Eviscerator's Lock - Lobster dinner for all

This axe is named "Severe Ruin". As in, this axe will Severely Ruin the amount of gold you have in the game. See how much I sold this for after the jump.

Isn't this worth more than the RMAH auction cap?

Liar

Disclaimer: This isn't my axe. I didn't find it. I didn't sell it.

What I did sell was a sword that was practically the same as this except not so shitty. I simply found the closest thing for you to use as a visual reference. As I mentioned before: I don't have a screenshot of every item I sold, because I have to screencap the item before it sells. After you have sold it, you can't see the details anymore. Quality work, Blizzard.

So what are the real stats? Well, I can't remember exactly, but it was about this:

Eviscerator's Lock
842 dps Rune Sword

Relevant affixes:
+80 Intelligence
+80 Vitality
Each hit adds +746 life
Critical Hit Damage Increased by 45%
Socket

Pretty good sword right? It's perfect for any wizard that uses the stunlock build since it adds all the damage, LoH and stats that you could ever want. Hell, even a barb or monk could use this because it has the key stats (High LoH, CritDamage, socket).

For those unaware of the critical mass stunlock build, go Google exactly that. The concept is that you use Critical Mass & spells that can hit multiple times to cool down your Frost Nova and Diamond Skin near instantly to prevent harm and keep mobs continuously stunned. The build is effective because it doesn't rely on having 50k dps; all it takes is spamming the same button over and over some reasonable gameplay skills to be able to kill most things. It was around for a bit when the game came out, but was nerfed, and now recently unnerfed. Quality work, Blizzard.

So how much is "Eviscerator's Lock" worth in gold? I would estimate at least 175m. This will be important for later.

Identify your weapons people

If this were d2, you should be using him (her) more

This is a bit of a tangent, but guys... ID your stuff. Quit selling it unidentified. It only takes 1 good ID to get an Eviscerator's Lock and earn a couple hundred million gold. And I really don't think it takes the 250 Rune swords that 175m gold can buy to find an Eviscerator's Lock. Here are the only reasons why selling unID is a good idea:

Reason 1:

You need the money now. If you are just starting, it may be a good idea to get some liquidity through gold so you can outfit your guy. This is fair. By selling unID, you are reducing the variance of your loot so you can make a guaranteed profit. 

Reason 2:

You are stupid. The current sell price of unids (under a mil or so, I don't really know) is way too low. I find maybe 50 ilvl 63 items on a day where all I'm doing is playing. If I sold them unID, I could probably get 10m gold (since I don't find 50 hellion crossbows a day; most ilvl63 items are worth much less). From experience, I can pretty much guarantee you that I'm going to make more money if I identify the items and sell them on the AH. Go plot some data points yourself and take a long average. You should make way more money than the amount that people are offering for your unids. Otherwise, why would people offer to buy them at that price? IDing an item is a high variance gamble. You can get nothing, or you can pay for lobster dinner. But it's worth it. It's fun. Just do it.

What every diablo 3 player wants

Think about it this way. If you never find anything good, and decide to go with the unID selling route, then you never will find anything good. The game becomes a chore of farming, selling, upgrading your guy. Why do this to yourself?

I mean, you can do whatever you want. It's just a game. Back to the real topic.

God sword

This sword doesn't even have a socket

What do you do when you find a sword worth hundreds of millions of gold?


Brag to your friends.

And then your family, and then your coworkers. After all that is said and done, you probably want to do a little dance. But after that, one of three things:

1. Keep it... ok... who are we kidding, you're going to sell it. Your greed knows no bounds.
2. Sell it on the Gold AH.
3. Sell it on the RMAH.

Deciding whether to do #2 or #3 is not as simple as taking the "$:gold" common ratio (let's say its 2$ per million) and doing some math. But let's do that math anyway.

Let's say that the "Severe Ruin" up there is actually worth 200m (it's not). This is equal to 200m * 2$/1m  = 400$. Because the auction price cap in the RMAH is 250$, you would not be able to get 400$ if you sold it on the RMAH. To get maximum value, you would have to sell the item for 200m and then sell the gold for money. But wait! There's more hidden footprints.

I mean hidden fees, sorry. If you sell it for 200m on the AH, you will get a 15% fee taken, and receive 170m gold after the auction clears. And then if you try to sell 170m gold at ~2$/m, you will get hit with the 30% fee, which will leave you with 170 * 2 * .7 = 238$. Compare this with the (250-1)*.85 = 211$ that you'd get if you had sold it on the RMAH, and you can see that you didn't really do such a clever thing.

Additionally, you have to factor in changes in the market, so you may not actually get the exchange rate you want. It also takes time and effort to make this transaction. As a rule of thumb, if an item is worth under 200m, I'm going to just throw it on the RMAH. If it is over 200m (which almost never happens), then I would sell it for gold and look for some way to turn it back into $.

This complicated rule highlights a problem with the RMAH/GAH interaction. I will talk about it in a future post. But for now, let's see how much that sword sold for. You can probably guess; scroll down and see.

(250$ - 1$ fee) * (1- 0.15 blizzard's cut) = 211.65$

Additional Tangent:

In case that first one wasn't enough for you, here's another story about this sword.

Gamecube Emerald

 Because the sword had a socket, I figured that I would put in the biggest Emerald to help with the selling process. So, up it went for 250$ with a Radiant Star Emerald nestled inside. And for the first 36 hours, nobody bought it. I was annoyed. By this point, I had realized the sword was clearly worth more than 250$, so what was the point of further increasing the value with an RSE? So I replaced the gem with a flawless square and put it back on the AH, but this time I lowered the bid price to 240$, and kept the buyout at 250$. This time it sold in 15 minutes.

Why? Well here's my three theories:

1. Chance occurrence. The eventual buyer did not see the first auction.
2. Putting a large gem in it showed the buyer that I was trying to inflate the value of the item, which to him implies that the item is crappier than it actually is.
3. Lowering the bid price to 240$ did something. This one doesn't really make any sense to me.

Who knows what happened.