Oct 25, 2011

Posted by in Zlatto's Bazaar | 18 Comments

Zlatto’s Bazaar: Habits Of A Successful Merchant Player

Zlatto’s Bazaar is the one-third Wall Street, one-third criminal empire and one-half gossip rag. You need to keep up on the Bazaar if for no other reason than to keep an eye on your competitors. Don’t be a Ho-tah and visit often.  Your comments are encouraged, especially if they make me credits…

“Wealth is power. With wealth many things are possible.”
George Clason (little know fact – he was part Toydarian)

So who doesn’t want to be that player?  The player that never worries about credits, gets to taxi wherever and whenever  he wants and has tricked out their starship with all the best armament from around the galaxy.  When you see that player, its humanoid nature to wonder why not me?  Well, lets talk about why it’s not you, and what you should be planning to change in your gaming ways to be that player in Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Identifying The Change

Worst of all has got to be the need for some individuals to constantly want to their upgrade gear. They want the best of the best, and no one will stop them. If there’s an epic item on the AH, they want to be the first with it. That’s a pretty huge issue for leveling characters, because (especially at first) there’s a need to differentiate from the pack. This might plague certain people.” – Momus

Now, I would trust this player with my credits only if he kept them in my line of sight the whole time, and I had my blaster out and charged.  But his opinions about economics and MMOs should be required reading for any gamer wanting to make an impact on their server. Momus’s brand of merchant madness can be read over in his column Blaster, Beggars & Credits right here at Ask A Jedi.

The Stumbling Block

The stumbling block described by Momus I call  “Parishiltonism”.  Swinging by the auction house or Galactic Trade Network is part of the merchant biz, one has to learn the flow of credits and resources to better squeeze credits out of the masses … er… I mean become a successful merchant. But when leveling your character, you should refrain from spending credits on items you will quickly level past (see paragraph above).

A player gets very little return on their investment for being in all low-level ‘green’ items.  Or worse, thinking that having a lowbie epic item will really impact your questing efforts at all. Wandering around town in the latest fashion purchased from the GTN might make you feel like a rock star, but when your guild-mates are buzzing past you in their souped-up speeders and sending their Crew out for better resources while you are grinding flesh raiders for credits, your mistake will be realized all too late. Credits wasted in the teens can comeback and haunt you. Tempting as it may be to spend, spend, spend, in most all cases the items you gather during questing and through rewards and drops should sustain you.

It’s A Trap

“New players will try to run too many missions at first before they get a steady supply of
credits coming in to fund it all.” – SWTORCRAFTER

Now here is one of the first players I will be adding to my in-game friends list.  His articles can be read over at SWTOR-Life, and again provide a keen insight into the market.  Of course adding someone to you friends list is not the same as trusting the change they give you on a purchase.  He is a as crooked as a bantha’s hind leg and will be one of those merchants clearing out the GTN for his own profit.

A challenge many a starter merchant runs across is the desire is speed leveling one’s crafting/Crew Skills.  By leveling your these with out a strategy, you run a very high risk of wasting not only credits but valuable resources you could use to make credits later.  Spend the time to find the least expensive path. It might not always be the easiest or even the fastest, but time spends differently that credits.

Crafting is one of the more common ways to break free of the average player in relation to wealth, but for every success story there are tens of thousands examples of players who find themselves pinching pennies due to poor planning. This includes leveling your skills up on items for your character to use.  This might seem to be a solid use of resources but check your math. In most cases you will be leveling past your items quickly.  Now Mission Skills will be a tempting credit sink for all players, but until you create a steady income of credits and understand the return on investment  of theses missions, you again run the risk of wasting credits.

So Where Do We Stand?

Now, I am not here just to talk about my thoughts on newbie shortcomings, but also share some insights I have gathered from emulating some of the better merchants I have seen across many years and many games.

step one, alts alts alts, for storage and selling cause you never know what might be worth something someday on the antiques road show.”  – Ventu

This anti-free trade Guncta would sell his own mother into servitude in the Spice Mines of Kessel (if he knew who she was) but I have seen very few players master economics across various games as quickly as him.  In World of Warcraft he was the guy you got your loan from to cover your first flying mount. And I might add he is amazingly soft spoken for a loan shark.

Ventu’s point is merchant 101 on many games, but with TOR, we have heard inventory will not be as much as a challenge as the ability for companions to unload sellable greys was shared and that our inventory is extended to our ship and not just our bags.

