30 Minutes a Day Project - Day 13 - 15

Time for another update on this project of mine! I'm torn between just getting everything up to date in one mega post or breaking it up but I think I'll stick to 3 days at a time, even if I get a little behind with posting! I hope you're enjoying these updates - I'd love to hear any more lowbie tips from you - I'll admit, I'm struggling a bit here!

Day 13

One thing I keep forgetting to do is to make a note of my opening & closing balances - there's no excuse really as I have Auditor addon installed which gives me the totals for the day really easily and in a simple layout too!

Not really much to talk about today - I did the Auctioneer scan again to see if there were any items for easy money from the vendor search but that just reminded me why I gave up on Auctioneer! The scan takes so long! I had just enough time to check the vendor search then to grab a few bargains from the trade Goods/Herbs category and to get them listed. Closing balance today was 301 gold - not very impressed with my lowbie gold making skills right now!

Day 14
Today was a better day overall with a mailbox opening of 65 gold and a Blingtron loot sale of 16 gold too. I received an email from Misha, reminding me that the Gaudy Winter Veil Sweater can be disenchanted into Strange Dust & Lesser Magic Essences. When I say 'reminding me', that's what Misha thought he was doing but actually, I didn't know in the first place so thank you Misha!

But here's the funny thing - I wasn't concentrating this evening so rather than waste time getting my bank alt to Ironforge, I took my baby Shaman there instead. She bought 15 sweaters and ran to the mailbox. Oops! I hadn't noticed they were Bind on Pickup so now my baby Shaman has Enchanting as a profession too! As for not wasting time - by the time I'd made this mistake and learned enchanting, I didn't have enough cash on the Shaman to send them or list them on the Auction House so I had to log my banker anyway!

The 15 Sweaters cost me a whole 3silver and 30 coppers but as you can see above, Strange Dust alone is selling currently for well over 2gold each so it's well worth the few minutes it takes to disenchant them! What a great tip for anyone trying to build their first bit of capital! Just don't flood the market!

I regularly check the Linen Cloth & Strange Dust markets for just this reason - when linen is mega-cheap, I buy it and convert to Strange Dust. I almost always have some Strange Dust listed on the Auction House and can usually get 2g per Dust easily. In terms of percentage profits it's probably one of the best little corner markets out there. Sadly the quantities that sell don't make it the best income source but added to other small markets, it adds a nice little chunk to your weekly income, especially when you are still building up your capital.

Day 15
Another ok day at the mailbox - 73 gold picked up and another Blingtron dropped meant 4 gold from selling the vendor trash it gave me!

As you can see below, I dived into the Herb category again and grabbed some more bargains. It took me back into Wrath times when I saw Terocone so cheap and Talandra's Rose too - I remember farming Zul Drak for hours for Talandra's Rose although I can't remember why now!

The Strange Dust from yesterday all sold too so off I went to the Smokeywood Pastures vendor and bought 30 more Sweaters! I'm sure I could sell almost all of the Strange Dust even if I disenchanted 100 sweaters but with the time limit constraint, 30 is more than enough to keep the gold rolling in!

Summary
Closing balance for today is 364 gold. It seems I've forgotten how to really make gold fast at low levels. I did a Gold Rush thing a couple of years ago and came about 4th or 5th with a total sales figure over 50,000 gold. There's no way I'm getting near that this time but I don't think it's just me. Back then, during Cataclysm, we had the Volatiles markets and I remember flipping low price Volatiles of all sorts for way more than I'd paid! It helped that Volatiles stacked in 200's as well as the volume turnover meant that even profit of just a few silvers each could mean quite a nice chunk on a full stack. I also flipped glyphs for nice profits too - the market was pretty mobile so it was easy to pick up good glyphs for cheap & sell them a day or two later for 2, 3 or 4 times the purchase price.

I also didn't have the time constraint so I'm wondering just how much I could be making if I removed the 15 minutes limit. I'm not going to, of course! That would negate the whole idea of this little project but it has got me thinking of my next project! Once we hit 31st December, I may just send all this gold to my leveling alt and restart the same idea but without the time constraint. I'm not sure I'd report it in such detail either but perhaps a weekly update of time spent and a screenshot of what's been selling.

I've had quite a few comments and messages about this project so I hope you're enjoying my misadventures in lowbie gold making! I know it's probably not that interesting to experienced gold makers but I think it does illustrate quite well which markets to look at when looking for stuff to flip when starting out. I'd hoped to have a lot more gold by now so you could see the mid-range price markets start coming within my pockets reach but there's still time for that!

