Saturday Celebrations - Wareitout, Stormreaver-US

This week's Celebration is from Wareitout on Stormreaver-US - a fellow Wrath baby who picked Skinning & Leatherworking as his first professions - just like I did! Great minds obviously think alike huh?

If you'd like to submit your own gold making Milestone Interview, instructions & more details are on my Milestone Interviews page. Any milestone is suitable - whether it be 100k or 10 million, we want to hear about YOUR story. Don't be shy! You've seen what others are sending in over the last 7 weeks so come on - tell us how you've been doing it!

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What is your Milestone amount?100,000 gold 

What got you started making gold and when?When I first started to play WoW, in WoTLK, the only gold I made was what I looted off corpses and got from selling junk to vendors. My friend, who recruited me to the game and was leveling with me, heard me say over Vent that I was selling Wool Cloth to the vendor and told me about how I could make a lot more off it by selling on the Auction House. I posted my cloth up and sure enough it sold rather quickly for much more than the vendor wanted to give me for it.  

Selling items on the Auction House pretty rapidly became a necessity as a new player due to the cost of mount, epic mount, flying mount, flying training and so forth. I found myself having to wait for epic flying and began to wonder how I could fully remedy the situation (and any further ones) using the Auction House. It was then that I really started trying to make a surplus of gold. 

I had picked up skinning and leatherworking on my first toon and tried to utilize those as well as scanning the Auction House for good deals on items I could resell for a higher price. I tried to get a feel of what was working on my server by observing what was going on in the market and exploit what I could. I eventually had enough gold to be comfortable and was able to afford my now 4 toons necessities. Making gold really captivated me and I just continued on after that. It has become just about as big a part of the game for me as PVE or PVP, and equally as enjoyable. 

Which markets have you concentrated on, if any?Leatherworking. In Wrath, all Cataclysm, and beginning of MoP I concentrated on Leatherworking above all others. I knew how to exploit the profession the best and it had a special place in my heart because it was my first profession that got me going. 

Biggest successes or biggest failures?The biggest success of gold making, if you are a person who enjoys it, is each and every sale. People get enjoyment out of getting end game gear and watching their dps or healing go up, goldmakers get enjoyment out of watching that number in their bank climb. Whether you crafted an item and sold it, disenchanted for mats, bought and resold, or farmed raw materials and sold them straight up, there is a satisfaction that is associated with everything you do everyday. Although, if I were forced to make a decision on a specific moment I would say watching my gold hit 6 figures for the first time felt more than nice. 

My biggest failure as far as gold loss is concerned was hands down the last time I took a break from the game. I've been playing since WoTLK but I've taken a few extended breaks along the way. Last time I took a break I was playing the AH hard. MoP had just been released and I had made 4 bank alts with their own guild tabs and full banks of stuff. I stopped playing pretty suddenly leaving my items that were on AH to expire in the mail, including what I had in transit between characters as well. This included probably around 120k worth of items including a rocket mount from my Engineer. 

Advice for new gold makers?Step back and decide what it is that you are wanting to do. Do you want to live comfortably in WoW, not worrying about repair bills, raid meals, flasks, etc? Or do you truly want to become filthy stinking rich? Once you've decided, you can then assess how much time and effort you're going to need to pour into the hustle and bustle of the AH.  

Starting from scratch typically is going to get off to a slower start, but don't fret. Stay with it, deal with markets that you are comfortable with and expand as you learn the others. Take some risks on reselling, if you feel compelled, but calculated risks so you don't bust yourself - you're going to get demoralized if you go all in on an item and then can't sell it for a while. 

Get some addons as you get more involved, they will make your life SO much easier and more enjoyable (Auctioneer, Auctionator, Tradeskillmaster to name a few). Utilize your professions and, if you have more than one toon, use them all together! Mine some ore, prospect it, craft some gems then make jewelry for your enchanter to disenchant and so on! 

But most importantly, HAVE FUN. If you feel like all the time your spending on the AH is a 2nd job, you're doing it wrong :).

Shoutouts for any blogs, podcasts or streams that helped you out along the way:Jim Younkin is a pretty cool guy I've checked out a few times. He's a very successful gold maker that really puts himself out there to help people with the market. I know he has tutorials out on how to run Tradeskillmaster and stuff but I haven't checked it out myself. Tarou WoW guides on youtube. When I first started gold making what little help I sought out was from this guy right here. Undermine Journal - Such a good website for ideas, information, and tools to help you out on your server specifically. 

What's your new goal, if any?I've slowed down a bit but I'm back at it now that I've returned to the game about three weeks ago. I churned out 24k in sales today and it felt so good I think I might start putting more time into it. I'm comfortable with the amount that I have but for giggles I am going to make the push for 250k. Although, if I decide to sell the Sky Golem I'm going to be making shortly, I might need to raise the bar to 350k. I thought that I'd be content with the 100k but what can I say except... "Can't stop, addicted to the shin dig" lol

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A big 'Thank You' to Wareitout for sending in his Interview - I love reading all the different stories & how people get to their Milestones. As this was submitted about a month ago, I'm sure he's made his Sky Golem by now - let us know if you sold it or decided to keep it Wareitout!

Getting caught by the mailbox autodelete is something I think many goldmakers are familiar with - I did the same last year - stopped playing abruptly & lost a shedload of stuff! Now I'm more careful and only send stuff via my banker - that way, if I don't log an alt for a long while, the mail bounces back to my banker who I log everyday & I see the stuff coming back! When I went off on my travels a few weeks ago, I specifically logged every alt & sent everything back to my banker or took it out of the mail & into the alts bags. It left me with messy bags now but at least I didn't lose anything!

