It doesn’t matter if the function is linear or exponential or logarithmic. I am 100% confident it is a monotonic function so you should buy up to the point where marginal revenue equals marginal cost and stop buying.

I suppose "exceeds the Sell price by a wide margin" is not an accurate portrayal. The actual buying never exceeds it, but once you click "Sell" after a big purchase, the average buy price immediately goes up to exceed the sell price by a wide margin.

Okay, this has another cause here that is not (directly) related to your profits: If you buy 50% of what you can afford right now based on your available money, the slider will stay at these 50% after the purchase is executed (this is an UI issue, not a profit/play-style issue). That means that the new average buy price is effectively the average of 50% to 75% before you clicked "Buy". That this range of items jumps up a lot in price and is above the sell value, doesn't effect your profits. And if you sold some items meanwhile but the slider is still at the 50% (or whatever percentage) this problem only gets worse.

If you bought some amount of items and then moved the slider back all the way left to "1 piece" and the buy price is below or at sell value, then you are still on the profit side. If the buy price exceeds the sell price, then you over-payed on some portion of the last purchase. So, yeah, if immediately after the last (big) purchase, the new displayed average buy price is above the sell value, isn't itself a bad sign at all. Just a (arguably) bad UI design decision.

Edited 4/6/2022 22:58:13

Since you're talking about this I will take this chance to ask here instead of making a new thread.

Why is it that when you buy something it says the price per bar is X:
https://i.imgur.com/3dA4WL3.jpeg

But after you buy it, it increases and its no where near what It said?
https://i.imgur.com/Xnv0PYv.jpeg

Why did it jump from 24 to 27? Its not the "market will increase by 43%" either.. I assume thats what it increased with this purchase not an extra on top of it. Its been bothering me for a while, not that it matters, it doesn't, its easily dealt with, it just bothers me not knowing why it happens.

It likely did increase by 43%.

What you've shown here is the average price of gold bars when buying (A) pre-purchase/pre-price increase quantity of 2.77K, vs (B) post purchase/post price increase quantity of 1.

So if you showed case (A) with quantity of 1, I'd expect it to be 27/1.4374=18.78, likely rounding up to display a simple 19.

I haven't verified it, but the purchase price shown is probably the average cost. The most expensive alloy purchased will be higher than what is shown. After the purchase is made, the price will jump to the new average. It would be nice to have a warning when the price of the most expensive alloy exceeds the sell value.

Edit: I believe that the percentage increase is based on the original cost of the alloy, not the current cost.

Edited 4/11/2022 15:54:15

Oh so its not "current price" but average of all we are buying atm. Ok makes more sense then. Though current price would make more sense? Does the average matter?

Either way got my answer, thanks!

EDIT: Doesn't say "current price" it literally says "cost of each" so of course its the average price of all bars you're buying... im just dumb.

Edited 4/11/2022 17:03:06

@Lkcynric: In the first pic you can see the price of the cheapest piece (the 21M in the top half of the dialog) and the average of all 2.77k pieces (the 24M in the bottom half). Therefore you can conclude that the most expensive piece was at a price of around 27M (2 * average_price - smallest_price). So, roughly 0.4k pieces for 21M, 0.4k pieces for 22M, and so on until 0.4k pieces for 27M per piece. After your purchase is handled, you can see that the next cheapest piece indeed costs 27M (again, top half and this time also bottom half). A price increase from 21M to 27M is approximately 30%, don't know where the 43% come from, but all numbers are rounded, so it could very well be 43%.

I hope that serves as a general guide of how to read the market dialog.

PS: To not exceed the sell value, you want to target a "per piece" price of (smallest_price + sell_price) / 2. That at least always worked for me.

Edited 4/11/2022 17:52:05

I just interpreted it wrong not sure why. I understand it well now. Thank you!

What Phoenix says is accurate.

However if you want to avoid math, just make sure that the Average price is always less than Sell price, and you'll never lose money on the aggregate sale, even if there is a some % of the purchase that is above the sell price, overall you're still gaining.

I typically just roughly scale the quantity down a bit from the top to generate good profit margins.

@graemes
Not sure what you're getting at, yes of course it is always increasing & you should stop buying when buy=sell.

What I'm saying is that in lieu of having an actual known formula, it's hard to be sure of the optimal technique, and from experience, it seems to me that when I use a market with little input money, the total profit earned when price equilibrium buy=sell is smaller than when I start using a market with high input money. So I'm not sure it's a straight function, but possibly that the purchase operation itself has some fixed or variable value increase to the buy price in addition to the increase in price based solely on purchase quantity.

I don't have specific values to cite as I don't track this stuff and am just going my memories of experience, but it feels like this:

Case A: Start buying from a low/mid-tier market (silicon, etc) with 100K money (low money)
- Do many small purchases and small quantities
- Eventually get to ~300M or so before buy=sell

Case B: Start buying from a low/mid-tier market (silicon, etc) with 100M money (sufficient money)
- Do a few purchases of large quantities
- Eventually get to ~500M or so before buy=sell

Case C: Start buying from a low/mid-tier market (silicon, etc) with 100M money (abundant money)
- Must be careful b/c buy price already > sell price at max quantity, must lower to a profit generating point
- Do 1 single purchase of large quantity that generates profit
- Get 400-600M or so before buy=sell depending on how well you estimate (or calculate) the profit point

So Sufficient Money is the easiest to work with, but Abundant can get good returns if you're careful, and Low Money generates the least.

Edited 4/15/2022 19:44:35

I tested this earlier today since I'm just digging at the moment before using the new scam ... I mean the new mechanic super ascending. The results have not changed since I ditched the new markets in favor of 5.14.0 market. I probably quit again before I get my artifacts since this is painful and only been doing it for like 2 days now lol.

