Gold-Making News from the Warlords of Draenor Alpha

Hey there, everyone. I realize I've been pretty scarce lately. Diablo 3 managed to suck me back in with Reaper of Souls, and I've also been playing some Infamous: Second Son on the side. I don't think I've actually logged in to WoW since at least the Reaper of Souls launch, and I need to do so soon, to keep from losing my stock, if nothing else.

Still, we got the first big WoW news in a while today, and I wanted to make a quick post about it before bed. Warlords of Draenor has officially entered the alpha phase of testing. While this testing is obviously very limited, Blizzard chose to share with us a wealth of information today in the form of patch notes, which you can read here.

Unfortunately, while we know there are likely plenty of changes coming to professions, there isn't much that's been shared with us at this point. Given Blizzard's history, this is hardly surprising. Profession changes are usually one of the last things tested. In fact, we've even seen changes in the past that didn't make it onto beta or PTR at all, but were in a patch at release.

Still, what we do know is interesting, if brief. The first thing that immediately caught my attention is the removal of any sort of combat-based perks for professions. In the past, things like Jewelcrafter-only gems or a Blacksmith's extra sockets meant that any raider who wanted to be considered anywhere close to "hardcore" had two maxed professions, and usually crafting professions at that.

The removal of these bonuses may mean that we see fewer people, particularly among raiders, bothering with leveling their professions at all. A reduction in the amount of people who are competition, or who are at least partially self-sufficient instead of being buyers, seems likely to be a positive change overall, for those of us still willing to put in the work.

Secondly, Blizzard apparently felt that certain major glyphs were too expensive for leveling characters, while presumably also being essential parts of the class and/or spec. To that end, certain major glyphs will be learned automatically at levels 25, 50, and 75. The list of those glyphs can be found here.

It's hard to say what effect these changes will have on the glyph market. On the one hand, it flat out reduces the number of glyphs available to sell. On the other hand, these certainly aren't always going to be the exact glyphs someone wants, and it may be that getting these certain glyphs automatically will cause a new player, or someone leveling an alt, to start thinking about glyphs earlier than they might otherwise.

One thing's for sure, though. You don't want to be caught with a large stock of those glyphs when patch 6.0 launches. Now, assuming the patch launches about a month before the expansion, we've still got a good 5 months at even the most hopeful estimates, so you certainly shouldn't go out and have a fire sale right away. If you're someone that's making a stack or more of every glyph, though, you may want to consider gradually cutting back on your restock quantity for those particular glyphs.

Lastly, we'll be seeing a slight change to the way Herbalism and Mining work. You can read the official notes here, but the long and short of it seems to indicate the catch-up systems implemented in Pandaria for those professions were successful. Currently, no matter what your Herbalism and Mining skill, as long as you have those professions, you can gather in Pandaria. Below 525, you'll see a reduced output, generally in the form of "fragments" of the ore or herb in question. In 6.0, Blizzard will be adapting this mechanism to work for Mining and Herbalism all over the world. Any herb or ore in the game will be able to be gathered at any skill level, with a reduced output if your skill level is less than what would have previously been required.

It's a good system, in my opinion. With the increased speed of leveling, trying to keep pace on a profession as you leveled was a daunting task, and often a waste of time. The Pandaria changes were good, but often meant that if one wanted gathering professions, the best thing to do was just ignore them until Pandaria. This probably wasn't what Blizzard wanted, and may have reduced the already unpredictable supply of old world ore and herbs. Ideally, this change will help keep those supplies from dwindling too much.

Hopefully, there will be much more in profession news to come, as we progress through alpha and into beta. I'm particularly interested to see how they interact with Garrisons (another feature with very little news, as it isn't yet being tested). For now, though, all we can do (again) is wait.

Nothing Ventured - Hardened Obsidium Set

Greetings, gold makers. I hope you've all been having a great week, what with the unexpected boon of WoD pre-orders, and the boosted 90s that come with them, going live. I've definitely been having a good week. Glyphs have been particularly productive, but everything's been selling more, even some of my crafted PvP gear.

I have to admit, I'm a bit stumped at that one. The 476 gear I can understand, especially if someone wants to actually PvP with that boosted character. It may be slightly lower item level than the 483 gear they start with, but it's blue instead of green, it's got sockets, and it's got PvP Power, plus PvP oriented set bonuses. What I don't really get is why the 458 gear's seen an upswing. Maybe people who want to get that character into PvP, but don't have the gold to fork over for the 476 items? I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth; I just wish I knew the logic behind why it's selling.

Still, even if existing markets are doing better than they have any right to be at this point in an expansion cycle, it's still good to branch out. Finding those extra little niches can help sprinkle a little bit extra on top of the bounty we're already getting. Most crafted items like this, especially, are hard to argue against, since the time investment is minimal. Set them up in a TSM group, assign crafting and auctioning operations, and they pretty much take care of themselves in the course of your normal restocking routine.

So, you know what that means. It's time for another part of my new series:

Nothing Ventured

Today's Item: Hardened Obsidium Set

For the second installment in this series, I really wanted to find something for my Blacksmith. It's arguably one of the less inspiring professions, having less non-gear options for high sellers than its armor making siblings, Leatherworking and Tailoring. With the crafted PvP gear no longer selling nearly as well as it had prior to 5.4, my Blacksmith was hit the hardest.

I was having a conversation with my partner the other day, and he mentioned that back around the end of Cataclysm, he used to make the Hardened Obsidium set for leveling tanks. He wondered whether or not there was still a market for them, and I'll admit that I started out skeptical.

Now, I know leveling gear still works as a market. Even with the boosted 90s available, there are still plenty of people leveling the old-fashioned way. Jim over at Power Word Gold is known for doing a bunch of business in the 77-80 Catacylsm greens market, for example. The Hardened Obsidium set, however, all requires level 80, so it can't be used to blast through the last bit of Wrath content. It's a perfect starter tank set for Cataclysm content, but the gearing landscape has changed since then, right? After all, we've got heirlooms that go to 85 now. We've also got vendors at the start of the Cataclysm zones that sell level appropriate gear, a la Mists of Pandaria.

Those are both true, yes, but there are some caveats. Many people haven't bothered to upgrade their heirlooms, so for them, the party still stops at 80. For another thing, particularly for a tank, dungeons are definitely the quickest way to go. Cataclysm dungeons are likely the first area where a leveling player will hit a roadblock, as they require a certain item level to queue. Not only are there likely to be gaps in a  person's current gear, but heirlooms count as item level 1 for these purposed.

Of course, as mentioned before, there are the vendors in the Cataclysm starting zones that sell starting gear, of item level 232 (actually the exact same gear given to Scroll of Resurrection 80s). Now, that's super and all, but the Harden Obsidium set is 289 (and the helm and shoulders are 308 blues). Definitely a much nicer starting point, and if the tank buying them does have heirlooms that scale to 85, these pieces are much more likely to let him keep some or all of them while he queues up for the initial Cataclysm dungeons.

Now for the best news. There's no reason you can't start making these immediately, because they're all trainer patterns. The whole set can be easily learned from any Blacksmithing Trainer, and in fact, is probably sitting in your profession tab unnoticed.

Here's exactly what to look for:

• Hardened Obsidium Helm
• Hardened Obsidium Shoulders
• Hardened Obsidium Breastplate
• Hardened Obsidium Belt
• Hardened Obsidium Legguards
• Hardened Obsidium Boots
• Hardened Obsidium Bracers
• Hardened Obsidium Gauntlets

The materials are pretty straightforward, with all pieces taking Folded Obsidium (made via your Blacksmithing with 2 Obsidium Bars). Some pieces also take Elementium Bars. In addition, the bracers require an Elemental Flux. This is a vendor item, but be aware that it is only sold by Blacksmithing Supplies vendors, not general Trade Supplies vendors.

Anyway, that's going to do it for today. Give a try, and let me know what you think.

Warlords of Draenor Pre-Orders are Here!

Just a quick post to make sure you know that today marked the start of pre-orders for Warlord of Draenor. Those that pre-order (as well as those who purchase one separately) get their level 90 boost right now.

What does this mean for us as gold makers? Start pumping out those gems, enchants, consumables, and even glyphs. Also, be prepared for tomorrow to quite possibly be a bit heavier in the gear enhancement markets than even a typical Tuesday.

That's all for now. Gotta get working!

Addendum: Just to be clear, the boosted 90s will receive a set of 483 gear and Embersilk Bags, so don't bother pushing bags or crafted PvP gear.

