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) .

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!

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!

A Crimson Conundrum

I woke up at 5 am this morning and started my morning routine

Ø  Login to Wow

Ø  Scan AH

Ø  Shower while scan is in progress

Ø  Once complete, review emails…

And that’s when I saw this

O…M…F…G…

I snatched it up. I have always been an avid Pet Collector and the Whelping’s have always somehow evaded my grasp. When I do see them, they are for insane prices on the AH, and the Goblin in me wars with the Pet collector and I don’t end up spending 30k for a freaking pet.

Now I have a Whelp. But now…what to do?

The average price for the Whelping on my server is 5k. That’s a 1000% turn around if I sell it for the average price.

Once again the Goblin and Pet Collector are at war.

If this was the Tiny Emerald Whelping, there would be no competition. The Pet Collector would buy the pet, equip it and strangle the goblin with her purse strings if she uttered a single protest. But its not. While I do want to collect all the whelping pets, I could sell the pet and purchase more herbs for inks or raw materials to sell and possibly make a killing in Cata.

Right now the Pet Collector seems to be in the lead and I did not put the Whelp on the AH before I left for work – but I didn’t send it to my main to equip either.

On the Gold Front I have recovered from my AH Spree and I am back at 30k on my banker (I don’t really look at my other toons personal loot) Doesn’t seem like a lot to some of the Major gold contenders, but I’m happy with 30 k liquid and 4 guild bank + 2 Character banks filled with materials.  With the weekend coming up I am hoping to drop another 10k on cheap materials once the farmers come out to play. We’ll see how it goes.



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.

Buy Low – Sell Normal, unless supply is limited – take risks, but don’t be too hasty.

“Buy Low – Sell High” is a standard economic statement that is easy to understand. Buying something below cost or as close to cost as you can, and selling for a higher price results in a profit margin.

However with wow, there are multiple items that can be supplied in great quantities and it’s almost impossible to control the supply of any one market. Buy buying low and selling at normal prices, you are almost guaranteed to sell your items and still make a profit.

Selling high can be beneficial, and there are times when you can make a larger profit, however with that comes risk. The higher your sell price, the greater the chance of the item being underbid or not bid on at all. This all depends on supply.

If the item you are selling is a limited supply or a highly sought after item, then an increase in price is a good risk to make. It is still a risk, but the chances of a sale are greater.

For non-limited supply items or items that are not in high demand, charging higher than normal prices can result in returned auctions and increased auction fees (some items have very high auction fees and multiple auctions of said item can result in a loss).

Making large profits depends on your knowledge of the current market, where the market is going and what kinds of risks you are willing to take. You also have to take into account the game and what the majority of players on your server are focusing on. In between raid releases? Reputation and Vanity items may sell more as players concentrate on other parts of the game. New Raid or Boss release? Items needed for raiding may increase. Holiday? Items needed for holiday quests and achievements should spike in price.


Keeping all this in mind is one of the things you need to do to become a successful Auctioneer.

Welcome to The Golden Muse, a world of warcraft blog by yours truly, Cindia

My gaming career and gold making career started in Ultima Online where I loved setting up my vendors and exploring other people’s vendors for underpriced items and flipping them for profits, or farming with my pack of frenzieds. I stopped UO for Everquest, and my passion for profits fell as I had to contend with the EQ economy (was not friendly toward new or starting players).

I started wow a few months after its initial release and I now look back and laugh at my nativity. I remember looking at people in blues and epic mounts in awe, never dreaming that I would be able to afford the 100g epic mount.

I made lots of mistakes in my early wow career, first was not utilizing the auction house. I didn’t even know it was there until 6 months into playing. Once I knew it was there I didn’t really think of it as a valid source of income.

Another mistake I made was selling or vendoring items that if sold on the auction house would have netted me a nice profit (I once vendor’d the Parrot Cage (Hyacinth Macaw), I thought it was ugly and this was back when pets where actual items). Most of this behavior continued through vanilla and into BC.

When BC was in full throttle I found my interest waning in Raiding, but I still wanted to play wow so I started an Alt Draenei mage, as I leveled I found items of worth and actually started posting them on the AH. The profit I was returned was amazing and I was soon surprised that my little level 40 mage had more gold than my level 70 raiding priest. The Auctioneer in me was born.

With WOTLK launch the little mage became my main and I decided to start reviewing the AH more and actually make gold with the AH, but I was bombarded with leveling and raiding and didn’t have much time.

The last 6 months I have remedied that. I now am making gold consistently and I have my fingers in lots of pies. I spend lots of time reviewing gold making blogs to compare ideas and see other methods other people use to see if they can be applied to my server and my markets.

With Cataclysm a month away, I decided it was time to become a serious competitor in the Auction House on my server, and see if I could reach the new gold cap of 1 Million Gold.

Therefore I decided to start a blog and chronicle my progress and report my thoughts, tips and mistakes along the way.