Sunday, July 27, 2014

A Diablo 3 Story


TLDR: I made about 100 000 euro from Diablo 3 in exactly 1 year. Below I will tell you in great detail how.


I want to dedicate this to a dear friend of mine who passed away very young. K, I wish you were here to read and enjoy this with me.


PART 1: INTRODUCTION

Hey, I am a young guy from Bulgaria and I want to tell you a story. I guess I should start from the beginning. 15 May 2012, the Diablo 3 launch date. I have to say that I had never seen as much hype for a single game (well, maybe except for the Starcraft 2 announcement) as for Diablo 3. It is somewhat understandable as it is was Blizzard game (who at that time had a reputation of taking a very long time but always delivering an exceptional product in the end) and its predecessor, Diablo 2, was beloved by many and for a very long time. However, there was something more to it. Even in my measly little country Bulgaria, you could feel the immense hype, from social networks and word of mouth to launch events. And boy was the global launch of the game a success.

http://mashable.com/2012/05/23/diablo-3-fastest-selling/

http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/724035/diablo-3-breaks-pc-sales-records-moves-more-than-35-million-units-in-24-hours/

That’s 175 million euro (If we calculate 1 copy at an average of 50 eu due to different pricing around the world) made in 1 day. Not bad at all, even for Blizzard. I would actually say that the hype in the last few weeks reached such insane levels that this was ultimately part of the reason why people were disappointed in the end – the expectations were just ridiculously high and could not be met no matter what. But that definitely was not the only reason people were disappointed, and I’ll share my thoughts on that later. Anyway, I was also one of the people who was excited and got the game at launch. I took my time in the beginning but played on and remember well the good old days of super hard inferno, when this was the prevalent tactic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEyk63UaBI4

What glorious days those were! I would even argue that this inferno was much more fun and challenging than just plowing through a ton of mobs at full speed in short runs where the only challenge is how fast are you going to clear an area. But this really isn’t why I’m writing this blog. Moving on, we find ourselves almost a month later, when this glorious event finally occurs:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/6360586/real-money-auction-house-now-available-in-the-americas-6-12-2012
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/blog/10043198/real-money-auction-house-now-available-in-europe-15-06-2012

 The Auction House is up. A marketplace which connects each and every player in an entire region with millions of players. Little did I know at the time the amazing opportunities this would bring to those smart enough and dedicated enough to seize them. I did manage to sell some items I had gathered in the first month of playing completely “legitimately.” I remember selling some 2 handed rare mauls, which at the time were actually considered good.  All in all I made a couple hundred euro from the items I managed to find and/or buy on the auction house in the first 30-40 days of the game. At that time I was getting more and more involved in the Auction House, partly inspired by the amazing stories I had heard from a good friend of mine (K, who sadly is not among us anymore, I miss him a lot to this day) of how he was trading items in Diablo 2 and getting many times their worth over and over again. He was at first disappointed by the Auction House as he thought it almost completely removes the possibility of bartering with other players, which in turn makes it very hard to make really good trades. No one would be stupid enough, he thought, to not spend 30 seconds to check the price of something before trading it away very disadvantageously. And boy, was he wrong. Was he very, VERY wrong. Back in his day in Diablo 2, he was creating public games and trading with one person at a time.  How I wish he was still here to see what the potential was of inputting this idea on a huge scale such as an auction house that connects millions of players from an entire continent.

By now you probably have realized that I did not use farming bots, or “regular” bots if you would. I never used such bots in Diablo 2, in fact I never used any bots before Diablo 3. I guess they did not appeal to me very much. Around mid-July 2012 though, I was still fascinated with trading and the Auction House, I was already a bit more experienced and managed to make some good trades and was even using another account just for trading. At this point many of my friends were still playing the game and one day one of them (hi J, love ya buddy) sent me this small program. It worked a bit like this, just way slower, as it was choosing the criteria using the cursor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-ZRnsiEpu8

(and no, this is not the real name of the bot that I used in any point)

It also allowed you to only input one set of criteria to search for. In other words, it was extremely primitive. However, it did allow you to not do the same thing yourself for hours upon hours. So this was the first Auction House bot I ever used. And it worked. At that time Diablo 3 trading was the Wild West. Most people didn’t even know what all the possible properties of an item were, or how many one could have. Also, so few items were found yet, so all kinds of things were selling for insane sums of gold and/or real money. Remember those days?

http://www.examiner.com/article/diablo-3-real-money-auction-house-live-us-items-already-being-sold-for-250
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/930659-diablo-iii/63216388

Yep. Items that would not have even been worth 50 000 gold (or fractions of a cent) in the end of 2013 were being sold for hundreds of dollars and euro in July 2012, and even in the following few months. It was a trader’s paradise. So you can imagine that even with my super primitive first bot, which only searched for ONE single item with specific properties, I was actually making some money. Not a lot of money, but it was something. I remember in these months I used to search a lot for rare rings or rare amulets. What still comes to my mind is a criteria searching for rare amulets with more than 7 critical hit chance and more than 50 critical hit damage and buying any that cost below 1 or 2 million gold. I sold amulets with these criteria on the RMAH (Real Money Auction House), for tens and sometimes even 100+ euros. Stuff like 7+ crit chance, 50+ crit damage and a high main stat like strength or intelligence + vitality was considered pretty good back then. Trifectas ( crit chance + crit damage + increased attack speed) was even more rare and expensive. Another popular thing I remember botting the old fashioned way was chantodo’s force wizard sources. These were great because almost no one seemed to know that the property “Arcane power on critical hit” was actually rare and very valuable. So you could just adjust your bot to search for chantodo’s force sources with arcane power on crit and above a specific damage, choose the minimum price under which the bot would buy any item it found, and you were good to go. Even later than that, I tried botting for Skorns with Life leech and got some money out of that too. But all of that was insignificant. I was only scratching the surface of an ocean of possibilities. I was botting for 1 specific variation of 1 item at a time. So I was really looking only through a ridiculously small possibility of all undervalued items that entered the Auction House. To this day I still regret I did not figure this out earlier.

At this point in time, the last few months of 2012, I was already using another bot, a much more advanced bot. Its amazing property was that it allowed you to make it as complex as you wanted, but you needed to know at least a bit of programming basics to do that. It could be used in the basic way that my first bot was used (searching for just 1 variation of 1 item), and that is how I used it for some time. I just didn’t know any better and was probably too complacent to figure out how to use it to its fullest potential. It searched faster than my first bot, so I guess I was happy with this small improvement and forgot to think big. The same friend which sent me the first bot back in July had also continued to entertain himself with this activity. In December 2012 he first told me that he had spoken to some other botters in a forum and that one told him that there was a way in which, if you could write the necessary code, you could actually search for much more than one variation of one item at a time. You could search for multiple items at the same time, and if you wanted to take it far enough, you could actually search for EVERYTHING that is of any value at the same time. (I feel I need to say thank you here to this person which I later found out was a Russian guy (z). Thanks for putting us on the right path friend
J )

The searching itself was actually really easy, anyone could do it with no bot at all. I regret a bit that I am writing this after the Auction House is already gone because if it was still here anyone reading this could just start the game, open the Auction House window and do the following thing:  Under Search -> Equipment, choose any hero, choose Armor, and choose All Armor. Under Item Rarity, choose Legendary. Now hit search and you will see a list of items. Then sort them by time left so that the newest items show at the top. If you now put a different maximum price ( something close to 2 billion, this is used to avoid receiving cached results (results from a minute or two ago), which you would if you just hit Search over and over again without changing the maximum price) and hit search again, you would see the newest legendary items that were just posted in the Auction House. Keep doing this and you will see that there are new legendary items posted every second. And this is only the Armor section, we haven’t even touched the 1-Hand, 2-Hand and Off-hand sections yet!

So, this is how to look at all new items coming in through the Auction House. Now, what if we had a more complex code which would allow the bot to complete one search with the method listed above, look through only the newest few items posted, then look through a list of items/properties worth buying if below a certain price, buy any item that matches those criteria, then repeat the search by changing the maximum price so that it avoids cached results? That would be pretty sick right? Well, that is exactly how my Auction House bot in all of its beauty worked! Remember my friend that used to join games in Diablo 2 and traded with one person at a time? Imagine him doing the same thing, but actually being in every single game hosted in the entire Diablo 2 server at the time, talking to every person in there and making every trade that was advantageous to him. Oh, and doing all of that several times per second. I guess a cool illustration would be this, just with buy/sell orders instead of Dogecoins
J :

http://i.imgur.com/CA0Dnbr.gif

It actually did much more and was much faster than this guy, but visuals are important too
J
Also, shoutout to the Dogecoin community (www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin), you guys are awesome and I've invested some of my earnings in DOGE as it shows great potential!




