TopDoc

Those bids may be non-taxable, but I have a feeling some of you flippers haven't been properly reporting your capital gains. Have you been tracking your cost basis?

Fourspeed, Regarding low level recipes, I think you're making a bad assumption. You're assuming those are actually produced by low level players. In fact they're produced by SS/Fire brutes rolling on the low level bronze table, at least most of the ones that are in demand. And they aren't very rare anymore. Steadfast Protection: Res/Def and KB Protection both used to be worth something. Last I checked, one is vendor trash. In fact a fair number of low level recipes used to be worth 5-10M. Now there are very few. Bronze recipes are so cheap in AE that any dip in supply will be quickly covered, no matter what the level. Pretty soon farmers will be switching more to Gold rolls, because Bronze is so oversupplied.

Granted there aren't necessarily many low level bronze recipes on the market. You may have a hard time finding a Bonesnap if you want one. But that's just because people aren't bidding enough to get other people to list recipes, and so many recipes drop that it's hard to do the right thing with every one. There aren't enough transaction slots for lowbies to bid on everything they need, and sell everything other people want.

But I think you're absolutely right about reduced demand for lower level IOs. You don't need any Enhancements if you're being PL'd to 50. And even if you're playing, the increased speed means less time or need for IOs at lower levels. You can only put in a fairly small number of bids, and you virtually outlevel the stuff you buy. Bid on a level 18 Bonesnap: Acc/Dam when you're level 15, and you may get it when you hit 20, at which point you'd want a 23 instead.

Salvage will only stay high as long as people think it is better than recipes in AE. The day Platinum becomes better Inf/ticket than bronze rolls is the day Platinum prices crash. Part of my new farm is an analysis on how to effectively spend your tickets. I haven't started on it yet, but I expect to see a few surprises. Say I earn 9,999 tickets in 20 minutes. I can trade that in for 124 pieces of specific Uncommon Salvage. If some piece is selling for 150-250k and a flipper has enough outstanding bids at 150k, I can make over 18M Inf. Maybe that's better than Bronze rolls, maybe not.

With /auctionhouse, it becomes REAL easy to sell massive amounts of Common Salvage while standing at the ticket vendor, as long as there are outstanding bids. If there are several pieces of Common Salvage in the same category (say low level tech), then that becomes a good way to use tickets. Convert 9999 tockets to 1249 random pieces of Low Tech Salvage, scrap the half that is junk, sell the other half. Say 624 pieces at 50k each is 31M Inf. Consider this fair warning to all of you Salvage flippers.

I agree that changing demographics could be very disruptive to the Market, but I doubt that it will be. Given the emphasis on microtransactions, I'm guessing F2P and Premium players will be able to do most everything VIP players do if they pay for it. That means at least some F2P and Premium players will be generating and using purples, which means they're the same as VIP players for this analysis. Those F2P and Premium players who can't generate or use purples won't really affect this. The only problem would be if they can do one but not the other. If they can generate but not use purples, prices may drop big time. If they can use but not generate purples, that's just one more thing driving prices up.

Personally I'm looking forward to massive multiboxing. I got my old computer shortly before CoH was released in 2004, and I just replaced it this past Christmas. I may be able to run 8 accounts on my new machine. That's an entire Fire/Rad SuperTeam. If F2P players can get recipe drops, then this will likely increase farming rates and therefore purple production. We'll see.

eryq2, you may not want to buy purples at their current prices, but some people do. Prices are still going up, and the purples aren't sitting around gathering dust on the shelves.

Future trends in the Purple market

Where will things be one month from now? One year from now? This is a market analysis based on current trends and various assumptions.

The game is heading to more and more powerful level 50 characters. The Alpha Incarnate slot started it all with a +1 Level Shift, which made ALL level 50 content easier. Alpha Nerve and Cardiac boosts increase Defense and Damage Resistance respectively, making it easier to soft cap characters for Defense or Resistance. Alpha Cardiac reduces downtime by reducing END usage, while some Musculature boosts increase END Mod for Stamina and similar powers. Alpha Spiritual similarly increases Healing (including Regen) and Recharge (for healing powers). Whatever holes there are in your build can be filled with Incarnate slots one way or another. If you don't have any holes, you can always go Musculature for more Damage.

Add on the four new Incarnate slots and it becomes sick, particularly the Destiny slots. Stackable Barrier means more Defense and Resistance for everyone. Stackable Ageless means more END, Recharge, and usually Recovery for everyone. Stackable Clarion means status protection for squishies. Stackable Rebirth means healing plus either HP or Regen for everyone. If that's not enough, the Lore pets include untouchable buffing pets, though those aren't available all the time. The other Lore pets mean more damage. The Judgement slot gives a huge crashless nuke that a full team of 8 Incarnates can use every 15 seconds, which means on every spawn. The Interface buffs are pretty small, but stacked Resistance and Regen debuffs make it just a bit easier to take down AVs and other hard targets.

