Auction House Tips

[Logan.ps]

I wondered if any of you had some tips for the best way to use the Auction House (not the RMAH - just the gold one)?

I put my first items up for sale yesterday. They have about 18 hours left on them - but I have zero bids. It may be that they are all level 30-37 items and therefore not in the premium market...

I put them all up with a 100g minimum price, and No buyout price, with the assumption that 'the market knows best' and that this way I would ensure sales. It doesn't seem to be working. So, over to you....What do you do - do you search for similar items, then undercut with a lower buyout price? Interested to hear your strats.

[Apoc.ps]

I haven't tested it much, but I think typically, you'll get zero bids, or a full buyout.
Not many regular bids

I think the gamer-of-today's need for instant gratification means that people don't bid on stuff without a buyout.
Another issue for chars who aren't level 60, Let's say I want to buy that lvl37 item for 101g, by the time the auction ends I'll probably be level 40

So I think you should throw in a buyout price, and undercut the market with it.



I've sold a dozen things maybe, not a lot.
If similar stuff is selling on the AH for 20k, I sell mine for 5k-10k buyout: guaranteed sale...and still better than in-game vendor's paltry offer

[Xearo]

Haha, yeah, I never bid on anything. I've had only one item bid on when selling, everything else has been bought out - and that's only because I put things at a reasonable price (by comparing similar items before selling). I do the same as Apoc with pricing. The way I see it is I'm never going to use the item again and the best price in-game for it will be 2000 tops, so any gold is good gold. to get a huge amount of gold you need to be selling seriously high-level stuff. best i've accumulated from one item was maybe 50k, but that was a very lucky drop.

Tips for buying, however, depend on what you're looking for. Put the max buyout you're happy with and sort by max buyout price, but ascending. Then find the a cheap item that's already better than yours, then raise your requirements to the item you've found and search again, until you find another good deal with similar or better properties. Intelligence for WD/Wiz, dex for monk/DH and strength for barb. Never overlook attack speed and health on hit (especially for high-level characters) and remember to get resistance to all elements on armour if you can, in hell and beyond. If looking for weapons pre-60, start browsing for items that have a lowered level requirement - search for it as a property and put you max item level the same number of levels as the minimum value on the lowered level req, so you'll get items that you can use, then do the above to find a better item for a good price.

[Logan.ps]

cool advice.

Do you charge/pay a decent premium for items that give an increased chance of Crit? I find them one of the most powerful things in the game - especially since Crit's often have additional benefits dependent on runes. As a rule, I build with a focus on Lifesteel, Chance to crit, and dominant attribute (ie dex/strength/int). I find vitality is so easy to add with Gems, that I ignore it unless it's +50 or higher.

[Xearo]

cool advice.

Do you charge/pay a decent premium for items that give an increased chance of Crit? I find them one of the most powerful things in the game - especially since Crit's often have additional benefits dependent on runes. As a rule, I build with a focus on Lifesteel, Chance to crit, and dominant attribute (ie dex/strength/int). I find vitality is so easy to add with Gems, that I ignore it unless it's +50 or higher.

Crit chance is pretty low on my list of priorities, only because I lean towards attack speed/lifesteal and getting all three is either costly or impossible for my price range I don't have like 1,000,000,000g spare - I'm lucky if I have 100,000 at the rate I spend it. I like to sell things with higher chance to crit, but usually it's on a crappy item and I don't try to sell it for much. It depends on the item, dps etc. At hell+ I generally build with dominant attiribute+vit+DPS, but mainly because different classes have different priorities on auxiliary stats like life steal - DH, for example, is like paper vs fire without vit, so lifesteal is useless if you're dead in one hit.

[awesome-o]

If you manage to get some money at some point, it can be worth to stroll the AH for good items without a buy-out and a low bid with not much time left on it. This is how i acquired a amulet for 250k because noone bid on it and it was only half an hour left. While it really was worth 1250k. This is also a really good strategy to make money. It does requires some dedication, but i find it quite fun to flip items on the AH.

[The Sero.ps]

Yeah, I only know from the WoW auction house, but anything but EXTREMELY rare things just wouldn't sell without a buyout price.

Personally I think Apoc is undercutting a little much. That guarantees a sale... largely because someone is buying it to put it straight back on the AH for 1k less than other things, rather than 10k. So if you're looking to maximise total earnings rather than just get it quickly, don't undercut too much, because it has the chance of ruining the market. I've seen certain groups of items (again, on WoW) drop to about a 5th of their normal price for a week or so just because a couple of people undercut too much to get a sale. I think the Diablo AH will be more stable, as it is larger than the WoW ones which are per server, but even so, I never liked getting less than I could.

Also, that is a way to make money on it, see if anyone is undercutting by too much, and buy and resell it yourself.

One final thing, for both my above points, generic things often sell better.

[Apoc.ps]

when your item is competing with thousands of the same thing, a healthy cut goes a long way

obviously if all of us ever catch up with awesome-o's gear, most of what we're saying right now will be moot

[The Sero.ps]

when your item is competing with thousands of the same thing, a healthy cut goes a long way

As I said, my info is from the WoW AHs, which were MUCH smaller. Still, a 50% undercut does seem... excessive. While the larger AH will have more sellers, so more items to compete against, it also has more buyers which will pick up on cheaper items quicker. So a 10-20% undercut should be enough, as it should still stand out to the market with that.

[Bursar]

For selling, unless the item has very good stats for a specific class I just go with 4x the vendor buyout. I've sold a fair amount this way. I only check other auctions if i'm selling something 'good' then I may tweak the price accordingly.