I've been playing around in beta trying to get a routine going with regards to flipping items.
The strategy is simple, buy something for 100g, sell it for 110g, profit...or is it? Those of you that know the system will immediately see the flaw in the above statement. To quote Rolf Harris"Gee...can you tell what it is yet?"....
So what I want to post today is some simple, yet very necessary information for would be flippers of mats/items on the Gold and Real Money AH.
At the time of writing the transaction fees on Beta are as follows:
Commodities/Gold on both AH's is a 15% fee paid by the Seller.
Items on RMAH $1:25 per item
Items on Gold AH 15%
What does this mean for those planning to play the flipping/salvaging game?
For every 100g you spend on an item you need to be selling for MINIMUM 115g just to break even. So bidding on items to Salvage to Subtle Essence at 150g requires you sell the resulting Essences for 173g. So if the going rate is any less than 180g it's probably just not worth the investment.
Now we also need to bear in mind that since we are likely to be bidding on these items the sales won;t complete for up to 24hours. We tie up our 150g bid in the system until we are out bid, or win at the end of the auction time period. So the price of essences now is irrelevant. We are banking on the price of Subtle Essences being greater than 180g in 24 hours or mores time.
True Flipping is can happen somewhat quicker of course, buying 100 subtle essences for 100g, to sell at a minimum of 100 x 1.15 to break even can be done in a matter of seconds, assuming the market is rising, but as Marko has shown the market is anything but stable, so the real game is going to be guessing when the best time to sell will be. Is it the second after the stack gets into your stash or at sometime down the road (eg. 6pm on a Friday evening when server populations are logging on to play and craft, rather than 2am on Saturday morning when the player base has dumped 200,000 Essences on the AH after a full evening of playing and farming.)
Flipping between the RMAH and Gold AH is going to be even riskier. The margins a lot tighter and transaction fees potentially crippling. When I buy an item or commodity from the RMAH I need to sell it for 1.15 times what I paid for it, and for 1.15times the amount of gold that I can sell for the amount I paid, plus 1.0329 times the amount paid to cover Paypal to cash out. Some may not be following me at this point so I'll explain this again: I will be paying transaction fee of 15% on selling the item on the Gold AH, another transaction fee of 15% selling the gold on the RMAH, and a further transaction fee for cashing out to Paypal of 2.9% plus 0.3%. So that $1.50 item needs to generate $2.05 (1.5x1.15x1.15x1.032) worth of gold. So if gold is worth $1 per 1000 I need to sell for at least 2050 gold, and to sell the gold for at least $1 per thousand to break even. If gold is like Beta and worth closer to $10 per Thousand the item needs to sell for 205 gold to break even. Subtle Essences are a good example of where this is currently workable in Beta. It is possible to buy Subtle Essences on Beta AH for under $1 each, making your threshold value to sell on gold AH 137gold, assuming a 10 to 1000 ratio, however as this drops on release to closer to $1 per thousand or lower we would need to be either buying our Essences for 10c each, or selling for 1370g each to profit from this revenue stream.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Difficulty and Tiers for Cratfed/Farmed Item Stats (post 2)
This is the second of 2 articles discussing my thoughts on playing the crafting aspect of Diablo 3. I previously discussed stats on items, crafting and selling items based on what players will want at certain transition points in the game. http://www.diablo3artisans.com/ have a Barbarian build page, which also discusses the levels at which we will see these choke points. Whilst I have little information to go on I thought I would share what I have, and some assumptions I am making at this early stage of the game. Marcko had something to say on item crafting and wanted stats back in March.
Level 1 to 30 is going to be in Normal.
Desirable stats will be those that increase DPS (Strenght / Dexterity / Intelligence and +damage / Attack speed, Magic Find and Gold Find. Experience will always be a bonus to those wishing to level faster.
Weapons with high DPS will always be desirable, with those at the top 1-2% of the range accompanied by relevant stats selling for a premium.
Level 30 to 45 players will be venturing into Nightmare difficulty.
The same main stats will apply here for increasing DPS as will the desirability of high DPS weapons. What will likely change is the desirability of Vitality and Orb Health bonuses. I don't predict Nightmare as having much in the way of resistance based fights. This is mainly due to Resistances on gear affixes coming in at level 31, 38 and 45, making for a total of 3 possible affixes for each resistance, vs 10 for levels 45-60. If resistance only appears in Nightmare it can't be deamed nessescary for Nightmare (you would have to complete the game to gear for it...dosen't work.
Along with the desire for Vitality I would also expect to see self healing abilities on gear really rocket in value. Those High DPS weapons we saw in Normal sellling for a premium will now be worth considerably more with the Vampiric affix. 1 to 3% of damage done converted to life.
Level 45 to 60 players will be venturing into Hell difficulty.
