Let's see what you're hoarding! Post your muledumps here
Aside from patience, I find that what separates great merchants from the good is an effective and efficient system of wealth management and trading process. I think a writeup on how you organize, manage, and use your mules would be super interesting to read.
I was originally going to build a guide for how I go about how I trade, what I look for, market tendencies, mule management, organization, etc. but I never got around to it. Itās a lot of information.
I actually just started typing up a quick summary to try and answer some of your questions, and it was turning into a paragraph, so Iāll post what I have written, but I think it would probably be best if I turned it into a full post that I could try and maintain.
Here is what I have thus far:
Types of items sold: I can tell you that I spend less time doing single item sales (ie. Iām selling book of geb for 6L to one person), and more time selling inventories of at least 8 items all at once to a single buyer. Itās more efficient.
Where I get my items from: To do these kinds of trades, I generally turn to āsuppliersā (which is NOT to be read dupers, although I suspect that upwards of 75% of all items on the market today are the result of duping). These people, like myself, have a lot of 5-10 specific items. For example, I have around 50 or so regular suppliers that tend to offer me large quantities of goods. These people, like myself, are interested in health of the economy. Based on a number of constraints (drop rate, dungeon completion frequency, raw stats, usefulness, character creation frequency, demand, inventory size, life pot value, etc.), we try and manually regulate the number of each item on the market at any one time in order to keep the price relatively stable. For example, during the current period, the price of attack is dropping, due to both the shatters event and the puppet event. The price of attack currently can be estimated at 50-75% of itās actual value. I have bought up over 750 attack pots in an effort to reduce the supply and manually boost inflation. In theory, attack and defense should always be about the same, as they hold similar difficulties in obtainability and usefulness. Currently, the disparity is that attack is trading for for 0.5 of a defense. This is not healthy, as it throws all the other pot values out of balance, which in turn affects the price of low tier items like elder, which then impacts the prices of top tier items like gsorc, which alters the way STs sell, such as geb robe. Left to its own accord, the market will probably balance out, but it will take longer. This way, profit gets made, and things stay more consistent for everyone.
Mule organization: At this point I have well over 350 mules, most of which I donāt touch for an extended period of time. On muledump, they are organized alphabetically by item and frequency of use. For example, the mules that I house live on I tend to draw from a lot as I transfer large amounts of life. I will typically āwithdrawā 200 life at a time from my mules so that I can do it all at once. This gets put onto my main account, which has 30 vaults dedicated to housing life pots. Additionally, I tend to keep 2-4 of the most frequently traded items on this main account for easy access. This way I donāt have to log into a mule every time I want to trade.
Iām very good at merching, and Iāve put in the time and the effort to make it work. I am also organized, driven, and have set up the proper infrastructure for sustainable growth. I have gotten lucky numerous times, and have found some great deals, but I also am merching in ways that I donāt see many other people doing, which shaves off quite a bit of time. Also, the more money you have, the more it can work for you. Your merching power with 10 life to work with is a lot different than 1000 life.
Thanks for the rundown, but I still donāt understand how you got into this. As you said:
But how did you build up this original supply to start? Especially because I remember you were low rank when you joined the forums. Or is that one of the moments that you āgot luckyā?
I can tell you either RWTed or that is just inspect element. 
I meanā¦ Youāve been active for around 340 hours. And that huge a quantity of items? Not possible. Your comments saying you ātook advantage of pricesā are obvious lies.
Play the game lmao
Also no clue why Iām looking so far up
Donāt worry, I didnāt show the empty chests.
Laughter of the mocking variety intensifies
ā¦
I feed all the UTs I get because they fill up my characters.
3 vault chests sucks tbh
You just piss me off with the 8 dscales in a vaultā¦ I reserve my vaults for event whites lmao
NOTE, THIS IS GOING TO BE RATHER DETAILED, AND I WILL EXPLAIN THINGS THAT YOU MIGHT NOT FIND IMPORTANT, SO YOU CAN JUST READ THE BOLDED PARTS IF YOU. IT WAS JUST ALL THE INFORMATION THAT I COULD THINK OF AT THE TIME.
If by low rank, you mean that I was blue star, I donāt think that has to do with anything. I was blue star on this account because I really only played wizard. Itās my favorite class (to this day, although warrior is pretty damn fun), so I figured why play anything else. I only started playing other classes, because people stopped taking my trades seriously since I was such a low star level.
I started merching on this account about a year and a half ago. I made about 600 life, spent it all on skins, and consumed them all. All my characters died, and I quit the game for several months. About a year ago, I hopped back on. I had 2 life pots, and and an acrop, worth 2L at the time. Within two weeks, I had 100 life.
