ALERT! NEW AH SCAM WARNING

This may not be a NEW scam, BUT it is increasing in noticeability and I know someone who bought an L gun for a three digit sum that was BROKEN. It would seem unscrupulous sellers are listing their broken L items and getting market value on them and or maybe more than that from people think they are UL items.

Before buying something with very low condition that is L, ALWAYS look at the info. If it says minimum condition is 3%, then multiply the total max condition by .03. So 120 ped item would have a min condition of 3.60 peds. If the item has a value around the minimum, MAKE SURE that it is unlimited and repairable, and if it is L, do not buy it! You will end up with a very expensive display trophy for your apartment if you have one!

I only post this warning because we are broke enough with MA's crappy loot right now, we don't need bad sellers ripping us off to boot. IF everyone stops falling for this trick, then they will get tired of spending the auction fees to list broken items and we will effectively have this shut down and under control. It is doubtless MA will do anything about it, since they only seem to send a general response that says please read forums or articles or guides and learn how to improve your playing experience. I call BS. They seem perfectly happy to offer safe harbor to exploiters and scammers as long as it doesn't come out of THEIR pocket. Oh, don't get me wrong as soon as someone does something that hits MA's pocket book, I guarantee they will put a stop to it like the time deposits were messed up and people were depositing but the processor wasn't debiting their cards. They went through and traced every counterfeit ped, reversed trades and purchases, etc.

If you have been taken advantage of in this manner, PLEASE fill out a ticket and complain to MA. If enough of us make it clear we are tired of this crap, maybe they will do something. Broken L items should NOT be sellable... At least until such time as broken items become useable in blueprints.. It would be nice if you could put a broken gun into your refiner and have it break down into crafting materials. Then it wouldn't be SO bad... But they would have to change the name from CB19 to BROKEN CB19... SOMETHING would have to be put in the name or description alerting us it is broken and not useable.

This is the Goldbaron signing off... And in the mean time... Caveat Emptor!

AUCTION HOUSE: Clarification on Placing and Filling Orders

The weak economies of Arkadia and Rocktropia are in dire need of supply and demand. Yes, the supply is there, but it does not do any good for the crafters if the materials and ores are all trade terminaled. But, it is a huge risk to post large amounts of listings and ores, and have to wait for them to sell when you want to keep playing but have no peds. So my goal here, is to encourage you crafters to place orders for the materials you need... It tells the people selling their materials that ok, I have a market for it. In order for crafting to be viable, we must convince people not to TT any of the materials we need, or we really can't craft. Those of you who do thousands of click runs on calypso... You have the benefit of a steady flow of ores from the huge economy, and from the asteroid, and all other destinations. Calypso is the lifeblood of EU. But I want to see all the other planets become viable as well.


So... In order to place an order... You must click the orders tab. Then, you must click on the "available" tab. In order to find the item you wish to order (no L items may be ordered), you must go through the list one page or 10 pages at a time, and select your item. Then, you may place an order for it, it costs 1 ped per day of the listing regardless of quantity or peds ordered of that item. You set the maximum markup you will pay, and the WHOLE amount for that order will be deducted from your ped card.


If you order 100 narcanisum at 125%... And someone sells 90 ingots at 120%, the 5% difference is refunded to your ped card at the time you purchase those ingots. You have the option of leaving the remaining amount of the order up, or you may take it down early to obtain the rest of the funds that are still reserved for it.

Please bear in mind, it is not economically feasible for people to fill orders below 105%, the exceptions are for residues in large quantities. However, refined oil, the refiner decay alone brings the cost of this to 105%, so a note here: NEVER fill orders for oil for less than 105% unless you like throwing away peds! I've learned this from doing!


And a reminder...


TO FILL orders...


Click the orders tab. You may search if there is a lot of listings, or browse... Or sort by markup... When you find an order you wish to fill... Your listing MUST have the same quantity or less, and be AT that markup or under in order for the order to fill (buy out price). If you do NOT meet these requirements, the order will not fill.


Orders can change from hour to hour, minute to minute, day to day. What isn't ordered now, may command a huge price tomorrow because someone wants to do an emergency crafting run on something.

