Current Version: 3.0  (11/09/2008) for WoW 3.0

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• About KBS Bargain Hunter

• Configuring A Product For Bidding

• Configuring A Product For Selling

• "Partial String" Products

• Hunting For Bargains

• Posting Auctions

• Determining Your Commitment To The Market (Value Buttons)

• Dealing with the Dreaded Auction Lag

• Setting Configurations

• Other Notes On Bargain Hunter

About KBS Bargain Hunter

KBS Bargain Hunter is a program that assists you in buying and selling items at the auction house. This add on applies a few helpful buttons to your Auction House Dialog. This mod was written towards my AH style, which is buying low at volumes and reselling at a higher price.

I have managed to earn 250g in a weekend using it. Best of all, it saves you a lot of list shopping time, allowing you to hunt the entire trade goods market of around 3000 items in 10 minutes or less (no lag).

For buying items, it allows you to set a price per unit on any item that you are willing to pay. Then it when you review a list of items, and that item is present it will immediately buy out the item if the buyout price is at or below the price per unit value, or it will place a bid on the item if the current bid is at or below the price per item.

It assists in the rapid search through a listing page with the click of one button, saving a great deal of time.

For selling items, it allows you to post for auction any or all items that you have specified can be posted, with one button press.

Bargain Hunter DOES NOT do auction analysis. You set the price. It is also not automated. You determine when/if the next page will be examined for bargains.

Configuring A Product For Bidding

Bargain Hunter Buttons on the Browse Tab

Before Bargain Hunter can make a bid on an item, you must configure it to do so. First you make sure that you have set the active configuration to the one you desire (see setting configurations).

When you are ready to set a bid price on a specific type of item, open the config dialog. On the AH dialog, this is the button marked "Config" off the Browse Tab or the Auctions Tab. Alternatively, you can enter the slash command "/bhconfig".

Product Settings Dialog

First, Enter the Product name you wish to buy. You must type in the EXACT string for the product, though case does not matter. For example "Light Leather" is used in the picture above.

For bidding, the only parameter  you have to specify is the "Price/Unit" value (Price Per Unit). This would be the price for a SINGLE unit of that item (not a stack). For example, for "Light Leather", you might enter a Price Per Unit of 50 copper. The unit is one piece of "Light Leather". When it searches, it will look for different sized stacks. So if you have a stack of 10 with the next bid for 5 silver or less, it will bid on it if possible. If the buyout price of that stack of 10 is 5 silver or less, it will buyout that item.

In order to activate buying of this item, you must also check the "Buy It!" check box, and click the "Save" button to save the data on this product.

Configuring A Product For Selling

Before posting items for auction automatically with KBS Bargain Hunter, you will need to configure the product.

Bargain Hunter Buttons on the Auctions Tab

When you are ready, open the config dialog. On the AH dialog, this is the button marked "Config" off the Browse Tab or the Auctions Tab. Alternatively, you can enter the slash command "/bhconfig".

Product Settings Dialog

The following information is needed for KBS Bargain Hunter to sell an item in the auction house:

Stack Count - the number of items in a stack needed to post as an auction item (1 for single type items, generally 10 or 20 for stack type items). In the example above,  I wish to sell "Light Leather" in stacks of 10.

Sell Bid Price - The posted bid price for stack. (7 silver in the picture). This is the bid price fo the specify stack count. (7s for 10 Light Leather).

Sell Buyout Price - the buyout price to be posted. Zero means no buyout. (8.75 silver in the example).

Duration - the 2, 8, or 24 hour auction time limit for this product.

Lastly, you must check the "Sell It!" check box to indicate that this item will be posted when it meets the stack count.


"Partial String" Products

Bargain Hunter also allows you to bid on items and post items that make a partial string match. For example, you may want buy/sell all of the Shredder Manual Pages possible, but you don't want to enter "Shredder Manual Page 1", etc for all twelve product types. Instead, you can determine the unique product string for this item, which in this case is "Shredder", and set a price per unit on it. Then click on the "Partial String" check box to indicate that you want to pay that Price Per Unit for every item with "Shredder" in its title. Bidding/Posting an auction with this item type is handled the same way as with full string products.