Nothing Ventured - Royal Scribe's Satchel

As gold makers, our biggest threat may not be what you think it is. It's not competition. It's not markets collapsing. It's not a bot constantly undercutting. It's the threat of stagnation, of getting into a rut where once we find something that works, we put our blinders on and zero in on that specific routine.

Now, don't get me wrong. You can still make gold that way. Diversification, though, is definitely your friend. A profitable market that you're not in is money money left on the table.

To that end, I'm starting what I hope to be a new series, called Nothing Ventured. It's a shorter segment that I hope I'll be able to add more often than a standard blog post. It'll feature a quick suggestion of an item you may not be making, usually something I just recently added or re-added to my routine. You may or may not already be making it. It even may or may not be profitable on your server. I obviously can't make any guarantees, but hopefully something in this series will spark an idea.

Today's item came from the fact that one of my banks has dozens of stacks of Inferno Ink sitting around. It's the Royal Scribe's Satchel, made with Leatherworking. Introduced in Cataclysm, it's still the largest Inscription bag at 36 slots. Anyone who makes a lot of glyphs can tell you exactly how useful it is to be able to store more of them, so these bags are a hot seller to those wanting to enter the glyph market.

Now, with this and many other Cataclysm recipes, the blessing and the curse of it is that it's gated behind the Molten Front dailies. For those of you who may not have been playing at the time, the Molten Front was a daily hub introduced with the Firelands raid in patch 4.2. Each daily completed there gives you a Mark of the World Tree, a currency required to unlock further quests in the chain. Unlocking further parts of the chain would unlock new daily hubs, one-time quests, and most importantly for our purposes, vendors.

It's a blessing for gold makers because gated content like this means that not many people stuck with it through the month or so required to unlock everything. It's a curse because, well, it takes a month or so to unlock everything. The vendor you're looking for is named Ayla, and requires you to have unlocked both the Druids of the Talon and Shadow Wardens quests.

This recipe is Bind on Pickup, so be sure to do these quests on your Leatherworker. The last thing you want is to spend a month doing this, only to realize you're on the wrong character.

The materials required for the bag are 3 Inferno Inks and 3 Pristine Hides. Be sure you save everything you can on mat costs by checking your different options for obtaining them. In addition to buying them straight from the AH, Inferno Inks can be bought from the Ink Vendor for 10 Ink of Dreams each, and Pristine Hides can be purchased from the Leatherworking Supplies vendor for 10 Heavy Savage Leather, which can in turn be created from 5 Savage Leather each. Looking up Royal Scribe's Satchel on your realm on The Undermine Journal will usually give a good idea, at a glance, of which is cheapest, but keep in mind that market price doesn't necessarily tell you what the lowest priced good is.

I hope you've enjoyed this new segment. Hopefully I'll have something for you next time that doesn't require a month-long grind of dailies, but this was the first thing I pulled out of my head. If you found this helpful, or have a suggestion for a future Nothing Ventured segment, leave a comment below. I'd love to hear from you.

The More Things Change...

So, as many of you know, it's been a while since I was last active in gold making. When I left, the game was still in the doldrums of patch 5.3. Throne of Thunder and the Thunder Isle were getting a bit stale, Battlefield Barrens wasn't having the longevity the developers hoped, and patch 5.4 had yet to grace us with its presence.

Even though it was only one patch ago, quite a few things have changed, both in the landscape of the game, and thus the overall landscape of gold making, and for myself personally. Things aren't what they once were, and that's required adjustment, for good or ill. So, what exactly has changed, and how have I been dealing with it?

Timeless Isle

My nemesis

One of the biggest features of patch 5.4 is the Timeless Isle, a new "free-form" exploration experience using what Blizzard learned from Battlefield Barrens, with item level 496 gear (and 535 if you're lucky) to be found therein. It's a big change in the non-raiding experience of the game, and most players either love it or hate it.

Personally, I'm pretty firmly on the "hate it" side of things, both as a player in general, and as a gold maker in particular. As a player, I'm one of those that needs some structure in my play experience. It's the reason I struggle maintaining interest in games like Minecraft and Terraria that have no real "goal" other than what the player decides their goal is. Don't get me wrong; I'm not a fan of too much linearity, either (Final Fantasy XIII, the interactive cutscene). Something with a balance is best, and grinding mobs while rushing from rare to rare (only to find them dead long before I get there, unless I'm very close when they spawn) is not my idea of a fun time.

That wouldn't bother me, however, if it weren't for the effects the Timeless Isle has on the gold making game. First and foremost, its easy access to item level 496 gear, along with the lack of new crafted PvP recipes with the new PvP season in 5.4.7, has taken the crafted PvP gear market out back and put it out of its misery. Hell, I just got through saying how much I hate the Timeless Isle, and I still take my alts there for some easy gear.

The crafted PvP gear was never an amazing market. It certainly was no glyphs or gems or enchanting. It made a decent, predictable profit, though, and with very little effort needed to maintain it. That's not to say that the pieces never sell now, nor that they aren't necessarily profitable. What it does mean, however, is that they sell infrequently enough that I've had to drastically cut back on my stock. Without doing that, I'd be losing money on, of all things, posting fees.

However, Blizzard's decisions are not the only things to which I've needed to adjust. Some come from the community itself.

TSM 2.0

When I left, TradeSkillMaster 2.0 was in beta. I'll admit, now, that it would have probably been beneficial to participate in the beta, to learn how to adjust to the changes sooner than later. At the time, however, I told myself that I didn't have the time. Of course, I don't have any more time now, but it's not like me of last year could have possibly known that, right?

There are definitely some things I like about TSM 2. I can use things like percentage of crafting cost or market price without having to put each individual item in its own group. Retrieving mats I need from the bank is often a matter of a single click. Pricing has a bit more flexibility.

So what don't I like? The new design just seems to add a fair amount of extra complexity for the sake of complexity. TSM has never been the easiest add-on to simply pick up and use, and it often intimidated many people, but it was still straightforward enough that with enough practice and reading of tooltips, it wasn't that difficult to learn. Now, so many functions are different from what they used to be that when I first opened up TSM upon coming back to the game, I literally could not figure out how to make it work. I'm very thankful for the video guides Phat Lewts has made, and with those, I've managed to get settled in, but I still feel like it shouldn't have been as difficult as it was.

Personal Changes

On a more personal level, it's been a bit of a struggle getting back into the gold making game. Back in 5.2 and 5.3, in an attempt to give our struggling raid group whatever help I could, I was watching the Black Market Auction House like a hawk. I bought a few pieces of gear from there, not only for me, but for some of our core raiders as well. That took me from comfortably over gold cap to about 300k gold across all my characters on my main server...and all for a raid group that ended up falling apart anyway.

Now, I don't necessarily begrudge the expense. All of the people I actually bought for were people I'd consider friends still, despite the fact that we're not raiding. And at a certain point, making gold starts to seem pointless if you don't spend any of it. It's just that looking at where I was then, compared to where I am now, it seems like an awfully long climb to get back there.

What didn't help matters, either, was that I was gone long enough for my entire stock of goods on the AH to not only expire, but disappear from my mail. Getting my stock back to reasonable levels was a costly investment, and one that I've only started to recover from in the last week or two.

I also have, for whatever reason (likely shuffle related), a bank full of enchanting materials. There were about 5,000 Spirit Dust in my Enchanter's bank, along with proportionate amounts of Mysterious Essence and Ethereal Shards. It would be tempting, seeing as I'd completely forgotten about them, to see them as a windfall, but if I'm going to be honest, they're a loss. I presumably got them from disenchanting the jewelry I produced when shuffling Ghost Iron Ore, back when DEing those made sense. Nowadays,at least on my server, you're far better off vendoring everything but the rares, given how far enchanting mat prices have fallen. Still, looking at the bright side, at least I don't foresee having to buy more enchanting materials for quite a while, which saves time, if nothing else.

Conclusion

Despite all of this, though, I'm still plugging away, not spending too much time with it each day, but still turning a decent profit (currently about 7.5k a day, according to TSM Accounting). I probably could be doing better, and plan to look into some less obvious markets as we get further into the end-of-expansion lull, but given the minimal amount of time investment, it's not bad, either.

For all that the changes since I left have required adjustment on my part, and for all that I've felt the need to rant about said changes, the basic premise of my gold making remains the same. Find things I can make at a profit, and make them consistently. Expand as more sells. Always keep looking into new or underexplored markets. Make profit, and reinvest that profit.

