Congratulations on the move and thanks for the follow through.
Your goods look nicely diversified. Please keep it coming. I'm very interested in reading about your experiences actually selling the items post-move. This is the part where, in the past, my own server-move plans have fallen apart. Usually I'm torn between "sell now before the market moves" and "don't flood the market".
What is a good strategy for moving a lot of gold thru the neutral AH? Say from horde to alliance, does the alliance player just post something for the 16k buyout or do you move everything item by item with low buyouts. One you'll lose a chunk to the AH tax and the other you can risk other players sniping your items for low buyouts.
What is a good strategy for moving a lot of gold thru the neutral AH? Say from horde to alliance, does the alliance player just post something for the 16k buyout or do you move everything item by item with low buyouts. One you'll lose a chunk to the AH tax and the other you can risk other players sniping your items for low buyouts.
Those are the two strategies and you already know the cons of each. If you go the moving items one-by-one route, just do it late-night when there's fewer people playing and I recommend doing it with a friend on vent/at your house. Double boxxing is fine too if you have two monitors; as soon as you have to alt-tab to get from one WoW to another you're introducing a gap of time for someone to snipe. And finally, if you have lots of stuff, don't do it all at once. If someone does happen to see what's going on, they can sit on the AH and try to snipe over and over. If you do only a few items at a time, the chances someone sees a pattern and is able to capitalize on it is much smaller. GL.
Those are the two strategies and you already know the cons of each. If you go the moving items one-by-one route, just do it late-night when there's fewer people playing and I recommend doing it with a friend on vent/at your house. Double boxxing is fine too if you have two monitors; as soon as you have to alt-tab to get from one WoW to another you're introducing a gap of time for someone to snipe. And finally, if you have lots of stuff, don't do it all at once. If someone does happen to see what's going on, they can sit on the AH and try to snipe over and over. If you do only a few items at a time, the chances someone sees a pattern and is able to capitalize on it is much smaller. GL.
I always always recommend pricing things at LEAST their normal value. The last several people I knew who tried to move items crossfaction by under-pricing and rebuying on another acct (or by a friend) had all their items sniped by AH bots (don't know how automated this "bot" actually was, but their descriptions have been that it was purchased instantly after they clicked to "Create Auction"). Since then, the only safe advice is not to price your auctions at anything lower than you'd be willing to sell the item for, and eat the cost of doing business at the AH, as long as the AH cut + Tax is less money than you'd lose if you lost the item outright to a sniper.
Clearly this varies by server, but beware of Cross Faction AH Sniper Bots. There's a lot of profit to be made if you can utilize both factions' markets, but know the risk of trying to transfer items cheaply.
Originally Posted by XI-
You see, the petty rules and regulations for the general forums don't apply here. If you're a fuckwad you will systematically be mocked and embarassed to the fullest extent of our abilities. In short, take your 12 bucks, shove it up your fucking ass, and don't come back until your IQ reaches double digits.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the smart way to do it would be to, say (assuming you're moving items from the Horde side to the Alliance), have an Alliance char post something relatively worthless, like 1 FrostWeave or piece of vendor trash for a couple thousand gold, and have the Horde character buy the item to send that couple thousand gold to the Alliance character (fast-forward 1 hour for the cash to show up in the mailbox). Then the Horde character then posts the items that need transferred for a high cost (say, double actual value) and the Alliance character buys them using the gold that basically got transferred over from the Horde char.
This would seem a risk-free way of transferring items from the Horde to the Alliance side, or vice versa. But would the sale of the 1 FrostWeave for a few thousand gold set off little alarm bells at Blizzard to make them cancel the sale or something?
No, the problem is actually that the neutral auction house takes a large cut of the sale price on any item. Far more than the 5% that the normal AH takes (i think it's 20%, i may be wrong). Because of this the gold given to the alliance character gets cut by 15%* (or whatever that value is) which ends up being A LOT of cash.
