Pet Speculation

One of the new features for Mists of Pandaria is the new pet battle system. It is really hard to say whether this will be a fun feature or not. I personally loathed archeology as a horrible time sink, but I loved the mini-game for the sunflowers vs zombies up up in northern eastern kingdoms. I've only read a bit about it, but pets will be universal for your account, and they'll fight in mini-pet teams. This could be a great way to have fun outside of raiding or pvping. The game certainly needs alternate routes at the high end.

I am no stranger to pets. I am buy no means an expert, but I've acquired enough to know a bit about the subject. (One of the few I am missing is the accursed Tol Bard Fox.)

 

The question is if this system is fun, then how can we turn a profit from it? I mentioned in my lantern mongering post, that limited availability pets might be a good investment. If you are looking to start a business, I am sure you've heard for many of the high selling pets. This is certainly something worth farming.

Fireflies, disgusting oozlings, the whelps (crimson, emerald, dark, and azure) and the like are some of the most highly sought after pets. One my server during wrath, each pet would go between 3 to 5k. Today 15 to 20 is a common price. There's a natural increase in value as inflation. I dabbled in a few pets, mostly buying them super cheap and reselling.

Pets aren't faster sellers by any means. It takes a certain level of dedication. When buying high ticket items, it is important not to panic. Sometimes, it comes down to admitting, you can't sell an item and just using it yourself. That's always a nice backup plan.

Sometimes, it is just being patient. I had a Big Battle Bear (not a pet but a mount from the card game). I paid a king's ransom for it, 80k. Then I spent the next 4 months trying to sell the thing for 100k. The problem was there wasn't anyone on my server that was interested in such a high price item. Through the end of wrath, I maintained my faith and stuck with it and eventually partway through cata, go 85k for it. At the end of the day, 5k wasn't a huge profit—6 and a quarter present. One the other hand, I never needed the money really for anything, so it was better than having it sit idle all that time.

Pets are a nice form of speculation. Maybe every pet team will want a disgusting oozling? The value might increase. People might get more interested in pets in general because of the expansion's focus on them. For whatever the reason, pets are a pretty solid investment. It is not without risk, but that's what makes the game interesting eh?

The Best Redundant Profession is ...

I had a really good run today.  With my two log ins, I cleared around 10k.  That's rock solid from what I was doing before.  It must be the weekend rush really kicking end.  Unless my competitors don't log on as much during the weekend for whatever reason.  My inventory value continues to fall, but I can hardly complain.  At this point, I've really accomplished my original goal.  In many ways, writing here has rekindled my interest in making gold, though we'll have to see how long it lasts. 

I managed to find a decent price on whiptail and bought as much as I could find.  It ended up being around 230 stacks.  To be honest, it was tedious milling it, but I used the hotkey I mentioned before and got right to it.  A movie later, and I was ready to afk and turn it all into ink.   The best part is I've almost four bags of ink now, so I am protected from the markets twists and turns until my inventory runs out.  I'll keep checking for good prices, but it isn't as critical.  The nice side-effect of milling so much whiptail is again inferno ink.  Inferno ink is a great way to generate darkmoon cards or heavenly shards.  I am honestly leery about darkmoon cards this late into the expansion, but I might gamble and go for it anyway.  I never have lost money on a fair yet.

I managed my side businesses as well today.  I suppose I should reveal all my professions.  My shaman is an enchanter/tailor, my druid a alchemist/jcer, my paladin an alchemist/engineer, and Dk of course is an alchemist/inscriptor.  The only reason my paladin is an engineer is because I was challenged by my guild mates to get raid ready in one day--and the 359 helm was too good to pass up.  Enchanting, jewelcrafting, and inscription are all solid money makers but each skill requires large time investments.  I believe alchemy is the best skill for redundant characters.  It all comes down to transmuting.  If I want to do jewelcrafting say, a second jewelcrafter offers little advantage in the long term.  Basically, I could do the JC daily twice instead of once.  For something like smithing or leatherworking the benefit is almost zero.  Each alchemist allows me to transmute once a day for a minute's time.  That's a huge amount of profit for the time frame.  Without any procs, at the start of the expansion I could buy life for 15 and sell it for 45.  That's 30 gold per life or 450 gold per transmute.  One of my friend's has 8 alchemists, so he made 3,600 gold for logging in each day--with a 15 percent buff for procs, that's 4,140!.  Of course, after this became less profitable, there was always true gold.  He had a huge advantage in making true gold because he could craft all his other elements from life.  (If you aren't aware, if you transmute in uldum you always get air, and Vash always gives you water, deepholm earth, etc.)   True gold was great all through 4.2 because of the crafted 365 gear.  Admittedly if the recipes would have been more accessible early on (basically you couldn't get them for almost a month), then maybe the demand would have been even higher.

