Resetting Markets to Make Gold in Legion

First off, I guess I should explain what I mean by resetting markets. When someone tries to undercut the lowest price on the market but leaves a large gap in the prices, then there is an opportunity for you to make some gold. Of course, it does depend on you having enough gold to buy all the cheaper items up and there is a risk element too - you may get stuck with the cheaper goods if the market is dropping and yours don't sell quickly enough.

But at this point in a new expansion, prices are still pretty high and quantities of herbs, ores, leather and silk is dependent on people still leveling. There aren't many farming routes established yet and most players are spending time leveling, not farming.

As you can tell from my previous two posts, I started my herbalist in Highmountain because Foxflowers were the most expensive herbs at the time (not including Starlight Rose though). I did post a small area that is pretty good for farming Foxflowers but it's not an efficient way to do it.

So what I did to make the most gold from Foxflowers was to reset the market. Prices drop over the weekend to 20g or so but during the week, they are regularly at 30g or more. When I saw a bunch of Foxflowers at 9g, of course, I snapped them up and I also grabbed all the Foxflowers upto about 18g. Luckily I remembered to take a screenshot just before I bought the last cheap Foxflower!

They all sold at 30g or more so I made a tidy profit on those.

Today I had a brainwave when looking at Stonehide Leather - I noticed that there were a couple of bid only lines so when I went to check the prices on those, they were about the average market price but what I did see at the top end of the price range was a huge discount for a bid price. Basically someone had overpriced their main buy price so they were never going to sell but their bid price was actually below the market price by about 3g. That doesn't sound like a huge profit but I snapped up 4 stacks of 200 leathers at an average price of 9g30s when the market price is over 12g50s.

I'm pretty sure I could sell them all very quickly if I wanted to but I actually want them to level up my leatherworker so this way, I have comparatively cheap materials to do so and if I make the right items to level up, I can also sell them and have a lower base price than my competitors.

You can reset all sorts of markets but I tend to play it a little safe and stick to profession materials. It doesn't have to be the current materials either - I'm resetting Living Steel and Golden Lotus markets too - I'm not sure why those markets are still so active but I'm not going to complain!

Where to Find Foxflowers in Legion

Where to pick Foxflowers in Highmountain

Last time, I recommended starting your herbalist in the Highmountain zone of World of Warcraft Legion because of the value of Foxflower. Well, I have to say I may have been a bit premature with that statement! It still holds good unless you are an alchemist as well, in which case, you will find that your opening Alchemy quests all take you to Azsuna.

One addon I would really recommend you installing is the Gathermate2 addon - I used to use Gatherer but as of this week, it still hasn't been updated for Legion herbs. I was slow to install this addon so although I picked Foxflowers all the way through Highmountain, I don't have a record of where they all are! I fixed that for Val'sharah and Azsuna though!

One other thing to note is that if you do start with Highmountain to take advantage of the high Auction House prices of Foxflower, it is worth keeping 60 back for your Alchemist. This is another thing I messed up on so I had to go all the way back to Highmountain to pick them for my Alchemy quest! Without the Gathermate2 information, it took a while to find a good spot but I eventually found this little area in the north to be the best for picking Foxflowers.

There are lots of murlocs around here and a bunch of crab type NPC's that wander in groups so you will have to fight your way through. On the far eastern edge of the range are neutral murlocs so if you don't feel like fighting and have time, you may find enough Foxflowers in the safe area to keep you supplied.

One of the biggest changes to herbalism in Legion is the fact that each herb now has a rank attached to it so when you pick your first Foxflower, you get a simple quest to pick more Foxflowers but the quest will take some additional quest items each time you pick, then asks you to return to the Herbalism trainer in Dalaran. Once you do that, you learn rank 1 Foxflower which increases the number of herbs for each pick and the trainer gives you another quest to learn rank 2 and later rank 3.

I was also slow to do the herbing quests so I had almost finished Highmountain before I gained the rank 3 skill. But I realized halfway through Val'sharah what was happening and jumped on the herbing quests as soon as I got them! It definitely improved the number of herbs I received each time I picked too.

Next time, I'll tell you about all the fun I'm having leveling my alchemy profession!

Quick Tips - Skinning & Herbing in Highmountain Zone - Legion

I started my herbing alt in Highmountain after checking the prices of herbs in the Auction House. Foxflower was selling at the highest price by a large margin so I figured that was a good a place as any to start my Legion adventures.

What I didn't know was that when you pick a Foxflower, there is a chance of it spawning a ghg fox which runs around nearby and drops more Foxflowers. All you have to do is run over them to collect them. Sometimes that's easier said than done though, especially if a mob is attacking you at the time!

I had 27 Foxflowers from one pick and at 50gold plus on the Auction House, that's a very profitable way of herbing!

Another thing I thought of as I was questing and arrived at Nesingwary's camp, was that I should have brought my skinner here too. As always, Hemet Nesingwary has quests that require a lot of killing of various animals in the vicinity so if you are a skinner, it's an area full of carcasses to be skinned. It's not the best zone for skinning so far and I'm a fair way into the questline but this small area should prove profitable whilst you are leveling through the zone. I wouldn't start my skinner in this area just for the skinning though as most of the mobs have been humanoid.

One other nice surprise I had so far in Legion was the value of vendor trash - after just an hour of questing, I vendored all the trash in my bags and made over 400 gold. I'm not saying this is a great way to make gold but as a simple result of questing, it's a nice little bonus.

So what do I think of Legion so far? Well, having got sucked in by the easy leveling during the Invasions, I went from one level 100 to 4 level 100's, a 95, two 90's and of course my new Demon Hunter at 98. There's also a level 100 boost waiting for a decision to be made - I'm leaning towards a Shaman for the boost as I don;t have one yet and although learning a new class at level 100 might prove difficult, it can't be any harder than playing a Rogue who was left at level 83 in Mists of Pandaria for the whole of the Warlords of Draenor expansion!

I'm enjoying the leveling process so far and I'm taking my time  - yes, I'm still spending a bit of time in the Auction House but for now, that's just a start and end of playtime activity. I'm not sure how much goldmaking I'll be doing but as I come across ideas and feel the urge to write, I'll be popping them here as quick tips. You can also keep up with my doings on the podcast - The Journal of Marcus Ty. Marcus talked me back to joining him for our bi-weekly chat about goldmaking in Legion!