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Enchanting - Sources of Cheaper Materials For 5.4

With the upcoming changes to Enchanting in Patch 5.4, I thought I'd have another look at how I work with this profession & how I could source my enchanting materials as cheaply as possible. I've always just dabbled in the scroll market with the sole exception of the Enchant Weapon - Agility enchant for heirloom weapons. That enchant made me 1000's of gold over the last few years and at one point, I had upped the price to 1200g. It's one of the markets I let go when I took a mini break & I haven't got back into it since.

Until recently, I've just been buying my Spirit Dust off the Auction House when it fell to 2g-ish but in the last few weeks, it's been consistently at 4-5g all the time & the scrolls just aren't selling at high enough prices or volumes to justify that raw material price. At 2g a piece, it was reasonable to convert the Dusts up to Mysterious Essences too but not now.

So I needed an alternative source of cheap Spirit Dust & Mysterious Essences other than the Auction House. I looked at just buying cheap Green armor pieces off the Auction House but usually the prices are just above the level that I need to make cheap dusts so although I still check regularly, I don't get many bargains that way.

Back in November 2012, when Mists was still quite fresh, I did a series of posts with small, simple spreadsheets in them - including a 'Converting Enchanting Materials' one. The link for the conversion spreadsheet is still active & is a very quick & easy way to see at a glance whether converting up or down is worthwhile. Please feel free to download it if you want to - just please don't edit the online version!

Now that things have settled down in game & prices are more stable, I'm finding that Windwool Cloth is almost always around the 20g a stack mark - that means my Tailor can craft the current PvP Bracers using 4 bolts of Windwool Cloth (ie 1 stack) and then disenchant the bracers to give me an Ethereal Shard - I say 1 but often it is 2 Shards with the Guild perk, Bountiful Bags. That means that I can get my Ethereal Shards for 20g or less (depending on procs) which is usually 10g or more cheaper than the Auction House.

Using my handy dandy little spreadsheet, I can easily see that at that price, if I convert the Shards down to Dusts, I'll get a minimum of 9 Dusts for that 20g - not quite 2g a piece but still much better than the current 4-5g on my Auction House! The only problem with that method though is that Mysterious Essences are so expensive! If I break down a Shard to an Essence, do I really want to break expensive Essences down to Dusts! Or even worse, at 20g a Shard, when converted up to a Sha Crystal which then only costs 100g & they sell for around 300g most of the time!

I get around this conundrum by making & disenchanting lots of Bracers! By diversifying across the raw materials market & the scrolls market, I make sure I'm selling at a profit, no matter what is actually selling. Lately though, again in preparation for Patch 5.4, I'm storing up my Essences - I'll either make a killing on the scrolls or own the market for Essences - or at least, that's the plan!

And finally a really neat tip from one of my readers - Philip H. emailed me a couple of weeks ago to ask a question and gave me a little of his game story too. He mentioned something in his email that I had never even thought of so I asked & he gave me permission to let you know about it. I may be slow & you are all doing this but it does require a special set of circumstances so I have a feeling there's not many using this tip!

Basically Philip had leveled his main and been raiding, LFR'ing & doing a lot of max level stuff. He'd also vendored all of the useless soulbound Epic items that he couldn't use. At a later date, he decided to make this character his Enchanter and once he had leveled it to max, he used the Blizzard item restoration service to get back all those Epics he had vendored previously! Say hello to lots of free Sha Crystals!

You can get back upto 50 items at a time but can only use the service once a month but it's still a great idea. Obviously, it only works if you've vendored or deleted useless Epics before you learnt Enchanting but it's worth bearing in mind if you're considering changing professions on your main.

Have I missed some other way to get cheap enchanting mats? I'd love to hear your comments.

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Enchanting Changes in 5.4 & Other Enhancements Too!

One of the changes that struck me as interesting in the patch notes for 5.4 was the changes being made to item enhancements. This includes enchantments, leg armors, spellthreads and I'll be honest, I'm not sure which Engineering item they mean - the tinkers gears maybe? I had a few questions about exactly what this meant for us goldmakers but although I've been reading comments all over the place, none seem to make it any clearer so I thought I'd do a post about it & see what discussion we get in comments!

Items
All permanent item enhancements provided by Enchanting, Engineering, Leatherworking, Tailoring, and various vendors and quests are now able to be applied to items of any level. This means all enchantments can now be applied to heirloom items.

• High level enhancements applied to items equipped by low level players have their power scaled down to be similar to enhancements intended for that level range. 

• Low level enhancements applied to items equipped by high level players do not grow further in power beyond their intended level range.

How I see this is that all the current top level enhancements can now be applied to heirloom gear and will scale down as appropriate for your level - a big change as previously, only enchants with no level requirements could be used. This is a good thing for most enchanters or at least for those of us who only make gold with top level enchants. But I know there are some of you out there who specialise in the older enchants for heirloom market & for the twink markets - this was one of my question areas - will mid-level enchants scale too? What if the scaling means that some of the mid-level enchants are still better than top level ones after scaling?

