34 Million for an Amulet

I posted about a high quality amulet drop that I got about a month ago on an Act 1 Inferno run.  At the time, I thought that I had found an item worth hundreds of dollars.  Here's a screenshot of my godly amulet.

 

I did quite a bit of research and asked for some pricing help on the Diablo 3 Gold Secrets Forums and found that this amulet was indeed "worth" a lot of money/gold.  For over a month, I tried listing this amulet on the gold auction for anywhere from 100,000,000 gold to 300,000,000 gold.  I never got any bites, so I tried listing it on the RMAH for around $75 a few times.  Still no action.

Finally, I decided to lower my expectations and start listing it for a more reasonable price on the GAH.  I put it up a couple times for a 50,000,000 buy out and a 40,000,000 bid.  When I logged in today, I saw that it had sold!  Someone had placed a bid at the 40,000,000 price point and when the auction closed, I had 34,000,000 waiting for me in my inbox.

I immediately put 10,000,000 up on the RMAH to sell and will be using the rest to flip higher cost items like rings and amulets for bigger profit margins.  I want to have a decent stash of gold for when the new legendary items come out to buy and flip on the RMAH for a profit.

Keeping Inventory

With the Diablo 3 markets slowing down and thousands of players leaving the game every day, it's been difficult to justify spending time in the game playing the auction house.  I've been making a couple million gold a day consistently for the last few weeks and selling off a bit, but I've even had gold that did not sell on the RMAH.  What I'm telling myself now is that the hard work I'm putting in to raise my gold balance and keep in touch with the market will help make me a pile of money when they finally release the PVP patch...which apparently isn't going to be for a while.

Patch 1.0.4 will not have PVP as far as we know.  They just released that they will be addressing legendary items, class mechanics, magic find, and a few other things.  I don't think that this patch will fix the game, but it will bring a few players back to try out the new mechanics.  I'm going to keep a close eye on how Magic Find changes.  That might be a solid market to invest in as more players will want to try out Magic Find after the patch.

For right now, I'm doing my best to always keep 10 auctions up and have as many bids in to keep my inventory of items up there.  Looking for items to buy out and flip is simply not viable for my play style as when I'm playing the game, most other players are sleeping and not farming.  However, I've got a routine down of checking 7-10 different markets for cheap items to bid on every day.  I'm keeping an inventory of 30-50 items to resell at any time and logging in every morning and every evening to put items up.  Right now I'm spending around an hour a day placing bids and auctions (I haven't killed a demon in weeks).

 

For those of you out there trying to make money playing Diablo 3, stay strong and keep plugging away.  It is entirely possible to make extra money in this game over the long run, as long as you continue to adapt to the market.

Auctions Picking Back Up

As I'm sure that you've heard, Diablo 3 is broken.  Players are quitting the game left and right, which has made it difficult for people like me to make any kind of consistent money playing Diablo 3.  A smaller player pool means less players spending money on items.  If you look in the Diablo 3 "Blog-o-sphere" you'll find several "I'm quitting this game" posts on blogs and blogs that haven't been updated in weeks or months.  I've admittedly slowed down on my posts as I've been a little discouraged, but I've learned a few things this week that have renewed my making money vigor.

• Fewer players playing the game means fewer players farming high level content

I've noticed that prices in many of the markets that I check on a daily basis are either staying strong or even increasing.  Quality items are starting to become scarce as there are not as many people farming content and finding these items, but there are still players who want to purchase upgrades.  There are also less players utilizing a bidding strategy, meaning that I'm picking up items for less than 10K and selling them for well over 100K consistently.

• Players are not buying elite items, but they are willing to spend a few million for an upgrade

I still haven't sold my bad ass amulet that I keep listing for around 100 million.  I think that I'm going to save it for the PVP patch, where it might be worth a lot due to the high vitality and resist to all (if resist to all even factors in to PVP).  Anyway, now that I have a little more gold to play with, I'm finding that I can make a profit a million or so at a time buying amulets and rings for between 400K and 800K and re-selling them for 1 million to 3 million.  If I can do 10 of these a day where I'm making about 500K each, that's 5 million a day or $9 real money per day, which equates to $270 a month.  I could live with making an extra $270 a month on Diablo 3.

• People are still reading about Diablo 3

Although several Diablo 3 bloggers are showing decreases in traffic, we are all still getting some traffic to our sites.  Meaning that there are still people out there playing the game.  I know that quite a few gamers are looking forward to the release of Guild Wars II, which will be coming out in a few weeks.  I expect to see a lot of players stop playing Diablo 3 at that time, but that just means that the markets will change.  Players will come back to Diablo 3, especially when the PVP patch comes through.  There are always going to be opportunities to make money playing this game, it's just a matter of finding the right markets.

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!