Got 30M to use, what to do to make more Inf?

Hi all.

I know nothing about the market, and I just want to make some Inf. :V

I have about 30M that I can scrounge up between my characters, what could I do to make some Inf with that by playing the market?

Buy low, sell high?

In all seriousness, if you are looking to make inf on the market, the best advice is to be patient. Pick some items that have a decent range of low/high prices; this usually indicates the "must sell" low points and the "must have" high points. Put in low but serious bids for rare items, wait til they get filled, and then sell at the higher price points. It will take time to get the item and then more time to sell it, but patience is its own reward.

I'm going to suggest some reading for you. One thread is self-promotion, but the other two are from the godlike Fury Flechette.

A simple illustrated guide to make inf
A Market Journal: From 0 to 1 billion in 7 days
Tips and Tricks from a newby: A market blog

Take the general advice from those threads and you'll be well on your way. I've gone from a level 1 character with nothing, fresh account, to over 600M in... 12 days now using the advice in these threads.

Here's a thread where I went from 0 to 100 million- but I think the problem is that I've been doing this so long I skipped all the steps that would actually explain how I did it. This is far from the ONLY way to make money- if you ask ten marketeers you will get eight to twelve different answers and they all work.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=232470

You can skip the first 4 or 5 posts, where I went from 0 to around 10 million.

If I had to boil down the process to five or six key points:

1) Look at max level in set (40 for Impervium Armor, 50 for Numina's or Crushing Impact or whatever) - that's where all the action is. Nothing like getting a great bargain, listing at a reasonable price and waiting a month for it to sell.

2) Look for something that costs 2 million in parts and labor, and sells for 10 million, or thereabouts, and the last 5 sales are within the last couple days. OPTIONALLY look for something that has relatively few for sale (crafted) and a lot of bids. Be aware, however, that it's easy to put up 100 bids at 1 inf each to create the impression of "lots of bids"; it's harder to fake number for sale, but not impossible [craft 10, dribble them out 2 or 3 or 5 at a time].

3) Remember that "parts and labor" includes the recipe, the salvage [1-3 million if it includes a rare salvage], and the crafting cost [up to 500K for a level 50 or 200K for a level 40].

4) Popular sets! this is included in "last 5 sales" part, but some things are always going to be oversupplied because almost nobody uses them. Hold, immob, knockback, accurate debuff, sleep, snipe, blah blah blah. The good stuff? Melee, ranged, heal, resist, defense, PBAOE, ranged AOE. I'd put them in about that order, but that's very rough.

5) Bidding: Leave recipe bids [and big ticket salvage] around to fill whenever. Don't get petty- I never bid less than 5908 on anything, and I don't blink at bidding 55,908 to get the last common salvage I need to craft something and get it on the market Right Now. On a 2 million inf item we're talking less than 3% of cost. On a 20 million item, 0.3% of cost. Mr. Wentworth takes 10% of profits. Don't stress about it.

6) Listing: I list well below the "typical last 5" but above the obvious asking points. If something has a last 5 from 8 to 10 million, people are probably going to try to get it for 5 or 6 million, but will expect to get it for 8 or 10. So 6,100,908 will make you the full 8 million, 10 if you're lucky and they're lazy/rich, almost all the time. And if it cost YOU 2 million, even if they buy for 6.2 million you will still be happy.

908) In case you were wondering why all my examples end in 908? That's my area code. And I know what buys were mine. Which can be handy if you're juggling a lot of different items across several different characters. I've had people set their price points at 909 to beat me out to items. Eh, whatever, there are a hundred different niches in this market.

... wow, there's a lot of us.

What do you consider "properly" io'd out? For me that IS like 100 million, but I'm notoriously slack on the actual optimization of characters.

I'd love to know what a "proper" build is, too. I'm having fits trying to figure out what to buy for my EM/WP/Mu Scrapper.

I divide it up into [roughly] the 30 million, 300 million and godzillion inf builds. I have no idea what a full build REALLY costs these days; the last time I planned an entire upgraded build at once was in issue 10 or so.

30 million is frankenslotting with, maybe, one or two nice things in there [Steadfast Res/Def, or similar].

300 million is slotting some nice sets for a goodly amount of +Rech, or +Def of a type or two, or +Regen/Dam/HP (those seem to go together in a lot of sets).

Godzillion is where people sprinkle the build with purples, PVPs, LoTG +Rech, and so forth. Money is no object (especially when you're exporting from Mid's to the forums to give people advice.)

Those are only rough brackets, but I find them handy for thinking about what you want to accomplish. I recommend people frankenslot at least their first character, the first time, because it gives you a good handle on how inventions work in an actual character, how the market and such works [not as much of a problem in here, I know] and what kind of benefits you get.

And if you decide to upgrade, the frankenslotted IO's are generally under half a million each and you're going for tens of millions, so who cares if you just destroy them?

Heya Fulmens-

You're probably right, I could probably IO out my rich guys to my satisfaction. BUT, I'm a hoarder. I hate wiping out my influence, I hate spending cash. Silly, perhaps, but there you have it.

Conceptually, I'm probably aiming for somewhere between the 30 million "Frankenslotted" builds and the 300 million builds. Some good sets that give decent bonuses for the character in question, but I don't need to use a whole bunch of the super-expensive sets. Call it a "budget build" .

I have entirely too many alts, which is precisely why I'm learning to play the market. I can log in, put in some long haul bids and not play the alt for a while. When I feel like playing him again, my bids have filled and I can get to work on my marketeering.

Well, futz. I started playing the market because I wanted to have enough Inf at level 22 to do a frankenslot build, something "cheap" that would make me kick **** on the way to 50. 600M Inf later, I'm level 20. Maybe I need to reevalutate my plans.

Run some SFs at +2 or at LEAST +1.