Return of the Priest,Battle Pet System and its effect on my stock-pilling

A blood elf wakes in her chambers in Silvermoon, slightly confused, dreams of an alternate life as a Night Elf lingering. She groans as she rises from her bed, it seems that she has been sleeping a long while. She smooth’s out the wrinkles in her robes, reaches for her trusted mace and says a short prayer to the Light – smiling as the holy power fills her.

She takes in the beautiful sights of Silvermoon as she steps out into the brisk morning air. Breathing deep she can feel the resonance of the Cataclysm in the air, but deeper in her bones, she feels that another challenge awaits Azeroth. A challenge that she would gladly accept and face for the Light, for Silvermoon and For the Horde!

Happy Monday! As you can tell from by brief foray into the RP world, My Priest has returned from Retirement. The Priest was originally my main character in Vanilla and TBC, however during Tempest Keep I took a long break and returned as a Mage, putting the priest away unless I needed to level her for her professions.  As I’ve come back and leveled my second mage, I find that while I love playing the mage solo and questing, I totally hate grouping with her. Not only does it take forever for me to get a queue pop as DPS but it just isn’t very challenging. I needed to get some Justice Points for an Heirloom item (Starting a hunter) so I figured I’d trot out the Priest just to try it, 8 hours and lots of groups later I was very much enjoying myself.  I think that MOP may see the return of the Priest as my main grouping/raiding character with the Mage as my solo/questing toon.

In addition to my fun as a priest, I have been messing around with the Pet Battle System on the PTR. It’s fun in a silly kind of way and I do like how it allows me to capture pets; however that also means that people will not be so inclined to purchase pets the could just go tame themselves, so the pet market may not be as lucrative as before. I was going to stockpile some pets, however I am now going to sell them off.

With only 2 months to release, I am not going to be investing too heavily into stockpiling anything. I will just wait for good deals, such as late Wednesday someone posted about 400 stacks of whiptail @ 19g a stack, I spent almost 8k and bought them all up, turned them into ink and by Saturday had made the 8k back and still had a bank filled with ink.

With the expansion announcement, many people are trying to get rid of items they think they won’t need, so I would be on the lookout for items that are needed in leveling trade-skills, especially items in the level range that pass so quickly (like Mageweave, Medium/Heavy Leather).

Have fun out there!

Enchanting Rods – Bye Bye!

Busy weekend and its crazy here at work so this week’s post is a short one. Enchanting Rods were going to be part of my MOP Stockpile, but if according to the newest Beta release notes they are going bye-bye.

All Enchants will just need the Copper Rod to create, its blizzard’s way of helping the leveling process for new characters.

I had a few Rods in my Bank pending MOP, mainly because if they gave gains I used them to level up when I was leveling Blacksmithing, now it’s time to liquidate while I can.

This is a perfect example of why you should pay close attention to the beta release notes.

btw mage farmer is now 85 J

Weekend Warriors, a New Guild Bank and the Undermine Journal.

shit just got real....

Another week gone by and another progress update. We left our intrepid Mage at level 63 last week, marching through the wilds of Outland. Not only did she survive the twisted nether but managed to make it through the undead filled peaks of Northrend, through the burning of Mount Hyjal and now sits in the underground Caverns of Deepholm …yes my mage is now 82.


Outland passed very quickly, almost too quickly as I hardly managed to pick up any herbs along my way. Plenty of ore for Blacksmithing, but herbs were not spawning for me for some reason.  The good news is I got enough greens and cloth to make a few [Bag of Jewels], which sell for about 350 gold each.


The farming front is going well, so well that it’s now time for me to start outlining my MOP Preparation plan.


My first major setback is space, thankfully while I was perusing the AH late Sunday night someone announced in trade that they wanted to sell a 5 tab guild bank. I figured what the heck and sent the gentlemen a tell – for only 50 gold I now have a guild bank (the name is rather unflattering but I can change that). I am giving it a week before I actually start using it, it looked legitimate, only 4 people in the guild, guy who sold it was guild leader for a while, but just in case it was stolen or something I don’t want to start using it just to have blizzard take it away.


I figured a week should be sufficient and then I can start with my stockpile.


