Auction House PvP

Progress Report: 26000g Total

2010-09-16T05:00:00.000-07:00

Booyah!

Greetings ladies and gentlemen! Although I've been spending some time away from the World of Warcraft, I got a week of Auction House work in before I destroyed my addons. I earned 12000 gold that week for a grand total of 26000 internet golds! Since then I've been reposting what's already in my mailbox on raid nights, but not recrafting, and I've gained another 4000g. I've actually got 30k in my stash now, but I didn't screenshot that so it's not in the title.

The volatility of every Auction House market astonishes me. Once I sold two Bejeweled Wizard's Bracers in two days for 1999g each - a total profit of 3500g. Those are the only two Bejeweled Wizard's Bracers I have ever sold. Unless you can verify a market is absolutely dead on your server (for some people this is flasks or Inscription), it pays to keep your fingers in a lot of pies. Jewelcrafting and enchant scrolls are by far my most consistent money makers, but both markets are quickly volume-capped and between Tailoring, Glyphs, and Engineering pets, I'm prone to a big stack of "bonus gold" about 1/3 of the times I post. As soon as I branch into Leatherworking and Blacksmithing I'm sure I'll be even more of a world-conqueror!

The Cataclysm is fast approaching. With my reduced time commitment to the game I may not hit the gold cap before release, but you can bet your ass I'll still be trying!

OH! Final thought -- tanking an ICC-25 GDKP was a huge money maker for me. The 3000g I earned payed for what I purchased and the BoEs quickly netted me another 3k of profit immediately afterwards in trade chat. Depending on how things shake out with me and Starcraft, I may be running my own GDKP soon.

AH PvP 2.0

2010-09-14T05:00:00.000-07:00

Forgive my life-crippling Attention Deficit Disorder, but I am back with excuses and goals!

Excuse #1 - I've been playing Starcraft II! I'm PLATINUM, baby, and hoping to be diamond eventually. I really enjoy the game because it's so new that everyone is still bad and I have a better chance to become an excellent competitor by adopting early. Compare this to WoW, where I started playing arenas in season 7, lacking the experience of six previous seasons that almost everyone else had. (I still got 1800, but I fought tooth and nail for it and so I respect hard-working players at every level of Warcraft PvP.)

Excuse #2 - I accidentally erased my hand-coded extension of the KTQ addon (trying to install Ubuntu Linux), crippling my ability to efficiently play the Auction House.

Goal #1 - I am back in the addon writing business! Since Kevmar looks to have retired to Starcraft II, I'll be maintaining and extending his KTQ tool and sharing it with the people. I've also got my eyes on the GoGoPet addon, which is missing some of the functionality of its mature older brother, GoGoMount. (Hopefully with GoGoPet I can just submit a patch to the project, as the developer appears to be active but focused on other things.)

Goal #2 - Blogging three days per week! Tuesdays will be an addon progress report day, Thursdays an AH progress report day, and Saturdays a craaazy idea I have - the "Noobcast". The Noobcast will be a video where I present tips for Starcraft and Warcraft from my idiot's perspective. AND I will post in advance just like Markco.

Of course, all of this is pending my ability to function as an adult and get things done.

Want to see something really cool and unrelated?

Pardon my poor photography, but those are the 310% speed drakes from ICC-10! My PvP guild (who are all *much* better at PvP than me) built an extremely solid 10 person raiding core on the whim of the GL, who is good friends with a warrior from our server's #2 progression guild that decided to raid lead for us because he didn't have the 10-person achievements. Lucky me! It's interesting that we have an abundance of healers (because we're a PvP guild) and they're constantly arguing over who will have to DPS. (I am the only in-guild tanking main, but after a month we picked up a great Warrior tank who is the alt of our server's #1 raiding Priest.)

Why do they call it a Playstation 3?

2010-08-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

Because when you see it you turn all the way around 3 times and you walk away!

One of the most popular troll jokes in our trade chat is "They call it an XBox 360 because when you see it you turn 360 degrees and you walk away."

"Then you're still facing the same direction, dumbass!"

The Nature of a (Real) Troll

An amateur troll does everything he can do get people riled up. He enjoys the power of causing angst without retribution. This is your standard internet jackass posting, "I hate the jews/blacks/indians/muslims/eskimos/etc." Amateur.

