Rex's Goldmaking Guide: Part 3 - Tailoring, Blacksmithing and Alchemy

Ah professions, the meat and potatoes part of making gold. Using the trends we pointed out in the Part 2, we'll have a look at three of the professions Blacksmithing, Tailoring and Alchemy in this part of the guide. What we won't cover are the gathering professions such as Skinning, Mining and Herbalism as these require farming.

I don't have any experience on Inscription so I can't really comment. My gut feeling though is that as a profession, there's little ongoing demand or repeat business. Once players get their set of glyphs, they are done and there are no real incentives to change glyphs.

The making of Darkmoon cards is interesting although random. The Nobles Deck seems like the deck of choice and people are willing to pay big bucks for it, I've seen prices advertised for about 14k gold for a deck and the Ace for about 5k. Until competition drives the prices down, in the short term at least, Inscribers lucky enough to proc a Nobles Card will hit the jackpot.

I don't know about Vellums, perhaps they can provide a nice income stream as enchanters use these more and more to list enchants on the AH.

Tailoring

Its all about bags! However its not about the Frostweave Bag... yet. Currently, it costs 90 pieces of frostweave cloth (about 22g a stack) and 12 infinite dusts (~36g) and 2 eternium threads. On Dreadmaul, bags are selling for about 100g each, so you're making a loss if you're buying mats to sell. In the short term, it will continue to be expensive, however once the 3.0.8 patch comes in, Frostweave Bags should become cheaper to make as the bag will need less frostweave cloth.

In the meantime though, the 16 slot Netherweave Bag is still popular due to the hideously expensive price of frostweave bags and the mats for the 18 slot version being tricky to get. In fact, the demand for the Netherweave Bags has more than tripled the price, and I have made a nice amount selling bags in the 15-25g range (up from the BC price of about 4g). Not bad when you consider that the bag is made from a single stack of netherweave cloth (and a rune thread).

Whats driving demand for Netherweave Bags? Well the bags are still an upgrade from the 12 slot versions DK's start out with as well as an economical choice for fitting out any alts or bank alts that players have.

Making bags still has falling demands over time though since you don't replace bags very often at all. Typically you get you invest in a good set of bags at the start that will last.

Alchemy

I've often heard that Alchemy isn't profitable, and that the real money made is actually in Herbalism. Through BC, I took up alchemy and herbalism on my shaman to make buffs for raiding. I hardly made money out of alchemy alone. As pot spec, I could only sell extra pots I procced which is really nickle and dime stuff really, a couple gold here and there. I came across a few transmute spec Alchemists, and they all complained saying it was the worst decision they made. The long cooldown to make metagems meant it was hardly worth it.

In Wrath however, its a different story. Transmute spec alchemists aren't restricted to a daily cooldown anymore! This alone made me dump pot spec and take up transmute spec. I then bought up a stack of Eternal Airs and Eternal Fires, took some scrub gems from my jewelcrafter and proceeded to produce a stack of skyflare and earthsiege diamonds.

Now the procs here are awesome! From a stack of about 20 transmutes, I usually pick up about 3-5 extra diamonds. if you want you can sell them uncut for about 40-50g each (already in profit) plus the bonus profit on the extra procced gems. Alternatively, you can take them along to your local JC and with the right cut, turn it into a gem worth about 70-100g!

Blacksmithing

Blacksmithing is in a really nice place now with all of its gear being BoE and the introduction of the Eternal Belt Buckle. For long term profit, I love the belt buckle! Everyone level 70 and up needs (not wants) one. I make heaps of these (about 20 at a time), and they sell like hot cakes on the AH.

I've stayed away from making epic BoE gear. I'm just not comfortable putting a lot of gold into a single item hoping it will sell. This is especially the case when the BS epic designs are all trainer taught and as such don't have any barrier to entry. This I believe leaves you wide open to undercutting and a high risk of having to sell the crafted items at a loss. I'm a bit more conservative in that way but that's just personal preference.

