How I went from MP3 to MP6

Lately my goals have changed from crushing the auction house for extra cash each month to learning new markets and investing my profits from Diablo 3 back into my character.  My idea is that when PVP and/or an expansion hit, I will have a high powered character to go along with my knowledge of both the gold auction house and the real money auction house.  Having a high powered character will allow me to farm high level content effectively, which at certain times may be just as profitable as spending time on the auction house (or a good use of time while waiting for auctions to sell).

Two days ago I was stuck grinding in MP3 doing key runs and getting into the occasional group for running ubers, where you need an infernal machine to access the high level bosses that drop items to make a Hellfire Ring (which I'm still working on).  I'm currently Paragon Level 11 and have yet to get a decent legendary drop while key farming.

Enter Gimmic Gaming's Class Guide.  Markco posted on his blog about Gimmic Gaming's new guide and gave it a thumbs up, so I decided that it would be worth a shot.  The guide contains extremely useful information about building your character and walks you through exactly how to spec to move up from whatever current Monster Power level you are farming.

I literally took the information in the guide and went from farming MP3 to MP6 by just changing my spec and investing a couple million into some new weapons.  

Check out the guide here

I only purchased one class guide (each class guide is $30) because I primarily play a barbarian.  That was all I needed and it was worth the $30 investment.  I learned more in 30 minutes of reading and watching videos about playing my Barbarian than I've learned in the hours and hours I've spent playing the game.

You can get a class guide for each class for less the $100.  If you play more than one class and want to learn go dominate with all of them, I highly recommend buying all of them for the reduced price.  If you specialize like me, try out the guide for your class first.  If I start playing another class, I'll be buying Gimmic's guide to that class before I even get started.  I'll be posting results of my upgraded farming runs soon!

Key Farming and Paragon Level Grinding

There are plenty of people making good money playing Diablo 3.  At this time, I am not one of them.  I've changed my outlook on playing Diablo 3, mostly due to a couple months of not spending as much time as I would have liked on the game.  Now, I'm making an effort to log in at least once a day and learn about the game, market, and put myself into a position to make a good amount of money consistently.

Here are the things that I am doing to invest in my account and learn.

1. Gold Auction House flipping/research.
1. I'm learning what markets are over saturated and what players are spending gold on.  Soon I will venture back into the real money auction house as well.
2. Reading Markco's site and gold guide.
1. Markco is updating his gold guide often and the forums are still bumping with valuable information.
3. Farming on Monster Power 2-3 for drops
4. Grinding Paragon levels
5. Farming for Keys of Destruction 

I'm able to accomplish 3-5 all at the same time, which is great.  I have a balance of gear on my barbarian that allows me to farm MP2-3 and also get a little bonus experience.  I have a ruby gem in my helm for 29% bonus and am planning on investing in a Leoric's signet ring soon.

I also am hoping to craft a Hellfire Ring for the added experience bonus, which will help me grind out a few more paragon levels as I'm farming.  The long term goal is to have a paragon level 100 character that will be able to farm high Monster Power levels, especially after players come back to the game with the PVP patch, which is on the horizon.

Right now I seem to be able to make around 3-5 million a day in a few markets that I have learned about by experimenting and also from advice from Markco's Gold Guide.  As I build up my gold stash, I plan on jumping into some higher end markets and hope to be making 5-10 million a day.

Status update:

Gold amount: About 30 million

Paragon level: 10

DPS: 54K

December Update

As Markco pointed out, I've been slacking a bit on the updates here at Diablo 3 Profits.  Part of that is because of the lack of time that I have been dedicating to blogging and playing Diablo 3 and part of it is the fact that I've honestly been pretty lazy.  If there are culprits other than myself in the case of the lack of updates, they would be the South Carolina Gamecocks football team and my four fantasy football leagues.

I've been hopping on Diablo 3 every few days and doing a bit of buying and selling and testing new markets. With the game changing as often as it has, without my daily log ins I've had difficulty keeping up with market trends.  The concepts that I've learned from Markco's Gold Guide and the forums still apply however, especially the idea of trading in markets that I myself am making purchases for my character.

The markets that I am still finding success are extremely low risk/reward at this time, and I'm only making a couple million with each round of buying and selling on the GAH.  I'm experimenting in some higher end markets, but so far it looks like volume would be my way to go if I would log in more often.  One possible solution would be to upgrade my work laptop and be able to log in more often during the day (lunch, sometime in the afternoon).  With the end of the year coming, maybe I'll get an equipment upgrade.

