Warlords of Draenor Alpha Patch Notes & Gold Making

Very late on Thursday night here in the UK, Blizzard finally released a huge post of information relating to the Warlords of Draenor expansion. The Alpha patch notes in their entirety can be found on the Battlenet site but be warned, they are lengthy, fairly detailed in some areas and very likely to cause some upset, especially with Class changes. This is a gold making blog however so I've been following my fellow gold makers, reading up on various bits in the patch notes and have a few comments to make myself.

Glyphs

The main point that struck me (and many of my fellow gold bloggers like Selltacular over at Copper to Gold), is the removal of 76 major glyphs from the crafting process. These will instead be learned automatically at various levels during the leveling process. I've not been in the Glyph market for a long while now but not all of the removed glyphs are good sellers anyway. Selltacular says 12 are in his best sellers list but of course, your server may be different so the extent to which your market suffers will depend on which glyphs your server population likes best.

Whilst this list of removed glyphs may change, I would suggest that you keep an eye on your own stock levels and as more information is released over the coming months, make sure you don't craft too many at a time or get stuck with a large stock of them. Keep an eye out for additional glyphs to be removed or for this list to be changed though.

Gathering

We can currently herb or mine in Pandaria even if we don't have maxed gathering professions. This was introduced in patch 5.3 as the frustrated screams from gatherers having to pass by nodes they couldn't gather finally reached the ears of Blizzard. The answer was fairly simple in the end - just allow lower skilled gatherers to get just a fragment from the node rather than a full sized herb or ore.

This is being extended throughout the world for Warlords of Draenor, where a Gatherer can interact with any node at any level but the resulting material gathered is based on their skill level.

This is one piece of news I am very happy to see - trying to level a gathering profession whilst leveling an alt was hard enough anyway but with reduced XP requirements, additional heirlooms and various buffs, it became almost impossible to keep up. I don't think this will change much before actual release either as it really is a much needed improvement.

Professions

As usual, profession information is very scarce this early in the cycle. There is one major change noted though -

"Some of our goals with Professions in Warlords of Draenor are to make them more of a personal choice, and less of a mandatory “min/max” selection. To that end, we're removing the direct combat benefits of Professions."

I read this as being the removal of things like the Blacksmiths' extra sockets bonus, the Leatherworkers' bracer fur lining, the Jewelcrafters' Chimera's Eye gems and the Scribes' shoulder enchant.

How will this affect gold making though as none of these items can be sold anyway? I think the 'min/max' comment in the quote above points us to that answer - raiders! Many raiders level professions reluctantly - they aren't really interested in making a lot of gold. What they want from professions is the best combination of profession related perks for their class and spec. So if these combat benefit items are removed, raiders won't have the need to level their professions any more.

If raiders don't have professions, they will then need to buy crafted items like potions, gems, flasks etc and perhaps crafted armor & weapons too although I'd expect them to look for a friendly crafter before hitting the Auction House.

It may even increase the supply of some materials though - things that get picked up randomly whilst out questing may be sold on the Auction House rather than kept for own use. I'm not sure how much of a bonus this will be though - we still don't know enough about how the Crafting professions are changing to make a call on this one.

Summary

The most important thing to remember is that these are Alpha notes - the very earliest version of details that we have been given and almost 100% guaranteed that there will many, many changes still to come. It's way too early to get upset or start worrying about this stuff just yet. With a possible release date for Warlords of Draenor in December, we have possibly 8 months still to wait for the actual game release although of course, Beta should come out way before then.

I shall be trying to keep up with the flood of information and working out how it can benefit our gold making, of course but feel free to leave comments or drop me an email if you think I've missed something or would like further discussion on a subject.

In the meantime...'All aboard the change train!'

Have fun!

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20 Days of Gold Making - Day 6 Best Market

The topic for Day 6 of my 20 Days of Gold Making is "Which market has made you the most gold over the years?". This would appear to be a fairly easy question to answer but if you haven't managed to track the sales data, you just have to go with your gut reaction.

For me, I have 2 markets that did superbly well for me during Cataclysm, glyphs & gems. Unfortunately, my PC hiccupped & I lost all my sales data so I've never been able to see which of the two markets was actually the best one.

I didn't really start gold making until just before Cataclysm arrived in December 2010 & by January 2011, I had added Jewelcrafting to my maxed professions list & also added Trade Skill Master to my addon list. Both these actions boosted my gold making in a big way - suddenly listing 100's of glyphs was easy & crafting only the most profitable ones using TSM to tell me which they were, also increased my profits.

The gem market was a new one for me but the Elementium/Obsidium Shuffle was in full swing & the vendor price of the common gems was un-nerfed at that point so I went into full scale gem production, transmuting to higher quality gems whenever possible & selling stacks of common gems for the daily jewelcrafting quests. Even after the vendor price was nerfed, I still made good money by making jewelry to disenchant & then either selling the enchanting materials or making enchant scrolls.

At the height of my glyphing/shuffling period, I was easily pulling 7-12k out of the mailbox each day, just from gems & glyphs. If I had to guess at a split between the two, I'd say 55/45% between glyphs & gems but that is really just a gut instinct.

Now in Mists of Pandaria, neither market is doing much at all. Glyph sales have dropped in quantity & prices have fallen dramatically too. Gems seem to be hit & miss as well although I am selling a few here & there. At the moment, I'm still too busy doing dailies, leveling, dungeons & scenarios to really get into a proper gold making routine but part of my lack of enthusiasm for getting the gold machine rolling again is the sheer lack of sales on anything I have tried so far! Maybe I'm not seeing results because I'm not paying close attention but it all seems very hit & miss right now.

Hopefully things will change as everything settles down but with the new patches coming out so fast, the markets are in an almost constant state of flux - a good market one day will bottom out the next day & be back again next week! Don't get me wrong, I am not moaning about the good old days of easy gold! The truth is, there is so much gold to be made from dailies, questing & of course the new Tiller farms that I'm not feeling the urge to dominate markets any more. I'm enjoying the challenge of making gold in this mobile market but until I get all my girls maxed, gold is definitely taking more of a back seat. I still can't resist the Auction House though so leveling is taking longer than planned!

