Gold Halved?! Stockpiling for 4.2

Hello infrequent visitors. It often feels like I am writing to myself when I post entries here. Promoting yourself in the blogosphere takes commitment, tenacity and determination. Even an attitude change is enough to increase traffic. But this blog is simply my little writing outlet, entwined with my passion for the number one subscription MMO — a world that has been a part of my life for the past six years, and counting.

Whether one person or 200 people read any given entry, I will continue to write and express my own experiences and thoughts surrounding our beloved and ever-changing and maturing World of Warcraft. I'm just content with putting into words what is going through my mind and my gaming life at this moment. Promotion can be reserved for traffic-hungry bloggers within the community. :)

Now that that little spiel is out of the way, let's wax WoW, shall we? Shine on, shine off.

My gold reserves have been halved. I spent almost 35,000 of 70,000 gold! Perhaps "spent" is the wrong term. I invested a large sum of money into various areas for a predicted return. ROI may be 90%; it may be 200%; but whatever the outcome, just the thrill of spending — what is to me — so much gold makes the whole endeavour worthwhile.

I stepped out of my comfort zone in a much bigger way than at the end of Wrath. Back then, I kicked off my gold-making dabbling with a stroke of luck. And since I play casually and have taken a couple of breaks from playing since Cataclysm hit, I haven't really put much effort into utilising much of what is at my fingertips in order to increase my bankroll.

With 4.2 on the horizon, I decided to change this. I must rein myself in to prevent obsession — which also means following my own advice of not comparing my own experience and goblinning with others in the community. But I have taken some risks and have been preparing myself to try and turn my recent investments into profit.

Let's take a look, shall we?

Truegold
JMTC has been a big help, once again. I had already determined to stockpile Truegold, after having realised that there are new craftables coming in 4.2 that require 8x Truegold each. I had just started buying up Volatiles and transmuting a bar a day, when I read the blog entry about stockpiling the stuff. That was when I decided to just buy as much as I could while also transmuting once a day. So far, I have bought around 45 bars off the AH at under 500g each (the cheapest was around 465g, but that is rare). 495 x 45 is around 22k gold spent. On Truegold purchases alone. The Volatiles also put quite a dent in my funds. But at least I am somewhat stocked up on those, too!

Expected ROI is 200% for these. No one can say for certain just how long after the patch hits until blacksmiths will be in desperate need of bulk Truegold; or whether there will be quite so much of an increase in value. One thing is certain, though: there will be profit.

Pristine Hides
Another JMTC blog entry put me onto this (thanks, Mageshadow! And thank you to the anonymous commenter who pointed it out in the first place!). It was actually something I missed. I had considered trying to stock up on Dreamcloth, because I know that just as Truegold is going to suddenly be in great demand for blacksmiths in 4.2, so too is Dreamcloth going to suddenly be in great demand for tailors! I decided not to invest in Dreamcloth, however, as I don't want to overextend myself. I could, potentially still stock up a little, but when you diversify too much it can become overwhelming.

Pristine Hides are not only going to be in high demand, but they are also going to possibly be in greater demand than even Truegold. 'What?' you might ask. 'What is the biggest difference between the new blacksmithing craftables and the new leatherworking ones?' The answer, my friend, is item level!

Take a look:

• Blacksmithing epics that require 8x Truegold are iLevel 365. The iLevel 378 ones each require 8x Living Ember.
• Leatherworking epics that require 8x Pristine Hide are iLevel 378. They also each require 8x Living Ember.

Pristine Hides are currently sitting at around 225g on my server. I bought up as much Savage Leather and Heavy Savage Leather as I could where it worked out to under 200g to hand in for a Pristine Hide (each costs 10x Heavy Savage Leather, which is 50x Savage Leather). Maybe half of what I bought was closer to 150g. I also expect a 200% ROI on these.

Primal Might
Now for some reasoning of my own. Researching other potentially profitable transmutes, I noticed that Primal Mights were selling on Proudmoore for anywhere between 275-420g. Why should this matter? Aren't they an obsolete item? Not quite. There are two uses for Primal Mights: Runed Adamantite Rod and Master of Transmutation.

