Don't Forget your Lowbie Skills Can Make You Money Too!

Rather later than planned but I thought I'd continue my foray into low level craft items that sell well. I covered low level Leatherworking & some low level Alchemy items in 2 previous posts but I don't have quite so many items on any of the other proffs, so this post is a bit of a round up!

The biggest low level money maker profession is probably Inscription - I have this on my AH Alt & now she's up to skill 150, she's doing ok thanks :) I'll do a proper update on her later this week. Gathering herbs while you level or putting them on your snatch list is a great way of keeping costs down - it's a fairly labour intensive prof in general with the milling, crafting inks then making the glyphs but it is worthwhile if you do your homework.

I won't go into great detail on glyphs - too many to cover & much better posts re glyphs already out there on the net. But, what do you do with all your 'rare' inks? Make Decks of cards of course! Obviously at low levels, this won't be the big ticket items like Darkmoon Card of Destruction but the lowbie ones like Mysterious Tarot at skill 85 (which gives the Rogues Deck) or Strange Tarot at skill 125 (which gives the Swords Deck).

Both of these can be used to increase your reputation with the Darkmoon Faire but that is another post! Needless to say, these 2 decks still sell fairly well so if you have excess Hunter's Ink & Dawnstar Ink, this may be an option. If you end up with odd cards, check the AH - I often find the individual cards for as little as 3g each. Rogues Deck usually sells for 50g & up whilst the Swords Deck sells for 80g & up. There are two other decks at slightly higher levels so keep your eyes open for those too.

Next profession is Engineering - now my alt is still only low in this so the only item she crafts on a regular basis is the Mechanical Squirrel Box at skill level 75. I'm selling these at 25g each at the moment & creeping the price up a little each time I post. I occasionally have competition from levellers but no-one else seems to be bothering. Very basic mats of copper, malachite & linen so most of that 25g is profit :)

I'm currently levelling Blacksmithing on a level 50 alt so I'll go have a look, see what she's got to craft & I'm going to power level Tailoring on another level 50 alt in the next week or so. I'll take notes & get back to you for low level items to craft for profit on those professions soon.

Don't Be A JOAT!

As a follow up to my butterfly post on Monday, I thought I'd fill you in on this week & what I've learned already.

I've learned that no matter how many lists you have/make, there's always something else that pops up & grabs your attention! I've been pretty good at sticking to my intended routine but the bit about doing my JC daily & listing the appropriate gems on the AH has kinda fallen off. Once I start seeing those 'a buyer has been found' messages pop up in my chat box, I just have to dash back to the bank to see if I've got any more to list or 'damn, I've run out of xyz, gotta prospect more ore' 'craft more rings to d/ench' or whatever it is that's grabbed me.

You've heard the expression " jack of all trades, master of none"? Well, I think that's me - I have a pretty good understanding of most of the profs by now (except BS & Eng) but I've never stayed concentrating on one market long enough to become a master.

At least one of the main gold blogs had a post about diversification but I've just spent 20 mins looking for it & can't find it so someone link it pls so I can give credit! Diversification is good, it allows you to have experienced fingers in many gold making pies but there is a qualifier there - you need to build up knowledge & experience in a single market before you jump into the next!

Markco explained it pretty well earlier this week in his post as did Ali in her guest post mentioned in my post linked above but it actually takes a bit of sitting down & thinking about before you realise that that is exactly what you're doing (or not doing, as the case maybe).

This last few weeks, I've got the gold fever. I'm not much of a history student but even so, I'm getting a taste of the addiction/fascination with gold that created whole towns on the basis of a few nuggets of the real stuff found in a river in the 1800's.

I get such a buzz when I see those 'buyer found' messages, it's ridiculous! My hubby can always tell when I'm emptying my mailbox by the k'ching sounds & apparently when my Mysterious Fortune Cards are selling well, according to him, I cackle in my corner!

So what can you take from this ramble that will help you make gold? Hmm, tbh, I'm not sure but perhaps my message today is - are you jumping around, from crafting to listing to farming to ah camping to disenchanting to barking & back to listing? If you are, how much other WoW stuff are you actually doing as well? When was the last time you put a level or two on an alt or got an achieve? I know my JC'er hasn't left Stormwind in weeks & she's not even my banker and my poor little shammy is sitting in the Hinterlands somewhere, totally abandoned.

So go on, be a devil, let your bank/auction alt have a break & go & get some levels done. Hey, getting to 50 opens up the next lot of profession training, maybe that will make you some more gold down the line!

Drowning in Zephyrites?

I posted a few stats from my big Obsidium prospecting session a little while ago but since then I've been buying ores at anywhere from 26-50g per stack & following my methods from that post. I'm 8k up in four days so I feel it's going fairly well but now I'm absolutely drowning in Zephyrites!

I've been crafting necks/rings & spikes to disenchant or sell the blues then selling the enchanting mats. We've also had 3 nightstone & 2 jasper JC dailies in the last week but no Zephyrite dailies so I haven't been able to get rid of any that way.

I figured I wouldn't be the only one with this problem so I decided to have a look at my options.

