Organica

I've always skipped Crippling Axe Kick. I didn't like the animation, but I was under the impression that it wasn't that great a power anyway given the animation time. Maybe I was wrong?

And I've always, always, skipped the taunt and Cobra Strike.

Go to Independence Port near the hospital and knock the gates off their hinges. You can do that in Bricks too. If you run a block away and come back, the gates will still be on the ground with new gates on the hinges to knock off. You can amass a large collection of fallen gates if you keep it up.

I've found that running into the gate edge-on is a reliable way to knock it off quickly. ^_^

Also, I keep reading this post as "Better post this before I blow my cookies"... :/

You definitely need cookies to dip in that tea. Or should I say biscuits?

Nice job!

Now let's get away from top-level IOs a bit. I actually tend to IO my toons out mostly with level 28-33 IOs these days. This is because the difference between a level 30 IO and a level 50 IO is actually not that great, but a level 30 IO allows me to exempt down to level 27 and still get the benefits of that IO. level 28 would allow you to exempt to 25 (say, Sister Psyche TF). Level 33 would still work at level 30.

Anyway, when shopping for IOs at the lower levels, using the market tools helps a lot. So as you see above, I'm changing the filter to show stuff for sale only. This is so I can see what's available for me to purchase right now.



Even at the lower levels, Mako's dam/end are plentiful (and likely very cheap). You should never spend much for this IO. It might still be worth crafting though, people will always pay for a crafted IO that they can slot immediately.

Accuracy/damage, on the other hand, is in short to supply. We have at least one at level 33, and at least one at level 36 and I think that's at least one at 38. Then we have some at 48 and 50.

If you can buy the level 33 IO for cheap you can almost certainly craft it and sell it for a profit. There probably aren't many others available (one crafted at level 48 -- I looked). When someone comes along who wants a level 33 or lower Mako's set, they will pay to to get that IO NAO. (And sometimes that's me. )



Mako's damage/recharge is in short supply at lower levels too. Only one at level 35, with 23 people bidding. If you want one at 33 or lower, you're going to have to put in a bid and then wait.



Now we set to bidding only.



No real surprises here. Very few people are bidding on the Mako's damage/endurance, but there are bids on the Mako's damage/recharge at nearly every level. For some reason we have 11 people bidding for a level 35 dam/end and no bids at other levels -- I can't really explain that, except that there are probably lots more available at other levels so people buy them immediately when they bid. (Well, I can explain it a bit, as it's a strange lowball number being sold for repeatedly, so some crafter is working this niche.)

Nobody is bidding on Mako's dam/rech at level 30 or 31, so if that works for you, you can probably bid low.

Anyway I hope some of that was useful.

tl;dr:

Many bids does not necessarily mean there is a high demand.

Several buys in the last 5 for an odd-numbered low price means someone has a bid out for at least 1 large stack, probably to craft or relist higher.

Compare the low bids for recipes versus how high the crafted IO sells. Pay attention to how many other crafted IOs are for sale. Crafted IOs can be sold for a markup pretty reliably; people like not having to craft it themselves.

If you want to sell something for 20 million, and there are a a lot of that item for sale, list well below 20 million, but somewhere above what the next lowest bid might be. Use an odd number.

If there are few others listed for sale, and it's a popular/useful IO, you can list for a relatively high price.

When buying IOs below level 50 or the top level for that set, using the market filters can help you find what's for sale very quickly, or what you can bid on with no competing bids.

As always, buy low, sell high. Leave your bids up and go do something else. For recipes, especially less than level 50 recipes, leave bids up for days or a week or two if needed.

The rest of my examples use Mako's Bite, a set I've made a lot of money on over the last year. Here we have the level 50 dam/end recipe and IO. 51 recipes for sale, so these aren't in short supply. Someone is buying them up for 500,001 influence. This is almost certainly a crafter since they're not worth relisting; there are (probably) too many for sale for you to flip them.

There are 100 crafted IOs for sale. That means your IO is either going to move slowly or move cheaply. They are selling reliably for 5 million, so it's possible to make money buying them at half a million, but it's not your best marketing opportunity. If you don't list them low enough, they'll take forever to sell. List them too low and someone buys them well below that 5 million mark.



