Consortium Project update November 2012

1,261,169 gold for the month. Not only did we beat our previous PB (personal best) but we smashed the 1 million gold goal I set at the beginning of this expansion.
Kinda scared now as I don’t have a long term goal in the works, and as I’ve said before, I need goals to stay motivated.

 

So what changed? We had been doing 600k ish then boom, 1.26 million. I attribute the jump to a few things.

1. Blizz released 2 more LFR’s this month, along with the raids instances.
2. More people hitting 90 and the ease to get into and complete heroics.
3. More guilds starting to raid.
4. Daily Quest Rep rewards from VP. Yes there are still people grinding out rep, can you believe it. I sure can.
5. Duping of Blood Spirits, means access to crafted gear is much easier.

Sales of Enchants, Gems, and Belt Buckles went through the roof. 952,630g profit from this alone.

190,000g sales from DM cards.

118,539g profit from Glyphs.

 

Our Routine

• We buy as much Ghost Iron Ore & Green Tea Leaf as we can up to 1.75g each (35g a stack) on Caelestrasz
• Prospect the Ore and make Ornate Rings & Shadowfire Pendants.
• The Blue procs from the above, we try and sell on the AH, otherwise we DE along with the greens.
• DE’d mats used for enchants.
• Craft 15x Profitable enchants.
  
• Wild Jade, Imperial Amethyst & Vermilion Onyx used for Primal Diamonds.
  
• Cut the following Primals x10.
  Agile Primal Diamond
  Austere Primal Diamond
  Burning Primal Diamond
  Ember Primal Diamond
  Reverberating Primal Diamond
  Revitalizing Primal Diamond
• Keep an eye on the price of Serpent’s Eye, the below DE into Ethereal shards. We can sometimes pick up Serpent’s Eyes for 5g each.
• Make the 450 Ilvl Jewellery which is profitable x4-5 of each
  Band of Blood
  Heart of the Earth
  Lionsfall Ring
  Lord's SignetRoguestone Shadowband
  Golembreaker Amulet
  Reflection of the Sea
  Skymage Circle
  Tiger Opal Pendant
  Widow Chain
• Cut gems with highest prices first x20.
  Bold Primordial Ruby
  Delicate Primordial Ruby
  Brilliant Primordial Ruby
  
  Fractured Sun's Radiance
  Quick Sun's Radiance
  Mystic Sun's Radiance
  Smooth Sun's Radiance
  
  Adept Vermilion Onyx
  Artful Vermilion Onyx
  Deadly Vermilion Onyx
  Deft Vermilion Onyx
  Fierce Vermilion Onyx
  Fine Vermilion Onyx
  Lucent Vermilion Onyx
  Potent Vermilion Onyx
  Reckless Vermilion Onyx
  Resplendent Vermilion Onyx
  Skillful Vermilion Onyx
  Willful Vermilion Onyx
  
  Puissant Wild Jade
  Zen Wild Jade
  Balanced Wild Jade
  Misty Wild Jade
  Lightning WIld Jade
  Piercing WIld Jade
  Sensei's WIld Jade
  Vivid WIld Jade
  
  Energized WIld Jade
  Etched Imperial Amethyst
  Glinting Imperial Amethyst
  Purified Imperial Amethyst
  Shifting Imperial Amethyst
  Veiled Imperial Amethyst
  Guardian's Imperial Amethyst
  Defender's Imperial Amethyst
  
  Rigid River's Heart
  Solid River's Heart
  Sparkling River's Heart

• Buy Sha Crystals when cheap for the Rep Enchants if you can craft them.
• Buy Living Steel when cheap and get BS Guildy to make into Buckles.

• Mill Herbs and turn into Shoulder enchants if you have a Scribe.
  

  Greater Crane Wing Inscription

  Greater Ox Horn Inscription

  Greater Tiger Claw Inscription

  Greater Tiger Fang Inscription

  
  
• Don’t be scared to move items to the opposite faction if prices are being tanked. As an experiment when I was looking into Arbitrage opportunities, I was moving Belt Buckles from Alliance to Horde and made 200g a pop.
• Use the remote Auction House during the day if you have access to a computer.
• Setup notifications on Wowuction.com or TSM Desktop App (link Below) to alert you to cheap mats.
• Don’t be scared to buyout other peoples auctions to reset the price. We regularly do this with Primal Diamonds, Belt Buckles and Shoulder Enchants, when prices get tanked to sub cost prices or near to.
• No 1 rule, in an undercutting war, try to always be the last man standing. Never let emotions drive you, always undercut by 1c (small amount) only, down to your break even point. If you drop the item value by 10-15g the only person you're hurting is yourself. If your competition posts more items or can stay on longer, it doesn’t matter, while you are on line be the aggressor. Make your competition work for every gold. Don’t stay up till 3am trying to win an undercutting war, walk away and get up fresh for a new round the next day. Persistence and repetition is the key. Learn to post and raid at the same time. 2 screens = win
• You will need the following bags 2x Illusionary Bags, 1x Luxuious Silk Gem Bag, 1x Outherworldly Bag for the toon running Enchants, Gems & Buckles. We use the the Royal Scribe Satchels for Glyphs.
• Addons TSM, Auctionator, TSM Desktop App.
• Though I hate doing Dailys, theres some I do every day. Tilers Rep, get it to revered and you can then plant Songbell seeds which turn into mote of Harmony when harvested. I’m doing this on 3 toons per day. Get your rep to Exalted and you can have 16 farms. Spirits of Harmony (SoH) can be exchanged for 3x Golden Lotus which is used by Alchemists to transmute gems, this is good for making up missing gems for Primal Diamonds, unless they are cheaper on the AH.
• Although we do sell Leather Leg enchants, getting SoH is time consuming. I’ve tried to stay away from crafting anything that requires SoH. This is not to say that Crafted items are unprofitable, but more so, that getting the mats for them is a time sink.
• Use your professional cool downs every day.
  
