Auction House Farming

Today I'm sharing a method of making a steady income of gold that can be used by anyone that has unlocked the Blacksmith. This should be well known to any WoW players using Enchanting and trawling the AH for Items to Disenchant however works slightly differently on Diablo, and is made fractionally more complex by the lack of addons such as Auctioneer and therefore the mass buyout options available in WoW. It doesn't need any spreadsheets and constant tracking for market fluctuations but this would help to maximize profits if you have the time and patience to follow your market in depth.

First we need to select a market. There are 4 tiers of crafting materials to cover. I recommend picking the one that is within your means to play with. The lowest end is going to be Subtle Essences (20-35g each) and the highest end Fiery Brimstone (100-150k each). In this example I'm picking Subtle Essences, obtainable 100% of the time from Blues in the 1-29 range, along side Fallen Teeth 100% of the time from Rares in the same 1-29 range, and noting that Blues also drop a Fallen Tooth 15% of the time.

I will caveat the following by stating it is an example and I am using round numbers to make the math easier to follow. Lets assume that Subtle Essences are selling for 100g (I know they aren't right now, although they could be going up due to 1.0.3 and people crafting for alts, but last check 30g was the nominal value give or take weekend and peak times market fluctuations. I'm also assuming that Fallen Teeth are selling for 100g each, also not a real figure.

Now we need to acknowledge the 15% Auction house Fee. 100% - 15% is 85%. So we multiply the price we will sell our materials by 0.85 to find the amount we will actually receive on completion of our sale.

So selling my disenchanted Subtle Essences for 100g each gets me 85g in my balance on completion. This is my Magic Number!

Take the market price of our Subtle Essence (100g). You may want adjust for anticipated fluctuations between buying you items and being able to sell the materials if you want additional safety margin or if you are willing to gamble a bit. Multiply by 0.85 to get your Magic Number 85g and start searching for ALL rarities of item on the AH. Lets start with  level 1-29 Swords. Look for items you can bid on for under your 85g. I tend to find 1-3 per page in any given market sector and price bracket. If you set a max buyout you will be looking at 46 pages of items from your figure down to wherever 46 pages gets you to. It is unlikely you will get all the way to the bottom provided you start at a high enough buyout figure! There are simply that many auctions! The buyout figure and the starting bid aren't linked so I regularly see silly numbers like 40million buyout, with 100g starting bid. People do this for several reasons, for example to entice bidders by having a buyout price that puts their item on the first page. You will notice that if looking for low starting bids you will tend to find more per page in low buyout ranges, but you will also find more competition trawling for these same deals in those lower ranges.

I like to keep 100 active WINNING auctions at all times in my chosen sector. If you can't find 100 to bid on note the lowest buyout figure on the last page and rerun you search, lets assume is was 54,000, search again from 54k and you'll be looking at 46pages of items with buyouts from 54,000 on down. By narrowing your search to a range of buyouts you also dodge the other people searching just the Bids without Buyouts, or people going for the 9999999999 and down bracket. Remember you will get your money back if out bid so find every item you can bid on for 85g, be they magic, rare, or even ledgendaries. Now note the bracket you ended on, so when you log in the morning before work you can grab your "out bids" and rebid on either a lower bracket in the same sector (1H weapons for barbarians), or move on to 2H weapons for Wizards. Keep it up over a period of days. It takes 10 mins before leaving for work, during a lunch break, before you log for an evening play session or after a play session. Cut and Paste your Bid amount so you are hitting CTRL+V on each bid pane rather than typing 85 or whatever your "Magic Number" is for your materials. The seconds saved really add up when you get into the brackets with values in the tens of thousands.

At some point you will be ready for a salvaging session. With 100 auctions won and more coming in every hour or so your stash will fill up rapidly so make sure you have at least a full page clear for this so you can send a decent amount from the AH completed tab to stash to salvage at least a page full at a time!

Your going to spend a few minuets salvaging your mix of blues, rares, and maybe even a legendary if some one let one go for 85g in this case...lol. You might even spot an item that you can flip, which is always a bonus, but lets just assume it is all going to be salvaged.

Every item you got for under 85g the difference was refunded and you will make at least that in profit from your Subtle Essence. You saw it at 30g start bid, you bid and won it at 30g, you get 55g and the item so salvage, and get 85g from the sale of the subtle essence.

Every Blue gets your Subtle Essence so that is at least a break even.

15% of your Blues drop a Fallen Tooth so all those teeth are profit (you could vendor them and it would still be profit, but AH will of course get you more).

In the level 60 blues and rares bracket you have a 0.1% or 1% (I forget actual drop rates) chance of Fiery Brimstone. More bonus profit if you get lucky!

Every Rare you found you get a Fallen Tooth and a Subtle Essence, since the Subtle Essence was your break even your Fallen Teeth are pure profit.

Cancel the stacks of Essences and Teeth you currently have up, relist with the additional ones you just salvaged and get ready to hear that ITEM SOLD ding while you play or see the big chunk of change in you completed tab next time you log!

A WORD OF WARNING!

IF YOU ARE BUYING 20,000,000g items for you main there is no way to keep them separate from the junk you are planning to salvage SO DON'T GET TOO CLICK HAPPY OR YOU WILL BE A VERY SAD PANDA!!!!!!

One nice thing to note about the AH system is you don't have to worry about a competitor  out bidding you by 1g in the final minutes of an auction. The minimum threshold for new bids will probably put him above his break even number, unless it is vastly different to yours, in which case one of you has gotten their math wrong. Alternatively he knows something you don't, i.e. he is going to use, flip, or if he is planning on disenchanting he is speculating on a price rise or using knowledge of market peaks to raise his "magic number". I get out bid on at least 50% of auctions I bid on. I simply take that money and keep bidding. Being out bid costs you nothing, unless it is happening all the time in which case your time becomes a factor.

                 

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!

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.

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.