Author Archives: cash

My little Diablo 3 helper

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Having a few crew members is nice. But what someone really needs to join the big Diablo 3 auction house trading leagues is a minion. Luckily for us, Daniel and Chieu Lee from DC Mediafirm got us covered. With the release of the Diablo 3 Item Minion for IPhone the days of investigating a new market without knowing which stats are possible on an item are over. Or at least that’s what the developers of the app claim. Let’s check it out.

The free version

With a size of only 3 MB, the app will find its way to your Iphone pretty fast. On your first launch, you get a tutorial overlay explaining the different functions of the simple and clean interface.

The item categories are in alphabetical order (just like on the auction house), which makes navigating them very intuitive. The app displaying the magic item name that results from the selected affixes is nice, although I can’t think of any practical use for it. I’d like an option to just show me rare items. Second feature that doesn’t make much sense to me is the color coding of the main stats. I would’ve colored them in the same color as the corresponding gems.

Go premium

For the price of a buck you can upgrade your minion to the premium (or rather full) version. It just takes a few in app clicks (and a working Itunes store) and you get access to all secondary stat values.

There are still a few affixes I’ve never seen in game before in there (% Damage Taken is Converted to Life, Dam Conversion 12?) and I’m not sure why they consolidated XP, Gold and Lvl Req into one category, but the second window is just as easy to use as the first one. What bothered me tho was the in app advertisement still appearing. After paying for the app, I somehow expected it to go away.

Conclusion

I’m not a big app guy. I usually use my phone to call people, take photos, send texts and find my way back, when I get lost (thanks google maps). But I can definitely see me using the item minion for Diablo 3, especially when researching new markets. There are websites out there, giving you the raw data, but none of them presents it as fast and as easy to use as the minion does. Especially when looking for lower level max stats, while researching twink markets. Would I recommend it? Yeah sure. Even if you don’t get the full version (which is only a buck, I mean seriously – o n e  d o l l a r – that’s the price of 400.000 gold), check it out and I’m sure you’ll find some use for it.

Flipping Weapons in Diablo 3

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Breaking into a new market can be hard. Especially if it’s a market that seems to follow different rules, than the ones you’ve played before. So for today’s post I’m gonna show you how I approach a new market. But first – a little background. ;)

I hate selling weapons. Mostly cause it’s a really random market. There’re lots of variables and the prices people put up seem more based on wishful thinking than the prices for regular gear. That’s one of the main reasons I’ve stayed away from selling weapons for as long as possible. Problem is: There’s a lot of money to be made in weapon sales, too. The harder the market, the more money. So I’ve started investigating and testing the market, trying to see if it’s possible to turn a buck or two.

I – Research the market

One does not simply walk into Mordor – and one does not simply invest millions of gold into a market without doing proper research. I usually try to simplify a market as much as possible. I don’t deal in gear having more than three valuable affixes, I round down to the next 25 when choosing a market to compete in, I set my item’s prices at around fifty percent of the next lowest buyout. Stuff like that. With weapons, that’s already done for me – with DPS. I’m gonna focus on 1h weapons for now, ignore all the “just bid” items, ignore additional stats and try to create a price “curve” from the prices I get.

Weapons above 900 DPS seem a good choice. Prices between 300 and 500k usually aren’t older than a few hours . Everything above that price-wise is older, so weapons below that should sell easily. With weapons above 925 and 950 DPS, a little more might be possible.

II – Set a maximum you’re willing to pay

I like hard max bid caps and usually look for a hundred percent return of investment. That all goes into my calculations, when I decide on a max bid. And I usually don’t go over my max bids as to not screw up my calculations in the long run. So I don’t have to change my calculator for trading weapons. Now it’s time to scan the auction house for weapons that fall into that category and apply what we learned about bidding.

III – Wait and see

I just did exactly that a few hours ago. Now it’s time to wait for those items to come in and see if they’re selling. I’m pretty confident they will, but with a market as random as the weapon market, I might as well lose a few millions. We’ll see.