But the concept of selling from your alts make solid strategic sense.  The Galactic Trade Network is presumably accessible from many locations but your main should be out doing ‘heroic’ things as those Darth Daniel Erickson has commanded.  By using an alt to do much of your credit manifesting, you gain many positive advantages:

  • If you are going to be one of those that like to clear out the GTN and re-bundle for credits having it not tied to your main or your main’s guild can sometimes be to your advantage
  • Location, location, location. By parking your alt in the thick of the commerce you save time managing your auctions and enable the character to monitor chat
  • Anonymity is your friend. Once people get the feeling that a character is making money on their trades they tend to adjust their prices

Time Is Money

“Time is money to many players, learn to profit from in game laziness. The easiest example of this is can be seen in recipes/patterns/schematics that are sold by limited NPCs. In many cases players don’t want to travel and are willing to take the easy route for a few credit mark-up”  – Tieve

Now Tieve is an interesting character. His skills at accumulating in-game wealth spans multiple gaming platforms and makes it easier to ignore the fact he is a chronic auction house manipulator and as crooked as a Toydarian chance cube.

The economy of a server ebbs and flows, so  what are you doing about learning its cycle?  What time of day do you play?  Is it different from the time of day you work the auction house?  To understand the opportunities to make credits, you need to understand what the time, day and other conditions do to the prices of items and the demand of certain resources. I know of many a shrewd trader in World of Warcraft who made their first steps to dominance just by working the cloth markets.  Accumulating when the server is slow in the trade channels,  adjusting the stacks to the optimum count and getting their new bundles of joy out for auction to be ready for the mass of players rushing it to level alts in First Aid, Tailoring, and Enchanting.

Now the laziness/wastefulness of players does not just happen in game.  I cannot fathom the amount of players that buy gold/credit making guides.  I am not sure if these are the same people that send money to the Shopping Network for Star Wars Hummel figures and that crazy guy that shouts at you about Oxy-Clean, but as a fledgling merchant you need to know the resources available to you.  I can find no examples of things found in guides that cannot be learned from following active forums, reading the patch notes, paying attention to cycles and reading some of the columns on your favorite fan sites.  I can also almost guarantee that people in your guild know simple but proven ways to earn gold/credits, so just ask. That is part of the guild experience – learning along side some fellow gamers.

  1. Good content, but please have someone proof this. I’m not even a grammar nazi and saw like 6 major typos

  2. The part on the parishiltonism is totally true. I became a server first master armorsmith on my aion server at the lvl of 25ish (I cant remember exactly, I gained so many lvls crafting I forget where exactly I hit master) by using the markets and peoples desire for the latest and greatest gear.

    I literally rode the forefront edge all the way up, and by the end I could work purely on commission and have everyone else bring me the materials…

    I also had a list a mile long of people who would pay anything for full sets of uber lucky proc’d gear, but I ignored them since I could demand any price any time for an orange piece.

    However, this worked because the crafted gear was better for a very long time compared to the other items in game.

    My question is, will the “greens” that are crafted be equal in stats to those gotten in quests? Or will the crafted be superior?

    I.E. will a crafted green lvl 10 blaster be equal, better, or vastly better than a green quest blaster around lvl 10?

    This one aspect will determine whether it is worth crafting items for selling across the spectrum or whether it is merely worth minimal investment to level past the lower tiers.

    • @Vyltor solid questions. I am hopeful that one the press run through the vast imagery of the worlds, make comments on romances, and the other ‘pretty’ things that a few hard working nerds like Larry over at Hyperspace Beaconwill be able to share some more of the common items but interesting to the merchant-focused players. I know from what I read that a crafted item has a chance for an exceptional success that would add more stats or an extra mod slot, so a ‘crit’ lvl 12 versus a quest lvl 12 would seem an easy winner. But of course there is nothing but guesses and innuendo so far.

      • Yes, I firmly beleive the crit items will be much better long term (as with the mod slots, you can upgrade them constantly I think) but the more important thing for crafters, at least initially, is how noncrit greens compare to quested items.

        If the crafted are superior, it will be profitable early on to craft and sell em, instead of reverse engineering everything.

        Also, what happens if you que up crafting and run out of space in your inventory?

  3. pwnttothemax says:

    good read. i loved your descriptions of the various crafters :D

    • I know right? those descriptions were hilarious. Very good article my man, I always really enjoy your take on the Crew Skills scene.

      Hey Zlatto while I am here, you got that 100k credits you owe me?

      :)

    • @pwnttothemax hehe sadly the descriptions came too easy. I wonder what that says about me?

    • Agreed – great article with some amusing descriptions. What I like about this article most of all is I related to all of it. Over time, through trial and error, I’ve learned all this the hard way. Seeing it written up really is a service to those interested in delving into crafting.