Mining Basics Part 4: Selling Your Ores

This seems like a logical fourth part to my recent series of posts outlining the basics for all the noobs who are coming into Entropia on a daily basis. I am seeing incredible amounts of new people every time I log in. It takes me weeks sometimes to run into another avatar I've seen before. Seriously!

If you look at the totals on Entropia Tracker, say my mining rank is like 700 out of 3000 or something... And you think wow... 3000 people is that all thats here? But then you realize... That's only people who have hoffed and globalled in the last 30 days that are counted. It took me 6 months to get my first global. Then it took another 6, and after that it dropped to 3, and then I started hitting some kind of a global at least once a month... Until now, where I have globalled virtually every day I've played. So just think of how many people there really are playing that are not counted in the globals and hofs.

Anywho... I am a bit off topic here, but that's ok. This is going to be short and quick.

Markup is crucial to your success in any profession. It is the difference between winning and losing. Mindark is not going to guarantee you will win on every run you do. However, what gives you the opportunity to is markup because markup is directly out of other peoples pockets unlike the TT value of items.

There are several things to consider.

1. Rarity and % markup.
2. How many peds worth of each resource you have.
3. Auction fees.
4. Trader prices.
5. Is it worth more refined or unrefined (This may sound dumb, but I will explain why it is valid)
6. Do I fill orders, or do I just list an auction with a buyout?


So lets start with number one...

If a resource is selling for less than 110%, you are generally going to have a hard time pushing it on the auction unless you know what you are doing, and it is going to take a fairly large stack of the stuff to make it worth doing. For instance...

Oil had orders at 104%. I thought ok, I will try refining my 80 ped oil global and sell it to orders. What I didn't expect was, my refiner broke at least two times, so that cost me 4 peds right there. Then there is a matter of the auction fee of nearly a ped or so. My markup was less than 5 peds. I literally didn't gain anything by doing this.

However, it has a lot to do with what is the value per unit. See, refining decay is based on how many units you are refining. It is costlier to refine Crude Oil than say, Angelic flakes or Dianthus... Ped for ped that is. It wasn't worth bothering to refine the oil and fill orders. But I could have 80 peds worth of say, Alicenies and refined it and sold it on an order of 104% and actually made a few pecs.

Depending on the markup it can be cheaper to actually TT the stuff. But on all items you think are TT food, at the very least talk to a trader to see if you can get ANY markup for.

BUT REMEMBER: If you take something like Dunkel... Assume 5K% markup. A trader MUST automatically deduct around 1500 points off that markup and offer you between 3500% and 4000%. Because even with 3500%, the auction fees would take all the profit and then some. And if you think it is easy to sell something so rare, especially when it's not refined, you can try it. If its extremely high markup and rare, so few people even use it that it would be a risk counting on the fact someone using it would actually see your listing and buy it... It's safer in my opinion to sell it as fast as you can as long as the offer is reasonable. Reasonable, in my book, is markup minus auction fees on rare items. On common ores and matters, the standard few percent discount is reasonable.

#2:  If you have 10 peds of lysterium thats worth say, 105%... You are only talking 50 pecs markup. You wont make money with orders. Potentially, you could list a 9.99 ped lot of Lysterium ingots (333) of them for say, 120% and they will sell becuase lots of crafters will pay a little extra for smaller quantities. But you risk also that you might not sell it and lose the auction fees. So you have two options: Hold your ore til you have about 50 to 100 peds worth, or find a trader. Small markups will make a difference, but only on large TT values.

#3: Auction fees are progressive. The more value the item has, and the higher the markup, the faster the increase in auction fee as you up the price. However something you should know is... The auction fee to list what, 200 peds of Cobalt is like 6 peds or something... But to sell say, 900 peds on auction the fee is only like 12 peds. So after a while, economies of scale kick in and the more you can list at once the cheaper it actually gets for you to list. If you were to list four lots of 200, you would be paying nearly 25 peds in fees, versus saving and filling that 900 ped order. The numbers are just approximations from memory, not accurate... But the principle is what I am trying to explain. It will always be CHEAPER to sell the biggest lot that you can sell at one time,

Fees are good though. Why? Because it prevents people from using the auction as a warehouse like so many online games tend to do. If there were no fees, people would simple list everything at astronomical prices and never have to worry about storage for their stuff again. It might not be a big deal now, but back in the day when there was no storage on the asteroid, it would have been considered a major exploit.