PART 2: HOW MY SYSTEM WORKED

Let’s go back to December 2012. My friend who told me about this method was passionate to make it happen but did not have the skills necessary to write the needed code. After all, this was much more complex than just writing a few lines to make the bot do a simple search for 1 variation of 1 item. I thought of a programmer friend of mine, who had played Diablo 3 at launch as well but had already stopped by December. Several days later me and my friend met with him and explained what the idea was. The plan was to pay him a small sum of money (I forgot how much it was, but it was maybe 50 euro) to take a few days to write the code that we needed. He had a working first draft the next day. Here is the last version of the code in question, for any curious programmers:

* (script is at the very bottom)

It was maybe 30 or 31 December 2012 when I first got the script and tried it out on my laptop. That’s right, I was playing and botting on a f*cking laptop until then. And it wasn’t a great one either. So, to sum this up, I invested around 50 euro to get the very first version of our “Mega bot” as we called it later. I think the money I made in the next year was a pretty good return for this initial investment. This first script was however not enough for the bot to work at all as it required detailed criteria of each item it was going to be searching for. I had to spend several hours only writing basic criteria of some of the most popular items like Inna’s Temperance, Mempo of Twilight, Immortal King’s Eternal Reign and Natalya’s boots. To understand how much writing and price checking is required, I will show you all the criteria for 2 items (as it appeared after my last edit in 2014, but the idea is the same). Natalya’s boots is one of the items with the easiest to write and shortest criteria, whereas Lacuni Prowlers is one of the longer ones.

** (script is at the very bottom)

Long, huh? Bear in mind that this is just the criteria for two items. Eventually, after several months, I was pretty much botting all the legendaries (and a few rares) worth anything in Diablo 3, or in other words I had similar criteria for tens of other items. If an item could potentially be expensive, I was looking for it. But we’ll get there soon.

I got my first items with the Mega bot around New Year’s Eve. I was actually very surprised when I came home from a party and saw how many items the bot had gotten. It seemed that for more people than one would think, the  best way of spending New Year’s Eve was playing Diablo 3 and selling items in the Auction House. But I should not really complain as these people were giving me great presents. On January 1st I started selling those sweet sweet presents. And the results were staggering. The money started flowing in immediately. Before, I was searching for 1 variation of 1 single item, for example any Mempo of Twilight with Critical Hit Chance, below the price of 1 million gold. Now, I could search for 100 different variations of Mempo of Twilight, plus hundreds of variations of all other worthwhile items. In the first days though, I only had one bot account, which I was using to bot some legendary items in the “armor” category. Even with this small sample of all possible items though, it was soon obvious to me that I had to buy a very powerful PC which could run more than 1 diablo window, and would also search the Auction House which much higher FPS (Frames per second). I acted quickly and maybe a week later, still the first part of January, I already had a PC with an intel i7 processor, 16GB Ram and a powerful AMD video card. During this time I had continued to write criteria for more items, and my programmer friend and me were fixing some flaws with the initial script. Not even 10 days had passed from the first time I ran the bot and I was already making, on average, more than 100 euros a day. 100 euros a day made by sitting in front of my PC and selling some items in a game. And that was with just one PC and only one bot account! At this point I started realizing that the potential of this endeavor was very big, and that it would be smart to concentrate all my efforts on improving and expanding the bot and the “botting business” as a whole.

This is probably a good time to address a thought that many of you reading this might be having: “Who cares what kind of bot, script and search method you had, I still don’t understand how the hell were you getting and selling so many expensive items! Surely the number of people making very bad trades on the Auction House cannot be that high?” I remember a friend of mine asking me the exact same thing when I first told him about all this. I answered: “S, it turns out that in a game like Diablo 3 that has millions of players in each region (Europe, Americas and Asia) there are so many players that have no idea what they’re doing that good and expensive items are being put for sale on the Auction House for ridiculous prices all the time.” In fact, even mind-bogglingly dumb trades are not uncommon when you have a sample size of millions. I will show you many hilarious examples soon enough. It seems that most players in Diablo 3 just had no idea what they were doing when it came to item trading and the Auction House. That’s why before Auction House bots became more common (2012) it was even possible to make great trades by manually sniping items on the Auction House and reselling them. Many players, depending on the point of view, could be called very casual or just plain stupid. I don’t want to call people stupid but when I look at an item I bought for 50 000 gold (or less than a few cents for those not familiar with Diablo 3 gold) which actually costs more than 100 euro it’s hard not to call the person who sold that item stupid. You could argue that they simply didn’t know what’s good, but sadly also didn’t know how to do something as basic as to check an item’s worth on the Auction House. Maybe the perpetual whine regarding vanilla Diablo 3, that players were almost never finding any good items, was in reality people not knowing when they find something good and giving it almost for free to people like me. Here are the only 2 screenshots that I’ve kept from January 2013 to further my point. The first one, the lacuni, was sold for about 150 eur if I’m not mistaken, and bought for 3 million gold (less than 50 cents or 0.5 eur) as you can see. I’ll let you decide for yourselves who got the better end of that deal  
J









This one is an Echoing fury bought for 150 gold (fractions of a cent) that in reality cost about 120 euro at the time. To be fair, this one is another case, what I like to call the “Oh shit!” case, as this is what the person who sold the item is saying once he realizes that he sold the item on the gold auction house instead of on the RMAH (Real Money Auction House).  The seller knows the worth of the item but just fails at placing it in the correct Auction House. In time I became happier and happier every time I saw an item being bought for something like 100, 190 or 250 gold. This would often mean I had bought an item that was worth about the same amount, except in Euros. Actually, here are some more of those, they’re too funny not to be included.


Those two are from the end of March 2013, their prices were very accurate and sold for almost as much as I bought them, except in euro of course, hehe:







These two are from May 2013 and again, similar price except instead of 115 and 250 gold (fractions of a cent) they sold for about 100 and 200 Euro.







Here's one from August 2013, this Skull Grasp ring eventually sold for 60 Euro.




This sweet Mempo of twilight helm was bought in March 2013, when they were still very expensive, thus it really sold for about 130-140 Euro.




August 2013, a pretty good Skorn by anyone’s standards, sold for 90 euro:




Now that we’ve had a good laugh at some “Oh shit!” moments, let’s get back to our story. After I realized the potential profits from AH (Auction House) botting, I began expanding my little business. First I bought one more account and started using 2 accounts which were botting for legendary Armor. Why another one botting the same subset of items? Take another look at the screenshots above. See those failed transactions with red exclamation marks? You only really saw those when you were botting. What those really mean is that me and another buyer, or many other buyers, were trying to buy an item at the exact same time, the fraction of a second after the item was first showed as available on the AH. In reality, this happened when several bots tried to buy the same item and sent requests at virtually the same time. They all sent valid buy requests, but in the end only 1 person can get the item, so the others received the “failed” notice. It is easy to conclude from this information that once bots and botters figured out that the faster you search for an item, the bigger your chance of getting it is, it was practically impossible as a normal player to make a great trade. You could still make some good flips, but the really great bargains, the items which you bought for a price hundreds of times less than their real price, were only for AH botters.
I also bought a second PC and with that came 2 more bot accounts, one searching for all 1-hand items above 58lvl (All so that it can also scan through rare 1-handers, which could sometimes be very valuable) and another one for legendary 2-Hand weapons. The main cash makers here were Manticore and Skorn, with Skorn being especially juicy as so many people had no idea which of Skorn’s properties were static and which ones were random and valuable (Life steal mainly). However, the criteria for items such as Skorn and especially Echoing Fury was a nightmare to write, as there were hundreds of possible variations of those items that were all valuable and worth buying if below a certain price. Even so, I managed to do all of this rather fast, and before January had even finished I was already botting with 4 accounts on 2 PCs with some solid criteria. At this point I was using my first PC only for the two Armor bots and the second one for the 1-Hand and 2-Hand bots. It’s worth noting that all of these were botting on the European server. Sometime in the end of January was the first time I managed to make more than 500 euro in 1 day. I still remember that day, I wasn’t even at home then but was managing and overlooking my PCs with team viewer. It was pretty cool to earn 500 euro in a day(or almost 1000 leva, the currency of Bulgaria) as this is actually a lot of money in Bulgaria. The average wage here in 2012 was a little over 350 euro/month. You heard that right, that’s 350 euro or about 700 leva per month.

Moving on, as I got more bot accounts and continued to write more and more criteria, I was faced with another problem. Until then I had access to only 2 accounts with access to the RMAH, mine and a friend’s. The problem was that with so many good items to sell, there just was not enough room for all of them and I needed more accounts. You might ask, why not just sell everything for gold and sell the gold? Well, apart from the fact that at various points of the AH’s history, it was very hard to sell gold on the RMAH as its real price was below the gold floor price, there was an even bigger problem with selling for gold. In short, selling gold for real money was a big rip-off. You were much better selling a good item directly in the RMAH for euro, as the fee for that was a flat 1EUR + 15% of your profits. If you wanted to sell that same item for gold, then the gold for real money, you would have to first incur a 15% fee for selling the item for gold, then two 15% fees one after the other when selling the gold for euro, for a total of 27.5%. You can see why 1 EUR + 15% is much better than 15% + another 27.5%. So, I started asking around and with time got more RMAH accounts to sell with, which helped immensely. The final number of RMAH accounts for the European server I used was 6, and throughout the year those accounts were almost never short of items to list on the RMAH.
I want to mention here as a somewhat unrelated point that for many months I was buying some great crafted 1-hand rare weapons every single day for ridiculous prices. Even a year after crafting was already proven to be very unprofitable and unwise I was still buying 1-hand rare weapons with more than 1200 DPS, a socket, critical hit damage and a main stat/life steal every day. This meant that every day there were people who hit the jackpot (odds in the thousands if not millions) by crafting a weapon close to perfect (for an ilvl62 item) but they were silly enough not to check its price and instead gifted it to me for a price tens or hundreds of times less than its real price. Thank you to all those dedicated crafters giving me almost for free their best crafts so I can sell them! I think this is a good time for a few more screenshots, as walls of text can be dull. Here are a few of the amazing deals I got in the first months of 2013.

This Echoing Fury I bought for less than 100 million gold and sold for more than 20 times more, making more than 300 Euro from selling the gold, as in January 2013 gold was still pretty expensive.




Here is a very sweet Manticore bought for 8 million gold if I'm not mistaken, and sold for 2 billion gold (a bit over 300 Euro after taxes at the time)





Another great manticore, bought for 10 000 gold or fractions of a cent, and sold for a bit more than 100 Euros.



And another awesome Echoing Fury, as you can see here listed for 250 Euro and sold in less than 1 minute. I bought it for 2 million gold. (or less than 50 cents).





I specifically mentioned the European region for Diablo 3 before because as we all know well, there are 3 big regions in which you can play Diablo 3 – Europe, The Americas and Asia. It was around February or March 2013 when I realized that by botting only in Europe I was really limiting myself. And since there was no RMAH in the Asian region, the most natural development of my botting “business” was to start botting in the US region as well. I also have to say here that I never got to botting in Asia, but that proved to be a mistake as I later learned the Asia server was very profitable to bot even without a RMAH. Anyway, making the jump to botting in the US region was not easy. There were a number of obstacles to be overcome, and some which I never bothered to, such as the lag that you experience when logging into US from EU. One of the obstacles was that you needed a US phone number in order to use the RMAH, which meant prepaid US sim cards had to be ordered from the US. Another problem was that the prices in the US AH were different than those in the EU AH, which meant simply copy/pasting the EU criteria was not enough, the minimum price for which to buy the items in the criteria had to be edited. In other words, I had to go through thousands of variations of items and check their price, then determine the minimum price for which the bot should buy them. For example, if the cheapest Mempo of Twilight with Critical Hit Chance in the AH cost 5 million gold, I would put the minimum price for which the bot should buy such a Mempo at 1 million gold, or about 1/5 of the price of the cheapest similar item. This obviously took a lot of time, and was pretty stressful as messing the criteria up would mean the bots buying items not worth buying and wasting all of their gold. It’s also worth mentioning that during my first few months of botting in US, before I got my 3rd PC, I was using a VM (virtual machine) to run my 2 US bots. That was necessary because it was impossible to bot on both regions on the same system, as the bot was not able to change the game region by itself, so the region that was last chosen was used by all bots. This reminds me that there was (and still is) a cool feature of Diablo 3 that saved me some money and effort when it comes to botting on different regions, which is that you can use one single Diablo 3 account to log in all 3 regions at the same time. So, with only 4 accounts I could run 4 bots in the EU region and 4 bots in US.
Even with all of those obstacles, botting in US was great. You could say it was a whole new market, and even though 1 USD was worth less than 1 EUR, the prices and activity in the US region was higher than that in Europe, which meant prices for the good items were higher and you could make more profit by selling the same items. The profit in the end was not too high though, due to probably the biggest obstacle of botting in the US region, which was lag. Lag (or high latency) is what caused me to lose to the other AH botters when we were all trying to buy at the same time a super cheap but good item posted on the AH. This resulted in me either getting a “failed” transaction when trying to get most of the really lucrative items, or missing them altogether. Due to this I didn't get even nearly as many good items as in the EU region, which is why I did not need too many RMAH accounts in US to sell from.

The period from when I first started botting in the US region as well, up until somewhere around July 2013 when the prices in the game started dropping a lot, was the best time of my botting “career.” Ever since the first few months of Diablo 3 the prices of gold and items had been decreasing steadily and the first part of 2013 was no different. Prices in Diablo 3 went from more than 20 euro per million in the first few weeks of the game to less than 20 euro per billion in some of the final months of 2013. However, this part of 2013 (March-July) was amazing for me because the prices and interest was still relatively high, and I had managed to expand my little business to the point where I was botting a big portion of all of the items worth buying in both the Europe and US servers. I had continued to write new and more detailed criteria for items, In other words, my bots were scanning through thousands of items each minute in search of anything that was sufficiently underpriced (a minimum of about 4 or 5 times more valuable in reality was what I was typically looking for). This criteria improvement was only one part of the much more advanced “system of work” I had developed by this time. I’ll tell you about it in a second, but first here is a screenshot of how the RMAH log in one of my accounts looked like:




It’s a pretty good day for this account, as it has managed to sell 9 items in the RMAH that day, and pretty expensive items too.  Add that to all the sales from the other accounts and we get very solid numbers.

In these few months I had my best month ever in terms of profits. During that month I made an average of about 370 Euros per day. I even had my record of a bit more than 750 in a single day then. 370 Euros per day is a good profit in any country, but you have to realize that in Bulgaria, where the average wage is a little over 700 leva (360 Euros) per month, this was a big deal. I was making more than what most of the football players playing for the country’s top clubs were. This was also a big deal in terms of the Diablo 3 economy. Unfortunately I don’t have the gold price for this month written down, but the gold price in July 2013 was approximately 0.25EU per 10 million gold, which amounts to 25 Euros per 1 billion gold. So, in terms of July 2013 gold prices, I was making 14.8 billion gold every day during my best month. Imagine what kind of hero I could have had if I was still playing the game at that point! And I was doing all of this by spending only a few hours (sometimes even less) in front of my PC each day. Life was very good.