I think the second bullet point in the quote above indicates that mid level enchants will scale but will stop scaling when their max level is reached. The Crusader enchant is a perfect example - it won't scale past 60 so the question then becomes - will people still use Crusader below level 60 (if it's scaled stats are better than the top level enchants scaled stats) & re-enchant for the rest of the trip to 90?

I suppose that will depend on how well the scaling works - min/maxers will take whichever of the two types gives them the advantage at each level but I think most of the player base will just go for the simpler option of max level enchants.

I think the other professions will see a boost in sales too - I'm not very aware of mid to low level leg armors & spellthreads in current use, to be honest but I think the same thinking will apply. Why enhance an item twice when a single top level will scale all the way after all?

So how am I getting ready for patch 5.4 and all the changes? I may be wrong but I've been increasing my stockpile of current enchanting materials & I've started farming for Motes of Harmony again on my Leatherworker's Tillers Farm - I'd like a little piece of the action on the Leg Armors market as well as scrolls! I've never really got heavily into the Enchants market - I'm more of a dabbler there but I'll go where the profits are so this could be interesting to say the least!

What do you think? Do you have experience with Heirloom enchants & Twink enchants market? I'd love to hear your opinion on this as it's not one of my strong points! 

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What's Been Selling This Week? 11th August Edition

Yet another week of slacking here at Casa Nev & no good excuses either - unless you count my dearest getting me hooked on the crack-game that is Candy Crush! It turns out I'm a lot more competitive than I realised and getting ahead of my Facebook friends & staying ahead of my fella has become addictive!

But I did manage to branch out a little this week so although my overall sales are pretty dismal, there is hope on the horizon for 3 new markets! As you can see from the screenshot, Mysterious Fortune Cards are still selling well & as a by-product of those, I have a few stacks of Starlight Ink accumulating. I decided to try the various Shoulder Enchants and have been pleasantly surprised by those selling well. I tried selling the basic inks too - the prices are such that 3 for the inscription is roughly equal to 3 raw ink - but none sold so I guess I'm not the only one trying to use them up somehow!

I also dipped a little deeper into the cut gem market - still no huge volume - either posted or in sales but a wider variety of cuts sold this week. Prices aren't too horrible but they're not great either - luckily the bots seem to be back & Ghost Iron Ore prices are staying around the 40g mark. I just need cheap Golden Lotus now to transmute some of the piles of rare gems that are building up. I could do the whole Jewelcrafter/Disenchanting thing but for the moment, I really can't be bothered!

Talking of Enchanting - I actually made some scrolls this week & they've been selling too! Again, I didn't dive in deep & the prices fluctuate wildly so I still have some learning to do in this market. I also had a couple of posts ideas so watch for those in the next few days!

In other news, I've almost stopped selling the PvP crafted gear - mostly because I'm trying to build up my stock of Magnificent Hides and because with patch 5.4 seemingly so close now, I've noticed sales slowing anyway. I really don't want to be left with a lot of this PvP gear once the new stuff is released! The Tailored PvP gear hasn't been selling for such good prices so I'd stopped that a week or two ago as well.

And that's about it for last week really. The Mammoth Mining Bags are selling but slowly & I've snagged a few of the level 83/84 green armour items for less than 25g so those are showing up on the bottom of the list too. I did make up 60+ Netherweave Bags on Sunday so I'd take a wild guess & say they'll be showing up on next weeks report!

Have a good week everyone - enjoy your gold :)

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20 Days of Gold Making - Day 9 Favorite Niche

Hmmm, my 20 Days of Gold Making questions seemed like a pretty good list to me originally but now I'm trying to write the posts, some of them are stumping me! Today's burning question is "What is your favorite niche market & why?" but I'm really reaching for an answer for this one!

I'm really not very organised in my gold making endeavors, I jump in & out of markets, craft a bit here, flip a bit there so narrowing it down to one niche is kind of difficult. I've had pretty good sales with the Netherweave Bag market, Essence of Air & the related enchants do well but not very often & of course, glyphs (if you can call them a niche market!). Niche to me though, means a smallish market, very specialised & not necessarily a huge profit earner. It has a narrow target audience, usually few competitors & not a huge supply of the item which allows for higher prices & profits albeit in smaller sales quantities.

Working with that definition, I'd have to say low level enchanting materials is probably one of my favorite niche markets. I periodically dominate the Strange Dust market & have always had good profits from the Greater Eternal Essence market. I'm a bit of a hoarder so any armor drop that doesn't have a transmog value, good stats for levelers or just doesn't sell, usually get disenchanted. I also used to buy very cheap green armor off the Auction House to disenchant, in an effort to get the guild achievement for disenchanting 25,000 items -  Dust, Dust and More Dust! I should probably get back to that soon as we never did manage to check that one off the list!

