Here's my question. I have a 60 alt that is Mining/Skinning atm. I was planning on dropping skinning and power leveling either JC or BS. However, neither of these two crafting professions seem to be big money makers(as in the crafting itself is adding value over and above the raw materials). If you are going out and mining all of the stuff yourself, how much are you making by prospecting it and cutting gems over what you could make simply by selling the ore? To me, it seems like if you can't make money simply buying ore off the AH and prospecting and cutting it, then that process hasn't added any value to your product. So I'd be better off selling the ore and saving myself all that gold I would have to spend on BOE JC patterns.
No, you definately make money by cutting greens. But its low profit, you need high margins.
And as for the rares, you need to do the math for your server.
What you need is to know the price of all 6 rare gems, the price of adamantite, the price of adamantite powder... and i guess price of greens. There's another thread with more detailed math in showing what you need to do to find out if it is profitable. But it all depends on the price of adamantite.
Interesting note, Fel Iron has 1/3rd of the chance of Adamantite for blues, so calculating Fel Iron prospecting vs. Adamantite prospecting is rather easy. If Fel Iron cost less than 1/3rd the price of Adamantite, then prospecting Fel Iron should be cheaper. Of course, theres a little more math invovled in regards to Adamantite powder ~ worth 40s on my server, Fel Iron powder vendors for 15s I think.
Here's my question. I have a 60 alt that is Mining/Skinning atm. I was planning on dropping skinning and power leveling either JC or BS. However, neither of these two crafting professions seem to be big money makers(as in the crafting itself is adding value over and above the raw materials). If you are going out and mining all of the stuff yourself, how much are you making by prospecting it and cutting gems over what you could make simply by selling the ore? To me, it seems like if you can't make money simply buying ore off the AH and prospecting and cutting it, then that process hasn't added any value to your product. So I'd be better off selling the ore and saving myself all that gold I would have to spend on BOE JC patterns.
That's why I've stopped prospecting ore, both from my own gathering supply and from buying it cheap at the AH. I still buy cheap ore, I just don't prospect it myself. On my server, when the cost of [Primal Earth], [Eternium Ore], and [Adamantite Ore] jumped, while [Large Prismatic Shard] fell, I just moved to resell the raw materials. You can also still make decent profit from buying the raw gems, cutting them, and re-listing, although the volume you can move is often restricted by your server population.
15 Badges for an epic gem will dump a lot of epic gems onto the AH, as this will provide a means of selling badges. It will allow people to run Karazhan, down a few bosses real quick, trade the badges in for a Crimson Spinal or Shadowsong Amethist, and then sell it on the AH for a good chunk of change.
This will effectively open up the Epic Gem market that much earlier and drive down rare gem prices that much faster.
The biggest effect it will create is that it will even out the prices across the different colors for epic gems. Right now, there are just as many Talasites created in the game as Living Rubies. This is because you do the same thing to produce one as you do the other, and a random number generator tells you which one you get, whether it is from prospecting, looting a chest, mining a node in Hyjal or looting a corpse in BT. This will allow people to choose to create Crimson Spinals instead of Seaspray Emeralds and increase the supply of one without affecting the other.
The other place I see this affecting is the hard-core Arena PvPers who don't raid. After the patch, the will have little or no access to epic gems aside from running heroics and praying for a good gem drop. This will allow them to run heroics, stock up badges, and socket their S3/S4 arena epics with epic gems. 2-3 heroics per week will give them more than enough badges to keep their gear socketted without touching the rare gem market.
In an earlier post, I predicted that 2.4 would bring a gradual decline to the Prospecting market and a corresponding decline in the Adamantite/Fel Iron markets. Epic Gems for Heroic badges will accelerate that.
15 Badges for an epic gem will dump a lot of epic gems onto the AH, as this will provide a means of selling badges. It will allow people to run Karazhan, down a few bosses real quick, trade the badges in for a Crimson Spinal or Shadowsong Amethist, and then sell it on the AH for a good chunk of change.
This will effectively open up the Epic Gem market that much earlier and drive down rare gem prices that much faster.
