I'm trying to keep tabs on this, but last week, the Frost Lotus market doubled in value overnight. I watched it happened, as I was looking for a few more Lotus for some flasks. The AH was empty, and was set upon by someone listing the lotus at double normal price. Undercutters followed closely behind, but the price did not drop steadily like I had hoped.

I can only attribute this to increased demand for flasks from Ulduar attendance. I have a set price I won't go below, but may be forced to buy some simply due to dwindling supplies Has anyone else seen something similar happen? I'm hoping recent weekend activity will have dropped the price some more, but I'm not holding my breath (Mother's Day kept me busy all weekend).

Frost Lotus is at around 35g on M'G (one of the most populated Horde side servers) and it was just 20g a week ago.

Frostmourne-US saw the jump about a week ago too from 15-20 to around 35-40.

Flask prices however have somehow steadied out at 20g each still, so not much profit to be made there.

Posting prices from your own individual server will be completely anecdotal, as every server is going to be different, even if only slightly. Just because your server experiences a price increase of 8g does not mean every single server will. Try discussing strategies and theories rather than individual prices

Personally, I've found myself becoming increasingly invested in low-volume, high cost materials such as Abyss Crystals and Arctic Fur. I'm predicting a pay-off once Ulduar becomes more accessible (people start getting high-end enchants, and the LW patterns take off) and arena teams start gearing up again - however for the moment it means much of my capital is locked away in a handful of stacks of items on my bank alt. Bit of a risky position to be in, hopefully the payoff is worth it!

I have been thinking just this for quite some time Tifordin. I have gathered titansteel bars/arctic fur/moonshroud in anticipation of such effects. However, it seems that as long as the runed orbs are in such limited supply, we won't be able to sell a large enough quantity of these to drive the price upwards.

I am holding on to all of it for now in hope that Blizzard might decide to increase droprate of the orbs and/or that the best guilds get all the craftables they want and start selling their orbs.

This is purely anecdotal, but for the last week myself and quite a few of the herbalists in my guild have been grumbling about the lack of frost lotus collected while doing daily herbing runs. While beforehand it was normal to run across 1 or 2 lotus a day on normal trips we've been struggling to even pick up a single lotus over a couple of days. I'd simply put it down to random number generator being random, but seeing that its also bumping up server prices elsewhere in the same time frame i'm not so sure now.

I don't know, I'm seeing lots of people thinking herbs and flasks price are unreasonable and leveling druid farm bots for the purpose of getting "free" flasks and herbs.
I did so myself and lots of other people do.

End result: Sholazar and Icecrown look like "The lvl 77 Druid Grand Annual Meeting" and much more herbs are harvested for personal purposes and never go to the AH. Hence maybe a rarefaction of supply for non herbalists.

I don't really see another valid reason, as you can farm for flasks much faster than you can consume them, I have 50ish in my inventory, enough to make another hundred on my druid. It's either that, or people started to use flasks in Ulduar while they didn't in Naxxramas.

This thread is turning more and more into a "look what I did and see how much gold I made" and less of "this is an novel concept try it on your servers".

Stocking up before 3.1 on X is not very good advice to anyone. We can't really use that information for anything except marvel at the wisdom.

Can we please keep the focus on ideas moving forward instead of comparing capitalistic e-peens?

To prevent this post from being a complete whine I'll share something that I haven't seen mentioned here very often:
Prospecting Thorium Ore
I buy Thorium Ore when it goes below 50g / stack and prospect it. I sometimes also reset the marked and list a few stacks at 80-90g (and they sell). The point is that the gems from Thorium are needed to reach 300 JC and as such people will buy them at ridiculous prices (20-25g usually, but sometimse up to 50g each).
It is a very small marked as well and most sellers are JCers who sell surplus when they reach 300, so there is not as fierce competition as many other markeds. (If I see this ruined on my server because of this thread I am going to cry)

I think this is the case. After Blizzard lowered the duration on flasks (for non-alchemists) to an hour I think more and more people use them, thinking it would be cheaper now since they can use 3 flasks lasting 3 hours for a 3 hour raid instead of 2x 2 hour etc. Ironically, this change has increased the price of flasking overall. Albeit, the flask market is constantly trying to approach 20g a flask there are always people out there to grab them all out and relist for 30g +.