More Incarnate slots and trials are coming, which will likely make characters even more powerful. While the RPers on Virtue would probably like 5 Incarnate slots of controllable customizable non-combat pets, I have a feeling the slots will be for more practical things. The end result is that fully Incarnated characters will do more damage than pre-Incarnate characters could.

If people spend more time playing their level 50 chars (doing Incarnate trials, Weekly Strike Targets, and level 50 TFs for Alpha components), they are more likely to want to improve their characters other ways. That means more IO loaded and cookie cutter builds with high damage, recharge, and Defense. As the general population of IO loaded Incarnates increases, the trials and even TFs will become easier and faster. This is a circle that feeds on itself and just keeps growing. If you haven't done an ITF in a while, try it with a full team of Incarnates. You'll see what I mean.

One problem with the Incarnate Trials is you don't defeat lots of mobs. In the LAM most teams defeat all of the outside mobs and all of the courtyard mobs. Then there's the turrets (EBs that give boss rewards). After that is the AV robot, 20 glowies, and Marauder. The only mobs defeated in the last 2 steps are those caught in the splash, and that's a big part of the trial. If you get the doors fast with Molecular Acid, sometimes it's hard to defeat the 30 mobs you need to show superiority over the IDF. That's a mere 30 mobs for 2 full teams in 10 minutes! The BAF is similar. There are 40 mobs at the start, that's fine. There are 5 minutes of the prisoners in the middle, though the spawns are small and they run a lot. And the rest of the time you're beating on AVs and a few bosses on the side. On top of that, the mobs are very high level in both trials. You spend more time defeating them than if you were fighting level 50 mobs, but the drop chances are the same. I'm guessing the drop rate of recipes and such in those trials is around 1/10 of normal level 50 content, for an equivalent amount of time.

I wrote most of this article before Keyes came out, but I see Keyes is more of the same. Beat up a few mobs early, beat up a few mobs on the reactors, beat up just EBs to get one type of power cell, but you can sneak around and avoid mobs for the other power cells, then the big AV fight. Total drops are trivial compared to a steamroll ITF or LGTF.

The Cathedral of Pain is an extreme example of this sort of thing, that hopefully the Devs will never repeat. The individual mobs give no rewards at all. No XP, Inf, Prestige, Salvage, or Recipes. If you succeed, then there's a small reward at the end. If it didn't include Incarnate Salvage, it would be as unused as the Shadow Shard.

I'm expecting the trend of hard trials to continue, though hopefully none will be as bad as the CoP. You don't make an interesting trial by having people slaughter a huge number of easy mobs. You use hard targets to make it a challenge, some REALLY hard targets that require teamwork, make the characters run around and jump through the right hoops, add in unresistable auto-kill damage because otherwise characters may never die, etc. I would be very surprised to see an Incarnate trial that involved defeating 1000+ even level mobs. Future trials will probably have even tougher mobs requiring lots of earlier Incarnate buffs.

With level 50 chars becoming more powerful, PLing will never leave AE. If you can fight +4/x8 mobs without a problem, then fighting 2 spawns of them at a time means faster XP, and AE lets you do that and more. Walk into an Ambush farm and you're at the agro cap surrounded by a huge number of mobs till you hit the half ticket softcap. Then click a glowie to finish the mish and get the rest of your tickets, rinse and repeat. PLing may not reach the same speed as during the recent Great Monkey Burn, but it will increase with each incremental increase in power.

The game is 7 years old. People know what works and what doesn't. A PUG STF isn't a losing bet these days. The average number of Veteran badges in a team is always going up, though granted going Free-To-Play may change that significantly if there is a massive influx of new people. The leveling rate from normal play is probably higher than it has ever been, and still increasing.

We have already seen the results of these trends. The rate of people hitting 50 is probably higher than it has ever been, excluding exploits. Ticket production is probably at a high as well, and still rising. The demand for IOs is on the rise, and the increase in ticket production is easily keeping pace. That's why Uncommon and some Rare IO recipe prices are still dropping. With all the SS/Fire Brutes farming and PLing, there are a lot of tickets. And I'll be publishing information soon that will let ANYONE farm tickets almost as fast, without needing expensive IOs or even a level 50 character.

Now comes the big problem. Purple production is declining, but demand is still growing. Production is down because 50s are spending more time in low-drop Incarnate Trials. Granted people may be playing their level 50 chars more due to the trials, they probably aren't playing them 10 times as much to make up for the 1/10 drop rate in trials. Demand is up because 50s want them more due to the Incarnate trials, and there are more 50s than ever.