Life was not all leisure though. To make all of this possible I had developed a system which allowed me to maximize my profits and minimize the time needed for me to work.  Here is how I did it.
First of all, I relisted all of my items for sale in the RMAH 2 times each day. I decided it was best to do that once in the morning or around noon, and once in the evening, between 7 and 10 PM CET was ideal as many people come back from work at around 6-8PM and start playing soon after. For those who don’t understand, relisting means cancelling an item that was put on sale and then putting it for sale again immediately after. This was done for two reasons. The first one is psychological. It had to do with the “time left” of the auction which was shown at the right of the AH window. If an auction is closer to its maximum time left (1 day and 11 hours, or “1d11h” as it was shown) then this means that it was put up for sale not long ago and not many people have had the chance to see it. This makes people feel like they’ve found a potentially great deal, and especially at 1d11h the desire to buy the item immediately before anyone else has had the chance to see it is big. This is why later, when I finally started using an automated selling script for the gold auction house, I would program the bot to relist items every hour, so they would always show the winning “1d11h” label no matter how long they had been for sale. Another psychological issue I used was the well known marketing trick of pricing goods as 19.99$ instead of 20$. I had my own spin on that and as you can see in the screenshot I always priced my items like this: 18.95, 24.95 etc. In the last few months of the AH however, I decided that I was losing too many cents that way and reverted back to the more common 19.99. The second reason for relisting my items in the RMAH was that every time I was relisting, I was lowering the price of each item. This was done because I had a limited number of RMAH slots and many valuable items, so I had to dispose of them fast to make room for new ones. I even had an exact scheme for lowering items’ price. If an item’s price was between 3-10 Euros, I would lower its price by 1 Euro each time, if it was between 10-60 Euros – by 2 Euros each time, and above 60 I would lower between 2 and 10, depending on the item and the price. In other words, a price reduction of 2-6 Euros per day for most items. All of this was on top of the fact that I was of course initially listing each item 10-15% lower than the cheapest similar item at the time. You can see that I was utilizing some pretty dramatic price undercutting. This meant that I was the first in line to get my item sold when someone looked for a similar item, but I am sure many times my items were also bought by resellers who thought they could flip them for more money.
Another important thing I figured out was that I couldn’t do everything on my own (duh!). I had Danish friend with whom I had played Diablo 3 almost since launch and Starcraft 2 even before that. (L, I’m talking about you buddy!) At one point in time in the beginning I even sold some items for him in the hardcore AH, as he had more items than slots in his. As he really enjoyed trading and the AH, I offered to give him some items to price and sell on the gold AH and then give me the gold back, in return for a percentage of the profit. His cut was 33% for all gold sales to be exact, and 27.5% of all RMAH sales (a few months later he started doing those too). He agreed to the deal with enthusiasm, and this proved to be a great and fun experience for both of us. On my end, as I was selling all of the best items for real money, I needed to manually sell some of the less valuable items for gold so that I could fuel the bots with more gold, which they were constantly spending. This took a lot of time and effort, so having a helping hand helped a lot, even if it meant only getting 66% of the gold from each item. I mostly bought items whose real price was tens or hundreds of time more than what I spent for them, so what I needed mostly was a constant influx of gold to fuel the botting machine. On his end, even 33% of some of my items was a lot more than he could ever make by playing on his own, so he became quite rich in Diablo terms too, and made some nice profits himself. In the second half of the year he introduced me to a friend of his (Hi, P, and thanks for all the great work man!), with whom I made the same deal. All in all, they were selling gold items for me in a total of 3 of their accounts, and RMAH items in 1 account each + 1 single US RMAH account which P set up months later. So, with their 3 total RMAH accounts plus my own, in my best days I was utilizing a total of 11 RMAH accounts to sell items, the majority of which were for the Europe region and some for US. Those were all full for a big portion of the time, meaning I had 100+ items for sale in the RMAH at any given point.
You could imagine that with my 8 RMAH accounts, even relisting all the items 2 times per day took quite some time, not to mention the time needed to fill all the empty slots each time items were sold. I pretty much learned every variation of every item that was valuable so that I could spot those fast from the pages full of items I came home to every evening. I’d then take those items, move them from my bot to my RMAH accounts and check the price for each one before listing it. Sometimes, if I was away, I couldn’t do any of that, which meant a reduction in profits for the day as my items’ “time left” would be far away from the most appealing “1d11h” and there would be empty slots in the selling accounts unfilled with new items. That’s why I decided I needed a person that would “look after” my accounts and my botting operation as a whole. This couldn’t just be anybody, it had to be someone I knew and could trust. Luckily I had the perfect guy, a friend which I had known for a long time. I paid him to log into my PCs 2 times per day and relist the items in every RMAH account. He also was in charge of fixing any bot that had stopped working. The most common problem here was the Diablo window itself closing with a stupid error. So when this happened, he would stop all the bots on that pc, re-launch that window and start the bots again. On the whole, he was of tremendous help to me as I had less things to worry about and could even afford not to be at home every single morning and evening. With him and my 2 Danish pals in mind, you could say in a way I had 3 people working for me, meaning my Diablo 3 botting had turned into my own little small business operation.

There are two final big improvements to the system which I made. The first was the dedicated sell script in the beginning of July. The second was starting to bot for Off-hands (wizard sources to be precise J ), the only type of items which I was ignoring so far. I first wrote the criteria for them in the last few months of 2013. Regarding the sell script, I have to say that after a good deal of thought and theory crafting my programmer friend managed to write a rather complicated (at least for me) piece of script for the bot which enabled it to automatically price items and put them for sale in the gold AH, as well as relist them and reduce their price by a given percentage at any given time. I can’t stress how enormous and important this sell script turned out to be. He actually wrote it before July, and this was the last thing he did regarding Diablo before becoming mysteriously inactive. At first it looked too complicated to me and I was unsure how to use it, but once I figured it out I put it to great use. It was first put as part of the bots I already had running. This meant that they were searching for items as usual, but every hour or so the bots would pause for a minute to put items up for sale, and every 45 minutes or so they would pause to relist every item which had been for sale for more than 1 hour (that way all items were always shown as if they were just put on the AH, they had the “1d11h” time left) and lower their price by about 2-5%. This new addition to my bots worked well for a while before I realized I could take this further. By extracting only the sell/relist script and making some modifications, I created a dedicated sell script which could log in and out of many different accounts, put items for sale, relist and reduce prices where necessary, then logout and repeat. This happened in the beginning of July, and I immediately got 4 more accounts which I used just for this - selling items in the gold AH with this script. I had to constantly move a lot of items to them. Here is how it looked like every time I was moving items:


Each of these items costs tens of millions of gold. After a certain point I never wrote any criteria for items worth less than 20 million gold, so there was almost no cheap stuff being bought (mistakes happened of course, but not often). Thankfully my friend also helped with moving items to the accounts, as this was pretty time consuming. The first day I started the dedicated script, with only 4 accounts selling, I made an extra 2 billion gold. Before I started using this script, I was beginning to be in big trouble as I had been accruing more and more items which I was unable to sell fast enough even with my bots selling automatically and my Danish friends selling as fast as they can. So a little before July, I had actually managed to fill most of my available accounts with items. That means all of their stash pages plus all of their 10 characters’ inventories all full of items. And all of those items worth millions of gold each. So you can see how this sell script was very necessary and long overdue. I was very happy when I got it working. It was also apparently invisible to Blizzard, as I never got any one of those accounts banned up until the very last banwave in the beginning of March, when to my dismay they were banned as well. The sell script’s key to not getting the accounts banned was that it did everything very slow, and it logged in and out of several accounts, so each account was in practice online for only several hours a day.
There is not much else to say about botting Off-hands, except that it obviously helped my profits when I started botting them. I bought my 3rd and most powerful PC (3.5GHz i7, 32 GB RAM etc.) a few months after January, and with it I could finally organize my bots efficiently – I used my newest PC to run all 5 bots in the US region (+ a virtual machine for the dedicated sell script) , and the other 2 PCs were used for botting in the Europe region. In other words, my newest PC was running 6 Diablo 3 windows 24/7. Starting to bot for Off-hands also brought me to my final number of bot accounts which I used at any given point in time – 5. 2 for Armor, 1 for 1-Hand weapons, 1 for 2-Handers and 1 for Off-hands(sources). I never used more than 5 searching/buying bots at a time – when they were banned I just took my sell accounts (the ones using the dedicated sell script) and started using those while I bought new accounts and used those as sell accounts. This way there was almost no downtime after a banwave, if I was present at the time of the banwave I could be up and botting on all cylinders again after 15 minutes.
The last thing I want to talk about regarding my system are some technical specifications. The reason I needed more PC’s is that I couldn’t just run tens of Diablo windows on a single PC because that would mean the game and AH would run slow in each window. I needed the game to run as fast as possible, in order to give myself the best possible chance of outcompeting other botters for valuable items. As I was running a total of of 4+4 buy bots in both servers (and 5+5=10 after starting Off-hands) + 2 more dedicated sell scripts (1 for Europe and 1 for US) I needed at least 3 PCs so that each window would run fast and the bots would be efficient. On average, I managed to get between 150-200 FPS (frames per second) on each window. To do this, I made the Diablo windows as small as possible plus I entered the lowest possible graphics settings in the d3prefs.txt file found in your “Documents -> Diablo 3” folder. This made the game look like total shit, but it was some high FPS shit! Later I found out how to completely turn off the game’s graphics, making the Diablo windows look like black boxes. The game’s FPS counter then showed numbers in the 500-1000+ range, I never figured if that was entirely accurate but I guess it was close to the fastest possible it could run. Apart from that I was paying 2 separate ISPs, as internet in Bulgaria can be unreliable and I couldn’t afford to ever be left without internet. After all, even when I would’ve missed only an hour or two of botting due to my internet being down, my losses from that hour would’ve been greater than the 15 euro per month I was paying to one ISP(for their best offer, mind you!).
These are pretty much all the basics of how my botting operation was working through the longer part of its lifetime. Now, for those of you that are still here after this wall of text, I want to reward you by showing you possibly the most expensive item I ever botted. 