This is where I expect to see more emphasis on resistances coming in, with a view to end game level 60s in Inferno. These are the levels where players will farm/craft/buy the gear that will keep them alive in the first runs though Inferno. If all you stack at this point is vitality the chances are you will feel very squishy, the 20-30% resitance and damage reduction items you were able to aquire in Nightmare now come into play, as you progress these go up to 60% by the time you are ready for inferno. I for see people having to carry a piece or each resistance either in bags or in the bank ready to equip when mobs known to do that kind of damage come into view. Beware the unwary adventurer that jumps into the fray with the fire breathing skelltons of the deeps (made this up!)without equipping his fire res piece (or whatever is the appropriate piece). It also prompts the question as to how the resistances will work. Can I get to 100%? Then again would I want to..as I would be gimped on everything else? If I have 100% fire res the mobs will still deal a mixture including physical? Are there Diminishing returns? I don;t see anything such as "unique equipped" preventing stacking the heck out of a resistance, but for the above reasons I can't imagine peopl wanting/needed more than one or 2 peices of each equipped at one time, given top end is 60%, so 2 pieces neting 120% reduction.
Level 60 Inferno End Game
Experience on a piece of gear at this level will be have become completely worthless, fortunately we won't see that after level 55 items. What this means is players seeking to replace all those pieces they bought from us previously that had it. Woot! The other thing we notice is a number of stats with multiple lvl 60+ item affixes. What this means for us as crafters will be a larger range of stats from which people will be choosing, Affixes exist for item levels 60, 61,62 and 63, which is likely to relate to mob levels. Bosses being level 63 will presumably be the only mobs capable of dropping the level 63 affixes, rare spawns 62, and trash mobs 61. There are also a number of level 70, these could be for Legendary items or possibly just place holders for future expansions? The other question is what will end game crafting entail?
My views on Crafting
WoW is a good example (feel free to argue) of a redundant end game crafting system. The cost to craft end game epics is such that only the very first few created are profitable, the only time I see these done are within guilds to improve the overall raid group performance. To buy Essence of Destruction and all the other mats required to craft a BoE Dragon Soul level epic costs more than all but a select few are willing to pay for the Item (End game raiding guilds pushing for server firsts are your liekly buyers with gold from guild banks). With multiple other items to fill the availible slots, and the price astronomical, they barely make the crafting cost on the open market, let alone a decent level of profit. If someone has money to burn gearing an alt that isn't raiding you might get a sale to help them bump their iLvl, but thats about it. The real money I see in WoW is in high turnover items...enchants/gems/consumables...where one can make a good 50 to 100% profit margin, vs making a Mekineers chopper or a curent raid tier belt for 16000 and selling it for 16500 on AH. In Diablo 3 the system is such that crafting materials will be consumed in massive numbers creating junk items, and this will set the price of the prefect items in the AH. I craft 100 pieces of armor costing 3000 gold each making the one perfect one cost 300000, so I'll sell it for 600000, and becuase it is the best one on the AH and there aren't 100 exactly the same going for 3000g each I'll hopefully make a profit.
Level 1 to 30 is going to be in Normal.
Desirable stats will be those that increase DPS (Strenght / Dexterity / Intelligence and +damage / Attack speed, Magic Find and Gold Find. Experience will always be a bonus to those wishing to level faster.
Weapons with high DPS will always be desirable, with those at the top 1-2% of the range accompanied by relevant stats selling for a premium.
Level 30 to 45 players will be venturing into Nightmare difficulty.
The same main stats will apply here for increasing DPS as will the desirability of high DPS weapons. What will likely change is the desirability of Vitality and Orb Health bonuses. I don't predict Nightmare as having much in the way of resistance based fights. This is mainly due to Resistances on gear affixes coming in at level 31, 38 and 45, making for a total of 3 possible affixes for each resistance, vs 10 for levels 45-60. If resistance only appears in Nightmare it can't be deamed nessescary for Nightmare (you would have to complete the game to gear for it...dosen't work.
Along with the desire for Vitality I would also expect to see self healing abilities on gear really rocket in value. Those High DPS weapons we saw in Normal sellling for a premium will now be worth considerably more with the Vampiric affix. 1 to 3% of damage done converted to life.
Level 45 to 60 players will be venturing into Hell difficulty.
This is where I expect to see more emphasis on resistances coming in, with a view to end game level 60s in Inferno. These are the levels where players will farm/craft/buy the gear that will keep them alive in the first runs though Inferno. If all you stack at this point is vitality the chances are you will feel very squishy, the 20-30% resitance and damage reduction items you were able to aquire in Nightmare now come into play, as you progress these go up to 60% by the time you are ready for inferno. I for see people having to carry a piece or each resistance either in bags or in the bank ready to equip when mobs known to do that kind of damage come into view. Beware the unwary adventurer that jumps into the fray with the fire breathing skelltons of the deeps (made this up!)without equipping his fire res piece (or whatever is the appropriate piece). It also prompts the question as to how the resistances will work. Can I get to 100%? Then again would I want to..as I would be gimped on everything else? If I have 100% fire res the mobs will still deal a mixture including physical? Are there Diminishing returns? I don;t see anything such as "unique equipped" preventing stacking the heck out of a resistance, but for the above reasons I can't imagine peopl wanting/needed more than one or 2 peices of each equipped at one time, given top end is 60%, so 2 pieces neting 120% reduction.
Level 60 Inferno End Game
Experience on a piece of gear at this level will be have become completely worthless, fortunately we won't see that after level 55 items. What this means is players seeking to replace all those pieces they bought from us previously that had it. Woot! The other thing we notice is a number of stats with multiple lvl 60+ item affixes. What this means for us as crafters will be a larger range of stats from which people will be choosing, Affixes exist for item levels 60, 61,62 and 63, which is likely to relate to mob levels. Bosses being level 63 will presumably be the only mobs capable of dropping the level 63 affixes, rare spawns 62, and trash mobs 61. There are also a number of level 70, these could be for Legendary items or possibly just place holders for future expansions? The other question is what will end game crafting entail?
