First IO set, ToD pricing

I put some bids in for my first IO set last night and it seemed much higher than what I expected. I had to bid under the lowest posted price (this is just for recipes) for just about every piece. I added up the lowest prices for each piece and that came to 38 million. I have read a number of posts that claim this set can be bought for 10 mil. I know prices fluctuate so I'm guessing that's the issue. My total bids came to just under 20 mil. Is that too much?

Price is, to some extent, a function of patience. I don't know anything current about ToD specifically, but here's what I've been doing lately:

Put in really low bids, like 10% of the going rate, on the crafted enhancement with the highest volume. That's usually level 50. Then put in 5 bids on the recipe at maybe 75% of the going rate, but only if that is far below the cost of the enhancement, which always seems to be the case these days.

Most often I'll wind up getting the crafted enhancement dirt cheap, and I slot it. That doesn't always work out, but I do almost always get the five recipes at a good price. It may take several days. I buy all the salvage I need. If I need an expensive rare salvage, then I put in 10 bids at a price maybe 15 or 20% below the going rate. The salvage bids usually fill quickly.

I craft all five, slot one if I need it, sell the other four one at a time for a big markup, undercutting whatever the going rate is so they sell sooner rather than later. I also resell the leftover rare salvage for a profit.

I have been outfitting my new level 50 dark defender for weeks now. I'm almost done with everything but the pool powers. I haven't left Wentworth's that whole time, and I have about 100 million more inf now than I did when I started shopping.

I wish I could shop like that in the real world. Imagine walking onto the lot of a car dealership, buying ten cars, selling nine of them for a profit, and walking home with a free car and $100,000 in your pocket!

Thanks for the help. I'm now starting to feel like one of those suckers. Wish I could get home now and retract those bids.

Touch of Death - Melee set

Bonuses
Two enhancements reduces the duration of Immobilize effects on you by 2.75%.
Three enhancements increases maximum Health by 1.5%.
Four enhancements improves the Damage of all your powers by 2.5%.
Five enhancements reduces the duration of Hold effects on you by 2.75%.
Six enhancements increases Melee Defense by 3.75%.
Six enhancements increases Smashing and Lethal Defense by 1.875%.

It is one of very few sets that increase the melee positional defence that is open to scrappers tanks and brutes. It is the largest (joint with obliteration) amount of melee defence for any single set bonus.

It is in very high demand for softcapped builds for /SR and /Shield types.


You can sneak the odd one from lowballing, but with the high demand and constant turnover it takes a lot of patience.

Oh and the acc/dam/end and dam/end/rech sets are Pool C, available from merit rolls, and so expect those two to be even more expensive than the rest.

Bear in mind Fulmens' sig as well. I can't quote it word for word, but basically if you haven't left a bid up for 24 hours, you haven't really tried to buy something.

For something as popular and useful as ToD, you'll want to get bids in and let them ride a whole week (specifically from Monday when prices are lower all the way to Sunday when prices are high). In the meantime, indulge in activities that will get you one (uber ticket earning, merit generation, etc.)

If you are tempted to falter patience-wise, another Fulmens trick is good for that--buy weird levels. Everyone and their mother want a level 40, but people treat a level 39 like an IRS agent. Check out the movement on lvls 34-39 and see where you'd have the best odds for the least cash.

And finally, the old market addage to buy more than you want is always good. If you score some extras with patience, they can usually be sold at a more get it NAO price.

If you're not in too much of a rush and you have characters that you don't play a lot with, use them to put in the low bids. This way, you don't clog up your Market slots on the character that you're playing. If they have enough Inf, you can bracket a range of levels with bids.

Also, if particular Sets strike your fancy and you think that you may want to use this Set for other characters in the future, buy extras now so you won't have to wait again next time.

Did someone speak my name thrice? Oh. Only twice. Darnit.

