So, real money hasn't been attached to the auction house yet. Thank god.

Right now, it looks mostly swarmed by goddamn lunatics charging $45k for a shitty rare that you'll out-level in an hour or two. I have picked up a few reasonable pieces here and there that have helped me along. Thanks to the overblown pricing on 85% of the other items in the auction house, I've managed to eke out a respectable business getting rid of some rare items I just don't have a use for anymore. The biggest frustration I have right now is the mandatory 2-day timeline for any auction. Since my fiancee and I did a pretty crazy marathon over the weekend, by the time I'd won the auction, I'd already found four or five better pieces of gear. Obviously now that I'm back to a normal routine that won't happen as frequently, but the lack of a buyout price on a lot of auctions is a little crazy.

Still, given the ludicrous prices, I'm curious to see what the real-money auction house will do to the game's economy.

Has anyone taken a peek? Found any awesome deals? Found pricing strategies that work pretty well? Only focusing on items with a reasonable buyout? Spent a staggering amount of gold already on a drunken flight of whimsy?

Yeah, it was just people out of their fucking minds at first with crazy prices then I learned to use the search system well. Put down all specific stats youre looking for, set your max price you're willing to pay for an item and start browsing. That's the only way I've found useful stuff. Generally for like 10-15k gold which is completely reasonable. My biggest gripe with it is that when all my items I'm auctioning are filling up all the spots and they aren't selling I have no way to get rid of it for the new item I KNOW will sell. Having to wait the 2 days just to get confirmation that my shit didn't sell kinda sucks. Also, buy out is your friend. I don't bother with actual bidding, I've got shit to do so I just get the best buyout prices

I didn't really hit the AH till I was looking for lvl 55 gear to finish Hell, and I mostly just filter based on how much I want to spend and what stats I was looking for. Did some grinding and sold stuff on the cheap, usually 5k for an okay blue and 20k for a decent yellow, just to keep money flowing quickly. Found a few crazy good deals but even a few seconds hesitation made me lose them.

@wmaustin55: Yeah. That's my situation right now, too. Probably thanks to how much I've churned through in the past week. My entire stash is filled with Rares that will probably do okay on the market, but the inability to adjust timing or to take auctions down when it's clear nobody is biting is a little frustrating. I'm thinking I'll start putting relatively low buyout prices soon just to get this stuff moving.

Ah prices are always fucked up right after launch, they should ballance out. Just use the maximum price search to weed out the outrageous priced items

Don't buy anything pre 60. It's simply not worth it.

The people putting prices on things are trying to generate a false economy, which works great for me due to "cheap" being overpriced still.

I've made about 500k so far of selling rares for low prices.

I got a socketed 1-hand that had dex, vitality and over 100DPS unsocketed for 10k today. I don't know what that guy was doing when he put that auction up but he helped raise my DPS by like 700. I've been able to sell items consistently using the search function and comparing similar items. I've made probably 120k off the AH so far.

And yeah, don't mess around with bids until you are at least deep into hell. You out level stuff too fast. Just buyout.

I have a legendary weapon that i was thinking about putting it on the auction house. But I deiced to make a barb to use that weapon instead

I have bad news for anyone who thinks the prices will level out. First the prices are only going to go up as people collect more and more gold and second when the real money AH goes live everyone can sell their own gold for real money which means gold inflation is going to go nuts and pretty much make buying anything with gold not possible. While I love this game I hope you're all ready to bust out your wallets, especially since they removed trading from the game.

So far Ive used the auction house for the vast majority of my gear. Granted I'm not buying ridiculously expensive stuff (im level 21 and the maximum Ive spend so far on a single item is 3000), just better equipment than the stuff I have. I think it's a much better alternative than hoping you'll get a good loot drop. Granted, I would never EVER pay real money for this, and I hope once the real currency system comes in it won't fuck up the gold currency auction house. Plus after today's hacking disaster, who the hell would want to put their account/paypal details on battle.net?

@blueduck: They didn't remove trading from the game though.

@blueduck: They didn't remove trading from the game though.

Yeah, I also think the two day timeline is pretty ridiculous. It might make sense at 60 for certain items, but when I'm just looking for a good int item to fill a slot I haven't found something good for I want it now, not in two days, so I mostly stick to buyout prices.

When selling I normally try to price reasonably for bidding and buyout (4k-20k depending), and I've been able to sell most of my random good stat rares or great blues I'm not using that way, making enough to keep myself fairly flush in cash. Is there any indication if the ridiculously priced mid-level items are actually selling?