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Timeless Isle - Island of Loot & Leather

Patch 5.4 finally arrived this week and as planned, I took all my crafting alts out to do some random killing in Pandaria to get the relevant new recipes (Hardened Magnificent Hide, Celestial Cloth, Balanced Trillium Ingot & Jard's Peculiar Energy Source) before taking my main over to the new Timeless Isle. Having been at work on Patch Day, I didn't get to the Isle until about 9pm and to say it was crazy busy would probably be the biggest understatement of the year! I didn't know that many people were still playing!

I probably made the best decision to do my craft/AH stuff before heading to the Isle though! There were only 4 Crafted Malevolent PvP items on the AH until I got there! My Paladin was only just about geared for the very first level of LFR so the mobs on the Isle are pretty hard work for her! With so many other players there though, I was pretty much able to just run around & pick up the treasure chests which yielded about 6 new pieces of item level 496 Epic armor items as well as shedloads of Timeless Coins, the new currency.

The following day I had booked as holiday - I expected to be busy playing all the new stuff in WoW but I have to be honest, I'm not really getting it! It's pretty hard work on a rubbish Paladin so I guess I need to take my even worse geared but seemingly unkillable DK over to do the questing type stuff! I did play for a few hours on Thursday but again, mainly running around picking up chests and skinning!

Oh my! The best thing about the Isle for me is the skinning! It is heaven to land on the beach & just see turtle carcasses stretching to the horizon! Skinning them also gives a few Timeless Coins each so although I won't be getting my 50,000 coin trinket anytime soon, I am picking up bagloads of free Exotic Leather! The other side effect of this is that there is loads of cheap Exotic Leather on the Auction House. I've been buying it up whenever I see it at 40g a stack or less.

Now apart from the fact that I need 2 x Magnificent Hides for 2 Leatherworkers each day for the Hardened Magnificent Hide cooldown (for the next 45+ days!), I've also been watching the Magnificent Hide market for a while & it rarely if ever, drops below 150g per Hide. I'm thinking that if I can control the availability of cheap Exotic Leather, I can probably control the price of Magnificent Hides too. If I have too many, I can just sell them at 150g or more & make an easy 50g profit each!

I'll be doing my usual What's Been Selling post on Monday but I will say now that the gold hasn't been flowing anywhere near as fast as I had hoped. It is flowing though so I'll tell you more about that next time. How has the new stuff affected your goldmaking? Too busy playing or are you raking it in at the Auction House?

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What's Been Selling This Week? 26th August Edition

What a wild ride it's been this week! Not that my sales really show it but I made a couple of great deals early in the week & they should start paying off over the next week or so. I also found a gold mine in one of my banks so all in all, it's been a pretty good week!

Over the last few weekly reports, I've been banging on about Mysterious Fortune Cards and oh look! there they are again at the top of my earnings list! This week though, I've had a lot of competition from 2 people selling them at 7-8g a piece so to start the week, I just slowed down & thought I'd wait them out. Well, until I saw that one of them was trying to offload all his stock at 6g each in the trade channel! I quickly logged a different alt and whispered him - he had 1600 cards. I hesitated so he dropped his price to 5g each at which point I snapped them up! He also offered me the Starlight Ink he had so I grabbed a couple hundred of those too - at 20g each which is less than 50% of the current market price. I've been selling the shoulder inscription scrolls quite well so I thought I'd soon shift the inks too.

By Wednesday evening, the other cheap MFC guy had sold out or gone AFK for a while so I listed 400 cards in various stack sizes & actually barked a couple of times in trade. You can see the results in the screenshot - all 400 sold by the next morning at 16g each! Happy Nev that day.

I've also been doing a bit of prospecting & gem cutting - now that I'm using TSM2, I seem to have got the bug again - I think the challenge of making it work has given me the spark back for now. My server is still slow though so I'm not shifting gems at any great pace - I'm hoping the Connected Realms will help to fix that though!

I've also been picking up more & more of the 83/84 MoP Green Armor - buying any below 50g and reselling them for 199g or 225g. The usual Mammoth Mining Bags & Netherweave bags have been selling - although Netherweave Cloth seems to be getting more expensive these days. I can wait though - I'll just snatch the really cheap stuff & make bags in batches when I remember.

So what's this goldmine I found in my Rogue's bank? Cataclysm uncommon gems - 100's of them I'd totally forgotten about! I popped over the the Auction House to check the price of Hypnotic Dust. At 8-10g a piece, I decided it was worth the time to convert all those gems to rings & necklaces to disenchant. Above you can see some of the result - almost 1400g in one evening and I still have about 10 stacks of Dust to sell! That was a nice little bonus this week.

As an update to yesterdays Leveling Leatherworking post, I can now report that the enchanting materials I got from disenchanting all the low level stuff has netted about 2700g so far and the MoP green armor which I decided to sell has netted about 1300g so far. After an initial outlay of about 4200g to buy all the leather I needed, I've regained about 4000g so far and I still have some materials & armor pieces left to sell. I think it's just about paid for itself already you know :)  Now if I can just do the same with Engineering I'll be really happy!

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Leveling Leatherworking Before Patch 5.4

After I wrote my post a couple of weeks ago on the New Crafting Materials for 5.4, I realised just how long it was going to take me to learn all the new PvP crafted item recipes so I decided to sacrifice my 2nd Tailor and level a 2nd Leatherworker instead. I thought I'd share with you how I did it, how much it cost & how much it's going to save my sanity going forward!