If you have any tips or questions, feel free to drop me a comment below.

Making Gold with the Garrison Auction House

As I get back into my stride with goldmaking in WoW, I'm finding all sorts of nice opportunities to make gold on the Auction House. One of my newest earners is flipping the parts that make up the Garrison Auction House or the Ancient Trading Mechanism.

Take a look at the Undermine Journal page above - it's for my server so yours may be very different but I'm sure there will be the same opportunities for you as there are here for me.

The first thing I look at when using the Undermine Journal is to compare the current prices with the mean prices. You can see that on some of the component parts, current prices are way below the mean prices which signals an opportunity. I've been buying up cheap component parts and flipping them for close to the mean prices or above.

Where some of the current prices are above the mean, that's probably my auctions pushing them up - I'm not being too greedy but I am a goldmaking goblin after all! My best sale so far is a 70 gold Super Cooling Tubing which sold for over 1200 gold.

The other thing I look for is whether a full set of components is available to make up a full module and whether the cost of the parts is less than the module sale price. You can see that the Super Cooling Module parts would cost around 1200 gold but the current sale price is at 2500 gold - sadly there aren't any coolant components available (I wonder why! muhahaha!) so it looks like I'll be keeping that profit to myself!

I've only been flipping these parts and modules but you do need to think about where they come from. The Super Cooling Module parts and the Cyclical Power Module parts come from the quest zones so they will always be the most plentiful and therefore the cheaper markets. The Auction Control Module comes from dungeons which is also a cheap market due to plentiful supply.

The Arcane Crystal Module parts come from raids and garrison invasions but although some of the components seem to be plentiful, the Arcane Crystal Lens is rarely seen on my server which has pushed its' price way up.

The hardest module parts to get and therefore the most expensive one is the Universal Language Module which comes from Ashran. I was chatting to a fellow goldmaker in game last night who was barking in the trade channel to buy one. He didn't believe the AH price was reasonable and was hoping he could get a bargain through trade. If you like to PvP then perhaps this is not so difficult to obtain but for us PvP-novices, it seems like a million miles away from possible! Even for all that gold, I doubt I will ever really get into Ashran to fight.

There is definitely gold to be made in this market but even after just a couple of evenings, I can see that some prices are being undercut a great deal which is bringing average prices down. I could keep buying up every really cheap component I see and I will for a little while on some of them but if the volume available is too high, I'll just be filling my bags with junk. So I'll take what profit I can for now, maybe store a few components & modules in my guild bank and keep checking back periodically to see if the prices have stabilized at all.

How and Why To Price Your Primal Spirits

There are multiple sources of Primal Spirits in World of Warcraft, some of which are free so why would you need to work out a price for them? Well, Primal Spirits are one way of increasing your supply of the bind on pick up crafting materials like Burnished Leather or Hexweave Cloth which are used to craft the highest quality armor and weapons as well as the item upgrade essences. You can also exchange Primal Spirits for the Sorcerous Air, Water, Earth and Fire that you need for crafting as well as Savage Bloods.

If you are going to craft any of the high end gear or upgrade Essences, you need to know your base crafting cost so you know exactly how much you can sell it for and still make a great profit.

Sources of Primal Spirits

The main free source of Primal Spirits is the gathering professions - you will occasionally get them when mining, herbing, fishing or skinning.

There are some missions for your followers which reward Primal Spirits - I'd count these as a free source too.

Another 'free' source of Primal Spirits are the various caches, bags and also the mine carts in your garrison mine.

Garrison Traders will sell you Primal Spirits in exchange for raw materials. There are five possible traders who can turn up in the entrance hall of your Level 3 Garrison Town Hall - the fur, ore, herb, dust and leather traders. Each Primal Spirit will cost you 5 raw materials - which material will depend on which Trader is visiting that day.

Calculating A Price For Primal Spirits

Primal Spirits are only used in a couple of high end crafting recipes - these are the recipes that allow you to make a BoP crafted material without a cooldown but as they give only 1 BoP material, it is an expensive way to get extras.

So the main use for Primal Spirits is to pay for BoP crafting materials, Savage Blood and the various Sorcerous elements. But before you start exchanging like crazy, you really should check out the prices of the raw materials and Savage Bloods on the Auction House. 

If you cost the Primal Spirits based on the daily Trader, you will have a possible 5 different prices. You can take an average of these to calculate your Primal Spirit cost or you can set yourself a maximum price for bulk buying the raw materials and use that as your basis.

For example - the Traders accept 5 each of true iron ore, draenic dust, talador orchid, sumptuous fur and raw beast hides. If each of those has an average price of 2 gold then each Primal Spirit is costing you 10 gold (5 mats x 2gold). That's not going to be the case usually though - each material will have a different average price so work out 5 x each price, add them all together then divide the total by 5 - that will give you an average price to use.

Or you could fix your raw material buy price at 1.50 gold and only buy bulk raw materials under that so your maximum cost for a Primal Spirit will be 7.50 gold (5mats x 1.5 gold). This is where your bargain basement shopping skills come into play!

Trading Up Primal Spirits

OK, so you have a price for your Primal Spirits now but what are you going to do with them? The main use is to buy BoP crafting materials from the Primal Spirit Trader in your Garrison but you still need to check the Auction House for prices. Obviously you can't buy BoP crafting materials on the Auction House so you need to calculate the cost based on raw materials costs.

Each BoP material costs 5 Primal Spirits and as mentioned earlier, each Primal Spirit takes 5 raw material. This means that a single piece of Burnished Leather or Hexweave Cloth for example, has an equivalent value of 25 raw materials (5 to trade per Primal Spirit x 5 Primal Spirits to trade for BoP Material).

So in the examples above, a single BoP crafted material will cost either 50 gold or 37.50 gold, depending on how you calculated your base costs.

The thing is though - each piece of BoP crafted material can also be obtained via Work Orders in your Garrison and those only cost 5 raw materials. So why would you spend 25 raw materials via the Traders to get the same crafted material? The truth is, you don't need to but as the Work Orders are time limited, you may find that you are selling your crafted gear faster than you can get the materials via Work Orders.

