Tag Archives: real money auction house

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.

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. :)

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.

Taking the weekend off from Diablo 3

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We managed to reach our week one goal of making fifty Euro with Diablo 3 and the real money auction house and decided to give ourselves a little time off from work. When you mix playing computer games and trying to set up a startup business the lines between work and spare time can easily blur. So we thought it’d be important to just stay off the game for a while and refuel our power cells.

Thuata flew over to Austria to visit her family and Triple, Sapphirus and me decided to chill and just enjoy ourselves – playing other games. Luckily my man Martin was able to get me one of those shiny Dota 2 invites, so me and Triple spent most of the last two days (and nights) pwning noobs. Sapphirus mostly spied on foreign nations and spread his new-found religion known as “Hentaiism” throughout the known world in CIV 5 – Gods & Kings.

Our goal for week two is to make 75€ with Diablo 3. After we pretty much emptied what we had stashed item wise in the last few weeks, we’re looking into a few possibilities to make that happen. We’re taking it slow, aiming for a gold to money conversion rate somewhere along the lines of one buck per hundred thousand gold, going for five Euro range items. I’ll let you know how that works out.

Being serious about life – and Diablo 3

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So it’s taken me about a month to settle in. With my move from Ireland to Germany, finding an apartment, buying furniture, getting everything set up and so on it’s been a crazy time. I was pretty fascinated how easily – after I spent the last year on changing many different things about my life – I fell back into old habits. I picked up smoking again, I went back to drinking caffeine and sugar-ey drinks, my sleep cycle is anything but healthy and I haven’t seen the gym for about two months. Seems like it’s easy to fall back into old patterns, once your mind is occupied with other things. But hey – I’m only human, right? No real excuse though, I feel terrible. So let’s do something against that. Starting today – in addition to my Diablo 3 endeavours – I’ll work on disabling auto-pilot and go back to a more organized and healthy life and working day. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Another big part is of course Diablo 3. The RMAH opened its gates a few days ago and so far we sold some stuff. Nothing major though. And nothing that might become a regular stream of income. Have to work on that. Flipping items on the gold auction house has become harder, too. Now with everyone and their grandma trying to convert their virtual currency to hard cash. Still waiting for an inspiration there. Almost through Act 3 Inferno by now. Managed to get to Siegebreaker yesterday with 5 active Nephalem Valor buffs. Trying to put my work day into a more “organized” form. Started today with creating “blogging hour” from 2pm to 3pm. Will sit down every day and write about whatever I have on my mind. Create the habit of just writing (no matter how bad it is).

D3Inc – Three weeks after release

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It’s been a little more than three weeks since Diablo 3 got released – and we’re on our way to set up a good baseline for when the real money auction house comes live (hopefully) next week. So – what have we been up to?

Progression

Aside from leveling to 60 within the first week we’ve progressed slow but constantly. As one of our members is only available during the weekends we’ve moved Inferno progression to those times and spent our weeks farming content we’ve already mastered, building up our regular, magicfind and goldfind equipment. While we were doing mostly Act 1 Jailer/Butcher runs two weeks ago, we switched to Act 2 Maghda and Kulle/Belial runs last week. During this weekend we plan to progress through Act 3 and hopefully finish it. Our focus here was not to die our way from quest to quest, but to actually tackle the various champion and rare packs and be able to kill those.

Thuata

Our female crew member spent most of her time buying raw materials and crafting various items – selling them with big success. With commodities back online competition has been rough the last few days and so she started researching the gem market and flipping gems with increasing success.

Triple

Being one of our part-time members, he played from home most of the week. He’s been doing some testing on Nightmare gold runs, tinkering around with +gold find and pickup range equip. In his free time he likes to do solo Belial runs and crying for help once he realizes that the Lord of Lies eats melees for breakfast.

Saphirus

I have an incredible amount of respect for people who are able to switch off their brains and spend the day doing repetitive work. Saphirus is one of those guys. Watching reruns of his favourite TV shows he spent the last week doing one champ/boss run after another and found us a lot of set items and legendaries.

Mike

Being the only one who has a full-time job and isn’t on site, it has been hard to integrate Mike into our routine. He managed to get to 60 about a week ago and has equipped his witch doctor since. Hopefully we’ll find a smart way to merge him into our crew more in the next few weeks.

cash

I’ve spent the last week with my new best friends – spreadsheets. I’ve tracked market movements on specific markets and made most of my money doing big-ticket flips. I’m excited to see how the real money auction house will influence the markets I’m playing at the moment. For next week I plan on getting an overview over the weapon market and start flipping mid to high dps weapons.