On the Auction housing front I have had to shift my selling paradigm from my old server. Originally I came from a mid-high population, PVP server with a very heavy raiding presence. Most guilds on my server raided 4-6 hours Monday through Thursday, making those days prime time for posting Auctions. Weekends I almost never bothered because that’s when all the crafters and farmers came out and prices tanked.


It’s almost the exact opposite on my new server. I noticed pretty slow sales during the week, but starting Friday afternoon up until Sunday evening very high, constant sales. This lets me know that on this server I probably have way more people who have jobs or attend school or otherwise don’t have much time to play during the week – so on the weekend they don’t want to waste time and buy what they need on the Auction House.

This is very important to learn on a server as I wasted a good amount of time posting auctions during the week that never sold; I am still going to post some items, such as consumables, raw mats or glyphs. But vanity items like pets or transmog gear I’ll probably wait for the weekend when the Weekend Warriors roll in and start buying.

Last but definitely not least, the greatest news I had upon returning to Wow is that the Undermine Journal is back! Before I left on my year hiatus, the Undermine Journal went offline due to the extensive modifications that were made to the online auction house. It’s back online now and awesome as always.

It helps me keep up with trends and it’s much easier for me to alt-tab to see a market price for an item then keen Auctioneer running all the time (and remembering to scan) and I am going to try out the add-on version to see how I like that.

If you haven’t already been to the Undermine Journal, head over now.

Golden Muse out…

The Death of a Guild Bank

Week 2 of wow return has been completed and boy was it a busy week.

During the week I continued leveling my new Mage who made it to 63 by EOD Sunday. This little goblin is a pure famer with Herbalism/Mining. Her Ore is currently going to the Priest who I recently replaced her mining with Blacksmithing. Her Herbs are being saved for when the Rogue transferred.

The last character I have to transfer is my Rogue (Inscription/Alchemy) who I made guild master of my Bank Guild (instead of my level 10 bank alt). I waited the whole 7 days it required and bright and early Saturday morning I logged into battle.net to transfer her over and I get an error.

Guild does not meet the minimum level requirement for transfer.

O.

M.

G.

Apparently guilds have to be level 2 to transfer, looks like I should read the fine print a little more often.

/wrists

After I screamed in rage and contemplated spiking my headset, I reviewed the contents of my 6 filled bank tabs to determine what stays and what goes.  I spent the next 3 hours auction-housing and general house cleaning.

After it was all said and done I was up 10k in 12 hours (longest I was willing to wait), I probably could have made more but I really wanted to get this last transfer done and hop into the Inscription/Alchemy markets on my new server. Looking back it was actually a good thing, I am a hoarder in game and will save everything for months just waiting for a good price (sample: I had 500 small eggs waiting for Winter Veil just hanging out), this requirement allowed me to clean out all that extra stuff.

I will miss my guild bank though; I had 6 tabs and my own private warehouse.  After I settle a bit I am going to look at purchasing another one on my current server as Inscription takes up a lot of space.

Current Gold Making Tip: Vendor Recipes, I can’t get over how much people pay for vendor recipes. While I am leveling my Farmer I make a point of always stopping by any vendor and seeing if they have a limited quantity recipe or even one that just looks unique. Most of these go for under 1 gold (30 silver most of the time) but sell between 25-50 gold. Since I am already in town it takes no extra effort to check out these vendors.

Thoughts on the Return… First Week Back

Today is officially my first week back to Wow and I will have to say it’s going well so far. I started a Goblin Mage to help myself re-learn the basics and the Capital Cities. She is also going to be my new farming character as my old farmer isn’t worth paying for the server transfer. In addition to learning my way around, leveling lets me travel to some out of the way places for recipes as well as low level materials.

Originally I used my scroll of resurrection to get my Main (Jewel-craft/Tailor) on this server, which left my crafting alts on the old server as well as my guild bank. I transferred over my first Alt (Enchanter/Miner) on Friday and after a few weeks will transfer my last alt (Alchemy/Inscription) who is also the guild master of my Guild Bank. This will allow me to be a bit more aggressive with auction-housing.

 A few things will be changing with my auction house strategy since not only am I on a mid-population server (from High Population) but now my guildies are also real life friends who are willing on working together for the benefit of everyone. We did some discussion on Saturday and they let me know which markets they were primarily in and I let them know my intentions. Luckily they are mostly in Crafting Materials but there is some overlap with Jewel-crafting and alchemy.