The former is a potential niche market; but I reasoned that the latter is where you could make more sales. With the rise in demand of Truegold coming in 4.2, I predict that more alchemists will want to spec Transmutation Master. And in order to do so, they will need 4x Primal Might. I can't say when the demand for these will increase, but I am trying to keep an eye on prices and put them up individually for now to try and get a few bites. So far, I have sold 6 of the 7 I put up, ranging from 315 to 420g (300 to 400g after the AH cut).

The Primals needed to make these range in price overall, but it has worked out a fair bit cheaper to buy them as Motes when they are cheap. You can actually save quite a bit overall if you buy Motes whenever they are available. And since Transmute: Primal Might is not on the cooldown, you can craft to your heart's content. It's just a matter of choosing when to put them up, and how many to put up at once in order to maximise profit. I am still learning this, but I intend to experiment a bit with stacks of four to see how that works out.

Now, Primal Mights are not huge profit; but they are consistent and an interesting use of transmutation off the cooldown. Competition shouldn't be too fierce, either (if it is, don't bother, or just cool off for a bit and keep an eye on movement).

Shadowspirit Diamonds
This is really something I could have taken advantage of over these past few months. Especially as Obsidium and Elementium ore prices dropped (though they do still fluctuate a fair bit). But coming back to look at the Cataclysm shuffle, I see that Shadowspirit Diamonds still have the potential to yield decent profit. It's mostly a matter of finding ore at good prices (hint: near the end of weekends), finding the time to prospect and transmute, and choosing whether to sell raw or cut without fear of overwhelming competition that results in continually wasted deposit fees on your part (and the inevitable influx of returned gems — every jeweller's nightmare).

The gem market can be nasty. But if you play your cards right, you can at least come out on top, regardless of how many people continuously undercut your attempts at providing the masses with their meta gems.

I uploaded my Professions Shuffler spreadsheet. There is a link under the Tools box to the right. The spreadsheet tries to combine Alchemy, Enchanting and Jewelcrafting to help work out what makes profit and what doesn't. I simply don't have time to get involved in a big way in multiple markets — but I can still enjoy spending gold to try and make gold, and work out where potential profit can be made. And I can still play around with shuffle spreadsheets of my own concoction. ;)

I will upload an updated version every so often. Does that mean I have to start adding version numbers? :D

--

In other news, I picked up Archaeology with my rogue, Selaena. It would be nice to eventually have a shot at getting Recipe: Vial of the Sands from an excavated Canopic Jar. The probability is insane, though. :/

I also ran my first level 85 instance with her, Lost City of the Tol'vir. The lag was atrocious and I am really out of practice with a melee toon. But it was fun, and I got a new dagger: Barim's Main Gauche, and some shoulders from a quest in there: Clandestine Spaulders.

I rolled a Human hunter on the same realm as my little Worgen priest — who incidentally is now level 28 and slowly making his way through Ashenvale. My plan is not to level as fast as possible, but to enjoy the content and the casual pace that comes with experiencing the quest chains and lore. I want to finish the zones, regardless of experience gain and level pacing. It is my own escape within an escape.

Gaiwyn isn't really much closer to being able to step into the Zandalari heroics. But no mind. When 4.2 hits, I intend to forgo a lot of what I was aiming towards and simply enjoy the new questing hub and whatever rewards I can garner through that — not to mention, of course, the whole experience of the Molten Front and its dailies and progressive nature.

So I still play, and I am still trying to balance enjoyment between various toons. I honestly can't see most of my level 80s making the journey to 85; but with three now, who knows if I will get an urge to level, say, my warrior or my hunter. :)

And with that, I leave to post another day.

Peace.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Fifty Thousand Gold

What do you call a part-time goblin; someone who is a small fry in a big sea of sharks all trying to come out on top and turn a big profit? A halfling? A hobgoblin? A Demigoblin?

Well, whatever it is called: that's me. It's hard to be a casual player and make it in the auction house game; the game of goblins. There are people out there who play many different markets and those who stick to just one or two - who manage to do pretty well for themselves. I hear reports of players with hundreds of thousands of gold stocked up, or pulling in tens of thousands in a week.

For this demigoblin, having finally reached the seemingly pitiful milestone of 50,000 gold is a big thing. I can't put my fingers in too many pies because of lack of time; and a lot of the pies I try to stick my fingers into just get burnt or come out sticky and not very nice tasting.

But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Building an enterprise takes time; it takes mistakes and learning; and it takes patience and having to force yourself to ignore everyone around you and how they are doing. My 50k gold may seem pitiful in light of how other auctioneers are doing; but for me, it is a good goal to have reached.