  

There are a lot of bloggers out there, some offer different ideas for gold making every day, some focus on 1 profession and are authorities in that area.

Twichie Enterprises is the main reason I provide monthly updates as I've always liked reading their blog, and the idea of giving readers an overall financial perspective, appeals to me.

This blog will never be a place for cutting edge ideas as I read other peoples blogs for those. It will however focus on the Shuffle and the how a team of 3 go about it.

Arbitrage

This is going to be the new project that the Consortium team trials. We’re going to buy off one Auction house to sell on the other. The minimum we intend to make is 35% mark-up excluding AH fees, but this % may need to be a little flexible.

The neutral auction house is where this may grind to a halt. If we get a camper/sniper then we won’t be able to transfer items between factions, so the whole project becomes pointless until they leave.

The minimum an item can be sold for on the Neutral AH is 2 copper to minimise the 15% commission the neutral AH charges.

The Plan

We’re going to setup a toon on the Alliance & Horde side with 1,000 gold each, they will buy cheap items off the Alliance AH to sell on Horde side. We’ll transfer the items across, to our Horde toon and sell them. We will then buy cheap Horde items and transfer them back to Alliance for re-sale. We will then do the same again but investing profits.

The Rules

No crafting, we buy from the AH or Consortium Project (better the gold stays in our pockets than competitors) at Auction House prices for resale.

Example

Let’s say we purchased 1000g of items on Alliance, send to neutral AH, transfer to Horde, Sell on Horde +35%, we lose 5% to AH fees but should have 1300gish for re-investment, purchase goods, send to neutral AH, transfer to Alliance, Sell on Alliance. Should have 1690gish for re-investment.

 

The Problem

 

By trips I mean the gold/goods go from Alliance to Horde to Alliance again.

So after 14 trips we'll have 1.5 Million gold, right!  Nope, after 9 trips it’s going to be hard to find enough items on the either Horde or Alliance side to send back and forth for resale. It's going to slow down substantially at this point, but mathematically it looks impressive.

I will setup the toons during the week and commence the project when the new month for the Consortium Project starts.

 

The Tools

I’ve setup a spreadsheet on google docs if anyone wants to try this out on their own realm. Please report any errors you find.

How it works

1. Download the spreadsheet from the link above and open it.

2. Import data from the Undermine Journal for both factions.

Goto TUJ ->Pick your Realm & faction -> Site -> Market API -> Click CSV.

Copy/Paste to relevant tabs (Alliance & Horde) over the existing/old data.

3. Set % markup you want to achieve on the Arbitrage spreadsheet. A2

4. If you buying on Alliance to sell on Horde, use the drop down box and set the Alliance Column F & J to True (deselect False) or for Horde G & K.

5. Pick what you want to buyout and look at Col L for Alliance (M Horde) for Max price to pay based on % markup.

In the above example Ethereal Shards can be bought on Alliance for 51.25g (Col B) the market average on Horde (Col I) is 75.19g, however current price is 105.75g (Col C)

Max price to pay for Shards is 55.7g (Col L) based on lowest value in Col C or G. Just remeber to reset the filters when you want to swap to the other faction.

You can add items, just put the item name in CoL A, then copy existing data from Col B to K and paste on the same row as the new item. I'm assuming some basic Excel knowledge here.

Living Steel Belt Buckles would be one item to add.

Let me know what you think.

Gold is not motivating

There are many players in WoW who struggle to keep a few thousand gold, I was one of those people once. I would go to raids with just enough gold to cover repair bills, having just spent most of what I had on Gems and Enchants. It frustrated me, not because I had no gold, but that I didn’t have the knowledge to make gold, and the only avenue left was doing Dailys, which I hated.

I resolved to find a way to make gold. I became a Glypher and soon the gold started rolling in (back when I though 3k a day was a lot). I set myself a goal to make 1 million gold. It took a long time to achieve my goal, mainly because I now had the resources to purchase what I wanted. When a new Tier of gear came out, I would purchase the latest BoE gear. Spending 30k on a trinket wasn’t an issue, so for every two steps forward, I took one back.

At the beginning of Cata I had hit the previous Gold Cap on a few toons and decided to make the push for 1 million gold. By half way through the first tier of Cata I achieved it. But what happened next was unexpected. I couldn’t bring myself to play WoW, I had lost all enthusiasm for the game. Raiding was something I had always loved doing, but even that was empty for me. I decided to take a break from the game.

Four months later I came back to WoW but my intention was to only play PvP. I still did not have the enthusiasm I once had. I changed from Horde to Alliance and started running BG’s. I also got back into making gold. This is about the same time I started reading Critical Goblin’s blog.