The reason people try to do it in items is because the AH cannot take a cut on the value of an item, just it's cost. This is where to problem of sniping comes in. Basically, the current situation is that while there is money to be made, it isn't terribly reliable and the margins are very largely diminished. For this reason I tend to only ever to Alliance to horde transactions when i intend to re roll anyway and the money would be lost completely, or where profit margins are so absurd that the huge cut doesn't make the activity not worth my time.
EDIT: It appears i am wrong. poster below says it's 15%, which is still very significant.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the smart way to do it would be to, say (assuming you're moving items from the Horde side to the Alliance), have an Alliance char post something relatively worthless, like 1 FrostWeave or piece of vendor trash for a couple thousand gold, and have the Horde character buy the item to send that couple thousand gold to the Alliance character (fast-forward 1 hour for the cash to show up in the mailbox). Then the Horde character then posts the items that need transferred for a high cost (say, double actual value) and the Alliance character buys them using the gold that basically got transferred over from the Horde char.
This would seem a risk-free way of transferring items from the Horde to the Alliance side, or vice versa. But would the sale of the 1 FrostWeave for a few thousand gold set off little alarm bells at Blizzard to make them cancel the sale or something?
Yes but you would lose 27,75% of the gold used this way because of the 15% auction house fee
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the smart way to do it would be to, say (assuming you're moving items from the Horde side to the Alliance), have an Alliance char post something relatively worthless, like 1 FrostWeave or piece of vendor trash for a couple thousand gold, and have the Horde character buy the item to send that couple thousand gold to the Alliance character (fast-forward 1 hour for the cash to show up in the mailbox). Then the Horde character then posts the items that need transferred for a high cost (say, double actual value) and the Alliance character buys them using the gold that basically got transferred over from the Horde char.
This would seem a risk-free way of transferring items from the Horde to the Alliance side, or vice versa. But would the sale of the 1 FrostWeave for a few thousand gold set off little alarm bells at Blizzard to make them cancel the sale or something?
It's easy to make a risk-free transfer, but the AH takes a significant cut of the buyout price in fees. Assuming that you want to guarantee that you'll be selling the item for at least the expected sale price, your method involves paying a 15% fee twice to transfer the item, then another 15% fee to transfer it back. Eating 45% of your profit is not a fantastic idea.
Far better "safe" method: simply advertise for a buyer on the opposite faction, then sell it directly to that buyer on the neutral AH.
If you're trying to transfer gold, it's the same thing. You either accept the 15% fee, or you trade high-value items at minimal cost and risk someone sniping the aution. There's no safe and free way.
Edit: wowwiki confirms that it's 15% per transaction. Adjusted the figures above (I originally had 10%).
Ozweepay, It might be a safer idea to unload the Frost Lotuses before 3.1 if you get a good market opportunity. With the patch futzing herb drops, I'd expect supply to swing way up. If you don't get a good market opening to unload some stock, I'd say build flasks and sell those instead of just the lotus. Hopefully people will be hitting Ulduar hard and dropping decent money on buffs.
From the wording it doesn't sound like drop rates were increased, only drop values. That is, your average gather will yield higher quantity, not necessarily yield rare herbs with higher frequency. If that were the case, Frost Lotus prices might actually increase as scribes would need fewer gathers for the same supply of millable herbs.
Do we have any PTR data regarding herb drops?
What I lack in intelligence I make up for in verbosity.
To make the neutral AH transfer safer you could set up cameras to watch at the goblins.
If you want it real time, then you can create trial account(s), drag that level 1 to the monitor point and if there are no other people around, then start transferring. Or you could ask some friends to keep track on the NPCs.
From the wording it doesn't sound like drop rates were increased, only drop values. That is, your average gather will yield higher quantity, not necessarily yield rare herbs with higher frequency. If that were the case, Frost Lotus prices might actually increase as scribes would need fewer gathers for the same supply of millable herbs.
Do we have any PTR data regarding herb drops?