Here we have the level 50 mako's dam/recharge recipe and IO. This is a much better seller, as you can see. There are lots of people bidding, but you can still buy up the recipe for 6 million and sell for 15 million (or 100 million if you're lucky. ) Because of the 12.5 million purchase, I suspect someone was listing them at 12.1 million or thereabouts. There are only 19 IOs for sale though (and only the 1 recipe) so you can list pretty close to that 15 million mark and expect it to sell.

Also of note: despite only 1 recipe being listed for sale, all recent sales have been from this morning. This is not a hard-to-come-by set. If you bid on a stack of 10 at 6 million or thereabouts, it will likely fill in a few days.



Mako's quad recipe and IO. For some reason that I'm not able to fathom, quads are sometimes even more valuable than triples and sometimes not very valuable. An Obliteration quad sells for more than double the Obliteration triple, which itself does not come cheap. But Mako's quads are not so expensive, you can buy them for -- well, 650,000 in the above example. But the crafted IO is selling for 10 million, with only 19 for sale.

I probably don't need to explain that one any further.

I thought I'd try to explain, with visual examples, how I interpret the market when I'm buying and selling. Despite all of the advice and threads dedicated to how to use the market to help yourself, it seems to me that the biggest key is knowing how to interpret what you see. I know some marketeers keep graphs and charts (or at least in their head) and know market trends, but I, like probably most of the player base, never do that. However just using the limited information we have in the last five sells, number of sellers and number of bidders, I feel I rarely need to know more than that.

All examples are from hero-side on Sunday morning 2/21/10. Most of this should be obvious to people who market regularly (I think).



I'm going to mostly talk about recipes and IOs, since what I do is buy recipes, craft, and sell the IOs. But here's something I noticed this morning. Do you see multiple bids filling for 1 influence here? The 500 inf bid is actually mine; before I placed that bid, the last 5 bids were all 1 influence.

Now, note that there are 775 people bidding here. Or perhaps I should say 775 bids. That might not be very many people, that could be only 7 people with 10-11 bids in for stacks of 10. Or it could even be one person with all those bids in on different characters on his account.

The most important bit of information here though is that every other bid is less than 500 influence, and most, if not all of them, are for one influence only. This is a prime example of how a high number of bids does not equal huge demand. Iron salvage is plentiful heroside. Someone is simply buying tons of iron salvage for as cheaply as possible, maybe to vendor or maybe for crafting purposes.



My next salvage example is Living Tatoos. I've been suspicious that someone has been manipulating the price of these for a week or more. My reasoning? They've never (in the past) been hugely in demand, and the amount for sale has not, as far as I can tell, gone down much, but the prices have suddenly rocketed upwards.

Although I also have a theory that more people are abusing the AE for powerleveling these days, and when that happened last Summer the prices of rare salvage went down (people bought with AE tickets) and the prices of uncommon salvage shot up (people don't buy with AE tickets).

Anyway the important information we can learn from this picture is that someone bought a Living Tatoo for a million influence, but they've also sold for 22,222 influence within probably the last hour. Put your bid up for 23,000 influence or 26,000 influence and come back in an hour, you'll have your salvage.



Now let's talk recipes and crafted IOs. What we have here is a level 50 Aegis Resist recipe/IO. Aegis is a popular set, and for resist or defense sets, the one that grants only defense or resistance is always popular because your tank, brute, scrapper, etc. wants as much defense or resistance as possible. This is the first IO of the set that they slot.

As you can see the recipe is selling reliably for 8 million. In point of fact, it's selling for 8 million and 8 influence. This is not an example of five different people typing that same odd number, it's an example of one (or maybe two) crafters buying up the recipes to craft and sell (or possibly to flip by relisting the recipe at a higher price).

On the right you see that the crafted IO sells reliably for 15-20 million, so yes, you can make money on these buying them at 8 million. I've done a lot of this actually. Now, it's important to note that there are 95 crafted IOs for sale. Very likely if you list your IO for 20 million, it can sit there for months without selling. But if you list it for 14.1 million it would probably sell quickly. There's a good chance that some are listed at 15.1 million (and in fact, a good chance that one of my toons is listing them at that level). You might try listing them at 15.6 million, since someone here has bought one for just over 15.1 million. The trick is to list them low enough that they sell quickly, but that they still sell for that 18-20 million price. Very likely if you list 10 of them for 15.1 million, most will sell for 18 to 20 million.



Next up we have Decimation damage/recharge at level 40, which is the highest level for this set. Maybe because they don't go to 50, this set is not one of the most popular of ranged damage sets, but it still sells reliably well.