My views on Crafting
WoW is a good example (feel free to argue) of a redundant end game crafting system. The cost to craft end game epics is such that only the very first few created are profitable, the only time I see these done are within guilds to improve the overall raid group performance. To buy Essence of Destruction and all the other mats required to craft a BoE Dragon Soul level epic costs more than all but a select few are willing to pay for the Item (End game raiding guilds pushing for server firsts are your liekly buyers with gold from guild banks). With multiple other items to fill the availible slots, and the price astronomical, they barely make the crafting cost on the open market, let alone a decent level of profit. If someone has money to burn gearing an alt that isn't raiding you might get a sale to help them bump their iLvl, but thats about it. The real money I see in WoW is in high turnover items...enchants/gems/consumables...where one can make a good 50 to 100% profit margin, vs making a Mekineers chopper or a curent raid tier belt for 16000 and selling it for 16500 on AH. In Diablo 3 the system is such that crafting materials will be consumed in massive numbers creating junk items, and this will set the price of the prefect items in the AH. I craft 100 pieces of armor costing 3000 gold each making the one perfect one cost 300000, so I'll sell it for 600000, and becuase it is the best one on the AH and there aren't 100 exactly the same going for 3000g each I'll hopefully make a profit.
Beta 18 Run throughs
To test the Diablo 3 gold farming strategies I suggested I did another few runs through to gather some actual figures to enable comparisions between the strategies. It's a small sample size, a little over 1 hour played per strategy, but revealing.
Full Run Through Act 1.
Character : 45dps Lvl 13 Barbarian,
Time Taken: 1hr 10mins
Gold Looted/Quest Rewards: 14514 Gold Find: 8%
Magic Items Looted: 36 Magic Find: 6%
Magic Items base (not attributable to gold find) (36/1.06):34, 29.1 per hour unbuffed.
Gold Base (not attributable to Gold Find) (14514/1.08):13438, 11520 per hour unbuffed.
Run Through "Reign of the Black King" questline.
Character : 45dps Lvl 13 Barbarian,
Time Taken: 1hr 5mins, 2 runs completed
Gold Looted/Quest Rewards: 11513 Gold Find: 8%
Magic Items Looted: 28 Magic Find: 6%
Magic Items base (not attributable to gold find) (23/1.06):22, 20 per hour unbuffed.
Gold Base (not attributable to Gold Find) (11513/1.08):10660, 9840 per hour unbuffed.
So for Act 1 at least farming the complete stroyline is about 17% more productive than farming just the final quest area. I am quite suprised by this finding, although with hindsight I see the difference is going to be in both the quest rewards and the large number of cellars/rare mobs in the external areas versus the final dungeon. It seems true what Blizzard intended that exploring should yield better rewards than boss runs.
Farming Cemetary and Dark Cellar Rares.
tbc.
Full Run Through Act 1.
Character : 45dps Lvl 13 Barbarian,
Time Taken: 1hr 10mins
Gold Looted/Quest Rewards: 14514 Gold Find: 8%
Magic Items Looted: 36 Magic Find: 6%
Magic Items base (not attributable to gold find) (36/1.06):34, 29.1 per hour unbuffed.
Gold Base (not attributable to Gold Find) (14514/1.08):13438, 11520 per hour unbuffed.
Run Through "Reign of the Black King" questline.
Character : 45dps Lvl 13 Barbarian,
Time Taken: 1hr 5mins, 2 runs completed
Gold Looted/Quest Rewards: 11513 Gold Find: 8%
Magic Items Looted: 28 Magic Find: 6%
Magic Items base (not attributable to gold find) (23/1.06):22, 20 per hour unbuffed.
Gold Base (not attributable to Gold Find) (11513/1.08):10660, 9840 per hour unbuffed.
So for Act 1 at least farming the complete stroyline is about 17% more productive than farming just the final quest area. I am quite suprised by this finding, although with hindsight I see the difference is going to be in both the quest rewards and the large number of cellars/rare mobs in the external areas versus the final dungeon. It seems true what Blizzard intended that exploring should yield better rewards than boss runs.
Farming Cemetary and Dark Cellar Rares.
tbc.
Farming and Crafting ideas (Post 1)
A wealth of information is out there now regarding these 2 key areas for making gold early on at release. The advantage anyone who has played the beta has now is, or should be a pretty thorough knowledge of the first 13 levels on normal mode, and what stats will ultimately prove most desirable during peoples initial play though.
Marko has been analyzing various crafting gears and stats, while others have been touting the multiple farming strategies available.
For me I want to cover both over the next couple days in articles starting with Farming:
There are multiple ways to profit from farming, some with a group, or accomplice, others solo. Some are based around stacking Magic or Gold Find, others simply on killing quickly.
Strategy 1 : Simply run through the Act 1 game (beta levels) on normal repeatedly building up a damage/gold/magic find set. This sounds simple, and is. Each run through takes under an hour, even being thorough and when I say thorough I mean breaking every barrel, turning over every corpse, exploring every dead end, searching every book shelf.