On another note: I’ve been catching up with HBO’s True Blood and just saw the third season’s “Burning Down the House”. And wow – if that isn’t one of the best ending scenes I’ve seen in a long time, I don’t know what is. Check it out here:

Bidding – Three ways to do it in Diablo 3

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I’ve talked a lot about flips in every color and form the last weeks. Today we’re gonna focus on one of the most essential parts of flipping. Getting product to actually flip. If you just buy out stuff, you limit yourself. If you’re serious about flipping, sooner or later, you’ll have to get into bidding. And there’re different ways to do it, all having their own pros and cons. Let’s check them out:

I – Mass Bidding

The easiest way to do it. You decide which items you want, you set a limit you want to pay for them and you go in there and you bid your max bid on every single item you find. Before you’re at the end of your funds, a few hundred bids will have returned to you and you go on bidding on even more items. You’re going for mass, not class. You’ll get outbid a lot, but when you check your account in the morning, there’ll be a stack of items for you to flip and keep you going.

II – Bid Sniping

Especially useful if you’re flipping high value items or looking for upgrades. You look up the items, note down when they’re going to end, set yourself an alarm for that time and you come in at the last seconds of the auction and bid what you wanna pay for it. That way, you give your competition the smallest chance to grab the item. They won’t be alerted by someone else bidding on the item and the price won’t go through the roof. That’s a lot of work. Jotting down items, setting up an alarm – all that stuff takes time. And there’s a decent chance the item will be far above what you’re willing to pay, once you return to the scene. But it can be worth it.

III – Bid Tagging

A combination of the first two methods. Instead of potentially pushing the bid to a point where it’s too expensive for you, you just bid the minimum amount, to make it show up in your bid window. Ideally, you note down your planned max bid. Then, a few moments before the auction runs out, you come back and try to snipe it. I prefer this method for items in the few hundred thousands region. For smaller items, it’s just not worth it.

So there you have it. By now you should be able to decide which bidding strategy is the right one for which situation and apply them appropriately. Do you use a different strategy? Did I forget something? How is the auction house treating you? Leave me a comment.

Why you should settle for small flips in Diablo 3

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I got some good feedback on my article about slow and fast flips on the Diablo 3 auction house. Good enough for me to go back to flipping and talk about another nice opportunity to make gold and money in D3. This time around, I’ll focus on why “go big or go home” doesn’t always hold true. I’ll talk about the main advantages small flips have over big flips. And give you a few reasons to not just look at those big bucks. But first:

What’s a small flip?

Opinions might differ on what exactly constitutes as a “small flip”. It also depends on how big your bankroll is. The flips I’m talking about here are somewhere between 50 and 250k, with a profit margin of around 60k. That doesn’t sound a lot at first, but it’ll add up. Here’s why:

I – Bigger markets

The size of the market is quite unimportant if we look at it from a seller’s standpoint. We have to beat the cheapest product on it. There’s no way around that. But looking at it as a buyer – or more correctly bidder (cause that’s what we’ll have to be, to actually get our hands on those products) – there’re pages of pages full with wares that potentially have a bid low enough for us to snag them.

II – Carefree Markets

You’ll be maneuvering in markets that offer items for low prices. Most of the people buying here, will be looking for character upgrades. They want the items cheap, and they want them now. They’re looking for buyouts, not for bids. Your items will not only sell pretty fast, but you’ll also have less competition (read: only other auctioneers) on your bids.

III – Low risk

On the off-chance you make a bad deal and grab an item no one wants to buy from you, you’ll waste a few thousand gold. Nothing major. One or two small flips later, you’ll have forgotten about it.

So there you have it. Small flips are awesome. Don’t get me wrong. We all love flipping an item with a profit margin in the millions. Those are the war stories we tell our pals on private forums. But if you want to make some constant money in Diablo 3, you can’t count on those. They’re nice when they happen, but tons of small flips are where the money is.

You got ten auction slots – use them!