You can see that I bought this Echoing Fury on 4 April 2013. Interest in the game was still rather high then, and this item was rather close to perfect. The EF’s maximum damage with these stats is around 1300, so this fell a bit short, but it had a perfect 1.45 out of 1.45 attack speed, 168 out of 169 dexterity, 3.00 out of 3.00 lifesteal and 10.1 chance to fear with the minimum of 10.0 being most desired. This was a very expensive item, more expensive than the 250 euro maximum of the RMAH, so I gave it to a friend and told him if he could sell it for me for a higher price outside the AH he would get 10% of it.
Here is the reddit thread he created, inside it is a link to his d2jsp thread as well. Please don’t hate on the guy, he is a legitimate player that had nothing to do with my botting. Sadly, we did not get any legitimate offers which were high enough to warrant the risk of accepting real money from strangers. We got offers of around 500 euro but we thought those people were suspicious so we did not proceed. We never really got an offer in gold that would have been the equivalent of 400 euro or more. The Echoing Fury’s real price at the time was between 500 and 600 euro. In the end I sadly sold the item on the RMAH for only 250 euro as I could not risk getting scammed in Paypal. It sold in about 10 seconds.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/1bo95x/best_drop_ever_sick_ls_echo/

And yes, he wrote he found it on an Act 3 MP4 run. What did you expect, “my friend bought this with his amazing AH bot”? I doubt that would have been wise.


PART 3 – THE BIGGER PICTURE

Now that I have shared my secrets of how to make large amounts of money in Diablo 3 by using a complex Auction House bot, I’d like to talk a bit about the Diablo 3 economy as a whole from the beginning of the AH in June 2012 to its end in 18 March 2014. Also I will share my (very educated) opinions regarding the implications of the different types of botting in Diablo 3 as well as Blizzard’s actions (and inactions) against it. As I mentioned before, the price of gold in Diablo 3 depreciated hugely in the span of the 1.5 years from launch until the AH’s closure. I remember a friend of mine selling gold to some Arab guys (J, that’s you) even before the AH was launched in late May 2012. The price he got then was more than 40 euro per million. Yes you heard that right, 40 euro for a million gold in Diablo 3. He made around 450 euro by selling 11 million gold. Of course gold was much harder to collect then, no one had good items, there was still no RMAH and probably almost no farming bots. Fast forward to January 2013, and the gold floor had been dropped to 0.25euro/$ per million. That’s more than 100 times less, quite a dramatic decrease in just 6 months. In the end of February 2013 the real gold price had actually dropped even further but the floor remained so most people were buying/selling Radiant Star Emeralds to get the real gold price. There was a clever little trick however, with which you had a good chance to sell gold at the RMAH’s gold floor and get a great deal. You did that by putting many smaller auctions (5X200 million gold instead of 1X1 billion for example) each at least 10 seconds after the other and timing all of them to finish at a time which was a peak time for people playing the game and buying(6-10PM at working days or weekends). The idea behind that was that gold selling in RMAH worked on the basis that if many people are selling gold for the same price, the one whose auction is closest to ending is the one that’s first in line to sell his gold should a buyer come. That is why, in this case where the gold floor price in RMAH was higher than the actual price of gold, your only chance of selling gold through the RMAH was in the last 5-10 seconds before your auction expired. Before those last few seconds your auction had 0% chance of selling even a small part. That’s why it was obligatory not to cancel your auction but wait for it to expire, and that’s also why we saw so many people complaining in those times how “gold doesn’t sell” and “I waited for 12 hours and didn’t sell anything so I’m cancelling my auction.” Once again, you just had to know how the system works.
In a few words, the whole history of Diablo 3’s gold price can be summarized as follows. It started from more than 40 euro per 1 million gold in late May 2012, the first RMAH floor for gold was 2.5euro/$ per 1 million, then in January 2013 it was already lowered to 0.25 euro/$ per 1 million. The price continued to plunge rapidly and at the end of July 2013 it reached a new low of 0.25euro/$ per 10 million or 25 euro per 1 billion gold. This was one of the lowest points of gold’s price and it lead to another lowering of the gold price floor. In the end of August 2013 Reaper of Souls was announced and the gold rose to 40 euro per 1 billion gold. There was a gradual decline in the following months up to mid December 2013 when gold rose again to about 40euro or 50$ per 1 billion gold only to fall back in January. The last big rise was in the AH’s last month in March 2014, when gold prices exploded to higher than 80 euro/130$ per billion which was normal considering the big renewal of interest ahead of the expansion.
From late May 2012 to July 2013, in a little over a year, the price of gold in Diablo 3 managed to decrease more than 1000 times. This of course led to the real price of items decreasing in a similar manner. The result of that was that players felt that they were never finding anything valuable while playing, nor were they finding any valuable amount of gold with which to buy the more expensive items in the AH. This frustrated many players and they started blaming the AH, when the real problem lied elsewhere. But why did gold decrease so rapidly in price? This happened because of two reasons. Sadly, Blizzard is seriously to blame for both of them. First, it was because there were not enough gold sinks in the game. In other words, there weren’t enough places to spend your gold where it would be removed from the economy forever, making the gold you find more valuable. Crafting quickly became almost obsolete, repair costs were laughable and the only real gold sink was actually the AH itself with its 15% fee for selling items for gold. This lead to all the gold found in the game to pile up in huge amounts with little way for it to be removed so the remaining gold can be more valuable. There were so many ways this could have been fixed or prevented at all. Just look at the mystic in the expansion, or at the way you lost gold while doing PvP in Diablo 2. I really don’t need to give too many examples, but gold sinks were desperately needed in Diablo 3 and the existing ones failed to deliver.
This is what multiplied the effect of the second issue. The issue of farming bots and Blizzard’s severe unwillingness to ban them. Let’s talk about Auction House botting and bans first for a bit. I’ve actually written down the dates and times of the last few banwaves of Auction House bots before the AH closed down in March 2014. Here they are:

- 3 October 2013 - around 8:44 PM CET (Central European Time)
- 6 November 2013 - sometime during the night.
- 19 December 2013 - 10:40 PM CET
- February 25, 2014 (Tuesday) – Patch 2.0.1 hits + a banwave hits right after the US maintenance ended during the day.

Here is the place for me to explain that Blizzard’s policy in Diablo 3 was (and still is) to ban in waves or so called banwaves, meaning that even if a botter is caught after a few days of botting he is only flagged and will be banned on a later date as selected by Blizzard along with many other flagged botters. You can see from my information that in the last several months Blizzard banned AH bots on average less than once per month. That means that even if your account was flagged after 1-2 days of botting 24 hours per day, your account would be left free to bot for a few more weeks before finally being shut down. To be fair, in early 2013 Blizzard were actually banning AH bots every 2-3 weeks, but later in 2013 there was a period of time in which there was no banwave for more than 3 months. This is very important because something even worse happened with regards to the farming bots. The banwaves for them were even fewer. In the beginning of 2013, there was actually a period of more than 4 months in which there was no banwave for farming bots. 4+ months!
And this is the second reason why gold prices and the value of virtually everything in the game decreased by so much in such little time. Farming bots left unchecked. In short, rampant gold/item farming bots left unchecked for months at a time plus a severe lack of gold sinks ruined Diablo 3’s economy. I want to emphasize this so I will repeat it in bold:

Rampant gold/item farming bots (the ones running around in the game collecting stuff) left unchecked for months plus a severe lack of meaningful gold sinks ruined Diablo 3’s economy.

Sadly it really is no stretch of the imagination to figure out who is the main entity to blame here. The game design decisions were what lead to the lack good of gold sinks, but Blizzard could have still slowed this gold flooding process significantly by just… doing their job. Specifically the part which says that they are doing everything they can to ensure a fair playing environment and to remove cheaters. And not just any cheaters, but the ones most responsible for discouraging the large majority of the players who left the game disappointed. The farming bots really did that because nothing was stopping the people running them from just running more and more. One new Diablo 3 account cost 60 euro/$ at launch and as cheap as 25 euro a year later. With one banwave every few months for farming bots it was an easy decision just buy more and more accounts as each would pay for itself for sure during that time. That holds true even though farming bots were much, MUCH less profitable than the advanced AH bot that I was running. Here is a quote from a random person on reddit.com/r/Diablo, I’ve saved it because that’s what the opinion of many people was on the matter of bans and people were actually happy with this explanation even though it was complete bullshit.

“Blizzard has talked about this before. The stated reason for letting suspected botting accounts go for a bit before banning en masse is for two reasons: One, so that they can monitor the botters and better learn what to watch for, so they can make Warden better; and two, to make it harder for botters to work out exactly what behavior caused them to get caught, which could help them tailor their bots/botting to avoid being caught in the future.”