A sophisticated troll works with the goal of making people respond at length, hopefully with passion, without knowing they're being trolled. A sophisticated troll comment would be the XBox 360 joke, or something along the lines of, "Do ret paladins need to gem ArPen?" This troll is seeking the multi-layered pleasure of fooling you while you think you are smarter than him. This is the fellow who will put Lustrous Chalcedony and Fiery Weapon on his Shadowmourne and link it in /trade.

But that was fluff. The real point of this post is...

An Awesome Tale of Righteous Revenge

A fellow in trade is looking for a tank to instantly queue a random heroic. Pikkle is a tank! I accept the deal. At the end of the dungeon, Pikkle is refused payment and put on ignore. With enough badgering his associate in the group gives me 30g (all he had) as a form of apology for his friend's behavior, but they are unguilded so have no further accountability. /fumes

Don't fuck with the bear. I macro'd his deceitful ways and now every time he spams trade looking for a tank I hit the macro to tell everyone he will not pay. Of course, he doesn't know I'm doing this because he has me on ignore.

Still, I was left unsatisfied. Then I notice him starting a ToC 10 group that needs one more healer. Fortune has aligned. The gods have spoken in my favor. I have a healer. I log into my other max-level character, a Discipline Priest named Wonzy, who I hadn't played in six months, and get into the raid. I'm even invited to this kid's personal Ventrilo server. Do you see what's happening? He doesn't know it's me.

While people are buffing, someone starts the event. Twice! Gormok noms some tanks hard when I pretend to disconnect in fire. Oops. We get past Northrend Beasts even though somebody got charged by Icehowl (not me this time) and then cleared Jaraxxus even though I ignored Incinerate Flesh and Faction Champs even though I died again (this time only because I was a pure noob).

At Twin Val'kyrs I am running out of ways to "accidentally" screw up so I decide to make myself known. I run all the way across the room to pull the bosses when people haven't even clicked portals yet and die immediately, but the idiot still doesn't realize Wonzy is the raid screw-up so I do it again, am identified, and spew forth a torrent of righteous fury into vent (so I can't be screenshotted) as I reveal my true identity. I am banned from the Vent but the raid is already breaking up before I can be kicked from it and I have won.

A few other members of the raid, innocent bystanders, whispered me in anger but were strangely understanding as I explained how I had committed a perfect act of vengeance. A few others took their rage to trade chat and were quickly and harshly shushed by a server that has grown to love me after years of friendly and competent play.

Weekly Progress Report: 14000g Total

2010-08-11T06:35:00.000-07:00

Om nom nom.

I now hold 14000g in my Cataclysm nest egg. Hells to the yeah, my brothah! This is 13000g more than last week and *almost* 2000g per day. By my calculations I need to stow away 2500g per day if I'm going to hit the gold cap before a November Cataclysm. When I add Leatherworking and Blacksmithing to my bag of tricks I should easily hit that mark.

Totzy, my Leatherworker, is level 64 with LW 350 and a mountain of Borean Leather in the bank, so as soon as she dings 65 I'll enter into that profession.

Until two days ago I avoided selling many enchant scrolls because I found the necessary micro-management distasteful. But after some bank tab arranging I realized I was completely out of my previously made enchanting scrolls and probably had been for a long time! They must have sold... I hit the spreadsheet and found twenty scrolls worth keeping in stock - but perhaps the details of that are for another post. In the two days of posting enchant scrolls I've seen my income jump by 1000g per day and I've already noticed the prices to be as volatile as meta gems; I've sold Powerful Stats for 220g-430g; I've sold Greater Stamina (Boots) and (Bracer) for 9g-59g.

Epic Gems suck! I can transmute them and buy them with honor so I'm cutting them, but the raw gems often sell for as much as the crafted, so pfft. Rare Gems are free money - often I don't even need to prospect, but can buy vendor priced uncut gems on the AH, craft them, and repost them for 15g-69g. (If I do prospect, Saronite Shuffle baby! It's alive and better than ever.) Meta gems often sell for stupidly high prices ie back to back Chaotic Skyflare Diamonds for 197g each (350g or 700% total profit). Sadly, gems (like everything) are volume-limited, so I can't simply cut extra gems to make more gold every day.

If people will fuck off and not undercut me for one or two hours, I'll make a 700g profit that day from glyphs. I find the sweet spot for this is posting at about 2am server time. Luckily I'm a night owl and play on an active late-night server. Typically though I only sell 100g-200g worth of glyphs every time I post. That's still profitable, but it tortures my mailbox.

Tailoring is, as usual, low throughput and low competition. I made a Spellfire friend for life when I helped him gain twenty very expensive (for him) skill points by crafting me 100 Spellweave. Yesterday I made my first crafted epic which could be a 300g-1000g profit (if it sells at all).

Armor Vellum III, Epic Off-Hands, and to a lesser degree, Runescrolls are still, months later, curiously high-volume, high profit items. Comma comma comma comma.

Finally, ENGINEERING. Some jackass is setting a Tranquil Mechanical Yeti pricewall at 240g. Really? Yetis? He also thinks he's choking the market by buying all Globes of Water for 50g or less but I've still got about 30 Yetis in the bank. If he wants to make 30g profit on a one-per-day item that requires nine separate materials and five unique crafting steps, be my guest. I'll wait till he gets bored and then sell mine for the 550g per day they easily fetch. Aaaaand then he'll undercut me constantly in a manner worse than any glyph camper and I'll drive the price into the ground again and he'll build another wall like he's smart and I'll just buy all his crap and relist it at twice the price to save myself the enormous crafting time He'll think he won and keep providing me with near-cost Yetis all the way through Cataclysm and in real life an angry, small dog will jump up and bite him in the nuts.

Tailoring: Another Reason to Not Make Frostweave Bags

2010-08-09T09:01:00.000-07:00

Marcko points out that Frostweave Bags are a profitable, if volatile, market. I suppose he's right.

But is it worth it to use your Imbued Frostweave on a sometimes-profitable market that requires micro-management? I say no. My buy threshold for Frostweave Cloth is 60s, which gets me just enough to stay stocked with Frostsavage Battlegear and specialty cloths.

What I might consider is buying up the Frostweave Bags already crafted when they're posted at stupidly low prices and then reselling them. I'll test it with a few to see how effective I can be with that.

Netherweave Powah!
Any person on any server can profitably sell Netherweave Bags as quickly as they can be crafted, but the profits are so small that it's hardly worth the craft time.

FALSE.

Following another Marcko tip (that I can't fucking find) I've been posting my bags for a much higher, non-undercut price. I've found a sweet spot with 20 bags at a time, 19g per bag with 48 hour posts. The profit here is 11g+ per bag, or 220g profit every two days. This is worth my time.

Game: My First Bubble-Hearth

2010-08-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows Paladins only use two buttons -- Divine Shield and Hearthstone, but I had never seen it with my own eyes until I was grinding Timbermaw Hold reputation. I had to nom nom nom on this homeboy who was camping my mobs and he peaced the fuck out.

WHAT!?

Weekly Progress Report: 1000g Total!

2010-08-04T05:00:00.000-07:00

Fucking Adorable

We're changing up our system here at Auction House PvP. It turns out I have a ferocious need to buy expensive, beautiful things. So far:

2200g - Corpse Tongue Coin (heroic)
1000g - Shadowvault Slayer's Cloak (heroic)
3000g - Portable Hole
6000g - a 4th guild bank tab, a 5th guild bank tab, and another 5th guild bank tab
1600g - Tiny Crimson Whelpling
--------
13800g Total

Beyond this I've done the necessary reinvestment, purchased most of an alchemy powerlevling kit, and been buying Titanium Powder, Damaged Necklaces, and Books of Glyph Mastery to expand my gem and glyph markets.

I foresee no stoppage in my wild, wild spending. After all, I still need a Kirin Tor ring, four more guild bank tabs, three more portable holes, epic and cold weather flying for two alts I don't play, pets, a Blacksmithing powerlevel kit, and a 350-450 Leatherworking powerlevel kit. And after that, my other 80 still needs a Mechano-Hog. After that I may slow down... but I will probably buy Titanium Powder and Damaged Necklaces until I've gotten every WotLK Jewelcrafting pattern.

So how will I handle this insanity? I'm building a Do Not Touch Pile, at a pace of 1000g per day. At the end of a day of collections I mail 1000g to my favorite banker and he puts it in his personal guild bank, to be kept safe from my main's greedy hooves. If I'm going to reach the gold cap by a supposed mid-November Cataclysm, I need to up that amount to 2000g per day. I'm keeping it at 1000g for now because stashing 2000g per day wouldn't currently leave me with enough gold to reinvest and because I feel it's important to powerlevel the Blacksmith and the Leatherworker before I really dig in.

Since last night, the Do Not Touch Pile holds 1000g.

Loremaster: FU Shimmering Flats

2010-07-30T02:34:00.000-07:00

Every Friday I step away from the Auction House.

I've been nipping away at The Loremaster, hoping to visit the old content I never saw before it disappears in the Cataclysm. Last week I finished the Eastern Kingdoms with a lot of breathing room. I completed the 550 requisite quests without helping anyone in Booty Bay, finishing anything in the Badlands but BRD/BRS quests, ignoring quest givers in the cities, and only getting halfway through Silverpine Forest.

Old Azeroth Needs to Die
With the exception of a few epic questlines, the old content is EXPIRED. Most of it is pointless, confusing, not story driven, and requires way, way, WAY too much travel.

Over the course of two days, I completed the quests in Shimmering Flats, a "quest hub" on the eastern edge of Thousand Needles. "Oh SWEET a Gnome VS Goblin racetrack! These quests are gonna rock!" No, Pikkle. No they won't.

In this hub of about 30 quests, I was sent to: Stranglethorn Vale; Desolace; Tanaris; Ratchet; to Stranglethorn Vale from Ratchet; The Badlands; Dustwallow Marsh; Stranglethorn Vale AGAIN; more Stranglethorn Vale;

At this point I would like to note that most of the Stranglethorn Vale quests are part of a ping-pong quest chain and cannot be completed together.

Continuing: Ratchet and Tanaris again; from Stranglethorn Vale to Swamp of Sorrows. The quest giver from STV to SoSorrows actually taunts you, saying, "But you've come all the way from the Shimmering Flats to get it... are you willing to travel some more?

Until this Bullshit Gets Replaced, WoW will Have No New Players
Thank the gods for Cataclysm, because NOBODY new to Warcraft will play 60 levels and about 14 days /played through a video game that was built in 2004. They have to blow up the old world, because without new players, WoW will slowly but surely die as the existing players leave, one at a time.

Weekly Progress Report: 5230g Total

2010-07-28T05:00:00.000-07:00

Another Day
Another Dollar

Just before I started this attempt at a gold-making empire, I spent all of my golds on some delightful gold-si nks. With 1563g and nothing in the bank, I've climbed to 5230g in ten days. My income is about 5000g per day, so why is my total so low? MASSIVE reinvestment. I'm building an infrastructure for my empire. Once that's done, well start seeing some real gold.

Market Report

I'm in the process of developing an addon to perfectly track profit per item, profit per tradeskill, and expenditures. A few addons like this exist, but none precisely fit my tastes. Until the PikklePlusProfits addon exists, all of my market reports will be guesstimates.

Jewelcrafting: Meta-gem transmutes are AMAZING. I can't believe I never sold metas before. Epic transmutes are free money. Flasks are a fail market.

Enchanting: I had too little capital to dive deep into this market while prices were so volatile after Warden 2.0. But every twink enchant I crafted sold quickly, some for an extremely high profit.

Tailoring: I've sold three full sets of Frostsavage Battlegear for 150% profit. Netherweave Bags sell faster than I can craft them. My specialization cloth is also a convenient source of constant, easy money.

Engineering: Craft pets. Sell pets. Huge profits, low effort. Sadly, low volume also. I did chase a camper out of the market!

Inscription: Armor Vellum III and Faces of Doom are the bread and butter of my empire. Still, I'm pleased with the secondary income of my new glyphing strategy...

Inscription: Sniping High-Priced Glyphs with KTQ (KevTool Queue)

2010-07-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

Inscription is potentially the greatest money-maker in Wrath of the Lich King. That is, if you're willing to spend extra hours a week milling, crafting and posting.

I'm not, but there's still money to be had.

Every day I craft one of every glyph with a minimum value of at least 20g. I do it fast, I do it without thinking, and I don't need three separate bankers to post a mountain of glyphs that will never sell just because the deposit cost is low.

I work the magic with an addon called KTQ, or KevTool Queue. KTQ provides a command line interface to automatically add items to your Skillet queue according to total inventory and a price threshold (judged against the current minimum buyout).

Every morning and most evenings I log into my main, scan the AH, repost my expired auctions, and log into my stock boy/scribe. After pulling replacements for every sold item from his personal guild bank and mailing them to my main, I click on this macro:

/ktq set threshold 20g
/ktq queue 1 glyphs

I craft whatever is in the Skillet and mail it to my main. Then I log in, post the new glyphs and replacement inventory, and play Warcraft.

Why Does This Work?

Most glyphers swear by volume. Hundreds of glyphs with small profit margins makes a hefty total profit. It does! but at the cost of time. I value my time and I don't believe in AFK crafting. You still have to click. I want to maximize my gold per hour.

If you post a glyph on my server, you will be undercut within twenty minutes. I refuse to camp the Auction House because again, it kills your gold per hour. However, any glyph able to climb a mountain of competition and attain a 20g price tag has such demand that a few undercuts won't matter; the customers will buy their way back up to me.

Last night I sold a Glyph of Shadow for 99g.

My Poor Old Glyph Banker

Have you read about the other glyph system? The one where three bank toons stockpile every glyph ever imagined by the gods? I tried that once and what I ended up with was...

Every few days I'll log into a neglected alt and post everything in this bag of fail. When it's time to collect, I never earn even 100g.

Tailoring: Role-Playing Costumes

2010-07-23T05:00:00.001-07:00

A niche market is an auctioneer's nirvana. A great niche like twink enchants or engineering pets provides high profit margins, low-competition, steady income, and fantastic gold per hour.

While clearing out a guild bank tab of banker costumes (I killed my bankers along with my failed Glyph empire), I stumbled onto a great niche. I had three Tuxedo Pants, Shirts, and Jackets along with two sets of Haliscan Pantaloons and Jackets, as well as a full complement of Dress Shoes. I tossed them on the AH because I waste not and want not. Astonishingly, it all sold within a week for about 50g per item. I checked the crafting cost: 5-15g. I made more. They sold. Now I always keep them in stock.

Next week I'm expanding my inventory to include Lavender Mageweave Shirts, Blue Overalls, and Red Lumberjack Shirts.

Game: I'm Fucking Pumped for Cataclysm Talent Trees

2010-07-21T05:00:00.000-07:00

Whoa, Pik! Isn't this a gold making blog? Why yes, dear reader. But I also actually play World of Warcraft. And damnit I will write about it!

PRIESTS: Evangelism, Archangel, Atonement

Discipline Priests have always been the most aggressive PvP healer, with an offensive dispel, two powerful DoTs, a multi-target CC, and the option to stack haste or crit and chain Holy Fire into Smite spam to help ensure a kill whenever there's enough CC that they aren't busy healing. Now with a stacking Smite buff, a Smite-based mana mechanic, and Smite that heals (?!?!) they won't just GET to be an offensive healer, they'll HAVE to be an offensive healer.

I'm bringing my old Priest Main out of retirement to become my primary alt. I've never had a primary alt before! And I'm replacing his Enchanting with Engineering to further emphasize the fun factor. Besides, who needs two enchanters?

(41 point talent calculator)

DRUIDS get Mangle at Level 10

In current lowbie Warcaft, you aren't really given the option to play Feral until you get Cat Form at level 20. Even then, you're stuck using the pathetic Claw until you get Mangle at level 50. That's like a Mage waiting 50 levels to learn Frostbolt. I remember doing level 19 Warsong Gulch in Travel Form because it did just as much damage as Bear(auto attack).

I'm glad the king of the spec jungle is gaining lowbie playability. I can't wait to see baby durids be 4 fite!

Twinking is Resurrected

In patch 3.2, Blizzard added Battleground XP (yay) which forced twinks (low level players with BiS gear, enchants, and professions who only do BGs) to visit Behsten or Slahtz to turn off their XP gain. Then those stupidly overpowered, fun-killing bastards would queue their own special no-XP BGs to fight each other (yay). But there weren't enough twinks for the BGs to pop. RIP twinking.

In Cataclysm, Battlegrounds will not be limited to servers on a particular Battlegroup (group of servers that competes in Arenas and, erm, Battlegrounds) so with the pooling of servers there should be enough twinks that they can queue up and fight each other. This new environment where everyone has BiS gear (for their level) may become the most balanced PvP in Warcraft and an interesting diversion. And I have most of the best twink enchants, so I'll get rich!

My Plans for Cataclysm

I'm going to be rich. And I'm not going to raid. I don't like raiding. But I do like achievement points and sexy mounts, so whenever a new raid tier is solidly conquered, I'll buy a hard-mode carry, get my mount, and experience the content once, which is enough for me. The going rate on my server is 100k gold for the latest tier of hard-mode content. My back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest I will be able to afford it.

My two max-level toons will each have two PvP specs -- the Discipline + Shadow Priest alt and the Feral + Resto Druid main. When I'm not auction housing, I'll party on Vent and in Battlegrounds and Arenas with my friends. Barring that, I'll explore old world content and New Azeroth. This is enough for me to love the game. I've spent vastly more time in tiny Warsong Gulch than the towering Icecrown Citadel and it's never grown tiresome. Not even during the grueling three-hour Burning Crusade lolRestoDrood stalemates.

I'll grind my Rogue, DK, Warrior, and Mage to whatever level is necessary for Illustrious Grand Master crafting, but beyond that I say "meh" to alts.

Of course I'll have to experience level 10 Shield Slam, level 10 Mangle, level 10 Mortal Strike, Troll Druids, Goblins, and new lowbie zones, so I'll probably fiddle with a couple of baby Warriors and a baby Druid for awhile until I settle them down for some serious twinkage.

Oh and one more thing...

+Hit Gems Will be Blue, Not Yellow

Fantastic. Despite the popularity of Stamina, Spell Penetration, and MP5, the paucity of blue gem cuts leaves me with massive overstock when I'm pushing yellow, red, and orange gems in volume. This also means green gems can be Hit/Crit, Hit/Haste, and Hit/Int so they won't be worthless just because pure DPS classes won't use a gem that's tainted by Stamina.

TL;DR - Fucking pumped.

Market Research: Rare Quality Blacksmithing Weapons (WotLK)

2010-07-19T23:09:00.000-07:00

I may have discovered a market that even Stokpile overlooked: rare quality Blacksmithing weapons. All are delightfully cheap to craft and use common materials: Saronite Bar (1g68s), Cobalt Bar (5g27s), Crystallized Fire (1g95s), Crystallized Shadow (50s), Crystallized Water (24s), and Crystallized Earth (24s).

All prices are taken from the Wowhead "Buyout price."

Saronite Spellblade Craft: 29g1s, Buyout:79g20s

~~Saronite Ambusher Craft: 70g46s, Buyout: 39g66s~~
Cudgel of Saronite Justice Craft: 25g68s, Buyout: 39g99s
Corroded Saronite Edge Craft: 28g83s, Buyout: N/A
Corroded Saronite Woundbringer Craft: 25g47s, Buyout: N/A
~~Honed Cobalt Cleaver Craft: 84g4s, Buyout: 61g99s~~
Saronite Mindcrusher Craft: 37g50s, Buyout: N/A
Furious Saronite Beatstick Craft: 25g2s, Buyout: 90g90s
Savage Cobalt Slicer Craft: 56g14s, Buyout: 78g50s

Watch out for the Deadly Saronite Dirk because it is commonly used to level Blacksmithing and sells for (according to Wowhead) an abysmal one silver.

The trick is to craft a single set of these and see how much volume they do. I would craft one of each italicized weapon to begin. The weapons without Wowhead buyout prices are suspicious to me -- perhaps nobody wants them. Sales might be nothing because non-80s are assumed to all have Heirloom weapons but selling even one of each italicized weapon per week would earn 152g47s of profit, and even more if the ones without Wowhead buyout prices also sell!

Now I just need a Blacksmith! I'll drop one of my two Scribes and use that slot to powerlevel Blacksmithing AFTER I take my level 64 Rogue's Leatherworking from 340 to 450. I'll have to gain a level!

My gut instinct is these are profitable, but not as profitable as Belt Buckles, which hearsay tells me are impossible to keep in stock.

Tailoring: Frostsavage Battlegear to 450

2010-07-17T18:53:00.000-07:00

You don't need to create iLvl 200 epic armor (risky) or Frostweave Bags (unprofitable on some servers) to level Tailoring to 450. Crafting a few sets of Frostsavage Battlegear will get you there.

I wish I knew that before I made four Ebonweave Gloves. Let's hope they sell!

Inscription: Calculating the Price Threshold for Northrend Herbs

2010-07-16T18:45:00.000-07:00

How much should you pay for herbs? Here are the formulas for individual herbs, courtesy of Gevlon:

Icethorn, Lichbloom: (1.5 * Ink of the Sea + 0.3 * Snowfall Ink) /5
Adder's tongue: (1.43 * Ink of the Sea + 0.25 * Snowfall Ink) / 5
Talandra's rose, Goldclover, Deadnettle, Tiger lily: (1.3 * Ink of the Sea + 0.16 * Snowfall Ink) / 5

For me that means Icethorn is worth 1g26 (25g20s per stack), Adder's Tongue is 1g15s80c (23g16s per stack), and low level Northrend herbs are worth 97s2c (19g44s per stack).

Doing this math has raised my threshold significantly. Good, because I sell Armor Vellum III faster than I can stock it.

Warden 2.0 is Fucking Up My Shit

2010-07-15T23:32:00.000-07:00

With patch 3.3.5 and Ruby Sanctum, Blizzard also updated Warden, the anti-botting software in the World of Warcraft.

Materials prices on my server have skyrocketed. A stack of Saronite Ore for 20g is a DEAL. A stack of Infinite Dust for 40g is a STEAL. If you want to craft Glyphs and Vellums, you better already have a bank tab full of ink because you won't find herbs in bulk at any price.

I've checked other gold-making blogs for their thoughts, but everyone is too busy going ape-shit about the RealID/forums fiasco to comment.

I would prefer that the botters stay gone, but I haven't got enough faith in Warden 2.0 to trust that we're experiencing a true, long-term price reset. For now I'm only buying the mats necessary to maintain next week's sales.

The List is Up

2010-07-15T07:29:00.000-07:00

I've composed my initial list of items worth selling.

In the time between its creation and this post, I've acquired the patterns/formulas/schematics for:
Nightmare Tear
Chaotic Skyflare Diamond
Lil' Smoky
Enchant Weapon - Icy Chill
Enchant Weapon - Crusader
Enchant Weapon - Agility

We're on a good path.

--

I've already spent 1000g on a new guild bank tab. It's a necessary purchase, but still a diversion from my primary goal of acquiring 5000g in liquid capital.

How Much Should I Stockpile?

2010-07-14T15:17:00.000-07:00

Income is currently being reinvested at the speed of light.

I intend to store four weeks worth of crafting materials according to my anticipated weekly volume.

Obviously, if materials are too readily available I will lower my snatch price.

Working Documents

Expected Sales - Anticipated items sold in a week.

Shopping List - Materials needed to craft a week of expected sales.

Snatch List - Material prices according to the most I'm willing to pay.

Craft Day

I only want to craft items (other than gems) once a week. I will keep that stock in the primary bank guild and mail necessary items to my auctioneer every day.

Current Snatch List

2010-07-14T03:45:00.001-07:00

Eternal Shadow - 10g, Ebonweave and Dreadstone transmutes

Eternal Earth - 5g, crafting uncommon gems into vendor trash and Frostsavage Battlegear

Eternal Fire - 20g, Frostsavage Battlegear, Azure Spellthread

Eternal Life - 20g, Shining Spellthread, Flask of Stoneblood

Frozen Orb - 22g, epic off-hands

Netherweave Cloth - 40s, Netherweave Bags

Frostweave Cloth - 50s, Ebonweave and Frostsavage Battlegear

Saronite Ore - 90s, prospect to sell rare gems, craft and vendor uncommons

Titanium Ore - 7g50s, prospect and sell epic gem and dusts, if it's posted this low

Globe of Water - 50g, strangulate the Mechanical Yeti market

Elemental Earth - 10g, see above

Elemental Air - 10g, see above above

Truesilver Bar - 5g, Yeti

Uncut Rare Gems - 8-15g

Uncut Epic Gems - 70-80g

Iceweb Spider Silk - 5g, choke the rare Spellthread market

That's it for now.

