Thursday, June 30, 2011

Price drops and stokpiling


Since the creation of this blog I've yammered on at great length of the benefits and necessities of stokpiling. A few times even I've given very specific notes and advice on what, when, and how much to stokpile. Today I'm going to do the opposite and cite an example where you shouldn't stokpile by referencing the current state of a few markets in rift.

The primary reason you would want to avoid building up a stokpile is when prices are likely to go down. If you get a hint that they're about to drop (which can take many forms) you may want to consider selling off what you have piled up and save only what you'll be needing soon. This is when you make the shift from long term profits to making money on what you can sell today or tomorrow only.

The big problem here is that the signs of a price drop are usually extremely subtle and sometimes are entirely unnoticeable unless there's some patch notes that specifically state something about drop rates or material changes. It's very easy to get jumpy here and you have to resist bailing 99% of the time, but always keep your eyes open just in case.

Right now in rift, the price on raw materials are very slowly dropping lower and lower. It's only to the tune of a few gold here and there, but it is steady much like the way that gas prices raise IRL. Very slow and you won't notice it hurting your pocket until they're way up there. Same thing just in a different direction. With the materials slowing degrading in value you'd think that the price of the crafted goods are going down in stride right?

Wrong.

The prices of the crafted gear form blues to purples are staying the same. In fact a fist full of them have actually gone up since people aren't trying to sell them at all. That means it's time to really profit. My biggest gripe to date in the rift AH has been things selling under material costs and it looks like this might be about to change. If materials go down just a little bit more there will be room for some serious profit. But anyway, back on topic. Over the last week or so the price on a few high demand materials have gone down in price and have been in this new low range fairly consistently. Namely metal bars and lumber.

The main ones that I've notice go down are carmintium bars and shadethorn and runebirch lumber. The reasons for this are fairly basic. The large demand for all of these materials stems from the daily quests that use them and each needs a large amount of them. That high demand attracts the farmers to supply it while lowering the price due to a drastically increased supply. To give you an idea of how much they have dropped when I first got to the level that I needed them they were all around 50g each. As of this writing they're hovering between 10 and 15g each. That's quite a significant drop off.

The reason that a lot of the crafted goods haven't gone down in price is because at least 80% of these materials vanish when people craft items to turn in for their daily quests. So the amount that's left floating around at the end of the day winds up being rather low. Once the prices stabilize once again at their new price ranges is when it will be time to stokpile.

In addition to being able to grab mats super cheap mid day and on the weekends (just like saronite Saturdays in wow) that allows for more opportunities to flip the raw materials during the week when the farmers are off duty and prices rise. Meanwhile I'll be stashing a bunch away to craft all the stuff that needs them and supply my own daily quests.

One other reason for crafted items not falling in price that I can think of while I'm on this subject is that these materials aren't used directly in a lot of things. They're primarily used to craft other raw-ish materials which in turn go into all of the high end and high demand goodies. These "refined" materials can sell for almost double the plain material costs and the crafted items are now selling for a good profit because of this.

You'll almost never see the refined mats on AH because people only buy a few here and there to get what they need crafted and then ignore them. But as the CEO of Wal-Mart can tell you, these occasional sales are all that you need to become incredibly wealthy. That's my plan.


Thanks for stopping by!

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

A beautiful mess


Remember when I was writing about enchanting on wow? Remember me bitching about bag space all the time? Well I'm at it again, I've done run out of out of room on my main. I'm holding onto just about everything for every profession I come across. I'm doing this because there's still 2 more professions for me to level up and there is a ton of material overlaps.

The more I play the more that I'm noticing there are positively oodles of small markets to play around with. I've been experimenting with just about everything that I can and have found a number that are profitable, but not many that are worthwhile. So far my experimenting has been limited to low level gear from OF and AS and some assorted baggies.

It seems that bags are now in demand. I tried crafting a few silk bags a while ago but none of them sold, even for a pithy 60g. The materials are about 50g to craft and that's roughly the same price for vendor sold bags with fewer slots. Lately however I've been getting as much as 1.5 plat for them and sold over 20 in a single day.

I've gotten my OF up high enough to make the next level bags which have a material price of a bit over 1 plat so we'll see how that goes. Considering how well silk bags are doing and based off what I know about people in this market from wow I'd expect the higher bags to fetch a great profit but at a slightly lower sales rate.

The other thing I've been fooling around with is burlap and copper gear. Granted copper typically sells for 10-20g each I've managed to sell several sets of it for 20g each which is a 20g or so loss. But all professions come with an investment and start at a huge loss I'm not too worried. Also it's not viable to RB or salvage them at that low of a level because the mats you get out of it are essentially worthless. Burlap gear though costs a few silver at most to craft and I' sold two sets of it for 30g each. A pittance for profit sure but it sells.

At any point where there is a demand for something (especially gear) it proves that the market is viable in that range. Though the cloth sells so low it's not worthwhile now, it will go up over time as less people are trying to sell it. This also proves that since there is a solid demand for low level gear that there is going to be an equal demand for mid range gar as well which I'm going to look into soon. I'm thinking somewhere in the 30s range with chromite plate, thick leather gear, and silk cloth areas.

The main thing that I need to figure out is how much profit am I willing to settle for. Normally it's material cost plus 15%. But when I'm working with things that can be razor thin profits at times it's not really worth the hassle. Right now I'm willing to sell runes for a mere 10% over the mats, but that's just to mess with my main competitor in that market.

The rest, well, I'll have to feel thing out and wait a bit before I make any final decisions. The great double gold capped stokpile AH extraordinaire is debating on weather or not a tiny sum is worth the effort I know, it's a shame. But when you're working with such a small amount of start up capital every penny matters. It matters a lot.


Thanks for stopping by!

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Market experiments


I now have 4 different crafting professions at max skill level and as such have been looking into lots of different things. Today I'm going to cover a few random things that I've been crafting, what's been sold and what's been turned into RB fodder. I'll go profession by profession listing each item that I've been experimenting with along with a quick once over on it.


Outfitter.
I bought the recipe for shaleweave gloves and robes a bit ago as there were none on AH for a few days that I saw. So far the gloves have not sold, but I've sold three sets of robes in the price range of 3-6 plat. Aside form that, the big deal here is crafted bags. Just like the nether bags in wow, silken bags are selling faster than I can buy the mats and craft them. And I even mean that literally. I sell typically 10 per day at anywhere from 30g profit to as high as 1 plat profit over the materials on each sale.

Right above silken bags are the ones that use spellspun silk which is typically not easy to find a good deal on. Time to start up the stokpile method. These cost about 1 plat to make and sell for as much as 4. I also saved up three days worth of tokens to buy the next level of bags that uses witch weave cloth. Significantly more expensive than plain silk of course, but it has more slots! These cost around 3-4 plat to craft and can sell as high as 10. All of these bags have the same profit margins and rate of sales: high.