The biggest effect it will create is that it will even out the prices across the different colors for epic gems. Right now, there are just as many Talasites created in the game as Living Rubies. This is because you do the same thing to produce one as you do the other, and a random number generator tells you which one you get, whether it is from prospecting, looting a chest, mining a node in Hyjal or looting a corpse in BT. This will allow people to choose to create Crimson Spinals instead of Seaspray Emeralds and increase the supply of one without affecting the other.
In an earlier post, I predicted that 2.4 would bring a gradual decline to the Prospecting market and a corresponding decline in the Adamantite/Fel Iron markets. Epic Gems for Heroic badges will accelerate that.
I wouldn't overestimate the effect of this, except in further driving down Living Rubies.
This vendor won't open until quite a while into building the SSO town, so it certainly won't affect prices immediately.
Most people are going to spend their badges on many many things before epic gems: the gear, the nether vortices and primal nethers, pvp gear. The idea that 10 people go into karazhan, and all of them do nothing but spend their 22 badges on gems (making 14 gems total) seems a little silly. Maybe we'll see more T6 farmers doing that, but they're already doing karazhan for the other heroic items according to people on this forum. If Crimson Spinel sells for 200g (definitely up for debate, given increased supply), that's 280g a person. A nice chunk of change indeed, but wouldn't most of those people be able to earn more in the time of a 4 hour kara run (assuming they too read this thread)? Even 4 hours of raid trash farming?
In the very long term, when this vendor has opened and most people have more badges than they know what to do with, this will drive gem prices down. In the short to medium term I don't see much changing. Certainly this won't swamp the effect of increased gear supply.
Since shatt is in Terrokar, it has lots of people traveling in and out of it every day, and so alot of nodes along common paths get picked, leaving not too much else. SMV and Netherstorm both lend themselves to players with flying mounts, so it's a lot easier for them to prod themselves into farming there, since they don't have to fight through swaths of enemies for one node. But at least in Netherstorm, when the nodes are up, they are godly. It seems like more Rich Adamantite nodes spawn here than regular adamantite, and the nodes are usually clumped up near each other.
Yea, I've also had really good experience in Netherstorm and SMV. It's especially good if you're a dual gatherer (mining/herbing), as Netherbloom and Nightmare Vine can fetch a pretty penny on the AH.
I wouldn't overestimate the effect of this, except in further driving down Living Rubies.
This vendor won't open until quite a while into building the SSO town, so it certainly won't affect prices immediately.
Most people are going to spend their badges on many many things before epic gems: the gear, the nether vortices and primal nethers, pvp gear. The idea that 10 people go into karazhan, and all of them do nothing but spend their 22 badges on gems (making 14 gems total) seems a little silly. Maybe we'll see more T6 farmers doing that, but they're already doing karazhan for the other heroic items according to people on this forum. If Crimson Spinel sells for 200g (definitely up for debate, given increased supply), that's 280g a person. A nice chunk of change indeed, but wouldn't most of those people be able to earn more in the time of a 4 hour kara run (assuming they too read this thread)? Even 4 hours of raid trash farming?
In the very long term, when this vendor has opened and most people have more badges than they know what to do with, this will drive gem prices down. In the short to medium term I don't see much changing. Certainly this won't swamp the effect of increased gear supply.
Huh? We clear Karazahn in 2-2.5 hours with main/alts. And to be quiet honest... I think most of us are doing it because we're bored out of our minds. Hell, sometimes (like this weekend) we run two Karazahn's back to back and switch chars.
Huh? We clear Karazahn in 2-2.5 hours with main/alts. And to be quiet honest... I think most of us are doing it because we're bored out of our minds. Hell, sometimes (like this weekend) we run two Karazahn's back to back and switch chars.
And you don't even have to be T6 geared to do kara in 2-2.5 hours. A lot of wasted time is because people lose momentum, take time for a break here, go summon someone else who is replacing someone, etc. If everyone knows how to play the character, knows the fights, and can pay attention for a couple hours, stuff goes very smoothly.