What I saw there was a project which I could replicate on Caelestrasz. My motivation was not to make gold, but to see what effect my actions had on my competitors.

The Alliance Glyph market was dominated by 3-4 players at the time, so for the next 3 months all I did was post glyphs walls. 2x @ 15g, 2x @ 20g and 2x @ 25g for 48 hrs.

Prior to me entering the market, glyphs sold at 100gish each, so I wasn’t popular, as I received helpful advice as to how to raise glyph prices from competitors. By the end of 3 months, one consistent competitor remained in business, who seemed more than happy to play the 15g glyph game.

What did I learn from this project……most people realised that they are working for nothing/couldn’t compete and took a break from the glyph market. The one remaining glypher, has a herber and despite the fact that selling herbs would be more profitable, they had the mindset of “I will control this market” and “I will not leave”. The most important lesson for me, was that having a Project/goal is motivating, not the gold, I got my enthusiasm back for WoW.

As I said in last month Consortium Update, one of my goals is to reach 1,000,000 gold profit in a month. Based on our profit to date this month I can see that this goal will be achieved very soon, maybe even this month. I need a new Project/Goal and I’m open to ideas. Furthermore I’m feeling evil so the more mischievous the goal the better. Tung needs your Ideas now before he looses his motivation.

Consortium Project Update October 2012

We’ve had a really good month as it turned out. I didn’t think it would be the case half way through the month. We close off our month on the last Sunday of each month, this allows us to always restock, so we include all the costs for achieving the profit.

That being said, prior to MoP we were purchasing a lot of materials cheap with the expectation that there would be huge inflation upon release. This month we are seeing the benefits of those decisions. I use the term Sales below because a lot of costs were incurred in the previous month, which aren’t deducted this month to work out profit.

We were also farming a lot of our own herbs for DM Cards and the value of the herbs isn't being taken into account.

Total Profit of 632,067 gold for the month, which is a new record for the Consortium Project.

Special thanks to xsinthis of the Golden Crusade for his work on The Golden Crusade Shuffler. Although I don’t use the spreadsheet, his yield values drive our costing data.

Bags

We backed a winner on Netherweave & Embersilk Cloth, our sales this month were 53,263 gold from bags. That’s a lot of bags. We are getting 20-25g for Nehterweave Bags & 300-350g for Embersilk Bags.

Enchanting Mats

I am only now, considering selling all the enchanting mats I purchased cheap prior to MoP, which we have a lot of. It’s taken a while for all the excess stock of my competitors to be used up.

Inks

Again we backed a winner, buying out all the cheap Whiptail and turning them into Inks has worked out brilliantly. We still using up all the stock we exchanged, and have approximately  3 months supply sitting in storage. This is a great advantage now that Herb prices are through the roof.  Glyph Sales accounted for 136,196 gold.

Darkmoon cards

 I did a post DarkmoonFaire Fail. The fail part was referring to Blizzards failure to change the Ink vendor when MoP went live. I didn’t communicate this particularly well so some readers misconstrued my meaning which I apologise for.  Sales accounted for 158,000 in DM Cards.

But maybe the title was a  premonition of what was to come, not naming anybody, but someone in the consortium project  put up a Tanking DM card on the AH for 300g, instead of 30,000 gold and blamed TSM for the glitch. Moral of the story check your high price posts before you walk away from the AH. Needless to say some tank is a happy camper today.

Enchants (Legs, Shoulders & regular Enchants), Gems & Belt Buckles

Profit on this was 284,608.

Having 3 Alchemists making belt buckles (2 Transmutation Masters) meant we were able to make 3+ per day of  Living Steel. I was also purchasing a lot of Living Steel off the AH, thus keeping the price high. A mate turned these into Belt Buckles for us and they sold really well.

Enchants are now selling really well, took a while for people to level to 90 and start doing heroics.

Gems, Ring & Necklaces

I’m baffled why people would sell Gems & Flasks at below cost. I thought that Golden Lotus would set the price of Gems and Flasks but that doesn’t seem to be the case currently. Maybe it’s because with Exalted Tillers rep people are able to make 1.6 Spirit of Harmony per day and exchange them for Golden Lotus. Maybe demand is still rising for Gems & Flasks but sometime soon prices have to reset. I didn’t start selling gems until late in the month. Rings and Necklaces have sold really well. I even sold a Sapphire Panther for a nice 4k Profit.

Flasks are great on Raid Nights but early in the week, that are pretty dead. I had to revise my notion on buying out Golden Lotus to 300g and selling heaps of flasks, there just isn’t demand.

MoP Goals

One of my goals for this expansion is to make 1,000,000 in a month.  For that to be a reality prior to Blizzard making Mote/Spirit of Harmony tradable,  I’m going to have to level up my JC & Enchanter on Horde side in preparation. Get ready Horde, here comes the pain.

Cross Realm Auction House

This post is for consideration as part of Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival for November 2012.

It relates to a blue post from Blizz talking about the possibly of introducing a Cross Realm Auction House (CRAH) and the effect on the economy this feature would have.

 

 

By combining the action houses, there would be greater Supply of items but there’d be greater demand too.

Demand drives prices, when there is an oversupply of something; Sellers are forced to reduce prices to sell their items. The price falls till enough Buyers enter the market to purchase the items.

