Farming Guide

So I promised at the end of yesterdays post to elaborate on farming strategies I have been using since the comodities AH is down and I lost that income, my characer is kind of stuck at the start of Act 2, even getting to Magda I take a beating and have to skip elites and make clever use of doorways to grab closer resurection points etc. just making it not worth the effort.

So I'm looking right now to make some gold to stockpile or invest in RMAH items and gold selling.

Basic principles:

1) There are no loot tables, any mob can drop any piece of gear upto the mLvl (monster Level) of that mob/or area in the case of barels, weapon racks and the like. You won't be searching for Fallen Lunatics becuase they are the only mob to drop a legendary weapon of a certain type. Everything has the same drop chance from every mob, be that a barrel all the way up to Diablo in Inferno. This means any area can be your farming spot of choice.

2) Magic Find will increase the chances to drop blue/yellow/orange gear. If you pick up everything on the floor bags will be full in under a minuet. With only 10 Auction House slots and salvaged components going for vendor sale value it's just not fun or efficient spending half your farming time in town, casting teleport, or standing at the vendor/blacksmith/stash to sell/salvage/store items from Hell or lower difficulty.

3) Gold Find and Gold pick up radius will have Nightmare mobs dropping Hell amounts of Gold pe either bygold r kill, and hell mobs dropping Inferno amounts of Gold, the difference being you are AoEing the mobs down in record time and with some gold pick up radius it is in your bags before it hits the floor! This leads me to sway since level 60 towards Gold Find. It's not about gold/loot per kill. It's about maximising gold/loot PER HOUR!

4) Liberal use of ALT and CTRL. The ALT key turns on or off the visibility of drops on the floor text. In options this can be set to always on for farming, and most people are aware of this. CTRL allows you to mouse over the item to see the full tooltip. If you know your items and affixes which you need to by this point you can quickly tell if the item is worth a bag slot and potental early return to town either from stats for an Auction Sale or gold vendor value.

5) Nephalem Valor stacks should ideally be up prior to hitting the highest density mobs of the level. This is straightforward in Act 1 where starting at Leorics Crown will get you to the Old Ruins Cellar for +1 to stacks, the Cemetary for another +1 stack, and a quick backwards check outside the gates for possible rare packs before entering the first crypt where you will find alot of mobs, and normally 1 or 2 rare packs per run. So most of the defiled crypts are run starting at 3 stacks, and quickly up to 5 stacks. After killing the Chancellor grab the couple rares, go back to clear out remaining unexplored crypts and then proceed to the Cathedral for the highest density of Mobs. These tricks can help massively in both gold and in shortening boss farming runs!

6) High Density Areas I farm:

Act 1

Start quest Chamber of Suffering, then visit 3 Defiled Crypts, Cathedral levels, Halls of Agony, Cursed Hold, and finish with Butcher.

Act 2

Start quest to kill Magda, work backwards to get stacks to 5, then forwards through to the boss. There is alot of desert and this isn't the greatest if you end up back tracking trying to find exits, but also some good caves, but I tend to avoid Act 2.

Act 3

This is where it is at inmy opinion, just start from the begining and clear to Azmodan, start closer to the end depending on how much time you have, but mob density, stack building and completon time are ideal for me.

Act 4
You kill bosses right of the bat with no stacks and then spend alot of time running around killing corruptions until getting across the great span and heading for Diablo where you will have rares and mobs to kill but it took me some searching just to get 5 stacks before Diablo unless I started at the begining, which just entails alot of running.

7) Always hug the LEFT or RIGHT of a map!

Your biggest lost in time is walking past the turn off you needed to get to the exit and having to turn around to retrace steps over areas already uncovered! Always taking LEFT or RIGHT turns enables you to clear the whole area and never have to back track. On finding the exit to the next area it's a judgement call as to wether it's worth back tracking to uncovered areas. In an open field hugging the edge revels the edge, then you can zig zag through the middle to clear the area.

Which follower do you use?

On an earlier post I wrote about my build as I was nearing level 30 and Nightmare. 12 Hours Played Build and Progress. I updated my Build in Hell and this has been holding steady through Act 1 and I'm now at Act 2 Chapter 6 Inferno. I also posted A Barbarian Build that works!