In the end, it really is like the old saying goes. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Where Have I Been?

Long time, no see, gold makers. As I sit here writing this post, I'm painfully aware that it's been almost 8 months since I last wrote anything on this blog. That in itself isn't so remarkable. I took a break from the game, and honestly, I wasn't even sure if I was coming back. What's less understandable, I would even say inexcusable, is that I never told anyone reading this blog that I was going.

I'm almost as sorry as my Paladin's transmog (and couldn't think of another picture to use)

There was nothing dramatic or earth-shattering about why I left. After playing almost uninterrupted since late Burning Crusade, I was just tired of the game. Nothing was necessarily wrong with it, but my life was changing. Hell, I was changing. When I left WoW, for once I meant it when I said "It's not you; it's me."

Things with my guild didn't help either, but it was nothing any of them did. We'd transferred from a dying server to one of the biggest PvE servers, hoping it'd be easier to recruit there. What we actually found was that, especially after falling behind due to our various issues in the previous tier, no one wanted to give us a chance. This meant it wasn't at all uncommon to end up pugging the last two or three slots in a 10-man group. Our other tank and I were solid, so at least we only needed DPS and occasionally a healer, but it still wasn't fun, and made progression difficult, to say the least.

At the same time I was getting tired of WoW, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn was nearing launch. I'd played some beta, and was interested enough to pre-order for early access. I actually didn't stick with that game for long, but it distracted me enough that when I logged on one raid night and only half our group was online, my partner and I both finally said "screw it" and started our break.

If you're still reading at this point, you may be happy to know there's good news. I've come back to the game, albeit in a much more casual, limited capacity. There were quite a few factors: BlizzCon, a glut of unexpected free time around the holidays, the fact that I still follow a few gold makers, etc.

Still, I initially didn't know if I wanted to continue with the blog. I'm just getting back into things. I'm playing on a more casual basis. There are plenty of times I just don't have much to say.

Two things influenced my decision the most. Firstly, one of my favorite gold bloggers, Faid, returned from quitting the game. She's also taking a much more casual approach, not just to her playtime, but also to her blog. Frankly, I like her new attitude on blogging. It's something she does first and foremost for herself now, and if someone is helped or entertained by reading it, more power to them. I highly recommend you give her a look at ClockworkRiot.com. She's a very intelligent and entertaining person, and someone I admire very much.

Secondly, I've been listening to quite a few podcasts on the subject of gold making (and there are certainly many more than there were even a year ago). Things have changed enough since I left that I sometimes find myself floundering, and ideas are always helpful. Jim Younkin of Power Word Gold has a relatively new side venture called The GLDMKR Podcast. It's produced daily(ish), but each one is very easily digestible at about 5 minutes. I was getting caught up on that, and got to Episode 9. It was definitely different, with Jim launching right into a lengthy list of names for almost the entire episode. Near the end of it, I was surprised to catch my own name. Only at the end did he finally explain that this was a list of all the people who have started gold blogs in the last 3 years. Jim, if you end up reading this, I just want you to know that hearing that meant a lot to me.

In the end, I decided to shake the dust off the blog and continue it. What does it matter if my posting schedule is inconsistent, if I get busy sometimes, or don't have anything in particular to say? It's not about making someone else happy or living up to their expectations. It's about me, reflecting on my journey. If someone finds any information in it that helps them, that's great. If they don't, they don't. In the end, it's not about them.

This is my story.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

(Now I want that FFX HD remaster. Is it March 18 yet?)

20 Days of Gold Making, Day 4 - The Cautionary Tale of the Neglected Alt

Evening, folks. I apologize that it's been longer than expected since my last post, but you know how that pesky "real life" thing can get. My time for WoW in general got sporadic for a bit, and when that happens, the attention I give the blog also tends to suffer.

Anyway, I thought I'd finally dive back into Nev's "20 Days of Gold Making" topics. Why, then, did I skip from day number 2 to day number 4? Well, first of all, day number 3's question is about strategies when first starting out, which I plan on discussing further when I get into some "Back to Basics" sort of posts. Secondly, I had a...learning experience today that related to day 4's question.

So, without further delay...

4. Do you use a banker alt/guild? When did you start doing that & why?

When I first started out, I used my main, my Druid, as a banker. I had things down to a general process, for each day, which would go something like this:

1. Use any daily cooldowns on crafting alts
2. Check Druid's mail
3. Post anything that had expired
4. Queue up the various professions' Restock queues in TSM
5. Shop for all the mats
6. Send the mats off to the various crafting alts
7. Hop onto each crafting alt and do the actual crafting
8. Mail everything back to the Druid
9. Have the Druid post everything

That actually wasn't as much work as it seems. Steps 6 and 8 were also made much easier than they would otherwise be by the use of TSM Mailing. Still, not everything was perfect there. Step 6 in particular became much more complicated when two of my crafting alts needed the same mat. Herbs, ore, and especially the various Volatiles (thankfully gone in MoP) were common offenders there. I couldn't set TSM Mailing up to mail some of an item to one alt and some to another. (At least as far as I know. If anyone knows differently, please let me know.)

The other problem was the sheer amount of mail for the Druid to sort through in steps 2 and 8. Postal helped with that, of course, but bag space was still an issue, not to mention that only 50 items can be displayed in the mail at once. I would spend very long stretches of time going between long stints of mail opening and long post scans on TSM.

In addition, the fact that my Druid was the one with 99% of the gold wasn't ideal. The crafting alts may not have been really interacting with the Auction House at all, but many of them still needed vendor mats. Most notable was my Jewelcrafter. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Jeweler's Settings add up, and the vendor value of cut Zephyrites wasn't cutting it. Having to send more gold his way every so often was a bit of a pain.

There were other, more subjective problems with the arrangement, as well. Most notably, I just felt like I was spending so much time hopping between characters as opposed to how much time I was spending actually doing something. Granted, this was before I got my first solid state drive, so load times were longer, but the feeling likely would have been there regardless.

All in all, I like the way I do things now better. Almost everything is handled on the character that crafts it. Mats a character acquires that they have no use for (like cloth on anyone but my tailor) gets sent off to the appropriate characters, but otherwise, each character is mostly independent. Each handles his or her own mail, buying, crafting, selling, etc.

Honestly, it solves most of the problems of the other method quite well. Each character's mail load remains relatively small (except my Scribe, but that's the nature of that profession, really). I have TSM set to not count any other character's inventory, so it doesn't matter that, say, my Scribe and my Alchemist both have herbs. Each character handles their own gold, and is thus quite unlikely to go broke. (In fact, it often makes it much easier to get an at-a-glance idea of whether a segment of the business is profitable.) I probably spend about the same amount of time "toon hopping", but it feels like less, because I'm stopping and doing quite a bit between each hop.

It should be noted, however, that this system is not without its drawbacks. Unfortunately, I discovered one of them the hard way today. In cases where you just plain get very busy for a while, it can be surprisingly easy to leave a character alone for too long.

Under the current system, I'll start at the top of my list of characters, finish all of that person's crafting and posting needs, then move on to the next. Time has been limited lately, so I haven't always been making it all the way down the list. Still, I'd start from the top each day. I figured there would be so little needing to be done on those characters near the top that I'd still make my way down the list in good time.

I was corrected today, when I finally logged onto my Death Knight, who happens to be my Tailor and Enchanter. All of the greens I had sent from my Jewelcrafter recently were there in his mailbox...but nothing else was. It took me a while to realize what had happened, but finally, I figured it out. It had actually been more than 30 days since the last time I had logged onto that character to check his mail. As a result, every single mail message, whether it be gold from auctions that had sold, or items from auctions that had expired, was gone.

The tailoring stock wasn't a big deal. Cloth is still dirt cheap, for the most part, so I was able to restock fairly easily. Enchanting was another matter entirely. I don't exactly mass produce the high-end weapon and bracer enchants, since they're fairly slow sellers, comparatively. I usually only keep 3 of each in stock. Still, restocking those all at once meant needing almost 150 Sha Crystals, which are currently running between 200 and 300 gold each on my server. I was honestly tempted to wait until 5.4, when they would be much easier to mass produce (more on that in a future post), but ultimately, I decided to take the chance at profit now, particularly since we have no idea when 5.4 will actually go live.