I know someone who claims to have 500+ badges banked. Pretty reliable source but I wouldn't think that's the norm. The fact that epic gems will be available for 15 badges is something that escaped my notice with the deluge of information but there are still many other factors to consider:
As previously mentioned, not everyone is immediately going to dump thier badges on gems. There's alot of iLevel 140+ gear available in 2.4 for high badge costs. Nether vortecies. Also, as mentioned, the vendor won't immediately be available but likely will be accessible by the time S4 hits, which is payday for JCs normally. (banked arena points + new loots = high demand)
On the other hand....I have quietly been stashing Dawnstones, Talasites and Earthstorm Diamonds for the new cuts being introduced. Debating whether or not +8 spell haste or attack haste or whatever is something a min/maxxer would stack is somewhat irrelevant because the vast majority of the market, especially on my backwater server, don't know any better and if you tell them haste reduces the cast time of thier fireball/shadowbolt/starfire, whatever...they'll be all over it....I think(/hope).
15 badges is alot for an epic gem. I might have 5 red slots on my druid. +20 healing for 75 badges? hmm....well, maybe if I had a ton to begin with but my 'other main' is a prot warrior who I don't raid on beyond 10 mans and I have spent a ton of time running heroics/Kara/ZA working on his badge gear. Then again, all raid bosses wil be dropiing them so...
Man, you need an economics degree to keep up, lol. Makes it fun. In general, I think there will be a slight shift in the rare gem market along with an initial surge. People will be going into the Magister's Terrace and aquiring new gear as well as badge gear. Assume SWP gear will mostly get epic gems banked from Hyjal and BT as well as from SWP its self so no change there, really. The new cuts will increase the desirablitiy of some gems slightly. Enchanting mats and raw materials will see slight increases too but nothing as dramatic as if they dropped S4 with today's maint. period or something. /shrug. We'll see. I believe I'll come out of this fairly wealthy but not as much as I had hoped.
I wouldn't overestimate the effect of this, except in further driving down Living Rubies.
This vendor won't open until quite a while into building the SSO town, so it certainly won't affect prices immediately.
Most people are going to spend their badges on many many things before epic gems: the gear, the nether vortices and primal nethers, pvp gear. The idea that 10 people go into karazhan, and all of them do nothing but spend their 22 badges on gems (making 14 gems total) seems a little silly. Maybe we'll see more T6 farmers doing that, but they're already doing karazhan for the other heroic items according to people on this forum. If Crimson Spinel sells for 200g (definitely up for debate, given increased supply), that's 280g a person. A nice chunk of change indeed, but wouldn't most of those people be able to earn more in the time of a 4 hour kara run (assuming they too read this thread)? Even 4 hours of raid trash farming?
People are running Kara now to farm badges for primal nethers to sell, so I'm sure converting badges to money will only increase as the options to do so become more varied. For T6 farmers, it would be faster than 4 hours and figure in a couple void crystals for everyone as well as the other trash (everything adds up) - it becomes a pretty good farming run, and more fun than grinding solo.
Anyways, I do agree that the impact will not be immediate and the new gear in 2.4 will probably push the entire market up temporarily. I also think that people running Kara for epic gems will primarily be motived to do the runs to socket their own gear rather than waiting weeks on the guild's Crimson Spinel list. I suspect that this will result in most guild banks liquidating their non-red epic gems since there will be even less demand for them even as temporary crimson Spinel substitutes. Rubies will come down in price for sure, but the other rare gems could very well become vendor fodder within a few months as the epic versions flood the market.
Most people are going to spend their badges on many many things before epic gems: the gear, the nether vortices and primal nethers, pvp gear.
In the very long term, when this vendor has opened and most people have more badges than they know what to do with, this will drive gem prices down. In the short to medium term I don't see much changing. Certainly this won't swamp the effect of increased gear supply.
I did not mean to say that the effect would be immediate, the week 2.4 is released. I indicated this process taking months in previous posts. Even if this doubles the speed of the price drop, it would still be many weeks or months.