Now usually when I level a profession on a high level character, I take my time & pick up all the materials off the Auction House as cheaply as I can. I use the Wow Professions website and their very handy list of materials as a shopping guide and just check out the Auction House each time I visit. But this time we have a deadline of 10th/11th September for the patch release date & I want to be ready for it so I bit the bullet & just went head first into buying everything I needed.

Luckily I decided to do this on the weekend when prices are often a bit cheaper anyway and I managed to pick up everything I needed to get me to 450 skill points for about 1600 gold. I did have a few bits in my main Leatherworkers bank such as hides and some part stacks of various leathers but not much really.

The painful bit was buying the Savage Leather - I could easily have taken my Skinner out for a couple of hours but I was on a roll and just wanted to get this done! I paid almost 2500 gold to get through the Cataclysm skill levels but finally made it to 500 when I could start some of the newer MoP recipes using Exotic Leather I'd already picked up cheaply on my main Leatherworker.

So after about 4 hours of buying, sorting banks, logging alts to gather bits & pieces & of course, learning & crafting, I finally made it to skill level 570 and got stuck! It's at this point that leveling a profession on a level 86 character sucks! I need just one Spirit of Harmony to buy a Contenders PvP recipe (outdated now but still cheap for a few more levels) or I need to get her out questing so she can pick up the 2 world drop Magnificent Hide recipes.

On the basis that it's the Magnificent Hide recipe that I really want & need, I'm going to be quite happy if I can pick that up quickly & just do the cooldown each day to build up my Magnificent Hide stock ready for patch 5.4 but I will need to be maxed 600 skill points to use any discovered recipes so I haven't got enough days left before patch to get there. Luckily my Rogue & Hunter both need a bit of gear to start their questing so I made a few bits for them and got a few more points that way.

Now here comes the nice surprise of all this - I had no use for anything that I crafted, I couldn't be bothered to try to sell any of the low level stuff either so I sent almost everything to my Enchanter. She spent a happy half hour disenchanting it all & I posted all the enchanting materials on the Auction House. I did send the MoP items to my banker/auction alt though - some of it is selling at 50g or more which is still better than the enchanting mats from it.

Just 4 hours after I listed everything, I popped back to see if it was selling. Oh man! Was I a happy banker - almost 1600 gold in the mailbox & over 40 auctions still to go. I haven't tallied up how many of the MoP greens have sold either but the overall cost of leveling my 2nd Leatherworker is coming down all the time!

As for my sanity - well, not having to wait almost 90 days to get all the new PvP recipes will definitely help! I know I'm going to end up with duplicate patterns so it won't halve the time taken but it should reduce it significantly. It will also give me a headstart on many of my competitors so I'm really looking forward to making a killing on this stuff!

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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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New Crafting Materials for Patch 5.4

With the imminent arrival of Patch 5.4 and all the changes to crafting professions, I thought I'd have a little dig into which materials I'm going to need & how many I should be buying now. I'm not usually a fan of major stockpiling, I prefer to buy cheap materials every time I see them rather than when I want to craft & yes, that does mean I have a stock of materials but nowhere near the quantities that many gold makers pile up before a major patch.

This time though, the raw materials on my server seem to be dropping in price right now which is kind of strange but I'm not complaining! I've never really prepped for a major patch before for various reasons but I thought I'd give it a go this time round!

So what are the new materials that my Tailor, Leatherworker & Blacksmith are going to be making?

• Celestial Cloth = 10 Bolts of Windwool Cloth (4 bolts per stack of Windwool Cloth so 2.5 x basic stack cost)
• Hardened Magnificent Hide = 2 Magnificent Hides (1 stack of Exotic Leather per hide if I only use the daily cooldown to make it, 2.5stacks if I want to make as many as I like)
• Balanced Trillium Ingot = 1 Trillium Bar (made from 2 black & 2 white Trillium Ore or via Alchemy transmute of 10 Ghost Iron Bars (which is 1 stack of Ghost Iron Ore)).

Each of these materials is on a daily cooldown and is bind on pickup so you won't be seeing any of these on the Auction House. Each time you make one though, you will 'discover' a new PvP armor recipe or one of the new Epic item level 553 legs or belts. It's the crafted PvP gear for all three professions that interest me as a gold making non-raider. The Epic items take 21 or 28 daily cooldowns to make and I'm not sure the sale price of the final piece will make up for lost sales of the less expensive PvP gear.

The real kicker is the sheer number of PvP patterns to learn - for Tailoring it's 45, for Leatherworking it's 89 & for Blacksmithing it's 35 (that's if I counted them correctly in Wowhead professions tabs!). It's at times like this I almost regret Leatherworking being my main profession but it does have some advantages! OK, yes, it's going to take me twice as long to learn all the Leather & Mail armor recipes but it does mean that I stand a good chance of lower competition for the first few weeks. 

Think about it - in 35 days, any Blacksmith that's done their discovery every day will have all the recipes but so will all the other Blacksmiths so there will be competition on every piece of plate PvP gear! Leatherworkers won't even have half their recipes by then & given that Leatherworking isn't as popular a profession as Blacksmithing, there are fewer Leatherworkers to compete with me on those recipes that we have in common. The same thing applies to Tailoring of course but 45 days in and all the patterns will be learnt & available. 

On this basis a Blacksmith will need 1 stack of Ghost iron Ore per discovery so 35 stacks. A Tailor will need 2.5 stacks x 45 which is 113 stacks (rounded up!) and a poor Leatherworker will need 178 Magnificent Hides. The inequality in costs of these basic materials is really obvious at this stage - a stack of Windwool Cloth is 30-50 gold, a stack of Ghost Iron Ore is 30-60 gold but a Magnificent Hide which is on cooldown too is anywhere from 100-200 gold each and you need 2 of them every day!