Crafting the bolts and the bags takes only a few moments so it's not a big deal to have a guildie craft a fist full for you.

Other than that I bought the recipe for marauder's breeches which still to this day have not sold as people are selling them for 1 plat which is significantly under material costs. Hell I've even seen some for 50g and below. What in gods name are these people thinking? Sigh.


Armorsmith.
This was my first experiment and I bought a recipe for a plate dps belt, darkmetal tassets which is a high 30's range. I've sold several so far for a 2 plat profit and they seem to go at a rate of one per day. So far so good. I also crafted a set of plate tanking gloves which I'm hopeful for as they are not easy to craft and have not seen any on the AH yet.

In addition to that, I also got the recipe for worshipper's chainmail which is selling at almost the exact same rate and profit margins. Doing rather well with this prof so far.


Rune crafting.
I've bought a few of the recipes that needed a plaque to craft so far and am rather disappointing. I bought the ones for strength and int to weapon and have seen only a few sales for very low profits. So far this entire profession makes next to zero profit without selling the mats. I've been abusing the hell out of my RB button with exotic leather and composite shoes. Other than that this prof is a waste thus far.


Weapon smith.
For this prof I'm mostly working with 2h weapons. I've crafted a darkmetal axe and an orich sword. So far neither have sold, but I'm certain that they will soon. I'm sure because they are leaps and bounds better than any alternative and are max level blues, so you'll have to run T1's to get an equivalent or better easily. That and they have hit on them which is extremely valuable when gearing up.

After that I got the rep recipe for a darkmetal gun which has been selling the same as the other dark metal gear. I think this level and price range is where the magic is at so I'm going to try and acquire a few more pieces around this area.


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Promote higher prices


I've said many times that almost everything in rift is being sold under materials, so today I'm going to give a short look on my thoughts on how to "fix" this situation. Granted one person isn't going to change the world over night, but you can at least get things rolling. This is actually something that I haven't done before and am pretty excited to see how it works out.

I'm going to lose a few plat on deposit fees over the course of a couple weeks but it might be well worth it in the long run. And you know me, I always plan for next month instead of next week. Since this is just a theory this is going to be a shorter entry than my typical wall o' text that I love oh so much.

First is the plan. Any time I see a bunch of runes up for 10g when it costs something like 90g to craft I'll list mine at 1.5 plat. In other words, I'll base the price I list at on the current low under mat cost and my default fall back prices and guess at what their average market value would be if it was placed in a healthy economy. I'm not undercutting holy crap I know! I'm going to be doing the exact opposite and doing it during prime time mid afternoon.

Now here's why I'm doing this. People that are selling for chump change compared to the material prices KNOW that they're selling at a huge loss and are willing to accept that fact. Anytime I power leveled a profession in wow I knew I was selling at a loss and losing a ton of gold up front and so did the people that had no idea about in game economics.

It is just that obvious. So the idea here is that by always having something up for a high but still reasonable price people might wise up. They could easily get to thinking "ya know I want to sell this crap to make some cash back, but why not go a tad higher and get more?" All of these overhead auctions will be listed for 48 hours so that when the 10g auctions expire they'll relist and see me up for 1-3 plat and think twice about auctioning them for a few coins over the vendor price.

Because runes DO sell and sell often, but people aren't listing them for a profit. So this is my attempt to clue people into the fact that they can get sales and they can turn a profit. My hope is that this will help raise prices up to a profitable level a bit sooner rather than later. I am really excited to see how this pans out, I'll be keeping track of dates, times and prices for a few weeks. During which time I'll update you all on when something of note happens which includes a string of nothing happening at all.

And to cap it all off, there's one last potential benefit of doing this. By default the AH listings show the highest price up top. So with a bit of luck I can catch a few "oops" sales by accident. People may just expect that the cheapest is shown first (which I really hope they make default soon btw) and buy whatever is up top. In this case it'll be me with my nominally priced rune at 2 plat and not 10g.


Thanks for stopping by!

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Free server transfers


NOTE: In addition to free xfers, many shards were turned into trial only ones which has caused an exceptional amount of people shifting around. So while this was intended to be Monday's entry I felt it was too important to wait because it's happening right now.


Trion just recently put in character transfers which are free and only to select realms. This is one of those big things that will have a massive impact on your local auction house. Since it's free and only have a one week "cool down" on it, this means that people are going to be shuffling around quite a bit. For example, my server WAS a low pop server and is now high and to my knowledge is also locked from other players transferring to it. That was all over the span of a single weekend, which isn't over yet as I'm writing this on Saturday.

What does this mean to you?

Well a lot actually. This means that of all of the possibilities, at least 20 of them are going to happen with you over the next week. Competitors will be leaving, new ones will be joining. A lot of prospective buyers will be coming and going as well. Low pop servers will become medium or high ones so be prepared. I'm going to cover a few important things that you have to look for immediately because you stand to either lose a ton of money or have a chance to triple what you already have.


Check your stokpiles.
With potentially hundreds of people joining your server in a 48 hour period that means there's potentially hundreds of raw materials flying up onto the AH. For me the main thing to be hit were minor catalysts. Before they would rarely go down to 8 platinum and now that is the standard price of them.

On the flip side (mild pun) eternal planar dust has gone up by a platinum and spikes at 8 when it was steady at 4-5 each. So depending on how thing go you may be out a little on your investments or have a chance to make a killing by flipping what you already bought for super cheap compared to the new prices.


Markets: New and old
The main reference to this is my situation with rune crafting. Before xfers came around it was essentially a dead market. Not many sales for not much of a profit. That's entirely different now to the point that I've have to literally triple the amount of mats that I keep stokpiled just to keep up with the new demand. Meanwhile the bag market has been so flooded everything is under material costs again and the prices have even gone up on the mats.

So anything that requires a consistent amount of small sales to be worth it is either going to be amazing now or totally destroyed. In this respect you can think of the flood of xfers going in and out as cleaning the pipes for a breath of fresh air into the auction house. Look over all of your professions and see if anything has opened up.


Price changes.
Yes this one is obvious, but not in the way that I'm thinking. Most people that are trying to work the AH in any degree have likely been playing the game for a while now. And as such they have a good idea of what the normal accepted value or things are, on their old server. Now they're coming over to yours and are trying to sell stuff that will be either much above or below what you may normally expect.

In either case you stand to profit by playing your cards right and taking advantage of people selling at their prices and flipping their stuff. For those who want to sell way above the prices you can undercut them by a lot and seem like a very good deal on your wares while still far above your normal price. Either way, your local prices on just about everything is going to change significantly.


