Reaping the benefits of leveling

My mage hit 70 yesterday, so I can finally get back into gold making. But, like I mentioned earlier, spending time leveling a character isn't all that bad. Sure, the gold per hour is arguably not that great, but even so, you can make a lot of gold by doing what I did.

I logged on to my warlock yesterday, and collected all the greenies and the NW cloth I had sent from my mage while leveling. I then proceeded to make bolts from the cloth and disenchant all greenies. I ended up with 87 bolts of NW, 110 Arcane Dust and 17 Greater Planar Essences. Not too bad actually. After cleaning up my inventory a bit, I went to the auction house to post some of the enchanting mats. GPE's went for 30g per, and there were no single Arcane Dust at all, only stacks. So I put up all my 17 GPE's for 29g, and 40 Arcane Dust at 5g per. This morning, mere 12 hours later, everything had sold. And I still have a lot more dust to unload.

While I know that this is not a great way of making gold, I actually kind of prefer it this way. I get to level a character, which is something I really enjoy, and at the same time make a heap of gold off of the things I find. I haven't sold any NW bags yet though, as I'm planning to stock up on cloth before I do that. Also, the market makes very little sense at the moment, with NW cloth sitting at 11g a stack, while the bags are at 12g. Will have to wait and see if the bags will rise in price before I start selling mine.

Primal Mights

I'm still working on my mage and his alchemy, which is coming along great now. I hit 69 yesterday, and went to Netherstorm to grab the transmute quest. After seeing the mats requirement, I portaled to Orgrimmar to see what a Primal Might sold for. They sold for 140g on average.

At first this annoyed me to death. 140g for an old-world crafting material? Seemed I had to go grind the reagents myself. But then it hit me: I'm going to start selling these badboys myself, and see if I can make some money off of it. The results up until now haven't been that bad.

I managed to get myself a sweet deal on the Primals i needed, paying around 250g a stack per primal (12g50s per Primal needed), except for Primal Earth which was 60g. Total cost for that ended up on somewhere around 1000g. So after transmuting all 20 mights (I realized quickly right after doing this, that had I learned my transmute mastery first I could've had several more >_>) I went to put some on the AH. I put 4 up at 120g a piece, and they had all sold this morning. While it doesn't cover my Primal costs just yet, if it keeps selling like this it will cover all my alchemy expences quite fast. I will continue to put them up 4 at a time, undercutting by some gold, and post results sometime next week.

Getting somewhere.

Even if my prediciton was a little off, I'm still quite satisfied by the leveling speed I've had the last days. My mage dinged 67 yesterday, i even almost made it to 68 before I had to call it quits.

In the process, I also managed to push up my alchemy quite a bit, and am now at 413 skill. I would've started on the Transmutation Mastery questline a long time ago, but apparently I need level 68 to do it, so I'm racing there as fast as I can. Have also begun doing the alchemy research, but with a 3 day cooldown it's going to take some time to get all the stuff I want.

My goldmaking has however been very slow. With all this time focused on my mage, and on my paladin's raiding, I've only been able to sell tailoring cloth and a couple of epic gems. So I've made gold, just not a lot of it. Expecting things to go back to normal once my mage is at 450 alchemy and can transmute stuff.

The Goldthorn trick.

I've been working on my alt's alchemy lately, and as I was doing some research on where to herb, I happened to find quite a good trick for earning gold as well.

On my server, a stack of Goldthorn is averaged at 23g, Liferoot is about 20g. And there's a great place to farm these in a short amount of time: Scarlet Monastery. More spesific, the Cathedral.

In the Cathedral, you're guaranteed 2 Goldthorn nodes and 1 Liferoot node. If you have a high level herbalist, you can run in, grab the nodes, and get out in a minute. Reset, rinse and repeat. If you have other things to do, park your herbalist outside and go do other stuffs. Log back in after an hour, do the same thing 5 more times, and go do something else. This can easily be 40g/hr for a minimal effort.

Mind that your milage may vary from server to server, but at least it's a sure way of making a little extra cash on the side.

Slowing down.

Lately, it feels like my income has slowed down a lot. Not that I've really made a huge pile of gold compared to other blog I've been reading, since I've pulled about 12k in 3 weeks, but it still feels like I'm earning less of it. I think I badly need something new to work with, as I'm just not getting the output from enchanting and tailoring that I want. Hopefully, my alchemist will help me solve the problem.