Right now I have already got more than enough Ghost Iron Ore & Windwool Cloth to make all these cooldown items for both my Blacksmith & Tailor. My Leatherworker has been storing up Magnificent Hides for a couple of weeks now & I've been buying some off the Auction House when they fall to the 100g or less point but I'm still not going to have enough ready made. Luckily for me, the price of Exotic Leather has dropped sharply on my server this week so I may have to go the more expensive route & use the non-cooldown, 50 Exotic Leathers recipe to make extra Magnificent Hides.

Ok, so that's the armor crafting professions, what about the others? Well Engineering is getting a fabulous new mount - the Sky Golem - which requires Living Steel & also uses a daily cooldown item called Jards Peculiar Energy Source. This Peculiar Energy Source uses Ghost Iron Bars so that's more Ghost Iron Ore required. Then of course, there's the Jewelcrafting - a new raid & new Epic armor patterns means a bump in demand for gems (and enchants too) with Ghost Iron Ore being prospected to get them. I already have maybe 200-300 stacks of Ore sitting around so I'll be all set when the patch goes live. I'm not going to stop buying though - all those PvP Plate armors use Ghost Iron Bars as well so I'll be smelting until I'm blue in the face I think!

So if you like farming & you want a suggestion of what to farm over the next few weeks, I think this analysis kind of points you to Leather farming. You could go mining of course or on a mob killing spree to get cloth but my advice would be look for leather - less competition from bots and others players picking up cloth as they quest anyway.

How is your patch 5.4 preparation coming along? Have you got enough stuff or are you still buying up your Auction House? let us know in the comments below :)

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20 Days of Gold Making - Day 15 Professions

The question for today on my 20 Days of Gold Making is "Professions - do you have all of them, some or none? Which is your favorite for goldmaking?" which is both an easy & a tough one for me. Yes, I have all the professions, most are maxed with the exception of herbalism (my loved/hated Rogue) and Engineering which is on my level 50-something Warlock. As for which is my favorite for gold making, that changes almost week by week!

If you've been reading here for a while, you'll know that glyphs & gems were my main gold makers during Cataclysm but with the advent of Mists of Pandaria, both seem to have ground to a halt. I've been transmuting Trillium & Living Steel on both my Transmute alchemists and making a few flasks here & there too but I can't say Alchemy is my favorite profession right now.

My paladin is really the only alt with any reputation locked recipes at the moment and she is my skinner/leatherworker. I've been making a mix of the various leg armors and the Epic gloves to make best use of her Spirits of Harmony which I get from doing the dailies & planting Songbell Seeds on her Tillers farm. If I can get cheap Savage Leather, I'm also making the Triple-Reinforced Mining Bags (to use up my Volatile Earths) and the Royal Scribe's Satchel (to use up my Inferno Inks). These have been selling around the 1000g mark, albeit slowly but I'm in no rush to get rid of them - they sit in my mailbox in 1 or 2 mails & I just take out another when one sells.

I've also been making quite good profits from the Mammoth Mining Bags - 48 pieces of Borean Leather usually cost me around the 1-2g mark so my maximum crafting costs for them is 96g. Until recently, I had managed to push the price of these bags up to around the 350g - 400g mark but I have a competitor now who insists that the list price should be 150g!

Now I know that I can sell them at 350g so I could buy out her cheaper bags but the problem is that at 350g, they don't sell quite so quickly and as she is both a skinner & leatherworker in the level 70's, she is obviously picking up Borean Leather as she is questing in Northrend. If I buy her bags, she will just produce more & I will run out of space before she gives up this market. So what I'm doing is snatching up most of the Borean Leather on the Auction House at every opportunity including Heavy Borean Leather & Borean Leather Scraps and converting it all to Heavy Borean Leather.

Once she hits level 80 & moves on to the Cataclysm areas, I'm hoping she will 'forget' this market but in the meantime, I am undercutting her & if she doesn't post any bags, I'm putting my price back up to around 250g. I'm still making pretty good profits so I'll stay in this market.

I've also been making some of the PvP armor, prices can vary a great deal from day to day so I just make a few pieces and jump in & out of the market when the prices are high. I'm also doing this on my Blacksmith but she only has 2 of the PvP recipes right now as she is only level 87 & struggling to get Spirits of Harmony. My tailor is still level 85 though and not likely to be leveling any time soon so the PvP Tailoring recipes will have to wait!

I've always had a soft spot for Leatherworking - it's my only original profession on my very first ever alt so I have recipes that are hard to get or no longer in game, I've slaved through various dungeons in the hope of getting the Stylin' leather hats recipes & I've got a snatch list for hard to get materials for some of the lower level recipes too. I really should start making those again - I wonder if they still sell? Hmmm, new post idea there I guess :)

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Leather Conversions Spreadsheet & Bags

Leather Conversion

I promised you more spreadsheets so today we have a Leatherworker's spreadsheet. I wrote a post way back near the beginning of Cataclysm about converting leather scraps up to better qualities as a way to make some easy gold. It's nice to see that the old tips & tricks still work now that Mists of Pandaria is live & I've included some of the older conversions in this spreadsheet as there is still gold to be made there.

Now there are two ways to use this spreadsheet - you can download a copy of my Leather Conversion spreadsheet & just manually input prices from your Auction House or you can use The Undermine Journal .csv file as I explained in last weeks post Easy Data from TUJ.

If you decide to manually input the prices, you will need to overwrite the VLookup formulas in column B but the rest of the spreadsheet will still work. (If you want to try your own VLookup formulas, keep reading, instructions at end of post)

If you want to try the TUJ data file, follow the instructions in the post to get a .csv file onto your PC. Open it in Excel or Open Office & just copy/paste the whole sheet into tab 2 of my Leather Conversion spreadsheet. It should pull the data through to the main sheet automatically.

