Consortium Project Update December 2012

Another good result, 830,000 gold for the month. There’s plenty of gold to be made despite competition being at an all-time high. This month were seeing a few new players entering the market and competing for market share. Is this just part of the Craziness that is Christmas?

Some old players are changing strategy too. Instead of competing on 1 toon, they are using multiple toons to place Auctions more frequently. 

We netted 225,000 gold profit from Glyphs and DM Cards, and 605,000 gold profit from Enchants, Gems, & Belt Buckles.

The Arbitrage Project works great going from Alliance to Horde, but I’m finding it difficult to find enough items to send back from Horde to Alliance. Dabbling in this with the highest priced items netted 85,000 profit without much effort. We’re talking Primal Diamonds, Belt Buckles, Shoulder Enchants and Red Gems. Horde side on Caelestrasz is a much slower market, however there seems to be less competition too. It will be interesting to see how this plays out after Christmas when the kiddies go back to school.

GKP Runs

Woot! GKP runs are back on Caelestrasz Alliance. The first one kicked off last week, which I couldn’t attend as I’ve been away since New Year’s Day on Holidays, but this week I’m signed up and good to go. Finally something to spend gold on other than items off the BMAH.

Size : 25 man

When : Fri 8pm ST, be online 20 mins before raids starts for invites.
Where: Mogu'shan Vaults
Invites : Whisper Jetfoo, Helya

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.