We have a bombshell, ladies and gentlemen. That's right, come 6.0, the neutral AH is being abolished and the Alliance and Horde Auction Houses are going to merge. I'll give you a minute to freak out, run around the room with your arms flailing, and then come on back and we'll figure out what this faction AH merger means.
Ok ok, this breaking news is a couple weeks old aleady, but I did want to do a full blog post on it, and I'm sure some of y'all may not know. First, yes, it means you will be able to buy and sell things to the horde if you're Alliance, and vice versa. What it DOESN'T mean is that the world is ending, WoW is exploding, or the Auction Housing are going to be destroyed. So, what have we got here?
On every realm, we'll essentially be going through a realm merger, where population increases and competition increases, pushing down prices of most markets slightly. Raise your hand if you've been through a realm merger. Wasn't as bad as you thought, was it? If you haven't, essentially, the few days beforehand, everyone gets nervous, the auction house starts to go a little crazy, and then the merger happens. The three days after the merger, everyone yells at each other to "GET OFF MY REALM," makes awkward one-word combinations of the two realms' names, while the AH is adjusting to the increased competition. Eventually AHers get tired if bidding wars and buying each other out to prove who is top dog (aka. someone runs out of money). After four days...everything is fine.
Will prices fall?
Yes, but not necessarily on everything, it won't be anything to worry about because you might actually be making more profit in the long run. So, if you're a miner or herbalist, chances are you already have a lot of competition. Even on a low-med pop, 6-10 farmers are out and about. So, a merger doubling 8 miners to 16 won't affect the market as much as Blacksmithing, where the number would double from say 3 major competitors to 6. Of course you'd have the smattering of 10 or 20 half-hearted posters, but I'm talking about the people who run their professions like they own it. (People like you, the kind are prepared and read blogs)
But Why Would I Be More Profitable?
So, prices generally fall according to the inverse log of the number of people on the server. Blah blah blah, math, what this means is that if you double the number of people, the price won't be cut in half, but less than that. If you triple the people, prices will be less than a third of what they were. Taking Sky Golems as an example, on the day they were released, on low pop realms, they were selling for 300-400k gold, and on high pop realms like Stormrage, they were at 60-80k within a few hours.
Left: Graph showing inverse log function. Right: Google related image search. Nailed it, Google. Nailed it. -_-
So, let's say you've been selling 10 gems a day for 150g each. 1500g in revenue. Well, when the population doubles, if you stay on your game, you can expect 20 gems a day, but prices won't be cut in half. So, 20 gems a day at (for instance, but realistically) 100g each, which would total to 2,000g in revenue.
But That's Just Revenue. What About Profit?
Yah, this eats into low-profit-margin crafted professions a lot more that it does other trade professions, true. Miners could essentially mine forever, since small servers are now medium pop and mediums are now large. However, with WoD, they're changing the structure of professions to be higher priced on average. Fewer gem sockets, by itself, raises the price of each individual gem. With items like Sorcerous Earth, and the Alchemical Catalyst, there seems to be incentives to deplete materials by selling goods to other profession users rather than using them yourself (or building up your Garrison or course). Either way, this expansion should not be a "dump all raw materials from Halfhill on the AH." The professions you know and love now are being altered to sell for a higher price in the future. Still, it's early. It's Beta.
So, am I worried about this? A little bit, but not really. There will be a pretty significant adjustment, especially for people on servers who have 15% Horde and 85% Alliance where the Horde prices would plummet, but in reality, most of those server have been merged already and won't be drastically affected. Furthermore, if you've already been through a server merge, pat yourself on the back, because you know what this is going to be like, except this time, you don't have to deal with all the BS in Trade chat. :P
For the past two weeks, we've been doing a series about preparing for Patch 5.4. If you've read everything, then thanks for following along, and I applaud you; it's been a lot of information.
/clap
With Patch 5.4 at our doorstep, it's time for an abridged recap of everything you need to know to make gold with the auction house, crafting, and with no professions, 1) in case you missed a few posts, 2) to correct any changes Blizzard has made on the PTR or any accidental reporting errors on my part, and 3) to provide a link you can bookmark and easily come back to in the next few weeks, since many of these tips will be valid goldmaking strategies for Patch 5.4 for the first month or two.
The Build Up
Step 1: Sell off 522s and Spirits
Unload any crafted 522 armor you have, Haunted Steel Headguards, Quillen Hide Helm, etc. While TheUndermineJournal.com states the median price in the 25k range, the moving price for both helms and boots has dropped to about 18,000 so post in that range if you want them to sell (my recommendation, servers vary and of course yours may be different).
Sell your Haunting Spirits if you have any. Their prices are mirroring Blood spirits trend so they should plummet to 1000g in the second week, 600g in the first month, and bottom out to 300g in month two. Don't get caught holding the bag. There's still a week left to make gold with spirits before the opportunity is gone.
Step 2: Build up an inventory of crafting mats
The new daily cooldowns for tailoring, blacksmithing, and leatherworking require a lot of basic materials: 1 Trillium bar, 10 Bolts, and 2 Hides. In addition, the new ilvl 476 crafted PVP gear will need about 50% more mats to make than the old ilvl 458 stuff. So, stock up now on cloth, ghost iron, trillium, or hides before prices jump up. Trillium's increase will influence Living Steel's price, but since no crafted gear requires it, expect Living Steel's demand to drop until about October 10th, when the first Engineers are able to craft the Sky Golem/Sky Claw mount, and the price will rise some. The new mount requires 30 Living Steel and 30 Stabilized Lightning Source, the new Engineer daily cooldown.
Step 3: Get enhancement professions ready
Generally, this refers to Jewelcrafting, but Enchanting and Inscription as well. Glyphs are getting a rework so that'll be covered later in the guide, but include those mentally here too. If you're prepared, you could potentially make 20,000 gold an hour from jewelcrafting as a few people did in patch 5.2. Here's why. Many of the classes' spells are changing, and because of this, lots of players will need to reforge, regem, and re-enchant when they log in after 5.4 drops. In addition, with everyone running Siege of Orgrimmar on Normal and Flex immediately, they'll be getting replacement gear en masse, which needs optimization.
Prospect a large stockpile of gems, cut a stack or two of each of the solid-color pure-stat cuts, and then look at your server's history, read my rundown of spell changes, and determine if my list of recommended mixed cuts (crit/agi, haste/agi, haste/int, spirit/int, and mastery/str, along with block and parry cuts) makes sense to you. If not, head on over to Stormspire.net and see if any other seasoned JCs have other input. You can make a ridiculous amount of money here in the first two or three days.
Other professions should follow the same general advice and build up an inventory of materials, have basic sure fire sellers precrafted, and study your market for any specialty items.
Step 4: Noodle Cart Prep Work
Patch 5.4 is introducing an easier way to buff up: Noodle Carts. In short, they let one person become a vendor (Blizz keeps the gold, whamp whamp) and people buy multiple max level food buffs from them, rather than just the one use that the raid feasts have. They're more efficient than feasts, but still requires a royal ton of materials. Moreover, everyone will be doing the same quest chain to get these mats all at once, so you can load up on them beforehand (since the materials will probably sell out) and mark em up to 500-1000% the normal price. No one wants to spend 20 minutes flying around just to farm out 5 Wildfowl Breasts. The quest chain is pretty long so I expect most people to take a break after the "Noodle Cart Kit" but I put together a Google Document outlining all the mats for each kit so you can farm all the mats for everything if you choose to own the entire Noodle Industry.
The Post-Release Hustle
Step 1: Jewelcrafting Sellof
If you're a JC, get everything posted up. Depending on how crazy the AH is, this could be a small time commitment, or it could be a full-time thing. We'll see, although honestly I don't think it will be quite as ridiculous as the 5.2 rush was. Follow TheUndermineJournal.com, WoWuction.com, or Stormspire.net for news from your server and others on what price trends are going on and what demand for different gems is looking like. If you use TSM 2.0, make sure you have your Cancel scans set up; you will be undercut often.
Step 2: Profiting from Battle Pets and LFR
Four new tradeable battle pets drop from LFR and Flex that will sell very well on the Auction House: Droplet of Y'Shaarj, Gooey Sha-ling, Blackfuse Bombling, and Kovok (baby Garalon, Eeeeee!) Additionally, any boss drops that you don't need can be disenchanted for Spirits of War, the new version of Haunting Spirits. These will start off very expensive (10k+) and then slowly become more reasonably priced, so sell them as soon as possible. Make sure to run Flex, Normal, and LFR Siege of Orgrimmar as soon as you can on as many toons as you can in the first week or two. LFR part four won't come out for a while, but keep running these for your chances. They're adorable and good pets that you'll be able to sell for a bundle, especially if you take 45 minutes and level up to 25 before you AH them.
