10 Tips For Effective Skyblock Auction House Management

Buying from the Skyblock Auction House can be a rollercoaster ride of pitfalls and risks. You leave for two minutes before an auction ends, and suddenly find that 15 people have outbid you.
The timing of your own auctions can also have a huge impact on the final sale price. Something we will discuss below. The starting price of an auction can also be tricky; Do you price it high hoping that one person will bid, or price it very low, hoping to stimulate a bidding war and get max profits?

Here are a few simple pointers to help you out.

1) An item will disappear from the Auction House view when 5 minutes are remaining on the timer. If you want to bid, you might want to make sure it’s before the 5 minute mark. Alternatively:

2) If you know the name of the seller you can simple use the command “/ah sellername” to see which items they are currently selling. This will include any items that have gone under 5 minutes remaining.

3) Any new bids when under 5 minutes remaining will not affect the timer. Once the time remaining reaches 2 minutes, any new bid will reset the timer to 2 minutes. A good time to start bidding on an item is right as it hits 2 minutes, as the timer will then not reset and you might catch other bidders sleeping.

4) If you know the specific value of an item, it can often be worth bidding a little under that value so that any further bids will take it above its real value, thereby dissuading further bidding. It might seem counter-intuitive to bid 3.4 million coins on a clean Aspect of the Dragons when the current bid is 100,000 coins, but it might work in your favor.

5) Adding specific enchantments to a sword will actually reduce it’s value. Some enchantments, for various reasons (mainly something known as Invincibility Frames), can be detrimental. Some risky enchantments include Thorns on armor, and sometimes enchantments like Venomous or Fire Aspect on swords. These enchantments will reduce the value of the item.

Here’s a list of basic sword enchantments (and where they are unlocked) to think about:

Get these on Weapons:

Cubism V – Pumpkin V
Luck V – Rabbit V
Looting III – Gold III
Scavenger III – Gold VI
Execute V – Diamond II
Critical V / VI – Diamond V
Experience III – Lapis III
Lethality V – Obsidian II
Sharpness V – Gravel IV
First Strike IV – Gravel VI
Ender Slayer V – Ender Pearl III
Giant Killer V – Ghast III
Vampirism V – Ghast V
Impaling III – Prismarine Shard I
Life Steal III – Default Unlock
Telekenisis I – From Rusty in the Gold Mines

These enchantments will generally lower the price of a weapon:

Bane of Arthropods – A weapon with this enchantment cannot have Sharpness or Smite, beware.
Smite – A weapon with this enchantment cannot have Bane of Arthropods or Sharpness, beware again!
Cleave – Mobs hit by Cleave still won’t be First Striked, but other issues with Cleave have been fixed.
Venemous – Possible Invincibility Frames
Fire Aspect – Possible Invincibility Frames
Knockback – Annoying to chase mobs unless one-hit

6) Conversely, enchantments like Dragon Hunter or Critical VI can easily be understood in terms of value. They are purchased in place like The End or in the Dark Auction, and their value is fairly steadily.

To buy Dragon Hunter I costs 1m coins

To make dragon hunter II cost 2m coins

To make dragon hunter III costs 4m coins

To make dragon hunter IV costs 8m coins

To make dragon hunter V costs 16m coins

If you want this enchantment, you can simply add this onto the value of an auction to see what it is worth paying.

7) NPC purchased items like Stonk (the efficiency VI pickaxe) are a bad idea to sell on the Auction House. The value of Stonk is 499,000 coins and anyone who can access The End can purchase it. Therefore it will never sell for more than this on the Auction House (unless in error) and is likely to sell significantly lower.

8) Beware trick auctions. It sucks to end up quickly bidding on a cheap Enchanted Lava Bucket for 300,000 coins only to see that it is just a regular lava bucket priced to fool the unsuspecting buyer. The two items look very similar and often show up in the same searches. Once your bid is made you can never get it back.

A famous example is selling Telekinesis on the Auction House. It costs 100 coins in the Gold Mines but can often sell for way more on the Auction House.

9) Set yourself a max bid amount and don’t go over it. It can be easy to get caught up in a bidding war and end up paying way over the odds. Don’t worry, most items will be back on the Auction House at a lower price. Hold to a max bid and play the long game.

10) Always be aware of the peak server times when creating an auction. It is possible to adjust the auction end time, and this should generally be set to a time when lots of players are online.

Auction House strategies on Hypixel Skyblock can be deep and complex, but we hope this brief guide will help you out, ensure you make the most coin and minimise any painful mistakes.

As a bonus tip, you might want to think twice before buying enchantment books from the Auction House. Unless you have something tracking the prior work penalty or ‘anvil uses’ you could be setting yourself up for frustration. It is possible to buy a book that needs 250+ levels of experience in order to add it to an item.

There’s a great method to ensure that any sword can have max enchantments and only a single anvil use. Its a great way to ensure max value of the sword, as it future-proofs the weapon for further enchanting. Something we can discuss in another post.