Infinite Gold Strategy through Salvaging/Crafting?

[Markco]

I published on my blog a strategy for making infinite gold in diablo 3.

I would like to share this strategy with you for two reasons:

1. It's too easy to do and needs to be fixed.
2. It will greatly reduce the value of higher end crafting materials.

So what's the strategy? Simple: buy 100 subtle essence. Craft 50 belts. Salvage them all. Craft 25 belts... Etc down to the point where you can't craft any more.

What do you end up with? FAR more than you started with. You'll have more value from the 5% fallen tooth and 1% petrified bark than subtle essences you began with.

Why is this? Because you always get a subtle essence + a chance for a rarer crafting material. See how this is an issue and how you could go forever buying essences, crafting, salvaging, and selling the results?

This strategy will greatly reduce the value of higher rarer materials until this kind of method is no longer profitable. That's the natural balance of things.

How to fix:

Two things: increase cost to craft on items and do not give a subtle essence + chance for rarer material every time you salvage.

[Naviaras]

If this becomes too much of an issues they can easily hot fix it to lower the % chance to get the high quality item. Just like they can adjust sale prices if it looks like it might be an exploit.

This trick make work in the beginning I doubt it will be a viable long term $$$ generator.

As has be stated numerous times before it is in Blizzard/Activision best interest to make sure the economy stays stable and health. I strongly believe that Blizzard will actively monitor the Auction Houses to keep inflation in check. Just like they will be checking for duplicates items an other hack/bugs/exploits that could upset the economy. Checking the RMAH changes in P11 there is now a 1 day cool down on sales. I believe it is there to allow some sort of monitoring.

Remember we are playing in Blizzard's sandbox and they can easily change the rules of the game. In the end the "House" always wins.

[Zokar]

So, on average, the purchase of 100 SE results in:

99 SE
4.95 FT
0.99 PB

Selling those will cost 15% so this will cost:

14.85 SE
0.7425 FT
0.1485 PB

This leaves us with the value of:

84.15 SE
4.2075 FT
0.8415 PB

So, the question, is the following equation true?
100SE < 84.15SE + 4.2075FT + 0.8415PB

or, is:

4.2075FT + 0.8415PB - 15.85SE > 0

So, it's not guaranteed to generate a profit, it depends on the relative values, so lets take a look at a few example:

SE	FT	PB	NET
			
1.0000	1.0000	1.0000	-10.8010
1.0000	1.0000	1.3000	-10.5486
1.0000	1.0000	1.6900	-10.2204
1.0000	1.0000	2.1970	-9.7937
1.0000	1.0000	2.8561	-9.2391
1.0000	1.0000	3.7129	-8.5181
1.0000	1.0000	4.8268	-7.5807
1.0000	1.0000	6.2749	-6.3622
1.0000	1.0000	8.1573	-4.7781
1.0000	1.0000	10.6045	-2.7188
1.0000	1.0000	13.7858	-0.0417
1.0000	1.0000	17.9216	3.4385
			
1.0000	2.0000	2.0000	-5.7520
1.0000	2.0000	2.6000	-5.2471
1.0000	2.0000	3.3800	-4.5907
1.0000	2.0000	4.3940	-3.7374
1.0000	2.0000	5.7122	-2.6282
1.0000	2.0000	7.4259	-1.1861
1.0000	2.0000	9.6536	0.6885
			
1.0000	3.0000	3.0000	-0.7030
1.0000	3.0000	3.9000	0.0543

So, yes, there are potential breakpoints of profit as one can see, but this arbitrage like many others have a good potential to even out. One will just have to wait and see what the price structures are to really know if there is any profit in it.

[Mokhtar]

As pointed out in Markco's blog, there is also a cost for crafting the items. The cheapest item costs 40 gold to craft, so you will need 2000 gold to craft 50 items from 100 SE.

[Zokar]

As pointed out in Markco's blog, there is also a cost for crafting the items. The cheapest item costs 40 gold to craft, so you will need 2000 gold to craft 50 items from 100 SE.