Was it something I could afford? Yes, of course. Was it something I was happy about? Absolutely not!

Still, there's nothing to be done for it now. No amount of fretting will magically bring back what was lost. I just have to move forward and take it for what it is: a learning experience.

Don't Fear the Undercutter

This may not be news to many, but your most precious resource in the gold making game (and in general) isn't some ultra-rare item or some esoteric bit of knowledge. It's time, plain and simple. Every person only has so much of it, and once it's spent, there's no way to get it back. It's the ultimate limited commodity.

Now, of course, how much time one has to spend on WoW in general, and on gold making specifically, varies enormously from person to person. Some people have more free time than others. Some people have other things they want to do with that free time. And you know what? That's perfectly okay.

Yes, time spent is a factor in gold making, but is it as big of one as we may think? "But Tailswish," you may say, "I need more time, no matter what, so I can keep up with those undercutters!" There's certainly some basis for that line of thinking. It's not uncommon to get undercut within minutes, or sometimes even seconds, especially on high population realms.

And here's the biggest thing I've learned over the last couple of years: that's okay. No, really, it is. You don't have to spend all your time trying to stay on top of the people undercutting you. In fact, there's a good chance that trying to do so will hurt your sales.

When I first started out in my gold making journey, I had quite a bit more free time than I do now. More than that, the idea I had stuck in my head was that I had to "use" all of the free time, that doing so would give me a huge advantage. I had everything I crafted sent to one banker, and that banker would run a cancel scan every hour or so.

What was the problem with that? Between running the cancel scan, retrieving everything out of the mailbox, and posting it back up, the whole cycle would often take upwards of a half hour. This means that for the items that continually ended up at the bottom of that huge stack of mail, they were only even on the AH about half the time! It's true that the lowest priced auction sells, but you know what doesn't sell? An item that's not on the AH at all.

There's also another important thing to keep in mind. Supply and demand are constantly fluctuating, and although they'll always go back to equilibrium, there will also be plenty of spans of time when one is greater than the other. Specifically, there will be times, often several in a day, when demand outstrips supply for a given item. At that time, the cheapest auctions get eaten up, and the demand takes a healthy chunk out of the middle.

So what's the moral of the story? There will always be someone there to undercut you. Rarely, if ever, is "camp the AH and run continuous cancel scans" going to be a viable strategy. Instead, be patient. List enough of a variety of items, all at reasonable prices, and simply leave them be. Yes, plenty of them will expire, but that's okay. Plenty of the constant undercutter's auction don't sell, either, but he's paying more and more fees every time he relists, while you're only paying once every 24 or 48 hours. More importantly, you'll be pleasantly surprised at what did sell, and with nowhere near the time investment of the camper.

Gold is valuable, but your time is infinitely more so. Yes, all other things being equal, the person who has 8 hours a day to spend making gold will earn more than the person who has 1 hour, but not nearly as much more as you may think. Now, if you have that massive chunk of free time every day, and want to spend it at the AH, then hey, more power to you. But if you don't, or if you want to say, duck off and play some Borderlands 2 instead, don't think that means you can't make gold. It's about using what time you have effectively, more than anything else.

Personally, I fall much closer to that hour a day end of the spectrum than I used to, and I'm still doing just fine. I can even leave my auctions be for a day or two, and it's far from the end of the world. I don't fear the undercutter, because I see him for what he is, and I know I'll do better than he could ever imagine.

Not Dead - Again!

So, just a quick update before hopefully more posts to follow. I'm not dead, nor have I quit WoW, nor have I quit gold making. It's just been a combination of being busy with college and, honestly, not having a whole lot to talk about in regards to gold making.

It's a bit sad, really. There just hasn't been much of a change, at least in regards to gold making, since 5.2 or so. Some of the PvP gem priorities changed a bit with 5.3, but really, most of the same stuff's been working. I was doing Nev's 20 Days of Gold Making to give me some ideas, but I was far enough behind on that I felt the motivation waning.

If I'm going to be completely honest, a big part of me was ready to simply abandon this blog. I didn't post anything to that effect, perhaps because I felt like that would be too final. In every way that mattered, though, the plug had apparently been pulled.

What changed, then? There are a couple of things, really. First off, I had a period yesterday where I was trying to track down what was causing some crashes for me, so at the advice of Blizzard Customer Support, I was playing completely without add-ons. It made me realize just how much we all rely on add-ons, and how much of an advantage that gives us over those who only use the default AH interface (that unwieldy behemoth that remains largely unchanged since launch).

Now, that's not to say that I couldn't do what I do without add-ons. If push came to shove, and TSM, Auctionator, etc. were all broken in a critical moment like a patch day, I could deal. However, it would take me so much more time and energy, compared to how I'm able to do things with those tools. In short, like any tool, they're still only worthwhile if you know what you need to do in the first place.

In addition, my raid group's had a bit of a revolving door lately. Things are starting to stabilize, but for a while, there were quite a few new recruits or random people joining us on any given night. One thing that surprised me when meeting all these new people was how many of them complained about being broke. And when I say "broke", sometimes I mean "less than 2k gold across all their characters" broke.

We were having a conversation about gold in tonight's raid, and my guild leader said, with pride, "You know, Tails even has his own gold making blog". His comment, along with the realization that I haven't updated this thing since March, filled me with shame. That's the one thing I don't want to feel about this blog. I want to be able to proudly tell people with questions that I have a blog full of advice.

To that effect, I've resolved to start posting again, and quite possibly get back down to basics. The beautiful thing about basics, after all, is that they're useful to everyone. People new to the gold making game get the most good out of it, of course, but it's not at all uncommon for a more seasoned gold maker to see something simple they were missing, or have a much more complicated idea sparked by reviewing a basic concept.

For those of you that are still with me, I thank you for staying. I hope to have much more to show you in the future. Of course, if anyone has any specific topics they'd like covered, I'm more than happy to cover anything left in the comments.

For now, though, for the first time in far too long, I bid you all good night and good gold.

Rev Up Your Crafters - Blizz Gives Free Week to Lapsed Accounts

This post will be relatively short and sweet, as I'm actually finding myself with a ton to do in-game right this moment, but I just wanted to give you guys a heads up.

I logged on tonight to find things selling in much more massive quantities than I'm used to for "setting and forgetting" auctions.  For example, I logged onto my Jewelcrafter and took about 28k gold out of the mailbox, all from gems.  An entire stack of a few things had sold, along with smattering of everything else.  I'm crafting PvP gear and flasks almost constantly.  I didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I thought to myself "Where is this all coming from?"

Then I saw something interesting.  My former Guild Master and a couple others who'd quit, suddenly signing on for the first time in weeks.  Turns out, Blizzard is giving a free week of game time to people whose subscriptions have lapsed.  Presumably, they hope they'll see enough in 5.2 to make them consider coming back.

This represents a huge market.  These people have just come back to the game after an indeterminate amount of time.  They only have so much time given to them for free, and they want to try out everything the new patch has to offer.  And seeing as they have no idea whether or not they'll stay past that free week, they're not being stingy with the gold.

So, what should you be doing?  Get your crafting alts producing, and get posting the fruits of those labors.  Basically, anything that helps someone do Throne of Thunder, or progress through LFR in general, is a good thing.  PvP gear, Ghost Iron Dragonlings, flasks, gems, belt buckles, enchants, spellthreads, etc.  Get crafting while the crafting's good!

5.2 Round-up

Hey there, gold fans!  First of all, apologies are in order.  I know I've been a bit scarce lately.  Part of that's been class work getting heavy, but most of it was just plain not logging on to WoW much.  If I don't have much motivation to even log in, it's certainly difficult to write about the game.

Regardless, 5.2 is here, which means a return for plenty of us, including me.  It also has some fairly significant changes from a gold maker's point of view.  In-depth posts may follow, but for now, I'll settle for simply giving a birds-eye summary of what's happening.

Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing has undergone some rather significant changes.  Most notably, recipes have been added to skill up from 1-500 just from Ghost Iron Bars.  Be warned, however, that these recipes are often extremely inefficient.  They also have no real use other than their rather low vendor value (although this is true for much of leveling most professions).  In general, I would treat them as a gap filler for those levels where the old-school mats are either prohibitively expensive or just plain not on the AH.

All three of the major gear professions (Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Tailoring) have new PvP recipes and epic recipes available.  Unlike with previous patches, these are all learned through a random discovery method on a daily cooldown.  This means the basic 450 gear will probably be viable to sell for a while still, as everyone randomly learns their new recipes.  This is particularly true because these recipes are exact replicas of what was offered from the honor vendor last season, meaning many pieces are actually class-specific.