I'm only Paragon level 7 on my Barbarian, and I'd like to continue to grind out a few levels in between auction house sessions.  

Goals for December:

Paragon level 20

100 Million Gold in the bank

Make $50 in cashed out, real money.

Cheers!

Investing

When I logged into the game this morning, I had about 15 million gold.  I'd invested around 20 million in upgraded gear for my Barbarian so that I could hopefully complete the game on Inferno and start experimenting with farming using Monster Power.  My plan is to use the 15 million gold that I currently have in the bank and grow it every day by bidding on items and flipping them for a profit. 

I've spent a few hours getting back into the game and just doing searches on the Auction House, both Real Money and Gold, to find out what is selling and what specific markets are looking like.  So far I've found one market where I can buy items for between 100K and 250K and flip them for around 400K to 600K.  These items seem to sell slowly, but consistently.

This morning, I put up several items that I had won bids on last night in the one market that I had found.  I invested another few million in bids in my market and then invested the rest in several other markets that I wish to experiment in.  Right now, all of my gold is tied up in these bids, which means I'm free to farm for a while and work on finishing up the game and of course watch a few football games.  I have nearly 100 winning bids out there, so I am hoping to win around 40-50% of those bids and work on flipping the items this evening and tomorrow.

Even if I win some of these items and they never sell, I'm investing in knowledge of the current markets.  Spending a few million to find new markets is an investment that is worth making, you never know when you'll stumble on a market that no one else is playing and is extremely profitable. 

Current gameplay status:

Paragon level: 3

Inferno Act II Completed - working on Act III

Patch 1.05 and Me

Despite my last post saying that I was "back in the game," I basically took the last month off of writing and playing Diablo III.  Life gets busy, as all of you know, but with the resurgence of the Diablo 3 community, I've decided to jump back into the game and see how things have changed.

I hopped back on my Barbarian and noticed that I never finished the game on Inferno.  The furthest that I ever progressed was finishing Act 1.  I also never spent time grinding any Paragon levels, so I'm basically starting to experience the "end game" that is not the auction house. 

I had about 30 million gold left over from playing the auction house, so I invested about 10-12 million in upgraded gear for my Barbarian.  With the new Monster Levels, I'd like to clear the game and have the option of farming any Act that I want so that I can adapt to the changing environment and capitalize on the new markets out there.  I've started to explore both Auction houses again and will be posting about some of my markets and tactics that I will use, along with farming with my Barbarian.

This morning I ran through Act II on Inferno and started to play a little Act III.  My Barbarian dinged level 3 in Paragon levels, so I have a long way to go.

I've also checked back with the Diablo 3 Gold Secrets Guide and read up on the last months worth of articles, watched a bunch of new videos, and stopped back into the forums.  If you're serious about making money playing Diablo 3, I highly suggest you check out Markco's gold guide.

Back in the Game

I logged into Diablo 3 today for the first time in about two weeks. After patch 1.04 I didn't have a whole lot of incentive to keep playing the game, even though I had finally sold an item for 34 million gold and had a little currency to play with...basically I was burned out and disappointed with the game. I didn't see the fun/challenge in playing the game anymore and I honestly was just waiting for Guild Wars 2 to come out so I could spend some of my free time playing with my buddies. 

Then I realized that I was missing out on making extra money toward things that I want to do in my life like get ahead on bills, help pay down my student loan debt and my car loan, and take my girlfriend out to a nice dinner on occasion. When I logged back in today, I spent a few minutes looking up the "new" legendary and set items and seeing if I could spot any trends. I immediately picked a couple items and used my bidding strategy to invest some of my gold in trying to pick up some cheap set items to flip. I also picked up a few items to throw up on the RMAH. I'm going to do my best to rededicate myself to spending at least half an hour a day on the auction houses in Diablo 3 and try to make a few bucks each day. 

An extra $4 a day doesn't sound like much, but an extra $120 a month is halfway to my car payment. I also updated my goal bar on the side of this blog. I'm up around $100 profit from Diablo 3, which isn't all that spectacular but I think now that I have a little bankroll I will be able to consistently make a few dollars a day.

Good luck everyone and make sure to check out Markco's guide. He's keeping it very up to date and his people are STILL make hundreds of dollars playing Diablo 3.

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.