Or they could just release it right off of the bat. Remember they are promoting 10 and 25 man raids as separate progression tracks. As such they probably don't have a problem with people who have been farming Naxx 25 buying Ulduar 10 gear as soon as it goes live. They don't presume people will go Naxx 25 > Ulduar 10 > Ulduar 25, they presume you will go from Naxx 25 > Ulduar 25.

And again, to tie this to the thread topic -- the decision is, as a 25 man raider, do you dump your stockpile of valor badges in BoE bracers now or do you hold them given the likely scenario that 10 man Tier 8 will be purchasable when 3.1 goes live. Personally I prefer the option to get a potentially good two piece bonus and/or better itemization right at the start versus an extra cache of gold.

Of course, I could be dead wrong and they could be content not adding any pieces of 10 man Tier 8 gear to valor badge vendors... although that would be disappointing from the perspective of a pure 10 man raider who would want the same option he had for 10 man Naxx.

a "pure 10 man raider" would not have any valor emblems and would therefore not be disappointed.

You missed my point. I meant that as a 10 man raider collected heroic badges in Naxx 10 he had the option of using them to buy two pieces of the tier gear. One would imagine he would be disappointed if he were unable to buy the 10 man Tier 8 with valor badges as he collects them doing Ulduar 10.

This is pretty irrelevant, considering that tier 7 was available on vendors from release, we can't really tell for sure what the next step will be. Granted, you had to actually farm some heroics/raids to gather the badges, but tier 7 10 man was a massive upgrade over the heroic blues. So, now you have your emblems of valor and t7.25, and tier 8.10 is roughly equivalent. If you're farming 25 man content, you're really not gaining anything by switching to 8.10 if you have a guild capable of mustering 25 people for a raid (and right now, that's really not hard) until you've actually got one or more pieces of t8.25 and want to switch to the new set bonus. And, if you're a dedicated 10 man raider, you will need to farm the EoVs anyway. All in all, I would say that Blizz has probably planned this out and has little to fear concerning an inflation of tier 8 right from the start.

To make matters interesting, the 8.10 parts you can buy with valor emblems could just as well be the shoulders and legs, and the ones you buy with conquest emblems two other pieces to complement them. That way, you're basically spending upwards of 60 emblems on a t8.10 and a heap of gold on gems and enchants to get stuff that is marginally if at all better than what you're wearing.

Anyway, another thing I'm guessing will happen in 3.1 is that there may be some new additions to professions. Think 'Executioner' enchant in the Zul'Aman patch. Hearts of Darkness for BT. Sunmotes for SWP. While we could debate if this is a good thing or not, these materials, as well as access to any recipes based on those could provide some interesting niches for craftsmen for a while.

But, back to more realistic business opportunities. Between the possible emblem vendors, the guaranteed new VoA wing and the new gear obtained the old fashioned way, through raids or arenas, passively stocking up on enchants/armor kits/threads is likely to earn you good money, like before every new content patch. Prices sure as hell won't go down on most commodity goods, but as the patch draws near, the cost of mats involved may increase.

The bag market might still be a good idea - at least, on my server - considering that a lot of people are now swimming in cash because casual raiding is dirt cheap if you don't need to flask up for some reason. This is where the accessibility factor comes in. You have gold, you want an extra bag. Do you a) grind some mats and pester a tailor friend b)buy the mats and pester a tailor friend or c) buy the bag? If you're not a pathological min-maxer, you will probably go for the last option. I make it a point not to underestimate the laziness of the usual AH buyers. Which is the reason I occasionally sell some of the proc flasks (which I get for free, as a bonus to what I farmed for) or weapon vellums and can still make a profit.

Oh, and one more thing. The blow engineering will take from the new non-consumable arrows has been brought up somewhere in this thread. I'd wait it out until the PTR is available, because I'm not dismissing the possibility that engineers might get one or more ammo recipes. Granted, they will not be a steady source of income, but with sufficient pre planning, you could hit the jackpot in the first day.

Considering the fact that Blizzard has created 10 and 25 man progress in order for smaller guilds to be able to progress
People raiding in 10 man will probably move from ILVL 200 (213 from end bosses) to 213 (226 end Bosses)
Wich is the same as curent 25 man progress
There for, it will be stupid to introduce different badges for the same purchasable items with valor tokens (I-lvl 213) s curently we have boots, bracers, back
My asumption is that T8.1 will be purchasable with the same Valor badges and could be linked to a time based unlocking vendor scheme. Even a few but not many new items could be introduced to make the people that raid 25 save their old badges instead of selling bracers
A new trinket or a few things with item lvl 226 that cost more making the 25 raiders go back to the old content and not that easily obtainable at first.