Speaking of which, my prediction that I'd hit 70 by the end of this week is WAY off. I'm currently 53, and my week is already looking too full to fit in alt leveling. I'm raiding mondays and thursdays, I'm watching the newest series tuesdays and fridays (House M.D. for the win!), and I get busy a lot during weekends. So that leaves about two days a week where I can effectively level my toon. It's going to take a bit longer, but it's getting done.

I've had a bit of luck while leveling that toon aswell. When questing in Cumswallow Marsh (a fine little nickname we've given Dustwallow Marsh around here), I stumbled upon Dart, which dropped the hatchling. It sold for 650g after 5 minutes on the AH. Also, while questing in Un'goro, I happened to cross paths with the Ravasaur Matriarch, which also drops a hatchling. It sold for the stunning sum of 1299g on the AH after about a day. So now I've already got some money for leveling alchemy. All I need now is getting to level 70.

Hallow's End

A new holiday is upon us. This time, it's the Hallow's End event, and like with most other events (Except for the Brewfest event I guess), there's easy money to be made. The trick this time, is to sell wand charges for The Masquerade. This might require a bit of luck from your side, but if you're like me and are going for Hallowed Be Thy Name, you'll get enough of these wands anyway.

The trick to this, is to stand in one of the major cities and announce that you're selling a transfrom from Wand X for Y amount of gold. I've seen these charges run for anything between 10g - 30g, which means anything from 50g - 150g per wand. And as you pay nothing for the wands, nor do you do any special amount of work for the money, I'd say it's a nice profit.

Another good way of earning easy money during this holiday, is to aim for Tricks and Treats of Azeroth. You do this by visiting the inns of your faction all over Azeroth and Outlands. Every Candy Bucket gives you 6g63s at level 80, and a bunch of useless candy (except for G.N.E.R.D.S., which you will be using to get G.N.E.R.D. Rage). Doing all of these will net you 311g61s. Concidering the time it takes you to get all candy buckets, one could say it's not great income/hour, but it doesn't require a lot of work so it's basically free gold. And your auctious will keep selling even if you're off exploring, right?

If you're going for the title, you'll have to do all this anyway, so if you're in it for the money, you might want to concider going for the title.

Lazy friday: Low level money making.

I'm more or less too busy to write something long and interesting today, so I'll just post a quick gold making tip for you low levels.

I'll start by saying that as usual, not many servers has as unstable an AH as mine does, but I guess this'll work for most servers, as the demand for herbs usually stay semi-high all the time.

Peacebloom and Silverleaf are found everywhere around the starting areas of most races. Get yourself a herbalist (for example a death knight with which you pick up herbalism) and run around farming those. Getting a few stacks shouldn't take very long. Pick up anything else you find along the way.

Run to the nearest auction house, and check prices for both. On my server, they've been somewhere between 6g and 10g per stack throughout the week. Post stacks, receive profit. And all that for barely a couple of hours work.

The good thing with this trick is that it doesn't require you to have some high level character with epix and 450 skilled professions. It requires 1/75 herbalism, and in Horde/Alliance only zones, you're mostly safe from getting jumped. Have a nice weekend!

Moving into other markets.

Reading other people's blogs the last week has made me realize that I should try to broaden my search for a good market. Since I have an inscriptionist, some would say that would be the obvious market to move into. At the moment, I'm still working on doing minor and northrend researches every day, until I'm satisfied with the amount of glyphs I can craft, so I'm letting that market sit for now.

I do have a market I'm planning to move in to right now though, and I'm working hard on leveling an alt to 70, so I can get all the recipes and such I need to hit 450 in that spesific profession.
My target? Alchemy.

Leveling the profession itself might be a bit time consuming, as I'm planning on farming most of the herbs myself. I have a character with max herbalism, and an epic flyer, so I'm good to go there. I also have a character with 450 JC and several epic gem patterns, so I'm covered there aswell. All i need now is to hit 450 alchemy and get epic gem transmutes. My character is 45 right now, but with the speed of leveling right now, I predict level 70 by the end of next week.