Step 3: Grinding New Glyph Patterns (Corrections)
42 new glyphs have been added, but these aren't learned on a daily cooldown for once! These recipes are learned from killing mobs, similar to Jewelcrafting meta recipes. Some of the glyphs are Bind on Pickup from Pandaria mobs and some are Bind on Equip from Timeless isle kills. El from ElsAnglin put together a great comment on which glyphs drop where. If you can get your glyph toon geared above ilvl 500, go to the Timeless isle and grind there. If you can't, grind your favorite 90 pandaria spot, then switch to your main, and grind Timeless Isle on that toon. On my original post, I made a big deal about bind on pickup, but it looks like you can mail patterns from Timeless Isle between toons.
Step 4: Noodle Cart Quests
So, you posted up all the mats for noodle carts before the patch was released, now it's time to actually learn the recipe for the cart itself and sell those, because they'll be overpriced themselves. The quest chain starts northeast of the lake in Timeless Isle. Here's a guide I put together about how to get the noodle cart.
The short version is run Temple of the Jade Serpent, kill the bonus boss, go to Halfhill, catch sacks in the Imperial Granary, and run Stormstout Brewery. But watch the video, cause you might have to redo a step or two otherwise, cause there are a few tricky parts. When you get the +300 kits, but a few on the Auction house and you should make a very decent profit for the first couple weeks as all the lazy people procrastinate on doing the full quest chain.
Step 5: Timeless Isle Pets
There are going to be 12 great (read: profitable) pets dropping from rares and elites on the Isle in Patch 5.4 (couldn't get the filter to show only the 12, but you'll get the idea). You'll also be able to purchase some new pets with Timeless Coins, which drop off NPCs (x10-40) and Bloody Coins, obtained from killing players (x1). Oh, and of course, Blingtron 4000 is finally dropping a pet. Hazaa!
Lil Bling Bling
If you need a map of all the rares, Wowhead has a great guide here. As you can see, they're all on the perimeter, so rare farming is just a nice Un'goro-style route around the outside, rather than zig zagging around like in Isle of Giants.
Clarification: The Celestial Tournament reward pets, the Celestialets, are NOT cageable, so you will not be able to sell them, as I alluded to in the first version of my pet post, before I was kindly corrected.
And that's it. Each of these step should be able to, by themselves, be able to earn 50k at least in the first week if you spend just a little bit of time working on them. If you call in sick to work all week (I'm sure your boss will understand) then the sky is the limit. Good luck, everyone. Remember to subscribe to this lil ole WoW blog, follow me on Twitter, and until next time remember to
Search. Craft. Post.
Every Day.
P.S. I also wanted to say, sincerely, thank you for all the comments, tweets, and general support from you all. WTBGold has been growing recently because of y'all spreading the word and I really appreciate it. I look forward to helping more people start and continue their goldmaking journey.
Some people like to make gold on the auction house, some like to use professions or mob grinding, but a select few get bored of all that jazz and turn to more creative means: using Whiskers the Rat or a Lashtail Hatchling to make a massive stockpile. That's right, don't think I forgot about you Battle Pet aficionados, and don't think Blizzard did either. Patch 5.4 is currently introducing 92 new Battle pets according to WoWhead, of which 20 will be tradable. And yes, finally, Blingtron 4000 is dropping a pet!
Lil Bling is the cutest thing EVER!
Celestial Tournament:
This blog is dedicated to goldmaking, so I want to focus on that aspect and how people who prefer pet battling could go about making gold in 5.4, but there is one thing I wanted to touch on first that is worth mentioning, and luckily it could be fairly profitable. Blizzard has introduced a really neat addition called the Celestial Tournament. This is a single-person non-PVP weekly scenario that requires you to have fifteen level 25 pets in order to enter (recently hotfixed from a requirement of thirty). While in the tournament, you fight one round of 3 legendary NPCs, and then a second round of the four celestials in pet form. You can choose the order of your fights during each round, but the trick is, that you have a debuff preventing you from healing or reviving any of your pets during the entire scenario. In short, have a lot of max lvl pets (The minimum recommended "all goes well" number for completion is 21). Upon finishing the scenario you recieve 1 Celestial Coin, and for 3 coins each you can buy the Battle Pet versions of the four Celestials ("Celestialets") Yu'lon, Xuen, Chi'Ji, and Nuizoa. So, get to leveling if this interests you. Unfortunately, Blizzard has stated that these new Celestialets are not tradeable, so we won't be able to sell cute little Xu-Fu, Cub of Xuen. Whamp whamp.
Battle Pet Rundown:
In the spirit of "OMGITSANEWPATCHTHERESSOMUCHTODO!" I'll try and sort this list by easiest to hardest. Here's what you need to know to get the best pets in Patch 5.4. These are the pets that you can attain, cage, and immediately sell on the AH to make some decent cash. Most new pets sell for an absurd amount of gold when they're first released, so if you find a way to obtain a few of these, feel free to share your secrets in the comments!
Things You're Going to Do Anyways
You're probably going to run LFR, but make sure you also try to run Flex every week too, and make sure you pick up a daily Blingtron somewhere. Not only is he adorable, but his new pet is actually pretty OP.
Lil Bling - He makes it rain. As in, that's actually an ability he uses. What more do you want?!
Gooey Sha-ling - Get your very own sha! Deals good damage and reduces healing, so it should be good for Celestial Tournament bosses with healing abilities, according to MestMistel. Drops from Sha of Pride in Wing #1: Vale of Eternal Sorrows, on LFR and Flex.
Droplet of Y'shaarj - Sha: now comes in purple! Also, it's an elemental pet with magic, aquatic, humanoid, and undead abilities. I'm all kinds of confused with this guy. Y'shaarj is a jerk. Anyways. Drops from Sha of Pride on Flex, Normal, and Heroic, but not LFR.
Blackfuse Bombling - Adorable walking mine. Drops from Siegecrafter Blackfuse in Wing #4: Downfall, on all difficulties. The LFR and Flex won't be released for another ~40 days though, just FYI.
Kovok - Oh my god, we get a mini-Garalon! This guy is actually really overpowered from the videos I've watched, to the point where I'd expect it to be nerfed a little. He has Pheremones (about 200 dmg to all pets for 4 rounds) a poison, and a poison-modified bash. He's like Lil Ragnaros on steroids. Anyways, he drops from Paragon of the Klaxxi, Wing #4: Downfall.
While You're Out and About-Rare Drops
There are plenty of rares and elites on the Timeless Isle, just like there were on the Isle of Giants, and some of them drop pets. The coolest look ones are the pandaren spirits, although the Darkmoon Faire has some new goodies as well.
Ruby Droplet - Red Pandaren Spirit dropped from Garnia at the Ruby Lake. My personal favorite, and I might even just camp this one for a little bit; I have a thing for red though. Good undead skills. To access the mountain top, attack an albatross, and have it carry you.
Jademist Dancer - This guy is absolutely cute as a frickin' button, and has a very decent aquatic setup with Acid Rain->Rain Dance->Steam Vent x2. These don't drop from rares, but just normal elite mobs by the same name, so feel free to grind some out.
Dandelion Frolicker - And we finally get sprite pets! These drop from Scary Sprites, another elite creature located on the Isle. Not impressed by this guy's skill set, but hey, who doesn't want to own a sprite after grinding out Alani?
Moon Moon - First off, props to Blizz for the meme reference. lolz. Possible drop from killing the new Darkmoon Faire boss, Moonfang.
Grindy Things
In the Timeless Isle there are two new main currencies, Timeless Coins and Bloody Coins. Timeless drop off mobs at a rate of about 10-40 per mob. Bloody drop off people after turning in 7500 Timeless coins for a special trinket that turns you Hostile to both factions. Every kill, whether Alliance or Horde, grants you 1 Bloody Coin.
Harmonious Porcupette - This little guy is sold from Mistweaver Ku in the Timeless Isle for 7500 Timeless Coins at Revered reputation with Emperor. You'll be getting coins anyways, by doing your dailies and spending time on the Isle. Might as well spend it on this pet ASAP and put him on the AH within the first couple of days. Rep can be grinded out by killing Yaungols (i.e. Black Prince Rep 2.0)
Vengeful Porcupette - For the vengeful version, talk to the Bloody coins vendor, Speaker Gulan. This required 2500 coins. Grindy Grindy. You can try and survive on your own, but much like farming Kokron mats, it's easier to team up for this. Timeless Isle is going to be a wild place to be for the next couple of weeks.
Gameplan:
In my opinion, Pet Battling is an entirely personal gameplay style, so it's up to you. I will be focusing on the more profitable aspect of selling gems and enchants on the first day or two, but if you don't have a JC, and enjoy pets, this could be very lucrative. Several guildies sold 3 or 4 of the Spectral Porcupettes for over 12,000g each when those were new, and they hadn't even leveled them up. So, you have options:
Option 1- Find one thing that you're good at or enjoy doing. For instance, you're just awesome at Timeless Coin farming or can make the rounds of the rare elites like a boss. Just do that one thing and load up on a bunch of one type of pet and be the go-to guy (or girl) for that on your server.
Option 2- Focus on everything pet related. Figure out a route that works for you that lets you hit everything I've listed here. Note: I left out a few of the boring/repetitive pets.
Option 3- Do the main questline, work on the story, and do whatever else you feel is important, but keep pet farming in the back of your head so that you can earn a little extra from it. For instance, if you're running around the Isle and see a Scary Sprite or Jademist Dancer, for the first week or two, it's worthwhile to stop and kill it until prices fall on the pets.
Either way, any of the pets you farm out should sell for 10k pretty easily, worst case, you spend 45 minutes leveling them to 25 and THEN sell them for 10k. It shouldn't be very difficult to farm out 5 or 10 of these in the first week if that's what you decide to devote yourself to, and there you go: 50-100k gold in a week. Bling Bling.
And that's it guys, hope you enjoyed what is the last full guide of the Countdown series. I'll be doing a wrap up and compiling everything into a nice, clean, pretty (and hopefully short) list for Saturday's post. See you then! I wouldn't be at all hurt if you Followed me on Twitter or shared this with you friends on Facebook. Until next time, remember to
Oh my goodness, can you believe the Vale is going to be destroyed in less than a week?! I'm so nervous I'm actually a little queezy. Actually, that may just be because I've got a cold. :-( Yah, I'm a little sick today so I'll keep this one short for y'all but here's the information you need to get your scribe ready to make some serious gold. That's right, they're making some serious revamps to glyphs for Patch 5.4 and introducing a new way for inscription to learn the recipes, doing away with the glyph daily cooldown. So, here are the five major points to be away of, my recommended gameplan, followed by the full list of the current glyph recipes in the PTR database right now. In the list, any that I've heard substantial buzz over (i.e. you should sell these for a lot ~ 1-2k initially with no competition) will be marked.
Glyph of One With Nature: Teleports you anywhere...that has trees.
Cause you know, druids like trees.
Changes:
1. Continue to learn all your old recipes through the daily CD. It's still in place. It's only the new 5.4 recipes that are affected by the change. Just wanted to get that out there, first and foremost.
2. Currently, there are 42 new glyphs that are being introduced, and this patch will go down in history as being the first actually introduces some useful minor glyphs: Warriors get Glyph of Subtle Defender, Druids get Glyph of Sprouting Mushroom, DKs get Glyph of Long Winter and there are many others.
3. The Patch 5.4 Glyphs are learned by killing mobs; half the techniques are Bind on Pickup from killing mobs in Pandaria and half the recipes are Bind on Equip from killing in the Timeless Isle (Note: Since the Isle is in Pandaria, the BoP patterns can drop from Timeless Isle mobs as well as BoE techniques). The Medallion is a World Drop.
4. The requirements for learning them are Inscription 500. The Timeless Isle quest chain requires lvl 90, and while I haven't tested it, I suppose you might be able to teleport there with a warlock and do the grind in a party if not lvl 90. Just be warned, the mobs in the Isle hit VERY HARD, and are designed for ilvl 500+ geared players. My warrior is 545, and on the PTR they knocked out 1/3 of my health per hit. It's actually kind of embarrassing, but exciting at the same time. In short, be 90 and geared or with friends.