AH is great you can get far better gear then anything that drops for you in normal-nightmare for next to nothing if you know how to search. People are constantly selling great rare items for under 1k sometimes almost at vendor prices. There really isn't much reason no to skim it from time to time to deck your guy out once in a while and make the game go by way easier and faster.

Even now in Hell I'm constantly on the lookout for good deals, raising your dps by a couple of thousand is nothing to sneeze at, or life by a few thousand. As long as you find reasonable prices. One trick i have learned is in the wee hours of the night when there aren't that many people combing the AH you can find real insane deals for great items with superb stats get put out for dirt cheap, because people want fast cash, normally these get bought before you have time to even look at the stats properly, but later at night the time window can extend to a few minutes. I've bought great 1h wepons that raised my dps by a metric fuckton, then when outleveling them and buying new ones i was even able to sell my old ones for a profit.

It's also way cheaper to shop on the AH then ever using the Backsmith or Jeweler, you can always find better gear for cheaper, with the stats you need not random bullshit.

It all comes down to proper searching. Set your base stats, like I'm a monk i look out for weapons that have at least some DEX maybe some VIT, and a socket or a speed boost or some one other enchant. Set you max price. Then sort first by price to see if anyone is selling good shit for cheap, then by DPS, to see if any super high dps weapons are being sold for way below avarage. For armor it's a bit trickier because you can't sort for amor the same way you do for dps at least it doesn't matter the asme way.

Same for selling items, if you know what stats are in high demad you can quickly filter out your rares for shit to vendor and something that would fetch you 5-10K+ in the AH. Just yesterday I stumbled upon a vendor on Hell selling a ring with DEX and Speed Increase % for 6 K, bought like a dozen, sold them all on the AH for 15k a pop, way below market price for such shit, they sold like hotcakes, my only regret is i didn't have enough gold at the time to buy more of those rings from the vendor.

Or if you are a low level char for example high level Hell difficulty gems sell for dirt cheap, far cheaper then crafting them, and with no level restrictions you can put them on low level character. Spend 500g on a couple of socketed items at lvl 15 and put in a couple of Square Rubys, voila you have lvl 30 equiv dps at lvl 15 for next to nothing, everything just melts away.

Play it right and the AH is both a source of great gear and gold.

Wasted so much gold on blacksmith training....such a god damn waste, went to auction house and got all rare and legendary gear for under 10K, most of it was for vendor price.

Just limit buyout prices to 1-2k. Plenty of sane people. Also, sell your items at buyouts of ~1-2k, and they'll sell in minutes.

I want to make one but I’m going to get feedback first. What do you guys think about an anchored thread for trading requests for Duders? I feel like as long as we moderate it and make sure people go back and delete their comment after getting what they wanted/don’t need it anymore it can be an awesome thing. One user posts what they need and posts their battletag. I hypothetically see that, add them, then join their game and we work something out. What do you guys think? I’d much rather prefer to do that a majority of the time than AH, but maybe I’m in the minority

It seems like a pretty useless feature to me so far, I'm sure they'll get some sort of system going once real money is involved but barely give it any notice. 

untill I hit 60 I only look below 10k for nightmare loot, I might go up for 20k for hell loot. Really worth to do once or twice, change all your gear, you can double your defence and attack!

Will the Gold AH become completely useless once the RMAH opens up? I've not played a game involving an auction house before.

Surely gold inflation will go through the roof. All the best items will end up on the RMAH because why would you want worthless gold. Are the gold sinks big enough? I watched some of the Inferno 'world first' race and even though the team kept wiping out, they'd easily have enough gold to repair all their shit.

@Panpipe: The economy is the biggest concern I have, and partly the reason why I started this thread. There really doesn't seem to be too many permanent cash sinks in this game. Like anybody else here, I barely buy anything from vendors (unless it's for achievement purposes) and I typically come across enough health potions that buying those isn't a significant sink. I don't know how far down the rabbit hole levelling up artisans goes, but I doubt that will occupy me for longer than a month or so, unless you can get them to the point where they're producing legendary items for vast sums of gold - and at that point, why even have an auction house? From what I've seen, the price of rares will probably drop a fair bit but yeah, anything worth really having will be expensive beyond reason unless Blizzard has already anticipated this stuf and has corrective measures in place. Taking 15% commission doesn't seem to be enough to offset gold auctions at very high levels, but who knows.