Go on for A BIT? Learn what to watch for?? I’ll tell you what they were watching for. They were watching for accounts playing 24/7 for weeks without ever stopping. That’s what the big time botters, the ones with tens of accounts, were doing. The small time botters that were just botting on their main account for several hours a day or even the ones that were using a few accounts were of very little concern with regards to the bigger picture. The big time botters just viewed this as a business, if their investment (buying a Diablo account) was going to pay for itself plus return a profit than there was no reason not to run as many bot accounts as possible. And it did pay for itself. This amounted to thousands upon thousands of farming bots running at any given point in time flooding the economy with a huge amount of gold (and items). Yes, even if there were no bots gold would have depreciated due to all the normal players farming, but this process would have been many times slower than what we saw. Players would have been able to play for much longer without having the feeling that their efforts are useless and they can’t ever find/collect anything of value. Blizzard could have stopped this. I can guarantee you that all the bots farming 24/7 were flagged by Blizzard’s Warden within the first 10 days since they had started. But why were they let to continue for months, sometimes even more than 4 months at a time? It was just Blizzard’s indecision/incompetence/laziness/lack of interest or maybe all of those at the same time. They could have had a banwave every week, even every two or three weeks would have been enough. Or they could have had their system ban accounts as they were exposed, not waiting for banwaves at all. There really is no reasonable explanation for why Blizzard did not stop the farm bots in Diablo 3. They did not design the game good enough to have significant gold sinks, and then they just failed hard by not banning the many thousands of farming bots for months at a time. Here is a thread from reddit that turned into an AMA of a botter using farming bots:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/152inu/massive_bot_ban_way_struck_me_and_my_10_accounts/

Here is the part where he confesses that he had not been banned for 3 months running 24/7:


[–]TMSwede [S] 18 points 1 year ago (55|37)
Top of Form
I've had it on for 3 months 24/7 with no warning or nothing, so it wasn't a too big of a surprise today.
Bottom of Form
[–]Savage_X Sark#1360 38 points 1 year ago (47|9)
Top of Form
It makes me extremely sad that it took them 3 months to ban you :/
It is pretty obvious that they do not really care too much about stopping the botters.”


Now, you might be wondering “Why the hell is this guy who made so much money by using Auction House bots complaining that Blizzard did not ban botters more often?” It’s because farming bots had to be stopped because they were the ones ruining the game’s economy and consequently the game itself by discouraging players from farming. Auction House bots did not harm the game’s economy, they even helped it a bit by generating more transactions in the AH, each of which incurred a 15% fee of gold, which was removed from the economy. They definitely made it almost impossible for a regular player to make a ridiculously good trade on the AH, but that was hardly one of the game’s major problems. It’s funny that AH bots were actually banned more often than the game-breaking farming bots. Another reason why I would’ve liked even more bans for all botters was a more selfish reason, the fact that I was making so much money from only 4-5 accounts that I could have afforded to buy new accounts every week, or even every day if the bans were that often. In fact, if there were bans every 2-3 days I would have made significantly more money as almost all of my competition would have been out of business. Most of the AH botters as I described before were using simple scripts which were searching for just 1 variation of a single item. This meant they were making much less money than me. All of those would have found it unprofitable to buy new accounts every few days and stopped, meaning I would be getting even more of the juicy expensive items being sold almost for free. All in all Blizzard’s decision not to care about stopping cheaters and botters in Diablo 3 hurt both the game as a whole and me and my profits in particular. 

As we’ve already established that I can anticipate what you’re thinking, I sense another question in your head: “OK, so you made a lot of money from Diablo, but were there others like you? Were you the one who made the most money from botting?” The answer is that I was definitely one of the more successful botters and made more money than most. I was also definitely not the one that made the most though. I don’t know specifics about the most profitable botters using farming bots, there may have been entities with huge farms (meaning with tens if not hundreds of accounts botting) who made a lot of money, especially in the first year of the game. However I highly doubt that any single person made much more money than me by using farming bots. Well run Auction House bots with great scripts were just many times more profitable than farming bots. When it comes to the Auction House bots, there were at least several people, if not tens, who were using the same method as me but had started earlier and had more time to upgrade and expand their system. For example there was a person from South Korea who operated mostly (if not only) in the Asia region and sold enormous amounts of gold and expensive items to third party sites. I have a reason to think that he made about $400 000-500 000 from Auction House botting. There are a few others which I know of but this is the person that I know of who has made the most. This is a good time to again lament my decision to never bot in the Asia region due to it not having a RMAH. It turns out that because many botters thought no RMAH in Asia meant very little profits the competition there in terms of AH bots was smaller. It would have been a ton of work but if I had been able to find 1-2 more people to help me out I could have maybe ran AH bots in Asia too and made a lot more money in the end.


PART 4 – CONCLUSION

In conclusion, I want to say once again a big, big thank you to the creator of the bot, he knows who he is. This guy created an amazing and complex tool which he gave away for free and even helped maintain it and make it better. By doing that he gave a great opportunity to people like me to make a lot of money from a computer game and learn about programming and high-frequency trading in the process as well. I’d also like to thank my friend who wrote the complex parts of the script (MegaBot ftw!)  as well as all the other people who helped me in one way or another. With the shutting down of the AH in late March 2014 and the launch of the Diablo 3 expansion Reaper of Souls there is no longer an economy in the game and therefore no longer any money to be made. I made about 100 000 euro in total in 2013 and a bit more in 2014. Sadly I think that there will never be a similar opportunity again in online RPGs in terms of profit making. The Auction House truly was a unique way of connecting millions of players together in one place and exposing all ignorance in terms of trades and pricing. I am off to other projects now but I bring with me my fond memories of this fun one year plus some experience on how to run and expand a small business. I know a lot of people will say that what I did was cheating or unfair, but everyone must realize that in the end what I did was completely legal. It was only against the game’s terms of use but those have nothing to do with the law and it’s the game creator Blizzard’s responsibility to enforce those terms. Also, ask yourselves, if you had the opportunity to do what I did for a year and make as much money as I did, or even more, would you do it or would you say that it’s cheating and not fair to other players?  I will end on a simple phrase, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Have fun. 




This nat ring sold for 14.95 Euro, was bought for 10 mil or 0.37 Euro :)

Bottom of Form



A close to perfect Strength Mempo helm bought for 127 million gold or about 3 Euro, sold for 150-200 Euro.



These boots don't cost 700 000 gold... more like hundreds of millions.





These Inna pants were bought on new year's eve. Maybe someone was feeling Christmassy and wanted to give away (almost) free stuff? Bought for 2 million gold or about 5 cents, sold about 60 Euro. 









A sweet Natalya's ring that as you can see sold for about 70 Euro. It was bought for 151 million gold, or about 4 Euro at the time.








A pair of legacy zuni boots that I’m sure the owner had no idea that they can even be worth something. But guess what, they were actually worth a pretty 60-70 Euro at the time. Bought for 1.5 million gold ( 0.05 Euro).



A cool Dexterity mempo bought in January 2014 for 88 million gold ( or about 2 Euro), it's real price was sadly only about 1 billion gold or 25 Euro at the time.





An amazing Skorn bought for less than 1 Euro, it's real price was 90 Euro. Oh how I will miss the AH and it's great way of exposing people who have no idea what they're doing...




This sword sold for 50 Euros, and the guy posted it for 1299 gold, probably goofed up while trying to post it for 12.99 Euro. In any case, he failed miserably cause even 12.99 Euro would've been far away from its true price.





An insanely good Skorn which sold for 140 Euro. The guy put it up for 54 million gold or less than 2 Euro! What were you thinking???




This sword I bought in the US Server, it sold for a whopping 110 dollars. Decent, considering it was bought for 50 million gold or less than 2 dollars.




A great Witching Hour belt I bought for 600 million gold (or about 15 dollars at the time), and sold for 50 dollars.



THE END







*

function ItemMiner()
--haConsole()
if haSearch() then
local counter = 1
-- for every item in the result set
while haListIterate() do
local item = haItem()
if item.rtime < NEW_ITEMS_TRESH and counter == 1 then
haSortTimeLeft()
break
else
-- loop over each array of arrays of item stats
for j,arrays in pairs(ITEMS_TO_BUY) do
-- item as name => stats
for name,stats in pairs(arrays) do
-- check if item name is the same
if (item.name:upper() == name:upper()) or (name:upper() == 'RARE' and item.rarity:upper() == 'RARE') or (name:upper() == 'ALL') then
-- proceed with the check
local hasNeededStats = true
local maxItemBuyout = 0
-- loop over all stats for this item
for i,values in pairs(stats) do
if values[1]:upper() == 'PRICE' then
-- this is the max price to pay for the item
maxItemBuyout = values[2]
elseif values[1]:upper() == 'AVERAGE DAMAGE' then
-- calculate weapon's average damage
local stat = haItemStat('damage')
local avg_damage = (stat.value1 + stat.value2) / 2;
-- check desired average damage
if avg_damage < values[2] then
hasNeededStats = false
end
elseif values[1]:upper() == 'HAS SOCKETS' then
local item_sockets = item.sockets
if tablelength(item_sockets) < values[2] then
hasNeededStats = false
end
elseif values[1]:upper() == 'DPS' then
if item.dps < values[2] then
hasNeededStats = false
end
elseif values[1]:upper() == 'TYPE' then
if item.type:upper() ~= values[2]:upper() then
hasNeededStats = false
end
elseif values[1]:upper() == 'NOT TYPE' then
if item.type:upper() == values[2]:upper() then
hasNeededStats = false
end
elseif values[1]:upper() == 'LIFE' then
if haItemStat(values[1], false).value1 < values[2] then
-- not good enough
hasNeededStats = false
end
elseif haItemStat(values[1], true).value1 < values[2] then
-- not good enough
hasNeededStats = false
end
end
if hasNeededStats then
-- all stats needed have been checked - item is good to buy
-- buyout if cheap enough
if item.buyout > 0 and item.buyout <= maxItemBuyout and haGetGold() >= item.buyout then
--print('Attempt to buy item at position ' .. counter .. ' with name ' .. item.name .. ' for ' .. item.buyout)
-- buyout this item - it's in budget
haBuyout()
haSleep(1000)
while haSendToStash() do end
haSleep(1000)
do return end
end
end

else
-- continue with next item in the list to buy - this one is no good
end
end
end

if counter == MAX_ITEMS_TO_CHECK then
break
else
counter = counter + 1
end
end
end
else
search_counter = 0
haLogout()
do return end
end
end






