Tips for buying against Plot not yet available for purchase. 4.2 housing

I was finally able to purchase my first house! Landed a plot in Lavender Beds, it was a fun, stressful, and exciting hunt that lasted about a week. I wanted to put out some info and tips to those still house hunting, because when I started there wasn't much on the topic except "It's a random timer"

Unfortunately, I can confirm from my experience that this timer is 100% random. I tried a few things while hunting and compiled my experiences below:

-I have never seen a plot sell in less than 8 hours, if it goes quicker, chances are it was a relocation...
-I have seen plots stay unavailable as long as 14 hours
-I have seen plots devalue as much as 2 times, and sometimes not at all. The plot I bought stayed at 3,000,000 purchase price until I bought it. Devaluation timers don’t appear to be relevant to availability.
-I have seen plots with a sale time of 4:44pm. 10:17am, 3:34pm etc. Plots DO NOT become available at the top of the hour as I initially suspected.

-I have seen plots sell in between minutes as well. This proves that plots do not become available at the top of a minute. I was trying only to buy when the minute would turn over and lost a plot. Plots literally become available at any second. This really sucks because it means it's a spam fest with multiple competitors.

So, tips for buying:

1. Watch the wards and the clock
Check the wards before you do something that will take about 8 hours, like going to work, school, or sleep. Write down on a paper what plots are available and their location. When you get to play again, check wards, if those same plots are still up, they are getting close to being able to purchase. No need to sit on these all freaking day, you'll waste your life and get more frustrated. This can keep your hunts down to 1-4 hours roughly. Unless it’s one of the longer 14+ hour waits.

2. Try a controller
It's a lot easier than the mouse, and produces less fatigue. This is personal preference of course but try it out. Also the targeting with a controller is as simple as pressing X to get you right on the placard.

3. Put yourself in /busy status
This will keep you from receiving unnecessary chatter or tells, or harassing ones from the competition.

4. Hunt in blocks
This is a big one, try to set a window for hunting of 2-4 hours. Anything more is really taxing and emotionally hard if you don’t get the plot. If you only spend 3 hours hunting, there isn't so much heartache when you lose out as opposed to 10+ hours of wasted time. That will wreck you. Using the timing method above should accommodate this. Since you know which plots have already been available for 8+ hours. If you can, put a movie on or something else to help pass the time.

5. Find a purchase spamming rhythm
Get into a zone with your purchase clicks. I would sometimes spam super crazy then wait, or would just try a few times every minute or so. Pick what works for you. I did notice that the more people spamming seemed to lower the wait, but I don’t have any data to back it since I don’t know exactly how much they were trying to buy. I do know I lost two houses after spamming hardcore for about 10 minutes with 3-4 other players trying also. When I took a break after spamming I came back to them being sold….

6. Learn to let go
Major! Everyone wants something they can't have, and the competition aspect makes this exciting and addicting. But be willing to have fun with it and celebrate the victory of others. I actually made 3 new friends while sitting on placards just chatting. It was great to see them finally get their homes also. Remember this is just a stupid video game and a few years from now it’s probably gonna be irrelevant. So make sure you’re having fun! If it's not fun anymore give yourself a much needed break. Be focused, but not obsessed.

And finally, if it’s really super important to you, changing servers to a less populated one could give you the less competition and more availablity…

That’s all I got, I hope this helps someone. Best of luck! Feel free to comment with any other tips or data/info you have.

The official gimpy forum motto: You can edit your post to get around the absurd character limit.

Grats on snagging a plot. :)

Or.....if you are on most of the mid pop, lower pop servers, with hundreds of smalls at minimum price, you can buy a plot as a placeholder, while you hunt a med/large, and then use relocation to bypass the random timer all together.

There was 3 (2 of 3 was around mine) smalls available last night on Lich in Goblet (probably due to auto demo). Told my FC and got 2 FC members as neigbours.

OP findings was interesting and good tips. My tip is if you can't get the plot you want, grab whatever you can and use the relocation at a time when your dream plot gets available.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kittypryde

Or.....if you are on most of the mid pop, lower pop servers, with hundreds of smalls at minimum price, you can buy a plot as a placeholder, while you hunt a med/large, and then use relocation to bypass the random timer all together.

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This. There was a small in shirogane in my ward the other day with 15 or so people trying g to get it. One went to goblet bought a small then came back and relocated straight to the shirogane plot

Just spent 9 hours camping a house. Someone came up and bought it in two minute. That was 9 hours of spamming. This system is broken.