo mumbo jumbo in the market forum. The scientology forum is that way --->

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You may be new but you have a more solid grasp on basic market mechanics than 90% of the players in this game.

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Thanks! (I knew 4 years of business school had to be good for something...)

And thanks for these quick tips also. I hadn't spent much time thinking about it in this game, but the weekly buy and sell cycle matches right up with LOTRO's AH. The opaquity (is that a word? it's the opposite of transparency) of this market is very frustrating and I don't have the time to really track the market at various times of day or days of the week so much.

If you're working the market, it's never safe to assume. Do your homework, study the prices and such before diving in to make sure you don't hit your head on the bottom. If I were you, I'd start with the guide in Four's sig. I forget his whole name, but he's been in this thread. It says "I've been rich and I've been poor. I prefer rich." with a link in the last "rich". I tried it and that technique still works well.

Build up some moolah and then try the more expensive stuff. FYI tho, I posted this thread after looking at Set IO's, not common. I haven't researched the common market yet so that's one less person for you to compete against if you do that.

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the only flaw i see in your statements is that the market hasn't been around for 5 yrs. it was introduced in i9 or i10 if i remember correctly.

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Ah, I did not know that. How long ago was that, anyone know? I will gladly update any of my comments with that in mind if anyone wants to call me out on it.

See, told you I was a newb!

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Then there are others that think market manipulation is bs. Doesn't feel real heroic to sell something for 100x the actual cost just because you can. As a long tooth I feel sorry for the newbies without disposable. There is nothing worse then leveling and not slotting cause you dread the time it will take away from actually running missions to slot up. I for one applaud your effort and ability to find satisfaction ripping of others to turn a quick buck.

I sure hope rogue addresses this and condemns heroes and rewards villains for such actions. Look what greed has done to our country.

Quietly filling your coffer not because I'm stupid but because I'd much rather spend the night helping my team and others play the game not exploting them...crafting in middle of mission while rest earn you experience sweet idea=kick.

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I hope you're not responding to me (the OP) with this. There are so many things wrong with it, it's hard to know what to address first.

1 - I'm not manipulating the market. I'm taking advantage of inefficiencies in the market to make money. If people are feeling ripped off, they won't buy my "product" and I'll have to lower my price. Or competition will come in and force me to lower. The fact is though, that if the market is still this inefficient after 5+ years, it's not going to change anytime soon. In fact, the only thing I am gonna do by entering the market is push price MORE towards equilibrium. You should be thanking me for my "greed".

2 - I'm not a hero, I'm a villain...IN A VIDEO GAME. Note that last part.

3 - Running missions in this game is repetitive and boring. Playing the market adds variety and fun and will keep me around longer. Maybe you don't want me around longer, I dunno. But I certainly don't dread time away from running missions.

4 - I'm not ripping anyone off. If people weren't already paying these silly prices for stuff, I wouldn't have started the thread. It's clear that after 5 years, this is how players actually want the market to function or it would have changed by now.

5 - The devs want to keep more players playing so they make more money. If playing the market keeps me around, why would they want to change that in the next expansion? How many people leave the game because they don't want to pay 2M inf for something they could make for 500k but won't just make it themselves??

6 - I'm not even gonna touch the US politics there in the second paragraph.

7 - Who in the world mentioned crafting in the middle of a mission? I want the table so I don't have to run to Cap every time I wanna craft something. Travel time sinks piss me off more than anything else in MMO's. I'm sorry if you think that means I'm "exploting" my fellow players.

Sorry man, maybe you're reading the wrong part of the forum if you don't understand basic economics and hate capitalism.

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Not picking on your observation, but I do want to point out that 1,900,000 influence profit does not really seem ENOURMOUS to me. Since you are from another game (welcome to CoX!) the relative value of currencey here might be a little different.

Many people here (myself included) have made more than 50,000,000 on a single transaction (actually, far,far more than that, but it works for the point I am trying to make).


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It's enormous when you look at it as a 2000% profit. You'd have to have purchased your 50m item for 2.5m to make the same relative profit. Maybe that's possible maybe not, but the margin is ENORMOUS when you look at normal profit margins in a competitive market.

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Considering that an in-demand purple recipe can go for 120,000,000 you would have to do over 65 of those sales to afford 1 in-demand purple. It is entirely possible (and easy) to do those 65 sales, but if you look around you might finda better niche.

The best bet may be to make several of those 1.8million profit transactions as your base-line, and branch out to higher profit activities as you find them.

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Yeah, it's likely I'll end up doing that since inventory limits really nerf my ability to scale up the volume of transactions. Still, this should be enough to get me into a full set of L30 IOs with little effort.

THANK YOU! This has been buggin me for a while and with my first char hitting 25, I've been wondering when I should start IO'ing. Guess I'll start now. :-D

BTW, it's been asked but I don't know if it was answered...does this apply to Set IO's too or just Common IO?

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Actually I didn't create that phrase but it might have been created to describe my attitude. I make my money with patience, ruthless efficiency, statistics and mathematical analysis. I spend my money spontaneously, recklessly and with no regard for its value.

*EDIT* Actually now that I think about it I think I did make that phrase

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Are you a stock broker in real life by any chance? :-p

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Actually from his description, I'd guess he's NOT a stock broker. Playing the stock market is gambling, unless you're privvy to inside information. There are a lot of better ways to make guaranteed money.

I used similar techniques (market analysis using spreadsheets, databases and python scripts) to get rich in Eve Online and it was much more satisfying because the market was a lot harsher and much more well-balanced. Making money in CoX doesn't really take too much effort from what I've sen so far, thus it's far less satisfying.

It's like strutting around being proud of how much candy you took from all those babies. Nothing personal against anyone who has put forth the effort because I'm sure it took a lot of time and effort and was probably vastly satisfying. It's just not my cup of tea. I'll take enough to get what I want and be happy.

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And as most everyone else has said--you're providing a service that they are willing to pay for. For them, it's easier to pay more (sometimes a LOT more) to just buy it and slot it...vs. finding the recipe, finding the salvage, finding a University, etc.

I figure there is only a small percentage of folks who are legitimately ignorant of the price of an item they are buying. Everybody else just doesn't care. So take one for the team, and make some dough.

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Yeah this seems to sum it up nicely. I guess if I can make steady cash building and selling, getting the field crafter badge should be a non-issue.

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The crafting in this game is so simplistic and boring, I'm not surprised people are willing to pay others to do it. I was an explorer/crafter in my last MMO. In this one, those are about as appealing as a trip to the dentist's office.

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Well I'm not talking about gathering and crafting though. I'm talking about buying a recipe, all the salvage, assembling and reselling for ENORMOUS profit. Like spending 100k and selling for 2M. It makes no sense to me, but if it works, why not do it I guess.

Now here's a question. Is it worth the money to get the crafter badge so I can summon a crafting table? I noticed that regular old non-set IO's generally sell for a loss, but that may just be the really low-level ones that people craft for the badge and then just dump on the market. Does this turn around at higher levels or will all my crafting towards a badge be at a loss?

Oh and lol at the guy who called it a "secret" of making money in this game.

Is it me or I can I just buy recipes cheap, craft them and repost the crafted items, and make TONS of cash?! I'm used to playing the market on Eve Online where you NEVER see opportunities this obvious. Usually if it looks too good to be true, you forgot to move a decimal. But I really think this looks to be the case here. Am I missing something or are consumers just really stupid in this game?

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So, even with fairly average stuff, it's pretty profitable, albeit slow. The perk is that it's
easy to get enough tickets in a single play session to roll a few dozen recipes, and it's
hands off once the recipes are crafted, so, the process can be easily run in batches.

For that mythical casual gamer who doesn't play much, rolling some Bronze recipes
can make them a nice little nest egg while their character is idle using this approach.


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Interestingly, I'm a casual gamer right now (new job, long commute, not much time to play even if I could!) and I came to this forum looking for JUST THIS type of information. So thank you!

While I'm here, how many tickets did it cost per roll? I'm still L25 but I have 4 or 5 thousand tickets that I've only been using for updating my enhancements as I out-level them.

I figured I'd wait until I could roll on 30's since a lot of sets start at 30, but if the 25-29 range is this profitable, maybe I'll start on that...

I'm no expert here, but if you're feeling like you're not survivable, why wouldn't you put three heal IO's in your healing skills?? RttC, Healing, Fast Healing, High Pain Tolerance...I agree that you don't need more than one end-redux in your toggles. I don't even have Stamina yet, just QR, and I don't have any endurance issues with 2 end-redx in each attack and 1 in each toggle. Fit up for more healing and that should make a difference right there.

After that? Like I said, I'm no expert... :-D

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Does anyone else find this build a slow starter? I've got a DM/Shield scrapper who's a lot of fun, so I thought I'd give a /Shield brute a try. At level 20 I still feel extremely fragile. Damage output with Fury isn't bad, but I usually end up taking so much damage I can't keep going if I run out of inspirations.

I've played defense-based scrappers (2 Shield and 2 SR), so I know the early levels can be rough, but this brute is definitely one of the more frustrating chars I've played. I'm holding out until level 25 (SO's and a couple more powers) before judging him too harshly, but I haven't felt this frustrated with a new char in a long time.

Admittedly, part of the problem is probably that the first Brute I played is a SS/WP, which basically plays like God mode.

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Well I'm glad it's not just me. I mentioned very early in this thread that I didn't see these builds as being usable while leveling. They seemed more like builds made to be respeced into. I'd like to see a leveling build too, but I'm in no rush. My WM/WP brute is super fun right now.

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There's an updated list of guides on page 11 of this thread.

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Well...

Thank you. and Oops

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It's okay it took me quite a while to discover that fact on my own. Actually, there are still plenty of guides missing but apparently it's not as big a deal anymore since they released all the real numbers. *shrug* I still like reading them, personally.

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Noticing that there are not recent corr guides i8-ish for most of them. Nothing for Pain Domination at all.

If I'd leveled one beyond low 20s at this point I'd take a stab at it.

I will get to drafting my current thoughts on my favs... Anyone else?

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There's an updated list of guides on page 11 of this thread.

Hehe, yeah I read it. I still haven't given up on my Rad/Storm but I started a Fire/Kin and I've been leveling him. He's at like 8 right now and I'm having a craptastical time trying to find groups. It's probably just the empty-ish server I'm on, but I'd rather be on a low-pop server than an overloaded one. I need to find one with a nice middle ground for grouping.

BTW, one thing people never put in their guides (which I wish they would) is how much APPROXIMATELY (I know prices fluctuate like mad) a build will cost after all the various IOs. Like a general range (this is the 5-10mil set, this is the 5-10bil set, etc). Everything seems expensive to me now because my highest char is 22...but it'd be good to have a general idea...

Nice read, makes me want to try one.

One thing I'd add, none of these builds seem to be built from the ground up...that is they don't go in the order that seems usable when leveling. First travel power at 30? Err...I don't think I could handle that. You might put in a leveling build too...

I see no reason not to take Speed Boost. I know I liked it when someone cast it on me. I can't see playing Kin and NOT taking it...I mean, it's a badass buff. If you're not gonna buff, play a different class.

Anyhow, thanks for all the advice so far. Now I just have to figure out how to slot stuff. Actually, random noob question here: If (when) I respec, do I lose all the enhancements that are in the skills at the time?