**

Natalya Boots:

  {
  ['Natalya\'s Bloody Footprints'] = {
   {'Vitality', 85},
   {'Dexterity', 195},
   {'Price', 2000000}
  }
 },
   {
  ['Natalya\'s Bloody Footprints'] = {
   {'Dexterity', 260},
   {'Price', 1000000}
  }
 },
  {
  ['Natalya\'s Bloody Footprints'] = {
   {'Dexterity', 270},
   {'Price', 12000000}
  }
 },
  {
  ['Natalya\'s Bloody Footprints'] = {
   {'Dexterity', 280},
   {'Price', 31500000}
  }
 },
  {
  ['Natalya\'s Bloody Footprints'] = {
   {'Dexterity', 285},
   {'Price', 50000000}
  }
 },
  {
  ['Natalya\'s Bloody Footprints'] = {
   {'Dexterity', 290},
   {'Price', 75000000}
  }
 },
  {
  ['Natalya\'s Bloody Footprints'] = {
   {'Dexterity', 295},
   {'Price', 100000000}
  }
 },
  {
  ['Natalya\'s Bloody Footprints'] = {
   {'Dexterity', 299},
   {'Price', 124000000}
  }
 },
  {
  ['Natalya\'s Bloody Footprints'] = {
   {'Vitality', 30},
   {'Dexterity', 240},
   {'Price', 6000000}
  }
 },
  {
  ['Natalya\'s Bloody Footprints'] = {
   {'Vitality', 30},
   {'Dexterity', 260},
   {'Price', 27500000}
  }
 },
  {
  ['Natalya\'s Bloody Footprints'] = {
   {'Vitality', 50},
   {'Dexterity', 260},
   {'Price', 50000000}
  }
 },
  {
  ['Natalya\'s Bloody Footprints'] = {
   {'Vitality', 50},
   {'Dexterity', 270},
   {'Price', 95000000}
  }
 },
  {
  ['Natalya\'s Bloody Footprints'] = {
   {'Vitality', 70},
   {'Dexterity', 270},
   {'Price', 150000000}
  }
 },
  {
  ['Natalya\'s Bloody Footprints'] = {
   {'Vitality', 70},
   {'Dexterity', 280},
   {'Price', 225000000}
  }
 },
  {
  ['Natalya\'s Bloody Footprints'] = {
   {'Vitality', 70},
   {'Dexterity', 290},
   {'Price', 500000000}
  }
 },
  {
  ['Natalya\'s Bloody Footprints'] = {
   {'Vitality', 90},
   {'Dexterity', 285},
   {'Price', 700000000}
  }
 },
  {
  ['Natalya\'s Bloody Footprints'] = {
   {'Vitality', 80},
   {'Dexterity', 290},
   {'Price', 1000000000}
  }
 },
  {
  ['Natalya\'s Bloody Footprints'] = {
   {'Vitality', 90},
   {'Dexterity', 295},
   {'Price', 1200000000}
  }
 },


Lacuni Prowlers:

{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Dexterity', 80},
{'Price', 1000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Strength', 70},
{'Price', 1000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Intelligence', 80},
{'Price', 1000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5},
{'Vitality', 110},
{'Price', 5000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 60},
{'Price', 2000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 60},
{'Price', 5000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 60},
{'Price', 10000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 60},
{'Price', 32000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 70},
{'Price', 25000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 70},
{'Price', 45000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4.5},
{'Vitality', 40},
{'Strength', 80},
{'Price', 1000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 30},
{'Strength', 70},
{'Price', 1000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4.5},
{'Vitality', 60},
{'Strength', 90},
{'Price', 2000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Strength', 80},
{'Price', 9000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Strength', 80},
{'Price', 24000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Vitality', 40},
{'Strength', 80},
{'Price', 15000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 40},
{'Strength', 80},
{'Price', 61000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Strength', 90},
{'Price', 61000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Vitality', 10},
{'Strength', 130},
{'Price', 210000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Vitality', 60},
{'Strength', 130},
{'Price', 250000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Vitality', 10},
{'Strength', 150},
{'Price', 310000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Strength', 150},
{'Price', 400000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Strength', 90},
{'Price', 60000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 80},
{'Strength', 80},
{'Price', 130000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Strength', 110},
{'Price', 350000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 10},
{'Strength', 150},
{'Price', 500000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 60},
{'Strength', 130},
{'Price', 500000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Strength', 150},
{'Price', 700000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Vitality', 40},
{'Strength', 80},
{'Price', 35000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Strength', 90},
{'Price', 67000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Strength', 90},
{'Price', 120000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Strength', 110},
{'Price', 400000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Vitality', 60},
{'Strength', 130},
{'Price', 600000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Strength', 110},
{'Price', 500000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 60},
{'Strength', 130},
{'Price', 1000000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Vitality', 10},
{'Strength', 150},
{'Price', 500000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Strength', 150},
{'Price', 700000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Strength', 140},
{'Price', 800000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 10},
{'Strength', 150},
{'Price', 1000000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 60},
{'Strength', 170},
{'Price', 1500000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Strength', 130},
{'Price', 2000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Strength', 130},
{'Price', 45000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Strength', 130},
{'Price', 60000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Strength', 130},
{'Price', 100000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Strength', 130},
{'Price', 150000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 3},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Strength', 160},
{'Price', 1000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Strength', 160},
{'Price', 40000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Strength', 160},
{'Price', 100000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Strength', 160},
{'Price', 140000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Strength', 160},
{'Price', 350000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Strength', 160},
{'Price', 500000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4.5},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Intelligence', 130},
{'Price', 2000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Intelligence', 130},
{'Price', 60000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Intelligence', 130},
{'Price', 75000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Intelligence', 130},
{'Price', 100000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Intelligence', 130},
{'Price', 200000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 3},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Intelligence', 160},
{'Price', 4000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Intelligence', 160},
{'Price', 50000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4.5},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Intelligence', 160},
{'Price', 75000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Intelligence', 160},
{'Price', 100000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Intelligence', 160},
{'Price', 150000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Intelligence', 160},
{'Price', 190000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Intelligence', 160},
{'Price', 350000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Intelligence', 160},
{'Price', 600000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Dexterity', 130},
{'Price', 2000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Dexterity', 130},
{'Price', 4000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Dexterity', 130},
{'Price', 10000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Dexterity', 130},
{'Price', 35000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Dexterity', 130},
{'Price', 100000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 3},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Dexterity', 160},
{'Price', 2000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Dexterity', 160},
{'Price', 4000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4.5},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Dexterity', 160},
{'Price', 10000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Dexterity', 160},
{'Price', 25000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Dexterity', 160},
{'Price', 50000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Dexterity', 160},
{'Price', 80000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Dexterity', 160},
{'Price', 100000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 8},
{'Dexterity', 160},
{'Price', 200000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Dexterity', 160},
{'Price', 350000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Intelligence', 75},
{'Price', 1000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5},
{'Vitality', 40},
{'Intelligence', 80},
{'Price', 2000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 60},
{'Intelligence', 90},
{'Price', 40000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Vitality', 40},
{'Intelligence', 80},
{'Price', 25000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Intelligence', 90},
{'Price', 40000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Intelligence', 110},
{'Price', 100000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Intelligence', 110},
{'Price', 250000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Vitality', 10},
{'Intelligence', 150},
{'Price', 300000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 10},
{'Intelligence', 150},
{'Price', 500000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 60},
{'Intelligence', 150},
{'Price', 700000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Intelligence', 110},
{'Price', 300000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Vitality', 10},
{'Intelligence', 150},
{'Price', 500000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Intelligence', 110},
{'Price', 450000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 10},
{'Intelligence', 150},
{'Price', 700000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 60},
{'Intelligence', 170},
{'Price', 1200000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4.5},
{'Vitality', 70},
{'Dexterity', 90},
{'Price', 1000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5},
{'Vitality', 40},
{'Dexterity', 80},
{'Price', 1000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Dexterity', 80},
{'Price', 2000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Vitality', 60},
{'Dexterity', 70},
{'Price', 5000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Dexterity', 110},
{'Price', 100000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Dexterity', 110},
{'Price', 350000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 10},
{'Dexterity', 150},
{'Price', 500000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 60},
{'Dexterity', 150},
{'Price', 1000000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Dexterity', 110},
{'Price', 400000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Vitality', 10},
{'Dexterity', 150},
{'Price', 500000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Dexterity', 110},
{'Price', 800000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 10},
{'Dexterity', 150},
{'Price', 900000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 50},
{'Dexterity', 150},
{'Price', 1000000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Vitality', 60},
{'Dexterity', 170},
{'Price', 1200000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 40},
{'Dexterity', 70},
{'Price', 1000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4.5},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 50},
{'Dexterity', 70},
{'Price', 5000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 50},
{'Dexterity', 65},
{'Price', 30000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 40},
{'Dexterity', 60},
{'Price', 20000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 55},
{'Dexterity', 75},
{'Price', 100000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 55},
{'Dexterity', 75},
{'Price', 120000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 65},
{'Dexterity', 80},
{'Price', 130000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 60},
{'Dexterity', 75},
{'Price', 190000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 70},
{'Dexterity', 85},
{'Price', 250000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 60},
{'Dexterity', 75},
{'Price', 350000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 70},
{'Dexterity', 85},
{'Price', 700000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 75},
{'Dexterity', 95},
{'Price', 1200000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 3.5},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 50},
{'Strength', 80},
{'Price', 2000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 40},
{'Strength', 60},
{'Price', 1000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4.5},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 40},
{'Strength', 60},
{'Price', 1000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 40},
{'Strength', 60},
{'Price', 25000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 40},
{'Strength', 60},
{'Price', 110000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 40},
{'Strength', 60},
{'Price', 30000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 50},
{'Strength', 70},
{'Price', 200000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 65},
{'Strength', 80},
{'Price', 150000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 70},
{'Strength', 85},
{'Price', 400000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 45},
{'Strength', 65},
{'Price', 210000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 60},
{'Strength', 80},
{'Price', 400000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 70},
{'Strength', 85},
{'Price', 600000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 45},
{'Strength', 65},
{'Price', 220000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 60},
{'Strength', 80},
{'Price', 450000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 70},
{'Strength', 90},
{'Price', 800000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 3.5},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 50},
{'Intelligence', 85},
{'Price', 2000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 40},
{'Intelligence', 70},
{'Price', 1000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 4.5},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 40},
{'Intelligence', 60},
{'Price', 5000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 40},
{'Intelligence', 60},
{'Price', 32000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 45},
{'Intelligence', 70},
{'Price', 31000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 40},
{'Intelligence', 70},
{'Price', 70000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 60},
{'Intelligence', 80},
{'Price', 250000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 5.5},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 60},
{'Intelligence', 80},
{'Price', 500000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 40},
{'Intelligence', 60},
{'Price', 130000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 40},
{'Intelligence', 60},
{'Price', 350000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 60},
{'Intelligence', 80},
{'Price', 250000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 50},
{'Intelligence', 70},
{'Price', 350000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 70},
{'Intelligence', 85},
{'Price', 600000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 75},
{'Intelligence', 95},
{'Price', 1000000000}
}
},
{
['Lacuni Prowlers'] = {
{'Critical Hit Chance', 6},
{'Attack Speed', 9},
{'Resistance to All Elements', 70},
{'Vitality', 40},
{'Intelligence', 90},
{'Price', 1500000000}
}
},