Unfortunately for Blacksmiths, their daily cooldown, Lightning Steel, requires a quest item from the new Thunder Forge, which is only unlocked when their server's Thunder Isle reaches a certain stage.  There were reports of players being able to get into that area early, but from what I understand, the NPC that drops the item has been hotfixed out.  Unfortunately, the way Thunder Isle works, even if your server has full participation each day, it will likely be a while before you see the Thunder Forge.

Leatherworking

Like Blacksmithing and Tailoring, Leatherworking has new patterns learned from a daily cooldown.  It's actually two daily cooldowns, but only one can be used any given day.  Magnificence of Leather and Magnificence of Scales are both BoP world drops from any Pandaria mob.  Much like meta gem recipes, these seem to be "smart drops" and will only drop if you're a Leatherworker (not yet known if a particular skill level is required). 

Personally, I recommend our good friends Wyrmhorn Turtles in Valley of the Four Winds for this one.  They're clumped relatively well, they don't have much health, and are already very popular with skinners.  I got both recipes in less than a dozen kills.

The daily cooldown will let you use either 20 Exotic Leather or 20 Prismatic Scales to make a Magnificent Hide, and teaches a random new recipe in the process.  This ability to make one of your Hides more efficiently each day is particularly nice since, from what I've seen so far, the new PvP recipes all take Hides exclusively.  You also seem to be able to learn both leather and mail recipes from either cooldown, so feel free to make whichever is more cost effective.

Tailoring

Like Leatherworking and Blacksmithing, Tailoring has new patterns learned from a daily cooldown.  Tailors have it particularly nice, though, as the discovery has simply been folded into their existing Imperial Silk cooldown.  Thankfully, though, the new PvP recipes don't require any Imperial Silk, just your normal Bolts of Windwool Cloth.

Jewelcrafting

Jewelcrafters have two new recipes of note:  Serpent's Heart and Primal Diamond.  Both seem to be world drops from Pandaria mobs.  Basically, anything that can drop your meta gem patterns can also drop these.

Serpent's Heart is essentially the new "Prism" spell of MoP.  It uses 3 Serpent's Eyes to make a container that will usually contain a random rare gem, but can occasionally also drop a Primal Diamond or the recipes for the Jade Owl and Sapphire Cub.  The recipe is, of course, on a daily cooldown.  Depending on your realm prices, this can be a gamble.  It's great if you get a Wild Jade, for example.  Not so great if you get a River's Heart (I know on my realm, even one Serpent's Eye is worth more.).

The new Primal Diamond recipe makes a Primal Diamond with 5 of every uncommon MoP gem, plus a Spirit of Harmony.  I guess this is great if you have extra Spirits just sitting around on your Jewelcrafter?  Don't expect this to change the meta gem market much, if at all.

Sunsong Ranch

There are a few noticeable changes with the farm.  First of all, if you're at Exalted with the Tillers, you can talk to Nana Mudclaw to get a quest that culminates in you taking over the farm from Yoon.  This means two things:  First, the farm house essentially becomes an inn, letting you rest and bind your Hearthstone there.  I guess that's cool, although there's an inn maybe 30 yards away already.

More interesting, though, is the fact that this allows you to fulfill work orders for the various 5.0/5.1 factions.  Each work order means using 8 plots, and the reputation reward is nothing to write home about (400 before any bonuses).  They're usually not the best use of your plots, but if you're still struggling with a reputation, they are one more thing you can cram into a day.  It should be noted, though, that the work orders won't let you get around rep prerequisites like Golden Lotus (sorry, Enchanters).

Also of note:  seed bags.  The seed vendor now sells seed bags of every type of seed.  Each bag has 10 charges.  When used, it puts a targeting reticule on the ground.  Click an area containing up to 4 plots of Tilled Soil, and it'll plant in all 4 of them at once.  It's so much quicker than planting everything individually.

Lastly, the patch notes say that the yield on special crops has been increased.  I'm still in the process of testing the results.  So far, Songbell seeds remain unchanged, but that's hardly surprising.  Raptorleaf seeds are still disappointing, giving 3-4 Exotic Leather instead of 1-2, still with no chance for Prismatic Scales.  Winshear Cactus seeds actually aren't half bad, each giving somewhere around 6-10 Windwool Cloth, as well as a decent chance for a Bolt of Windwool Cloth.  I'm still in the process of testing the rest.

Reputation

On the subject of reputation, there is one more notable change.  You can now champion a faction for your first dungeon run and scenario of the day.  Dungeons give a base of 300, while Scenarios give a base of 200.  This is somewhat similar to the old tabard system, except that it's limited to once a day.  To champion a faction, simply open your reputation panel and select the star next to your desired faction.  It's also interesting to note that this method will let you earn Shado-Pan or August Celestials reputation even if you're not Revered with Golden Lotus.

Conclusion

Phew!  That was actually quite a bit to cover, even in brief.  Still, that should be the most relevant changes from a gold-maker's point of view.  What are your favorite changes in 5.2?  Let me know in the comments.

Until next time, good night and good gold.

Gooooooooooaals! (20 Days of Gold Making, Day 2)

Greetings, gold fans!  I apologize for my absence, but I'm afraid my class load was hitting me harder than usual.  Still, things have calmed down a bit, so it seems like a good idea to continue with the "20 Days of Gold Making" inspired by Nev.

2. If you set yourself a goal, what was your goal & at what point did you set it?

 I think goals are just as important in gold making as they are in any other area of your life.  The hard part, though, is figuring out exactly where to set those goals.  Set them too low and there's no real sense of accomplishment.  Set them too high and you're likely to get frustrated when it either takes too long or just isn't possible.

That being said, I probably aimed a bit on the high side when I set my initial goal.  When I first started gold making, I decided almost right away that I wanted to be gold capped, to have a million gold.  That being said, I knew it also wasn't going to happen anywhere near overnight.  I knew it could take a year or more.

As it so happens, I set that goal in January of 2012 and reached it at the end of October.  That may not be as fast as some others could do it, but it was in my predicted timeline.  I have to say, though,, that if I were doing it all over again, I'd likely set a series of smaller goals leading up to it.  I could see myself making progress each day, but sometimes it seemed like so little compared to where I wanted to be.

Still, I did it.  I climbed to the mountain.  I made it to the top and then...well, that's a story for another day.  Specifically, it's a story for day 8's question.  So until then, keep striving for those goals, whatever they may be.

20 Days of Gold Making - Day 1 (Better Late Than Never)

Evening, gold fans.  Like many out there in the blogging community, I sometimes experience a shortage of that most important element:  topics.  I've lost count of the number of times I've been in the mood to post something here, only to realize I couldn't think of a particularly interesting topic.

That's not surprising.  Gold making is, in some ways, ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration.  That is to say, the vast majority of my time in game is simply spent going through my routine:  buying my mats, doing my crafting, posting, maybe occasionally cancelling.  There are weeks at a time where nothing really changes.  Shockingly, those parts aren't very exciting.

So when I saw Nev (of Auction House Addict) post her "20 Days of Gold Making" post, I was intrigued.  Give me a topic, and I'm perfectly willing to ramble on until you beg me to stop.  It took me a while to hop on board, but I'm going to try my hand at this.  I certainly can't promise they'll be 20 consecutive days, but my goal is to get all 20 covered over the course of...well, however long it takes me to do this.

With that in mind, let's head straight into Day 1.

1. When did you start gold making & what triggered it?

I'd venture to say I'm a bit newer to the gold making aspect of WoW than most of the bloggers out there.  I'd been playing since mid-TBC, but the event that sparked my interest in gold making actually took place in December of 2011, not too long after Dragon Soul released.

I was taken with the holiday spirit, and decided to get presents for all my raid members.  It wasn't a gold making exercise in and of itself, but most of what I got everyone was Argent Tournament pets, which were going for 3-5k at the time.  Multiply that by ten people (I was doing it in a sneaky, anonymous way, so obviously, I also needed something for myself), and it was enough gold that I really had to work for it.

That taught me that I could make gold, and that it was actually pretty fun.  Around the beginning of 2012, I actually entered into a competition with my partner to see who could reach gold cap first.  It was fun, but I don't know that either of us were that serious about it at the beginning.

