Sunday, October 7, 2012

Massive Early On Inscription Profits

   It's always a great time to play WoW when it is in the starting phase of a new expansion. For the majority of the people it's the new content, the new instances, the new raids, the new PvP seasons but for some it's the new opportunities to make gold. Well if you are one of those people that enjoys a combination of those options, but you also value the last one as well then read on about the possibly most profitable profession early on in the expansion.

   This profession as the title says is Inscription. For this expansion the Scribes will have additional ways of making gold besides the normal glyphs/MFC. 

   But first lets make one thing clear, the old ways of making gold with Inscription are still very much going strong, and even more because it is the start of the expansion. This old way that i am talking about is the Darkmoon Card Of Mists , which is as the name explains the new version of the Darkmoon Faire trinket card. As you can see on the image above, the sale price for those cards is quite high, i've sold mine for anywhere from 3-10k depending on the card, and the best part is that they do sell quite fast. There is a catch as well here though, in the previous expansions we could mill away and make a metric ton of the cards due to our supply of inks, but in MoP this has been modified a bit because in order to craft one of these bad boys you will need a Scroll of Wisdom, and you get this from a daily. So more or less you can produce a single card per day ( 1 extra per week if you do the weekly quest ).

   Another one of the really good income sources for Scribes in MoP is going to be the shoulder enchant market. Unlike the Cataclysm expansion where in order to get a shoulder enchant you needed to grind reputation, in this expansion you need to buy it from a Scribe or the AH where a smart scribe has posted his stock. 

   The only thing that kinda sucks is that crafting the shoulder enchants like Intellect one as well as the rest of them is quite cheap to make if you do a lot of milling and have a steady income of Starlight Inks, so this should be a good earner as well.

   Last but not least, with the release of MoP we see the arrival of new people, and the return of some of those people that didn't play in Cataclysm. What this means is that these people haven't heard about the Mysterious Fortune Cards, and now it's all up to you to introduce them to the wonderful world of gambling their gold away. And if you are wondering how to get more inks to craft them, don't worry as with this coming server restart they will update the ink traders to work with the latest inks so you will be able to trade down.

   So the important thing to know about Inscription is:
  • Do your daily, and make a card from the Scroll of Wisdom
  • Don't forget to renew your glyph stocks 
  • Get in on the Shoulder Enchant market
  • Get in on the Mysterious Fortune Cards
   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.

Friday, October 5, 2012

Selling To The High Roller Mount Club

   In one of the previous posts i covered all the bases about the Tillers faction, and if you ended up reading that post and started your farming career good for you, if you haven't at least go and plant a few seeds so you can get some quick cooking ingredients that you can turn into some quick gold. But anyways enough about the Tillers, today we are going to take a look at another faction, namely the Order of The Cloud Serpent. 

   I want to make one thing clear from the start, this is a Jewelcrafter only deal, so for all of you people out there that aren't Jewelcrafters, go and level one. 

   I won't go into lengthy speeches about this faction, but instead i will get down to the juicy gold making points that we all like. This faction starts giving you quests at level 90, so on top of having to be a Jewelcrafter you need to be max level as well. If you have leveled to 90 and you are a JC, then simply go to their camp in The Jade Forest, in The Arboretum and talk to the guy that's giving you the quest there. After a few short kill quests your reputation will increase just enough so you can get access to the vendor.

   The reason why you want to get to this vendor right away is the Jewelcrafting mounts that you can make by buying the pattern from this guy. There are 5 different Panther mounts, 4 of them are different color while the last one requires you to have the 4 in order to be able to craft it. 

   You need to know one thing though before you set out on a selling spree, one of the ingredients for making one of these mounts is a Orb of Mystery which is a vendor material that you can get for 18k (with the guild perk for cheaper prices), and that is sold by Big Keech in Vale of Eternal Blossoms. So if you can shell out 18k for that, and you have the rest of the materials you can get in on this very lucrative business. Best thing about this mount though is the fact that it doesn't require a Spirit of Harmony, so as long as you have the gold to craft it you can make it.

   Another thing before i leave, if you decide that you want to get in on this market you might want to think about a little advertisement in trade channel. I mean people will want to pay your overpriced mount that costs you about 25k up for even 50k, but in order to get this profit you need to inform people that these mounts exist and that you are the guy that they can buy them from. 

   Another cheap shot tactic you can use is simply reselling an Orb of Mystery. The chances for a sale are slim because people that inform themselves properly will know where to get it, but there are always naive people that run to the AH first thing when they need something. So if you are going to craft one anyways, buy the Orb from the vendor for 18k, post it on the AH for 25k and start advertising that you are selling the mount for 40-50k. If you get a sale you will earn about 20-30k profit from a single mount, but if someone goes about making one for himself and he decides to buy your Orb from the AH then you will be up about 5k after AH houses. So no matter what you win.

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Jewelcrafting in Mists of Pandaria

   In one of the earlier posts i did about Jewelcrafting i broke it down to the basics and came out with the fact that if you wanted to get into the jewelcrafting market you would need to invest 207 days of dailies in order to get all the patterns from the vendor. Well in MoP we have a different approach to how the patterns are obtained, namely you are given the chance to research a color of a gem by spending 3 uncut gems, and if you have learned all the cuts that you can have from that particular color then you can get a different color gem.

   If you take this into account and compare it with the previous 207 days you needed to do dailies, with this new way of obtaining cuts you are down to 68 days of dailies, but if you take into account that you can obtain gem cuts by spending 3 Spirits of Harmony you can knock off a few days from that count as well.

   Now that we looked at the time table needed to level a jewelcrafter, lets take a look at the gems and how they are going to work.

    In Cataclysm we had The Ore Shuffle where we would prospect ore, cut and sell the rare gems and DE the rings and amulets we got from the shuffle to get Enchanting materials. Well in MoP this formula is a tad bit different, namely there are no rings and amulets right off the bat, you have to go and get them from a jewelcrafting trainer in The Jade Forest, but even when you get them there will be a catch. Namely this catch is the fact that in order to craft those you will need to spend 3 different kinds of gems for the green item, or if you want to craft the rare version you will need to spend 6 normal gems and 6 Serpent Eyes. 