Excellent point, so with the above setup 99 items get created, so that would cost 3960 gold. So, instead of the above formula, one would just need to be greater than the cost of buying the 3960 gold, which if it's say $1 per 1000 gold, we just need to have the end result be greater than $3.96, this doesn't change much:

SE	FT	PB	NET
			
1.0000	1.0000	1.0000	-10.8010
1.0000	1.0000	1.3000	-10.5486
1.0000	1.0000	1.6900	-10.2204
1.0000	1.0000	2.1970	-9.7937
1.0000	1.0000	2.8561	-9.2391
1.0000	1.0000	3.7129	-8.5181
1.0000	1.0000	4.8268	-7.5807
1.0000	1.0000	6.2749	-6.3622
1.0000	1.0000	8.1573	-4.7781
1.0000	1.0000	10.6045	-2.7188
1.0000	1.0000	13.7858	-0.0417
1.0000	1.0000	17.9216	3.4385
1.0000	1.0000	23.2981	7.9628
			
1.0000	2.0000	2.0000	-5.7520
1.0000	2.0000	2.6000	-5.2471
1.0000	2.0000	3.3800	-4.5907
1.0000	2.0000	4.3940	-3.7374
1.0000	2.0000	5.7122	-2.6282
1.0000	2.0000	7.4259	-1.1861
1.0000	2.0000	9.6536	0.6885
1.0000	2.0000	12.5497	3.1256
1.0000	2.0000	16.3146	6.2937
			
1.0000	3.0000	3.0000	-0.7030
1.0000	3.0000	3.9000	0.0543
1.0000	3.0000	5.0700	1.0389
1.0000	3.0000	6.5910	2.3188
1.0000	3.0000	8.5683	3.9827

Either way, I get the feeling it's going to even out quickly if people start aggressively doing something like this.

[Zokar]

Ok, this has inspired me to write a very small tool.... shouldn't take too long, I'll see about posting it tonight if I have time to hash it out.

[viledevil]

and the 100 se make 50 belts, not 100, and the expected # of ft is 2.5 not 5.

[Zokar]

and the 100 se make 50 belts, not 100, and the expected # of ft is 2.5 not 5.

100 SE results in 50 belts, but those 50 belts result in 50SE and 2.5FT and 0.5PB but those 50SE result in 25 belts which result in 25SE and 1.25FT and 0.25PB and so on and so on, the results eventually add up if you break it all the way down. Fairly sure my numbers are correct when considering all the rounds of making additional belts.

[BZK]

I don't wanna be mean or anything but infinite gold as the title of your manipulation is really misplaced and seems like exageration to get some views.

Crafting cost gold, and most importantly cost time. You could farm normal and it would be infinite gold by your definition, you take 0 risk, and only lose some time. We have no idea yet how much the crafting material will be worth at the point where players will actually need them for something. This "technique" just use common magic material to get rare (and legendary) material, there is nothing new in that, WoW has similar features in some crafting skills. The value of legendary and rare material will be based on the demand from crafter that consume them, and the offer will be provided from farmer that drop them or "salvager" that gets lucky (well after 1000 salvage luck has less to do with anything).

Will this be a way to get material/sell material to get gold/€, yes it will.
Will it be faster than farming inferno with some MF gear and selling good affixes rolled loot, salvage any unwanted items to sell materials in AH, nobody can tell.

If you could refrain from using catchy term like "infinite", you could just say something like: way to get highely valued material and cashing out on them through craft/salvage with little effort.

Edit: At some point if with 100 blue material you can get 10 yellow material, blue material price will balance itself to 1/9th to 1/11th of the price of a yellow material if the demand is not overwhelming in rare material, be cause people will buy blue material instead of yellow when they actually need yellow one and just craft/salvage until they have what they need so the demand on blue will become higher -> price on blue will increase just accordingly to the price on yellow. you won't be able to get benefit from this at anytime anyday.

[kestegs]

The reality is that this would take a fair amount of time, so unless you are going to write a script that is going to do all of the crafting, selling, etc for you (Don't do that, I'm not suggesting it) then you could likely gain wealth a lot faster just by killing baddies.