Make Gold in Diablo 3

I just finished up another HubPages article on how to make gold playing Diablo 3.  For many of you who are experts by now, this article won't be anything mind blowing, but for anyone who is just getting started at trying to make a buck playing Diablo 3, this is a great place to start.

Make Gold in Diablo 3

To give you guys a quick update, things have been slowing down a lot for me in Diablo.  I traveled last week for work and my laptop can't load Diablo, so I missed a few days of playing the auction houses.  When I got home, I tried to knock out a few rounds of auctions and noticed that items were selling extremely slowly (or not at all).  I think my markets are starting to see the results of thousands and thousands of players quitting the game because they are bored.

My amulet that I posted about last week hasn't sold yet.  I've had it up a few times for pretty high amounts (250 million, 225 million) and recently for 100 million bid.  I may have to bite the bullet a bit and sell it for a reasonable price, buuuuuuuut.....

Right now, Blizzard is implementing a large patch.  The rumor is that it's a PVP patch...meaning that a ton of players are going to be coming back to the game.  I honestly think my amulet is going to be a hot item for players looking to do some PVP, so I'm hopeful that I'll be able to find a buyer.  Also, once this patch is released the auction house should liven back up.  

Keep a close eye on the markets and find out what stats people are going to want for PVP.  These items will sell for stupid high amounts over the next week while players are trying to become the best at PVP.  I'd suggest joining Markco's Diablo 3 Gold Secrets forums and reading up from experts who have made thousands of dollars playing Diablo 3.  I just renewed my subscription and am looking forward to reading what everyone has to say about the new patch!

Awesome Amulet Drop in Act 1 Inferno

Over the weekend, I spent one of my mornings playing the game and learning how to farm Act 1 Inferno efficiently.  Basically, I followed the advice of the guys from "Try Hard" on YouTube.  I'll add the video to the end of this post. 

My Barb is geared out to the point of being able to kill things fairly easily in Inferno Act 1 but I haven't progressed any further than that.  I have a magic find set that gets me over 200% MF with the Nephelam Valor buff, so I was hoping to get a decent drop over the weekend to build up my stash.

Boy did I ever.

By my third or fourth run, I hadn't found anything worth putting up on the AH.  I was getting a little discouraged...when I saw that I had an amulet drop.  I usually wait until the end of the run to identify everything, but I get antsy when I see rings or amulets.  So I cleared the mobs in my area and right clicked the ammy...

Holy #!!~#@~#!

I immediately hopped on to both auction houses and started looking for similar items so that I could price it out.  I couldn't find a single item like it...and immediately started seeing dollar signs. 

I finally found one item that was similar but didn't have any magic find.  It was listed for 300,000,000 gold.  So, I figured what the hell...I'll put it up for 300,000,000 gold and see what happens.  That's over $500 worth of gold if I sold it straight on the GAH at $.25 per million (after fees).  It hasn't sold yet, but we will see.  I've heard that high ticket items tend to take a while to sell, so the name of the game is to be patient.

I also posted this on Markco's Gold Forums and got some great advice on how to go about selling this item and what it might be worth.  The consensus is that it is probably worth over 100,000,000, but might take a while to sell. 

If I could sell this off for a hundred million or two, it would be an awesome way to get some money in the bank and work toward my goals.  Until it does sell, I'll be using my regular strategies to build up my gold and now I'll probably do at least one farming run each morning to try and get some more items like this one.

Gold Find Set

As I've said many times on this blog, there are countless ways of making money in Diablo 3.  For casual players like me, playing the auction house is the most efficient way to use time in the game to make a profit.  An hour a day can turn into millions of gold, which can turn into cash money.

However, as a gamer I also enjoy spending a little time actually playing the game and swinging a badass two handed axe like a giant baseball bat.

I decided to invest in another strategy for making gold that I read about in Markco's Gold Guide.  He suggested a farming run in Hell for players that do not quite have the gear to effectively farm Inferno Act 1.  The probability of finding an item that's really worth selling on either AH in Act III of Hell are slim to none, but with a decent gold find set you can make upwards of 400K per hour killing everything you can find.

The first step was to pick up a high DPS weapon.  I spent about half a million gold on a two hander with close to 1200 DPS.  The important thing is to be able to pretty much one shot as many mobs as possible, which my two hander does nicely in Hell Act III.