   So as we can see the difference is huge, in Cataclysm all we needed was 1 gem and a setting, and now we need 3 different color gems, or 6 gems and 6 serpent eyes. It remains to be seen if this is still going to be a viable way to deal with the gems when the prices normalize.

   Now as you can see on the image above, there is another way to go about with your normal gems, and this way is to cut them. You see when you cut them you have about 15% chance that they will be a rare quality "perfect" gem. This means one thing though, you can choose which gem you want to make even if you don't have the pattern learned by now. For instance, if you want a 240 Stamina gem, but you don't have the cut learned just yet, then take a stack of Lapis Lazuli and get down to cutting, and with a bit of luck you will get a perfect one that has the same stats as the rare one.

   Ok now we know the time table, as well as how to cut any gem we need, what is left now is what to expect from the JC market.

   At the moment the Jewelcrafting market is very slow, and the reason for this is simple, people are still leveling or they have leveled up but aren't still geared enough to be able to start doing heroics, raids and LFR. Once this has been surpassed we will see a sharp increase in the gems market, and with that a sharp rise in the prices of gems.

   What you want to do to prepare for that is quite simple, from time to time browse the market for the cut gems, as well as the perfect cut version of the gem and if you see any cheap ones buy them out and store them. The reason for this is simple, the amount of uncut gems that is in circulation is alot smaller then the amount of gems that is going to be required once the people start getting gear that requires gems.

   Anyways here are the things that you might want to know if you want to get into this market:
  • Do your daily research cuts
  • Check the AH for low priced gems and buy them out 
  • Prices of uncut gems are going to be higher then prices of the cut ones for a while due to people buying them so they can use their daily cool down, so if you have some for sale, sell them uncut.
  • You want to be playing your JC character because that is the only way to obtain the Meta gem patterns and the Spirit of Harmony that you can use the expedite the research of new cuts.
   So by knowing this you should be well armed to start on your way to sail the waters of the JC market.

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Tillers Farming in MoP


   There are new posts about places where you can go and "farm" certain stuff that you need in the game, be it ore, herbs, cloth or even Motes Of Harmony. Well today we are going to take a look at a certain fraction in MoP that deals exactly with this, the farming part. This fraction i am talking about is The Tillers, but if you are asking yourself why are they so important to mention them, well it's quite simple they allow you to actually have a farm where you can plant seeds and then pick them up where you can get materials for professions, Motes Of Harmony ( yes a viable way to farm these bad boys with certainty ) or even pets like the Terrible Turnip

   For this post i decided that it would be much better to copy a piece of info that the use LORE made for Wowhead, but he had it in the comments part and i thought it deserved to be out in the open for more people to see it and get informed. So here we go i will try and get it as close to perfect as possible with all the links.

This is a rather long post, but it covers everything there is to do with the Tillers faction starting from the intro quests, down to every daily there is to do. And again Kudos go to Lore for writing this for wowhead.com.

 INTRODUCTION

When you begin leveling on the continent of Pandaria, at around level 85 - 86 you should reach the Valley of the Four Winds. During your time questing here you will slowly make your way to Halfhill, the main hub of the area. Halfhill is the center for all cooking and farming in Pandaria, so settle in because you'll be back here a lot during the expansion. 

It is here in Halfhill that you will meet Farmer Yoon and the Tillers for the first time, and in doing so have the chance to work on your very own farm.
Once you start on the quest chain Learn and Grow, the small farm Sunsong Ranch will be phased so that you are the only player that can enter your particular farm, alowing you peace and quiet to toil as you see fit.

At the moment, you can start your farm and enjoy the initial quest line, all the way up to  Learn and Grow VI: Gina's Vote, but after recieveing your introduction to the Tillers Union you will have to part ways. As it currently stands you will have to wait untill level 90 before you can continue your farming career. You can still plant, grow, and harvest on your four initial starting spots, but any more will require significantly more reputation than you can acquire at level 85.

The quest chain: Learn and Grow

The Tillers quest line starts when you visit Farmer Yoon in Halfhill. When you approach him you will immediatly see the sorry state of Sunsong Ranch.
Yoon's Grandpa has left him the farm, and as Yoon isn't much of a farmer he'll need your help to get things started.

You begin by accepting the quest  A Helping Hand, and start to clear Sunsong Ranch, by using a pick to smash the loose rocks scattered around,
With the rocks broken, you approach Yoon again to show him your work. Just as you do, Haohan Mudclaw and his lackies walk up to the farm and start berating Yoon and his poor farming skills.
After the short confrontation Yoon turns to you, determined to prove them wrong, and asks for your help to become a master farmer.
 The Family Farm. It is here that your partnership is forged and you begin to grow crops on the farm under Yoon's tutelage.

 Learn and Grow I: Seeds 
A short trip off to halfhill market and you're introduced to your seed vendor, Merchant Greenfield. The first seeds he will give you are his own special 'Ez-Gro' seeds. Take them back to Yoon and you can get down to planting.

 Learn and Grow II: Tilling and Planting
Now you have your seeds Yoon will teach you how to till the first two patches of bare soil on his ranch. A simple case of righ clicking the mound of earth. Once tilled you can select the soil, and plant your Ez-Gro Green Cabbage Seeds.

 Learn and Grow III: Tending Crops
As if by magic all planted seeds instantly turn into sprouting crops, due to the special soil in the valley. As you'll soon see though, the crops are parched and need watering. Yoon will give you his  Rusty Watering Can allowing you to turn your Parched Cabbages into Growing Cabbages.

 Learn and Grow IV: Harvesting
While talking to Yoon your Growing Cabbages immediatly turn into Ripe Cabbages. While this change would normally take 24 hours, the special EZ-Gro seeds from Greenfield make this one off set of crops grow extra fast.
Now it's time to harvest your first vegetables. Doing so gives you the achievement  Green Acres and returns the soil back to untilled soil, ready for you to start over with new seeds.

