Fending off the Competition

In my last post I outlined the measures I was taking to crash the Glyph market. Today I will be discussing the results of the crash and what changes I've had to render to continue crashing the market in a manner that is "safe" for my pocket.

When my initial crash strategy ensued as servers came up Tuesday, I began to see a decrease in activity from my competition. There was only one other person in the market who seemed willing to hug the threshold closer than I was, and that suited me just fine. Between the two of us, we held the market at a consistently low profit-margin for a good several days. All the while, I was netting approximately 300-500 gold every morning (which was about equal to what I would make on a given morning when the profit-margins were higher). The thing I disliked most was that it took more time and materials to restock my glyphs for a smaller payout. But, in order to drive people out - sometimes you have to make sacrifices.

To make matters worse, shortly after Tuesday herbs were more scarce than usual - and began selling at higher prices (probably due to the DMF). These two factors would eventually lead to the alternative market-crashing strategy that took shape yesterday. But before I go on to talk about my alternate strategy - I just want to give you all a tip about something you should watch out for when the herb prices are spiking and you are crashing the market

On Thursday night, when 3/4ths of the glyphs on the market were sitting at my threshold (2g) I began to see a massive buyout. One of my competitors decided that, with the situation of costly herbs that were hard to find - it would be a great idea to buy out the market and resell. The problem was, I had virtually no inks at this point, and no herbs to mill - which lead me to doing a /cancelall.

From here, I had to rethink how I wanted to go about crashing the market. First things first, I couldn't have my competition buying out the glyphs that I had made at my previous cost-to-craft. So, with a little research, I moved to reset my threshold slightly above what it would cost to craft glyphs at the current herb prices (3g and 5g respectfully). Next, I bumped my fallback up to 8g and 10g, a level at which I believe my competitors will not try to "buy me out" with. Then, I turned off the "Override undercut" and turned on Smart Undercutting. This means that now, when I am undercut, I will only have to go through a period of 5 undercuts before I have met my threshold.

So now, instead of running people out of the market by "burning the crops and sowing salt into the earth", I am running people out through lowering morale. When you see your 10g glyph suddenly drop to a sub-4g glyph in an hour - making less than 1g profit on it, it's bound to get some people to quit. But, I'm only on day 5 of my "market crashing" extravaganza - when the war is over, I'll be sure to let you all know!


In other News

Check out Carbon's latest post over at his blog for some cool addons you might want to bring into the fold - their pretty sweet! Also, if you're a scribe, take a look at Wingman's post on the JMTC forums to calculate how many more days of research you've got left.


Next time on Green Guts' Goblin Emporium...
Check back next time to see what new profession(s?) I've maxed out, how my new plan to hold down the market is working, and whether I've FINALLY found a 3v3 team.

~ GG