Method 1: Cheap and Sneaky
This method takes advantage of people (or bots!) who do not understand how Auctioneer works. Players who use Auctioneer can be fooled fairly easily if they are not using common sense (or are very inexperienced). Frankly it seems to me that most people do not use Auctioneer wisely at all. They blindly buy and sell without stopping to evaluate what it is suggesting. On average I guess it works for them - who knows. You can use this to your advantage though!
Auctioneer's bidbroker looks for auctions that are close to expiring and have low bids compared to the market high sell point HSP. Percentless is similar, but compares the buyout price to the HSP.
Knowing this what can we control here? Well obviously we can create auctions with whatever bid and buyout prices we care to. Can we control the HSP though? If we can, we have a winning combination, yes? See why? No? Keep reading.
HSP is the lynch pin to Auctioneer. It would seem like we cannot control it. However we can - in controlled, limited ways. The HSP is based on past auctions. So why not create the auctions that set the HSP? Why not indeed!
Pick an item that you can get a number of and does not have too many auctions. Great magic essence is not a good idea here, there are simply too many auctions and you won’t be able to control the market. I would make some suggestions here but I am going to leave it to your decision. I will say I have seen this done with common vendor purchased items as well as blues.
All you need to do is to set up some auctions at a high price. Historically item X has sold for 25s, so create 10 auctions at 5g. Also buy up any other auction with substantially lower prices. You will need to spend some time watching the auctions in order to take control of the price like this. Some items may not be controllable. If so try something else. You may also not sell any items at all, but that is not important here, we are now setting the HSP for Auctioneer.
After a day or two, try putting an item X up with a buyout at 2g. It sells! Why? Some unsuspecting player has just done a percentless scan and found your item "under priced". If you got the bite, try listing another few at lower prices. See what happens. If you are working with cheap items there is no reason to get greedy here - don't put up too many items to sell.
The important factor is maintaining the artificially high market price. This will keep auctioneer triggering with percentless scans. Picking the right item to do this with is key - because it determines how hard and how much it is going to cost to control the price.
You can keep putting up items priced to sell causing the HSP to decay and just ride the price to the bottom. Or you can stop selling to maintain the price. Milking these cycles most effectively take some luck and some work.
Got it? Confused? Think it over.