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My Best & Worst Markets in MoP

For this months blogging carnival over at Cold's Gold Factory, Cold has asked us another interesting question. Unfortunately I think my answer is probably not going to be particularly informative as I have been focused mainly on leveling, dailies & yes, dungeons! But never mind, it's still valid & I'm pretty sure many of you have probably found the same markets as I have.

BEST and WORST Markets So Far In MoP

Tell us about your favorite, most profitable, or most consistent market in the MoP era of WoW Gold Making. Then, tell us about a market that you've abandoned, has crashed, or has just plain been a flop. What are your best and worse WoW auction house markets so far in Mists?

My Best Market in MoP

For me, with all the leveling & dailies, my best market that has almost taken care of itself is the vegetables from my farms & any cooking materials I've been picking up whilst out in the world. I haven't been paying close attention to the Auction House & I haven't been crafting much at all to sell so my banker is just selling off any green armor/weapon drops & other random stuff that drops of mobs. My MySales statistics are abysmal! With just 5000 gold in sales last week, I'm not sure I should even be writing a gold blog right now! But in my defence, I haven't been playing much either so from just logging in & relisting what I do have in the mail, that's not so bad, right?

Looking through the MySales statistics though, it's very obvious to me that vegetables, meats & fish are my best sellers. I only went half way down the list to get the numbers but I've made almost 12,000 gold since early October. I know that doesn't sound like much but most of my farm produce has gone to my Main alt to level my Cooking in all the Ways. I finally finished that last week & now I'm in full production on 4 baby farms (4 x 4plots) producing various vegetables each day.

The other nice surprise when I looked at MySales was just how much gold I made from some of the items I cooked to get skill points - almost 2000 gold just from the last few items like Chun Tian Spring Rolls, Sea Mist Rice Noodles & Banquet of the Steamer.

My Worst Market in MoP

Well, I have to say it - glyphs! I'm sure if I was paying attention, relisting 3-4 times a day etc like I used to, that this market could be better but with so many glyphs under 25g each, I've kind of lost interest in it. I can craft a glyph one day based on current market price of say 200g & then the next day, some nice person (thru gritted teeth) has relisted theirs for 15g or 20g. I have almost 1000 glyphs that I just can't seem to move & the numbers aren't going my way at all.

I'd be very surprised to find that I'm making any gold at all with glyphs right now especially when I compare it to pre-MoP days. Just pop back to my Nev's Glyph Strategy post from earlier in the summer & look at those prices!

I've always been a glypher in my gold-making - glyphs probably accounted for over 60% of my 1million although I can't be sure as I lost all my data before I could analyse it (arrrgghhh!).

Where Next?

So once I'm done with all my alts, leveling, dailies, rep grinds, dungeons etc, I'm going to have to find a different way to make my gold. I've been a bit spend happy recently - mounts especially towards the end of the summer - but I'm well below 500k now & I don't like it much!

I'm looking at the Flask market right now after moving my main farm over to Enigma Seeds for the Golden Lotus harvest but having looked at my Cooking results for the best market section above, I think perhaps I should keep an eye on the Banquet market too. It goes without saying that vegetables are still in my plans but over time, I'm sure that market will saturate too & I will have to move on to something else to make good gold.

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Weekly Sales Update - Post Patch 5.0.4 3rd Sept 2012

New mog for my lil Warlock Engineer

Well! What a week it's been! The week before patch, I finally caved in & decided to buy up some of the cheapest glyphs flooding the Auction House. I may have got a bit carried away as I decided to try the same strategy on both factions on my US account too. I'll say here & now, I think I owe a big apology to everyone not on a server like my EU one! I've spent the last couple of years making gold with glyphs easily & posting about it here. I'd never really tried glyphs seriously on any other servers but oh man! This US server I'm on is a bitch for glyphs! lol

So the first screen shot is the summary page of my US Alliance character - I don't have any characters over there higher than lvl 15 so I was very restricted on what I could do glyph-wise. Given the overall average price of glyphs, I set myself a ceiling of 10 gold & bought a fair few glyphs below that - mainly in a vain attempt to reset the market on those particular glyphs. As you can see, I've made some nice profits on individual glyphs but overall, glyph sales post patch were very disappointing & I still have a bag full of cheap glyphs to sell.

CLICK IMAGES FOR LARGER, READABLE VERSIONS


US Alliance server

This next screen shot is my US Horde character. Now here I have just maxed inscription on my Hunter & have done maybe 10 days of researches for the Northrend & lower daily cooldown so I have some non-trainer taught glyphs. I also had a bit more gold available to buy up some of the cheapest glyphs for stock.

I've used the Sales tab for this screenshot to show how few glyphs have sold since the patch went live. If I'd used the Items or Resale tabs, it would have given an incorrect picture as I've been selling glyphs here for a while & didn't clear my data pre-patch.

Just a quick glance down this list will show you just how low the overall prices are for glyphs but there is one major player in the glyph market here who doesn't appear to sleep! Even with the time zone working in my favour for really early morning listings, he still manages to undercut me within an hour or so!


US Horde server

And last but not least, here is the screenshot for my main EU server, Alliance side. You can see straight away that the volume of sales is higher but look at some of those prices! Quite a few over 400 gold & a lot in the 200-400 gold range. The volume is still well down on what I have been used to but honestly, I haven't been posting as regularly as I used to & I left the market completely for quite a long time so I'm not the big player I used to be.

Home server, EU Alliance

So it wasn't quite the second Glyphmas that many gold bloggers (including myself) were expecting/hoping for. On the plus side for me, I've never been one for stockpiling anything so I only have maybe 2000 inks in the bank, mainly because the cataclysm herbs never dropped below 50 gold a stack here. I'm not sure there is a huge downside generally though - all those who did stockpile inks at least got them at really good prices & won't have to mill/make ink for a long time yet!

As for the rest of the changes brought about by the patch - I am soooo confused! I have 7 level 85's now that I have hardly played since January so resetting their talents & glyphs is not so bad - I've already forgotten how to play them but resetting toolbars & new rotations is going to take me some time!