Gameplan:
I'm not quite sure how the breakdown will work out, but have not heard promising things from people who have grinded out Timeless Isle. To make gold in patch 5.4 from inscription quickly, go ahead and find your favorite Pandaria lvl 90 farming spot: Dread Scar, Krasarang Daily mobs, Golden Lotu...oh wait...From there, move on to Timeless Isle and kill a bunch of guys there for the coins, which you need to grind out anyways.
For now, what you need to do is just focus on gearing your self by running LFR and your daily Heroic Scenario cache, if you don't have a regular Normal/Heroic raid team. Six days is enough to go from zero to hero with the current gear available, if you load up on coins from the Isle of Giants Palace of Lei Shen scenario.
Update 9/11/2013
The new patch has been out for a day and I wanted to clarify a gameplan that seems to be working well.
Situation 1: Your scribe is geared and 90. Go to Timeless Isle and kill stuff, following along with the normal quest chain. Both BoE and BoP inscription techniques will drop. Expect to grind out to about 50,000 timeless coins before you have all the patterns.
Situation 2: Your scribe is not geared but 90. Do the Timeless Isle quest chain on your main. After killing a bunch of mobs, you'll have a bag full of 496 bind on account gear and a few Burdens of Eternity so you can just send those over to your scribe and after an hour of just questing, WHAMMO! alt is geared to the teeth. Then send your scribe to the Isle.
And that's about it. We scribes are no stranger to long grinds, be it posting or learning recipes, so get out there and get killing things. However, if you aren't geared on your scribe, go run some LFRs and Normal mode Throne of Thunders, because you will need the gear. Other than that, remember to follow me on Twitter, share this with your guildies if it was helpful, and to
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
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.
About half of the people I've met in game who have more than a million gold say that they made most of it though Jewelcrafting, and they did so by taking advantage of singular moments. While there is a rush almost every patch, the only one I've been online to actually witness is the 5.2 launch, where PVP Power/Resil changes caused everyone to regem for the hardly-used PVP cuts. People reported (with proof) consistently making 14k, 20k, and 25k per hour, with a few even spiking here and there to 40k in sales. In this post, I'll explain why this all transpires, then go over what class changes we should expect, and finally wrap up with a plan of action so that you can be the next person making 25k, but first things first...
Ok, so, here's what happens. People log on after the patch and start doing their new quests. That one guy in guild who always reads every single word of the patch notes says "Hey guys, Haste is more important than Crit for warriors now. No, I'm serious. Go to AskMrRobot." And everyone freaks out because there's no way haste could ever be worth anything, right?! I mean...it's...haste! So we check it out and "zomg, dude you're right. That's so weird, oh well, lol." So we spend 1000g-2000g reforging and regemming. It sucks for us, but we do it once and we're done. The great part for JCs is that it's not just that one person; there are 3,000-50,000 level 90s on every server doing this. That's a high end estimate of 100 million gold in revenue for a high pop server's FIRST regemming...and then everyone runs LFR+Flex+Normal and gets new gear (that they need to optimize).
I read WTBGold, so I can afford to buy this temple now
CHANGES:
Here's a brief rundown of the major changes that are coming up, as it pertains to gemming and enchanting. *Legal: Does not constitute raid optimization advice; consult with your local raid leader and class expert before fully reforging. Subject to change before Patch 5.4 release date.
Death Knight
Frost: DW>2H, so 2H players will be switching to Mastery>Haste>Crit.
Blood: Riposte added. This gives crit when you block/parry.
Paladin
Holy: Mana changes. Seal of Insight no longer returns mana, but Divine Plea returns more. Spirit/Mastery gemming changes depending on your proximity to the ~12k break.
Priest
While there aren't any changes here, it is worth pointing out that SoO raid gear is very light on Spirit+Haste gear with only 6/12 of the main slots being covered. So people will need to gem more for these stats than they were previously. This is more longterm strategy though.
Shaman
Resto: Healing Rain and Healing Tide Totem buff, however this does not change reforging.
Warrior
Arms/Fury: No stat changes, but I am excited that Bladestorm is on a 60second CD, and Arms is viable for raiding.
RECOMMENDED CUTS:
So, crit/agi, haste/agi, haste/int, spirit/int, and mastery/str mixed cuts should get a decent bump based on the current PTR. [Update Septemper 10, 2013]
Now that the patch has been live for a bit, we have a little more data on recommended cuts. These are the most purchased cuts from a sampling of 5 servers. The cuts that were selling well on all or almost all servers are italicized.