2 1/2 months after Diablo 3′s launch

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Muten left me a comment asking what had happened to the crew and the blog. Perfect timing. Let’s look back at what has happened, what we achieved, what we didn’t achieve and what we’re planning for the future. Feel free to join me. ;)

I – The Crew

I love movies that give you a small glimpse of what eventually happens to the characters. Jane married and finally got in touch with her mom again, Jimmy combined his love for space with his Lego collection and shot himself to Titan and Jeremy joined a Hippie commune in Iowa. So what has happened to the crew.

Thuata

Our Demon Huntress got a job at a local don’t-ask-me-what-exactly-they-do company. She’s working nine to five during the week and almost completely stopped playing Diablo 3. What she still does though, is crafting and selling gems – and writing about it.

Mike

We had problems integrating Mike from the get go. Not only the fact, that he wasn’t on-site, but also his irregular working schedule made it hard to include him in our team. Add an unforeseen family emergency to that and you get the reasons why I haven’t heard from him in weeks. Sometimes priorities simply shift.

Rob

Rob’s enthusiasm declined visibly once our hardcore two-week perma gaming ended. With his final exams on the horizon, his barb giving him a hard time in Inferno and the game simply not being what he had hoped for, he had to divide his time between work and gaming. Not to mention Dota 2, which somehow seems to be a lot better at grabbing and holding its player’s attention than Diablo 3 does at this time.

Cash and Saphirus – aka “The two Daniels”

That leaves Saphirus and me – which isn’t all that bad. We still take Diablo 3 serious. While he focuses on farming, I keep an eye on the auction house and creating a baseline income from D3. I really enjoy working with Saphirus. He’s a relaxed, hard-working dude and he keeps me grounded (and working).

II – Making money

The question I get asked the most is: “Can you really make money with Diablo 3?” My answer usually is quite cryptic, so this time I’ll try to not bullshit you. Yes. Yes, you can. Is it enough to live from? It might be. Some day. And it is – for some people. But it’s not for us. At least not yet. So why not?

The first few weeks

The time after Diablo 3′s launch was dominated by black (or grey?) market sales. Selling Softcore Gold, selling Hardcore Gold, selling Diablo 3 weapons through ebay. Stuff like that. The real money auction house wasn’t live yet and people made a killing selling to the needy. There’re stories on the net about people making hundreds and thousands of bucks.

We didn’t. Why? Cause that wasn’t how we wanted to play it. We’ve worked in the industry for a few years and we both didn’t feel good about breaking the rules. Well almost. I had someone on IRC asking if anybody was selling gold and I sold him a million for 20 bucks. I felt dirty afterwards. Our business is about making money – legit. That might not be the easiest and most lucrative way, but we believe it’s the right one.

After RMAH

Since the RMAH got released we’ve been working on ways to constantly create income. Instead of doing risky high value flips, we settled on sure flips. Instead of selling all our gems or gold, when the commodity and gold markets opened, we settled on staying liquid. We experimented a bit with crafting, lost a little money here and there, spent some money on upgrading our characters to make farming more lucrative. Not counting the equipment we’re wearing and some high value items we still have on stash, we’re sitting at roughly 400 bucks. That’s not a lot, but it’s a start.

III – The future

After chasing after the golden goose for a while, we realized we wouldn’t find it. At least not right now. We needed another baseline. An item that we’d be able to convert to cash. One we’d be able to calculate with. We found gold. At a conversion rate of 0.25€ per 100k (before “taxes”) it’s not awesome, but reliable. We also started trading on the US market. It seems more active than the European one. We’ll see.

The next few weeks I’ll try to get into a routine. Auction house checks, Blogging, Networking, create KPIs, see what happens – and tell you about it. :)

Fast versus slow flips

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I catch myself spending more and more time on the auction house in the last few days. And it makes sense. To make money with playing Diablo 3, you have to actually sell stuff in Diablo 3. There’s no way around it. You can level ten characters to level 60, farm Azmodan 24/7 and keep up to date with community sites and blogs as much as you want. In the end it comes down to one simple thing: If you want to make money with the auction house, you’ll have to actually use it. The more, the better. Most of the time I’m browsing markets, looking for bargains, checking if I can make a few gold here and there. There’re two basic principles of making money on the auction house. They’re called flips. Let’s have a look at them, shall we?