I'm off on my travels again this week so I'll miss the Mists of Pandaria release on my EU account too. I just won't have access unfortunately. Luckily my friend plays so I will at least have access to my US account but with only one PC in the house, we'll have to fight to use it for Launch Day!

Weekly Sales Update - 19th Aug 2012

My favourite bit of Zangermarsh

So I finally got my new place sorted out & my internet all connected up so I only missed a day of sales this week. But I got sidetracked by my US account, as I decided to level another scribe over there so my EU sales have suffered again although not as much as last week!

Sales of almost 21000 gold with purchases of about 5000 gold means an overall increase in liquid gold of 16000 gold. I'm still below the half million mark after my mount spending spree a few weeks ago but I'm quite happily just poodling along, keeping my fingers in various markets & looking for new little niches here & there.

Late last summer, I decided I wanted the Dark Iron set for my DK's transmog outfit so I spent a little time farming materials in Molten Core. Then I took a break & it all got forgotten until recently but I've since found out that I can get very similar stuff from a vendor in Shattrath so I put my Blood of the Mountain on the auction house. It took maybe 2 weeks but they did sell at last which put them at the top of my sales value list.

The Pristine Hides & the Noble's Monocle are also 'clearing out my banks' items - I've already made maybe 10000 gold from random stuff out of the mess of my banks & these were a nice bonus this week!

My glyph sales are fairly poor overall, I have more glyphs unlisted than I ever have before. I mentioned last week that there is someone tanking the prices so much of my 5000 gold expense this week have been low priced glyphs. I wasn't in the mood to buy him out completely but where there was only 1 or 2 low priced ones before a decent price one, I bought them out to relist at the higher price. For some glyphs, this has worked well but for others the tanker just listed a few more. I'm not worried though - they are all below my crafting cost so I'm looking at it as building some glyph stock for Mists :)

Items that don't show up on this screenshot include level 77-80 green armour - each day, I have been checking several times a day to try to find some good deals. For me, that means purchase cost below 50 gold & I then relist them immediately at 199 gold.

I also had an interesting conversation with Cold a week or two ago & he gave me a heads up on his Bargain Blues Stockpiling post. Now I've never really done many battlegrounds & I certainly have no idea about twinking so this was an interesting sideline for me. I have managed to pick up a few items but rather than keeping them in my bank for Mists of Pandaria release, I've put them back on the Auction House for a healthy mark up. I've sold one or two pieces but again, these are a more long term investment for me.

So that was my week - ok but nothing spectacular but then my server is very quiet now. I'm pretty sure it will liven up again soon of course but if it doesn't, I'll be ok - I just like to poodle along & faff at my own speed anyway :) have a good week peeps, Nev

Weekly Sales Update - 12th August 2012

Well what can I say? What a crap week I've had on the Auction House! To be fair, I've hardly played at all, not even to keep my auctions up so I shouldn't have expected any different really. With sales of just 9656 gold for the whole week, I almost feel ashamed to call myself a gold maker!

So what did sell? Well, not many glyphs for sure! I had a quick look today & it seems that someone has decided to drop most of the glyph prices below 100 gold. I know on some servers, gold makers would be quite pleased to be getting 100 gold a glyph but with inks at 10g-12g here, glyph prices have traditionally been much higher. This close to Mists of Pandaria, I'm wondering if someone just wants to dump stock - I shall wait & see what happens over the next few days & then decide what to do.

One option is to buy up all the very cheap ones rather than crafting my own. Now that would be fine except many of those are glyphs I wouldn't usually bother crafting anyway. The other option is to spend some cash, make a load of glyphs and push prices lower til he/she gives up. Not sure I can really make myself do that right now though. This week looks like being another busy real life week & tactics like that need a fair bit of close attention.

A new market showing up on my top sellers list is the level 77-80 greens items. With the glyphs selling for lower prices, they've dropped off the leaderboard. I've been picking up 77-80 greens for 50 gold or under & relisting them immediately for 199 gold. I could possibly push that price up but I'm not out farming these greens & only manage to pick up a few here & there so I don't really have much say in what the market price should be. There is one main player in this market & I guess with my insomnia, I'm managing to snag the few bargains that get listed while he sleeps!

A few engineering pets, a few netherweave bags & some inferno inks make up the best of the rest with that old favourite Enchant Weapon - Agility taking top place this week. I kicked my self hard earlier - I didn't even notice the enchants had sold or I would have listed a couple more.

So just a short update this week - hopefully I can do a bit better in the next few days but I may even be without internet for a day or two so that won't help. It's all good in the long run though. Onward & upward as my gran used to say :) Have a good week y'all xxx

Different Markets, Different Tactics

Ferris Wheel by Andy Cardiff, under creative commons from Flickr

It's that time again, thinking of a post for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival proves a challenge most months for me. This month is no different. I'm not the most organised gold maker or a particularly deep thinker about tactics or strategy so this was really tough! Thanks Cold! lol

Compare & Contrast 2 Different AH Markets and How Your Gold Making Strategy Varies In Each Market

Market 1 - Glyphs & Gems

I've written several times now about my glyph selling method & about the only organised part of it is the regularity of doing the same thing every time. I also do virtually the same routine for my gems. Both these markets have a lot of competition, regular undercutting occurs & can be rather time intensive to make the most of them. I'm not particularly greedy about owning a market or even dominating it - I just take what I can squeeze out of it so I don't really worry too much about what my competition is doing.

• empty mailbox of cash & expired glyphs
• cancel any remaining glyph auctions using TSM
• relist glyphs per TSM settings
• run TSM Inscription only scan
• rinse & repeat 2-3 times per day

Depending on sales from day to day, I then add the following crafting routine maybe once or twice a week

• cherry pick top priced glyphs to craft using TSM crafting
• run Buy materials module in TSM
• mill herbs, make inks
• craft cherry picked glyphs
• list new batch of glyphs

Market 2 - Almost Everything Else I Sell

One thing I've never quite got my head around is sales groups in TSM. I know how to set them up in principal but I can never decide what should go in which group! So as a result, almost everything except glyphs & gems get posted manually.