Solo Inferno Butcher is on farm in my main build with 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor. Act 2 has been rushed to Chapter 6 sipping everything possible as looking at the sun in that desert will kill you without resistances! I'm looking forward to going back with more gear to kill Magdha again, ideally with 5 stacks and some friends to help on the control side of mob killing and kiting which is becoming more necessary in Inferno.

To that end I want to answer a question I had from Pitlord "Which Follower do you Use?"

In Solo play followers can be both a major asset and a total liability. I am currently using the Enchantress in Inferno butcher farming runs. Templar for Magic/Gold Find to keep down time to a minimum and GF/MF maxed out. The Scoundrel comes out for boss fights where I'm likely pushing the enrage due to build

Here are the builds I use for each and my reasoning behind each, and when I choose to use each.

https://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/follower#0100!1000!0000

The Enchantress is who I'm using right now, whinny voice, kinda annoying ditsy blond chick. But she has some nice utility:

Charm. The charmed enemy is attack able by both you and it's buddies, and attacks it's buddies. It's not doing any damage to me and it's keeping it's buddies from wailing on me. It can equate to 100% damage reduction for 4 seconds which is an eternity in this game. The alternative knock back from Forceful Push messes with my Barb that needs to be in melee range to do damage and self heal. It is too unpredictable when she will use it to help with kiting.

Powered Armor, as with all armor in this game beats the Reflect Missiles due simply to Armor in Diablo 3 reduces ALL types of damage.

Disorientate is 2 secs for an entire group that are now not wailing on me. While I'd like the 15% damage taken pool of Erosion Diablo 3 require intensive movement to avoid hits and damage from the environment so keeping champions and rares that would really benefit from being nuked with an extra 15% DPS in the pool becomes a dangerous proposition.

Focused Mind seemingly goes against my previous choices of control, but the 60sec Cd on Mass Control, and the ditsy blond way she will use all controls on Cd, can't be controlled by the player, and we have no tracking of her internal Cool downs short of a stopwatch makes it unreliable at best. While Focused Mind with my Smite runed Frenzy benefits more from 3% attack speed.

The Templar is my first choice for any farmable content below Inferno. The reason being his shields gives me an extra magic/gold find slot over the other 2 followers:

 Heal vs Taunt. I'm the tank. If you taunt and die who is going to heal me. If I get below 50% you can bet I have a revenge ready, I don't need you taunting mobs away so they are out of range. I need more revenge procs to farm this content faster!

Intimidate relies on enemies hitting the Templar, so fail for me. Life Regen is always nice. I have pitifully low values of Life per sec on gear so it takes forever to heal out of combat, so Loyalty is the only choice here.

Charge and Onslaught. Don't get any ideas about your follower doing a ton of DPS and finishing off that rare pack while you go for a coffee. 200% of naff all is still naff all! I'll take the stun. If I'm in trouble I can open some distance, pot, wait on Cd's before jumping back in.

Guardian vs Inspire. The saddest thing for me in the Barbarian gameplay is the lack of fury spending we are seeing due to the fury generators simply being better than the spenders. I'm not going to rant about class design, but Inspire..lol. Guardian saved my life a few times in Hell, but I also found that a healing build Templar can be a liability against Vampiric + pool of bad stuff mobs. He will stand in the pool healing himself, which translates to healing the mob that dropped it!

The scoundrel is one I'm yet to find any real use for on my Barbarian other than damage dealing, but hres my take on him:

I could see myself bringing him along to a boss fight like the Butcher were I'm pushing the enrage timer if he hides in a fire area and I can't get decent uptime on him. However Follower DPS is lack lustre at best, so not used this guy much.

Crippling Shot vs. Poision Bolts is simply slows vs DPS. I don't rate slows as highly as I maybe would as something other than a Barbarian, but I'm not a kiter. Stuns do helpout, but unless someone is going to inform me that it also slows mob attack speed I'll take the DPS and just burn the bad guys down.

Dirty Fighting is the clear winner for me here. If my follower needs to Vanish to self heal it's becuase the AI fails and he stood in bad stuff. Either way he will self resurect in a matter of seconds so I'm not going to go to any lenghts to keep him alive, including talenting. Dirty Fighting however has potential to keep me alive, and that much more important!