Also, it prevents people from flooding the markets or otherwise manipulating them by buying up all the cheaper listings and relisting at much higher prices. The fees force people to list at prices they reasonably expect will find buyers.

I do notice the more I spend in AH fees, the better quality of loot I get... But I have no concrete proof, only observation from my own situation. But just keep your eyes peeled to see if it's making any difference for you or not. There is a lot we may never know about the game.

4: The reason traders are justified in making profit is simple. Most people do not have more than a few peds in any given stack of ore or resources. If you mine with less than a couple hundred peds, you are going to have a varied inventory when you get done. You will be forced to either tt lots too small to put on auction, or find a trader.

Now, when a trader buys from you, he has to consider how the market is. Are prices heading upward, or downward. Is it in high demand or is it not being used much. Whats the current price.

See... The advantage of a trader is this: If you cant list the stuff you have yourself, you either have to wait til you have more, TT it, or sell to the trader. Would you rather have five piles each of 2 peds of 120% ores and trade terminal them, or go to a trader who would give you say 115% for the ores. It is your choice. You can either lose 2 peds in markup by TTing, or you can go to the trader and let him make a few pecs, and lose only half a ped.

In turn, the trader accumulates the ores til he has sufficient amounts to peddle on the auction house or direct to crafters.Traders however, if they are smart, will take a sufficient cut on the ores so that when they have amassed their piles, that they will still make some money after figuring in the fees and etc.

However, if you have piles of ingots worth over 20 peds, and markup is over say 115% or 120%, by all means sell them yourself, in most cases you will get more than a trader will offer. It's just reality. But the exception to this rule... If it is an Ore that doesn;t move fast... Cobalt is very tempermental. If I list it as the lowest auction buyout, someone always undercuts me. But orders are sometimes 10 points below the lowest auction price. The solution? See what a trader will offer you. If Cobalt is 120% on orders and buyouts are no lower than 130, rather than risk being undercut, you might get a trader to give you 125%.

#5: Yes, I have to cover this... Becuase there are separate categories for unrefined and refined ores and enmatters, differences in the market value arise. In the case of chalmon/devils tail... I once sold 20 peds or so TT value, to orders for 560%. I went and checked the devils tail orders... Devil's tail was ordered at 620%. I would have made more money selling it unrefined. So when you have VERY high markup stuff... ALWAYS check the refined and unrefined orders BEFORE you refine it... You can always refine it later, but you can NOT unrefine an ore!

#6; Filling orders vs. Selling on Auction...

Scenario 1: Your ore's lowest buyout is at 120%. The orders are paying 119%. It is best to fill the order. Because even if you do list for say 123%, it might not sell, and for the 4 points difference, i'd rather have my money now. Also a gap like that generally means the price is going to be dropping so is best to be done with it than stuck with an overmarked up listing.

Scenario 2: Orders are at 120%, but lowest buyout is 130%. This is what I have experienced with Cobalt on a somewhat regular basis. Because the cobalt is virtually impossible to move without filling orders for me, I would opt to take it to a trader or fill the orders. Any other ore though, I would just do a listing at slightly under the lowest buyout if I needed the peds right now. If I wasn't in a hurry, I would find the lowest price listing around the size lot I had, and list just a little bit below that. People are going to always pay a little higher markup for smaller lots of resources.

Scenario 3: Make note of what the lowest auction buyout is, and then ask a trader, if there are no orders. If the trader offers you an amount somewhat close to that figure, do the math and see how much of a difference it is and if it is acceptable, take the trade. Otherwise, see Scenario 2.

I hope this helps clarify some situations and help you understand some of the dynamics at work in the market place. I will go through and clarify and rewrite this over time... Maybe add better examples and make it simpler to understand... But in the mean time, good luck!