Then it was time to start combing the AH for Gold Find Gear.  I went slot by slot and looked at prices for the max gold find (which are extremely high) and then knocked off one or two percentage points from my search and picked up deals that had high Strength (for my Barb) and high gold find.  I'm not concerned about vitality or resist all at this point, I just need to kill fast.

For a few million, I outfitted my Barbarian is Gold Find gear that was not perfect, but pretty close.  Unbuffed, I have 289% GF and 364% with 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor.

GF Without any stacks of Nephalem Valor

GF With 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor

I also equipped my follower (Templar) with gold find gear.  You get a bonus to your gold and magic find from your follower, so if you put together a GF or MF set, make sure you don't forget your follower.  Templars are the best because they can equip a shield, which gives you an extra GF/MF slot.

Here's the build I use normally when farming Act III Hell for gold. 

Now that I have a gold farming set, whenever I have some extra time to play the game I can throw on this gear and run around Act III Hell and kill everything I see.  I've had mobs drop as much as 2,000 gold.  On average, white mobs will drop 200-500 gold a piece. 

Seeing huge amounts of gold drop from mobs is a lot of fun.  It's not the most efficient way to make money playing Diablo 3 and you won't get rich doing it, but it's extremely consistent.  I invest a lot of my capital on bidding on items and I only win about 15% of the items I bid on...which means I tie a lot of gold up in bids.  When my gold balance gets low, farming for gold like a Chinese Gold Farmer is a way for me to spend any extra time I have playing the game and still be helping my bottom line.

Thanks for reading and be on the lookout for a video of one of my Gold Find runs soon!

Finding My Style

Over the weekend I had quite a bit of time to play around in game.  My newly dinged level 60 Barbarian had some mediocre gear for a level 60, so I went ahead and spent some of the gold that I've been earning using my bidding strategy on upgrades.  After all, this is a game and I'm a gaming dork...I enjoy running around killing things.  I got a shiny new two hander with 1200+ DPS and a bunch of 100 Strength, 100 Vitality, + Resist to All gear to help me get through Inferno.  

Inferno is hard.

I can see why the developers didn't think that there would be a Diablo kill on Inferno for a little while.  After I died a few times in Act I Inferno, I switched out my bad ass two hander for a sword and board set that drastically lowered my DPS but allowed me to stay alive for most of Act I.  I didn't have a lot of Magic Find on my gear, but my goal for this weekend was to just enjoy the game and clear some content.  I progressed most of the way through Act I Inferno before I decided to start exploring some other options and get back to playing the AH.

At the time, I had about 5 or 6 million gold from playing the GAH.  My stash and a couple mule characters were full of items that I had won on the AH using my bidding strategy and I was just waiting for my GAH slots to open up to sell them.  I've found enough markets to keep a constant supply of cheap items, which is great...but because of the 10 auction limit I can only sell so many at a time.  This means that any other time I have in the game could be spent farming and making more gold.  To do that, I need a farming set.

I went back to Markco's Gold Secrets Guide (which has been updated a ton since my last read through) and picked up a few farming ideas.  One that sparked my interest was building a gold find set and farming lower level content for gold.  For this, I could definitely use my badass new two hander to mow down mobs and break open things.  I spent some time researching Markco's guide and also the Diablo 3 Gold Secret Forums (which you get 3 months free access to if you purchase Markco's guide for $24), and decided that I could make upwards of 500K gold in about 45 minutes if I built a gold find set.

Half an hour and a few million gold later, I had a set that gave me over 300% GF with the Nephalem Valor buff.   I'll write up a post soon about my Chinese gold farming imitation.

I also would like to be able to farm Inferno runs in between gold find runs.  I'm going to start building a Magic Find set that I will be able to use in Inferno Act 1 and quickly clear the content.  This will take a little while as the items with Magic Find, Resist to All, 100 Vitality, and 100 Strength cost upwards of a few million gold a piece.  The plan is to keep an eye out for deals on the AH and big on some bad ass items to build my set and get it for cheap.

I'm at a bit of a crossroads in my making money in Diablo 3 adventure.  I haven't made a whole lot yet as I've spent a lot of the gold that I've made by playing the GAH on buying gear upgrades and investing in my main to be able to farm and craft to make more gold.  Once I finish out my Inferno Act I MF set, I can really see myself starting to rake in the gold and then be able to start selling on the RMAH.  I want to build up to around 10 million gold and then anything above that will be sold or invested in items to sell.

