Holiday Predications for the Market

Marketeers rejoice!!!!

If simple Keynesian economics prevail, then the holidays could be a magical oppurtunity for investment.

Holiday sales of common salvage will likely reach record highs as people continue merit farming on Winter Lord mishes to the point of exhaustion. The amount of people not doing regular missions will push salvage costs to record highs not seen since the great market inflationary period immediately following the introduction of AE, unless the devs act soon. 8 merits per Lord Winter will be too easy to pass up for the average player as this will be the quickest way to to make merits over short periods of time.

Recommendations:
(1) Stockpile common salvage used in the standard IOs for levels 25-35 recipes immediately. Common salvage fluctuates on weekends and nights anyway, but it should be especially profitable during the holiday season.
(2) Sell Candy Canes immediately as the price shall bottom out due to massive oversupply. This may lead to early short term profits, but long-term, the investment is risky. Get in and out early if you are going this route.
(3) Hold good recipes as they have long term value. In the short term, the merit farmers will be able to build the recipes they really want, so you may take longer to sell them in the immediate season.

A short term strategy in investment usually leads to all sorts of mishap, however if human behavior prevails as one would expect, the winter event shall mark the most profitable period in Paragon and the Rogue Isles history.

Stockpiling of salvage has already begun! I have noticed a lot of major fluctuations with commons like iron and even circuit board topping 100K blueside.

Keep it ebil this holiday season!

Stayed away from the last event and even 2xp weekend, I plan not to invest heavily in certain niches that I play in.

I plan to play the market very aggressively this winter and see what happens.

Perhaps i will inadvertently destroy influence and infamy but that may be just as fun.

Peace to everyone

Presumably, there will be lots more people playing. There'll be a pretty well-established pattern of surge in player activity > surge in supply > prices fall > IO consumption increases > supply dries up > sudden spike in prices > gradual decline > return to normal.

I'll hoard a few stacks of recipes to sell during shortages (there is nothing more fun than logging in to see "For Sale: 0" on anything you have stock of), but other than that, I have no extensive holiday plans.

Does anyone have the candy cane drop rate from presents ?

That seems to be what everything hinges on. During the preview I was running BNY as defeat all, and I was able to get salvage, recipes, and candy canes at about 1/min. The first time I went through I even got an obliteration piece as a drop. When I was trying to click presents, even in PI I was getting gray conning spawns.

It's new and shiny, and possibly fun. People will play it for that reason, regardless of whether it's optimal for rewards or not.

I just hope more slow resist IOs are available for super-cheap again. I've used up most of mine once I realized they'd never give the return I was hoping for. They're high enough that I don't want to buy them at buyitNao pricing but cheap enough to not be worth much marketeering.

RagManX

On Guardian server, I tried it 3 times and failed. We didn't seem to have enough people or enough coordination.

I expect it will be like the banner event (but easier). At first there will be a ton of people doing it in the more populated zones, so it's always easy to succeed. After a while, hardly anyone will want to bother with it and it will be much tougher to gather enough firepower to pull it off.

When it comes to holiday events, the devs do not subscribe to the "always leave them wanting more" philosophy.

As with anything involving a large bag of HP and multiple teams involved-res is king.

A single /sonic defender will be adding hugely to everyones damage, no matter if teamed or not (60% minimum for a 3 attack chain and likely upto 100% if a highbie)

I see myself just getting the badges on my 3 badging characters and then going back to normal play...so no effect here.

Was only on for a few hours during the sneak preview. I was dualboxing. Getting onto teams and as soon as we would get back to atlas after defeating the megaGM, Altas (on Virtue of course) was almost ready to spawn another present to do it all over again. I rejoiced over a few repeated runs. #1) Juicy Merits! #2) Juicy Candy Canes, which i made 40 to 50 million on that night and stockpiled an extra 40 away.

However, during the live event, I do not expect CC prices to stay high for long; so that reward will be less desirable. I did enjoy the event, the problem is that it was not good for LEVELING.

We all play different ways and have different goals, and the great thing about COX is that the game caters to different people in different ways. However, with 50 virtue heroes (jumping to 71 when I can create villian AT's in praetoria and bring them blueside) I am trying to level. I have goals for how much lvling I do in a week and Lord Winter chasing will not be productive in that.

That said I will still be doing some of it, when I am looking for something 'different'. Even if the cane prices tank, the merits and fun will be enough.