Do Ya'll really have 20+ jah's?

I have about 100 jahs and Bers and about 150 jahs in gear. But I have dropped only 4 Jah, 2 Ber and a couple of Lo/ Sur/ Ohm. Most of my Wealth comes from trading.

You "just" have to learn the mechanics of the game and which builds are strong and popular. Then you know which items to look for. Lots and lots of items have value.

Example: Some people here said Tal is the first rune of any trade value. Wrong! Almost all runes have trade value. I have sold lots of El, Eld and Nef, even Eth. (Only Ort, Ith and Shael are really hard to sell. And Gul on non-ladder are only worth half a Vex, of course, only good for cubing). Running the hell Countess alone with a fast sorc will grant you the equivalent of at least 1 Ist per hour in like 25 runs if you also factor in her keys. So that is 1 Jah in 12 hours.

I have made like 50 Jah with buying Hel runes for Ist and selling them in bulk for Jah or Ber. Very consistent income. My profit margin always was between 30 and 50%, Nowadays the Hel trade has Fallen a bit, sadly. I guess some big crafters are retired.

So, farm and farm and farm and do it quickly and efficiently. Make lots of mules to store everything, sell your stuff (runes, bases, charms, gems).

The big thing, of course, is flipping but it is morally "questionable". You can get very lucky. Once (just once) I got so lucky to buy a 6-40 cremonial Javelin for just 10 Jah (non-ladder) from a Korean guy who suggested the price himself (I did not pressure him). I played a bit with it, them sold it for 30 Jahs (and I was greedy to make profit, if I had waited longer I would have got 40).

Last tip for now, although I have many more: Roll some runewords yourself. Even a bad Enigma can be sold for 80% of its rune value, but a great Enigma is 10 or 20 times more!

DasNarf wrote: 7 months ago

DarkSoul48 wrote: 7 months ago

By the way, I also have a level 90 Demon Machine Enchantress with Blaze and Firewall (squishy because of no Energy Shield).

I am using this thingy to cast a fully synergized level 18 Energy Shield. It's a quite solid solution to my non-existent resistances and saves a lot of skill points.

SPOILER

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Thanks for the suggestion. She is more of a party girl who enjoys pairing up with our Frenzy Barb or Summon/ Werewolf hybrid Druid for mutual benefits:
1. She gets a life boost from maxed BO or Oak Sage
2. Melee chars get her maxed Enchant
3. Demon Machine wrecks large groups of monsters that aggro on the fighters
4. For tanky enemies, she swaps to Eschuta+Phoenix and her maxed Firewall burns even bosses in seconds (24k damage, -50 enemy fire res, plus Conviction aura from Emilio)
5. Blaze is for fun when somebody gets through and chases her (and Warmth is a synergy for Enchant, Firewall, and Blaze anyway)

Gaming is a social activity for me so I don't play much alone, and when I do, I use either our Nova ES Sorceress or Dragondin instead of the Enchantress to clear dense Terror Zones. I managed to find some GG items even by playing less than 20 hours per month. For example, I found a 3OS ethereal Tomb Reaver with excellent rolls, a 43 life Javelin skiller Grand Charm, Tyrael's Might off of a trash mob in a Terror zone, etc over the last few months.

I know farming Torches is a good strategy, but I don't enjoy repetitive target farming for keys, so we only killed the Ubers 5 times in 3 years. Quite a bit of my good gear actually came from lotteries organized by our Good Samaritan Shadowheart (make your own build gave me HoJ, Enigma, Phoenix Monarch etc, and now a near-perfect Druid Torch) and from some people who gave away their gear at the end of a Ladder season: I got a perfect Flickering Flame Tiara, another Enigma, etc for free...

I may as well add my five cents (since pennies are finally out of production).

To directly answer the question, only in gear. More like a few hundred. In actual runes on mules? Not at the moment because I haven't been trading much in this current stint of returning to the game since late-December, but there have been times when I've needed that many considering how much the total value of my characters' gear is worth.

I also have items that are technically for trade and would easily fetch several or even dozens of Jah, but I don't currently need the currency or have the desire to trade much at the moment. My current return to D2R is primarily for finishing my fourth 99. I'm not sure when I'll have time to dedicate to more gameplay after that.

For me, trading has been the key that fills a...not quite what you'd call a middle ground, but an in-between space where I can maximize my characters' output as long as it's cost-effective. Unless I self-found an exclusively valued item, I generally won't splurge trading for items to get me from the 95th percentile to the 99th percentile because it won't tangibly improve the performance of my characters either in-game or in the D2Planner DPS calculations.

For all my 99s and my 98, I would need to spend exorbitantly to get an additional 1000 DPS out of each build because I'd be chasing perfect items that fall on the wrong side of the price/performance curve for me. I could do it in most cases, but I don't think that's a good way for me to manage my in-game resources.

If you have an extremely valuable item for trade, you can dictate the terms of the sale whether you want to be paid in Jah runes, 20/5s, or 3/20/20s. Personally, since I don't believe I have any single piece of gear in use that's worth a 20/5, I'd rather my liquid assets be Jah rather than 20/5s and 3/20/20s, but the charms hold their value better than the runes. If you move a lot of high-value merchandise frequently, you'd probably want the charms on hand.