What are the benefits of this strat? Well death remains a near impossibility. You will kill quickly, have high magic/gold find. I tend to get over 10k per run and near 40 salvageable blues, at beta prices these mats go for 120-150g each. Total 15-16k per hour.
Downside? Once players are though this content, unlike WoW where you have to level by crafting items, they will not need these mats as they won't be crafting normal level gear. Farming this section will cease to be profitable compared to farming other areas and difficulties where players do need the gear/mats. My thoughts would be the best place to do this after release will be an area at the transition between 2 difficulty levels, initially between normal and nightmare, then nightmare and hell, and finally hell and inferno. Here the gold/drops should be the best, and the demand for those drops the highest as players try to gear though the transition.
Strategy1b:
As above but limit your runs to a quest/quests within the act, the later quests are likley to be more profitable, for example Reign of the Black King.
Strategy 2: Locate farmable packs/areas. These include my favorite run which involves getting to the Cemetery of the Forsaken Checkpoint. From here run a lap of the graveyard to find the rare spawn (may or may not be here), kill and loot that, then go to the Waypoint, hit Old Ruins. Run a lap of the Old Ruins looking for the entrance to the Dark Cellar (random spawn so may or may not be here). Kill/loot whatever is inside (treasure pygmy, rare mob/pack, chest). Then use town portal (T) and log out. When you resume game you are back at the Cemetery. Rinse and repeat.
Benefits? These rare packs have increased chances to drop Magic Items, and Gold. The strategy holds true for any phase of the game where checkpoints and waypoint placement allows, including Manglemaw where from the checkpoint after you kill him you can log out and back in to do a 180 though the door and kill him again.
Downsides? Blizzard could easily nerfbat these strategies into the ground, move the checkpoints away, fix the door on Manglemaw. (Link to an article on Diablo Fans and video). However I actually doubt it, and the reason I doubt it is that it isn't actually all that profitable compared to Strategy 1. Smashing these couple mini bosses/rares and re logging gives comparable gold/magic items per hour from what I've seen so far to running the whole act. Simply put instead of spending 1 to 2 minutes simply running to find the are mobs in strategy 1 you are on a constant roll of kills. Once release hits and we are into harder content this may change. Farming a pack of rares for rare/legendary items worth 100's of thousands to the right bidder may tip the scales, but since any item can drop from any mob I'll probably be sticking to my first Strat.
Strategy 3: Working together to take advantage of increased first kill drop rates. This I have seen touted on various sites, and there are youtube videos showing the details of how they work, are based on the first boss kill by a character granting additional rares. So how does it work? As with strat 2 you are farming a boss repeatedly, eg. The Skeleton King. You and your buddy get to the checkpoint and both of you are saved to it on your mains. One of you drops group and brings a newly created character that hides in a corner while you kill the boss, then he loots the rares that drop because it was his first time and hands them over to you. He then deletes that character and logs on to his main, starting back at the checkpoint you saved at, you log your main to get saved to the checkpoint again, and then drop group and bring your newly created character.
Benefits? If it works at higher difficulty levels I can see those dong it able to make considerable sums in a very short period of time. However I personally hope it doesn't work because it's so broken, which brings me to the downsides.
Downsides? The first time though thing works fine in Normal against the Skeleton King. He is very straight forward to solo with any reasonably geared level 13, with a level 60 it will probably be a one shot. The question mark is going to be over how profitable this becomes. Will a level 1 be able to get Nightmare/Hell/Inferno rares from a first kill by being carried by a geared 60? The SK rares, frankly, are for the most part pretty worthless. Stats wise I see much better blue items regularly on the AH. Is anyone going to be buying these outside of the Beta?
Further more I'd be concerned if this could be considered an exploit. You would be utilising a feature of the game in a way that was not intended. Blizzard did not intend for people to be logging in and out to get saved to checkpoints so they could create level 1 characters to stand in corners and not take part in kills and then scoop up rare and potentially valuable items. It would be similar if someone in WoW found a way to abuse the raid lockout system to reset raid bosses enabling a guild to kill them an infinite number of times a week.
Strategy 4: Farm the Auction House, where some say the "Real PvP is at". Yes, if that's what floats your boat go for it. I won't be one to sit for hours refreshing the screen looking for the nubbins that just posted a legendary sabre for 100gold, or 100 subtle essences for the default 14g vendor price. It works, it's great, but simply not my cup of tea.
On the other hand there is no reason not to, in the course of your normal logging in and out have a look at prices and take advantage of price fluctuations, bid on low priced items you can flip, as that only takes 5 minutes of your time, and you might get uber lucky finding something like I suggested above.
There is also high potential for arbitrage between the auction houses, buy something on RMAH for $1, sell it on Gold AH for 2000 gold, sell the gold on RMAH for $2. Since we don't know yet what the prices will look like for gold/items in RMAH or Gold it's hard to say how much profit may lie in doing this, and early in the game as Marko points out in his guide players won't have the large gold stockpiles to make large gold purchases, so this one will be further down the line from release.
So there you have it, my summary of farming ideas from both my personal beta experiences and gathered from the far corners of the interweb! Links on the side bar to some of my sources. Please check those guys out too!
