That makes sense, but jewelcrafting is my main profession and my source of income and untill I get enough designs from the vendor I doubt selling dragon's eyes for less than 1000g each would be smart.

If each Eye is worth ~750g (as on Khaz'goroth) it'll take a fair bit of work to make as much from a recipe as from selling the eyes you could have bought instead of the recipe.

This completely depends on the scale you produce gems on. Personally I keep a lot of gems on the auction house, and a popular cut bought with tokens will earn me more than the 2.3k gold within a week or two. They might be a great way of making money short-term, but I don't stop producing after two weeks.

Has anyone had any luck making a decent amount of money with Inscription? I was lucky and managed to get both the horde first Bestial Wrath and Frostfire glyphs on Cairne, so I made a pretty penny off of those glyphs for a week or so, but it seems that making any money with the profession is entirely luck based.

Are the new Darkmoon cards selling anywhere? If so, for how much? I can't get them to sell at all on Cairne, but I think part of the problem is that the general WoW populace is ignorant to what the cards turn into thus far.

As you did, I got a couple of decent discoveries early and sold a few of them, but nothing substantial (maybe 25 total before undercutting crashed the market of each glyph). At this point on my server Eternal Life is basically impossible to buy, perhaps from other people making cards, but there have been very few of the new cards for sale on the AH either. With current prices it would take me about 300g per card in mats to make one, and I'd be hard pressed to even get a hold of those mats without farming them myself. I know there will be demand for the Nobles deck from some classes, but most of the new cards in general seem pretty lackluster. I'll be keeping an eye on the market while the fair is open next week, but I don't know if I'll be dipping into it or not. At this point crafting seems to be the only source for the new cards, and people may be expecting that to change.

Overall as a profession the design of Inscription seems very poor. Having every single northrend Glyph be a discovery means it's currently impossible for even several scribes to cover the inscription needs of a guild, whereas in three months everyone will have all of them, but by then there will be very little need. Combine that with the nerfing of scrolls, leveling gaps (290-300, not being able to go over 365 pre-wrath), and poor craftables (the offhands are mediocre at best). The entire execution seems very haphazard. I understand they had to put the majority of their time into designing the glyphs themselves, but it seems like they tried too hard to make Inscription different but then didn't put enough time into what they actually ended up with. I do like the mechanic of being able to mill any herb, the shoulder enchant bonus is great, and crafting the cards adds a unique element. But it's certainly not much of a profession to profit from (not that I really care), and I have no need or motivation to level it past 400 other than one point per day doing research, which is a shame. Hopefully it will get a streamlining and tweaking pass in one of the future LK patches.

That's pretty much the same experience I've had. I, however, chose to drop over 6k gold on the AH to buy the mats and get the realm first inscription on Cairne. Not really sure why I did it, but I had money to burn, so I figured why not.

I've made a good chunk of it back through selling glyphs - as stated, that bestial wrath discovery was a godsend, I was getting about 200 gold per, and sold probably 15 before I started getting undercut. I still can't sell a card worth a damn, though, sadly. I've been able to construct two full decks - Prisms and Undeath.

As far as the cards being lackluster, I think [Darkmoon Card: Death] has some promise.

While I can't speak for the design of inscription specifically, isn't that much the same as with all professions - including the secondary ones - in this expansion, and is it really a bad thing?

Or rather; Is a design in which it is desireable/beneficial to max out a profession you're expected to keep for the entire expansion cycle in the first two weeks?

I kinda like this approach where the actual level matters less - and in some cases is more of a challenge rather than a grind - so there's room to fill them in later. If they decide to add more crafted gear, they don't need to stack it up at the cap. The people who are capped will be the people who are either completionists or the ones who genuinely uses the profession - because in many cases capping it offers no tangiable benefits yet, it's just something you can do. It feels like they've got more room to make crafting an actual progression than they had previously.

If there's progression in the crafting, and some future refining, then I absolutely agree with you. Even if they just add a glamour benefit to being maxxed (like the different Flying Carpets for tailoring), it would be nice. I think a lot of professions are hoping for this, as Inscription is hardly in the worst position overall in terms of usefulness. I know they have specifically said that they want people to get use out of their profession even if they aren't maxxed, which is definitely a good thing, but there should still be some point to being maxxed as well, they don't have to be mututally exclusive.

Considering the state that it hit live servers, especially the 290 to 300 gap where the inscriptions you should be leveling on require an ink you can't make yourself until 300, it just seems like overall the profession was just thrown together and not given enough attention. We've seen this before, but you would think a profession they announced well over a year before it hit live would have had some extra time spent on it in development. All of the annoyances were also discovered and reported in the Beta, and I think most of us were surprised when it hit live in that same state with virtually no improvement. I do sincerely hope they give Inscription a top to bottom review and refinement some time in the future, and I hope we see an evolution of all crafting skills throughout the expansion. However, they've given no real indication they intend to do that, and if anything seem adverse to making any of the crafting skills too desirable.

Remember to only count the premium the specific cut provides. If you can get 120g for the token bought cut or 100g for your best other cut of the same gem then you'll need to make and sell over a hundred of that specific token cut to break even on the cost of the recipe. So eyes are looking good to me, I'll go back and start filling out my recipe list once a few more people start making the eyes.