Multishot vs Powered Snot, yes I called it powered snot due to the whopping 25% weapon damage it does. Most boss fights do have some adds making Multishot work for me, and although I'm a lover of stuns against Rare/Champions were mechanics just don't exist if you are relying on stun locks to kill bosses you are failing at mechanics becuase nearly everything is avoidable to the extent that they have "check me out I did it naked achievements".

Anatomy and Hysteria are simply a question of how much crit do you already have. I have next to zero so 3% extra is going to be more benefit than a proc that relies on something that has next to zero chance of happening. Can I rely on a crit every 6seconds to keep the Hysteria buff up at it's max uptime of 50% for 10% increased damage, or is 3% crit with 100% the better choice.

Hope my explaination of what I use and why helps you make your own descisions about your followers. See you in game and Good Luck!

A Barbarian Build that works!

There has been alot on the forums about how gimped the Barbarian class is but having gotten to 60 I wanted to share my build which I used for solo play through Hell and into Inferno.

Frenzy increases attack speed and is a very good DPS tool. Triumph can be uses for more self healing from 22 to 59 when you get Maniac. Since the DPS from Rend whih will follow 5 stacks of Manic it boosts Rends Blood lust healing. In Inferno control becomes more important so Smite has been my rune of choice.
Rend takes Blood Lust for a sustained self heal during combat, while also doing some of the highest weapon damage, albiet over time of any secondary skill.
Ignore Pain is in there for those "oh &%$#" moments when that arcane vortex molten waller combo pulls you into stuff you can't immediately get out of! I previously had Weapon Throw in here which worked well chasing down casters, but with the combos in later difficulty I feel the cooldown is needed, And Contempt for Weakness does a ton of damage alongside the Enchantresses Reflect Spells ability softening up weaker casters during the big pulls.
Revenge is your main big heal, 5% per mob hit and I find I want it up as often as possible. In a heavy fight (10+ mobs) with Provocation it can and does proc back to back making it my biggest DPS and Heal skill and second only to keeping frenzy up.
War Cry with Invigorate boosts your HP and provides health regen and fury at the start of the fight so you have something gong in.
Wrath of the Berserker is to do as much damage to something as fast a possible to start the health globes dropping, boost you heals from Rend, or break snares!

Defensive passives are kind of overlooked at lower difficulties, but really make or break your build a the higher difficulties in solo play. I have alot of Vitality on gear, and still take massive damage from 10+ mobs in melee combat. The armor from Nerves of Steel is paramount to reducing that damage while I get the Self Heals rolling.
Superstition is an anti-Caster and Anti-Arcane, Molten, Plagued, Waller (or similar get stuck in bad stuff on the floor...it will happen!)
Relentless is the most awesome passive in the game. It has kept me alive for the next Revenge proc, Potion CD, Health Orb drop, Ignore Pain CD, next Wrath of the Berserker or just waiting for the chance to move and kite for a bit so many times. A really life saving passive!
*Edit I have since changed Relentless to Nerves of Steal. Add Armor Value equal to 100% of Vitality. This actually doubles my armor value through the vitality on gear and my damage reduction, effectively getting me 50% reduced damage without the need for being low HP!
So from this I get a rotation of sorts/priority for abilities.
Start pull with War Cry up, then Rend to get Self heals rolling, get frenzy stacked to 5 and by then Revenge will have procs and melee mobs will have closed in for the Revenge heal. Waiting for revenge I was probably under 20% HP and being kept alive by Relentless. Now I'm back to full HP. Use Revenge every proc while not letting Frenzy or Rend fall off your targets and you are good to go. Use Ignore Pain and Wrath against Rare and Champion packs.

Auction Tips for Flips

Put together a short little guide to how I'm playing the gold AH while I amass a fortune in gold for whenever the RMAH actually gets to us!

The beauty of this is it works for any commoditity be it Essences, Rare Crafting Mats (Illustration is with Fallen Teeth), Any level of gems, Black Smith or Jewlery Pages, Tomes etc etc.

The principle works on the basis that whatever the average price has been in the previous 24hour hours it will get back there again within the duration of your auction, ie. at peak times when demand outstrips supply.

Image 1

The AH kindly gives us the info we need..the previous 24hours price, the stable price at which we are relying on remaining constant.

Now you see the price for 10 right now is 29 gold...with some spamming of the search button we finally find a price at or below our threshold of 22g.

Image 2

Boom! Click Buyout!

