4.0.3a on the Horizon!

With 4.0.3a on the horizon many inscription changes are in the works. If you read the Consortium Forums (which you should), the Elen Posted that come 4.0.3a the ink trader change will be in effect, even though blackfallow ink will not be available yet. In addition, Vanishing Powder will no longer be available from inscription vendors – instead Dust of Disappearance will be in its place.  Last, but not least Glyph of Mage Armor will again be trainable.

Because of these changes, and because Pilgram’s Bounty is on the horizon, I don’t think that 4.0.3a will be released 11/23 , especially with reports of all the bugs present in the current beta version. I think it more likely that they will release 4.0.3a on 11/30 just 1 week before Cata goes live. Of course I could be completely wrong.

What does this mean for you? This shortens the time you have to stock-up on inks so get out there and trade your ink of the sea while you can, stock up on vanishing powder and sell those Glyphs of Mage Armor if you have been holding on to them!

Buying Herbs for Inscription – prices

One of the first mistakes I ever made when I entered the AH was to buy material at prices that when crafted would sell for less than I paid in materials. Now I am very careful to only buy materials at my lowest crafted threshold.

For Glyphs, my threshold is 10g. When I look at Herbs and Glyphs this is what I do

20 x Herb Price: 12g (.6 s per herb)

20x Herbs = 12 Azure Pigments = 6 Ink of the Sea = 2 Glyphs =  6 g per Glyph Cost (12g/2)

Therefore if I sell at my lowest threshold I will still be making 4g per glyph in profit.  I also take this into account when I am reviewing my competitor’s stock. If they are selling at below my threshold, then I buy up their stock – they have already saved me the milling/trading/crafting time by providing the glyph at below cost.

Now, many Glyphs will sell above (or way above) my threshold of 10g – but the inscription market is very competitive and risky. The prices of Glyphs change from 13g one day to 130 g the next, all in a blink of an eye. Because of this I choose to be a bit on the conservative side when buying materials.

Here is a quick spreadsheet, just plug in your Northrend Herb Prices to get a quick estimation on what the cost of crafting a glyph would be: IM A GOOGLE SPREADSHEET

Note – this is estimating an average of 3 azure pigments per mill – results may vary.