Jewel-crafting doesn’t have me worried. With MOP on the way it would be pretty beneficial to have other JC’s coordinate patterns so that we can avoid all buying the same patterns (coordination to destroy rivals will also be easier with friends J) .

The Golden Muse Returns…

The Golden Muse has returned and up for new Gold Making Challenges.

Over a year ago I stopped playing World Of Warcraft and focused on work and home life. After a few months I thought about going back but was frustrated because my top geared mage was no longer top geared and I decided to try out some other things.  I played around with Star Wars, Tried my hand a Diablo and eventually decided to come back to wow.

Today is my 3^rd day back and there have been lots of changes in the last year. I left when Cata was still kinda new and shiny – now it’s a little crisp around the edges due to the Fire Lands.  Not only do I have to learn new areas, new dungeons, new raids and new gems – but I decided to server transfer to a different server and different faction!  I had played alliance for my entire career of wow, but some real life friends of mine are Horde on another server  and my new causal lifestyle fit more with them then my hard-core raiding guild (whose leadership and membership based majorly changed during my year + long absence).  I now have to re-learn all the capital cities and stop myself from going on auto-pilot into an Alliance city (I have killed myself twice so far doing that).

But the Auction House remains the same.  While the markets are a little different on this server and there doesn’t seem to be as a competitive market as my last server, my first 2 days have netted me about 8k with just doing some light auction-housing. I am spending my time reviewing how the market on this server works and who my competition is on this server before I jump in feet first.

Stay Tuned :)

Back in Action!

Its been a crazy few weeks. Between work and raiding I had little time for my extra activities. In fact some days went by that I had NOTHING on the AH, blasphemes I know.

But things are starting to settle down so I have begun to research the recent and upcoming changes in anticipation of more gold making.

In the meantime, here is a post I was working ok a few weeks ago before life decided to head-butt me:

I have been in process of investigating different ways of profiting using my professions, today I should be able to get another Gem Cut and I plan on purchasing a PVP Gem cut to see if I can get a nice price from cornering the PVP Gem market.

In the meantime I have been focusing on my JC and Enchanter.  Kreaton over at Not So Secrect Society, has posted a nice post regarding the green gems and their various uses. I myself have been reviewing green gems and over the past 3 days I have done a little research and a little spending.

Monday, elementium ore was down to around 3.7 per ore or 74g per stack. One single person had posted over 500 stacks at this price. I almost couldn’t help myself. I ended up purchasing about 50 stacks.

Investment So far:  approx. 3,700

I prospected it all and after it was all said and done I received an average of 10 of each blue gem and 40 of each green gem (I haven’t seen anything official but I wonder if Nightstone proc-rate has been increased? I received almost 45 nightstones, the most of any green gem).
The Jade, Alicite and Carnelian’s stayed with my JC and I crated the Jade Rings, Alicite Necks and Carnelian Spikes (I ended up proc’ing 1 Blue Jade Ring and 2 blue alicite necks).  Once complete I sent all the items to my Enchanter to DE, with the exception of the Blue Items – which were sent directly to my banker.

After I was done, I took all the Dream Emerald’s and cut them into Lightning Dream Emeralds, which are going for about 375g per on my server.

After the crafting of the Gems, I DE’d the items and sent them to my banker to begin posting. I spent about 45 minutes total doing this, and was afk half the time cooking dinner.

The final auctions have sold and I have netted approximately 31,257 g.
Investment – 3,700g
Return – 31,257g
Profit: 27,557g

Not too shabby.

Patch 4.0.6 Prep!

Patch 4.0.6 has hit the PTR and many changes are gold making opportunity’s waitng to happen!

First off, META Gems

New Meta Gem cuts will be available, each of these gem cut require at least 3 Red Gems – I expect Red Gems both raw and cut to have an increase in price as people re-gem their gear, Orange and Purple may also have a increase, but I don’t think it will be as high as Red. Also the old meta gems (Chaotic and Relentless) have been changed to require red gems as well.

A new Dream Emerald Cut will also be available, so you may want to save a few JC Tokens so you can buy it right away (this is a PVP Gem so this will depend on if there is a PVP market on your server).

I am not dead…

Just really, really busy. Between raiding 4 nights a week, working 6 days/65 hrs a week and attempting to make some gold in between I have been slammed. I am drafting a few blogs for next week and hopefully my schedule settles a little and I can continue my normal routine.