Now for the fun bit that most people may not know!

Image 3

After you click the following Buyout Confirm pop up (Below) you will be returned to the search you just did with the 22gold per unit price. So without spamming for more under 22g fallen teeth you can click buyout again (Image 2) and it will continue to buyout any Fallen Teeth at or under 22g per unit until there are none left, at which point you get an auction not found error message, but no problem, just keep clicking, if anyone posts more at your threshold you will snap them up!

To Salvage or Not to Salvage...

That is the question, Whether tis nobler in the mind to take the slings and arows dropped by mobs and salvage them or, by vendoring get more gold from them!

The answer is relatively simple.

A blue of a specific level has a 100% chance to produce an Essence, and a 15% chance of producing a Fallen Tooth.

So for normal mode blue items

(100% x price of Subtle Essence + 15% x price of Fallen Tooth) x 85% (due to auction fees) = Value

Lets see a real world senario:

A blue item that vendors for 98gold while subtle essences are going for 30 gold and a fallen tooth for 150 gold.

(1 x 30 + .15x150) x 0.85 = 45g (44.625 rounded)

since 45<98 Vendor the item

For Normal mode Rares it is 100% chace for Fallen Tooth, 100% chance for Subtle Essence

(100% x price of Subtle Essence + 100% x price of Fallen Tooth) x 85% (AH fees) = Value

(1 x 30 + 1 x 150) x 0.85 = 153g

so if the vendor value of the rare is less than 153g you should salvage.

As far as I can tell so far the formulas are the same for all difficulty levels of mats. So all we need do is know the value of essences and rare mats that we will be salvaging into and we can keep this in mind as we visit the vendor/blacksmith when our bags get full.

I'll also reiterate that we need to be following trends in the market. If the price of Essences is currently down in the 15g area, but we know that at a weeekend it is likely to bounce back to 30g or more we need to be using the 30g figure, and not the 15g figure. Auction Sucess: It's all about timing!

And off course if the item is maxed out stats you could also sell it on the AH, but that should go without saying!

12 hours played build and progress

So the strategy so far has been conservative leveling. I have a real life (son to look after during the day, girl to cook dinner for and cuddle at night etc etc.) So I'm not doing a D3 Marathon trying to crank out to Inferno in the first week.

Remember my conservative leveling and gold farming strategy? So I have been playing through quests, Getting to the end boss, and then leaving game to check the AH prices of crafting mats etc. to flip, and checking public games interface for my restart point and going back in solo again. So right now I'm going back in having gotten 2 quests into Act 3 at level 26 Iwill be starting over from 2 quests short of the end of act 2, killing Belial again, and thus out leveling the content even more before continuing on.

Barbarian Gear:
I'm running with a self healing focused build, so I'm looking for weapons with the Vampiric affix (heals you for x.xx% of the damage done. Gear is predominantly Strenght, and Magic Find. However Experience, Gold Find is on a few pieces simply because I'm dealing with random allocation within my own drops. And with damage done converting to heals I'm not shying away from DPS stats if the overall benefit is there.
Note: Don't trust the numbers in your inventory when switching between Dual wield, 2H, and Sword and Board. (+/- x.x damage and protection, or even the DPS number on the weapon), Equip the items and check your stats Damage number. I have been having some surprising results. The calculation system just doesn't work well switching between weapon types.

Barbarian Build:
No buff to worry about losing yet, so no penalties for switching builds about at this stage, but mostly I've been running, currently  at level 26:

1) Leap with Impact (+Armor on landing) - Jump in and be able to take the beating!
2) Revenge with Vengeance (+Fury and Heal on hit) - this is like having a health globe on demand!
3) Battle Rage (+30% damage) - stacks with the damage done = heals so keeping this up at all times!
4) Call of the Ancients (3 npcs help for 15secs) - had trouble getting mobs to stand in Earthquake!
L) Cleave with Rupture/Reaping or Frenzy with Triumph - 2H/1H playing about with these
R) Rend with Blood lust (Heals for 9% damage done) - most of the self healing
Passives: Blood thirst and either Weapons Master or Ruthlessness depending on weapons.

Mobs to watch out for:
So glad I wasn't playing Hardcore. First encounter with Stinger packs in Act2 lead to my first death. They "cast" small wasps which getting hit by can be fatal if it's a pincer of 3-4 streams and you, as in my case are spamming rend expecting these "adds" to die. They are not target able adds they are projectiles!