Now a non-savvy market user might look at this and say, "The recipe sells for as much as 3 million, and the crafted IO sells for as little as 1.1 million. There's no reason to buy and craft this recipe." But the important bit of information here is that there are actually only 9 IOs listed, and yet the last 5 sales are within the last 24-36 hours. Also, the recipe has sold for as little as 1.5 million and the crafted IO has sold for as much as 7 million. With so few crafted IOs for sale, you can list at very close to that 7 million mark and expect them to sell, at least within the next several days or a week. Put in a bid for the recipe at 1.5 million (you might be able to buy them even lower if you're patient, there aren't all that many people bidding) and then list the crafted IOs as high as 6.6 million, or 6.1 million.

Remember that a new blaster set is coming out this Spring. Ranged and Targeted AoE IOs will probably go up in price.

Welcome to the club!

Welcome to the club!

There are cut-scenes in newer storyarcs and newer task forces. I think the earliest one you can find is the Frostfire mission in the Hollows, which you can run in your teens. It's a pretty boring cutscene, but it's there, and the mission itself has a unique map and is fun.

Your next chance to experience some good, unique maps, character interaction, and cutscenes are the series of storyarcs in Faultline. This is a newer (revamped) zone, so I'd try that out to see how it feels. You can run those in the very late teens or early tewnties.

Even a few of the older task forces have unique maps for the final mission. The Synapse TF has a large warehouse map with unique rooms at the end. The trials all have unique maps -- Terra Volta Respec Trial, Eden Trial, Abandoned Sewer Trial. The task forces in Striga and Croatoa have unique maps.

The most popular task forces at level 45-50 come with multiple unique maps and sometimes a cutscene. The Imperius Task Force (actually 35-50) is one of the best examples of this in the game, and the cutscene may annoy some but is integral to the story. The Lady Gray Task Force is also mostly unique maps and loads of fun. Pretty much ditto for the Statesmen Task Force, and to a lesser extent, the Kahn Task Force.

But as others have said or hinted at, most of the hero content is at least 5 years old or longer, and is not as well assembled as the newest hero content (Faultline, Striga, Croatoa, Cimemora, Rikti War Zone, newer TFs) or as virtually all of the villain content.

There are cut-scenes in newer storyarcs and newer task forces. I think the earliest one you can find is the Frostfire mission in the Hollows, which you can run in your teens. It's a pretty boring cutscene, but it's there, and the mission itself has a unique map and is fun.

Your next chance to experience some good, unique maps, character interaction, and cutscenes are the series of storyarcs in Faultline. This is a newer (revamped) zone, so I'd try that out to see how it feels. You can run those in the very late teens or early tewnties.

Even a few of the older task forces have unique maps for the final mission. The Synapse TF has a large warehouse map with unique rooms at the end. The trials all have unique maps -- Terra Volta Respec Trial, Eden Trial, Abandoned Sewer Trial. The task forces in Striga and Croatoa have unique maps.

The most popular task forces at level 45-50 come with multiple unique maps and sometimes a cutscene. The Imperius Task Force (actually 35-50) is one of the best examples of this in the game, and the cutscene may annoy some but is integral to the story. The Lady Gray Task Force is also mostly unique maps and loads of fun. Pretty much ditto for the Statesmen Task Force, and to a lesser extent, the Kahn Task Force.

But as others have said or hinted at, most of the hero content is at least 5 years old or longer, and is not as well assembled as the newest hero content (Faultline, Striga, Croatoa, Cimemora, Rikti War Zone, newer TFs) or as virtually all of the villain content.

Well in all fairness I can be a buy it NAO person on occasion. But that's partly because I can afford to be, as long as I'm not doing it all the time. ^_^ And it doesn't bother me to wait a week or two to purchase 10 copies of an IO that I only plan to craft and sell. When I'm buying IOs for my own characters to use I'm sometimes less patient.

For myself, I IO'd a lot of my characters. Then I got 2 billion again, and at the moment I have a 2 billion bid in on the Glad +3% def lottery. Last night I almost bought one off-market for 2.3 billion (I was willing to up that a bit if asked), but the guy suddenly said someone had offered him 4 billion for it. If that's true, that's a pretty amazing deal.