I have general prices for many things in my head & I find it fairly easy to remember approximately how much I bought something for. Trying to explain my thought processes is one of the most difficult things for me to do. I've had problems at work when trying to teach someone else my system there & the Auction House is very much like that too.

I almost always go in at the bottom of the market as long as the price is still within my happy zone unless some idiot has undercut by a large amount. You know the one - the idiot who thinks that 50 gold is too much so posts his for 20 gold? Yeah that one! Then I usually undercut the next sensible price & if that bottom price is within my buy range, I may buy it & flip it straight away.

The other thing I do is to vary my stack size - again depending what the item is, I may sell my stock as full 20 stack or I may post as 10's, 5' or singles. Items like hypnotic dust, infinite dust or mid range leather are fairly expensive now so I usually list those in mixed stacks. People who don't care about the price & just want a lot will buy the full stacks but people who just need a few will buy the singles or 5's where they may hesitate to buy the full expensive stack.

Summary

So there ya go - very organised, precise cherry picking for glyphs & gems, total gut/instinctive reactions for everything else - couldn't get much further apart in methodology but it works for me. I certainly wouldn't suggest it as good for everyone but I can't be the only disorganised gold maker out there, surely? lol

Weekly Sales Update - 5th August 2012

Amani Dragonhawk - part of my spending spree recently

I've had another crazy busy week so my attempts to ramp up my goldmaking have rather come unstuck! I've managed to maintain a nice flow of gold from glyphs but I do have some stiff competition there now so with my random & infrequent posting times, I'm keeping them on their toes at least!

My best seller this week as far as gold amount goes is the Enchant Weapon - Agility enchant. I sold one or two recently for over 1300 gold each but someone seems determined to bring the price back down under the 1000 gold mark. I'm using Essence of Water with a cost of maybe 15 gold max, transmuted into Essence of Air so to be honest, anything over 200 gold is pure profit but we won't tell everyone that will we? lol

I also managed to snatch up a bunch of Savage Leather & Heavy Savage Leather which I converted into Pristine Hides. Yes, the old 'convert it up' trick still works - if you watch your prices! I still have a fair amount in my mailbox - I didn't want to convert it all at once, just in case prices or demand changed. I like that flexibility of choosing at what stage I want to sell my part processed stuff rather than crafting it all up to Pristine Hides then not being able to sell them.

With all the talk of pet battles up & coming, I made up a few Pet Bomblings & Mechanical Squirrels - both are selling ok, slow but steady. Cheap materials & reasonable prices make for some nice extra income. My warlock is now level 50 so I need to push her on a bit further - I want the Mechanical Yeti from Winterspring!

My overall gold balance only increased about 18000 gold this week - I've bought a lot of herbs as the whiptail & cinderbloom prices are starting to come down a bit. I've been managing to get maybe 20-30 stacks a day under 50 gold a stack & now have a guild bank tab full of inks. I still have a long way to go & I'm hoping prices will continue to drop a bit further too.

What's in store for this upcoming week - more busy real life stuff unfortunately - mostly good stuff but it will slow down my blogging, playing & gold making. I still need to make a stab at a to-do list & try to prioritise things more - limited playtime makes that even more necessary now but I keep getting sidetracked! Oh look! Shinies!

Weekly Sales Update - 29th July 2012

Fyzz, my new banker

Well what a week it was last week! Monday I received the news that I'm cancer free at last, Tuesday my RL finances got sorted out & on Wednesday of course, we all found out that Mists of Pandaria will be released on 25th September! On Thursday I decided that my current banker would need to get to 85 & finally get around to maxing her Engineering so this little lady was born. Meet Fyzz, my new banker & proud GM of yet another guild & guild bank! Also on Thursday I guested on Power Word:Gold podcast so watch out for the new episode this week! It was great catching up with Jim (Flux) again & if you're an older reader, you'll remember I did a few episodes with him last year.

I've moved all the random stuff I was selling from my old banker, tidied up her guild bank to stuff I think I will still want or need & moved all my glyphs & gems from my scribe/JC alt too. This little girlie ended up with over 400 auctions running, which I know is not that many by some standards but for me, that's a heck of a lot!

So in between all the happy faces & excitement round here, how did my sales go last week? Well not too shabby at all really, considering. Total sales for the week were 33,000 gold most of which came from existing glyphs & emptying out alts banks. My Gold total as of last night was 394,000 gold - but I did have a major spending spree last week as I mentioned & I bought this new guild with an absolutely epic name this week. I'm thinking I may open this guild up & invite lots of randoms, not so much for the weekly gold cash flow boost but more for leveling the guild with a view to selling it later.

screenshot from MySales addon

I thought I'd keep it fairly short this week so I've only included the one screenshot. At some point earlier this year, I snatched up a few stacks of Pristine Hides for well below their usual price. I've been dribbling them back onto the market this week at about 150-200 gold profit per Hide. I still have another stack to move so that nice big chunk of change I spent will probably double itself once the last few sell. I like little deals like that!

I've also started moving some of the pets/companions that I'd tucked away. Christmas in July seems to be quite a thing online in my craft circle so I thought I'd dig out my few Christmas pets. The Green Helper Box & Jingling Bell were nice little earners & I'm hoping I can move the others at around the same prices too.

Glyphs always feature heavily in my sales reports & no change this week. What has changed is the variety of glyphs that are selling - there rarely seems to be one glyph that sells more than others - always just 1's and 2's in the top half of the sales table. But as always, the glyph prices are healthy & net me 3000-5000 gold a day easily with just 2 or 3 cancel/relist cycles. Now that Fyzz is selling them for me, I could possibly increase that number of relists & I may try it as an experiment for a few days, see how much of a difference it makes, if any.

Looking forward, I'd like to claw back as much cash as possible before Mists of Pandaria arrives but I also want to level a few more alts. I still have a fair few achievements I want to try for as well so I'll have to balance my gold making activity with play time otherwise it could become quite an obsession! I'm also hoping to be moving house & doing a bit of travelling before Mists hits so I could be a very busy little bee for the next couple of months!

