cryek

Nice talking to you while you still had an account, Ghunga Diner. 'Mod Sass' is a hanging offense in these parts, especially with the more notoriously prickly admins.

Regarding 2.4.2 and the upcoming season 4 patch, I would save most of my void and LPS stock for the opening of season 4. That should give demand enough boost to make somebody a healthy profit, although I expect on most servers there will be competition in the void/LPS market.

Primals, especially water, life and air, are a pretty safe bet. Leg enchants and the materials to make them will see a short-term boost. Blue gems for servers that haven't unlocked the gem vendor should prove profitable; I have no idea what the new gear will do to servers that have epic gems available.

Enchanters themselves can make quite a bit of money during the release of a new season. Season 3 I made several hundred gold in tips alone, essentially between running back and forth from the bank to the auction house.

 

Perakles

I made a significant portion of the money required for my second epic flying mount by buying every single LPS and Void Crystal on the AH shortly after season 3 hit and then reposting them all at 1.5-3 times the prices I paid for them. Admittedly, it was an evil way of making money, but it worked well - I made about 2400g with <1000 gold invested.

"Cornering the market" is not generally advisable, but if you know there will be a high demand, it may be worth the risk.

 

oldmandennis

The UBRS rookery does not skin. The plagued hatchlings in Scholo do however. AV is another choice - somewhat distasteful, but quickly reachable from Shatt if you only have 15-20 min to farm. It gives mostly thick though... but that's not much of a problem if you are selling to drum rerollers.

 

Mideci

On Stormrage (US), at least, you'd get slaughtered trying this. There is way too much "dry powder" in the form of banked void crystals and would-be tailor-created shards to pull anything like this off at this stage in the game. Never mind the fact that the amount of season 4 gear being sold is going to be miniscule compared to what was bought for season 3 due to the ratings requirements.

 

Meddler

My thanks to all that've contributed to this thread, it's helped me have fun collecting more gold that I can usefully use, at least for the moment. A few tips I'd like to contribute that I haven't seen/don't recall being mentioned specifically:

1. With Large Prismatics I've found it easy to get a higher sales price by selling them in various quantities rather than individually. I've consistently been able to sell shards in stacks of 4 or 6 (and less often 2,8,10) for a 3-5g markup per shard over the last couple of months. From what I can tell this is a result of people needing a certain number of shards for an enchant and simply buying the cheapest stack with that number in it available without checking other prices at all. Not always profitable due to undercutting, but I've tended to find the worst undercutting actually happening with single shard sales so it's often an easy 10-15g for a single search/check. There are probably other materials with the same sort of potential, leather especially from what I've seen, LPS have worked well for me though since they're high demand and have no listing fee.

2. The markets for small prismatic shards and large prismatic shards aren't always in sync. By keeping an eye out I've been regularly able to buy small prismatics for 6g when large prismatics are going for 25+ or sell small prismatics for 9+ when large are 20ish. There doesn't seem to be a huge demand for small prismatics comparatively so it's easy to post too many and flood the market, as above though it's a single search to check. Not so helpful for those that aren't enchanters and can't break down/merge shards themselves, I assume this plus the usual laziness is the reason these two prices aren't better matched. I'd expect void crystals and large prismatics will probably reach some similar sort of relationship too of course. Similarly it's occasionally possible to pick up cheap nexus crystals as people clear out banks/level old 60s for substantially below the price of a small prismatic - stacks of 20 nexus for 80g when SPS are 7-8g a piece for example being something I've caught occasionally.

3. As with large/small shards it's possible to make some easy money buying motes and converting them to primals, with the advantage that there's no profession required. People seem to throw up motes at cheap prices rather than bothering to wait for enough to convert to a primal so a quick search can often pick up what are effectively primals at 1/2 to 2/3 the current price (provided you're patient enough to simply collect motes this way until you get full primals of course). Another won't always work but simple and quick to check thing. Works particularly well when the price of primals has spiked but those chucking up motes for a quick sale having raised their prices in compensation.

4. Searching the entire AH and sorting by time left. Basically means you can hit the refresh button and see whatever's just gone up seconds ago. Usually nothing too exciting but the quickest way to spot those obscenely cheap bargains people throw up unknowlingly or uncaringly that will vanish within minutes at most. I've had success with this buying bulk stuff that people have been offloading well below market raids almost the second it's gone up whereas I've never been able to get Auctioneer or similar to be quite that responsive for me personally. Imagine others may have had more luck automating this but throwing it out there for those that haven't.