The fast flip

I love fast flips. You got five minutes to spare? Go on the auction house and see if you can find an item that’s seriously underpriced. Check a few stat ranges, sort by lowest price and if you’re lucky you’ll find an item that’s much cheaper than the rest, right at the top of your list. How can you be sure you’ll be able to flip it? Check how long it’s been up there. You should be looking at 1d11h to 1d10h tops. If not, you’re probably in a slow moving category. Buy the item, reprice it and there you go – you just made money with a flip.

Good things about the fast flip:

  • Fast return of investment
  • Small time effort
  • Very low risk

Bad thing about fast flips:

  • Low overall profit

Don’t get me wrong. The profit margins you’re playing with are somewhere in the two to three hundred percent range. That’s awesome. But the sums you’re dealing with are usually pretty small. Flipping a mid level weapon you bought for 5k for 20k net is nice. But it’s still just a 15k gold profit. That’s a few packs in Inferno. You have to do a lot of flips to make a lot here. That’s not saying it isn’t awesome to see those chest pieces you just put on the auction house sell while you’re fixing yourself a sandwich. But we want to make the big bucks. What alternative do we have?

The slow flip

I’m a big fan of con and heist movies. So when thinking and comparing the fast and the slow flip I immediately thought of the long and short con. Short cons are basic tricks to get people’s money. Ranging from credit card fraud to insurance scams, they’re easy and fast ways to get by. But they’re not where the big money is. If you wanna go big, you have to plan a long con. If you want to sell the Golden Gate Bridge or the London Tower to someone, you need preparation. You need props. And that takes time. Of course you’ll be a few millions richer afterwards, but until you got that money in your pocket and another country’s stamp in your passport, there’s a high risk of it all being for naught. And that’s what the slow flip is about.

It’s you seeing a potential 250$ item on the gold auction house. The buyout price is 25 million gold. You’ve had a few good days and got like 30 million in your pocket. The next best comparable item at the moment goes for 50 million. Even if you don’t manage to flip it at a conversion rate of 1$ per 100k you might at least get .75 – or flip it for a few million profit on the gold ah. But here’s the catch. It’s Tuesday evening and both items have been sitting on the auction house for more than half a day. You’re sure the item’s worth the money, but you’re not sure if someone will actually pay that much for it. That’s where your long con planning comes in.

You’ve been monitoring this market for the last three weeks. You’ve seen items, just like the one you’re about to buy, leave both the gold ah and the rmah for what you think it’s worth. You know Tuesday’s a bad day for moving items, so you decide to sell it on Saturday. There you go. You click the buyout button, see your whole liquidity taking a dive. A few days go by. It’s Saturday night and by now the item’s been sitting on your shelf for almost a day. On your way to bed you check your mails one last time and – bam! It sold! You’re 211 bucks richer! You did it! That’s what the slow flip’s about. In a different scenario there’s been a nerf to one of the stats on the item a few days after you bought it. You have to sell it for half of what you paid for it just to get a little bit of your gold back. Both can happen. That’s the difference between a good and a bad conma- uhm… trader! :)

Hunting for the golden goose in Diablo 3

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I spent the last few days browsing the Diablo 3 auction houses up and down, looking through almost all possible categories and crossreferencing them between each other. I haven’t found what I’m looking for though – yet. What I’m looking for is what I call the “golden goose”. I’m not sure yet it’s out there, I don’t know if I’ll be able to find it, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be vital to “cash out” in a volume that actually allows me to call playing a computer game all day work. So what makes an item a golden goose?

I – Availability

To use an item to convert gold into money, you have to be able to get your hands on it. Of course there’re cycles involved. It’s easier to get rid of stuff on the weekends and here in Europe Tuesdays are the worst, if you try to turn a buck. But aside from all that, it has to be possible to dump as much virtual currency into the item as I can create.

II – Demand

It’s not easy to find sure sales. Especially not on the real money auction house. From what I hear, that might be a little different in the US, but here people seem to be holding on to their money a little better. And of course there’s competition. I can’t constantly cash out, if I got people undercutting me like crazy.