The same basic calculations apply for buying the Sorcerous elements or Savage Bloods. Sorcerous elements cost 15 Primal Spirits so that's 150 gold or 112.50 gold (15 x 5 raw materials=75 raw mats) which is a crazy price! My Auction House has Sorcerous elements ranging from 25-45 gold so I won't be using Primal Spirits to buy those any time soon!

Savage Bloods cost 25 Primal Spirits from the trader so the equivalent raw material cost is 250 gold or 187.50 gold (25 x 5 raw materials = 125 raw mats). That's a bit better but not much. Savage Blood sells for between 180 gold - 270 gold on my server so there's very little profit to be made by selling Savage Bloods bought with Primal Spirits. You can also get Savage Blood from your Barn but unless you have loads of Barns in full production, you will probably need to buy Savage Blood at some point.

Calculating Cost of Crafted Gear

Most of the epic item level 640 crafted gear uses 100 of the BoP crafted materials and a few bits of other basic raw materials. It's fairly easy to calculate the base cost of crafting these as 100 x 5 raw materials if you get all your BoP material from work orders. If you do use the various Traders to buy BoP materials then the calculations above will set the price for your epic item.

These epic gear items are all upgradeable though and this is where the Savage Blood price comes in. Each upgrade from level 1 to 4 will cost 70 BoP crafted material, 15 Savage Bloods and 15 Sorcerous elements to make the upgrade Essence. You can upgrade the crafted gear without equipping it so depending on the prices on your Auction House, the best profit may come from selling an upgraded item rather than the base item.

You can also sell the Essence itself but again, check the prices on your Auction House and watch your base costs!

In Summary

With so many ways to convert raw materials, garrison resources and Primal Spirits to BoP materials and Savage Blood, fixing your crafting costs is always going to need to be flexible. But it will give you a baseline below which you just don't craft or sell your items. If you feel like Primal Spirits and Savage Bloods are 'free' because you get them while your doing other stuff in game, then you will be seriously eating into your own profits by selling the final product too cheaply. You don't need a huge spreadsheet to track these prices to the copper, just make sure you are aware of the costs of crafting so you don't underprice your gear on the Auction House.

I hope this makes sense - it's tough to explain in writing how my brain works sometimes! Please let me know if I've messed up somewhere or if the prices on your server are way different. I'd be interested to know how do you calculate your prices too. 

   

What's Been Selling This Week? 30th June 2015

This week, I've been busy leveling my main but I've also been clearing out some of my alts banks too. I'm still very focused on leveling and am only just beginning to get my gold making machine running but as this was always a popular post in the past, I thought I'd give you a peek at what's been selling this week.

As you can see from the screenshot, I've been selling a wide range of random stuff but the nicest surprise for me was the sale price for the Pyrite Ore - that's an average price of 759 gold for a stack of just 20 ore! If you're a bit short on gold, it might be worth checking out your Auction House to see how much it's selling for on your server and then deciding whether to go farming or not!

It's nice to see the Mammoth Mining Bags are still selling for a good price. These were the last few I had in a bank but I'll be checking out the price of Borean Leather to see if it's worth making more. In case you were wondering, the pattern for this bag comes from the Sons of Hodir in Storm Peaks. Now that so many people don't grind the old reputations, you may find that you are one of the only Leatherworkers able to make this bag so you could, theoretically, push the price up, especially if it's currently selling for very cheap.

Another nice surprise for me was the price of the Trillium Bars. Each trillium Bar takes 10 Ghost Iron Bars (which is 20 Ghost Iron Ore) and your alchemist can transmute the Ghost Iron to Trillium Bars. The transmute isn't on a cooldown either so if the price is right for buying raw materials, this could be another nice little earner from an older expansion.

I'm not really focusing on my Archeology right now so I decided to sell my Ogre Missive. I'm happy with the 332 gold that it sold for but after checking out The Undermine Journal, it seems I could perhaps have waited and got quite a bit more for it. I seem to have forgotten some of the basic rules of goldmaking in my break from playing! I didn't really know what it was for other than Archeology but a little research might have got me an extra 200 gold - know your market and know your prices!

The rest of the stuff that sold is pretty unremarkable, just random stuff from my banks but what this screenshot doesn't show is the 4 bags full of transmog gear I've been trying to sell! I know I have some nice bits and pieces but the rest is probably just average. I think my enchanter is going to end up disenchanting most of it and I'll see how the essence and dust markets are instead!

So there we go - just a slow steady week of sales, nothing really remarkable yet but I'm shuffling raw materials around between three alts to make the best use of garrison work orders while I level my main. Once I hit level 100 on her, I'll be leveling her leather working and seeing how the professions are these days. I've not heard much good stuff about them but I want to see for myself!

5 Reasons You Might be Struggling To Make Gold in World of Warcraft

5 Mistakes Players Make When Making Gold in World of Warcraft

Today we're going to take a look at the top reasons why you struggle to make gold in World of Warcraft. Marcus and I came up with a few more than 5 once we got chatting about it on the podcast but they are all linked to these top reasons so read on to find out where you might be going wrong and how to fix it!

Are you...

1. Not Playing the Auction House?
2. Not Selling Items That Are In Demand?
3. Spending Too Much?
4. Undercutting Too Much?
5. Inefficient?

Once you have these five points sorted out, you should be able to make WoW gold easily and afford anything you want to buy in World of Warcraft.

Reason 1 - Not Playing the Auction House

For many players, the World of Warcraft Auction House is just an afterthought to their time spent playing. These type of players raid or PvP and just pop to the Auction House at the end of a session and throw stuff up for sale without any research as to best prices or times to sell. Other players I know just sell everything they don't need to a vendor!

Learning to use an Auction House addon like Trade Skill Master (TSM) or Auctionator can make your WoW gold making efforts much easier but they do take a little time to learn. You had to learn how to raid or PvP etc though didn't you? So spending some time learning the mysteries of the Auction House is no different. It's just another aspect of this game we play.

Reason 2 - Not Selling Items That Are In Demand

Part of learning to play the World of Warcraft Auction House is knowing which items are in demand. When you are crafting or gathering, you need to check whether the items you end up with are going to be worth your time and effort. When do most guilds on your server raid? That's a great time to be selling raid supplies like buff potions & foods. Sadly, professions can no longer make blue quality PvP gear or gear enhancements like leg armors which were all good sellers after raids.