 

krup

First time poster, long time reader and got a lot of assistance from posts in this thread so thought would add my own ways of making gold.

Firstly, i have 2 Transmute spec Alchemists, so i will buy Primal Earth for 3.5gold and Transmute to Life and sell for 25gold plus.
Also making Mystic Spellthread nets me nice profits, i buy the Primal Mana below 20g, paying 20 max and can sell the made product for 150g with usually around 80-90g spent on mats.
Same with CobraHide Armor kits, can usually buy a couple scales for 40g, although Primal Air is quite expensive i can make them for around 180g and sell for 250g no problems.
Used to bid on the 20g Imbued Netherweave Robes, disenchant and sell the Large Prismatics at 27g plus, the market has dropped a bit so don't spend too much time on this lately.
Ghost Mushroom's sell for big bucks, i sell 10 for 25g usually. I leave my Herbalist Rogue in the cave in Hinterlands and while playing will log off every 20mins to grab the 3 that are in the cave. I will also leave my miner there to mine the 2 Mithril/Truesilver nodes in the cave as well. That way for 5mins work per 20mins can give you a few stacks over the course of a day/night that can get you like a nice pay out. On the topic of herbs i will also go to Blasted Lands and grab a heap of Gromsblood where i can sell a stack of 5 for 8gold.
This morning Primal Air was like 44g on Horde side Proudmoore so with a few curcuits of Nagrand with my mote extractor i can do a couple dailies, (nether residue and surveying), get some Primal Air's, (also killing Storm Ragers and Living Cyclones, take a trip in the North and South Clefts for mining nodes, fly over the lakes and get any nodes there also killing as many water elementals to maybe get a few free motes of water, same with shadow guys when doing the Surveying quest just hopefully pick up 1, 2 or 3 from a couple kills, over a couple days you might get a Primal or two.
I run BRD with my mage and lower level shamen to get exp, runecloth and shards from disenchanting blues. Runecloth is 5g a stack at the moment, so i might get 8 stacks in there, plus all the other useful lower level stuff that sells surpringly well.
As has been said during the week the prices will rise which is the best time to sell, i will hold off selling on weekends and do the majority of my farming then. During the week when my play time is decreased i will just do simple dailies that keeps the gold ticking over and just relax and play the AH.

I've been making about 2.5k a week last 3 weeks with limited play time during the week. For someone who never had money from the amount of alts i have it's been good to make like 8k in the last month and i'm actually having fun doing it.

I could go on with other things i do, but i won't waste any more of your reading time.

 

Inaiwae

Since 2.4 (in fact since few weeks before 2.4) meta gems on my server started to be really profitable. In fact they are so profitable that i became lazy to do anything else than sell 2 meta gems per day for ~ 200-250g profit, which takes me about 5 minutes (i have a friend who's transmute master and transmutes for me for the opportunity to keep procs, + my own alt). This however applies only to 2 cuts, which are Chaotic skyfire and Relentless earthstorm. The rest of the cuts are too common and people are flooding AH with them, mainly with the new SSO recipes. Is this situation similar on other realms?

Earthstorm diamond: primal earth 5g, primal water 25g, green gems 3g --> 90g per gem. Relentless earthstorm diamond sells for 190g on my server. Uncut gems on AH are 140+.
Skyfire diamond: primal fire 25g, primal air 25g --> 130g per gem. Chaotic skyfire diamond sells for 250g. Uncut gems on AH are 200+.

 

Niallest

I've been working the earthstorm diamond market for as long as my JC friend has had the recipes to cut them. I keep a large supply of the mats required on a bank alt, checking the AH once in a while for cheap primals and green gems. keep a stack each of those mats on my alchemy main. Every single day i make my diamond (hoping for mastery procs) and send them to the JC who does all the work from there. The actual price of the mats has fluctuated, and with 2.4 the primal prices have soared, but it still remains quite profitable. It helps that my JC is a real life friend, because there's some degree of trust when i don't keep track of anything. He tracks how many i've sent, and sells them on the AH after cutting, sending me back 90% of the return. He works the market well enough to not sell when prices are low (and they've gotten much lower on my server than Inaiwae, there have been streaks of weeks where relentless was going for 110-120g) Regardless, there's always at least a 20g profit to be made per gem. before S3 came out, we stockpiled the supply, and sold thousands upon thousands of gold worth of diamonds in the 2 days after release, at 250-300g per earthstorm.