Hope you’re having luck in the wow and more importantly, having fun :)

Random Rewards: Mysterious Fortune Card

When I started leveling my inscription, one of the items you use to get gains is the Mysterious Fortune Card. I thought at first that this was a useless item, but the more I made the more I decided I should review the item before I vendored it.

The Mysterious Fortune Card is a card that when used changes into a random Card that lists your fortune, and sells for X amount of gold. The X is where it gets interesting. The used card can sell between 5 and 5,000g, depending on what card it is. Let the gambling begin!

Right now, Glyphs are selling for an average of 80g, which is great if you bought inks before the ink trader changed (which I did) and still have some in stock (which I don’t) – because of this, its more expensive for me to trade inks, or more work if I have to farm or purchase the old herbs required to make inks.

The lowest herb price on my server is Cinderbloom at 6g per herb, which equates to 30g per mill and 120g per stack.  If I do a rough average of 3 Ashen Pigment per Mill, then I get cost of 19.8g per Blackfallow ink ((6*5=30)*0.66)=19.8). The Fortune Card requires 1 Blackfallow Ink and 1 Ressillant Parchment (12 silver) to make, rounding our cost to 20g per card.

Currently these cards are going for 45-50g per card, but I have seen as high as 150g and as low as 25g. if I set my sell price at 40g per card, I gain 20g profit per Card not including any Burning Embers I get during the milling process.

Stack of Herbs: 120g (investment)

Ink from 1 Stack: 6 Inks = 6 Cards = 240g Return

Profit: 120g per stack of herbs bought, not including Burning Embers.

If Card prices are under 30g per, I would look at Fortune Cookie Prices as this food is a great raiding food, with the added benefit of the fortune card.



NOTE: I wrote this post a while ago, in the meantime I myself have caught the Mysterious Fortune bug and often the cards do not get past my inscriptionist before I flip them over.  I would advise NOT forming this habbit as it is not very conductive to making gold - but it is pretty fun :) 

To buy or not to buy?

Many people are leveling professions, with that comes an influx of crafted materials. The specific market I am reviewing currently is Enchanting scrolls.

People are throwing scrolls up on the Auction house for ridiculous prices, begging to be bought up. But speculation has been ongoing on wither or not these scrolls will be able to be turned for a profit.

Example "Enchant Cloak– Intellect" has been going for between 1g to 8g.  This is a popular enchant that could be used by multiple different classes.

Risk Analysis

Right now people are not going through gear quickly and are not worrying about min/maxing (at least majority) so these scrolls are not selling quickly. Couple that with the fact that enchanters can use this recipe to level Enchanting leaves us with a low demand, high supply item – not a recipe for gold success.

This is where a goblin’s patience can potentially off. If you have extra space, in either a bank or alt mailbox, you could buy up a few of these and wait a few weeks/months for the prices to rise making a tidy profit.

This is rather risky, as you are counting on the prices rising, but it could be a well worth investment. Personally I am buying any 85 enchant under 3 g and sending them to one of my obscure alts to hang out in their mailbox for a while.

A few more examples
Enchant Bracer - Expertise (going for 50s on my server some nights)
Enchant Bracer - Precision as low as 2g

Glyph’s are they worth it?

Glyph’s were a major money maker for me at the end of WOTLK. The only major drawback I encountered was the time it takes to create my large stock of glyphs.

Enter CATA – glyphs are selling at an average of 80g per on my server (some as high as 250, but many as low as 20g) and I have finally run out of stock that I saved from before the ink trader change.

Now if I want to create more glyphs I will have to either go farm old world herbs (not as hard as was previously with a flying mount) or buy/farm Cata herbs and trade.

My issue with glyphs right now is that it doesn’t seem worth it. The average price per glyph if I purchase the cheapest CATA herb is 14.79g per Glyph (80g sell, 63.43g cost).  I normally have about 350 Glyphs so that’s about 4,917g after AH fees and such.

Now, 5k isn’t bad – but it isn’t great either. Considering that it takes me anywhere from 1-2 hrs to complete my glyph cycle, I could spend that on more lucrative gold making cycles.

Right now glyphs just don’t seem worth it to me. I am involved with almost every market on my server and maintaining a sold Glyph presence doesn’t seem viable – at this at this point.