First off, the raw gems are selling for maybe 7-10g each but with a 5g (ish) deposit & hundreds of them on the AH I need a sell price of at least 15g to make any gold (cut & vendor =9g + 5g AH deposit if it doesn't sell).

I've only just maxed my JC so trying to find a cut for the zephyrites that sells well seems a bit silly as I only have a few cuts available so far. I don't want to 'waste' my JC tokens on zephyrites just yet. Having looked at the prices of cut zephyrites, even the perfect cuts are selling for maybe 25g if it's a really good day.

With the upcoming changes (summarised nicely by JMTC) to meta gems, I have been making shadowspirit diamonds, ready to cut as & when the new cuts are available but this eats into my stocks of the other gems which are making gold in other ways. I'm trying to find a happy balance between using the other gems this way for stock & still making gold now.

So the only other option I can see for now is to utilise my alchemist & transmute zephyrites (+ azshara's veil) into ocean sapphires. I have one cut available for now but should be able to get another later today (unless it's the Elemental Goo daily, 'cos my JC'er is only lvl 76!).

Luckily I have a herbalist questing thru Vashj'ir at the moment so I don't have to lay out cash to get the herbs required, just a lil' bit of extra time picking flowers as I go.

I need to watch the Ocean Sapphire market a bit more closely over the next few days - I've not been that interested in the cut gems yet as I have so few cuts but now seems like a good time to get interested!

What do you do with all your excess zephyrites? Have I missed anything obvious? Let me know what you think.

Training a Butterfly!

I've been trying to write this post all weekend - editing, wiping & starting again & then in 3 seperate blogs there are posts which link in & explain perfectly what I've been trying to say! Grrrrr lol

My butterfly is my brain - you've all seen a butterfly flit between flowers in a seemingly random fashion, well that's how my brain works! I log in each morning with full intentions to do something specific & then by midday, I've done loads of stuff but not what I intended at the start! So I need a routine, a 'method' if you will & I need to stop jumping around every time I see a new 'shiny' to distract me.

Aliciana's guest post at JMTC relates to knowing your Niche Markets - something I've overlooked since I started trying to make gold. I had some beginners luck before I found all these wonderful gold blogs by applying instincts and common sense - 2 things I think I've lost sight of as I now 'work' at making gold.

Then later in the day, Alto posted his Common Sense post - another few chords started ringing in my ears and now this morning (UK time that is!), Stede has posted a full scale, in depth look at Jewelcrafting. This is one of my newer professions and one that I have dived into wholeheartedly, ignoring some of my more familiar profs & ignoring common sense a little.

So besides linking to these 3 great posts, now what can I talk about today? Well I thought maybe a little public analysis of what I have & what I should do with it might be useful to other butterfly brains out there! For the moment, I'm going to ignore my LW & Inscription & focus on the holy trinity of gold making at the moment - Alchemy, JC & Enchanting, all of which I have finally managed to max to 525.

I've been buying Obsidium Ore whenever I see it below 50g a stack - this last few days it's been as low as 29-35g a stack so I currently have a mailbox full of it to deal with! I have been using the now-famous spreadsheet which Zoxy explains really well in his post but my PC is pretty old & slow & I find tabbing in & out of game to be evermore frustrating so I've kinda gone with my gut feelings & my trusty calculator. It doesn't help that prices on my server are so stupidly low that the only real way of making any gold at the moment is enchanting materials from disenchanting jewellery - monotonous & time consumimg.

I'm going to try to stick to a routine for a few days & see how it goes. This is my provisional routine which I will adapt as necessary.

• Log in to banker(s),
• collect post
• squee with glee/cry over lack of gold
• relist any returned items
• list any new stuff sent from alts
• run auctioneer fast scan (time for a coffee & smoke anyways!)
• run snatch search, buy if needed
• check prices of all raw Cataclysm gems & herbs (for possible transmutes)
• fill in spreadsheet
• log in to JC alt, do JC daily
• if JC daily is jasper/nightstone or zephyrite, list gems on AH in 1's & 3's & hopefully at higher price than yesterday
• check enchanting mats stock, decide whether to prospect/craft/disench more stuff
• use spreadsheet to decide if metagem transmute is sensible, send mats to alchemist
• Log in to Alchemist alt, do daily transmute volatile life > air, send to enchanter alt
• Do metagem transmutes if viable
• Log in to Enchanter alt, check price of Enchant Weapon - Hurricane (currently the only scroll worth selling on my server) & make a couple if price is good.
• Last but not least - WALK AWAY NOW & go do some actual playing!

So what do you think? Have I missed anything or is there still too much in there? I'm thinking I will do this probably twice a day, morning & early evening. I have to break the habit of popping to my banker every hour or so to see if anything's sold & I also have to stop buying Obsidium Ore even if it is down at 25g a stack - at least until I work thru the last ton of the stuff in my mailbox!

photos © Arty Allsorts 2008, used with permission

AH Alt Day 30 - Final Count Up & Next Phase

I've kinda let this little project slip for the last week or so - I've been so busy prospecting obsidium, milling herbs & buying maelstrom crystals that I didn't even check her auctions for the last 2 days!