Meanwhile I'm making more influence. I don't have any problem giving out my secrets since they're not that secret and I don't work a single niche. I buy, craft, and sell: level 50 (or top level) damage IOs in stacks of 10, generally working Mako's Bite, Touch of Death, Kinetic Combat, Positron's Blast, Scirrocco's Dervish, Obliteration, Decimation, Devastation, several others but basically any high-end set IO with useful set bonuses, and usually triples, damage/recharge, damage/accuracy, whatever seems likely to sell for a profit to me but is not so rare or uncommon that I can't buy them 10 at a time.

I also buy, craft, and sell: Defense IOs (Luck of the Gambler, Gift of the Ancients, usually Defense or Defense/Endurance), Resist IOs (Aegis, Reactive Armor I think, usually Resist or Resist/Endurance) and various Heal IOs, Miracle, Numina's, Doctored Wounds, especially Heal and Heal/Recharge.

I switch around a lot because I market with a lot of characters and things change, but on nearly all of the above you can buy the level 50 recipe in stacks of 10 for a price millions below what the crafted version will sell for. It may take days or a week or two for your 10 stack bid to fill, but I usually have several different bids in at once, and when one fills I put bids in for the salvage, then craft and put them up for sale. And I may only check the character once a week anyway.

I don't think any of these are very secret niches. Most people who talk of niches I assume are buying special procs, IOs at lower levels, things that aren't the most blatantly obvious. Damage, Defense, Resist and Heal at the top levels seems blatantly obvious to me, but it works well for me.

Bunch of Bronze Roll junk listed (not a Midlevel Crisis character, but):

Crushing Impact acc/dam/end l27 (sold immediately)
Multi-Strike triple, 2 @ l27 listed
Red Fortune def/rech l27 listed
Regen Tissue heal/end l27 listed @ 1 inf
Scirroco's Dervish dam/rech l27 listed @ 1 inf
Smashing Haymaker l27 listed
Smashing Haymaker triple l27 listed
Theft of Essense heal/rech l27 listed
Titanium Coating resistance l27 listed @ 1 inf
Crushing Impact dam/rech l30 (sold immediately)
Crushing Impact dam/end l30 listed
Efficacy Adaptor end mod/end reduct l27 (sold immediately)
Expedient Reinforcements acc/dam l30 (only one listed, no bidders)
Lockdown acc/hold l30 (only one listed, no bidders)

Also have listed:

level 22 Impervium Armor end/res
level 22 kinetic combat dam/acc
level 33 forced feedback +rech

Technically you can run almost any AT without fitness. When I used to play EQ, my shaman had to sit for multiple minutes at a time to regenerate all of her mana -- so that's a viable way to play. I just don't consider it fun. I want my characters to be able to go non-stop, so I build nearly all of them with fitness. ^_^

Some of my scrappers have stamina + inherent recovery power (regen or willpower) + physical perfection. My MA/WP scrappers all have that, and need it.

That's kind of sad really. I've always thought that Defenders didn't really need fitness, but I think I got that impression from my Empathy defenders.

Just this last week I made a sonic/sonic defender, PL'd up to level 22, picked out my powers, avoided fitness... then I did my level 20 costume mission, and it was immediately clear to me that I'd made a big mistake. Granted, I hadn't really IO'd out the character yet, but endurance was going to be an issue regardless of how much reduction I slotted.

Ah well. Now I know. ^_^

I'll always set Hasten on auto if I have it. If I don't have Hasten but have a mez protect clicky, I'll set that. And I've often wished I could auto-set both at once.

Usually when I first make a character I'll set brawl on auto. This is because I don't like to keep brawl on my attack tray (usually have too many other powers there -- even at level 1 I have 1 attack, up to 3 vet attacks, and some sort of minor ranged attack), but in the low levels without a full attack chain it's nice to have brawl going off on occasion. I'll take it off auto as soon as I have a decent attack chain.

Of course, when I'm PLing I'll sometimes set my 2nd account to auto-follow me and auto-fire one attack. I can't really control both accounts at the same time, but that gives me a little extra firepower.

Other than that, I've only ever done this once. On my main character Mouse Police (katana/regen), I found that I didn't use Divine Avalanche often enough, and I also took quite a few of my other attacks, leaving me with a crowded attack tray, so I eventually set DA on auto. This worked pretty well for me. It's occasionally annoying but often quite useful. But even on my broadsword/regen character I avoided doing the same thing with parry.

I would never, ever put Buildup on auto. I want to hit that just before I hit my really big attacks.

Yeah, I've had the same problem. Really annoying.