2011 - What a mixed bag it's been!

My 2011 started off full of enthusiasm & found me writing regularly here as I rode the excitement of the early stages of Cataclysm. Levelling 4 alts to 85, levelling JC & Enchanting so I could make even more gold, discovering Trade Skill master & making new friends was so much fun & kept me going until mid-summer.

Once I hit gold cap though, I kinda lost my drive & if you've been a regular reader, you'll know my posts have been very scarce here since. I hadn't been doing the new Cata dungeons & hadn't even seen inside the Zandalari ones when they were released so I did a few with guildies & got sidetracked into PvP with my newly dinged Hunter. Had some personal problems with a couple of guildies & combined with the lack of drive/focus with my gold making, I spiralled down quickly & have been fighting clinical depression for a few months now.

The gold making community has been a constant source of friendly support though & I'm so proud to call them all friends. Just little messages of 'I'm here if you need me', 'I miss your writing, Nev' or even just 'hugs' means so much when one is so low. One special person gave me the impetus to start fighting again & to get some help so now I'm booked in for various sessions in the coming months to try to sort all this crap out.

I could waffle on forever about my plans for the New Year but right now, it's all the small stuff - baby steps & 'just keep swimming' as Dory would say :P I plan to return here more regularly but I won't promise, I just don't know yet. There's light at the end of the tunnel - I just have to get there.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is 'a huge Thank You' to all my readers, my fellow writers & my goldmaking friends - without you guys & gals, I'd still be broke in game & broken in RL. I was going to name everyone who's been so nice to me but the list got so long, it would need its' own post!


Wishing Everyone a wonderful start to 2012 & lots of gold in your futures

Luff y'all
Nev
xx

(White Ribbon) - Heart of Gold

With one voice, as one community, we are speaking out and working to end violence against women.

The White Ribbon Campaign
The White Ribbon Campaign International
White Ribbon on Twitter

I am sooo proud of all my fellow gold bloggers today & as one of the few female writers, I am very aware of many of these issues. I had no idea of the statistics. Here in my cosy little corner of the world, these things are rare but recently they have shoved themselves under my nose too.

Regular readers will know that I don't usually write much personal stuff here - this is my gold making blog after all but this is different. I was one of those statistics as a teenager although I never reported anything. I was too young & too stupid to know quite what to do. I was one of the lucky ones, I had some very good friends who helped me & I have been able to put 95% of the emotional baggage behind me but that last 5% will stay with me forever.

So to all the wonderful decent people out there - read some of this stuff, see if there's something you can do too.

Nev

xx


PS I've had some lovely supportive emails since I posted this & I thank you all, you know who you are. I do just want to clarify a little tho - I was part of the abusive relationship statistics not the rape ones. I'm not sure I'd have had the strength to put all of that behind me & my heart goes out to all who suffer that violence.

And Now For Something Completely Different...

So today I have exchanged posts with some of my fellow gold bloggers. Epidermuss at WragstoRiches has written this post for us here today & I have written a post for Gimp over at GimpsGold. Follow the trail of links to see who else has joined in this little blogging adventure :-D

Bag space and the cost to you

Hi
As many of you will know when you are levelling a character in World of Warcraft, bag space plays a key part in your ability to keep on questing or running dungeons, without having to stop and keep visiting vendors all the time.

The common philosophy among players and bloggers has always been to go for Netherweave Bags. These are 16 slot bags and are Bind on Equip. The reasoning behind this is sound, as you get 16 extra slots per bag space for generally between 8g - 16g on the realms I have experience playing on. Which at 8g a bag is 50s per slot or at 16g is 1g per slot compared to Frostweave bags during WotLk which where from 75g - 100g per bag for 20 slots. This works out at 5g per slot at 100g a bag or 84g for the extra 4 slots per bag space.

Personally I never followed this idea though, and there are several reasons for it.

- If you start a character then decide you don't like the class, a Netherweave bag can only be sold to a vendor as it becomes Soulbound as it's Bind on Equip.
- Every new character requires new bags.
- Its vendor value is only 1g

I prefer to equip new characters on new realms with Runecloth bags. These bags are 14 slots and generally cost around the same mark as Netherweave bags, but crucially can either be re-used on different characters or sold on the auction house once you've used them.

On my mains realm when I first started playing, it was towards the end of Burning Crusade and I bought 8 Runecloth bags for a grand total of 10g or 1g 25s each, which was a lot of gold for me at the time. But I still have these bags and my low level alts are currently using them now. This shows how re-usable Runecloth bags are.

Now with the addition of Cataclysm, Blizzard has added the possibility of buying faction specific 16 slot bags like the Ironforge Bag. These are available for the cost of 2g and you can buy one from each respective main home faction. So you can buy 6 for either horde or alliance, and they are available at revered with the respective faction. That's 8g for 64 slots to fill your bags slots on your character or 12g to buy them all so you can purchase two extra bag slots in your bank, giving you an extra 32 slots in your bank also.

Now with the way the levelling zones have been redone and the ability to wear tabard's for your home factions in dungeons it’s got a whole lot easier to get bag space.

So if your starting new characters on new realms or just new to the game when you go to the auction house to buy bags, stop and think about your purchase before you waste gold you may not have.

Epidermuss

BOO! Guess Who's Back?

