Great places to farm gold in Diablo 3

The Real Money Auction House has been postponed until the 13th of June now and that of course is a bit annoying. It does leave more time to farm for gold though.

I have tested a lot and here are the best places to farm for gold in Diablo 3.

Fields of Slaugther

Fields of Slaugther is in my opinion by far the best place to farm. With Diablo 3 moving away from boss runs for loot, farming has become a question of how to kill the most monsters in the least amount of time. Any monster can potentially drop a legendary and while champion mobs and special monsters are good, normal monsters should not be discarded as they are fast and easy to kill.

Fields of Slaugther is great because it has both a high density of normal monsters to kill and a good chance of multiple  rare and champion packs to spawn.

It is also the best farming place in D3 because there is a very good chance of finding the Cavern of Frost which has champion and named monsters and a Resplendent Chest in the bottom. I also often find a Treasure Gnome in the Cavern of Frost giving me even more drops and gold.

The Fields of Slaughter are even a fantastic farming place in Inferno. You know those Demonic Mines that has a tendency to kill you when you are mindlessly grinding away? Yeah well, they can be used for killing off mobs too. Just kite the monster across the mines and watch them take almost a million points of damage when the Demonic Mine explode.
Finally it is awesome for solo farming, because not only do you get your follower, Tyrael will join you in the battle as well.

To get to the Fields of Slaugther, simply pick Act 3 and the quest the Siegebreaker. Now you should have the waypoint The Bridge of Korsikk. Be ready to fight immediately when porting in as there are often a rare or champion pack around the waypoint.

Now just clear the area, find the the cave and then reset and go again.

Whimsyshire

Whimsyshire is a great place to farm for items, although not as much for gold. The drop rate of blues and Yellows in Whimsyshire is incredibly high, even with little Magic Find. The drawback of course is the cost to get access to Rainbowland. 150k for the normal staff of herding, 200k gold on top of that for access on Nightmare. Hell will cost you 500k gold and the Inferno Whimsyshire staff is a staggering 1 million gold, meaning you will have spent 1 million 850k gold for your farm place. Of course if you are lucky and get a legendary drop amongst all the blues and yellows, that will easily cover your entrance fee. Time to gamble on the drop rate perhaps?

Garden of Hope level 2 and the Silver Spire

These levels of Heaven are okay in terms of gold drops, but not as good as the Fields of Slaugther. They are however better if you want to get some high level drops.
Gardens of Hope and the Silver Spire is good because there are a lot of monsters spawning. The drawback is that the monsters here are quite hard and as such you chance getting killed over slightly better loot. In terms of time vs payout for farming I don't feel the increase in gold and items over act 3 is worth it.
Personally I would recommend Fields of Slaugther for Gold and the Whimsyshire for items, but if you do not have access to the latter or you want to farm for both at the same time, then the Silver Spire and Garden of Hope are going to fit the bill.



The most important thing in terms of picking a farming spot in Diablo is to look for high density "easy" to kill monsters with high drop rates. The less you have to move and the more rares/champions  or chests you have access to in the area the better.

Happy Farming!

Diablo 3 Aucion House price development

Over the last couple of days I have been keeping a close eye on the D3 gold Auction House. As expected prices has dropped drastically on most commodities. Here is a chart over a couple of the most  basic items.

 

The blue line represents Blacksmith Pages, the Red one Jewelcrafting. The yellow is Subtle Essence and the green one is Fallen Tooth.

It might be a bit hard to see, but it seems like Subtle Essences has stabilized around 14g pr item and Fallen Teeth at around 25g. This being said thoug, as mentioned in a previous post, it is not really worth it to salvage items for this as you can get more from selling the item directly to a vendor.

So what sells you ask?

Well at this point mostly yellow items and above. I have had really good luck with selling resist item as people are starting to realize that they will need those for hell and beyond. Anything that fits the perfect mold for a class item sells as well. That means things with Int, Vit and attack speed for Wizards for instance.

I must admit that I am a bit disappointed with the pages, gems and dyes. I was expecting them to be the money makers, but it seems they are just too common to be worth anything now that the initial surge of buyers has disappeared. I managed to make quite a profit on them while it lasted, so I wont complain too much, but still!

Unfortunately I am going on vacation for a week now, so I wont be able to keep tracking the price development, but I will be back with a vengeance on the 29th of May. Until then happy money farming! 

What sells on the Diablo 3 Auction House?

Diablo has been out for 2 and a half day and I felt it was time to share my speculations based on current experience of what sells on the Diablo 3 Auction House.
This post is mainly dedicated to things that sells on the gold Auction House, since the Real Money Auction House has yet to go live.

My observations so far is as follows. Crafting materials will sell, but the price fluctuates wildly as people go through the content I foresee the normal mode crafting materials becoming really cheap or not selling at all. At this point in time you can still sell them, however here is a small tip. The subtle essence sells for between 20 and 25 gold per item at present and the Fallen Horns are about 40g (This is likely to fall drastically). Most blue items of act 3-4 sells for 100+ gold and you usually only get 1 essence or horn from an item. This means that unless the item value to sell to a merchant is less than 30 I would not recommend salvaging from a pure money perspective. The same goes for Shimmering essence and Lizard Eye with prices on the auction house 30g and 150g. Most items simply sell better to the merchants.

