Cooking For Raiders in 5.4 - Part 2

A little while ago, I wrote a post about Feeding The Raiders in patch 5.4 but immediately received comments on the post & on Twitter that I'd missed the new Cooking recipes being added in patch 5.4! I meant to do an update post almost straight away but it got lost in the torrent of ideas that hit me at that time so I'm only just now getting around to it.

Ok, so in patch 5.4 there are 2 new sets of recipes - 1 set is 300+ individual buff foods and the other set is from a new Noodle Cart with +250, +275 and +300 stat buffs for either 10 man or 25 man options so that's 6 different Noodle Carts! I'll break them both down separately below.

New Individual +300 Stat Buff Foods

There's good and bad news about these new recipes - the good news is that they should be cheaper to produce than the existing +300 buff foods like Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp for example but you're going to have to farm for some of the ingredients regularly because they have a limited life span of 2 hours! You're also going to have to kill rare mobs in Vale of Eternal Blossom for the other ingredients although those will probably turn up on the Auction House at some silly high price.

• Fluffy Silkfeather Omelet - 300 Strength, requires Aged Mogu'shan Cheese & 5x Fresh Silkfeather Hawk Eggs
• Stuffed Lushrooms - 450 Stamina, requires Aged Mogu'shan Cheese & 5x Fresh Lushrooms
• Seasoned Pomfruit Slices - 300 Agility, requires Ancient Pandaren Spices & 5x Fresh Pomfruit
• Spiced Blossom Soup - 300 Intellect, requires Ancient Pandaren Spices & 5x Delicate Blossom Petals
• Farmer's Delight - 300 Spirit, requires Aged Balsamic Vinegar & 1x Fresh Strawberries & 2x Fresh Shao-Tien Rice
• Mango Ice - 300 Mastery, requires Aged Balsamic Vinegar & 5x Fresh Mangos

The Aged Mogu'shan Cheese, Aged Balsamic Vinegar & Ancient Pandaren Spices are the items that drop from the rares in Vale of Eternal Blossom. With all the new activity there, you could see a lot of these hit the Auction House but I'd take a guess that they will be quite expensive initially. The Fresh ingredients may look familiar - most, if not all of them were quest items from the Golden Lotus dailies so Blizzard are recycling their in-game use! The Fresh ones are the items with a 2 hour life span so if you do decide to farm them, don't hang around too long!

New Noodle Carts (+250, +275 & +300 Buff Foods)

These are a bit more complicated & expensive to make and the details on the patch notes aren't very clear yet. Hopefully someone reading may have tried them on the PTR & will leave a comment below! (pretty please?)

You get the recipe for the various Noodle Carts from 3 different quest chains, one chain for each level of buff (250, 275 or 300) and it appears that it's the 25 food version that is the reward. I haven't found a source for the 10 food version yet though. There's conflicting data as to which of the 6 versions are tied to the 3 quest chains - on Wowhead, (thanks to @Sivation for the heads up here!) it appears the 10 food version is the one tied to the quests whereas  in their write up of the new cooking recipes, they have linked the 25 food versions to the quests!

Anyway, whichever is tied to the quests, the materials required to make the supplies for the carts are the same - 5 x each 250+/+275/+300 buff foods for the 10 food version & 10 x each of the same foods for the 25 food versions. Once you have your Noodle Cart, you will be able to set it out in the same way as you set out feasts & players can purchase their Noodles from you. It isn't totally clear yet whether you get the cash or whether, like Jeeves, the gold goes to the game. One comment I read says it goes directly to the game so I can't see any major benefits to spend the time & effort to make one of these carts!

Having said that though, it would work for a raid team to all chip in supplies to make one of these carts but as an individual, I won't be bothering with them unless details change my mind for me!

Effect on Current Cooking Markets

So what effect will this have on current cooking supplies & buff food markets? I'm really not sure to be honest - we may see a bump in demand for the materials for the current buff foods as people make them to then make their Noodle Carts so meat, fish & vegetables could be good sellers but there's also been a slow down on my server of sales of the existing 300+ buff foods so the prices have dropped to below 10 gold each. I've been picking those up at 3-5gold and have a few stacks of each type ready just in case but I haven't invested deeply in this market.

