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Contents Farming Gold - Part 3: Malicious playProbably many of you want to know about these bits. These are the big money; how you get large amounts of cash from gullable and foolish players. I don't approve, but I do find them interesting approaches. The key to malicious play is to fool people. It is a set of simple methods that can cause people to give you money for worthless items, buy things by accident and use other peoples work for your gain. You wish to make sure that someone believes they're getting a fair deal, when you're reaping in the cash. I'll divide this into key parts:
Selling highPerhaps this is only pseudo-malicious play - there is some value in moving goods from place to place - but this approach is to take things that are easily found and sell them in the auction house at a vastly increased profit. For example, you can in Undercity buy patterns for a tuxedo jacket for around a gold. You can then put this in the auction house, and when searching, people with more money than sense (or time) will say "ooh, a pattern I don't have" and buy it for 5 gold. So for moving an item all of 20 metres, you've made 4 gold. This approach can be extended to other patterns, in particular the rarer patterns which are of limited stock. As I say, there is some value here; for example, getting to winterspring to buy the runecloth bag pattern is not trivial at level 35, and yet a level 35 could have the tailoring skill to use the pattern. Many people use this approach; simply look for all the white patterns in the auction house. Similarly, some patterns are in difficult to access areas. There are pitfalls to this approach; for example, there will always be competition since it is a simple idea, and also some of the patterns are just not of value; they're either very easy to get, or not very useful, or in some cases, taught by a trainer anyway. This same idea can also be used to sell genuinely useless items to people; I have no idea if this actually works, but there are a reasonable number of people who sell items which really have no use. With some persistence, someone is bound to pick them up sooner or later... One final approach on this one is realising that people don't know the true value of some items; for example bags. Bags can be bought from vendors, they are not expensive. A 10 slot bag is 1 gold, or even 90 silver if you have a decent reputation. And yet, you can still sell silk packs (10 slots) for more than one gold. I've seen people attempt to sell 6 slot bags, which can be bought for 5 silver, for one gold. This isn't exactly selling junk, but it's certainly selling items for far more than their implicit value. Forcing mistakesYou will see sometimes people price items oddly; they'll have a sensible bid price, but an enormous buyout. This is a prime example; they're hoping that someone won't think too carefully, and just buy their item at an inflated price without concentrating. Recent changes have made this harder; but there are still many opportunites to do this. The simplest, and possibly most evil, is to sell a single item at the price of a stack. For example, if silk sells at 60s/70s per stack, then put a single piece of silk on at 60s/70s. It will look right, feel right, and if people aren't concentrating, someone will buy it. Very simple, very effective, and I know I've been caught out by this. Along a similar vein, look for people who've mispriced something. Suppose they've put a pattern with a 200g buyout, which is reasonable, but a bid of 20s. It is simple to pick up this item and resell it. It might sell on buyout, but then you lose nothing. To further refine this style of play, don't just bid 20s; bid 10g. Then the bid price doesn't look so low, which will discourage others from doing the same thing. Again, if it sells, you lose nothing. If not, you get a lot. Again, you can spot items that are intentionally mispriced, sometimes; for example, in the neutral auction houses, someone wishes to transfer an item between factions; so they put it in at a very low price. You swoop in, and gather the item. Easy. Taking advantageAlong the same lines as the above, this is more systematic. The idea here is to take someone elses work, give them some pennies for it, and then sell it yourself for more. A common idea, and actually does have some value; you give the manufacturer a guarenteed price for their items now, and carry a stockpile of items for others to buy. Done sensibly, with people who understand what you're doing, this can be a genuinely useful and slightly profitable service. Done maliciously, and you can make a fortune. You must understand the value of goods for this to work. The point here is to look for people undercharging for items, to buy them, and to sell them on at a profit. For example, you see someone selling a reasonable weapon at 5 gold. It's not a bad price, in the grand scheme of things; but you know that mace will sell for 200g (with a bit of luck), so you buyout immediately and re-add it to the auctions, at 200g. Similarly, you see someone selling light leather at 3s, and you realise it sells at 40s, so you buy it, and resell. The point here is that most people have no idea of value. For example, They fail to realise that, while light leather is really easy to get, most higher level players can't really be bothered to get it. In fact, in the time to get it, they could make more than the value of the leather, and buy it. Also, it is very difficult to value the price of items; because you cannot easily farm a specific weapon, it is difficult to judge the value of that weapon. Gaming the marketWhile taking advantage merely corrects the value of prices in the auctions, gaming the market takes it to the next level. Hence, rather than buying things you know will sell at a higher price, you ensure that the market value of those items is higher. There are many ways to do this; in the real world, most of them are illegal. The simplest, and what can be the most effective, is to monopolise. Simply buy up everything of a particular type, and then sell it again at the price you want. For example, suppose there's a load of iron bars at prices ranging between 2 and 4 gold. You can buy all these bars, and put them all back in at 6 gold. This is probably more than they're worth, but because you're artificially inflating the price by creating demand (anyone that puts any iron in the market, you'll buy from, so the sale price increases for the supplier as well), you will still sell at this price. This method is phenominally dangerous; the first and most immediate pitfall is that within a short amount of time the sellers will realise their prices can increase, and hence your profits will fall. Similarly, if you cannot maintain the price rise by purchasing everything, eventually the price will drop and you will be left with a large amount of very expensive junk. But these can be worked around; for example, should the price drop for a day or two, hold your stock and wait. Within a day or two, all the auctions at the lower prices will sell or time out, and you can go back to selling at a high price. There are other ways to do this, too. For example, you can artificially lower the price by selling cheaply; this is particularly good for items that do not sell regularly. The suppliers of these items will decide to move to other products, since their profits have fallen, and then you can use the fact the market is empty in order to raise the prices significantly. The other part to gaming the market is to consider how any other people are doing the same thing. If you have a large stock of something, you can play chicken with them, and sell it all to them at a price that isn't as high as their desired price. If done right, they will give up selling at a high price, and lower their prices to clear their stock; at this point, you can buy your stock back, at a healthy profit. ProblemsAll of the malicious play methods will generate bad feeling; suppliers will dislike you, people will start to avoid your auctions and be suspicious of your motives at any prices. This is simple to avoid - multiple accounts. There's no reason at all why one can't buy, post to the other, and they sell; this gives the appearance of a market. Similarly, you can sell from more than one account, so it looks as if there is some competition when there is none. The other main problem with reselling items in the auction house is fees. Sure, you might be able to sell that dagger at 20g more than you bought it, but your fee paid will be 3g a go, and every time it doesn't sell you're losing out. There is always a balance to be sought; the risks are big, but the rewards great.
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