Advice for obtaining currency during league start.

3.7 will be the 4th league I have participated in and I think I finally have a passable understanding of mechanics. My goal for this league is going to be to obtain enough currency to get a headhunter because I want to try that silly

playstyle. I literally do not care about completing the atlas, defeating UE, exploring the new mechanic, or delving deep (each of those were goals in past leagues). With that goal in mind how should I approach league start/first week to maximize currency? I can dedicate ~24 hours on the first weekend and ~64 total for the first 7 days .

My current options/plans:

1) Speed level to Blood Aqueducts (~6 hours for me), farm humility cards for Tabulas (opening weekend tabula worth ~20c), trade all the C for divines (<6 c at league start), wait like 2 months into the league and offload divines for exalts. The build I take here only has the goal of Blood Aquaducts at speed and nothing else (lighting trap or something that wipes the whole area with a 4 link).

Why divines? - Well divines like exalts appreciate to 3x their initial value in relation to chaos. Unlike exalts you can invest into them at a lower choas cost earlier on (6c for a divine on day 3 vs 80 c for an exalt). Ancient orbs/Annuls/Sulphite Scarabs/Prime resonators/handful of other items also meet this criterion. Exalted shards are even less costly but they do not appreciate as much but I could just hoard them and convert them. The problem is most people selling exalt shards sell 1 and you spend more time trading than value generated killing mobs. Other items that appreciate at similar rates and are more expensive than exalts (Doctor/Nurse cards/Mirror shards) require a huge build up of C to get into and the RMT/bot farm people will probably be in that asset class so I don't want to be.

2) Just do a MF build (tornado shot dead eye) and pick a map with a valuable but accessible divination card (Kaom's heart cards on volcano; or landing on the beach) and run it. This will obviously take longer to get to and adds map sustain/purchasing woes and requires me to buy expensive gear for the league start (wind ripper is >2 ex on league start). However, if I just keep this up all-league it will probably have the smoothest currency gains over time. It will also be extremely boring..and I will be forced at least to complete A1-A10 for the two extra sextants.

3 (Current plan) Combine 1 and 2 until I earn enough.

4) Make a build that has the sole focus of killing Normal Atziri and farm her the moment I step out of A10 and do the final ascend. I figure Atziiri's drops will all be more valuable this league. First, the mortal fragments will be the key to getting Atziri's Disfavour which I think will be one of the best uniques this league. Second, Doriyani's catalyst is always extremely valuable during league start. It drops in value fast though so if I can't reliably take down Atziri by the end of 10 hours I am not sure if it is worth. This option seems the most fun of the ones I've come up with cause I like the Atziri fight and undergeared/underleveled it is actually tense.

5) Do the MF build form 3 but sit myself on the T6 burial chambers and hope I get a div card 1 in 200 runs. Run 1600 maps all league and then die.

6) Write off the goal as a league goal and just get enoug Exalts to combine with my standard stash and buy it in Standard ... I have about 40 ex already stashed in Standard. If I don't get enough EX at 2 months I will do this.

TL/DR: Please give me your advice to maximum currency gains in the first week.
(Edit: oops spelled divine wrong the whole way through)

I hug my dog and it poops out chaos

Find an item to flip or craft and look for a currency with a 2-4 chaos profit margin per trade.

I made ~ 30 EX per day from bulk buying essences and using them on Shaped amulets only.

Around another 50 EX per day by buying weapons from others and recrafting / divining / crafting their values and reselling for 2-20x the cost.

Something 20 EX per day from investing max into maps and ran all possible buffs + 8 mods 140 quant corrupted T16 maps - did Uber Elder and sold extra maps. Main money comes from maps.

I also also quite often flipped Essence of Corruption. Bought them at 3C each sold at 5.5/6 with minimum of 4 corrupts. Maybe 5 EX per day.

Played something 7-9h per day on League starts for 1-2 weeks max. The profit numbers kick in after the first week.

WOOPS! Forgot to add that I played last in September (:

You're doing this all wrong. You get people who do this to give you the stuff they've farmed. You do that by having items they want for "good enough" purposes for early mapping. To do that, you have to get to maps before they do. So quit dicking around in acts and get to maps. Find rares that others will consider giving you their stuff they've farmed up.

Easily 10x faster than farming yourself.

theres all kinds of thing you can do.

early on your best bet is to do what kiss me quick says. you find something you can flip. essence tend to be very very easy to do. AKA you can buy 3x or even 9x of a certain essence for 1x chaos, combine them and sell them for 2-3x the price. even something that simple is a great way to make some very early money

i don't like playing the trade game very much or very long though, as its way too tedious. i hate trading in this game. so i like to get my currency from playing the game.

especially at league start your best bet is to be the first to do something. be the first to get high ilvl items and you'll be ROLLING in coin.
be the first to grind out uber lab and you'll be ROLLING in coin.

uber lab is actually a great thing but is pretty RNG dependent. also you basically have to bypass everything else about the game, including league mechanics in order to do it.
however with uber lab you can get some very good uniques worth a couple exalts, if lucky. you can get great currency in general. you can get tons of high quality gems which sell very well and very high for early league. and you can get lucky and get tons of maps. t11-t13 maps too, which early league are worth a ton as well.

your best bet is to construct a plan and stick with it. having a goal in mind at all motivates you to keep playing the game, and i almost guarantee you'll reach that goal.

"

Find an item to flip or craft and look for a currency with a 2-4 chaos profit margin per trade.

I made ~ 30 EX per day from bulk buying essences and using them on Shaped amulets only.

Around another 50 EX per day by buying weapons from others and recrafting / divining / crafting their values and reselling for 2-20x the cost.

Something 20 EX per day from investing max into maps and ran all possible buffs + 8 mods 140 quant corrupted T16 maps - did Uber Elder and sold extra maps. Main money comes from maps.

I also also quite often flipped Essence of Corruption. Bought them at 3C each sold at 5.5/6 with minimum of 4 corrupts. Maybe 5 EX per day.

Played something 7-9h per day on League starts for 1-2 weeks max. The profit numbers kick in after the first week.

Thanks for these tips! I did dabble in the craft mostly good items last league and it worked out well. Do you have an intuitive sense of the updated item pricing or are you running multiple searches to figure it out? The problem for me was that it was almost 20 min per buy/craft because I am still not intimately familiar with item affixes combinations. I get the sense every time I do a new build I have a better understanding of affix worth.

I love the shaped amulet idea. Did you scour/essence? Why not go with fossil/chaotic resonators?

Normal atziri is a good target - some uniques are quite expensive at the start, and ex are still cheap.

It's funny that the best way to make currency in the game is by not playing the game and playing trade simulator instead. And some people will say that this would only happen if we had easy trading.
I don't even know how people can endure and have fun by doing all this flipping all day, considering how awful trading is lol.
Unless they use some kind of 3rd party programs to reduce how annoying it is.

Find the flavor of the league builds, usually there are several and craft the items that make the build great by buying the bases for usually cheap. Just know what to craft each league and early is what makes the most profit until everyone else starts doing it then you need to up your game to higher end crafts.

Trial and error really, developing strategies that work for you as you're leveling and sticking to it while making minor tweaks here and there.