WoW Midas's top 10 lessons learned

I like the WoW Midas site. He offers an objective measure of WoW inflation/deflation on Vanilla, BC, Northrend and Cata Mats, great reasearch.

He also has a post for the bloggers (and those thinking about blogging) out there : Gold Blogging Top 10 lessons learned

Finally theunderminejournal.com is looking for new blogs to syndicate.  It is the largest driver of traffic to my site.  Please drop them a line via their contact form with the address for your blog suggestion. The blog must:

• Discuss the WoW economy in most articles
• Use correct spelling, capitalization, punctuation and grammar
• Show an effort to provide new ideas
• Provide an RSS or Atom feed with at least the first 5 paragraphs or 1,200 characters

(As a side note: they seem to be content with nearly correct spelling and grammar - I can't pretend that I always succeed on these two items.)

Mix Master again

I am Guild Master of a micro guild - Dark Prophecy, with 7 or 8 casual players.  Sometimes we actually have players online and on friday nights will even have 4 or so players raiding.  Considering our size and activty, being lvl a 12 guild isn't too bad.

We recently picked up a couple of alchemists, so it was worth getting the Cauldron of Battle (my non-raiding alchemist already had it from a stint in another guild).  For this we needed Mix Master (1000 flasks made).  We already had 250 flasks made from ad-hoc crafting, but needed to make another 750.

If you are serious about making a large number of flasks, you want to use an elixir specialist to do so.  Over time, this provides a 15% bonus to the number of flasks or elixirs you make.  I am also very happy to confirm that at the moment the proc's from this do count toward mix master.  And even though I know that the law of averages says I will get 15% bonus, getting a 5x proc still gives a nice buzz.

We made roughly an equal amount of flasks with an eye towards the cauldron: strength, stamina, intellect and agility.  This wasn't so much because I intend to use 185 cauldrons any time soon, but because there will be a consistent demand for these flasks - either directly or as mats for other guild's cauldrons.

I purchased both the herbs and the volatile life over six weeks, and over both auction houses.  To make our 750 flasks (we already had 250), you need 12,000 cinderbloom, Azshara's veil, Twilight Jasmine and Whiptail, and 6,000 volatile life.  That is a lot of mat's to strip off an auction house, with an inevitable price rise associated.  My guestimate of the alliance price rise is about 2g50/life and about 50s/herb.  It didnt help that on the Alliance AH, there was at least one other player also vacuuming all the volatile life of the AH.  Life was the hardest thing to find enough to buy.


I staggered purchases.  I bought off both auction houses.  Horde side volatile life was regularly 3-4g cheaper per volatile than alliance.  I made sure I had something to sell Horde side (glyphs) so I didn't have spend a 15% neutral AH hit just to convert cash.

I staggered my purchases over a month, once every day or so buying any needed 'below average' mats off the auction houses.  Towards the end I had to pick only the best horde sales as I was running out of horde gold.  However just horde glyph sales let me buy almost all the horde volatile life I wanted.

The darkmoon faire is just around the corner, so I expect that volatile life will reman in demand for another week.

I expect to make a profit on the flasks.  I am not convinced that this profit would have been more than simply averaging out the AH prices buying mats when cheap, selling mats when expensive.

PS. If you are looking for a place to park a toon or two on Alliance Caelestrasz, send an in game mail to Foofixit.  If you are willing to provide guild xp (even from doing the odd quest or daily), I am happy to provide guild repairs.  I am also paying 2g/point towards the fishing achievement Thats a lot of bait.

Sometimes Addons interfere with goldmaking

I love my addons.  Inventory management, keyboard binding, threat monitoring, encounter warnings, buff management, heads up displays, friends syncing, non-friend ignoring, crafting management, AH management, healing trackers, dps trackers.  I even have an addon to manage my addons. 

For some things however, they just slow things up. Too much lag can be a sign that your addons are interfering. The other night I had a full set of inscription bags with pigments to turn into ink.  Even though this part of inscription is an AFK, it was taking forever.  The crafting bar would 'stutter'; Appear, pause for a long time, and immediately jump to 'finished'.  Rinse and repeat. 

