Hi, i would like to ask for some advice from you guys. I have started on a new server and i currently have a lvl 70 Paladin (crusader Aura) with Mining/Herbalism Spec. Playing Ah somehow never worked greatly for me but from what i read here i think i can manage some. The thing is as a Gatherer i have all the tools i need but i m lacking epic flying mount. I have lik 450g money which is pretty low. And before i begin to read this treat i was thinking about droping herbalism in favor of Jewelcrafting.

But with 2.4 so close and epic gems for BoJ's would JC still be viable source of income to me (i have to buy rare recipies etc..) , Which course of action should i take? any advice would be welcome.

Does anyone have any idea of what the prices for primal nethers and nether vortexes will be when patch 2.4 comes live?
Knowing these prices would be really helpfull to make some choises...

Well we have estimates. Most people sell the use of their nether for 50g or so, so the price will only go down next patch once they can be freely traded. I doubt by that much though, so I'm targeting 35g to 40g. No one smart will trade badges for nethers.

For Vortex, they will come almost exclusively from people trading 15 badges, after the latent supply from random SSC/TK raiders is more or less used up. Since the best other use of 15 badges is to buy a Crimson Spinel and spinels are in far higher demand, a vortex will cost no more than a spinel does after the patch.

So what will spinels cost? I'm going mostly with a gut instinct of 200g to 250g, which pegs vortex prices at 200 to 225g. But it's really just a number I extracted out of my nether regions.

This is true; but it does not make it any more or less worth farming, just more of a risk, with more of a potential payback. (Which is itself moot, I guess, as you can only do it once every three days.)

Since I'm replying to another Stormrage Horde player, here's my tip (which while I know is applicable to Stormrage, but could well be on other servers too - just depends how many people are already) for how to exploit the imminent 2.4 patch: [Wind Scales]. Noone seems to be farming them, I rarely see them in the (Horde) AH, there's a nice focused group of mobs that drop them, even now they're worth farming at the prices they sell for and after the patch comes out the amount needed for the new recipes is going to push the price up a whole cockload higher. As someone recently pointed out, people aren't just going to be wanting materials quickly for the new craftables, there'll be less people actually farming the materials.

[Incidentally, I'm up for healing or DPSing once every three days if you don't already have someone, Cirocco!]

This is not necessarily true.

My gold making really comes from my JC alt. Between farming ore and prospecting the adamantite I get, I rake in an obscene amount of money each week. Maybe I'm just amazingly lucky, but over the last thousand or so prospects I've gotten an average of one blue gem per 4 prospects (one blue per stack), which has lead me to simply buy 400-500g worth of ore off the AH each day and then prospect it for the gems. Even at inflated prices of 28-30g per stack, I tend to make a profit of roughly 25-50% of my initial investment. Unless of course I get stuck with a bunch of talasites.

Of course the downside to this is that it requires most of the exceedingly rare world drop blue quality designs to be truly effective, otherwise you only get about 3-4g profit off each stack of ore, rather than 10g or more.


Also, while not a dedicated gold making strategy, something I always do is make bandages out of all the cloth I happen to come across. The market for netherweave on my server is stable, but exceedingly slow and you only get about 3.5g per stack, but if you make that same stack into heavy netherweave bandages and vendor it, you get 3g. While you lose 50s by not auctioning it, if you factor in the AH cut, the time required for it to sell, and possible relisting fees, you actually get the same amount, if not more, by simply by vendoring the bandages.

So remember next time you need to get rid of 40 stacks of netherweave, that bandages vendor for more than the cloth they are made out of.

If you think that nethers will go for 35g to 40g and spinels/vortexes for 200g, that's a pretty large difference in price-per-badge. Anyone needing nethers will simply get 5 more badges, sell a vortex/spinel and buy the nethers. I think we'll see a equilibrium where the vortex/spinel price is closer to 150% of the nether price. This is assuming (as you do) that nethers can still be sold; either the nether price will increase or vortex/spinel price will decrease.

I'm possibly making some other simplifying assumptions here that make me really wrong.