Thanks for stopping by!

Thursday, June 23, 2011

1,000 platinum and market approaches


As of today I have reached my next goal of 1,000 platinum. Since this is a rather important milestone I wanted to take the time today to talk about the different approaches I've been taking in addition to giving you all a list of the hottest items that I've been selling. The biggest difference in moving from wow to rift is that every profession has so much that they can sell.



The only exception to that is an apothecary because their most popular items to sell (dyes) are used frequently for cheap skill ups. They do however have full dominion over a certain niche market which I'll be covering at a later date once I look into it more. When you have such a wide variety of items to craft, flip, and refine there is only two approaches that you can take that are viable. This is what I want to cover today along with the pros and cons of each one. First I'll go over the approach that I'm currently using: the blanket approach.

The blanket approach is the easiest one to understand of the two. When you have a large amount of options of things to sell, you simply sell all of them. That's it. While this is incredibly easy to understand, it is actually a little harder to pull off properly and be effective at it. The blanket approach is only for those who are capable of being highly organized. Here's a few reasons why you will not succeed at this approach if you are not very organized. When taking the full on blanket approach you have to constantly keep track of all of the following:

~ 20+ different items
~ Thresholds of each item
~ Fall back prices of each item
~ No less than 3 different materials needed to craft
~ Stokpiles of all the necessary mats
~ Material overlaps for over half of the items
~ Which banker is supposed to be selling what
~ Which toon has what 2 or 3 professions
~ Where to farm the mats if there are none to buy
~ Every competitor in every market for every item you sell

That's quite a lot isn't it? Granted some of that you don't have to memorize, but if you don't that adds a good amount of extra time looking things up. For example when you have to craft another ebony hatchet you'll have to cycle through your trade skill book, identify what mats you need, filter through your inventory and bank for all of them, and then double check what vendor mats you need to buy and how many. That can take upwards of a minute to do and if you multiply that by 20 items you can tell that it is no small length of time. But if I just said "ebony hatchet materials" and you immediately think "2 dark metal, ruby, minor flux, 2 enduring dust" you're good to go.

That's the biggest draw back to the blanket approach right there. You will have an absolutely massive inventory to keep track of which translates into needing an equally massive stokpile of raw materials (plain, vendor purchased, and refined) along with a serious need for bag space. While it takes a bit to explain the draw backs of it, the benefits that this approach gives you are very straightforward. You have tons of options of things to sell and never miss a chance to make some cash.

The other viable approach that you can take for making money in rift is the specialized approach. This is somewhat akin to the blanket approach in that you make a lot of everything, but as the name might imply you specialize in what you sell. How you specialize is entirely dependent on personal preference and shard economy. How you specialize is entirely at your own discretion and each section of the market that you focus on will have exactly the same pros and cons as the others. So first I'll give you the good and bad of the specialized approach and then I'll list off what I've found to be the best things to focus on.

The biggest benefit of specializing is the simplicity and ease of use that it offers. You are working in a small to moderate sized market in only one or two professions which means that the material overlap will be very limited. That makes keeping track of what you need to stokpile, farm, or buy more of very fast and easy. The other benefit is that it is very easy to keep track of who has what and what you need to craft more of.

A specialized approach typically doesn't deal with more than a dozen different items or so and only from a single profession. With low material overlap and compact enough to fit in a single toon's bank and bags makes this approach ideal for those with only one character or lack of organization skills. And now to wrap this all up with a simple list of the areas that I recommend to specialize in.

~ Epic gear
~ Refined materials
~ Gear for specific level ranges
~ PvP oriented goods
~ Level 50 blues (high end or entry level)


Thanks for stopping by!

How I'm doin' it wrong


Today I'm going to describe my step by step method of how I work the rift AH. But before that I'm going to start out with a disclaimer because I'm positive that I'm doin' it wrong, hence the title. Simply put, I'm almost certain that there is a better way of doing things that I just haven't discovered yet. Either there's some form of a macro, script, or esoteric addOn plug-in thing that I'm entirely unaware of. There just has to be something I'm missing. That being said, here's the process in it's entirety.

First I log into my banker: the man, the myth, the legend, the lover of all things shiny Stokpile. Ah it's been far too long since I got to do that. I collect any expired and sold auctions while making a note of what has been sold so far, just like I did with enchanting in wow. then I mosey over 5 steps to the auctioneer and open my bags. I'll right click on a rune to search for it and sort everything by lowest unit price. If I'm not the lowest on that one, I'll open the auctions tab, sort by name, and then cancel all of them that I have up.

Since canceling an auction causes the scroll bar to automatically tick back to the top I make sure to keep an eye on how far up or down it was so I don't have to spend so much time looking. I do this for each of the runes that I have in my bags and once I've gone through them all I collect whatever are in the mail. There's a bit of a long delay when canceling auctions so once I have what was there I'll log off and onto my RC. Since my RC is also my OF I'll do the same cycle here in a way. I'll collect the mail and make a note of what's sold. I'll go to the work bench and craft any runes that I need and then a few steps over to the loom and craft any extra bags.

Then I hop over to the AH and start searching fro RC mats, bags, and other things that I stokpile. I'll look for cloth, catalysts, and assorted planar dust and recipes. After that I'll list my wares and hop onto my smith. Same deal, collect mail, note what's sold, craft replacements. The difference here is that all of their items are augmented so I can't just right click to see what's currently being sold. So I'll type in the first 4 letters into the weapon or armor sections. That way I'll cut out just about everything that's up with those same letters in the name though for a few things I don't even need to specify which section. That's a very nice thing to remember as it can save a bunch of time and hassle.

Once that toon's auctions are handled I'll log back onto Stokpile and collect the rest of the canceled auctions along with anything I mailed over. Then I double check each of the runes that I have for sale by right clicking them in an extra step. Granted this isn't entirely necessary as no more than 10-15 minutes have passed, but it's a good precaution to take since I am human and tend to make mistakes from time to time. Once I finish canceling I'll list all of his wares and then call it done until later that evening.

I still haven't figured out a good time frame to aim for when posting auctions. It seems that around 8pm-ish is when people finish up with their chain dungeon runs and runes start to sell more than usual. At 3 or so is when it seems that gear typically sells the best, but these are all very light observations since I sell things on several different toons I don't really know EXACTLY when something sells, only that it has sold. So I try and poke my head in to check their mail throughout the day when I have a spare minute just to see what is selling and when. So far this is as much as I've been able to pin down.


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Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Searching for a method


Time is money friend! And the one thing that addOns gave us goblins more than anything was more time. I don't have that luxury in rift and even said a while ago that I'd be out of the AH game if I didn't have any addOns. Unfortunately I don't have that option here in rift. There are very few ways to save time that are already built in, in fact the only good one that I know of is that if you right click on an item at the AH window it's search for that item for you.