I know the nether vortex belts have been mentioned, and this probably varies per server, but for some reason there are at least half a dozen people selling Belt of Blasting on my server, to the point where it's not profitable to bother crafting and selling them. I've found the Belt of Natural Power to sell VERY well though, at a cost of about 1200g for mats, and i've sold them for anywhere between 2100g and 3000g. I made about 20k gold on belts in my 2 month parental leave that happened to coincide with the release of 2.4.

 

Bullistic

Agree with the above on earthstorms, pretty much all I do these days. I sell relentless, powerful and bracing. I buy most of my earthstorms of the AH, but spam a small amount to get an xmute or 2 daily, paying the alchemist between 5-10 gold (ha). Probably sell 2 or 3x more relentless of course, but the other two do sell respectably. Eternal and insightful earth are nice cuts too of course, but the competition is much heavier and the prices arent usually good, so I dont fuss with those. Have not tried skyfires in a while, but will give chaotic a look based on the comment above.

15 brilliant glass (about 10 saved up pre-patch opened after patch and 5 done or bought after patch) and 1 epic gem. I've taken to buying cooldowns for 10 gold...so far it hasnt paid off but w/e.

Interestingly, hording 140 noble topaz/dawnstone/talasites in anticipation of the new haste cuts turned out to be a bust. I've sold around 10-15 at barely inflated prices. I'll unload most at S4 I guess.

One thing thats good to save up or price manipulate pre-S4 is primal life. Used in the leg patches, it goes pretty quick. The morning before the badge vendor popped I bought, doubled the price and relisted, worked beautifully.
Primal mana is used too, but I leared with badge vendor that people now have hug stores of primal mana bc of the quest. Trying to bolster the price of primal mana failed on me and I wont try that again. Nor did arcane dust or planars budge...I'm still selling oils because I have so much arcane dust I refuse to take a loss on.

 

kallik

Just a tip to miners.. if you haven't been selling pre-bc bars on ah. Do it. Since patch 2.4 I dropped my gathering skill to learn smithing, because I had the funds to finally go to 2 professions and buy mats from ah.

I'm sure I've funded a few level 40 mounts and haven't reached 250 skill yet.

 

matt127

Agreed. I have made quite a bit off of flipping low priced low to mid level crafting mats. These type of mats will ALWAYS be in demand.

 

vanskater

Which is why im saving a whole bank of netherweve for WOLK.

 

savernon

The difference is, netherweave is extremely easy to farm. Every single humanoid mob in the 64+ outlands areas are what you could consider a "node" for netherweave. Azeroth herb / mining nodes on the other hand, have a fairly limited supply, with the added burden of limited to 120% max mount speed for a paladin, 110% for other classes.

Edit:
Before the patch that took arcanite off the transmute cooldown, I was able to make a decent chunk off my leveling alchemist by making an arcanite bar every day, since all paladins need them for the lvl 60 mount quest, which a lot of people are interested in. This also has the added benefit of removing ~25-30 levels of alchemy skillups from your herb stockpile. While there isn't a cooldown on it anymore, you can still possibly make a few gold if you see someone in trade asking around for arcanite bars.

 

Macblade

Neatherweave may be easy to farm, but no one is going to want to farm it when they are starting the new zones in WOTLK. Judging by the crafting professions in TBC and First aid in TBC, neatherweave will be in demand for at least the first part of the 375 to 450 push. I know of at least a couple of people that make a quick 1k or 2 selling rune cloth when TBC came out. Everyone want band aids for leveling too...

 

Conoris

But if Hellfire Peninsula is any guide, wouldn't it fair to assume the starting zones in WotLK will be stocked full of mobs that still drop netherweave (mixed in with whatever the "basic" Northrend cloth is)?

 

grimman

I for one had enough runecloth to cover my heavy runecloth bandage (not 'band aid') skillups in Hellfire Peninsula alone, on two characters so far. Judging by that, the opening Northrend zone will probably be similar. Blizzard seemed to balance that nicely on the first attempt! :O

 

Namsar

If it's not Frostweave I'll be bitterly disappointed.

