*Scratches head in confusion*

I just finished reading (well, muddled through about 15+ pages worth, to be honest) a recent discussion regarding influence cap costs on certain not-to-be-named enhancements and the sheer impossibility of ever affording said costs and thereby achieving a Dream Build(tm), in which a variety of individuals with more patience than I ever had tried to achieve the internet equivalent of teaching a pig to sing.

I'll be the first to admit I'm not the brightest bulb in the package, but I do have a Stupid Question(tm) to ask of those that have treaded the waters of the Market. I'm an off-again-on-again player, not a very good one to be honest, but I do read on occasion. In that vein, I have read and continued to read the multiple posts regarding influence acquisition and I don't profess to understand them in their entirety nor even in part, but I have dabbled, and really dabbled is the word.

I've bid low on a few salvage pieces, to make enhancements off recipes I've found just from playing around and completing missions. Then, oddly enough I sold said enhancements. Which in turn funded an experiement or two, bidding on recipes (instead of actually, you know, finding them via drops) and then bidding again on the salvage to make them, and then selling the crafted result on the Market.

My confusion is that I'm wondering how I got to 100+ million influence, which is more than enough to manage my needs for the foreseable future, in around a month's time. I wasn't watching anything, not really trying, and I sure as heck wasn't playing every day (or every week for that matter). Is that really all there is to it? Can the simple idea of Bid Low-Sell Higher with Just Add Patience tacked on, be all thats necessary to garner influence?

I guess thats my Stupid Question(tm). People I can understand, but you put the word Economics in front of me with numbers attached and my frontal lobe sorta starts dribbing down the ravaged remains of my brain stem.

Sincerely,

iCynic
(There's an App for that)

Honestly, it's pretty easy to do pretty well without a lot of in-depth understanding. If you grok what's going on at a fairly basic level, you've got the tools to get rich. The trick is that not everyone seems to be wired to grasp this stuff intuitively.

That's where most of the highfalutin' talk you see in threads on the forums comes in. That's people trying to explain what they are seeing, using models to predict it or explain those predictions to other people, or sometimes even just get some idea of it for themselves.

Congrats of either good luck or a grasp of the fundamentals, even if all the talk here makes your eyes bleed.

That's pretty much it. Eventually, you'll begin to get a feel for what something's worth on average, so you immediately know what to bid and what to sell it for.

Right now, due to a few factors, the market prices are a bit strange. This could have something to do with your luck. I have just started a character that hasn't been playing the market (save for listing all of my salvage drops at 1 inf), and he's got just over a million inf. This is at level 5, with under an hour of playtime, and I think all of his drops have been common salvage.

Thank you, Champion.

As the others like to say the game throws money at you and you need to duck to avoid getting hit by it (I think that was Goat actually).

I just sell my drops and do a little crafting and I make about $150m per week myself so your experiences line up perfectly with mine.

I'd say you are missing something, but it's one of those skills that take time to master and afterwards don't seem like a skill at all - like long-time gamers who think the controls to the new Super Mario game are intuitive and are puzzled when their non-gaming relatives don't instinctively understand that B is for jumping.

Basically, if you do a lot of marketeering, eventually you get so good at finding niches on the market that you don't need to consciously think "hm, what are the dates on the 'last 5 sold' table? what does that tell me about the turnover of this IO?" or "okay, if this is the high price and this is the low price, what should I bid at to get things as quick as possible, and what should I sell at to maximize profit?". You just type in numbers while you're chatting with SGMates over Vent, and the profits roll in.

I haven't been able to get that far yet, so I share your confusion. Most of the time I just try to post things at about 10% below the highest sell price. Sometimes they sell overnight, sometimes they sit for weeks. My biggest source of income is still exchanging Alignment Merits for LotG 7.5% Global Recharges. But I'm okay with it, Inf from the market doesn't count for the badge anyway.

The good thing with working one enhancement is that eventually you memorize what you need. I know I needed a nevermelting ice, silver, unquenchable flame, and a diamond. If you are dealing with these pieces several times per day, it will become second nature. If it's not, you always have your bid tray to help you. Just check your outstanding bids, or what you've already won to keep you on track.

The only number you need to know for salvage is "10". lol. When actively working a niche, I don't look at my recipes, and what salvage I have currently, and how many of this or that I have. Whatever salvage I am missing or running low on, I check the recipe, and anything I need to craft it I bid on 10 stack of them. I'm going to need them anyway, so why bother wasting a market slot bidding on 3 nevermelting ice, when I can win a stack of 10 of them, and save myself some time later?