This is where addons help too. TSM has the ability to scan the WoW Auction House regularly and build a database of average prices. A quick look at current average prices should tell you whether an item is selling well or not.

Another time that players lose WoW gold is when leveling a profession. There are usually items that sell well even at lower skill levels but if you follow a profession leveling guide, it will just tell to to make 5 or 10 of an item to get the easiest skill points. That's fine if you are in a rush and already have gold but it's a waste of materials and gold if they don't sell. Sometimes it is better to level more slowly but be able to sell the crafted items for a good price.

Reason 3 - Spending Too Much

This is a basic budgeting principle - if you are spending more than you are earning, you won't be making WoW gold and part of making gold is to control your crafting costs. Again this comes back to knowing the average market price of your crafting materials and building a small reserve of correctly priced crafting materials.

You may find a great new market with a craftable item that you can make but if you dive in and buy the materials straight off the WoW Auction House, how do you know if those materials are expensive today? If you can spread your material buying times to when materials are cheap, you will maximise your profit for that item. As I said in episode 43 of the Journal of Marcus Ty podcast, I love bargain shopping and I don't mind buying 200 cheap leathers today that I might not use until next week. It helps me know my costs and profit levels so I can sell my item at best price or hold on to it if the price has dropped this week.

JOURNAL OF MARCUS TY GOLD GUIDE

WARLORDS OF DRAENOR EDITION

Get Your World of Warcraft Gold Making Guide Now!

Reason 4 - Undercutting Too Much

Linked to reason 3 is undercutting. If I know my crafting cost, I also know exactly how much profit I will make when the item sells. Knowing that profit figure, I can chose how much I want to undercut on the Auction House so that my item sells but I still make profit.

I have seen people undercut by hundreds of gold when all they really needed to do was undercut me by a few coppers or silvers. That would put them at the top of the list when a buyer searches for the item. I have also seen players undercut so far that the listed price is not only below the crafting cost (so that's a loss straightaway!) but the price is also below the vendor price!

Back in Cataclysm, when I was hitting the glyph market hard, I would list a whole bunch of single glyphs, each one undercutting the market by just 5 coppers. Canceling and relisting was a common practise in both glyph and gem markets but I didn't often cancel. I just listed a new glyph at the lower price. That way, if the market was very active, the lower priced glyphs would sell and my first listed glyph would often also sell at the higher price.

Reason 5 - Inefficiency

If your time in World of Warcraft is limited, you want to be as efficient as possible in your gold making efforts. One example of inefficiency is the gathering professions. Now I'm not saying gathering is bad, just that it's not the best use of your limited time unless you find a market for a material that is selling at crazy good prices. 

Two examples spring to mind for me - the Hypnotic Dust market is still very active on my server so running old instances or buying cheap Cataclysm gear to disenchant might be a really good use of your time if you also enjoy the old content. Another market that I found by chance is Pyrite Ore which I mentioned in the podcast. I was just clearing down my bags but I was pleasantly surprised by how much the Ore sold for!

Another example of inefficiency is running between the bank, Auction House and mailbox, shuffling materials around between alts or banks. Using a mailbox addon like Postal helps speed up the mailbox part of your routine but it's out of date now. TSM has a mailing module which most goldmakers have moved to, I think. 

Another good thing about TSM, is that not only does it have a nifty Warehousing module which will shift materials around easily for you but it also has an Item Tracker which adds some information to your tooltips, telling you how much of an item you have and where it is. I've blacked out my toon names but as you can see from the screenshot, it shows you exactly where all your items are stored.

Summary

So there you go - 5 reasons why players struggle to make gold in World of Warcraft. Do you fall into any of these groups or can you think of other reasons why players find it difficult to make gold? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Marcus has launched the Warlords of Draenor edition of his gold guide recently. I've read through the whole set of guides and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants a clearer idea of how to make gold in World of Warcraft. If you sign up to my newsletter, you'll get a coupon for 20% off too - just a little thank you for signing up.

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Warlords of Draenor - The Iron Tide Pre-Patch is Here At Last!

The time has finally arrived for the excitement and build up to the release of Warlords of Draenor, the pre-expansion patch a.k.a patch 6.0.2 and I have succumbed to the hype and re-subbed. Well, when I say re-subbed, I've bought a 30 day timecard so I can decide whether I even want to buy the expansion.

Over the summer, I've spent a couple of months in Wildstar and more recently, a week or two in ArcheAge but although I've enjoyed them, neither has the initial addictiveness that World of Warcraft had for me way back in 2009 when I first started playing. To say 'I'm back!' is probably a bit premature as I'm still feeling a bit 'blah' about the whole genre but I have 30 days to give it a good go and who knows, maybe make a shedload of gold in the process!

I took the time to read almost all of the patch notes for Patch 6.0.2 The Iron Tide - well, all except the huge number of changes to the classes - those I'll look at when I try & fail to play an alt with any degree of success!

I've only logged three of my alts so far - my main, a human Paladin had over 1200 gold in the mail from the justice point conversion but I had to spend some of that straight away to change her face. My beautiful redhead looked horrible with the new model graphics so I found a face I liked and changed her hair too. I'm still not sold on the new model but it's at least bearable now.

Original model

New model

The second alt I logged was my baby Gnome banker - no justice point conversion gold for her as she is only a lowbie who's never really left town but as a Gnome, her time is short. I currently have another lowbie Gnome who is definitely destined for the delete button but most disheartening is my Gnome Rogue - she was my beautiful pink pig tailed girlie and was my 2nd max level toon ever. I'm not going to race change her yet, I'm hoping Blizzard will maybe hear the screams of agony from twitter and the forums about how horrible the new Gnome faces are (I've not seen one good comment yet!) and perhaps they'll revise them a smidge. Hey, a girl can hope, can't she?

The third alt I logged was my level 89 Hunter, sitting forlornly in a tent on the Timeless Isle. I'd seen reports on Twitter that a single kill was letting people ding 90 so I gave it a try. Yup! Just one kill and up popped the level 90 Achievement thingy - not bad after her sitting there for months as I ran out of steam to  level her any further. Her mailbox had about 700 gold in it from the Justice Point conversion and as she is a Draenai, I didn't feel the need to go and change her face. Once I get her back to town, I might visit the Barber shop, just to see if I prefer a different model but for now, I can live with the new look.

