Grungo

I would think that the reason for this is that the primary market for Gyro-Balanced Khorium Destroyers are tanks that are using it as a stat stick. For a tank, putting a scope on the gun accomplishes almost nothing, as they only fire it at max once per pull (much less assuming you're using a hunter MD for pulls).

 

dblaikie

I'm not sure if it's already been mentioned in this thread, but after everyone expressing their disinterest/lack of success selling enchants, I thought I could shed some light on a different side of this business.

Selling for tips/fees is barely profitable, I agree.

1) The worst thing you can do is sell for "tip" - people are, for the most part, cheap. They don't understand the value of your time and the rarity of the recipes you are buiyng. Solution: Have fixed fees.

1.1) The exception to this is, as someone already pointed out, common recipes - they're worth nothing or less than nothing. Other people are selling these enchants with mats below cost to skill up. Make what you can, but don't expect a lot.

2) Get rare patterns. Obvious, one would think, but it's more than that - you're running dungeons anyway, right? So go out of your way to keep the list of dungeons that have BoP enchant drops (MT, AC, SH, SV, Arcatraz - did I miss any?) & get them. This is a hard one to justify from a profit perspective - if you're just going for the enchant, then all the time you spent running that dungeon over and over again must be earnt back by selling the enchant. I'm not sure where exactly the break-even is, as I only went far out of my way to farm one enchant: Agi to Boots. All the others I had a slight preference to run the dungoens, but it wasn't a pure farm.

3) Stick to your fees, but encourage people to pay them - offer to accept mats, primals, anything else you know you can move that they might have spare if they claim they can't afford the fee. (this only accounts for a small (<5%) portion of my customer base, but still nice to do)

But none of that's new. The real money I make in enchanting is offering convenience. Sell enchants with your materials. Markup mercilessly. If someone wants an enchant now, has the money to pay for it and little knowledge or care for the current market value, they'll pay.

Market value for enchanting materials on Khadgar's Alliance:
Arcane Dust: 1-1.5g/each
Greater Planar Essence: 5-7g/each
Large Prismatic Shard: 20-25g/each
Void Crystals: 10g/each

So I buy at the low end - dust at 1, GPE at 4, LPS at 20 or below (don't have a large stock of LPS, but it doesn't matter), etc.

Then when someone asks me for an enchant I quote them two prices (or one, if I think they're the kind of person who wants to pay outright). I look at the pattern, do the maths - dust at 2g/each, GPE at 5g/each (could be more, but it's easier maths this way, I pad out arbitrarily these days), LPS 30g/each, VC 10g/each.

Depending on the enchant, this can be anywhere between maybe 20 and 40% profit, at a rough estimate. Obviously I could markup more consistently, track prices more closely, etc, but I find this to be convenient enough and a simple way to profit.

While I'd like to keep better track & know my average gold/hour hanging out in the cities selling enchants, even if it's a fair way below farming (I agree with the quoted numbers of around 100-150g/hour), it's also more convenient. Farming requires constant interaction with the game, mindless farming. Enchanting I just press my advert macro from time to time, read articles, chat with guildmates, chat to people, see what shiny new gear they've got, etc.


Another thing I used to profit from, but not so much any more - selling the rare tailoring recipes. Earlier than many people I had both the Spellstrike and Whitemend hood patterns. As a spellstrike tailor I have always made my spellcloth on every cooldown (20g profit every two days even if you sell at rather average prices) but never really sold my cloth. Buying a few primal might cheap and crafting up these items on demand for a peak of 1200g/Spellstrike Hood (effective nether price: 450g) - sold 4 or 5 in a month when I first figured this out. Only sold 2-3 items that way in the past 6 months though, other people catching on & the patterns becoming more common.

These days I'm happy to just push up the price of nethers to see what people will tolerate - I have none, but more than enough spare badges to buy them if people can afford it. I've crafted several pieces for 150g/nether, nearly twice as much as the common going rate if you're willing to wait several days to a week & watch trade.

I sometimes craft items in advance, just for bag space or because I'm bored - but haven't taken the risk of posting on the AH given the large fees that will be involved in listing such expensive items (I'm used to working with enchanting materials (which I rarely sell, unless the prices spike exceptionally)).