When I was leveling alts all over the place, my enchanter was kept pretty busy disenchanting every day so she has a bank stuffed full of all sorts of dusts, essences & crystals from all levels! It makes for a very pretty view when I open all her bags but right now, I'm just trying to maximise the sales prices to clear some space!

As I'm sitting here writing this, I suddenly thought 'why don't I try a 'profession package'? lol, I have so much saved up, I could probably put together a full leveling kit & sell it via trade! I've heard/read of others doing this with various professions, maybe I should give it a try! I just need to check what I have already, fill in the gaps & start barking! I'll let you know how that goes :)

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Converting Enchanting Materials For Easy Gold

Converting Enchanting Materials for Easy Gold

I haven't actually done anything with my Enchanter yet during Mists of Pandaria but I have been seeing lots of tweets & chit chat about converting enchanting materials for profits so I thought I'd have a look into it. I quickly realised that a mini spreadsheet was the way to go so once I got my head around the formulas, this is what I ended up with!

Last time I posted a screenshot of one of my mini spreadsheets, lots of readers asked for it to be available on Google Docs - well I didn't have a clue how to do that then but this time, I managed to work it out! You can access the Enchanting Materials Conversion spreadsheet via Google Docs (or Google Drive, whatever they call it now!) & I hope I've made it freely available to view & download. If not, let me know & I'll see if I can get it sorted out!

Enchanting Materials Conversion Spreadsheet

All you need to do is to change the prices in the yellow boxes to the prices currently on your own server Auction House. As you can see, converting down is rarely going to be profitable but I wanted to include it, just in case! The figures above are from my server today - Ethereal Shards are slightly underpriced today based on the conversion rates so there's no point converting materials up to those. However, being so 'cheap' they do make the best material to convert up to a Sha Crystal if I want to use my daily enchanting cooldown for that. The only other way to get a Sha Crystal is to disenchant epic armour & weapons & I don't think anyone is going to be doing that for a while yet in Mists of Pandaria (except maybe raiders gearing up of course).

The Undermine Journal, Sha Crystal  Supply & Price Chart

You can easily see from the Undermine Journal screenshot how low the supply has been over the last week but also how the Ethereal Shard price has moved too. It's the Ethereal Shard price on the green line, in case you were wondering.

This means that Sha Crystals are probably going to remain pretty expensive for the next few weeks at least - once more people have access to epic gear & epic crafted items through dailies & reputation grinds then we may see the supply of Sha Crystals increase. But until then, it's probably worth keeping an eye on this market - I know I'm going to but I'm going to be careful too - I got a little hurt by the maelstrom crystal market at the start of Cataclysm although I was a very new gold maker at the time. Hopefully I've learned quite a few lessons since then!

Oops! Seems Molsan & I share a brain! He did a great post yesterday on almost the same subject so maybe pop over there for a second viewpoint if you have time :)

If you're leveling your enchanting & need infinite dust then this 'Hunt for Infinite Dust' post may be useful - just adjust the prices for your server of course!


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The Hunt for Infinite Dust

A week or two ago, Huntermastery sparked a good discussion with his post about what not to stockpile for Mists of Pandaria. One of the items on his list was Infinite Dust. His argument was that abyss crystals were a more effective way of storing stuff that could be turned into Infinite Dust & Cosmic Essences, rather than storing multiple stacks of dust & essences. It turned into quite a good discussion which you can read about on his follow up post about Abyss Crystals if you'd like to.

Now I'm not trying to resurrect that discussion but I've never had much luck with the Abyss Crystal shatter as a source of infinite dust, I've always used my Jewelcrafter to make bloodstone bands, crystal citrine necklace & sun rock rings to disenchant. I have a permanent watch set up for the gems & I only buy them when they are below 3 gold each & preferably below 2 gold!

Since May this year, I've also been picking up very cheap Wrath armour to disenchant - I check the dust price & base my armour buy price on that. I also only buy the top end greens - level 78-80 as they give an average of 5 dusts per item.

So I thought I'd lay out some results from a little test I did last week. I've used The Undermine Journal mean price for my cost prices as I had a lot of stuff in my bank already.

Abyss Crystal Shatter

13 Abyss Crystal (TUJ mean price 427.70g) = 18 Infinite Dust + 41 Greater Cosmic Essences (TUJ mean price 491.34g)

Overall profit = 63.64g

This is a perfect example of my previous experience with the abyss shatter - I always get more GCE's so as a source of infinite dust, it is very frustrating even though GCE's still sell pretty well.