You can now buy Purple and PvP recipes via Empyrean Merits. This may reduce the price of the highest priced ones (like Glad Armor: +3% Def) in the coming months, but that's about it. Only stupid people buy Crushing Impact IOs with Reward Merits, only stupid people buy Positron's Blast IOs with Alignment Merits, and only stupid people will buy purples with Empyrean Merits. At least at their current prices.

In one year, what will things look like? Purples will be more expensive than they are now. People will complain even more, because the average player doing Incarnate trials will be earning less than before the trials. Also farmers will be making more than ever before, because of the increased damage dealing capabilities of Incarnates. Maybe you can earn 3 million Inf/hour doing Incarnate trials, but that's a drop in the bucket when Apocalypse IOs cost a billion each. Meanwhile farmers are earning 3 million Inf/minute. You will no longer be able to just "PLAY MOAR" to earn them, since most large groups will be doing low drop rate Incarnate Trials. Only the ultra rich (Ebil Marketeers and Farmers) will be able to buy them on the Market.

Discuss.

Wah! I need all of the Keyes badges! Help me Leo, Turg, Max, Destiny.

I wonder if I have Wabbit Season on Victory...

Yep, I expect those 2B prices on Glad Armor uniques to drop. I was thinking about selling the only one I had before i20.5, but decided I didn't really need the inf.

Anonymoose nailed it. Find your best AE ticket farmer and use tickets to generate piles of low level Common Salvage. Store it in a few Salvage Storage bins in your base, then have your crafter grab and craft as needed in the base, buying recipes from the crafting table. When you're done with the low level IOs, sell the remaining Salvage, and repeat for mid level. It's only at high level that the Salvage may be faster to buy on the Market, and the recipes may be expensive enough that you'd want to consider buying them on the Market as well.

If you don't have a fast AE ticket farmer, ask me in a week or so. I'll probably be posting a silly fast, easy, and cheap ticket farmer.

This is all from memory, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong or things have changed.

Actually the results of my farming analysis back in the day was that about half of the Inf earned in total was from purples. I believe purples have increased in price significantly since then, so purples probably account for 65-75% of Inf earned by farming. Obviously that means you should never farm mobs that don't drop purples.

I did an analysis of tickets, and posted an article long ago titled "Silver is for Suckers". Silver recipes are a combination of uncommon mob drops and mission complete drops. Most of the mission complete drops are garbage. Bronze drops have a moderately high chance of being silver, and you only get uncommon mob drop silvers. By buying only Bronze recipes, you get about the same number of Silver uncommon mob drop recipes as you would if you just bought Silver, but you also get a large number of Bronze drops. All of those Bronze drops are worth far more than the mission complete Silvers. The only drawback of this is that you can end up with a large number of moderately valuable recipes. You may spend more time that it is really worth crafting and selling them.

You can play games with Salvage to make large profits, but it hurts non-filthy-rich people so I won't say how.

PvP IO farming is definitely a good way to make a huge amount of Inf, if past performance is any indication of future returns. I've been doing it for quite a while with my 2 accts. Near the end of the last AE exploit (the Great Monkey Burn), I sold off most of my stock. I'm now sitting on 44B in cash in the Market, and that's after spending a lot. I've since retired from marketeering and non-PvP-IO farming. Unfortunately there are problems with PvP IO farming including the initial investment, uncertain results, and the uncertain market.

You need to find out how to do it, then either respec or level up chars from scratch, and then see if you can even do it. If you have a flakey ISP, so sorry. I moved off Freedom due to the farm crashers, so good luck if you're there. The Devs have done a number of changes designed to make farming PvP IOs more difficult, so it's a cat and mouse game. There are still plenty of mice farmers getting their cheese, but you may need to restart or give up each time things change. With 2 accts you'll probably get around 1 per day on average. If it's a Glad Armor: +3% Def, that's 2B. Or perhaps you'll want to keep that. If it's a Fury of the Gladiator or Javelin Volley, that's chump change. In short, it can take a while to begin production, it can be hard to maintain production, and there is a huge variance in production.

Who are you selling to? Some PvP IOs are great for PvE, so those will always have a big market. (Of course those are the ones you generally keep for yourself.) But most PvP IOs are bought mainly by PvPers. The Devs don't have a great track record on attracting or holding PvPers. One of these days someone will discover another AE exploit, PvPers will exploit it massively for a while, and PvP IO prices will go back up to their silly levels. Or maybe the Devs will make a change that will draw in lots more PvPers. But until then, most PvP IO prices will be just meh compared to what people remember. I have 4 Glad Jav Procs sitting in the Market listed for nearly 2B, because that's how much they were worth a while ago. Do you want to sell now, or wait for the next bull market? How well can you predict the Market? PvP IOs are not a steady income like most other forms of farming.