So that has been my total gametime so far this week - apart from checking out the Toybox and restacking a few bits in my bank that is. I'm hoping to get a bit more time in game over the weekend now that my jetlag is almost gone and I'll be looking at the Auction House and new possibilities now that so much has changed. If you're still here and reading my sporadic posts, thank you for sticking with me. I hope to get back to more regular posting now that we have some new stuff to talk about!

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Gifts for Gamers and Geeks
or this great TCG post
WoW Reign of Fire TCG Box

Wildstar - Gold Making & Leveling in a New MMO!

Well, it's been quite some time since I posted here but I've been suffering a bad case of the blerghs as well as having yet another operation but in between times, I've been playing the newest MMO on the block, Wildstar. I'm learning the markets and I'll be posting some gold making stuff here soon.

I'm thoroughly enjoying Wildstar but I'm so slow at leveling, it's taking me forever. Apart from being distracted by the Auction House and Commodities Exchange (like the true AH Addict I am), I have been struggling a bit to find things on the map.

Now don't get me wrong, I've never run out of quests or got really lost but it all takes time to find where you should be questing and then you find you're not quite in the right area but there's a huge wall in your way or you can't find a way around a big hill!

Check out the NEW Zygor's Wildstar Leveling Guide here

So it's with some relief that I received my email telling my that good old Zygor's are releasing a new Wildstar leveling guide with all the great features that their World of Warcraft Guide has. I've been telling everyone how wonderful their WoW Leveling Guide is for years now and from what I've seen of the promotional stuff, this Wildstar one looks like it's going to be just as useful!

There's one for each faction, Exile & Dominion or if you're bi-factional, there's a paired bundle especially for you. It covers all the zones for questing with an optimised leveling path which should make questing much more streamlined. It will also jump ahead on quests as you progress so if you have an XP buff for example, it will skip a quest that you no longer need to do!

It places a small but detailed box on your screen which shows you exactly what you need to do next and there's also a waypoint arrow too so if, like me, you regularly get lost, this is perfect for you!

I love my WoW guide and I'll be buying this one too - I just have to decide whether I'm bi-factional or not!

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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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Saturday Celebrations - Dysenigrate, Hyjal-US

So this week, we have a success story from Dysenigrate, one of my Clan mates in the Eviscerated Clan in Clash of Clans and I owe him an apology and to everyone for being so late! This post was due 1st March & I'm only just now remembering to do it! In my defence, I missed a few other things too as I've been super busy at work, preparing for our financial year end and also getting ready to fly out to see my fella! He's still asleep right now so I've pinched his PC to get this post out! lol

If you'd like to submit your own gold making Milestone Interview, instructions & more details are on my Milestone Interviews page. Any milestone is suitable - whether it be 100k or 10 million, we want to hear about YOUR story. Don't be shy! You've seen what others are sending in over the last few months so come on - tell us how you've been doing it!

I'm running low on submissions so if you'd like to see this weekly story continue, I'm going to need more stories!

I try to reply to each submission quickly so if I don't reply - poke me again as I may have missed it or leave a comment on a post - those I definitely see more easily. Now that AH Addict is getting more popular, the email address is busy with spammers coming out of the woodwork so I do sometimes miss things :(

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Milestone Amount:  

1 million liquid gold on my main server

What got you started? When? 

In the last couple months of Wrath I obtained the pattern for the cloth dps boots from ICC. After I made mine (scraped and saved lol!) I saw that they were listed for almost 5k on the AH. I ended up selling them at a slight loss after several weeks of constant undercutting and relisting. It was only a small loss but I learned a lot about the total cost of an item - materialss, posting fees, AH fees, and time. So much time invested in those boots! In any case I wanted more gold in my virtual wallet so I vowed to figure the Auction House out. 

Markets? 

I started out with vendor pets - the ones from Breanni, Rashaad, and the Winterspring Cub from Everlook. Now I'm mostly out of the pet market and focus on Cloth PvP gear, Enchanting, Glyphs, Shoulder Inscriptions, Cogwheels, and the Ironpaw Shuffle. Early in the expansion, I made and sold Living steel everyday but I probably stopped that in 5.2. Just maxed a Leatherworker and starting in the Leather/Mail PvP gear market. 

Biggest success or failure? 

Honestly, I'm too cautious to take any big risks, but my biggest failure was being unwilling to stockpile materials. There was a two week span where I couldn't post enchants at all when material prices rose above my thresholds and I had no stock. Lesson learned! Now I keep at least one guild-bank full of materials. 

Advice for new goldmakers? 

It's ok to start small, don't risk your whole nest egg on a high ticket item to flip. Smaller sales add up and eventually a miss or a slow sale on a big ticket item won't hurt so much.

New Goals? 

I haven't set a new number but I plan to stay above 1 million liquid gold. 

Bank alt(s)? 

I started my first bank alt just for convenience before I ever considered myself a goldmaker. I've had that one since BC and just recently started a 2nd one to handle glyphs. 

Farm (y/n)? 

Only in the course of normal play, or if I have to. For example, if I have to farm up a Bind on Pickup (BoP) material like Spirit of Harmony, I'll farm them in an area where I am also skinning or getting cloth or something of value. 

How much playtime devoted to goldmaking? 

At least 30 minutes daily on crafting / posting / relisting. Sometimes 3+ hours if I'm trying to learn something or chasing a rare pattern. 

Rewards? 

None yet since my goal is to stay over 1M liquid. The first target I have in mind though is the Grand Expedition Yak, probably followed by TCG mounts. 

Shoutouts? (streams, blogs, podcasts) 

Nev AH Addict (of course), Power Word: Gold, Call to Auction, Cold's Gold Factory, Zerohour's blog, and recently I've been following Stede, Wowprofitz, and phatlewts.

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Big congratulations to Dysenigrate! Hitting 1 million is still a huge achievement regardless of what anyone says about getting there being easier these days! It may not be uphill both ways in the snow type difficult now but it's still only a tiny percentage of players who get there and they all deserve congratulations!

