WoW Economist

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

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!

The Eredar Twins are the 4th boss encounter in Sunwell Plateau. As of now, however, guilds cannot access them because of a gate which requires progress from the Shattered Sun Offensive to unlock. As you realm nears the unlocking of this gate, be prepared to invest!

This encounter is an elemental one involving shadow and fire. We’re going to forget about the shadow part here because most guilds attempting this boss will have full shadow resist sets from the Mother Shahraz encounter in Black Temple. However, we can expect them to be less prepared to be taking fire damage.

Therefore, when the top guilds on your realm begin attempting this boss, theyre going to need a heckload of Major Fire Protection Potions. The mats for these are:

1x Primal Fire
1x Mana Thistle
1x Imbued Vial

But we’re going to go ahead and recommend against investing in those mats until more “casual” guilds start attempting the twins. Why, you ask? Because top guilds are more likely to provide their raid members with a Cauldron of Major Fire Protection (similar mats):

2x Primal Fire
7x Mana Thistle
1x Fel Iron Casing : 3x Fel Iron Bar

We’re recommending here to invest in the Mana Thistle and Fel Iron Casings. The reason is, not only are these two materials used in creating all Cauldrons, but the price of Primal Fire, like other Primals, will be affected by many other trends. In addition, the preceding encounter to this one is Felmyst, which involves a significant amount of nature damage (therefore Cauldrons of Major Nature Protection will be needed as well).

Looks like SWP is shaping up to be an elemental consumable heavy raid instance. Time to cash in, amigos.

Risk’ometer: 4

With the release of Sunwell Plateau, expect a lot of top tier guilds to compete with boss kills. The second boss in SWP is Brutallus and he is a balls-to-the-walls DPS race. Guilds decked out in T6 are going to have a run for their money with this one and they need all the help they can get to beat the enrage timer.

There are two items that will help to increase their DPS above and beyond using the standard flasks & consumables on this particular boss:

Elixir of Demonslaying:
1x Gromsblood
1x Ghost Mushroom
1x Crystal Vial

and

Drums of War:
3x Heavy Knothide Leather
3x Fel Scales

Buy these mats now and hold onto them until several guilds on your server start attempting (wiping repeatedly on) Brutallus. You can check their progress on realm forums, or even easier, on Wowjustu.

Risk’ometer: 5