Leather Conversions Spreadsheet

So what are we looking at? Well, I've tried to keep it fairly simple but it took me a while to get there so I hope you can follow what I've done! Converting up from the various leather scraps is a bit more time-consuming but can be very profitable - just look at the price of Savage Leather Scraps on my server today (red dot line). Converting up from those scraps means that my Savage Leather would only cost me 33 silver - a big saving over the 9 gold or more that someone is trying to sell their Savage Leather at! If there are enough Savage Leather Scraps to convert to a Pristine Hide (250 scraps, in case you were wondering), that's only 17 gold 50 silver for a Pristine Hide - big profit there or even use the ultra cheap hide to make the scribe or mining bags for even more profits!

Now I've only included the bags here but you can easily add rows for leg armours or anything else you like - add a row for the leg armor & a row for each type of material it uses besides the leather then use a VLookup formula to get the prices from the TUJ data file. A quick a-b formula later & you should see if it would be profitable or not.

Ok so I promised help with the VLookup formula for those of you not sure about spreadsheets. It's really very easy but sometimes the help files make it confusing. This is what Open Office says :-

"Syntax

=VLOOKUP(SearchCriterion; Array; Index; SortOrder)

SearchCriterion is the value searched for in the first column of the array.

Array is the reference, which is to comprise at least two columns.

Index is the number of the column in the array that contains the value to be returned. The first column has the number 1.

SortOrder is an optional parameter that indicates whether the first column in the array is sorted in ascending order. Enter the Boolean value FALSE or zero if the first column is not sorted in ascending order. Sorted columns can be searched much faster and the function always returns a value, even if the search value was not matched exactly, if it is between the lowest and highest value of the sorted list. In unsorted lists, the search value must be matched exactly. Otherwise the function will return this message: Error: Value Not Available."

OK - so the Search Criterion is what you are looking for in that huge table of data - in our case Savage leather, Pristine Hide etc. For this formula to work, your description in the main spreadsheet must be identical to that in the data file so watch for spelling mistakes & random apostrophes.

The Array part of the formula is merely the parts of the huge data file that the formula is going to look at. The formula doesn't need to look at the whole file, it always starts with the item name column so you have to tell the formula which columns to look at. In our case, it only needs columns C & D so I click C1, hold down the shift button & page down to D12000+.

The Index part of the formula is which column contains the data you want to use in the formula - for us that would be column D or 2 (it's the 2nd column in our array). If we wanted to pull data from other columns, we would just increase the Array columns (say columns C to H) & put a 3,4,5 or 6 in the formula to pull data from that column.

Sort Order is important to us here - the data file is so big, we really don't want to sort it in ascending order before we do anything so the last part of the Vlookup formula for us is a 0 (zero).

So for this file, our Vlookup formula looks like this 

=VLOOKUP(A5;'TUJ Data'.$C$2:$D$12668;2;0)/10000

The Undermine Journal data prices are expressed in coppers so I have divided the Vlookup results by 10,000 to get to a gold/silver price.

So there we go! I hope it's clearer than mud to those of you who need the help but if you are having problems, do feel free to comment, tweet me or email me & I will try to help further. 

As for leather converting - don't forget, you can convert the lower leathers up to higher ones too - it's rarely profitable but if you just need that 1 or 2 more pieces to get a skill point, it can be a time saver.

Image © Austin Appraiser under Creative Commons licence

Shake That Salt Shaker - Engineers Get Groovy!

© TheGiantVermin, Salt Shakers on Flickr, under CC Licence

Just a short post today as I'm away from home & can't access my main account. I will resume my weekly sales updates once I return home again though.

One of the nifty gadgets that Engineers can make is the Salt Shaker. It requires an engineering skill of 250 & is usable only by Leatherworkers with a skill level of 250. This came to my attention whilst I was writing the Engineering pets posts recently. The Tranquil Mechanical Yeti requires Cured Rugged Hide in its' making & part of the process of curing is to refine deeprock salt.

Salt Shaker Materials

1 Mithril Casing = 3 Mithril Bars = 3 Mithril Ore
6 Thorium Bars = 6 Thorium Ore
3 Gold Power Core = 1 Gold bar = 1 Gold Ore

The salt shaker originally had a cooldown but that was removed & now the only limit to how much refined deeprock salt you can make is how much deeprock salt you can source. It's not the most widely used material but the drop rate is fairly low so I'd say your best source will be the Auction House over time.

Cured Rugged Hides are used in level 60 Epic & Rare armors including the Black & Blue Dragonscale sets. I'm not sure if these are good mogging items as I haven't kept up with mogging trends but you should be able to see from your own servers data on The Undermine Journal.

As I mentioned above, the main use I can see for cured rugged hide is in manufacturing the Mechanical Yeti. So with the salt shaker, I can therefore make money in several ways

• As a LW'er, I can hoard as much deeprock salt as possible & refine it for sale to other leatherworkers
• As a LW'er, I can snatch up rugged hides to cure & also sell to other leatherworkers or engineers
• An an Engineer, I can make Salt Shakers & sell to leatherworkers

The other good thing about the Salt Shaker is that many Engineers forget about them once they level past 250 but the salt shaker can give skill points all the way up to 290 (altho it goes green at 280, so probably hard work to get those last few points this way). If you make a few at 250 & find they sell on your server, then why not make a few extra, get the skill points & make gold while you're at it? lol

On my EU servers, the salt shaker sells for around 55 gold with materials in the 15 gold range. It's not the fastest seller but most leatherworkers will need one at some point & with the influx of leather wearing Pandas soon, I'd like to feel fairly confident that there will be a boom in leatherworking too.

