Greetings, fellow goblins! Some of you might already be familiar with me and my work. For those of you that don't know me: Several years ago I created a sniper string for TSM that has become quite popular thanks to
youtubers like Sheyrah and others who have showcased it in their TSM sniper guides. Over the years I have made some alterations to the sniper string to reflect changes int he economy as well as to make use of the new value sources that were added with TSM4. In Today's post I'd like to share a new version of my sniper string and demonstrate how easy the string can be modified to better fit your personal preferences.
You can also find the new sniper string as well as some of my other work on my pastebin.
What is sniping?
The term sniping refers to the act of monitoring what items get posted to the AH, as they get posted, to quickly buy auctions that get posted way too cheap.
In TSM4 you simply open the Auction House, switch to the Shopping tab and then click the "Run Buyout Sniper" button. Once you have started a Buyout Sniper scan, TSM will continuously check the last page of the Auction House that contains the 1-50 most recently posted auctions, and it will compare the buyout price of each auction to the maximum auction price you defined in the options of your sniper operation(s). Any auction that that gets listed below your maximum auction price will then be presented to you, so you can buy it right away.
I'd also highly recommend to watch Sheyrah's video on this topic. She showcases my "old" string but also does a fantastic job of explaining how sniping works in TSM4 in general:
So what's new?
The old string uses different percentages of the minprice value of an item as the maximum auction price, depending on the value of the item:
minprice Value |
Percentage Used |
>250,000g |
80% |
>100,000g |
70% |
>50,000g |
60% |
>10,000g |
50% |
>5,000g |
30% |
>1,000g |
10% |
The higher the value of the item, the higher the percentage we are willing to pay for the items. Or in other words: The less valuable an item is, the cheaper it needs to be listed in order for it to be worth buying.
Now, while I like the general idea of this approach, I have one issue with it: There are hard jumps. What I mean by that is that the sniper string will use "30% minprice" as the maximum price for an item with a value of 9,500g, but it will use "50% minprice" for an item with a value of 10,001g, even though the items have a fairly similar value. And that's exactly what the new version of my string adresses. It still uses the same exact percentages for items that are valued at 1,000g, 5,000g, 10,000g, 50,000g, 100,000g or 250,000g, but for items that are valued somewhere inbetween these values, it dynamically calculates the percentage that should be used. As a comparison:
minprice |
Old % |
New % |
5,001g |
30% |
30% |
7,500g |
30% |
40% |
9,500g |
30% |
48% |
10,001g |
50% |
50% |
An item valued at 7,500g is valued exactly halfway between 5,000g (which would use 30%) and 10,000g (which would use 50%), so with the new string it will use 40%, as that is halfway between 30% and 50%. The new string essentially gets rid of the sudden hard jumps by drawing a straight line between the two points. A picture says more than a thousand words, so here is a picture that shows the difference between the old and new string:
