I hate to be a doomsayer for anyone used to buying gems for under 300g, but it looks like we have some changes coming in WoD. At the same time, I'm not sure if this is good news or bad news for those who decided to keep Jewelcrafting as a profession or not. But it looks like we're going to see 2,000 gold gems in Warlords of Draenor.
Get shocked now, so you can prepare later, and share in the wealth. :)
Did a little talking about this on the YourWoWMoney podcast, but I just ran some numbers. The rare gems for WoD cost 50 Taladite Crystals, 10 Sorcerous Air, and 5 Warlord of Draenor Herbs. Taladite Crystals at max level are crafted from 20 Blackrock ore and 10 True Iron, yielding 10 crystals. So, essentially you'll get 1 crystal for 3 ore. Sorcerous Air is a byproduct of crafting, so it's worthless and it's price will be entirely dictated by demand, competition, and server size. Expect prices to be pretty high initially, and settle in somewhere in the 10g-200g range depending on your server. Ore routes from my testing give 600-900 ore per hour, so we'll see about the same prices at the start of the xpac, in the 2g-5g range, maybe leveling out back to 1g or maybe not (we don't know enough about long-term demand yet to figure out that equilibrium but we can assume what people will put the ore up for at release).
Currently, with the prospecting mechanic we all know and love are used to, you can generally get 1 rare gem from 20 ore. In MoP, we're seeing gems at 100g to 300g with a mat cost of 20g for a stack of Ghost Iron. When Lore first announced that Jewelcrafting and Gem prices would be higher because Blizzard was reducing the number of slots in gear, who would have thought they were going to do it by increasing the mat cost x10? Share this with any JC friends and let me know in a comment what you think.
Long story short, on a high pop server, we're looking at gems that cost a minimum to craft of 400g, and a maximum of almost 3000g. And depending on where sorcerous prices stabilize at (I'd expect 25-40g personally), you should be expecting gem prices in the 1,000g to 2000g range FOR THE ENTIRE EXPANSION. Start saving.
Thanks for reading my little WoW blog and remember that the key to making gold in the end is just to
Search. Craft. Post.
Every Day.
"Only Noobs mine ore." We've all heard it a million times in various forms. The more experienced and less snobbish goldmakers will tell you that it's just more profitable to do just about any other gold making action in-game. Personally, I've had at least one gathering toon for years and enjoy it immensely. For me, it's relaxing to just fly around mining while listening to Alanis Mori... I mean Snoop Dogg. Unfortunately, many new Jewelcrafters or Blacksmiths who choose mining as a secondary profession will still occasionally be hazed on goldmaking forums, since "it's OBVIOUSLY much more profitable to buy ore off the AH." While there's been a lot of talk from different screen names I haven't seen anyone do a breakdown of whether or not the above statement is actually true or not, and I like testing game-changers analytically, so let's do that now (note: general consensus is usually correct, but I learn a lot with my testing). This is hopefully going to be a little more mathy that most of my posts, so for anyone who doesn't want to read all the mumbo jumbo, just scroll down to the conclusion at the bottom for a nice, easy wrap up. Ok, so, once and for all, is it really cheaper to buy ghost iron ore or bars off the Auction House, or should you mine them yourself?
"He sure has the reach advantage, and she has...What the?!...Is that a rack of blunderbusses and greatswords?!"
Guess:
While a bunch of people say that it's always more profitable to buy ore off the AH, I'm gonna have to go with a hypothesis of, "It depends." The times that I would rather be lazy and buy ore are the moments when I don't have very many gems to cut; the miscellaneous flight time seems more weighted when you're only farming 5 or 6 stacks of ore versus the massive 200-stack grind sessions. So, I naturally feel that it's better to farm ore for bigger stacks than smaller stacks. But enough guess work. On to math!
Calculations:
First off, we'll start with the basic profit equation of Profit=Revenue-Expense. In this case, our revenues are the gold earned from selling gems or armor. The expenses are going to have to be monetary, but the big problem with mining, or the blessing, depending on how things turn out, is that it is pure profit from trading in time and prospecting ore. So, we'll turn the time spent mining and prospecting on both sides into an expense. Jewelcrafting should be more fun to play with than Blacksmithing, so let's focus on that profession, ok? The process for buying will be 1) purchasing ore for gold, 2) spending time prospecting which we will convert into potential gold lost, and then 3) selling cut gems. The process for mining will be 1) mining ore (Duh), 2) spending time prospecting, 3)and then selling the gems. Alrighty, here we go duhn du-duh-duhhnnnn: when is it more profitable to buy ore?