The central point is that this give people more reason to get rid of rare gem or ore stockpiles instead of holding them and hoping for their price to climb in the months to come.
Originally Posted by Bismar
The idea that 10 people go into karazhan, and all of them do nothing but spend their 22 badges on gems (making 14 gems total) seems a little silly. Maybe we'll see more T6 farmers doing that, but they're already doing karazhan for the other heroic items according to people on this forum. If Crimson Spinel sells for 200g (definitely up for debate, given increased supply), that's 280g a person. A nice chunk of change indeed, but wouldn't most of those people be able to earn more in the time of a 4 hour kara run (assuming they too read this thread)? Even 4 hours of raid trash farming?
Actually, I do anticipate people farming Karazhan for epic gems. For example, my main is heavily BT/Hyjal geared with epic gems to match. My arena gear tends to be socketed with rares. A lot of the new badge loot looks nice, but most of it is side-grades or down-grades compared to what I already have. I occasionally do heroics, Karazhan, or ZA, but I am not heavily motivated to do them as I already have plenty of badges for what I want in 2.4. This gives me a lot more incentive to join up with guild groups for Karazhan as it would allow me to gem up future PvP gear with epics instead of rares.
The other thing to note is that people use Karazhan to gear up alts. Now they will have incentive to run it a second time on a main so that they can buy the gems with their main and use them on their alt.
As to your point that Kara would only yield about 280g worth of gems... it also yields Void Crystals and gold off the bosses, making the final take a lot higher than that. It may still be more profitable farming elementals, but I know many people (myself included) who would enjoy raiding more than farming, and isn't that the whole point of the game?
The death-blow to the rare gem and adamantite market will come when people realize there will be no new badge gear until WotLK, and WotLK will use a different token instead of the Badge of Justice. 2.4 may or may not be the last round of badge gear, I won't know until Blizzard announces it. But once people realize they have nothing new to buy with badges, people who are holding them for a rainy day will dump them and they will almost all go towards Epic Gems.
I regularly see Primal Mana dropping below 14g on my server... My question is, will the influx of gear brought on by 2.4 and S4 be enough to pocket me a 5g+ profit on each one that I stockpile (I'd imagine demand would be fairly high, with 10 primals required for a Runic Spellthread)? A 30% profit for minimal effort and only moderate investment would be quite nice. Or is it just wishful thinking on my part :P
The death-blow to the rare gem and adamantite market will come when people realize there will be no new badge gear until WotLK, and WotLK will use a different token instead of the Badge of Justice. 2.4 may or may not be the last round of badge gear, I won't know until Blizzard announces it. But once people realize they have nothing new to buy with badges, people who are holding them for a rainy day will dump them and they will almost all go towards Epic Gems.
I think in the end you will be proven mostly correct but there are some mitigating factors. One, people posting in this thread are not representative to the general playerbase. you being heavily in tier 6 places you well above the curve in progression in a broad sense. Two, the average player is somewhat more impulsive and since the gem vendor is not going to be accessible for a period of time, people will aquire new gear and want to socket it now. In that case, its much less running Kara for one gem + half another...a month after 2.4 release and more a case of getting the best gem (readily) available as soon as I have the unsocketed item in my hand. It will take some time for the gems bought with badges to come down in price, though as someone else mentioned, the less popular combo gems won't be used as often....T6+ raiders can afford to chew up Kara to get a CS instead of waiting for more to drop on this week's farming run. They won't be quite as inclined to jam a Living Ruby or an orange in a red slot for the time being.
All that said, this thread has changed my thoughts some and I intend to a unload a little earlier than I would have. I still maintain that there will be a surge in the market but as the epics open up, the demand for rares will fade. There will still be money to be made but prices will come down significantly over a long time period.
With all other Badge rewards being soulbound as soon as you pick them up, isn't it reasonable to assume the rare gems might be too?
It seems to me that Anything that you buy from a rep vendor, or specialty vendor of any sort is always soulbound. Halaa stuff, Spirit shard purchases, and any of the PVP vendors only sell items that soulbind immediatly.