Under a CRAH environment there would be a constant influx of items for sale. A Buyer could almost be guaranteed to find an item they were looking for on the AH.  The Raw materials for all professions would be undercut constantly in an attempt to be the cheapest. This is great for Buyers but Sellers would be in constant competition. Margins would be cut to the point that the average wow player would be selling at cost.

My main reservations to the introduction of a CRAH would be as follows.

 

Gold Sellers 

One of the tricks gold sellers use to distribute gold is to have the buyer (once they’ve paid for the gold) put 5 stacks of Linen Cloth for example on the AH for a ridiculous price, then the gold supplier buys it out, and 30 mins later you have your gold. The Gold Seller wears the AH fee so let’s say you purchased 5000 gold, you would put up 5x items at 1050 gold (5x1000g + 5% AH fee). You receive 5000g in the mail.

A CRAH would mean that Gold Sellers would no longer have to be on multiple realms. They could distribute huge amount of gold from one Server.
Remember the duping of Queen’s Garnet in Cata, when the next exploit is found by the Gold Sellers, the CRAH would be a license to make gold for re-distribution.
In the meantime all those Low population servers can expect a growth of Bots to supply the CRAH with mats.

PvE & PvP Realms
I hate being ganked that’s why I play on a PvE Realm. It provides the added benefit of being able to explore Horde dominated areas to gather materials without interruption.  There would be a distinct advantage of being on a PvE realm for Gatherers to make gold, if a CRAH were introduced.

Volume & UI
I’m sure we’ve all experience the person who puts up 1000 pieces of Cloth in single units on the AH. I always find this slows down the Auction house considerably, which is probably the primary motivation of the seller. I use an addon called Auctionator to search for items on the AH and when the above occurs, I find that Auctionator  grinds to a halt. The main reason I use Auctionator is because I dislike the way the Blizzard UI shows what’s on the AH. If a Cross Realm Auction House were introduced unless something is done to the UI, I believe the AH wouldn’t cope with the quantity of Auctions.
Trying to use the Blizzard UI to buy items off the AH, is an exercise in frustration. Selling items is even more of an ordeal. In 10 years, Blizz have made no effort to make the UI any more user friendly, but have incorporated a No. of other Addons into the game, as features.
I say, fix the current AH UI before you go experimenting with Cross Realm AH's.
 
Competition
My biggest competition are the no-lifer’s (could be Gold Sellers) who sit on the Auction House 24/7, (Some would say I’m one). These people undercut constantly and dominate an area of the AH. A CRAH would only promote this sort of behaviour, especially by gold sellers. I've got enough competition on 1 server let alone Cross realms.

 

My opinion of the CRAH is that it would be a huge mistake on Blizzards behalf to try and facilitate this feature. Don't fix what isn't broken.

Gathering (Gold per Hour)

Gathering Professions can be very lucrative for gold making especially at the beginning of the expansion. If you’re going to be spending any serious time gathering (Minig or Herbing), then I suggest you hit up your local Engineer for some Mist-Piercing Goggles . They increase the number of nodes you see by about 10%.  These Goggles do not need to be equipped, just put them in your bags and carry on Gathering normally. The extra nodes appear with a sort of mist around them.

The other item that will be in high demand is the ForagersGloves which drop off a rare spawn Korda Torras in Kun-Lai Summit. These gloves increase the speed which you  Mine/Herb  nodes in Pandaria. They reduce the gathering time by up to 1.5 seconds, down to a minimum of .5 seconds. These gloves will need to be equipped unlike the above. My Alliance Druid (Herbalist) & Worgan Hunter (Mining) both want these bad……time to camp Toras me thinks.

One of my goals for MoP was to keep track of the Gold per Hour (GpH) that Gatherers could achieve.

When I first entered Jade Forest and saw all the Mining Nodes and Green Tea Leaf that abounds, I thought I would have to look no further that this area. 

Now Ghost Iron Ore nodes stick out because they are white, but I find Green Tea Leaf to be a pain to find, the nodes being green and all. I end up flying around trees looking for the sparkle of the node which slows my farming.

Fortunately Fool’s Cap is a better choice currently, as I can get almost double the price of Green Tea Leaf on the AH, and I can see the herbs easily.

Mining - Ghost Iron ore - Jade Forest

 

I spent 30 mins following this path around Jade Forest. In that time I collected 20 stacks of Ghost Iron Ore

Ghost Iron Ore is selling for 3g50s each currently

GPH 2,800

 

 

Herbalism - Fool's Cap - Dread Wastes

 

I spent 30 Mins flying around Dread Wastes collecting Fool’s Cap. I collected 20.5 Stacks. This area is so small that if there are any more than 2 people farming this area at the same time, then your GpH will drop significantly.

Fool’s Cap is selling for 5g75s each.

GPH 4,715

 

Skinning - Valley of the Four Winds

 

I don’t have a Skinner so Humph and I farmed WyrmhornTurtles in Valley of the Four Winds on our Hunters.

We did this twice, the first time I was paying attention to drop quantities however the last time the spawn rate of the Turtles had dropped significantly. Confirmed by wowhead comments, thanks Blizz.

I want to have another crack at this area this weekend, to revise my data.

Despite the nerf, what I liked about this area is that it gave Exotic Leather, Motes of Harmony, Prismatic Scales, uncommon items, and Raw Turtle Meat which is used for Feasts.