I still have a fair stockpile of "twink" items, Saronite Ore, and glyphs and inks. These will take a fair bit of patience and skillful posting to sell.

• Glyphs have proven to be fairly slow moving; but I will turn the inks I collected before 4.0.3 into popular glyphs and get those out.
• Saronite Ore is not yet in low supply / high demand; so that has become a long-term investment.
• Twink items - especially epics - don't seem to have any interest attached to them; which may indicate the need to try and sell them individually through trade rather than auctions over an extended period of time.
• All of my Netherweave Bags have sold!
• A few enchants have sold - and some enchanting mats have sold (including Wrath and Burning Crusade mats); but this is also a long-term investment. I intend to hearken back to trying to sell levelling enchants again.
• Gems are a slow moving market, with huge undercutting wars still going on; but this just becomes a matter of posting the right gems at the right time and not putting up too many at once. It was disappointing to see the new metas drop to below 150g so quickly, but there is still profit to be made here if you simply don't let the amount of flooding and undercutting dampen your [shadow] spirits. ;)
• The last of my starter gear pieces finally sold. That is something I don't want to bother with again, but it was nice to buy things for a handful of copper and sell them all for between 5 and 25g - even if it did take a few months!

My plan of attack
With little time to play and even less time to be able to do things like prospect, disenchant and post individual items to the auction house, I have to plan my gold-making prospects pretty wisely. Things like being more aware of when to post, when to buy, and what to invest in or spend time doing in order to get things out there where (and when) there is a demand.

Jewelcrafting
I will continue to try and a. Buy up Obsidium Ore for prospecting; b. Buy Pyrite Ore in the hopes that when epic gems drop my stockpile will net me some serious profit in some way; c. Turn gems into jewellery to send to my enchanter; and d. Cut prospected rare PvE gems and post them up on Wed morning (Tues afternoon, server time)*.

I hope to eventually get my hands on the new meta designs, too: Agile, Burning and Reverberating.

Enchanting
Basic mats are gained through disenchanting the jewellery sent from my jewelcrafter. I want to a. Sell Hypnotic Dust and Greater Celestial Essence; b. Enchant and sell low level scrolls for twinks and BoA gear; and c. Enchant and sell high level scrolls when Maelstrom Crystals are much more readily available.

Alchemy
This is a tricky one. I only just got my alchemist to 520 last night, finally, after the cost of Whiptail went down. It's hard to try and get everything done that you want to get done when you have such little time to play! Eight more Alicites and I can shoot to 525 and finally begin transmuting.

At 525, it is my hope that I will: a. Transmute metas from the uncommon gems sent from my jewelcrafter; b. Transmute daily - Living Elements or Truegold; and c. Create flasks for posting on Wed morning (Tues afternoon, server time)*.

Fishing and Cooking
Not big money-makers, but I'm mentioning these because, a. Doing the dailies nets a little bit of gold and they are easy for even me to slip in at some point during most evenings; b. I want to get the rare fishing rod and learn every cooking recipe; and c. Selling buff food is in fact a possibility to make a little extra gold on the side.

* More people raid on Tuesday nights - the day following maintenance - than any other night. This is prime time for providing the necessary items and reagents for people who are both about to raid (flasks and food buffs) and have finished raiding (gems). Get your gems and flasks/elixirs up during that period and ignore the undercutters. Auctioneering 101, friend. Now I have to go and listen to my own advice!

My characters
Well, Gaiwyn is level 85 but is in really crappy gear so far. I have started on Twilight Highlands, so will work my way through there and then hit up normal dungeons with guildies if I ever get the chance.

Ilyaena is level 84 and I have started on Uldum. Playing a Shadow Priest is really fun. I hope that at 85 I will be able to both heal and dps in instances.

Selaena is also level 84. I haven't yet started on Uldum, but I will eventually; probably after the insane amount of Whiptail spawns have been tuned back to normal. I also find playing a mutilate rogue to be very fun.

It's all a matter of balancing play-time between my three toons. Some of my limited time is spent posting auctions or doing some sort of auction- or profession-related activity; and some of it is spent doing professions dailies or trying to zip over to a zone and get a few quests in. It's not possible every day to do what I want to do; but I do try and find a few minutes to at least do Gaiwyn's cooking and fishing dailies!