This is restricted to glyphs however, other inscription items are still on my crafting cycle – but I’ll save that for another day.

So, here’s my tip. Don’t get stuck in your old  habits. Be sure you are reviewing your gold making strategies to ensure that you are getting the most gold per hour. Don’t follow a routine just because it’s what you are used to.

Best time to buy!

I work full time, raid 4 Nights (3 hrs) a week and I am a full time Goblin, that takes up a lot of time. From usually around 6 am to 5 PM PST I am not available to do much wow stuff with the exception of some remote AH checking when I am on a break or having a slow day.

With that in mind, I look for deals when and where I can, example 5 AM Material prices! When I get up at 5 am, I make some coffee and do a quick AH scan while I get ready for my morning workout. During that scan I often find that ore and herb prices have dropped dramatically, probably because A) the late night famers have posted all their materials and B)less people are on so less buyers.

Example: Wensday 12/22 when I logged on at 5 am elementium ore was at 5g Per/100g a stack. At 4 PM it was over 15g per stack and rising. As more people logged on for the day and it started to reach peak hours, the prices significantly rose.

You can also follow this trend during the week. Monday’s elementium ore can go for as slow as 2-3g per, while Thursday and Friday tend to have 18-22g per prices. During the week between work and school, less people have time to farm for materials, but on weekends, everyone is out farming.

I used elementium ore a lot in this example, however this trend can be found across multiple markets. I don’t mean for you to get up at 5 am just to buy some items (unless of course that’s your thing), but if you’re up anyway due to work or school and have a few spare minutes, give it a try – you could get a great deal!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the Golden Muse!

Update on Perfect Nightsones!

Last week I posted to buy up the gem cuts Timeless Nightstone, Jagged Jasper, and Solid Zephyrite

as blizzard was removing the proc of perfect for these cuts [source]. At the time, these gems were going for 5-10g per gem as jewel crafters dumped them into the AH after a disappointing attempt to get their daily done.

Once I heard of this hotfix, I bought up all the perfect cuts under 10g on the AH, investing approximately 1000g.

These cuts are now up to 75-95g per on my server as people buy these gems instead of their more expensive blue counterparts for their leveling gear. My initial 1000g investment has already profited about 4000g as I have sold a little under half of my perfect stock. 

Last night I purchased the Gem Cut Willful Ember Topaz as part of my PVP Gem experiment. I cut 5 and placed them on the AH for 450g per. This was pretty late last night and none have sold so far, but I am hopeful that they will sell as it reaches peak play time.

I made a tentative decision on my Tailoring route (see this post for details) with one more Chaos orb I will be able to craft my 6th dreamcloth and create the Breeches of Mended Nightmares, I am going to post them around 20k and see if I have a buyer. If not, I am going to wear them and then focus on Spellthread. This employ's one of my tenants of AHing - Never buy something you wont use.

This is the reason I chose the Willful Ember Topaz as my PVP gem cut. If I decided to PVP on my mage, then this is probably the gem I will use, therefore if this experiment ends up being a failure I did not invest in something that wont eventually get used.

Tailoring Speculation – Dreamcloth

Tailoring has always been a profitable profession for me, not just at the beginning but throughout expansions. Even at the end of WOTLK I was able to craft and sell BOE Epic Items consistently.  With the introduction of CATA I have new BOE patterns to craft and of course a new cloth cooldown to deal with. There are 6 possible ways to craft Dreamcloth, 5 of which have a 6 day cooldown.  The Destruction Cloth  does not have cooldown, however requires 5 Chaos Orbs. With Heroic’s being challenging again (which I love) it takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours to complete a heroic and most crafters are grabbing up these orbs like candy.

Because of the rarity of the cooldown, it makes determining what to craft rather challenging. The first two things I have been looking at with Dreamcloth are the new Leg Enchants:

Powerful Enchanted Spellthread 

Powerful Ghostly Spellthread

Each of these items requires 1 Dreamcloth and sells for between 1700-2200 g currently on my server.

Dreamcloth has an average price of 800g to create (if I don’t count the chaos orb cooldown) which results in a profit of 900 to 1400g per.

The second thing I was reviewing was the BOE Crafted items. They cost 1 dreamcloth just to purchase and between 4 to 6 Dreamcloth to create.