Marko has been analyzing various crafting gears and stats, while others have been touting the multiple farming strategies available.
For me I want to cover both over the next couple days in articles starting with Farming:
There are multiple ways to profit from farming, some with a group, or accomplice, others solo. Some are based around stacking Magic or Gold Find, others simply on killing quickly.
Strategy 1 : Simply run through the Act 1 game (beta levels) on normal repeatedly building up a damage/gold/magic find set. This sounds simple, and is. Each run through takes under an hour, even being thorough and when I say thorough I mean breaking every barrel, turning over every corpse, exploring every dead end, searching every book shelf.
What are the benefits of this strat? Well death remains a near impossibility. You will kill quickly, have high magic/gold find. I tend to get over 10k per run and near 40 salvageable blues, at beta prices these mats go for 120-150g each. Total 15-16k per hour.
Downside? Once players are though this content, unlike WoW where you have to level by crafting items, they will not need these mats as they won't be crafting normal level gear. Farming this section will cease to be profitable compared to farming other areas and difficulties where players do need the gear/mats. My thoughts would be the best place to do this after release will be an area at the transition between 2 difficulty levels, initially between normal and nightmare, then nightmare and hell, and finally hell and inferno. Here the gold/drops should be the best, and the demand for those drops the highest as players try to gear though the transition.
Strategy1b:
As above but limit your runs to a quest/quests within the act, the later quests are likley to be more profitable, for example Reign of the Black King.
Strategy 2: Locate farmable packs/areas. These include my favorite run which involves getting to the Cemetery of the Forsaken Checkpoint. From here run a lap of the graveyard to find the rare spawn (may or may not be here), kill and loot that, then go to the Waypoint, hit Old Ruins. Run a lap of the Old Ruins looking for the entrance to the Dark Cellar (random spawn so may or may not be here). Kill/loot whatever is inside (treasure pygmy, rare mob/pack, chest). Then use town portal (T) and log out. When you resume game you are back at the Cemetery. Rinse and repeat.
Benefits? These rare packs have increased chances to drop Magic Items, and Gold. The strategy holds true for any phase of the game where checkpoints and waypoint placement allows, including Manglemaw where from the checkpoint after you kill him you can log out and back in to do a 180 though the door and kill him again.
Downsides? Blizzard could easily nerfbat these strategies into the ground, move the checkpoints away, fix the door on Manglemaw. (Link to an article on Diablo Fans and video). However I actually doubt it, and the reason I doubt it is that it isn't actually all that profitable compared to Strategy 1. Smashing these couple mini bosses/rares and re logging gives comparable gold/magic items per hour from what I've seen so far to running the whole act. Simply put instead of spending 1 to 2 minutes simply running to find the are mobs in strategy 1 you are on a constant roll of kills. Once release hits and we are into harder content this may change. Farming a pack of rares for rare/legendary items worth 100's of thousands to the right bidder may tip the scales, but since any item can drop from any mob I'll probably be sticking to my first Strat.
Strategy 3: Working together to take advantage of increased first kill drop rates. This I have seen touted on various sites, and there are youtube videos showing the details of how they work, are based on the first boss kill by a character granting additional rares. So how does it work? As with strat 2 you are farming a boss repeatedly, eg. The Skeleton King. You and your buddy get to the checkpoint and both of you are saved to it on your mains. One of you drops group and brings a newly created character that hides in a corner while you kill the boss, then he loots the rares that drop because it was his first time and hands them over to you. He then deletes that character and logs on to his main, starting back at the checkpoint you saved at, you log your main to get saved to the checkpoint again, and then drop group and bring your newly created character.
Benefits? If it works at higher difficulty levels I can see those dong it able to make considerable sums in a very short period of time. However I personally hope it doesn't work because it's so broken, which brings me to the downsides.
Downsides? The first time though thing works fine in Normal against the Skeleton King. He is very straight forward to solo with any reasonably geared level 13, with a level 60 it will probably be a one shot. The question mark is going to be over how profitable this becomes. Will a level 1 be able to get Nightmare/Hell/Inferno rares from a first kill by being carried by a geared 60? The SK rares, frankly, are for the most part pretty worthless. Stats wise I see much better blue items regularly on the AH. Is anyone going to be buying these outside of the Beta?
Further more I'd be concerned if this could be considered an exploit. You would be utilising a feature of the game in a way that was not intended. Blizzard did not intend for people to be logging in and out to get saved to checkpoints so they could create level 1 characters to stand in corners and not take part in kills and then scoop up rare and potentially valuable items. It would be similar if someone in WoW found a way to abuse the raid lockout system to reset raid bosses enabling a guild to kill them an infinite number of times a week.
Strategy 4: Farm the Auction House, where some say the "Real PvP is at". Yes, if that's what floats your boat go for it. I won't be one to sit for hours refreshing the screen looking for the nubbins that just posted a legendary sabre for 100gold, or 100 subtle essences for the default 14g vendor price. It works, it's great, but simply not my cup of tea.
On the other hand there is no reason not to, in the course of your normal logging in and out have a look at prices and take advantage of price fluctuations, bid on low priced items you can flip, as that only takes 5 minutes of your time, and you might get uber lucky finding something like I suggested above.
