Countdown to Patch 5.4 - 8 Days: Are You Ready For Noodle Cart Devastation?

     This is the only time you'll hear me say this but, KEEP THIS POST A SECRET! For real, normally I tell y'all to share things with your guildies, but don't share this one. Here's why; if you talk about the new Noodle Cart quest chain there will be an terrible, epic, violent revolution...or at least you won't make any money from the new buff food.

Quick Backstory:

     In 1929, Wisconsin milk farmers had what's called perfect competition, where they could increase supply without dropping price. The Great Depression hit though, a few years rolled around, and prices everywhere started falling. Milk farmers reacted in an understandable way, they each increased their personal production in order to try and sell more to feed their own families. But see, when everyone made more, this caused prices for milk to plummet even further because they were producing too much of it. The government attempted to correct prices and farmers interpreted this as causing the change. The milk farmers banded together against the government and went on strike in 1933, leading to some of the most wild photographs of the depression. The Wisconsin Farm Holiday (silly name, serious business) set up roadblocks so that other farmers couldn't sell milk.

"Flaming Logs Stop a Car Near New London"

     Anyone who tried to get through these roadblocks would be punished; the group of 130,000 farmers ended up stealing and dumping out a massive amount of their own neighbors' product over the following months.

"The Last of Seven Carloads"

Pictures via Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 35, number 1, autumn, 1951

     Here's the interesting thing. They dumped out thousands and thousands of these containers of milk, unloading cars, trains, you name it. This decreased the supply by enough to create scarcity, thus causing an (accidental) increase in price. They won the war and made more money in the long run by literally dumping all their own product and not making anything for a couple months. Also, there was tear gas and people died during later riots. The 1930s were pretty horrible. Ommitting those pictures.

Noodle Cart:

     So, how does this all relate to the new Noodle Cart Kit? Ok, sure, we probably won't have Obama calling in the National Guard on this one. But here's the thing. The new food buffs are BiS and there's only one type of the max level food: the Grand Pandaren Noodle Cart. When you have a server full of people flooding the market with uniform goods at the same time you have something very similar to the milk scenario above. In other words, everyone is expecting to make money from their product but nothing differentiates them from Joe Blow, Mary Sue, and the 10,000 other people on server who just completed the quest and are also expecting to make the same amount of profit selling the same amount of goods. While maybe not as drastic in its process and end result, it can end poorly if we all spread the word to everyone in guild on Patch 5.4's release day, so while it makes me a little sad to limit other players' initial patch experiences, I recommend being sneaky here. The quest chain for the noodle cart has gone relatively unhyped so far. If you play your cards right, my expectation is that you'll be able to get outrageous prices for the +300 carts throughout the first week or two until prices start to level out.

     The quest chain to get it starts in the new zone, the Timeless Isle, to which you gain access by talking to Chromie and teleporting. The video below explains the rest of it.

Worst Case (Best Case?):

     Let's say that everyone finds out about the carts and there is a NOODLE CART RAMPAGE! What then? Well luckily, these take a pretty substantial amount of mats. The first quest, which we can pretty much count on everyone doing at some point in the first week, requires the following raw mats:

5 Tiger Steak - 5 Charbroiled Tiger Steak

10 Juicycrunch Carrots - 5 Sauteed Carrots

5 Jade Lungfish - 5 Swirling Mist Soup

5 Giant Mantis Shrimp - 5 Shrimp Dumplings

5 Wildfowl Breast - 5 Wildfowl Roast

5 Ginseng - 5 Ginseng Tea

Edit: 9/15/2013 Since release, the most profitable way to make money has been selling mats, specifically, the cooked materials and not the raw mats, although it's a good idea to have some of each up so that you can corner the market. Sell stacks of 5 for ~250g or more if you think your server can afford it. End edit

A google document I put together containing all the noodle cart materials is here.

Not as bad as it looks. Hint: Timeless Isle=Meat.

Conclusion:

     If you want to prep for 5.4, here's my final advice for the day. Go out and farm the mats above. There are different mats for the lvl 275 and 300 food, and go ahead and grind out the quest yourself and put those on the Auction House on the 10th. But tomorrow, and in the coming days, spend some time farming up some Wildfowl Breast, Tiger Steak, and various fish. These are relatively easily farmed, but the recipe only calls for 5 of each. Would you pay 250g for 5 Wildfowl Breasts-Wildfowl Roast just to save you the time and get your cart after spending two hours on a quest chain? I know I would. If 100 people do that, it's a profitable afternoon of farming Cliff Kites. (Would you pay 300? 500? Set up a couple tiers to test the market's comfort levels.) This way, you're making excessive gold off the people who are too lazy to farm their own mats AND the people who are too lazy to grind their own noodle cart quests. 

It's a lactose-free win/win!

Until next time, remember to 

Search. Craft. Post.

Every Day.

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