Breeches of Mended Nightmares

Flame-Ascended Pantaloons

Dreamless Belt

I have already purchased the Breeches of Mended Nightmares and Dreamless belt, as these were items that I could use to get my main character raid ready. The risk I see with these items is I haven’t actually seen any of them SELL on the AH.

Sure I’ve seen these items up for between 25-30k, but each day I look and they are still on the AH or have been relisted.  The investment in the purple BOE is between 3200-4000g per item and also the fact that the cooldown has been burned for a week.

Therefore there are two possible roads I could take.

Rout A) Medium Risk

Craft the Spellthreads using all of my Dreamcloth Cooldown – sell no lower than 1500g per.

Investment Cost: 4,000g

Possible Sell Price: 13,200g

Profit: 9,200g

If sold at lowest price, total sell price is reduced to 9,000g and profit to 5,000g

Analysis

I think of this as medium risk only because the majority of guilds on my server have not really begin hard core raiding and raiders are going to be the majority of my customer base for these items. Most people would not want to waste an expensive epic enchant on a rare item, and instead would rather purchase the rare spellthread for a fraction of the cost (135-250g currently, not even worth the mats as people use these recipes to level tailoring).

However, once people start raiding, these items will sell – it’s just a matter of when.

Rout B) High Risk

Craft Either Pants or Belt – sell no lower than 10,000g per

Investment Cost: 4000g

Possible Sell Price: 20,000g

Profit: 16,000g

If sold at lowest price, total sell price is reduced to 10,000g and profit to 6,000g

Alternate secondary fallback price of 15,000g returns 11,000g profits.

Analysis

BOE Epics are tricky, sometimes they sell like candy and other times you’d be better off DEing the item.  This item is high risk for my just because the customer base is significantly smaller than Rout A, as the Spellthreads are used by non-cloth wearers.

In addition, most people are hesitant to purchase large price tag’d items (Look at a Car commercials, most advertise the possible Rate/Month and the total price is in the smaller text) so I would be looking for big spenders who want then instant gratification of EPICS NOW!

Lastly, I haven’t actually seen any of these items sell. This could be because of the reasons I listed above, or it could be that the prices were just too high (30,000 g does seem like a lot), perhaps if I sold my items at half the normal price (12-15k) then I would see some sales.  The time to sell these items is now, before people start raiding and getting better BOP epics.

If the item didn’t sell, then I would either sit on it for when raiding has quieted and another wave of alts gets to 85 (4-5 months) or DE the item for 3k, taking a 1k loss.

What’s a Girl to do? When I finally decided ill post some results. In the meantime, back to work for me. Tonight I’ll be able to get the PVP gem and I can start that experiment. Have fun!

TUJ is No More

It’s a sad, sad day for Gold Makers today, as The Undermine Journal has gone offline

http://blog.theunderminejournal.com

I have been expecting this for a few days now, with the release of the new Armory, the host and developer of the site was experiencing multiple issues. I was hopeful, as it wasn’t shut off yet. But as I was skimming the items and determining what today’s blog post would be about I was taken to the closed page:

Sad Panda is Sad.

Good news is even with TUJ I still created and maintained my own personal spreadsheet  and list and kept up all my old AH habits. TUJ was more for the notification and ease of access while I was at work.

Goodbye TUJ, Hope to see you again someday!

Possible Niche Market – PVP Gems?

Choosing a gem cut on a high population server is pretty hard. The first cuts are out and now everyone is scrambling to get all the PVE cuts and sell them for 150-300g a cut. If you review the undermine journal, one thing to notice is that many times there is no data on any PVP Gems. So far on my server there is No Data for Spell Penetration or Resilience Gems. I see the possibility of profit!

My server is a high population server with a pretty even mix of PVP and PVE player base. Pretty soon, most players will exhaust their patience with PVE content and move on to serious PVP. With Serious PVP comes PVP gems!

I have not found one person on my server with a blue PVP Gem cut, mostly because the PVE cuts are making consistent money.  Therefore my next test of the market is going to be to purchase a PVP cut and see how it compares with my PVE Cuts.

I think this would depend on your sever. If your server does not have an active PVP player base I would NOT recommend doing this. Ill test it out over the next few days and return the results.