Blizzard historically dosen't like those types of items to be resold on the AH. Putting a Gold value on Heroic badges Seems to fall in this pattern.
You can likely trade them, or auction them off now on the PTR, but I'd be surprised if you can come the live patch...
With all other Badge rewards being soulbound as soon as you pick them up, isn't it reasonable to assume the rare gems might be too?
Primal Nethers won't be BoP in 2.4 and are purchasable with Badges so there is your precedent. Seems unlikely they'll create a whole new set of BoP gems to me, especially as right now you do need to trade them to a JCer to cut them.
With all other Badge rewards being soulbound as soon as you pick them up, isn't it reasonable to assume the rare gems might be too?
It seems to me that Anything that you buy from a rep vendor, or specialty vendor of any sort is always soulbound. Halaa stuff, Spirit shard purchases, and any of the PVP vendors only sell items that soulbind immediatly.
Blizzard historically dosen't like those types of items to be resold on the AH. Putting a Gold value on Heroic badges Seems to fall in this pattern.
You can likely trade them, or auction them off now on the PTR, but I'd be surprised if you can come the live patch...
If the gems are soulbound, then you won't be able to do anything with them without rerolling Jewelcrafting.
The death-blow to the rare gem and adamantite market will come when people realize there will be no new badge gear until WotLK, and WotLK will use a different token instead of the Badge of Justice. 2.4 may or may not be the last round of badge gear, I won't know until Blizzard announces it. But once people realize they have nothing new to buy with badges, people who are holding them for a rainy day will dump them and they will almost all go towards Epic Gems.
I would assume that there will be at least one more arena season after S4 considering that if S4 comes out within the next 2 months, then WotLK coming out when it's release date is supposedly set for (December I hear) means that S4 will last for over 7 months. Though with the length of S3, I wouldn't put it over Blizz to just say "screw it" and make repeat S3.
The gem market always surges with arena patches (more so IMO than badge loot patches) due to the ease of obtaining it. It will be interesting to see how the markets do in that patch considering people will have been able to stock up on badges for the epic gems for a few months.
If the gems are soulbound, then you won't be able to do anything with them without rerolling Jewelcrafting.
Originally Posted by Derrek
If you can't trade an epic gem, then only JC's will be able to benefit from them... so why not put a JC requirement on the gem.....
I don't think they'll be soulbound.
Adding the ability to cut via "Will Not Be Traded" would solve this.
You could still turn in all your badges for lots of epic gems, but reselling them and making a killing on the AH would be impossible.
The gem would still be soulbound to you, but a JC could cut it for you, akin to lockbox picking.
In the long run, badges for epic gems will obviously crash the market for both epic and rare gems. Epic gems can obviously not sell at 400g+ a piece (even up to 1k for spinels currently if they are even available) when a mildly competent group of 10 can get 15 of them in 2-3 hours. Add in all the badges from raid bosses.
Rare gems will be impacted hard as well. People will be much more willing to slide by with uncommon gems if they know rare gems are on the horizon either through personal farming or a slightly higher premium. Consider the current situation:
Bob Shadowpriest has crafted his new FSW shoulders. He needs a couple of spelldamage gems for them. He can:
a) Buy uncommon gems for 3g a piece, 6g for 14 +damage.
b) Buy rare gems for 65g a piece, 130g for 18 +damage.
Now add a third option that says "c) Buy epic gems for 200g a piece, 400g for 24+damage". Only someone that is extremely short sighted would go for option b. I dare say the rare gems will have to take at least a 50% plunge to be competetive, considering how cheap the uncommon gem alternative is.
In this exact scenario, the epic gem upgrade over uncommon costs 40g per +damage. The rare gem costs 31g per +damage and is a temporary upgrade. I personally wouldn't go for the rare gem until it was down to something like 10g per +damage, which is a gem cost of 23g.
