Influence, what am i missing?

Originally Posted by Timeshadow

I wanna expand on something others have hinted at. When playing the market timing is everything. That recipe or piece of salvage that's going for a few hundred thousand now will be selling for several million by 8 or 9 tonight. So why not snap up a few and repost 'em in a few hours when they're in extremely high demand? With that in mind, here are some timing tips:

1) Never buy on weekends. The average age of CoX players is higher than other MMOs. That means most of us have jobs, kids, etc. that take up our time during the week. The sudden increase in players online during the weekend means more people are looking to get stuff and get it NAO!! That's why market prices sky rocket when the week's out (Particularly on Saturdays). It's especially noticeable when looking at salvage prices. Circuit Boards and Spell Ink are two extremely common drops. During the week they can go for as little as 50 influence. But on weekends they'll sometimes go as high as 50K.

2) Daytime is primetime. If you're looking to get things at a bargain place your bids during the day. The reason for this is similar to my first point. There are fewer players online during the day so you won't have to worry as much about competing with others who have much larger bank rolls than you do. It's easy to snap up some of the leftover stuff from the previous night that didn't sell and got reposted for lower prices. Also, your bids will generally come in quicker because there are fewer competing bids clogging the stream.

3) Don't trust nighttime sales records. When bidding during off hours you'll often come across prices that seem extremely high. New marketeers are often discouraged by this because they think that's the average going rate for the item. More often than not that isn't the case. What you're seeing are the prices from the previous night's peak activity. Since fewer people bid during the day those records don't get altered to reflect the deals you can get. Don't let it fool you.

Originally Posted by Grey Pilgrim

Probably true most of the time, but I would advise anyone to just sell stuff on the market frequently. It helps supply (and all of us, therefore), but it also informs you what a "normal" price for an item is. So you can put in a bid for what something normally goes for, even when the price is way higher. It'll come back down eventually.

To put in my two cents on the overall topic, getting money is really just as simple as playing the game. You can play the market a lot and farm, sure, but you don't need to. Just sell your drops wisely (checking to see if you can get more on the market as well: this doesn't take all that long), and the money will come.

I came back to CoX not long after the invention system was in place, and I had a lot less money than most people. I made a Blaster at the time and got him to 50, managing to buy all his IO sets with the money he made alone, filling up the slots that opened with each level increase. He didn't get inf from any other toons: this was all based off of what he sold from drops. He was helped a little by having a respec recipe drop (but it was only worth 18 million then), but most of his gains were little steps here and there.

You can put together a respectable build with not a whole lot of money: it's only some desired sets that are worth a few million for each piece, and the really rare ones that are worth more. Are those sets nice to have? Sure. Do you need them? No. Go for something more realistic than a purpled out build, sell your drops, get merits, and it's all fun and gravy.