WoW Economist

In less than two weeks, we’ll be exploring brand new territory with thousands of new items. We’ll have to transition to the new (lower) value of gold and it’s going to be a bumpy ride. For a while, the market is going to be out of whack with Outland items being dumped into the market to make room for the goodies in Northrend.

It’s hard to predict exactly how the economy will react to these changes, especially considering I wasn’t playing during the launch of the Burning Crusade. On one hand I could say prices will drop drastically because everyone will be eager to get rid of them for new gear, mounts, etc. in Wrath. There are dozens of gold sinks to motivate players to spend, spend, spend. Many players believe dumping everything they can into the AH is a great way to make some quick gold. And it is, but it has its consequences.

But, then again, the value of gold is going to drop. There will be a lot more gold in the economy with the new quests and it’s going to take some time for players to adjust to seeing these larger numbers next to the gold coin in their bag. They’ll feel wealthy initially, willing to spend more on new and old items. This could drive prices upward. I definitely believe this will happen long term. I just can’t say much for the short term.

My guild is slowly emptying the guild bank and stock piling gold to buy ourselves the first BOE recipes we can get our hands on. There’s a lot of crap in there that’s been rotting since the first days in Karazhan. I’ve yet to see a guild use their guild bank effectively. We do well dishing out epic gems and enchanting materials to our raiders that get new loot, but there’s still four other tabs full of crap that’s rarely touched! Today I offered to take the position as the guild accountant, at least for the liquidation process. I’m sure it’ll be worth clearing out the bank to make room for new materials, patterns and consumables, but I’m not sure how far the 15-20k gold will get us.

I personally just bought a few yellow, red, and purple gems with my badges, had them cut, and sold them for 250-300g a piece. I’ve also bought some of my guild’s high end mats to craft into BOE epics and sell. I’m mostly shooting for one of the server’s first two-passenger mammoth mounts. It’ll be nice having my own vendors attached to my mount for repairing and restocking on ammo. I just hope they are part of some faction I can get exalted with for a 20% discount.

So, how are you preparing for Wrath of the Lich King? Please take a few minutes to post a comment and share with all of us. We all benefit from each other’s insight, and you may spark an idea for a new WoW Economist article before Wrath!

With the introduction of the Achievement system in pre-Wrath patch 3.0, more opportunities for profit have surfaced. Many pet collectors and skunk lovers are going after the 50 vanity pets achievement for their own Reeking Pet Carrier. Since the release of the Burning Crusade and the addition of the skunk critters throughout Terrokar, many of us have been dying for our own skunk mini-pet. Now that our wish has been granted, we’ve been sucking up all the vanity pets we can get our hands on.

High demand and lowered supply - you do the math! Here’s an opportunity for some really easy profit, especially for those playing on PVE realms. There are about 30 different companions that can be purchased directly from vendors, and I don’t think any of the vendors have a limited supply. A quick trip around the world will earn you some exploration and trick-or-treating achievements while you stock up on these vendor-sold vanity pets. Selling these on the Auction House will usually return 10x your investment, sometimes more.

If you are Alliance or you play on a PVE server, keep a close eye on Lil Timmy as he is a rare spawn NPC that sells only one White Kitten before despawning for hours. The last White Kitten I saw on the AH was priced around 200g. I can’t say if it sold or will sell, but if it does, that’s a hefty profit for wandering around Stormwind.

I personally spent the time to travel around and collect the pets while exploring and I’m very close to getting my own Stinker. I’ll need to spend a few hours farming for the oozling and whelplings before I’m done. The skunk is definitely an awesome and unique pet and well worth the effort. I’m not the only one who thinks so, either, so get out there and make some money off ‘em!

I was a bit surprised when I heard that the new profession, Inscription, is coming well before the Wrath launch. Eyonix stated that the pre-Wrath content will be patched “in the coming weeks” and according to some of my own insider info, Wrath isn’t scheduled to launch until early November. I can only assume the patch will land somewhere in the middle. I’m hoping for sooner than later.

Iktomi hinted in a comment in our last post that we might have some success selling “tradeskill power leveling packs” of herbs to new inscribers. Perhaps even a step-by-step guide to go with the raw materials. That will likely fetch more profit than the soon-to-be-inflated market price of herbs. Did anyone try this with Jewelcrafting in the Burning Crusade?

Whether you plan to sell your herbs individually on the auction house or in packs directly to new inscribers to quickly boost their skill, I’d highly recommend investing gold into herbs as soon as possible. Once the patch hits the test realms, I’m guessing prices will slowly rise on the live realms, then sky rocket when the patch goes live. It’s also worth noting that Cenarion Herb Bags aren’t that expensive to craft and hold 25% more herbs than Netherweave Bags. I was recently invited into the Wrath beta so I’ll be working on an Inscription power leveling guide as soon as I get a stock pile of herbs to transfer over.

Happy 4th of July, everyone!

The Holiday Fireworks Vendors are out and it’s the only day of the year to get some insanely cheap Red, White, and Blue sparklers! According to Wowhead, the price of these sparklers averages anywhere between 4g and 7g - a pretty good return if you ask me. They will take up quite a bit of valuable inventory space though.

Like the snowballs, you’ll probably have to wait a few months before they actually reach this price. But I bet you could start selling today and make a gold or two per sparkler if there’s no competition.

So if you have a few extra character slots, store some extra sparklers and ground flowers for a rainy day! By the time you remember you still have a stock pile, they might be worth selling.

It looks like the economy is beginning to settle down after the initial rush for Season 4 gear. I’m sure there’s a bit of fluctuation left to go before I’d consider the market stable again, so no need to rush getting rid of everything you invested in for the new arena season. You still have time.

I found it interesting that the motes and primals went up quite a bit more percentage-wise than Void Crystals and Greater Planar Essence. I still have a few stacks of Void Crystals to dump and fortunately the prices are still high enough to make a good profit after AH fees. I was a little frantic before Season 4 trying to gather up all the cheap enchanting materials and took about 2k gold in loans from friends. They’re all paid off and I’m sitting at about 2,300 gold and double that in items to sell. It was a success for me and I did well considering it was the first time I’ve taken advantage of the new-area-season inflation.

How did you do with Season 4? Leave a comment and let us know how much profit (or loss, but I sure hope not) you ended up with. We’d love to hear!

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.

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:

• Red Belt of Battle
• Belt of the Guardian

Tailoring:

• Belt of Blasting
• Belt of the Long Road

Leatherworking

• Belt of the Black Eagle
• Monsoon Belt
• Belt of Deep Shadow
• Belt of Natural Power

Risk’ometer: 3

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

With many realms now well into phase 3, its time to think ahead to the next phase. When you’re able to retake the harbor and create the alchemy lab, its epic gem time. Each of the six raw (or uncut) gems will become available for purchase for the relatively small price of 10 Badges of Justice. Additionally, the epic gem cut patterns that where previously only available to those with Scale of the Sands reputation are now available with Shattered Sun Offensive rep.

So, what are the opportunities here? Well there are several:

1. You buy uncut gems for 10 Badges of Justice and sell the straight up in the AH or in Trade chat.
2. You buy uncut gems for 10 Badges of Justice, cut them or have them cut by a JC and sell them in their final form.
3. You buy the uncut gems in the AH or trade, cut them, and resell.
4. You buy select recipes if you are a JC, and hope the market comes to you for cuts which you charge extra for (epic gems, new recipes).

Let’s start from the bottom, for kicks. I do not advise you to follow the last option unless you are on a low-pop realm where these cuts are going to be hard to find. On the other hand, if you have sufficient rep from Mount Hyjal (Scale of the Sands), there is substantially less risk because these recipes are ten times cheaper. Here are some of the following we think will be in high demand:

• Design: Bright Crimson Spinel
• Design: Runed Crimson Spinel
• Design: Solid Empyrean Sapphire (sure bet)
• Design: Sparkling Epyrean Sapphire
• Design: Subtle Crimson Spinel
• Design: Teardrop Crimson Spinel
• Design: Luminous Pyrestone
• Design: Potent Pyrestone
• Design: Quick Lionseye
• Design: Reckless Pyrestone

Keep in mind that raiders who need these gems may already have a sufficient supply available from Black Temple drops and that raiding guilds tend to have a 375 JC who they can count on for free cuts.

Regarding point #3, we would recommend you buy and sell according to the cuts we predict will be in demand (see above). However, this is probably the riskiest option.

The first two points are going to be the least risky, if only for the simple reason that you didn’t spend any money to acquire the gems. But we advise you to keep an eye on the AH, see what raw gems and what cuts are being sold before making an investment.

I’m going to be slightly pessimistic for here in terms of overall risk:

Risk’ometer:

Okay, this may be our riskiest proposal yet. If it pays off, you look like a genius. On the other hand, if it goes south, your forehead will likely have a fine rendition of the outline of your keyboard for days to come.

Being a rather cautious investor (I was more aggressive before I still didn’t have epic mounts on all my characters), I rarely engage in attempting to control markets nowadays. But it can be fun, once in a while, and immensely profitable. The perfect condition to execute it in, however, are rather rare.

It might look something like this:

Basically, there needs to be an obvious lack of a certain item that is usually in regular need. The auction house might only have a stack of 5, 10 or 20 left in it, which no one has bought because they only need 1 or 2 at the present time. Or the AH might have only have one or two of that item posted but no stacks. What you need to do is buy up all of the supply, and relist individually (if you bought a stack) at a very high markup (30-50% above usual market price). Then you have to sit there and keep refreshing the AH search; when someone posts that item below your buyout price, you need to buy it asap (you can relist or hold onto it, depending on how your current listings are doing).

Your goal here is to be the sole provider of that particular item and in doing so, charge an abnormally high price for it which in theory should be paid as you are the only supplier. As you can see, this has a serious probability of failure, most likely caused by needing to buy so many items listed below your price. It is also very time consuming because you need to watch the AH like a hawk. But if there are buyers desperate or rich enough swarming the market, you could come out seriously on top. We recommend you do this at prime time for a better chance of success.

Risk’ometer: 5