As for the Aged ingredients which drop from Rares in the Vale, I'm not clear on how much of this new patch is going to take place there so I can't advise correctly but if there is a lot of questing there then the sheer number of players doing the new content will almost guarantee a market for the Aged ingredients. Whether you go and farm Rares yourself to sell the ingredients or to make the new individual buff foods will be up to you but I'm pretty sure I won't be going there any time soon! I'm too far behind on gear & stuff to really join in with current content, I really must try to catch up soon! I will be keeping an eye on the market though - if it looks promising, I may have to actually play my Paladin a bit!

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Feeding the Raiders in 5.4?

Back in March 2013, I wrote about my learning experience of the Ironpaw Tokens market & specifically the 300+ stat buff foods. I really enjoyed working out the complexities & little corners of that market but having taken a bit of a break from dedicated gold making., I lost my grip on the market. Recently I've been looking at it again but there's been a big slow down in 300+ buff food sales and prices have fallen to about 10g each. That's a big difference from the 70g I was getting for the Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp and the 50-65g for the other types!

So you may be wondering why I'm writing about it again now? Good question! It actually occurred to me to have another peek at it whilst looking at a different market - enchants. With patch 5.4 looming ever closer & the introduction not only of Virtual Realms but also Flex Raiding, will we see a leap in demand for buff food? The usual summer slowdown is in full swing in Europe and has only just started in the UK. Our school vacations start & finish later than my American friends so things aren't likely to pick up much before early September here.

If patch 5.4 does bring in this new type of raiding, I'd hazard a guess that we will see a jump in the number of raids happening and a jump in the corresponding markets. I have high hopes for the buff food market and have been buying up some of the very cheapest auctions. Why spend Ironpaw Tokens to make my own when I can buy the foods for less than 10g each? I'm not going crazy though - I really don't want to be saddled with stacks of buff foods I'm unlikely to use myself if they don't sell!

Let's do the maths though - if I buy at 10g and end up selling at 50g, that's 40g profit per food or 800g per stack! You won't need to move many stacks to make a really healthy chunk of change, that's for sure! Even if I only sell for 20g each, that's still 200g profit per stack - nice!

This is where a bit of lateral thinking comes into your gold making too - if buff foods jump then what about the other raid-related markets like flasks, gems, enchants & other item enhancements? I'm not usually big into analysing patch notes & forecasting type posts but this time, even I can see the possibilities although there are some changes coming to enchants & enhancements which might mess things up a bit. I'm still trying to work out what those changes will do, so watch for another post on that soon!

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What's Been Selling This Week?

It's been a couple of weeks since I last posted my weekly sales pics and 2 very slow weeks they were too! This new job is really cutting into my energy to actually play the game right now, to the point where I don't even relist my auctions some evenings.  But I made a bit of an effort over the weekend & did a whole bunch of crafting so hopefully this current week will be a bit better.

As you can see, the Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp continues to sell well even though I've picked up some competition on the other 4 types of +300 buff foods. I've managed to maintain the price at about 80g each & I have 2 or 3 regular customers.

week ending 22nd April

The Mysterious Fortune Cards were an after thought when I was crafting on the weekend - I saw someone barking in trade so I listed a whole bunch quickly & just watched him sell my cards for me! The best thing is, my cards were 15g-ish whereas his were at 12g but he'd listed them only in stacks of 20. I listed mine in singles & 5's and sold out in about 20 minutes!

I've stopped selling my Living Steel this week too - the prices have dropped below what I'm prepared to sell it for but not quite low enough to take a gamble on flipping it. I know the new weapons will be arriving soon but I've never had much luck with that kind of stuff so my risk-averseness (is that even a word? lol) has kicked in. I'm playing it safe with Living Steel Belt Buckles instead although again, the prices have dropped a little bit.

