Sim­ple Steps

Our kin­mates often ask us how Hob­bit became so rich?  (Espe­cially after he bought every­one a new, deluxe kin­house in the best loca­tion in all of Eri­ador).

To become filthy rich, or at least socially secure, in LOTRO is rather straight-forward, if pedes­trian.  There are lots of meth­ods, but sim­ple, guar­an­teed ones are this:

• Be an Explorer and exploit every resource you come across, and after you mas­ter a given tier of craft­ing for that resource, sell the rest in the Auc­tion House;
• Com­plete all slayer deeds for each region your com­plete, and sell the hides, recipes and inter­est­ing detri­tus in the Auc­tion House;
• Mas­ter your non-resource craft, work daily on guild rep­u­ta­tion, equip your­self and your friends best you can, and sell crit­ted and guild items in the Auc­tion House.

The cen­tral theme of my path to riches and social secu­rity is the Auc­tion House.  Mas­ter the Auc­tion House, and you will never lack for lucre.

The Auc­tion House

Most play­ers mis­use the Auc­tion House.  Buy low, sell high is the rule there, just as in life, and most under­stand this intel­lec­tu­ally.  But few have any expe­ri­ence as a low-end retail busi­ness­man.  The Auc­tion House is not a bou­tique shop where one prices the best goods for only the best sort of peo­ple, and lives off a mod­est num­ber of sales*.  The Auc­tion House is Wal-mart: We Sell For Less.  (Although, smartly, Wal-mart has changed it’s slo­gan to Save Money. Live Better.)

The key to low-end retail is vol­ume, vol­ume, vol­ume.  As long as you can make a small profit on each item sold, the more items you sell, the more gold you gather.  And that gold really builds up.  In par­tic­u­lar, by the time you hit Forochel or Ere­gion, you will eas­ily gather one-third to one-half gold just walk­ing around killing things.  The quest rewards are good, and the resource gath­er­ing is excel­lent.  Toss in some good craft­ing, and a stack of ore/wood/hides, and you can eas­ily col­lect 2g from your new best friend, the Auc­tion House.

And the key to vol­ume sales is con­sis­tency.  Gather always (but not while run­ning instances, and never, never be a varmint! — stealer of resources from those in com­bat; Red­head invented that phrase, and I like it), gather while deed­ing, gather while on the way to a solo quest, gather while on cooldown.  Com­plete stacks gen­er­ally sell bet­ter in the Auc­tion House and are eas­ier for you to price accord­ing to the cur­rent mar­ket whims.

And man­age your bags!  The gold for extra vault chests is worth the cost as long as you keep stack­ing up what­ever comes your way: chests pay for them­selves if you don’t stuff them with dresses or memen­tos or fur­ni­ture.  (Hob­bit hopes he receives vis­i­tors while in con­va­les­cence; Red­head is an assid­u­ous dress collector.)

How to Price at the Auc­tion House

And, finally, my real secret: good pric­ing at the Auc­tion House, best explained by example:

1. Search on your stack: drag it into the search box in the Auc­tion House window;
2. Sort by Buy­out (some pre­fer Cur­rent Price, but it is trick­ier to work from);
3. Scroll down until you see the first, cheap­est com­plete stack (100÷50÷10, etc., depend­ing on item);
4. Post your stack for 2 days, this is impor­tant: the longer your post is, the bet­ter odds of some­one buy­ing it out;
5. Post your stack for a mod­est amount lower, e.g., if 100 Sil­ver Ore is sell­ing for 750s, post for 725s

Not for the weak of heart: If you are really jonesing for the Auc­tion House, con­tinue with:

1. Make an esti­mate at sin­gle item cost, e.g.,  if 100 Sil­ver Ore is sell­ing for 750s, then 1 Sil­ver Ore is about 7-½s;
2. Sweep through the par­tial stacks, and repeat your estimate;
3. When a par­tial stack has an item cost less than half (impor­tant!) that of the cheap­est full stack, buy out the par­tial stack.

The sec­ond optional pass is that you may buy­out under­priced goods, and later repost them as well-priced com­plete stacks.  The impor­tant rule of half is to pro­tect you from price fluc­tu­a­tions: it is quite sad to sink your pre­cious gold into a mar­ket, only to lose your shirt later when you unwind your posi­tion (to use the lingo of real world markets).

*The Truth About The Best Sort of People

Actu­ally, I lied.  The Auc­tion House is a bou­tique shop where one prices the best goods for only the best sort of peo­ple, and lives off a mod­est num­ber of sales.  But this is only true when you are sell­ing the best goods (aka [Hunter’s Bow of the First Age].  That is not you (or you would not be read­ing this post).  Hob­bit is rich, but he is not that kind of rich: he is rich, wealthy, inde­pen­dent and socially secure.  He is not the best sort of people.

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