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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Old Markets Gone Bad!

This month's topic for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival is one that many of us can have a chat about. If you've been making gold in-game for a while, there are bound to be markets that have died on you or that you've given up on. I know I have a few but I've narrowed it down to just one market.

Name one of your historically profitable markets that is now defunct and what can we learn from that old market?

I think you can probably guess from my header image which market I chose for my topic this month - yup - vendor bought cooking recipes! I stumbled into this market within a month or two of starting to play WoW. The Pilgrims festival was in full swing as I started leveling my 2nd alt & accidently found the cooking recipe vendor in Stormwind when I wanted to add Cooking to her profession list. I had a little bit of gold then from selling turkeys I'd picked up whilst questing so off I went to the cooking trainer to get started. Except I didn't find the cooking trainer - I found the recipe vendor so I bought the recipes anyway, having no idea that I didn't really need them to level my cooking.

It was one of those serendipitous moments when I accidently bought 2 of the same recipe so I just threw it on the Auction House - I followed the existing prices & just undercut by a few copper. I think it earned me about 6g back then and it took me a few days to realise it as I was busy questing & leveling & didn't check my mail! Needless to say, I quickly ran back to the AH to check some of the other cooking recipe prices & a fledgling Goblin was born! I think I made maybe 500g from just those cooking recipes in that first foray into the AH.

Fast forward to the next Pilgrims festival a year later & I had a few more alts on the go & a level 80 too. I'd been dabbling in the AH but not in any serious way. I was in a busy guild, chatting, dungeons, raiding a bit all took up my game time so although I was never short of gold, I wasn't racking it up like some goldmakers. That inspiration/necessity came later & is a different story! So for this 2nd festival, I remembered the cooking recipes & looked up on Wowhead to see what other recipes might be out there. 

The Stormwind vendor was always the easiest to get to - my bank alt lived in Stormwind but my 2nd or 3rd alt was working through Outland - I'd regularly pop over to the Allerian Stronghold in Terokkar Forest & pick up 2 or 3 of each recipe & post them back to my bank alt. This year, I raised the prices & some of them were selling for 30-50g. I loved this market - the Stormwind set cost about 1g & sold for 15-30g each - all the time!

I can't remember all the other recipe vendors but I do know I made good gold from this market right up to the launch of Mists of Pandaria. The new Cooking trainer & leveling method for cooking means that most players now level their cooking just standing in Halfhill. I bought a set of recipes from the Stormwind guy just last week - I was curious to see if there was any market left for them. A few have sold but only for 2-5g now - still a very good profit & still a reasonable market to try for some starter cash but for me, it's just not time efficient enough now.

So what can we learn? Well I think the most obvious lesson is that some players are just plain lazy or downright stupid! Think of all the cheap vendor bought stuff that sells for much better prices on the Auction House - gold bloggers have been writing about them for ages but there are still players out there who have no idea you can buy say, crystal vials from a vendor! But don't forget, I'm not even talking about limited supply items - those I kind of understand buying off the Auction House, there's a time element to getting them & for some players, time is more precious than gold. Nope, I'm talking about unlimited supply items just like cooking recipes!

There is still a small market here - some players like to have all the recipes & some prefer to level a profession as they level their alt so they do it using the older recipes & materials they pick up along the way. It's not a market I'm bothering with now although if you are just getting started, it may be worth a try. A 1g investment could net you 50-100g profit even if you have to relist them a few times.

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Project Shoofly - New Server Leveling Project

So I think I've worked out why I'm not playing much WoW right now - I have no direction! Too many alts still need gearing up that I don't know where to start & not sure I have enough time before Mists of Pandaria hits anyway & when I do pick one, guildies sidetrack me or Facebook, or Twitter or any number of other bits I have going on.

So I've started a new little side project away from the madding crowds, on my US account. I know there's always some sort of leveling project going on but for me, this will be a whole new game - no heirlooms, no other high level alts, no professions already leveled - oh and horde-side!

Why Horde? - well, I've never played a horde character beyond level 20 so it should feel almost like a new game & I've often wondered just how much an ordinary non-AH player can easily make whilst leveling so I thought I'd give it a go.

I have just about 2 weeks before I wander off on a trip so here's the rules I have set for myself:-

• 2 horde alts - 1 to level, 1 as banker (seperate from any other gold making activities)
• no help from anyone unless I go through trade but I think most new players wouldn't do that anyway.
• As I don't know where any of the vendors are, I've switched off my Recipe Mate add-on, again, I'm not sure totally new players would have many add-ons
• only Auctionator add-on (no TSM or Auctioneer) for the Auction House
• no playing the Auction House on my banker, she is just there to sell stuff I pick up whilst leveling
• no rushing - I will just play as & when I feel like, with no special emphasis on gold-making
• most advice to newbies is 2 gathering professions so I'm choosing herbing & skinning

In my last post, I told you about my baby Alliance Hunter, well I haven't played her much, did a few battlegrounds but my twinking partner has been kinda busy so she's on hold for now - I didn't want to get too far ahead! But I have still been popping in now & again to the banker on Alliance side. Just a bit of low level herbs flipping, the vendor bought herbs & a few of the cooking recipes later & I have a princely sum of 457 gold already!

I'll probably keep going on her as well - it only takes a few minutes for each visit & if ever we do continue our twinking, at least I will have a bit of cash behind me :)

It will be interesting to see how different it is horde side & I wonder how far I will get before Mists of Pandaria is released? Had a challenge on Squidoo the other day to write a product-based lens so as everyone says 'write what you know', I wrote about Mists of Pandaria! I'm quite enjoying myself over there, I must admit but the whole SEO thing has me baffled. It's keeping me busy, that's for sure & makes a nice change from World of Warcraft end of expansion blues!

Auction House Alt - Day 1

I started a human rogue purely for the closeness to SW & I know the starter zone so well, I could flip thru there in about 20 minutes. I arrived in Stormwind and went directly to the Old Town where I had a quest hand in from the guy in Goldshire. I now had 9silver 63copper to my name. As I was already in Old Town, I went to the cooking recipe vendor & bought the Beer Basted Ribs recipe for 2s 40c, knowing that it would sell for at least 1gold if not a lot more.

On my way back to the AH, someone was paying for guild charter sigs so I piped up, signed up & made 7g - nice little boost to my starter pot. Posted the recipe for 3g 90s, undercutting the one already listed & proceeded to do my auctioneer scan.

The first search I do at this stage is always a vendor search & today it proved very worthwhile. There was a Fractured Alicite selling for 5g when the vendor price is 9g so I grabbed that, ran to mailbox, picked it up & vendored it! Pure luck but an immediate profit of 4g :)

The next stage of my search is done on the normal AH browse screen - I sorted by time left & did a general search under Trade Goods. I was looking for those tiny bid deals that were going to finish very soon, hoping a) to win them or b) not tie my cash up for too long. I was in luck again! Mageroyal with 1s bid, very cheap mageweave & some monstrous claws, all short time left with bid prices below 20silvers and even some volatile waters, although they were on long auctions and I probably won't win them, it's always worth a try :)

So, with 7g 19s 34c left, I decided that was enough for now & went for some lunch. Imagine my pleasure when I came back to find I'd not only won the mageroyal & mageweave but also had sold the Beer Basted Ribs recipe!

Straight back to the recipe vendor in Old Town, bought 1 of each recipe except the 2 bind on pickup ones & put those up for auction, listed the few bits I'd won & left it at that for today. Closing gold balance 11g 85s 59c.