In my personal opinion it is probably because it is much easier to convince someone to buy something for 30g instead of 20g (1 hour flask) rather than 60g over 40g (2 hour flask). Although the profit for the seller is exactly the same.

(I was also one of those racking up huge amount of frost lotus prior to the patch (had 2-300 I think) and bought most of them for less than 15g)

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EDIT: I'll help out turning the subject then

I do the same thing, and I suspect many on my server to know this "trick". The prices are extremely variable. I can sell an Azerothian diamond for 50g+ if I am lucky, then I can turn around and buy 15 for 50g total 3-4 days later.
The same is the case with tin/iron ore. Although to level JC you do not need that many gems from these ores I have found that jade/Citrine sells very well as long as you control the market on your own (and you often do since "noone" cares about the vanilla market)

I've started speculating in Runed Orbs, which seems to work very well, provided you have the cash to do it (it's basically just the old dominate-a-market theme, on a very expensive, yet small market). I pick them up at random times, between 1200 and 1400 gold and with a little patience (3-4 days tops), sell them on for around 1600-1700 - I've even sold a few auctions of 6 at a time for 10000g (1666,6g per). Don't know how long it will hold, and it's definitly risky business as I fear they're gonna drop anytime soon. The higher the stake, the higher the profit I suppose

I think there is some potential there. I'm just not sure I want to risk the investment. Consider that with 3.1.2 there will be a heavy nerf to the first 1/3 - 1/2 of Ulduar, so Runed Orbs will become more plentiful. However, the crafting patterns are still rare. I think you can approximate something similar to the Nether Vortex in TBC shortly after BT opened.


A tip I've wanted to use but can't on my server due to someone else dominating the market already: Netherweave Bags take exactly one stack of Netherweave to make. All characters need bags, and with the current state of things, a fair amount of people are rolling alts. Considering prices on Netherweave are very low presently, you can stand to make some decent money by just buying cloth and converting it into bags.

It may be possible to make some money by selling them cross-faction as well, but expect it to take much longer to see any returns.

I find that I use more flasks on average per raid in Ulduar than in Naxx due to the shorter duration. My guild's raids typically last from 3.5 to 4 hours, during Naxx that was two flasks per night. With the flask duration now reduced to one hour, I find myself using 5 flasks per night to ensure that I do not lose the buff midway through a boss encounter. Instead of losing 5 to 10 minutes worth of a flask's duration once per raid, I now lose 5 to 10 minutes worth of duration four times per raid necessitating a fifth flask.

I've found a quick and easy way to make some gold depending on your server.

Since people are not doing as many TBC instances, there is a shortage of Large Prismatic Shards.

On my server, for some reason, Void Crystals are going for 6-8g a pop, while Large Prismatics are sharing the same value.

By using the Void Shatter, and turning 1 Void Crystal into 2 Large Prismatics, you are effectively doubling your initial investment, as you can resell each Large Prismatic for the price of 1 Void Crystal. And also, since the Large Prismatic market is relatively small, it is easy to dominate and control it with your cheap shards that you can sell for half of the price of everyone else, and still be making a profit.

It has made me a bit, and still is working out rather well. It's not a way to get rich quick, but is definitely providing me with some steady income.

I doubt the drop rate of [Runed Orb] has changed signficantly. However, I do believe the price will drop rapidly over time as players begin turning in excess [Emblem of Conquest] in. At a 18->1 ratio, with just flame leviathan 10 hard + a full clear of uld25, you could currently make ~1800g a week. If you assume most guilds get stuck for awhile at Mimiron, thats still 15 tokens a week. That situation will not hold for very long. I suspect most players will buy 1 tier piece for 58 tokens and 1 other item for on average 28 tokens giving a total of 86 tokens. As a semi-hardcore guild leader, I already have 40 tokens and at +15 per week, I will be done in exactly 3 weeks and likely selling orbs 1 week after that. Assume most people in my situation dont make every raid or sit out, you are looking at a slowly droping over time price followed by a vast price drop in 6 weeks with prices in 4 months possibly going as low as 300g to make the end crafting products cost 2-3K each.