The crafted PvP gear is still selling fairly well & the Leather/Mail stuff is holding its price nicely. The Cloth armour isn't doing so well but as I've stocked up on Windwool Cloth all at less than 30g a stack, it's still making some nice profits.

The previous week (when I completely missed a post!) was perhaps my worst week in 6 months. I let my auctions lapse on the Wednesday evening & didn't log in again until late on Saturday. Add in toothache again this week & I'm not sure next weeks report is going to be much better unless the stuff I crafted over the weekend moves!

week ending 15th April

In other news, I did get an unexpected invitation one evening last week - Marcus Ty asked me to join him on episode 3 of his podcast, the Journal of Marcus Ty. It was great fun - we chatted for maybe 40 minutes before we even started recording & then another 30 minutes or so afterwards too! If you are new to goldmaking, I definitely recommend having a listen to Marcus - he tends to focus on teaching the basics & explaining stuff that I certainly take for granted. It seems common knowledge isn't actually that common these days!

Also, for those who are interested, the screen shots above come from a simple little addon called MySales which you can find on Curse.com. I know TSM Accounting has something similar but this one is just so neat & simple, it suits a screenshot better I think.

Image - Floating Market, Bangkok © Nev 2005

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What's Been Selling This Week?

As expected, my sales have slowed down this week as I've started a new job. I was hoping I could sneak onto the Remote AH now & then but in an open plan office with a boss sitting behind me, I haven't even tried! I was only cancelling/relisting once during the day anyway but I messed up my auction timings too so one evening I got home to find they had all expired!

Given that, I'm still quite happy with my sales this week - not quite the 'ramping up' I was hoping for but hey ho, life happens!

I've added screen shots of the top 2 pages of My Sales this week - I thought it might be interesting to see some of the stuff that didn't make page 1. Living Steel Belt Buckles are selling pretty well - in fact, faster than I can make the Living Steel so that market will dry up a bit for me soon. I was tempted to buy some Living Steel when it was around 400g mark but I decided against it for now - the belt buckle market isn't as high volume as I would like to be able to turn the Living Steels around quickly.

I've definitely picked up some competition in the 300+ buff food markets - I'm still dominating the Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp but all the others have dropped off, I've tried buying up the cheap stuff but there's too much for now so I'll hang on to what I've got, pick up the super cheap stuff & just focus on the Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp.

In making my Mysterious Fortune cards, I've ended up with loads of Starlight Ink. Yes, I know I could make Darkmoon Cards but I've never had much success with those & I don't have many Scrolls of Wisdom so I decided to sell some of the Inks - just to see what sort of market was there. Bear in mind that I'm only buying the very cheapest herbs at a max price of 30g a stack, so selling Starlight Ink for 70g each or more is nice, especially as my Mysterious Fortune Cards are selling themselves too.

By far my biggest gold making market right now is the crafted PvP gear - both my Tailor & Leatherworker are still doing their daily cooldowns for the new patterns & I'm adding 2 of each new item every day. I'm still managing to pick up Windwool Cloth & Exotic Leather for around 30g a stack & I have over 200 stacks of each right now so that will keep me supplied for a while longer!

The Flasks market this week has sucked! Very few evening opportunities at anything over 50g which is way too close to my crafting price so I've been hanging on to most of them for now. I did make a few leg armors this week, just to test the market. Once my Leatherworker has finished her daily work orders on her farm, then I'll definitely be back to planting Songbell Seeds for the Motes of Harmony.

Enchanting has been going well this week too although I have slipped a bit on crafting scrolls - I thought I could buy the enchanting vellum from the vendor on the Travellers Tundra Mammoth so I took my priest back out into the wilds to do some questing but then it was way too much hassle to get the vellums so I let it go for now! I keep forgetting to use my banker in Ironforge to send some in the mail too. D'oh!

So there we go - Nev's fairly casual approach to selling stuffs this week.

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What's Been Selling This Week?

Wow! Monday really does roll round fast these days doesn't it? It's time for this week's round up of what's been selling on my server although it's much the same as last week for now.

