This post marks a slight change in the focus of AH Antics. I will likely revisit Tabbytha, my little hordie experiment, but for now, I will be focusing on my "real" AH business.
How would you like to always buy your crafting materials well below the market price? Well, "always" is a bit strong, but I'll show you how to do so any time they're underpriced and you are in the Auction House. We'll be using the SearchUI part of Auctioneer; specifically, the Snatch Searcher.
Now, there are two ways to get to the SearchUI. You can either click on the Search tab at the bottom of the AuctionHouse/Auctioneer interface or you can right-click on the little magnifying glass at the top of the interface. We want to do the latter.
But Why?
That's a good question. I'm glad you asked, and we'll get to that in a moment.
But first, let's click on Searchers in the left menu area of the SearchUI. That will open up a list, and towards the bottom of that sub-list, you will find the Snatch item. Click that. What you see will look something like the screenshot. My list is already populated with a few items that I snarf every time they meet my price requirements.
Price requirements? What do you mean?
The whole point of the Snatch list is to allow you to easily find items you want to buy at a price you want to pay for them. For example, I have mine set to find Adder's Tongue with a price of 85 silver each, which translates to 17 gold per stack. That means any given glyph will cost me 3.33g to craft, including 50s for parchment, the most expensive parchment available.
17g for a stack of Adder's Tongue?!?
Look, I'll admit, it doesn't happen as often as I'd like, but it does happen enough to make it a good point to set my Snatch list. Normal for my server is about 20g per stack. I will likely change my searcher to 90s per herb or 18g per stack. That's still only 3.5g per glyph in mat cost.
So, what? I can do this by hand! Why use Snatch for this?
Ah, but can you buy 40 stacks of various different herbs in 40 seconds? I can.
That's the real beauty of the SearchUI. Once your Searcher has returned a list, you can Purchase All just like the Appraiser will let you Batch Post a ton of auctions.
So I can just leave my Banker on while I go to sleep and he'll buy everything for me?
No, not exactly. So I lied a little. It's not "just like" the Apraiser's Batch Post. Here's what happens.
You hit Search on your Searcher, Auctioneer zips through all the listings for all the items you have in that searcher and returns one unified list of all items that meet your price requirements.
Then you play a little game of Keyboard Twister by pressing Control + Alt + Shift then pressing the Purchase All button - which was the Purchase button before you pressed that magic key combination.
FInally, you will be presented with a rapid-fire series of confirmation pop-up boxes, ensuring you really want to buy 20 x Adder's Tongue for a really great price. Or 17 x Felweed for a really great price.
17 Felweed? But I need stacks of 5!
No, you don't. Look, I make a lot of gold on the side off of people that think like that. Don't be that guy. If you're completely unwilling to hang on to the extras until you buy another odd stack with an extra 3, then just relist those two. But I'd rather buy an odd stack for a really cheap price than limit myself to multiples of 5.
So, that's it. That's the Auction House Antics Crash Course In Using Auctioneer's Snatch List. Use it every single time you're at the Auction House. You'll be astounded at the great deals you find. Like Adder's Tongue for less than 50s each. That's 10g per STACK for the mathematically weak. And that's imba.
My AH life got drastically simplified when I discovered the Snatch search UI. One of the things you missed (or misstated) was that while yes, you can search for all the things you want manually, it will take you forever. I track over 100 items and if I tried searching for them all manually, it can easily take me a few hours.
ReplyDeleteA few thinks I'd like to see changed in Snatch UI:
- the confirmation dialogs when you buy all items are very annoying and sometimes cause errors especially if I buy a lot of items.
- There is no easy way to purchase just a subset of items it shows. The UI gives you an option to purchase one item or purchase all of them. This isn't always the case.
Aside from those few issues, I think it's a great tool!
Booty Bay Merchant
I mentioned it, but perhaps differently than you hoped for.
ReplyDelete"So, what? I can do this by hand! Why use Snatch for this?
Ah, but can you buy 40 stacks of various different herbs in 40 seconds? I can."
Basically, I'm holding a dialog with an imaginary friend. While many people think they can search manually and do just as well, it just isn't true. Even if you don't look for "bargains" and just search for mats at (or below) your target price, noone can bulk purchase faster than someone using Purchase All from any SearchUI Searcher.
I thought about only buying Adder's Tongue and using the Ink Merchant to do my conversions, but the prices on other herbs can be ridiculously low by comparison.
Thanks for your comment!
How do you deal with items you don't have but want to purchase?
ReplyDeleteE.g., I see QQEpic or SSSchematic. I want to snatch/buy them if they hit my price. But the only way I know to add something to snatch is if it is already in your inventory. How can I add the epic that I see on the AH to my snatch list?
TIA - there has to be some addon that helps with this but I have not been able to figure it out.
Re: Finding something not in your inventory...