ADVICE: Take Advantage of Low Markups!!!

A lot of blueprints can be very expensive to skill up. Armor is especially costly to skill in. If you have something you want to skill in but don't want to pay high markups, just keep track of what materials you need and check their prices over time. I have seen Alice drop from 150% to TT food. Narc from 170% down to 120%. Cobalt as high as 170% down to 130%.

If most of the components you need for a blueprint drop significantly, there is no better time to craft it than when it is most affordable. That way, when the prices go back up, you have your skills without the expense you would have had. The system does pretty good usually at compensating in terms of TT losses, but Markup is what you can expect to lose. It's the cost of doing what you are doing. I am not saying that the system cannot compensate you in terms of the relative markup, but it sort of has a built in mechanism for that. Say if you have narc at 140% and Alice at 120%, BSM tends to sell for 160 to 170%. The markets on Entropia are no different than any other. They will always tend towards equilibrium. If it costs more to make a good, that good is going to be worth more, generally.

I see dozens of resources that are "on sale" because they have dropped so low in markup. Cash Cows of the old days... Turned to TT food.

Good luck and happy hoffing!

ADVICE: To TT or not to TT

There are times when you simply cannot profitably sell something for a markup if it is too low. Take Oil for example. It had a common markup of about 104% on orders or less, and if you competitively list it, you are lucky to even sell it at 105%. But, I was trying to fill an order once... My refiner broke a lot trying to refine a couple hundred peds of crude oil. By the time I was done, the orders were not high enough to cover the refiner decay and the listing fee. In short... TTing my oil was more profitable than auctioning it off.

Generally, I consider anything below 105% to be TT food, unless I have a trader that will buy it from me, or someone in my society can use it. If it is someone in the Society, I generally will sell it to them for TT value, it helps them out, and they will gladly help you out in the future too.

You have to look at it this way too: If you have something at say, 103%, and you are holding it and holding it trying to gather enough to sell... Finally you have thousands of peds worth, or maybe hundreds, and you sell it for your little bit of markup... If you don't feel foolish, you ought to when I tell you... You had no doubtedly deposited so you had more peds to play with because all your peds were tied up in loot, correct? Well... You effectively lost half a percent if you sold your tt food at 103% to a trader, or even on auction. How? Because there is approximately a 3.65% fee deducted from your peds when you deposit to cover the credit card transaction.

So, it is cheaper just to TT the low markup stuff if it means having to deposit.

If you are fortunate enough to have a large ped roll, then never mind me... It is wiser to get any extra you can out of what you have. Feel free to read my posts regarding survivability to find out more on why this makes a big difference.

It is mysterious to me how the auction fees work in Entropia. Some items is possible to fill orders at 102% on auction and still have some slight gain. Other items, you can't pay the auction fee with anything less than 105%... You just have to look closely at what you are selling and what all the costs involved are, otherwise you will find not all opportunities are ge drd le s.
Always remember a loss is a loss no matter how small.

I generally do not recommend TTing anything over 105%... Exceptions are for things that either sell slowly or not at all. If there is no demand, you can't expect to sell it for any markup.

Under 105%, is TT food.

HOW TO: How to Fill or Place Auction House Orders

I still run into people who have been on Entropia for years that have never learned how the Auction house works... They have not yet used the orders for ordering materials or selling resources. So, I thought it would be appropriate to give everyone a quick tutorial on how the Auction house ordering system works.

PLACING ORDERS:

Rules:
You can only place orders for UNLIMITED items.

When you place an order for an item, the FULL TT + Markup is held by the system until order fills. 

If the condition of the item is less than full TT, You receive a refund for the difference in condition when the order is filled.

As of last time I've used the orders, it cost 1 Ped per day that your order runs. If it is a rare item, you need to run for more days sometimes to get it filled. If it is ores or other resources, one day is plenty because if someone raises their orders too high over yours, yours may never get filled unless the market drops.

What it is useful for: Ordering crafting supplies for much lower than you can buy them off auction directly. Obtaining expensive items that you don't want to pay full retail for but reasonably think someone would sell to you at a lower price such as a hard to sell item but they need the PEDs.

