Before I start, here is my disclaimer - I'm not the richest player in 9Dragons, nor am I the best player, I have however bolstered together more than 150,000,000 (yes, 150 MILLION gold) in just over four weeks during my period of being SM6 through to EC5. Here's a short, but clear guide on how to do it:

What you will need:
- Some start-up capital. Every entrepreneur needs some cash to get going. I DO NOT condone taking loans from other players, do so at your own risk. I started with around 500,000 gold, but 1,000,000 would be ideal and give you a running start.

- Not only do you need a desire to make a lot of money, but you also need the determination to grind, even when your luck is soul-destroying. Remember, you won't just be making money, you'll also be shooting through the levels too!

- A second character on your account. This character will act as your 'trader' and will reside permanently in Hefei market. Technically this isn't a necessity, but it helps to keep the main grinding character separate from your trading toon.

- An 'always on' broadband/DSL/cable internet connection. You will need to have your PC switched on and connected as often as possible. I leave my PC on 24/7. If you wish to do this, I would recommend you use a PC with a low-watt power supply (300-400W is best, any lower is a benefit) to save you the nightmare of a 300 foot-long electricity bill.

- A 40-slot storage facility with the courier's guild is recommended, but not necessary. It makes organising and keeping track of your stock much easier.


Becoming a successful trader:

Anybody can buy and sell on Hefei market, but you need to be smart in how you market your goods. To date, I have only used a Lion's Roar to sell an item ONCE, but in retrospect I could have made much better uses of Lion's Roars - I will go on to explain how later on. First and foremost, you need to know your market. We are all limited to 9 slots for our stands; this means you should be selling 9 desirable goods simultaneously to get a decent throughput on your stand. It is good to offer a variation of items at varying prices - remember selling 9 items worth 10 million on one stand doesn't mean you'll end up with 90 million by the end of the day. The liklihood is that the more expensive your items, the longer they will take to sell.

As well as a keen business acumen, you'll also need to be aware of market prices for many items. Selling items for too much will mean that you'll be owning them for a lot longer and selling them too cheaply will ultimately result in a lower bank balance for you. There are some threads on the forums that list market prices for items, but don't take them as gospel. Market prices are constantly fluctuating and you need to be aware of them as well as being aware of when you need to cut an item's price to clear inventory and make way for more stock.

Finally, you need to be patient. Your cash reserve is not going to pile-up overnight, but it will do in time. You shouldn't attempt to play the game for extended periods of time either - I strongly advise playing for more than 3 hours at a time simply because it's bad for your health and bad for your social lives. Sometimes it is just nice to logout for an hour or two and sit outside in the fresh air


Let's get started!

So let's begin. First thing's first, if you want to maximise your money and be financially aware, I suggest you record all your transactions and record your stock. All you need is a pen and some paper. Record the items you have acquired and are going to sell and find out and write down an acceptable price range for each of those items. For example:

1x level 4 dexterity elixir ----- 2,900,000 - 3,200,000
1x lotus leaf elixir softener ----- 700,000 - 950,000
10x purple COF pass ----- 25,000 - 35,000
(note: these prices are made-up)

It is a good idea to keep this list separate as your own price list and then update the prices as and when necessary. You should keep a second list similar to this on which your cross out the items you have sold and a third list on which you record the sales of each item you sell as a running total. This way you have three CLEAR references to item prices, items in stock and the price for each item. You can also take this a step further and record your expenditure so you won't ever be sat there, scratching your head at where that 3,000,000 went the next day.

Now you're ready to get selling. It is recommended that you only try this method on one server at a time. The reason being that it can be a very time-consuming quest and attempting it on more than one server at a time will only confuse you in the long-run and slow down the entire process, making it unmanageable. All you need to do at this point is start filling your stock up. We all know that the best place for looting decent items is the Cave of the Conqueror. This is part of the reason you need a fair amount of start-up capital, you'll be needing herbs to stay alive down there which you can either buy or spend a long time 'farming.' As a point of reference, I must have eaten through AT LEAST 700 middle-level herbs during the last four weeks, most of which I bought as farming them would have taken up far too much time. The second, and a very important, point of consideration is when to grind in CoC. Personally, I don't like grinding there during double exp events as it becomes too crowded and all the sub-human players come out to PK, be rude and irritate the rest of us. Early morning and late evenings were (and still are) my preferred times to grind, but this may depend on peak load times for the server you are on.