I'm always curious to hear how people get sucked into the Auction House game - for some (like me), it"s a natural & comfortable place to be, or it starts as a way to pay for end game repairs & raid supplies & for others, it's a deal that looks too good to miss and so another trap is sprung and a new goldmaker is born. I have a guildie who is slowly getting sucked in, he likes these one off big sales like Dysenigrate did but he'll wake up soon and realise he's rich & he likes it and then I'll say 'told ya!' :)

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Saturday Celebrations - Goldmansax

This week we have a tale of big money from Goldmansax - very appropriate name there! He doesn't say which server or whether he is USA or EU but that doesn't really matter - all gold stories are different depending on server as so many of us gold bloggers regularly point out!

If you'd like to submit your own gold making Milestone Interview, instructions & more details are on my Milestone Interviews page. Any milestone is suitable - whether it be 100k or 10 million, we want to hear about YOUR story. Don't be shy! You've seen what others are sending in over the last few months so come on - tell us how you've been doing it!

I'm running low on submissions so if you'd like to see this weekly story continue, I'm going to need more stories!

I try to reply to each submission quickly so if I don't reply - poke me again as I may have missed it or leave a comment on a post - those I definitely see more easily. Now that AH Addict is getting more popular, the email address is busy with spammers coming out of the woodwork so I do sometimes miss things :(

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What is your milestone amount?
I originally started with a milestone amount of 1million gold; however, as I approached that, it switched to “I want enough to buy a Swift Spectral Tiger and have at least 400k leftover to rebuild.”

What got you started making gold and when?
I’ve played WoW for quite a long time and, for whatever reason, never gave goldmaking much thought. I was chronically poor and struggled to keep gear gemmed and enchanted, let alone my altoholic/twinking problem (before heirlooms). I stumbled across a youtube video about the shuffle during Cataclysm and dabbled in that for a short while, turning ~2k into 30k in a short time.

What really got me started, though, was finding the Consortium forum and, particularly, a post entitled “March to a Million” written by Faxmonkey and posted on April 9, 2012. I think I read that post the day it came out and it essentially “clicked” for me. I decided to re-roll on a high pop server and try to replicate what Faxmonkey wrote about – start with nothing and turn it into big bucks by flipping high volume materials and eventually moving into flipping higher value items.

Through this method, I was able to turn a few silver and some linen cloth into 100k within about a month and half. Not a huge amount, but I was keeping my pally’s weapon enchanted with Crusader throughout leveling (no heirlooms) and buying other, slightly, frivolous items. The new server became my main server where I built up an army of alts, covering all professions, and began to branch out into profession-based gold making.

Which markets have you concentrated on, if any?
I primarily stick to flipping still. My favorite has been the 77-79 Cataclysm green gear. They still sell incredibly well (we’ll see after the squish :/ ) and have been a huge part of my income, of late.

Favorite niche market?
Despite a large portion of my income generated from a niche market, my favorite is actually Enchanted Elementium bars. They don’t sell often, but when they do it’s an amazing day to open the mailbox J

Biggest yay?
When I started on the new server and flipped an Axe of the Legion from 100g to 10k within 12 hours and then did it again within a few days.

Did you reward yourself for reaching your goal?
I actually got very bored with WoW last spring and decided to hang it up at around 900k. I came back after about 4 months and decided now was the time to buy that Spectral Tiger. I found one for 420k or so and didn’t even think about it, just bought it. I’ve since moved servers, again, and begun rebuilding on my new server and am up to about 500k, after leveling some new alts (only transferred a couple).

Shout outs for any blogs, podcasts, or streams that helped you along the way.
Several – first off is the Consortium forums. Can’t even begin to describe how much insight I have gained from the people over there. Also, Faxmonkey for their post that got me started, Nev, Phatlewts, Sapu and the TSM team and Manthius. Thanks!

What’s your new goal, if any?
Mostly my goal, now, is to continue generating income to support my playing the game. I really want to ensure that I enjoy actually playing and don’t spend hours staring at the AH or my TSM crafting windows. I would like to hit 1M before Warlords of Draenor, but it’s not a priority. Thank you all for reading!

-Goldmansax

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Thank you for sending in your story, Goldmansax - I am terrible for not reading forums but I should really, there's so much useful information to be found there. Congratulations on your Spectral Tiger and I hope you get back to your 1 million again soon!

Happy goldmaking peeps!

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The Accidental Goldmaker - A Challenge from the Godmother!

Cute kitten pic...just because!

A fair few weeks ago now, Marcus & I had the opportunity to chat to The Godmother about her adventures in WoW and her accidental goldmaking on episode 21 of The Journal of Marcus Ty podcast. She told us then that she was going to issue a challenge to the goldmaking community and soon after, she did indeed, publish that challenge.

So here is my answer, albeit rather later in the day than planned, for which I apologise profusely - I've been kind of spaced out/absent due to some new medications but I'm getting used to them now so hopefully, normal service shall be resumed soon.

The Challenge

To suggest the best way to make gold from the stuff she had picked up whilst farming skyshards in the Vale. You can read her challenge post here.

The Stuff

Windwool Cloth (over 200) plus 3 Bolts
17 green items(416/429's)
+10 plus of the three new Pandarian Cookery materials
34 Ghost Iron Ore
25 Black Trillium ore, 18 White Trillium ore
40 Spirit Dust
30 Exotic Leather

Shadowsong-EU server alliance

My Suggestions

Windwool Cloth

Currently selling for about 16-17g per stack which is about 4g per bolt - but bolts are only selling for 3-5gold at the moment so personally, I wouldn't bother making the cloth into bolts just to sell. I know Godmother has all professions maxed so I'd suggest looking at the Crafted Malevolent PvP gear market - most of those items take between 4-6 bolts of windwool cloth so even if the PvP gear is only selling for 100g (as it is on my server!), there is still more profit than just selling the cloth.

Green Armor/weapons, ilevel 416 & 429

These are the level 87 & 88 items - not much market for these and although they could be disenchanted, the enchanting materials are so cheap right now, it's better to just vendor these - unless any alts can make use of them of course. Vendor prices start at around 9g from what I can see so unless you were to get lucky & d/enchant them to Mysterious Essence, you'd only get Spirit Dust and probably not 9g's worth either!