Log out, disable all addons, log back in again, and craft inks with an unmodified UI.  Much faster and smoother, saving in the order of 0.75 seconds per ink made.  Not a deal breaker but certainly worth considering.


Question for the day:  I know that the chef's hat changes time for cooking.  I know that haste changes your global cooldown and combat 'cast time'.  Does haste change your crafting 'cast time'?

What if you can't prospect Cata Epic gems?

 Anyone remember Stormjewels?

From the WoWPedia page :
Stormjewel is an epic gem that can be found by fishermen when doing Dalaran daily fishing quests. They can either be found in a Bag of Fishing Treasures, or the treasure bag can contain a Tiny Titanium Lockbox which in turn can contain a stormjewel.

Prior to patch 3.2, they were the only Northrend epic gems availabe to non-Jewelcrafters. They provide identical bonuses to the "ordinary" epic gems added in that patch.

Toward the end of Cataclysm Lich King I was buying uncut gems almost entirely sourced from either Honor Points or the equivalent of Justice points. I almost never sourced them from prospecting.

Blizzard have also done nothing but nerf the gold to be made from mining+prospecting since Cata was released. 

As a gold community, we overhype some things.  Remember that there was going to be unlimited demand for Dream Emerald for all those hunter scopes?  I'm still sitting on a large stockpile, with nowhere to sell them.


Back before 4.2, I (correctly) predicted that I thought that 4.2 would not introduce Epic gems.  For the reasons outlined (i.e. it is a stealth nerf to older content), I now think that at some stage in 4.3, we will see new epic gems.  It may not be during the initial release, as leading PVE guild's don't need them initially, but middle of the road guilds will.

It is just as likely that alternate methods of getting Epic gems  (Honor, Justice or Valor points; fishing) will limit the initial windfall of prospecting Epic gems.

I will still do my JC dailies.  I will stockpile a relatively small amount of pyrite ore.

I am uncomfortable gambling my fortune on fools gold.

Kaliope on transmogrification

I love Kaliope's blog (kaliope.crafterstome.com).  She doesn't write much, but when she does, it's worth reading.  She not only consistently is in the lead of researching upcoming tradeskill changes, and appears to understand 'cool'.

Please note: I don't do cool (or DPS either).  Many AH goblins can't or won't do it either.  This should not stop you from having a theoretical knowledge of an upcoming market. 

She has written up a post Transmogrification and Leatherworking, well worth the read.  She is not on all of the 'main' blogrolls running around, but worth the read, especially if you have leatherworking.  She has said that tailoring is next on her todo list.

Darkmoon faire next week

I know that some readers have been following my darkmoon faire series, and probably are trying their own hand at card making.

We are about to start the week before the faire.  This means that volatile life and inferno ink's will go up in price (if they have not already done so) as crafters start to gear up for their next set of trinkets.

Also, this is the week that you get best prices for your any remaining unsold trinkets.  I have deliberately not sold some trinkets until this week - just to get these prices.  (Caveat venditor : If everyone else is doing it, then the prices will instead crash).

Anyway, while I did not keep as good a notes as I wanted to, they are good enough to give a comparison of what the theory suggested I might have made vs what I did make.

Bodycheck the AH botter.

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. (Gahndi)

I had a comment on yesterday's post mentioning that while the techniques work on human players, they work less on bots.  It is true that bots are more persistant, if only because they need less human intervention.

Bots are very good at performing the same task over and over, and very bad at reacting to unexpected changes.  As a typical human player, you can be good at unexpected changes, and very bad at performing the same task over and over.  You do have the option of looking at new markets.  There is no guarantee that new markets will be any less competitive.



As an observer, it is difficult to tell the difference between:

• Prohibited

• automated bot.
• semi automated bot that only automates the 'keypress/click now' requrement.
• Account sharing campers being on 24/7
•  Permitted
• A streamlined account using addons, but with a player using a scroll wheel mouse performing clicking while they are watching TV, eating dinner
• A streamlined account using addons, but with a player using a second account, having the keystrokes from their first account send keypresses to the second account
• A very dedicated camper with basic addons spending all day on the AH.  Or even 2 dedicated campers on two accounts operating in shifts.