This morning's post is a little longer than my normal ones, but there are just soooo many options at this point that it makes my head spin.  Thank you for reading and if you have any suggestions, comments, or questions feel free to leave a comment here or e-mail me at pbody5205@gmail.com.  I'm also on Twitter @KKrizan.  Cheers!

Make Money by Selling Set Items and Legendary Items

 

I just posted a new guide on my HubPages account about making money and gold selling set items and legendary items.  I've found a couple good arbitrage opportunities where I've made as much as $6 per million gold by buying set items on the gold auction house and selling them on the RMAH.  I'm working on finding a balance between flipping items on the gold auction house and investing some of my profits in items that will sell on the RMAH and also gearing up my Barbarian to be able to farm gold/rares.  Check out the new guide below and start making some cash!

Make Money in Diablo 3 Selling Legendary and Set Items

Weekend Warriors

The weekends are for buying.  I spent a lot of gold picking up cheap items that are going to sit in my stash until mid week when the prices level off and I can sell them for their "normal" prices.  I did however find one awesome deal that I flipped for over a million gold.

One of my markets is belts with Str, Vit, and Resist to All.  I was scanning the AH and came across this deal at the top of the GAH search page.  I was surprised that it was still there when I clicked buyout.  At first I thought I should just keep the belt for my Barb, but when I looked at the prices for similar stats I wanted to get it up on the AH and see if I could flip it for over a mill.

I put it up for 1,250,000 and it sold within twenty minutes for a cool 1 million profit.  That is why I love the weekends - players who don't know much about the AH find items and throw them up for any amount without doing research.  For players like you and me who know our markets, we can spot deals like this a mile away and capitalize on them for huge profit margins.  

I spent a lot of time this weekend reading the forums over at Diablo 3 Gold Secrets and learning about how other players are having success not only flipping items on the GAH like I am, but buying items on the GAH and selling them on the Real Money Auction House for cash.  I highly recommend that you go check out Markco's gold guide there and join the community of players who are serious about making money playing Diablo 3.  It's a literal gold mine of information.

Have a good week everyone and don't forget to put in some bids tomorrow for the server reset! 

Bidding Strategy Video

Instead of just writing about my experience making money playing Diablo 3, I wanted to show you guys one of my auction house strategies that makes me millions of gold through a video!  This is my first effort on putting together an instruction video but it won't be the last!  Check it out below.

Bidding Strategy Guide

I just put together a guide on HubPages for a bidding strategy that will allow you to make some decent money playing Diablo 3.  As stated in my short guide - understanding the gold auction house is the first step to understanding how to make money playing Diablo 3.  Gold has a value and an exchange rate (if you understand how to convert the gold that you've acquired to real money.  This guide will help you in one aspect of the gold auction house - bidding on items.

Make Money in Diablo 3 By Bidding on Items

Check it out and enjoy!

Ding! Level 60!

I've been in the leveling home stretch for about a week and I finally just sat down and pushed through over the weekend.  I have just over 40 hours played on my Barbarian (and a lot of that time has been spent playing the AH).  I probably spent 25 in game to get him leveled to level 60.

I dinged 60 in the middle of Act IV in Hell difficulty.  I didn't spend a whole lot of time farming anything as I leveled, I just concentrated on burning through the content.  Now that I'm level 60, I plan on jumping into Inferno and trying my hand on Act I.  I invested about 4 million gold in gear to hopefully get my resist all up a bit and also tacked on some additional gold find.  Looking at the screenshot above, I feel like I need to invest a few more thousand into dyes to make my Barb look less like a clown and more like a money making cash cow.

I'm still spending the first 20 minutes to half an hour of my in game time combing the AH for deals and bidding on a bunch of items.  I've really learned a few markets and have been trying to expand my horizons a bit, but I seem to keep coming back to the ones that I know.

My bidding strategy seems to work and give me a steady flow of items to flip.  Almost every time that I log in I have won at least 5 items that I can re-list for 100% or more profits.

Well, I'm off to give Inferno Act I a shot.  Wish me luck!

First RMAH Sale!

Finally!  I broke the damn RMAH ice and made a sale.  I was beginning to believe that no one actually bought items on the RMAH and that everyone who I've been talking to about making money in Diablo 3 had been playing a huge joke on me.  Now, I've got a renewed confidence in the game and am going to see how I can expand upon my one GIANT $1.99 sale. 

Here's what sold and how I sold it...