I have no data as such, however I have picked around 50 herbs on the PTR. Whilst this may be far from a suitable sample to gain accurate data on, I failed to find any 1x[Lichbloom] or 1x[Icethorn] during my herbing.
From the wording it doesn't sound like drop rates were increased, only drop values. That is, your average gather will yield higher quantity, not necessarily yield rare herbs with higher frequency. If that were the case, Frost Lotus prices might actually increase as scribes would need fewer gathers for the same supply of millable herbs.
So we have the standard problem of changing one variable in an existing model, and trying to predict how the system will change to rebalance. I was setting Time_Spent_Gathering to remain constant and adjusting herb numbers to reflect that. You're absolutely correct in that Total_Herbs_Gathered could be the constant. In practice, it will likely be a combination, depending on the Herbalist in question. Another minor point that I wasn't considering is: cap on Lotus per Herb is probably still 1, even on standalone Lotuses in Wintergrasp. Secondly, those are gathered at a much smaller proportion to the bonus-drop Lotuses.
A lot has already been posted, but I thought I'd share my experiences and recap what's been said.
I have transferred literally thousands of objects and thousands of gold between factions. Indeed, the first thing I do when I "set up shop" on a new server is position lvl 1 mules in booty bay, one of each faction.
Basics
You need two accounts. You can't have two toons of the same faction on the same account on a PvP server, but more importantly you cannot buy your own auctions within one account. So you'll have to get a 2nd account by some legal means (the best option is simply to pay for two of them... I do this as do many of my friends).
Establish Mules
Running a troll or orc from their starting area to Ratchet is a simple matter: go east, then south, then swim. If you die to the lvl 21 elite shark, you'll spirit rez at Ratchet which actually saves time. Then the boat to Booty Bay and you're done. Getting an alliance mule to Booty Bay is a bit trickier: roll a human and die in the start area. Then run as a ghost to Booty Bay (takes about 8 minutes). Do not spirit rez here. Run directly west out to sea until your ghost dies from fatigue, then spirit rez. You are in Booty Bay.
If are just starting out, you need a little cash on whichever faction is not the home of your main. I often grind up 3 to 5 silver as a lvl 1 just to get started. This will enable you to buyout 1 copper auctions plus pay for postage to get them to a city mule. Once stuff starts selling, you should have plenty of gold on both sides.
Moving Gold
Moving gold is completely safe, but costs 15% if done through the neutral house. Go into the Booty Bay inn on the mule where you would like the gold and buy a fish for 10 copper (or whatever). Put it up on the neutral for (say) 1000g. Now buy it with your other mule and an hour later you will have 850g. I almost never do this, averse as I am to lose such a large chunk of money.
The other option is to find someone who wants to trade gold cross-faction. On PvE servers people will often reroll the other faction and want to move their money over. Less commonly, people on PvP servers like to have gold on both factions in order to have the flexibility to find rare epics, cheaper mats, or just play both markets. In any case, I don't know of any safe way to guarantee a safe exchange of gold with another player: either you go first or he goes first. Blizzard does not forbid this kind of exchange, but I doubt they would do anything to help you recover gold lost if you were scammed. That said, I have never been cheated while doing this, and often the other person happily goes first. The only thing you can do to assuage your worries is use high level toons from well-known guilds with a good reputation, and perhaps swap gold in small installments rather than all-at-once.
Moving Items
Moving items is free, but carries some risk. This has been well-discussed above. To move an item, you auction it for 1 copper buyout (regardless of its actual value!) and then quickly buy it with the other mule. I use side-by-side computers for this. My right hand hits "Create Auction" while my left hand hits "Search" with the item name already typed in. I always put a 1 copper bid and a 1 copper buyout so that bidding (2 clicks!) will buy the item out. Using Auctioneer can make this even faster (single click buyouts). It is free because 15% of 1 copper is rounded down to zero: the AH takes no cut.