Fallen Maniacs in Act 3. Indoors these things come running at you around corners so you may or may not see them coming. They explode on contact with you or your follower. I've taken to jumping out of the way and letting my Templar take the beating.

Hungering Pestilence in Act 3. I've seen these in the outside areas and the answer is like with Belial to just keep moving so you are never standing in stuff that spawns under your feet.

Just Getting Started

So my run though began at 01:30 PDT after the login issues that affected so many of us. I played for a couple hours and then went to bed to be ready for an early-ish start at 07:00. Again played for a couple hours before running a few errands, and came back to the server maintainence which is ongoing as I write.

Playing my clearance strategy with Magic Find seems to be paying off, I have about 15% MF and 5%GF from items quired in the game, no money spent yet on the AH. I have a stock of 70+ Subtle Essences and 20+ Fallen Teeth, and 20k gold.

Currently I'm just watching the markets at approximately 3 hour intervals, 6,9,12,3,6,9 and so far the prices have fallen from around 30g at 6am to 30g at 9am, with the miday inspection to follow the writing of this post. This downwad trend is not unexpected.as I imagine most people are busy playing and throwing a few subtle essences at the AH undercutting whatever is there while few people are buying to craft anything. Unlike Beta no-one is going to be making big bucks from crafting level 1 to 13 gear. So I'm revising my strategy to biding my time to craft when I have the blacksmith ready for Normal-Nighmare transition gear, so magic items and rares in the 25-30 bracket.

What I have done is list a few of the better items I have found with +main stats, + magic find, +gold find and +exp in 7 of my 10 slots, including the 2 rares that dropped from my first SK kill. Although neither are boasting top end DPS or stats I kept the price low for quick sales, banking on the vanityappeal of being in all rares and having the character sheet tinged with yellow which there are sure to be ignorant players willing to part with gold for! I was also somewhat lucky in getting a 3rd Rare which was a mid range DPS bow for my Scoundrel who has joined me for the remainder of Act 1.

Meanwhile in other news of note I found a quest in the Lost Mine which is a dungeon in the Fields of Misery area you are sent to after killing the Skeleton King. The quest giver is our old friend Tashun, the first Vendor we met in Tristram. Completeing his quest involves exploring the mine which for me was loaded with rare and champion packs, and the reward is 50% off his items, making finding him a real bonus in that we are able to re-sell those items on the AH. I was yet to have a shoulder set and he convieniently provided a +11 strenght (max affix) with 2yrd+range on pickup (Weak), so I am using one pair and flipping the other on the AH.

I also found Scouting Rings of Wounding (3% MF which is mid range for the item level) which should have reasnable resale value when I upgrade, more than vendor price at least, and Adventuring Rings of Wounding (6% Exp which is top of the range for item level) which will fetch an even better return, again following an upgrade.

A note on switching companions though. Make sure you take your rings/amulet from your old companion before asking a new companion to join, or it's a trip back to Tristram to retrieve them!

Artwork!

Bored while waiting to get on!

The servers are busy at this time. Please try again later (Error 37)

Happy Launch Day everyone, did we expect anything less?

I think I may have said in a previous post that I probably wouldn't bother staying up to log on as soon as servers went live...well curiosity got the better of me! Now this isn't going to be some long winded rant about "How fail Blizzard can be", after all, tonight is probably going to be the biggest server load in the games lifespan. How many thousands of people are trying to log on at this moment? During the course of the game these kinds of peaks simply won't exist, but it demonstrates two things.

Firstly the popularity of the game, plenty of customers who will want goods from both Auction Houses,

Secondly the predictability of the masses, sense tells you not to bother because of the server load, but desire overwhelms sense.

So actually 3 things: I am susceptible to that desire, in this case to get on and play at the moment of launch.

So a warning to all would be auctioneers. Don't fall prey to that desire when you see that item on the AH for more than you can afford. The desire to max out your toon will be your downfall when it comes to making gold. Sinking your profit into items that don't meet your end goals of making gold will be your, and most players gold sinks! Consider the initial cost minus the resale value and fees when you out level it/find something better and factor in how much gold over how much time that item for your character make you. If the numbers don;t add up don't let vanity and desire over ride sense!