In terms of making items to DE, I stumbled across the plans for Reinforced Cobalt Shoulders which dropped off the Onslaught Mason in Dragonblight while I was levelling. With the mats to make it being four cobalt bars, this is an awesome, as you can make five level 73 greens from one stack of cobalt! Whats weird is that the DE table is a bit off. Install of DEing into lesser cosmic essences or 1-2 infinite dust, it DEs into greater cosmics and a number of infinite dusts. There are other world drop recipes for the other pieces of the 'Reinforced Cobalt' set, but you only need one pattern as they all use only four cobalt bars.

For dream shards, if you have both enchanting and blacksmithing skilled up. Armoursmiths can make Legplates of Conquest for the cost of 3 saronite bars and a fifth of an Eternal Earth. Hopefully these should be worth a bit after the 3.0.8 patch. The legplates are bop though so you can't make these on your blacksmith and send them to another toon to DE.

So that's Tailoring, Blacksmithing and Alchemy coming, in part four, I'll have a look at Enchanting and the demands at present and in 3.0.8, and then finally the big daddy of moneymakers... jewelcrafting. :D

Cheers!

Rex

Rex's Goldmaking Guide: Part 2 - Trends in Wrath

In my last post, we had a look at the general process I apply when making gold, but these rules aren’t much help unless you can make solid predictions on where the market is likely to head. So where are the trends in Wrath?

Death Knights

No surprises here. The introduction of DK’s to the game has brought about increasing demands to several areas of the market where demand was pretty low in TBC (e.g. strength gems). At the start of Wotlk, players levelled their mains and now that most players are 80, in their spare time, some would be levelling their alts which I would assume may include a DK.


So I believe that there is likely to be a ‘second wave’ of DKs coming through. There is a limit though. Many guilds are at saturation point with DKs given that every man and his dog has one, so players may be discouraged from rolling a DK main.

The rise of dps hybrids

Blizzard’s changing stance on hybrid dps has opened the door to a much more diverse range of damage dealers. There are rising numbers of Balance Druids, Retribution Paladins, TG Warriors and of course Death Knights. This has led to an increased demand for dps items and gear.

Changing face of tanking

I don’t think Blizzard was happy with the way that tanks generally geared themselves, with the defence cap being too easy to reach. After reaching 490, tanks just slammed pure stamina gems and enchants and that was it. Now, with the defence cap at 540, there is an interesting change to demand for defence stats as the defence cap is harder to reach. Adding to the demand was the removal of defence from talents such as Anticipation for prot paladins.

Tanks now need to consider whether to socket or enchant for defence on their gear. As a result, an increasing demand for defence stats will reduce demand for stamina.

Stat consolidation

Stat consolidation, e.g. spellpower, hit, haste has meant that there is a greater demand for a smaller set of products. This is good as suppliers can shorten the list of goods that need to be supplied to the market. For example, casters and healers will pursue similar stats (apart from hit which is a caster only stat).

Achievements

Achievements are a big thing in Wrath, as people chase titles and drakes. Trying to make gold out of it is difficult though, as the aim is to have items for sale for an achievement. Seasonal achievements, where players are trying to finish the achievement in a short period of time spring to mind. A good example of this is the 'Tis the Season achivement when winter clothes were in high demand.

Looking forward, Children's Week looks promising to make some nice gold as Tasty Cupcake and Delicious Chocolate Cake are needed for the Bad Example achievement.


So there we have it. In the next part, we will look at the real gold, and what is profitable and what isn't.

Rex's Goldmaking Guide: Part 1 - General Rules

Having to constantly respec to fill tanking, healing and dps roles and keeping different sets of gear enchanted and gemmed has forced me to take a keen interest in making gold and the general WoW economy. I have become wealthy in WoW and by doing so, has freed me into pursuing anything I want to and not have to grind for gold when you can be doing better things.

So what follows is my goldmaking guide series. Firstly, in Part 1, we'll have a look at what separates the rich from the poor and general money making principles.

1 - Salary mentality
There are generally two types of people that earn an income in WoW, the first type are those that get gold when they need it and go out and farm or quest. The problem with this mentality is that you receive a linear income. I.e. Your income is directly related to how much time you put in. When you stop farming, you only have a very limited supply of goods to sell, and once these are sold you need to go back out and farm some more. Similarly with questing, these players only make money by finishing quests and need to do more quests to get more gold. It is hard to become 'rich' in this way as you do not generate money passively. For a long time, this is how I made my money, and how I saved up for my epic mount. After purchasing my mount I quickly became poor again and was caught up in a cycle of working to pay the bills.