 

 

 

 

Darkmoon Faire Fail

I was going to submit this post to Cold as part of his previous Blogging Carnival but too little too late I guess. I’ve been sick for the last 2 weeks and didn’t quite get around to it.

The Consortiums Projects intention was to make a killing on the first Darkmoon Fair, but Blizzard had other ideas. There are a number of major drawbacks to DM trinkets currently.

1.The Ink vendor was not exchanging Ink of Dreams for Starlight Ink, this meant that Humph and I did a huge amount of Herb farming at the release of MoP, so we could create DM cards each day. We have 3 Scribes (4 if you count my Scribe Horde side) that can make DM cards, and each card required 10 Starlight Ink. This was a huge time sink to create these items.

2. Each card requires a Scroll of Wisdom with a cooldown that resets at midnight. Only I card can be made per day. This was never the case in previous expansions.

3.The Relic of Niuzao had no bonus on equip, Blizz has stuffed up, No Tank in their right mind would want this trinket as it stood then. Fortunately half way through the Faire Blizz made a change and added Stamina but the price had fallen so far by this time.

4. Blizz made the Trinkets Ilvl 376, unlike the last few expansions, these Trinkets won’t last through the first Tier of gear. Raid Finder will have better.

The Darkmoon Faire arrives and we’ve been able to make 3 Decks, (Relic of Chi Ji, Relic of Niuzao,& Relic of Xuen). The only Decks we end up selling are to ourselves and another member of our raid team. There just isn’t the demand for these trinkets at current prices.

I decided to buy our Relic of Niuzao now as the price has dropped significantly from 100k to 35k due to not having a bonus on equip previously. Humph decides to purchase the Relic of Chi Ji for 100k.

Soon after the DM faire ends Blizzard change the Ink vendors(Mithrildar in the comments informed me this occured during the Faire) so you can exchange Ink of Dreams for Starlight Ink. Humphs trinket is now selling for 35k. Well done Blizz you have totally screwed all the scribes that put in a huge amount of effort to make cards. The Ink vendor should have changed when MoP released.

We offer our Monk offtank a deal on the last DM card, he has a scribe also but isn’t using his Scroll of Wisdom.Our offer is to make us 21 cards and we’ll give him the trinket, he accepts. This offer was made after the Vendor changed, so it's not like we were being excessively greedy.

Hindsight is always 100%, if I knew then what I know now, I would have just sold all the herbs and waited for the Ink trader to change.

On a positive note I belive our crafting cost to make a deck to be around the 7k gold mark, if we use the Alchemy CD as a guide to what a Scroll of Wisdom is worth. (Living steel less cost of mats to make 6x Trillium Bar) puts the Scroll around 300 gold in value.

What did we do wrong?
We asked too much and followed the market as to valueing Trinkets. At the time Starlight Ink was selling for 300g+ each, if we allowed 1000g for the Scroll of Wisdom for each card then a deck would cost 38k to make. Trying to sell them for 85-100k was over the top.

The Golden Lotus Bottleneck

The Golden Lotus Bottleneck

Today I want to share my thoughts on Golden Lotus (GL) and the impact to the economy this herb will have. Golden Lotus is used by Alchemists to make Flasks & Transmute Gems. Every Flask/Transmute requires 1 of these items.

There are 3 sources of GL. Herbalism, Spirit of Harmony exchange, and planting seeds to grow a mote of harmony or a random herb (Farmville).

Having farmed Green Tea Leaf, Fool’s Cap, and Snow Lily on my Druid quite regularly since hitting 90 last week, I have 10 GL to my name. The spawn rate of these is terribly low. The best place I found was Dread Wastes where I farmed about 4 of these in an hour.

They are currently going for 255g each on Caelestrasz Alliance, and I expect that price to rise significantly now that Raids have been released and LFR to begin this week also. The demand for this item will definitely outstrip supply for 2 reasons.

There are no Cauldrons of Battle from Alchemy currently, meaning that every raider will either have to supply/use a Flask which lasts 1 hour (Unless you’re an Alchemist) or (use an Elixir after every death). Most guild raids last 2.5 hours so 3 Flasks will be required every raid night. We therefore have a choice, either fork out for 3 Flasks per raid night from the AH, or go farm GL on you Herbalist, or farm Motes of Harmony and when you can make a enough Spirit of Harmony, exchange them for GL. If you don’t have an Alchemist, then your friendly Guild (Flask Master) Alchemist will be more than happy to take your GL and exchange them for Flasks (to later hope for a proc when they make replacement flasks).

The other reason that prices will go through the roof is that Ghost Iron Ore and Kyparite share the same approximate prospect yield for Rare Gems (4%ish chance) - pretty low. I should also mention that Jewelcrafters can also cut their Uncommon gems in a hope to get a perfect cut with has the same stats as a Rare gem. I believe there’s a 20% chance of getting a perfect cut so there is a potential source for alternate gems but I'll be doing the enchant shuffle.

The only way to get gems transmuted colour specific, is by an Alchemist. Again for every transmute a GL is required. So we’re back to farming GL either by Herbalism, Motes of Harmony or Farmville. I should also note that Jewelcrafters can also cut their Uncommon gems in a hope to get a perfect cut with has the same stats as a Rare gem. I believe there’s a 20% chance of getting a perfect cut so there is a potential source for alternate gems.