RedBrilliant, Delicate YellowQuick, Smooth, Fractured Blue Sparkling PurplePurified, Glinting OrangePotent, Adept, Artful, Reckless, Deadly Green Energized, Misty, Lightning, Zen
GAMEPLAN:
To take advantage of all these changes, and make enough to tide you over for a while, Jewelcrafters will need to follow a few steps. First, start prospecting ore now to build up a supply of gems. Go as crazy as you feel comfortable with here; Blizzard has confirmed that there will not be an epic gem released in 5.4 so you can continue selling this inventory until 6.0 is released (people have inventories of 2000+ of EACH rare gem, so go hog wild, you'll be fine). Make sure you have TradeSkillMaster set up appropriately for you, not for anyone else, but for you and your comfort/greed levels. (Click here if you need help with shuffling the uncommon gems)
Have a couple stacks of the basics cut. You'll want to load up on pure agi, int, strength first, and then focus on Orange cuts and the wider used purple cuts like Agi/Hit, before moving on to the speculation list from above. However, the specific cuts that will sell vary wildly by server makeup, PVP vs PVE, and whether it's a strong progression server, so I cannot, unfortunately, give you a list of "the best Jewelcrafting cuts to make gold with in 5.4," but I can come close. If you go to The Undermine Journal, you can see a nice layout under Crafting->Jewelcrafting of all the cuts with the profitable ones highlit in red. Then, if you go to WoWuction you can see the demand for them. In other words, while a cut may be listed for a profitable price, there might only be 1 person a month who buys that specific gem, so why bother? Finally, if you don't know any of these cuts, make sure you finish up the daily cooldowns for them now. Oh, and grouping up in the Barrens is a great way to farm Spirits of Harmony for a second cooldown.
Come release day, we may all be surprised by what gems actually sell, how ridiculous prices are, how large the market's demand is, or how small it is, but it's usually better to be the person who put him/herself in a position to profit. Prices WILL jump around. I like to keep The Consortium forums open in Chrome all day on Patch releases, just to make sure I don't miss anything.
Just keep prospecting! Just keep prospecting!
1. Prospect ore en masse.
2. Load up on Solid Pure Cuts.
3. Research which cuts sell well for YOUR market, not anyone else's. Make these.
4. Learn anything you're missing.
5. Be ready and prepared to be flexible.
Final note. This all applies to the enchanting market as well, since it's part of any mass-optimization change, although people tend to change out enchants much less frequently. Still, if you're an enchanter, the same rules apply. Have a material stock in place, make profitable crafts, and be ready.
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to the next guide, when we're only (*GULP*) a week away from Release Day. Follow me on Twitter if you haven't already and Share this with your guildies if it was helpful. Until next time remember to
Welcome to part two of the countdown! Only 12 days left until the Alliance and the Horde set aside our differences and beat the heck out of an empowered Warleader with the help of an orphaned dragon-man, whom we also set aside our difference in order to kill his father (...and his mommy Onyxia before that...twice...three times if you count the 60 and 80 raid seperately). Looking over at MMO-Champion, things seem to be coming to a close for Patch 5.4. On the latest PTR Build, there were only 4 ability changes, which pretty much means they have everything ironed out, until the next PvP season starts and people start complaining about how overpowered Shamans are (I'm calling it). But as it stands, we goldmakers have some hustling to do in order to prepare ourselves if we want to buy out and farm up things that will be in demand in the near future.
That poor little butterfly...
In my previous post, I mentioned profession changes. Nev did a great write up on all the 5.4 crafting changes if you'd like to read it. In short though, things are gonna take a ton of mats, and rather than using raid essences to craft epics, we'll use normal materials like trillium, hides, and cloth, and a LOT of them. The amount of materials needed to craft PVP gear has been increased, and I expect the AH prices to increase accordingly.
So, looking over those numbers, there's about a 50% increase in the materials cost, which should mean about a 35% or so increase in mat prices if Blizzard doesn't mess with node spawn rates (it's not a 50% increase because Demand doesn't increase Price 1:1, since Supply and Demand are curved lines). Remember that on top of all this, everyone has their new daily cooldowns to learn all these new PVP recipes that each require 1 trillium bar, or 10 bolts, or 2 hides, just to keep the markets moving a little more.