Launch Day Preparation Guide

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

As we near Diablo III’s long-awaited May 15 launch date, we have some additional details to share on what to expect, how to prepare, and when you’ll be able to begin installing and playing.

Purchase the Game
If you haven’t already purchased Diablo III you can acquire it directly from Blizzard through the digital presale. You can also preorder the game at most major retailers and fine purveyors of high-quality gaming products worldwide. If you’re interested in the Diablo® III Collector’s Edition, please be aware that this physical retail-only edition is printed in limited quantities and has already sold out in most places that take preorders on games. We recommend calling around and checking if your local retailers will have the Collector’s Edition available.

Create Your BattleTag™
We expect that on launch night both the game service and website will be under very heavy strain due to the immense number of people excited to be among the first playing Diablo III. With that in mind, we highly recommend you create your BattleTag now, as it’s required to play Diablo III. Please keep in mind that this non-unique nickname is a permanent choice, and will display both in-game and on the website, so be sure to choose one you like! (What is a BattleTag?)

Regional Launch Times
As previously mentioned in the announcement of our midnight launch events, the launch time of the game is broken down by region.

The Americas (U.S., Canada, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and South East Asia) servers open at: 12:01 a.m. PDT, May 15

Digital Presale Download
If you’ve purchased a digital copy you can begin downloading your client right now, and we highly encourage you to do so. We also have a Diablo III presale visual guide available that may be helpful. As it may take you some time to download the full game, it’s best that you begin early. This may afford you additional time to troubleshoot any downloader or installer issues you may encounter.

Early Install
We will be unlocking the game's installer at 8:01 a.m. PDT on May 14. This will allow you to begin installing the game, troubleshoot any issues you run into, download and install the launch day 1.0.1 patch, and be ready to play as soon as the servers come online.

Global Play Launch Time
We’ll be turning on Global Play when the game has launched in all regions. This means that you will not be able to play in a region outside your home region until after the Americas’ midnight launch at 12:01 a.m. PDT on May 15. We’ll provide an update once Global Play is enabled, and you’ll then be able to change the region you connect to through the game’s options. Please note that characters, items, and friends lists do not transfer across regions and players who use Global Play to connect outside of their home region will only be able to access the gold-based auction house. More information can be found in our Global Play introduction article.

Launch Night Login
As we’ve unlocked the Diablo III installer early, many people will be ready to log in right when the servers go live at midnight, so we’re going to be closely monitoring the impact on the service. It’s possible we’ll need to adjust the rate at which we’re logging people in to ensure a stable experience, and if we do you may see a delay when attempting to login. Please be aware that a delay of up to 40 seconds is possible while the game attempts to connect you. If your connection doesn’t succeed in 40 seconds, you’ll be presented with an Error 37 message and asked to try again. If you see this error it does in fact mean that you should try again. We’ll be working around the clock to keep you informed of any issues that are occurring through the in-game breaking news window, as well as the official forums.

Auction Sucess: It's all about timing!

Lets consider for a moment the typical cycles of the playerbase:

Log on, check thir auctions, send gold to stash and decide to spend that gold to upgrade something or craft a piece of gear, then they farm a few dungeons for gold and maybe materials, before they log off for the night they will list farmed mats and gear on the AH. Am I somewhere close? I think so.

So when will people be logging on?
I imagine the majority will be between 5 and 7pm, with time differences in the americas region of 3 hrs between East and West coast that makes our window for logging on between 2pm PCT and 7pm PCT.

So when will they be buying from the AH?
I'd imagine this will be within an hour of logging on, so 5-8pm in the relevant time zone, so highest prices I'd expect to be between 2pm and 8pm PCT, as the previous nights farmed materials and gear supplies dry up.

So after playing a while they post all their farmed/crafted gear and materials. When is this likely to be?
I'd imagine anywhere between 10 and midnight. Lets face it that most people have "Real Lives" that involve school or work. So between 7 and Midnight we will begin to see the number of active auctions increasing, and consquently prices falling.

How do I beat ths as an Auctioneer?

Well for a start I need to be aware of these time periods, and buck the trends.

