Step 1: Getting started!
You're now level 4. Grats! Eventually you will want to shoot for level 10, as you cannot email your vast fortune off to any of your other characters until you're level 10, but for now, level 4 is good enough! We reach level 4 because at level 4, you can hold 15 salvage. This is key to our market adventure, so don't try this before level 4. It will make you pull your hair out! Level 3 will get you 8 slots, and soon enough you will have 2 extra to make 10, but come on... its level 4! Plus, you'll need a tiny bit of start up cash.
You have a bit of inf from getting to level 4, and really, this is all you will need to start out. I ended up with 1,517 inf from killing stuff and selling my enhancements that dropped. I don't plan on playing this guy, so I sold my training enhancements. If you simply must keep them or if you slotted them, no biggie!
The goal for this step is to get at least 50,000 inf.
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| If you have 50,000 inf or more on you, skip to STEP 2 |
50,000!!?? Oh my! I've never seen so much money!!
Don't panic! Its not too hard. Here's what we're going to do. Go to the Black Market or Wentworths and start putting your market slots to work!
At this point, you have 4. This is plenty! More is better, but this is perfect for your brand new character!
At this point, you will have to put in a small bit of leg work if you're not sending yourself the 50k. I promise this will be the absolute hardest part, so don't be overly worried about it.
On the left side of the market interface are categories. Click on the bottom one: Salvage. Now expand out the Invention header by clicking on Invention. On the right side you will have a somewhat long list of all of the invention salvage that is available in the game.
Notice how some are white, some are yellow, and some are orange? We're going to start with the white ones. Start clicking through them until you find one where there are 0 bids. I cannot tell you which piece of salvage this will be, so this one's on you, sorry
Generally whites will have the most sales at 1 inf. If you're having no luck, or if you just want to, you can try the uncommons (yellow) and rares (orange). Just remember to stick with the stuff with 0 bids on it! Find one? Great! Now bid 1 on 10 of them ( Bid 1 x10 ). Do this for 4 different pieces of salvage. Get any? Well, maybe you did, maybe you didn't. If you didn't, don't worry! This is a bit like fishing. If you prefer to speed up the process, you can Bid 11 x10 instead of 1. But I find it to be about the same.
Keep doing this, collecting the purchased salvage until you can't hold any more. Feel free to cancel a bid at any time if you're not getting any bites.
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Alternate method: If salvage isn't your thing, you can always open the recipe area, click other and bid 1 on level 50 generic IO recipes. These sell for about 80-100k each, so you will only need to get lucky once  Since you can only carry 1 recipe at a time right now, don't go too crazy with this!
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Alternate method #2: 1. Do the Tutorial and don't use your big inspires. 2. When you Atlas, train and sweep to Wents. By the time you do that you will have a few hundred influence. 3. List the inspires for 5 inf each. Watch them insta-sell for anywhere from 60,000 to 150,000. 5. Profit |
Ok! Back so soon?! Great job! It took me about 50 minutes to get my 50k. Like I said, mailing it would have been MUCH easier.
Moving on!
Step 2: The good stuff!
Ok, now that you have your 50,000 (or more) its time to turn it in to millions!
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Go back to the Market and open up the salvage. Start looking through all of the uncommon (yellow) salvage. Here's the markers you are looking for:|
This will not happen over night! Patience is the key when doing anything with the market! Here's the plan: You're going to buy one kind of salvage. You're going to offer one set price and you're going to sell one kind (the same kind you are bidding on) of salvage at a different set price. |
- Salvage that has about 300-600 available for sale.
- Salvage that has less than 50 bidding on it.
- Salvage that has recently sold for over 10,000. (not necessary, but a plus!)
- Salvage that has all 5 spots as selling today.
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The why
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This part is kind of a guess, so don't worry if you don't hit that perfect salvage the first time!
So start looking for something that matches our markers above.
Once you have your salvage picked out, start by bidding 500 x 10 for all 4 of your market spots.
Why 500? Well, this gives you priority over people bidding 100 or 123 or 11 or 1 and in the end, you're not making a huge dent in your profits.
Now go play the game! This isn't Monopoly! Go arrest bad guys! Go do villainous stuff! GO
PLAY!
Back? Have fun? Great!
How does your market look? Did you buy a lot of the salvage you were bidding on?
Yes? Great! Go to STEP 3
No? Don't worry! Check back tomorrow and see how you did. Some days are slow. Some are busy. Don't get down if it doesn't click immediately!
When you come back the next day, did your bids come through?
Yes! Great! Go to STEP 3
No? Don't worry! Grab what you did buy, vendor it (at a profit, yay!) and try again with a different salvage after canceling all of your current bids.
Step 3: Show me the money!
Now, here is where the risk comes into play. You're about to list your salvage and the fee will make it so if you cancel your sales and vendor the salvage, you'll lose a tiny bit of money. Don't worry. All told, you will only lose 10,000 total and we've already seen how easy it is to get that back!