Anyway, final cash count over 30 days of pure AH flipping & a little inscription side action has netted her a whole 3537gold. Not much more than last time I reported in but I still have quite a bit to sell. Closing stock is as follows:-

First Mate Hat - bought for 500g hoping to sell for 3000g or more
Design - Jeweller's Sapphire Monocle - bought for 50g listed at 250g
2 Swords Deck
1 Rogues Deck
16 various glyphs
1 Titanium Toolbox - bought for 15g, listed for 75g
& 5 cooking vendor recipes.

Her inscription is maxed at 150/150 (she is only level 10!!) so rather than just abandon this alt, I think the next experiment will be to see how much she can make in the next 30 days from Inscription alone. Obviously I will continue to try and sell the remaining stock listed above but unless I see some fantastic deal, I won't continue to flip AH items or vendor items.

I think this may prove less lucrative than pre-Cata - there does seem to be a general slowing down of glyphs on this server & my main server as well as a lot of very low priced glyphs (less than 2g!). But I think it's worth a try even if it is only on a small scale.

Wish me Luck!

My Pocket's in Shock!

Yup, I spent almost half of my liquid gold yesterday morning after the server restarted - I happened to be trying to log in just as they were coming online & had spent the previous hour or so, reading about the Maelstrom Crystal nerf over on Zoxy's blog and loads of others.

I logged in & nabbed the whole lot while most people were still blissfully unaware that the servers were back up or that the hotfix had gone live. I am now the proud owner of 27 Maelstrom Crystals and very few fingernails.

It's taken me a further 24 hours or more to come to the understanding that I am more risk averse than I ever realised! I think that perhaps if I'd reached 200k before this happened, maybe I wouldn't be worrying so much. Not only that, it's just a bloomin' game for pete's sake! It's not even 'real' money after all!

But you know what? I've actually worked pretty damn hard for that stash - I've read blogs, I've made spreadsheets, I'm going to suffocate under an avalanche of sticky notepaper soon & I've spent hours upon hours in the AH, watching markets, trying to get an understanding of things.

In my head, I know these things will sell & I 'know' the market will rise for a while. I also have a maxed enchanter so I can always use them for the top end enchant recipes & sell those instead.

But in the meanwhile, I'll still be gibbering in the corner, chewing my fingernails!

What's the biggest purchase you've made & how long did you deliberate before or worry about it after?

Mysterious Fortune Cards Revisited

Back in December I wrote a post about  Mysterious Fortune Cards & how they were not for me at that time - I was still levelling my herbalist through the new zones & making a fortune from the herbs that all the MFC required. Well, the market has settled down, herb prices have dropped to between 50-75g a stack (mainly Cinderbloom) & I've dived in! I've even been barking in trade occasionally.

Admittedly profits aren't quite so high as they probably were in December but that's OK, I do actually want to leave the treadmill of milling/inking/card making/ listing to play this game sometimes which I know I wouldn't do if these were selling at this rate but for more money! I have some pretty major competition but they seem to be evening players so I'm owning the daytime market & letting them have some profits in the evenings - I'm so nice like that! lol

Yesterday I did have to giggle all day to myself - anyone listening in must have thought I'd lost it! There was a new entrant to the market who likes to list a 'full deck' of 52 then barks like crazy about how cheap his bulk purchase is compared to all those singles (mine!) but every time he barked, I ran out of stock! In the end I just made up 200 cards & listed 20 as soon as he barked then another 20 as they ran low. I didn't quite managed to clear my stock but I now know to just wait them out - I refuse to post at silly prices just to get rid of them.

If you really want to know how to play this particular bit of the game - have a read of the Masters' articles - Cold's Mysterious Fortune Card posts - he pretty much has it covered & this post has links to other great blogs that wrote about MCF's too.

In other news, I managed to get the Fortune Cookie recipe yesterday so today's plan is to try to create a Fortune Cookie market - my auctioneer has only seen about 200 so far according to my scan data so it may be a lost cause for now or no-ones really caught on. I have my fingers crossed & I'll let you know how it goes in a few days :D

A Misers Guide to Cataclysm Enchanting Mats (& a little gamble)

Do you ever stumble across something in game & wonder how many others have found 'your' little trick? I do & then I wonder if I should write about it or keep it to myself, especially if I haven't seen it on any of the myriad sites I read! But today, I decided to share - after all, that's what this gold blogging is all about isn't it?

This is really aimed at those of you who don't have easy access to a high level jewelcrafter to prospect, craft rings & disenchant them. I guess many of you will be familiar with buying cheap greens at the AH but just in case you missed that, this is what I do on a regular basis.

First up, I check today's prices on the AH for Hypnotic Dust, Lesser Celestial Essence (aka LCE), Greater Celestial Essence (aka GCE) & Heavenly Shard (more on these later). Dust is at 9g, GCE at 50g, LCE at 36g & heavenly shards at 63g. These prices form the basis of my decision making when bidding or buying at the next stage which is to sort the Armor subcategory by item level 78-85 & by bid price. You can see from the screen shot that Auctioneer tells you which items d/e to Cata mats & which to WotLK mats - very useful for the level 78-80 items.