2 - Business mentality
The richest players I've met view making gold as a business. They often buy goods in bulk (which leads to a discount) and then use it to craft them into something more expensive. The trick is to do it in such a way as to make a profit, which is difficult to do as many crafted professions usually do so at a loss. This approach then becomes a business mentality, as you have moved from being a farmer, to a manufacturer. You buy basic goods from other players (herbs, ore, eternals) and turn them into something much more valuable in a short period of time. Then its simply a matter of listing it on the AH and you are free to pursue instances, raids etc.

I'll include 'flippers' in this category. Flippers are those players that scour the auction house (often with the help of Auctioneer) for a bargain and relist it for sale. While I don't have a problem with flipping, it seems like a conservative way to make money with a lot of risk. If I flip say eternal airs, and it sells for a profit, you should ask, why did it sell? You may have missed out on a further profit if you could have transformed that good into something better rather than just flipping it.

For this reason, I stay away from flipping, and prefer to maximise my profit by trying to buy some basic goods cheap and then transforming it into something much more valuable.

3 - No farming
Personally, I hate farming, and is a complete waste of time! The exception to this is when it isn't actually listed on the Auction House and you have no other choice. I prefer to buy something that is overpriced than to farm for it. Not because I'm lazy, but because of the opportunity cost involved. If you're desparate for cash to buy goods from the AH such as eternals or ore, it is usually faster to do some dailies, and use the gold made from those quests to buy it. Not to mention other benefits from questing such as rep gains or achievements.

4 - When is the best time to trade?
All the time! I've often heard people say that they prefer to trade on the weekend, when the server is at its busiest and the price is at its highest. This usually comes from farmers since they have to work to get their goods and want the best price for their goods.

As a manufacturer, you want to sell as much of your goods as possible for a profit. Im going to borrow an investment cliche here: Time in the market is more important than trying to time the market. It is important that you keep trying to sell your goods all the time, rather than trying to pick specific days to trade. You may make less of a profit on different days, however that is the important thing. You are still making profit you would otherwise have missed out!

5 - Flooding the Auciton House
The market can only absorb so much at one time, so I prefer to list my goods in quantities of at least three stacks and at maximum six. I find that listing in quantities more than six results in severe undercutting and often a lot of unsold items, but anything less than three means you potentially miss out on more further sales if the first two are sold quickly.

6 - Auction House listings
The Auction House gives you three choices, 12, 24 and 48 hours. My preference is for a 24 hour listing over 48 hours. I find that with 48 hours it is far too long unless you're trying to sell something like an epic item. To me, that means you dont expect to sell the item for two days, and you will probably be undercut before then.

It also costs more which may impact on the number of listings you can afford.

So unless you don't intend on logging on for more than a day, stick to 24 hour listings.

7 - Mods
For trading, I use two mods. The first one is Auctioneer, an Auction House mod. There are plenty of guides on how to use Auctioneer, so I'm not really going to cover it here. I don't do scans of prices for the AH for the median price because by doing so, it encourages you to wait for a higher price rather than trying to sell it now. I prefer to be at the front of auctions so I can turnover the goods quickly, knowing that I can keep supplying more. What I do like about Auctioneer is the ability to do multiple listings of the one item with a single click. It will also automatically list your auctions in the preferred stack size once its set.

The second mod I use is a mailbox mod called Postal. This mod allows you to open all your mail with a single click and will tell you all the sales you've made as well as your expired auctions. Additionally, Postal provides a summary of all the gold collected at the end. I usually have anywhere from 50 to 400+ auctions running at any one time so Postal is a Godsend for preventing RSI!

In Part 2
In the next part of this guide, I will examine current trends and opportunities in Wotlk.

Cheers,

Rex

Relevelling to 80: Easier or Harder?

Hey all.

Yesterday, Who's Healing turned 1. Woohoo! I never thought I would still be writing about this a year on, but here we are.