How To

In the auction house, there are two tabs at top. One says Offers, the other says Orders. Offers is what everyone is trying to sell. It is where you go to buy things directly off auction, or just list things for sale. You need to click on the Orders tab.

At the bottom of the window I believe it has a button that says either Make Order or Place Order. Click it.

Select your item from the list that you wish to order. It can range from blueprints, to animal oils, to metal ingots or raw resources. Even weapons! But note they are all unlimited. Limited items must be bought and sold at the prevailing market price as dictated by supply and demand.

Once your item is selected, you decide how long you want the order to run. If you are ordering common items such as ores and enmatters, you will want to note the highest order price already listed and the quantity they ordered. The highest order price will get filled first if the quantity the seller sells is equal to or smaller than the ordered amount.

Say there are two orders for Narcanisum.

Order 1    1000 Narcanisum at 140.50%
Order 2     2000 Narcanisum at 139.19%

Scenario 1: If you sell 1500 Narcanisum for 140.50%, it wont fill the order, and will go straight to auction for buyout at the price you chose. You can instead sell it to order 2 for 139.19% or as close as you can get to it, because they have enough quantity ordered.

Scenario 2: You have 500 Narcanisum to sell. Even if you sell it at 139%, it will still go to order number 1 because they have the highest bid, and they have enough quantity left to buy your lot.

FILLING ORDERS:

Rules: See scenario 1 and 2 from last section.

How To:

What I recommend doing is just type in the item you have to sell in the search and click on the orders tab. If any orders show up, those are what people are offering for you to sell them the item and how many they still want. The advantage over auction is, you don't have the risk in worrying if it will sell or not and whether or not you will lose your auction fee if it doesn't sell.

When you find an order you want to fill, you must go to the offers tab. Sell item like usual, except you only put in up to the quantity of item ordered, and you set the buy out price AT OR BELOW the ordered markup. If both of these conditions are true, the transaction will be instantly completed and the PEDs available on your card right away!

That's all there is to it!

It is not uncommon to save 10 to 20% in material costs by placing orders instead of buying straight off the auction. This is a huge benefit to crafters, and it helps other crafters and miners by giving them instant demand if they need to use the peds they just tied up to keep playing. It sucks to have all your peds in auction house waiting for things to sell.

Good luck and may everyone ATH or have fun trying!

Update On The Economy in Entropia: Major Price Changes Open Up Opportunity

Because I am dedicated to the crafter and miner, though more and more I am hunter friendly, the prices in the market place and auction house affect us all. When Thrusters first came out, they were around 500 peds with markup! A great many were sold and used at those astronomical prices! Gungnirs were 1500 peds without any weapons when they came out!

Well... In the past month or two, prices have changed a LOT.

ON CALYPSO:
Thrusters are going for about 30 to 50 peds now, so what, about 700% markup instead of the 7000% they used to be!

Gungnirs and Sleipnirs are going for 300% or so now. So you can pick one up for about 75 Peds.

However, on Arkadia, thrusters were selling for around 80 peds, meaning there is room to make some money if you want to make the long flight.

Alicenies is rockbottom at very nearly TT food prices. However, it still selling for a nice premium on Arkadia and who knows where all else. This is one resource that might be worth just buying a bunch to wait for prices to go back up. It is used in so many blueprints, and for high demand components like Basic Sheet Metal.

Narcanisum is cheap now as well, at around 125%.

The time hasn't been better for buying things, in general, prices on most things have dropped, so nows the time to hit the market and auction and see if you can turn a buck!

And no, this isn't a promotion for Mind Ark LMAO... Instead, this is your wakeup call. The early bird gets the worm... And the first man gets the oyster and the pearl, the second one the shell! Go show the world what Free Enterprise can do for you! Where there is opportunity, there are profits!

Trading: THE Road To Profits

I am an experienced trader and I have learned so many things the hard way I do not wish to give my secrets away... But I will share enough to help you understand and learn to trade.