There is also high potential for arbitrage between the auction houses, buy something on RMAH for $1, sell it on Gold AH for 2000 gold, sell the gold on RMAH for $2. Since we don't know yet what the prices will look like for gold/items in RMAH or Gold it's hard to say how much profit may lie in doing this, and early in the game as Marko points out in his guide players won't have the large gold stockpiles to make large gold purchases, so this one will be further down the line from release.
So there you have it, my summary of farming ideas from both my personal beta experiences and gathered from the far corners of the interweb! Links on the side bar to some of my sources. Please check those guys out too!
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Excel Spreadsheet to show item max and min item affixes
I created this excel spreadsheet based on the beta data from www.d3inferno.com/ to help me analyse Items in D3. Having the Max and Min Stats for any given item level will enable me to quickly reference the item I just picked up, crafted or am looking at in the AH to see if it is maxed out for it's Item Level. I will state that I omitted the class specific abilities as simply too numerous to put together, so this is somewhat incomplete as is.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Key dates and times
Open Beta testing:
Friday, April 20 at 12:01 p.m. PDT (noon), and Monday, April 23 at 10:00 a.m. PDT.
Beta Closes
May 1st 11:59 p.m PDT (midnight).
Game Launch
May 15th 12:00 a.m PDT (midnight).
Friday, April 20 at 12:01 p.m. PDT (noon), and Monday, April 23 at 10:00 a.m. PDT.
Beta Closes
May 1st 11:59 p.m PDT (midnight).
Game Launch
May 15th 12:00 a.m PDT (midnight).
A blue post that caught my eye
To be clear: On your first kill of a boss in normal difficulty, you are guaranteed a random rare and a class rare, as well as some blues and other stuff. All other kills on all difficulties result in standard drop probabilities. You have a decent chance of getting a rare or two every time you kill a boss.
So will it still be worthwhile running though multiple times? I think not, the gold drops and value of the low end items reachable will be negated by the higher value drops of later levels. The excessive farming of the Skeleton King in beta was also achieved by a waypoint co-op "exploit" which is likely to be fixed rapidly if not already, and even if it is not it is unlikely to be advantageous at higher levels than Act 1 Normal.
For more blue posts about DIablo 3 check out the blues tracker at http://www.diablofans.com/
So will it still be worthwhile running though multiple times? I think not, the gold drops and value of the low end items reachable will be negated by the higher value drops of later levels. The excessive farming of the Skeleton King in beta was also achieved by a waypoint co-op "exploit" which is likely to be fixed rapidly if not already, and even if it is not it is unlikely to be advantageous at higher levels than Act 1 Normal.
For more blue posts about DIablo 3 check out the blues tracker at http://www.diablofans.com/
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Beta 17 run through
I ran though Beta 17 having previously completed the Betamaxed and Overachiever in Beta 16. My run though Beta 17 has been with a view to forming strats for gold, item and real money farming and I'd like to share those findings with you.
I chose a Barbarian as they have a good level of survivability combined with melee range AoE attacks, namely the spammable Cleave and Hammer for fury dump. By remaining in melee range I am closer to the gold and items as they drop thus making for more efficient farming than a Wizard or Demon Hunter which tends to leave dead mobs, and therefore gold, spread further away due to kiting and atacking from range, which will become more so in higher difficulty levels. The Witch Doctor's pets in Beta 16 I found to be an annoyance due to attacking mobs around corners etc. which again leaves loot spread far and wide. The Monk would also be viable, however are squishier that the Barbarian. Whilst the other classes also have mobility and control the Barbarian's Leap and Ground Stomp at the low levels seem ideally suited to my needs.
I aimed to cover the whole map on the run, which took 1.5 hours hours, including back tacking when I found the exit but had left areas uncleared (particualry Defiled Crypt levels and Cathedral. This run finished with me at level 10 on the Skeleton King, and a total of 13,000 gold. For a comparison I re ran the level this time going as fast as possible to the end, this left me at level 8 on the skeleton king which made for a longer and harder solo fight, less gear, and neted a lttle over 6k gold after 45mins. Needless to say mathematically both runs result in a gold farm rate of 8k per hour. Assuming I can get $1 per thousand gold on live servers this is $8 per hour, a california minimum wage before selling additional items!
In Beta the prices of gold are somewhat inflated due to the $50 beta bucks everyone gets, however prices last night were in the $9 to $14 per thousand range. This may actually not be far off the levels on live servers in the first week or so of launch as people will not have gold to level atrisans, stashes, and buy crafting mats and gear and demand will be highest. As dificulties increase the amount of gold dropped from mobs in game will also increase, however so will the average players repair bills and gear expenses, those wanting to level to 60 and inferno the fastest will be those paying a premium for gold in the forst weeks of launch. I think some site talks of $20 per thousand to be over exagerated but for me anything over $1 a thousand would be good, and I can see this balancing out over the course of the game on the gold per hour farmed to $ per hour on RMAH ratios.
I also collected a number of magic items, and the obligatory rare from the first kill of the Skeleton King. BEaring in mind that no-one on live servers will likely have the 10's or even 100's of thousands of gold to spend on rares in early weeks after the games release, short of buying it from the RMAH, my thought process is to sell the rares on RMAH, along with any good magic items I can get.