This method carries obvious risk: if you put [Nobles Deck] up for 1 copper and try to buy it out within 1 second, someone else could still buy it first and you're out a lot of money. Blizzard will not help you, and the buyer may refuse to give it back (I'd say of the 5 times I've been sniped in 10,000 items moved, 4 times the sniper gave the item back; the latter guy was obviously botting as well).
Ways to mitigate this risk: (1) don't ever move items for 1 copper. Bots will scan for cheap buyouts, and auto-buy them even though it's against the rules. One of the times I was sniped, I had put 20 stacks of NW cloth up and they were bought in under 1 second. This was not a human at work. (2) Use /who macros and look for other toons that are obviously cross-faction mules. Or post spies at every auctioneer (impractical, imo, plus snipers usually hide.. the botter above was behind barrels in Booty Bay, but in range of the auctioneer) (3) Transfer items at off-peak times. (4) Use mods to quickly buy your auctions to limit exposure time. (5) On PvP servers, stop activity if there is anyone nearby hostile to the buying mule.
One note on that last point: on a PvE server, the biggest headache is people who kill the auctioneer. If this happens in Booty Bay, know where the other auctioneers are and get over there if you have 1 copper auctions still up. On a PvP server, your lvl 1 mule will be one-shot. This is not a problem if it's the selling mule, but the buying mule dead means you need to quickly cancel your auctions. Don't try to run back: it takes too long.
Obviously high-ticket items should be transfered one-at-a-time. I have transfered items worth 5000g. I like the thrill and the risk associated. For low-ticket items, I transfer them in bulk: use Auctionator or Auctioneer to post a batch of items. An example: non-rare faction pets. A rabbit (IF), cat (SW), or owl (Darnassus) is purchasable for less than 50 silver at a vendor, so if you put 10 of them up, you lose at most 5g. On the other hand, these items will go for 10g or more each on the Horde AH, typically. So the risk analysis suggests you should probably go for it.
I transferred 115 stack of [Saronite Ore] from Alliance to Horde today, 35 stacks at a time. It was 7am, but my heart was still in my throat. I don't recommend doing this. The last few percent on KT before Immortal was less scary.
Overhead
When moving items, you will have to pay a deposit proportional to the game's value on the items. To minimize this, set auctions to 12 hours. After your auctions sell, you must wait an hour to recover your deposit (which is annoying, but was instituted to combat professional gold-sellers). This can sometimes be inconvenient: I have more than once run out of deposit money while trying to move multiple items.
Synopsis
I do a good business in arbitrage (taking advantage of differences between faction economies), and auctioneer even has an arbitrage searcher to aid you in this. If (say) [Frost Lotus] are cheaper on Alliance AH but [Arctic Fur] are cheaper on the Horde AH, you can make money by trafficking them back and forth. You do assume some risk, but overall you will make money. Moving items available to only one faction (eg, [Throat Piercers] or [Recipe: Dig Rat Stew]) to the other can often yield profits as well.
I'm finding myself bored at the AH and wondering what the 2nd best way to make gold is. I realize this will depend on the server supply/demand and the economy, but what do you think in general does best:
Herbing
Mining
Fishing
Farming mobs for item(s)
Solo instance grinding
Dailies
Heroics
Something else
There is RNG in all of this, of course, but the law of large numbers should prevail. I wish I were organized enough to track my time herbing versus the average value of what I collected and compare to mining stats. Then compare to how much I make doing other things in the list.
What do you do after your daily AH routine is done and you feel like making some money?
As I have experience in a few of these fields I can offer some insight to several activites listed.
Recently myself and a friend refer-a-friended ourselves several new alts, and in continuing past 60, and to help the sometimes still mostly naked altsg et gear, I powered the alts through some old world raids, BC dungeons, BC heroics and Karazhan.
I noticed that I was actually coming out with a substantial amount of gold from the regular BC instances, initially I was more focussed on getting EXP/items for the alts and just looting everything else on my main. Which prompted me to look more closely at numbers.
