by Basil Berntsen
Sometimes, the cheapest way to acquire the quantity of farmed mats you need is to buy them direct from a farmer. Buying them on the auction house is probably more convenient; however, your farmer has to pay the AH cut, and you have to beat your competitors to it. Having a farmer send everything they farm cash on delivery every day is a much more efficient way and has some serious benefits for both sides of the deal. How can you find farmers and convince them to send you goods instead of listing them on the AH?
This is not a one-way deal. You need to make it better for a farmer to ship directly to you than it would be for them to go and post their items for sale. To do that, let’s look at the annoying parts of selling farmed goods.
- Unsold inventory If you list 20 stacks of herbs on the AH, it’s possible that you’ll get undercut and the demand will never outweigh the additional supply, meaning you won’t sell your stock. This costs you your deposit fee (which goes up as you make longer auctions).
- Delayed reward Even when your items sell, they don’t always sell right away.
- Uncertain prices Prices can vary wildly, and you never know how low you’ll have to post stock at to make it move.
- Auction house cut You make 5 percent less than your clients were willing to pay, every time you make a sale.
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by Cyrak
Item production is the most lucrative gold making scheme in WoW
In this section of Ultimate WoW Gold Guide we’re going to focus on the art of production and speculation in the World of Warcraft economy. This is the end game of WoW gold making and can also be the least effort depending on how you decide to approach it.
The producer is the player that uses professions that make equippable items from raw materials. Some high level producers choose to gather their own raw materials, but I personally prefer to simply purchase them from trade chat or the Auction House. This method of gold making can be done without ever leaving town.
As we discussed in the first section of the guide, the most lucrative production professions are Inscription, Jewelcrafting, and Enchanting. There is a logical reason for this (and for why professions like Blacksmithing and Leatherworking have fallen behind). These professions produce items that are frequently replaced, particularly Jewelcrafters and Scribes. Glyphs and gems are replaced on a nearly weekly basis by many players, this means that there is always a high demand for your goods whereas when you’ve crafted the Icecrown recipe legs and boots there’s little to be gained from the services of a Blacksmith or Leatherworker.
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by Basil Berntsen
Auctioneers rely on farmers for raw materials for various businesses. In fact, we rely very heavily on them, and there are quite a few markets that are only more profitable than farming in terms of gold per hour if we can do them on a very large scale … much more than any one person can farm.
I’ve been flying circles around Sholazar Basin and boy, are my arms tired!
The interesting thing about the markets we work on is that it’s almost no more actual work to make, for example, 150 Titansteel Bars than it is to make 20. The only difference is in how annoying it is to find mats, and the number of Dr. Who episodes you get to watch while AFK crafting. The difficulty of finding lots of cheap mats is really the only barrier we worry about. And any experienced auctioneer will tell you that, historically in Wrath of the Lich King, it’s been no trouble at all.
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?by Basil Berntsen
Basically, the goal is to watch prices for a few weeks, try to predict their next swing, and take advantage by buying low and selling high.
Watching prices
Easier said than done, like most things worth doing. You might get hundreds of items you’d like to watch, and short of a photographic memory or a manual spreadsheet, you’re going to need some help keeping track of it all. Enter Market Watcher. This is a nifty addon that, once configured, allows you to scan the auction house for just the things you’re interested in, and will show you a graph of their prices over time once you get a couple scans done.
It actually has a fair bit more functionality than just graphs, but it’s stuff like buying and selling, and I never bothered looking that far into it. I simply created a list, scan it daily, and use the data to determine value.
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by Basil Berntsen
Saronite Ore is cheap and plentiful. Prospecting it with a jewelcrafter used to be extremely profitable back before the introduction of the disenchant option in dungeons, and the price of Infinite Dust was floored. It was so popular that we had our own name for it: The Saronite Shuffle.
Well, it’s back! It’s no longer profitable to use it for making enchanting mats, however it sure is profitable overall!
There are a few keys to making the Saronite Shuffle work for you. Firstly, these days, you need access to an alchemist, ideally with Transmute Mastery. Mostly for your Transmute: Skyflare Diamond and Transmute: Earthsiege Diamond. Epic gem transmutation is limited to one every 20 hours, and shouldn’t really be considered in your final profitability.
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?by Amanda Miller
Today, I’m going to talk to you about a way to make money skinning in Felwood, although similarly leveled zones work as well. This can be done with higher level characters or those who are at-level (50-60), although it moves more quickly if you have a character capable of chain pulling without having to stop to eat or drink or run back to your corpse all the time.
If you don’t have a skinner that is a high enough level, you really should get one. Leather sells consistently well, and is very easily gathered. In fact, you could get one today! Create a Death Knight, train skinning, and go on a rampage, starting with a low level starter zone and working your way up.
Now that we’ve settled that, let’s get down to the particulars.
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?by Basil Berntsen
Pets from almost any source are a lucrative market to be in, and this will provide another way engineers can make a bit of cash from their horrible gold sink of a profession. Hunter ammo was a step in the right direction, and this is too.
First up, you need the schematics
Unless you happened to have them already, you will probably need to go farm the schematics. These were formerly unfarmable and tied to one of the two branches of engineering, but now both goblin and gnomish engineers can get them as a random drop.
- Schematic: Lil’ Smokey is dropped by the Arcane Nullifier X-21, among other mobs. The drop rate in Wowhead says 2%, however that includes all the non-engineers who kill these and don’t see the schematic. In reality, it should be much much higher.
- Schematic: Pet Bombling is dropped by Mekgineer Thermaplugg, and again, while it shows a low drop rate, that includes all the non-engineers who kill him and can’t see the drop. I read comments saying that it’s a very high drop rate for engineers. If you kill him, are eligible to get the schematic, and don’t see this, let me know in the comments.
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by pantryboy @ mmowned
Let’s start, shall we?
PvP
Overview
The amount of Honor awarded for an Honorable Kill has been increased by 100% for characters of all levels.
Given that all avenues in the game which award players with Honor do so with a calculated conversion from a specific
amount of Honorable Kills, this change means that all Honor players can obtain through various means will be increased
by 100%. To offset against this in two key areas, experience gains in Battlegrounds have been reduced by 50% and
Honor awarded for completing each Wintergrasp weekly quest has been reduced by 50%. When pairing the Honor
rewarded from Honorable Kills being increased by 100% with the 50% Honor reduction from Wintergrasp weekly quests,
and 50% experience-gain reduction from completing objectives in Battlegrounds, players will notice no change in the net
amount of Honor or experience awarded in either case.
There’s not much really to say here, it’s all pretty self-explanatory. But this is not the interesting bit, this is just an overview. You recall in 3.3 the introduction of the Random Dungeon Finder, no? Well, Blizzard hadsuch a good return that..
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by Basil Berntsen
Today we’ll be talking about something that many experienced auctioneers have discovered on their own– the stack size you list on the auction house has an effect on your profits and sales volumes. There are many types of things that you’ll find yourself selling as you get more involved in making gold on the AH, and most of them are being bought by people who need more than one, but less than a stack.
The buyers for whatever product you’re marketing are motivated mostly by price, however also by convenience. If a buyer needs a stack of 3, say, Infinite Dusts, unless you provide them with the choice of buying a stack of three, they need to choose between 3 singles or a stack that would leave them with leftovers. If the prices are the same, they’ll typically go for avoiding leftovers. Many will even pay more for singles to they can avoid leftovers. You also have to factor in that many of them use the default AH interface, complete with its horrible sorting, so they may just buy the singles to avoid having to page through to the stack size they want.
How should you use this to make more gold? You can provide the service of pre-packaging your wares in a variety of stack sizes. The skill comes in when you’re trying to decide what sizes to offer, how much of each size you should list, and what prices you should use. Here are some rules of thumb:
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by Amanda Miller
If you’re like me, you have a lot of excess emblems sitting around. Maybe you never got around to spending them before the next tier came out, or maybe the badge gear just never quite compared to your raid drops. Whatever the case, there is no sense letting them go to waste when you could put them to work and earn some gold!
First, here is a quick breakdown of the current badge system, from most recent and difficult to acquire on down:
- Emblem of Frost: These can be acquired primarily by raiding Icecrown, completing the Raid Boss Per Week “weekly,” or by completing one WotLK heroic dungeon per day using the Random tool.
- Emblem of Triumph: Most raids now drop these badges, as well as heroics. You will also be awarded these for doing any number of WotLK heroic dungeons past your first one per day using the Random tool. You will also get some by completing your first normal WotLK dungeon per day using the Random tool, as well as completing the Raid Boss Per Week “weekly.” Also of note: If you get Heroic Oculus using the random tool, don’t drop group! Not only has it been nerfed like crazy, but when you defeat the end boss, every player will receive a loot bag that will contain these badges and more, plus a chance at getting the super rare Reigns of the Blue Drake, which used to be available only by killing Malygos, who now drops his 25-man version (Azure) in both 10 and 25-man.
- Emblem of Conquest: Originally, these were acquired by running 10-man Coliseum, or 25-man Ulduar.
- Emblem of Valor: Originally these dropped from Ulduar 10-man and Naxxramas 25-man.
- Emblem of Heroism: These were among the first WotLK badges, and dropped from Naxxramas 10-man and heroic dungeons.
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