Touch of Death prices may have gone up or down - I don't follow that specific set, because when I was doing a lot of marketing prices were all over the place, and there were plenty of things that WERE guaranteed money instead. What we know from the Big Page Of Info:

Acc/Dam and Dam/Rech are relatively common. (One drops relatively frequently from baddies and one is a doorbuster.) Acc/Dam in particular should be relatively cheap.
Dam/End and "Chance for damage" are uncommon baddie drops. Right now should be a great time to pick those up, because essentially everyone in CoH is out farming in the streets. Put in bids over the weekend.

It's a BAD time to pick up the two triples, because (as mentioned) everyone is out farming in the streets and nobody's in AE or Task Forces. However... they'll be back. Patience good.

In the general "buying" case- Squez is right, the prices on things below max level are much, much tinier than the prices at max level (or next to it.)

Like the "level 40" price for any given Touch of Death triple is probably five times the "level 36" price. It really does work almost exactly as well. The annoying thing is, you get as many level 40s as level 20-39 combined. So shotgunning out a lot of bids on lower levels will work... eventually.

If you do get extras, though, you can generally craft them and sell them for up to twice as much as you paid for the original. If you're thinking "I can buy two, sell one and nearly break even!" - you can. No guarantees on pricing, you may get burned, but if you want it chances are someone else does too. Someone with a lot more money than you, even.

Warren Buffet likes to say "The market is a mechanism for moving wealth from the active to the patient. " In CoH, "patient" means "willing to wait as much as three days."

Good luck!

In addition to the above advice, go out and make more money.

First, look at the pricing of the set and determine which pieces will cause you the most trouble. Most "expensive" sets actually tend to be made up of a bunch of comparatively cheap recipes and 1 or 2 really expensive pieces. (e.g. Lv30 Eradication - everything but the quad is in the 1m-2m range) This is usually the Pool C(s) in the set. For quite a lot of sets, depending on level range and popular frankenslotting combinations, the Pool A recipes will be expensive too (e.g. Lv35 Kin Combat: Dam/End, Lv50 Numina: Heal).

This means that in an "expensive" set, less than half the recipes make up the majority of the cost. Do Task Forces and collect Merits (which you need for blueside accolades, anyway). Pool Cs, like ToD Acc/Dam/Rech, are usually 200 Merits with rare exceptions. You can buy these for Merits directly, but it's usually smarter to buy a Lv25 LotG 7.5 with the 200 Merits, sell that, then buy the recipe you want. Nearly all Pool C recipes of equivalent Merit cost are significantly cheaper than an LotG 7.5 on the market, so you will get your recipe and a nice chunk of change to buy the rest of the set with.

Be skeptical of people who blindly tell you to turn to direct Merit purchase for everything; some anti-market posters will lie to you out of a misguided belief that they are harming the market, when all they are encouraging is a wastage of Merits. It is typically a better idea to make buy LotG 7.5s and sell those to buy the recipes you want, unless the recipe you want is rarely available on the market (usually happens if you are typing to buy recipes at less than the maximum level of the set, or from non-50 sets. ToD is one of the examples, actually).

Farm the AE for tickets and make lots of random Bronze rolls. These will get you your Pool A recipes, and you have a shot at other desirable Pool As as well, which will go towards funding the rest of your build. There's discussion elsewhere on the best level range to roll in.

If you can afford it, bid on both the recipe and the crafted enhancement (a good sum to bid for the enhancement is the same price you bid for the recipe, or 1m-5m less). Occasionally people sell enhancements for less than the recipe price. If both bids fill, then sell one for profit and keep the other.

I personally don't much care anymore about "cost-effectiveness" with my Monopoly Money in the game. Especially now that inf is so easy to come by. If I lose too much, there's plenty of ways to generate more.

So if I see something I want that costs 250 Merits, and that's how much I have, well then that's a no-brainer.

(It also helps that in the past week and a half, I've had four purple drops, plus one respec recipe drop... >.>)

This thread has some Market forum regulars actually praising the direct purchase option a bit. Might be time for a forum showdown on the topic?