The absolute Hell of Equipment Market Trading - and how to Join it

Hello everyone, I'd like to briefly introduce myself, I'm a 35yo dad of 2 lovely girls (2.5yo and 3 month old), that's working a 9-5 remote shift, with not so heavy hands-on workload. Being someone who despises doom scrolling of any kind, and stuck in a situation where I'm deprived of any kind of social life (for now at least) and entertainment I could drop at any point, warera came in like a perfect fit, with one tiny flaw at least, there's not much to do/click to fill in the day.

That is until I stumbled upon https://app.warera.io/article/6a450fb4db34c26265b8225b, and that is when I started a new journey that I'd like to share with everyone, hope you'll find it fun and/or educational.

Chapter 1: Who's this written for?

Here's the general idea behind this article, so if something hits the mark, stick around as it's probably gonna be a long one:

• To educate the people I’ve been profiting of

• To gain actual insights of my journey you could apply yourself if you wanted to (no this is not one of those Tip me for my secrets kind of a deal)

• To ensure that the competition on the market is actually fair (more on this a bit later)

Special thanks to https://app.warera.io/user/6941081ccb2715e852c98d71 for the help with this one, and the time he spent on his article: https://app.warera.io/article/6a6a0647d4ceb2a62933e157 - definitely one of the better reads in the game, and I'd recommend anyone who yet hasn't to check it out. It gave me the motivation for what I'm about to write.

Chapter 2: Stop leaving money on the table

There are 3 types of people that I encountered on the market, that sell their equipment at a bad margin, from which no-lifers like me end up profiting from.

1. Those who don't know or wont utilize the dismantle feature

This is pretty self-explanatory, and there are hundreds if not thousands of listings of items below their dismantle value every single day (mostly consisting of Gray/Green/Blue items). If you click on an item in your inventory, you'll see the dismantle option which will provide you with metal scarps that you can then sell instantly on the market.

Here are the price points every player should know:

Gray: 1.272g if scarp is at 0.212g or 1.314g if scarp is at 0.219g

Green: 3.816g if scarp is at 0.212g or 3.942g if scarp is at 0.219g

Blue: 11.448g if scarp is at 0.212g or 11.826g if scarp is at 0.219g

My honest advice is to always check the scarp price before adding any of these 3 rarities to the item market. It will save you a lot of time and money.

2. Those who don't know that different item stats come at different price points

This one is also self-explanatory. Blue armor that provides 15 armor will sell at a higher price than the blue armor that provides 11. A lot of people will just check the lowest item price on the market and attach it at that price point without actually bothering to check the stats. This is where people like me are able to get a large sum of cash fairly quickly. Here's my biggest single-item snatch, which has netted me almost 30g in one transaction (note I don't scan for Red items):

This one was extra special to me, as the profit came of a https://app.warera.io/country/6813b6d446e731854c7ac7bc player.

3. Those who gamble and want their stuff sold fast

Not much to be said about this, they know what they are doing, purposely leaving a couple gold gap on their listings so that they can gamble again ASAP.

The only message to these people from me is - Gamble on brother!

Chapter 3: How do I do it?

Many might think that there's some secret sauce as to how you can participate and raise that net worth asap - sorry to disappoint, but there's not really much to it. You constantly click around item to item and look for the deals, while some might have many tabs open, one for each item type. I personally prefer just to click around in one which is probably not the most "optimal" approach.

You mostly cycle through grey, green and blue items as they have the most amount of volume. You know the scrap prices by heart, so you know whenever someone made an error and netted you the profit. You occasionally (every 3-5 minutes or so) check the listings on Purple and Orange items as whenever someone drops a deal there, since those items are often not instantly picked up, and hope for the best.

Chapter 4: What did I learn?

This kind of "work" is extremely mind-numbing, repetitive and can extort copious amount of time. The environment is tremendously competitive, to the point that everything becomes luck based - meaning that you litteraly have to click (or check in a different tab) on an item, as someone is posting it in order to land the deal. The profits are not guaranteed, meaning that I had stretches where I got 1-2g while clicking for hours, and then I had stretches where I landed 50+ gold in a matter of minutes. This hell is not for everyone, but here's "the knowledge" you should equip yourself with before even giving it a shot:

1. Know the prices

Without this, you stand no shot, literally. By the time you check if a potential item is worth buying, it will be gone.

2. Off-hours work best

I had the most success in the early morning & evening hours (CET), the amount of people like me lurking around is not as high, so there's more room for error, as items are not snatched within 3 seconds of posting.

3. Work the target

This is something you'll realize really quickly, if someone has posted an item that has room for profit, they are likely to post more. https://app.warera.io/user/6941081ccb2715e852c98d71 's article got me curious how I compare to the other suspects he mentioned in this regard so I reached out, and as expected, I was on the list with my fastest reaction time being 2.3 seconds.

So how do I utilize my "knowledge" to buy so fast that I end up being flagged as a potential cheater?

It's simple really, we humans work in and are trained to recognize patterns. When someone that has a huge list of items to sell is posting them 1 by 1, they will work by color. Almost nobody will ever post 1 green, then 1 purple, then 1 blue at random. So as the items are coming, I'm already on the page sniping them really fast (as fast as it takes me to click Buy/Confirm Buttons). When I see the listings stop, I immediately check other items of that rarity. Often enough I find the next item the "victim" had in line and then I start buying those as they come. When I see that there are no more listings for that color I move to the next lower one, and funnily enough you'll end up seeing the same person there, making the same mistakes, and the process repeats.

Chapter 5: Is it worth it?

Honestly no. Like stated previously you'll end up burning hours, often to no avail, just to catch that 10 minute window of lucky brilliance. My profits varied from day to day, I do not have the exact numbers, but they're roughly somewhere in the line of 50 to 100g with a median number of active hours per day of 3h.

Chapter 6: Fair play

https://app.warera.io/article/6a6a0647d4ceb2a62933e157 - This one raises some good points, and if anyone is willing to waste their life on this, we should ensure that the environment is fair for everyone. As an almost a full-time equipment trader, I wanted to compare myself to the people that were accused, and have chosen the two I remember encountering the most.

Just to clarify, this is who I see the most, as we probably play at the similar times, nothing against the lads, as I'm a firm believer in the innocent until proven guilty.

So as stated, I won't be making any allegations and will leave everyone to make their own conclusions. Here's how an average player compares with a manual trader (using the methods above), against the 2 players mentioned in the article:

Again, massive thanks to https://app.warera.io/user/6941081ccb2715e852c98d71 for working with me on this, and providing the information.

Final thoughts

Do I believe there are players with scripts doing their buddings out there every single day for over a month without being noticed for 14 hours on average?

I find that unlikely. At least unlikely that it's being done for the full duration of 14 hours.

The reason for that is my own experience. If someone was literally snatching everything with automation, there would be nothing left for me, and I've managed to snatch quite a lot over the past 20 or so days.

However, from what I've learned, the secret is not in buying, it's actually in knowing where to look. If there's a tool out there that would mimic the market listings for all items in one place where you could instantly see any mistakes other players make, that would give the person with that tool an insane advantage over the rest of us who are manually checking every single of 36 item categories, and I seriously do not know if and how we could protect ourselves against that.