The icy art of making gold - Page 29

Targrend · 01/24/09, 7:14 PM

On my server, the cost of northrend herbs hasn't yet increased to compensate for the increased cost of ink. Buying herbs and milling them is a good moneymaker at the moment.

Xeno · 01/25/09, 2:46 AM

After fishing in howling fjord for a few days for: One That Didn't Get Away - Achievement - World of Warcraft I've discovered that northrend fish sell reasonably well for their time investment. 3 of the 4 fish caught there are worth between 50 silver to a gold per fish and glacial salmon seems to have limitless demand right now with fish feasts having just been released. If you can include fishing in some kind of multitasking it's just pure profit. Having said all that I'd like to share with you a cautionary tale. After fishing up the [Dark Herring] (1:1000-1:10000 drop rate) I had, as you can imagine, thousands of these fish that I needed to unload, and quickly. My bank alts mailbox and banks were overflowing. Well to my amazement, last night I discovered that I was banned for economy exploitation. I sent them an e-mail and whatnot but as of this moment, no wow for me.

To be clear, I was selling 5-7 stacks of 4 types of fish cheaply, and putting up new stacks whenever they were bought. In the time that I began selling these fish I had made roughly 4k gold. And of course there was no botting or anything involved, just watching tv while fishing.

edit: Got a very generic password reset email roughly 36 hours post ban. No details, but resolved!

ECZO · 01/26/09, 8:34 PM

To my great amazement Infinite Dusts and Cosmic Essences are holding their own even after the materials requirements nerfs; that's could be because my realm has been the target of a free transfer from an overpopulated realm which populations isn't know to be formed by top notch raiders.. Prices had even risen by a very satisfying 20%

Am I the only experiencing this good market moment due to a change in the server population?

thefatman999 · 01/26/09, 8:48 PM

I'm on a server with free transfers off of it, and Infinite dusts and Cosmic essences still sell just as well as before. I also was surprised, as I expected the changes to effect the prices a lot more than they did. I expected cosmics to lower and dream shards to raise in price. However, cosmics are still 25-30g (normal), and dream shards are still 8-12g, so nothing really changed as far as prices for enchanting mats.

Unity · 01/26/09, 9:12 PM

Pure speculation on my behalf but I imagine we're (the situation is similar on my server) seeing prices hold steady because the reduction in demand through recipe changes is being countered by a reduction in supply due to more of the population having completed questing and therefore having fewer quest greens for disenchantment.

coredumperror · 01/26/09, 10:33 PM

I think the most likely reason for prices having actually gone up, rather than down, is that demand for the best enchants has gone considerably up because they're cheaper. That demand has more than offset the reduction in total mats required. Also, the Stoneguard Band and Shadowmight Ring mats have gone up in price, cutting the potential profit from buying eternal shadow and eternal earth to turn into dusts and cosmics. Therefore less people are converting eternals into enchanting mats, reducing the supply slightly.

ECZO · 01/27/09, 5:34 AM

Originally Posted by coredumperror

I think the most likely reason for prices having actually gone up, rather than down, is that demand for the best enchants has gone considerably up because they're cheaper. That demand has more than offset the reduction in total mats required. Also, the Stoneguard Band and Shadowmight Ring mats have gone up in price, cutting the potential profit from buying eternal shadow and eternal earth to turn into dusts and cosmics. Therefore less people are converting eternals into enchanting mats, reducing the supply slightly.

Don't know if you're talking about Vek'nilash EU or US, but on the european server mats costs stayed stable (eternal earths) or went down thanks to the bigger supply of gems (saronite ore halved it's value since the patch.. mostly because you can gather twice the previous amount in the same time).

Your idea about an increased demand for top end enchants could explain this market behaviour.

Dream shards on the other end are still disappointing (12g), there's still no point in mass producing them. Guess there was a huge stock which is going to get dumped soon or later.

Olla · 01/27/09, 5:34 AM

I've made about 12k gold selling sapphire spell threads and the frost resist cloth gear on the AH on Hordeside, Lightninghoof. Tailoring is very unpopular here and there is a healthy raid population, I rarely have any competitors and I'm able to buy up and relist for my price when i do. The robe is going for about 800, the gloves and belt 600 each, which isn't bad for an hour of farming.

ECZO · 01/27/09, 8:19 AM

Originally Posted by Olla

I've made about 12k gold selling sapphire spell threads and the frost resist cloth gear on the AH on Hordeside, Lightninghoof. Tailoring is very unpopular here and there is a healthy raid population, I rarely have any competitors and I'm able to buy up and relist for my price when i do. The robe is going for about 800, the gloves and belt 600 each, which isn't bad for an hour of farming.

There's no speculation margin on that item on my realm, even if you craft it with your own mats you're earning 10-15g over the cost of the mats and that's before the ah cut.. not really worth it.

On the other hand eternal fires at 40g each are screaming for some serious engineering farming in scholazar basin.

Perimeter · 01/27/09, 8:45 AM

I go back and do all the quests I didn't do while leveling

Carnivean · 01/27/09, 9:10 AM

Originally Posted by Perimeter

I go back and do all the quests I didn't do while leveling

That's an awesome and totally innovative way of making money !