What have you been doing? Any specific markets you’re playing? Found a super rare item? Leave me a comment. ;)

D3INC – Day 10

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What an awesome day. Started late, after I slept in, farmed some Inferno and sent the boys on their way. Cleaned up the apartment and just relaxed and watched some TV after. Spent the evening and night establishing some long-term strategies, setting up some excel sheets and cycling items through the auction house. Sold around a hundred items until now. Found some regular sellers and things are looking up on establishing a regular income.

Downside – Diablo 3 real money auction house got postponed “until it’s done”. Kinda hard to earn money playing Diablo 3, if there’s no real money auction house. But maybe it’s for the best. Let them iron out all the problems, before it might cost people their money.

Although the majority of the “vocal” community seems to be through Hell, reached 60 and is tackling Inferno now, sales figures suggest that most people are in fact still in Normal difficulty, somewhere around level 20, making their way through Act 3 and 4, buying stuff to boost their character stats. I’m excited to see if there’ll be a shift in demand or if there’ll be a constant stream of new people coming in – or at least alts being created. Decided to start tracking commodity prices from tomorrow on to find cycles.

How have your sales been going? Already hit the gold cap? You know how the comment system works. ;)

D3INC – Day 9

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We’re slowly settling into a more normal rhythm. Have a good weekend ahead of us. I’ll go watch a football game and meet with some friends, Daniel’s gonna chill out at a wedding, Caroline will go shopping and Rob will take some time to unwind at his apartment. I think, after being stuck with each other for such a long time, we all are looking forward to some time alone. I hope we’ll get back fully recharged and with new energy.

Diablo 3 real money auction house release is six days away. They’ve been tinkering here and there, but I’m still worried about the general state of the auction house and not fully sure if we’ll be able to carve our niche. With the prices dropping like crazy everywhere around, it looks like supply is far higher than demand. Maybe this’ll change, now that we get into regions that take far more dedication than just clicking your way through a few dungeons. We got through Act 1 Inferno today. Butcher was a serious bitch, but we had some nice progression and were able to beat him after changing some skills and finding our rhythm. Act 2 was… deadly. We got owned hard by the first mobs we met – and each one afterwards. Went back to Act 1 and it gets easier and easier with every piece of gear we get (duh!). Hopefully we’ll be able to switch to MF soon to get some more upgrades before we hit Act 2 Inferno again.

Plans for the next week:

- Do some more group farming tomorrow morning

- Say goodbye to the guys and do some solo farming

- More solo farming, a few blog posts, etc. on Friday/Saturday

- Weekend on Sunday/Monday

- Get the gang together again on Tuesday and maybe tackle Act 2 by Friday

So yeah. Blog posts. Was thinking about some FAQ style newbie guides, detailed character focused things, opinion pieces on the auction house and maybe a few zone breakdowns for Act 3 / Act 4 Hell and Inferno Act 1. Mob types, tactics, etc. What do you guys think? The comment section is waiting.

D3INC – Day 6

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And it’s after midnight again. One day I’ll manage to go back to a regular sleep cycle. Very slow day, enjoyed the sun shining through the window, leaned back and relaxed for a bit. The highlights:

- one of our crew members was still at a friend’s birthday party, so we decided to take it slow

- started separate solo farm Act 3 Hell farm sessions in the morning

- watched a lot of TV while solo farming

- Optimized my “crash and burn” wizard build, pretty fragile

- crafted and sold a few more “Harvest Moon”s, wonder how long they’ll stay at such a good profit margin

- servers were down for a few hours so I used the time to write a little about “Surviving Hell”, check it out

- finally finished Diablo and Hell. After we decided to kite the adds in p2 it was a cakewalk

- took a look at Act 1 Inferno, decided to spend some more time in Hell

The only thing that really bugged me today is the Perfect Square bug on the Diablo 3 auction house. Most people aren’t able to post Perfect Square Rubies on the auction house. You try posting your stones, the auctions show in your active auctions, but they aren’t shown in the search results for the stones and apparently people can’t buy them. Problem is: I didn’t know that. All I saw was the price being around 250k gold and the mats being somewhere around 100k. So I put in around 1 million gold and crafted 10 of those puppies – which now block my stash and tie up a big part of my liquidity. Hopefully I’ll be able to sell them at minimal loss, once I’m able to post them again. I imagine those few lucky bastards that are able to post those stones at the moment are making a killing. With problems like these I’m just glad they didn’t release the real money auction house yet. At the moment it’s just virtual currency, I’d be more stressed out, if it was a real million tied up.

What are your experiences with the Diablo 3 RMAH? Did you encounter any bugs yet? Did you sell a lot of stuff? What’s working for you? Leave me a comment.