Not going to say which markets, just in 3 months ive made 462g so far. Though i pretty much only log in for 4 hours each day to play the TP setup buy/sell orders etc.
Alot of it to do with buying out 10-20 cheapish bits of the armor/weapons and reselling all pieces for small profit + combining that with buy orders for lower price for even higher profit margin at the end of it.
Oh. I’ll take a guess. Don’t look at lvl 70+ because no-one buys anything with 80 in sight and once you hit 80 the market is glutted. The sweet spots are level 35/50/65, I’d guess. The trick is having enough gold to control the market, buying up anyone under-cutting you and controlling the selling price.
Four hours a day for 3 months = approx 350 hours. I actually understand that because I was addicted to the TP when the game launched but I prefer farming now. Though I only play maybe an hour a day now. In Orr you’ll make 1.5 gold an hour (some will claim much more) with the right gear. Do the math.
Ghoest – I try not to snit, but inflation commonly refers to a rise in prices. However much you may rail against the way words change meaning, it will still happen. You’ll be happier and appear less foolish if you simply accept that. Since gold can be bought for Gems it is not just a currency, it is a commodity in a separate Gem economy and absolutely subject to inflation.
You might consider a course in good manners before giving us the benefit of what you learned from your introductory course in economic theory.
There are still items that you can double your money on, but the market is lethargic and there’s always the risk of getting stuck with stock that won’t move.
Farming/gathering is probably the better way to go these days.
If you want to tell people you’re a TP mogul just put 10 copper ore up for sale at 10g apiece – then you can tell people you have 100g “invested”.
Economics will sort this out. Right now 16 bucks may well buy enough gold to buy the equivalent of 60 dollars worth of Gems, but the way the Gem inflation is going that won’t be the case forever. Unless the farmers keep lowering the price of gold, eventually you hit a point where Gems are going to cost so much gold that there’s little difference between buying officially and buying from a farmer – and which would you choose?
This is why I rate Gems as a great investment if you have lots of spare gold. There are your numbers: $16 vs $60 – so once parity hits and allowing for the 30% tax you’ll be almost tripling your gold, passively.
None of this is bad. It’s evidence of a functioning economy developing. Something that was worrying me for a while. Kinda crazy that the gold farmers are shaping that economy to their own detriment.
What’s funny is that I just got done reading a thread in the general game discussion subforum where a bunch of people were complaining about how terrible it was that $1 worth of gold through ANet (via gems) is still such a measly quantity. The thing that makes it funny is how confident people in both threads are that their own complaints about the exchange rate are absolutely legitimate, despite the fact that their complaints directly contradict each other.
Very few people are capable of dispassionately assessing the whole system, preferring to focus on their own immediate problem.
I’m sure there’s plenty of tweaking that could be done, but the warrior is a Swiss Army knife capable of filling many roles.
Trouble is some people want their class to have the best damage, best survivability, best crowd control and best mobility all at once. And this isn’t just limited to warriors.
Gem prices are almost definitely going to keep on rising as more gold enters the economy. With the amount of farming going on there is no real cap on how much gold can be produced, while Gems have a fixed real world value.
If you think about it, it isn’t in the interests of AN for Gems to be EASIER to buy for gold. They want to sell Gems for real world money. It becomes more attractive to buy Gems for real money when those Gems can be converted to more gold. Gold-farmers actually play an important part in the economy and will eventually make themselves obsolete when buying gold off AN, via Gems, becomes more cost-effective than farming.
I commented on a different thread that I think the trend is for gathered materials to tend towards vendor prices.
You pointed out something very valid – there’s no need to craft exotic gear when Dungeon and Karma gear can be ground out, so high-level crafted armour is actually pretty third rate. So there’s not the demand to soak up all those excess materials.
Sadly AN have been issuing bandaids to redress these problems, like the anti-farming code and the special Mystic Forge recipes, rather than looking at the big picture. I wonder what their economist is doing for them.
Right now no-one is selling Gem Cards in the UK. If I buy from Amazon.com (assuming they will sell them but if they do it will be at a healthy 20-25% discount on the in-game UK price), can I redeem the US Gem card on my UK account?
Ah. So someone is buying up the supply of BLCs to re-list once the event is on-going. They’re definitely not buying that many chests to open them – it would cost a fortune.
The peak price for BLC will be during the event so hold on to them until then.
Not sure if you’re serious but it sounds like Bull’s Charge followed by Greatsword’s Hundred Blades, possibly with Frenzy popped on it – after which the Warrior would be pretty vulnerable if they used Frenzy.
I’m no PvP expert, but if you’re squishy you probably should have some condition removal to break the root and then the HB is relatively easy to avoid.
I’d second that on Gems. They have a fixed cash value, while the economy is generating a lot of gold. In theory in a year from now there will be far more gold in the economy so Gems will become more expensive relative to gold.
The flipside of that is that in theory Gems will also buy a lot more gold in the future.
Having Gem cards available cements the value, so AN can’t start changing the price relative to real money the way they can manipulate the supply and exchange rate, potentially, for Gems/Gold.
Ironically Gems play an equivalent role to what gold does in times of real economic uncertainty.
In the first two months of play we’ve basically seen virtually every other material take a nosedive in price, and in time, without manipulation of the crafting economy, every item will tend towards vendor prices.
I will only sell mats that generate a profit on the TP. I will vendor all other mats that are on the 1c over vendor priceline. If I glut the market on an already low demanded item , I am contributing to my own cash flow issues in regard to TP sales. I salvage blues and greens for the basic mats which usually sell for more than the unit itself.
It makes sense to salvage low level items (using the cheapest kit) because the mats you get sell for more than the items do – and you have the 500 salvages for the monthly achievement) but once gear starts to hit around the 30-40c selling price then I’d just vendor it instead. Yellows sell well under lvl 60 on the TP – the market gets cutthroat at 75-80 so it makes more sense to salvage lvl 75+ yellow items in the hope of ectoplasm and high-end mats. Does depend on the item though, some still sell better than the materials you MIGHT get.
I made almost enough gold in the first 2-3 weeks of the TP to outfit my warrior for his career into exotic gear at 80. This last couple of weeks… way more profit grinding in Cursed shore with the bots. Be sure to group up and run the common events with the zerg.
You used to be able to sit at the TP and make a consistent 10-15% on certain common materials, flipping stacks of 250 several times an hour – it was boring but lucrative.
Now, virtually all the fast moving “stock” is commoditized to nothing, or at best you buy low overnight and hopefully clear 5-10% during peak times. It’s not worth putting the time into it anymore. Tripling your money? Enjoy it while you can but if something has somehow managed to elude the fell gaze of the farmers up until now, just don’t expect it to last forever.
The bots and gold farmers are pretty much running rampant and AN have been applying sticking plasters (anti-farming code and those special recipes to soak up mats) to address symptoms, without tackling a cure. At this stage I hope their dream of a functioning economy are pulled off, but I’m not hopeful.
Gems have a fixed cash value (which is a rip-off in the UK – I digress) and are going to become even more widely available once the Gem Cards roll out.
Supply and demand can’t really work when the supply is potentially limitless. More and more gems will enter the system, and the value of gold will drop relative to gems (which we’re seeing – it costs more gold to buy the same amount of gems that it did a month ago) and may even stabilize relative to the black market, or close enough to make it not worth the trouble to buy farmed gold (I do hope so).
If that happens it’ll be pretty impressive and prove AN haven’t fudged the economy. NB I’m not saying it will definitely happen, but as more gold enters the economy it’s going to become less valuable compared to gems, which have a fixed real money price/value.