I am 5% of the way towards the gold cap. It's difficult to not look at all of the people around me who post at the forums I do and feel so small and underachieving. But we all move at our own pace; and it is important to realise that putting the important things in life - my wife and kids, work, and trying to aim towards dreams for the future - is much more worthwhile in the long run.

Take it easy.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Hatchling a Plan

Hatchlings Making a Comeback
It's official: Razzashi Hatchlings will not be a money-maker in Cataclysm. So the question is: do I try and sell mine now at 5k gold a-piece, or do I wait and see just how difficult and rare they become when re-introduced to the game post-4.0.3a?

Either way, the only thing I've lost is the couple of hours it took me to farm them myself. Thankfully, I didn't pay a large sum of gold in the hope that their value would skyrocket. And if it comes down to it, I can learn the pet myself on a couple of toons. :)

Saronite Shuffle
On another note, I've heard that it may still be profitable to prospect Saronite Ore, grab cheap Eternal Earth (people dumping their stock) and use that with the green gems you prospected to make items for either vendoring (if profitable), selling at the AH (if the supply is not too high) and disenchanting.

Northrend enchanting mats should rise in price in the expansion, so that isn't a bad way to go. Just work out if you can get stacks of ore cheaply enough and it could be a good market to dabble in.

Glyphs and Inks
Just this morning I got a pretty insane deal: about 20 stacks of Adder's Tongue for 14g per stack! I have been buying as many herbs as I can get my hands on (at less than 24g per stack), and crafting as many glyphs as I can from the milled pigments and resulting ink - a huge task in itself.

Dumping the Snowfall Ink is a huge problem, as they keep getting returned to my mailbox after trying to auction them off. It seems that there is too much on the market and just not enough people wanting to make and hand in Darkmoon cards. If it comes down to it, I could always just vendor them. :x

I have filled up more than a guild bank tab so far with stacks of 5-10 glyphs each and have stockpiled 3-4 stacks of lower level inks (for crafting into glyphs or even reselling post-patch). My plan is to get at least 10 of each of some of the popular glyphs as well as 8 stacks of each of the six glyph inks before patch 4.0.3a. If I can sell all 10 of about 20 glyphs per class, covering 6/10 classes, at 45g each, I will make 54k gold. Having spent around 20k on herbs to make the glyphs, that's over 200% profit.

It has been a lot of work, but the more I tried to prepare, the more I found myself making. It's too hard to balance everything, so my piece of advice today is to just do what you can do and not worry about trying to meet crazy goals. I may be taking too much on my plate, and I am definitely putting a lot more effort into Inscription than anything else. But this opportunity to take advantage of selling so many glyphs will not roll round again any time soon, and that is something I keep in the back of my mind as I continuously press that mill button.

Here's hoping that I can spread myself out more after Glyphmas II passes; just not too thinly. :)

Peace.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Resubscription

My brother reactivated my account for me yesterday. With the Internet now technically active at home, this means that I will be able to log into the game after receiving my laptop next Monday, arriving home and installing everything: XP in English, Wow itself, whatever patching is needed, etc.

On the updates front, Jewelcrafting and Engineering both have additions to their recipe stockpile. Wormhole: Gadgetzan sounds pretty cool. Just remember to equip a Parachute Cloak if intending to go through. And check out the new rings and necklaces.

And a reminder: check your class(es)' skills and talents, either at the official site or MMO-Champion.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Beta Build 8820

It's here! The latest beta update. Changes to skills and talents. More class glyphs.

PvP Items
WotLK Arena Weapons Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3
WotLK PVP Necklaces | Rings | Cloaks | Trinkets

Lake Wintergrasp PvP Vendors
Epic Armor
Epic Belt/Boots - 24 800 Honor
Epic Bracers - 15 800 Honor
Epic Necklace - 19 000 Honor
Epic Cloak - 19 000 Honor
Epic Trinket - 24 800 Honor
Epic Rings - 19 000 Honor

Rare Armor Sets
Rare Chest - 6000 Honor
Rare Helm - 6000 Honor
Rare Shoulders - 4800 Honor
Rare Gloves - 3600 Honor
Rare Pants - 6000 Honor

Weapons
Off-hand items - 3600 Honor
Main-Hand (Healer Mace) - 10 000 Honor
Main-Hand (Melee) - 8400 Honor
Two Hands - 12 000 Honor
Ranged Weapon (Hunters) - 12 000 Honor
Throwing Weapons / Wands - 3200 Honor
Shields - 6000 Honor
Relics - 3200 Honor

New Professions Recipes
Engineering
Blacksmithing
Jewelcrafting

Level cap raised to 80 and new instances unlocked! Source.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Mounts and Jewelcrafting Quests

Firstly, I just want to briefly mention the changes in the latest build (8788). Hunters, Warriors and Death Knights have perhaps received the most changes since my last update. If you are interested, check their talents.

