Auction House

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I may need an intervention. I'm finding this game incredibly addicting, but now that Paracelsi has introduced me to the auction house I'm losing my mind.

Someone at Blizzard needs to develop a way to get to the auction house via phone or browser. Yesterday I was at the mall shopping with family, and all I could think about was if my items were being purchased or if my bids were winning.

 

It will pass.

Unless you mean the RMT (cant help you there) the AH simply loses its charm once you find out just how random it is. Better to just forget about it so when you login and your bids do win/your items get purchased, you get a pleasant surprise.

 

I agree that the prices are completely random. I was just looking for some amulets and I saw two that were basically the same. I put a bid on one at $1,500. the other one had an opening bid of over one million.

As of now the novelty hasn't worn off

 

I hope you mean gold and not us$, sounds pricey in dollar. I have amassed a grand total of 10m gold now, have decent gear 56k dps and 31k hp but now need to work on my defences. I don't know how. I want to be able to finish the game without cheesing or running past some packs but I can't see how that is done. Nor do I know where to start with my gear, what should I replace? Amulet, rings and gloves are the damage pieces(and to some extent head and bracer as they can carry crit). They are the only pieces which can carry proper dps stats like haste, crit and crit dmg so defensive stats on those are out of the question. That leaves chest, pants, boots and belt and I dont know how much all res and vit I can squeese into those. Apparently I also need to start looking at armour.

A mate showed me a sick tanking wizard build that would allow me to do quite a lot with minor tweaks to my gear but I just can't get into the defensive mind set. I am a damage dealer. It is built into my dna. I cry if I replace an item and lose 500 dmg but gain 15k hp. It feels wrong but post-act2 too many packs annihilate me. I can't take a punch and if I for some reason can't kite I am toast.

 

The auction houses are a major sore point with me regarding this game. And I just mean the virtual money one not the RMAH. You see, I know I have a compulsive and addictive personality. And I know I will obsess over it, much like the TGS has. Sure, Skyrim is still taking up a huge amount of my game time, but I see the AH as an undeniability bad addition to my gaming time, as it would completely change the way I would play the game.

And I know it's just because of my gaming style. I would want to get my hands on the best equipment I could, and while I would probably steer clear of using real money currency, I would have to make a character that was a gold farmer. I know this. I would run easier areas repeatedly to try and bank as much gold as I could, and use it to buy items at the AH. That's all I would do - for months if need be. And then try and build a "perfect" character, only to realize afterwards that since I didn't have enough expereince with the high level acts, because I built a gold farmer who couldn't compete in those high acts, that my perception of a perfect character and what in reality is the best type of character you could realistically hope to obtain are vastly different.

And then I'd be digusted that I would have to start all over again. I'm not saying the AHs are bad for everyone, but it's just a really bad idea for me with the way I play games.

 

Yes, I'm only using gold not dollars (sorry about that). Mrs. Snook still hasn't forgiven me for when I paid $65 in real dollars on Ebay to Get Natalya's claw in Diablo 2. She apparantly doesn't realize (or care) how rare a level 99 assassin was.

Aldeth, you may have cursed me. Now I'm considering how I can outfit my character with nothing but +gold gems and equipment and farm like crazy.

Today is my first day back in the office since vacation and not knowing if I'm winning my bids or if my items are selling is very annoying. It was explained to me that Blizzard was worried about bots taking over the AH if they allowed web access.

 

I'm pretty sure Inferno wasn't meant to be (completely) soloed. Sure we can beat most of the game, but bottomline is that the game requires an internet connection and the skills were balanced for multiplayer. They've already nerfed the hell out of the DH (solo-wise) and there's always a specific combination of monster abilities out there that will give any character grief. I doubt even the savviest DHs can kite an elite pack with Jail/Vortex/Teleport + an innate teleport, for example. Feel free to add Shielding, Invulnerable Minions or Horde to that.

Farming is a lot easier at level 60 thanks to the Nephalem buffs, I wouldn't bother with it til then.

 

Last night I ran into two mobs that were damn close to impossible (Act 1 Hell). I don't remember what the first one was called, but they kept mirror imaging into other copies of themselves. I swear there was over 30 of them at one point. It didn't end until we had killed the 3 or 4 that were the real ones.

The second one was my first introduction to invulnerable minions. That was a *****. Especially since my DH typically sprays and prays and in order to beat this I had to run away, stop, and then specifically target the boss.