Hunting For Bargains

Once you have configured your items to check for bidding, you may begin to hunt for bargains. First, do a search on the browse tab as you would normally do, whether it be the entire auction, one category, or a filtered category like "leather" or "light leather".

Bargain Hunter Buttons on the Browse Tab

When the first listing page is returned, you press the "Hunt" button, and it will scan that page looking for bargains. Any products that meet the price per unit value in your config, which also have the "Buy It!" button checked, will be bid upon.

If you did bid on anything in the currently displayed list, it will be indicated in white for bids, and blue for buyouts. You must wait for all of the bids to be accepted before moving on to the next list page, else some of your bids may fail. (listen for the cash sound if you are waiting for bids). You have to be very conscious of this in heavy lag situations.

To search the next page, press the "N" button. This will request the next auction list page, and when it appears, hunt for bargains. You do not need to press the "Hunt" button again.

The "P" button will allow you to hunt backwards one page in the list.

The "N" and "P" buttons will only check the next page when the game's Browse "Search" button is enabled.

Posting Auctions

Selling is simple.

Bargain Hunter Buttons on the Auctions Tab

Once you have configured your products for posting, simply go to the Auctions tab in your Auction house Dialog and press the "Post" button. Any items meeting the stack requirements in any of your bags will be posted per your specifications if they have the "Sell it!" box checked.
 

Determining Your Commitment To The Market (Value Buttons)

The Bids tab frame and the Auctions tab frame have "Value" Buttons

Bargain Hunter Value Button on the Bids Tab

In the case of the Bids tab listing, pressing the Value button will show how much copper coinage you have committed to bids, for that page. If you have more than 50 bids, you will need to scroll to the next page and hit Value again for that page.

In the case of the Auctions tab, pressing the Value button will show how much copper coinage you could possibly gain through buyout sales for that page. If you have more than 50 auctions, you will need to scroll to the next page and hit Value again for that page. It does not count products that do not have a buyout price.

Dealing with the Dreaded Auction Lag

As you may know, if you start working the AH during peak times, you may experience lag between searches and orders. Patience is needed to effectively search the AH for bargains during lag, though the Bargain Hunter shortens the amount of time you will spend waiting.

Remember to only press the Hunt/N/P button once for  search, and wait for the indication that the list has returned and updated, bids have been placed, and all bids have been accepted. Careful attention to this will allow fairly rapid searches to occur even during lagging periods. If you press the N button more than once at a time, you may miss out on real bargains.

Setting/Changing Configurations

KBS Bargain Hunter has a very rudimentary way to have different configurations. Each configuration will be its own unique listing of product specifications. You may want a configuration for each type of AH, and you may want one for each server. The configurations are set based on names you specify, not based on character or server or side.

The current configuration name is listed at the top of the Product Settings Dialog. If you wish to change the configuration or make a new one, or copy information from one to another, press the XConfig button in the Products Setting dialog. Alternatively, you may enter the slash command "/bhxconfig".

Configurations Dialog
 

The current configuration will e displayed on the dialog ("test" in the picture above).

 Below that is a name you will enter as your "action" configuration. This will be the configuration the buttons below are used with.

"Set As Config" - Will set the name listed in the text box as the current configuration. If it does not already exist, an new empty one will be provided.

"Clear Config" - Will empty the config listed in the action text. It will have no entries.

"Copy Under Current" - This will take the action config and add to the current config all product entries not already in the current config.

"Copy Over Current" - This will take the action config and copy all product entries to the current config.

"Delete Config" - this will destroy the action config. You cannot delete the current config.

Other Notes On Bargain Hunter

Beware that when you use Bargain Hunter to look for things to buy, it will bid on as much as you can afford. It is up to you to understand the market conditions of your Auction House. If you incorrectly enter a price per unit that is too high, Bargain Hunter won't realize it was a mistake.

Comments, questions and suggestions are always welcome. This add-on may be improved upon in the future. I purposely did not automate it more because I enjoy the freedom of adjusting prices and such as I see fit during the hunting process.

To make a comment, send me mail at mok@killerbeesoftware.com, or visit the forums at http://killerbeesoftware.com/swarm.

Below is an example session with the player searching the Auction House for Light Leather with a price per unit of 50 copper.