So you don't have to type anything in when you want to see what the current price is. No matter what, working the AH in rift is going to take significantly more time than in wow. This is especially true with RC which requires a blanket approach and a dedicated banker like glyphs and enchants did in wow.

So how can I work the AH as well as I know I can without spending all day doing so? The name of the game is specialize. Pick a specific profession and/or market and put your effort into that and ignore the rest. Time to compromise.

I won't be working in every single facet of every profession I can find a viable market for at all like I was in wow. And even when I have an alt covering every profession I still wont. There just isn't enough hours in the day to do that without some form of automation. That and it'll get incredibly boring very fast and I don't want that to happen. So instead I'll be focusing on what sells consistently in any given profession for an acceptable price range. This is also going to take a lot of time to get down because I'll have to commit to memory a lot of things that AH
addOns used to do for me.

I know the general price ranges for the runes I sell, radiants are 50g, token bought ones are 2p, and anything else is around 20g. There's a lot that are different so those I have to double check on a case by case basis, but I get reminded easily. What I do after collecting the mail is write down in notepad what I've sold (just like I used to do with enchanting) and craft more of them. Then I go through my bags and right click on each rune to see what the current price is.

Anything that's priced at 1p or higher I double check my price guide for. Everything else fits in neatly for what I stated earlier. When I find something I have to undercut I'll sort my current auctions by name and cancel them and relist what's in my bags. I always make sure to have 1 rune more than the 2 I normally list so that I can easily search. Then I log onto my main and craft whatever needs crafting, mail it off and list.

With so few regular sellers there's no need for a second cancel/post cycle but I'm sure that's not far off once things settle down and aren't all under material costs. Hopefully this will be soon because just selling raw materials seems a little silly considering the massive crafting empire I left behind in wow.

I'm still trying to iron out how to go about my AH playing with so little to go on in the way of time saving. I'm sure in a month or two either I'll have things down to a point that it's as fast as possible or things will be added/fixed with the game so that I won't have to think so hard about quickening the process.


Thanks for stopping by!

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Rift status report


Since I haven't made many official "reports" on my business in rift I figured I should write one about where I stand now. First, my platinum total is 720. I've spent a good number on stokpiling mats that I use regularly and a few epic RC recipes. Next are the professions and right now I have all of them maxed out, but still a number of recipes to get. Here's the score on that front.

Rune crafter: Down to "only" 10 plaques needed, going to take a while if I don't get lucky. You're guaranteed at least one plaque per week from a quest for a crafting lure. But the 15 shell daily, the crafting rift itself and the master level prof daily all have a chance at a plaque. It is probably something like a 5% chance because I've gotten maybe 4 plaques so far for assorted toons by doing all of these dailys. So it could take me 10 weeks or it could take a few days.

Outfitter: Two more plaques and then it is complete. The only recipes that are missing aside form the one are currently below material costs which includes both blues and purples.

Armor smith: Four more recipes and four plaques to go and this one is done for now. So far dark metal plate is pretty popular along with dark metal weapons for assorted classes.

Apothacary: Maxed skill. Buying different token recipes will be the VERY LAST thing that I do, and there's only 3 that might be profitable. Even the high demand ones such as black or white dyes are very questionable on their profit margins. For this profession I'll wait to get them all last unless something major changes.

Artificer: Three more epics to go which takes another 6 plaques. After that I'll have 3 more blue recipes left, each of which will take several days to buy.

Weapon smith: I'm missing two blue recipes which take 212 tokens each to buy and have no competition with. I may end up buying another two for bows after I get the armor recipes. Other than that the only recipes that I'm missing are currently below material costs.


Reputation recipes: This part is going to take a long, long, long time. The obvious reason of needing so much of it isn't the biggest issue. More than the rep needed (honored and above for everything) is the fact that every toon needs it that high. All of the recipes are scattered and diverse as one might expect so I don't actually need every single rep nearly maxed for every toon. But the fact remains that I need at least half of them for access to the goodies that they each offer.

To top that off, the real kick in the nuts is the super long que times for dps (which are all of my toons) so I'm going to have to give support a try and possibly tank. Shudder. Other than that the only real downsides is that there are no RC recipes to be had from rep and none of my toons has a pair of crafting profs that have recipes from the same rep. Ah well, Rome wasn't built in a day after all.

Naturally I intend to keep doing the prof dailys even after I have all of the profitable recipes. Simply put you never know when a large shift will come around so it's good to be prepared. It costs me maybe 20 or so platinum each day to do all the quests but half that for only the max level quests which is pretty damned significant of an investment. But once I have all of the essential recipes for each profession I can cut back to only doing the master level ones because they have a chance at a plaque each time so I'll keep up with that until I have all of those.

After another week or two I'll have all of the normal recipes taken care of completely it seems and, depending on luck, I'll have the epic ones done soon after. It seems that the influx of certain materials is becoming much more steady which allows me to buy them as I need them. I can't afford to stokpile anything that costs 10 plat but everything else I can start to stash away. But I'm still going to wait on the big stokpile craze as I'm getting the notion that prices are going to start to steadily fall. I'm not usually wrong about these things.


Thanks for stopping by!

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Building an army


I made my first alt last week or so and they're in their 40s already. After seeing the quests once and having it all fresh in my mind, leveling up is insanely fast and easy. And you know what's better than that? It's fun! I've been leveling an alt mage as stormcaller spec and I bought them 2 more roles for ele (so I can pseudo tank rifts) and pyro just for a change of pace.

Fire spec is insanely fun to play and is highly mobile but not so good for leveling up. Ele is just insanely boring all around to be honest, leveling as a tanking warrior is more interesting. While stormcaller is huge fun, big burst damage and loads of utility. Now when I was creating this toon and got out of the starter zone I had to decide on professions, the fun part.

Always take a gathering prof so I took mining as everyone needs ore and gems. Then I took a pair of crafting profs with armor and weapon smiths because once the game matures a little bit more the token recipes will sell very well. Being able to have 3 different profs on a single toon is going to be amazing and will drastically cut down on my AH time once the business is in full swing later on down the line.

Though admittedly this isn't going to be much of an army since the 3 professions per toon limit bring the number needed down to only crafters total. The rest of the gathering profs can be scattered across 4 different toons which is enough to have one of every calling and is all you should ever need with being able to have 5 different soul set ups. A total relief from wow where I needed every single character slot used up by crafting alts and bankers.