Nev's Glyph Strategy | Lazy Girls Guide to Glyphing

Laid back glyphing © Nev 2008

I received a reader email the other day asking about 'Nev's glyph strategy' after they had listened to an old PowerWord:Gold podcast & I realised that I'd never actually written a post about it! The timing is also fortuitous as there has been a fair bit of glyph talk on Twitter too so here we go - how I do glyphing - laid back, get there eventually style - my Lazy Girls Guide to Glyphing!

Some scribes like to make a few of every glyph, they have bags & bags of stock, they 'wall' prices in an attempt to control the market & to be honest, I admire their dedication & organisation skills but I just don't work that way. If you want to read more about hardcore glyphing, have a look at Twitchie's latest post 'Two Character Glyph Operation', Faids 'Glyph Competition: A Primer' or Huntermastery's 'Return of the Inscriptionist'.

I have my TSM groups set up by ink & I cherry pick the highest priced glyphs to craft & list. I suppose this is a variation on the 'Buy Low, Sell Normal' theory although I do prefer 'buy low, sell as high as possible' version :) I am also averse to hard work in a game so my method works well for the more casual gold maker.
Each morning I empty my mail, do a cancel & relist at the Auction House then do an Inscription only scan - it's very quick & gives me the information shown below in the screenshots. As you can see, someone else is raising glyph prices on my server & doing all the hard work for me. The bulk of the glyphs I craft are Ink of the Sea or Ethereal Ink ones & depending on herb availability, I may only craft glyphs above 400g or 200g if there is a good supply.

I've only recently returned to the glyph market but without spending huge amounts of gold on herbs, I am happily making 4-8k gold per day with just 2 or 3 cancel/relist sessions - each of which takes only 5-10 minutes. Ink is currently costing around 10 gold per ink so I have changed my Threshold price to 50 gold. This means that I don't have to worry too much about what price TSM wants to post a glyph. Even a sale at 50 gold is making me some profit - not much, admittedly but the time saving effect is worth the loss of a little profit.

Now before you saw 'wow, look at those crazy prices' - yes, my server does seem to be a bit special when it comes to glyphs but I did a little experiment on another server using only a level 10 scribe & I still made a fair bit of gold. The trick is to control your herb costs & only buy inks or herbs when the craft cost is much less than the glyph prices. When leveling your inscription, don't make 5 of the same glyph just to get points! No, just make the glyphs that show up as profitable in TSM & watch the skill points accumulate painlessly!

The above screenshot is a sample of my listed auctions - you can see the wide range of prices TSM has listed them for. Now I've only been crafting glyphs that TSM says are above 250 gold but as the market prices move, TSM adjusts & undercuts other listings, hence the 104 gold glyph - but that is still way above my crafting cost so I have no problem with that.

As a very extreme example - look at this screenshot! Some random scribe has listed glyphs at 1000 gold each - TSM automatically undercut him by my few silver preset & I left my auction there, even though I had zero expectation of it selling! Well, I'm happy to say - it did sell!

What's Been Selling This Week?

© Nev 2009 WW2 Spitfire Aerial Display

It's been a pretty good week for me, this week. I've dipped a bit further into the cut rare gems market & it's showing up nicely in my weekly sales list. Even better from a liquid gold point of view, comparing the sales income with my increase in liquid gold figure & I've only spent 2580g this week! That gives me a beautiful profit figure of 66800g-ish so I'm flying high & on a roll!

So you may be wondering how come I've spent so little this week? Well, I was doing a lot of shuffling for enchanting materials at the start of the year but the prices for rares, either cut or uncut were so low, I decided to hang on to them. Now the prices have risen, almost all those cut gems have come from my various banks!

Also this week, I was asked to join some guildies in 5v5 arena for a laugh. They want me to bring my rogue who has been sitting around since she hit 85. Off I went to various gear optimiser websites to see what I needed & then came back & made her the Brazen Elementium Medallion. Unfortunately I forgot to check what she was already wearing! It seems she hadn't been sitting around the whole time since 85, she must have sneaked out & done a dungeon or two somewhere along the line because the neck piece she had was better.

Glyphs have continued to be a strong seller even if the gem sales are pushing them off the first page of my sales figures. I've also sold a few more pieces of the Bloodied Leather pvp set although competition has set in so I may leave them to fight it out for a while now.

Some of the lower level leatherworking items have been selling too - 3 sets of Barbaric Bracers, 2 Gem-Studded Leather Belts & a Black Dragonscale Breastplate have all sold as has the masses of Chocolate Cookies I baked up earlier in the week.

Going forward, I'm almost out of Inferno Rubies & Carnelians so I guess it's time to start prospecting again. Luckily I picked up 200 stacks of Elementium Ore at 25g a stack yesterday (muhahahaha!). I'll carry on glyphing too especially as I have Jewelcrafting & Inscription on the same character.

I'm not sure I could face cancel/reposting gems & glyphs if they weren't on the same character so if you haven't got your professions set yet, that might be something to think about although it isn't the optimal combination, to be fair.

Most bloggers suggest jewelcrafting & enchanting on the same character so you can disenchant the jewellery you make without using the mailbox. The only reason I didn't do that is timing & space - I already had inscription on this alt & enchanting maxed on another. When I needed to add jewelcrafting to my profession list, the only spot was on my scribe so that's where it went! I like happy accidents :-D

What's Been Selling This Week?

Well, all I can say this week is 'wow! what a week!' Doing my usual bit of maths, I find that I've only spent about 13.5k on stuff leaving me with a healthy liquid gold increase of 48.5k. I didn't conciously reign in my spending, I've had a few 10k plus income days & I've pretty much been doing my usual routine but looking at my list of items, I can't even see that I've been using up stock items so I'm not really sure what's been happening!

Following on from last weeks' update, where I mentioned the glyph market has gone crazy, I thought I'd post the top 3 pages of my sold items. I finally got rid of the Earthquake Deck that I picked up a couple of weeks ago. That was probably a mistake as I just about got my gold back on that investment! Prices for the Darkmoon cards & trinkets have really dropped with even Tsunami & Hurricane decks selling around the 8-10k mark during the Faire last week.