You can also see that the highlighted one has a bid price of just 9.75g - thinking back to today's price for hypnotic dust (9g) this is a definite bid item - it d/e's to at least 2 hypnotic dusts on average, making it a bit of a no-brainer really :)

Generally speaking, I bid on almost every Cata item that has a bid price below today's price for 2 dusts or 1 LCE (roughly 20g usually) & that's being very conservative - I am looking for a bargain after all! You can repeat this process for the weapon sub section too but I rarely find any low bids in there on my server.

So where do the Heavenly Shards fit in? Right here! After I've exhausted all the greens, I move on to the blues.  This time, I'm not only watching for the Cata mats in the tooltip but the heavenly shard itself - some lower ilevel blues d/ench to Small heavenly Shard which is not really what we're after. I believe you need enchanting 500/525 to disenchant these but you can always grab the bargains now & d/e when you get there.



Bearing in mind today's price for Heavenly shards (63g), I look for bid or buy prices below that - today's price is high for my server so I put a cap of 50g on my purchases. As you can see from the screenshot - there are 5 auctions available on this page alone & by the time I'd finished, I'd either bought or bid on 18 different listings!

So where's the gamble? Have another look at the tooltip on the 2nd screenshot :) Spotted it yet? Yup, there is a miniscule chance of these blues d/enchanting to a Maelstrom Crystal which currently sell for about 1500g on my server & are used in the top level enchants & to purchase the very top level recipes from the Shard Trader in the Twilight Highlands.

Now that would certainly make my day, that's for sure!

Yet More Obsidium Ore Prospecting!

So I've just about cleared the last bulk buy of Obsidium when I logged in this morning to find another sweet deal :) Yup, I am now the proud owner of another 1000 ores for a total cost of 2750g - that's just 2.75g each or 55g a stack.

This time, however, I've been really observant & kept notes of everything I've done to reduce this stack to profit. I decided to deal with the whole lot at once instead of in dribs & drabs to make record keeping easier. So what did I get? I got 53 carnelian, 35 zephyrite, 60 jasper, 47 alicite, 57 nightstones & 47 hessonite. I also got 17 of the rare quality gems but I'm ignoring them for the moment!

I'm still levelling my JC to 535 (yup, she's a draenai so gotta get extra 10 points) so the first thing I did was the Fire prism - that netted me an ocean sapphire & 2 demonseye to add to the lot above so I'm ignoring these too for now :)

I then started crafting - 30 Jasper rings (got 5 blues), 20 alicite pendants (got 2 blues) & 20 hessonite bands (got 2 blues). I sent the blues to my auctioneer & all the greens to my enchanter. I also made 15 carnelian spikes which went to my enchanter as well.


remaining stock

My disenchanting produced 39 lesser celestial essences (780g), 108 hypnotic dusts (864g) & 27 greater celestial essences (1620g) - all of which I am keeping for my enchanter to produce scrolls so I've valued these at today's prices if I had bought them with a total of 3264g.

At this point, I am already in profit - 2750g on ore, 3264g worth of enchanting mats & a small cost of 154g for the jeweller's settings means 360g profit at this stage. However I still have all of the nightstones (54), most of the zephyrites (32) and 27 jaspers as well as all the rare quality gems & all the blue quality jewellery to sell.

The nightstones & zephyrites will be used for JC dailies & sold at AH on those days. I may yet make Nightstone chokers to disenchant but even today they had an AH price of 25g each so I'll probably just watch the market & list when the prices rises. If all the blues sell, that's another 1382g (less AH fees of course).

I'm still getting JC cuts so for now, I'm just keeping my rare gems. I have an alchemist so I'll be sending some of the spare stock over to her to transmute to Shadowspirit diamonds as well. I'll be listing this stock over the next few days & keeping a tally so I'll try to report back soon (as long as I don't get this lot muddled with all the other stuff I keep producing/buying/selling!!

Can you see something I've missed? Let me know :)



Woo Hoo, Finally Made It!

I was hoping for 100k by 6th January as a doubling of my gold since Cata release but yesterday I finally got there - screenshot snipped from my altoholic summary :)

And in a big coincidence, Alaysha, my little auction house experiment hit another milestone of 3000g :) I have a screenshot but for some reason, I can't add a second image so you'll just have to believe me.

I scanned the AH this morning & bought a First Mate Hat for 500g as I seem to remember reading about these. Perhaps I should have double checked first but there was one other listed when I looked & it was at 5000g so fingers crossed for a sale soon.

In other news, I managed to sell one of the Elementium Geode pets I bought the other day as well as the other expensive items I bought. I mentioned which items in my Day 20 Update post & I've placed a lot of bids today for similar items. Any of the blue (rare quality) Cata items with bid or sale prices of 10 gold are probably worth a try - I'm pretty sure enchanters are scouting for these for cheap disenchanting so even if I only double the price & relist, that's still good profit. There are also some cut gems with really low bid prices - I'm looking at the rare gems again - the uncommon ones are still so cheap that there's little to be gained once you take into account the high deposit cost which you may lose if it doesn't sell.

So that's about it on AH Alt update - day 24, 3000g & lots of stuff still to sell. I haven't been quite as industrious at searching for bargains over the last few days so incoming gold has dropped but I'm being braver at trying some of the more costly items.

Can I get to 10k by day 30? I have no idea but I think it's a nice round number to aim for & way higher than I ever really expected at the start of this little experiment.

So Leatherworking's Not Quite Your Thing?

How about Alchemy instead then? There are about 8 items an alchemist can make below 150 skill points that can make a nice little bundle for you if herbs are more your thing. Of course, there are others & you will need many of them to level up but the following 8 items are the regular sellers at more than a few silvers each.

The first thing I should say is that I have most of these herbs on my snatch list at really low prices & I grab them whenever I see them. I also have some low level toons which I level with herbalism & mining as standard as I have all the main professions covered on higher alts, so I usually have a ready supply of low to mid level herbs.

Linking to my Leatherworking post yesterday, Elixir of Defense is available at 130 skill points & uses 1 Wild Steelbloom & 1 Stranglekelp. It's used in the Toughened Leather Gloves and I used it on one of my low level clothies who was dying too often for my liking :) I usually list these for 3g each & make 20 at a time. I don't list 20 though, only 2 or 3 at a time on the AH.

Also linked to Leatherworking but at 50 skill points is Elixir of Minor Agility (1 Silverleaf & 1 Swiftthistle) & at skill 140, Elixir of Lesser Agility (1Wild Steelbloom & 1 Swiftthistle). I usually post these at 3g each but sometimes they sell for 5 or 6g each. Give it a try on your server - you may have lots of leatherworkers around :)

Moving away from supplying Leatherworkers, there are also 2 potions which sell regularly to pvp'ers - the first of which is Swiftness Potion (skill 60). This takes 1 Swiftthistle & 1 Briarthorn and can also used by leatherworkers but I think most sell to pvp'ers, especially those below lvl 20 as it increases run speed in battlegrounds (great if you're trying to keep up with the flag carrier). These regularly sell in stacks of 5 for 10-20g, especially when it's a Call To Arms weekend for Arathi Basin or Warsong Gulch.

The Free Action Potion is available at skill 150 & uses 2 Blackmouth Oils & 1 Stranglekelp. Whilst researching these recipes, I noticed that this one has the same materials as Elixir of Water Breathing, available at skill 90. Currently I am selling the water breathing one at about 5-10g each for people who are going through Vashj'ir.

I've found that the Oily Blackmouth fish sell better than the Blackmouth Oil so you may find the fish are expensive to buy - never mind, just go fishing & use some for the above potions & sell some fish too!

I'll be looking at some of the other professions over the next few days, so don't forget to pop back when you can. I hope this will help as you level your alchemy or as you start to build your gold making skills.

So You Don't Have a High Level Leatherworker...

So what? You can still make some nice gold at lower levels, even as early as level 10! Those of you who'd looked at my auction house alt experiment posts will know that I've also started levelling a hunter on the same server. I picked up skinning & leatherworking and so far have made a few pieces for myself but she's only level 10 so I haven't really got into my stride yet.

However, my main is level 85 and also has leatherworking (at 485 so far). I remember when I was first levelling her & her leatherworking, I carried on making the lvl 5-15 stuff long after she had passed them for skill points as the light leather was so cheap & the really low level stuff was selling well. With the redesign of the whole questing process & rewards, I don't know if this still holds true but it's worth looking at for yourself if you are new to the game or starting on a new server.

The earliest good pattern is Toughened Leather Armor available at skill level 120 - it takes 10 medium leather, 6 cured light hides & 2 fine threads but it currently sells for anywhere between 30-50g. As it is for level 19's, it's a perfect twink piece so although you probably won't sell lots every day, it will sell.

Next up is the Toughened Leather Gloves available at skill level 135. This one only takes 4 medium leather, 2 cured medium hides, 2 spider's silk, 2 elixir of defense & 2 fine threads but I usually post these at 95g each & more often than not, they sell within 24hrs. I have Spider's Silk on my snatch list & rarely pay more than 1-2g each for them.

At skill 155, you pop over to Darnassus (if you haven't already!) and find the leatherworking supplies vendor Saenorion to buy Pattern: Barbaric Bracers. This is a limited spawn recipe but I've never had any problems getting it. If he doesn't have it when you get there, give it 10 mins - wander round and enjoy this beautiful city, maybe do some fishing to get your skill up then pop back.

There are a few more mats for this one, 8 heavy leather, 4 large fangs, 1 raptor hide, 4 small lustrous pearls & 2 cured heavy hides but none of them are particularly expensive. If you're skinning as you level, many of the mats will be dropping for you anyway.

If you're making this on a high level toon, just put the large fangs & raptor hide on your snatch list or if you're levelling alts, bear this recipe in mind and send across any fangs or raptor hide they pick up. These bracers regularly sell for 125g, again within 24hrs usually.

This next recipe took some getting! I parked an alt in Booty Bay & logged her several times for 2 days before Rikqiz deigned to sell me the Pattern: Gem Studded Leather Belt. I don't think it's that rare, just my timing being bad! This one requires skill level 185, has really simple mats & sells for 120g every time I list it. Having a lowbie jewelcrafter, I always send all gems I loot to her which means I usually only need to buy the heavy hides. It requires 4 cured heavy hides, 1 iridescent pearl, 1 jade, 1 citrine & 1 fine thread.

None of these cost much more than 10g in mats even if you buy everything from the AH. Many of the mats you will pick up as you level anyway or can go farm some for yourself. If you're running a rogue, feral druid or hunter, you could also be one of the best dressed around!

Arrrggghhhh! One of THOSE days!

I'm pretty new to this blogging lark. I'm enjoying it so far but I jumped in with a specific idea & no real plan for the future - although actually, that's pretty normal for me. So today, when I sat down to write a post, I got a bit stuck - so many good writers & blogs out there with so many topics covered already, where or how do I make mine that little bit different?

Well, I'm pretty new to this gold making lark so I figured I just need to write about what I'm learning, how I'm working things out & link to the various posts that inspire me to try different things or make me want to ask more questions on a subject.

I've already started keeping notes for prospecting (see my Obsidium Prospecting post), milling & disenchanting with a view to sharing my findings. I've also been questing with a Potion of Treasure Finding active to see how that affects loot drops & keeping a gold tally while I'm questing from 83-85, just to see how much accumulates without being noticed.

So I guess what I'm trying to get at, is - are there any little experiments you run for yourself that I could try or other random ideas that you haven't got around to or can't be bothered with? Have you done a blog post that you think I could follow up & link to?

Let me know what you think so far - I love receiving comments (as do all bloggers I'm sure), they let me know that I'm not talking to myself!

The Second Dumbest Server on WoW maybe?

There has been a bit of a theme running through the gold blogs over the last couple of days, but Wes at CappedbyCata said it best in his I think I play on dumbest server in wow post! I logged on yesterday evening to find the AH on my server flooded by stacks of Obsidium Ore at just 50g per stack. I immediately bought 40 stacks before getting cold feet as I couldn't see the end of the listings! I passed word to my hubby who took his fill then logged an alt to go & let my guildies know. Two of my closest friends in guild managed to take their fill, as did several other guildies that I know about. Happy days all round then!

So why is my server possibly the second dumbest server on WoW? Well this morning I woke up extra early (about 6am ugh!) so I logged on as it's something quiet to do without disturbing sleeping beauty next door! What did I see? Over 250 listings of Obsidium Ore at less than 2.5g each! Luckily they weren't all in singles otherwise I may have passed but I just couldn't resist! I am now the proud owner of 90 stacks of Obsidium Ore at an average price of 50g per stack. I took out all the auctions below one guy who had his listed at 6.50 per ore & promptly relisted maybe 30 stacks in various multiples at 6.45g per ore.

 Besides watching the AH like a hawk for the next few hours, I foresee a LOT of prospecting, crafting & d/e'ing in my near future. I'll try to keep detailed notes and report back soon. It does follow nicely from my Obsidium Ore & Prospecting post and also I'll be keeping an eye on Mageshadow's post on Making Gold with Obsidium just to make sure I don't miss any tricks.

Auction House Alt - Day 20 Update

So Day 17 opened with a balance of about 2000g & I did my usual routine, scan, search & post. I bought a few herbs for milling at silly low prices but even the silverleaf stacks have jumped in price today. Did sell the moth eggs so it looks like another trip to Exodar may be on the cards.

Day 18 opened with a balance of 2123g, not bad for minimal attention yesterday. Bought more herbs for milling, did my Minor Inscription Research & made a couple of glyphs to post. I think I may level my banker alt to lvl 10 to get the next level of Inscription training.

Day 19 opened with a balance of 2226g so fairly consist with 100g-ish per day so far. I feel the need to ramp it up a bit but I'm not quite sure how! I'm placing bids worth maybe 300g or more most days but I'm just not winning them. I put the remaining moth eggs up and also a full set of the vendor cooking recipes - I can't help marvel at how lazy or ignorant some people are in-game, paying 12g for a 5silver recipe!

One item I did win was Crocolisk Au Gratin, bought 3 stacks for about 2g & so far sold 5 for 15g, only 55 more to sell then :) From my inscription milling, I gained 5 Verdant Pigment which I can't use at this level so I popped it on the AH for 11g each too.

Day 20 dawns & I have a lovely mailbox full of cash, opening balance today 2532g! Another 30 or so Crocolisk au gratin's sold & all the verdant pigments, cooking recipes & moth eggs too.

I decided to take a gamble today & spend some of this cash - I found 2 Elementium Geode, each for 300g while my auctioneer scan was telling me over 900g each so I snapped them up - fingers crossed they sell soon!

I tried bidding on some Cata green armour items for less than 10g each - I'm pretty certain I can sell these again - either at the correct prices for armour or at 20g-ish for disenchanters to snap up. Unfortunately, most were either on long bids times or on someone else's list because almost as soon as I was placing bids, I was being outbid. I did manage to snaffle a Bloodied Pyrium Shoulders for 23g which I promptly relisted for 395g and also a Revitalizing Shadowspirit Diamond for 8g which I listed for 255g - oh happy days!

Closing balance however, not such a good result - down to 1589g but with 2 pets & 50 other auctions active, I suppose it's not all bad :)

And on a funny side note - who said that women were bad drivers??? huh??