3 new Pandaren Cookery materials

I'm going to assume Godmother means the Aged Balsamic Vinegar, the Aged Mogu'Shan Cheese & the Ancient Pandaren Spices. I checked out the Undermine Journal for these as I haven't kept up to date on their prices. I was surprised to find them selling for little more than 1g each. Not much profit there then! 

They aren't used in the Noodle cart recipes either so the only other use for them is the 6 new Bind on Pickup cooking recipes that provide the new 300+ buff foods. These recipes use the other new ingredients like the Fresh Pomfruit or the Fresh Lushrooms but these have to be gathered specifically as they only have a 2 hour 'life'. If you're in the Vale grinding out rep or stones or whatever is going on there, then it might be worth a few minutes to pick up some of the Fresh ingredients even if only to make buff food for your own endeavours!

Ghost Iron Ore

Currently selling around 45-50g a stack is a nice price - my server has it around 35g most of the time! I checked out the bar price just in case but Bars are at 5-6g each so not much profit there at all. There are several options for Ghost Iron Ore in general - make bars for Engineer or Blacksmith, send Bars to your Alchemist to make Trillium or send Ore to your Jewelcrafter to prospect. With only 34 Ore though, I'd be tempted to make Bars & send it to my Blacksmith to craft the Malevolent PvP gear (yes, again!)

Black Trillium Ore, White Trillium Ore

Black trillium is selling for 5-8 gold and White Trillium is selling for 6-7.50g - that's nice profit right there but what else can we do with it? It takes 2 Black + 2 White trillium to smelt to 1 standard Trillium Bar. So that would be a cost of 22g-31g per Trillium Bar which is selling for 39-45g - still not that much profit but better than selling the plain black & white ores.

With 18 White Trillium as the limiting factor - Godmother could produce 9 Trillium Bars from this haul which would be at least one Living Steel Bar (sale price 284-340g) which could then go to make a Living Steel Belt Buckle (sale price 330-390g).

Spirit Dust

This is selling for around 1g on Godmother's server and on my own. I've even dropped my maximum buy price to 80s as I was getting way too much availability for the number of enchant scrolls I could sell. It used to be worth converting Spirit Dust up to Mysterious Essence & just selling the Essences but the prices have stabilised to a point where there is very little profit there now.

Looking at prices on Shadowsong-EU, I'd suggest the best use of these dusts is to make a few of the Spirit Dust only enchants like Enchant Gloves - Greater Haste or Enchant Chest - Mighty Spirit. Both use just 4 Spirit Dusts but sell for around 30g. Not great prices but better than just selling the dusts alone.

There are better enchants to sell of course but they use Mysterious Essences or Ethereal Shards - not a problem these days as both are fairly cheap but the current best way to get Mysterious Essences is to buy Ethereal Shards and break them down, not to convert the Dusts up! So for this exercise, I've assumed Godmother doesn't want to go buying extra materials to make stuff.

Exotic Leather

For me, the very best use of these is to make Magnificent Hides either through the daily cooldown which uses just 20 or even the more expensive way but without a cooldown of using 50 leathers. At the current sell price of Exotic Leather of 87silvers, even a 50 piece Magnificent Hide only costs 44g - massive profits when I make my Crafted Malevolent PvP gear which sells for 700g or more.

Summary

There's definitely some gold laying around to be picked up when you are out & about doing other stuff as this shows very clearly. It's hard to make accurate suggestions for selling such small quantities for profit as so much of what I do requires more materials than Godmother picked up. But I've tried to limit myself to suggestions that don't require buying extra materials but one thing I would do, is to not sell everything in a rush.

If, like the Godmother, you are out & about picking up random stuff like this - don't be in too much of a hurry to sell it every day. Sometimes it is worth hanging on to a few smaller stacks until you have enough materials to make a proper go at crafting something profitable! Like the Ores - if you pick up more black & white trillium the following day which would add to the pile of standard trillium you could make then you could make 2 Living Steels Belt Buckles & the greater profit from them, rather than 1 Belt Buckle and selling the remaining trillium at the lower profit price!

I hope that makes sense but all I'm trying to say is patience is a virtue - don't be in too great a hurry to sell everything when a little patience may make you a better item in a few days.

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Saturday Celebrations - Psaronius, Icecrown-US

Another success story from the USA - this time Psaronius of Icecrown server has shared his story with us. This touched a chord with me as I started playing just a few months before him & I started my gold making just a few months before him too! It seems we were on the same schedule there for a while!

If you'd like to submit your own gold making Milestone Interview, instructions & more details are on my Milestone Interviews page. Any milestone is suitable - whether it be 100k or 10 million, we want to hear about YOUR story. Don't be shy! You've seen what others are sending in over the last few months so come on - tell us how you've been doing it!

I'm running low on submissions so if you'd like to see this weekly story continue, I'm going to need more stories!

I try to reply to each submission quickly so if I don't reply - poke me again as I may have missed it or leave a comment on a post - those I definitely see more easily. Now that AH Addict is getting more popular, the email address is busy with spammers coming out of the woodwork so I do sometimes miss things :(

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What is your milestone amount?My first milestone was likely when I hit around 20,000 gold, I realized I could play and not be broke in-game again, and the next was breaking 100k and feeling a great deal of success. I’m currently sitting just above 600k and I feel the end is in sight. 

What got you started making gold and when?
I started playing in January 2010 and knew nothing about the game. While my son tried to explain the in-game currency, I could not grasp the entirety of the game. One thing I knew is I never had enough gold to buy what I needed. In February 2011, my son told my he was going after his Loremaster achievement and at that point I decided I needed a goal, but something I could achieve, and I needed gold; at that moment I chose the gold cap as my goal. 

Which markets have you concentrated on, if any?
At present my main markets are glyphs, JC, PVP gear, and thanks to Nev, Mammoth Mining Bags. In addition, I have three guild banks full of transmog gear and typically have 300 or so pieces posted all the time. 

When did you start a banker alt?
I started a guild bank before I really started working on gold making. I used it to save mats I thought I would need in leveling a number of alts. I still use him but only for transmog, and I’ve added two more guild banks to store gear in and sell transmog gear. 

Do you farm materials?
When I started gold making I always farmed anything I could. For the most part I now buy most mats in the AH, but if the price is more than I’m willing to pay I’ll still farm. 