I did do a bulk deal to get rid of my low level Darkmoon decks - 36 decks of the Rogues, Swords & Mages for around 1000g. I possibly could have made more during the week, selling them via the AH but I wanted the bank space & I wanted to take the deal now rather than waiting. I also used up some of the other uncommon inks to make the Demons Deck but that went to the AH, along with spare cards of all decks. Cash is still trickling in from those but I now have an extra 20 spaces in my bags :)

So, apart from the usual, most popular gems & cuts, the only items making the top 3 pages other than glyphs is my mammoth mining bags & a single solitary set of Bloodied Leather Boots. You can easily see the prices I've been getting for my glyphs - I don't set the markets - I use TSM to post which pretty much means I undercut glyphs already there.

I have changed my glyph process slightly but I thought I was just making my life a little easier, I didn't think it would prove so effective in increasing my sales! I used to have a weekly glyph crafting session, where I would spend maybe an hour or two, checking, milling herbs, ink making & glyph crafting then I would top up my stock midweek. Now I'm spending maybe 15 minutes extra per day, topping up only where the gaps are & only the top profit ones (per TSM scans).

Other proffs have kind of fallen by the wayside - I've been making some of the low-mid level LW items & they have been selling & at a profit but I'm not sure the time spent is the most efficient use of my time. I'm going to keep making them to see if I can raise the prices a bit more & also for future posts info. My Blacksmith has just hit Northrend so she will be mining cobalt this week - time to see if there's any life in the BS markets at this level!

I really need to get my enchanter working - I batch make scrolls periodically but she gets little love in between times. I find the scrolls market so confusing, I tend to put it off. I guess TSM has made glyphs so simple for me, I just wish there were an easier way for enchants too!

Glyphs - Sorting Out a Tanker? Help!

I've been watching 2 names in our glyph market recently who seem intent on dropping prices to below 20g or even 10g across a range of glyphs. The first guy (let's call him Epie) used to be a fairly regular, top end of the market guy until about 3 weeks ago when he started posting glyphs in 'walls' of 5 or 10 singles at 10g each - across the board with no exceptions. Now I'm not talking about those glyphs with normal sale prices below 25g like Maul or Soulstone, nope - I mean Rejuvenation (usually 185g) or Explosive Shot (usually 228g)! At first I thought he was just dumping his low end stock but as the weeks have progressed, he's casting his net wider across the market.

Then we have the second guy - I call him Mo - he is mainly hitting the low end stuff but again, posting in 5 or 10 singles at a time across about 40 different glyphs. Mo has pretty much owned the Mysterious Fortune Card market - he posts about 100 single cards at a time for 10g & he keeps them topped up. He doesn't bark in trade (that I've seen) but they sell. At first I bought a few to flip because mine had been selling quite happily at the 25g mark without even barking but he just lists more & more, making it very hard work to bark & sell through his listings. I must admit - I gave up on MCF - I still have some & I list late at night if he's let his auctions lapse but sure as eggs is eggs, his wall of 100 cheapies will be back the next morning!

So I'm in a quandary - I've taken a dislike to Mo just because he's bugged me so there's no way I want to buy him out to try to reset the market. He is working the lower price glyphs so I'm not hurting myself by letting him play there.

Epie on the other hand, is spreading his cheap glyphs to the higher price ones. I've had a look & I can't see any other auctions under his name so I'm guessing this is his glyph alt or his only alt (it is an 85). I could buy all his cheap glyphs & hope he doesn't have a bottomless pit or I could ignore him for a while & see where it goes.

I've not really tried to 'beat' competitors like this before - I tend to go with the flow & post when I like the prices & don't post when prices are low but as I'm expanding my glyph business as my main source of income, I don't want to let a couple of dodgy geezers ruin my party!

So I'm looking for suggestions/opinions/advice please - will be much appreciated & any results will be reported here at a later date!

What's Been Selling This Week?

I've had a busy week gearing up & rep building this week so my gold making has slowed a little. Add to that a severe shortage of Outland & Northrend herbs at even vaguely reasonable prices & you can see the effect on my sales.

Doing a bit of maths & I've worked out that I spent around 27k on various stuff so total increase in cash is only 20k but out of that 27k - 8k was for fast flying for 2 alts & 3k for a set of Terborus's bracers so it would have been 31k up :-)

I did a bit of excel wizardry too - I thought it might be interesting to see where the bulk of my cash is coming from.

Inscription - mainly glyphs - 21.3k

Jewelcrafting - 15.9k

Enchanting - 6.1k

Leatherworking - 1.5k

Tailoring (Netherweave bags) - 0.6k

Random other stuff - 2.1k

So although there's only 1 or 2 glyphs showing up at the top of the leaderboard, the sheer variety of glyphs adds up to my best sellers overall.

I've also expanded my LW'ing a little - I've made a full set of the Bloodied Leather agility pvp set & some of the well known lesser blues such as Toughened Leather Armor. As each piece of pvp gear sells, I'm making another so I always have a full set listed. The lesser stuffs aren't exactly flying off the shelf but if I pick up the mats over time at very low prices, then it's almost pure profit. I want to give the market a bit more time before I report fully.

This week, I've also been working a bit more on my Tailoring - I'm at 510 now & run out of my cheap volatiles - being the skinflint that I am, I'd rather wait to level further until I can get some more cheapies rather than pay silly prices at the AH to get those few points now!

I've also been selling a few bits & pieces from my mid level Blacksmith but for some reason, they haven't shown up in the MySales report. I guess I've not activated the addon so I'll need to fix that before next week!

With Leatherworking, Tailoring, Enchanting and Inscription either at max or close to max level, I really need shedloads of volatiles. I'm wondering how you guys get enough for your needs - do you buy at AH, transmute volatile lifes or do you farm them?

