An Advanced guide to Equipment Trading
In the previous article https://app.warera.io/article/6a6ba7ea49b02db40312b3e8 I shared my general experience with equipment trading without getting into detail. Since there was interest for this content, and I saw some new traders on the market following the article, I'm deciding to share some advanced techniques that will hopefully lead you to successfully larp Nicolas Cage in warera
Chapter 1: Cheat-sheet
Memorize this table and utilize the market, always going by the sell order price. You should only abandon this approach in the following cases and sell at the buy prices:
When you're expecting a sharp decline in scarp prices
When waiting for sell orders would leave you out of cash for further market snatches
Scarp is currently sitting at 0.218 and I haven't yet seen it go to 0.22
Chapter 2: Sniper's Nest
Most of your success will depend on the following criteria:
Time of day & the amount of competition
Knowing where to look
How fast you can click
So, you want to participate but don't know where to set up shop?
Well the answer is obvious, most of your time will be spent checking Blue and Green weapons, with a pinch of Purple weapons here and there. This is the place where most trains will start, and generally the places with the highest amount of volume. If it's been quiet on this front for 10 or so seconds, do a lap by checking other Blue/Green items.
You should occasionally check Red/Gold/Purple for single-item deals, as this is the 2nd best way of making money on the market besides catching trains.
You'll probably notice that I have forgot to mention Grey items, and you'd be right.
The reason for that is that these type of items you will never look for individually. When you land on the Equipment Market page, it will show all available listings on the Market starting with the cheapest ones at the top. This is how you will be sniping those deals, and believe me those 0.1-0.2g profits per item do tend to stack up.
Example of scouting the market:
Rifle > Rifle again (to deselect it and check for Grey deals) > Gun > Gun again
Try to utilize checking for Grey items in between every item switch, as the volume of these listings is highest by far.
Chapter 3: Catching the Train
Trains are the most lucrative way of making money on the Equipment Market:
It's a moment when someone dumps a large amount of items on the market, and if they attached 1 under the price, chances are they'll attach them all with the same mistake. Your job is to be in the right place when it starts, and to collect as many items as you can against the competition.
Trains will almost always play out in the following manner:
They will start on the Weapon of the highest rarity the victim has in their possession
Once all weapons are posted, the victim will then proceed to list all their armor - Important to note: they will often list all their specific armor (ex. pants) before moving on to another type (ex. gloves)
Then the victim moves on to the Weapon of the lower rarity and this repeats until all items in their possession are listed
The reason for this are 2 factors:
The way item listings are presented to you - which is why it almost always starts at the Weapons as they will always be at the top of the category
For Armor, it's easier to copy/paste the price on one then post them in the order they're presented to you - as armor after weapons is placed a bit "at random"
Bonus Tip: When you see a train start, you can open the victims profile in a new tab to get rough intel of the amount & type of items you can expect from them. Note that you have to be really fast when checking this, as if you spend too much time looking, someone else will land all the deals.
Chapter 4: Quick Fingers
How fast you're able to click is going to be essential to your success in the Equipment Market. Previously my fastest "snatch" sat at a 2.34s which ain't gonna cut it during peak hours when there are 5+ people competing for the same train:
As you can see here, https://app.warera.io/user/6a2fb4d49bf84f5e4246bb1b managed to get 7 items in a row with an impressive buy time of <2s. There was a grand total of 31 green items in this run, and I managed to get my hands on only 3 of them (2 on 2s buy time and 1 on 3s buy time), so I thought there must be something I've been doing wrong, and as it turns out I was.
You see, an important part of sniping the listings is refreshing the prices. Once you land on the page with the items what you see is what you get, no new listings will appear, unless you refresh it by clicking on another item and then back to it. As it turns out that's way too slow and will cost you tremendous amounts of gold.
Instead you should utilize this:
The +/- icons on the screen will refresh your listings. When you land on the page the count is set to 0 and every time you click on + the listings will refresh. Once you reach the actual Item values (on gun example 51) you can do + then - to keep the value correct and to get the new listings. Buy Button is also way closer giving you more time to react to an incoming listing in a train.
Since implementing this, I managed to get way better snipe times, as shown in Chapter 3, where you can find my 2 and 1s buys.
Chapter 5: The downtime
If the day is going slow, there is one more thing that you can do, that many do not bother to check. You see, most of the vultures like me will just look at the initial listings without going too much in dept with it. However there is one more technique I practice occasionally, that will net me some money from time to time. When checking for Red/Purple/Gold/Blue items, the margins on items with higher stats can be quite good. So sometimes, I'll put in a in-between number on an item (ex. I'll search for Golden Boots 35) to see if there's an item that's below the price for that stat, but not cheap enough to appear in the initial listings.
Chapter 6: The Wolf of Wall Street
This will be the final tip I have for you today, and it goes slightly beyond the Equipment Trading into Item Market and Crafting.
As any free market, warera market also experiences some degree of volatility from which you can profit of. Here's how you can react to sharp changes to Metal Scarp prices, and use this to your advantage:
📉 Sharp Decline of Scarp & Steel prices
If this happens, check the prices Gold & Red boots and gloves, chances are that targeted crafting of those items might be profitable. Assuming equal odds of each stat, you can calculate your chances for profit & overall average net gain/loss of targeted crafting. Also very profitable for people who are preparing for war, especially since there's no market tax involved for self-crafting.
With the current prices this is not profitable, but was extremely worthwhile a couple of days ago when I made the calculations. The example of the sheet can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LeGwEsOmNAP2D3JlbTBlvs3TrLDVOHTKQmYBkkzxWQM/edit?gid=0#gid=0
📈 Sharp Rise of Scarp prices
If you catch wind of a sharp rise of Scarp prices, you should immediately go to Red/Gold Helmets, Armor & Pants. Chances are you'll find old deals that are now under their dismantle value.
I apologize for the long post, but I sincerely hope some of you will find it useful.
Happy Hunting!