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.
Showing posts with label Gold. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gold. Show all posts
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Friday, May 4, 2012
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
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.
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.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Flipping between Aution Houses and Transaction Fees expalined
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
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!
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!
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