By itself, Entropia is a negative expectation game. This means that because of decay and the unknown distribution of loots, if no new money were added, the economy would dry up and everyone after enough time would be broke. Fortunately people like myself are happy to deposit a nominal amount each month, which I don't mind.. $50 in Entropia lasts much longer than $50 in a casino... Or in a gas tank lol.

So how do you turn it into a positive expectation game? That is what markup does. Instead of mindark crediting you for tt value of an item, other people will pay a premium for things based on supply and demand. This increases the amount of peds circulating because the more spent in markup, the more that is deposited. But when markup is considered it is possible to suffer very heavy tt losses but make a slight profit.

Items and resources are always going up and down in markup. The real genius to the game is that the TT value never changes. This limits mindark liabilities to the player in a worst case scenario, and solves the problem of calculating loots with a rubber ruler.

The old adage buy low and sell high is king here. Say an ore is 140% markup on the auction. If you find a miner who wants to sell without waiting for auctions to do the job not to mention the fees charged to the miner for the auction, you could reasonably offer 135%... Maybe as low as 130%... But remember, you give someone too short of a deal and you will be ruined as a trader! If you are losing just a few percent on each crafting run, the cheaper prices from buying directly can mean break even or profit!

If you want to trade full time it is important to identify your customers. Who will you buy from and sell to? What is an acceptable profit margin? For a little while I was seeing traders on the asteroid offering two points under market value... It is nuts to buy a 200% ore at 198%... There was no way to compete with that so I had to quit trading. After a while the noons must have slit their own throats as prices later returned to a viable level... Remember it is a 50 ped round trip to asteroid and the only way miners get good markup on ores up there is traders. If not for the trader either the miner ties up all their peds and returns to planet to sell or they TT their ores.

So you got to also factor in other costs such as auction fees... I always strive to buy for no higher a price than break even if I have to let go of my ores at auction prices including the auction fees. If traders can't make profit then they go out of business... Which if someone is willing to pay near market value for something that you can't do, let them. If it is a bad deal for you it will hurt them and they won't be competing for long.

So, with everything said, I wish to highlight some important advice for trading:

1. Do not be afraid to offer TT value on a near TT item...
2. Always buy anything you can for TT... This does not mean screw over your customer eiher though... Always offer a fair price. For ores at 110% to 140% fair is usually 5 points off. As markup goes up, you can knock more points off... Say a 5K% Dunkel Particle... Is best to offer 4K% or so.
3. If a trader is offering more for something than you are paying, and you feel you can't beat their price, then perhaps selling all you have of that item for a quick profit is a good idea.
4. Always check orders... Sometimes you can be profitably surprised :)
5. Do NOT go up to people and initiate trades at random... This will piss people off and a pissed off person won't do business with you.
6. Be kind and courteous at all times...
7. Be very careful of the society you join. Joining one of the notoriously bad ones will give you an instant and epic fail as a trader.
8. Conduct your trades as timely and accurately as possible.
9. Always check prices so you can offer a fair deal from day to day.
10. If prices drop it is best to hold your inventory until it goes back up.
11. Ores run in cycles... They have a normal high low range. Narcanisum ranges from 130% to 170% on average for instance. This means you can identify bargain prices and stock up.
12. Regardless of what prices are you buy with enough margin for profit but if it takes you a long time to flip your inventory be careful.
13. Ask your customers to compare your offer with competitors. Most times they won't bother :) but it gives them confidence in you.
14. Profits are better than luck.
15. Don't get greedy lest you destroy your reputation and clientele.
16. If you think trading is slow, figure out how fast you can sweat and then see how many days it would take to sweat what you just made on one trade :)
17. Always be helpful to noons. They may not have much to trade now but they will remembebyour kindness and reward you with loyalty.
18. Remember... All deals are final and any errors are up to the people Involved. Unless mindark themselves have been harmed by your actions, they will not intervene on any finalized trade.
19. Restrain your spending. Every ped you use is one less ped that can make you money.

I will revise this post in the near future and add more to it so stay tuned!

The biggest advantage to trading is there are no tools to decay or risk to find the loot. And if you have trouble making peds... Just remember to ask yourself what a Ferengi from Star Trek would do :)