For regular outlands instances you can expect anywhere between 115g - 365g gold per clear assuming you sell absolutely everything. Incidentally the 365g instance was a particularly lucrative Underbog clear with a large amount of green weapons dropping. For heroic BC instances the amounts are slightly higher placing your income at ~220g or so per with the added benefit of badges which can be used to purchase nexus and nethers which may or may not still sell reasonably well on your server(If you look at it as "bonus" any amount is good really)
Of course if you're an herbalist, enchanter or skinner you can also substantially increase the income from instances. Specifically as an enchanter you can DE all the mats and craft the still highly sought after BC enchants, or use your leather and primals/nethers to craft BC items that still often sell relatively well.
So overall, aside from it eventually becoming very tedious powering through older instances/heroics can be very profitable.
In terms of herbing, mining and fishing it really depends on how active the farming community on your server is; On my server there seems to be a large amount of herbalists so your income can be very limited due to AH competition keeping prices low and farming competition whilst you gather. Oddly enough the price on flasks, elixirs and potions still remains relatively high compared to the materials cost so in that particular instance herbalism is likely much less profitable per time invested than alchemy.
In terms of mining the prices for stacks of ore hasn't really changed more than 1-2g up or down in almost two months now, whether or not that's a good or bad indicator of it's profitability I'm unsure, but it certainly seems to be a fairly stable market, and subsequently a predictable return for your farming.
I level alts and set them up with transmute-type professions. Depending on the type of transmute, they make the capital cost back in varying amounts of type with minimal work. (Transmute spec Alchemist, non-Transmute spec Alchemist, Tailor (especially Mooncloth Tailor), Mining (I've currently got two miners for Titansteel))
What's really nice is using a bit of vertical/horizontal integration in the process, chaining together cooldowns of multiple alts to create one item, but to create it much faster than others. This really works exceptionally well for tailoring. Back in BC I was pushing out Primal Mooncloth bag once every 4 days.
The others are less profitable, but pretty-good for being lazy. Transmute Life (~4g) to Fire (~24g) would be a 20g profit. Then use the Eternal Fire in the transmute to make Titansteel (the transmute itself is worth another 40-50g).
Originally Posted by arison
Everyone should start from the same place and rise based on their abilities, desires, and schedule. No one plays MMOs to *be* powerful, they play MMOs to *become* powerful. It's the journey, stupid. The rarer loot is, the more cherished it is when you get it, but only so long as there is a reasonable expectation to get it. The rarer loot is, the better it feels when you kill a boss or when $AWESOME_TRINKET drops.
It's easy to make a risk-free transfer, but the AH takes a significant cut of the buyout price in fees. Assuming that you want to guarantee that you'll be selling the item for at least the expected sale price, your method involves paying a 15% fee twice to transfer the item, then another 15% fee to transfer it back. Eating 45% of your profit is not a fantastic idea.
Far better "safe" method: simply advertise for a buyer on the opposite faction, then sell it directly to that buyer on the neutral AH.
If you're trying to transfer gold, it's the same thing. You either accept the 15% fee, or you trade high-value items at minimal cost and risk someone sniping the aution. There's no safe and free way.
Edit: wowwiki confirms that it's 15% per transaction. Adjusted the figures above (I originally had 10%).
Thanks to all those who clarified this, I wasn't aware the Neutral AH fee was that high!
Keep in mind the gathering professions will still rely on the AH for money (I include Fishing in that list). If you just want some personal gold, doing dailies for the rep you still need can be a change of pace from staring at an Auctioneer.
I suggest trying to "stack" your gold gaining. In other words, do dailies and grab ore/herbs along the way (possibly stop to fish a school); keep an eye out for specific mobs that have a higher drop rate of specific items.
You can use something like Routes as a helpful addon for herb and mining; but again you are only focusing on one source of income versus diversifying a bit.
After trying to find out which enchanting scrolls would make me the most money i came to the fairly obvious conclusion that it was the ones with the cheapest mats. On my server at least the best-choice enchants all go for around 70-85 gold each. So therefore the ones with the lowest matierial cost gave the largest profit margin. On my server the most profitable one is Super Stats on Chest but due to their being limited demand for it i have also diversified into the following 5 enchantments.