Things changed, though, near the beginning of February 2012.  That was when my mother, who had been battling with breast cancer for the last three years, decided that the last couple of chemotherapy options available to her were too riddled with side effects.  She decided to end chemotherapy, and began in-home hospice care.

I'm thankful for the hospice team's help, but other than nurse visits and bathing visits, the rest of the care pretty much fell to me (and to the amazing family and friends who brought food and things like that).  Surprisingly enough, though, I still had some free time, and was in desperate need of a distraction.  I had classes (mostly online, as leaving the house was difficult), but that didn't take up all my time.  Maybe it should have, but when you're averaging 4-5 hours of sleep and pretty much unable to leave the house, it's funny how the free time builds up.

There was WoW, of course, but the nature of my free time didn't lend itself well to traditional WoW activities.  I might have as much as an hour or two at a time between Mom's medication, but at any given moment, she could need something.  Of course that's more important than any group I may be in or even any mob attacking me.

That's where gold making and the AH really started to shine.  They were one form of play where if I needed to drop everything and rush into the other room, I could do so with absolutely no consequences.  It was the distraction I so desperately needed.  And when the couple of weeks the doctors predicted turned into a couple of months (a gigantic mixed blessing, if ever there was one), gold making is one of the things that got me through the toughest time in my life.

I realize that's a bit more personal than something one normally expects to see on a gold making blog.  I apologize if I offended anyone by being so open.  I just wanted everyone in this wonderful community to know that their blogs, podcasts, and videos provided me with so much more than just virtual currency in a game.

Everything Is a Learning Experience

Greetings, gold fans!  I can't help but feel I've left you in the cold again.  A few weeks ago, I announced my new project for the new year...then promptly proceeded to post absolutely nothing further about it.  I do apologize most sincerely for that.  It wasn't right to just go silent, especially after disappearing for most of December.

So what happened?  Well, some of you who follow me on Twitter may have gotten bits and pieces, but let's start from the beginning.  My guild's raid nights were cancelled from December 24th through about January 7th.  No real surprise there.  There was Christmas, then people were on vacation, etc.

It was when I poked my head back onto my main server on January 9th, what should have been our next scheduled raid night, that things went in unexpected directions.  It turned out that, seemingly out of the blue, our raid leader/guild master was quitting the game.  He just felt the game wasn't really doing anything for him, he had other things to do with his time, etc.

Now, I don't have a problem with anyone deciding to quit.  It's a game, after all.  However, when you've been raiding with a group for almost three years, and most of them consider you a friend as well, it seems a bit rude to give no warning until the day you're leaving.  Doubly so if you're in a leadership position.

But that's neither here nor there.  The bigger concern was that there were 2 or 3 RL friends of his that were likely to go with him.  Now, that may not sound like much to some, but we're a 10-man group, and our server was inactive enough that we'd often have trouble getting a stand-in when one or two people were absent.  Four people would be unthinkable.

To be honest, I thought our raid team was doomed.  The one thing I didn't want to do was start all over with another group.  If I couldn't keep raiding with them, would I quit raiding?  If I quit raiding, would I quit the game?  I have my gold making, but even with this blog going, I mostly consider it a side project.  I couldn't imagine quitting, but I couldn't imagine losing my raid group, either.

Thankfully, the remaining members of our group pulled together in a way I wouldn't have expected.  Basically, we all got together and said "Well, I guess that means it's time for that server transfer we've been talking about, so we can start recruiting."  And just like that, within a couple hours, we were all moved over.  Of course, we had to wait for the guild itself to follow.  Apparently, in order to server transfer a guild, you need to have been the GM for at least 7 days.  Who knew?

The new server is treating us well, but as it happens, the new server is Zul'jin, the very same place where I had been engaging in my "from scratch" project.  At that point, the temptation to mix those gold pools was too much to maintain the integrity of the project.  Thus, it ended much quicker than I thought it would.  However, it was still a valuable learning experience, and I gleaned a fair amount of knowledge to share with you all.

Hopefully, I'll be posting more regularly now, but with classes getting back into full swing, we'll see.  If nothing else, feel free to poke me on Twitter if I go a week without posting.  Sometimes I'm not really busy, per se, just too distracted to notice how long it's been.

Happy New Year! A New Project Unfolds

Long time, no see, gold fans!  I'd definitely like to apologize for my extended absence.  Things have just been so busy with the holidays.  Combine that with the fact that there hasn't been anything terribly new in gold making, and it makes for a real lack of motivation to post.

Still, it's a new year, and I'm excited to take Swishco Ventures into 2013.  It's certainly been an exciting year, with many things to celebrate, from the start of this blog to reaching my first million.  And as much as I may sometimes complain, wondering if anyone's reading this thing, I can also look at the stats and see this blog is doing better than I ever imagined.

However, with success comes choices.  What should I do next?  What's the next big goal?  At first, I thought it would be 2 million, but that just doesn't seem to have the same appeal as that first million.  I'd rather have a learning experience, do something I haven't done yet.

So what do I want to learn, and perhaps through my experience, teach others?  I want to learn how to start from scratch (slowly develop an army instead of already having at least a decent basis).  I want to learn the differences between a medium population server where my side is the minority (like my current server), and a high population server where my faction's in control.

Then I remembered a discussion my guild had a while back about possibly switching servers.  It hasn't panned out so far (we've got a member or two holding out), but it gives me a flimsy excuse.  I can investigate and build resources on that specific server, rather than some random one that may not ever see any further activity.

Furthermore, as I bounced this idea around with my partner, he expressed the desire to join me, and to perhaps turn it into a competition as well.  So we're both going to start out on this new server, without any outside help, and with very few rules otherwise (one of the main ones being no Death Knights until at least one character is level 55).  Classes, professions, and methods are all up to the player's discretion.  First one to gold cap (or perhaps to make such a large gap that the other gives up) wins.

Thus, it is with great pride that I introduce the star of this new endeavor:  Naturalcause, Undead Hunter on Zul'jin-US.

Look for another post later in the week as I sort out what I want to do as far as professions.  Inscription has definitely crossed my mind as one, since much as I hate the glyph market, it is one of the only professions where you can make things right from the beginning that are useful to characters of any level.  I'm still definitely open to suggestions, though, so post them in the comment section if you have them.

Weekly Sales Summary 11/09/2012

Greetings, gold fans!  I apologize for being fairly quiet, but to be honest, it's been a slow week, especially for a Fair week (more on that a little further in).  When it's a slow week, the gold making process tends to be boring.  When that gets boring, it's harder to get motivated to write about it.  It hasn't been uncommon this week for little daily bursts of WoW to be followed by long stretches of playing my Mechromancer in Borderlands 2.

Still, sales have been made, so let's at least give a bit of an attempt to analyze them.

As you can see, Darkmoon cards are still prominent, but not as much as last week.  I also let a Tiger's Deck go fairly cheap, simply because that's the kind of server this is, especially now that we're into our second Fair.

What's happened to Darkmoon cards?  It's a combination of a few factors, I think.  With the very late implementation of the Ink Trader last Fair, very few people were able to make full decks, and many were left with an inordinate amount of Starlight Ink.  Making things worse is that the "I can just get everything from LFR" attitude has increased with ilvl 483 items available from Heart of Fear.  All in all, I think we're seeing Darkmoon cards fade into obscurity much quicker this expansion.  Not something I want to hear as someone with six Scribes, but there it is.

Sales for the week total 148,951 gold.  Not bad, but purchases total 224,806 gold.  Wait, what?  Oh, that's right.  The Black Market Auction House.  There are very few of the cosmetic things there that would catch my eye (although if, say, Mimiron's Head came up, it'd be another story).  However, Sunday night saw a metaphorical horse of a different color enter the BMAH.  By which I mean, not a horse at all, or a mount of any kind.

No, Sunday night featured something much more special on the BMAH:  my heroic boots.  I know some would say it's silly to spend too much on something that will just be replaced at whatever theoretical point in the future brings us tier 15, and objectively, they're probably right.  When you're a main tank for a raid group, though, it's hard to quantify that boost to your whole group's progress.  And that's how the last half hour of the auction turned into a bidding war between myself and a Gnome Monk, with me eventually winning the boots for 180k.

Still, viewed another way, that means I only spent 44,806 gold on more routine things, mostly crafting materials (especially ink).  For a week with 148k in revenue, I can live with 45k of expenses.

