Ironpaw Tokens - Yet More Thoughts!

Do you ever have a subject that ties you up in knots & you just can't seem to get your head around it? Then, when you finally think you've understood it, someone says something & you're back to going round in circles again? Yup - the Ironpaw Token shuffle is my achilles heel right now! Ok, so last time I wrote about Ironpaw Tokens, I thought I'd finally got my head around it but after chitchatting with Cold, I realised I had still missed something!

I wrote that I was 'fixing' my Ironpaw Token cost at around 30g so I knew my base cost was a maximum of 24g per single +300 buff food. With my own tunnel vision firmly in place, I was merrily buying all meat/fish under 1.50g each and converting 90% of them to Ironpaw Tokens then using those tokens to buy a bag of 5 of the specific meat/fish that I needed. It seems that Mushan Ribs & Raw Tiger Meat are the most easily available at low prices & as I didn't want to hold loads of stacks of those, I was converting the Mushan Ribs to Tokens too!

Cold pointed out that by using my Ironpaw Tokens to later buy  Mushan Ribsx5 from the bag, I was effectively paying 120g a stack! Ouch! Needless to say, that woke me up a bit!

So I've changed my tactics yet again. I am still buying every meat/fish for under 1.50g  and if I get lucky, vegetables for under 30s each to convert to Ironpaw Tokens BUT if I'm short on my specific required meat, fish or vegetables for crafting then I check the Auction House for any of those under 6g each (or 1.20g for vegetables). This maintains my 30g maximum Token cost even though I'm sometimes using the raw mats rather than tokens.

This way, I'm almost never short of materials to cook with - either by converting Tokens or by buying the correct items to cook the buff foods with. I'm still buying loads of Mushan Ribs under the 1.50g cut-off point but I'm saving more stacks as they are rather than converting them. By expanding my cut-off point to 6g per specific type of fish though, I'm not having to use up my precious Tokens to Buy Giant Mantis Shrimp or Emperor Salmon (for the Black Pepper Ribs or Mogu Fish Stew).

Hopefully I've got it sorted in my head now! I have to say I love this market, I'm almost the only seller of Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp & I've got the price up to 78g per item. I can barely keep the Auction House stocked even at that price. The Mogu Fish Stew is running second but it's a fair way behind, selling at around 55g per item. I have a bit of competition for the other +300 buff foods but they are listing them at 25g each. Needless to say, I'm buying those up - it's only just above my base cost & it saves me using my own tokens for the Rice Flour & saves me lots of time too!

As an added bonus from all this converting - my level 85 Rogue is almost level 86 now too - the hand-in for the 'Replenishing The Pantry' quest gives 25k XP per turn in so if this market stays profitable for me, I may never have to quest on my Rogue! Woop Woop!

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Yet Another Cooking & Ironpaw Tokens Post!

It's been a while since I created my Ironpaw Token spreadsheet & made it available to my readers but I have to admit, I've been slacking! Not only have I not been doing much with the cooking materials, I haven't really been very focused on gold making at all. But a week or two ago, I read Zerohour's post about his approach to Ironpaw Tokens & it struck a chord with me so I thought I'd have a go at something similar on my server.

To do so though, I needed to really understand what his spreadsheet was showing us. I got there eventually - it seems that getting my head around the variables is taking me longer each time I tackle this Ironpaw Token stuff! Must be getting old or something :P

Anyway, I discovered that my server has some nice inexperienced Auctioneers who post the various meats & fish for silly low prices so I initially set my top value per stack at 25 gold. I've since been buying everything  (well, meat & fish) under that price & converting much of it to Ironpaw Tokens via the Bundle of Groceries & Restocking the Refrigerator quest in Halfhill.

I've also been concentrating on the 300+ buff foods (mainly Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp & the Mogu Fish Stew) as the various Banquets are selling for only 10-20g each on my server. Each of the 300+ buff foods has 4 ingredients - by fixing my Ironpaw Token price at 25g per token, each recipe costs just 100g to cook and as each 'craft' makes 5 items, that's a base cost of 20g per 300+ buff food.

The Black Pepper Ribs & Shrimp I have been listing at 58-65g & they are selling out quickly. The Mogu Fish Stew is slightly lower priced at 35-45g but I'm creeping the price up on those & they are still selling well.

What I'm finding is that the Raw Tiger Meat & the Raw Turtle Meat tend to be the items listed cheaply most often along with Krasarang Paddlefish.  I'm keeping a few stacks of the meats in reserve so that's actually 1 less Ironpaw Token I need to cook the Sea Mist Rice Noodles & the Chun Tian Spring Rolls.

I haven't gone into full 'dominate the market' mode just yet - I'm still testing the markets. I also don't have a huge stock of Ironpaw Tokens but with 2 alts doing the Tillers dailies as well as buying all the cheap stuff, my inventory is bound to increase over the next week or two. I've also increased my 'base' price per stack of meat/fish to 30g as there just wasn't enough supply under that price. It means that each single food has a maximum price of 24g each & with my sell price at 60g-ish, that's still plenty of profit for my liking!

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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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Ironpaw Tokens & Cooking Materials Shuffle - Revisited

Ironpaw Cooking Materials Shuffle

After some comments, email feedback & a conversation with a fellow gold blogger, I've added some more stuff to the Ironpaw Tokens spreadsheet I uploaded a few days ago. It seems that as long as it took me to get my head around what I was trying to do, I still didn't quite manage to communicate it very well in my Ironpaw Tokens & Cooking Materials Shuffling post!