I am not a lawyer, and the above rules match my understanding of what is allowed/not allowed - if you feel that the above criterea is misleading, please comment below, giving sources (terms of use, blizzard forum posts etc).

A player using prohibited methods (especially if they are acutally on 24/7) should be reported to Blizzard.  You will not get any instant gratification in return, but they may look at your complaint at some stage.  Blizzard do ban botters in waves.  With the exception of getting the (passing) 'feel good' of reporting a botter, is no significant difference between any of the above.


They are all good at repeating a simple task, and are all bad at reacting.  So, make them react.


In yesterday's post, I talked about learning all the skills, 48 hour posts and cutting off their profit. 

Today, we look at body checking the opposition.  Your aim is to get them to post at cost (or less), keep them grinding and posting. You will need patience, all the profitable recipees of that market segment, and a stockpile to start.  This is not yet about profit.  You are already making none - because a persistant undercutter is already preventing your sales.

You will need your own spreadsheet, calculator or pen & paper. 

• Guestimate the amount of demand at low prices.  Stockpile enough mats to satisfy that demand.  (You can always sell surplus mats later)
  
• Over a cycle, determine what are your costs, including AH fees, based on the minimum market price of material. theunderminejournal.com gives you a fortnight's history of supply.  Remember the darkmoon faire when looking at herbs and volatile life.
• Use trade chat, other crafters to see if your intermediate costs can be reduced (e.g. JC's should find a transmute alchemist to make your inferno rubies).
• Use a deep undercut - aiming each time to post at halfway between your cost and market prices.  Post for 48 hours, in singles at this point.
• Wait for their response:
• Do they buy?  Then Sell.  Lots.  Until they give up you have a guaranteed buyer for 1/2 the potential profit.  Offer to sell COD.  (even botters keep an eye on their accounts).
• Do they undercut? Then do another deep undercut - again halfway between your cost and market price.
• Do they sell below your cost?  Buy untill you have your desired stockpile.
• Reached your stockpile limits?  Post singles, in 48 hour auctions at your cost price.  This caps their income (remember - they have already capped yours).

This is boring and not particularly profitable - for both you and your competitor.  If you have done your research better than they have, then they may be losing gold.  There will be other crafters; levelling toons, others getting out of the market, players farming for themselves.  These competitors will unkowningly help you in making your botting competitor's life hell.


At the moment, my time is better spent working around other players.   However, it's not that hard to run off both botting and camping competitors.  It comes down to endurance.  You can devote an hour every 48 hours, they are spending one or more account's full time 'owning' a now worthless market.

What to do with that camper?

On the Auction house, there are dominant names in some fields, often a 'camping' player.  That is, someone who does nothing but sit on the auction house, and undercut's you by a copper or two within moments of you posting something.  You could camp in responce.  I don't.

In response to a recent comment.  I will illustrate my methods to combat this.

First of all, learn everything for your chosen profession.  The harder the recipee is to get, the greater the chances it will be profitable.  Your camper may not have the time to learn these recipees.

• For jewelcrafters, this includes dalaran JC dailies as well as Stormwind/Origmar dailies.  
• For scribes, do your research (minor and major), and pick up books of glyph mastery (though they may become somewhat redundant later - with research also being able to do this too).
• Bored enchanter's should organise older content to pickup patterns - either for maxing out low level pvp toons, BOA enchants, or just cater to the low level rich player.
• Bored leather workers, tailors and blacksmiths should also consider farming older content for the patterns that look 'cool' for transmogrification.  Caveat Emptor : I have no idea what 'cool' would look like.
• Engineers should get pet recipees.