These will have trickle down effects on Living Steel but I'd be hesitant to go whole hog on trying to control that market at the moment. Although, the Sky Golem mount is one of the coolest things you've ever seen.
I want to Flag PVP, sit in Twilight Highlands starting zone, and wait.
These are a new toy Engineers get to play with, and Blizzard was nice enough to let them sell them to other players so that it can finally be a profitable profession somewhere near the end of the expansion. The Sky Golem recipe requires 30 Living Steel and 30 Stabilized Lightning Source, the new Engineering daily cooldown, so Mid October would probably be the best time to unload your LS.
SUMMARY:
You'll need about 50% more of the basic stuff for everything craftable in 5.4, so it'll be more expensive. Buy it cheap now and either flip it later if you want, or just use it and sell the results. You'll profit either way.
Hope this post was helpful. If it was, hey, share it with your guildies and I'll see y'all for Part Three. Until next time remember to
Evil Garrosh is coming, and so are the crazy markets associated with any new patch release, so every other day, I'll be bringing you something you can do to prepare so that you can either make money with Patch 5.4...or in the case of this post, prevent you from losing your shirt!
Poor Garrosh...This is what happens when you eat Mentos and Diet Coke.
It's two weeks out and time to start selling off your ilvl 522 crafted epics and Haunting Spirits. These items, like Blacksmith's Haunted Steel Headguard, Leatherworker's Quillen Hide Helm, or Tailor's Falling Blossom Hood sell more slowly than the PvP gear because of the higher prices, but luckily, everyone is gearing up alts right now and is a little more willing to pay. I've been selling them in the 25k-35k range (lower for boots, of course) but remember, you're selling off inventory, here. Craft more if you want to but do so at your own risk because prices for these will fall considerably after the 10th. If you have any Blood Spirits left over, get rid of those as well, as they will continue to drop in value, although probably not by as much as Haunting Spirits.
If you have several Haunting Spirits, now is the time to sell them. Since TSM 2.0's release two weeks ago, I have sold 58 of them on my tiny little server...wait wait, let me log in...since TSM 2.0's release, I have sold 65 of them on my tiny little server. (Click here for my guide on how to initially set up TSM 2.0) People are hungry for the materials for the gear, even if they aren't buying out the 522 crafted markets.
Liquidating AND making a ton from it? Yes, please!
The Blacksmithing daily recipes in patch 5.4 give iLvl 553 legs and belts (well, the Leatherworking dailies and Tailoring dailies do, too, but I like Blacksmithing best...hush). BUT, this gear only uses trillium/windwool bolts/exotic leather as base materials, so the demand for spirits will fall. Counterpoint: Helm and Feet patterns have not been introduced, so craftable 522 gear will still be an upgrade for new toons dinging 90 who have the gold to buy them and don't want to grind rep/dungeons/dailies. My rebuttal though, is that since mat prices for the spirits will fall so much, the prices for the gear will fall, making it more cost effective to sell everything you can right now, and then craft any profitable 522s that arise in the future with materials purchased in 5.4 at 5.4 mat prices.
In short, drop your epic prices a smidge and start selling your expensive stuff. If it doesn't sell, discount it more. You don't want to get caught in late September having to sell a 522 helm for 8,000g that you crafted for 40,000g worth of mats. Likewise, look at the chart of blood spirits compared to haunting. Two weeks after release (Sept 24th), Haunting Spirit prices will likely drop to 1k. One month after patch release (Oct 10th), expect them to sell for 600g, and in two months (Nov 10th) expect them to have bottomed at 250g. I don't know about you, but I like getting 3k a pop for em right now. :)
Other News:
My YouTube channel is up and running, and we actually have a guide up now, too! It's completely unrelated to anything I'm talking about up above, but I had a lot of fun filming it, so here it is. Enjoy and hope you make some gold from it. So, if y'all have any requests for future videos (would you prefer addon guides? instance guides like this? PTR guides? profession walkthroughs? flipping tips?), drop me a message in the comments.
Until next time, follow me on Twitter for more tips, and always remember that there isn't a secret to making gold in World of Warcraft. All you have to do is just