ReplyDeleteI totally forgot to come back to that point.
You RIGHT CLICK on the Search Magnifying glass so that you can have both the SearchUI AND the Auction House UI up at the same time. That way you can "search" for the item in the Auction House UI, Shift-click it into chat(any chat channel will do, I use /say), and THEN switch back to the SearchUI and Shift-click the item link in the chat.
You don't need the item in inventory, you just need to be able to shift-click it or a link into the SearchUI.
Sorry I forgot to come back to that. I even bolded the part about Right-clicking the SearchUI magnifying glass and SAID I'd come back to that. And promptly forgot. Apologies.
Also, as far as addons that can help with it, I imagine Atlas Loot would be able to provide you the linkage you need.
ReplyDeleteHave you experimented with using the resale tab, doing the search and buying up items that are undervalued? Here's a video I just made on it, maybe it will give you some ideas:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xbBGN5-td0
@Will - not much really. I try to spend as little time as possible actually making money. Maybe I'll do a post on market selection to answer this deeper.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment!
After reading your article about the snatch feature was really insightful. I have been using it since reading, a month/month and a half ago...which has saved me a lot of time.
ReplyDeleteI will admit that I didn't really bother to read and needed to re-read the options at the bottom about gold per snatch, bids and buyout.
I have two questions though, one there is a red arrow or green arrow when you do a search. I am assuming the green arrow (points down) means anything equal or below your set price, while the red (upward) arrow is above it?
Also have you had any problems doing a search on cloth, seeing it there and doing the snatch search and it not showing up? I have not figured how I have actually fixed this (have 2-3 times), I am guessing by running a scan at the same time, but have not been able to figure out the reason or fix to reproduce....just fumbling around and get it working somehow.
Otherwise great post and help!
I have a setup question...I'd like to batch post based not on market value (unless there are no other glyphs of that type posted), but rather directly undercut the currently posted glyphs (preferably by, say, 1s).
ReplyDeleteBasically what i do now is run a scan, then alt-dbl click each glyph in my inventory, which posts them for my preset undercut value. I haven't been able to figure out how to set up appraiser to do this. Any tips?
@Kitha -
ReplyDeleteRed/Green Arrows - I have no idea. I never noticed them until you mentioned them. I wonder what they are.
Missing/Lost items - It happens. There's always someone who's Snatch or Real-time search is faster than yours. It can't really be helped. Sometimes you catch a great bargain, sometimes you get beaten to the checkout.
@Anonymous - I am positive you *can* do this, it's just not my business model, in general. Look in the Auctioneer options for something about Price model and change that to Undercut, perhaps? Another option, and one I haven't tried but that many use, is to find another, light-weight AH mod that strictly does what you want. I am pretty sure there are mods that specifically post at a set undercut from the current market, and I would imagine that at least one of those would do batch posting. That said, I am sure Auctioneer can probably do it, I just don't know how. You might try the Just My Two Copper forums over at http://justmytwocopper.blogspot.com/ or the Auctioneer Addon Forums at http://auctioneeraddon.com/ as both have a fairly active community of folks that have probably tried to do exactly what you want to do. If it's possible, they'll be able to tell you precisely how to set it up.
Not trying to dodge the question, just slightly outside of my expertise.
@AH Antics - I think I figured it out, the snatch uses the file from the last scan you do. So I have been trying to scan the AH before doing the "snatch" search.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't referring to it being gone by someone else buying it, but the fact I could do a search on the item and see it, but the snatch wouldn't show it. Which I believe is due to the whole auction house scan be old.
Thank you though, and I think the arrows have something to do with the order the items are searched? I say this, since now that I am "snatching" more then one item, and I click on the arrow it flips them.
WOW GOLD, nice blog. its worth reading. I liked it very much
ReplyDeleteInstead of the SearchUI + main page shift clicking stuff or typing searches by hand, get the mod called AHSearch. It lets you add the items you search for most to a drop down list on the main page of the Auction House.
ReplyDeleteI created a group for Herbs and with one click on the arrow search for each of the herbs in the group I created.
Although it was time consuming, I have a group for each inscription ink so that I only search for the herbs/inks I need for crafting.
It is a real-time search, just as if you'd put the words in the search window yourself - which can save time by not scanning the entire AH to use Auctioneer's Snatch.
@Gwyd -
ReplyDeleteI think you may have missed the really important part of the Snatch list. I use it to buy 20, 30, 40 or MORE ***STACKS*** of, say, Adder's Tongue at about 1 second per stack, not even looking, just spamming my mouse button, at my given price threshold.
And you only have to do the kludgy link thing one time per herb.
Try the Snatch list. Trust me.
Buying a couple thousand Adder's Tongues in a few seconds while paying more attention to the TV or talking to my wife is totally worth that tiny little kludge.