WoW Economist

Profitable Prospectin’ for WotLK

Mar 22, 2009 Auction House, Crafting, Patches, Professions, Resources, Wrath of the Lich King

This is the first of many guest posts. Richard (Twinkletoes - EU Kul Tiras) sent me this article two months ago and I promised him to post it as soon as I could. Unfortunately, my recent injury significantly delayed it, but the basic concepts are still valid. A belated thanks Richard!

Ever since the release of the Profitable Prospectin’ article from last May I have been an avid prospector making enough gold to kit out my main and alts.

With the release of WotLK came new Ore and new Gems. AH prices have been fluctuating for the core materials and it took some time for this to settle however the wait is now over and we have enough information to dust off the article and give it an update.

The basic principles are still the same, work out the price of the resulting gems a prospecting session should make; if they’re worth more than the raw materials then it’s worth it. In the original article we stuck to Adamantite Ore and for WotLK Saronite Ore is the ore of choice.

I will leave the maths explanation for the original post but the theory is still very similar. There is a 24% chance to drop a blue gem and a 108% chance for either 1 or 2 green gems.

Test Results

Over a two week period I bought 112 stacks of Saronite Ore at 35 Gold each for a total investment of just over 3.9k. This prospected into the following:

If we AH everything we prospected this would result in sales of 7.6k. With an initial investments of 3.9k that leaves us a profit of 3.7k.

For the theorycrafters amongst you the 112 stacks should result in 3.5k profit (I was lucky on a few extra Scarlet Rubies).

What’s interesting is the time required to make this much gold. By far the most time is spent doing the prospecting itself and then placing the gems on the AH at the right price. I would estimate that I spent about 1 hour game time for the above test.

Tips

This probably goes without saying but spend a little time tracking Saronite Ore on the AH at different times and on different days. Find the highs and lows on both prices and availability.

Ore is generally cheaper on the weekend and on my realm there are only 10 or 12 stacks below my target price at any one time. I aim to clear these out most days depending on how much I have invested in gems.

As with the original Profitable Prospectin’ post, this will only work over a large amount of prospects. Prospecting for profit works on the law of averages and you need a large enough sample size to justify the expense.

Although I put most of my green gems on the AH I am also saving a fair number of stacks back for the soon to be released Icy Prism. On that note, look out for cheap Frozen Orbs.

Having a Jewelcrafter at your disposal will greatly increase your profit on the blue gems. The higher level gem recipes are gained through the daily JC awards and running various instances. As a guide, the top ten gems from my realm make an extra 50 to 70 gold per sale. We got 99 blue gems from the test above and if we converted just half we would have made an extra 3k on top of our 3.7k of profit.

Enchanting changes in patch 3.0.8

Jan 5, 2009 Auction House, Crafting, Farming, How-To, Investing, Patches, Professions, Wrath of the Lich King

As we covered a few weeks ago, some enchanting recipes are being changed in the upcoming patch. Thanks to well-formatted post at MMO-Champion, we’ve got a much better idea of what’s being changed - nearly all the Wrath enchants!

Many of them are having their dust and essence (especially essence) requirements lowered, some have had Dream Shards added or Dream Shards to replace Abyss Crystals. With the additions of two new tanking enchants, we can definitely expect Dream Shard prices to rise - probably double or triple their current cost. I’ve been stocking up over the last few weeks and I’m already seeing the prices climb from 4-5g each to about 8-9g each. And the increases in price isn’t stopping any time soon.

I have not yet heard if the patch is coming during tomorrow’s maintanence or not, but it has to be soon. You still have a chance to pick up some more dream shards before the auction house is cleared out and inflation sets in.

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: Seasonal

Icy Prism, the new Brilliant Glass

Dec 13, 2008 Crafting, Investing, Patches, Professions, Wrath of the Lich King

After being the proud owner of nearly every Engineering pattern in the game (save for very few, rare green ones) for about two years, I decided it was time for something more profitable. There just wasn’t much Engineer-only recipes in Northrend to make it worth while. I dropped Engineering for Jewelcrafting and leveled it up just before the expansion. After hitting 80 and farming a few stacks of ore, I dropped mining and leveled up Enchanting (I wish I had gone Inscription instead, but I’ll probably just roll a DK for that).

The upcoming patch has a lot of disappointing changes (I’m a hunter), but I’m very excited for the new Brilliant Glass of Northrend, Icy Prism! Even better, it’s made from those three uncommon gems I seem to have the most of: Calcedony, Shadow Crystal, and Dark Jade. It also requires a Frozen Orb, which could make it a costly endeavor for now, but I’ll bet it’ll still be profitable after cutting the resulting gems.

I was going to write about Frozen Orbs and other rare materials, but it seems I might be a bit late, so I hope you were selling them as soon as you got your hands on them. In the first week or two of Wrath, Frozen Orbs were going for 300-400g on my server, Abyss Crystals made a few hundred more. I made a killing on them during that time. Now that the Frozen Orbs are down to about 50g each, it’s probably safe to start stashing them away for Icy Prisms. I haven’t heard if they have a chance to turn over epic gems, but it should still be profitable regardless. If epic gems are released through Icy Prisms, we’ll be insanely rich!

I have a neat little prospecting calculator that’s nearly finished to give you an idea of how profitable prospecting is on your server. Across the few servers I’ve checked, uncut uncommons go for a few gold a piece and uncut red, orange, and yellow rare gems sell anywhere between 50g and 90g. If this sounds like your economy and Saronite Ore is around 25-30g a stack, it’s probably safe to prospect the hell out of it. You’ll get some profit out of uncut gems, but way more out of cut ones. Just find the most profitable cuts and get those recipes before the competition does - and sell, sell, sell!

Death Knight preparation and investments

Nov 5, 2008 Class Specific, Factions & Reputation, Farming, Investing, Resources, Wrath of the Lich King

A few guides and shopping lists are floating around to prepare yourself for rerolling a Death Knight. With the introduction of a brand new class into WoW and the fact that all races start in the same area, the leveling process in the first few weeks is going to be chaotic. That’s where these guides come in.

Scattered around Azeroth and Outland are many repeatable reputation quests. Almost all of these quests offer experience the first time you turn them in and usually some bonus reputation as well. There are a dozen or so of these quests that are well worth doing after your Death Knight escapes the Scarlet Enclave. The major ones being the cloth turn-ins for every city faction and the turn-ins for Outland factions. I’m not going to go into much detail about the quests themselves, but the complete shopping list should give you an idea of what items to start investing in.

• 300x Wool Cloth
• 300x Silk Cloth
• 300x Mageweave Cloth
• 300x Runecloth
• 6x Blasted Boar Lung
• 6x Scorpok Pincer
• 11x Basilisk Brain
• 14x Vulture Gizzard
• 5x Snickerfang Jowl
• 1x Imperfect Draenethyst Fragment
• 1x Flawless Draenethyst Sphere (very rare unless you kill Teremus, you can probably skip this one)
• 30x Core of Elements
• 30x Crypt Fiend Parts
• 30x Bone Fragments
• 30x Savage Frond
• 30x Dark Iron Scraps
• 2x Thorium Bar
• 1x Golden Rod
• 8x Hi-Explosive Bomb
• 8x Unstable Trigger
• 10x Unidentified Plant Parts (or 360x to get you to Honored before you do Zangarmarsh quests, helping you to hit Revered for your head enchant before you leave Zangarmarsh)
• 6x Bog Lord Tendril
• 10x Mature Spore Sac
• 10x Glowcap
• 6x Fertile Spores
• 5x Sanguine Hibiscus
• 30x Arakkoa Feather
• 10x Oshu’gun Crystal Fragment
• 3x Pair of Ivory Tusks
• 10x Mark of Kil’Jaeden (for Aldor)
• 10x Mark of Sargeras (for Aldor)
• 1x Fel Armament (for Aldor)
• 10x Firewing Signet (for Scryer)
• 10x Sunfury Signet (for Scryer)
• 1x Arcane Tome (for Scryer)

The Death Knight starting area quests will get you past level 58. Afterwards, you’re forced to roam around Eastern Plaguelands for a while - with dozens, maybe hundreds, of other Death Knights, all competing to complete the same quests. The reputation turn-ins will give you a significant boost (a level or two initially, and a few bars every few levels during Outland leveling) and will allow you to push past the chaos into uninterrupted leveling.

How are you preparing for Wrath?

Nov 2, 2008 Auction House, Patches, Wrath of the Lich King

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!

Gold Sinks in Wrath of the Lich King

Oct 12, 2008 Patches, Vendors, Videos, Wrath of the Lich King

To keep inflation down, gold sinks in the WoW economy are a must. Usually, these are just vanity items that suck some of the pure gold out of the market. Thanks to Warcraft Econ, we now know of quite a few from the current build of Wrath’s beta server. Below is a video highlighting some of them. I’m really looking forward to having my own vendors attached to my mammoth!

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.

• 60x Alabaster Pigment (~6 stacks of herbs)
  
• 40x Dusty Pigment (~4 stacks herbs)
  
• 134x Golden Pigment (~14 stacks of herbs)
  
• 118x Emerald Pigment (~12 stacks of herbs)
  
• 114x Violet Pigment (~12 stacks of herbs)
  
• 110x Silvery Pigment (~11 stacks of herbs)
  
• 130x Nether Pigment (~13 stacks of herbs)
  

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.

• 10x Burnt Pigment
• 10x Indigo Pigment
• 5x Ruby Pigment

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.