III – Good Conversion Rate

Before the auction house went down yesterday I was able to do a few nice flips from gold to real money auction house at a conversion rate somewhere along the lines of two Euro on the hundred thousand. I don’t think those’ll be more than a lucky break in the future. What I’m looking for is something along the lines of fifty Cent to a buck for a hundred k. Taking into account how much gold I can make in an hour that’s around two to four bucks an hour. That’s not a lot, of course. But it’s a start.

I haven’t found it yet, but I might. It might not be a single item, it might not even be a single item category – but it’s what I’m looking for. And I think it’s what everyone trying to make a regular buck from playing Diablo 3 should be looking for. Did you find it yet?

How to successfully waste money with Blacksmithing in Diablo 3

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You got too much gold, too many crafting mats lying around and wonder how you can get rid of them as fast as possible without any chance of profit? Of course you can always just throw it on the ground (well actually you can’t, but I’m sure you get the image), but it’s much more fun to waste it while thinking you got a chance to make it back. Enter: Haedrig Eamon, the blacksmith. Here’s what you do:

I – Level up your Blacksmith

Level your blacksmith to max level. It’ll net you a nice achievement and cost you a good bunch of gold, pages and tomes.

II – Visit the auction house


There’re a few one-hand weapons available to you. You want one that offers six affix rolls. Not cause they offer the highest chance of actually giving you a few useful stats on your weapons, but because those are the most expensive
 ones. Right now a sword seems the best option. It doesn’t only offer the fastest attack speed, but is about twice as expensive as the other weapons.

III – Craft

Log onto one of your mule characters and create as much swords as you can. If you have more gold than base material, buy some more on the auction house. The more swords you build, the higher your chance’ll be to get a roll that allows you to sell the sword for a tenth of what you paid to build it. Probability and stuff.

IV – No profit

You got it! By now you should’ve burnt several million gold to see, if crafting six affix items to get rich in Diablo 3 is viable and you can – through your test data alone – be absolutely sure, that it’s not.

So yes dear diary, that’s how I spent the first part of my day. But maybe I was just unlucky. Maybe you’ll have to create much more items to make it work. Maybe I can just put another few millions into… wait! Let’s do the math.

D3Inferno has a nice database providing me with all possible variables that go into creating a Conquest Sword. Unfortunately the whole item creation process isn’t really well documented, so I’ll have to make a few assumptions to make my third grade math calculations work. But I don’t really mind.

I – The naked sword

A best “naked” Conquest Sword has a max DPS of 216.3 DPS, doing 93-216 Damage with 1.40 Attack per Second. I can work with that.

II – Adding affixes

There’re four affix groups the sword takes its stats from. It looks like it always chooses one damage modificator from “Swing” (with a few exceptions) and one mainstat from “GenericSwingWeapon”. This leaves us with four random affixes. To get maximum DPS (and let’s be honest here – that’s what counts, if you actually want to sell your weapons) we’ll need the “Attacks_Per-Second_Item_Percent” and “Damage_Weapon_Percent_Bonus” mods – as high as possible. At item level 62 the maximum values of those two affixes are 9% and 40%. The highest additional damage we get from “MinMaxDam” or his elemental friends is +224-298 damage.

III – Do the math, Part 1

Thankfully we all know how to calculate weapon DPS in Diablo 3. We take our basic stats and add the additional damage, bringing us to 317 to 514 damage per hit, averaging at 415.5 damage per attack and 581.7 damage per second. Well that’s a fairly small number. Let’s add 40% additional damage to that. Our new sword does 443.8 – 719.6 damage, 581.7 damage per attack and 814.4 dps. Now that’s not too bad. And let’s not forget we got a last ace up our sleeves: increased attack speed. Now, after we add 9% increased attack speed, our final item looks a little like this:

Conquest Sword
887.67 DPS
443.8 – 719.6 Damage
1.526 Attacks per Second 

Ok. That’s cool. It’s not top of its class, but this sword can definitely sell for a few hundred thousand gold on the auction house. Perfect. Let’s visit my blacksmith and… wait! Those stats are for the best possible Exalted Grand Conquest Sword you can craft in Diablo 3. But how high is the chance you’ll actually get those stats on the sword?

