Archive for the ‘Gathering’ Category

Gold-making tips from a WoW millionaire

Apr 19, 2009 Auction House, Gathering, How-To, Investing, Resources, Videos

I saw this a few days ago on World of Raids and was drawn to the “0 to 1,000 gold in 4 hours” title. I was a bit skeptical, but I watched the video anyway. Turns out there’s some pretty good information in there! He’s since released another video and a PDF that explains some really efficient gold-making tactics.

This one summarizes his basic strategy and more-or-less proves his “quick gold” claim. I was still a bit skeptical as it could be faked fairly easily, but his 2nd video and PDF proves that he really knows his stuff. I’m excited for his next video.

His site, WoW Auction Mastery, has the same videos in high-def and the PDF I was talking about. He’s supposed to have a few more videos coming in the next week. I’ll probably review them in more depth pretty soon. I’m going to put a few of the techniques to use and report back with my findings! Leave a comment and let me know what you guys accomplish as well. Maybe I can get him to write us a guest post!

Winter Veil Inflation

Dec 16, 2008 Auction House, Crafting, Farming, Gathering, Holidays, How-To, Investing, Professions, Wrath of the Lich King

I’m sorry I didn’t get this post up sooner so you guys could start preparing. Wordpress has been giving me some trouble lately. If the most recent updates don’t fix it, I might have to move to a new blogging platform.

Winter Veil is finally here and so is the inflation. Most of us have seen it before - hundreds of gold for stacks of Small Eggs among other things. It brings back memories of WoW’s first Winter Veil and farming the hell out of owls in Teldrassil for eggnog.

With many players going after the Merrymaker title, a few of the player-created items are in very high demand. This demand has caused the materials to skyrocket in price, giving us an opportunity to earn some major cash. Seeing as this post is a little late, we won’t be able to invest in much. But some quick and easy farming, even on low level alts, will prove to be very profitable. Here are some items you should look out for and sell while the demand lasts:

  • Wool Cloth and Bolts of Woolen Cloth
  • Runecloth and Bolts of Runecloth
  • Rugged Leather
  • Copper Ore and Copper Bars
  • Small Eggs
  • Deeprock Salt - this is a big one, going for about 20g each on my server. Deeprock Salt can be turned in with 5g for five Preserved Holly.

The following may be profitable investments as they can be purchased cheaply from vendors. I’ve often started earning funds on new bank alts by selling a few Rune Thread on the auction house for a few hundred percent markup - the markup and demand are likely much more significant at this time of year.

  • Rune Thread
  • Green Dye and Red Dye
  • Holiday Spirits and Holiday Spices
  • Ice Cold Milk

Hopefully there’s still time for you to take advantage of the holiday madness. Let me know how you do!

Tags:

Overachiever Wealth: Vanity Pets

Oct 21, 2008 Auction House, Factions & Reputation, Gathering, Investing, Vendors

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!

Speedy Scribe: Power level your Inscription in patch 3.0

Oct 10, 2008 Crafting, Farming, Gathering, How-To, Patches, Player Interaction, Professions, Resources, Wrath of the Lich King

The inscription powerleveling guide I’ve been working on is finally complete! Naturally, there may be a few mistakes, so I urge you to try the guide on the PTR or once 3.0 goes live. If you find something wrong or you have a better route for a certain portion of the guide, feel free to leave a comment and let me know!

At the moment, it’s pretty pointless to level inscription past 350 as there are no new recipes for 355 and beyond. The only way to learn new recipes after 350 (and the only way to learn minor glyphs) is through Minor Inscription Research, which has a 20 hour cooldown. Below are the materials required to get to 350 inscription. The pigments come from different sets of herbs, which you can see on Wowhead by clicking each pigment’s name. The average return of each herb is about 2.5 pigments per mill (5 herbs), so you’ll need about double the amount of herbs to get the necessary pigments listed below. I plan on having one extra stack of each as a buffer in case of bad luck.

The following uncommon pigments have a chance to be milled from each set of herbs. With the volume of herbs required for the pigments above, you should have no problem getting these pigments.

And finally, the parchment below can be bought from the inscription supplies vendors near every inscription trainer.

  • 60x Light Parchment
  • 121x Common Parchment
  • 155x Heavy Parchment
  • 30x Resilient Parchment

Now that you’ve stuffed your inventory full of materials, let’s plow through this guide. I started out at the Ironforge trainer until 300 Inscription, then moved to Honor Hold to finish up. You’ll need to make a few trips to and from the bank to mill the herbs and use the pigment, but make sure you mill enough Nether Pigment to bring with you to the Outland to get from 300 to 350 inscription.

Read the rest of this entry »

Inscription: Help me finish the guide

Oct 7, 2008 Farming, Gathering, Patches, Player Interaction, Professions, Resources, Wrath of the Lich King

I need your help! Because of the short supply of certain herbs on my server, I haven’t got very far in writing the inscription guide. I just didn’t have enough herbs to copy over to the public test realm. I’ve been wasting a lot of time farming them manually on the PTR.

So that’s where you come in!

I know you’ve been stockpiling herbs over the last month or two. If you could prepare one character full of a few stacks of each herb, copy it over to the PTR (US PVP realm), and mail me the stacks of herbs, I would greatly appreciate it. You can send the herbs to my PTR character, Frolic (Alliance on the US PVP realm), or whisper me if you catch me online. I should be on the PTR for most of the day. If I can get a few of you to do this, I should have the inscription power leveling guide finished by tonight.

Wrath: Inscription coming sooner than expected

Aug 26, 2008 Auction House, Gathering, Investing, Patches, Professions, Wrath of the Lich King

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.

Wrath: Introducing Inscription and Herbalism

Jul 19, 2008 Crafting, Gathering, Professions, Wrath of the Lich King

This post will be one of many analyzing the data we receive from the Wrath of the Lich King beta. If you have beta access or a spare key and wish to share information with us (or loan us a key), we’d love to hear from you! Please leave a comment and let us know.

Inscription is the new profession in Wrath of the Lich King and has been mentioned numerous times over the last six months. However, we never really knew what materials were required for this new craft. Until a few days ago…

It seems Herbalism is the complimentary profession to Inscription. To inscribe spells or scrolls, ink is used. Obtaining ink is much like Prospecting for gems - you crush five herbs using Milling for one (or more?) ink.

From what I’ve heard, the first three low level inks (Ivory Ink, Silver Ink, and Earthen Ink) require the first three low level herbs (Peacebloom, Silverleaf, and Earthroot respectively). I can only assume each successive herb is used for it’s own color/type of ink.

This is going to be huge for the herb market! Mining is primarily used for Blacksmithing, Engineering, and Jewelcrafting while Herbalism’s only major profession is Alchemy. Inscription is Herbalism’s new best friend in the expansion and we will see a significant rise in herb prices, especially in the first few weeks. I’d estimate 5-10x in the first few weeks (especially for the lower end mats, not so much the higher end ones), and slowly drop down to 2-3x current market prices where it’ll likely remain.

I’ve got six “storage bins” ready for herbs, so I’ll be stocking them up like mad over the next many weeks. According to my girlfriend, Wrath is scheduled to launch November 3rd, so we have plenty of time to buy all the herbs our little bank alts can hold without artificially inflating the market and overpaying.

A drop rate is a probability, not a guarantee

Apr 29, 2008 Farming, Gathering, Raiding, Resources

WoW Insider has a short but great post on the math behind drop rate percentages. This may not be obvious to some people and the math behind the percentages will make it much clearer.

While Wowhead may tell you the drop rate of a Badge of Justice from Shattered Sun Supplies is 10%, you are not guaranteed a badge in 10 supplies. You actually have a 34.87% chance of not finding a single badge from opening 10 supplies.

Here’s the math:

  • Take the percentage chance of not receiving the item you are after (in this case, 100% - 10% = 90% or 0.9)
  • Raise that to the nth power, where n is the amount of times looted (in this case, 0.9^10 = 0.3487 or 34.87%)
  • The result is your chance to not get the item in the number of times you’re looting (or 100% - 34.87% to get the percent chance you will get the item, 65.13%)

This math applies to items opened, corpses looted, herbs picked, ores mined, gems prospected, and everything else with a drop percentage attached to it.

And speaking of prospecting, we have a great article coming up that will break it down and give you an idea of how profitable it might be to buy up your server’s Adamantite Ore and spend the day prospecting. Stay tuned!