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 :)

Multi-Tasking FTW!

I think I've mentioned before that I'm working on my Loremaster achievement but I'm also working on various reputations for The Exalted achievement & I'm doing the rep grinds that give mounts or pets for those achieves too! When I say I'm working on my Loremaster, what that really means is that I pick a zone based on what rep, mount or pet I can get or what materials I'm having problems with at the AH. Last week I went to Winterspring and as I've never quested there on my pally, I decided to keep a good list of what I picked up through the zone.

I was at about 0/3000 Neutral rep with the Wintersaber Trainers but I really want the Frostsaber mount so I decided to combine the rep grind with the questing. My pally is also my skinner/LW'er & I'm constantly struggling to find affordable Thick Leather & Rugged Leather at the AH so I emptied my bags & off I went.

2-3hrs of questing & a bit of rep grinding later & this is what I'd picked up, with their current AH values on my server:-

74 Thick Leather (222g)

94 Rugged Leather (376g)

4 Thick Hides (28g)

7 Rugged Hides (35g)

38 Runecloth (27g - 40g)

25 Bear Flank (30g)

18 Giant Egg (36g)

Recipe: Elixir of Giants (48g)

1 Elemental Water (7g)

1 Core of Earth (2g)

1 Globe of Water (5g)

1 Ironweb Spidersilk (4g)

5 BoE Green items

So that's a total of 820g and 130g from loot, vendor trash & quest rewards makes a grand total of 950g - woop woop! lol

I didn't get very far with my rep grind though - only about 1200 into Friendly because I googled for a guide & found out that the method for getting the Frostsaber mount is changing in patch 4.1. Instead of killing chimaera, bears & furbolgs, Blizzard are introducing a 20 day quest chain to feed, train & generally care for your cub. I didn't think I could grind the rep before the patch hit (there was a possibility of it hitting today) but now I have another week to do it, I may carry on & stockpile the leathers at the same time.

If you're a miner, Winterspring is still good for Thorium, particularly the old favourite Yeti Cave as well as Owlwing Thicket & Frostwhisper Gorge.

For herbalists, Winterspring is the only place to find Icecap as far as I can tell & there's a fair bit of Mountain Silversage here too.

For those of you who sell limited supply vendor items/recipes/patterns, look for Xizzer Fizzbolt in Everlook - he usually has 5 engineering schematics - including Fused Wiring which I wrote about last week!

If you haven't got your Timbermaw Rep up, I'd recommend Alto's post but do Winterspring first - you get Winterfall Spirit Beads when you kill the Ursa's & Shamans for the rep quest which are useless if you already have Timbermaw rep as they are soulbound & can't be passed to an alt or sold.

So, where do I go next on my Loremaster/Exalted/mount chase? Any suggestions welcome or if you'd just like me to cover a particular zone in a similar vein to this post, let me know in comments or you can contact me via my new gmail address at the top left of the page :) I look forward to hearing from you *she says, hopefully* lol

Scavenging For Gold

When I started writing this post, it was to be a follow-up to my Low Level Leatherworking post but as I delved deeper into the numbers, it became quite obvious to me that Leatherworking on it's own is not quite as profitable as I'd originally thought! If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll know that I dropped mining & picked up skinning again on my leatherworking pally as I was finding it expensive to max my skills using bought leather.

Now I'm guessing but I think a lot of players dropped skinning as they neared Wrath max LW'ing because the top level items didn't actually use that much leather. With the release of Cata, top level LW recipes once again increased the need for Savage leather but I'm not sure many players went & relevelled skinning.

The other change that seems to have affected leather supplies is the ability to track herbs & ores at the same time - the old advice was to put 2 gathering skills on a new alt - usually herbing/skinning or mining/skinning but with the ability to track herb & ores at the same time - most people now recommend herbing/mining for a new alt - further reducing the number of skinners out there.

My original post mentioned 4 low level recipes you could make for profit but I've since added a few more to my repertoire, including :-

White Leather Jerkin - 8 light leather

Swift Boots - heavy leather, swiftness potion & thick spider's silk

Black Dragonscale Breastplate - 25 rugged leather, 25 black dragonscale & 1 cured rugged hide

Shadowskin Gloves - 8 thick leather, 8 shadow silk & 4 cured heavy hides

Blackstorm Leggings - 10 rugged leather, 2 cured thick hides & 8 breath of wind

Warbear Harness - 28 rugged leather & 12 warbear leather

So I've added thick spider's silk, black dragonscale, shadow silk, breath of wind, warbear leather & swiftness potion to my snatch/dealfinder list & I pick them up for silvers whenever I see them. Breath of wind is probably the most expensive but as a rule, I've not paid more than 4g each for them over the last 2 weeks. I'm not able to find all the mats at my prices all the time so I buy them as & when I see them cheap & let my stock build up a little. Once I have enough mats, I craft a few items & post them for sale.

But this week I've been having trouble getting rugged & thick leather - there's been virtually none on the AH most times I've looked & if there was some, it was at silly high prices - as high as 8-10g per piece!

This is where your scavenging skills come in! It's perfect if you have low capital too as the only outlay is time & perhaps a few flight path fees if you don't have flying yet.