Lesser known gold making addons
Addons are such huge time saving tools, using them is an absolute must. One I don’t hear about often but I use a lot is Panda. Its used for milling herbs and prospecting ore faster than the standard WOW interface. In addition I use it for crafting gems and glyphs. If you’ve updated prices through your auction tool, Panda will show you current unit prices and inventory in your bags. 

Biggest successes or biggest failures?
I think of any gold loss as a failure and I’ve had my fair share of those. The thing that really bugs me is when I hold on to purchased mats for too long and the price drops to a loss. Biggest success was when I sold a panther mount for 27K and cloth slippers for 22K in one day. My biggest oops! was selling a tailoring pattern I got as a drop, Star Belt. I realized, after selling it immediately, that its a super rare pattern and I could have tripled my money. 

Professions?
My characters have Mining/Blacksmithing; Enchanting/Leatherworking, Jewelcrafting/Tailoring; Herbing/Inscription. I am leveling a couple of other alts so I can round out the mix with top level alch, engineering, and skinning. I don’t see a need to level the professions until the alt hits top level so the little guys just mine and skin and I sell the mats. 

Advice for new goldmakers?

• Low level mats sell, especially leather and ore so I always start mining and skinning on new characters. The 10 or 20 or 36 gold per sale will always add up.  

• Use the auction house and try to sell everything you acquire. 

• Use addons. 

• Know your market(s) and know prices. Perhaps most importantly know your crafting cost and use this to determine your bottom price, and don’t sell below this. 

• Use Wowhead as a resource for learning about items, bosses, and drops.

Shout outs for any blogs or podcasts that helped you along the way?
Auction House Addict is my favorite blog, the tips have been fabulous! The Undermine Journal is huge, there are links to other goldmaking blogs and the thoughts and ideas I get from them are awesome.

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There's some very good advice there from Psaronius - low level mats are often overlooked by more experienced goldmakers but when you are starting out, there can be some really nice profits there. And if you've been reading my stuff for a while, you'll know I always say 'know your prices' :)

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Saturday Celebrations - Lindrayn, Twisting Nether-US

This week, we have a tale of millions from Lindrayn on Twisting Nether-US server. I have to apologise here now, I missed this email a few weeks ago so it's a bit late being published! I'm so sorry, Lindrayn.

If you'd like to submit your own gold making Milestone Interview, instructions & more details are on my Milestone Interviews page. Any milestone is suitable - whether it be 100k or 10 million, we want to hear about YOUR story. Don't be shy! You've seen what others are sending in over the last few months so come on - tell us how you've been doing it! 

I'm running low on submissions so if you'd like to see this weekly story continue, I'm going to need more stories!

I try to reply to each submission quickly so if I don't reply - poke me again as I may have missed it or leave a comment on a post - those I definitely see more easily. Now that AH Addict is getting more popular, the email address is busy with spammers coming out of the woodwork so I do sometimes miss things :(

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What is your milestone amount?
My first million

When did you start?
I started getting serious on a whim during Firelands in July 2011. I had heard about the “obsidium shuffle” on making gold and I had a max level Jewelcrafter, a max level Enchanter and a max level Alchemist so I thought “why not?” I bought my first load of ore for 30g a stack and I probably bought 50 stacks. After processing it and cutting gems I doubled my investment by the next day. It all went downhill from there. 

Did you set a goal?
My goal was 1 million gold in one year. I barely made the goal. I started with 70k in July 2011 and by the end of June 2012 I was sitting at 960k. I had a friend loan me the last 40k just so I could screenshot it and celebrate (took me 4 days to pay him back)

First tips & tricks?
For me, its frequent undercutting. Be bold about it. If the market dips too low, don’t be afraid to be aggressive and buy someone out and reset the market. The gem market has been ruthless at times on my server. Also, the phone app is a must. It allows me to check auctions every hour or two while I’m out and about. 

When did you start a banker alt?
I don’t really have one. I moved my main toon, Edrisa, to Proudmoore late last summer and this toon was originally intended as a bank alt. As you can see I’ve made it a full fledged alt that I raid on too.

Best market over the years?
Jewelcrafting by far. I would say 80% of my wealth has come from gems.

Favorite niche market?
I dabble in inscription. I picked it up at the beginning of MoP just for the 476 caster staff. I make a fairly decent amount of gold off shoulder enchants and occasionally dabble in glyphs. I just don’t have the patience to do it full time.

Do you farm materials?
Never. Early on I had some supply problems with herbs to transmute gems, but near the end of my first year I got rid of all my gathering professions. I buy 100% of my materials from the AH or private farmers.

How much playtime devoted to gold making?
I devote probably an hour a day to managing my auctions. 2-3 times a week I spend a couple hours processing ore to make gems, rings, and enchants. When patches first drops its not unusual for me to spend twice that managing things.

Professions
Jewelcrafting, Enchanting, Alchemy, Inscription.

Flipping
I make a moderate amount of gold flipping transmog gear, mounts, and pets. Recently I’ve found its profitable to buy cheap pets on Proudmoore and sell then for 2-3 times as much on Twisting Nether.

Reward yourself for reaching goal?
Therein lies my weak point! I tend to spend WAY too much gold on things I want. When MoP launched, I think I spent nearly 200k gold just buying myself gear off the BMAH and from players. 

I’ve bought many mounts for 70-90k off the BMAH and I can’t resist buying mini-pets. I would likely already have my new goal of 2 million gold if I would stop spending it on big ticket items. But hey, what good is the gold if you can’t get what you want!

What's your new goal, if any?
With me moving my druid to Proudmoore, my new goal is to cap on both servers. When I transferred my druid, I had just over 1 million gold. I transferred 920k to Proudmoore and that left me a nest egg of 100k on Twisting Nether to bounce back from. 

Since August, I have turned that 100k back in to 350k. I have lost gold on Proudmoore but I’ve also bought easily 150k in gear over there to raid with. I’m sitting at 870k there. So right now I’m sitting at just over 1.2 million and I am shooting to make it 2 million by the launch of the next expansion.

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A perfect example of one of my newbie tips - a copper saved is a copper earned! If you want to build your gold stash more quickly, then you have to stop buying yourself luxuries! I'm a fine one talking though - I hit my million as Lindrayn was getting started and I still haven't hit my 2nd Million! I do have a fine collection of mounts and pets though so I don't care!

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