Farming motes of Harmony from Mobs again takes a while, there’s a cave just up from One Keg that has an acceptable drop rate of these approx. 1 Spirit an Hour.

The last way to acquire GL is via Farming (Tilers Rep), this involves planting Enigma Seed seeds and cultivating your crop the next day. There is a random chance that you will receive a GL. I believe you can have a maximum of 16 farms if you want to play Farmville. You can also plant Songbell seeds and harvest Motes of Harmony which is probably the better choice.

After discussing this issue with a few people in game I am of the opinion that the general gaming community do not like how the system is working presently. As a raider (Goblin view below), I didn’t sign up to spending an hour a night doing Dailys for Rep gear, to then have to go out after the raid to farm mats for consumables. The general wow community want to log in, raid, run a few dungeons then log out. They aren’t looking for the time sinks that Blizz are imposing on us. For these type of raiders that are time limited, they have one option, buy off the AH.

At last count there were approximately 200 GL on the AH ranging in price from 255g to 489g. As a Goblin I’m going to make hay while the sun shines. Buyout all the GL on the AH to 300g and make Flasks for re-sale. Keep buying out GL and play the Flask market until Blizz realise the errors of their ways and either increase the drop rate of GL or make Mote/Spirit of Harmony BoE.

After trying this out, the demand for Flasks and low price of Gems ,make buying out Golden Lotus unprofitable.  Do not attempt this until the price of Golden Lotus and demand for Flasks/Gems increase.

Consortium Project September Update

Consortium Project Update September 2012

As I predicted, September has been a quiet month, we made 450,000 gold. Glyphs have gone crazy, they alone brought in 260,000 gold profit.

The way we have structured the guild bank is that there is always 100,000 gold at the beginning of every month. When we need to buy stock e.g. Whiptail we do it from those funds, that way at the end of month we just put all the sales back into the Guild bank and deduct the initial 100,000 to determine profit.

 

 

I spent a lot of gold this month buying out items I thought would be in high demand in the near future. Items like Maelstrom Crystals and Greater Celestial essences, we also made Netherweave bags, Embersilk bags. We will reap the rewards for these items soon I believe. We also prepared for the Glyph rush in advance buying out all the Whiptail under 25g a stack and converting it too inks.

Even Goblins have Nub moments, in my haste at midnight one night after milling Whiptail and turning it into 60x stacks of Blackfellow Inks, I went to the Dalaran Ink vendor to turn into Ink of the sea.

I have macros setup to make this process very fast, the only problem is that I also included a line item in Dumpster /din Blackfellow Ink to move Ink to the Guild Bank, you guessed it, I was clicking on the Dumpster macro by mistake and woosh there went 50x stacks down the drain. I bought back what I could and submitted a ticket to Blizz to try and get the balance back, but to no avail. I received some bullshit email saying basically, this item wasn’t on the list of items a GM can refund and I could request it be included for the future blah, blah, blah… I estimate that was approx. 3,300 gold lost.

 

Since MoP launch the Consortium Project has levelled the following character and professions.

DK to 90 Inscription/Enchanting 600/600

Druid to 90 Inscription/Herbalism 600/600

Hunter to 90 Mining & JC 600/600

Druid to 90 Enchanting/Herbalism 600/600

Hunter to 89 Skinning/Letherworking 596/600

Warrior at 85 Herbalism/Alchemy 525/600

Paladin at 85 Mining/Blacksmithing 525/575

Warlock at 85 Alchemy/Inscription 595/600

We are currently making Glyphs, DMC Cards, Staffs, mining and prospecting gems, JC rings, Primordial Diamonds, Herbalism for Starlight Ink (Blizz have totally stuffed up Inscription with regards to Inks, more on that later), Enchants and Living Steel.

Not a bad effort for 1 week into MoP.

Back to Basics : What to Sell

Back to Basics : What to sell

Determining what to sell for someone new to the Auction House can be quite daunting. Crafting something that never gets sold can be demoralizing. I tried my hand in the Mogging market for a while with mixed results, and can vouch for the fact that it’s a feast one week, and a famine the next, not really my preference.

The Consortium Project focuses on items that sell fast and regularly, this blog will primarily be from that perspective. There is nothing better than going to the mail box and finding 50-100 sales. When I had a holiday recently, Humph (one of the partners whose focus is glyphs) took over my part of the business temporarily. He couldn’t believe the amount of money we took from non glyph items. The secret is that we’re diversified, and sell the most profitable items from a range of professions. By combining our professions we get economies of scale which reduce our crafting costs, thus maximising profit.

 I’m going to assume that you have Jewelcrafting (JC) at max level but this process works for most other professions too.

What Gem cuts are popular? There are so many different cuts, what sells, what are lemons?

Even though I play a variety of Toons, I still don’t know the secondary stat preference, for most classes. i.e. Enhanced Shammy they want Agi as their prime stat, but what’s the best secondary stat?, Haste, Mastery or Crit?  In MoP hunters now need Expertise, do Enhanced Shammys need that too?

I gave up trying to memorize all the different combinations and requirements of each class/spec.

There are 2 Methods to determining what to sell.

Method 1

I turn to WoW Popular which is updated after each Patch.

