I keep my AH alt in a "bank" guild. My guild leader and a few others important to the guild know the character name. I let them know in case there is something I am selling they think can be used for the guild. I rarely give anything away, unless its like 10g or less item but I will heavily discount. I have had to stop that treatment for a few guild members who abused it by reselling under names I knew.

RP servers are actually the easiest to profit on, in large part because a small percent of the population focuses on making money from the auction house or just acquiring recipes that are hard to obtain. For example, I had a rogue alt on Thorium Brotherhood that did stealth coffer runs for burning essence. As it was a role playing server, there were a lot of guilds struggling with molten core (at the same time my raid guild was blazing through Naxxramas). I made a ton of money from fire resistance enchants and dark iron bars, things that I'd never be able to sell on Mal'ganis. The key is knowing how market demand differs, and also which areas have low market supply. You won't make a ton of money on flasks on a role playing server, but you will on gems.

However, there's also less farming which means less inflation. So the margins won't be as high, but you'll still have more purchasing power. In other words, in one week you might make 1000g on a normal server or 800g on a role playing server, but that 800g on the RP will buy more stuff due to lower Auction House sale prices.

It's really hard to say how long before 2.4 goes live. Two weeks? Four weeks? More?

I have never gotten prepared for a large content patch before. However, I have invested about 2,000g in stocking up on various mats. Some are for my own use to enchant or craft gear. The rest I'm hoping to sell at a profit.

I'd like to know specifically what people are stockpiling. I've been buying primals, mainly because I see them as a safe investment. I don't see prices going down in 2.4. However, I'm not sure how much of an upside potential there will. Definitely some profit but the margins may not be huge. Likewise, I don't think you can go wrong with Adamantite.

What about non-farmable items such as Khorium, spell cloth (and primal and shadow), Earthstorm and Skyfire Diamonds?

The problem on this RP server is that, for almost every market, supply vastly outpaces demand. People have undercut LPS so low that you can't do the JC or arcanoweave method of producing them. I've seen talasites as low as 4g. Yes, you read that right. I know it's a crappy gem, but 4g?

Normally, the solution for such undercutting would be to buy and relist at my price. However, there are no buyers. I would lose a fortune in listing fees, and end up sitting on inventory I can't move.

My thought was to simply buy all the ridiculously underpriced items, fill my bank to the brim, and transfer somewhere that I might get more than 40g for my delicate living ruby cuts. If anyone has a better solution, please help!

Thank you.

#1) Please don't sign your posts, you should have read this under the GIANT sticky at the top of every forum. Go read that thread.

#2) Diversify your portfolio between short-term guaranteed sellers and long-term investments. Even the famed Warren Buffet's portfolio is mixed between short-term growth stocks and long-term value investments. Speculating on when 2.4 is coming out is kind of silly since we don't really know, be as prepared as you can be with what you can invest, but don't sink 100% of your capital into mats for 2.4 or you WILL get boned if not everything turns out right. Keep investing in gems and reselling them as cut, build a larger capital base and invest ~15-20% of your profits in your 2.4 prep-stash per week. Always have some liquid assets on hand to snag good deals that appear.

#3) I invested 90% of my net worth in items for the 2.3/s3 patch because I knew exactly when it was coming out, prices took forever to respond to the news of the patch on my then-server, and because I had no day-to-day costs other than buying items to resell. The other 10% I held onto to grab good deals on the ah/in trade chat and continued to pad my stash with profits from that 10%.

#4) Make sure you know what's going to be in demand during the new patch. Stockpiling enchanting mats is great and all, but the margins on those are going to return to normal a lot faster than other items. Splitting your investments between enchanting mats/gems (which will have high initial profits) and items that will sell steadily if slowly after patch 2.4 is also important. Again, balance value investing with short-term growth prospects.

Re: Zifna and others regarding the BT gem market.
Thanks a million for the BT gem guide, I've been speculating in the BT gem market only with pvp oriented gems (15stam/10resil as these are very cheap), but it's good to see more info on the other gems. Really nice little write-up and an important contribution to this thread.

For those of you selling points on your arena teams: Do you find that the market for point-selling is saturated on realms with high populations of 2100+ 5v5 and 3v3 teams? Does the demand of high-population realms still exceed the supply of good teams? I ask because Proudmoore has only one group of pointsellers Horde side, and prices far exceed those of higher population realms (i.e 500 gold for 8-900 pts, whereas on destromath, 1100 points is 500g, and 1300 points is 700g)..

Are you sure it isn't just a lack of inflation? Knowing the value of a Living Ruby or Talasite doesn't mean much unless you know the value of a stack of Adamantite Ore. On Mal'ganis, Ore is going for 30g a stack and gems are averaging 35g. If an average gem on your server is 25g but ore is only 18g a stack, the ROI is the same.

Rubies are 60-80g on Tichondrius. I envy you.

See, that's what I was trying to get at. I could send my JC, stocked up, to your server and profit. I don't think I'm explaining my situation very well, but you've all been very helpful with your responses.

Kino you need around 350 for all the "good" cuts but with 325 you can prospect adamanitum, and that willb e your main money maker.

edit fixed adamantite prospect

I'm thinking on leveling JC with my druid for extra money (he's herbalist/none atm), but i'm afraid of how much that could cost me... Since my rogue is a miner, i think JC as a nice "third" money making profession.




A effective way of farming your char epic mount gold, is geting to 70 before questing at Netherstorm and Shadowmoon. Those quests at 70 give you about 10 gold each (avarage)... Easy gold.

It's 325 skill to prospect adamantite. Not 300.