As a key tip for beginning this regime, a useful tidbit of advice is to try and stay down in CoC for at least a week before you return to the surface to unload your heaps of loot. The reason for this is that you will want a healthy backstock of items in your 'trader' character's inventory so that you are not pressured into grinding more and returning to the surface more, which can be a real hassle. Avoid selling weapons on your trader unless they are are slotted, blue or green WITH VERY GOOD stats and by 'very good' I mean + 3 or more stats relevant to the weapon. So for instance, a sword with + 1 wisdom and + 1 essence is both worthless and will take a long time to sell, so you are much better off pawning it to an NPC for 17,000 gold instead of wasting space and time on your trader's inventory. Be aware that the majority of the drops you will get will be standard weapon drops that are best pawned to an NPC. The best thing to do with these is to take the cash from each weapon sale and use it as pocket money for repairing your clothes and weapons and buying herbs. In the grand scheme of things, it is a very small cash flow and is best used for maintenance rather than totting it up on your accounts sheets.

You will have to be patient a lot of the time, waiting for those good drops to come, but trust me, they will come. Try to focus less on the drops and more on the social aspects of the cave. There will always be players down there to have a laugh with, party with and to become friends with. Let the good times overwrite the bad times, and again trust me on this, there will be times when masked cowards of FC/CS/GL will PK you because it satiates the basest emotions of their testicle-sized brains and there will be times where the good drops just seem to be hiding from you.

Once you have gotten started and the cash is flowing in, maintaining this system is a lot easier than getting started. Just be aware of prices on the market, check around other stands once a week to note down any price fluctuations of items you are selling. Take items that aren't selling off your stand for a while and replace them with other items in your stock as part of a rotation system to keep cash flowing. Also, if there are some items that just won't seem to sell even when you have experimented with their prices endlessly (Sacred Flower meditation and steps tomes are a traders worst nightmare, I know) store them up and every month blow them out of your stand in a sale and lower the prices right down in order to get rid of them (but that NPCs will give you upto 90,000 for some tomes, so never sell for less than an NPC will give you!).


Top tips:

- For items with an abnormally high value and market demand, such as high-refined weapons, use Lions' Roars to sell them in an auction system. Offer a fair starting bid which you would be happy to accept and then take the highest bid that somebody whispers you. There are some players who rant about this a lot, but ignore them. If they're not buying - mute 'em. Just remember to be fair and NEVER be rude, it's just not healthy for the social aspect of the game.

- It is best to do a roar at double experience times. These times will always attract the highest server load (and hence, the biggest audience for you!) and because people are grinding they will not be willing to collect their items immediately. Use this to your advantage in auctioning off items, but also make sure you take down the names of all high bidders because it isn't uncommon for some jerks to bid high and log-off at the end of double experience because they don't want to buy the item after all. Don't waste your time on retribution on these idiots, either add them to your KOS list or tell them to buzz off next time they answer your roars (or both!)

- Never fill your stand up with items that are similar or the same as this minimises the appeal your stand will have to potential buyers. Always try to keep a variety of items up on sale at any given time to ensure that the game's broad demographic according to time will be taken advantage of. The ONLY exception of this rule is, of course, Blood Essence which is likely to sell a lot quicker than most other items in the game. I managed to sell 80 blood essence in just 3 hours one weekday morning by filling my stand up with it in different denominations (sets of 20, 10, 5, 2 and 1) all at the highest reasonable price on the server.

- Stay as aware of market prices as you possibly can. It doesn't take long to scout the other stands in Hefei and it will only serve you in good stead in the long-run.

- Stockpile Blood Essence. This might sound a little strange, but it is a good idea. You may remember I said I sold 80 BE in one morning, this was because I kept all the BE I looted in storage instead of selling it as I got it. This is because blood essence has a highly volatile price as rises quicker than any other good, so by storing it all up for four weeks, you may well get an extra 50,000 gold per BE than you would have done if you had sold as and when you got it. In my case, BE was around 350,000 gold when I started making money and by the time I sold it, I secured 450,000 gold PER BE making a gain of 100,000 per BE (or 8 MILLION GOLD overall!)

- Scout for items that are selling well below their average market price. Look out for newbies underpricing their items so that you can resell them for profit. However, if you do this, be aware that such items may be underpriced for a reason (i.e. nobody is buying them!)

- Make use of Wan Daye's collection lists if possible. You might be able to sell a set of five level 4 elixirs for a few million each, but if you turned them into a Wan Daye weapon, would you get more gold? Work it out and be smart with such opportunities.

- Luck in CoC is a fickle thing. Sometimes I found it helped me to get out for half an hour and then go back inside or log-off for an hour or two. I don't know if your luck is 'reset' when you leave or log-out of CoC, but sometimes it seemed to work for me.


Thank you very much for reading, I'll be happy to read and respond to any questions you may have and rebut any constructive criticism. If you feel the need to flame me or whatever, send me a PM afterwards and tell me what it's like to be ignored.

Author:alexboni