 Learn and Grow V: Halfhill Market
Whilst you only have 2 Cabbages, Farmer Yoon still thinks it would be a good idea to take them down to the market, and sell them to Gina Mudclaw.
Before you set off you're told to investgate the small patch of Dark Soil under the farm house, where you will find a  Marsh Lily. Handily the perfect gift for Tina as you make your introduction.
Now that you've introduced yourself to Gina and given her a gift, you should find yourself at friendly reputation with her, allowing her to ask you for assistance in her own work.

 Learn and Grow VI: Gina's Vote
Gina tells you how she has been supplying the chefs in the area with their ingredients to cook all their meals, but now she's run out of  Scallions. The perfect oppertunity to put your new farm to work.
Walk over to Merchant Greenfield, and this time you'll see his whole inventory open for sale. A short browse and you should find the  Scallion Seeds you're looking for. When you return to Sunsong Ranch you'll see you have four patches of untilled soil available, not just two.

Simply till the soil the way you did before, and they're ready for planting with your seeds.
While your planted scallion my be 'Parched' like the cabbages were before, there's also a chance they can require other tending before they're ready to grow.

Thankfully Farmer Yoon will tell you anything you need to do to get your crops nice and healthy and growing.

How do I care for my crops?

  • Bursting Crops - Instantly become harvestable the moment they're planted.
  • Parched Crops - Use the Rusty Watering Can to water them (found in your inventory, or next to the tree stump).
  • Infested Crops - Use the Bug Sprayer on the plants to clean them (found in your inventory, or resting against the stairs).
  • Wiggling Crops - Pull out the Virmen from the ground and kill it.
  • Alluring Crops - Click the light and then defend the plant from incoming birds.
  • Smothered Crops - Grab the weed smothering the crop and pull it out.
  • Wild Crops - Hit and bite the weed into submission while it wrestles you.
  • Runty Crops - Grab the plant and jump up to pull it out of the ground a little.
  • Tangled Crops - Grab the weed constricting the crop and run away, pulling it out of the ground.

If at any time you find you've planted the wrong crop, or planted it in the wrong place, you can pick up the shovel from the set of tools near by, and uproot your growing plant, destroying it but leaving it's space available for re-planting.

Now we do the hardest part of the quest line, waiting as our planted and tended crops grow over night.

Any growing crops you have planted will turn to harvestable crops at midnight. So if you've stayed up late, or come back the next day, you'll be ready to continue with your farming. 
Now that your plants have all grown up, you should have your first healthy crop of Scallion, ready to pick from your farm.
Simply yank up the vegetables, and carry them over to Gina Mudclaw to complete the final part of the Learn and Grow series.

. . . .           Hooray, you're officially a professional farmer           . . . .

Once you give Gina the Scallion, she will be very grateful that she can supply the Ironpaw chefs again. After the quest completion she will escort you back to your farm, to personally thank Yoon and yourself for all your hard work.

As a further reward for helping her, she will offer to cast her vote as a member of the Tillers Union, pledging to accept you as a member.
She will then walk over to the Tillers Shrine (which I'm sure you were all wondering what it did), and light an incense in one of the offering bowls in front of it, signifying her vote.
Now that Gina has activated the shrine, you have a handy new tool for tracking your reputation with the various farmers across The Heartland. It will also act as a new display, to show you how many of the five votes you have gained for entry into the Union.

Unfortunatly if you're reading this while questing, it will be a little while before you can follow through with the rest of the guide. 
For those of you at level 90 however, you have only just begun to skim the surface of the farming experience.

With your soil all planted and your crops growing, you can make a start on the Tiller daily quests, in order to raise your reputation with the faction.
As you complete more daily quests, your Tillers reputation will slowly increase allowing you access to more of the faction's rewards, such as new seeds and land expansions.
You can find a list of all the new daily quests in the next section. Or follow on to the next part of the Tillers quest line here.

Daily quests

Each day you can complete six of the Tiller daily quests listed below, and gain up to 1075 Tiller reputation. 
When the new day starts, two of the farmers from out around The Heartland will come to Halfhill Market, and ask for help with a particular problem. This gives you a chance to gain some extra reputation with the various farmers in the area, at the same time as gaining your Tiller rep.
Two of the following daily:

Not in Chee-Chee's Backyard        +150 Tillers rep, +2000 Personal
You Have to Burn the Ropes          +150 Tillers rep, +2000 Personal
Water, Water Everywhere              +150 Tillers rep, +2000 Personal
The Kunzen Legend-Chief              +150 Tillers rep, +2000 Personal
Money Matters                              +150 Tillers rep, +2600 Personal
Pest Problems                                +150 Tillers rep, +3300 Personal
Weed War II                                 +150 Tillers rep, +2000 Personal
Chasing the Chicken                      +150 Tillers rep, +3000 Personal
Where It Counts                            +150 Tillers rep, +2000 Personal
They Don't Even Wear Them      +150 Tillers rep, +2000 Personal
  
 Just outside the market, Andi will ask you to collect a potential gift for one of the visiting farmers.
One of the following daily:

 A Gift For Chee Chee                  +150 Tillers rep, +1400 Personal
 A Gift For Ella                             +150 Tillers rep, +1400 Personal
 A Gift For Fung                           +150 Tillers rep, +1400 Personal
 A Gift For Fish                            +150 Tillers rep, +1400 Personal
 A Gift For Gina                           +150 Tillers rep, +1400 Personal
 A Gift For Haohan                      +150 Tillers rep, +1400 Personal
 A Gift For Jogu                           +150 Tillers rep, +1400 Personal
 A Gift For Old Hillpaw                +150 Tillers rep, +1400 Personal
 A Gift For Sho                            +150 Tillers rep, +1400 Personal
 A Gift For Tina                    +150 Tillers rep, +1400 Personal

From your own farm, Yoon will ask you to complete two daily quests. One which he believes will help the farmland, and a second to crow a specific vegetable for the next day.
One Farming quest, and One Killing quest daily:

Farming:

 The Cabbage Test                                      +350 Tillers
 That Dangling Carrot                                  +350 Tillers
 Why Not Scallions?                                   +350 Tillers
 A Pumpkin-y Perfume                                +350 Tillers
 The Pink Turnip Challenge                         +350 Tillers
 The White Turnip Treatment                      +350 Tillers
 Squash Those Foul Odors                         +350 Tillers
 It's Melon Time                                         +350 Tillers
 Which Berries? Witchberries.                  +350 Tillers

Killing:

 The Lesser of Two Evils                           +275 Tillers
 Stealing is Bad... Re-Stealing is OK          +275 Tillers
 Stalling the Ravage                                   +275 Tillers
 The Kunzen Hunter-Chief                         +275 Tillers
 Simian Sabotage                                  +275 Tillers


Joining the Tillers Union

Now that you have Gina's vote you are set on the road to becoming a full member of the Tillers Union, and helping Yoon become a master farmer.
Once you get a little more reputation with the Tillers, Yoon will send you out to do quests for the other voting members of the Union. Gaining their favor in order to secure the remaining four votes.

First off you will be sent up to see Mung Mung, a farmer who works for Haohan Mudclaw. 
To secure his vote he will ask you to help out on the farm a bit by gathering up partially chewed carrots.
When the carrot eating culprit can't be found, Mung Mung asks you to replace the carrots with ones grown on your own farm.
The next day when you harvest your carrots and return to him, he will use them to replace his lost crops and save his job. He will then meet you back at your ranch to light his incense, and give you his vote.

With two votes for the Tillers Union gained, Yoon will send you up to Farmer Fung in order to earm your third. 
When you speak to him, Fung is adamant that he won't be voting for Yoon or yourself. However he lets slip about his yak problem on the farm, giving you an oppertunity to befriend him.
Fung is so grateful for you returning his Yaks, that he changes his mind about you. He offers to vote for you if you can help feed hes herd of Yaks with cabbages.
The following day when you present your cabbages to Fung, he is taken aback but just how perfect your fresh cabbages are. So good in fact he heads straight over to your ranch and casts his vote for you, insisting that you join the union.

Three down, two to go. Only the senior members of the Mudclaw family to impress now. Yoon suggests you start with Nana Mudclaw first.
Nana's speciality it seems is brewing, but not just tasty drinks, brews that will heal and rejuvinate you. For this she requires the magical waters from the northern waterfall. This is where you can come in, but unlike the previous quests be prepared to do a little killing.
The other ingredient Nana needs for her brew is fresh Witchberries, and you guessed it, you'll be the one growing them.
When you grow your berries and bring them to Nana she can't wait to taste them, their sweet flavor bringing back to her fond memories of Yoon's Grandpa. Such fond memories that she trots straight on down to the farm to issue her vote and reminisce with you both about her old friend Grandpa Yoon.

Your last vote is going to be the hardest, convincing Haohan himself to let you into the Tillers Union.
When you meet Haohan, he is too preoccupied with his farm house being broken into, and so much damage being caused to talk to you. Maybe a freindly farmer like yourself can help him out.
You put on your CSI sunglasses and take a look around the farm. Finding the tell tale footprints of the intruders, you trace them back untill you run across the culprits of all the theft and damage.
Hozen! So they're the ones behind all this.. *takes off sunglasses* ..Monkey business. 
The Who plays as you go back to Yoon to inform him of your discovery.
Recognising the oppertunity to impress Haohan, Yoon sends you off to collect ingredients from the Virmen, to make a poison to 'deal with' the hozen.
Time to start growing crops again, but this time your delicious work will go towards a more sinister end.
Poisoned mellons in hand you make your way to the hozen summit and face Chief Yip-Yip. As you attack you realise that he has 12 million HP. Thankfully the poison in the mellons carries a hell of a kick and allows you to kill him with ease.

By the time you return, all five voting member of the Union have heard of your triumph over Yip-Yip. Amazed at your work they all gather at your ranch to thank and congratulate you, even Haohan has high praise for you saving his farm. 
With his final vote cast, all thats left is for you to lite the last incense on the Tiller Shrine, and join them as a full member of the Tillers Union.

More plant types

As you progress with your Tillers quest line, and complete more daily quests, the full range of rewards from farming start to open up to you.

One of the main benefits of a higher reputation level with the Tillers, is that Merchant Greenfield will sell you a wider variety of seeds to grow at your ranch.
A higher reputation can also let you grow the farm it's self.

The basic crop seeds you can plant at friendly ( Scallion Seeds etc), will most likely grow into 'Ripe Vegetables' and yield the results listed in the table below. However there is a moderate chance that when they grow over night, they will form 'Plump Vegetables' instead. When harvested plump vegetables will give 8 items instead of the usual 5.
There is also a small chance when you harvest any plant on your farm, that it will give you a rare item for reputation, such as  Lovely Apple, in addition to it's typical loot.
Very occasionally, in place of the regular seeds that have a chance to drop, you can recieve  Ominous Seed, which when planted will grow into  Terrible Turnip.

Some of the seeds you can buy at revered will allow you to not only farm cooking ingredients, but also grow primary profession materials, such as cloth, metal, and enchanting materials.
In addition, any crop you harvest will grant 50 reputatation with the Tillers, regardless of it's yield.

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Early on MoP Shuffling

   Today we are going to take a more detailed look on a most profitable venture that we can use to our advantage to make a metric ton of gold in  a short time. This is going to be a viable option for a short term because it will catch on very quickly and people will start realizing that they can skip paying the extra gold for it, but anyways let me get down to the juicy, and profitable parts.

   For this to work you need to have 2 characters, one of them needs to have alchemy, while the other one needs to have mining, or if you have those two professions on the same character then you don't need 2 characters.

   As you can see on the image it all starts with Ghost Iron Ore. The way to get the ore is obvious, either mine it or AH, either way is OK but i would advise you to go for the AH approach simply because it's a short window of opportunity on this plan, and it is surely going to loose it's momentum in a short time when people get more informed. But anyways back to the point, when you get the ore you will need your miner to smelt the ore. If your miner is not high enough to smelt it don't worry, it takes about 10 min to run around the starting Pandaria zone and your miner will have the skill to smelt the bars.