================================================================================
Test #1:
Starting ￦: 6.7135B

Tin Bars:
Buy 27000000 > 28700000 => Final ￦=13.2733B and Buy=Sell=426￦
Profit 6.5598B

Buy 557000 x 100 times => Final ￦=13.2739B and Buy=Sell=426￦
Profit 6.5604B (difference is that it takes longer so ￦/sec gave extra 0.0006B)

This implies that I need to buy ~55,700,000 tin bars so Buy=Sell=426￦ and does not
matter which combination you use to get there.
================================================================================
Test #2:
I dump all my money into mercs so I can start with 200k￦
Starting ￦: ~200k

Buy ~55,700,000 really slowly => Final ￦=6.5607B and Buy=Sell=426￦
Profit => 6.5605B

This implies that for a constant alloy sell% the market will always generate the same profit. You have your starting money then always add 6.56B to it. You can start with 200k or 20B and you will get 6.56B.
================================================================================
Conclusion:
For a given item in the market there will always be a single value N that is the
optimal number that you have to buy to hit max profit. Since it's a single value
this implies that each market has a set amount of money M it can generate.

Therefore, if your starting money is X before using a market then you will always
be capped X+M money after using it.

#5.14 best market I miss you baby

Edited 4/15/2022 21:12:08

Interesting. Maybe I'll replicate your test to convince myself.

Btw, if you're using an old version of the app to do your digging (same as I did) and it's pre-TW nerf (5.16?), then get TW to Insane, get a CW artifact cooldown buff & CW dig speed buff, then you can use active artifacts included TW every 3.25h in rapid succession and dig away madly, throwing down TW, TS, QS, IM, SAC in quick succession for the entire 2 weeks the abilities are active, dig dig dig.

And if you have coins to throw at it, it only takes ~10 to reset TW from 3.25h to use it again. Then reset and go go go more. Make the most of that 2 weeks. I only did Epic digs in that 2 weeks and got a ton of Epics from it.

@krinid: The problem with comparing few purchases against many purchases is that ideally you would have to do this on the same map, with the same bonuses (advancements, techs, artifacts) with the same market and same alloy/item. Because otherwise we run into the situation that we do not know how exactly markets work.

Point 1) The profit might be related to the initial cost of one piece. If first silicon bar costs 10k, (ideal) profit will be 50M, if silicon bar starts at double (and double sell price), then profit will be double, too. Or perhaps this might not be true, who knows.
Point 2) The profit might be related to the factor between buy and sell price. If sell price starts out double the buy price you get 50x sell price profit, if sell price starts out triple the buy price, profit is 100x sell price. Or whatever factors, I'm just speculating at this point and playing around with numbers.
Point 3) Every level might have generated prices and therefore different profits, so one alloy on one map might behave totally different than the same alloy on the next map.

I doubt that you had done the tests scientifically as I described them, so your different profit numbers could have any reason why they ended up this way. And, "~300M or so" isn't really inspiring confidence after all (French Revolution was "~1800 or so", see what I mean). Especially if you try to compare different outcomes. ;)

Edit: Do we even know for sure that using the alloy/item with the highest starting price will yield the most profit? Has someone actually tested this?

Edited 4/15/2022 22:26:47

@krinid: What's a CW artifact and what is CW dig speed buff? More specifically, what's CW?

I've done some actual testing today to Prove or Break this myth. I did the same level twice with same Artifacts/Techs/Adv's relevant to alloy values, and seems I'm just being deceived by the total value and not the actual difference between start and end values.

My testing was just 1 market on 1 map but the results showed that when making the buy=sell price match, the profit was almost identical (<0.2% deviance) regardless as to whether the # of purchases to achieve it were 12 (low starting money) or 1 (abundant starting money). While it is possible that this differs by item, by market, map, etc, I strongly doubt it. Most mechanics are the same across all levels, and just the "values" differ (buy/sell prices, which are in markets, which are required for Techs, etc). So case closed as far as I'm concerned.

#MythBusted

Quite funny, as I was so convinced of this that I typically go out of my way to not use the markets until it's time to drain them. lol. When in reality all one needs to is minimize market use until you get both Alloy Sell Value Techs, then use them liberally as required. This is actually good, less stringent than I thought they were.

I've never thought this. Don't see how it would make a difference. Actual price just affects the quantity bought. It's the difference of Sell-Buy price that matters, in combination with the Price Increase after purchase. Whichever item has the Largest difference and Lowest increase is the best one. I can't be bothered to do the math, so just go with whichever one has the lowest price increase %. But if anyone has done actual testing, let us know.

Edit: Do we even know for sure that using the alloy/item with the highest starting price will yield the most profit? Has someone actually tested this?

@jajonnz: CW is Clan Wars, you can earn benefits for idle by taking part in the Clan Wars events (if you are in a clan).

There was a mention of market changes, did they change? I rememeber seeing nothing on latch nkted. Related to them.

@jajonnz
As Phoenix stated, the phrase "CW artifact cooldown" refers to cooldown rewards for artifacts from Clan Wars. If you join a clan, you can compete in CW. See this: https://www.warzone.com/Clans/War and click the "Rewards" button. "4 territoriesReduced artifact cooldown time by 30% for two weeks" is the item I'm referring to here.

@Lkcynric
The initial 5.14 markets were super profitable, much more so than they are now. I don't recall the exact version (maybe 5.15 or 5.16), but markets suddenly became horrific, instantly non-profitable whatsoever. This was quickly fixed, and they became profitable again. And a few more changes but I haven't kept track. In the beginning, I think the chaining/# of purchases method I mentioned previously was a factor, but somewhere along the way seems to have eliminated. But it's all fuzzy now as none of these changes have been clearly documented in the change blog notes.