I'm pretty happy with the way Rexkicker is for now, I'll keep chipping away at the Sons of Hodir Rep so I can get a better set of blue shoulders, but its so painfully slow.

Raiding has started to pick up again, and I scored the Libram of Radiance from Naxx. I'm not sure how this stacks up against the Venture Co Libram but meh I'll see how it goes.

Grinding to 80... again

I've levelled my druid to 74! Its so different trying to relevel the second time around though.

Firstly, its a heck of a lot faster, all that stumbling through, figuring stuff out, and well... just enjoying the scenery is gone. Its down to hardcore speed levelling, and organising stuff like getting an Overcharged Capacitor made BEFORE you hit up Borean Tundra.

Sure its easier now that there's a heck of a lot less ganking going on and less competition for mobs. Also the bonus XP and the BoA shoulders are a massive boost!

On the downside, there are chronically more r-tards floating about that are making pugs hellish. For example, I got invited to a group as the healer with four other dks that had no clue! Why are these groups so bad? My thoughts are that its coming down to badly played alts or are mains that are so bad that they still can't get to 80!
I'm starting to really think twice about joining pugs but there's not really any other option when you're trying to level an alt and your guildies are off running heroics. Actually, I don't like asking guildies to 'help out' on a lowbie run, cause I know I don't like getting pestered to do lowbie runs on my main.

So yeah, pug groups have been bad but surely a pug raid wouldn't be so bad?!

LFM MC Achievement

Seeing these words in trade, the thoughts in my head were, awesome do an old school raid and get the achievement. Several hours later, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Not much to say but lets put it this way.... when putting together a pug raid, a single level 65 priest doesn't cut it for heals! Oh and getting a tank would be helpful as well.

Sssh!

Well I'm posting from my laptop since I got a BSoD after trying to patch my pc to Windows Service Pack 3. Spent all day yesterday trying to fix it, but it now looks like a reinstall job. Don't know why Microsoft would allow their own patch to destroy their own system but hey, it gives me a chance for a new post while I find my copy of Windows.

So anyway, I tried the shoulder enchant on my BoA item with some Arcane Tomes and it doesn't work! Well... because it doesn't meet the level requirement. Oh well, at least I know now. My advice: Only enchant your gear with those enchants that don't need a level requirement to use.

Weapon Buffs

Blizz has stated that they wouldn't allow weapon buffs on weapons for high level weapons to reduce the cost of raiding. That seems fair enough, and I know I've been trying to burn up all my Wizard Oils before my Moonkin hits 80 (its tragically slow, I just can't seem to do the grind to 80... again).

I do like to squeeze the most out of my paladin though, and just when I finally get to use weapon buffs for the pally in raids, it gets taken away. Well... not quite.

For some reason, the adamantite weightstone still works with my Titansteel Destroyer! I don't know whether its the weightstone that can be applied to all maces, or whether its just the Titansteel Destroyer thats the only one that the weightstone can be applied to. I have also tried putting on Wizard Oil on the TD, but it doesn't work. Unfortunately, I don't have a different mace to try weightstones on but if anyone out there can try it, please let me know!

I highly doubt anyone at Blizz would read this blog, so until they figure this one out, lets keep this buff on the down low. ;)

Post Christmas.....

Okay, its 2.54 in the morning on Boxing Day and I can't sleep. As I'm in a hazy insomniac mode this will be pretty much a non-wow related rambling so feel free to stop reading at this point. Boxing Day will be a lazy day, I'm just looking forward to just relaxing and watching the cricket on tv and hope that Australia can level the series against South Africa. Well Maybe I'll multitask and mindlessly quest or something while the cricket is on.

Looking back at my Christmas loot, I find that some of the best presents actually come from your siblings as they usually know you the best. I have three brothers. My youngest bro (78 BM Hunter 'Ghetts') tends to give challenging presents. Last year it was a massive inflatable yellow duck (I can't remember what it actually does, but whatever its doing its doing now). This year, it was a swear jar! I didn't think thought I swore that much, but actually yes, I'm sure I could fill it pretty quick.