So version 2 has a whole bunch of extra columns which should show you at a glance which cooking material will make you some profit if you convert it to another via the Ironpaw Tokens trade-in. I've uploaded this as a second file called Ironpaw Conversion and Profits which you can download & edit freely. Please though - make sure you download before you edit - it just makes it easier for others if the original file is left untouched.

Ironpaw Token Profit Shuffle Spreadsheet

I took the original spreadsheet and extended the columns - one for each cooking material. Now all you have to do is type in the prices (in the yellow boxes) for your Auction House & it should calculate where any profitable conversions are. To use it, just choose the cooking material you have from column A & read across that row to find which other cooking material to convert it into for profit (or savings if you're leveling your cooking of course).

You don't need to worry whether you are converting vegetables to meat/fish or vice versa - I have adjusted the profit calculations accordingly within the sheet.

Also, you may want to sort each section (vegetable rows, fish rows, meat rows etc) by Column B once you've entered your AH prices - make sure you sort the whole section though otherwise the formulas will mess up big time! lol Sorting is optional but it does make it easier to read if your cheapest price is at the top of each section.

So an example might help I guess. If I have plenty of Wildfowl Breast & want to use those to convert to vegetables - I can see by reading along row 29 (wildfowl breast, column A) that converting to Juicycrunch Carrots, Green Cabbages or White Turnips will give me a loss, converting to Witchberries will give me profit of 1g63s per item but converting to Jade squash will give me a very nice profit of 6g 67s per item!

Please remember though - cooking materials are very volatile right now & prices are likely to vary widely over a few days - don't sink loads of gold in today then find out your 'profitable' material from the list above is the cheapest on the Auction House tomorrow. Spread your risk too - don't invest loads in just one cooking material - if you are going to convert a lot, convert to a range of different profitable items so that you are covered as prices change.

So there you go! Thank you to all the commenters, emailers & others who gave suggestions on the earlier version. I hope this one is closer to what you were hoping for from the earlier version.

Good luck & have fun

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Set Up A Shopping List in Auctionator

Auctionator Shopping Lists

One or two comments I've received lately made me wonder whether people are using Auctionator easily so I thought I'd put together a basic guide to setting up a shopping list, just in case anyone needs it. I'm using Cooking Materials for this example so it links nicely with my earlier Ironpaw Tokens & Cooking Materials Shuffling post. If you'd like help with any other Auction House addons, just let me know & I'll see if I can help.

OK, so you've installed Auctionator from Curse.com & opened your Auction House window for the first time - what do you see? You should see just 3 extra tabs at the bottom of your window - ignore the beancounter & TSM tabs in my screenshots - I really should get around to removing Beancounter as TSM-Accounting now has all the data I used to use in there. I only really use the Buy & Sell tabs - to be honest, I'm not sure I could even tell you what's in the More tab off the top of my head!

A basic search is easy - just type your item into the search box & hit enter (red dot at top in screenshot). Your most recent searches will then be stored in the window on the left - as you can see in the image. You can also search a range of items by clicking the + button (red circle in image).

You can search for a named item within a category or you can search for a subset of a category. In this second screenshot, you can see I've chosen Trade Goods from the drop down category list & then I'm about to choose Cooking in the sub category. If I was searching for level 77-80 green armor for example, I'd also add 77 & 80 in the level range boxes. If you do want to search armor - I like to pick the armor type too (in the sub category section) so I only get a small range of items to glimpse through. It just makes it easier to look through 20 Cloth pieces then say 25 Mail pieces rather than trying to look through every green 77-80 piece in one long list! 

For Cooking Materials however, we are only really interested in the Mists of Pandaria items at the moment but this list includes every cooking material in the Auction House. When the search results first pop up, they are automatically sorted by highest price first so naturally in this third screenshot, you can only see Pandaren cooking materials, however when I scrolled down, some of the cheapest Pandaren items were mixed in with earlier, lower level materials.

You can easily re-sort the search results list by just clicking on 'Lowest Price' marked with a red cross in the screenshot. This is a little misleading at first - it's not sorted by Lowest Price, it's showing the Lowest Price for that item. You have to click the individual item to get the details of available auctions but it's quick & easy & there's a Back button to get you back to this main list.

This is a great way to look for cheap herbs too - once it's sorted by lowest price first, if you see a herb like Goldthorn on the first page of results, you should probably snatch it up quickly! Currently the Cataclysm herbs are showing up on my first page which is great because I'm still making Mysterious Fortune Cards.

So to exclude materials I am not interested in, I created a shopping list specifically for Pandaren cooking materials. To create a new shopping list, click the New Shopping List button at the bottom left - it will ask you to give your new list a name so pick something easy like 'Cooking Mats' and start entering the items you want to add. I don't know if there's a quick way of doing this but I just type the item name in the Search box then click the Add Item button!

Now I have an easy way to look at individual cooking materials or I can use the 'Search for all items' button (bottom left, red button) to get an overview of the category. I use this list to get the prices for my spreadsheet so I can easily see which items are the best for IronPaw Token shuffling.

I also have shopping lists for hard to find items that I want to pick up cheaply whenever I can, lists for level 77-80 armor, lists for MoP green armour, list for each profession (not all mats, just the ones I use most often) & generally a list for everything I find I look for regularly!

So there you go - a quick & easy way to make Auction House searching so much easier - be careful though - making lists can be addictive! I have to periodically go through & check my list of lists & delete any that are no longer used but then I have been using Auctionator for a long while now. I hope this reads as clearly as I wanted it to - if there are any points you think need further explanation or if you've found an even easier way then please, do let me know in the comments.

Have fun peeps 

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