In case you are not familiar with what Humble Bundle is, let me explain it quickly. You pay how much you want for a bundle of indie games. The money you pay, you can distribute as you want between game developers, charity organizations and the company hosting this sale.  If you pay more than the average of $7.64, you can unlock a bonus game, which is Bastion this time around. You also receive the soundtracks of all the games in FLAC or MP3 format. Want steam product keys? No problem, they are included. Are you excited already?

Let me just tell you the latest edition of Humble Indie Bundle comes with the best games it ever has (in my opinion anyway). Titles like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Psychonauts, Limbo, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP + Bastion speak for themselves.

Let’s take a closer look at them in case you’re unfamiliar with them.

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So I’m back in sunny sunny UK (lol) after two weeks of non stop Diablo 3 action and i can honestly say although it was a lot of fun, although very tiring and I’m glad to be home so I can have some chillout time. Having said that I’ve done anything but chillout since getting home since there’s just one week left of rated phase of TR to qualify for regionals so most of my efforts have been and will be on that for the next few days.

So i figured I’d cobble together a blog quickly before streaming this afternoon to let everyone know a bit more about the trip and how it went etc.

First of all it’s important everyone realises the purpose of the trip which wasn’t just to get first 60, but to gain publicity and awareness for athene’s charity campaign http://opsharecraft.com/. Over the duration of my visit of about two weeks they managed to raise $130,000 for people in the horn of africa due to the increased stream views gained from the Diablo 3 event.

The trip started out with the usual 2hour bus ride to London Heathrow airport where i would meet up with redhot aka mike aka bigbadmike where we would enjoy an english breakfast/tropical smoothie combo.

Moral of the story, food at airports sucks and is a ripoff; but i guess everyone knew that already.

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The new champion, Darius, the Hand of Noxus (most likely named after two famous top lane players – Dyrus (TSM) and Darien (M5), was released several days ago, and has been advertised as a powerful top laner and jungler. How strong he actually is, and which roles does he fit the most?

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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.