I chose these because I've heard of a lot of people that are selling certain blue gear from reputation recipes with some success. That and my main wears plate so this would help out a little. In addition to that, I can save up all of the gems for when I eventually take artificer on another alt and I won't have to worry about needing them at all. After the mage is taken care of I think I'll make a rogue and aim for artificer, apoth, and foraging. After that I believe I'll have everything covered and for alt number 4 they'll only need gathering profs which leaves me a lot of room to play around with if/when a new profession is added in.

Stating the obvious, the goal here is to diversify early on and be ready for when I can really move ahead in the AH game. Since most of the rep gear needs dust from mid range rifts I've gotten a shit ton of that just from leveling and taking the RC pouch from the meridian daily quest. Also there is the added benefit of being able to do the weekly quest and make a crafter's lure every week for every prof which will make me quite popular in any guild I run with. I read that anybody that participates will get the bonus mats and they are not divided up.

The plus side there is you get some brownie points with your guild, more mats for you and maybe more if they donate some of their share, and extra mats since with a group you can clear every stage including the bonus boss. It will definitely be fun to drop like 10 of these in a row teehee. Just make sure that you don't use them until you're max level and only use them in max level zones of you're going to screw yourself on the mats you can get.


Thanks for stopping by!

Friday, June 17, 2011

Crafting rifts 411


Today is a rather short, but extremely useful and important entry none the less. It's on the topic of crafting profession rifts and all of the unknowns surrounding them to the uninformed. It will be just a collection of all the random facts and tidbits of information that I've found out from experience. I've done a handful of these so far and am experienced enough that I can give a ton of random info on them. Unfortunately all that you get told in game is that you can make them and you can get plaques out of the deal along with profession specific mats. That's it.

Being the good goblin that I am (yes I am still a goblin, even in rift) I didn't use a single one before I had all of the essential questions answered. So today I'll be sharing with you all of the info that I've gathered on them. This is all accurate and comes directly from personal experience. I've learned not to trust google or any fan sites as there is so much out of date info that you can't really rely on it without confirming it first hand. Without any further ado, here's what I know on the subject.


- For those with more than one crafting profession on the same toon, you will have the option to start the weekly quest for any of them to get a lure. HOWEVER they all share the same weekly cool down. In other words if you turn in the quest for a rune crafting lure, you will not be able to do one for armor smith that week. So don't craft the quest items unless you want to get that specific lure that specific week. I found this one out the hard way.

- The crafting lure can only be used on a tear

- The level of the tear DOES have an effect. For best results, use the ones in the NW area of shimmer sands. If there aren't any up you'll have to seal all of the other rifts that are up. If you can't solo the last elite just let the timer expire as soon as you get one.

- The level of the zone obviously matters as well. Only use these in stillmoor or shimmer sands to get the most out of it.

- Minor and major tears have no effect, they will always end up being minor in that the mobs are all non-elites minus the bonus boss.

- Each one can be done with a group of 3. They're identical to your average run of the mill minor rifts but with bonus materials and such. Anybody with plate armor and a support healer should do the trick. In fact I did several on my mage with a tank and a dps and we did just fine. We hit all of the timers with plenty left over and downed the bonus stage boss without any problems at all.

- The drop rate of plaques is quite low as one would expect.

- The materials that you can get range all the way from top level stuff that you can gather normally or the hard to come by good stuff such as minor catalysts and eternal dust.

- You can get a plaque from a crafter's rift even if you weren't the one to open it. So long as you have the associated profession you have a shot at it once it's sealed.

- If you come across a group doing a crafting rift and don't get an invite or join publicly, you can still get mats and plaques by helping out. VERY cool.

- Just a personal observation, but it seems that the most common types of lures used in "crafting raids" are for armor and weapon smiths. So should you find yourself able to hop into a group take the toons with one of those professions to increase your chances of getting extra plaques.


Thanks for stopping by!

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Fun farming!?


I know I know. Don't farm fools, donate your bodies to science! ...and all that stuff. But one thing that I just love doing in rift is, well, rifts. Every one you close you get non gold currency to buy stuff from vendors. All of it is useful and all of it sells to somebody. In addition to that you get rare materials which are needed to craft some pretty sweet epic lewts.

This includes things that you need for a daily quest which gives a chance at a rare prof token and a rare artifact (random collectible that sells). While still leveling up, me and my gf would clear any rift that we came across and managed to skip a full zone and a half by the time we hit 50. In other words not only are they highly profitable, they give great exp.

The main thing to look for from closing a rift is eternal and endless planar dust. This goes into either epics, high end blues (t1 equivalents) or sells often and for a good price. Also to top that off, you need several eternals for a weekly quest which gives you a plaque for a given profession which gets you the really profitable recipes. In other words you get so much form them that is so versatile in it's use there is no reason not to clear them.

Yes it's farming, but since when do you not have to grind for gear? In wow you run normal and so called "heroic" dungeons that you need fuck all from just to get rep for upgrades to get ready for raids. You farm or save up cash to buy rare boe gear or the mats to craft them. Even when you have a fortune at your disposal, you still have to do SOME form of grinding to have as many upgrades as you can outside of raids.

In total there are 6 different types of rifts that can spawn, each with 4 (I think) different versions and goals. Each one has the same general loot table as the others, just replace fire themed items with water themed ones and the like. And for some bizarre reason, I cannot stop doing these things. I can't help but find it incredibly fun, especially the ones that are more than killing mobs. The major rifts contain only elite mobs (mostly) so you can't clear them and get the bonus boss with only a plate dps and a support healer. If you go solo you can clear a normal rift minus the bonus stage usually, but if you have some kind of self healing you can clear every section in the time limit of a max level rift.

But for max level major rifts a full group of 5 or 2 dps, support healer, and tank-like-person could do it just fine I imagine. The expert level rifts will require a full standard group of tank, healer, support, 2dps though. But the higher the difficulty, you guessed it, the better the rewards.

Once we hit 50 we went on a rifting spree and cleared every max level zone of rifts until something more interesting comes along, which would be something like a full guild dungeon run. I mean come on, great money, great fun, guild exp. quests, great gear, silly acheesements? What's not to like?


Thanks for stopping by!

Monday, June 13, 2011

Rift market watch


I've been playing rift for a while now and have been watching the AH since the second week I started. So I think I have a firm enough grasp of what's going on right now to a point that I can safely comment on it. First I'll just write up a short list of what sells then go in depth afterwords. But before I get into that I have to give my "massive" gold total first. 400 platinum. Far better than I was expecting in all honesty with the economy being in the state that it is. Here's what I'm seeing sell with a degree of consistent profit.

