Making Gold With Pet Battles

If, by any chance you read my other blog, She Rides Dragons, you'll know I've become slightly addicted to pet battling! Well, ever the good goldmaker, I've been looking at how I can profit from this new addiction of mine and with a little help from my friend @Socowow on Twitter, I've been looking at prices across various servers that I've dabbled on in the past.

When I was heavily into WoW and playing all the hours of a day, I often started an alt on a different server, just to play the Auction House from a different angle. There are 2 servers where I have a few thousand gold so I popped onto the Undermine Journal, hoping to compare prices directly. Unfortunately, TUJ doesn't have a direct comparison facility for pets as it does for other parts of the Auction House so I had to spend a little more time on it.

On one of the other servers (let's call it A), I had 8000 gold just sitting there and its Alliance population is about 2.5 times bigger than my main server. Prices in their Auction House are generally lower than my own and that includes battle pets so I went on a bit of a shopping spree! I did decide not to buy any level 25 pets though - I'm still in the early stages of my pet addiction and enjoy leveling them so I thought I'd get 8 level 1 rare quality pets for the price of 1 or 2 level 25's.

My thought process was to buy good but cheap pets and just flip them onto my main server but there were so many I didn't have, I got slightly sidetracked and decided to keep them! I'm now down to about 1200 gold there so this morning, I went on another buying spree but not pets this time. No, this time I was looking for deals to flip to increase my gold so I can buy more pets!

The other server where I already had about 3000 gold is another low Alliance population server and their prices are even higher than my main server. There was a much greater variation in prices though - level 25 pets were selling for anything from 5000 to 15000 gold, so I will be keeping an eye on that Auction House and snapping up deals when I find them.

On server A, level 25 battle pets sell for between 2000 - 5000 gold which is very cheap compared to my own server where level 25's typically are listed at 10000 gold or higher. The potential for nice big profits is definitely there but until I start selling off level 25 pets, I don't know how good the sales will be. Having said that though, like any 'slow' market, it will sell, eventually and a 5000 gold profit is not to be sneezed at, even if it does take a couple of weeks to sell.

Another factor in my slow start in this market is my own noobishness - I only have one level 25 pet so far and I haven't even thought about the Pet Battle PvP stuff yet. I can only look at rare quality pets for now and hope they are good ones for dedicated pet battlers. Once I have a better idea of which types & breeds are best for high level PvP, then I'll have a much better idea of what to flip.

Have you tried this market yet? Any tips or tricks you'd like to offer? If so, leave a comment to help this sad addict out ok? lol

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How To Take Your Gold With You When You Transfer Servers

This month is the first month that Selltacular over at Copper to Gold blog is hosting the monthly Gold Blogging Carnival, having taken over from Cold at Cold's Gold Factory. As he says in his post, the topic of server transfers has been very common on Twitter & various forums over the last few months & Blizzard must have been listening as this week, they have had a 50% off character services sale.

If you were to transfer servers and could take only one toon, which one would you take and why? What goods would you use to transport all of your gold over the 50k transfer cap?

My choice of toons to move is fairly obvious - I could either take my main - a Leatherworking/Skinning Paladin and basically never look back at my current server or I could take a high level toon but one that is unimportant to my goldmaking. For me at least, those would be my options - yes, I could take any one of my 6 level 85-90's but as my professions are all over the place, moving any of the 5 besides my Hunter would leave a gap in my goldmaking on what I still consider to be my main realm.

My level 85 Hunter is my 2nd alchemist & 2nd Tailor - alchemy is maxed but tailoring I haven't even started on the daily Imperial Silk cooldown & learning the newer PvP items so if I was moving in order to continue my gold making, I'd have my work cut out for me! However, for me, a move is more of a search for the social side of WoW - I really miss evenings on Skype with my guildies, tackling new dungeons, raiding or even just mucking about in PvP.

Now I know it's kind of academic at this point but to take as much of my gold with me as possible I would firstly empty her bank & bags of any low level or non-valuable items. Next I would make sure she had large bags and fill them with valuable items as well as any heirlooms I wanted to take with me. I might even go and buy more heirlooms from the guild vendor if there were some I didn't already have. I wouldn't pay silly money for the largest bags though - at least not until I had filled my existing large bags. Spending 3-4k gold on an extra 4 spaces per bag seems kind of silly to me unless I knew I could make it worthwhile on the new server!