Lazy Summer Days © Nev 2007

Yup, I finally surfaced from my dungeons & battlegrounds long enough to realise how long it's been since I posted here. As I said in my last post, I'm loving my Hunter! Why it took me over a year to actually get her levelled is beyond me but I am so happy that I got there eventually.

So I guess I should give you guys an update of my summer gold making although to be very honest, it's been more of a summer of gold spending. Once I hit my 1 million gold, every bone in my body decided to rebel & make me start spending rather than being the miser I had been whilst trying to reach my target. I thought I'd list the stuff I know I bought

2x Witch-hunter's Harvester - 25k

3x Mekgineer Chopper - 45k

1x Traveller's Tundra Mammoth - 16k

1x Ring of the Kirin Tor - 6k

1x Masterwork Elementium Deathblade - 13k

1x Lava Bolt Crossbow - 25k

4x JP boots - 2.5k

1x Claws of Torment - 7k

1x Chelleys Staff of Dark Mending - 13k

So that's at least 152k without any smaller bits like pets and levelling professions but even without really trying, I've managed to keep my gold balance around the 930k mark. Regular readers will know I lost my MySales data just a day or two after I hit my goal, so I thought I'd show a screenshot of what's been selling since. It shows just about 2months of data now.

I stopped glyphing almost straightaway - the few that show up on MySales are the remnants of stock & I slowed down on the cut rare gems too. Mostly I've been doing a lot of questing at all different levels (my new shaman is now 55 & my forgotten Druid just hit 62) so I've been selling all the drops & mats that you normally pick up.

On 1st September, I did have a massive tidy up & craft session - trying to clear down my bank junk & bags. I had a fair few Cataclysm enchanting mats stashed so I made up a whole bunch of high level scrolls - not a market I am very familiar with but I did get some nice profits. I also returned to the glyph market & cut rare gem market - glyphs have really slowed down over the summer, it seems but the gems are still selling fairly well.

I now have alchemy & tailoring maxed on my Hunter so I have double transmute & dreamcloth cooldowns available. My Hunter is about the only alt I have capable of getting Chaos Orbs so perhaps I should have put something other than Tailoring on her but hey ho! We'll see how this goes for now.

So that's been my summer, slow & relaxed on the gold making front but absolutely manic on the questing/levelling/dungeoning front but you know what? I think I needed it.

I have a few ideas lined up for regular post slots here & I've changed my day to Tuesday over at Goldgrubs (it's tough writing when hubby's home!). There's another project in the works which I think is launching this weekend. Gimp over at GimpsGold is organising a Golden Circle - you'll have to wait a few more days to find out more but I think it has great potential for all of us, bloggers & readers alike, so stay tuned!

Hello & Goodbye (slightly off topic)

© Nev 2004 A Dream Holiday

Hellooooo! I was very surprised this morning to see that it has been almost 2 weeks since I last posted. Time really flies when you're levelling 2 alts & finally experiencing the Cataclysm heroic dungeons! I got my hunter to 85, an alt that was born during last summers' huge guild drama as an escape has finally made it to level cap. I already have 4 level 85's but although I'm an ok player ability wise & a good player attitude wise, I've never really managed to get good dps numbers out of them.

My hunter has changed all that & having the gold reserves that I do, I was able to buy the Lava Bolt Crossbow, Witch-Hunter's Harvester & the JP boots for her the day she dinged. I also - like any good goldmaker - had the mats in stock for the Corded Viper Belt & some Justice Points saved up so I could get my first JP piece. Add the Thrall questline cloak & the initial Firelands vendor piece & I was off to my first heroic Cataclysm dungeon the same afternoon!

Now that may be quite normal for many of you but I've actually only completed 2 heroics on any of my girls up til now & two of my four 85's aren't even geared enough to try so for me, personally, this was a major step forward. So far, since Thursday, I've now done 6 or 7 heroics on my hunter & her dps numbers have given me the confidence to try HC's on my healer too. I'm still a little way off being able to do the Zandalari dungeons but that's my next target.

I know many goldmakers manage to raid/do Heroics etc whilst making gold but for me, it's one or the other for now. That's just the way my brain works. At the moment, it's full of stat priorities, rep grinds/rewards & reading everything I can find to help my performance. I 'm still doing some gem selling to fund my daily costs but as far as gold making goes, that's about it.

Having said that, I'm not quitting this blog. I fully intend to come back to some proper gold making soon but rather than just disappear for a month or more, I wanted to let my readers know.

So for now, my plan is to resume serious gold making & blogging about it in early September. I'll still be posting on my regular Wednesday slot over at Goldgrub's & I can't break the habit of reading all the new posts each day from the other gold blogs on my blogroll. If you have any gold making questions or just want to chat, I am still checking my email & twitter regularly as well as the comments here so I'm not far away.

Anyway, I've waffled on long enough, so I want to thank all my commenters & readers who've kept me going this long & I wish you all happy goldmaking for the rest of the summer. Take care & I'll catch y'all soon

Love
Nev
xxx

Weekly Sales Update

© Nev 2004 - Calm, Tranquil Dawn

It's been another lazy, slow week at the AH for me - I've been levelling my hunter with a guildie (or should I say, trying to keep up) & I finally got my 1 year old warrior to level 80. I have made a little more effort with rare gems this week but the whole sense of urgency to cancel/relist multiple times a day has definitely gone on vacation!

