Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Making Gold from 5.3 Mining/Herb Changes

Well, patch 5.3 is out today, and while I anxiously await its release, figured I'd share how I'll be making money from the patch changes.

Only changes this blog cares about:
Node gathering professions can now be leveled in Pandaria from 1-600! This is, or could potentially be, a pretty dramatic shift in the marketplace. You get "ghost iron nuggets," "kyparite fragments," and "torn green tea leaves"  that act like motes: 10 of them turn into 1 ore. So-

Old way to level Mining 1-600(if you're Horde, /shoo): Go to Wow-Professions. Alt-tab back and forth, swap continents multiple times, and learn the mining routes for each of the following 1) Darkshore/Elwynn Forest, 2) Hillsbrad Foothills, 3) Western Plaguelands/Feralas,  4) Burning Steppes, 5) Ungoro Crater, 6) Hellfire Peninsula, 7) Nagrand, 8) Borean Tundra/Howling Fjord, 9) Sholazar Basin, 10) Mount Hyjal, 11) Twilight Highlands, 12) Jade Forest/Valley
World of Warcraft How to level mining difficult


New Way: Valley
World of Warcraft how to level mining 5.4 easy

So, where would this be useful? You have to be 85 to use the Pandaria portal, but that's really the only restriction on the new system. There are a two main situations where it would help:
1. Switching profession @ lvl 90
2. Outlevelled gathering profession zone/too lazy to go back and catchup

From here we can identify some changes in the future supply, and thus the change in prices. In the first situation, all ore/herbs would be replaced by Pandaria equivalents. So, at first dramatically, and then evening out over time, we should expect to see an increase in supply of Pandaria herbs/ore (and thus decrease in price). Simultaneously, we will see an decrease in the supply of all other herbs/ore (and therefore an increase in price).

For situation 2, I don't know about y'all, but I either stop leveling my profession at 100, 200, or 400. Somewhere in there, there is a zone or an ingredient or SOMETHING that I just can't get or don't want to grind out. It will be different for everyone but one thing remains the same: more people will have leveled to 100 than 200 (because you need to level to 100 first) so there will be more lvl 200 switchers than 100. Likewise, even fewer people will have gotten to fel iron ore, so more people will be nuggeting that grind rather than going out to Hellfire Peninsula. So, we have a trend, all old world ore will become more rare as lvl 90s switch professions and just spend an afternoon grinding, but the more recent ore will become less farmed than the older content. Here is a handy dandy picture: find your expansion's end boss!
World of Warcraft new gathering system


Action steps:
1. Long term relative price increases in old world ore and herbs, so stock up now if you see anything less than 100% median market price.
2. Ininital influx of levellers testing system out=shock to supply. Be ready to buy a LOT of cheap Green Tea and Ghost Iron. Set a threshold, and buy anything under that. Glad I got my scribe to 80.
3. Longterm, more people will be farming current ore and herbs, so there will be an increase in supply and drop in prices slightly here. Be ready to sellback your step #2 ore in 2 weeks - a month, but if you have inventory now, convert some to blacksmithing/living steel/etc now. Prices are going down, so convert and decrease your inventory.
4. (optional) There's something very interesting that MIGHT happen on very populated servers, where there are always people out farming. The expected value of each node is no longer 5.5 ghost iron ore/node, but instead less, since it's giving out 1/10th of an ore to lowbies. So, it's essentially wasting nodes that would have otherwise been mined fully, if the zone is always being farmed. This means that on very high pop realms, the ghost iron/green tea supply is actually DECREASING by this change, which would lead to a price increase long term for ghost iron.



Talking points:
1. What do you think will be a resting point for prices? What variables are you considering?
2. How likely do you think action step #4 is?
3. What affect will this decrease in herbs have on the ink market?

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2 comments:

  1. As an active trader in low level herbs(not too much in ores there still very common) I'm interested to see short term what the effect is on prices and supply. Long LONG term I see low level herbs and ore becoming as worthless as low level enchanting supplies, blizzard is streamlining the profession leveling process a bit at a time, and once it's hit all the profession, old world demand will be gone and prices will crash... big time

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  2. Well...I'm not so sure on that, but let's take herbs for example. Glyph makers will always want to buy old world herbs for old world glyphs, but with the trade-in, scribes generally won't pay more than current herbs. For old ore and leather, you can make a killing off crafting some of the rare transmogs, so there will always be some demand.

    In general though, once all professions are 1-600able with current mats you're right that old demand will go down, and all professions/goldmakers will have to adjust their strategies accordingly.

    Where I think you're wrong though is that while demand will probably drop significantly, so will supply, so prices might not change as much as you think, since when supply and demand move together, price doesn't change. Heck, on some servers it may even go up. We need to know more about %s and how they're going to implement crafting changes before we can make assumptions about future prices.

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