Low pop server here and I've done this successfully across a few markets BUT, I did it without having to resort to posting with alts.
I'll be frank, I tried it once and it left me feeling a little dirty and all told, after all the effort involved, it ended up being a complete waste of time. In the end, when you're trying to control prices your goals are the following:
- choke the underlying supply chain
- prune listings and extending high buyout levels by buying out undercutters
- or worst case scenario, push out undercutters (by signaling that you're willing to take a loss to undercut them - I usually do this by buying out their supply and reposting it back while undercutting them - this is an important calculation you need to make so you're clear on how much you're willing to spend to undercut someone and how much that impacts your overall profit...just make sure you remove emotion from this equation or you WILL lose out on profits).
The trick with making this work boils down your ability to sustain these conditions over a period of time. Usually a week is enough but I've sustained these conditions in various markets for over a month now successfully and defended against undercutters where necessary.
Here's some examples:
Saber's Eye Gems
When I dipped my toes in,
Säblerauge were around 3.5-4k and
Pandemonit was selling briskly at 5k...So I bought out all the
Pandemonit and
Wutstein and kept buying it out without posting any back. I did this till I had about enough for 100 cuts across all the saber gems.
Then I watched the saber eye supply and waited for what I felt was the lowest supply then bought all those out and kept buying them out. So the first reset, I nudged the price from 3.5k to 4.8k. I waited for posters to unload their supply and bough them out slowly over the next week. On the next reset, I bought all the supply again then nudged the price up another 1.5k to 6.3-6.5k. I rode that slide out for a week until supply was low again and then I did something a little different.
I posted a few of my
Pandemonit at ridiculous prices, like 8k per and
Pandemonit suppliers followed suit surprisingly. When I saw they were biting and helping me put
Pandemonit supply out of reach of anyone looking to compete, I bought and reposted the remaining saber supply at around 8.5k. So that last round was about 2 weeks ago and the prices for saber gems are still around 7k.
Now through all that, I diligently watched reposters and if someone undercut me by a significant margin, I didn't think twice, I bought them out - I categorize that purchase as a "cost of doing business" expenditure.
I did run into a few griefers who took advantage of my resetting, and this is probably the only place where an alt or alt army would come into play. You don't want any griefer undercutters knowing you're willing to reset, so this is one place I'd consider deploying alts. In my case, I didn't need to and I just kept buying out cheap supply and making sure it wasn't economical to buy pandemonite and flip it for a saber profit.
Mind you this was all on a low pop server, you'd need to be way more flush and way more aggressive on a higher pop server to sustain something for as long as I've sustained this reset.
Chaos Crystals
I tried this market and was NOT able to sustain a consistent reset of
Chaoskristall for more than a few days...there's just too much supply available period. I didn't lose any money with this reset, but I didn't make any either...though I did sell a boatload of enchants as a result of having to redeploy the mats.
Argus Gems
Totally resettable and extremely volatile. You can't sustain a reset in gems unless you control the
Empyrium supply. I spent about 200k just buying out item=151564] for a couple of weeks and although it helped, it was very difficult to sustain and be profitable. While gems do move, they just didn't move fast enough at a price that would justify continued buying out of
Empyrium.
The nice things with gems though are that when they drop below a certain threshold (if gem cost * 1.65 < 1
Urobliterum) then you can buy out the gems and shuffle them over to
Urobliterum (assuming you have a good supply of which everyone should). This shuffle has a couple of coincidental benefits in that:
- it reduces the supply of gems
- it shifts the risk of unloading and spreads it across 2 markets
So while you may make a little or break even in the shuffle, it's a great way to spread the risk and still possibly profit. Across around 1,000
Urobliterum sales, I'm in the positive using the Argus gem shuffle. (pro - tip
Hesselit and
Olivin almost always sell for less than primal obliterum so keep an eye on those supplies).
Hexweave Bags
...wow this market is sick...I don't have an alt army to deploy towards making these but when I have reset this market - it's always been good to me, so take that for what it's worth.
So yeah that's just a short collection of reset efforts...there are certainly more I can talk about, but those reflect some of the tactics, strategies and criteria that I think you can apply to any market. It won't work for every market and all it takes is one nutbag to come along and ruin everyone's fun but then again - that's the game we play.
So just remember in your case, make small moves to lure out cheap supply and buy it all as it becomes available, then slow nudge prices over a few weeks and see what happens. I've tried the aggressive resets and I've found they drop faster than just nudging and consistent "pruning" of big undercutters.