Thus, the best redundant skill is alchemy.  You get something for almost no time investment.  I can't stress that enough.  Your real money maker might be jcing or inscription or enchanting, but alchemy compliments any array of skills better than almost any other choice.  In this current expansion, Blizzard has not allowed for epic gem transmutes, but if they revert back to a Wrath model, then they might in the future.  The other really nice thing about alchemy is I could level it for 2 to 3k.  Engineering almost cost me 10k.  I also will admit, I like alchemy because I just make the flask at the start of the expansion for the extra stats, and then forget about it.  Every other "perk" from a profession is a repetitive enchant.  Plus a nice trinket never hurts!  Anyway, that's my musing for the day.

Patch Day Stockpiling

    One of the most exciting times for any gold maker is patch day.  My first really big patch day was with the release of Ulduar.  Before that point, I really only focused on making sure I had enough materials before a given patch.
    I had been selling flasks during Naxx and making a good profit doing it.  Raid leaders on my server, required people to use flasks to raid, thus, people were required to do so.  After awhile, I couldn’t farm enough myself anymore and simplify bought materials from the Auction House to meet demand.  With less time spent farming, I really started to make great profit.  The week before Ulduar, I made a decision to go all in..
    I had about 60k at the time and I bought all the lichbloom, frost lotus, gold clover, ice thorn, and premade flasks (both attack power and spell power) out of the auction house.  I dropped to 20k, then a mere 6k after buying a second surge of materials.  Then I doubled the price.  There was hate tells.  Why was I charging 80 gold for a 40 gold item?  They wouldn’t pay it--they’d farm it themselves--I was a bad person.  But at the end of the day, most people did pay it.
    After wiping the market out for a full ten days, it recovered faster than I could keep up.  The damage was done though.  The price had skyrocketed on these items and for the most part it never recovered.  Throughout most of Wrath, the price was 60.  It took until the end of the year of ICC for the price to really decline.
    Flasks aren’t profitable anymore because of the guild cauldron perk.  The market has shifted to gems and enchanting materials these days.  I’ve noticed Elementium ore on my server went from as low as 30 gold a stack to now 150+.  Red gems have gone from 50 to well over 300.  The demand is much higher than it was for Firelands and 4.2.  Why though?
    The new 5 mans are easier than the troll dungeons, so there’s some pick up there.  But the real reason, clearly is the Raid Finder.  LFR has brought a larger casual player base into raiding.  This extra content for really casual players has enticed them to by the best gems and enchants.  I’d imagine those that stockpiled pyrite for epic gems and didn’t panic sell it, are making a fortune
    What about future patch days?
    I‘ve mentioned this before, but during Wrath I stockpiled 16,000 glyphs.  The reason was because I was making them from 1-2 gold each.  I decided the value of the glyphs would appreciate more than gold would.  With my market manipulation, I’d assume that probably got over 200,000 gold for that small investment. 
    This tier of raids is over, thus the materials have a shelf life.  The thing to stockpile are materials on the leveling path for trade skills.  After all, all the new pandas and monks are going to need to level professions.  It is doubtful many will want to do it while they level.  Outland materials are already a royal pain to gather and prices will doubtless be high for those and wrath materials.  There’s a huge opportunity to pick up materials during “the dumping” as the people get rid of this expansion’s materials as well.

Finally, I sold some more glyphs and have turned a small profit on my investment.  I still have a large amount of inventory as well.  My overall value has plummeted as the invisible hand has begun to thwart the strings I pulled.

A Small Experiment

Perhaps because of my last entry, I got inspired and  started using Auctionator to buy out glyphs.  I invested about 4k in all into the market and ended up filling my bags with cheap glyphs, mostly in the 5 to 20 gold range.  I'd look at the cheap glyphs with the addon and I found there were a quite a few that were cheap, and then a huge gap where a guy had posted glyphs for 350 gold.  I basically reposted the glyphs at 349.

I didn't check my auctions for 13 hours, and had only sold 16 glyphs all day.  I made 2325 gold from those glyphs.  Some were probably glyphs I hadn't reset yet, but my average was 145 gold per.  Before I was selling and having to craft and mill each day.  With so few glyphs sold, that's not as much of an issue now.  So I have less work and about the same profit.  I can accept that.  Naturally, it will get worse as an undercutting war starts, but I'll try to babysit my glyphs alittle more (while watching TV or listening to my NPR podcasts).