Famers are out in force and elementium ore prices have begun to plummet. I was able to purchase 1000 ore for 3.5k this morning, prospected it all and so far have made around 6.7k, with a bunch of Blue and Green Gems left over.  If you want good deals, observe the farming times on your server, traditionally – the earlier you check the AH the better. I find my best deals when I get up at 4:30 AM for work and do a quick scan of the AH.

Perfect Timeless Nightstone - Buy em up!

12/14 Blizzard Hotfix had lots of changes, one of which I see a potential for gold making.

The gem cuts Timeless Nightstone, Jagged Jasper, and Solid Zephyrite can no longer create perfect versions of the cut. [source]

This was the most annoying thing ever, as the daily quest would not accept the perfect versions of the quest.  Because of this, Perfect gems of these cuts were going from 5-10g on my server, since there were so many.

With the perfect option being removed, I imagine that the price will increase as people outfit their green gear or blue gear. Most people don’t want to spend 300-400g on a blue gem cut for gear they will replace soon. But would rather get a perfect cut for 75-100g. My advice? Buy up the cheap perfect cuts now (for the above only) and wait a week, then sell at 75-100g for a nice profit.

1 Week of Cata Update - I hate Nightstones

I’m alive!

My week of vacation is over and I’m back to work, which means back to blogging. Here is a rundown of my first week of cata.

Day 1 to 3– Farming like crazy

Once the release hit I hopped on my 80 priest with 310% speed and headed over to Mount Hyjal to farm some Obsidium Ore. The first 45 minutes were great and I was able to get 2 stacks and my mining up to 470. However the horde of characters quickly swept in and soon it was very hard to find any nodes.

Therefore I decided to take a chance and move on to Twilight Highlands. TH is the last zone most people go to when leveling, so I figured it would be the least populated.

I was correct. For the first two days I had TH all to myself (the occasional farm would drop in) and the elementium was flowing! I am pretty sure the zone was bugged because every 5 feet there would be an elementium vein or pyrite vein. After 20 hours of farm I had around 3000 elementium ore, 600 pyrite and a bunch of gems.

The first 1000 ore I sold for 600g a stack (30,000) and the rest for around 450g (once the competition started getting in(45,000) netting a total of 75,000 within the first 2 days.

I took some of the ore and grinded up my Jewel crafting on my primary toon so that I could start the daily asap (need 475 jewel crafting).  Then it was back to farming. I farmed another 1000 ore for my jewel crafting profession.

Day 4 – Max JC and Alchemy!

Day 4 hit and more people were invading TH and the amount of ore available dipped dramatically, also prices were going around 225g a stack (still nice, but not the 400-600 I was getting at first). I decided it was time to level my Mage and some professions. As I started leveling, I would periodically review the AH online, and buy up any Cata herbs that were too low. I spent about 1000g total and was able to max out my alchemy and then sell what I made for about 2200g. Once I was 525 I was able to craft Shadowspirit Diamonds and Truegold.

My first transmute of true gold proc’d 5. Yes that’s right 5. I believe I was the first to post them on the AH and I sold each one for 5,000g each. 

Now that I could craft meta’s I used prospected the 1000 ore and leveled JC so I could learn a Meta Cut. Being a Draenei helped a lot with this.

Once I was able I learned and cut the Asture Shadowspirit Diamond, and sold 6 for 1,500g each.

I decided that the rest of the time I would concentrate on leveling and getting my mage heroic ready. I spent 6 k leveling my tailoring and started making Dreamcloth.

END of Cata Gold Total

+75,000 (day 1-3 mining)

-1000 (525 Alchemy)

+25,000 (Truegold Proc)

+2,200 (Misc. Alchmey Creations)

+9,000 (Meta Cuts)

-6,000 (525 tailor)

104,200g in week 1 of cata

And I still have about 15 of each rare gem (pending cuts) and 20-25 of each green gem with the exception of nightstones.

Nightstones are evil. They are used for everything and are hard to come by. EVIL I TELL YOU!

In addition to the gold, I was able to max 3 professions with a 4^th on the way (JC could be maxed but I am waiting for a second Meta Cut) with lots of raw materials waiting to be turned into something fun. My Mage is level 85 and already heroic ready. Now the challenge will be balancing my gold making business with also being a full time raider on the one of the top guilds on my server.