Daily jewelcrafting quests have been added. Six new daily quests have been added that require you to craft items and receive certain drops from monsters. Thoughts are that one random quest will be available daily, but for now you can choose one of the six and the other five are locked. The rewards for these quests are the tokens I mentioned in this post. The Dalaran Jewelcrafter's Token allows you to purchase these rewards. See also: screenshot.

Finally, mounts. I'd like to mention again the Magnificent Flying Carpet that I am looking forward to crafting on my mage. It requires 450 tailoring, but it will be so cool to fly around Outland and Northrend on a flying carpet! Also, the speed of mounts has changed to: "Speed scales with riding skill."

Some screenies:

Magnificent Flying Carpet

Black Warp Stalker

The Hog (Alliance)

Winged Steed of the Ebon Blade

Polar Bear

Frost Wyrm

Suh-weet!

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Professionally Speaking

I read the transcript of three interviews yesterday with various Bliz personnel. The first interview was about music in the game, especially focusing on what is to be expected in WotLK.

The second interview was what I was most interested in. It covered professions and expected changes with the expansion. I have every profession across my toons, and so found many things in that interview to be interesting. Check out the following summary from MMO-Champion (edited):

General

• The alchemy discovery system could be added to all professions, but will be restricted to "fun" discoveries or more predictable outcomes.
• Players may be able to collect tokens from daily profession quests and use these to purchase select recipes from token vendors.
• 375 skill requirement for the best craftable gear was too high -- expect the required level for epic craftable gear to be lower than the max 450 in WotLK.
  
• Sets such as Frozen Shadoweave were "too powerful", damage stats being equated with Tier 6, but available to any tailor without too much trouble (eg. Didn't require nethers). School-specific craftable items will be reviewed.

Blacksmithing

• Blacksmiths will be able to add sockets to a weapon, Armorsmiths will be able to add a metasocket to armor.
• The plan is to try to balance Armorsmithing and Weaponsmithing to make both specs viable and interesting.

Fishing

• Fishing will be more interesting and require more than half-conscious clicking.
• There will be fishing-specific food in WotLK just like what was introduced in TBC with recipes like Spicy Crawdad or Golden Fish Sticks. (Might be time to get both this and the cooking skill for my mage...).

Engineering

• Some of the engineering items nerfed in TBC like the Gnomish Mind Control Cap will probably be un-nerfed and/or upgraded in WotLK.
• Items like Rocket Boots will be changed to an "enchantment" allowing you to convert any footwear to Rocket Boots.
• WotLK now allows engineers to do "on-use enchantments" to items, and they're going to use it a lot. (Parachute Cloak enchant, or something to let you shoot webs from your gloves, etc.) -- each "enchantment" would replace any existing one on the armour, and vice versa.

Enchanting

• Enchanters will be able to sell their enchantments at the Auction House (or send them to alts) -- Scrolls of Enchantment.

Alchemy

• Discovery won't be used for "important" recipes anymore, it will be either predictable or just produce "fun" recipes.

Jewelcrafting

• Not as reliant on world drops.

Tailoring

• Tailoring-only flying mount -- the Magnificient Flying Carpet! (I can't wait!)

Inscription

• One inscription is equivalent to one or two talent points, and all the inscriptions aren't about increasing power; sometime they’re a big power increase but they’ll change something else about the spell. (eg. reducing the cast time of Pyroblast down to 3 sec but adding a 25 sec cooldown, or decreasing the effect of Last Stand from 30% to 20% of your max health, but giving it a 2 min cooldown instead of an 8 min cooldown).
• Inscriptions will affect talents, but probably won't affect passive talents very often.
• 15-20 Inscriptions will be available for each class, sometimes with more than one inscription available for a specific skill.

So these are some of the changes to look foward to with professions! The third part of the transcript covered a few questions that people had directed towards Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan. It makes for an interesting read.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore