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.