Buying
In my case playing from the west coast. I'll want to be buying at or around midnight. I can stay up late to hit the AH at midnight or later, this would mean 3am if you are trading from the East Coast, or get up early at 5 or 6am before my normal day begins to grab the deals, the downside for me with the latter is that anyone playing from the east coast will have had a 3 hour head start on me clearing out the best deals. If I stay up late I beat them by a couple hours.

Selling
I want my auctions to stand out as the best deal to that player who just logged on at 6pm, so I need to be monitoring and keeping my comoddities auctions below the competition from 3pm until 6pm to catch the East Coast trade. For Item auctions all I can do is post and ensure they up during this time and reasonable enough to attract bids during the peaks. I could shoot for auctions to end a few hours after this time, which would mean posting at 6pm consistently. This means that an East coast player will know he will get his new badass weapon or piece of gear before he is done playing that night, while the West coast player will have it almost imeadiatly.

Weekend Trade
What happens at the weekend? While the evening play cycle continues to be in effect, the time spent increases to encompass the afternoon, so while more players are online the trends become a little harder to predict. There will be morning players, afternoon players, evening players, all day players, and some that stay up until the small hours. Couple this with the 3 hour time differnce from East to West and you have a full 24hours. What can be counter on though is one thing. Prices will be highest due to the sheer number of these weekend warriors! So I'll be making sure my best items are up for sale at this time. I will possibly consider reducing the commodities I list to make way for 48hrs of these higher value items in the slots.

Conservative Leveling and Gold Farming Strategy

With the changes to the RMAH release I thought I would outline my personal revised gold plan.

Using the Public Games interface to determine level requirements.

On opening the public games interface you will notice that in this pane the quests are sorted by level, in the Beta the only games you could join as a lvl 13 character were Reign of the Black King, 4-13. Using this as a base line will be my starting point. So every level after my first kill of the Skeleton King I will finish my current quest and then log out.

Why will I be doing this? Well in the first instance this will allow me to check the public games pane and choose the lowest restart point for my character. Similar to WoW these will essentially be the equivalent of "Green" Quests in the quest log. Anything below this would be Grey and therefore, whilst Diablo quests still grant xp, the gains will be lower than if I choose the lowest public game as a start point (Green/Yellow) and the dropped items will have a higher level.

In the second instance it will allow for a quick check of the state of the AH. Crafting materials prices, Gems, and the bidding on a few Auctions, which will be forming a substantial portion of my gold farming, scooping up deals I can later resell as is of after savagling/combining.

So I will be leveling while farming easy content, steadily progressing, but not at the rate of the rat race, and not exposing myself to deaths.

My mantra will be to play like I'm playing Hardcore! DO NOT DIE!


Cash flow predictions...

I'm predicting a modest income of 10,000 gold per hour from playing and replaying the initial 13 levels, based on the beta, this is expected to increase as I progress though the remainder of the game in Normal, Acts 2 through 4 should provide higher drop rates of gold based on previous Blizzard Games.

Stash costs, are illustrated below, so first hour played I should have Stash Tab 1 unlocked. I don;t propose to open up additional tabs until at least week 2 as I don;t view it as necessary with the ability to mule items on alternate characters. The sash will primarily be used for collecting AH items for resale or salvaging.

Tab	Tab Cost	Upgrade Cost	Total Cost
Tab 1	0	2,500	10,000
Tab 2	10,000	2,500	20,000
Tab 3	50,000	2,500	60,000
Total Cost	60,000	30,000	90,000

Blacksmith leveling

Starting to Apprentice Blacksmith 8000                       
Apprentice to Journeyman 18000                                  
Journeyman to Adept 28000                                         
Adept to Master 34000                                                  
Master to Grandmaster 67,000 gold and 5 Pages        

Based on my previous estimation of gold per hour it will take about 16hrs to raise the gold purely by leveling until hitting the point that pages are required. This will be a choke point depending on the frequency of drops and availability and price on the AH. A choice to be made here will be to horde for own leveling, or sell what is not immediately needed to generate more income. I don't tend to horde items like this beyond overcoming a temporary slump in the market. I expect these to go for a premium early on, so I will be focusing on selling until I actually need these. Same applies to tomes.

