(Market): Poverty is Hard!

I support this poster, and feel I can contribute. Devs - please implement price caps to keep prices from getting so high on the official black market.

RagManX

As noted already, this has been removed. But to clarify - this was never true. What did happen was if you didn't have market interaction for 60 days, everything you had in market slots was sent to the great bit bucket in the sky. I had characters with items listed for 6+ months before they sold, and that was just fine as long as I checked in at least once every 59 days.

RagManX

I do whenever I see them in warburg trying to figure out how to get nukes or the one I really found funny was the lvl 50 that had to ask what the ferry was for

ok the person that pointed out that we are talking about the period immediately following dbl xp is correct and I have played cov long enough to expect the spike my statement was that this is not a normal spike and yes I had to buy pistons for 1 mill to complete a toon lucky for me I only needed 4 more but 4 mill for something I normally pay as suggested 5k or less for was painful and no I am not JOKING its not FUNNY

You think it takes a day for the market to recover from double xp? It's only BEEN a week since 2XP. The fastest the market has ever recovered from 2XP is about two weeks. The slowest was two months; I was starting to think that one was a permanent change in prices...

Over this last weekend some of my leftover "list for a million" common salvage sold. So the madness is by no means over. Your argument is like saying "I went shopping the weekend after Thanksgiving, and the mall was insanely crowded. I don't understand- it wasn't Black Friday!"

First thing: You're certainly not poor. For which I applaud you. There are a couple of questions here:
1) Where do you set the line for "Rich"?
2) How much inf do you want?
3) How much time to you want to spend getting that rich?

I don't mean to sound patronizing (I may be giving you the bonus package) but basically, you can get as rich as you want or need.

Until very recently, the most expensive build I ever did was around 150 million inf, so that's where I sort of set the top of "upper middle class." This is obviously a personal thing- I almost never use really expensive toys because I almost never do anything that requires really expensive toys. To put it another way, no amount of IO'ing out your build will do you as much good as teaming with an Empath, Kinetic, etc. even if they're only paying attention half the time.

So, let's assume you want your next project in this game to be "Become Rich." There's nothing wrong with that project, and you don't need a good reason[sic], but you should sort of set your goals and expectations so you don't get there and go "But I thought it would get me chicks!" or something.

Now there are a couple methods. One is what I think of as "Brute force." You farm, or run TF's, or whatever, and you collect one to ten million inf per hour- depending on your level of intensity, skill of teammates, whatever you wish. I think the best use of Merits is still random rolling in the 35-39 range. The ITF/LGTF are probably your best earners on Task Forces, because you can get Purple drops as well as regular cash and prizes. I don't know optimum farming tricks, because I don't do that.

Another is PVP. I don't know anything about PVP and the fabulous prizes you can get therein. The best ones are reputedly selling for half a billion or more, but I suspect the vast majority are selling for 10 to 30 million.

Then there's the Market, where I make my money. If you look at the price of a crafted recipe, and the price of the salvage, and the recipe, and the crafting cost... it doesn't add up. The crafted usually sells for a few million more. You can, therefore, buy ingredients, craft, and sell final products to the impatient for more. There are other ways of making money, but this is the one I use. Don't go into mass production, because if you dump 20 crafted items on the market they won't sell at the price you want. Find three or four things that you would want in your build, and buy up a couple of each and sell them judiciously. Then find three or four others. Never get stuck with a ton of inventory.

You should be able to make (on "low end stuff") half a million profit at least, on each, and on high end stuff... well, I made something like 50 million on a single item once, and there are people who've made a lot more. I'm happy buying for 10-15 and selling for 20-30 million, or buying at 25 million and selling for 40. On a new character I'm happy to buy for half a million and sell for a million or two. Then buy for a million and sell for five.

Right now the market's kind of crazy because, as mentioned, double-XP. It's a great party until the bubble bursts, so only do one or two deals at a time until things calm down.

DINGDINGDING...the disparity in prices can be EEEE-NORRRR-MUSS

Bingo give this person their prize

QFE

I have a newbie mastermind who's flipping piles of cheap stuff to get more market slots. I mean she's making a profit, but it's incidental to the slots.

Last night I put in a bunch of bids for Ancient Bones and some tech uncommon. At the time the bones were "worth" 80k and the tech one was "worth" 200k.

When I checked back this AM I'd picked up 60 bones for 1k each and 40 of the uncommons for 15k each. The bones were "worth" 100k and the uncommons were "worth" 300k according to the last 5.

I listed the lot for 50k each, and fully expect to have sold them all by the time I get off work.

The last 5 is a snapshot of a moment in time. It doesn't necessarily have any connection to the reality of what you can buy something for.

QFT.

Those that do not learn this are doomed to buy it NAO.

No you didn't. You chose to buy pistons for 1M. You could have bid, say, 10,000 and logged out. Then in an hour or two, when you went back, you would have bought all 4 most likely. Certainly you would have them after an overnight wait. There - I just saved you 3,960,000 off your next purchase of salvage that is temporarily out of normal selling range.

RagManX

This reminds me of something I read in a home improvement book a while back.
You can get something done quickly by paying a pro a lot of money, or you can do it yourself more slowly and save a bunch of $$$.

'Time is money' is just as true of the market as it is the real world.

Why would you buy stuff at the prices the marketeers sell stuff at, when you can buy stuff at the prices the marketeers BUY stuff at?

Shhhhh - you're interrupting a very important rant with your logic and facts.

RagManX

Ooops...good thing you didn't see my purchase of a PvP IO for 1.6 Billion. That's right, it's with a 'B'. I still don't know if it was worth it, but if I decide I don't want it, we'll see if i don't just feel generous enough to give it away to some lowbie standing in Atlas who won't be able to use it for a while. I know I'll make it back quickly enough to buy another one and keep the prices high!

Oh that is just a little too sad, but I am still laughing! Muah ha!

I like this.

Which is why I wish there was a way to see the range of prices over a longer period.

It does help to keep an eye on both sides, though. For whatever reason, sometimes you can get the crafted item for the same or less than the recipe.

Right before DXP weekend I got a crafted purple off the Black Market for the same low-ball price I had out for the recipe. That was about 65M less than the historic high price of the crafted item for the time I was bidding on it. Needless to say, I was pleased.

Truth. After ignoring the crafting badges for a long, long time, I got off my virtual duff and am going for Field Crafter on my hero badger. I had a nice stockpile of mid-level common salvage saved up, and used it to get going. Of course, I eventually ran out and had to start getting more. I chose the market as my source.

In general, I have been buying salvage anywhere from 50% to 10% of its peak price. I have seen things going for 100k apiece and gotten a stack of 10 of them for 10k apiece. I've been buying recipes for somthing like 10% to 50% of their purchase price at a crafting table.

On the flip side, I have been selling my crafted IOs for 200% to 300% of the non-outlier minimum prices I've seen. I just leave them up for a few hours or overnight and they all sell.

So here I am doing this thing that, once upon a time, made my teeth itch just looking at the raw crafting costs, and I'm making money off of doing it.

welcome to the ebil club.

All my FCs make money. My last 2 (#19 & #20) made around 200M each. You only lose money if you try to get FC in like one weekend.