Archive for May, 2008

Auctioneer Updates: Converter and Vendor searches, tooltip additions

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

As you may have heard, Auctioneer got a few updates recently. What really stuck out at me was the new additions to the SearchUI - Converter and Vendor searches.

Originally, if you wanted to look for vendor deals, you had to turn on BottomScanner while scanning the entire Auction House and click through each deal that Auctioneer found. Pain in the ass!

Now you can pop open your SearchUI of Auctioneer Advanced (the magnifying glass icon in the yellow tab on the side of your screen) and search your last AH scan for any items you can bid/buy and sell directly to the vendor for a small, but quick profit. This is a great feature for building starting capital on a new bank alt.

Another feature added to the SearchUI is the Converter search. With this function, you can browse for any motes, greater or lesser essence, etc. that you can instantly convert (into primals, lesser or greater essence, etc.) and resell for profit.

And finally, there’s more tooltip tidbits. Your tooltips should now show the deposit cost of listing an item on the AH for 24 hours. There’s also a new “suggestion” line under the AH deposit cost. Auctioneer tries to keep track of where an item came from (whether you bought it to DE, convert, resell, or otherwise) and reminds you what to do with it. Very handy for those doing a ton of buying (bidding in particular) and selling.

Posted in AddOns, Auction House, How-To | 12 Comments »

Reputation items: Aldor vs Scryer

Monday, May 12th, 2008

It seems that with the popularity of Quel’Danas dailies combined with the relative value of Aldor shoulder enchants and proc requirements on exalted neck pieces, the value of those respective reputation tokens has risen sharply. Indeed, killing blood elves on the new daily quests yields far more Sunfury Signets and Arcane Tomes than Marks of Sargeras and Fel Armaments. And thus, the laws of supply and demand take hold once again and gift us with an exploitable market opportunity.

So one way to get cash here would be to head on over to Legion Hold and kill every demon in sight. Here are a few other ways:

  • Always choose Aldor reputation items as your reward from daily quests.
  • Buy cheap Scryer reputation items in AH, trade at 1:1 ratio for Aldor equivalent, resell.
  • Buy cheap Aldor reputation items in AH, trade at 1:2 or 1:3 ratio for Scryer equivalent, resell.

Here’s a pristine farming location for Aldor reputation items if you prefer grinding it out:

Posted in Factions & Reputation, Farming | 5 Comments »

Buckle up, it’s time to get waisted!

Monday, May 5th, 2008

I’ve recently realized that with the BOEification (copyright, me) of Nether Vortices there may be a very real market opportunity in crafted epic belts. It must be noted that with the lifting of attunements in Hyjal and Black Temple, many raiders are adamant on upgrading every possible slot outside of the actual instance in order to counter bad drops and push through content faster. It should also be noted that some of the upgrades to the waist slot over the following crafted BOEs come well into T6 content and therefore these items are often well worth their while.

Now this might require a lot of free cash (1K+) and several relists but could net you a few hundred gold in profit. Be sure to check the AH to see if there is already a crafter on your server participating in this market… if there are too many, your profit might be too small to justify the risk. If not, I would try listing them for 12 hours around about 5 or 6pm server time… this will catch the attention of players getting ready to raid. You might also want to advertise in trade chat that the item has been placed in the AH.

Blacksmithing:

Tailoring:

Leatherworking

Risk’ometer: 3

Posted in Auction House, Crafting, Farming, How-To, Patches, Player Interaction, Professions, Raiding | 12 Comments »

Profitable Prospectin’

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

Edit: The math wasn’t really wrong after all; just poorly laid out.

I wanted to take a look and see at what price levels prospecting might be profitable. For simplicity’s sake, and also from what I’ve heard in the Jewelcrafting circles, let’s keep this analysis exclusive to the big one, Adamantite Ore. From Wowhead’s data, it looks like each prospect has a 22% chance to drop a blue gem and an 80% chance for 1.37 green gems (either 1 or 2 green gems will drop).

Anyways, here’s what to do:

  1. Find out the average selling price of a blue gem on your realm (add up average prices of Talasite, Noble Topaz, Living Ruby, Nightseye, Dawnstone and Star of Elune and divide by 6). Let’s call this x.
  2. Find out the average selling price of a stack of Adamantite Powder (20). In my experience, this doesn’t sell too well, so you might want to vendor instead. Let’s call this z.
  3. Find out the lowest price you can get a stack of Adamantite Ore for (20=1 stack). Let’s call this y.
  • 22% chance for a blue gem from 5 ore.
  • 80% chance of 1.37 green gems every 5 ores= 4.38 gems per stack. 18 green gems=1 blue gem (Brilliant Glass). That means every 4.11 stacks, or 82 ores, you have a guaranteed blue gem. [1/(82/5)]=0.06.

0.22x + 0.06x + 0.05z= expected gold from one prospect (5 ores).

0.28x + 0.05z (simplified)

y= price of 20 ores (see above).

If [(0.28x + 0.05z)*0.95]>y/4, then prospect. Simplified: 1.064x + 0.19z>y.

If you’re vendoring the powder, use 1.064x + 0.9>y, then prospect.

NOTE: This is assuming the gems prospected sell on their first listing.

NOTE2: This will only work over a large amount of prospects. The main reason for this is so that the sample size is large enough to justify the equation but also that you get the necessary green gems for Brilliant Glass and so that you get enough variation in your blue gems.

I’d like to note a couple more things regarding patch 2.4.2. First of all, Brilliant Glass is now set to be on a 20 hour cooldown, which is a slight improvement, but which still may be a roadblock for getting rid of those green gems. An alternative would be using them to transmute Skyfire Diamond or Earthstorm Diamonds. Or, you could straight up sell them in the AH although this may be slightly riskier due to the huge supply. Secondly, I’d like to note that, according to the patch notes, there is now a slight chance for Brilliant Glass to yield an epic gem, which means that this may be even more profitable than it appears. However, I do emphasize the small in “small chance” and this shouldn’t be something you rely on.

Risk’ometer: 2

Posted in Auction House, Crafting, Patches, Professions | 18 Comments »