What can you earn money on then you ask? Well so far I have been selling the Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing pages. The first goes for between 300 and 500 gold at the moment and the blacksmithing ones goes for 1400-1500 gold. These prices are likely to drop significantly, so now is the time to sell off pages. You can always pick some up cheap later on. Gems is another thing that sells, albeit it is dependant on the quality. Unless you sell really cheap I don't think you can get rid of chipped ones and regardless, it is more profitable to upgrade them and sell them on. I have yet to delve too much into the gem marked, but a flawless ruby sells for between 2000 and 3000 gold at present. I am holding on to mine though, hoping to upgrade them and auction them for a higher profit.

Last item I have been selling is dyes. I found a random NPC vendor that sold them and picked up a few. Sadly I didn't stock up on them as they sold like hot buns. At this point however, everyone has picked up on the dyes and they no longer sell for a real profit, if at all.

I just entered Act 2 on Nightmare and I am sitting on about 320k gold.
Not as much as I would like, but I will keep pushing the gold limit as I foresee the Real Money Auction House mainly be good for gold transactions.

How much gold can you make in D3 in 24 hours?

It has been a little over 24 hours since Diablo first went live and it is time for a status update. Unfortunately I was kicked from the server before I could take screenshots, so they will have to follow tomorrow. So far my Wizard is level 27. I am halfway through act 3 and I have earned approximately 100k gold. I have not spent much money on anything besides repairs. I leveled my Blacksmith to level 2 so I could get some proper gear at the lower levels, but now I haven't touched him since. The 100k gold is going up on the Real Money Auction House as soon as it is unlocked. Hopefully I can get it sold.

Diablo 3 - Act 2 Run Through

This post will be work in progress as I battle my way through act 2 of D3. I can say one thing, it is definitely getting harder so the promise that we will die is very real.

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Diablo 3 Live - Act 1 Run-Through - Spoilers

I finally managed to get online after almost 2 hours of attempting and when I finally managed to get in I figured I had to get something out of the opportunity even if it was already quite late. So here I am at 4:30 am in the morning ready to share videos of the entire first act in Diablo 3.
The videos are unedited and the sound is a bit weird, but if you are interested in seing a Wizard battling through the start of the game then this is for you.

I wont give any spoilers in this text, but if you watch the videos there obviously are tons. What I will say though is that the last boss was quite the surprise and extremely epic! :D (last video might not be done with importing yet. I just threw the link as soon as I could and it seems it is not loading. Hopefully it will be up soon.)

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Diablo Error 37

So here we are, almost 1 hour after the European Launch of the long awaited Diablo 3 and first impressions are abundant.....well in truth, most of us haven't actually managed to log into the game yet. The dreaded Error 37 is hitting people in the face when they try to log in, Blizzards official Diablo forum is flooded with angry rage threads demanding to know why Blizzard has not learned from previous releases.

I think they have though. The thing to remember when you think about launches and companies like Blizzard is that they have to make a choice at some point, deciding how many resources they can spend on login servers. Now on release day there might be a gazzilion players logging in at the exact same time, warrenting a very huge login server capacity, but will that really be necessary a day from now? A week from now? A month from now?

I think Blizzard made a calculated risk and assumed that people while annoyed with not being able to login, will still enjoy the game enough to forgive an hour or 2 of queue time.

That is of course my opinion and I don't know much about server structures etc., but to me it makes business and logistical sense.

Now I'd better be able to log in!

Diablo 3 launch night preparation

Tonight is the night when it all happens. In about 6 hours I will be logging in to play Diablo 3!
Here are a couple of tips to help prepare.

Pre-Install

The early install has started and if you sorted out the downloader, you will be able to install right now. That way you will be able to hit the game a 23.00 GMT sharp.
Also as a side note. If you get a message saying Unable to initialise streaming or createstreamingmanifest::getstreamingmanifestcontents then there is a couple of things you can try before you panic.
Make sure you run the installer as admin and if that doesn't work try again, try again, try again. I had to start my installer 7 times before it actually worked and with more and more people hitting the servers I expect that others will run in to similar issues.

Prep Snacks and Food for D3 gaming night

You don't really want to have to break off gaming early to go shop for food and snacks do you? I thought not. You have 6 hours to stock up on vital things like drinks, sweets and proper food. Do it now!
Here is my stash of snacks for Diablo 3. I don't actually like the standard gamer nutrients like soda and crisps which is why this might look slightly stange to you.

There is always room for Kinder Eggs and hot chocolate though ;)

Free up space on your D3 drive

If at all possible, make sure to free up space on your Diablo drive. The downloader is 7.something GB and the game itself is 15gb+

On a final note. I will be streaming my gaming experience live as soon as I am able to log in, so if you are at work and can't play or in another unfortunate situation that makes it impossible to log in, you can still get a dose of D3. The link to my LiveStream is here.

