Herding Elekks

So I've been dabbling around with some of my non-jewelcrafting professions a bit, trying to get a feel for other markets, learning what sells and what doesn't, stocking up a bit on mats for 4.2, etc.

Here's some stuff I've been doing in my other professions that's new-ish to me:

Alchemy
Found a bunch of Arcane Crystals up on the AH for 1g 25s a piece. Bought them all. At the same time, there were some Thorium bars up on the AH for under 50s a piece as well. Bought all those. Transmuted a bunch of Arcanite Bars and have been selling them for roughly 30g per. That's a pretty sweet profit margin.


Enchanting
I'm still mainly following a lot of the ideas laid out by Faid in her Enchanting Edition of Faid's WoW Gold Rush. Except now I'm using some of those Wrath materials in Enchanting scrolls.

Cold posted a while back about how Enchant gloves - major agility is still a very good enchant for agility using classes in Cataclysm. This got me looking around a bit and here are a list of item enhancements (not just enchants) and buff items from Wrath that have no Cataclysm equivalents:

Enchant Cloak - Major Agility (+22 Agi)
Enchant Gloves - Major Agility (+20 Agi)
Enchant Boots - Greater Assault (+32 attack power)
Earthen Leg Armor (+resil leg armor)
Insightful Earthsiege Diamond (meta with chance to restore mana on spellcast. Nice on very long fights)
Blackened Worg Steak (Track humanoids buff food.)

I don't sell all of these, but they are all items worth remembering if you happen to have the recipe.

I've also been selling Enchant Chest - Major Health scrolls. This enchant gives +100 HP to a chest slot item. It takes 2 small brilliant shards to make. It is not the BiS enchant for heirloom chest pieces (although I understand it might be very good for 19 twinks?), but it has two things going for it that the +4 stats BiS heirloom enchant doesn't:
1. It is fairly easy to get a hold of the recipe. (Limited Supply from Qia in Winterspring.)
2. The mats are stupid cheap, allowing me to sell this recipe as a bargain enchant.

To make the above more clear: It costs me roughly 20 silver to buy the materials for this enchant. (Including the Enchanting Vellum.) The scroll is selling quickly at 15g per scroll, which is both a reasonable amount to spend on an enchant for an item you will use for 80 levels and just stupid amounts of profit. I almost don't want to discuss this here because then someone from my server will start making it and there will be an undercutting war and then it will be as sad as Enchant shield - Vitality is there right now. :(

On the other end of the spectrum, I sold my first Enchant 2H Weapon - Agility scroll this week. The market for it is very small (pretty much just feral druids), but it's a great heirloom enchant.


Inscription
I sold some Mysterious Fortune Cards a few nights ago, but it made me feel kind of bad and I hate barking, so I don't think I'll keep up with that. I am however, still making MFCs, and cooking them into Fortune Cookies. I was selling them, but now I'm saving them to sell in 4.2 when I'm hoping the prices go up. (Especially if more people start pugging with the nerfs to Tier 11 normal mode raid content.)

I've also been toying around a bit with actual glyphs. I've probably sold about 800g worth of glyphs with only about 20 researched glyphs (and very few of them any good). There's some solid competition on my server, but a nice early afternoon opening for me to sell a few glyphs on weekdays.

I've currently got a few Adventurer's Journals up on the AH just to test out the market for them. (If they don't sell, I can use them while leveling my priest, who is allllmost to Northrend!)

This post is an entry for the June Cold's Gold Factory Blog Carnival. Cold asked:



What have you learned from the real world that you have applied in the WoW auction house?

Originally, I had this whole only-sort-of-facetious post written up about how I learned everything I know about making gold from Mark Shapiro, but the more I thought about it, the more it felt a bit glib. I may still make that post, but I didn't feel it was completely appropriate to the topic at hand.

But in real life, I am not particularly entrepreneurial. I don't sell stuff on eBay or work on commission. I work a 9 to 5. I am mostly fiscally responsible, but I am a compulsive saver. This attitude is great if you're always planning for a rainy day in real life, but not so great when it comes to making gold. I actually have to fight against my severe risk-aversion when I make moves on the AH sometimes.