Wrath lvl 78-80 Green Armor

14 various items all at 10g or less, approx cost 140g = 78 infinite dust + 5 greater cosmic essences (TUJ mean price 533.70g)

Overall profit = 393.70g

Jewelcraft Rings/Necks to Disenchant

60 x rings/necks approx cost 210gold = 102 Infinite Dust + 22 lesser Cosmic Essences + 5 small dream shards (TUJ mean price = 758.74g)

Overall profit = 548.74g

I made a variety of bloodstone bands, crystal citrine necklaces & sun rock rings. The bloodstone, sun crystals & huge citrines were bought over time as an average of 2g each & the crystallized earth required cost approx 75 silvers each.

TUJ Mean Prices used

Infinite Dust 6.25
Greater Cosmic Essence 9.24g
Abyss Crystal 32.90
Lesser Cosmic Essence 4.47g
Small Dream Shard 4.58

Summary

I realise the abyss crystal sample size is way too small to be really representative of the possible outcome but to be honest, at an average of 32g each, I just didn't want to spend out more cash, knowing my previous luck! Also, bear in mind, I'm trying to source Infinite Dust specifically in this post - if I just wanted Wrath enchanting mats then it wouldn't really matter too much :)

The easiest way right now is the Wrath greens - there is an abundance on my server as people are rushing their alts through Northrend before Mists of Pandaria arrives. Some items are below 5g so even if they only give me 2 infinite dusts, I'm still snatching them up!

Conversely, the gems for the rings/necks seem to be increasing in price - it took me a fair while to get enough gems to craft this many rings. If I hadn't been clearing out all my bank bags, I probably would have had a much smaller sample size!

If you need Infinite Dust - where do you get yours? Do you bite the bullet & pay AH prices or have you tried a different way? Let me know - would love your comments.

Something in The Air?

© Nev 2003 Something in the Air

A little while ago, I did a post about getting my Timbermaw Reputation to exalted in order to get the 2 heirloom weapon agility enchants. Both these enchants use Essence of Air which is notoriously difficult to farm since the Cataclysm. Wowhead lists them as a 5% drop rate which, as we all know, means a lot of farming time. The first time I went farming in Silithus, I killed Dust Stormers for almost 1 hour to get the 8 Essences of Air that I wanted. Recently I have had reason to go back several times & I've also shown or taken guildies there too.

The quickest way for a level 85 character is to portal to Uldum & fly across to the top north-west corner of Silithus as shown on the map. There are 2 main areas, concentrated around either side of the Crystal Vice where the earth elementals (Rumblers) are. The blue line on the map is the approximate path for the Twilight Prophet & her guards. She drops 7-10 Encrypted Twilight Texts which are used for Cenarion Circle reputation so if you already have the rep (or not interested in rep grinds), you can sell them on the auction house for maybe 20g each but obviously, your server prices may be a little different. I have them on my snatch list & buy them up when I see them for 3g or less.

So why am I telling you about this slow farm/low drop rate item? Well, I've been farming there several evenings recently & I have a feeling the drop rate has been improved!

I lent some gold to a guildie & instead of them repaying me in gold, I asked her to farm 8 Essences of Air for me, expecting it to take maybe 2 hours & she would feel like she'd worked for her loan! Instead, she whispered me within about 30 mins to say she had them already & did I want any more?

Two weeks ago, I was at Ahn'Qhiraj with another guildie farming the Battletank mounts & when we hit the 5 instances per hour limit, I took him over to Silithus to show him this corner. It's a nice little gold earner for anyone patient enough to farm & then patient enough to wait for them to sell. We were there for maybe 20 minutes & between us we got 10 Essences of Air.

Another evening this last week, I was kinda restless & didn't want to start any major stuff as it was getting late so I dived down to this corner & did a bit of farming. Within the first 12 minutes I had picked up 9 Essences of Air, not to mention 10 Breath of Wind & 12 Elemental Airs.

Now this is all anecdotal of course but my luck with the RNG is never very good. I decided to test my theory again this morning (Sunday) before writing this post & what happened? Yup, you guessed it - 3 essences of air in 30 mins - back to the old, horrible drop rate!

I had a look at the comments on Wowhead & there seems to be a mixed response as to whether the drop rate has been improved. I'm going to try it again in the late evening, just to see if there's a time based element on this particular RNG as one commenter suggested.

So, has anyone else been farming these lately? How was the drop rate for you? Or would someone like to test this hunch out?

Edited to add: If you have a choice of alts to take farming here, take a miner - lots of thorium nodes & some truesilver ones as well. Also, if your guild is going for the killing critters achievement - there's a fair few snakes around too! Enjoy :-D

Weekly Update with a Few Surpises

Well, What a week! After hitting 500k last week, I wrote that it was time to look away from my glyphs so the day after I wrote the post, instead of spending my usual time tending my glyphs, I got busy on my alts. I must have driven my guildies mad with all my logging in and out but once I get the routine sorted out, that will slow down. Patch 4.1 hit on Wednesday & not only broke almost all of my addons, I also got the dreaded DC bug. I have to say I wasn't very well prepared for the patch either & with husband home, my concentration & time were less than focussed on gold making.

