What To Do With Golden Lotuses?

What To Do With Golden Lotuses

Now that Blizzard have upped the spawn rate for Golden Lotuses (Loti?), as extras from normal herb picks & from the Enigma Seeds on your Tillers farm, I wondered whether I could make some good gold from them. Yes, I know, I'm late to the party but I've been focused on completing my cooking Ways & leveling & dailies! I'm also trying to work out which is the best crop to plant to make the most gold from my Farm. I've been planting the Songbell seeds to get Motes of Harmony but as my Leatherworker is creeping so slowly through her dailies, I have more than enough Spirits of Harmony for now.

As far as I can see, there are several options for using Golden Lotus to make gold - the 5 different flasks or transmuting uncommen gems into rare gems (6 colours) as well as the Mists of Pandaria Potion of Luck - all made/used by Alchemists. I could also just sell the Golden Lotus on the Auction House & save myself a fair bit of time & effort by not crafting anything but looking at this graph from The Undermine Journal, an average price of 100g-ish per Golden Lotus is not exactly the most profitable way.

Golden Lotus Prices (from TUJ)

My alchemists are both transmute masters so making flasks is probably not the best option either - the additional procs of a mastery are where the real profits lie as they bring the per item crafting cost down. I could change one alchemist to an Elixir Master at a cost of 8 Flasks, especially as the Living Steel transmute is not exactly profitable right now but I'm hesitant to do that straight away. I think I'll test the market first.

Alchemy Flask Prices (from TUJ)

The transmute uncommon gems to rare gems is also a bit of a non-starter - prices for gems are pretty bad on my server - to the point where my Jewelcrafter is still sitting around not doing much. Again, I've been focused elsewhere so I haven't been watching the JC markets as closely as I used to. Besides cut rare gems though, there are the ilevel 450 rings & necks to make as well as the JC crafted Panther mounts. Looking on the Undermine Journal for my server, it looks like there are some good profits in those for now but I'd need to do the prospect vs. transmute costings before I throw all my Golden Lotuses at those!

JC Rings & Necks (from TUJ)

So what to do? Well for now, I think I'm going to try the Flasks market - just dip a toe in to see how things go - for the cost of 16 Enigma seeds each day, I'm picking up 3-7 Golden Lotus as well as a variety of the other Pandaren herbs so my crafting costs are minimal (yes, I'm ignoring opportunity cost etc!).

Like so many, I'm also limited by time so I think this will be least time consuming whilst I have a better look at prospecting. My other 4-plot farms are still producing vegetables but I may just leave those lie for now - spend that time doing dailies or prospecting instead. I'm beginning to feel as if I'm a long way behind - with the release of patch 5.1 there's a whole load of new stuff to get into but I haven't even seen all of the initial Mists of Pandaria stuff yet and that's without spending much time at the Auction House! My gold flow is just ok but so many of my traditional markets seem to have almost disappeared that I really need to knuckle down & get that gold really flowing again.

What do you do with your Golden Lotuses? Are you feeling time-pressures, falling behind etc too? Let me know in comments - I'd love to hear from you.

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Adventuring Supplies - No Pandaren Level 85 Green Armour Market This Time?

Adventuring Supplies - No Pandaren Level 85 Green Armour Market This Time?

I finally managed to get my EU account upgraded to the new expansion Mists of Pandaria but have spent the last 2 days just trying to get my head around all the possibilities. Have 6 possible candidates for leveling first and all the professions to level has resulted in 2 days of Auction House chaos & profession confusion for me but I think I'm getting there!

I did manage to level both my Alchemists to 600 very easily (post coming up on that soon) & I took both of them to Halfhill to get their farms started. Whilst travelling there, I bumped into Claretta, an Adventuring Supplies trader sitting at Pang's Stead in the Valley of Four Winds.

Now one of the big markets during Cataclysm has been the level 77-80 green (uncommon) quality armour & weapons markets. If you were asleep or AFK, these were Cataclysm items useable by level 77 characters & up, with the obvious benefit of much, much better stats than the level 77-80 Wrath gear.

There has been some talk on Twitter about whether this 77-80 market will survive & I have to say, judging by my sales over the last week or two, yes - I think this market will survive! As you can see from my screen shot below, I have been buying Cataclysm 77-80 level gear for less than 50 gold each & reselling them quite successfully at 199 gold each. This screenshot is from my US account only but I have had similar success on my EU account although by using the Remote Auction House, none of my sales statistics were recorded - boo!

So back to Claretta & her fellow Adventuring Supplies traders - she sells a full set of item level 372 green quality armour for very reasonable prices. My US Hunter only dinged 85 a few days before Mists of Pandaria was released & as I don't usually do many dungeons, my poor hunter was not looking forward to the initial struggle to quest in the new zones, being dressed almost totally in Cataclysm quest rewards green armour!

As you can see from the screenshot below, the stats on these items are really quite good - especially when compared to many of the Cataclysm items my girlie was wearing. I had already picked up 3 or 4 Pandaren quest reward items but I was still struggling a little so I decided it was worth 150 gold or so to replace the worst 3 items.

With these wandering traders so easily available & with the Auction House flooded with Mists of Pandaria green quality items for very low prices, I have to wonder if an equivalent to the 77-80 market will be able to thrive during this expansion. I know many Enchanters are currently snapping up many of the lowest priced greens on the Auction House to disenchant but when the leveling buzz dies down a bit & everything starts to even out, these travelling traders will provide an alternative to the Auction House for buyers.

I know I won't be buying gear for my fresh 85 from the auction house unless the prices are really cheap. I would guess that buying cheap Mists gear & relisting them for much higher prices will find a small market - after all, there will always be players unaware of the travelling traders or those who simply want their gear straightaway who will purchase the higher priced armour but I don't think it will be as big a market as the recent 77-80 greens one. Only time will tell though - I'm not usually prone to 'forecasting' such things so we'll just have to wait & see how it goes.

What do you think? In my confusion over all the stuff to do in Mists, have I missed a point here? Let me know in comments if you want to put me straight :)