I've been experimenting in several markets on the gold auction house, primarily for Barbarian gear because that's the class that I know well.  I use a bidding strategy to try and scoop up deals for gear that I know will sell quickly if priced right - so I normally have a lot of gold tied up in bids.  What I'm trying to do is build up my gold supply so that occasionally I can invest in an item on the GAH to flip and sell on the RMAH.  I've heard of players getting as much as $20-$30 per million gold spent on the gold auction house in real money when they sell items on the RMAH - but I know that number is drastically dropping.

Right now my stash hovers between 2 and 4 million depending on how many bids I have going.  I'm spending a little bit of my gold investing in a long term strategy (that I'll write about once I figure out if it will actually work) and then I also have been keeping an eye out for items that I think would sell on the RMAH and are in my price range.  That's how I found the item that I sold last night.

I was looking through level 60 Barbarian shoulders with 100+ Vitality, 100+ Strength, and any Resist to All.  I found a low (ish) bid on a really nice piece with 150+ Vit, 140 Strength, 30 Resist All, and 16%  Magic Find.  I scooped it up for about 400K gold.  I tried to sell the item a few times on the RMAH for $10.00, then $5.00...then I dropped it to $1.99, which is where it sold.  Now, I know that the gold to money ratio isn't that great on it, but the concept that I learned from this sale is valuable - items with high quality stats will sell on the RMAH if the price is right. 

I had the money go to my Battle.net balance to avoid the high pay pal fee.  My idea is to build up a little balance in my Battle.net account and then use the money in that account to bid on/buy high cost items that I know will sell and re-sell them to cash out through Pay Pal.  I'd like to find a bunch of small markets where I can flip items like the shoulders and build up a nice little revenue stream.

For now - I'm working on getting to level 60 so that I can start building my farming set.  I'm level 55 and can just about taste it!  Now I've got about 45 minutes before I need to get ready for work - level 56 here I come!

Post Weekend - Bidding Strategy

On Saturday I posted that I was up to 1.4 million gold and was going to try out some new strategies for making money in Diablo 3.  Outside of the hour and a half I spent listening to podcasts from Markco about auction house strategies, I only spent a few hours this weekend playing the game.  Most of my time was spent combing the auction house for deals and learning how to flip items for a profit on the gold auction house.  I still have yet to make a sale on the Real Money Auction House (RMAH), which has been a little frustrating...but I did see a ton of success making gold this weekend.

My current gold balance shows around 400,000, but I have 8 auctions up that if they all sell will net me around 3 million gold.  I also have about 1.5 million tied up in bids - which is where I am seeing the most success in flipping items.  So even if only half of my auctions sell, I'll be up to around 2,000,000 gold and plus whatever gold I am refunded for my bids and the value of the items that I do win when the auctions end.

From my experience over the weekend, I found that bidding is where the biggest profit margins are.  Players that are buying upgrades are not going to bid on items and wait for the auction to end - they will sacrifice a few Vit points (and pay more gold) to be able to get an upgrade right now.  Here's the bidding strategy that I used this weekend to play the GAH.

1. Pick a niche. - I play a Barbarian, so I started looking at level 60 armor for Barbarians.  
2. Find items that you would purchase for your character. - My search criteria included: 100 Vit, 100 Strength, and I tried several other key stats like movement speed, attack speed, and resist all.  I picked one niche (belts) and decided to play in that space until I learned the price points and how to make a profit flipping items there.
3. See what the lowest buy outs for items with your search criteria are. - If you find a belt (or whatever other armor choice you pick) that has 100 vit, 100 main stat, and 40 resist all for a 50,000 gold bid with no buy out, check to see where similar items are priced at with buy outs.  If the lowest buy out for a similar item is 500,000, put in a bid for the item.
4. Bid on lots of items. - The easiest way to track items is to bid on a ton of items.  Once you bid on a item, it will show up under your auctions tab until it expires.  Right now I have 26 items that I've bid on and am following, but as I grow my gold and expand to other markets, I expect to be following hundreds of auctions.
5. Don't overbid. - Set a top price for each item that you are bidding on and stick to it.  You want to be able to sell the items you win for at least 2x the amount you paid for them to make it worth your while (and the auction slot). 

The first step to making money in Diablo 3 is having a handle on the gold auction house.  I feel like I'm getting there and learning, so I'm hoping that my first sale will come soon on the Real Money Auction House.  A huge thank you to the guys over at Diablo 3 Gold Secrets forums for continually posting and helping out guys like me who are struggling a bit!  Keep up the good work.