Having said that, almost 25k income is pretty good, I think. I've done a little prospecting as my Inferno Ruby & Ember Topaz stocks have almost disappeared & I even had to transmute some Nightstones to get more Demonseyes!

The meta gem cuts have leapt up in price this week so I made some more of those with my alchemist & cleared down a few stacks of the uncommon gems in the process. This was probably a good thing as it made space in my banks - I picked up around 250 stacks of Elementium Ore this week at around 35-39g a stack.

Why did I buy all that? Well, the price for Elementium Ore has been fairly steady at 65g or more so I wanted to clear the cheap stuff off the AH before everyone decided that was the price to list at! By trying to keep the price high-ish, I'm hoping my gem competition will have smaller profit margins and/or be eating into their stockpiles.

This is a bit of a new direction for me - I used to only buy what I knew I could process quickly but I was subject to the same price fluctuations as everyone else. This way, I know I have cheap ore that I can prospect, smelt & use in Blacksmith stuff or turn around & sell at the higher price! As you can see below - I did sell 50 stacks & pretty much doubled my money on them too.

Other odd bits from my sales data shows that I finally managed to sell my first ever top end enchant - Windwalk for 1551g - disappointing but still a small profit. The prices for maelstrom crystals have dropped to around the 100g mark so the prices of these enchants have dropped too & I've had this scroll listed for almost 3 weeks. I don't think I'll be making many more of these, that's for sure!

The rest of my top sellers are mainly rare gems as I would expect - I've completely left the glyph market other than a few stragglers still to sell. Other stuff that has been selling regularly includes the Rich Purple Shirts (78g each), Mechanical Squirrel Boxes (35g each) & Pet Bomblings (135g each).

With all the levelling I've been doing, I've also picked up a fair few bits & pieces to sell - chilled meat, rhino meat, frostweave cloth, green quality armour as well as lower level cloth like wool & silk from one of my lowbie alts.

One thing I did do this week was to clear the AH of a lot of very low level green armour & weapons - why? Well, Khalior did a great series of posts this last week or so about how a social member of raiding guild can contribute & make a bit of money too (although that's not the main point of it). The one I picked up on, was the Guild achievement for disenchanting items. I set my buyout price at 1g per item & have been checking sporadically for items to disenchant. Not only is the achievement counter climbing nicely but as he points out, I am making a bit of gold at it too & hopefully, by buying the low level crafted items, I am helping build gold for new players just levelling their first professions!

So that's my week - lots of actually playing out in the world & a bit of AH'ing. I still feel a little 'lost' & directionless but I needed the break. This coming week, I'm hoping to get my hunter or warrior to 85 (maybe both, who knows!) & start running some dungeons with them.

I also have most of the herbs needed to level a second alchemist which will be my Hunter so it will be interesting to see how the levelling products sell. I'll be taking notes as usual & reporting back here eventually!

Sales Update - Catching Up

Gone Fishing - Pre-Cata Screenshot

Since reaching my target, I've barely touched the AH so this post is by way of catching up with what random bits & pieces I have been selling as I try to clear the decks a little for my next target. I guess you could say I've 'Gone Fishing' for a while but the gold fever is in my blood & to be honest, the game just doesn't feel the same without that target looming. Yes, I'm playing my alts, levelling, PvP'ing a little, doing those darn Molten Front dailies etc but it all feels rather like aimless wandering so I've decided to go for the 2 million target!

I've also stopped taking a note of my gold balance over the last few weeks so there'll be no maths in this post to work out profits! Most of what I've been selling was leftovers from when I hit goldcap or random bits I've picked up whilst playing my alts so I'm rather pleased to see 23k in sales, although that is the total for 12days not 1 week!

I did craft some Ebonsteel Belt Buckles - I have 8k Elementium Ore leftover & probably around 500 Volatile Earths so the buckles seemed a good idea as the price had risen a little since last time I looked at this market.

I also prospected maybe 2000 elementium ore to restock on some colours of rare gems - the prices were just too tempting for me not to spend a little time on it. I've had almost 2 weeks off & my husband has almost finished his Inscription researches so for this next phase of my journey, I will not be doing very much business in the Glyph market - I'll let him have that one :)

Going forward, I was trying to think of a different way of getting to 2 million but I'll definitely be using Jewelcrafting - between the rings/necks to disenchant & the cut rare gems, it's too good a profession not to use. I hope I can finally get my head around Enchanting scrolls - having dipped a toe in the water for the Patch 4.2 rush, it doesn't seem quite so intimidating now.

I also have 2 free profession slots on a lvl 71 hunter - she was my original miner/JC but she was left abandoned a long while ago & has been superseded. I don't have a high level Engineer & my current low level Engineer is not an alt I actually like (as strange as that sounds) so my hunter seems like a perfect candidate to take over there. I only have 1 Alchemist at the moment so I guess that decides her second profession too :)

I'm going to continue these weekly 'what's been selling' posts - more out of curiosity myself than for any great gold making message but seeing what I sell can spark ideas for you to take & run with so I hope you'll bear with me.

I also have my first post going live over at Goldgrub's Goblin Academy tomorrow - it's quite nerve-wracking for some reason but exciting too - so pop the date in your diary & come visit me :)

Did Ya Miss Me?

© Nev 2005, Keeping Watch for Opportunities

I've been rather lax this last week or two - hardly any gold making going on & I've been so busy levelling alts with friends & guildies that I didn't even realise how long it had been since I posted here! I think I must have needed the break & with the loss of all my sales data & TSM settings, it made it quite easy to just walk away for a few days.