There's a lot of good gear on the auction house for very little.
You can get like 50k gold in 1-2 hours of hell playing, act 1 and 2, so its well worth the gold if you're luck is being a bitch (mine is).
 
Right now I'm taking advantage of the confusion as to what stats are good and which are not, before they figure it out and crank up the prices, both ingame and out.

@Tennmuerti said:

Or if you are a low level char for example high level Hell difficulty gems sell for dirt cheap, far cheaper then crafting them, and with no level restrictions you can put them on low level character. Spend 500g on a couple of socketed items at lvl 15 and put in a couple of Square Rubys, voila you have lvl 30 equiv dps at lvl 15 for next to nothing, everything just melts away.

This is a really smart idea. I just started a monk in hardcore - they have a separate stash and gold pool. First thing I did was just outright buy a couple solid rare fist weapons. I'm pretty sure they're both socketed, too. Will totally pick up some gems for 'em. Cuz, y'know. Hardcore.

@Canteu said:

Don't buy anything pre 60. It's simply not worth it.

The people putting prices on things are trying to generate a false economy, which works great for me due to "cheap" being overpriced still.

I've made about 500k so far of selling rares for low prices.

Not worth it now?

I'd rather pay 20k for a weapon that doubles my DPS than spend 10x that upgrading my blacksmith and trying to craft stuff.

@kyrieee: Or you just don't spend anything, AH or crafting and just level your character since all that loot is complete dogshit once you hit 60 and inferno.

I'm doing buyouts on anything gold that is worthwhile ranging from 10-25 K and they always sell out within an hour. Never worry about bids, the 2 day thing is a ridiculous amount of time because if you are any level below 60 you will most definitely outlevel what you are trying to buy in 2 days.

@murisan said:

Just limit buyout prices to 1-2k. Plenty of sane people. Also, sell your items at buyouts of ~1-2k, and they'll sell in minutes.

This. I mean, I typically won't list an item above 10k unless it's a really good piece of gear for the level, and even then, it's a max of 20k. That is easy to come by.

Meanwhile, all of the crazy and ridiculously priced gear is probably part "rub this in your face" as much as it is "man, if someone will pay this dumb amount of money for this, then WOOT". There are plenty of people selling legendaries and set pieces for cheap, though. I was able to find pieces around 100k at level 60 with no problem.

There is a ton of overpriced stuff, but there are plenty of good deals to be found if you know how to look for them.

I feel that buying loot in a game about finding loot kind of defeats the point of playing, I've managed to reach end of Act I Inferno without buying anything and remaining self sufficient so I can't see myself giving in any time soon.

Doesn't mean I haven't been selling everything though, 10-30k on every rare, 60-100k if they are really amazing. Everything sells, no matter how bad it is, you just have to find the right price.

@Canteu said:

@kyrieee: Or you just don't spend anything, AH or crafting and just level your character since all that loot is complete dogshit once you hit 60 and inferno.

Yeah but you have to get to level 60. That doesn't happen instantly for the average player. Clearly I'm playing very slowly compared to you, I've played 30 hours and I'm level 46. I realise you could level to 60 in less than 20 hours, but 20 hours of not spending money on nice gear is no fun.

Also, by the time you get to 60 you'll be making so much gold that you'd laugh at worrying about buying a nice level 30 weapon for 20k.

I always sell cheap, the way I see it, it is easy money and I have a fast turn around. I usually end up with several rares per session and they were starting to crowd my stash. If my choice is vendor for ~400 gold, salvage for a few mats I won't use or sell it on the AH for 5-8k, then the choice is easy. I could probably get more for the stuff I find but I'd rather it be gone fast and help someone else out. Also, when selling, always list a buyout price, as others have said in the thread the 2d wait can be brutal and wasteful, give people the option of getting the item immediately.

@Sign said:

I always sell cheap, the way I see it, it is easy money and I have a fast turn around. I usually end up with several rares per session and they were starting to crowd my stash. If my choice is vendor for ~400 gold, salvage for a few mats I won't use or sell it on the AH for 5-8k, then the choice is easy. I could probably get more for the stuff I find but I'd rather it be gone fast and help someone else out. Also, when selling, always list a buyout price, as others have said in the thread the 2d wait can be brutal and wasteful, give people the option of getting the item immediately.

Yeah, adding in a reasonable buyout seems to be absolutely key to keeping your shit cycling. The worst is sitting on 9 auctions with zero bites and having to wait those two days before you can adjust pricing or sub something else in. Meanwhile, your stash just piles up with more and more crap.