18 comments:

  1. GG ; i would like to sse what you will be able to do in a game like eve online.

    If i was working in a bank i would hire you immediatly.

    GG

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very good read. Quite the story. I miss the auction house, and hold the same opinion about farming bots as you. I feel that, even if D3 were to never process another RMAH again, the ability to have the GAH was great. If only the amount of gold/time sinks were in place then, as they are today.

    Maybe one day the AH will come back, but until then, I definitely won't be holding my breath.

    Congrats, and also, I'm sorry for your loss. I hope that you have found a way to process your income into further investments. GLHFDDNR20

    ReplyDelete
  3. 10 years ago around 109 i sold d2 items for several hundred euros.
    Gifted legit HL108 was banned. A friend was offering a few hundred.
    But the most funny is, first money i ever earned by myself was. Around 20 years ago, when i was like 10 or something. I climbed Cherry tree. And collected a bucket of Cherries. And sold them. Then bought a first bicycle.
    But i was more interested in fixind tech/electronics of me and my friends. This is why i became a Tech Support guy, rather then a sales guy. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I was one of the bigger early bot farmers. My peak production was 20 accounts (on one computer!). I started the first week of June, ran them 24/7 until the first week of July and then got spooked by the first ban wave. I cooled my jets the remainder of July and picked up again in August and immediately all my accounts got banned.

    However, in the single month I ran those accounts I made just under 10,000 USD. I missed out tremendously however, I was slow to ramp up my production and a gold dupe dropped the price of gold from 20 USD per million to less than 5 USD over night. The dupe involved changing your computers internal clock forward in time and using two accounts to simultaneously purchase and cancel the auction. Basically you got the bid money, and the buyer got his money back out of thin air. I only hit on max production of the 20+ USD per million gravy train for 2 days, and during those days I was making almost 1,000 USD a day.

    This was all before the RMAH was out, so I was primarily selling my gold to Chinese re-sellers, however, I had one major American buyer who bought 2 or 3k gold off of me as well as many, many other sellers. I spoke to him at length about what he was doing and it turned out he was intending on buying up about 20,000 to 30,000 USD in gold. What was he doing with this gold? Read on!

    He was cornering the market on gems for the RMAH release. He was buying up all gems of any tier that were priced within the margins he set for himself. He was then crafting them into the highest tier gems in the game. All told I would expect he was able to produce 10's of thousands of those gems with the gold he bought.

    When the RMAH released he immediately cornered and dominated the gem market on the NA server. He was selling gems for as much as 5 dollars a pop if I remember correctly all at the investment cost of pennies on the dollar. I don't know how quickly the gem market fell off, but I would be shocked if he didn't make close to 200,000 USD off of his stock and it could have been even more if the price held up.

    Not a bad return on his initial investment of 20 to 30k USD in just a couple of months time. Pretty crazy to take such a huge risk though.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Reading your story inspired me to look into poker bots. I'm a programmer, and that sounds exciting.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi can anyone tell me what programming language was used in the program? I have never seen anything like it, and a quick internet search hasn't provided me with any meaningful results.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A year later, but you can count on the Internet providing an answer to every question: it's Lua. How do I know: blocks ending with "end" keyword, no semicolons at the end of the lines, "local" keyword used for declaring variables, braces ({}) used for both array and object (actually both called "table") literals and ":" used along normal dot (".") for method access (actually, ":" is a simple syntactic sugar over the dot).

      Well, this is the first time my hobby (polyglot programming, checkout my site/blog on klibert.pl if you want to know more) proved kind of useful, which is why I'm happy to answer your question.

      Delete
  7. The funny thing is that this sort of scripting occurs on the stock market by financial companies every single day.

    BTW op better make sure you have your taxes in order as I would guess that you would have to pay tax on your earnings from RMAH

    ReplyDelete
  8. Very cool that arbitrage exist in all types of markets. What is even cooler is to have the training and creativity to notice and take advantage of those opportunities.

    ReplyDelete
  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Germán: Buy low Sell High ! :p

    ReplyDelete
  11. I just wonder how big idiot needs to be someone, who was buying some shitty virtual items for 250euro or something :-D

    ReplyDelete
  12. All Items are the only property of Blizzard Entertainment. Just click the links below. Sadly, this pillar also has the major reason why there's no multiplayer functionality for LAN. You are curious to know more about d2item sale, head over to the website.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Selling price is dependent upon the brand and state of the item that you're attempting to sell. At this time you'll need to discover the cost of the item used. Check out this site to know more about diablo boost.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I remember in probably 2012 I bought a trifecta zunimassa pox for 50m gold ($50 USD at the time) from the in game chat, and sold it later that day in the forums for $2000 USD.

    ReplyDelete
  15. If you want to Buy D2R Ladder Items at the lowest price, then I recommend you to buy it on MMOWTS.

    ReplyDelete