If you haven't found it before, wow-professions.com is a wonderful resource for levelling any profession - it's also great to give you an idea of where to find each type of leather - I'm not suggesting to go out to kill stuff just for the leather mind you, oh no - we're gonna be a bit sneaky! Say you need borean leather - well, we both know that Sholazar Basin is full of creatures being killed regularly so type in /who sholazar basin & if there are more than 2 or 3 players of the appropriate level there, it may be worth following them around as they quest to tidy up behind them. If you're lucky, they won't be skinners themselves or you may find some opposite faction players levelling there too - it's all 'free' leather for your scavenging pleasure :)

The one tip I would give is to hang back a bit though - I've found that some players leave a bit of trash loot on the carcass once they realise you're skinning their kills - it makes the carcass un-skinnable :(

The most obvious place for scavenging is Tol Barad just after your faction wins - everyone dashes over there to do their dailies & you can easily pick up 3 stacks from the crocs in 10 minutes or so if you don't have much competition.

I'm currently working on some reputations & my Loremaster achievement so I pick my zone depending on what leather I need. You could do the same or you could pick your zone & skin whilst waiting on the dungeon queues. Either way, you're not standing around in Stormwind or Orgrimmar wasting time, after all 'Time is money, friend'.

What's Been Selling This Week?

Last week was probably one of my best ever weeks - shifting those Maelstrom Crystals certainly helped my numbers but I've continued with the cut gems albeit still on a fairly small scale.

I also had a brainwave & managed to work out roughly how much I'd spent in the week - 18k spent so that's 47k profit which puts me nicely over the 250k mark - next stop 500k please :-)

I mentioned the Rogues Decks last week & as you can see, they made in onto my leaderboard this week. The only reason the Swords Deck isn't on there is that I ran out of decks to sell! I'm going to hang on to my 'green' inks & try this again next month. I've always sold a few rogues &  swords decks but never this many - I guess there's an 'Insane' achievement underway for a few people on my server.

On the JC front - we had the nightstone daily 3 days in a row then 3 days of the zephyrite daily. The jasper daily hit on the weekend - I have trouble selling gems on the weekend due to very active undercutters but I suppose I can let them have a little bit of space to play!

It surprised me when I looked at these figures as I've actually not been paying so much attention to gold making this week - my little jc/inscription DK who sat at lvl 77 for about 6 weeks has suddenly grown on me & I hit lvl 85 on her on Saturday after a week of solid questing & I was actually brave enough to do some random dungeons.

My poor pally has been sitting around since she hit 85 as I was really embarrassed by her poor DPS - I've been struggling with the changes brought in pre-Cata but I spent a lot of time on various websites reading up, made a few changes & risked taking her through a dungeon last night too. I was pleasantly surprised when her DPS turned out to be about 2-3k higher than I expected - still not brilliant but it's a start in the right direction!

So for the coming week, I'm still data gathering for my blacksmithing project & I've got a shedload of medium leather so I'm going to try TSM on my LW'er. I've now got 2 plate wearers to gear up so I'll be questing & dungeoning for rep & gear for them & my rogue needs to get more guild rep too so I'm going to be busy this week!

A Quick Tip for the Weekend - Work That Leather!

Sometimes I read tips in blogs or on forums & jot it down to try/look into later. This is one of those tips that got buried in the snowfall of paper notes on my desk but I spilt my coffee this morning & had to do a rescue mission (oops!) so this one, quite literally, floated to the top!

Leather - yes, just boring old Borean Leather or Savage Leather - it appears to work for both which is rather nice if you're levelling a skinner through Northrend at the moment :)

I've had a look on 2 different servers for these prices and they vary wildly so it's not a guaranteed money maker but it's worth a look on your server.

Server 1 - Savage Leather 4.5g (x5=1 heavy @ 22.5g) (x50=225g)
Server 1 - Heavy Savage Leather 23g (x10=230g)
Server 1 - Pristine Hide 300g

So it doesn't matter whether I buy Savage or Heavy Savage Leather - when I hand in 10 Heavy Savage Leather to get my Pristine Hide (at the Twilight Highlands leather trader) - my profit here will be 70-75g.

Server 2 - Savage leather 4g (x5=1 heavy @ 20g) (x50=200g)
Server 2 - Heavy Savage Leather 39g (x10=390g)
Server 2 - Pristine Hide 340g

But look at this! Server 2 has a much wider discrepancy - my only choice here is whether I can sell 10 Heavy Savage Leather to make profit of 10x19g or I go for slightly less profit but only have 1 item to sell (and by the looks of it, a scarcer commodity, less competition so I could perhaps push prices up a little).

Obviously the Savage -> Heavy Savage conversion only works if you have a Leatherworker (or access to one, of course) but if the prices work in your favour, it may be worth a visit to the trader in Twilight Highlands. I've also seen (& bought!) stacks of Savage Leather Scraps for 11g a stack - that's 2.75g per Savage leather when converted, so it's worth keeping an eye on those too.

I actually don't do this very often - I've been popping over to Tol Barad for the 'virtually' free leather there from skinning the crocs that everyone is killing for the daily. I say virtually free because it costs me time but I can pick up 10 Heavy Savage leather in less than 10 mins on a good day & 20 minutes on a bad day so it doesn't even cost that much time! Add in the Strange Bloated Stomachs & Crocolisk Tail which I cook & sell, it's a pretty good little earner.

Now at the beginning, I mentioned Borean Leather - same principle - 5 Borean Leather Scraps = 1 Borean Leather, x6 = 1 heavy Borean leather

Server 1 - Borean Leather Scraps 0.15g (x5=0.75g) (x6 = 4.50g per heavy)
Server 1 - Borean Leather 1.2g (x5=7.2g per heavy)
Server 1 - Heavy Borean Leather 14g

Server 2 - Borean Leather Scraps 0.65g (x5=3.25g) (x6 = 19.50g per heavy)
Server 2 - Borean Leather 2.0g (x5=10.0g per heavy)
Server 2 - Heavy Borean Leather 17g

On either server, profit from converting Borean Leather to Heavy Borean Leather is around 7g, scraps prices can vary wildly so on a good day, you may get server 1 prices!