We're just going to agree to disagree I suppose. Nethers are not going to be created any more frequently (well slightly because heroic magister's terrace will be popular for a month), but they are about to get a lot more useful. Current nether waste -- no one picks it up -- is awfully low. Sure there are some in banks and there'll be a bit of a glut at first.

I expect nether prices will rise over time and not fall. If a spinel has a badge equivalent value of 15g per badge (15 x 15 = 225,) and a nether costs 10 badges, you are right no one will trade in badges for a nether unless nethers are worth 150g. However, people do trade badges for nethers now. In fact, it happens fairly regularly.

I expect the price of a nether to rather quickly rise from the "glut price" to 2/3 or more of the "nether equivalent" price of a spinel. And I have a tough time imagining spinels holding much above 150g. Badges seem like they are going to flow like water. While spinels will likely start fairly high, they are going to come down fairly quickly.

I think nethers rise toward 100g and perhaps above. And that spinels come down below 200g toward 150g. Vortexes can't realistically cost any more than spinels because badges are going to be a fairly readily available currency. Within 2-3 weeks, too many of us can make sure vortexes are available if they are priced too high.

Your simplifying assumption is that Primal Nethers and spinels can only be obtained through badges. Nethers are easily obtainable at the end of every heroic run as well as some regular instance runs. Meanwhile, spinels are harder for the average player to obtain via T6 raiding. Pretty much up until WotLK, I think that nearly all people will stop buying nethers altogether. The market as a whole will rely solely on the supply of nethers dropping from heroic and normal instances. This may cause the value of nethers to rise slightly, but not anywhere near their former glory of 150-200g since the demand for nethers isn't really increasing. Meanwhile, most people will be saving badges for the new badge gear, while the rest will be using them for spinels. This will of course drive spinel prices down, but that price shouldn't reach low enough to make people even consider spending badges on devalued nethers.

Also, the popularity of heroics should rise once people can readily exchange heroic badges for T6 gear. This will inadvertently increase the supply of dropped nethers, offsetting the loss in supply from people not spending badges on nethers anymore.

Of course, all of this is entirely dependent on the assumption that the supply of badges won't be high enough to drive epic gem prices into the ground. I feel this is a reasonable assumption, given the fact that a large majority of WoW players aren't decked out in epic-gemmed gear yet.

What? I've been making 150g off nethers easily, the entire time. Simply buying the ten primal manas yourself to craft a runic spellthread makes for a 150g profit if not more, if you manage to get the primal manas cheap. Runic spellthreads sell for +-300g on this server. Granted, it requires a small investment, but 200% return on said 150 gold investment.. Can't say no to that.

The reason you net +-100g more than by just selling the nether, is probably partially laziness and partially safety of the buying party. Getting someone to craft a runic spellthread after gathering all the materials can be a fuss - and that said person is able to scam you and get your 10 primal manas. This last part is less of an issue if you are in a respected guild, but there's always a slight amount of mistrust.

For the record, if you are ever "scammed" Blizzard will restore the item and punish the offender, as long as it was agreed too in-game and the agreements are crystal clear.

I had a dispute with someone over 50g and a scam. Reported it to a GM. Got my gold back within 2 hours and the offender supposedly got a 3 hour suspension.

I think this is a fair argument. It certainly is valid when crafting time is directly proportional to number of items. Practically speaking, with things like projectiles, it has not been an issue. Crafting 20 stacks vs. 60 is just an adjustment in how long I afk, so going for higher volume, lower profit margin has not been much of a problem for me. On the flip side it's allowed me to [generally] avoid several issues: I myself don't get undercut much because my prices are already so low and it's not worth others' time to compete, and I'm much more likely to get a "I've been buying your shells/arrows forever, love the price, can you send them to me regularly?" ingame mail which drastically increases the volume once you have a few regular paying customers. The biggest challenge has been getting the raw materials at suitably low price but I've found that by acquiring the raw materials when I see them at low prices, even if I have plenty on hand, I can weather temporary price increases. As some others said, I don't think this model would work well for cooldown items like primal mooncloth, nor gems.