After my usual bit of maths, I can see that I spent 15800g-ish to make profits of 45100g-ish. I also bought a Hurricane Deck for my paladin main but having heard so many comments about how bad the paladin DPS is now, I handed in the Deck to get some rep & have listed the trinket on the AH. If it sells, I make profit, if it doesn't, my now, seemingly-useless Pally gets some gear love. 

I can hear you thinking 'no surprises so far' but just look at my sales screenshot & compare it to previous ones! It doesn't show glyphs across the board this week! How did I decide what to craft in my mega alt hopping session? Well, I tend to scribble notes down when I read all those blogs in my blogroll so I got all the bits of paper off my desk & went through them to make a master list of possibilities. Next, I logged my bank alt to search for what mats I already had tucked away & to check AH prices for everything.

Out came my master Excel sheet (you can see an example in my Enchanted Thorium Blades post) where I broke down all the possible crafted items into their raw or semi raw mats & input the prices from the AH. I ended up with a smaller list of profitable items to craft so then it was just a matter of buying any mats I didn't already have & get to crafting.

My smaller list required mid level BS & Alchemy, maxed & mid level Enchanting & maxed JC. There were also a few mid level Leatherworking items but I've been dabbling in those anyway (see my Low Level LW post).

I wasn't sure whether to give you a list of what I made but I thought I may as well :) Obviously you can cherry pick from the list for your own circumstances but it might give you a springboard for your own ideas too.

Blacksmith
Arcanite Rod
Fel Iron Rod
Adamantite Rod
Eternium Rod
Enchanted Thorium Blades (to d/enchant)

Alchemist
Arcanite Bar
Transmute Inferno Ruby

Enchanting
Enchant Weapon - Hurricane / Avalanche / Heartsong
Enchant Bracer - Dodge
Enchant Chest - Mighty Stats
Enchant Gloves - Haste

Enchant Boots - Haste

Enchant Cloak - Intellect
Enchant Off hand - Superior Intellect
Scroll of Enchant Weapon - Agility (the lower level, essence of air one)
Mass disenchanting of jewellery for Cata mats
Disenchanting the Enchanted Thorium Blades for Greater Eternal Essences

Jewelcrafting
Bold / Brilliant / Delicate Inferno Ruby

Agile Shadowspirit Diamond

Burning Shadowspirit Diamond

Reverberating Shadowspirit Diamond

Loads of the alicite/hessonite jewellery to d/enchant

Leatherworking

Shadowskin Gloves

Gem Studded Belt

Mammoth Mining Bags

Toughened Leather Gloves

Most of these have sold during the week but are not on my top list because they sell for lower amounts and/or less frequently but the profit margins are huge so they are still worth doing when you feel like it.

This week, I also managed to complete my Wintersaber Faction reputation grind & got my Frostsaber mount before the patch hit. I left my pally in Winterspring & as soon as I could log in after patch, I bought 10 of the new Winterspring Cub & mailed them to my banker. The first 3 sold for around 450g before anyone really caught on but I'd sold all of them by the end of the day with prices dropping to around 100g by the time I logged off.

By the end of the week, I was back to my familiar glyph routine. With so many bits to craft & source mats for, it's going to take a while to get into the swing of it but I'm sure, somewhere in that long list (and the ones that didn't make it this time!), is my next big venture.

I read so many blogs that I can't credit individual posts for the initial ideas that sparked my list but I do know that all that reading isn't a waste of time! If you're reading this as a novice gold maker then make some time & read those blogs too or use Flux's Gold Blog Directory to find all the information you could ever take in :)

They Love Me in That Tunnel!

They must do by now, I've done it twice this week! Timbermaw rep, that is. The talented Alto posted on Sunday about gaining Timbermaw reputation which is something I had been meaning to do for ages but didn't fancy the grind that I thought it was. His post mentioned 30mins- 1hr so I thought I'd give it a go with my holy priest enchanter. Took me a little longer even though she was already almost honoured with them but it still wasn't the long laborious trek I had expected. The Timbermaw Quartermaster has lots of recipes, the only two that I'm really aware of as being still relevant are the Enchant Weapon - Agility & the Enchant 2H Weapon - Agility. He also has leatherwork, blacksmith & tailoring recipes but I guess those items don't have the staying power that the Enchants do.

The only problem with both these Enchants is the mats - Essence of Air is as rare as hen's teeth & twice as expensive whilst Large Brilliant Shards seem to have almost disappeared off the AH too.