   Ok now you have Ghost Iron Bars in your bags, so what now ?  Simple you can take one of the two possible roads, you can either sell the bars for profit on the AH or you can choose the take the further refinement of the bars. If you simply want to sell the bars on the AH that's good, as you will still make a near 50% profit on your ore investment, but if you want to continue on with the whole deal keep reading. 

   After you get the Ghost Iron Bars send them to your alchemist who will take them and transmute them into Trillium Bars. If your alchemist just trained up and all he got was two patterns don't worry, he isn't bugged it's the way the new system works for Alchemy, you will need to make about 20-40 potions and the patterns will be revealed that way. So keep making those potions until the transmutation for Trillium Bar is revealed.

   After you have the transmutation available start making some Trillium Bars and selling them on the Auction House. As you can see on the image on the right i am making a good deal of profit on each bar, and the price for one Trillium bar is 10xGhost Iron Bars which in turn is one stack of ore. Just as a comparison, i bought the Ore from the AH for 75g per stack and sold them as Trillium Bars for 280g. That is 300%+ profit on that investment, and the best thing about it is that you don't really spend anything, as this transmutation doesn't waste your daily CD that you can use for the last step. Oh and just so i don't forget to mention, you can get extra bars if you are a transmutation master and your transmutations proc as you can see on the image below.

   And the last part of this plan is to take the Trillium Bars and use your Alchemist once more and use his daily CD to make 6 Trillium Bars into a Living Steel. The Living Steel is the new hot cake when it comes to crafting armor, so the demand for it is going to be high for a while, and if you are a transmutation master you have the chance to proc on it as well.

   So in short that is the way to go with the early on MoP metal trading, and no matter which route you choose to go know that the profit will be there, but if you have the ability then take on the three markets so you don't miss out on any of the possible profits.

   One last thing before i leave though, if you choose to sell the Trillium Bars know that the best time to put them on the AH is right before midnight ( that is when the CD for the Living Steel is reset ), because that is when people want to buy it the most. In the mind of the casual player it's "6 trillium bars for nearly 300 each is 1800 and the living steel is 2500, awesome i'll buy some" And that is how we get a hefty profit.

So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

MoP, Selling Caged Pets

   Mists of Pandaria is well on it's course, and from what i have seen already it is setting up to be an interesting expansion. We have new things to do, and new ways to make profit off from nearly every place we take a look at. Well today i chose to talk about a market that i think is going to be the next luxury market in WoW. As a clarification ,when i say a luxury market what i mean is a market that people buy/sell for commodities that aren't used to boost your raiding performance, nor make you a lean mean killing machine in PvP, an example for these luxury markets would be the Transmogrification and Pets markets.

   I have covered the section about making gold with pets in the past where we would craft or resell pets to people that were collectors and were willing to shell out top gold for them. Well with the new MoP pet battle system we have a whole new crowd coming in on a rather old market, and with their arrival the rules for the market are going to change.

   What this means is that, we used to sell the pets to people that only wanted them for the look, and now that they can do battle we are going to have people that are buying them for their combat abilities as well. 

   One thing that is important to know about combat pets is that you can tame a wild pet in the outdoors, but when you do that you can't "cage" him and then sell him on the AH (as far as i know and from what i have seen) but if you take a pet that you learned from an item, be it from a rare drop or a vendor pet and you level him up, then you can right click him in your pet list and from there you can choose to put him in a cage and then you can sell him on the AH for a hefty profit.

   There is another thing that is quite amazing with this patch about the pets market though, in a way Blizzard has made the pets to be shared across all your characters on your account, which in turn means that you end up on a globalized pet market. What i mean is simple, you want a pet Rat, but that Rat on your server is 1000g, you pop up on another server and you see it there for 1g, you buy that Rat there for 1g come back on your server and Boom you have a pet that you can either use, or resell for a hefty profit. Plus that same goes both ways, you can buy a pet from your server and then sell it on another server and make a starting capital if you want to change server.

   But back to the same server pet trading. One other thing that you might want to do is use up some smart advertising for your pets. Why this is a good idea is because people are still leveling their characters, and some by chance see the pet trainer and then they get hooked on the battle system. That is when you want to come in line and sell them the pet that they want, and the pet that will help them in the long run.

   So first thing you want to check is the AH, and see if maybe someone has posted a "leveled up" pet on there for a cheap price, then if they have you snag it and then try and peddle it, or if they haven't you have to level one yourself ,which is not all that hard. Your macro should be inviting and alluring to them, so use something like:

" Are you sick and tired of seeing your pets loose in a pet battle, well get your high level [Insert Pet Name] and never loose again "  

   In reality that is a bit of an over sale as the level of the pet has nothing to do with winning or loosing when he's facing a same level opponent, but that doesn't concern us, what we are interested in is making gold.

   So i am really curious to see how this market is going to morph in the coming months when people are done with leveling and are hard into the pet battle system, and they start buying/selling leveled combat pets.

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.


Monday, September 24, 2012

Maximizing MoP Profits

   So here we are counting down the last hours before we say farewell to Cataclysm and open our hands and prepare to embrace Mists Of Pandaria. Well while we are waiting that doesn't mean we should just stand around in our capital cities and do nothing, on the contrary we should be hard at work to prepare.

Maximize your profits by Syndicating
   In the previous posts i covered the things that should be on your watch list for making profit by stocking up on materials, and then reselling them later on for profit. Well today we are going to take a look at a different thing that will be more about optimization and maximization of the profits that are to be had in Mists of Pandaria.

   So i will try to keep this as short and informative as possible. Few of the most important things that we want to make sure we don't botch would be to stay on the up side of the supply / demand curve and always be ready to sell what the people are looking to buy. But lets get down to more specific examples.