The week started off really well in the 300+ buff food markets but I've gained some competition over the weekend. I'm pretty sure they aren't making as much profit as I am though as I am checking the raw materials supply 5-6 times a day & buying up everything below my buy price. I'm up to 107 Ironpaw Tokens on my Rogue alt who is about 5 token swaps away from level 86 now. Almost all of the level has been via Ironpaw Token swaps and a little bit of pet battling so you can see just how much raw material swapping I've been doing!

I've finally started shifting some of the Living Steel Belt Buckles & a fair few Flasks this week. I still haven't converted one of my Alchemists to Potion Master - both are transmute masters so I really have to watch my Flask & herb prices to make real profits there. I did manage to grab 70-ish Golden Lotus at 28g each though so that has helped a great deal.

I also managed to get a whole bunch of Silkweed this week - with the ink price calculated at 5g per ink but glyphs still not doing well for me, I converted all the ink to Blackfallow Ink and made a shedload of Mysterious Fortune Cards. I have a little competition now & then but I'm holding my price to about 16g per card & I'm not barking in trade either.

Before Patch 5.2 went live, I was using my Tillers farm for Songbell Seeds & Motes of Harmony but now I'm doing some work orders to save time on reputations. I made 2 epic pieces and as you can see above, I finally sold the Gloves. That was a nice little boost to my profits this week.

But by far the biggest boost has been the new PvP Crafted Dreadful Gladiator items from Tailoring & Leatherworking. I'm picking up Windwool Cloth for a maximum of 30g a stack which equals 4 Bolts of Windwool Cloth which means that the most expensive Tailored PvP item to craft costs just 45g. As you can see above - I'm selling for way above that price!

The leatherworking items are showing huge profits too & holding their prices better than the Tailoring ones. I snagged 150+ stacks of Exotic Leather for 25-30g & also picked up 40 Magnificent Hides for 40g each. Even if I make my own Magnificent Hide using the non-cooldown method, my maximum material cost is around 75g so Nev is a happy girl when that stuff sells for 700g-ish!

I mentioned last week that I was going to dip into the enchant market - well as you can see above, only 2 different enchants made my top sellers list but I am happy to report that out of the 30 scrolls I made, they did all sell & at a nice profit too. I made a load more this morning and focused more tightly on the highest priced ones. It will be interesting to see where they land in my selling report next week.

The Ghost Iron Ore price on my server is slowing climbing too - over 55g a stack usually and as I haven't really explored the gems market yet, I'm wary of spending too much there for now. My Warrior Blacksmith is just fresh dinged 90 so she's not ready for Isle of Thunder yet to get the Plate PvP patterns & the prices on the Contenders Plate has been dropping too. She also doesn't have many Spirits of Harmony to buy the older Contenders patterns so I'm kinda stuck there for now. It's on my to-do list though - if I can bear to play her much!

Tomorrow I start my new job so I'll be a bit more restricted in my AH activities for a while - at least until I get to know what the score is as far as internet use is concerned. I'm pretty sure it will be a lunchtime only thing so I'll just have to make sure I'm super organised for my evenings.

Hope y'all have a profitable week, have fun xxx

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What's Been Selling This Week?

Now that I am ramping up my gold making activities again, I thought it might be interesting to restart my What's Been Selling posts. I'm not expecting any major surprises to show up in my top sales but then it wouldn't be a surprise if it was expected would it? So it's probably just going to be a recap but you may find some inspiration for new markets to look at or just find comfort in how bad my sales figures compared to your own! I'm not the most efficient gold maker so my numbers are never going to be as impressive as some bloggers out there.

If you've been reading here for a while, it will come as no surprise that my best selling item this last week has been Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp - the +300 strength buff food. With the release of the new raid in patch 5.2 just a few weeks ago & the opening of The Isle of Thunder still in full progress on most servers, I should have known really but it still caught me unprepared for the sheer quantity of sales on my quiet little server!