But yes there shouldn't be any need to stock up vast amounts of current cloth. Perhaps just a bag or two per character to push through the early first aid and tailoring patterns but certainly I wouldn't call it a massive money spinner.

 

sadistic

It is Frostweave

 

Smurrf

Perhaps, perhaps not. If you happen to have the spare space on your account, it may well be viable to store cloth from Mageweave on up...at least in bolt form. It really depends on what kind of Tailoring BoP's will exist out there. Given the fact that so many people now are dropping Tailoring specifically because they're not getting any raid use out of it past early-mid T5, and switching over to LW or Enchanting or whatever, we might see a reverse trend when LK comes out, where all of a sudden people start realizing they need to powerlevel Tailoring again for the next big item or set.

Do I think it'll be as imbalanced as the sets were when TBC was release? Likely not, but there's a good chance it'll still be worth it. Again though, this only pertains if you have the space...cloth, even in bolt form, is bulky, and there's other items out there that get a much larger price for the same storage space.

 

ZeroWashu

I can see stocking up on both Runecloth and Netherweave for WOLK. Why? Because of death knights. While they start out at 55 with skills I doubt they will have more than 300 first aid and with the number of people bound to roll one up they will make great use out of these consumables. That is what I am trying to line up, what will a freshly minted level 55 actually need? It might be worthwhile to gather up some of the better cooking skillup mats too but these really didn't do well for me after the first few months of TBC. Has anyone found any word on which of if any of the non-tradeskills DKs will automatically be granted?

 

Bullistic

A good example of price changes is the stuff you used to get farming air elementals. Essence of Air used to be like 30 gold because it was used in high end crafted stuff. Breath of wind used to be 1-2 gold. Almost a complete reversal now. Essence of Air is 1-2 gold now -- no one wants those formerly high end items now, and its not in the leveling path. Breath of wind by contrast often sells for 12 gold or more each because those elementals are rarely farmed now, and the item is used in the leatherworking quests. Sure, you cant sell unlimited quantities at good prices, but if your patient you can do very well.

What we are aiming to find is the items like breath of wind that will be worth 5x more. The other nice thing about breath of wind today is the nice profit per stack you would have made hording it.

One thing that comes to mind to think more on is adamantite powder. Its basically a vendor item at the moment since large prismatics got wacked. Will it be useful in the JC leveling track post Northrend? (I have to check.) If so, the potential is there for big gains. If the old rare gems arent desirable for gemming gear, I'm thinking that folks may look at other leveling paths if they are cheaper.

 

bimmian

Anyone still able to make a decent profit from arcane dust? Prices have dropped like a rock, as supply has skyrocketed due to daily quests/supply bags. Where I could usually unload dust for 1.45g/each, currently prices fluctuate from 1g-1.25g. The real kicker is that there are upwards of 7+ pages of dust all the time. Granted there are no posting fees, so at least I'm not losing anything by posting them, but I am certainly not making anything near what I did pre-patch.

I was hoping it would settle out a little bit after the influx of people doing dailies, but it doesn't seem like thats going to happen. I have an entire guild bank tab filled with dust that I'm not sure what to do with. Ill probably hold out until some more WOTLK profession information is released to see if it will be worth it to just hold on to it.

My current money-maker is terocone though. Prices are just going crazy on it, any given day I'll see prices of 30-60g/stack. There is very little supply going on the AH at any given time (typically 5-15 stacks, plus someone listing them 1 by 1...), and I was unable to unload 8 stacks the other night for 50g/stack (sold in under 10 minutes, was the only terocone on the AH at the time). I've been buying up any terocone less than ~1.75g and re-listing for 40-50g/stack depending on the time/day (last-minute pot making raiders have no issue paying 50g/stack for it). Late night/early morning I can easily farm up 3-4 stacks in an hour, 150g+/hour not taking Fel Lotus(25g+) or motes of life into account.

 

karokajoka

My God the price of Ancient Lichen has gone through the roof. It's going for 60-80g per stack on my server.

The price of Vortices actually rose once the gem vendor opened. Seems like the standard rate is 350-450 gold per epic gem or Vortex. Seems like 15 badges = ~400 gold or so.

 

Denogran

Ironshield Pots. I've felt the pinch of that recently, as we've started in on SW. You can solo farm Slave Pens on any 70 to get 4-5 of them. Could prolly go through 5 resets in a 1/2 hour or so.

 

malthrin