Best way to dispose of Shadow Crystal and Dark Jade
I've been trying to find decent ways to dispose of the stacks of Shadow Crystal's and Dark Jade obtained through prospecting. Currently I cut them and vendor them, using AutoProfitx to sell them all with one click. This gives returns of 60s per gem, with the proc rate of Gem Perfection being 20%ish.
The low blue rings sell poorly on AH on my server, and the high blue rings need other decent gems that I can make money off, so I don't see that as worthwhile. Focusing crystals also sell quite slowly.
Has anyone found a better method of disposing of these items?
Icy Prisms, but that's still only 3 a day. There is really no other known use unless you were both an Enchanter and had a need for Dream Shards.
Originally Posted by arison
Everyone should start from the same place and rise based on their abilities, desires, and schedule. No one plays MMOs to *be* powerful, they play MMOs to *become* powerful. It's the journey, stupid. The rarer loot is, the more cherished it is when you get it, but only so long as there is a reasonable expectation to get it. The rarer loot is, the better it feels when you kill a boss or when $AWESOME_TRINKET drops.
* Some enchants now have level restrictions. Note: the enchant is never removed from the item to which it's applied, however, the player no longer receives its benefit until they reach the required level. Any enchants modified in this way have had their tooltips updated.
= able to enchant mongoose on BoA items? if so price of mongoose mats and mongoose scroll enchants will rise.
@ Thecrook: I've had the same problem of trying to offload more dust than the market can seem to support, and I've tried to use scrolls as a way of 'laundering' the excess. However, scrolls seem to have a pretty low turnover, and which specific ones are profitable is highly variable.
I'd like to find another way to offload excess dust, but the only other way I can see is in the form of [Bolt of Imbued Frostweave] and/or [Frostweave Bag]. These can be quite profitable, depending on cloth prices.
I've been trying to find decent ways to dispose of the stacks of Shadow Crystal's and Dark Jade obtained through prospecting. Currently I cut them and vendor them, using AutoProfitx to sell them all with one click. This gives returns of 60s per gem, with the proc rate of Gem Perfection being 20%ish.
The low blue rings sell poorly on AH on my server, and the high blue rings need other decent gems that I can make money off, so I don't see that as worthwhile. Focusing crystals also sell quite slowly.
Has anyone found a better method of disposing of these items?
The 8 agi/12 stam gem is still not in game so you can probably maximize your profits by cutting Shifting Shadow Crystal and taking the perfect ones to the AH.
Yeah I generally cut the shadow crystals into either Shifting or Sovereign. Both of them sell for around 15g for the perfect ones, and they sell pretty consistently, so it is a decent way. I still vendor the regular cut ones because they still dont sell for more than 1g so it really just isnt worth it with the number I produce. For dark jades, I typically sell them in stacks of 20 on the auction house. They actually sell for 15-20g normally on my server if I do it at the right time, so its a decent way to get rid of them.
I've been trying to find decent ways to dispose of the stacks of Shadow Crystal's and Dark Jade obtained through prospecting. Currently I cut them and vendor them, using AutoProfitx to sell them all with one click. This gives returns of 60s per gem, with the proc rate of Gem Perfection being 20%ish.
The low blue rings sell poorly on AH on my server, and the high blue rings need other decent gems that I can make money off, so I don't see that as worthwhile. Focusing crystals also sell quite slowly.
Has anyone found a better method of disposing of these items?
Dark Jade is the mats used for Transmuting Earthsiege Diamond. You can easily sell them for 30-40g per stack on the server. (I will even BO those below 60g most of the time).
Meta gem cut can fetch quite high profit margin if you snipe those Eternal Fire (earthsiege), and Eternal Air (skyflare) at low cost during weekend and get a alchemist to transmute them.
03/17/09, 4:47 PM
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