Obsidium Ore & Prospecting - sort of an experiment!

A slight change of direction for this post today - I'm still plodding along with my lil' auction house alt but I've spent most of my WoW time this week levelling Jewelcrafting on my level 75 DK & putting a few points on her Inscription too. Just out of curiosity, I kept a log of results from prospecting Obsidium Ore so following on from Smudger's 24hr Elementium Ore Project, here are my results so far.

I haven't been able to max her JC to 525, she's sitting at 501 for now whilst I get some of the daily tokens. I've been stockpiling most of the gems from this prospecting for 3 reasons - a) prices are ridiculously low at the moment for almost all cuts, b) I'm in no rush to get the capital invested back just yet & c) I can cut anything other than the standard trainer learned cuts!

I've bought 1120 ores (56 stacks) at various prices over the last week or so, with a total outlay of 3940g (3.52g per ore average). Results so far :-

Carnelian - 48 (aver price 22g) - 14%
Zephyrite - 50 (aver price 20g) - 15%
Jasper - 73 (aver price 12g) - 22%
Alicite - 45 (average price 13g) - 13% 
Nightstone - 60 (aver price 55g) - 18%
Hessonite - 60 (aver price 33g) - 18%

Inferno Ruby - 4
Ocean Sapphire - 4
Dream Emerald - 1
Amberjewel - 0
Demonseye - 2
Ember Topaz - 3

What I find interesting is that the two most expensive uncommon gems have the highest proc rate in my sample. I'm going to keep my results going and see if it evens out over time. I hope not because this is the good news :)

The other snippet that may be of interest to number crunchers is that I usually prospect just 100 or 200 at a time. These have produced 31/30/62/31/61/62/30/29 total uncommon gems per session - very consistent numbers I think.

I've sent 9 of each to my alchemist to transmute to Shadowspirit Diamonds, made some Carnelian Spikes for skill points & to sell and made a bunch of the Alicite pendants & Jasper rings to be disenchanted & turned into much more profitable scrolls.

As I said above, I'm holding on to most of these gems but even at these silly low gem prices, the uncommon gems alone are worth approx 8800g, a possible profit of 4860g before taking the rare gems into consideration. If I take care when timing my auctions, I've seen Nightstones at 80g & Hessonite at 45g, even Zephyrite jumps to 30g on occasion so the possibility exists to increase that raw profit quite considerably. Now these are the sort of numbers I like!

I haven't prospected much Elementium yet but I'm keeping a tally for that & also for any herb milling I do. The herb prices are still very high though so I'm being much more cautious there - I think one expensive habit is quite enough for the time being, thank you very much!

Auction House Alt - Day 16 Update

Today I took my banker to the inscription trainer & powerlevelled her (hehehe!) to 75 to get the Minor Inscription Research facility. I used 10 stacks of peacebloom/silverleaf at 2g a stack to get there & made enchanting vellums for as many points as possible, knowing that they will sell even though they are now available from the vendor. I also bought 1 stack of bruiseweed for 7g to make some Midnight Ink to produce my 1st glyph.

One mistake I made was to make too many Ivory Inks at the start - I was watching the skill points, not checking at what point the next recipe became available so I posted the excess Ivory Inks on the AH, along with a bunch of the Enchanting Vellums. I also bought a 5 stack of Vanishing Dust just for the hell of it - listed 1 for laughs & it sold for 3g! Of course, the other 4 are now listed too :)

Another booboo I made was forgetting that I had actually put anything in her bank! When I did that side trip to Exodar last week, I bought extras of all 3 types of Moth Eggs & stashed them away & promptly forgot about them until now. I checked the AH to see how many were listed (none at all) then listed 1 of each at my price. I bumped it up a little from the market average just for giggles & fingers crossed.

After a late night mailbox check, I was pumped to see this - WOOO HOOO!

A Big Thank You to JMTC

I'm a new blogger, new to gold making, new-ish to WOW & fairly new to reading various gold making blogs so you can imagine my total delight when I saw my stats yesterday. What was going on? Where had all these people suddenly found me? I guess I should have checked my email before I opened my blog because I get the daily mail from JMTC & there I was in all my newbie glory :D

Thank you so much, Markco & Mageshadow. You guys run one of, if not, the most popular, influential gold blogs out there so to get a whole paragraph to myself, especially such a nice one, means the whole world to me at the moment.

After I had finished dancing around my chair, phoned my hubby at work to tell him & generally finished grinning from ear to ear, I realised that this little experiment of mine (started for a laugh) could actually be useful to someone out there. So I'm going to try to keep this going as I learn to become one of the 'Big Guys' (metaphorically speaking of course!) - yes, I have 3 lvl 80+ & a whole raft of other alts & I've been making gold fairly regularly since I started playing but it's only now that I'm trying to pull it all together.

So, hang on to your hats, people! Nev wants to jump on the rocket to riches & I'm sure it's gonna be a roller coaster all the way! Wish me luck, hey?

A Most Excellent Problem!

I'm leaving my AH alt running in the background for a few days - I'm still doing the same old stuff whilst levelling my new little hunter over there. I'll do some intermittant progress reports but in the mean time, I need some help on my main server gold-making endeavours!

