Tips and Tricks from a newby: A market blog.

1,223,435,616 Liquid Inf. Break a billion and already 1/4 of the way to the next. Basically a lot of "taking my own advise" today, diversifying into sets I haven't touched in a while and checking the Big 8 for good moneymakers.

Thanks for the tip-list Archie. I'ma cutpast it into the OP. Actually, this seems like a good format update. Any list of tips that anyone posts will be cutpasted into the OP, with any redundancies removed. Maybe we can make a real marketing handbook out of that post.

For bidding, my "before bed" activity is to revisit what's been profitable the past couple days and fill my slots with bids at 75% the going rate. In the morning I cancel what hasn't filled and craft the rest.

Thanks for the kudos. I'm hoping I can crank into gear now and complete 2B in 21 days. That would be the real victory, I think: fresh account and no experience to influence cap in 3 weeks.

Here is last night's update, I was too sleepy to post it before passing out. Time of last screenshot was just before midnight.



749M Liquid Inf. Yeah, that's about 500M less than the last update. It's all invested in bids that should payoff over the next couple days. Made my first foray into the level 40 sets, and finding them profitable if surprisingly cutthroat. This is the level that most of this forum hangs out, isn't it? Salvage prices have gone through the roof, I'm seeing 100k commons regularly. Have to keep reminding myself that 90k is nothing and barely effects the final price point.

Anyone know a good way to merge multiple screenshots into a single picture? The processing is taking up more time than I'm happy with.

*edit* woohoo, over 1,000 thread views! There must be a lot of readers who haven't commented. Please, I invite you to post the market rules you live by, or comment in any way.

*editedit* *cough* I, um, may have had 300M sitting in my mail waiting for my defender to pick it up when I took those screenshots. So, add another 300M Information, and bump the total to 1.049B liquid Inf.

Just an update, nothing super-exciting last night


At 1.70B Inf and rising. Rapidly pushing 2 billion, I think I'll make it today.

Huh, so that's why my attempt to sell GoTAefense for 40 million didn't fly.

I actually ended up adding a whole new column to my spreadsheet to calculate a higher markup just for those, since they were going for so much more than cost. Sorry to block you like that

I'm running a bit behind. New computer components arrived (motherboard, processor, video card, ram) so I just had to tear it apart and put it together the right way. MUCH better now :-D Haven't done much with the market in the meantime, just letting my inventory liquidate. Here's the sales of the past couple days:



Important tidbit on the lower left: I've broken 2 billion! For those keeping score, that's 18 days from a fresh account to Inf cap. I'm sure it's possible to do it faster, but I feel pretty good about going from no market knowledge to Inf cap in less than 3 weeks.

Also, holy crap that second billion came fast! Really, it took me 14 of the 18 just to get to 10 digits, and now I've doubled my wealth in half a week! I'm almost disatisfied. I thought I was going to have to work at it to get to 2 billion in under 21 days.

At this point, I'm probably going to slack on the marketing. I'll only be updating this thread every other day at best, which is probably about as often as I'll visit the consignment house. I have my 2 billion, but only the barest inkling of what to spend it on, and my characters are levels 20 and 16. The whole reason I first visited this forum was to make enough money to outfit myself in full Common IOs at 22. I think I've adequately fulfilled this goal ;-)

I do welcome any comments, tips, or other posts anyone would like to leave.

the first billion is always the hardest

I suggest storing 1 billion as seed money for whenever you need more, as u learned making money after a bill is ridiculously easy, so store a billion...than spend, when your low on funds claim your billion and make more than put the billion back...

oh and to store money place bids on lvl 53 IOs, they will never fill..I like using 53 LoTGs for no particular reason though haha

LOL!

Now I have 2 different threads to point to when someone says "making a billion inf" is hard.

Good work!

So I am one of those people that is perpetually poor in every MMO I play. I got annoyed about being poor in CoH and decided to seek wisdom from the forums here. I read this and a few other posts... Wow what a difference two days can make.

As of 8/25/10 around 10pm my level 15 praetorian had a total of 4 million inf (borrowed from a friend to get started, yeah I cheated a bit). As of right now, that same toon is sitting on 20 million liquid and 40 million in assets (hopefully it will be sold when I get home tonight). Marketeering is an awesome mini-game, and it is way more fun than I thought it would be.

Though I now have the same problem as Haffron. Pile of money with no real idea what to buy my lvl 15 Brute.

Aura, thanks for the compliment.

Franklin, glad you're having fun with it. As for what to buy, I found that getting a Miracle: +Recovery socketed into Health at 17 made a HUGE difference. As a Brute, you might look into getting Regerating Flesh: +Regen socketed as well.

No real updates. I haven't even collected my earnings since the last time I posted. Too busy enjoying the Praetorian storylines. Well, that and playing Monday Night Combat. Seriously entertaining game. It seems like prices are falling a bit right now, so I'm probably just going to sit on my billions and see if deflation can make me richer in the next couple weeks.

Strange happenings: I've had two people PM me for marketing advice, and three contact me in-game. Maybe word is starting to get out about how easy it is to make money? Fury, if you're reading this, I apologize in advance: I linked them to your thread and told them you're awesome.

You guys are inspiring. I've been playing since launch and I still suck at this market thing. I starting trying to "seriously" market again a week ago... and I've managed to take my 100m->120m+50-60m in things waiting to sell. Not hugely impressive, but faster than farming. I think I'm still going about it wrong.

Couldn't be doing THAT badly, you have more than you started with...

Grats! I followed a very similar process to my first 2 billion.. which led me to create an uber scrapper as well - dm/invuln (variant of jshmoe's build, bye bye death). Now I'm sort've puzzled about what to do next. I have a purpled tank, a purpled scrapper, and a purpled corruptor. Purple prices have suddenly jumped to ~ 250 million, which seems downright unreasonable. Any bets on when/if they will come down again?

I doubt they will. People are figuring out they can make big bucks by spending 2 HVMs on high-cost Uniques, and use that money to buy Purps.

Alternate theory to explain the same data:

People have X amount of inf, and they're spending less than they used to on their oranges (because they're getting them with HVMs and slotting them), so they have more to spend on their purples.

I don't know which theory is right and I can't think of an experiment to determine it...

Very impressive. I've been around a while (50-something month vet badge), and I've never had even 100M on all (and that's a lot, trust me) my characters combined. Since the market came out, I've never been in want of basic enhancements (up to genIOs and a couple sets) and I have met with limited success in the market,but your comments and example here have inspired me to get back into the market again. Thanks.

@Fulmens: I think your theory is the more likely of the two, just given general knowledge of the way the "average player" seems to buy and sell in this game.

@AllYourBase: Glad you enjoy the thread. Feel free to add your own hints and self-reminders, and I'll add them to the OP.