 

Stilfor

http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/6066/water2ve9.jpg

There are quite a few more than 4 up at once, that is for certain. The availability of clouds likely varies a bit per server but water works great for me.

 

tommtomm

Some items I've noticed about my servers markets and making gold:

A) After reading these posts over the last week, and needing money for an epic mount, I was all hyped up and about to drop mining on one of my toons to pick up enchanting. Luckily, I did a little research on my server.

1) I didn't fully cost it out, but the LPS requirements alone for leveling enchanting is over 2500g, so I'm thinking all in cost would be something like 3250-3500g. One caveat here, I looked around on the web for a leveling guide, and possibly I didnt use one that is the least cost focused.

2) I read above about using a tailor to make arcanoweave bracers and DE'ing them. Based upon my server prices, the bracers would cost 18g to make, LPS sell for 22-24g. After the 5% AH cut, I figure I would have to do this over 825X to just break even on a leveling cost of 3250g. Uhhmm, NO. I have several different characters on my server who have 1000's of gold and control some of these enchanting mat markets, it would take for ever to sell over 825 shards. The main point here is that b4 you switch professions, research your market and figure out how long it will take you to recover your leveling investment and start making money.

B) If you have a miner like I do, pay attention to the names that tend to offer at least 3-5 listings of ore at a time. There are 3 characters that always offer about a total of 15 stacks of Adamantite within a gold range of 25g, day after day. This is either one guy with 3 alts, or 3 ppl acting in collusion. To test this, i started offering 2 stacks each at 26, 27, 28. Each two stack from a diff alt. Sure as anything, I sell them every day, even though there are 15 stacks offered around 25. Have patience and play around to see whats going on in your market. I found i can sell all the way to 29, but not 30. I expect that these are jewel crafters trying to keep costs on prospecting low, or someone amassing size and will take the market up one day.

C) Someone way back in this thread pointed out what I think is a key to making money. Have multiple methods!!!! I farmed all the primals for my FSW and spell strike sets on elemental plateau. I still have anxiety nightmares about it. I cant stand more than 15 minutes up there now. So, between my 2 toons, I have maxed out cooking, getting close on fishing, I have a 375 tailor, 375 miner, and 375 skinner. I rotate daily on all of these so I dont get sick of farming. Some are not as good gold an hour as others, but it keeps me farming. Another advantage here, is that you cannot offer too much of a product on the market at one time without causing it to head down. Each day on my rotation, I farm a weeks worth of the product, so that each day, I have 5-6 different markets offered for 3-4 items. I believe this allows me to make more money consistantly, and not end up with a huge inventory at risk if prices tank.

D) Never try to speculate in one thing with all your money. There are always ppl with more money than you out there waiting for large market disparities. If you spend all your money running mithril from 15 to 25, you can gaurantee someone with a big inventory is going to come out and front run your 25 offers, and you will soon end up with a big unsold inventory and the market is under your average cost. Try to pick 4 markets to specialize in, and never invest more than 10% to it at a time, so that if any one mkt fails, you still have money to stay in the game.

E) Don't head to outlands until your 60. Easy exp will make 58-60 fly by. Then once you've done HF, zang and nagrand, just grind out your last two levels killing mobs in Legion Hold. Good gold from drops, and you will have 3 zones left at 70 which pay tons of gold for quests. This is another thing to work into your rotation so you dont get bored working to make money. Grinding sux, so do the 68-70 grind only on rested exp, it will take a few days longer, but you wont go crazy.

Just my .02 of observations.

Now for a question, I am researching the jewel crafting and prospecting. When I look at ore with Enchantrix on, I see ore will prospect into low quality gems at 19% and rares at 2.5%. The patch notes from 2.2(?) show that ore now gaurantess a gem drop everytime. My question is, regardless of color, what is the drop rate from rares when prospecting. If I bought 25 stacks of Adamantite ore, ie 500 ore, how many rares ON AVERAGE should I get?

Thks for the info in advance.

 

◊ Shaker

You realize you only need 275 enchanting to disenchant lvl 70 blues, right?