So I don't have much to report on the gold making front, I've been rather busy spending it actually! But I do have rather exciting news (for me, anyways) - Cold has invited me to become a regular writer over at Goldgrub's Goblin Academy & with some nervous excitement & trepidation, I've accepted the Wednesday posting slot. I hope I can do myself proud over there but rest assured, I will still be writing here too. There's definitely some overlap between the two blogs so if you're a regular reader here who's just starting out on your gold making journey, I'd definitely recommend having a peek over there too.

I've always tried to write for the new to middle level of gold making experience. I don't usually comment on the very latest happenings (patches etc) because I'm not that experienced in those areas myself & some of the wonderful blogs in my long list over there ==> do the high end stuff so much better than I can.

I'm hoping that by writing for the very newest goldmakers over at Goldgrub's, I can focus more on the middle levels here. That's not to say I won't be wandering into very new goldmaker or very experienced goldmaker territory here, just that those 2 vastly different groups have such different needs, that it's difficult to cover everything for everyone.

As for this blog - where do I go next or what shall I do next? Now that I've reached my goal, I've got my thinking cap on for what my next target should be. I will probably go for 2 million or maybe more but I'm pretty certain I don't want to glyph all the way! I've got a few ideas bubbling away in the back of my mind but for now, I'm just enjoying the rest of Azeroth outside the Bank & Auction House. Posts may be a little sporadic here until my ideas gel into a strategy but if you've been reading a while, you're probably used to sporadic anyway :-P

As always, feel free to make suggestions/ask questions, either in comments or by email & if you have any ideas you want me to test, just let me know.

Not A Happy Bunny! A Cautionary Tale

© Nev 2008 - Not a Happy Bunny

I'm going slightly off topic in that todays' post is not really about making gold but it is important for all you hard working goldmakers out there, especially if you have a large goal (1 million gold etc) & want to get your name in lights over at WarcraftEcon.

As you may know if you read my blog post earlier this week, I hit my target of 1 million gold & was all set to start writing my Warcraftecon interview. One of the things I really wanted to do was to analyse the MySales data for the last 5 months or so, however, when I finally sat down & went looking for the mysales.lua file, it had only 15 entries in it, covering about 16hrs of sales. After a few minutes of panic, I realised that my PC had crashed the night before (18hrs ago) & I can only assume that somehow, my file was lost forever.

I know most of my gold has come from glyphs but also a lot came from rare cut gems & a lot from miscellaneous stuff like Chocolate Cookies, Greater Eternal Essences & pvp crafted items. Unfortunately, I have no idea whatsoever of percentages so my interview is going to be very light on hard facts :-(

So I thought I would pop a link here to an excellent post over at the Consortium forums, written by Stede. It's mainly about tidying up your data so you can read/analyse it more easily but I would suggest that you copy your data file to your desktop regularly, even if you don't want to analyse it that often.

Just for easy access, the pathway to your MySales.lua file is as follows if you followed the normal/standard installation procedure for WoW.

C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\your account name\SavedVariables\mysales.lua

COPY this file to somewhere safe on your system, don't move it - that will mess everything up!

You don't have to do anything with it unless you want to but by copying it regularly, you won't lose all those sales details that you've been working so hard at & it will be there when you need it.

Then you won't end up with a face like my little friend up there!

An Ideal Alt? Hmmm, Decisions, Decisions

This is my submission for Cold's Gold Blogging carnival this month, the subject of which is Ideal Alts. Now Cold did a fairly comprehensive series of posts on this subject & my first choice was in there so it's taken me a while but I think I've found one he didn't cover! The rep grinding rogue :-D

To be fair, this probably isn't the most effective alt for gold making but rather in speeding up & reducing the costs of reputation grinds (thereby saving money & you get back to the AH quicker!) lol.

Ok, so my thoughts processes are like this - human for the racial which gives +10% reputation gains & rogue for their ability to stealth & pick pocket. I know druids can stealth & I did consider them but it's the pick pocket ability that swung my decision (more on this later).

As for professions - well, seeing as most of the Burning Crusade factions have dungeon grinding as a way of gaining reputation, I think Enchanting is a must have especially if your rogue is high level & going to solo these dungeons regularly - disenchant everything & either sell the mats or use them for scrolls if more profitable.

For a second profession, there are definite arguments for going with skinning as leather & hide is always a good seller at almost all the various levels however, my second choice would be Tailoring. Why tailoring - because there is always a lot of cloth dropping in dungeons & you can use it to craft items for skill ups then disenchant those same items for enchanting mats.

The second bonus for tailoring is the Northern Cloth Scavenging ability which means that when you grind through the Northrend dungeons, you'll be picking up a shedload of frostweave. At the current time, frostweave cloth sells for about the same if not slightly more than Embersilk Cloth so good money to be made there too.

So why does the pick pocket ability of the rogue make this the perfect choice? Well one of the reputations for the Insane in the Membrane achievement is the Ravenholdt one - the only way to advance this rep to exalted is by handing in Heavy Junkboxes. Why pay a rogue to do this for you when you can do it yourself on your very own stealthy killing machine?