   Let's face it, the majority of the people that are playing this game have been playing this game for quite a while now, some are playing since the start of Cata, some are playing from WOTLK and there are even some that are coming from the Vanilla/TBC era. Well the same thing that all of these players have in common is that they all have multiple characters (alts) and they have different professions on them. Well if you are one of those people then you should make sure that even though you can't level all of your alts at the same time, you can at least make sure you aren't missing out on the things that are limiting your progression by a time table. 

      What this means is quite simple, if you have a Jewelcrafter, Scribe, Alchemist or any other profession that has a "daily" quest to do, make sure you do it and don't skip any of it. The reason for this is, even though it's it going to be very alluring to play your main and race for the top level 90, in the long run it will be very profitable NOT to skip on doing your daily profession quests, even though you might have to put some time into doing that.

   A great example for this would be the new Inscription daily research in the form of a Scroll of Wisdom that will be the new way to obtain those glyphs. There are 21 glyphs to be learned from that scroll which means that if you skip on a single day then you are skipping on getting some serious profit because there are no other ways to get that glyph except for the research, which in return means that not even your competition will have them so you could have a monopoly on that given glyph for a day or a week depending on the competition's luck of the draw.

   And last but not least, as i put in the first image above that says "Maximize your profits by Syndicating" you should really think about doing just that.  I covered a variant of this tactic a while back in a post that was about making gold with the help of a friend, but now we are going to take that idea and further build on it.

   To make it as simple as it can be i will get down to the idea right away. You want to make a syndicate of a given profession ( Jewelcrafting in my case ) and invite the top sellers in the market to join you for the greater good of all of you. What this means is that you all get to an agreement on who takes which gems patterns and then among yourselves you can have 4-5 or even more people all gathering their profession tokens and working as one opposed to all of you going for the same gems and then miss out on the profits that are to be had by selling a particular gem that someone was looking for, but couldn't find it because noone had learned the pattern. 

   Though to clarify, when i mentioned that you want to divide the cuts what i meant is that if JC 1 learns to make STR red gem, JC 2 learns to make INT red gem and i learn to make the AGI red gem, then i send a stack of uncut gems to both of them, and they do the same to me and we get back a cut version of the gems. So that way in a single cycle that will be needed to get one pattern you end up with 3 patterns, and the market is going to be controlled by your syndicate, meaning the opposition will need a much longer time to get in on your market while you will be up posting ALL your gems and undercutting only with the people that are in your Syndication. But if you decide to play it fair you can put your friends in your white zone so you don't undercut them but that is between you and them.

   So bottom line, while you are waiting for MoP it would be a good idea to talk to the major players in your server economy and give them the opportunity and the idea of a syndicate, and try to explain why this would be a great profit making idea. So for now i leave you with that and wish you a great time and fun in MoP

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.
   

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Back For MoP, Back For Gold

   So here we are back after quite a while with a new post, and hopefully the first in many posts to come. First of all i would like to say that i stopped with writing new articles on the blog for one reason and that reason was simply the fact that i didn't think there was anything new worth writing about, and i didn't want to make "new" posts that would be simply same as the old ones but from a different points of view. 

   Well all of that is about to change with the release of MoP. What this means is simply that all the markets are going to explode and be alive and ripe for the picking, and all you will have to know is how to make the optimal profit from those markets, and that is exactly where i will try to give you all a hand.

   Just like any market, or deal that transpires in the real world where the research and preparation are the key to being a success, the same goes for World Of Warcraft expansions. Knowing what to expect, and more importantly preparing for the upcoming expansion is 50% of the profit already in your pocket. I won't go into details on what you should have bought so far, simply because i made a post in two parts that was more or less a spot on about which items you should have stocked up on, the first part and the second part covered a wide market so you might want to check them out.

   Ok i am done with the words of wisdom, but now lets take a quick look at a tip that will actually make you a very hefty sum of gold in the longer haul, and it will make you go "Daaaaamn that was profitable"

   If you read up on these previous two posts back when i posted them, and you did some preparation and stocking up you should have a nice stock of soon to be older tier of materials, but if you haven't it's not all over as there are still almost two days left for you to pick up some bargains of the year. I will tell you exactly what to look for and what i stocked up and the reason behind it.

   First up i followed up on my own tips about the inscription and the inks in particular, i bought up all the cheap herbs that i could find up on the AH. The reason for this is that when MoP ships the only way to get the older inks would be either mill the old herbs (which are always rare to find) or exchange them for the newest inks (which will be expensive as hell), so this is why by buying inks now and then either reselling them or making glyphs with them in MoP is going to score you some awesome profits. While at the Inscription profession, you might want to take some Moonglow Ink, and Snowfall Ink and put them on the AH in stacks of 1, and the reason for this is because you want to cover the market for all the new Monk Scribes that will pickup Inscription and will want to do their Minor and Northrend inscription research.

  If you have a Jewelcrafter that has been a good boy/girl and has done his dailies and picked up on the epic cut gems then now would be a good idea to pick up the epic raw gems that are up on the Auction House for ridiculously low prices. Just for reference i picked up raw epic gems for 30-80g each, and i am well aware that in a few months i will sell those gems cut to twinks/alts for 1500-3000g easy. The reason behind this thinking is that the supply for these gems is finite and unless they introduce a way to get those gems by transmutes (which i doubt they will) you will end up with a VERY valuable piece of commodity.

   Lastly if you have an Enchanter you might want to pick up on some of the very under priced Maelstrom Crystals, or any of the other enchanting materials that you are low on stock. Just know that the price of the Maelstroms is going to crash in the next few days while anyone and everyone that has an Enchanter is going to be DEing their old gear and trying to sell the Maelstroms on the AH. The reason for stockpiling on these materials is simple, you will want to keep the Cata market covered for twinks that are always there, but the down side is that this is actually a longer term investment but a very lucrative one for that matter. Right now you will be able to pickup the Maelstroms for like dirt cheap prices of like 10-20g and after the dust settles they will be worth at around 100-140g (the vendor price for the ones that know how)

   So i leave you with this for now, but i will continue with new posts and more importantly posts about things that are profitable and things that will help you make a lot of gold. 

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.
   

