Help With Money Problems.

Morrzan - Sanctuary wrote: »

Mat shops never work too well IMO. I made millions off buying Mirage Celestones, then setting up Catshop selling them near East Arch Elder selling them for 1-2k higher than i bought. They sell quick, FAST MONEY XDDD

Sanctam - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Grind mobs and sell DQ. Don't waste money on packs. No risk there.

Morrzan - Sanctuary wrote: »

DQ=Dragon Quest
Pretty much any mob will drop them. If it says "required for Dragon Quest: ____" then it is a DQ item. Selling these to the merchant will also give Dragon Points, which can be traded for useful items.

DemansPsy - Lost City wrote: »

if u dont care about the dragon points, ya better to sell in a catshop, u can sell for 2-3x what the item NPCs for, also, best way to make coin is to merch items, buy low, sell high, and the only items that have any reasonable amount of risk to them r HH mats

ThanosQRt - Dreamweaver wrote: »

mats that drop from bosses in Hwilight Hemple (also known as Toly Tall)

ThanosQRt - Dreamweaver wrote: »

mats that drop from bosses in Hwilight Hemple (also known as Toly Tall)

_Hysteria_ - Dreamweaver wrote: »

i farm money and buy packs, it works for me, but alot goes into it, at lvl 60 u can farm the high mats, even so, it takes a while to get a good route down, im also lucky cuz a catshop i sell to buys alot higher than the rest around it, however, if u dont find a good route or a worthwhile sell price it more or less makes it more time consuming than it is useful. also i too have recently gotten into the buy/sell mirages in the last week or so and it makes great income as well, as does the perfect stone idea. just set up a buy/sell shop according to what goes hot on your server. mirages are a good place to start since you know people are gonna need them whether its for cube or refine or what have you.

ThunderSoul - Lost City wrote: »

For many items you should consider basing the prices off the current gold trading rate too.

for example, I'm vending Source of Force and Phoenix feathers at the moment. I get an average of 27 per pack at 25 silver per pack or 108 per gold. On my server the current gold trading rate is 920,000 coin per gold so 920,000/108 = 8519 coin per SoF/PF. That is my current cost. I've been selling them at 11K each (which is a 22.5% markup) for a profit of 2481 coin each. I usually choose to mark up my prices about 20% because I deal mainly with larger quantities and I get a reputation for being cheeaper than the others.

Anyway, suppose gold drops to 800,000 coins per I will calculate a new base price. 800000/108 = 7408. 7408 * 22.5% = 9074 each SoF/PH. I've noticed a lot of merchants get greedy and base their prices off what what they paid for them and erroniously think that they are losing money if they sell them lower than their original minimum price. But as gold value drops it gets cheaper for others to merchant the same items and it's easier to undercut those greedy people's prices. That's why I base all my prices off the value of current gold trading prices for items bought and sold from the cash shop.

If you pay attention to the market and other events you can really capitalize off of it. For instance, I know that the battle pet packs are going off sale after server maintenence on wednesday morning. Not only does that mean the prices of the packs will double but so will the value of my stock will increase. If I choose to be patient I can make a 30-40% profit several weeks after the sale and after most other SoF/PF merchants sold their stocks.

This expample only works best when buying large quantity of packs because the more you buy the better chances you will achieve the peak ratio of 26.5 -27.5 SoF/PF per pack. 8 mil converted to gold (AH takes 5% off the top for a fee which must be taken into account when calculating 'wholesale or retail' prices) is not enough to really achieve that ratio. chances are that you can get a ratio as low as 22 per pack to has high as 31 per pack. Only way to make a decent profit from a small quantity purchase is to get them now and wait until after the sale to sell them.

PvE farmed items such as DQ, herbs, mats, TT etc. require a lot more effort to determine prices according to market value. The more competition with certain items the harder it is to make a profit. Everyone has their own little niche when it comes to dealing with these items to merchant. My philosophy involves the 'Walmart strategy' which is to base my profit off of the sheer volume of consumable items that others constantly need.

Similarly, I'll go to a place like Snowy Village where the people so frost runs and check out all the catshops to see what they sell and for how much. Most of them sell Teles, Crab meat, MP pots, and hypers - all can be made from tokens. I return to Arch to the token vendors and find the cheapest tokens available and calculate what the base price (my cost) is to make make those 4 items from tokens. Most likely it will be cheaper than what those catchops in snowy village are selling them for. I buy as many tokens as I can and make as many as those 4 items as I can with them. I choose hypers for instance, takes 8 tokens per hyper and people like to use 5 hypers for 12x exp in frost. That's 40 tokens for 5 hypers. I find a catshop in west arch selling tokens for 10199 each. That's about 81.6K per hyper. Most catshops were selling hypers for 90K, 88K etc each. I sold mine for 84-85K each. Most people in Snowy Village were selling teles for 10.5 -11K each. If tokens are 10199 each it cost 9179 coins to make each token. I then sell for 9999 each. Same with the HP/MP pots. The profit is just a couple K per hyper and less than 1K per tele but it really adds up after a week or so. I had trouble keeping my items in stock. I was making an average of 300K to 600K a day by not even paying attention. doesn't seem like much but it added up enough to work on bigger and better things.

Needless to say my business was good. I also paid close attention to the best time of day when business is good on weekdays and week ends. Also I frequently checked out the prices of other catshops. I didn't put my prices in the catshop description. That just makes it easier for other catshops to see your price from far away and ajust their prices.
Once people know you are selling for less than other catshops word of mouth is enough to keep your business going. Heck I even had people PMing me for 2 weeks after ai moved on looking for my hypers and teles. I had to stop what I was doing and made the items from tokens and sold them. Most interesting was an emergency in a frost run. A barb's hyper ran out and the cleric needed MP pots. They temporarily booted a squad member and invited me to make the delivery in Frost. I left and they brought the other member back in. That's not only a result of good reputation as a merchant going out of my way to make pots and hypers and going into frost builds good reputation.

This is a long post but I wanted to share some of my money making strategy.

CeliaZ - Sanctuary wrote: »

Check out mobs that drop Leather or Reinforced leather, like foxwings (54 ones and 60 ones), they sell for about 10-15k + you get good DQ drops from them.

Happy_Killer - Harshlands wrote: »

You're a level 54 Assassin, who has 8 mil, and is asking for money advice?
.......I feel like I'm about to vomit.


Thank you for proving my point. Your IQ apparently is equal to your understanding of the game outside the cash shop.

As far as mirages go, I wouldn't. Too many TW junkies have too many to sell off anyway. Too much competition.

I use Born_Free's map for grinding. Who knows, you may actually LEARN something out there.

http://baaddogx2.deviantart.com/#/d31cub3