So what's this excellent problem then? I hear you ask - well, basically, I'm jumping around tactics & professions like a cat on a hot tin roof - so many options, combinations & possibilities that I just don't know where to start making a plan of attack! I know I need a plan, doubling my gold in the last month is purely down to the inflated prices of cata mats but I want to maintain this level of income if not increase it.

A bit of background might help I guess so here it is :) Mid-October 2010, I had about 25k across all alts at the time that I first discovered many of the gold blogs in my list over there ===> 
By the time Cataclysm launched, I'd reached the dizzying balance (for me, anyway) of 50k-ish & am currently sitting at 92k, having powerlevelled a Jewelcrafter yesterday (only at 495 for now but just started dailies, so that will help). I put this rapid improvement down to reading so many informative blogs each day & trying out some of the techniques so I thank you all for taking the time to share your thoughts & experience with us newbies.

I currently have mining, herbing, skinning, alchemy, cooking & fishing at 525, enchanting at 500, leatherworking at 485, inscription at 450 (still!) & now JC at 495. During cata, I have been making gold mainly by farming as I quested, maintaining a small but steady glyph business & doing my daily volatile life -> air transmutes.

So, where do I start to make this chaos into an orderly routine? Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated, even if you just point me to an older blog post that I may have missed.

Day 14 - Time for a Few Changes

So I've reached a point where I'm happy with my capital & I'm starting to get a little bored of doing & writing about this experiment of mine! I feel the need to change things up a bit so I've started a human hunter to level a bit.

But the question is which pair of professions will make most money at low levels? I don't really want to go with herbing/mining combo as I've found that the new questing process is too quick to keep my gather skills upto the level of the zone I'm in. On my dwarf shaman on my main server, I hit Wetlands & started seeing so many herbs I couldn't pick yet, that I had to go back to Loch Modan & skill up there. The same thing has happened as she went into Arathi, go back to Wetlands & skill up again. I thought I had been gathering a fair bit while questing but obviously not enough!

So, which profs? - In the end, I chose skinning & leatherworking. I can make gear for myself as I go along & I know some of the lower items sell well - maybe only a gold or two here & there but it does sell.

I'm also going to put inscription on my banker but buy all the herbs I need. With the minor inscription research available at skill 75, I can at least be making glyphs on a regular basis.

I also wondered if it was worth putting enchanting on my banker - either for some of the lowbie scrolls or just to disenchant lowbie, mega cheap gear & sell the mats. I'll have a look today at enchanting mats prices & make my decision from there.

The important thing for me, is that I'm not likely to level that far on this server. I already have 10 toons on my main that need attention & a guild full of lovely people to talk to & play with most of the time. If I was starting here with a thought to stay & level all the way, my decisions would be very different, that's for sure :)

What do you think, dear Reader? Any suggestions or your own stories to tell? Let me know

Auction House Alt - Day 13 & Vendor Recipes Recap

What a lovely start to my day - the rest of the cata herbs & some glyphs sold - starting balance today 1533g :D

I'm feeling ill today so just a quick visit to the cooking recipe vendor - easy & quick money. Here's a screenshot of some of my sales - 394g profit on these alone - it may be a boring/mundane way of making money but who cares! lol

You can easily see just how much you can make from these very basic recipes - I either follow & undercut slightly if there are already a few listed or go with auctioneer price if I am the only one listing.

Now if you do this on a new server with a new alt, you only need 3 or 4 silver to buy the cheapest & 1 silver to list it but it should sell for at least 3 if not 5 or 6 gold, so theoretically, you can then go get the rest of the recipes & make 20 or 30g, if not more, in the first day or so. If you're planning on starting on a new server, do this 1 or 2 days before you start your levelling toon & you will be well set up :)

Auction House Alt - Day 11 & 12

Day 11 Opening gold 1076g, just a flying visit - bought more stacks of cheap Cata herbs, bids on some Zephyrite for less than 7g each & loads of WotLK gems with bids below vendor price. I also found some mid size stacks of Embersilk Cloth with low bid prices - total bid spend 180g.

Late night mail check - oh what a disappointment! All my bids failed & Cata herb prices have fallen below 3.50g :( If I was on my main server, I would snap them up & hope for the market to bounce back because if the market didn't bounce, the herbs could be used to level my inscription or used by my alchemist. However, on this server, I don't have the liquidity to take the risk & it is very late so I'm playing safe & keeping my fingers crossed. Closing gold today 1041g but with 30 Cata herbs sitting in my bags.

Day 12 placed over 80 bids for all types of herbs - most for 1 or 2 silvers each. With herb prices this low, I'm tempted to start my banker on inscription - at skill level 75, the minor glyph research kicks in & some of those minor glyphs sell really well (as pointed out by Vince a week or so ago ). On the other hand, I've been buying glyphs at silly low prices for the last 2 weeks so perhaps this server glyph market is in a state of flux? Decisions, decisions!

The good news today is that the cata herb prices have risen again & now I'm kicking myself for not taking the gamble last night!! Listed the ones I did have & anything else that returned.

Late night mail check - most of the cata herbs sold & I won about 3 of the low herb bids! Closing gold now 1362g.