Today I’m going to be teaching you about the black market in Albion Online. This alternative to the traditional auction house has made several clever players very very rich. Let’s get to it
Table of Contents
What Is The Black Market In Albion Online?
The Black Market in Albion Online is the answer to a question you might have not even thought to ask, where do drops come from?
Now, most MMO players understand that drops from mobs or bosses are usually exclusive to those bosses and can’t be crafted, however, in Albion Online that isn’t the case. Albion Online is a player-driven economy and that would be hard to accomplish if everyone could just kill mobs for the best gear.
Instead, Albion Online handles this traditional MMO mechanic with the Black Market. Basically, any item you pick up from a mob in Albion Online was put there by the Black Market and crafted by a player.
Crazy right?
Next up I’ll explain to you how it works in more detail.
How The Black Market Works In Albion Online
Alright, so we’ve established that the Black Market is how you receive rare loot in Albion Online. Great. But, let’s explore how the system works in more depth.
First thing you need to know is that the Black Market can only be sold to, so the supply and demand are different than the traditional AH. The supply is entirely based on the number of people who sell to it, while the demand is based entirely on the number of players killing mobs.
Although, like the traditional AH, the more people who are in demand of the item (killing mobs) the higher the cost that they will pay.
For this reason, every time someone kills a mob that is supposed to drop an item, a buy order is created on the Black Market for a low price. For example, if a mob was supposed to drop a sword the Black Market would create a buy order for that sword at an extremely low cost.
Oftentimes, this initial cost is far too low to be worth your time. Tier 7 items can have a buy order for under 5k silver, which is absurd. However, once there are enough buy orders, the price increases. That 5k silver tier 7 item might be 20k silver now, still not worth it but we’re getting there.
After the price finally reaches a profitable point for the crafter, they will sell and the buy order is filled, meaning that a lucky player just got a cool drop and the whole process resets.
P.S. The Black Market is only in Caerleon.
How does the Black Market pay?
Well, it does so by utilizing the silver dropped from the mob. For example, a mob might drop 1k silver but the Black Market takes 20% to pay for a buy order leaving you with 800 silver (and not always with an item).
Item Sink
Of course, since the Black Market is a rather shady organization, they do “lose” some of your items from time to time. In the context of the game, this becomes an item sink. Lower tier items get lost the most often to prevent saturation.
Sell Orders
Much like the AH, you can create sell orders for the Black Market. By creating sell orders you can more easily control when to sell certain items, especially lower tier items that regularly drop but also have much more people making them.
Make Money On The Black Market
This is what I’m assuming many of you reading this want to learn to do.
There is a lot of potential to make money from the Black Market and in fact, many people make most of their money from the Black Market. If you plan on making money from the Black Market there are two primary ways.
Auction House Arbitrage
In this method of making money on the Black Market, you will be buying items from the AH (in Caerleon of course) and selling them on the Black Market for a higher price.
For example, let’s say you wanted to sell this Knight Armor to the Black Market.
Currently, the Black Market is buying for 55k silver. For you to make a profit selling this, you have to buy it for at maximum 54k silver and preferably lower.
Alright, now we know the price we need to buy it at, we need to go see if it is selling on the AH.
As you can see it is selling, and at 38k silver no less. That means for each piece the Black Market buys we make 16k silver (give or take some AH fees).
So, you can see how powerful the Black Market is. Where else in Albion can you make 16k silver in less than two minutes with almost no risk?
Now, you won’t always get lucky and immediately find a great deal every time you open the Black Market. But, sometimes you will and you might make 10x as much.
A couple of extra things to note
- The black market has almost no barrier of entry and is highly competitive.
- It is almost a certainty that it will become heavily botted/alt heavy after Albion becoming F2P.
- Having a large bankroll is important. You can sometimes make 60k on <100k item but often make 60k on a >250k item.
- If you take too long to buy and sell someone might beat you to the order, then you’re stuck with the item and lost all that silver.
Extra tips
When you are looking for items to sell on the Black Market it does require a bit of experience to get going. Knowing what items are normally a certain price takes time, but my rule of thumb is .1 enchantment tier should be 50% more expensive than .0, .2 enchantment should be 50% more expensive than .1, and .3 should be 100% more expensive than .2.
For example, a .2 enchantment should be 150k if the .1 enchantment of the same quality is 100k silver, while the .3 version would be 300k silver. It isn’t perfect, but it saves me a lot of time running back and forth between the AH and the Black Market.
My second tip to you isn’t really a tip but rather a resource. Now, it isn’t extremely helpful and won’t make you an Albion mogul but it will help you get a feel for market prices. Albion2D has a section on its website for items in the game and provides the market prices from each city AND the Black Market prices.
I know you’re probably thinking “wow! It will tell me prices? This should make the Black Market easy!” but the reality is Albion2D is a bit slow to update prices. If you rely solely on this tool without double checking the actual prices you’ll be broke before I finish this sentence. Trust me, I lost over 200k silver by foolishly trusting it. It’s a great resource, just use it with care.
My final tip is to use the market filter tools. Because the Black Market only buys the EXACT item, quality and all, mistakenly buying the wrong item can be costly.
Instead of wasting your time looking for the exact item, just use the filters at the top of the market screen so all you have to do is glance at the price to know whether or not you should buy it. Plus, you don’t have to redo the filter when you use the AH.
By doing this all I have to do is open the AH UI and I can decide if it is worth it to buy in two seconds, super simple.
Crafter’s Delight
An alternative method to simply buying and selling is to craft and sell things. This might be obvious to some of you, but don’t be so sure.
How many of you, when you were leveling crafting, sold everything you crafted at a super low cost just to recoup some of the silver spent? Or how many of you got an outstanding quality piece of armor and sold it for the price you sold the normal version at? I can safely say most of you have done this.
If you think this doesn’t actually happen, let me tell you something.
Those claws are the cheapest at the Caerleon marketplace right now. All of them are 1k silver cheaper than the normal version of the claws. Some outstanding quality claws are actually the same price as the base version as well. Crazy right?
Let me tell you a secret. Most of the money I make on the Black Market comes from good quality gear.
I believe this has to do with most people being lazy and just throwing items on the AH without caring about the quality of the gear, let alone how much they could get from the Black Market.
Essentially what I’m telling you is to stop being lazy and you get free money. Of course, you don’t have to and people doing method one will make free money. Either way, someone makes free money.
Conclusion
That’s about it for the Black Market in Albion Online. It is an incredibly intricate system that can cause mercantile kings to rise and fall…. Naw, it really is just a garbage dump for items nobody wants :).
Not sure what article will be next, but if you have any ideas drop them below in the comments friendos.