Post your salvage, all of it, in stacks of 10 with a sell out price of 10,000-15,000. The 10,000 results in more sales, faster. The 15,000 results in more profitable sales. Pick a number and stick with it! I use 15,000. I'd rather make a bit more and do a bit less sales. To each his own!
Now, GO PLAY! Its a game folks! PLAY PLAY PLAY!!
Back? Have fun? Great! How did you do? Die a lot? I have that problem too
Well, how did your sales go?
Sold them all?! Wow! Amazing! Great job! Repeat the process and go to STEP 4
Sold some? Great job! Did you sell enough so that you have a market slot available? Bid up 10 more of those bad boys for every open market slot you have and GO PLAY!
Didn't sell any? No worries! Check back tomorrow!
When you come back tomorrow, did you sell any? Did you sell at least half? Are you happy with the amount you sold?
Here's the part where you need to decide if you want to look into another piece of salvage. If you've sold even one, you've covered your costs. So no worries about vendoring your stock if you decide to pull it.
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For this experiment it took me 4 separate tries to get a “good” salvage. I always sold at least 1 of the salvage I was looking at, and this always covered my listing fees. Even after pulling them all and vendoring them, I had more inf than when I started. If you didn't sell at least half of your stock after 24 hours, I would suggest looking at another piece. We're trying to deal in volume here, and you're only trying to sell 40 of these. If it takes more than a day to sell 20, we've got better things we could be selling! |
Step 4: I got the power!
Now is when you need to start balancing out your salvage storage on your character and the available slots on the market. You always want to have stock on hand ready to be posted. Keeping 20 in your inventory is great for that! So try to find a good balance of sales vs bids.
I try for an even split myself, but it doesn't always work that way.
Step 5: Repeat as necessary.
Once you find a good salvage for you, work it. Work it hard! Check on this character at least when you log in and right before you log out. If this is your only character, make sure you check the market while you're running past it on missions!
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The numbers: If you can sell an average number every day, you will average a certain profit level per week. Below is a list of how many you sell on average in a day and what your profits are if you do: 10 - $910,000 20 - $1,820,000 30 - $2,730,000 40 - $3,640,000 50 - $4,550,000 60 - $5,460,000 70 - $6,370,000 80 - $7,280,000 90 - $8,190,000 100 - $9,100,000 |
You can see that this can turn into a nice little profit machine with very little work from you once you get it up an running. This is NOT how the marketeers make all of their billions. In fact, if you did manage to max out at say 100 a day, you would need a little over 4 years to hit the inf cap on this character if you were doing nothing but this.
This is not meant to get you billions, but it IS meant to get you up and running so you can do other things to make billions! I suggest reading Fury Flechette's guides and journals, Organica's guide to reading the market, as well as Archie's journal about hitting the inf cap in 5 days. They're all extremely informative and will help guide you on your way! This guide will provide you with the small amount of investment capital you will need to get started playing like the big boys (and girls)!
Also, if all else fails, you know that this works for you. You know that you will always have this amount of income coming in as long as you keep it up. If you venture into deeper waters, and bomb horribly (I did! I do! I will!), losing most of your capital, you still have a back up!
Good luck! And HAVE FUN!!!
Brilliant Guide!
Yet a 3rd (and you pointed out a 4th) guide to point to when folks say "making inf is hardddd!!!"
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
Flameboxer Aura LVL 50 SS/Fire Brute
Ice 'Em Aura LVL 50 Ice Tank
Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
Great guide. Be gone, stupid infless lowbies!
Goodbye. Not to the game, but the players. Goodbye. Everyone, remember to have fun. That's all I can say.
(Re-post from this thread: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=239252)
How to: Low level Nest-Egg start up with almost no cost
When I began this guide, I was attempting to get into diet marketeering. I wasn't interested in making billions. Well, to be fair, I was, but I knew myself and I knew that I wouldn't be willing to put in the time needed to make huge money that way.
The method below is perfect for those who want to get a foot in the door at the market. It helps you build a nice steady stream of inf over time, and can be used on any server at any level. There really is no "trick" to it. In fact, the system below is easy enough that both a 9 year old, and a 15 year old have followed it and made it work! This will get you millions, and if you have a few years to kill, BILLIONS!
So I began my journey with Experiment 1b. I made a brand new, level 1 character on Infinity, a server I had no characters on, and got to work. First things first. I had to level him a bit. You get very little in terms of storage at level 1 (salvage, market slots, ect.) and so I needed room to grow.
I ran around Atlas killing things as I normally would. I tend to street sweep a lot in lower levels. I made it to level 4 and visited Ms. Liberty.
At this point I had almost no money. Lucky for me, I have alts who do! We however, will cover what you will need to do to get some money if you don't have some you can send over. I didn't send anything to myself and you won't have to either! (Though I highly recommend it!)