Week One (before)

2010-07-14T03:28:00.000-07:00

IMMEDIATE GOAL

Accumulate 5k gold of working liquid capital.

CURRENT GOLD

127.

WEEK ONE SALES GOAL

1200g - 12 epic purple gems

800g - 1 set of Frostsavage Battlegear

250g - 20 Netherweave Bags

1000g - 2 Tranquil Mechanical Yetis

400g - 4 Pet Bomblings

400g - 4 epic off-hands

240g - 80 Runescrolls of Fortitude

400g - 12 Azure and Shining Spellthreads

900g - 30 Ebonweave

500g - 25 rare gems

560g - 8 stacks of 20x Armor Vellum

1200g - 60 Flasks of Stoneblood

----

7750g total

All of these items are in stock.

Volume of sales may be greater than anticipated (estimate is conservative).

Extra income will be derived from questing miscellany.

All tailoring items are entirely untested except for Netherweave Bags.

Weekly sales of Frostsavage Battlegear will bode well for the Leatherworking and Blacksmithing equivalents.

Much money will be re-invested.

EXPECTATION

I will have 5k of working liquid capital within the week.

FUTURE GOAL

Raise 7.5k gold to purchase two bank tabs.

Future posts will probably not be so detailed. But perhaps they will be more coherent.

My Starting Point

2010-07-13T21:07:00.000-07:00

TOTAL GOLD

I have 1021 gold across all toons.

TOONS AND PROFESSIONS

80 Druid - 450 JC / 450 Ench

80 Priest - 450 JC / 450 Ench

70 Warrior - 450 Ins / 450 Alch (Elixir)

70 DK - 450 Ins / 450 Alch (Transmute)

70 Mage - 430 Tail

62 Rogue - 330 Eng / 300 LW (knows 2/4 of pets)

INFRASTRUCTURE

2 bank guilds

7 total guild bank tabs

STOCK

lots of Pet Bomblings

1/2 tab of Lichbloom

50 Frost Lotus

7 Mechanical Yetis

15 Epic Gems

~100 Rare Purple Gems

~100 Rare Blue Gems

~10 Epic Off-Hands

~100 Runescroll of Fortitude

~100 Snowfall Ink

1/2 tab of Bolt of Netherweave

~100 Bolt of Imbued Frostweave

~250 assorted sellable items from leveling

~100 leftover random glyphs

~100 Greater Cosmic Essence

~40 Abyss Crystals

~40 Large Dream Shards

~200 Uncommon Gems

GOALS

1) Buy 5 more guild bank tabs (16k)

2) Powerlevel Mage Alchemy (3k)

3) Powerlevel Priest Alchemy (3k) (replace Enchanting)

4) Powerlevel DK Blacksmithin (7k) (replace Inscription)

5) Level Rogue to 65 and max out LW and Eng

I intend to use one bank for stockpiling raw materials and the other for stockpiling sellable goods.

I don't use an auctioning alt, so every morning the Warrior sends a selection of sellable goods to my main for posting.

When I've used up the remaining Frost Lotus, the Warrior will swap to a Transmute Spec. (Selling flasks was time consuming and barely profitable.)

I'd like to dump my leftover glyphs at any price. (Selling glyphs was profitable but extremely time consuming.)

Welcome to Warcraft Gold Routine

2010-07-13T19:11:00.000-07:00

I intend to walk on up to the gold cap.

I'll document that here.

THE ROUTINE is the evolving set of steps I'll be following to maximize my gold per hour.

THE SPREADSHEET is a tool calculating minimum prices for goods according to the maximum I will pay for materials.

THE SNATCH LIST is what I will pay for materials.