Consistency. It's only a virtue if you're not a screwup.

 

royaljester

A recent occurance has really troubled me about gold farming/playing the AH and I wanted to get other's ways of dealing with it...

I truly hate farming mindless mobs, but, at the same time, want to make my gold and get set before the expansion or even sunwell. I've been using the JC/Arcanoweave patterns to make the large pris for around 12-15g a peice (YAY) and in turn selling for around 32g a piece. NOW, a guildie saw some other nut putting stacks of two up for around 80g (wow) and decided to undercut him and put up for 75g/2 shards. Without noticing anyone elses prices, I put my own 2 stacks up for 65g (double my single price +a g or two). Needless to say I got my ass jumped for undercutting.

Anyways, I was told by a few other guildies to just make a new alt with an unknown name and class and just keep doing what I was doing. He even told me that he never puts stuff up when he sees fellow guildies items up, but with that logic, none of us could ever continue to make a profit always waiting on guildies items to be off the AH or if the guildie puts items too high, I'll never be able to sell and at least for other items, not enchanting mats, I'd lose my post fee because of their incompetance. How do you all deal with this? Should I just make a new alt and ah solely from that one? Anyone had trouble with a guildie that you didn't want to ruin the relationship? I mean, I like the guy, but this just seems completely retarded on so many levels.

 

Vyra

20 stacks of ore would be 400 ore

Wowwiki (borrowing WoWHead data) here would indicate about a 3% chance for any one type of rare gem on each prospect. Wowhead's sample size is pretty large, so I tend to think you'd expect, on average, about 18 rare gems from 500 ore (100 prospects).

 

wintermuteCF

Mathematics:
There is a 2.5% droprate (per gem) and 6 rare gems = 15% on any given prospecting of 5 Adamantite to pull a blue.
This also means you have an 85% chance to NOT pull a rare.

Probability is multiplicative. You have an .85^2 chance to get greens from two prospects. Three prospects is .85^3. Four is .85^4. This works out to an average probability if .52206, which I'll shorten to 52%.

Again, taking the inverse, this means you have approximately a 48% chance to pull a rare from a 20-stack of ore IN THE LONG RUN. Probability is only an accurate model if you're looking at huge amounts of data, and since we're not dealing with a REAL random number generator (WoW uses a PRNG), it is possible to have hot and cold streaks, confirmed anecdotally by people having spells of not pulling any rares from 5 stacks, and then there's that one random asshole who got 4 rare gems from a single stack.

It is also worth mentioning that what you should really be concerned with is the overall profitability of prospecting, not just the rare droprates. Consider that you also get 1-2 green gems per prospect (guaranteed) and 1 adamantite powder (guaranteed). As I'm assuming you've read the thread, you know that powder is a key component in braided eternium chains -- depending on your server economy, powder can be worth upwards of 50s apiece. Moreover, gems seem valueless on face, but remember that metagems are also very profitable cuts; if you work out some transmute suppliers (guild, friends, random pubbies who you paid) you can turn those into a valuable commodity.

The bottom line is that, while you will probably not get a rare from every stack (although I've had nights where I've had a 1:1 ratio or better), you'll get raw materials that can be commoditized into more valuable goods.

 

malthrin

Minor quibble, but any set of actual random numbers will also demonstrate streakiness - it's not a flaw of WoW's PRNG or anything.

Travian - Resto Druid
Malthrin - Priest

 

Galred

This is your anwer; I refer to this process as "smurfing" which came from the drug wars (a 'smurf' was a person who helped launder money by depositing sums of money in a bank account that were lower than the Notify-The-Feds limit).

I'm not advocating that you deliberately undercut your guildies, but at a certain point it's not your responsibility to scour the AH with your guild/guild alts list up. Just post via a smurf and you'll avoid drama, plus you can park your smurf, or 'bank alt' if you like that term better, by an AH and mail items to/from it.

 

royaljester

True, I had one of those previously. The problem happened when I started talking to guildies as I was ah'ing for quite some time. Guess convienance turned into the wrong choice. I'll remedy this and thanks.