So i am going to save all the badges i get my hands on from now on and the ocasional 1000 2000 gold that bracers are sold on my server will not make me richer
After all i read this forum every day and have enought other money makers to lay on than something that i can be sorry later on
Do not sell your Valor Badges

Note also that the Taunka have a lot more faction quests than the Frostborn. After you've finished every single quest, alliance ends a couple hundred points into Friendly, while horde characters are 75% into Honored, almost Revered. The 250pt daily Frostborn requires 2 months of 7/7 grind to catch up.

If those two factions are used (and I don't see why they should not) as an Ulduar-based reputation, the solution is simple: make Ulduar mobs give reputation, and add a couple dailies to those who don't raid, but want some rep-based goodies for sale (we're talking how to monetize this, right?). A 250pt daily for the Taunka, and a second 350pt daily that unlocks at revered for the Frostborn, and you would have characters that do a rep grind finish at exalted at the same time.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. At 24 emblems a week, with a potential 5 extra every week you can build up a supply rather fast, it all depends on how soon the badge rewards are made known on the test server and how long the test period is. Considering it's a new raid 6 weeks at the least doesn't seem to farfetched. That's 144 badges at a minimum, which if they keep the current pricing is more then enough to buy 2 new tier tokens.

So in short, if you start saving up badges again when Ulduar hits the test servers, it's soon enough to get a decent supply.

Quite true in my opinion.

For non-raiders, heroics will still be interesting for all the items in there, and for the BoH-item-rewards.
For raiders going into Ulduar, 5-man-heroics will still be interesting in order to obtain Frozen Orbs or Emblems of Heroism in order to buy Gems and/or Frozen Orbs.

So there is still money to be made from heroics even if you are raiding in Ulduar.

See the replies from Bornakk in the following thread. He confirms that Naxx25 = Ulduar 10.

This has been a very eye-opening thread so far. It has also inspired me to once again take my professions rather seriously.


I thank the people who mentioned the level 70ish jewelcrafting rings/necks for disenchanting.


Today I purchased many eternal earths and sun crystals at a ratio of 1:4. I browsed through the various uncut gems on the auction house and found many stacks of sun crystals at 20g/stack. Eternal earths have been high for a while now, in the 7g range. I knew about the higher level rings that require 2 eternals and disenchant into more materials, but on my realm there is a razor thin profit margin on those, to the point I didn't bother anymore.

I'd actually forgotten about the low level rings, and probably would have never bothered if it weren't for the info in this thread.



So 4 eternal earth (28g), 20 sun crystal (20g), and I walk away with 20x level 70 rings. At a cost of 2.4g to create, these have profit written all over them on my realm, where infinite dust sells for 5g a piece and greater cosmics go for 20g each. Each ring itself only gives 1-2 dust, or 1 lesser cosmic, with a low chance to produce a small dream shard, but the name of the game is quantity.

I now find myself with a way to mass produce enchanting materials at less then half the listed AH cost. Now I'm deciding where to go with all these materials. The first though is of course, simply listing them all on the auction house as raw materials. But with enchanting I've found that personally, I can pull very nice profits selling enchant scrolls on the AH. That includes buying materials at cost from the AH (ie: 5-6g per dust, 25g weapon vellums and 4g armor vellums), crafting a scroll and still seeing 60-150% profit after expenses.


To unload mass amounts of enchanting materials, this will be the route I'll take. Now to further narrow the market I can significantly cut my costs since I'm paying far less for enchanting materials then my competitors (unless they knew the secret before I did). Instead of creating markups with the mentality that I'm paying 5g per dust, I can do it knowing I only payed ~2.2g instead.

My theory is that many buyers will love me for providing such cheap enchant scrolls on the auction house ("cheaper then the cost of mats"), and I'll be able to move significantly more volume.



So hopefully this helped some people, as this thread in general has been a very large help to me, as well as being a large kick in the rear to get making gold again. After multiple epic flyers and crafted gear, I just let myself coast and watched my gold slowly dwindle away.