Unsurprisingly then, Mogu Fish Stew (the +300 intellect buff food) is also in my top sales this week as are Flasks. Sadly my alchemists are both transmute masters so my flask profits are based purely on buying materials as cheaply as possible. I did score 60 Golden Lotus for just 25g each a week or two ago which has helped keep my costs down. There's a fair bit of competition in the Flasks market & the price can drop to just 35g per flask so I don't list any on those days.

Living Steel & Living Steel Belt Buckle are mainstays of my gold making - I always make my daily Living Steel on both Alchemists and built up a bit of stock whilst my Blacksmith was still leveling. Now that she can make the Belt Buckles, I'm selling much less plain Living Steel and focusing more on Belt Buckles as the sale price is usually higher. This market is pretty volatile though - just yesterday, Living Steel was down to 375g & tomorrow it could be back up to 550g.

I've also been doing my daily Leatherworking Magnificent Hide cooldown to get the new PvP patterns & I make 2 of each new piece straightaway. I check to see which have sold overnight & make new pieces to keep my stock at 2 for each PvP item. I do the same thing on my Tailor with her Imperial Silk cooldown too and as you can see above, the prices are holding up fairly well.

I'm also still selling Mammoth Mining Bags although I have a competitor now who seems to think they should be priced at 150g-ish when I've been selling them for months at 375g. I did buy her out a couple of times but she just keeps on listing so now I've decided to buy all the Borean Leather & starve her of materials! It's working but slowly - I've got the price back up to around the 250g mark this week. She may have done me a small favor though - at 375g, I was only selling 1 or 2 a week but at 250g, I've sold 4 this week & 8 last week. Maybe I was being a little bit greedy but it is a good reminder that taking a little bit less profit per item may result in increased sales thereby increasing overall profits.

Just yesterday I crafted a whole bunch of enchant scrolls so next week, we'll see how they did! I also made up a bunch of Rich Purple Silk Shirts after snagging a bunch of Silk Cloth for just 4g a stack. I price these at 79g each but again, I may drop the price a little to see if I end up selling more.

Plans for this week include going back to some old favorite markets & seeing if they are still viable, keeping up with buff food production & keeping a close eye on the enchanting scrolls market. Have a prosperous week my friends xxx

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Masterchef - The Wow Goblin Edition



Boy's Buff Food - bacon sarnie

Now, if like me, you maxed your cooking (and maybe fishing) during your first toon levelling thru the new cata zones - what cooking have you done since? I get the impression that many people see cooking as something easy to max & then they sort of forget about it or they just cook the 1 or 2 buff foods that they need themselves. I include myself in this category - I make the strength, intellect & agility ones to keep my 3 lvl 85's stocked up but that was it - until about a week ago!

Long story short - we had a chance to try the LK fight as a guild for the first time & I took it on myself to provide food buffs for everyone. I thought I would just go to the AH & buy it but whoa! those prices were ridiculous! My goblin instincts kicked in & I've been watching the market ever since!

Just look at some of these prices!

Fathom Eel 1-3g each = Skewered Eel 6-8g each   (Agi)

Dragon Flank 2-4g each = Grilled Dragon 5-7g each (hit)

Blackbelly Mudfish 2-4g = Mushroom Sauce Mudfish 7-9g each (dodge)

These are the best examples for profits but for now, I don't know what the sales are like. I can talk prices all day but if they don't sell very well, that's useless info so I'm gonna get my Chef's Hat on this week & see what's really possible.

Luckily both the fathom eel & blackbelly mudfish are Uldum fish pools (eel is along the coast & mudfish along the river) and as we are attempting the guild fishing achieve & I go to Uldum most days for the transmute volatile life > air, 10 mins fishing those shouldn't be too onerous.

Of course, the easiest way to pick up the mats for these is to be levelling thru Cata but I don't have an alt ready to go there yet. I have been working on my Loremaster in dribs & drabs though so I plan on taking her back thru the remaining quests in Cata zones to get some of the mats & I'll buy a bit on the AH - let's see how much is possible, shall we?