- Rare level 50 epics
- Mid 40s range blues
- Level 50 blues
- Artifacts
- Top end mats for weekly quests
- Top end runes
- Mid range crafting materials
- Top end rift mats

One unfortunate note is that every one of the crafted pieces of gear that's sold for a profit is from a rare drop recipe. All of them. Any recipe you can get with tokens or a trainer is basically a throw away, max level epic or not it doesn't matter. They're all still selling at a loss. Meanwhile runes learned form tokens and plaques are selling for a small but steady 50g-1p profit a piece. This is good news for me as I have that profession maxed out. That means that once I get a fist full more recipes learned from dailys I'll be able to pull in a steady 10-30 platinum per week. That's assuming that their rate of sales and profit margins don't change.

The RB shuffle is still coming along nicely with a steady 3 plat per day and as high as 8 depending on the current demand. I've taken to no longer bidding on items, but AFK crafting them myself. 2 exotic leather is enough to craft a pair of level 40 range boots which will always RB for a profit with current prices. They cost 5-8g to craft and I sell the mats for on average 50g a piece, now that's a profit margin. As per usual, I'm stashing away 10 of each type for the daily quests and selling the rest. Any runes that sell when I don't have enough mats I can either xmute them if I'm in a bind or just craft more RB fodder.

The rare recipes are definitely where the money is at as people are willing to shell out top coin to be ready for expert dungeons and raids. These only come from top end dungeons and a select few expert level ones as well. In other words the recipe is on the same item level as the gear it creates and thus needs the same level mob to drop it. So until I get some gear together I may not see one for a while without luck form dailys giving me a plaque.

Since the end game is still very new to people one might think that there's no way for me to pick and choose the best rune recipe to sell because nobody knows. But there is a way. The top end runes sell for 3-5 plat each which means only accomplished players that don't spend all of their money on "fun" stuff can afford them.

And if you're good enough to be needing them and smart enough to afford them, then you're smart enough to know that 1 attack power is always going to be better than 1 crit rating. You'll also know that 1 ap is better than 1 strength or dext as well. I may be off on the stats (haven't checked since 3 patches ago), but the idea is that they're good because they know these things. These are the people I'm selling to, these are the people that I need to learn more about. Know your markets, eh folks?


Thanks for stopping by!

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Check point reached


Just the other day I reached my first gold making milestone in rift of 100 platinum. I did it through the methods that I have outlined already of day by day profitable runes, material conversions and flipping. Now as important as that may be, that's not exactly something I would dedicate an entire blog entry to. That's what, 2-3 sentences written and then call it a day? That's perfect if you're a gold fish maybe, but I have a bit more to say.

I've written before about how a milestone is an important thing to make note of as it sets a clear goal for yourself. However doing this entirely from nothing gave me a much different perspective on the matter. This is unlike my wow project where I made 50k with no help from level 1 in that I have zero knowledge of the game or it's markets. And neither does 70% of the people playing it for that matter.

Why is having 100 plat so important to me? Because it affords me many luxuries that I turn into business opportunities. I no longer have to count my pennies every day so I can train everything the prof trainers have to offer to make crafting and looking for something easier. I can train every skill for my class in case I want to try out a new spec later on.

I can comfortable invest in my weekly quest (finally!) for a RC plaque or general bidding. Most of these things though are just time savers and are more of a "quality of life" improvement than they are for making the rift money. The biggest improvement that this milestone means for me is that I no longer have to recycle my money.

By that I mean I don't have to go all in as it were every time something sells. Let me give you an example. When I had only 1 plat to my name, buying up junk just to RB was a serious gamble. If I only got crystals from it, I was completely SoL without a back up plan aside from questing more for rewards and vendor trash. So each time I'd sell a few kinetics I'd have to take all of my gold and all of the profit that I had just made and invest every silver coin of it to try and make more.

Now that I have a decent amount considering the level that I'm focusing on right now, I can easily buy 10 stacks of cloth or leather to RB and not worry. I spent the extra 2 plat to get my first alt their mount and another 4 to get a third role purchased just to muck about with and still be able to keep working my markets. By being consciously aware of this, it is allowing me to do exactly what I do best: Stokpile.

Now that I have the essentials out of the way (mounts, alt, extra specs, training, professions) I can focus on building a massive stokpile of RC mats so that once I'm able to do expert dungeons and get a few recipes for high demand runes I can fill that market nicely. I think I'm doing well, my initial goal was to be comfortable financially once I hit 50 and was a few levels ahead of schedule.


Thanks for stopping by!

Thursday, June 9, 2011

How different is different?


A lot of people are saying that Rift is nothing more than a wow clone. Well that's a valid opinion, but if it's a clone where are my orcs? Why can't I play a wolf? And why isn't my mage able to spec arcane? I know you're probably thinking "well that's still the same thing, just with different names." If that's your reasoning for believing that Rift isn't an entirely different game than wow, allow me to counter that logic with your own logic.

First lets play a little guessing game. The rules are simple: I show you two images of two different things and you tell me their name in one word. After you check them all out I'll let you know what they are. There's a total of only 4 pairs so I'm sure you'll do just fine!


Set 1


Set 2


Set 3


Set 4



Ok got it figured all out now? Good now here's the answers.

Set 1: first is a branch, second is a twig.
Set 2: first is a boulder, second is a rock.
Set 3: both are chairs
Set 4: I don't know about you, but I see a stool and a table

Sooooo how many did you get right? Get one or two wrong? Well that "stick" up there, at what point does it become a branch? If you say when it's attached to a tree, what of when it breaks? It's still there in the tree, it's still a part of the tree. And what of that boulder, just how big does a rock have to be so that it is considered a boulder? What about a rock being called a pebble and so forth?

A chair is a chair is a chair. Some might call ti a recliner or a sofa. The short hand version of all of this is the exact same logic saying that rift is identical to wow: "they're all the same, just with different names."

Clearly they're not.


Meanwhile I can (and obviously will) argue that TBC, wrath, and cata are the exact same game. Yes I'm saying that three entire expansions are the same game...just with different names. Here let me quote a few items for you along with noting what "expansion" they were introduced with.

TBC.
Arcane dust
Lesser planar essence
Greater planar essence
Small prismatic shard
Large prismatic shard


WotLK.
Infinite dust
Lesser cosmic essence
Greater cosmic essence
Small dream shard
Dream shard


Cata.
Hypnotic dust
Lesser celestial essence
Greater celestial essence
Small heavenly shard
Heavenly shard


Ok so those are just items, big deal. I mean they don't REALLY count right? What about the REAL game huh? The dungeons! The raids! Wow certainly has a few gems of boss encounters. Ones like lady vashj or sinestra or yogg saron. Very cool indeed, but let me sum up the boss fights that 80% of the raiding population saw.

Kill adds
Pew pew boss
Interrupt shit
Don't be in fire


Get the idea here? You can break it down even more, a fury warrior is just a rogue in plate with a red energy bar that goes up instead of down. Baseball is just some dudes hitting a ball with a stick. But I used to do that all of the time, why am I not being paid millions for it? I think you get the point.

