Sniper is a unique function in TSM that is focused on finding items that are really underpriced. It works by continuously scanning the latest auctions posted and showing any that meet your criteria.

This will allow you to snag up materials posted in stacks of 200 for the price of one material, or items worth hundreds of thousands of gold for 100 gold if you get lucky.

Sniper basics

In TSM4 sniper is based on operations. You will have a default operation that ships with TSM that will be applied to all your groups. Since it is governed by operations you can have different operations for different groups, which is very useful. All operations will automatically be used in a sniper scan.

For instance it makes a lot of sense to use different settings for sniping materials compared to sniping high-end BoEs.

Running a sniper scan

You start a sniper scan from the Sniper View of the Auction House UI. It’s the rightmost option available on the AH UI.

The Sniper UI is very simple as you can see below. You only have two options available to you: Run Buyout Sniper or Run Bid Sniper. The rest of the UI is covered by the list of results.

The buyout sniper is by far the most useful one. If you click it TSM will continuously scan the last page of the auctions house. Any items that have a buyout that is lower than the price defined in that item’s sniper operation will show up below and TSM will play a sound.

Then you just have to figure out if you want to buy the item. If you are on a high population realm there will be other snipers, so fast reactions will be the difference maker for the best deals.

The results

The results page will look identical to the results page for a shopping scan, with the item name, posts, stacks, bid and buyout. The rightmost column will once again be in comparison to the maximum price in your sniper operation, not in comparison to dbmarket or any other general price source.

Below you can see some results showing up for BfA materials based on my materials sniping operation.

Sniper operations

I personally only have two sniper operations at the moment, one general purpose operation and a separate one for BfA materials. I don’t use sniper particularly much though, so you may want to have more.

Sniper operations are very simple and they only have one option. A custom price string that is the maximum price it will show items at. You can create sniper operations the exact same way as you create any other operation.

Setting a generalized operation as your default operation

I would suggest setting up a generalized operation as your default operation. The most popular one in the game at the moment was made by BilisOnyxia and it is the one I am currently using.

His operation uses a custom price called minprice. You need to add it in under settings -> Custom sources.

max(min(DBHistorical, DBGlobalMarketAvg, DBGlobalHistorical, DBRegionMarketAvg, DBRegionHistorical), VendorSell)

After you have added the minprice source you can go to the default sniper operation to change it. The sniper string by BilisOnyxia is below. It’s quite long, but the general idea is that more expensive items will show up at relatively higher prices. A 100k item at 60% of it’s value is great, whereas a 1000 gold item at 60% is not as valuable. The ifgt() checks will compare the expected value of an item from the minprice source and then set the percentage of minprice you are willing to buy the item for based on that.

ifgte(ItemQuality, 1, ifgt(minprice, 250000g, 80% minprice, ifgt(minprice, 100000g, 70% minprice, ifgt(minprice, 50000g, 60% minprice, ifgt(minprice, 10000g, 50% minprice, ifgt(minprice, 5000g, 30% minprice, ifgt(minprice, 1000g, 10% minprice, 0c)))))), 0c)

I suggest going through your base groups and adding the default sniper operation to all of them, and then overriding it for any sub groups you want to add specialized operations too to ensure you get as many deals as possible.

Buyer’s beware

This operation will be applied to your base group. This means that every item in the game that is not in any of your groups will show up. I also suggest adding this operation to most of your groups for snagging up deals.

There will be items that show up that you are completely unfamiliar with. Some of these will be great deals, and some of them will be traps!

It always pays to take a look at the tooltip if you are unfamiliar with an item, you will miss out on some deals that way, but eventually you will develop the confidence and intuition to quickly figure out what you want to buy.

There are also players out there specifically targeting snipers by raising the value of an item over a longer period and then posting it cheaper, but still expensive.

Specialized operations

For some markets you want more specialized operations. This will typically be items you are particularly familiar with, or items you buy a lot of like materials.

At the moment I only have one specialized operation, but you may want to have several depending on your preferences.

I have a sniper operation for my BfA materials group that is identical to my shopping operation, with a maximum price of 80% dbmarket. I am always willing to pay up this price, and I want the materials to show up whenever I’m sniping to see if I can get some extra deals.

Any other flipping market would also be a great market to have a sniper operation setup for, you can either use the same threshold as your shopping operation or a slightly lower one depending on your preference.

Results will vary

Sniping can be very profitable as the best deals can literally give you hundreds of thousands in profit, but it is variable. Test out sniping at various times on your realm to see what works. Keep in mind that you will have to run sniper for more than a minute here or there to see results. The more time you  spend sniping the more deals you will see.

Part 11: Warehousing

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