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Preparing For MoP Investments Part 2

   In the previous post about the pre-launch for MoP we gave the companion and Inscription market a quick glance, and today we are going to take a closer look at a few more markets that would be very lucrative to take advantage as we send off Cataclysm on it's merry way, and welcome to arrival of the new expansion. 

CRAFTING

   First market that you would want to keep your eye on would be the materials market. Now to make it clear, i won't focus on telling you about each crafting profession separately but am i quite sure you will get the idea.

   The idea behind the crafting market, and its potential to be a huge profit margin is quite simple, yet very few people will see it. The actual idea is to buy the materials you usually use to craft your items, be it PvP set items or PvE epic items. The reason for this is because their price is dirt cheap seeing as how it is the end of the expansion and very few markets are moving any goods at all.

   So the price of the given "raw materials" is cheap, the supply is abundant and the competition is really not in the mood to buy it out. Everything sounds like it's setting up to be a sweet deal, but wait that's not all. By buying your materials now you will buy them at prices that aren't affected by the incoming inflation that will hit when MoP ships out. So as an example, if you spend 20g for a stack of Obsidium or Elementium Ore, expect that same ore to be 100g or even more depending on the inflation scale when MoP is the new dog in town, and Cataclysm is left in the rear view mirror.

   But lets take another look at what we want to keep our eyes open for in particular: 

   You want to keep an eye on the price of Elementium Ore for it's use in crafting all the level 85 plate PvP items. You also want to keep a healthy stock of Pyrium Bars which you can use later on to continue crafting Ebonsteel Belt Buckle, these will always be in demand from the people that end up twinking their level 85 characters. Another very important thing would be to keep an eye out for the volatiles, and their price. They are easy to obtain now and their price is cheap, but as soon as MoP hits their demand will go down but the supply will simply borderline dry out, so get yours now while you still can. 

   Another material you might want to get stocked up on would be leather, even though it's price is still a bit steep remember that inflation still hasn't set in and everything is still rather cheap. So if you were in the PvP leather market it would be a good idea to get stocked up as well.

   There are a few markets though that i wouldn't stock up too high on, and that would be the cloth market. The reason behind this is that with the introduction of the mass looting system it is going to become very easy to obtain cloth and it's price is going to be rather "volatile". 

   Last of the professions that would be worth stockpiling on would be the enchanting market. As it is now the price of the Hypnotic Dust as well as all the other latest materials is cheap because the influx is rather high from people still doing the Ore Shuffle but as soon as that is over the price for the dust as well the essences will go up. While on this topic it might be a very good idea to stock up on some Jasper and Alicite  which you can use later on for some post Cata DE action, as well as crafting and selling the rare rings to people that are leveling alts, or the new Pandas.

   Ok i'll end this post here, but in the next post we are going to take a look at how to approach the end of the expansion as a Jewelcrafter,  as well as a trader that wants to bank on the uprising of the new "PANDAmonium".

   So, like always, keep an eye out for good opportunities out there. 


Sunday, August 12, 2012

Preparing For MoP Investments

   So in about a month Mists Of Pandaria will ship out and finally we will have something new to do, kill new baddies, raid new places, level our professions and open up new opportunities to make gold. But before MoP finally ships we are going to have some time to make some pre launch investments that will pay out big in the near future, and i will further explain how and why.

   As the sign on the side here says, we will be buying the "used" goods, or translated into WoW terms we will be buying the soon to be old tier stuff. 

   What i mean by this is simply the same thing that happens with the release of every expansion, the week or so before the release of the expansion people get into insane mode, and they are trying to unload everything they have in the hope of making some quick gold off it while it is still current. This has some basic logic behind it, but if you give it a second thought and realize that even though it won't be the current end game tier there will still be market for it, and it will probably end up being much more expensive than it is now.

   But enough with the vague talks about what is going to happen, let's take a look at some actual items that will be worth buying when the big "Yard Sale" begins.

PETS

   Pets or companions will be in great demand in MoP, especially with the whole new Pokemon like pet battles. Up until now there was a demand for these pets from people that simply wanted to have them walk next to them, but now that they will be able to actually make them fight, and level them the demand will go even higher. But not everything is as jolly as it sounds, with the shipping of MoP Blizzard decided to make one crucial change and make all the mounts and pets be account bound. What that means is what ever you have on one character, it will now be shared on all of them.

   So there will be a huge increase on the demand for pets early in the launch of MoP, but that demand will be saturated rather quickly for the more common (vendor/crafted) pets, while the demand for the more rare and extremely rare pets will be further increased, and with that the prices for those pets will inflate quite a bit.  I have covered a bit about the location of the pets in the world, as well as the vendor location in a previous post so you might want to check that out, but if you are looking for more information about pets, you might want to check out some of the other blogs that are on the blogroll.

SCRIBES

    MoP will open up a huge profit market for the crafty scribe that will be up to the task to pounce on the possible profits that could be made early on in MoP. To be even more precise i am talking about the whole new Panda glyphs that will be available at the start.

   Now even though everyone will have them, not everyone will be able to craft them in high volumes. The reason behind this is pretty simple, they will still require 3 inks, but instead of requiring the overstocked inks from Cataclysm it will require the new Ink Of Dreams which will be expensive as hell for the first two months or so. So knowing this here is the punch line, BUY YOUR INKS NOW WHILE THEY ARE STILL DIRT CHEAP !! 

   I can't stress this enough without putting them with big red letters so i did just that, and as for the Panda glyphs the majority of them will require Ink Of The Sea, so make sure you stock up on those in particular. 

   If you are looking for some more info on Inscription and how to prepare for MoP as a scribe, then you might want to pop over to Croda's Blog where he covers all about Inscription

   I will cut this post short here, because if i continue on it will end up like a wall of text and we don't want that do we. Anyhow in the next post i will cover the preparation and shopping lists for the Enchanting, Jewelcrafting and the major crafting professions. But for now i leave you at this, and remember like always keep an eye out for good opportunities out there.


Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Mists Of Pandaria ... Sets Sails


  As the title says Mists of Pandaria will launch later in September, 25th of September to be more precise. Now this is not a ground breaking news if you follow any of the major information gateways, or if you happen to check out the Battlenet site, but the reason why this is a good news is that with this information going public people will know that there will be new baddies to beat, and new gear to obtain. Taking into account that those same people will want to get into MoP with as much as gold possible, it is only logical that they will try and sell some of the stock they have obtained, and get a quick turnaround. 

   Needless to say, this is going to open up a whole new market for the worthy gold making goblins that will fill their coffers to the brim by doing  highly lucrative deals with a huge return in a very short time table. But anyways, after a long and boring wait due to almost nothing happening in WoW, i will re-start with the posting on ways to use the auction house to make a profit and hopefully greet MoP with a gold sum that will allow you to buy anything you might deem worthy of buying without having to deal with the fact that you are broke.

   So heads up and prepare, there is a huge profit storm coming and you want to be on the side of the people that will profit and not on the side of the people that will be carried away by that storm. So keep on reading the blog as well as the other informative blogs that you can find on the blogroll on the side and together we can all make a pretty decent profit.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Protecting Your WoW Account

   Lately i have been away from WoW as well as Diablo, but that doesn't mean that i have lost interest in the games. Well to be honest i kinda lost my interest in Diablo as the feeling i am getting while playing it is simply like i am playing a beta game. But that put aside i still have my interest in WoW, and the economy part in particular, even though we have hit a rough patch of boring as it is.

   As a gold making oriented individuals we love to play the game for it's virtual currency making aspect, where if you play it right you can influence and shape a whole economy. Well today we are going to take a look at the ULTIMATE way to influence the shaping of an economy by doing the most important thing that you can do, protect yourself from hackers and keeping your hard earned gold in your account and away from the black market.

   First of all lets clear one HUGE misunderstanding, whenever someone says that the Chinese farmers are the people that are responsible for the economy going to the gutter, you are dead wrong, it is in reality your own fault. Now let me explain the reasoning as to why i am saying this.

   Let us begin by defining the usual suspects: 

Chinese "farmer" this is basically some guy or a girl that sits in front of the computer and makes gold by actually playing the game, be it by actually farming or playing our beloved AH PvP. ( In many occasions these individuals aren't Chinese, but still the term is the term )
 
Botter this is a guy that doesn't like to sit and spend his time at the keyboard , so instead he is using bots (automated programs) to do all his work for him.
 

Gold Selling Sites well pretty much everyone that has ever gotten up to a major city without turning off his trade channel has had a run in with these guys. They don't actually farm anything as they are more or less a "middle guy" in a otherwise simple transaction. They connect the buyer of the gold with a seller and take a piece of the profit for them selves.

Hacker this is the highest threat to the economy of any game. These are the guys that steal your account information and then log in and pick clean your entire account in a matter of minutes.

   Like i previously said the hackers are the biggest problem by far. The reason why this is so is simply because of the gravity of the impact they have on the economy. When they steal your gold they transfer it away somewhere where they will be able to store it until they find a buyer that they can offload to and get their money. Well the issue arises because when you file a report saying that you were hacked you always get your inventory and gold back, but rarely is your original gold found before it ends up to a buyer. The reason why this is an issue is simple, lets say for an instance that you had 500k on your account. Now if you were hacked, the hacker got away with a 500k worth of loot for a 5 min work he did, that same 500k is now into circulation because it will end up on your same server to some other guy that paid money for it.

Now comparing the 500k a hacker for a 5 min work, to a botter is like comparing your local grocery store to a fortune 500 company. They will both make money but the difference in cash/hour is going to be huge. Don't get me wrong though, botters do have an impact on the economy, but they are dependent on the community to buy their farmed goods and are more or less a factor in the every day economy in WoW.

   So how do we protect ourselves, do we take up a bulwark and try that way, or magic or stealth ? Well the answer to that would be ... don't be ridiculous this it the real world. But still there are ways to protect yourself, and i will give you a few hints as well as the kryptonite of the hackers.

  • GET AN AUTHENTICATOR !!
    This is the the one thing that you MUST get if you are serious about keeping your account safe. They are cheap to get on the market, but if you have a smart phone you can get one for free.
  • GET A SOLID ANTI VIRUS !
    This shouldn't really require a description as to why as it is always nice to have something that will stand in the way of malicious software trying to steal your information ( keyloggers in our case)
  • DON'T BUY GOLD OR POWERLEVELING SERVICE FROM SITES !
    Really there is no need for you to spend your hard earned cash to get some quick gold, or even worse for someone to play or bot the game that YOU bought, and YOU are paying a monthly price. If you need gold simply read up some of the articles that are on the blog, or some of the other FREE blogs out there and you can get your gold fast and FREE and you will have some fun making it. And not to mention the fact that giving your account information, or even worse your credit card information to a individual or a site that you don't know is not the smartest thing to do.
  • !!! CHANGE YOUR PASSWORDS !!! DON'T GET HACKED !!!
    This is that kryptonite that i was talking about. This is where more then 90% of the black market gold comes from. But to make it more clear, NEVER EVER use the same password you have on your account and your email that is attached to that account. On top of that, NEVER EVER use the same password on community sites that require you to put in a e-mail. The reason for this is that many, many people do that mistake where they would make an email and put in a password like (qwerty or 123456) and then use that same password for their WoW account and pretty much any other account they make on any forum or community site ( MMO-Champion and similar).
    The reason for telling you this is because many people do this mistake and then they wonder how they got hacked. YOU didn't get hacked, but the community site that you are a part of got hacked and their info was used to feel your account up and see if the passwords match, if they do then you are screwed. So i say it again, NEVER use the same password for your e-mail and community sites that require your password.
    And another thing you might want to do if you want some extra security would be to change your passwords on a monthly basis.

    P.S. If you are by chance actually using a password such as QWERTY or 123456 then you do deserve to get hacked !
   So i hope you had a nice time reading this, and i really hope that you didn't find out anything new ( it means that you already did everything right and you are protected) but if you did read something that you didn't know, then apply that to better the safety for your account, and stay safe and protected, and keep those hacking SOBs away from your hard earned gold.