Now it is possible that epic gems will command higher prices even after this goes live, but the ease of acquiring badges doesn't bode well for it. Say an average heroic with a decent group takes an hour and yields 20 badges, 1 void, 1 nether and 6 LPS (plus reputation, cash/cloth/greens, chance for rare drops and "fun" compared to solofarming). I'm pretty sure farming heroics in an average group won't yield significantly more than 100g/hour per person long term, since farming quicker than that for most people requires a dps spec and a good undisturbed spot or a gathering profession. People do dailies all the time for cash, remember, and they usually yield less than 100g/hour.
If we assume it is to yield 500g/hour for the group, the implied price of epic gems (with assumptions for the other prices) is:
6*20(LPS) + 1*30(VC) + 1*50(PN) + 1.3*x(gem) = 500
X=230gold
Increasing the rate of gold income allowed would increase the implied price of the gem significantly, but keep in mind that a stacked T6 group with practice could probably do heroics easily twice as fast, including kara for 3-4 times the gain. Unless we think such groups will be allowed to fetch 400g+/hour reliably regardless of their class (as long as they find a group), you can't really increase the expected gains for a "normal" group too much.
TLDR version;
I expect epic gems on mature servers below 300g in a few months, which combined with the low cost of uncommon gems makes me expect rare gem cuts below 30g.
Either that, or I'm going to be ridiculously filthy rich from farming heroics.
EDIT: Amusing observation: At 300g per epic gem, the daily heroic quest alone is worth 65g not counting instance drops.
I'd just like to comment that it's nice that Blizzard is making gold relevant again aside from just "paying the bills" in terms of repairs and consumables. This thread is all about how to make large quantities of gold, but before 2.4 comes out, what do you do with the large quantities of gold that you make? Epic flying mount is quite expensive, but we've had more than a year to collect 5000g. By now, most players who wanted an epic mount and put forth a reasonable effort have been able to collect enough over such a large expanse of time. I suppose you could buy arena points or buy 1850 personal rating, but that seems somewhat shady to many people including me.
Hopefully the Badge <-> Gold conversion through avenues such as BoE Nethers, BoE Vorticies, and purchasable epic gems will be able to provide a new market of luxury goods for those who have saved up some gold over the last year.
Edit: They've noticed this issue and have tried to address it with gimmicks such as 1000g hippogryph mounts and 1000g titles, but I like seeing more practical items like vorticies entering the market (seriously, how many people do you know actually ride the hippogryph around?)
I go nuts upgrading my character in every conceivable, expensive way. My PvP gear is all epic gems (AH bought, since our raid gems are restricted to pve gear). I just dropped maxed alchemy to level enchanting in a day since I switched to shadow recently. I fully plan, once 2.4 hits, to:
- Keep tailoring until I get the Sunfire robe and possibly healer equivalent.
- Drop tailoring, level JC and build the neck plus a healthy assortment of JC BoP gems.
- Drop JC, level LW for drums.
Others get flying mounts for alts, gear alts out in buyable gear, buy arena ratings, or simply sit on their mountain of gold and laugh.
I feel like Jerome Kerviel after the epic gem announcement: 18 spinels cut/uncut, 7 pyrestones, 6 lionseyes, 5 sapphires, 2 amethysts. Pre-Notes value: ~15,000. Post-notes value: 5000 if I'm lucky. Obviously they will increase in price over the next month as it is obvious that 2.4 is not coming out tomorrow, but prices will spike up ^ and then down with the 2.4 release, never to regain their previous high. BUMMER MAN!
Though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours, and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable; I simply am not there.
I go nuts upgrading my character in every conceivable, expensive way. My PvP gear is all epic gems (AH bought, since our raid gems are restricted to pve gear). I just dropped maxed alchemy to level enchanting in a day since I switched to shadow recently. I fully plan, once 2.4 hits, to:
- Keep tailoring until I get the Sunfire robe and possibly healer equivalent.
- Drop tailoring, level JC and build the neck plus a healthy assortment of JC BoP gems.
- Drop JC, level LW for drums.
Won't the BOP gems be unusable when you've dropped JC? Hmm, ok, there's no description on the items [Kailee's Rose], but I'd still be wary if they still work and/or you still can socket them after dropping JC.
03/04/08, 2:28 PM
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