It's not time wasted though. While leveling, I get some nice greenies to disenchant into profitable materials, and I get netherweave cloth for my bags. And I'm not going to have much downtime on the gold making either.
The cloth I'm crafting on my warlock takes me 10 minutes every 4 days. A jewelcrafting daily takes me 5 every day. The only time consuming work I have right now, is crafting Netherweave Bags. But then again, I'm selling 30 of them per day almost, so I'm going to keep at that for sure.

Anyway, back to alt leveling! And as usual, if anyone does have suggestions as to which markets I could try based on my professions, or maybe ways I could increase the profits on my current markets, throw me a comment. Suggestions are always nice.

Holiday recipes.

Today's post came out a little late, mostly due me catching an infection in my jaw. What joy.

Anyway, I discovered some of the old Winter Veil cooking recipes on an alt of mine which I have not played for two years. I figured since it was a low level, there would be no reason to log on since it couldn't possibly have anything of value. Boy, was I wrong.

All day, I've been putting these recipes on the auction house one at a time, for 50 gold. So far, all my auctions have sold. It's a ridiculous amount of gold for something that costs not even a fraction of what I get paid. For example, the Egg Nog is bought from a vendor at 60 copper per recipe. I put one on the AH for 50 gold, and 47g50s60c is returned to me. That's a 47g50s profit.

If you should happen to have any of these lying around, be sure to try this out. All servers might not have as many fools as mine, but nevertheless, I predict that there will be some sales.

Not everything is all fun and joy though. For the first time since I started, I was deeply undercut on my Netherweave Bags. So deeply undercut that I managed to sell two of my 30 bags, and that's it. I'm reposting them as we speak, so I hope I'm a bit luckier this time.

The importance of tailoring specialization.

During one of those precious few moments I managed to play this weekend (due to my face hurting real bad), I realized something. I had lost a ton of gold on one thing: I had the wrong tailoring specialization.

This might be something that 99% of all tailors have realized already, but it just hadn't struck me earlier. The reason for this, is that pre-3.2, Ebonweave and Spellweave went for roughly the same amount, and Moonshroud went for about 5-10g more than both. Thus, I decided that spending 190g on a respec just wasn't worth it. I would be satisfied with just selling two Ebonweave instead, earning me the gold I needed.

Times have changed. Ebonweave is now the cheapest of the three, with prices varying from 65g during the worst of times, to 80g during the best of times. Moonshroud still lies on about the same price it always had. Spellweave prices, however, has skyrocketed. A single Spellweave now sells for 250g. And I've kept selling Ebonweave instead. The moment I realized this, I started calculating gold loss during the last couple of weeks. The results were horrible.

Let's say than Ebonweave goes for 80g, Spellweave goes for 250g. If I exclude material and auction house fees, that's 640g for 4 Ebonweave crafts with Ebonweave spec, and 1000g for 4 Spellweave crafts, meaning 1640g in 16 days. Not shabby. But if I had been Spellweave specced, results would be different. Then I'd made 320g from Ebonweave, and 2000g from Spellweave crafts, meaning 2320g in the same amount of time. A 680g loss. Concidering the low amount of time spent on crafting and selling the cloth, that's a severe loss of income, which should have been avoided.

I have now respecced to the proper specialization, and am now earning the correct amount of gold. Still, I wish I had figured this out sooner, it'd made my income grow a lot more. Aw well, everyone makes mistakes.

Off topic: Where are all the posts?

During the last couple of days, there's been a strange absence of posts here, and I feel I owe you readers an explanation.

Remember me mentioning that I was going to the dentist to have a tooth removed? What I didn't know, was that the actual removing of the tooth would not hurt. The next week though, that's a very different story.

So here I am, left cheek severely swollen, my lower left third molar gone, mouth full of stitches, and in a great deal of pain. I've been living on a diet based on water and painkillers, and that's about it.

I hope to get better soon so I can focus on better things. But at least for now, I'm too focused on hogging my couch, munching painkillers.

Off topic: No news today.

Real life has given me a kick in the ass these two days, so no updates will come until at least tomorrow. Been flooded at work, and had a lot to do at home as well, so had no time for goblinism.

In unrelated news, I finally finished the Venomhide Ravasaur questline on my warlock. Go raptor mounts! See you fellas tomorrow.

Off topic: Blog layout and improvements.

I just finished reading Sarainy's review of Bobreazes blog (great review by the way), and I realized that a few things mentioned actually apply very well to my own little blog. Especially the part about layout.