Once you've got used to doing the quick maths in your head, you'll know at a glance whether it's worth going for on any given day - the other items to remember is the Mammoth Mining Bag & Trapper's Travelling Pack - both take 8 Heavy Borean or 48 Borean Leather - but they usually sell for around 200g on server 2 so it's not often that I ever sell Heavy Borean Leather as it is, there's better profit in the bags for me.

Besides, a girl can never have too many bags, can she? lol

Patch 4.0.6 - What Caught My Eye?

I've seen other blogs talking about this patch for weeks now but the word on the wind is that it's going live tomorrow in USA & that means Wednesday morning for us in UK & Europe. I think it's safe to say that most regular gold blog readers know about the 3 new enchants & 3 new meta gems as well as the changes to the existing meta gems. There's a whole host of little bits & pieces in there for classes, gear & professions but 4 tiny snippets caught my eye. The whole lot is here if you want to have a look for yourself.

Not the biggest gold-making news by far but the lowly & seemingly useless Murglesnout is going to have it's own recipe, the Scalding Murglesnout! So now when you fish up all that fish, at least you'll be able to level your cooking a bit or save on mana drinks between fights. I doubt it will sell for big money at the AH - it's not a buff food after all but if you're fishing them up anyway, you may as well try to make the best out of them.

Secondly, the drop rate for Spider's Silk has been improved. If you read my lowbie LW post a while ago, you'll know that 1 of the items I recommended uses Spider's Silk & whilst I've been snatching it on my server for a while, supplies have definitely dried up lately. I'm not sure whether this improved drop rate is a good thing or not. Personally, it was always a pain to farm for so I always kept it when any alts picked it up.

I think most of the spider's silk I've picked up at the AH recently have been from levelling alts or people making space in their banks. Why do I say that? Well, the LW recipe & 2 tailoring recipes that use it most are blue items & there have been very few on the AH at all. This suggests that the people selling the silks don't have LW or Tailoring or they just can't be bothered with the lowbie stuff.

The third snippet to catch my eye is that they have improved the LW levelling from 500-510! Grrrrr, my LW is at 512, having struggled through with that stupid Cloak of Beasts just a week or so ago!

And lastly, the drops from the Tiny Treasure Chests have been improved slightly. It will be interesting to find out how much they mean by 'slightly', not that I'm a great tiny treasure chest farmer or anything but I have tried. I'm just not very good at killing lots of stuff quickly yet :)

Apart from the obvious biggies, what's caught your eye in the patch notes?

So You Don't Have a High Level Leatherworker...

So what? You can still make some nice gold at lower levels, even as early as level 10! Those of you who'd looked at my auction house alt experiment posts will know that I've also started levelling a hunter on the same server. I picked up skinning & leatherworking and so far have made a few pieces for myself but she's only level 10 so I haven't really got into my stride yet.

However, my main is level 85 and also has leatherworking (at 485 so far). I remember when I was first levelling her & her leatherworking, I carried on making the lvl 5-15 stuff long after she had passed them for skill points as the light leather was so cheap & the really low level stuff was selling well. With the redesign of the whole questing process & rewards, I don't know if this still holds true but it's worth looking at for yourself if you are new to the game or starting on a new server.

The earliest good pattern is Toughened Leather Armor available at skill level 120 - it takes 10 medium leather, 6 cured light hides & 2 fine threads but it currently sells for anywhere between 30-50g. As it is for level 19's, it's a perfect twink piece so although you probably won't sell lots every day, it will sell.

Next up is the Toughened Leather Gloves available at skill level 135. This one only takes 4 medium leather, 2 cured medium hides, 2 spider's silk, 2 elixir of defense & 2 fine threads but I usually post these at 95g each & more often than not, they sell within 24hrs. I have Spider's Silk on my snatch list & rarely pay more than 1-2g each for them.

At skill 155, you pop over to Darnassus (if you haven't already!) and find the leatherworking supplies vendor Saenorion to buy Pattern: Barbaric Bracers. This is a limited spawn recipe but I've never had any problems getting it. If he doesn't have it when you get there, give it 10 mins - wander round and enjoy this beautiful city, maybe do some fishing to get your skill up then pop back.

There are a few more mats for this one, 8 heavy leather, 4 large fangs, 1 raptor hide, 4 small lustrous pearls & 2 cured heavy hides but none of them are particularly expensive. If you're skinning as you level, many of the mats will be dropping for you anyway.

If you're making this on a high level toon, just put the large fangs & raptor hide on your snatch list or if you're levelling alts, bear this recipe in mind and send across any fangs or raptor hide they pick up. These bracers regularly sell for 125g, again within 24hrs usually.

This next recipe took some getting! I parked an alt in Booty Bay & logged her several times for 2 days before Rikqiz deigned to sell me the Pattern: Gem Studded Leather Belt. I don't think it's that rare, just my timing being bad! This one requires skill level 185, has really simple mats & sells for 120g every time I list it. Having a lowbie jewelcrafter, I always send all gems I loot to her which means I usually only need to buy the heavy hides. It requires 4 cured heavy hides, 1 iridescent pearl, 1 jade, 1 citrine & 1 fine thread.

None of these cost much more than 10g in mats even if you buy everything from the AH. Many of the mats you will pick up as you level anyway or can go farm some for yourself. If you're running a rogue, feral druid or hunter, you could also be one of the best dressed around!