I used to do a little PvP a while ago. A long while ago actually, I think before the Update 13 changes. Someone (PERC?) made up a multi-server competition for lowbies. The event was a free for all, max level 5 I think. Being a number cruncher, I looked across all the ATs and power sets to figure out the most effective character possible at that level. I did a little brainstorming to figure out how the free for all would go, how long people would live, whether or not AoEs would be worthwhile, how fast people would be moving, etc. There were a lot of things to take into account, but I eventually ended up with an Arch/MM Blaster named Wabbit Season. Arch has a bonus to Accuracy which is great for low level PvP. My attack chain was Snap Shot, Aimed Shot, Snap Shot, Subdual, repeat. They all have an 80 foot range, so I could attack anyone getting near me. No one had status protection, so the Immob in Subdual prevented melee types from attacking me at all. Blasters can use their low level attacks while mezzed, and that's all I used. In any mob I targeted people low in HP, and I usually finished them off. I went after squishies rather than melee types who may have had minor Resistance or Defense.

The thing that put me over the top was loading up with +3 SOs. I got them by farming an AV. I think it was a level 47 AV farmed by a level 50 char with level 10 sidekicks to get the level 8 SOs, or something like that. I only had a total of 7 slots to play with, one in each of the 3 powers plus 4 for leveling up, but you can do a lot with that. I think the Arch attacks both had a Recharge SO, so my attack chain was constant. Most Blasters that level are lucky to attack 50% of the time. All attacks had an Accuracy SO, so I was far more accurate than most of the other people involved. Your average person with a single Accuracy TO had a 54% chance to hit, while my Archery attacks were 80%. And I think I had a couple Damage SOs as well in Snap Shot because I used it most often. I was doing around 3 times as much damage as a TO slotted Energy/Energy Blaster. Death is Nature's way of refilling your END bar, so no need for END reduction. I didn't avoid death because I needed the END. I ate dirt just like any other Blaster when people teamed up on me. But I gave far, far more than I received. I played the same build on serveral servers, using a Respec to remove the SOs when done and the Market to transfer them.

The end result was that I came out on top, often by a whole lot. Enough that people accused me of bringing in friends to be my targets, or using Inspirations (which were against the rules). But the truth is that the right powers, Enhancements, and tactics can make a HUGE difference at low levels.

So yes, low level SOs can be VERY effective. But as others have said, they are usually outleveled and discarded very fast.

A friend and I used to double dual-box a redside Respecathon. That's 4 chars (2 each) doing all 3 Respecs. That was 90 merits in about 45 minutes. The merits have gone down a bit, but it's still the best merit/minute activity I know of. If you have enough chars, you can do 2 or more sets per night.

Add me if there's room, TopDoc, 50 Fire/Rad Corr

Supposedly, level does not affect the chance that mobs will drop things as long as they're -3 or higher. It does affect the level of things dropped though. Farming a level 49 mission means the mobs are usually half 49 and half 50, so the recipes you get will be half 49 and half 50. Farming anything higher means all level 50 recipes. Many level 49 recipes sell for significantly less than level 50, and they move slower in the Market. The values of purples is higher than the value of all other income combined (recipes, Salvage, Enhancements, and Inf from defeats), and it seems that's what you're interested in since you keep those, so your best option is farming at -1 or +0. I've found that farming -1 mobs isn't significantly faster, since my farming chars have enough Accuracy to hit up to +2 mobs 95% of the time, and the extra 11% damage doesn't make enough of a difference. So when farming for drops, I go for +0.

I noticed something that could be related a little while ago, I think last weekend. Psychic Clock bosses use their ranged attacks in melee now. I am absolutely positive this is new behavior. Previously I could herd them up and the bosses would shift to pounding on me (Smashing damage only). Now they keep firing those Psi (ranged) attacks even when they're standing right next to me.

Check out the Rare Recipe Weight Project. According to the table built up so far HERE, The Gaussian: Rech/End has a fairly low weight. Probably 2 out of 5. And as others have said, many Rech/End IOs are vendor fodder.

I haven't seen anything like this yet, but it's probably only a matter of time...

THE FOLLOWING IS ONLY A SAMPLE, AND IS NOT INTENDED FOR REAL USE!

Hello friend. Want to earn billions of Inf? It's easy using the new Gleemail system. Here's how it works. Send 1 Million Inf via Gleemail to the top global name below. Then remove the top name, add your name to the bottom, and forward this on to all of your global friends. They need to be friends that will accept your email, or this won't work! Then sit back and relax. If you have good friends, they'll pass the email on. Soon, you'll be getting Gleemails for a million Inf. Since the system limits you to 20 Gleemails with attachments, you'll want to log in often to collect all of your Inf! You'll earn enough to give up your Day Job. But you have to follow the instructions above exactly!

@Smurphy
@Boltcutter
@Nethergoat
@Mrs. TopDoc
@TopToc

Yep, character level doesn't matter, just roll on the 10-14 level range.

I'd say whole account, now that you can transfer stuff around easily via email.