Let's face it; when I started this project, all I wanted was a place to post updates and share ideas with people. Looks and layout weren't really that important. So after messing around for about 5 minutes, I found a very generic theme that was easy on the eye, and went with it.

Now I'm asking you, readers (if there are any of you out there), to take an ubiased standpoint and tell me what you think. What should stay the same, what could be different, what would work better, and so forth. I'm not great at layout, nor do I know much about Blogger or any other blog engine. The only thing I really know is writing a bunch of TL;DR posts, because if there's one thing I'm good at, it's rambling on and on about stuff. See, this was supposed to be a short post, and already i'm writing a novel.

Anyway, if you have some suggestions, please do post. It would be nice to see what the readers think, and not let everything be about me and my little world.

Day 9: Risky move.

As I logged on to my crafty warlock yesterday, I just caught someone selling Titansteel Shield Walls in Trade Chat, for 400g a piece. After a quick scan of the auction house, I realized that this is just a bit under half of what they go for on the auction house. What did I do? I spent most of my "hard"-earned gold to buy a chunk of his stock, which would make about 6 Shield Walls.

I posted two of them for 700 gold (undercutting by 100 gold), just to see if they sell. I don't think they will though; chances are that someone will run into the same seller and do exactly the same as I did. Or maybe the ones actually looking for a Shield Wall will find the guy I bought them from and buy one there. It's a risky move, but he has to run out of Shield Walls and materials sooner or later. That's when I'll strike.

It's an investment for the future, this one, and I hope they'll sell well. Worst case, I'll have to do the same as he did, and sell them via trade for 400. Not the optimal result, but even money making has it's trials and errors.

Off topic: Friday's post might or might not make it. I'm going to the dentist *shrug* and have some wisdom teeth removed *double shrug*. Not really looking forward to it, mostly because I know it's gonna cost me about the same as the average car, but what won't one do to keep one's teeth healthy?

Bonus post: Stocking Cloth.

As I was reading MMO-Champion a couple of days ago, I noticed that a few items that will be added to the game in patch 3.3:

Leggings of Woven Death
Deathfrost Boots
Lightweave Leggings
Sandals of Consecration

It seems some of the items are missing some stats, but those will most likely be added and updated later, so pay no mind to the fact that at least two of those seem really crappy at the moment.

What you should pay attention to, is what materials are used. No, I'm not aiming at the "Icecrown Thing of Crafting Things", although I do like the name. I mean that all of them require 10 Spellweave and 10 Ebonweave.

I'm quite sure that a lot of people will want to have a few of those items crafted, and because of that, spellweave and ebonweave demands will rise. I recommend starting to stockpile some of both the cloths. Not necessarily fill your guild bank with them, but enough so that you can meet the demand when the opportunity comes. So unless you really need the gold you get from the cloth every four days, I think saving the cloth for patch 3.3 will be a smart move. And should the prices stay the same, at least you can just sell whatever cloth you do have for the same prices you would today. I concider that risk worth taking.

Day 8: Bags'n Buckles.

Yesterday, I stared playing with a few different markets, namely Mycah's Botanical Bag and Eternal Belt Buckles. I know the market choices might seems weird, seeing as I don't have a blacksmith, and there's a larger herbalism bag out there. Not everyone wants to spend the big bucks for an Emerald Bag though, and a close friend of mine is a blacksmith, so I can have some buckles made.

I decided to look into these markets, as I had a large stockpile of saronite and eternals sitting on my paladin alt, which I leveled ages ago just for jewelcrafting. I was kind of annoyed finding out I had all these materials, as I could've sold them separately on the auction house earlier for a larger profit, but there's no point in crying over spilled milk. Better just make the best of what I have.
So I had a few buckles made, and put them up at 32g a buckle (undercutting the competition by about 4 gold). Most of them sold already, will have to check results when I get home from work.

The Botanical Bag was actually an idea I got from a friend of mine. He had an alt he just wanted a cheap bag on, and he had the materials on an old bank alt. With this, I went to log on my old alchemist, which is a warrior I haven't played on since Sunwell was launched. (I actually just re-activated this account, so I could use him to camp the books in Dalaran needed for the Higher Learning achievment. Two computers, two accounts, double the efficiency!).