I do plan to do at least one more post between now and next week's summary.  I don't have a topic chosen yet, though.  This means if there's something you'd like to hear about, you should definitely leave me a comment.  If I don't get any, I'll still come up with a topic on my own, but I'd much rather know what you'd like to see.

Weekly Sales Summary 11/02/2012

Greetings, gold fans!  I know I'm a little late on this week's sales summary, and for that, I apologize.  To be quite honest, I just wasn't in the mood to blog yesterday.  It may sound immature, but I was in a bit of a funk.

Why, you might ask?  Well, Wednesday was kind of a big day for me.  It wasn't so much that it was Halloween (although we did actually end up with candy left at the end of the night), but because it was when I reached gold cap.  I was obviously ecstatic and rushed to write a blog post about it.

About 12 hours later, when I went to bed that night, I'd gotten congratulations from my guildies during our raid, but nothing from the blog.  No comments, no tweets.  That's not uncommon for a typical post, but I had hit gold cap.  It was a big milestone and accomplishment for me.

"But it's Halloween", I reasoned, and let it go at that.  Then all of yesterday also went by without a peep, and to be quite honest, that got a little depressing.  Long story short, I spent a good chunk of my time online that day feeling sorry for myself, and it delayed this week's summary.

It was stupid of me, I'll admit, and I'm not going to let it continue to bother me.  I didn't start this blog for fame or praise.  I started it because I enjoy writing, I enjoy making gold, and I figured maybe I could help some people in the process.  Even if I don't get a word of feedback, I can see by Blogger's statistics that the posts are being viewed.  People are seeing it, and if they're coming back, presumably it's helped or even simply entertained some of them.  As long as that continues, I'll keep posting here.

Now, enough of my sentimental whining.  Let's get to this week's summary.

Now, there are a couple of items in this week's top page that we can discard right now.  Relic of Niuzao and Breastplate of Ancient Steel both went for far less than they're worth, and in the cast of the chest, probably less than the cost of the base mats to make it.  They were a harsh lesson about my server:  People there just aren't willing to buy crafted epics (at least not at what they're worth).  I think Faid had a point in this week's Power Word Gold podcast when she said that with LFR, more casual players often have the expectation that they no longer have to buy gear (at least, beyond what's necessary to meet the ilvl requirements).  Thus, I got what I could out of the items and moved on.

Strangely enough, though, despite the relative lack of interest in completed Darkmoon Fair trinkets, there is plenty of interest in the individual cards.  I covered this briefly in my Profession Roundup Post, but essentially, people are much more willing to spend the gold when it's a couple thousand here, a couple thousand there, particularly if they can make some of the cards themselves.  This trend persists even when in the end, they've likely spent more than if they'd simply bought the trinket outright.

As you can see, Living Steel is getting downright pathetic.  Generally, if I can make even a slight profit on it, I'll make it, simply because of the chance of a proc.  However, today officially marked the first time when none of the base mats were cheaper on my server then the resulting Living Steel.  At that point, you're relying on a proc in order to not lose money, and that's never where you want to be.

Jewelcrafting also seems to continue making me gold, but I realize that's not the same for everyone.  I may have to make a post about it soon, but there is one thing to keep in mind.  Most of the prices on my server seem near the Undermine Journal's average across all realms, so most realms should get some value out of Jewelcrafting advice I give.  However, Jewelcrafting and Enchanting are two areas where certain servers just seem to wildly swing one direction or the other.

Anyway, that's about it for things of note this week.  Are things similar for you?  Wildly different?  Is there a specific market you're having trouble with?  Please let me know in the comments.

Gold Capped!

Remember my sales summary post last Thursday, when I said that at the pace I was going, I'd be gold capped in about two weeks?  Since then, I'd been noticing myself outpacing that, to the point where I woke up to a Halloween miracle today.  After logging into each of my alts and checking their mail, I found the little gold summary in the corner of my WoW client reading over 1 million!

Obviously, there was one thing to do before anything else:  take a screenshot!

So beautiful, isn't it?  After that, I wanted to experience truly being capped, so it was time to once again log onto each of my alts, this time to send all of their hard-earned gold to my Druid.

And a zoom-in on the bags, because I can't make the above pic any bigger without messing up all the formatting of the blog post:

I was a little disappointed by a couple of things.  First off, it wouldn't let me open the mail from my last alt, because the amount of gold contained there would have put me over cap.  So I had to return that gold (thank goodness for Postal's return button), and instead figure out the exact amount to send to myself that would put me at cap.  I also couldn't get the "You can't carry any more gold" error.  In fact, I tried vendoring something while at gold cap, and the vendor still took the item, while offering me nothing in return.

Still, I'm finally here. In a way, it's the finish line, but in an another way, it means things are just beginning.  I'm playing with the big boys (and girls) now.

I remember one of the first gold-making podcasts I ever listened to was an episode of the Power Word Gold Podcast where Jim and Jokine were discussing the view some people in the gold-making community had, that someone was only worth listening to if they were gold capped.  Neither of them believed that (Jim has, in fact, been wonderful as both colleague and resource), but there are still those out there in the community who think that way.  So, if any of those people are reading this, I have just one thing to say:

I'm capped now, so pay attention.

There's so much more I could (and will) say about this milestone and the journey that led me here, but for now, I'll simply let the joy of this moment speak for itself as I savor it.

One thing's for sure, though:  I may be capped now, but I'm not going anywhere.  I hope you'll join me right here for tomorrow's Weekly Sales Summary.  Until then, as always, good night and good gold.

Weekly Sales Summary 10/25

Hey there, gold fans!  Just a quick weekly sales summary today, like I promised you earlier in the week.  I can go on and on about what's been making me a profit, but a picture really is worth a thousand words.  Without any further delay, let's get into this week's screencap.

A few things should be noted.  In terms of pure sales, Living Steel was the best performer.  However, it also has the lowest profit margin, and unless you've got as many alchemists as I do, you're unlikely to have 28 to sell in a week, anyway.

Darkmoon cards are solid, when they sell.  Right now, there's a glut of supply, without much demand to eat it up.  Expired auctions are common, and a backlog's beginning to build.  In the long run, that's fine, as it means more in stock when the fair rolls around.  In the short run, though, it does dig into my profits, having to supply 6 Scribes with their Starlight Ink on a daily basis.

Ghost Iron Dragonlings have made it onto the first page, but their profit margin is actually not great.  However, each one sold almost inevitably means someone will be buying three Tinker's Gears.  Those didn't quite make it to the front page, but with their incredibly cheap mat cost, they're almost entirely profit.  ( For example, I sold 13 Smooth Tinker's Gear at 108 gold each.  Doesn't sound like much, but each one cost less than 20 gold to make.)

Other than that, results are fairly typical.  Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Jewelcrafting are all strong showers.  The only reason Tailoring hasn't made an appearance yet is because I have yet to get the Spirits on my tailor to buy the patterns.  I should have much more time to do that now, though.  My Druid has reached Exalted with Golden Lotus, will reach Exalted with Klaxxi tomorrow, and has reached Revered with the Shado-Pan.  Three less sets of dailies means more time to get those alts up and get them their patterns.

How did this all add up in terms of liquid gold?

Current total is 855k, up about 75k from my "I'm Not Dead" post a little less than a week ago.  Not a breakneck pace, but certainly not bad either (plus I'm sitting on a rather large pile of Darkmoon cards).  If I can keep going at this pace, I could be gold capped in as little as another couple of weeks.

MoP Profession Round-up

Greetings, gold fans!  I hope we're all having fun out there in Pandaria (even if the mass of dailies starts to feel more and more like work).  Amidst all of that fun beyond the Mists, however, you're probably wondering how to part your server's population from some of that sweet, inflationary daily gold flowing into the economy.

I'm here to help as best I can, with the profession round-up I promised in my previous post.  As always, note that this isn't necessarily a complete list, nor is it guaranteed to work on your server.  It's simply a summary of what has and hasn't been working for me in each profession.  Take it as an inspiration, then go out there and make it your own.

That being said, let's get down to brass tacks here.

Alchemy

 If there's one profession that's really disappointed me so far, it's Alchemy.  The main draw of the profession is, of course, the Living Steel cooldown.  Unfortunately, the profit margin on this seems to be getting thinner and thinner, as the price of Living Steel continues to drop (when it even sells).  Like with many things in Mists, I blame the Spirit of Harmony.  Other than the Living Steel Belt Buckle and the new Engineering-only helms, everything else that takes Living Steel takes Spirits.