By "good" when refering to magic items I'm refering to those with large quantities of desirable stats. Namely:
Strenght
Dexterity
Inteligence
Gold Find
Magic FInd
Additional Damage
Experience Gain
High DPS weapons
Vampiric/of the Leech weapons
Other stats I don't expect people to pay for at the low levels being:
Vitality (more HP is nice but hardly needed in normal)
Orb/Gold Radius (this just takes up space that could have something else, and wouldn't you rather control your health orbs though the fight than pick up while still on full HP? As for the gold it's going to be faster yes, but so is killing faster. There are (I know of at least one WD spell) that works off this attribute so maybe later in game).
Keeping track of and learning to judge what is a good value and what is a low value for DPS on a weapon at each level, and stats will be a big factor in my sucess. Of the magical properites availible is +1 strenght and 3% magic find of any use to anyone next to the +5 strenght + 8% gold find...probably not. So its not going to get one of my AH slots.
Now for the remainder of the items, the blacksmith comes into play. Salvage. Salvaging unwanted magic items in the first run got me 30+ essences, and over 10 teeth. On live servers these I do expect to see going for gold on the action house, and will most likely be selling as fast as they can be posted to people playing the crafting game. But remeber, no-one will have the gold to pay for big money crafted gear, so why bother gold sinking into leveling the artisans in the first week? I'll be aiming to make the gold from these to RMAH it.
This won't be hard, as the first wekend will be on us soon enough, and with it an influx of players wanting mats. With subtle essences taking little space to stockpile this will be the best time to sell.
By the end of the month of May I'd hope to be seeing some levelof income, all while staying at home watching the baby with a few hours play time while he is napping!
I chose a Barbarian as they have a good level of survivability combined with melee range AoE attacks, namely the spammable Cleave and Hammer for fury dump. By remaining in melee range I am closer to the gold and items as they drop thus making for more efficient farming than a Wizard or Demon Hunter which tends to leave dead mobs, and therefore gold, spread further away due to kiting and atacking from range, which will become more so in higher difficulty levels. The Witch Doctor's pets in Beta 16 I found to be an annoyance due to attacking mobs around corners etc. which again leaves loot spread far and wide. The Monk would also be viable, however are squishier that the Barbarian. Whilst the other classes also have mobility and control the Barbarian's Leap and Ground Stomp at the low levels seem ideally suited to my needs.
I aimed to cover the whole map on the run, which took 1.5 hours hours, including back tacking when I found the exit but had left areas uncleared (particualry Defiled Crypt levels and Cathedral. This run finished with me at level 10 on the Skeleton King, and a total of 13,000 gold. For a comparison I re ran the level this time going as fast as possible to the end, this left me at level 8 on the skeleton king which made for a longer and harder solo fight, less gear, and neted a lttle over 6k gold after 45mins. Needless to say mathematically both runs result in a gold farm rate of 8k per hour. Assuming I can get $1 per thousand gold on live servers this is $8 per hour, a california minimum wage before selling additional items!
In Beta the prices of gold are somewhat inflated due to the $50 beta bucks everyone gets, however prices last night were in the $9 to $14 per thousand range. This may actually not be far off the levels on live servers in the first week or so of launch as people will not have gold to level atrisans, stashes, and buy crafting mats and gear and demand will be highest. As dificulties increase the amount of gold dropped from mobs in game will also increase, however so will the average players repair bills and gear expenses, those wanting to level to 60 and inferno the fastest will be those paying a premium for gold in the forst weeks of launch. I think some site talks of $20 per thousand to be over exagerated but for me anything over $1 a thousand would be good, and I can see this balancing out over the course of the game on the gold per hour farmed to $ per hour on RMAH ratios.
I also collected a number of magic items, and the obligatory rare from the first kill of the Skeleton King. BEaring in mind that no-one on live servers will likely have the 10's or even 100's of thousands of gold to spend on rares in early weeks after the games release, short of buying it from the RMAH, my thought process is to sell the rares on RMAH, along with any good magic items I can get.
By "good" when refering to magic items I'm refering to those with large quantities of desirable stats. Namely:
Strenght
Dexterity
Inteligence
Gold Find
Magic FInd
Additional Damage
Experience Gain
High DPS weapons
Vampiric/of the Leech weapons
Other stats I don't expect people to pay for at the low levels being:
Vitality (more HP is nice but hardly needed in normal)
Orb/Gold Radius (this just takes up space that could have something else, and wouldn't you rather control your health orbs though the fight than pick up while still on full HP? As for the gold it's going to be faster yes, but so is killing faster. There are (I know of at least one WD spell) that works off this attribute so maybe later in game).
Keeping track of and learning to judge what is a good value and what is a low value for DPS on a weapon at each level, and stats will be a big factor in my sucess. Of the magical properites availible is +1 strenght and 3% magic find of any use to anyone next to the +5 strenght + 8% gold find...probably not. So its not going to get one of my AH slots.
Now for the remainder of the items, the blacksmith comes into play. Salvage. Salvaging unwanted magic items in the first run got me 30+ essences, and over 10 teeth. On live servers these I do expect to see going for gold on the action house, and will most likely be selling as fast as they can be posted to people playing the crafting game. But remeber, no-one will have the gold to pay for big money crafted gear, so why bother gold sinking into leveling the artisans in the first week? I'll be aiming to make the gold from these to RMAH it.
