Why would there be an increased supply of Snowfall Inks, and why would it be a good idea to stock up on Ink of the Sea? I've not read about any changes that would affect this..

Once people stop leveling Inscription, prices will raise. The prices are dirt cheap because supplies are absurdly high.

I have tried (probably not well enough, but I tried searching the compendium threads and post 1st of December newsposts) to find the patchnotes stating that Ink of the Sea would be tradeable to Snowfall ink (via NPC), but couldn't find it looking through World of Raids, MMoChampion and the US-PTR-forum.

Could someone please help out?

Edit; Thank you Righ.

I do not have blue post or otherwise, but I was on current PTR and you can trade 10 Inks of the sea for snowfall one and one for one of lower lvl inks at Inscriptopn trainer in Dalaran. I cant log in on PTR for some reason now, Ill post screenshot later. EU english realm is overcrowed I guess, I can create and login on other servers.

Edit: Screenshot

10 Ink of the Sea turns in for one Snowfall Ink. I generally see Snowfall Ink selling for a minimum of 50g apiece. If you can get it for 15-20g apiece via Ink of the Sea turn-ins you're looking at a healthy profit.

There won't be much profit. It sells for 50g, now, due to the only source being over-milling of other herbs to find it. That over-milling leads to ridiculously cheap, unneeded, Ink of the Sea and eventually yields some supply of Snowfall Ink. The change will result in a rise in the price of Ink of the Sea -- it's going to be useful now -- and a reduction in price of Snowfall Ink (at least initially) as a second source of it becomes available. There might be a small arbitrage left on the back end, but it will be small.

well thats assuming the price of Snowfall Ink doesn't drop. I bought up a bunch of stacks (20 stacks) of ink of the sea for 15g a stack and on my server snowfall is running 80+ each so I can afford a big drop in prices and still make profit.

As of the past few days the infinite dust market is dead. I have stacks and stacks I just cant move, prices are now under 20g a stack. Its all leftover from eternal earth/shadow rings being disenchanted. Cosmic essences are so profitable you can make money even if your not moving any of the dust being created.

Any idea on how well (if at all) snowballs will sell during the summer season?

It's a looooong term investment, I know, but I figure if I can even get 1g for a stack of snowballs, I can make a decent sized profit.

I've done this in years past and it really isn't worth the time or wasted bank space. I've found people unwilling to pay much for the snowballs and they are hard to move on the AH without some advertising, because in the middle of the summer people just aren't looking for them. You can make some money, sure, but only at the cost of a disproportionate time investment.

As well as this, now that WotLK added a couple of pretty popular dailies that reward snowballs (the Brunnhildar ones in peaks), anyone who needs snowballs out of season will have no trouble getting them themselves.

Bah. Well, at least I'll have no trouble beaning people well into the hotter seasons with my 4000 or so snowballs.

On another note: Eternal Belt Buckles.

For some reason, these can go as high as 40g+ over the cost of mats, and they MOVE. They're literally the only belt enchant available.

In a similar vein: don't assume that just because you've known about it for a while that it's common knowledge.

Like common sense, it can be amazing how uncommon common knowledge is .


That said, the reinforced cobalt chestpiece is at least one of the harder markets to exploit since to do it right you need mining (for smelting) + blacksmithing + enchanting.


(edit) apparently my point was unclear and so this post was deemed off topic. My point which apparently wasn't explicit enough for this forum is:

You shouldn't give up like people are saying on the recipe. There's been kneejerk reaction here and other places that once something is posted it's "pointless' to try to exploit. As I say above, it's harder to exploit than others because it takes three separate tradeskills, which means fewer people can, and people are more likely to dabble a bit and then get bored or annoyed with the work and get out. We've seen exactly this effect on Turalyon.

So just because you see a harder-to-exploit method dip one or twice on a server, doesn't mean you should give up. Keep an eye on it, the market may be possible still after a small bit of time.

Sorry I was apparently way too brief the first time and left too much up to requiring inference -- I've tried to hedge my words here while still being helpful, and I fell on the wrong side of that line :p.

In this case, the cobalt stuff is likely more interesting because it's such a cheap and efficient way to level blacksmithing. And once you are making it anyway, might as well disenchant and sell the bits. So as long as people are levelling BS, cobalt ore will be at a premium and dust will be cheap (we'll see much more of this if the new deathknight tanking weapons stay BoP which I think is unlikely but you never know).