I also got back on my druid for some alchemy. With a little napkin math and some time on the auction house with my alchemy window open, I was able to find many gold making oppurtunities and I created a wide array of elixirs that will sell for a tidy profit. Something I should have been doing daily for months now, if not years, but this thread was the simple kick in the rear I needed to get going again. Pure profit from alchemy is really quite simple, and I was surprised to see the steep profit margins other alchemists were shooting for when I was only interested in far more reasonable profit margins (I believe I like to think in volume, where other sellers are more interested in chasing those 200-300% markups but seeing far fewer sales).

Selling a crafted item (any crafted item) with mats you farmed yourself for less than the price that raw mats sell for is still selling yourself short. Unless you are absolutely certain that you have volumes which will not sell as raw materials, but will sell as enchant scrolls (and enchanting scrolls themselves are likely to be much lower volume items than raw materials), you are better just to sell the raw materials (unless you are happy to take the loss for emotional reasons, such as feeling like you are beating the system).

If you only sell a few of each scroll at such low price, two things happen:
- Low demand scrolls are bought only from you. Most enchanters don't bother with stuff like Spell Piercing anyway, so not much change there. Otherwise they will probably stop selling them and focus on higher demand scrolls. You may get some increased sales as people who normally gather their own materials and have a friend enchant, now come to you because you are cheaper.
- High demand scrolls are quickly bought out from you, and either used by happy customers, or relisted at a higher price. Either way, the more expensive scrolls will probably also sell and you have just missed all that profit. You would have to match the demand for each enchantment to really make a difference.

I've seen the discussion wether to keep Badges of Valor or not. If I interpret the following blue post correctly, there will be new badges called Emblems of Conquest. Please do correct me if I'm wrong.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Arena Matchmaking System FAQ

If I'm right, please in the name of all that's purple, get rid of valor badges.

I'm not sure why you're saying this this vehemently.

They made it clear that Emblems of Valor will not be able to buy Ulduar/25 gear.

They made it clear that there aren't plans to add to the Emblem of Heroism vendor at this time.

But that's all they've really made clear. It's a good bet that Ulduar/10 will drop Emblems of Valor, but Blizzard hasn't actually come out and said so yet. But it is a pretty good bet. And if they do that, they have not made it clear that nothing will be added to the Valor vendor. It's a decent bet that T8 will come in T8.10 and T8.25 flavors again, and that two T8.10 pieces will be buyable via Valor emblems. This wouldn't give folks with a ton of ilevel 213 gear any upgrades, but it would give them sidegrades that can participate in the T8 set bonuses, allowing folks to get the 2-piece set bonus right out of the gate, and the 4-piece set bonus that much sooner.

Given that, I'm not sure why dumping valor badges right now should be seen as a no-brainer.

It becomes an issue of demand though, and awareness. I did an experiment with enchanting scrolls some time ago, crafting 5 each of 6 common enchanting scrolls. Of them only Icewalker sold more than 1-2 a day and only 2-3 at that. It took almost a week to unload them all, and in that time I could have sold the mats to make them and then some. However it would still be wise if you're willing to put in the effort to sell both scrolls and mats.

I think there's a couple problems with enchanting scrolls right now that are preventing them from selling as well as they could. First there's a lack of awareness, second the AH UI for scrolls is pretty terrible. Enchants for every slot are lumped into Item Enhancements under Consumables, making it difficult to search for a glove enchant for example. The names are also quite long and it's hard to see at a glance what each scroll is for. If scrolls were brought more into line with gems, having more specific AH sub categories and a more user-friendly naming scheme I think they could be really profitable. In the meantime though I've found them to sell fairly slow.

One of the things I've learned from this thread and playing the AH is that posting items at low cost doesn't necessarily make them sell faster. If the user doesn't know how to find the enchant, or that they can buy it on the AH, they're not going to look.

Please delete.

I still find the risk to reward worth the effort.

For instance, uncut gems would be the most flexible of all gems, and also generally the cheapest. People can buy them for low prices, find a jewelcrafter with their desired cut, give a fair tip and they'll still generally spend less then they would on a cut gem buyout. This isn't always the case, but sometimes uncuts are 20-25g below the cost of cut gems on the AH, especially in the red gem market I find on my server.

Yet even though players have this option, the careful jewelcrafter can still make very large profits cutting gems aquired through various means and placing them on the AH.