The beauty of the stealth ability is that if you don't have time to kill everything in the dungeon, you can stealth past all except the ones you want, in most cases, the bosses but sometimes it's not the boss that gives you the rep items. You can also stealth past everything to collect the Sanguine Hibiscus in The Underbog for Sporregar rep.

From a gold making point of view, you should pick pocket everything then kill it - the gold in the junk/lockboxes isn't huge but it all adds up by the time you finish all these reps. You can also get some nice items - at 85, every rogues' dream weapons drop only from pickpocketed chests (krol decapitator & spinerender) albeit at very low drop rate.

If you really want to make the most gold out of this alt & haven't yet levelled one - consider stopping your XP at 80 - you can get the faction tabards & use the dungeon finder to run Northrend dungeons (in cata greens of course!) for the rep & for all those lovely Wrath enchanting mats & cloth. For the truly serious achievement chaser, there are also various mounts available in these dungeons & for purchase from Quartermasters once you are exalted. Don't forget the Argent Tournament either - money, pets & mounts from the dailies as well as rep & titles.

Unfortunately my own rep chaser isn't my rogue, tailor or enchanter & my rogue isn't human, tailor or enchanter so I kinda messed up there! lol

What's Been Selling This Week & Big News!

© Nev 2003, King of the Jungle

Well, it's been a good week for me - lots of sales & very little spending as I shifted many of the bits & pieces that I stockpiled in the week or two before patch 4.2 hit last week. Sales income of 67.2k & liquid gold increase of 68.7k meant that my spending was a negative 1000g! That surprised me a lot as I sat down to write this post but halfway through, I finally remembered that I sold some low level Darkmoon decks for 1000g via trade chat & I vendored about 10 stacks of Zephyrite, neither of which would show up in the MySales data!

This was the first full week of post patch sales & I find it interesting that none of my glyphs have made it to the top page. I guess the sheer volume & variety of cut gem sales has moved them down to the second page this week. Even my infamous Chocolate Cookies didn't make the first page, mainly due to my husband pinching my market! lol

So what did sell? Well, Ebonsteel Belt Buckles from my lowly lvl 75 warrior Blacksmith were a nice surprise when I finally got around to listing them - they kinda got lost in the mail & then the competition was really fierce so I played the waiting game & made a mini-killing when I managed to be the only one listing for a couple of hours one evening!

The scrolls for cloak enchants have continued to be good sellers although competition has increased towards the end of the week. Greater celestial essence prices have rocketed to 150g whilst the downward pressure on the final scrolls has also increased so I've backed off for now.

A new-ish item for me to sell is the two epic spellthreads from my tailor. As I mentioned last week, I'd let my dreamcloth cooldown pass me by so I didn't have very much dreamcloth available at all. Four spellthreads sold this week & that pretty much finished my supplies so I really must make sure to make my dreamcloth each week - it's easy money & really doesn't take long to do, especially as I have a fair few volatiles in stock.

On patch day, I checked the new JC pvp recipes & there was already major competition on the AH by the time I logged in so I made the 3 pvp inscription relics - finally managed to sell 2 of them this week although the prices are dropping rapidly so I probably won't make anymore for a while at least.

I think that pretty much covers this week & this will be the last 'what's been selling' post for the foreseeable future. Yup, the big news today is that I finally made the 1 million gold cap!

It feels like it's been a very long journey to this final goal but in reality, I started Cataclysm with 50k so 95% on my journey has taken place in almost exactly 7 months. The last 200k or so has really felt like a grind but I just couldn't stop when I was soooo close! I'm going to take a break from the compulsive, must relist auctions type of gold making that I've been doing but don't worry, I'm not going to stop blogging.

It's time to take my girlies through some Cata heroics & try to actually 'get good' on a least one character rather than ok-ish on four. I've said before that I'm nibbling at my Loremaster achievement as well as the Exalted one so I think now is the time to get those projects moving again. Yes, I'm swapping one compulsion for another but hey, isn't that what WoW is about?

Why a photo of a pensive lion, you may be wondering. Well, he's called the King of the Jungle & that's kind of how I felt when I hit the cap. Hugs & kisses from hubby & a few tears of joy & relief from me (yeah, I'm soppy) but at the same time a huge sort of 'what now?' feeling.

I don't usually talk about my photos here but before anyone asks, yes, I really was that close - no telephoto lens & the only crop was the sides to make it square. No, he's not tame but there is a glass wall between us, in case you were curious :D

Inscription - Hope For Lowbie Glyphers

© Nev 2008 Every scribes best friend

About 3 weeks ago, I decided to take another look at the glyph market on my lowbie AH Alt's server. For those of you who don't know, I started this blog with a new alt on a new server, levelled her to lvl 10 & took up inscription. The idea was to see how much gold I could make in 30 days via inscription & AH flipping. I got to about 6500g before I realised that it didn''t really make for good blogs posts, day after day so I abandoned her in SW & started blogging about other gold making stuff. (If you're interested, you can read those posts by using AH Alt from the tag cloud in the side bar)

I did a post about giving away my cash as I never intended going back & thought it might help someone else getting started. I got 1 whisper so he had 5k & I popped a bit in the guild bank to say thank you for not kicking me out even though I hadn't been online for months or really contributed to the guild levelling! That left me with 936g to start my latest little escapade.

