Making Money in Diablo 3

The RMAH is scheduled for release on 5/30/2012, according to the latest Blizzard update. What I’d like to do today is help you to prepare for making money in the most unlikely and at first unreasonable method imaginable. I am recommending that you start buying up Normal, Nightmare, and Hell crafting materials.

Why should you start buying these materials? Well, for starters, they are selling for far too little at the moment. This is due to massive surplus of players leveling through those areas, but also due to ignorance. You can actually vendor magic and rare items right now for more than the cost of their corresponding salvage results. For instance, by vendoring early magic gear instead of salvaging, you can buy four to eight times as many subtle essences on the auction house as you could get from salvaging the same gear at the blacksmith.

Knowing this, it makes a lot of sense to expect for prices to get back up to an amount closer to the vendor price of items. Especially because big websites (like this one) are going to educate people on the value of the materials. Plus, I have every incentive to “spread the word” so that my ridiculous stockpile of these materials can sell when the RMAH comes online.

Why wait for the RMAH? Because of the inevitable inflation of gold that will happen when people can just buy hundreds of thousands of gold with their credit card. This will help raise prices, and coupled with players leaving these leveling areas and vendor education, prices are going to skyrocket.

How do we know crafting materials can’t get any lower? Because vendoring the crafted materials results in a set amount of gold. Subtle essences SHOULD NEVER go below their vendor value of 14 gold, yet I’ve seen them go for anywhere from 10 to 20 gold at the moment. This is a low risk, high reward opportunity for the shrewd auctioneers out there.

For more ideas on making gold and eventually real money, check out Diablo 3 Gold Guide Blog. I currently have two free ebooks, totally 30 pages on the auction house and making gold/money within it. There’s also a guide with a massive forum community for those interested but, full disclaimer, it does cost money: Diablo 3 Gold Secrets.