@Enchanting Stuff:
Yeah the prizes are suprisingly stable. Dream Shards have risen from ~ 8g to 16 - 20g depending on the day and the time. So there is definately Gold to be made, but the market volume is still pretty small compared to dust or Greater Essences.

One thing everyone should try is to set up deals with the well known farmers. For example Eternal Earth is normally for 8g at the lowest in the AH on my server, but I set up deals wit 3 or 4 of the bigger farmers, who on someday put as much as 100 Eternals or more on the AH, now they sent me the Eternals for 7g COD per Eternal. I don't have to check the AH every 30 minutes and have an edge to my rivals on the Dust/Essence market, because my base matieral is ~15% cheaper.

Another sure income are the world drop JC recipes. They are few but I am the only one who has the Sovereign Twiligt Opal cut and it is a steady income evry day.

McInaction · 01/27/09, 11:13 AM

Originally Posted by ECZO

On the other hand eternal fires at 40g each are screaming for some serious engineering farming in scholazar basin.

It's rather silly easy, there's never any mobs near them and even with 4 other people harvesting them you can get 5-6 eternal fires in an hour, alone I can get 10 easy. Mannoroth seems to have a healthy population of engineers and I frequently see others zapping up clouds, but eternal fires still hover at 40g. The demand for cheap fires is so high that I can throw up 20 of em at prime time for like 5g less and they'll start selling before I finish posting them all. The price never goes down because the gatherers are never in competition with each other and trying to undercut one another.

Nostrum · 01/27/09, 1:28 PM

Originally Posted by McInaction

It's rather silly.... The price never goes down because the gatherers are never in competition with each other and trying to undercut one another.

Why waste 100g by massive undercuts then when you could just list them at 1c under? They will always sell at prime time.
Not that I'd be complaining if I was on your server.

MatsT · 01/27/09, 2:04 PM

Originally Posted by Nostrum

Why waste 100g by massive undercuts then when you could just list them at 1c under? They will always sell at prime time.
Not that I'd be complaining if I was on your server.

This is a common misconception that people who doesn't undertand economics makes. If there are more people who want to sell Eternal Fires at 40g than people who wants to buy Eternal Fires at 40g everyone will not be able to sell theirs. Even if they wait, there will be more and more gathered. The only way to make sure that you are the one selling your Eternal fires, is to lower the price. When the price gets low enough, some people will stop gathering because it's not worth it, and some people will start buying because they can afford it.

In a normal economy, people would not care about 1 cent less. There are many other factors involved when you choose where to buy something. You would have to lower the price by a lot more than 1 cent to make sure that your wares sold. In WoW this is not true. Because of the automatic sorting of the auction house, being 1c cheaper will pretty much always guarantee you get your stuff sold first. Therefore, it's common to undercut with 1c.

It is very important to notice, that unless prices go down with a noticable amount, more stuff will not be sold. The same amount of Eternal Fires will be sold, you will just change who gets to sell them. Therefore there must be a loser in this scenario. As long as you are selling more of your stuff, someone else is selling less. In this case, the loser is the one who can not constantly guard the auction house, undercutting everyone else posting with 1c. Someone who wants to put stuff up on the auction house, then log off and come back one or several day later, has no benefit from undercutting by 1c. Someone will just undercut him right away, and his wares will not be sold. However, if he lowers the price with 5g, more people will start buying eternal fires and fewer will undercut by 1c. This will go on until there are no longer any cheap eternal fires on the auction house. By doing this, he ensures that his items will sell. If stuff would "always sell" at primetime even for 1c undercut, you would probably be even better off posting it 1g higher, since the amount of stuff beeing bought is currently higher than the amount being put up.

To everyone who gets angry with others who undercut by "way too much". Just buy their stuff and put it up with a 1c undercut. You will make money and it will always still sell, right? At least that's what you claim in your whines...

Talgog · 01/27/09, 3:38 PM

Originally Posted by Nostrum

Why waste 100g by massive undercuts then when you could just list them at 1c under? They will always sell at prime time.

Depends whether the initial price is market-clearing or not. Narrow undercuts are dangerous because they (a) can't be bought out and relisted at a profit and (b) are not really different from the gouge price.

The WoW market may be very good at sorting best price, but if there's an obviously broken market, nothing is going to sell to natural buyers. People either can't or won't pay, say, 80g/stack of iron ore. If you list at 79g99s99c, I'm still not buying that because the price is outrageous.

You can go days without natural buyers depending on what the item is. I can't count the number of buyer strikes and consequent price crashes I've seen. Speculators will always buy, but they won't buy on something where they will surely lose money. Monopolists will also always buy if they view it as a threat to the price they are trying to set. And that's pretty much the only thing a monopolist can do because it isn't really possible to control the means of production or distribution in WoW. There's too much real estate, requiring way too many people working in concert. And there is no barrier to entry - if ore is overpriced, roll mining and sell ore in the trade channel.

The upshot is that if you dramatically undercut a high market price, one of three things will happen. The natural buyer will buy up because, shock, prices finally came down. The monopolist will buy to try to protect his price by "hiding" the lower price. And the speculator will buy to do arbitrage.

You don't really get any of those three effects for sure with very narrow undercuts, and you certainly won't get the latter two.