Thursday, January 26, 2012

The Darkmoon Fair, a rich person's game

If your bank looks anything like mine, after doing glyphs for awhile, you get an excessive amount of inferno ink?  What to do?

As a side note, I order my darkmoon cards by number, so in one bag, I know where to put each new card.

During its pinnacle, the darkmoon trinkets were incredibly profitable.  Before 4.3, I was making between 100 and 300k a month doing darkmoon cards.  Why was that?
    The demand for the trinkets was really high.  Volcano and tsunami were best in slot (or nearly so) for all 4.1.  For 4.2, they were still strong choices especially for new characters leveling up.  Even in 4.3, the darkmoon cards were still useful for allowing access for alts to LFR and 5 mans.
    The darkmoon cards like everything with inscription is counter intuitive to Blizzard’s belief  in a causal friendly game.  The crafter has a 1/64 chance of making the card they are looking for.  The chances of making a deck of  your choice are really, really poor.  This cripples people without the ability to devote larger amounts of money to it.  The average person simply can't finish decks without buying cards and paying higher prices.  This as akin to trying to start a card company...the average person doesn't have the capital.
    By spending over 100k a month, I was able to complete crazy amounts of decks.  Each month, I’d make between 30 and a 100 decks.  Now, I’d spend an entire of month of selling glyphs and reinvesting the money into herbs and then make massive profits during and after the fair. 
    Certainly, competition was a factor, but most people were impatient to sell, and I’d keep prices low and then up them once my competition sold out.  My impatient foes would sell out rather quickly.  You never would buy many materials during the fair itself, but before and after, was a great time to stock up.
    For card singles, sometimes I would sell but more often than not, I would not.  You would sell when you gained massive amounts of extra cards of a single type.  Buying cards was likewise distasteful, but it was worth monitoring prices.  Sometimes, buying a card for 500, would grant you an extra deck.
    The best thing about doing glyphs is all the inferno ink you’d gain as a byproduct.  If the darkmoon cards aren’t big enough on your server and you can’t sell inferno ink.  Vicious Jawbone of Conquest is an interest option to craft.  If you have an enchanter, you have more options.  For the cost of 5 ink (effectively worthless if you can’t sell or make anything out of them), then 12 volatile life, and a bleached jawbone.  Then you can disenchant them into shards.  With guild perks, you can even get extra shards.  It’s a nice bonus.  Shards are really high on my server, over 200 gold each sometimes.
    Pricing wise, I always follow the market demand.  Originally, I got over 20k for tsunami cards and 15 for volcano.  Hurrricane were lower from 10 to 12 and earthquake a mere 4k.  Today, tsunami are 9 or 10, while volcano for 8....and hurricane are 4 and earthquake a mere 2. 
   Depending on your skill and luck, perhaps for the new expansion you can be poised to really rack in the cash.





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