My other younger bro (80 Assasination Rogue 'Torps') gave me a much needed wallet to replace my old one (which is pretty tattered now after seven years of wear and tear). The reason I hadn't replaced my wallet prior was that it must have a coin pouch secured by a button. Yes this is an anally specific requirement and come to think of it, kinda neurotic. So I can only imagine how infuriating it must have been for him to try and find it. If I ever lose my wallet, I'm screwed trying to find a replacement.

The oldest bro (plays AoC instead of WoW), gave me a gaming mousepad with a Wotlk motif. I'm still kinda attached to my current mousepad (also given by him as a present), which is an Icemat mousepad. This sucker is actually made out of blackened glass, and has been a gamers dream. I don't think they make these anymore though which is a real shame.

Hmm... oh yeah.

Iron Boot Flask

I stopped by Frosthold in Storm Peaks to pick up my Iron Boot Flask, for a measly 10 relics. The fact that it gives you 10 sweet minutes of an Iron Dwarf skin is well worth it. I’ve always thought Dwarves were cool, and I kinda regret not making Rexkicker a dwarf pally from the start.

Looking it up on Wowhead, it seems that the buff from it also gives you a chance to proc additional damage. It might not be much but still, damage is damage and it would be interesting what the Recount log comes back with. The price of this item is going up to a whopping 250 relics in the 3.0.8 patch! Talk about a price hike, I’m glad I bought it now.

BoA Shoulders

I shelled out 60 badges for some BoA shoulders specifically for the 10% xp monster bonus. I slapped em on my druid for levelling, and I gotta admit at least psychologically, it feels faster. I noticed that after I downed the last boss of Utgarde Keep, I received about 12k xp rested. That’s about a 1k+ xp bonus from a boss kill!

Not sure if I can get them enchanted but if so, I’ll shell out for the BC version. My gut feeling is that the enchant won’t work until the toon meets the minimum level requirement anyway so getting the Wotlk version is useless for levelling.

If you armory my moonkin you may notice that I bought the cloth version. This is deliberate seeing as I still have a Mage and Shaman to level, so by making it cloth, it provides the maximum flexibility to hand it down to future casters.

Ho ho ho!

Merry Christmas everyone!

So I finished the Winter Veil meta achievement! It all started a few days ago with a little hat that dropped in Heroic Nexus off the first boss. Everyone in my party rolled need and as luck would have it, I won the roll and just walked around Dalaran with it on. Later, someone in guild chat mentioned that they were farming Nexus (non heroic) for the very same hat for the Merrymaker title. It was only then that I realised that I had something worth hanging onto and decided to look up what else I needed for this title (hoping it wouldn’t be as insane as ‘The Hallowed’ requirements).

In fact from what I could see, it seemed quite easy to do the rest of the achievements and I actually had the hard part done! So I ended up smashing through my Merrymaker achievements and today opened my presents to finish off the last one... ‘Crashin & Thrashin’.

Quick note, the ‘Winter Veil Gourmet’ achievement relies on having 325 cooking (to make the Hot Apple Cider). So if you haven’t raised your cooking skill… well unfortunately that’s too bad. For the ‘With a Little Helper from My Friends’ achievement, I waited as long as possible before I picked up the buff and joined a Wintergrasp raid. The key here is survival not damage and so I strapped on my tanking gear, and either hung out in a vehicle, or just camped at the back away from the action. Since you’re still in a raid, you just keep racking up those HK’s! Chicken I may well be, but a chicken with the achievement done!

On Heroic Oculus

On a separate note, I freaking hate Heroic Oculus with a passion! Yesterday it was the heroic daily, and I really didn’t want to go in there but the lure of two more badges proved irresistible. The first time I tried this on Heroic, for the last boss I had a setup of 1 red (tank), 3 bronze (dps) and 1 green dragon (healer). We wiped constantly, and just called it. A few weeks later I tried a combo of 1 red, 2 bronze and 2 green, and although we came close, we again wiped over and over. That wasn’t fun either.

This time around it was a different story. We decided to use a setup of 2 red, 1 bronze and 2 green. One red to tank the adds while the other tanked the boss. This setup made it easy mode! So yes, finally Heroic Oculus is done, and I definitely won’t be going to that stupid instance any time soon.