IV – Do the math, Part 2

Like already mentioned, we take the Swing and GenericSwingWeapon Affix Groups as a given. This brings us down to four rolls. Ignoring the “ResistFreeze”, “ResistRoot”, “ResistStun” and “ResistStunRootFreeze” groups D3Inferno lists, but I’ve never seen on a weapon, brings us down to 20 possible affix groups on our sword. Now with every roll this group gets smaller, adding up to a 21.71% chance of having one of the two affixes we want (+Damage% and +AttackSpeed%) on our item. But we don’t just want one. If we assume that one affix slot is used by the already present first affix, we get to a 16.71% chance for the second affix to be on our item – and a 3.62% chance that both affixes appear on our item. That’s not so bad. It means that if I craft 1000 items, an average 36 of them will net me around a mill. Let’s go over to my blacksm… I said wait!

V – Do the math, Part 3

It gets more interesting. We all know that Diablo 3 is random times random to the power of random. Here’s the catch: It’s not enough for us to get the two affixes we’re looking for. We want the highest possible roll. So how high’s the chance here? I’ll make it quick. Our chances of getting the best possible roll on the affixes is 3.33% for damage percentage, 5.55% for the attack speed increase and 0.01% (rounded up) for the additional damage. If you multiply those with each other, add Pi and swirl them through a few years of not listening to your math teacher, you end up with the probability of a perfectly rolled Exalted Grand Conquest Sword, which is still only a measly below 900 DPS weapon.

It’s roughly 0.0000006690303% 

There you have it. Bigger than your chances of winning the lottery. So go ahead. Try it. ;)

In Depth Analysis: Cemetery of the Forsaken

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After the months I spent running around the first part of Act 1 during the beta I was sure I’d never want to go back there again. Turns out I wasn’t as fed up with it as I thought. That might be partly because this first part is one of the easiest, but also coolest parts of the game. So when I go back to farming Act 1 cause I’m too tired to do harder content or just want to chill, I pay a visit to the “Cemetery of the Forsaken”. Its predictable layout, easy mob types and high ratio of rare and champion packs, makes it one of the finest locations in Diablo 3. Especially, if you’re looking to build up your five stacks of Nephalem Valor, quickly refresh the buff duration after a break or have a few minutes to kill between activities.

I – Welcome to the Cemetery

The layout of the cemetery is always the same. There’re four possible locations for the three crypts you’ll have access to – one in every corner. There’s a high chance of at least one rare pack spawning at the cemetery. If you’re lucky, you’ll get both a champion and a rare pack. As the cemetery’s only inhabitants (except for a few very rare bosses) are skeletons, the pack will always consist of skeletons, which are fairly easy to beat. You can kite them around in a big circle around the gazebo in the center. After you cleared the cemetery, it’s time to check out the crypts. There are four types of crypts you’ll find.

II – The Quest Crypt

There’re two basic layouts for the crypt you’ll be searching for, if you’re trying to assemble Leoric’s crown. They vary a bit, but end either in a horizontal (see screenshot) or vertical doorway. If you’re not questing through Act 1, don’t bother going deeper into the dungeon, after you cleared the first level. Both bosses you’d meet on your way are already dead. After you’re done with the two to four champion packs you’ll find on the first level, simply teleport back to town and use the waypoint to the cemetery again.

III – The Small Crypt

With not much room to navigate, the up to two packs you usually meet in this straight forward layouted crypt can become challenging. The Retched Cadaver’s spit attack, a pack of fast imps with fire chains or Scavengers in every form and flavor can kill you easily, if you’re not careful. You get a teleport stone at the end, which’ll bring you to the cemetery again.