What we want here is to make a list of what’s in vogue for each Class/Spec. Pick Gems from the top menu then select the Class/Spec you want to review. In the below case I’ve selected DK -> Blood

 

Anything with less than a Popularity of 2 stars I would ignore, but make sure you note the Meta Gem just in case it’s got less than 2 stars. Now you can cut n paste this into Excel/Open Office or use a pencil n paper to make a list. We do the same for each Class/Spec. When you have finished this click PVP under Playstyle on the left panel and for each Class/Spec repeat the above process and add their PVP preference to our list.

What you’ll find is that a lot of Gem cuts appear twice or more, sometimes with Popularity of 5 stars other times with 4,3 or 2.

In Excel sort the list by Name then Popularity so you have all the cuts in Alphabetical Order with most popular cuts at the top, then descending in order. Now all you need do is delete the duplicates with less popularity.

If you’re not familiar with Excel then you can look forward to a long process of coming up with a single list via pencil n paper.

One thing to remember is that WoW Popular is a data mining site which means it will take a bit of time to update come MoP, as players level at different speeds. One could surmise that the most hardcode players will be the first to level to 90, and gear their toons, ready for raiding, therefore the data will be accurate from the start, but that is purely speculation.

Method 2

This method focuses on Wowuction

The Gold Queen did a great video guide to this site and I see no reason to reproduce her work.

Suffice to say goto Professions -> Jewelcrafting then sort by Sold per Day and you have a list of popular cuts. Nowhere near as exhaustive as method 1, but an accurate list none the less.

In the next thrilling instalment of Back to basics we’ll go through how to setup TSM.

 

 

 

 

Wow-Pro MoP Ready

Wow-Pro MoP Ready

I’ve had beta access to Mist of Pandaria for some time but have only dabbled in it from time to time. My son has played the beta far more than me and is really looking forward to Poki-wow, but that’s a whole other story, today I want to share my love for a particular addon.

When I first logged into the beta Macros didn’t work, so for me that made the whole experience a bit tedious. Addons at that time weren’t enabled either, so I was reliant on the ingame quest helper, which even with an upgrade, left a bad taste in my mouth.

Since my first dabble in MoP beta, Blizz have enabled the use of addons and macros ingame, thus permitting Authors of Addons to make the necessary changes to make them MoP ready.

 Last week I tried installing wow-pro on the beta with no joy, Sunday 16th I think, they made a version available with MoP quests enabled (v2.3.1A). I installed it and took it for a test drive on the beta last night.

The other addon that’s necessary to make this addon work is TomTom which provides a directional arrow to the relevant quest ingame. I usually drag the arrow to the top of my screen so it’s out of the way but still easily visable.

I completed about 60 quests in the beta with no dramas on my DK. The great thing about this addon is that it auto accepts and hands in quests when you have selected the correct quest giver.

It also gives you a summary box of what you have to do to complete the current quest and tracks how many “Boars hearts” for example, that you have in your inventory towards the total required.

BTW Blizz you really need to do something about the number of heartless boars running around Azeroth! I remember killing 20 Boars to collect 8 Hearts once……

I’m a happy camper now that I know this addon is MoP ready and will use it to great advantage when levelling the “Consortium Project” toons to bring hell and cause disdain in my fellow AH Goblins. Big shoutouts to all the contributors at wow-pro for all your hard work.

Back to basics

Where to begin...

With Mists of Pandaria (MoP) soon to be available, I’m going to start a short series of guides as to how to get from no professions, to choosing the items to sell to maximise profit.

The recommendation below is not from the perspective of a hardcore raider, but more to achieve synergy in gold making.

From the start work towards finding a level 13+ (Preferably 25) guild to join as you level your character. Keep an eye on trade chat for any guild advertising. The idea behind this is you will get a bonus to experience gain as you level (Fast Track rank 2 Guild lvl 5) plus another perk (WorkingOvertime Guild lvl 13) and (Bountiful Bags, Guild lvl 22) which will assist you in your profession levelling.

When levelling a toon I always use the free ingame addon from http://wow-pro.com/. This addon is so good I can’t give the authors enough credit.

What Professions to take?

Some people will tell you to level your professions as you level your character, I’ve found this to be more time consuming then doing it once you hit 85, with the possible exception of Gathering professions (Mining, Herbing, Skinning).

Starting out I would recommend Mining and Jewelcrafting (JC) to any new players.

Ore is required by 4 professions while Herbs are only required by 2, so even if you just farm ore you will find a bigger market in Ore. That’s not to say you’ll make more gold in ore, just that there’s more liquidity. The main reason to take JC is that Gems have a very high turnover and with gear being upgraded regularly, customers keep coming back.  JC is also part of the Shuffle which feeds Enchanting. If you want to know how the Shuffle works then the diagram in the link below, will break it down. Having the professions associated with the shuffle is the foundation to the “Consortium Project”

http://stormspire.net/addons-ui-customization/1563-consortium-cataclysm-shuffling-spreadsheet-v4-5-a.html

These sites are a great resource for anybody wishing to level/change professions. They give you a detailed list of materials required to level any profession and what items to craft to quickly max  it.

http://www.wow-professions.com/ or http://www.warcraftprofessional.com/

Once you hit 85 and have levelled your Mining & JC to 525, then I suggest you either drop mining for enchanting or preferably level it on another toon. The synergy between Mining, JC and Enchanting is “Golden”.