My lowbie glypher is maxed at skill level 150 until I get her to level 20 (probably next year sometime!) so at this time, she can make glyphs using midnight ink, lion's ink & jadefire ink as well as the Rogues Deck ( from Hunter's ink) & the Swords Deck (from Dawnstar ink). I've also been doing my Minor Glyph Research for the last 3 weeks so I do have some of the discovered glyphs too.

I ran a TSM AH scan for just the inscription market & looked at what glyphs to make. I was horrified to see that none of the glyphs I could make were selling above 20g each. However, TSM was telling me that due to low herb/ink prices, there was still some profit to be made so I thought 'sod it' & decided to make 1 of every glyph I could. I made my craft list & went shopping for herbs to mill. That first day I spent 480g on herbs but as the midnight ink prices were down at less than 1g each, I could make an awful lot of glyphs for that 480g!

Over the next week or so, I logged in maybe 3 times a day - 9am, 4pm & 10pm-ish to cancel & relist as well as to restock but after the first week, I got a bit more casual & only logged in maybe once or twice a day & to be honest, not every day either! 

The screenshot above shows that over the last 17 days of MySales data, I sold 6264g worth of glyphs at around 12-15g each. MySales is configured to show 1 month so in effect, this whole story is about the last 17 days or so. For a level 10 Glyphing alt, I think that's pretty good going.

This screenshot shows the total number of sales & income per glyph but this is only the top page. As you can see, there were one or two glyphs with slightly higher prices but most stayed in the 10-15g range. By only buying herbs when TSM told me the ink prices were 1-2g or less, I knew that even at 10g, I would be making a small profit.

My opening balance was 936g, I received 6264g in sales & my closing balance was 4548g so overall I spent 2652g on herbs, parchments & listing fees, leaving me a profit of 3612g.

As a by-product of all this low end glyphing, I also have shedloads of Hunter's Ink & Dawnstar Ink which I have yet to make into the lowbie Darkmoon decks. I also currently have around 90 glyphs still waiting to sell but I'm not going to make any more glyphs so those will just add to the profit figures for this little escapade.

Now, before anybody jumps on this and says I was lucky with the herb prices, yes, possibly I was. My main server rarely has any ink price below 4g but at the same time, the actual glyph prices are much higher even at this low end of the market. This experiment server has 1 or 2 players posting walls of glyphs at 15-20g across the board but I was still able to make a profit on a lvl 10 alt played very casually.

Regular readers will know from my weekly sales reports that glyphs have been my main source of income for the last 6 months or more & that top end glyph prices on my server are over 200g & even 350g on occasions. I've had many comments about being lucky with my glyph prices but I think this shows that even at the very bottom end of the glyph market & with horrible bottom end glyph prices, there is still profit to be made & hope for anyone just starting out with inscription.

Anyone Fancy A Lowbie Gold Challenge?

© Nev 2009 Standing Out

Just a quick post today to let you guys know that I'm doing a little experiment (yes, another one!) and thought some of you might like to try it yourselves. I've started a little alt on a fresh server & I'm going to see how much gold I can make with a maximum of 4 hours played time.

For the moment, I've only levelled her to lvl 5 in order to get a few silvers for my first auction fees so I haven't quite decided what angle I'm going to try. I may start a little army of alts & try different things once this one is done.

So you wanna join me? The rules I've made for myself are pretty basic

• no DK's allowed (not everyone can make one yet)
• no other alts already on the server
• no help from any friends on new server
• no heirlooms
• maximum of 4 hours played time
• any race/class/profession combo allowed (except DK!)

I figured the main rush of 4.2 is pretty much over & as I'm not setting a deadline, 4 hours across a week or so is not that much. It will also give any budding goldmakers out there a chance to test themselves against the more experienced & perhaps remind some of the more experienced goldmakers of some of the little tricks they've forgotten.

If you fancy it, just go ahead & do it then at 4hrs played time (do /played if you're not sure on the timer) do a screen shot with the played time showing in chat & your bags open so we can see your gold total. Find somewhere to host the screenshot & pop the link in a comment here.

I'll try & get mine done by Friday this week & post an update here to give you something to aim for (ha! as if I'm gonna win, lol)

So let's see who stands out from the crowd with this one :)

What's Been Selling This Week?

© Nev 2007 Eagle Eye

Well, it was a quiet week to start with, watching my AH with Eagle Eyes, just snapping up those few last deals before Patch 4.2 hit here in the UK on Wednesday. I spent Tuesday evening in The Consortium IRC chat room - watching as 4.2 unrolled on the US servers & 'screams' of delight & horror scrolled past rapidly on my screen. Many of the EU peeps were asking questions depending on what they had stockpiled, I guess but it was great fun & I picked up a hint here & there, ready for the next day.

Sales at the beginning of the week were slow & I was all excited for the patch to hit. It's the first really major patch since I started seriously making gold so I only had other peoples' stories to go by. Sales of 58k looks good this week but I actually spent quite a lot (17k) on ores & volatiles where the prices were just too good to ignore so my cash increase for the week was 41k.

Most of the items that made it to the top of the Mysales screenshot are a result of Patch sales. If you're a regular reader, you know I tend to make most of my gold with glyphs & cut rare gems. However, one of the tips I picked up from the Consortium guys was cloak enchants - off I went to check prices & see what stocks I had & promply realised no-one was covering the +50 critical strike enchant for the cloak. I started my price at around 250g per scroll but soon raised it to 325g as the supply of Greater Celestial Essences dried up & GCE prices shot up to 140g each!