At the same time, supply seems to be up compared to where Truegold was this soon into Cataclysm.  Logically, that makes sense.  There's no alternative like there was with Cataclysm's Living Elements.  What else are most alchemists going to use that cooldown on?

A few people have suggested attempting to reset the price of Living Steel.  I could see that potentially being viable, but after my last experience with resetting, I think I'll play it safe.  What I do recommend, however, is taking the time to look at your options and see what's the cheapest way to get your six Trillium Bars. The following options are available:

- Buy 6 Trillium Bars directly.
- Buy 12 each of Black and White Trillium Ore (assuming you have access to someone with 600 mining)
- Buy 60 Ghost Iron Bars (Hopefully your alchemist has already learned Transmute Trillium)
- Buy 120 Ghost Iron Ore (assuming you have access to a miner)

Hopefully, one of those options will provide you with some savings.  Do keep in mind, however, that transmuting your Trillium means a chance to proc extras.

Flasks may also be an option on some servers, though on mine, the profit margins aren't great.  Obviously, if flasks are profitable and you do decide to make them, changing your specialization to Elixir Master will help.

Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, and Tailoring

 Despite all the new options that have unfolded for these "big three" gear crafting professions, I've definitely had the most success with the same tried and true category:  crafted PvP blues.  All of the reasons these were popular in Cataclysm still hold true to this generation.  More than that, PvP stats are no longer counted against an item's budget of PvE stats, so there's actually no shame this time around in using them to get your ilvl up for heroics.

Now, the factor that somewhat complicates things is, again, the Spirit of Harmony.  Thankfully, none of the "Contender's" patterns require Spirits to craft.  However, each one costs one Spirit of Harmony to purchase.  They're also BoP, and can only be purchased from vendors in your faction's city in Vale of Eternal Blossoms.  In other words, don't get too comfy standing around Orgrimmar on these crafting alts just yet, at least not until they have all these patterns. (Your Leatherworker, in particular, will be visiting Pandaria for a long time.)

There is a benefit to these patterns costing Spirits, however.  On many servers, there are patterns that are completely missing from the AH.  These should obviously be where you focus your attention first.  You can't necessarily name your own price (try to keep them in line with the other pieces), but obviously, no competition means anyone buying that piece is buying yours.

Enchanting

For whatever reason, I haven't had much success in Enchanting yet.  I think it mostly comes down to the fact that I'm not babysitting the market, and competition is very common, since the only things in play right now are all trainer recipes (and more than that, often used to skill up).  My Druid will be hitting Revered with the Shado-Pan tomorrow, so I'm highly considering taking up Enchanting on her until my Mage can catch up, as this would make me the only person selling the high-end weapon enchants.

Other than that, the only real advice I can give for Enchanting is to remember your upward and downward conversions.  This keeps the high amount of dust from the Jewelcrafting shuffle from being wasted, can help get you cheaper mats, and can sometimes even turn a profit in and of itself.

So remember, when converting up:

5 Spirit Dust = 1 Mysterious Essence
5 Mysterious Essence = 1 Ethereal Shard
5 Ethereal Shard = 1 Sha Crystal (daily cooldown)

When converting down:

1 Sha Crystal = 2 Ethereal Shards
1 Ethereal Shard = 3 Mysterious Essence
1 Mysterious Essence = 3 Spirit Dust

Engineering

There's good news and bad news for Engineers in Mists of Pandaria.  The bad news is that, once again, Engineering isn't going to make or break anyone's fortune.  The good news is that for once, there's something they can make for gold that's not a vanity item.

The new Ghost Iron Dragonling is a fairly nice, entry-level trinket that actually doesn't require Engineering skill to use.  The trinket has no primary stats, but has three Cogwheel slots that can be filled with the new Tinker's Gear Cogwheels, which give 600 to a secondary stat of the wearer's choice.  It's actually a pretty solid trinket, and versatile enough to be useful to all classes. (Ironically, the ones who benefit the least from equipping it are Engineers, since Cogwheels are unique-equipped and their Engineering helm has two sockets.)

The Dragonlings themselves often have a rather narrow profit margin, but the Tinker's Gears are solid.  Then again, it's really tough to be unprofitable when they only take 2 Ghost Iron Bars each.

Inscription

I've got a little confession to make.  I hate the glyph market. It's one of those few markets where babysitting the AH is non-negotiable.  Particularly after my 5.0.4 reset fiasco (and the literally thousands of glyphs it left me with), it'll take a very major event to get me back into that market.  I made enough glyphs to get my Scribes to 600, but that's it.

Still, there's more to Inscription than just glyphs.  Most notably, there are Darkmoon Cards.  These are realistically what you'll want to do with your Scroll of Wisdom, and with the Ink Trader finally fixed, it shouldn't be too much of a pain getting the Starlight Ink you need.

The first Darkmoon Fair of Mists has come and gone, and I certainly should have been in a good position.  I was, as far as I could tell, the only one Horde-side on my server able to scrape together even one trinket, let alone the three I had when all was said and done.  In reality, though, I learned a painful lesson about my server: no matter how rare they are, most of the people there just aren't willing to spend above a certain (relatively small) amount of gold on gear.  There are only about three progression-minded raiding guilds over here, and only one of those doesn't consider itself "casual".

Eventually, I ended up selling two of the three trinkets to raid members at steep discounts.  More specifically, Relic of Chi-Ji went for 50k, while Relic of Yu'lon sold for 20k.  While these still more than covered my ink prices (especially since I also ended up with a good two or three dozen other cards), it was still disappointing compared to the 100k+ prices people on other servers reported.

Strangely, though, while no one seems to want to buy the trinkets outright, there are plenty of people buying up individual cards.  I suppose a few k at a time seems a lot more palatable.  The decision then becomes one of selling the cards now, or waiting until the next fair?

Certainly, cards tend to go for higher amounts during the fair, as people scramble to complete decks.  However, as we get ready for Heart of Fear/Terrace of Endless Spring to open, that means more trinkets coming into the game, which lowers the value of the DMF trinkets, and consequently, the cards that compose those decks.  It's a calculated risk either way, to be sure, but for what it's worth, I've chosen to start selling mine now.  Realistically, I'll probably have some left when the fair rolls around again.

Jewelcrafting

As always, this one's a real gem (pardon the pun). Despite the MoP green jewelry taking more gems than its Cataclysm counterparts, the shuffle is still generally alive and well.  Then again, it's not uncommon lately for me to find ore under 5 gold per ore (a price I would've been happy with even through most of Cataclysm), so at that price, it's hard not to make a profit.  Obviously, this will vary from server to server.

Also, while there's no real need to level your Jewelcrafter, be sure to take them for a quick trip to Jade Forest to pick up all the cuts that use Serpent Eyes.  Mai the Jade Shaper is just sitting around Greenstone Village, not phased or anything.  She'll teach you all of those cuts as well as the ilvl 450 jewelry that uses Serpent Eyes, such as Band of Blood.

(If you have some spare time or are going to level up that character anyway, you can go killing things in Pandaria for your meta gem cuts, but it's by no means required, and certainly not a big component of Jewelcrafting profit.)

Generally, after I've prospected all my ore, the first thing I'll do is take care of restocking any of that ilvl 450 jewelry I've sold.  After that, I'll take any rare gems left over and take a look at the Jewelcrafting page over at The Undermine Journal for my server.  As I look at each gem color, if I have a cut that's currently selling for more than the raws (and I don't already have a bunch on the AH), I'll make that cut.  For the first color I encounter that I don't have a profitable cut, I'll use my daily cooldown in hopes of discovering one.  Everything else, I sell raw for now.

Lastly, the uncommon gems are used to make Shadowfire Necklaces and Ornate Bands.  Any blues get put on the AH for around 200 gold.  The rest get sent off to my Enchanter for DEing.  As I mentioned, though, the Enchanting business is a little slow, so I'm starting to sell some of the mats raw for now to prevent having a bunch of overstock.

Conclusion

As you can see, just about every profession has something to explore and a way to make gold in Mists.  In fact, this post ended up much, much longer than I had planned, with each category being almost long enough to be a post on its own.  Still, hopefully that gives you some ideas.

On Thursday, I'll be starting my weekly summary posts again, so you'll be able to get an idea of exactly what's been making the most gold for me.  Until then, it's off to bed for me, so I can wake up in time to do all the things I need to do daily in-game.

I swear, there just aren't enough hours in the day...