Amani Dragonhawk

Deciding what kind of valuable items to take with you requires research. Once you've decided on your destination realm, you need to use The Undermine Journal & look up all kinds of expensive items - think mounts (especially TCG mounts like Spectral Tiger or Amani Dragonhawk), high level, high price battle pets (although you can always swap those over later of course!) and epic armor. Don't forget mounts/pets you can craft too - think Vial of the Sands, Jewelcrafting mounts & pets as well as Engineering ones like the choppers.There's an option to compare prices between 2 servers at the top of the screen & I find it very useful sometimes.

The other thing to think about though is the higher value items that you can craft - think Living Steel, Living Steel Belts, top end enchants, valuable gems, spellthreads & maybe even the +300 buff foods!. These all stack so each single bag space can hold quite a high value stack. It might be worth checking out the glyph market on your new server too - I know many servers seem to have a dead glyph market & if your own server is dead on glyphs but your new one is busy, you can pick up a bucketload of cheap glyphs BUT be choosy! You don't want to take a load of rubbish with you!

And that's the key point here really - you want to fill your bank spaces & bag spaces with the highest value items/stacks that you can - it may be that a stack of say, Living Steel has more value than any of the mounts or pets you find on your current server& if you aren't taking an alchemist with you, but can still use Living Steel then having a few stacks for selling or crafting with may prove more valuable in the short term.

Going back to pets though - if you do have to leave a pile of gold behind, don't forget that you can still move some over time by buying pets on your old server, learning & then caging them on your new server. Once you are settled into your new home & have begun to understand your new Auction House, you may find opportunities you missed. Make a note of those when you find them - you may love your new server so much that you decide to transfer another toon over later & then you can cash in on those earlier missed options.

This all sounds like a lot of preparation & to be honest, yes it is. Moving server is quite a big change for many players & not one I would take lightly after all this time on my home server. I've decided not to move any alts this time though - as usual I've left it too late to really get organised & I'm not sure of where I want to go. I have some cash on Arathor so I may go & play a little gold making over there - mainly just flipping though & it turns out I have a friend who plays there too. As for my twitter friends on Ghostlands, I feel the need to learn to tank on a DK from the start so I'll possibly turn up on your doorstep sometime soon :)

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Time for a Change?

I may have to streamline my packing!

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was considering moving an alt from my current server in search of a higher population one. There's two main reasons for this with a few lesser reasons too.  I've also mentioned before that my guild is on life-support, just waiting for someone to pull the plug but I really don't want to do that so I figured moving 1 high level alt with 2 professions would let me dive straight in on a new server & would also let me experience an Auction House on a higher population realm.

One of the lesser reasons is that I really don't feel like leveling a new alt - my time is more limited now & besides, I still have alts on my main server to finish leveling! I'm looking for something in game to re-ignite my passion for this game & leveling a brand new alt is definitely not it!

So I was very pleased to see that this month's Gold Blogging Carnival was all about transfering servers - it's the first month that Selltacular is hosting the Carnival in it's new home as Cold has handed it over due to work, other projects & the fact that after all these years (3-ish for the blog, I believe) he's finally run out of steam!

I've been humming & ha'ing over which alt to move, which server to choose & whether or not to take heirlooms with her - all in preparation for my Carnival entry post this month when I saw yesterday that Blizzard have announced a 50% 'sale' on character services for this week only - arrgghhh! I'm not ready yet & I wanted to read all the Carnival entries too!

I'm not sure yet if I want to find a social & active guild or just a larger Auction House to play in - I can do both by moving a high level alt at least & I'm fairly sure now that it's my level 85 Hunter who will be moving - she's my 2nd Alchemist & my 2nd tailor so I won't miss her on my main realm so much. She's also the only alt with any reasonable pvp gear so that gives me that option too.

So now I just need to decide which realm to try out over the next day or two - Arathor-EU is one option as I have an alt with some cash there already and the Alliance faction is twice as large as my current server but if I want a friendly guild, I think I'll have to investigate Ghostlands-EU - a few of my Twitter peeps are there ( /wave hi guys!) & judging from my twitter feed earlier today, one of my friends is already trying it out & I have a feeling I'd be welcome too :P

I'm going to do some more thinking though - I need to work out how much stuff I want to take with me or shall I just go with the 50k gold, shall I take all my heirlooms or just the ones I know I won't need again on main server & I also need to check out the Auction Houses to see what sells best over there.

Once I have it all sorted, I'll pretty much have my Carnival post written too - I just wish the sale was on for a bit longer as I'm sure the Carnival posts will highlight something I've missed!

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