I've recently decided to start logging all my prospects to determine a few things (mostly how the loot table works regarding multiple gem prospects) about the drop rates of gems from stacks of [Saronite Ore].

Here's what I've found so far:

# Gems	1 Uncommon	2 Uncommon
0 Rare	71.6%	06.3%
1 Rare	18.8%	02.3%
2 Rare	00.7%	00.2%

sample size: 831 prospects (4155 ore)

Theory:

100% chance of 1 Uncommon and:

30% chance of additional: 1 Rare (67%) 1 Uncommon (33%) and 15% chance of additional: and 15% chance of additional: 1 Rare (33%) 1 Uncommon (67%) 1 Rare (67%) 1 Uncommon (33%)

Not enough data yet to factor in the 2 Rare / 2 Uncommon prospect.


[e]Will add additional data as I prospect more ore.

126 prospects is a way too small sample size.

I have an additional 5k ore to prospect, it's just a hassle recording all the data. Will update as I continue prospecting.

The point of recording this data is NOT to determine how many blue / green gems I can obtain per stack of ore, but to understand the rate of multiple gem prospects (and thus refine our understanding of the loot table for prospecting.)

While the concept might be interesting to some, I'm not sure how you plan on this contributing to this thread. Even if we refined our understanding of the loot table distribution for prospecting, we would still be at the mercy of the Random Number Generator. In addition an infinitely large sample which would provide proper % chances of each type of gem, would still not be representative for someone trying to prospect five, ten or even twenty stacks.

I do not believe going into the specific mechanics behind prospecting is going to earn anyone here any more money, as most of us are quite adept at it already (particular exploits and rare tricks notwithstanding). In addition, individual server economies and the huge number of people prospecting daily, there is "nothing" new to be gained from prospecting itself (It is already established that it's a good source of income, but how good it is depends on RNG, or "luck", and server economy).

Speaking of alarmingly uncommon 'common sense': prices will not stay high or low, so assuming any market will remain lucrative is frankly stupid [to be stupidly frank]. The exceptions are those that are time-limited, such as tailoring cooldowns and various Jewelcrafting options, but barring incredible surges in demand [and similarly, surging lacks of supply] prices WILL trend downward or over a static value over time, and even the slow markets are not immune to this. Think of real world gold. About a decade ago, a variety of metals were a more lucrative short term investment, to the point where the difference in cost between silver and gold was...low. Very, very low in some cases. The variety of factors here is astounding, but easy to follow: greater demand for things like silver and platinum, gold was NOT 'that year's black' [to the point where gold-alloys were more popular than gold itself in a lot of places], high supply. In recent years, however, all of these changed, as both the fashion demands and pratical [things like circuitry] demands for gold rose, supply did not, and other 'non-practical' metals fell in demand.

These simple kind of factors follow in game economy: critical thinking for long term investment is the real key to money, because every tends to oscillate around an equilibrium based around the prices of the supply matching the prices of the desired product. In game monopolies exist for only short periods of time realistically, and only truly 'cornering a market' by being the only supply available to certain customers will provide a meaningful cheat of those basic economic laws.

The problem with the said investment is that the WoW market is liable to abrupt changes, most of which occur with new patches changing the availability of some good. A good example is the Ink of the Sea change. You can't really invest in something that is not a basic commodity that'll always sell, such as, cloth or consumables. Even then you can't know for certain. In my opinion, the best 'investment' you can make is spending time in observing the market regularly and being poised to strike when there's an opportunity, so to speak. With long-term I mean something that spans over several months.

I have found that the best way to make gold for me was to spend a couple fo weeks to a month just stocking up on herbs, cloth, pots, flasks and everything. Then just sell them off.

I know most of you will say well thats just obvious but my warlock who is my only high lvl char so and also he has tailoring and enchanting, an i have never been able to make much money from it appart from with the spellcloths and the occasional spellthead here and there.

I am wondering has anyone here started a sort of partnership with a friend/guildy where he/she sells you staks of ore/herbs/gems etc and you just sell them on as i am thinking of starting this with a long time wow friend and want to know how well this can work inpractise.

cheers

Er... why would anyone in their right mind sell you stuff just so you can resell it for more, when they could simply sell it at the price you'd be asking and get all the profit? The only reason I can think of is that he thinks you're trying for a dangerously high margin, in which case you're going to lose money if your judgement is flawed.

If you want to speculate with commodities, browse for bargains on the AH. Don't shit on a friend just to save yourself 20 minutes work.