I've also managed to sell a few of the Enchant Cloak - Protection scrolls for around 375g and the Cloak - Greater Intellect around the 475g mark. Not so many of those due to competition & the fact that the +50 crit only takes 2 GCE's whereas the Gtr Int takes 4. I also made a few of the Enchant Chest - Mighty Stats but competition was fierce so I've just stayed with the cloak enchants for now.

The only glyph to make the top page this week is, of course, the brand new shaman Glyph of Unleashed Lightning. I was the first to list on Wednesday morning & quickly sold 5 at 575g each, unfortunately competition arrived rapidly & by Friday morning, they were down to 95g each.

Whilst my scribe was the first toon I logged to get the glyph & the new relic recipes, she's also my JC so off I went to grab the new PVP rings & necklace recipes/patterns. I trotted round to the AH only to find that all of the JC items were already listed by multiple players - but none of the relics were so I listed just 1 of each.

I think most gold bloggers were forecasting/expecting inferno rubies to sell fast & high priced but even today (Monday) the prices on my server are struggling to get up to 120g, which is where they were just 2 or 3 weeks ago. Demonseye & Ember Topaz's on the other hand have shot up in price & even some of the Amberjewel cuts have hit 60g+.

I haven't been stockpiling dreamcloth on my tailor but I kinda regret that now! The epic spellthreads have been selling quite well with the few bits I did have but my tailor is badly neglected so now this is where I pay my price! Going forward, I now know to watch the spellthread markets & I guess the leg armour markets for my also neglected Leatherworker.

I did make a few pieces of the new Bloodthirsty PvP armour in both Leatherworking & my Blacksmith but none have sold so far. I guess they will start to move this week when the new season starts but if not, I have a rogue who can use the leather items & either my pally or DK can use the plate ones!

Besides all this Patch 4.2 stuff, good old Chocolate Cookies & Greater Eternal Essences once again make the top page of results. I now have some competition in the cookie market but I've slapped him (my husband) & told him he's got to wait until I get my cap! Hopefully another week of sales like the last few days & I may have to start writing my WarcraftEcon interview.

PS I use the Mysales addon for the screenshots, really easy to use & configure using just /ms window or /ms config commands.

What's Been Selling This Week?



© Nev 2008, Picking Cherries

 Another slow sales week, with rare gem prices really dropping off, pre Patch 4.2 slow down I guess. Sales income for the week of 41.5k & liquid gold increase of 30.9k so I spent 10.6k this week mainly on a bit of last minute stocking up for the patch. In one way, it's annoying because I'm so close to my target that I don't want to spend more than I have to but by doing so, I should be able to really make use of the craziness that is Patch day in the AH!

 

I dipped my toe back into the enchanting market & cherry picked the highest profit enchants - namely the Hurricane & Agility enchants but if you saw yesterdays post, farming Essence of Air is a little hit & miss timewise so I'm not sure how many of the agility enchants I can realistically keep listed. Essence of Air sells for 175g each on my server which means that either the enchant price needs to skyrocket or I need to spend time farming, not my favourite occupation tbh.

Inferno ink sales have slowed down & the price has dropped but that's because the Darkmoon Faire isn't around for another week or two. I expect the new Inscription relics for 4.2 will also spike demand but I'm undecided whether to just sell all my inks at insane prices or to try some of the relics. I'll probably try 1 relic & see what the prices are like before I decide which way to go on Wednesday.

Greater Eternal Essences have also slowed down, saleswise & I've gained some competition. I'm doing my usual list when there's very few listed & at a price I'm happy to sell at. I actually bought some for 15g each this week & immediatly listed them for 55g which promptly sold!

Chocolate cookies & Glyphs are still selling well - some glyphs have jumped up to 300g or more but they aren't showing in my list up above because they are on page 2 :)

Blacksmithing has improved a little - I managed to shift some Ebonsteel Belt Buckles & I tried the Hardened Elementium Bar after reading Wes's post over at Capped By Cata. The Obsidium Skeleton Keys continue to sell but the strange thing is that most of them seem to be going to one person! I keep expecting an email asking for a bulk price but not received one so far.

The PvP stuff is what's left over from levelling my blacksmithing but I haven't made anymore because everything is going to be changing when the patch hits. Just in case you don't know, if you have the pattern already, it will be upgraded in your profession book & the patterns at the vendor will upgrade too so there's no rush to buy the patterns BUT if you have any unsold ready crafted PvP stuff, it won't upgrade so I'm trying to get rid of the few bits that I have left.

So that's been my week but I've also been slowed down by having my husband home for the week & we've started a little horde alt for a bit of cross faction trading. I haven't tried any cross faction before so I'm taking note of Faid's precautions & taking advice from Flux & Jokinee from Power Word:Gold. Talking of which - look out for episode 13 of their podcast - they have a very special guest this week :-D

Something in The Air?

© Nev 2003 Something in the Air

A little while ago, I did a post about getting my Timbermaw Reputation to exalted in order to get the 2 heirloom weapon agility enchants. Both these enchants use Essence of Air which is notoriously difficult to farm since the Cataclysm. Wowhead lists them as a 5% drop rate which, as we all know, means a lot of farming time. The first time I went farming in Silithus, I killed Dust Stormers for almost 1 hour to get the 8 Essences of Air that I wanted. Recently I have had reason to go back several times & I've also shown or taken guildies there too.