Second, do your market research as to what is profitable to make.  There are addon's like Lil Sparky's workshop, spreadsheets (both on the web and one's you do yourself), and even TradeSkillMaster has a tool.  You will sometimes craft stuff no-one ever needs, and sometimes will find genuine niche markets.  Your camper may avoid these recipees.

Post when your camper is AFK.  My Horde glyph camper has this posting activity (from http://theunderminejournal.com/seller.php?realm=H-Caelestrasz&seller=Massterbank)

I respond with this posting activity (from http://theunderminejournal.com/seller.php?realm=H-Caelestrasz&seller=Foostrait)

I suspect that Massterbank's overall earnings are higher than mine.  However, I have a much greater gold/hour than he does. There is absolutly zero value in 1c undercutting Massterbank when he is online.  He is prepared to outwait you.


If all the above don't work or are undesireable, look at cost based options option of dealing with campers.

Learn exactly how much it costs you to make something (gems, glyphs, belt buckles, pets - whatever).  Work out how little you are prepared to sell something for above costs.  This is your threshold.

Will your camper buy out your auctions if you post at your threshold?  Then sell away.  He may build a stockpile, but you are making gold (i.e. you are above your cost).  Easy sales.  I have several times had competition buy out my glyphs.  I then sent a note thanking them for their support, posted more on the AH, and asked them how many more they wanted COD?  Apparently this is demoralising for a wannabe monopolist.

Will your camper undercut you anyway?  Then sell a 48 hour 'wall'.  You are not making any sales as he continues to undercut you.  However, you are making his life hell.  There are still levelling toons posting things below cost - taking away his sales.  You are not allowing him to make a huge profit.  Your time commitment is picking up mail every 2 days and reposting (i.e. blessed all).  His is crafting, posting, ah fees, and doing this for less than questing gold/hour with a huge time commitment.  All it requires is patience, and the willingness to 'destroy the market' (buyers still think its great). 

It may take a month or two to drive off a particularly determined camper.  That's OK.  I am developing other markets while he is grinding for no reward.

AFK, still making gold

First life interferes.  Mostly good, but I have spent a fair amount of time /afk.

My routine still involves posting 12 hour glyphs many mornings, on each AH, collecting the sales and unsold glyphs in the evening.  I am way way behind in my crafting, but as I have not had time to solve that, still making 1.5k (profit) per AH per morning I can get to the PC is worth it.

Gem sales are also pleasantly reliable. 

• Log onto sales alt, collect mail, pick up 2-3k in sales, and yesterday's crafted gems.  Post 48 hour auctions.
• log onto JC, do the stormwind daily, and re-craft gems, and mail gems.

Two of my recent interests require significant amounts of volatile life, (One interest is the darkmoon faire series I have recently been blogging about).  Volatile life is stubbornly high alliance side (10-30g each) with limited supply, and significantly cheaper horde side (8g) with larger supply.  On a seemingly unrelated note , my horde toon is richer in assets and poorer in cash.

For me, there is no question that 'time is money'.  However even small amounts of time can be significant amounts of gold.

Transmogrification again instead of real news

I'm not great at 'cool'.  Too old, too results driven, and I normally don't care.

Transmogrification is about 'cool'.  The blue trackers are still going ape.  It has caused more excitement than, ... well the real id changes, but this time for 'good'.

Blizzard are confirming that to change your own gear's look, you need to have that gear.  Some gear that is unobtainable on your toon (eg Death Knight starter gear).

Many readers of gold blogs won't care about it.  Many players that wish to be parted from their gold will care a lot.  I'm surprised I haven't read a rant from Gevlon about the type of player who will care.

Regardless, old raids will become popular once this is released, with associate changes.  Players making or buying old gear.  Players incidentally farming those raids, selling what they farmed on the AH.  I also expect to see a reduced supply of high end disenchanted items as players start dumping them old gear store.

In terms of research, as a follow up on my recent darkmoon card series, I am writing a follow up on what cards, decks and trinkets I bought and sold or continued to hold.  However, you won't get it untill the next darkmoon faire.  Some readers expect me to make a fortune.  Others expect me to lose one.  The reality should be somewhere in the middle.