##Step 1: Buy items for a mana and sell them for a life
Note that if you donāt have a mana, I recommend just farming pots in the godlands until you have enough to buy 1 mana. This is much faster than trying to merch your way up from say, a def pot, although it can be done.
With respect to the actual process, basically to effectively merch, I think you need at least 1 mana. With a mana, you can buy a gsorc, a sky, a frostbite, a skullsplitter, a t6 orb, a t6 skull. These items are often overlooked by merchers, because they donāt have a lot of value. (sky aside), itās pretty easy to see all of these items for a life. When people look to get rid of them, or they just donāt know the value, they will often sell them for cheaper than their actual value. This is particularly true of the T6 abilities. With the rise of necros after the buff, I imagine the price will become more cemented and maybe even go up in value, but for now, people canāt really pinpoint what they are worth. They are pretty easy to buy for a mana and sell for a life. I have sold 10-15 for a life in the past week or so. It is definitely doable.
##Step 2: Buy ālowā tops for 1 life and sell for 1.5-2L
By low ālowā tops, I am referring to any top that sells for under 3 life. I draw this distinction, because the best tops (STs aside) tend to sell for 3L. Low tops tend to be traded slightly less frequently, yet they are still sought after. The reason that their prices are lower is most likely due to there being a significantly better ST ability that is available for purchase. For example, take the T6 wizard spell, elemental detonation. It is a great item. Many people want it. It tends to sell for 2L. This classifies it as a low top. The reason being is that the ST spell, ancient pierce, is not only significantly better (debatable to some, but I think it is the best spell and many other people feel the same, thus there is a high demand). This spell is also purchasable, which means that if I have the money and the option to do so, I will purchase pierce over eledet. This lowers the value of eledet, since there is less demand, and raises the price of pierce. Either way, items like these, (eledet, acclaim, T6 ghostly cloak, milk) all sell for 2L; however, you can usually buy them for 1L. You should have 1L from selling the item you bought for a mana, and thus you now have a life pot. Sell the low tops for 2L. Repeat this process until you have about 10L.
##Step 3: Buy āhighā tops for 2-3L and sell for 3-4L
By high tops, I mean the most frequently traded tops that are NOT STs. This primarily relates to high value T6 abilities such as gcookie, ggen, colo, and elvish.
The reason that I ask you to do 10L before you move on to high tops or anything else, is because high tops tend to cost 2-3L each. This means that you can buy 3-5 of them total. Since they take up a lot of your wealth at this point, it is in your best interest to try and buy multiple different high tops in order to maximize your efficiency by looking for multiple buyers at the same time. If you have all your money invested in 1 colo, there may not be someone buying colo for an hour; however, there is a good chance that there is someone buying either a colo or a gcookie or a ggen or an elvish right now, so you can buy each of them with 10L and then look for a buyer at the same time.
This is where you really start to make a profit. These are easy to purchase for 2-2.5L, and easy to sell for 3L. Occasionally you can get them to sell for 4L with the right buyer. I tend to stay in this phase until I have about 25-50L, bu there is really no reason to stray from it at any point, as it is an efficient way to make money assuming you have the inventory space.
##Step 4: Post-top merching
I really donāt want to get into this section on just a reply comment, but once you have 25-50L, you can begin to merch other things, like reskins, ST items, actual skins, UBHPs, vanities, etc. These are generally riskier, but more importantly, they are less frequently traded. While there is a lot of money to be made on these sorts of things, they require significant funds to merch properly so as to be efficient, as well as the vault space to handle the capacity of items you will require. There is no reason to ever stop merching tops, as this is your bread and butter, and it is quite profitable.
Unless you have over 100 life to spare, I suggest you stay away from the skin market, as it is particularly expensive to get into. I didnāt start merching skins until I had well over 500 life, as I wanted to be able to merch all the skins at once, while still maintaining my ability to merch tops. Furthermore, skins are very slow to trade, and while you may make 2-8 life off each skin, you could trade 10 tops in the time it takes to sell 1 skin, so you are really only doing it for convenience sake and to add a little extra cash on the side for your main business.
#If you have other questions, donāt hesitate to ask. Iām considering doing some sort of AMA session, since many people seem interested. Let me know if this is something that you would want.
I am active on more than 1 account. Not at the same time of course, but I do not spend all my time on IAmShurima. the 340 hours you are looking at does not take into account these other accounts. Much of my large quantity purchase negotiations actually take place over discord and not in game. Iāve spent days outside of the game talking prices with fellow players.
You can doubt me all you like. If I was concerned with your opinion of me, I could come up and show you the vaults full of skins that I have 1 at a time, but that would be a waste of both my time and yours.