Is it possible to retrieve price information from a specific list of items (eg. high end enchanting mats, eternals)? I've been playing around with auctioneer but can't seem to find any feature that would do what I'm after (if there is, a point in the direction of a guide would be greatly appreciated).

The drop rate goes up as more and more guilds do hard-or-middle modes of bosses. Essentially the bonus to most bosses in their slightly harder form (e.g. Flame Leviathan with 1 tower) is an extra orb.

And of course the drop rate will also go up as more and more people begin to pug the easier bosses.

What's the best time to buy/sell Frost Lotus? If people make & consume flasks mostly Tues/Sat, then buy around thursday? If you can is it best to simultaneously manipulate flasks?

Is there any way at all to get the beancounter data (from auctioneer) into some format that is easy to paste into a text file? I believe wow doesn't allow direct exporting, but it does allow macros and scripts to type. So it seems this could be done by having the mod mail beancounter data to yourself or something like that.

Have people had any luck manipulating runed orbs? What do you find are the price trends? Best to buy on Tuesdays?

Also how profitable do you think the runed orb-based items are/will be? I believe they are all BOE, but unfortunately this isn't the case for the recipes. Is it feasible to pay guilds to run you through Ulduar and pay for rolls on the items (you would wait as they did the rest of the instance, then run to the boss (wouldn't really matter if you died).

I agree that the [Runed Orb] market is doomed to crash and burn within the next few resets, and it's all about getting out in time (I can easily see orbs going down to Frozen Orb price levels in a few months). However, there are still some money to be made on those hardcore raiders that want to save their DKP and have 10000g to spare - I sold another 2 lot's of 6 yesterday and I'm definitely buying more tonight if I can. I'm out in a few weeks though, no doubt.

I´m following the [Runed Orb] market on my server, since i first read about it in this thread. And last week i read this on mmo-champion.com:
I´m not sure how this change will impact the [Runed Orb] market.

It will impact the demand for sure, I can see two separate effects:

1) This will allow raiding guilds to obtain most recipes faster, even on low pop/low progression servers. This impacts the speed of demand reaching peek. (More people with recipes = higher accessibility)

2) This will allow some 10 man raiders or casual 25 man raiders who are currently not willing to buy crafts from other players who have obtained the pattern to craft it themselves


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1) will impact the price of Runed orbs positively on a short term basis, 2) should increase the overall price of runed orbs as instead of casuals/10 mans selling those 1-2 orbs they get each week they will be saving them up and maybe even buying 1-2 to craft themselves

Both of them should increase the value of arctic fur, titansteel bars etc

Very doubtful.
1) Runed orbs are required in larger quantities for the BoE pieces.
2) The crafting gear is definitely more "competitive" than the pieces (you needed frozen orbs for) ever were. This should keep the demand up.
3) The purchasing cost (badges <-> orbs) is higher and in limited quantity. (weekly lockout of Ulduar vs daily lockout of all the heroics).
4) Runed orbs do drop in raids, but so did frozen orbs in heroics. I'd guess the amount of the latter to be significantly higher.

Prices will drop. No doubt. But certainly not to frozen orbs level.
The late price point of BoE bracers (purchasable for 60 valor badges) should be more indicative of the "real value" of runed orbs. Keep in mind though that the bracers did not require additional mats, which should be offset by the fact that 3 weeks of raiding were usually enough to collect the required badges whereas 98 conquest badges should definitely require more.

I really have to believe that the Frost Lotus drop rate was somehow changed. The price has stayed at its new value, but the supply has also *definitely* gone down -- no more than 2 pages of lotus at any given time (I didn't see any weekend surge in supply yet).

I may have to break down and pay the new price for lotus, but I need to do the math on new cost for flasks.



I'm still holding onto my meager supply of arctic fur, titansteel bars (<20 of each) and icy dragonscale (~200) in anticipation of 3.1.2 finally pushing the crafting recipes to market. Does anyone think it's worth picking up any more of any of these at current prices?