The quickest way for a level 85 character is to portal to Uldum & fly across to the top north-west corner of Silithus as shown on the map. There are 2 main areas, concentrated around either side of the Crystal Vice where the earth elementals (Rumblers) are. The blue line on the map is the approximate path for the Twilight Prophet & her guards. She drops 7-10 Encrypted Twilight Texts which are used for Cenarion Circle reputation so if you already have the rep (or not interested in rep grinds), you can sell them on the auction house for maybe 20g each but obviously, your server prices may be a little different. I have them on my snatch list & buy them up when I see them for 3g or less.

So why am I telling you about this slow farm/low drop rate item? Well, I've been farming there several evenings recently & I have a feeling the drop rate has been improved!

I lent some gold to a guildie & instead of them repaying me in gold, I asked her to farm 8 Essences of Air for me, expecting it to take maybe 2 hours & she would feel like she'd worked for her loan! Instead, she whispered me within about 30 mins to say she had them already & did I want any more?

Two weeks ago, I was at Ahn'Qhiraj with another guildie farming the Battletank mounts & when we hit the 5 instances per hour limit, I took him over to Silithus to show him this corner. It's a nice little gold earner for anyone patient enough to farm & then patient enough to wait for them to sell. We were there for maybe 20 minutes & between us we got 10 Essences of Air.

Another evening this last week, I was kinda restless & didn't want to start any major stuff as it was getting late so I dived down to this corner & did a bit of farming. Within the first 12 minutes I had picked up 9 Essences of Air, not to mention 10 Breath of Wind & 12 Elemental Airs.

Now this is all anecdotal of course but my luck with the RNG is never very good. I decided to test my theory again this morning (Sunday) before writing this post & what happened? Yup, you guessed it - 3 essences of air in 30 mins - back to the old, horrible drop rate!

I had a look at the comments on Wowhead & there seems to be a mixed response as to whether the drop rate has been improved. I'm going to try it again in the late evening, just to see if there's a time based element on this particular RNG as one commenter suggested.

So, has anyone else been farming these lately? How was the drop rate for you? Or would someone like to test this hunch out?

Edited to add: If you have a choice of alts to take farming here, take a miner - lots of thorium nodes & some truesilver ones as well. Also, if your guild is going for the killing critters achievement - there's a fair few snakes around too! Enjoy :-D

What's Been Selling This Week?

© Nev 2011, Eyes Wide Open

It's been a fun week this week, achievement chasing & levelling an alt or two, whilst trying to keep my sales at a steady level. Now that school holidays are sneaking up on my server, I can see a definite difference in sales, prices & volumes which is interesting & frustrating at the same time. Interesting because it's my first summer as a dedicated gold maker & frustrating as I'm so close to gold cap now, I just want to get there but prices are fluctuating like crazy so I'm being more careful about riskier strategies.

Sales income this week of 48198g + 2334g from my new blacksmith alt but with only a 36k increase in liquid gold, tells me my spending has shot up again after a couple of low spend weeks to 14.2k. having said that, I did spend about 7k on gear for my DK & 1k on Argent Tournament mounts for my paladin mount collector so actually crafting/resell expenses are still only around the 6k mark.

I finally managed to sell my epic world drop Woundsplicer Handwraps but only for just over 6000g - I mentioned a few weeks ago that these dropped for my pally about an hour after I'd bought & equipped a pair on my Priest for 8000g so I could say that I only paid 2000g for her gloves but somehow it feels more like I lost 2000g due to my inability to sell them at the higher price! Hmmmm.

Along with my usual glyphs & rare cut gems, I did manage to shift a fair few Greater Eternal Essences & Inferno Inks last week & the price also remained fairly high. I know from some comments that this is a good price & I've been actively working to keep these prices up there. I almost always have mine listed at around these prices, sometimes I'm slightly undercutting others but often I'm the most expensive. However, it does serve to keep undercuts just below mine so the overall average price stays high & customers get used to seeing the market at these prices. Eventually they will be the norm & people won't balk at paying these prices.

I also found out I needed a cooking recipe from the Shattrath Daily Cooking quest (to complete the Outland Gourmet achieve) so when it took me over to Netherstorm, I took the opportunity to stock up on the pets from Dealer Rashad, the pet guy over there. I've sold a few this week but the pet market seems pretty saturated except for the Pet Bombling from Engineering which has been selling nicely this week. I'm still looking for the Lifelike Mechanical Toad recipe on the AH but I think I live in hope on that one!

As for my newly maxed Blacksmith, I have to say I'm a bit disappointed. I think mostly because I had heard & read such great stories about profits from Blacksmithing but then again, I do realise that this close to Patch 4.2 with all those new recipes/plans coming online, I may have timed it badly! Pretty much the only thing that sells for a decent profit is the Obsidium Skeleton Keys - that Bloodied Pyrium Helm & Ebonsteel Belt Buckle up there are total flukes & Volatile Fire prices have been at a steady 13-18g each, making any of the Bloodied Pyrium set have a crafting cost of over 220g.

So for now, I'm knuckling down to my usual markets but I'm keeping my eyes wide open for opportunities elsewhere. I promised myself a whole host of goodies when I hit goldcap but until then, I really mustn't buy anymore pretties :D

PS The addon I use for showing my sales data is called MySales, download from Curse.com & really easy to use.