Jeweler Leveling

Starting to Apprentice Jeweler 5000
Apprentice to Journeyman 5000
Journeyman to Adept 10000 gold and 5 Pages

So while being cheaper the pages kick in earlier in the progression, with only 2 hrs gold to level yto this point. Gemming would not be much of a priority until well beyond normal, however with the ability to add sockets and remove old gems to replace with new, some players will be seeking to gain an edge though gemming with the highest end gems they can get, without the drawbacks (of wow for example) of losing valuable gems in the twinking of a lower level piece of gear. Overlapping with crafting the saleability of an item could be improved by selling already socketed, increasing the items value to players. What about if you dropped a socket, or 3, onto your skeleton king first kill rare drop? How much would it be worth now to those power levelers with 3 red +experience gems available?

So thats my first 20hrs of play gold generation, while anything I make selling gear or materials on the AH just gravy. In reality it should be less playtime as I will be contiuing to level and get more gold per hour in the later acts.

What just happend?

So I took a few days off from playing the beta towards the end, feeling I had things pretty well planned out for release..and whammo! I check my reading list this morning and find the RMAH release has been postponed to a week after the game release and transaction and listing fees have been radically altered.

No matter. Part of the game is dealing with Blizzard changing the goal posts, so how will I be going about my business taking these changes into account?

Leveling up in the first week.
I don't intend to race to 60. This I foresee as being disastrous from a gold making point of view. The long standing threat of "YOU WILL DIE" hangs over us along with the repair bills, one of the biggest gold sinks in the game. One we as potential gold sellers need to avoid like the plague! SO what is the plan? Play though on normal, acquire gear, ideally with some magic find and main stat (Strenght since I'll be playing Barbarian). Then on completion of normal TURN AROUND and run through again!

Multiple Magic Find runs in Normal.
The chances of playing though Normal mode once and picking up a decent set of main stat and Magic Find gear in the first run are limited, however a second run though with the newly acquired set will be faster and yield more drops. This in turn allows for 2 things. Firstly a better set of stats prior to entry to Nightmare, and a large quantity of Subtle Essences from the stuff not worth anything to you or others. These can be used for crafting or selling directly on the gold AH to enable stockpiling of gold prior to the RMAH release. Rinse and repeat for Nightmare-Hell, and Hell-Inferno.

Farming the AH for salvageable items and gems.
With the stockpile of gold from re-runs I should be getting my artisans up to a level that corresponds to my characters. This will enable both salvaging and gem combining. Unlike WoW, where a single AH search with Auctioneer will allow you to gobble up every crafting item under a certain price threshold, AH farming in Diablo 3 will require more time investment to search multiple pages for salvageable items to bid, at the same time it is unlikely any one, or even combination of players will find and bid on every item, so there will always be items you can grab for a low cost, provided you are patient and set realistic thresholds. So before and after logging for the evening, or during breaks where you want to just grab a soda or a bite to eat browse and bid on everything you can salvage or gems you can combine. With luck you will also find an under priced item you can flip.

Crafting.
It is likely many players will be trying to craft something, sink a ton of gold into it, and be largely unimpressed with the resulting imperfect gear. Crafting is going to require investment of the gold, essences and teeth that have been farmed from multiple runs. A perfect or near perfect high DPS weapon or main stat + experience/magic/gold is going to be highly sought by those trying to win the 1-60 rat race, but I'll most likely wait to see what stats are selling. It doesn't have to be prefect, you can break even with 50% of the max stats available coming up on maybe 1 in 3 or 4 pieces as people will buy any improvement, but remember, without the ability to buy gold no-one will have the 500,000 gold you need to sell that prefect piece of armor for after it took 50 tries to get it.

After the first week:
Arbitrage
I'll have to rework my percentages somewhat, however come the end of that first week and the release of the RMAH there will be a turbulent time while the gold and item values stabilise.

Selling Gold
Once the RMAH is released we will see thousands of players who have horded 100's of thousands if not millions of gold with which to flood the AH almost instantly. Some players will be desperate at this point, knowing the RMAH is coming and those pants in the gold AH are 500,000 and they will be ready to buy some of that gold. But the long and short of it is that initial supply will outstrip demand so although prices will start high, maybe the $10 per thousand that has been steady on Beta, the undercutting will be intense, and within minutes the price could well be rock bottom, at a point where people stop listing. After a time though the bonce back and settle at a going rate. So there may be a chance to make a few bucks if you can determine the low point in that initial slump before the market recovers, and don't mind investing real money to buy that cheap gold.