Bring on my 2nd run through the Timbermaw Rep - my paladin was my main for a long time so she is my Achievement Queen & I just had to get her the Exalted rep. She is also my favourite alt for random farmings so once she was Exalted (1hr 5mins from hostile to exalted, btw) I sent her off to Silithus to farm for the Essence of Air.

I must admit, I was kicking myself most of the time I spent in Silithus. I'd read somewhere, pre-Cata, about stocking up on these Airs & had managed to grab about 10 of them for 20g each pre-Cata. The bit I either missed or forgot, was what they were used for! So almost as soon as Cata hit, I also sold them - for about 85g each - nice profits but nowhere near as nice as if I'd hung on to them until now!

Anyway, 1 hour in Silithus netted me 9 Essence of Air, 20 or so Elemental Air & 12 Breath of Wind as well as 30-ish Twilight Encrypted Texts & a few Core of Earths. When I got back to Stormwind, I put a few of the elemental airs & breath of wind on the AH for 15g & 25g respectively - most have sold so that was a nice little side income as well as the 100g or so of vendor trash. As for the Twilight Texts, I had no idea what they were for - Cenarion Circle reputation apparently so I've shoved them in the bank for later.

Next stop - find out where to get Large Brilliant Shards - oh look, the lovely Kuja Klo just posted 'how to make gold in classic instances' & there's a whole bit on brilliant shards! How very timely! Only one problem for me - I hate to admit this but I've never done Black Rock Spire on any of my alts! I don't do that many dungeons whilst levelling up so somehow, I've missed this one completely. I think that having fallen in the lava off those chains so many times on my paladin (early days, oh such early days!) that I have subconciously avoided the whole place.

Edited to Add: Kammler also has a great post re the shards in his Keystone Enchanting Materials post & Faid has a video run through in her Faidian Slip #14. I didn't see these before I posted so adding them now for future reference :)

For now, I already have 8 brilliant shards & 8 essence of air so I can produce 2 of the 1H weapon scrolls - there's only 1 on our AH this week so far - at 1500g. I'm going to wait a while to see if it sells or the same guy just keeps posting the same scroll but at that price, I figure, if they are selling, then an hour in Silithus might actually be quite profitable especially if I go back to work on my Cenarion Circle rep too.

Do you guys ever go farming for those super expensive, rare mats or do you just snatch them off the AH when you can?

Training a Butterfly!

I've been trying to write this post all weekend - editing, wiping & starting again & then in 3 seperate blogs there are posts which link in & explain perfectly what I've been trying to say! Grrrrr lol

My butterfly is my brain - you've all seen a butterfly flit between flowers in a seemingly random fashion, well that's how my brain works! I log in each morning with full intentions to do something specific & then by midday, I've done loads of stuff but not what I intended at the start! So I need a routine, a 'method' if you will & I need to stop jumping around every time I see a new 'shiny' to distract me.

Aliciana's guest post at JMTC relates to knowing your Niche Markets - something I've overlooked since I started trying to make gold. I had some beginners luck before I found all these wonderful gold blogs by applying instincts and common sense - 2 things I think I've lost sight of as I now 'work' at making gold.

Then later in the day, Alto posted his Common Sense post - another few chords started ringing in my ears and now this morning (UK time that is!), Stede has posted a full scale, in depth look at Jewelcrafting. This is one of my newer professions and one that I have dived into wholeheartedly, ignoring some of my more familiar profs & ignoring common sense a little.

So besides linking to these 3 great posts, now what can I talk about today? Well I thought maybe a little public analysis of what I have & what I should do with it might be useful to other butterfly brains out there! For the moment, I'm going to ignore my LW & Inscription & focus on the holy trinity of gold making at the moment - Alchemy, JC & Enchanting, all of which I have finally managed to max to 525.

I've been buying Obsidium Ore whenever I see it below 50g a stack - this last few days it's been as low as 29-35g a stack so I currently have a mailbox full of it to deal with! I have been using the now-famous spreadsheet which Zoxy explains really well in his post but my PC is pretty old & slow & I find tabbing in & out of game to be evermore frustrating so I've kinda gone with my gut feelings & my trusty calculator. It doesn't help that prices on my server are so stupidly low that the only real way of making any gold at the moment is enchanting materials from disenchanting jewellery - monotonous & time consumimg.

I'm going to try to stick to a routine for a few days & see how it goes. This is my provisional routine which I will adapt as necessary.

• Log in to banker(s),
• collect post
• squee with glee/cry over lack of gold
• relist any returned items
• list any new stuff sent from alts
• run auctioneer fast scan (time for a coffee & smoke anyways!)
• run snatch search, buy if needed
• check prices of all raw Cataclysm gems & herbs (for possible transmutes)
• fill in spreadsheet
• log in to JC alt, do JC daily
• if JC daily is jasper/nightstone or zephyrite, list gems on AH in 1's & 3's & hopefully at higher price than yesterday
• check enchanting mats stock, decide whether to prospect/craft/disench more stuff
• use spreadsheet to decide if metagem transmute is sensible, send mats to alchemist
• Log in to Alchemist alt, do daily transmute volatile life > air, send to enchanter alt
• Do metagem transmutes if viable
• Log in to Enchanter alt, check price of Enchant Weapon - Hurricane (currently the only scroll worth selling on my server) & make a couple if price is good.
• Last but not least - WALK AWAY NOW & go do some actual playing!