Even though rift is very similar to wow in the same way that a rogue is close to a fury warrior they're in all reality entirely different. They just have different flavors. This is all going back to what I've said a dozen plus times so far: at what point is something no longer worth it? If 60 minutes per day is far too long to make 5k in glyphs, would 30 minutes be fast enough? What about 40? 50?

Just where do you draw that line is what you really need to figure out. What it all boils down to is where you and you alone make the distinction that something is different in enough ways to noticeably be it's own entity. So naturally I believe that rift is different enough from wow to capture and maintain my interest for a long enough time that I picked it up.

Why did I decide to raid as a DK instead of my pally with 3567847 acheesements? I like the DK flavor. Why? Absolutely no other reason that "zomg it looks so kewl!" Why do I like Rift more than wow? Same reason. Why do I like the enchanting market more than gems even though they're "the same thing with different names?" I just do.


What's your reason?

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Easy mistakes to avoid


NOTE: For those of you who may be wondering, I'll be writing up my weekly business reports next month. They'll come every Wednesday (reset day) and will contain all of the goodies and real time market info like I have always given.


Short-ish entry today on a few things I've noticed on the AH that can lose you a lot of money. They aren't bugs at all in the traditional sense, they're more along the lines of things being different than you naturally expect. They all have to do with the auction house UI and not the standard game settings or simple human error per sé.

I'll list them each off one by one and give a few notes on it. The idea here is making an easy way to keep tabs on things to watch out for so I'll leave a link to this entry on the side over yonder just to keep it handy. This will be updated regularly as trion changes the game and with anything new that I notice. If you picked up on anything that can cause problems or annoyances that are more than just a "aww that sucks but whatever" sort of thing please leave a comment and I'll edit it in.


Default vendor price bids.

When you first right click an item to put it in the AH window it sets the bid to the vendor price by default. I think the danger here is obvious since you can't cancel an auction that has a bid on it already. Personally I've made this mistake a ton and have profited from it just as much. I've gotten hundreds of pieces of cloth this way and managed to fuel my crafting with insanely cheap planar dust by this. So make sure you take the extra moment to double check you have the bid set right.


Changed settings not saving.
To easily avoid the vendor bid part you can click the box to set the bid to the buyout price. However if you close the AH window this might not save. In other words you have to do this each time you close and re-open the AH window. It might be a hassle I know so hopefully it'll be changed soon.


Searching for augmented items.
When you right click an item to search for it on the AH it will search for that exact name. This is important because when you add an augment to an item, which you should anyways as they're insanely cheap, it gets something else added to the name. So you may think that there are none on the AH when there's actually several and you list it for triple everything else. To avoid this I just type in the first 4 letters of the plain item to look.


Default item sorting.
By default the items on the AH are sorted with the most expensive ones first. This can be a boon and you can get a few "whoops" sales out of it, but you can also do the same thing and lose a lot of plat. Make sure to sort by unit price each time you close and open the AH window.


Incorrect mail auto complete
This is something I just hate about the mail box. It will try to auto complete a name for people on your friends list, in guild, and I've even seen a few random names pop up. Once again take the extra time to make sure you're mailing stuff to the right name or you can lose a lot.


Runes and rune Shards.
This one is specific to rune crafters. The profession dailys can easily cause you to waste a bunch of mats if you don't pay close attention to the name of what you have to craft. As the theme of this entry seems to be, double check every time. This also goes for when you're buying runes. You could easily buy two runes that won't go onto that shiny 2 hand weapon of yours so be careful.


Thanks for stopping by!

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

The plan


Today I'm going to detail out my long term plan for making some extra bank in rift as the title would suggest. Mind you I am still poor and most everything I can sell is listed under material costs. The name of the game right now is exclusivity. The more rare something is the more likely it will fetch a profit as everything taught by trainers is being sold at dumping prices. By dumping prices, I mean 10g for something that costs 2 plat to craft. If I wasn't trying to save up I'd get into flipping this crap, no joke.

Step one is to slowly build up a stokpile of RC mats. I'll be using most of these for the profession dailys and the rest will be sold as is. On the rare occasion I sell a rune for a profit I'll replenish my supply of them and list a few more, but they sell so slowly right now that it's not a real consideration unless I get a new recipe. Since every prof daily gives you generic tokens, all of the ones I get from outfitter quests will go into new rune recipes since I can get mats for runes far easier than I can get leather or cloth. Plus they're still semi profitable and once prices go up I'll already have the worthwhile runes to sell. Again, this is long term based on the fact that prices WILL go up at some point.

After hitting 50, I'll be able to do max level rifts which will give me a fairly good chance at getting the mats needed for the prof weekly quest that gives a plaque. I'll turn that in for the most profitable rune I can find and craft 3 of those. 2 get put on the AH and the third sits in my bags for ease of searching. This will take about a week to complete with any degree of success as closing a max level rift is NOT easy solo and doesn't guarantee any eternal planar dust. Essentially, the main goal I have is to do whatever I can to get more rare recipes.

But when me and my gf can get together and go on a rift hunt it won't be a big deal as we can aoe most of the stages just fine. As a paragon, extreme aoe is my specialty. It has huge range, hits a ton of targets, and I can spam it with massive +damage bonuses to the ones on a 6 second CD. So as long as the healer can keep me up, the mobs will be totally melted in no time. If we can put together a guild group once a week, then we'll be able to do the harder ones for both gear and mats. Like I mentioned before, the rewards are so varied that any chance you get to clear a major rift plus bonus you should jump on.

Once I've gotten a dozen or so rare recipes, prices for a lot of things will have evened out and selling raw RC mats won't be as profitable as it was when I started. But even at this point, I'll still be hunting for cheap greens to break down to keep myself supplied for quests and runes.

After I've gotten the key rune recipes for normal tokens, I'll then start working on leather gear. There aren't 3x more cloth wearing classes than leather ones like in wow, so choosing one or the other is based on competition and supply of materials. Since I'll be getting a good amount of leather in my normal day to day play time this seems to be the right way to go. Sure I can sell the leather just like I can sell the cloth, but when I pick it up by default more often that means the supply is far more steady.

I'll be focusing primarily on the mid 30s and early 40s level ranges. This is when spending a bit extra on gear begins to become a legitimate consideration. The blues you get then will ,last you through level 50 and serve you well still in entry level dungeons until the dice start to favor you. But if I can snag a profitable level 50 blue piece I'm definitely not going to pass it up.