This won't be hard, as the first wekend will be on us soon enough, and with it an influx of players wanting mats. With subtle essences taking little space to stockpile this will be the best time to sell.
By the end of the month of May I'd hope to be seeing some levelof income, all while staying at home watching the baby with a few hours play time while he is napping!
Real Money Auction House
So the real money auction house (RMAH) is exactly what it suggests, an auction house where people spend and use real money. They introduced it to remove the unsavory 3rd party trading that was going on in Diablo 2 through websites, some of which were out to steal peoples accounts. People have been argueing that they will bring a "pay-to-win" culture to the game, others argue it existed any way just through these 3rd party transactions and all Blizzard have done is secure it for the players so they don't get ripped off or hacked.
Which ever side of the fence you sit my side is simply - "Why not make a few extra bucks while I'm home playing house husband?" So I began setting things up and testing on the beta, and looking around at some other blogs/sites like Markos http://www.diablo3goldguide.net/ and http://www.diablo3artisans.com/
Which ever side of the fence you sit my side is simply - "Why not make a few extra bucks while I'm home playing house husband?" So I began setting things up and testing on the beta, and looking around at some other blogs/sites like Markos http://www.diablo3goldguide.net/ and http://www.diablo3artisans.com/
Diablo 3 Beta
I got my Beta invite towards the end of testing and in all really enjoyed the game play. Coming from WoW with my background as a Warrior the Barbarian was naturally the first class I rolled. I loved it.
What this game has for me as a player is the ability to run the same content solo as with a group, for the same loot, enabing me to perfect my character when ever I decide. If I go back to the U.K. there is no guild to answer to, no role (Tank/DPS/Healer) to perfect. It truely is designed with solo play in mind.
I purposefully skipped mentioning this in the previous About Me post, that I'm still out of a job, but currently looking after my 4 month old son at home while my wife is working full time as a teacher. Once Ski Season came to a close I took over to save us money on daycare, and we would rather he is with one of us either way at least until about 9 months, 6 at the earliest. So what really gets me exicted about this game is I can play while he is napping, when he wakes up I don't feel like I'm abandoning my 5man dungeon group, I can just log and be done. There are no daily quests that I feel I must get done. There are no points to farm or I'll be behind the gear curve. And above all else there is the REAL MONEY AUCTION HOUSE!
What this game has for me as a player is the ability to run the same content solo as with a group, for the same loot, enabing me to perfect my character when ever I decide. If I go back to the U.K. there is no guild to answer to, no role (Tank/DPS/Healer) to perfect. It truely is designed with solo play in mind.
I purposefully skipped mentioning this in the previous About Me post, that I'm still out of a job, but currently looking after my 4 month old son at home while my wife is working full time as a teacher. Once Ski Season came to a close I took over to save us money on daycare, and we would rather he is with one of us either way at least until about 9 months, 6 at the earliest. So what really gets me exicted about this game is I can play while he is napping, when he wakes up I don't feel like I'm abandoning my 5man dungeon group, I can just log and be done. There are no daily quests that I feel I must get done. There are no points to farm or I'll be behind the gear curve. And above all else there is the REAL MONEY AUCTION HOUSE!
About me and my gaming.
I have been playing World of Warcraft since September 2008, originally on EU-Terrokar. I played a Warrior and made decent progress though Wrath of the Lich King raiding 10 and 25mans with guild, at times I was fortunate enough with item drops to get into the top 100 geared on the server, at one point I was the third best geared Warrior on the server.
In the summer of 2009 I lost my full time job as a Civil Engineer and in December of that year I moved out to the U.S.A. to pursue my second passion which was teaching Skiing. Living in a small ski town in employee housing and the wrong time zone my raiding on Terokkar was brought to a stand still. I changed guilds to a more casual guild that was more willing to let me drop in and out of my raid spot due to the lack of regularity I was able to play, and continued though to the end of the expansion at the bottom end of any rankings.
With the release of Cataclysm I re-rolled on US-Skywall and joined a raiding guild. Clearing normal 10mans on a casual basis. The guilds ethos was simply "we have never been number on raiding guild on the server or gotten server firsts and we don't intend to!"
When the Annual pass became availble I considered it a no-brainer. I would certainly be playing WoW for an other year and upgradeing imeadiately to MoP, but I get this Diablo 3 thrown in...so why not?
In the summer of 2009 I lost my full time job as a Civil Engineer and in December of that year I moved out to the U.S.A. to pursue my second passion which was teaching Skiing. Living in a small ski town in employee housing and the wrong time zone my raiding on Terokkar was brought to a stand still. I changed guilds to a more casual guild that was more willing to let me drop in and out of my raid spot due to the lack of regularity I was able to play, and continued though to the end of the expansion at the bottom end of any rankings.
With the release of Cataclysm I re-rolled on US-Skywall and joined a raiding guild. Clearing normal 10mans on a casual basis. The guilds ethos was simply "we have never been number on raiding guild on the server or gotten server firsts and we don't intend to!"
When the Annual pass became availble I considered it a no-brainer. I would certainly be playing WoW for an other year and upgradeing imeadiately to MoP, but I get this Diablo 3 thrown in...so why not?
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