I had enough fel lotuses for 4 bags, and the primals needed for Primal Mooncloth were dirt cheap on the auction house, so all that was left was the cloth and the dust. I spent about an hour in Netherstorm, grinding Zaxxis mobs south of Area 52, and had enough materials for 12 Primal Mooncloths. I quickly went to make some cloth (the cooldown is removed, for those who didn't know), and had 3 bags made. I never got to put them up AH, as my internet went down (damn you, unstable ISP!), but will post them today and see what happens.

As a last note for today's post, I would like to thank WoWenomics for spreading the word about my blog. There's nothing quite like checking your blog one day, and see that people are actually reading it. :)

Day 7: Slow start.

So the first week is over already, and although I've made some gold, it's a lot less than I had first imagined. Aw well, I didn't exactly expect to earn the big bucks from just a couple of weeks of AH trading.

Anyway, the total sum of gold aquired in 1 week sits at about 3300g, give or take a few. This has mostly been made from enchanting materials and netherweave bags, and some daily quests I have to do (fishing, cooking). My enchant scrolls, which I at first thought would be my main source of income, turned out to have a lower payoff than I first expected, but I'm going to keep selling them anyway. Maybe the competition will give up eventually, I will just have to wait and see.

Hopefully, my income will be better next week. I like to believe that I've learned something from this week, which I can bring with me to future adventures.

Day 5: Netherweave Bags.

I managed to snatch 25 stacks of netherweave for about 4 gold a stack yesterday, which is about half of the normal price on my server. While I could re-post them later this week for more money, I'd rather keep them and craft bags out of them.

You see, the bag market is a lot larger than most players realize, and everyone needs them. It doesn't matter if it's for a main, a bank char, or even some alt that's only going to be leveled to level 13, people buy bags. And the netherweave bags are perfect candidates for just this. They don't really cost a lot, are easily obtainable from the AH, and they also have a decent amount of slots. This makes them ideal for selling.

For instance, I made 25 bags today, put them out for 13g49s99c, and 5 of them sold under 4 minutes after posting them. I expect the rest of the bags to sell by the end of the weekend. Concidering I bought the cloth for 4 gold, that makes it at least a 8 gold profit per bag. That's what you call easy money.

Day 4: Abyssal Shatter.

Yesterday, I noticed the new Abyssal Shatter feature had been implemented for enchanters via a hotfix. I decided that this feature had to be tested, and went to disenchant 10 Abyss Crystals. The results were impressive.

From my ten shatters, I ended up with 60 Infinite Dust and 28 Greater Cosmic Essences. Fair enough, I was very lucky with my loot, and noticed some guildies ended up with far more tragic results from the same amount of shatters. Still, even concidering that an Abyss Crystal sold for about 49g when I checked AH this morning, the Greater Cosmic Essences alone were enough to cover the cost. So in theory, the Infinited Dust is pure profit. I put it all on the AH this morning, so I suspect I will have a lot of money incoming today.

So, for any enchanter out there, do try this feature out. Of course, you better check the prices of the various enchanting mats before you shatter your whole inventory of Abyss Crystals. Also, my guess is that this will drive Abyss Crystal prices up, and dust/essence prices down, since the market will be flooded for the next days/weeks.

Day 3: Raptor pets.

All my weapon enchant scrolls came back unsold. Apparently, there's some heavy undercutting going on on those exact enchants, but as long as they sell for more than 30 gold I'm making money, so I'll keep posting them until they sell. My runecloth and all my enchanting mats sold though, so I'm almost at 1000 gold, with some more auctions up at the moment.

I also went to try my luck with a few of the raptor pets that was added not too long ago. From what I've observed, these pets sell really well on the auction house, selling for anything between 500g and 1500g (depending on the rarity of the pet, and on how desperate the buyer is). After 30 minutes of work (20 of those in Zul'Gurub), i got the Razzashi Hatchling and the Darting Hatchling. If those sell fast, it will be at about 3000 gold. Not too bad concidering the low amount of work put in to it. Also, i'll start placing my alts on the spawn locations of the rare mobs, and log in a few times per week. Maybe I'll be lucky with the spawns and snag a few more pets, only time will tell.

On another note, my predicitons regarding herb prices yesterday came true on my server. Lichbloom now goes for 50 gold/stack, Adder's Tongue is now up to 20g/stack, and Icethorn at 30g/stack. Also, a Book of Glyph Mastery now sell for at least twice it's usual price. If only I had been smart enough to grab more of those earlier.