      The mechanics of crew skills are interesting though. Whilst you might not view spending to send crew on missions to gather as the best ROI, there are other factors to consider. If I get early access and power level up through crafting, then I can be ahead of the curve and seek to craft purples (and ultimately even golds assuming gold schematics drop from operations and bosses). At some point other crafters will catch up but I foresee an early achiever opportunity. That said, over the long term (and in my experience) there are those players that really do differentiate themselves. In SWG we had resource quality that was a massive defining factor. In SWTOR I think re-engineering and it’s yield of schematics will be a factor. But from what I can see it’s going to be able the RNG to get crits on schematics you got through RNG’d crits. After that it’s about persistence and practice.

  4. I have always been the guy who had a decent amount of in game currency to ensure I could keep my stuff top notch, but never did work the system hard enough to become “rich”.

    I knew a guy in my guild in WoW who had gold in the millions. Exact numbers I am not sure, but I do recall him saying he was,or was close to, being a multi-millionaire. After reading this article I realize that he was a mix of all of the people you referenced.

    • @Kreelo so how did you accumulate? were you a player that did not mind finding the boring gathering routes and would over gather for the purpose of selling to the weekend gamers that wanted to pay to level their skills?

      • I would craft some valuable items and sell them on the AH. Just enough to pad my wallet so that if I needed to, I could afford to buy the best upgrades, enchantments, etc. Plus I am one of the lucky people who tends to stumble across valuable items while doing quests, or just farming for materials.

  5. I am trustworthy with money.

    You know EXACTLY what I will do with it. I am consistent in that area, thus you can always trust that I will do the same thing with it!

    • Prenerfed says:

      Predictable is not the same as trustworthy.

      Nice article Zlatto. And ignore the grammar nazis; editors are expensive. Credits are better spent on a new computer so you can type FASTER! ;)

    • I’ve been bouncing between you (Zlatto) and swtorcrafter for about two weeks now, and I’m really enjoying the takes on crew skills and how masterfully you both follow up on discussions in your comments section.

      I love crafting, and have an extensive history with it (albeit in only one MMO) in WoW. When I decide how I’m going to get rich I consider one thing most importantly. How can I get rich and enjoy doing it? The most important thing to understand in get rich schemes is that it will take time and it must be doing something you enjoy or you will burn out very quickly.

      In my experience there are three primary ways players make money through the economy.

      1.) Play the auction house. Buy low, sell high. This type of play style requires extensive market experience and the willingness to take some risk. This play style will be heavily influenced by TOR’s trade network cut of sales and most importantly by their deposit (money you have to pay to place the item up for auction and forfeit if the item does not sell). I am confident that zlatto will be a proper toydarian and quickly attempt to corner this market on his server.

      2.) Sell crafted items. Given the time frame involved in crafting this will likely be less commission then previous MMO’s, and a much higher emphasis will be on the GTN. A player can purchase the materials to craft the item, or farm them his/herself.

      3.) Farming mats and selling them. This one is fairly self explanatory, and I advise anyone planning on doing this to properly position a tv behind your computer screen and line up the “unmastered” episodes 4,5, and 6.

      Believe it or not I do have questions involved with this longwinded discourse and they are as follows.

      What are TOR’s plans for GTN policies (including the question of cross-faction access)?

      How varied will crafters recipes be (Thus reducing flooding of the same item)?

      And, How likely are we to see a repeat of WoW’s node system that involved people with no lives flying around eternally picking up all the materials we need?

      • @Figment you are spot on sir
        I also wonder how long till we see the farmers hogging the nodes. I mean it seems like Slicing is a credit sellers wet dream from what we have heard from people.
        Also, I wonder how easy it will be to play the GTN without the addons seen in other games that allow even the average merchant player to know the numbers, see things under priced and cash in.

        • Not enough information on crafting!!! Mission skills in particular I just can’t get a read on and slicing most of all. I love the ingenuity of it, but I just don’t have anything solid enough to run numbers on them.

          On the note of nodes. I hate to reference WoW i really do. But, one thing I felt they got right in that game was Archaeology. You could farm that as long as you wanted and NEVER affect anyone else. I shouldn’t think it would be too hard to crunch an appropriate number to make the payout similar to node farming w/o the exclusivity of “finders keepers”

          I personally would like to see the GTN remain addon free. I feel cheated when people can make a market decision because an addon is telling them to do so, when I know to do it because I put time and effort into doing so. Now sure, I enjoy doing it, I’m not complaining, but rewards should be comparable to effort.

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