 

As a WD player I can relate to that. You learn to appreciate less powerful enhancements like lightning enchanted (electrocuted) and plagued after such an experience. How are you holding up against packs with mortar or reflect damage?

 

Mortar causes me to do a lot of running. I'm not sure with reflect damage. I'm guessing I'm dying and not even knowing why

 

I'd like to see prices at least stabilize, so players working their way up can get a little boost when the gear they need just won't drop for them. But yes, TGS has a point about being able to watch the AH from a phone or even the blizzard site. This way I can use my laptop to watch the AH while I play.

 

I think the auction house needs an entire overhaul. What is the point of showing us our "completed" auctions when you can no longer see what the item was?

Also, limiting the search to three "traits" is insane. You should also be able to list "traits" that you don't want on items.

And what is the logic in not letting us sort the listings by current price, buy it now, or time left? Has anyone at Blizzard ever been to Ebay?

 

Whoo Hoo, I hit the jackpot.

I found in a Butcher run a pair of gloves that had stats something like this.

Intelligence- 120ish
Vitality- 70ish
Magic find
Increased attack speed- 6%
Increased critical hit= 8.5%

Not a great find for a demon hunter, but the merchants were offering 2800 gold for it. I decided to put it on the AH before I sold it. I listed it at 3500. Went to bed and it was at 21K, woke up and it was at 1M, went to bed it was at 1.8M, woke up and it was at 2.5M, went to shave and the auction ended at 10.5M. I netted a little less then 9M gold.

Teen Snook is major league jealous and says I should give him a couple of million as he is my heir.

 

It is good but I still think you got a good price. I think it is the vit that pushed it up. You should be able to get similar gloves for around the million. I am impressed by your recklessness in selling. Don't you check the AH for similar items before you put one out?

I remember finding a pair of pants that I thought were very mediocre but I checked the AH and the cheapest similar pair were 5m. Ka-ching!

 

Great find and congrats. I think Teen Snook's reaction is completely understandable.
Joacqin's right though, that was a bit reckless. You never know, atm top-tier gear can drop in act 1-2 and these are easily worth 100m or more.

 

I assume the difference is "fees"? If so, what is the point of fees when the currency is fake? I can see if it was real money, because then Blizzard would actually make a profit, but it's not like they can do anything with their cut of a fictitious sale price.

 

The AH cut and repair costs are there simply to put some brakes on the rampant inflation of the in game currency. If no gold ever left the game its value would nosedive immediately, with repairs and AH cut the value only gently glides down.

 

Well said. It is one of the major reasons I believe the auction house needs to be completely revamped. The D3 economy is ridiculous because the AH doesn't give sufficient information as to what things are worth. Just because you see a pair of pants listed at 5M doesn't mean that they will ever sell. As a matter of fact, we as consumers have no idea if anything on the first pages (listed in the 100s of millions) ever sell.

I hazard to guess that I only manage to sell 20% of the things that I put up for sale, and then once they are sold I have no ability to see what it was that I sold.

It kills me that they didn't pay Ebay a royalty and use their model.

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I agree it is silly, but I believe Joacqin is correct as to why they do it.

 

You get an idea if you put in the three major stats on the item you want to sell of its value. What I tend to do is to put a reasonably low bid price and undercut the cheapest equivalent item by quite a bit and then I sell maybe 30-40% of my items. Depending on the item I put it up again cheaper and cheaper. The pants I mentioned sold quickly so they were probably up for too little while it took me four tries to sell a dagger I found to have extremely good stats and when I finally sold it I only got almost half of the price of equivalent or even worse weapons on AH.

The thing is that maybe 10% of all items listed actually sell and those that get listed at a reasonable price are sold immediately so you rarely see them unless you constantly scan the AH. I found some good bargains during a period when I constantly checked the AH a few times for a specific item every hour or so over the course of a weekend. Most of the decent to good items are up for fantasy prices. If most of the gloves are listed at X the real value is maybe X/2.

 

I can guarantee that several of those 100m items do get bought/sold. It takes a while for them to sell though.

I don't know how these people acquired several hundred million gold in the first place, I personally don't understand the rationale behind spending 100m+ gold on a single item (does this mean they have a billion lying around or?). The most likely explanation probably involves those gold-selling websites.