Example:
I have 8 recipes, 6 nevermelting ice, 2 diamonds, 4 unquenchable flame, and 8 silver. Do I bid on 2 nevermelting ice, 6 diamonds, and 4 unquenchable flames to be able to craft all 8 of the recipes I've won? No. I bid on 10 NMI, 10 diamonds, 10 unquenchable flames, and 10 more recipes when I login. If I only had 2 market slots free, in the above example I would probably bid on 10 diamonds, and 10 unquenchable flames.

It does help to write things down though. I was actually doing that at the beginning also. It ensured I always bid the same amount for everything I needed, and that my break even price stayed the same. Eventually you will memorize the prices since you work with the same numbers over and over again. Silver? 11 inf. Unquenchable flame? 5555 inf. Diamond? 1,111,111. And if you can't remember, well if you've written the prices down, you just have to consult your list.

With me. I simply keep sufficient stock of salvage to craft whatever set of recipes I am bidding for. If I have outstanding bids for 20....and have just crafted 7 of that IO, I presumably have 13 of each on market so I bid 7 new of each. Once you set the 7 all you have to do is click on something to focus to the next one and it'll still be set for 7....place in bid and move along....all very quick. When I am crafting on a toon who can only fit like 36 salvage I'll only craft stacks of 9 recipes too (assuming it takes 4 salvage for each recipe)....because the biggest time sink is running back and forth to a crafting table more than once if you can't fit all the salvage.

As for making money off buy low, sell higher, with patience being all it takes? Heck I'd say patience is far and away the best part. I'll give an example:

When Going Rogue was announced I knew there would be recipes which were worthless blueside which I could make inf on later. I put extended bids out on a number of low level Pet Damage uniques and purples blueside on toons which I don't play often (off servers). GR took almost a year to come out and during that time I picked up 110 recipes which had been selling for avg of 75M each on redside for less than 500k each (and less than 50k in many cases). I'll be selling these crafted over the next 12 mos to keep from killing the price and am basically making about 50M per for crafting costs of roughly 2.5M each.

During early GR I realized that most people would play level 1-20 content. Soooooo I picked one of the highest selling price 1-20 recipes the Achilles Heel -res proc and put out long bids on similar toons. These had been going for 75-80M each prior to GR.....during GR there was a period where they were going for 20k or less. They have since recovered but not fully. I acquired an astonishing 420 of these things for avg price of 30k each. I'll probably be selling these until I'm old....but the point is I expect the price will go up again most of the way because we're not likely to have a period where 85% of the playerbase is playing 1-20 content for 6 weeks again.

Most of the profit potential is patience, a modicum of anaylsis, and a little foresight. All the other stuff is for the last 10% of profit potential.

E.E.

As an experiment I've recently been working on field crafter on a brand new character. My character is level 27, and I stared with about 2 million influence. I crafted accuracy and then damage IOs first, just enough to get the badges I needed, and sold what I made on the market. I went on to craft endurance modification, heal, defense, and run IOs.

At this point I've got most of the badges I need for the accolade. I still have to craft some of the less popular IOs -- fear/hold etc. It'll be quite a while before I get to 1,000 items crafted. But the important thing is I now have over 50 million influence. That's just from selling the IOs that I'm required to craft for the badges. I log in once or twice a day, collect money, collect salvage I've bid on, craft, list stuff for sale and put in bids for the salvage I'll need next.

Yep, it's just that easy.

As time goes on you'll be able to spot niches more easily. My one piece of advice would be to always compare the price of your recipe with the price of the crafted item. You may be shocked by the premium some are willing to pay to avoid crafting.

Firstly, I'd like to say thank you for the replies.

Having a frank discussion is always preferable to one laden with technical jargon or overly detailed explanations when trying to grasp a non-intuitive concept, at least for myself.

I think what I'm going to do is gather up a little of the cash I have on some toons, pool it on a character I don't seem to actively play as much as I would like, and for lack of a better term, Play Around.

Seems that by doing, I may learn best, and to be honest, I think having a goal may motivate me to tackle what would otherwise be an unappealing prospect.

I figure if I approach it not as a way of Raking in teh Cash, but more as a research project, I'd be more inclined to take it easy and not panic at the learning curve.

Besides, in a sick and twisted fashion, it might be fun to work with the goal of Influence Capping a toon for the first time just to donate it to the Crazy 88's.

Now that I think about it, I think I shall. Without a specific time frame who knows, it may actually end up being fun?

*Wanders off to window-shop for Monocles and Top-Hats*

Gratefully yours,

iCynic - There's an App for that...

Some good discussion here. Nice to see people sharing some solid insights in to the market.