With extended maintenance tomorrow, I thought it would be a good time to start a threat on strategies for getting good deals during/after maintenance. I've tried this occasionally, but I'm not sure on all the details. I know the auction timers don't reset, but when the server does come back up, how many minutes are added at the end? Is it 1 minute? 5 minutes? Does it end instantly?

Given that it's supposed to be 10 hours, there should be an enormous swath of auction items finishing during the maintenance. I'm in the market for a Witching Hour and this might be the best time to get one. It also seems like a prime opportunity for flipping items that are particularly difficult to search, like Stone of Jordan, Xephiran Amulet, Mara's Kaleidoscope.

So how do people search? What do you search for? Do you use it to flip items or purchase items to use?

I've tried getting items on the cheap this way with mixed results.

Functionally it is little different than sniping expiring auctions or newly posted buyouts at any other time - decide what you are searching for and refresh over and over watching the prices. Your odds of success do go up somewhat with the massive number of things that will expire while the servers are down.

What I have found is that to have much of a shot at getting a "deal" you really need to be online during that last few minutes before the server goes down. Otherwise you will either get outbid or simply bid up to the normal price you would have ended up paying anyway. There are just too many other people doing the same thing now.

I sniped IK boots for 250K, it's crazy.

Next maintenance I'm there. I also want those boots lol.

Posted by ninjax at 12/11/2012 08:55 AM

Next maintenance I'm there. I also want those boots lol.

I just bidded on them and got an error, I wasn't expecting to find them on my stash next morning :D

NOTE: i was using 1am as the cutoff for my auction bidding, but the maintenance didn't start till 1:18... just an FYI it may not be a hard stop right when they say its supposed to start...

i bit on some unity rings @ 500k each, i think i'll have 4 by tonight :) they're not great, but i think i can flip them
also another rare ring, but i don't think the auction ends till later tonight, so we'll see

My problem was that I put my bids in around midnight eastern and that was too early. You really gotta catch things within an hour or so in order to get the deals IMO. I had 38 bids in before I went to bed and only won 1 of them.

Posted by baccarat0809 at 12/12/2012 07:56 AM

My problem was that I put my bids in around midnight eastern and that was too early. You really gotta catch things within an hour or so in order to get the deals IMO. I had 38 bids in before I went to bed and only won 1 of them.

The more you wait the better. When I posted my bid everything was bugging out, it took ages to send me the error msg when I placed the bid. A good indicator is, for example, if you are selling 10 things and then suddenly only 2 appear and the list of finnished is empty and loading times and stuff like that. When that happens it's the time to hit, even if an error is displayed when you bid sometimes you may get it anyway.

Dang, I gots to try this next time. Thanks for the tip.

I did read another strategy elsewhere that I may try for the next scheduled patch/maintenance.

The suggestion was to aim at auctions that will end 1 - 2 hours AFTER the servers are estimated to be back up.

The logic is thus: While most people are on at the last minute trying to snipe good deals that are expiring while the servers are down these other auctions tend to have less attention paid to them on the assumption that those who jump online as soon as the servers are back up will bid normally.

However, these patches frequently run longer than estimated and those auctions still expire with the servers down.

If the servers come back up on time (or early) and you still get outbid there is nothing lost as usual. But if the downtime does run long you have that much better a shot at getting an amazing deal.

That is a very good point @Mylton. A sound sniper's strategy!

bah only ended up with 2 rings... lets see if i can flip them

Bumping this for relevance. Estimated 8-hour U.S. server maintenance Tuesday, 1/15/13. Last maintenance took longer than their 8-hour window so don't forget to look for items ending in the 11am-1pm PST range,as well. I got my current Witching Hour belt on a great deal from server maintenance. This time around, I have about 25 million Gold to play with so I might be searching for a good deal on some really high end gear.

Thanks for the reminder! I missed out on this last time.
On a AH related note, is it me or has gold inflation been noticable between now and the start of Dec? As an example I was looking at Nat boots with a particular set of stats and lowest buyouts were going from 25m-30m. Now they're in the 35-40m range. Also noticed rising prices with Zuni rings. I recalled seeing more < 1M buyouts for the cheapest Pox at the start of Dec.

@hdvision There's a pretty clear trend by looking at the USD Gold tracker.

On Dec 1, Gold averaged $0.36 / 1 MM and hit the floor $0.25 / 1 Million December 30. That 11 cent drop is an inflation rate of about 30%. It's presumably much worse now. There's no doubt we're seeing substantial inflation in the GAH, too. The question is whether Blizzard will drop the price floor in 1.0.7 or if people are going to be forced to go to the black market to sell their accumulated gold.

If they don't drop the price floor on Gold, the only possible inflation hedge left is high-quality, in demand Legendaries, but those are only available in the 50 million Gold range like the Nat boots you've been tracking. Those are still going to be risky depending upon waning demand for those Legendaries compared to the Diablo economy in general.

Those Zuni Pox rings actually got down to 300k for a day or so before they started headin up again

@ecocd Sharp observation there. I totally missed the USD/gold rate. Good thing I'm not in economics or I'd be fired. LOL.

Only won a High Vit Tal Rasha's chest this time around, but I'll take it. It very well could be my armor until I'm buying 100-million Gold items (i.e., never).

I dunno if steals really but happy with blackthrones bets/pants in below profile. 900K for pants, 1M for belt.
I was fraction too late on a high roll belt that had 280 Int that went for 1.7M. :(

Link

Logged in as soon as maintenance was finished, AH showed errors for a few mins but I kept trying.