TSM4 Sniping Guide Part 1 of 3

This is part 1 of a series.

Part 1: What is sniping, and how to do the basics.

Part 2: How to sniper-bait and make gold from the snipers.

Part 3: How to Snipe Better

What is TSM4 Sniping?

At least half of readers will have already heard about TSM Sniping.

A quarter will already be sniping.

One tenth will be making millions from sniping already.

This guide isn’t for them, it’s for the curious, new to sniping Auction House gold maker.

History of Sniping

Sniping was first done during the old days of Auctioneer.

It was possible to scan the last page of the Auction House by eye, and gobble up anything that seemed to be worth a lot of gold.

It was tedious. It took a lot of time. And it took a lot of understanding of the gold market value of every item.

That’s why most sniping was done in Booty Bay, home of the sneaky sneaky cross-faction Horde<>Alliance traders.

Horde/Alliance traders made gold by moving cheap items from one faction to the other faction using the neutral Auction House.

Here’s a screenshot of Auctioneer Sniping by my old friend and guildmate Sinshroud, lifted from the Consortium webpage he wrote.

Want to know more about the history of sniping? Fascinating article here.

TSM3 Sniping

TSM3 sniping was hidden away under AH >>Start Shopping >>Sniper.

You were faced with the amazing, but intimidating, Sniping String by BilisOnyxia.

Setting up TSM3 Sniping

Type /tsm and go to TSM3 features at the top and then go to “Custom Price Sources”. Make a custom price name exactly “minprice” without the quotations, then in the box, paste this string in: max(min(DBHistorical, DBGlobalMarketAvg, DBGlobalHistorical, DBRegionMarketAvg, DBRegionHistorical), VendorSell). This means when you call “minprice” in the future, it will use that long string instead.
Open up TSM3 Options. Under module options, click on shopping and go look at the Sniper Options section. In the box called “Below Custom Price (‘Oc’ to disable)”, paste in this string in that box: check(minprice – 100000g, 90% minprice, check(minprice – 50000g, 80% minprice, check(minprice – 10000g, 60% minprice, check(minprice – 5000g, 50% minprice, check(minprice – 1000g, 30% minprice, check(minprice – 500g, 20% minprice, check(minprice – 50g, 10% minprice)))))))

What this string means is this:

If an item’s value is greater than 100k gold, use 90%.
If an item’s value is greater than 50k gold, use 80%.
If an item’s value is greater than 10k gold, use 60%.
If an item’s value is greater than 5k gold, use 50%.
If an item’s value is greater than 1k gold, use 30%.
If an item’s value is greater than 500g gold, use 20%.
If an item’s value is equal to or less than 500g, will ignore.

Here’s the minprice string again

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

Here’s BilisOnyxia’s Sniper Options string again

check(minprice – 100000g, 90% minprice, check(minprice – 50000g, 80% minprice, check(minprice – 10000g, 60% minprice, check(minprice – 5000g, 50% minprice, check(minprice – 1000g, 30% minprice, check(minprice – 500g, 20% minprice, check(minprice – 50g, 10% minprice)))))))

TSM3 Sniping in Action

Head to the Auction house. Open the TSM3 Shopping tab. Look for Custom Filter/Other Searches and click Start Sniper.
TSM will check the last page of AH for all item with a buyout price that matches your settings.
Remember: for every Realm/Server the price are different so sometimes its better to think before you buy any sniper items!

Here comes the tweetable!

[bctt tweet=”My Body Is Ready for TSM4 Sniping!” username=”thegoldqueen”]

How to do TSM4 Sniping?

You need TSM4
You need TSM Desktop App
You need to know how to click a button.
TSM4 comes with Sniper set up ready to go! Just click the “sniper” button and go.

Step 1

Head to the Auction House. Here is your new default TSM4 window. Click “sniper”

Step 2

Choose a type of sniper. Yes there is now a Bid Sniper! But choose Buyout for now. We’ll cover Bid Sniper in part 3!

Step 3

TSM does its thing

Here’s what you’ll notice

1 Good thing: On the left you can now remove items from the list so you don’t keep seeing them over and over. yay

2. Another good thing: Results are now sorted by how recently they were posted so the newest results will always be on the top, ready for you to buy as quickly as possible

3. Bad thing: With these settings, you’ll see a list absolutely FULL of things that you really don’t want to buy.

Improve TSM4 Sniping

Lets put in some of those strings we used in TSM3

Step 1

Add the minprice into your custom sources

Step 2

Add BilisOnyxia’s excellent string

Step 3

Add the operation to a group/multiple groups.

Step 4

Run Sniper as before and check the results

You’re going to see a lot less rubbish on the sniper results.

TSM4 has found some possible snipes

The (!) mark shows that it’s a new item found since the last last-page search. Mouseover the (!) to find an (X). Click the X to make the item go away.

No thank you Sirenia, I love you but I don’t want your Slayer’s Cuffs.

I think I’ll take those Gloves though. Click the gloves.

It takes TSM a moment

Click BUYOUT as soon as it’s available

BAM

Side note: these are the usual prices for those gloves on my server. Thank you TSM!

How to sell the items you find?

Super easy with TSM4. Any items you find that aren’t in a group, go in the “Base Group” until they have their own group home. When you’re posting your TSM4 groups up on the Auction House, make sure you have Base Group highlighted / yellow.

Click Run Post Scan.

They’re posted.

Of course, if you think your item needs to go in one of your groups, or you want to make a new group, you can do that too.

Want a bonus? Here are my RECOMMENDED TSM3 sniping guides from YouTube

TSM3 Sniping Video Guides

How to Snipe Warcraft Gold with TSM3

Sheyrah and Xionic’s TSM3 Sniping Guide

Bregvid’s Guide

Hazelnutty’s Games Shopping Sniping Flipping Guide

Lazy Goldmakers TSM Sniping Guide

About the Author

Warcraft’s longest running Gold Making blog, The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande since 2010. Working on her 14th level 110, she’s a gold making expert with 9 years experience, 19,000+ achievements, 1593 days played, over 39 million gold earned, and now playing World of Warcraft Legion live on www.twitch.tv/thegoldqueen The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling, snatch lists, and farming gold making. Want more updates on Warcraft Battle for Azeroth? Support my Patreon for exclusive pre-release Gold Guides.

TSM4 Sniping Guide Part 1 of 3