So the short version is as follows:

1. Build up a stokpile of RC mats.
2. Continue to RB cheap greens for prof dailys and profit on selling mats.
3. Focus on rare rune recipes.
4. Clear a ton of max level rifts for planar dust.
5. Save up enough plat so that I can safely invest in flipping runes.
6. Patiently wait for normal trainer runes to be profitable then revisit them.
7. Start spending tokens on leather gear after important runes.
8. Try and acquire at least 1 high end leather recipe to craft.
9. Stop selling mats and work runes just like I worked enchanting in wow.
10. Drop butchering in favor of another crafting profession, most likely armor smith.


Thanks for stopping by!

How I make money


Ah my first official entry on making the rift money. Today I'll be giving a fairly detailed once over on what I'm actively doing to turn a profit in rift. Not what I'm planning to do or what I expect to do, but what I'm doing right now that is supporting my normal playing costs and profession leveling. To any wow player this is an oldie but a goodie that still makes great profit even today: DE'ing cheap greens.

This is something that I haven't done in wow for ages, but is necessary to fund RC in rift. I scan the AH in sections by armor type and then weapons. I sort them out by price and start scrolling down the pages. Since almost no green gear gets sold under the level cap I can safely bid on anything to same some cash by waiting a day. Before I go on I have to explain a few things about RC. This is good info for both rift players that don't have an RC and for wow players to understand wtf I'm talking about.

First there are only a few types of mats for RC in game and you can get any of them from any level green. In wow you have a different tier of materials for each level range and anything more than 10 levels below the current cap are worthless. Not in rift, every tier of materials is made by combining X of the lower tier ones just like lesser and greater essences in wow. Here's the different materials and their tiers.

Kinetic arc x5 > Kinetic charge x3 > Kinetic burst
Perpetual blur x5 > Perpetual glow x3 > Perpetual flare
Sentient spark x5 > Sentient surge x3 > Sentient blast

Flickering dust x3> Flickering shard x3 > Flickering crystal
Sparkling dust x3> Sparkling shard x3 > Sparkling crystal
Shimmering dust x3> Shimmering shard x3 > Shimmering crystal

Keep in mind that you cannot downgrade any materials unless they are at the max tier. So when you turn 5 kinetic arc into a kinetic charge, you cannot do the reverse. You can however turn a perpetual flare into 15 perpetual blur so you won't lose anything in the technical sense, but it is extremely annoying when you actively use a mix of all tiers when skilling up.

When you RB a green what you get is going to be one of those materials aside from the last two. What level the green is effects your chances of getting higher tier materials as opposed to what materials you get. This was an important bit of info for me to figure out early on or I'd have spent tons of plat and gotten crap from it all. Next of note is the level range vs. chance of high tier mats. None of this is for sure and is only my personal observations so I won't be giving any %'s just the general ballpark likeliness.

From level 1-29 it seems that you will only get bottom tier mats and maybe t2 shards. From level 30-39 you're very likely to get at least a t2 material from a single RB or t3 shard. From level 40-50 you're promised either a t3 mat or several max tier crystals. With all of that out of the way lets move on.

The next thing I have to look at is the assumed prices. With materials changing drastically each day I have to assign each of them MY price and what I value them at, not the AH. My assumed price for crystals is 10g and the other mats at 25g. This means that any high level green priced at 20g and below is going to get me a profit on average. So with that in mind it's just some simple division to decide what I should spend on anything level 39 or below.

But before I get to selling and buying and all that jazz, I check what the going rate of the t3 materials are selling for that day. If I can get at least a 20g profit I'll buy and RB them all. I'll list all but 10 of each so that I have enough left to do my prof dailys the next morning.

Fairly simple but still fairly effective none the less. As for the crafted runes themselves I only craft what's profitable for that specific day and nothing more. Prices just shift too much too often for if to be worth the time and effort of managing the inventory it needs.


Thanks for stopping by!

Monday, June 6, 2011

Everyone is a newbie


Right now Rift has been out of beta and officially released for...3 months. If that. In other words 90% of the players are still trying to figure shit out, including yours truly. This also means that the prices on everything are all over the place. Absolutely everything taught by a trainer is selling SIGNIFICANTLY under material costs. This is because of the obvious, everybody and their brother are crafting these with stuff they farmed or got from leveling and are trying to make their money back on it all. So any item enhancements are not going to sell for much if ever and gear is going to be very low as well.

A good goblin would notice this and invest in materials and any rare profession recipes. Just like me. Right now my professions are skinning, tailoring and enchanting in wow terms which are Outfitter, Butchering, and Runecrafting. RC lets you rune break (DE) almost anything that's green. So I buy any gear that's at a certain price range, break it, and sell the mats now that my prof is maxed. I use the mats for the daily quests and try hard to have a little extra for tomorrow.

Going from 2 million gold, rich enough to buy a max level guild and STILL be swimming in cash all the way down to not being able to afford training skills because I bought a mount is a bit of a shock. But I remember doing my From the Ground Up project and I don't feel so bad.

The big issue is that there are a ton of markets that will exist in the future that aren't viable right now. That's because there isn't enough money in game period. Things like vanity items, small items that help you clear rifts easier and the like. They are all good things and in demand, but people just can't afford it when they still don't have a max level mount yet.

The only perk to this situation is that you can take advantage of this game wide ignorance sometimes. For example if I asked you what a "Radiant rage runeshard" was worth what would your answer be? Exactly. And that's my answer as well, "fuck I don't know!" And that's the same thing you'll get from anybody short of being quoted the AH price for that exact minute. So when there isn't any X Widget's on the AH you can set not only their price, but their "assumed value" as well. So for the next 20 minutes that is what your widget is worth to anybody and everybody because they have no idea that it will eventually be worth pocket change.

The flip side to that is the prices on materials. Once you get higher level than the starter zone is when things take a turn. Leather that you get at level 40 might be worth the same as what you get at level 1 on that day. If you aren't rich enough to stokpile, these fluctuations in supply can really ruin your day. Although it does present a very high risk flipping change. The problem is, again, you have no idea what their average market value is and no way TO know short of watching them very closely every single day.

Since I spent all of my money at level 40 for a mount I cannot take such risks by any means since I literally can't afford to try. So What am I doing to make money in Rift? Check in tomorrow.


Thanks for stopping by!

Friday, June 3, 2011

Starting Monday


Aloha all, checking in to let you know that I'll be back to consistent posting after the weekend. Even though I have a lot written I am still putting it off for a bit. Sorry about that. The main reason is because I'm still fairly new to the game and am going over all that I've written to make sure it's still accurate. That and I'm still figuring out all of the "what's" there are to be had and sold in the AH game over here.

But fear not there is still a ton of theory coming your way and a good number of specifics on what to sell for the rift players that may be reading. With the game being only a few months old it is very exciting. I'm getting to watch a game and community grow and see how every single inch of that effects the economy. Fun times.


Thanks for stopping by!