TBH, I didn't knowingly undercut and shoot, at 10g higher I could have posted mine for 74g, allowed his to only be 1g higher and make 9g more per stack I had up. Sigh, the worst part of all, he's my class leader/a guild leader and a good guy, so I actually felt bad. And that was my counter point, it's not my job to make sure you're not getting screwed on the AH, I won't openly screw anyone I know for a few g's, but at the same time, I'm not going to monitor their progress just so they don't get upset.

 

Ragnor

For comparison LPS are ~23-24g ea on US-Blackrock alliance, you might want to mention that you're still making an obscene amount of gold for simple raw mats on your server at 30g+ ea

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

Jovis

About a month ago, there was a period of 2 weeks when you could safely post shards at anywhere from 35-45g each and you could guarantee that they would sell. It was a wonderful time, but then other people started reading this thread and the price has been dropping ever since, hehe.

Perhaps you could let your guildie know that 80g for 2 shards is unrealistic these days? Unless he's got some greater scheme to artificially inflate the prices of LPS, but there's simply too many suppliers at this point.

 

Ngita

Near the start of TBC we had a interesting situation where 3 out of the 4 people sellng flask of Relentles Assault where in our Guild. But I have allways run a anonymous ah/bank alt right back to MC days when I was foolish enough to put up a BoE epic with no buyout just before a raid. I just wanted to sell it not have detailed conversations about will I sell it for x+cash.

 

• Mex

Resurrecting an old comment here that I don't think got enough discussion.

I was considering trying to 2-man onyxia with a warlock partner. We're both geared in mostly PvP loot, a mix of S1, S2, and S3. I'm fairly confident that we could do it with him tanking and me healing, although I think it'd take a pretty long time (a 30 minute kill would require ~611dps). Bringing in a third player (warrior hopefully) would ideally halve the kill time whilst only reducing our cut of the swag by 1/3. It seems like a decent proposition.

What I was wondering was firstly, if I'm correct in believing that an SL/SL warlock with ~12k health and ~1100 damage, and myself with ~1400 healing would be fine to duo ony? Would stacking basic fire res blues / greens on the warlock help? Or is the incoming damage not worth losing outgoing damage for? Secondly, the green dragons. It's been ages since I've done them, but my understanding is that the stacking DoT (which adds 10 seconds to ability cooldowns) necesitates the use of 2 tanks. We don't have Hydross resist gear and the warlock not having a taunt would of course make tank swapping harder if we did manage to add a warrior to our little group. Does anyone regularly farm the green dragons and have any insight? According to Wowhead they're carrying 200g+ each, plus epics which can be converted to LPS.

Looking at some of their abilities, it seems that TBC has trivialised some but others remain just as potent. For example, Emeriss' 100% of player's life over 10 seconds DoT presents some danger. On the other hand, Lethon summoning 2 or 3 shades at his 25% phases suddenly becomes a lot less significant than 40. Ysondre's oomfiring druid zerg sounds like it could be nasty, although Emeriss' mushrooms and disease of death wouldn't be as potent with only a handful of players. From what I can recall from fighting them, and looking at our current situation, I'm hesitant to try fighting them, but as I said, if anyone has any experience I'd love to hear it.

Lastly Azuregos. His spell reflect would be irritating but not critical, but his mana-drain AoE could be quite problematic, especially with a warlock tanking. I don't suppose anyone remembers off the top of their head how much it drains for, or how easy it is to avoid? I suspect that we'll most likely give it a go for a laugh, any advice would be handy!

 

◊ Shaker

You don't multi-tank the green dragons - you outgear it with NR gear. Ysondre can be easily 5 manned, so I imagine with the right people she'd be pretty easy to duo or trio. We did all 4 green dragons recently, and our tank was taking 1k damage every once in a while.

Emeriss was by far the worst - the DoT is mean, the mushrooms are mean. Small grouping it would probably be better though, since you could actually heal everyone with a chain heal or two, for example.

Consistency. It's only a virtue if you're not a screwup.

 

• Mex

Hrmmm yeah I was afraid that NR gear would be the answer.

My warlock friend and I don't really PvE at all, so the resist gear would be purely an investment for doing the green dragons.

Not really sure it'd be worth it. Thanks for the info though!