Undeath and Chaos haven't been selling too well. Prisms sells ok (generaly you can make SOME profit on these). Nobles cards are where the money is though. They're easily selling for 1.2k each and the aces go over over 2k. Granted its the week before the fair and these are all new, but it seems like the Greatness deck is easily the best out of them all.

I believe the consensus on beta was that all cards are equally likely to be produced, so people paying more for the ace seems kind of silly :p

Greatness is definitely the most desirable deck though, partly because it's got obvious big numbers and partly because there aren't really any other trinkets that replicate it. Whereas even if prisms/chaos/undeath are better than the alternatives, there's always another trinket that's 'close enough'.

I bought the titanium spellshock ring gemmed of AH for 3500g just because trying to buy/find sellers for dragon's eye and the variable prices was too much of a hassle. Never underestimate peoples lazyness and wish for getting things fast and easy.


Personally I'm enchanter/tailorer though it's quite okay to earn money from tailoring (wispcloaks going from 2000-3000g with own-farmed mats that take ~1 hour to get) the only way I've found ways to earn money of enchanting is disenchanting and selling the mats. People just refuse to pay good money for enchants even with my own mats. People come and ask for enchants with my mats worth anything between 500 and 2000g and expect to get it for 100g. Same with 20slot bags, mats from AH for such a bag ran for ~300g on my server, people barely want to pay 100g for a crafted one.

I found that people don't pay for enchants based on what mats cost, but on the value they perceive on the enchant. For example, at 3.0 after they introduced armor vellum, I sold a lot of surefooted by depleting my stash of DE epics voids. (I don't know when it happened, but they nerfed the mats needed for surefooted from primal nether to essentially 4 voids). Surefooted sold for the same price as other kara dropped enchants like sunfire and mongoose. And you'd know the difference in mats price between them if you are an enchanter.

Currently, there aren't anything rare from enchanting. (No lucky discovery, no daily-based grinding). Dream shards are 10-15g each on my server. Every enchanter can afford buying all the patterns from the vendor. It's not surprising that you can't cut a profit on it when everyone else will be using the same patterns for levelling.

Edit: You mentioned wispcloak for tailoring. It fits the rare category at the moment, since it requires the northrend dungeon master achievement. You might be one of a handful tailors who can make it, and actually bothered to put them on AH.

I am finding the same problem as above with the mass availability of the profession recipes. As an engineer my outlets for money making a quite limited, I did get to 450 fairly early and had most of the materials for a armor plated shot gun so I made one and based on the price then that materials were going for put it on the AH for 5k, and it sold. Since then I've seen people advertising to make either 450 gun pattern for tips. I put another APSG up , but it hasn't sold and when I advertise in trade I get interest but no genuine offers or responses when I quote what I consider a reasonable price. Having these patterns on the trainer plus the fact that frozen orbs prices are bottoming out looks poor for tradeskillers on making money. Jewelcrafters who grind out Kirin-Tor rep seem in a good position to make some money for a little while.

I've found mining to be quiet profitable so far provided you are able to actually farm Saronite / Titanium. Have to start at around 5am in the morning when everyones asleep though

I've decided to level cooking on a few 70+ alts so I can increase my supply of Northrend spices. Has anyone figured out the minimum cooking skill level necessary to get the cooking daily? I'm fairly sure it is below 375. They're all below 100 skill currently and don't see the quest yet.

I am hopeful that increasing my supply of spices will finally make it easier to earn money through cooking because they are currently the bottleneck to making larger amounts of buff food. Buying them on the AH is currently impractical because the high price eliminates food profits.

You only need 350 cooking, which is quite easy to get. My 70 hunter had 364 and could see the quest.

I can confirm. I didn't max cooking in BC, and had 353 cooking when I got into Dalaran, and that was enough. The dailies have a specific 350 cooking requirement when you need a quest combine.

Did anyone else noticed an increased droprate of Crystallized Life through herbalism and a lowered droprate on Frost Lotus recently ?

I find that Thorium is still very profitable. I don't really know how long this can last but I'm finding it less busy than saronite areas.

It doesn't. The ICD is 45 seconds, making the proc, well, lackluster.

It's a bad trinket that is pretty unlikely to be fixed if past Darkmoon cards are any indication.

The problem with trying to make Nobles decks right now is that 3/4 cards have a value of nearly nothing and 1/4 of cards are Nobles. That makes the cost of a Nobles ~1200g less whatever you can get for selling off the other three cards. I'd estimate that value at 400g or so on my server for the three cards combined. Effectively, each nobles card is therefore on the order of 800g and in truth it's probably worse. The higher end herbs that would actually reliably yield 6 snowfall inks run 5g a piece. Using only inexpensive herbs may or may not be cost effective.

People will pay, of course, but 8000g+ for a trinket without even seeing what Ulduar loot looks like seems excessive.

The last 2 days I have been collecting Eternal Life at a really above normal rate. I thought I was just crazy. Seems like it will only get even easier too now that the elemental mobs in Wintergrasp will be properly "herbable" after they die. Prices were bound to drop because once the Faire is gone the card demand will be much lower, so this will only help (or hurt, depending on your profession) even further.

Min-maxers will always want to have the best they can get at the moment regardless, this is an MMO remember? Besides, smart players came close to breaking even if not profiting off crafting those decks. Personally I crafted more then half the cards myself, traded dupes for cards I needed, and bought cards to fill in gaps in other decks crafting those as well which will most definitely sell.