After this, on another toon I would take Blacksmithing.  Alchemy is also a good choice because you can transmute uncommon gems into Rare Gems but it requires herbs which you’d have to purchase off the AH. It’s preferable to make friends with a Guildy who has Alchemy (Transmutation Master) as a profession and see if they’d be willing to craft Rare Gems for you for free/small fee, if not go outside your guild.

So to break it down, 2 toons with the following professions.  

Toon A - Mining & JC

Toon B - Enchanting & Blacksmithting.

Now you are ready to make some serious gold.

384 DK Tank LF Heroic Dragonsoul full clear

Undergeared but experienced

I transferred my DK from Horde to alliance this week, I forgot how undergeared she was. Ilvl 383 but the Tank set was pretty good but for the Trinkets. I purchased a JP cloak (397) and I was good to go. Fortunately my Raid Leader is flexible and didn’t mind me off tanking so in I went to Heroic Dragonsoul having never stepped into anything past LFR on it.

The crazy thing is I didn’t have a problem. I died when Morchok was around 3% Health but by the time his twin made it to the other side, Morchok was a Corpse. Looky Looky  Indomitable Pride drops yay, the other DK tank already had it.

I went DPS for the next 3 fights. This is where I was carried. My DPS gear really sux, but I was able to pull 25k DPS which I thought was ok considering. We 1 shotted all three.

We had a few wipes on Ultraxion, 1 because I didn’t have DBM setup correctly on this toon and was missing the Fading Light taunts…..my bad.

The Loot Ship was a cakewalk, again I off tanked. We had a few wipes on Spine, but eventually got through with me dying to blood damage on the last platform, but in the Corruption phase, so DPS took that out.

Back to DPS for Madness, again a cakewalk, Blizz finally fixed the adds on the last platform so it was sweet. Souldrinker for me, woohoo.

I think a lot of my survival had to do with the excellent healz our group has, but even so as an undergeared Tank, knowing when to blow cooldowns, helps a shitload.

 

Heroic Dragonsoul + Mount

Heroic Dragonsoul + Mount

Last week our 10 man team got Heroic Dragon Soul down and I was the lucky mount recipient.

I have been raiding on my Druid as a Tank this expansion and I have had a blast, until patch 5.04 hit. WTF have Blizz done to Druid Tanks. I’m sorry to say but I won’t be playing my Druid in MoP.  Having to refresh Savage Defence every 6-9 secs is idiotic and a huge backwards step. I easily was able to mitigate the damage from Impale on Madness of DW until this patch, now I have to blow CD’s all over the place, just to survive, it’s total crap. I ended up speccing as Boomkin for the fight as our OT DK single tanked the whole fight, ffs not happy.

So now that I’ve vented I can say that my Horde DK will soon be joining the Alliance as my main for MoP.

At last review I had about 2.4 million gold across my toons so I decided to spend some. I purchased a Spectral Tiger Mount for 350k which was probably Duped, but I bought it from a fellow AH Goblin who I knew pretty well, so I was confident there would be no drama in the transaction.

I normally would not purchase these sorts of items but since they’ve became account bound it’s now something all my toons can enjoy and easier to justify. The only other mount that I really want is Ashes of Alar. Maybe in Mop I’ll be able to solo it or at worst keep an eye on the Blackmarket AH but when that goes up I could see someone bidding 999999.99 gold for it.

How to make 600k gold per month

aka the Consortium Project.

Wow! times flies when you’re on holidays. Lot’s has happened in the last month. Took the family on a Cruise through the South Pacific which was fantastic and I highly recommend them to people with kids….

Back in July I setup a Project to see what a group of like-minded Goblins could accomplish on the AH.

The idea is to have all the major consumables covered on the AH and watched as much as possible during the day and evening. I’m calling this Project “Consortium”. My best friend in game, his wife and myself are the 3 members of the guild and are enjoying rich rewards.

We’re talking Gems, Enchants, Belt Buckles, Leatherworking Leg Enchants, Tailoring Leg Enchants, and Glyphs. Anything that moves fast and is easily sold.

Our first month we made (July) 600,000 gold profit the second month with me away half the month, we made (Aug) 500,000 gold profit. This month (Sept) has slowed down due to MoP’s imminent release I’m guessing, but we’ll still make good gold.

 

The reason I titles this post how I did is becuase Glyph sales have been so pathetic it's hardly worth the effort. The 600k gold was brought in by 1 player. I would estimate that about 20k max could be attributed to Glyphs. Patch 5.0.4 has seen the glyph market become a bit more viable .

 

The Consortium Project ideology

The idea is to have a member post auctions during the day while gathering mats to keep costs down. At night the other 2 members keep their markets topped off and replenish stock levels.

Gathering has not been really necessary other than for Dragonscales as they are pretty expensive. Ore is cheap as to are herbs currently. Ore is shuffled or turned into Stormfoged Shoulders for DE and Belt Buckles. Herbs are milled for glyphs and  used to craft Inferno Rubys.

The great thing is the synergy between us, and I can’t wait till MoP to put this into full swing now that Scribes can make the shoulder enchants. Together we have the following professions covered.

Mining x2

Herbs x2

Scribes x3

Enchanters x3

Alchemists x2

Tailors x2

JC x3

LW x 1

BS x 1