 

Leica

Azuregos can easily be duo'd at 70 by a hunter and any decent healer. A warlock could probably do it as well with a voidwalker.

If you take advantage of the fact that pets are immune to the teleport, and therefore don't have an aggro reset when tanking, you simply have the healer and hunter take the teleports. Threat never becomes an issue, and your only obstacle is time. Perhaps this could be done with a warlock & his voidwalker as well, but the time to death would rise significantly due to the reflective shield.

Vis Maior - Bonechewer - http://www.vismaior.org - Bonechewer Alliance PVP

 

Xrhino

I have a problem with the maths used. I would think you would have a 48% chance to pull AT LEAST one rare from a stack. In the long term it would work out at 6 rares per 10 stacks to match the 15% chance per 5.

 

xarg

I've had quite a hunt through this thread, though haven't seen anyone mention selling arena points for gold. Getting the 7 games done each week on a 2k rated team takes around half an hour, and nets us all 800g each (we sell points in the 5v5 bracket).

My team levels a new team to 2k every week or two, and it generally takes us in the realm of 3-4 hours. We currently have one team over 2100, two teams floating around 1950 and one team much lower (1750). With our current 3 teams we can rake in 2.5-3k gold each week for 2 hours of effort. Then there's the optional few hours of investment to get ourselves more income each week. Add in selling points in 3v3 (less profitable but less of a logistics deal) and selling 1850 personal rating, and you have an extremely lucrative business that requires minimal effort.

Of course, this isn't an option to everyone, it does require having pvp skill and friends to play with.

We charged one guy 2.5k gold for 1850 in 3v3 and it just didn't seem worth the effort to get it done.

 

Enova

While we're on the topic of killing raid bosses for money, I've had a rather good experience 10 manning MC. (we didn't clear it due to half the people being alts without Hydraxian rep, but it went quite well). It's 10 bosses, I think, if you have enough people with quintessences, and it takes a couple of hours to clear, but you should still get more gold per hour than 2 or 3 manning Azuregos or the world Dragons, even if people decide they want to keep all the tier ones for themselves.

You also have an option to shard all the epics and put them up on the AH, or even have an enchanter convert them into SPS, and, on my realm at least, there's still people buying Fire or Lava cores now and then (probably for the +hit scope, that's the only reason I could think of). As well, Ragnaros drops a few BOE blues most of the times, and some of them still sell.

It's not market breaking, you'll not get rich over night, but it's fun, and most importantly, it's a change of scenery, for those who are bored with grinding.

Guilty as charged ^

 

Starelf

Quick question: since I am using MoneyFu that only seems to show each character's weekly and daily stats, I wonder if someone could recommed a better addon that has life-time money stats, and maybe monthly too. Ace/Fubar compatibility is a plus.

 

Zurgat

A large problem with Nagrand i find is that at least 2, and as much as 4 of the regular gas cloud spawns that are in the air, are unreachable.
Whether they spawn in the bad spot, or simply float off i'm not sure, but it's pretty annoying to find yellow dots on the map that can't be reached normally.

I never have that issue in zangarmarsh, plus zangar has a much smaller patrol path for clouds.

-= Random Ravings - RSS Feed =- Rogue and Hunter stuff here. As well as guides to get you trough your spare time.

 

◊ Cadfael

Shameless recommendation: http://files.wowace.com/Analyst/Analyst.zip (wow-ace, is on the mirror). That thing is written by my direct superior at work, so you can question my neutrality. I'm not sure if it does exactly what you want. In a way this is a bit like MoneyFu but it lists more exact where you lose money and with what you gained money. It counts all costs you incur, including stuff like buying recipes for tradeskills so it does more than just showing totals (which is what MoneyFu does).

On Curse there's a screenshot showing a bit the basic interface: Analyst | World of Warcraft Addons | World of Warcraft @ Curse.com

 

Zurgat

Sounds fairly memory intensive, how big is the footprint?
I'm trying to cut down memory usage currently, 23MB. ~50 seconds load time, vs only 4-5 without any addons.

-= Random Ravings - RSS Feed =- Rogue and Hunter stuff here. As well as guides to get you trough your spare time.