I feel the need for a second max level alchemist for the extra transmute - lifes are still the cheapest - but for now I just don't have a viable profession slot. My next highest alt is my mining/BS warrior at 62 & after that, I have a bunch in the 40's. Maybe I should just focus on one of those & try to level her as fast as possible - still gonna be a while though :(

TSM - Part Two - Crafting & Posting Glyphs

So here we go - part 2 & I hope this doesn't get confusing! I'll try & run through it in the order that I run as part of my routine so it will involve a little jumping around :)

First off, go to the Auction House & open your usual browse window. In the top right hand corner, you'll see a new box marked TSM - this is your open/close button for the pop out menu, shown below. Button 1 is your Post, button 2 is your Cancel, button 3 is the Scan menu, button 4 is the milling/prspecting shopping button & button 5 is your Shopping - crafting mats. The ones I haven't labelled are ones I don't generally use & certainly not for part of my glyph process so I've left them out for now.

I numbered the buttons from top to bottom but actually the first one I use is Button 3! This is the scan button which brings up its' own sub menu, shown below. If you have more than one profession set up for use with TSM you can click as many or as few of these categories as you like. I tend to scan just for the craft I'm working on as it's quicker & then my data is current for the relevant craft. Scanning for inscription only will look at all herbs, pigments, inks & glyphs, as well as any of the other miscellaneous items used for relics, tomes & decks. I'm guessing but this scan takes maybe 1-2 minutes at the most.

Before I go any further, I touched on this in yesterday's post - I preset my ink prices so that each ink/glyph group can have it's own threshold. In the window below, you can see I have Midnight & Lion's Ink preset at 5g per ink - this means that my threshold for these glyphs can be as low as 17g (3xink + parchment + AH 5%). This price shows up later in the process when shopping so I always know how much my maximum ink price is for any given set of glyphs.

To set these prices, go to the main TSM window (from your minimap icon), press the inscription button on the left hand side then choose Materials from the list. You have to put a tick in the Override box then enter your maximum ink price & hit 'okay'. Done! This is a preset so you only need to change it when your server prices for herbs change or if you find you under/over estimated ink costs.

After scanning, close down the AH window & open up your usual Craft window. At the top left, you will see a button for Open TSM Crafting, which opens this restock window. At the left hand side, you will see your ink categories (which we set up yesterday). If you hit the big 'Restock Queue' button, it will produce a list of glyphs to craft (on the right hand side) and a shopping list at the bottom left. In the last day or so, this module has been updated to included Inks & pigments in your shopping list so that makes life a lot easier!

The one thing I haven't quite worked out is why it didn't add in Glyph of Flame Shock & Glyph of Immolation Trap - it says they meet my profit criteria & I don't have any on other alts or anything either. All I do with these is a quick double check at the AH. Close down Craft window, reopen AH window & browse for these two - if they are still at profit & not too many of them, I add them to the craft queue manually.

To add or remove glyphs manually, you just left or right click the glyph name in the left hand list.

So we now have a list of glyphs required to restock & it's created a shopping list for us - time to go shopping! When I am having a buying/crafting session, I use button 5 the 'Shopping - Crafting mats' button. Open your AH browse window, open the pop out menu. It imports my shopping list to the bottom half of the window & searches the current listings for inks, pigments & herbs - sorted by the cheapest first. Your preset ink price is shown alongside the ink in the bottom window - in this screenshot it says 6g (old screenshot - I've updated since then!!).

Alongside the big BUY button, it shows how many available & price as well as the price per ink - watch this price & click buy for as long as it stays below your preset price. Once the ink price goes above your preset price, you can either make an executive decision to continue buying or you can hit the 'Skip Current Item' button at the very bottom of the window. If there is enough supply to fulfill your shopping list, it will skip to the next ink type once you have enough of this one.

At this stage, it's time to collect your herbs from the mailbox & do the usual milling routine. Then re-open your Inscription window, reopen the TSM page & hit the big 'Craft Next' button. If there weren't enough herbs available at your preset price, you can narrow down the list of glyphs by clicking the 'On Hand Queue' button. I'm not 100% positive but I think the parchments may be a limiting factor here so go get what you need before you shorten the queue!

With the recent change, actually making the ink is now part of this queue so it's time for a quick coffee/smoke break if you have a lot of inks to craft. I sometimes prefer to do this the old fashioned way so that I can process the inks by volume - i.e biggest workload first while I go get coffee then sit through the smaller ink craftings. Unfortunately, you still need to click when the item type changes - good of ToS :(

Once you have clicked your way through all the glyphs in your craft list, it's time to post! Back to the AH browse window, open the TSM pop out menu & hit button 1. It will scan & queue all the glyphs in your bags ready to be posted. If any prices have changed whilst you were crafting, you may end up with a few left in your bags as it won't post any that fall below your threshold (unless you set it to post at fallback, covered yesterday). I had a measly 4 to post when I took this screenie but usually it's upwards of 200 on my main scribe.

You can start clicking the 'Post Auction' button while it's still scanning/queueing but 200 still takes maybe 2 mins max, including my clicking time :) If you click slowly, you will see the details of each post so if you've made an error somewhere or it wants to list something you don't want it to list - just click the 'Skip Item' button at the bottom. Once you gain some confidence in what TSM is doing & that you're happy with your groups/prices etc, you will be able to click like a madman.

It will post at your preset undercut amount or your fallback, depending on your settings. The Cancel process is exactly the same except it's button 2 and it only cancels auctions which have been undercut! This is why I love TSM - 2 minutes to cancel 200 auctions & 2 minutes to repost them all (mailbox is the limiting factor for speed here).

As a last bit of information, I also use button 4 on the AH TSM pop out menu - this is the 'Shopping - Milling/Disenchanting & Prospecting' button. I use this on days in between major glyph craftings to pick up herbs at low prices - a bit like a snatch list I suppose. Click 1 of the 3 buttons at the top (mill/prosp/disench) then pick your ink from the drop down list and hit the 'Go' button. The display is very similar to your shopping list buying page but it doesn't show you your preset ink prices so bear those in mind. If you buy these 'cheap' herbs regularly & mill as you go, it certainly cuts down on the pain of a major glyph crafting session!