Time to slay some Demons!

D3 Real Money Auction House fees

Big news has been revealed about the RMAH(Real Money Auction House) in Diablo 3. Blizzard has come out and told us exactly how big fees will be associated with putting up auctions and it is actually not looking too bad in my opinion.

For items such as weapon and armor you will pay a flat fee of $1 if it sells.
For Gems, Gold and Materials it will be a 15% of the sales price.
There will also be a 15% fee to cash out to PayPal, something you can avoid paying if you just let the money go directly into your Battle.net Balance.
Finally the maximum sales price of an item will be $250

While the flat fee on weapons means that only really nice items will be viable for the RMAH, money, gems and materials will still be great for earning cash.

All in all I think Blizzard has made a good decission on the fee-level.

Another announcement was made as well that is putting a stick in my wheel though.

Remember how I was going to see how much I can earn on the first week as I have a very inconvenient holiday booked from the 21st of May?  Well, Blizzard has announced that there will be no RMAH for the first week after launch.

Quite annoying, however I will get around it by stockpiling resources and level as high as I can. Hopefully I will have Internet in my hotel so I can put things up for sale still.

If you are curious about Auction house fee calculations, then check out the nice little calculater Diablo Fans has put together.

Why it will be possible to earn money playing Diablo 3

I was out with a couple of friends yesterday and the topic wandered into D3 and the Real Money Auction house.

I started laying out my plan of generating an income through playing the game when one of my friends interrupted me and shut down the entire idea with the words “Noone will make any money of the Real Money Auction house.

A bit stunned I asked him to explain himself and he stated, “no gamer is going to want to spend money on something they can get through playing the game themselves”.

Now this is not the first time I have heard this argument when talking about making a living off Diablo 3, but it was the first time I heard anyone being so dismissive of the idea.

And so incredibly wrong as well people have been making money of MMORPG's since they were first introduced to the gaming community and that is why you will be able to make money off the Real Money Auction house. Don't believe me? Check out these examples

Ultima Online was the first really successful MMORPG with 250.000 subscribers in 2003. And with all those subscribers came a bustling digital items market.

Julian Dibbell is a freelance journalist with balls of steel. In 2003 he decided to quit his job and go into the world of Virtual trading to earn enough money to pay his bills every month just from what he could earn buying and selling online goods in Ultima Online. His book Play Money follows his attempt to make it big in the virtual economy. Not only is it a really fascinating book to read, however it shows that already back in 2003 with the MMORPG genre in its infantile state, it was possible to make money from playing computer games.

That is a 9 year old example you say, well sure, but it is a good one. The next example comes from D3s little brother Diablo 2. The game is 10 years old and still now in 2012 there are multiple pages dedicated to selling in-game items for real cash. Just as an example on one of them you can buy a 10 Max dam, 49-69 attack rating, 45 life great charm for $3.48. Yes that is more than a cup of coffee would generally cost at Starbucks and this is a game that has been out for 10 years, you would think people had, had enough time to grind for the item themselves if they really wanted to?

Unfortunately it is quite hard to find any numbers on how many items are sold in DII on a monthly basis, since the practice is not permitted by Blizzard Entertainment, however I bet you that unless it was quite lucrative still, there wouldn't be as many pages out there offering the service. You can also have a look at this poll to get a bit of an idea on numbers of people purchasing virtual items for real money. While the sample is not the biggest and while they might be a bit skewed as this is people who are on a Diablo related forum and as such probably more hardcore gamers than the average player, it is still interesting numbers. If we are to believe this poll then about 20% of players has ever bought items in Diablo using real cash. Surprised?

For another proof that it will definitely be possible to make money off the Real Money Auction house, you just have to look at World of Warcraft. On a daily basis players are getting hacked or running in to bots when playing. Why? So the goldfarmers can feed the never ending demand for gold sold for real money.

Last example for the day is League of Legends, World of Tanks or any of the many other free to play and micro transaction based games.

These type of games are hugely succesful and even if the items you can purchase are not offering any benefits, players are still buying. In League of Legends for instance you can buy skins for your character and the only purpose of these are the bragging rights it offers to have enough dough to throw at a computer game.

In Diablo 3 most of the items you will be able to buy and sell will have a tangible influence on the gameplay (better damage, more magic find, more money) and that is why you will be able to make money selling through the Real Money Auction house. When it all boils down to it, people are lazy, even in games created for leisure, people do not want to spend more effort than they need to.

There will be plenty of people buying gold, items, dyes and recipes. Especially if the PvP part of Diablo becomes succesful, but even if it is only moderately good, people will buy, shop, purchase and all the other lovely words merchants like us love to hear. And best of all, this time around it will be legal for players to go through with these sales and a supported system created by Blizzard themselves to sort out the sales. This means people who were previously too scared to get scammed will also start buying items for real money.

So there you have it, yes it will be possible to make money playing Diablo 3, will it be possible to get rich doing that? Now that is a whole other question, but I will be damned if I don't give it a go at least!