Patch 4.2 Preparation Questions

Posted by The Lost Meeple at 8:00 AM

Hey Mageshadow/Markco
I had a few questions approaching my first "stockpile" venture!

I'm currently just messing around with Volatiles to get a good idea how a patch-stockpile "goes down" since I've never really been at a level to pay attention to it before! I'm buying small amounts of them when they get below a certain price I'm setting as "my threshold." Mostly V-Fire and V-Earth w/a bit of V-Life (since they are always cheapest).

Some of the fire I've been selling (if I buy them for under 20G and the price soars to 25G, I sell in a stack of 200 to make a good profit), and then use a percentage of those earnings to buy more low-price V-Fire and V-Earth (saving the Earth and sometimes selling batches of V-Fire).

QUESTIONS:
When do people post auctions prepping for a patch?
The night before (in a 48-hr auction)?
The night the patch drops?
Or later in the week, after it drops and prices begin to rise?
How do you sell the items (12/24/48hr? large batches or small?)

Any other advice? I'm not large scale stockpiling, by any means; just a few Air and Water, maybe 600 Earth, 400 Fire, 200 Life.
-Imperiexo

A great set of questions to ask relating patch stockpiling Imperiexo! I'll try to answer them to the best of my abilities!

When do people post auctions prepping for a patch?  The night before (in a 48-hr auction)? The night the patch drops? Or later in the week, after it drops and prices begin to rise? How do you sell the items (12/24/48hr? large batches or small?

What I tend to do is post my stuff the night before the patch, I post my stuff for 48 hours so when the servers are back up I'm the only posted of whatever I posted. You can utilize this to your advantage and reset the market ( to an extend ). Post some of your stock, but not all of it as you do not want to flood the market. More on this below.

One tip I can offer you is don't sell everything the day of the patch. Try to sell items at their "high point", this might be a little difficult to determine but if you sell your items at the correct time you'll yield larger profits on everything. What typically happens on patch day is let's say a guy logs on and post his stuff, then the next guy comes and undercuts the guy who just posted X item and so on. This continues on until the price of X item is now below it's average AH value. Don't panic and sell your items at a loss instantly, prices tend to go everywhere around patch days. Try and determine when the high point of the item you're selling will occur and sell said item then.

With things like volatile in 4.2 you'll want to hold onto those for a bit, the main reason you're stockpiling them is to sell to people who will be crafting the new profession craftables. In order to obtain the pattern/recipe for the new craftables they'll first need to complete the new firelands daily area which I suspect won't take 2-3 days but instead a week or two. This also applies to other items such as Truegold, Pristine Hides, Etc. There will be a slight demand for them as people gather the materials to craft X item but you'll definitely notice when people start to obtain the pattern & recipes for the new craftables as the auction house supply will dwindle down to a couple postings. This is when you'll want to sell your stockpile as the demand will be there but most likely the supply won't be.