I find similiar results with scrolls. They take a little longer to sell, but the idea is to make more gold through selling them at a price higher then the cost of raw materials. At the end of the day, this is what we try to do with all crafting professions. My jewelcrafter can sell raw gems faster then cut gems, but the cuts make me more gold, so I produce cuts and sell a little slower. I also have a herb/alchemist with the same mentality. I can make pretty good gold unloading raw herbs on the AH. I can make even more gold carefully turning those herbs into elixirs and selling at a higher premium. They sell slower, but they bring in more gold. I can even buy raw herbs from the auction house (which I've been doing lately), buy vials from the vendor, use these materials to create elixirs and still turn a profit. Otherwise why would I even have alchemy? I'd just drop it for yet another gathering profession if I couldn't turn a profit from it.

Going back to enchanting scrolls, I'm slowly climbing back into that market. The one thing that surprised me was the obscene margins other enchanters are chasing. I'm talking up to 500% in many cases. I'm not one to judge what others choose to sell (or buy) their goods for, it was just surprising, and I couldn't see anyone paying such steep premiums for their enchants. In my opinion, the sellers may get lucky occasionally, but it would probably be the exception not the rule.



Here's a nice simple enchant, 28 spellpower to gloves

Material List:
4x Infinite Dust
1x Lesser Cosmic Essence
1x Armor Vellum III

On my server, the dust goes for 5g a piece, the cosmic essence would be 5g as well (since greaters are stable at 15g or less), and armor vellums are down to 2.5g when buying in bulk.

So to buyout materials from the auction house, it would cost 27.5 gold. I checked what others are selling for, and they're asking prices like 159 gold. I can't see anyone paying this, unless they are rather oblivious to how enchanting works. But what if that scroll were 39 gold, or even 49 gold? I put 2 up this morning for 49g while the competitors were selling for 159g, and mine sold in minutes. I made 2 more before leaving for a few hours, came back they sold as well.

That's just one example of an enchant scroll, I think for the moment I'll deal in these low material, low cost scrolls. I'm just using them as a way to unload my stock of dust/essence which I can produce daily. I could sell the raw materials for 25g and still be seeing a profit, or I could use those raw materials, and create something that sells for 40, 50 or 60g.

The key differences being that trade isn't filled with Jewelcrafters begging for people to bring them business, and some gem cuts are far from guaranteed. That was a key point in my argument, there are enchanters on every corner with hastily scrawled cardboard signs. (Your server/faction may be different, but this is how it is on mine).

Obviously you've had success with some recipes and I wasn't claiming that was impossible. I was merely suggesting reasons why the scroll market seems less dominant than the materials market.

Good point.


On another topic, I have a pair of alts in their low 70s right now. I really don't have the desire to level them to 80, at least in the short term, and I have no long term plans to level them either.

One of these alts has alchemy, which is a very nice profession for an alt. I'm trying to think of 2-3 other crafting professions to level, things that would be well suited for ~70ish alts who just sit in a major city most of the time.

I'm thinking about cooking on both, though I haven't done many of the dailies on my main characters. Some of them were rather simple (chilled meat, carrots in Crystalsong, though I may have to strip and suicide jump to get these on a 70ish alt).

I have enchanting and jewelcrafting covered on my mains, so a few thoughts kicking around my head were blacksmithing, inscription, leatherworking, tailoring or engineering.

I'd like to shy away from professions where most of the good patterns come from end-game rep factions, since for the time being, these characters will stay around level 71-72.

Inscription would be perfect for an alt - no recipes to farm (yet) and also very easy in terms of transportation, just set their hearthstone to Dalaran so you have access to the ink vendor, and park them near an auction house to buy and sell.

The professions that immediately jump out at me are those that either have cooldowns, or synegize well with other professions. Mining could well be worthwhile on one alt to smelt Titansteel. You could park said alt next to a mailbox in Winterspring/Silithus and mail transmute mats to/from your main and do Thorium runs when you find yourself bored. Unless you have a specific useful strategy, all of the crafting professions you mentioned are probably mediocre for an alt - they each provide benefit mainly through their buff (ie. the sockets, fur linings), and would likely cost more to level than you will ever make out of them.

The cooking dalies are nice and easy - if you have a supply of chilled meat, the carrots are the most difficult of the quests (especially for a low level alt, as there are a handful of lvl 78 wolves wandering around which you need to keep an eye on).

On enchanting mats, don't forget that the mats themselves don't have a listing fee, so there's no need to undercut if you're not in a hurry to make money.