Gem Sales (the only revenue) are the same on both sides, so that cancels out. The awkwardly named MiningTime and ProspectTime are in terms of "gold/stack." We can put in variables to make all this shorter and easier to read as well. Also, the inequality flips when we subtract out Gemsales and divide by the -1, my least favorite algebra trick that I always forget to do.
So there ya go, we have a surprisingly simple and obvious answer after almost everything cancels out. in short, it's cheaper to buy ore if your time is more valuable than time it would take you to farm. That's not 100% the right interpretation though, as we'll go over quickly in the conclusion. Also, I'm ignoring small miscellaneous time costs like buying from the AH, mailing between characters, and flying to the Valley of the Four Winds, since most of those can be reduced to almost nothing with addons like TradeSkillMaster. Basically, this should answer a bunch of the questions you might have been having about the process.
Either way, when you mine, lookout for that one stupid tiger that always freakin aggros.
Conclusion:
It is only more profitable to mine when ore is more expensive than other alternatives. It essentially comes down to the age old question of "is mining a good profession." Assuming, you know what you're doing and can farm up 40 stacks every hour, at current US prices of 3.49 g/ore that comes out to about 69g per stack or 2,800g per hour. There are many other farming options and dungeon runs that can net 4k+ per hour, but the question is, are you going to do them? Mining remains a fantastic option for trading time for profit.
To give an example of this all, one hour of mining would yield 40 stacks of hour, giving you about 7 of each rare gem and 40 of each uncommon after prospecting (for values, hover over the number in the % column on any prospecting tab of WoWhead). Prospecting takes about 13 seconds to work through a stack of ore (2 second cast w/avg 1.25 seconds of looting), so at least 8 minutes just doing that in this example.
Profit(Buy) >Profit(Mine)
Revenue-Expense(Buy) >Revenue-Expense(Mine)
11,400g - [(40stacks)(69g/stack) > 11,400 - (4k+)
11,400g - 2,760g > 11,400 - (4k+)
8,640g > 7,400g
[Buying ore is 1,240g/hr more profitable than mining.]
The trick to all this though is that if you DON'T go run dungeons, or if you just buy up ore on the AH, prospect it, and log off, when you would have been willing to go and mine it, you're losing that potential profit, and mining would have been the way to go. Here's why. That opportunity cost varies according to what you would have done in that specific hour. In other words, if you would have sat around in /G talking about how overpowered holy pallies are, then you're making zero gold and MiningExpense/OpportunityCost/last-part-of-the-formula, changes considerably.
"Logging off after Buying n' Prospecting" Scenario
8,640g < 11,400g
[Mining is 2,760g/hr more profitable than AHing.]
So, as you can see, either course of action can be more profitable depending on the mining expense - whether or not you make gold in ways other than Jewelcrafting. My concluding thought of all of this is that it's only better to buy ore if you, in the same session (or some scheduled time), go out and make up the debt you've accrued by purchasing that ore rather than farming it, because you've cost yourself 3k in potential profit if you do nothing. Don't be that guy. On the other hand, if you're super busy, raid's about to start, you have four other professions to manage, and you just don't have that much time to spare, then don't worry about it, you're still making 8,000 gold for 8 minutes of prospecting, a little bit of gem cutting, and a quick cntl+scroll on TSM 2.0. So, grats!
Thanks for reading my little WoW blog here! Subscribe to my Twitter for future updates, and until next time, remember that there's no secret to making gold in the World of Warcraft, all you have to do is just
Search. Craft. Post.
Ever Day.
P.S. For anyone calculus inclined, I apologize, I was hoping the math would get exciting, too, but it all just cancelled out all nice and purdy. If you really want to play with derivatives or whatever, find the minimum hourly profitability of a dungeon run to make buying ore better. Honestly though, the answer is right there on the other side of the equation. Whamp whamp. I'll find something more fun next time.
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.
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