IV – The Event Crypt

Now for the third crypt you can get two different dungeons. On the screenshot above you can see the basic layout for the “Jar of Souls” event crypt. Just like the “Bones of the Matriarch” event you can see below, there’s an achievement connected with it. While touching the jar starts a timed horde mode type event with mobs spawning until the time’s up, the matriarch quest starts after talking to an NPC and touching one of the bowls afterwards. You can cheese the jar event by simply running around in circles, dodging the skeletons until the time’s up. If your build consists of a few evasion skills, you can easily blitz the matriarch by clicking all the bowls in a row and touching the sarcophagus afterwards, ignoring all enemies. In both events the mobs spawned will disappear once the event’s finished.

V – Developer Hell

If you’re running the cemetery for a while, you’ll find a special easter egg the designers implemented. There’s a very rare chance one of the crypts will be the “Developer Hell”. Although you won’t see any champion packs here, it gives you the chance to hang out with the designers of Diablo 3 – and kill them. Almost through, you’ll run into the chief designer Jay Wilson, whose demise won’t just net you a nice feat of strength, but also the fulfillment of kicking the big boss’ ass.

Why your items don’t sell on the Diablo 3 auction house

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We’ve all experienced it. You stuff your ten auction house slots full of things you’re sure gonna sell like hot pie, just to stare at the auction house screen for hours to realize that apparently no one’s interested in them. It doesn’t have to be like that though. Of course, there’ll be a wasted slot every once in a while, but I’m not talking about some items not selling, I’m talking about regularly blocking all your slots on the auction house without even making a few gold back with what you looted in-game. I usually spend a few minutes analyzing why the items I put up didn’t sell and came up with the same reasons over and over again. Here are the main three reasons why your stuff doesn’t sell:

I – No one likes your stats

There can only be up to six affixes on a given item (which makes up to seven to eight stats, taking affixes like StrVit or IntDex into consideration). Maybe you found an item that almost one-shots attackers (Physical Damage to Attacker) and makes you pretty much invulnerable to Molten, Desecrate, Fire Chains and the Butcher (Fire Resistance) and allows you to pick up Health Globes from the other side of the room (Pickup Radius). That’s cool. But here’s the catch: people can only search for up to three stats. What does that mean for us? It means people have to prioritize. Looking for a perfect chest armor for my wizard, I’ll go Int first, Vit second, All Resistance third. After that I’ll sort by price. For other items I might look for more offensive stats. That’s what people do. If you want to price your items in Diablo 3 to sell and want people to actually see your items, you’ll have to price against other items with comparable go-to stats. If you’re in the same range and someone comparing the first few items with each other, your superior secondary stats will convince them to buy from you. But if your items aren’t the first few hits on someone’s search, you’re shit out of luck.

II – No one likes your prices

Finding the right price for your item is work. It starts with checking up on comparable items, taking into account how long those have sat on the shelf and then finding a price range that is as low as possible, but still in your comfort zone. I aim to sell the cheapest item in the stat range I chose to compete in. Different people have different approaches on how to select stat range. Some go for the next (lower) five, some ten. I go for 25 point jumps. So if my item has 99 Dexterity, I’ll look for 75 Dex items to compete with. If it’s a weekday evening, I’ll go 10% below the next one’s price for every hour his offer has been on. If the next item has collected dust for a few hours on a weekend, chances are no one’s looking for that kind of item in the given price range. You might have to underprice more aggressively. I know it sucks to only get a fraction of what you think the item is worth. But your buyers don’t care about what your item is worth. They take the cheapest offer, not the most reasonable one.

III – You’re on the wrong auction house

Whoever started telling people they could sell everything on the real money auction house for the most ridiculous prices, is an asshole. Fact is: You can’t. The moment you’d be selling for just a few cents after the cut you should try getting gold for the item – and if you’re about to ask for a few million gold, you might wanna think about putting it up on the RMAH. Just like people don’t want to spend real money on minor upgrades or level gear, people might not have enough gold to spend on the ultimate weapon. Of course you can get lucky from time to time. Question is, if that’s worth blocking a slot.

How are your sales going? Got any tips for people having problems with selling their stuff? An easy way that helps you? Leave me a comment.