However, there is one thing I've learned in real life apart from "Keep track of your expenditures and earnings every month" and "budget your spending" and "don't buy stuff you have no idea how to use just because it's on sale."


Your reputation matters.

My parents own a small business in a small town. Growing up, every little bitty aspect of our lives could make or break what Important People thought of our business, and therefore affect the kind of business we got.

While your server is probably not a small, gossip-y Midwestern town, outright trollish behavior can affect whether you get buyers, especially on items that you bark. If you have a reputation as a ninja, people may not buy your BoE epics because they don't know if you got them legitimately. If you are regularly a jerk to people in Trade, you may have difficulty selling to people through that venue. Sure a little mutual trolling can be good publicity, but at a certain point, I don't want to buy anything from you anymore.

Honestly, this does affect how I make gold. I don't cuss in Trade. I sell vendor items under a separate toon that's not associated in any way with my main. I do not snipe off the Neutral AH. I aim to be polite to people I sell to "in person" who have commissioned me in Trade. I try to give a good and fair tip to people whom I commission from Trade. When barking, I make a point not to spam Trade.

Keep a clean house. Know the line between being smart enough to take advantage of others' mistakes and being a slimeball. Your line might be different than mine is (my background suggests that it is), but be aware that you do have a reputation, and your actions influence it.

Several months back, when I was first getting into enchanting, I made a post in which I talked about selling Enchant Gloves - Minor Haste. This enchant is extremely powerful on very low level characters, and can be put on a pair of non-binding white-quality gloves and passed around to many alts. At the time I made the post, I was still thinking about the required materials (2 Large Radiant Shards, 2 Wildvine) in pre-Shattering terms, and felt they were fairly plentiful/cheap materials relative to the amount of gold for which I could sell the scrolls. This was a mistake.

Sure, back in the Azeroth we once knew Wildvine dropped like crazy off every troll in the Hinterlands. I know I personally had so much sitting around at one point I just vendored it because it did not sell on the auction house. Most of its uses are in vanilla recipes that have an extremely niche market. Many of those recipes (mainly the leatherworking ones) are no longer obtainable by new players.

But when the Shattering happened, Wildvine was one of the many low-level materials whose drop rate was seriously messed up. What used to drop like candy now dropped... well, not very many places at all. According to Wowhead, Wildvine now has two sources: The first is as a rare drop while herbing Purple Lotus, and the second is as a rare drop off a mob type in the Ruins of Zul'Mamwe in Northern Stranglethorn called Skullsplitter Witch Doctor. The drop rate is extremely low. I do not recommend farming for Wildvine.

However, I do recommend considering selling any Wildvine sitting in your guild bank, and keeping your eye out for people selling it for a cheap pre-Shattering price on the AH to flip. (Obviously, check The Undermine Journal or several weeks of Auctioneer scans before deciding on your snatch price. AH responsibly!)

Number of Sales: 857
Gold from Sales (Gross): 41606g 6s 75c

Top 5 Gold Makers Over-all
Shadowspirit Diamond (uncut)
Greater Celestial Essence
Reverberating Shadowspirit Diamond
Ember Shadowspirit Diamond
Infinite Dust

Top 5 Gold/Sale
Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Agility
Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Mighty Intellect
Truegold
Book of Glyph Mastery
Pristine Hide

Top 5 Number of Sales
Greater Celestial Essence
Greater Cosmic Essence
Shadowspirit Diamond (uncut)
Stormchops
Delicate Inferno Ruby

Cut Inferno Ruby prices got stupid low on my server for a while there, so as you can see, I chose to make my Carnelians into Carnelian Spikes to disenchant much more than I transmuted them into Inferno Rubies. It was my first major holiday as a goldmaker, and I did see a lot of business this weekend. Yay for three-day weekends!

My shaman is up to 82, and I've actually been able to find Whiptail cheap enough that I can mill it into pigments, turn it all into inks, and make a profit just selling the Inferno Inks. I'm splitting my Blackfallow Inks between trading in for more Inferno Ink, and MFCs to turn into Fortune Cookies and sell.

I ended up making a little under 500g on the Stormchops from The Stormchops Experiment. Most of my sales were to one guild, so if I do this again, I might look into selling directly to a guild still working on the Critter Kill Squad achievement. I'll probably finish up selling this last stack I have, then hop back out. I'm not in love with barking.

Finally picked up My Sales, so I can give actual accurate information about what I've been selling this week.

Number of Sales: 737
Gold From Sales (Gross): 31457g 50s 99c

Top 5 Gold Makers Over-all
1. Shadowspirit Diamond (uncut)
2. Bold Inferno Ruby
3. Brilliant Inferno Ruby
4. Delicate Inferno Ruby
5. Truegold

Top 5: Gold/Sale
1. Truegold
2. Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Mighty Intellect
3. Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Agility
4. Illusion Dust
5. Eternal Shadowspirit Diamond

Top 5: Number of Sales
1. Greater Cosmic Essence
2. Bold Inferno Ruby
3. Volatile Air
4. Shadowspirit Diamond (uncut)
5. Delicate Inferno Ruby

Not sure if the highlight of my week was the 5 Eternal Shadowspirit Diamonds up for 5g each I've flipped for 100g+ per, or the 30 stacks of Obsidium Ore under 10g I bought last night.

A bit nervous about how many of my eggs are in the Jewelcrafting basket, given that green gem vendor prices are getting nerfed again in 4.2. (Thanks for the heads up, @Sinshroud!) Having a ton of fun playing with the Disenchanting side of enchanting right now, though. (Totally inspired by Faid's latest WoW Gold Rush video.)

I've barely been trying to play with glyphs for, like, a day and it's already making me want to cry. I'll probably finish leveling it, but I don't think it's going to wind up being a huge part of my ~gold making schema~ for now.

The Thorium Brotherhood is a faction from the original WoW game, and it used to be really tedious and expensive to get. Some people on Wowhead used to suggest that this rep should have been part of the Insane in the Membrane grind.

Except now it is both easy and worthwhile to take a little bit to get this reputation to at least Revered.

A lot of people in the blogosphere have discussed this, but the reason you want Thorium Brotherhood reputation is simple: +22 Intellect to weapon. Back when heirloom weapons were first introduced, the ideal enchants for the caster weapons were Spellpower or Healing Power. But with class mechanics changes from patch 4.0 forward, the +22 Int enchant is now the Best in Slot enchant for caster heirlooms. (Or casters in the 19 or 29 twink bracket.)

So, how do you get this reputation? There are two methods, and I'll discuss them both, as well as how to get the formula once you have the needed rep!

( read on... )

Enjoy your shiny new heirloom enchant!

I haven't been updating a lot lately, sorry! I've been doing a lot of rep grinding. Lots and lots of rep grinding. And dying in Zul'Gurub. Lots of dying in Zul'Gurub.

I finally finished up Honor Hold, which means I'm hopping back out of the primal elements market. I am fine with this, because I really do not need to run Heroic: Shattered Halls any more. Ever.


( So you're grinding Steamwheedle Cartel rep, you poor poor person )


In other, more exciting news, my enchanter is finally to 425 skill. You know what that means...


Get down with your bad self, little worgen priest. Get down.

That's right. Awwww yeah, it's time to get on the proper Obsidium Shuffle train. Updates on that in the future.

Chocolate Cookies are still selling well. I've been selling a lot of fairly low profit margin, but still profitable, Hardened Elementium Bar. I also swam my mage down to Booty Bay, and am actually doing okay for myself selling Alliance vendor pets to the Horde. (And, slightly depressingly, Alliance.) I haven't really started in on cooking recipes apart from the Roasted Moongraze Tenderloin yet, but I should.

I'm also starting to consider taking a day or two out of my Life-to-Air transmute schedule to transmute Fire in order to stock up for 4.2. We shall see.

Okay, not a big deal for most of you, but it's a big deal for me.

And then I finally bought 280% flying for my herbalist, so I'm back under 100k again, but I was there for a while!

Obsidium Ore is sometimes under 30g a stack on my server, so apparently I'm still in the gem market for now.

I love Azuremyst Isle. This is partially because my first character ever was a Draenei, so it's sort of the place where I know where everything is. I spent weeks slowly leveling through all the Azuremyst/Bloodmyst content when I was a wee noob, so it's very calming and homelike to me. I mean, for goodness' sake, I keep my bank alt in the Exodar.

Today, I decided to work on leveling herbalism and skinning on a human rogue character I have, and I decided to do this on Azuremyst. It's not just that I love it, it's that it's a genuinely good place to do this. Why? There's a lot of cool stuff on Azuremyst Isle.

Low Population Pretty much the only people you are going to run into in Azuremyst Isle are lowbie draenei characters. That means you're not going to run into much farming competition. If your server isn't high pop, there is a pretty good chance that you will be the only person in the zone.


Holy cow, Draenei men are huge.

Recipe: Roasted Moongraze Tenderloin One of the few Alliance quest recipes that is not also sold by Kendor Kabonka. It comes from The Great Moongraze Hunt, a level 6 quest with no pre-reqs. I make a point of bringing my Alliance toons to Azuremyst at least once to do this quest, so I can sell the recipe to the Horde. (Even if you don't have a system in place to sell to the Horde, this recipe will eventually sell on the Neutral AH.)

Small Eggs The best drop rates for Small Eggs are in Eversong Woods, which is, for obvious reasons, easier to farm if you're Horde. For less adventuresome Alliance, Azuremyst has two great sources of Small Eggs. If you're leveling skinning, the various Timberstriders don't have the greatest drop rate, but are skinnable, unlike the vultures in Westfall. (The other good source is the moonkin on Silvermyst, who have a better drop rate than the vultures in Westfall.) Two times out of the year (Children's Week and Winter Veil), Small Eggs become incredibly expensive, and are worth stocking up on.

Blood Elf Bandit Mask A popular white drop from the Blood Elf Bandit NPC found on Azuremyst. I wouldn't farm it, since he's hard to find/not always up, and the drop rate is pretty low, but set up a targeting macro (since he's stealthed), and mash it when you run past a spawn point, just in case.

The Vendor Shuffle
Yep. I don't do the full Obsidium Shuffle (my enchanter is too low level), I'm a "buy, cut, vendor" type. Since the information about the lowered vendor cost of gut uncommon gems on the PTR came out, I've actually been on one giant last hurrah of vendor shuffling Obsidium. This is not because I make sooo much gold shuffling 48g stacks of Obsidium or whatever, but that because I'm either making small amounts of gold, or, worst case, breaking even, on the uncommon quality gems, this is actually a source of essentially free rare-quality gems. I'm about half stockpiling and half cutting-AHing the rares I get.


Rare gems
Inferno Ruby: I try to sell at least 1 of each main stat (int, str, agi) each day. On my server, the Strength rubies sell the fastest and most frequently.

Ember Topaz and Demonseye: I actually sell these uncut. They are popular enough gems that people usually buy them (if not immediately, then on the second relist), but there are so many possible cuts, and so few sockets that people might use these gems in, that I find I do less relisting selling them uncut than cut. I think about 75% of my AH strategy is based around that I hate relisting.

Ocean Sapphire, Dream Emerald, Amberjewel: TANK GEMS. Oh my god. People keep going on about how these color gems don't sell, and no, they are not nearly as expensive as the red/orange/purple gems, but they do sell. Slowly enough that I try to never have more than one of a cut up at a time, but they sell. Especially now that everyone that can tank is gearing up a tank set so they can take advantage of the Dungeonfinder Call to Arms coming in 4.1. I sell the +Stamina blue cut, the +Stam/+Mastery green cut, and the +Mastery yellow cut. If there's some fierce undercutting going on on the +Mastery Amberjewel cut, I sometimes try selling a +Resilience cut instead. These usually cost more, but require more relisting.


Volatile Life --> Volatile Air
My most dependable income after vendor shuffling. Depending on transmute procs and if I buy my Life or not, this is anywhere from 150g to 400g profit pretty much guaranteed every day. For like, literally 5 minutes of effort.


Low level enchanting mats
I'm pretty much not selling lowbie enchanting scrolls right now. Partially because I'm low on Small Radiant Shards and Wildvine for Minor Haste and Fiery Weapon enchants at the moment, and am a bit nervous about buying them instead of farming my own. But also because the more serious business twink/BoA enchant market is just a little bit too already spoken for for me.

So I've figured, if I can't compete with them on the scrolls, I can at least take their money selling them mats. Plus, I like farming anyway.

I leveled my priest's Blacksmithing from 300-340 straight through with Enchanted Thorium Blades, so I've got a ton of Greater Eternal Essences I'm slowly selling off. Illusion Dust is also fairly pricey, so all greens of around the level to produce these materials get sent to my enchanter right away.

As for stuff I farm (or have farmed in the past), I've also sold some Essence of Air and Essence of Undeath, both of which have gone up in cost fairly dramatically recently. I am definitely thinking of starting to schedule a little time one day each week for farming these materials. Possibly also Wildvine if it's as rare as it seems to be from the few times I've looked for it on the AH.

I also definitely need to get my enchanter to the point when she can solo some of the later vanilla dungeons for enchanting mats. SOME DAY.



Cloth
I solo TBC instances for rep. Constantly. I have buckets of netherweave and no tailor to make bags. I have a set price I always sell netherweave for (as expensive as I can and still be pretty much guaranteed that the Netherweave bag makers on my server will buy it), and while it's not a huge amount of my income, it adds up.


Outland materials
Primals (except earth), Khorium bars, Fel Iron ore... People buy it.


Prospecting any Adamantite Ore I mine
No, really. On my server I've found this is more profitable than selling the ore most of the time. (However, I made a few Adamantite rods while leveling BS, and I am not sure that that might not be more profitable. I'll need to monitor prices for a while.)

Adamatite Powder is combined with Primal Earth to make Mercurial Adamantite. This moves slowly, but moves, and is the best way I've found to move my Primal Earth aside from bargain basement prices.

Rare quality gems are vendored. They vendor for 3g uncut.

Green quality gem are put on the AH for folks leveling jewelcrafting. I like to wait to post them until they're up to at least 1g75s per gem.

Golden Draenite (the yellow uncommon gem) is a special case. It's used in crafting the flying carpet mount, and therefore sells for much more than the other color gems. When I prospect some Golden Draenite, I do a little dance.


Deepstone Oil
My guild is still working on getting the +90 stat feast recipe, which means I (and the one other fisherman in guild) need to fish from pools a lot. A lot. I decided to go fish up some Albino Cavefish, make some Deepstone Oil, then sell it in 8 stacks for people having the Vial of Sands mount crafted. This is not a hugely profitable venture, since not that many people are having the mount crafted, but they do move, albeit a bit slowly.


Stuff that I've tried and am not super impressed with:
Titansteel. I have buckets of Titanium bars to get rid of. (I transmuted a bunch when I was leveling Alchemy, since it was pretty easy to get the Saronite bars.) So I thought making titansteel when I had the Eternals available might be a good choice. But I'm not totally convinced it's not better to just sell the Eternals and find something else to do with my Titanium bars.

Primal Might. Similar to the Titansteel. With the amount of listing/relisting, I think it would have been better to just sell the primals. the one thing this does have going for it is that it does use up that pesky bankspace eating Primal Earth.

Vendor recipes. The market's just so flooded, it's not worth getting in on. I'm working on getting rid of what I have in my bank, but I'm not adding them to my "to pick up regularly" list. Waste of gold for me.


Stuff I need to try
Selling to the Horde. I have no interest in getting a second account to sell stuff directly to the Horde on their own AH, but I think I may try putting some Alliance pets up on the neutral auction house and see how quickly they sell. I used to do this, but got out of the habit. Now that my mage is high enough level that she can port all over the place, I might set her hearth to Booty Bay, and look into doing this again, on a more scheduled basis.

Inscription. I hate hate hate hate hate relisting. Hate it. This is why I changed my original Scribe over to a Blacksmith and washed my hands of the market. But I think I ought to give it another try.