So that's pretty much it! I hope this helps you as much as it did me. I now cancel/repost maybe 4 or 5 times a day & my glyph sales have shot through the roof. You still need to bring your brain to the party as no addon is foolproof but once you gain confidence with it, setting up multiple professions is pretty much the same. I think TSM is really, really useful for glyphs because of the facility to group by inks & therefore, to preset your ink prices & thresholds by ink rather than by class or whatever.

I've also started using TSM for my Cata JC rare gem cuts & for my cata enchants - seeing the possible profit figures at any one time certainly make it easier to avoid the low profit scrolls that I still have a bag full of from pre-TSM!

As always, feel free to ask questions - I'll answer as best I can. Good luck & happy glyphing.

TSM - Basic Set Up Guide for Glyphs

I promised Alto a guide for TSM for his Glyphs so here's the first part - the set-up. Fluxdada at Power Word:Gold did a great video on this yesterday but I do mine slightly differently & also if you can't watch video at least you can read mine, hey? lol

Now I have a disclaimer to make - I've never used any of the other addons for glyphing so although I have been extolling the virtues of TSM for glyphs, in reality, I have nothing to compare it to!

I used to go to the AH & check, class by class, for which glyphs had the highest sale price, then I would make those if the herb prices were sensible. I listed them for 48 hrs & rarely if ever, cancelled & reposted them. For me, it's the ease of buying herbs within a set price range & the cancel/repost function that has me raving about TSM. If you already have an efficient system, I guess changing to TSM may not be your best option but hey ho, I'm sure there are some readers out there who scrabble through as I was, so maybe this can help them :)

So what I've done here is to take a load of screen shots & numbered various things. I'll talk through each 'number' & hope it flows logically enough for you to follow.

This bit is very brief! Number 1 is the 'Craft options' button & number 2 is the 'Auctioning groups' button.

OK, so press the Craft Options button (#1) and this is what you get on the Data tab at the top there. Number 3 is a drop down menu - I like to use the AuctionDB - Minimum buyout option for mat prices & craft prices - this is the TSM database from the scan I'll show you later. My Auctioneer is playing up a little so I haven't kept those scans up to date. The TSM scan is so quick as well that I can run it every 5 minutes with no pain, if needs be!

The 'profit deduction' slider is set to 5% which is the AH cut - if you're posting on the Neutral AH, you may want to adjust this here.

Number 4 is where I originally had problems - I have 2 alts with inscription but on different servers so make sure to pick up the correct alt name from this drop down menu. If you craft glyphs (or anything else, for that matter) then send to a banker for selling, pick up the banker alt name here too. The same goes for the Guild drop down box alongside - if you have glyphs stored in a seperate guild bank, pick up both guilds here.

Next up is the Craft Management Window tab - the only things I change here are the Max Restock Quantity & the Minimum Profit (number 5). Both are fairly self explanatory & totally up to you how you set them. 

Moving on to the Profiles tab, I believe the first alt you set up anywhere in game on TSM, becomes the default profile! This took me a while to work out as I added a second & third alt before realising that I couldn't use the same default for everyone! So, before you go much further, put your current alt's name in here at Number 6! If you want different profit amounts depending on which alt, you will need to go back to box Number 5 & change it once you have a new profile set up. ie I set this up for AHAlt then when I go to Mainalt, I change the profile name/set up new profile & it will bring these values in unless I change them.

So at last, we get to the Inscription window! Click the icon to the top left & then the Options button in the left hand list. The first thing you will see is a list by class - I prefer to sort by ink as it makes pricing & buying herbs much, much easier. So just click 'ink' in the drop down menu at number 7. 

 Now at this point, we still haven't imported any of our profession skills/items so click 'Crafts' in the left hand menu then click 'Force rescan etc etc' button (Number 8). This should open your normal profession window behind this screen then close it again once it has imported your craftables. I've had a problem here once or twice so I either just log out & in again or do a /reload which seems to fix it.

Hopefully this will have imported all the glyphs/items you can make so now click an ink in the left hand list - I've picked Midnight Ink. You can see it has brought in all the glyphs I can make with Midnight Ink but none of them are selected. Pressing 'Enable all crafts' button at number 9 will pick up every glyph in this list.

Now, when I set up for the first time, at this point I click 'Create Auctioning Groups' which brings up a pop-out (marked 10a). Just click the large 'add crafted items from this group etc etc' button & it will automatically create a new group called 'inscription - midnight ink'. Now if you have already set up or are going to set up seperate profession groups, the category box will need to be used - the drop down menu will show you your 'master groups' as it were & just pick from there.

If you are still learning new glyphs, they won't appear in a group until you put them there. Go back to ink group page (#9 above) and tick the new item to 'enable it' then click the box marked number 11 and this box will pop up - in the drop down menu (at 11a), pick the name of the group to add your item to (in this case, midnight ink)  & hey presto, your new glyph is now in your crafting & auctioning groups. 

Now we go to the auctioning group button (number 2 on the first screen shot!) & you will see your crafting by inks list on the left hand side  are now showing as auctioning groups as well. This is where we set up our undercut amount, our threshold & fallback. In the screenshot below, I have marked the 'Categories/Groups' with a red blob - this is your override settings so if you forget to set amounts for individual groups, these are the settings that it will default to.

Post Time & Post Cap are both easy - as is the undercut amount - I hate those guys who undercut 1copper so I usually put a random amount in here! At number 12 I have set my minimum price at 25g & my fallback at 138g but at the very bottom of the screen is a drop down menu which allows you to decide what TSM will do if the price falls below your threshold. Somehow I managed to miss it in the screenshot but I have mine set to 'don't post' so it never posts below 25g. 

So that's pretty much the set-up covered. You can see below that I have a different Price Threshold for my Midnight Ink category. On my main inscription alt, I have a different threshold for each ink group depending on my ink prices but I'll show you that tomorrow when I cover the crafting & cancel/repost parts of TSM.

I think I've covered most of the basic set up stuff. If you think I missed something or you want further clarification, please leave a comment - this is my first 'tutorial/how-to' so I doubt I got it all first time :) I'll cover crafting, restock queues, posting & scanning in part 2, currently planned for tomorrow, real life permitting.