So what do you think? Have I missed anything or is there still too much in there? I'm thinking I will do this probably twice a day, morning & early evening. I have to break the habit of popping to my banker every hour or so to see if anything's sold & I also have to stop buying Obsidium Ore even if it is down at 25g a stack - at least until I work thru the last ton of the stuff in my mailbox!

photos © Arty Allsorts 2008, used with permission

My Pocket's in Shock!

Yup, I spent almost half of my liquid gold yesterday morning after the server restarted - I happened to be trying to log in just as they were coming online & had spent the previous hour or so, reading about the Maelstrom Crystal nerf over on Zoxy's blog and loads of others.

I logged in & nabbed the whole lot while most people were still blissfully unaware that the servers were back up or that the hotfix had gone live. I am now the proud owner of 27 Maelstrom Crystals and very few fingernails.

It's taken me a further 24 hours or more to come to the understanding that I am more risk averse than I ever realised! I think that perhaps if I'd reached 200k before this happened, maybe I wouldn't be worrying so much. Not only that, it's just a bloomin' game for pete's sake! It's not even 'real' money after all!

But you know what? I've actually worked pretty damn hard for that stash - I've read blogs, I've made spreadsheets, I'm going to suffocate under an avalanche of sticky notepaper soon & I've spent hours upon hours in the AH, watching markets, trying to get an understanding of things.

In my head, I know these things will sell & I 'know' the market will rise for a while. I also have a maxed enchanter so I can always use them for the top end enchant recipes & sell those instead.

But in the meanwhile, I'll still be gibbering in the corner, chewing my fingernails!

What's the biggest purchase you've made & how long did you deliberate before or worry about it after?

A Misers Guide to Cataclysm Enchanting Mats (& a little gamble)

Do you ever stumble across something in game & wonder how many others have found 'your' little trick? I do & then I wonder if I should write about it or keep it to myself, especially if I haven't seen it on any of the myriad sites I read! But today, I decided to share - after all, that's what this gold blogging is all about isn't it?

This is really aimed at those of you who don't have easy access to a high level jewelcrafter to prospect, craft rings & disenchant them. I guess many of you will be familiar with buying cheap greens at the AH but just in case you missed that, this is what I do on a regular basis.

First up, I check today's prices on the AH for Hypnotic Dust, Lesser Celestial Essence (aka LCE), Greater Celestial Essence (aka GCE) & Heavenly Shard (more on these later). Dust is at 9g, GCE at 50g, LCE at 36g & heavenly shards at 63g. These prices form the basis of my decision making when bidding or buying at the next stage which is to sort the Armor subcategory by item level 78-85 & by bid price. You can see from the screen shot that Auctioneer tells you which items d/e to Cata mats & which to WotLK mats - very useful for the level 78-80 items.

You can also see that the highlighted one has a bid price of just 9.75g - thinking back to today's price for hypnotic dust (9g) this is a definite bid item - it d/e's to at least 2 hypnotic dusts on average, making it a bit of a no-brainer really :)

Generally speaking, I bid on almost every Cata item that has a bid price below today's price for 2 dusts or 1 LCE (roughly 20g usually) & that's being very conservative - I am looking for a bargain after all! You can repeat this process for the weapon sub section too but I rarely find any low bids in there on my server.

So where do the Heavenly Shards fit in? Right here! After I've exhausted all the greens, I move on to the blues.  This time, I'm not only watching for the Cata mats in the tooltip but the heavenly shard itself - some lower ilevel blues d/ench to Small heavenly Shard which is not really what we're after. I believe you need enchanting 500/525 to disenchant these but you can always grab the bargains now & d/e when you get there.



Bearing in mind today's price for Heavenly shards (63g), I look for bid or buy prices below that - today's price is high for my server so I put a cap of 50g on my purchases. As you can see from the screenshot - there are 5 auctions available on this page alone & by the time I'd finished, I'd either bought or bid on 18 different listings!

So where's the gamble? Have another look at the tooltip on the 2nd screenshot :) Spotted it yet? Yup, there is a miniscule chance of these blues d/enchanting to a Maelstrom Crystal which currently sell for about 1500g on my server & are used in the top level enchants & to purchase the very top level recipes from the Shard Trader in the Twilight Highlands.

Now that would certainly make my day, that's for sure!