As for RWT, anyone who pays real money for items in this game is a fool. This is a flash gameā¦ Thatās absolutely ridiculous. Do you know how much 21,000 life goes for? How much actual money I would have had to spend? Just picking a random RWT site, oryx shop, they sell life pots 16 for 13 euros. Converted to dollars, I would have to spend over $20,000 to achieve what I have right now. I donāt even have a max divine pet. Donāt you think I would max my pet first if i were going to drop 20k + on this game? Thatās crazy.
And with respect to inspect element, I mean I could show you my screenshot off of another browser, like Safari or something, if it would make you feel betterā¦ but again, thatās not worth my time or yours.
I have made 800 life in a single day in this game. During the bella event, bride and bachelor skins were selling for like 1-2L each. I bought over a 1000 combined of the two skins. Having 1000 life is not that hard to comprehend. Since then, I have sold hundreds of those skins for 6-8L each. Thatās a 5000-7000 life profit. This was just a single occurrence of a price fluctuation, in this case, the bella event ruining the price of those skins. There have been 35 or so major price changing events in the past 2 years. I have tried to take advantage of each of them. Is it that hard to imagine that if my wealth multiplies 1.5x each event, perhaps I could actually achieve 21,000 wealth in 340 hours of in game time on this ONE account? I think it is not that hard to comprehend, but I leave that up to you.
Furthermore, I tend to make about 25-50L merching per day on average (back when I was merching actively). At this rate, I would have over 18,000 life if I did that for a year. I have played on this account for close to 2 years now.
btw active hours arenāt the hours that youāre logged on for, itās the time you spend actually playing the game, killing monsters etc. So your story is very believable
Ah, well truth be told, I donāt play the game that much anymore, but when I do play, I donāt spend much time at all merching. Itās pretty much all gameplay at this point. But thanks for the info
oh hello @IAmShurima i see you have returned.
[quote=āIAmShurima, post:390, topic:1207ā]
If you have other questions, donāt hesitate to ask. Iām considering doing some sort of AMA session, since many people seem interested. Let me know if this is something that you would want.
[/quote]lol, i remember my unfinished guide that i was making.
[quote=āIAmShurima, post:390, topic:1207ā]
I didnāt start merching skins
[/quote]also skins flux a lot due to releases in the mystery boxes etc.
my merching is pretty much opposite from you, i merch everything, from lame minor mana pots to pixies.
[quote=āIAmShurima, post:390, topic:1207ā]
This is much faster than trying to merch your way up from say, a def pot, although it can be done.
[/quote]ahh the good old times when i went from gsword
note sure if you wrote about situtional merching, lets say that the skull is getting buffed next month so the price will go up so you can buy some now. Or buying a ton of bach/bride skins when belladonnas was on, i dont really do this b/c im lazy, but i know you do this quite abit.
Back from the dead, yes![quote=āScorchmist, post:395, topic:1207ā]
lol, i remember my unfinished guide that i was making.
[/quote]
Yeah, I just kind of figured that if I hadnāt gotten around to making a full guide by now, I guess I probably never will. Itās just too much information and so much of it is situational. There is no way I could maintain a guide.
Well in the past, prices have been relatively stable (until DECA actually). Now they are all over the place, but I imagine they will stabilize over time as long as DECA doesnāt do anything else too crazy.
Okay so I am writing this from the perspective of someone who is just starting out merching. I merch just about everything that can be merched, or I used to anyway. Now I stick to the basics. Tops, STs, and skins. Iām more interested in maintaining an inventory and trying to balance out the market more than anything else at this point. I donāt really need to make any more money at any point in the near future. What I have is more than enough.
At this point, Iām actually here to play the game, get some white bags, maybe get white star if I can get off my ass enough to grind out some fame train time.
I never merched anything worth less than a mana. Itās just not worth my time. I can spend 15-30 minutes in the godlands and make a mana. It would take me the same amount of time to merch from a speed to a mana, especially with pot prices being shot to shit right now.
SHHHHHHH, Iām buying up skulls like crazy. You keep that quiet! I mean situational merchingā¦ I think there is less to explain. It takes a lot of wealth to do and a lot of inventory space, because I need to be able to buy 250 skulls and save them for a month till the price goes up. That means I need 250+L and 250+ inventory slots that I can just tie up for the next month, and Iām not sure how many people are willing to do that. If you are just starting out merching, this is not really for you, since you have to hold your assets for so long that it isnāt worth your time. The only reason I can do it is because I canāt merch tops any faster. I can only buy and sell so fast. This is a way to make additional money once Iāve reached full merching capacity for tops, STs, etc. Itās supplemental. Lucrative, but supplemental.