As a side note, my overall worth in glyphs was 10k before.  That's really not very much.  With inflating, my value is supposedly over 100k now.  I'll never get that much, but it is fun to see your value increase so radically.

Anyway, so far this small experiment has been a success.

Edit: I sold another 12 while writing this for 1851.  Again average is 154.  That's not too bad for almost no work.  It also suggests that I need to cycle my glyphs more often.

Market Mantipulation

Last year, Blizzard made a terrible mistake.  They removed the recipe for the mage armor glyph, but did not actually remove the glyph.  Thus, there was a limited supply of mage armor glyphs--those that had been previously created.  At the same time, Blizzard had buffed arcane mages significantly.  This created an insane rush on the limited supply of preexisting ones. 
    At the time glyphs went from 15 to 50 gold on my server.  I quadrupled the price to 200 gold and sold my entire stock over the first two weeks.  When I had just a handful left, I started radically increasing my price because I realized Blizzard wasn’t going to patch and fix this immediately.

    The screenshots I submit show selling a single glyph for both 2,000 and 1,000 gold.  It seemed absurd, but such was the situation that the shortage created.  It is the basic idea of supply and demand.
    During the start of Cataclysm, I sold glyphs at a very low rate.  I utterly drove out all my competitors.  Everyone thought it was the end of the world for glyphs.  With glyphs being permanent items, the age old competitors I’d competed against for 9 months…all vanished.  As I watched our server wide glyphs fall from 16,000 to 2,000, I realized that there was still money to be made.
    I began buying out glyphs at prices that were cheaper than I could craft them myself (as I always had done) and even those slightly above that price if I could clear the entire market out.  With the market cleared out, I reset it to the outrageous price of 275 gold a glyph.


    Some people balked I am sure, but the impatient would buy them up.  After all, they were less than a red gem and you’d never have to buy them again right?  Some competition came back and we’d bitterly go back and forth.  On my days off, I’d read a book and watch TV and every 20 minutes recycle all my glyphs from the AH to the mailbox, to undercut by another tiny amount.  At 275, gold, the glyphs would very slowly fall back down, to the point where I bought them again and continued the loop.  I could never win the market indefinitely, but I could take it over for 12 hours or so at a time.  This was plenty of time to see massive profits.
    This was great because most of the tedious work went out of the business.  I was reselling more than actually crafting.  I didn’t have to mill as much anymore.  Some glyphs like sap, lightening bolt, and void walker were poison pills and I avoided them at all costs, but most resold fairly quickly.
    The average person doesn’t want to find an inscription.  They don’t get mats like they do from enchanting from running dungeons.  And they feel they need glyphs to be effective.  Some glyphs are game changing like the unleashed lightening bolt glyph for elemental shamans.
    This full-scale market manipulation is a powerful way to generate cash at very low risk.  If you buy  30 glyphs for 10 gold each and sell but one of them, for 300, then you’ve broken even, plus 29 glyphs.  Those with massive gold backing can buy up mass quantities of low level herbs as well as high level to control the market.   It was impossible to hold the market forever, even doing this, but it often would create day long periods of wealth.
    This is a more advanced and risky technique, but certainly a way to generate revenue.

    On a side note, as I’ve gotten better with Trade Skill Master, the buying functionality basically works like Auctionsnatch.  Auctionsnatch still has usefulness in making large premade lists.

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.

Lantern Mongering

Instead of writing about the Darkmoon cards like I was planning, I thought I'd mention the current holiday event.  The interesting thing about this event are the two new pets, the Lunar and Festival Lanterns.  Alliance get a blue one and Horde a red.  Why are we interested...because they are BOE.

Essentially any pet collector will want both.  If you have access to two accounts, you can put them right in the opposing AH if you are adapt at transferring your goods early in the morning through the neutral Auction House.  Otherwise listing them in the neutral auction house isn't a bad move at all.

On the alliance side I see the lunar going for 3800 in my auction and 20k in the horde AH.  So with doing no work besides a chain of characters,  I could potentially make 16k profit.  Also there's only going to be a limited number of them until next year!  Prices might go somewhat higher after that.

The other fun fact is you don't even have to pay 3800 gold or whatever your server's price is to start up.  You could simply just grind it out by doing the event.  This would give you a nice amount of gold to start your own warcraft gold business.