Caelestraz Alliance glyph sellers are idiots

Every single one of you (Did I ever mention I sell glyphs on Alliance Caelestraz?)

If in doubt - create/use a horde toon and have a look at the horde AH prices.  I picked Warrior glyphs and looked at the first two pages.

Glyph of Demoralizing shout : Horde 99g; Alliance 44g
Glyph of Enduring victory : Horde 100g; Alliance 13g
Glyph of Mortal Strike : Horde 125g; Alliance 13g

Do I need to continue?
Some of us need to sell glyphs to the other side.  Many of us already have access to children, spouses, guildmates who can help us shift glyphs.

My fellow competitors, if you don't do it, I am going to start.

This is today's second post.  If you missed it, you may also like to read Convert Ink of the Sea immediately?

Convert Ink of the Sea Immediately?

I don't know.


www.wowconfidential.com says in 4-0-3 jessica sellers now trades only blackfallow ink for other inks, in turn quoting WoW insider and MMO champion.

I am expecting another fortnight of Nothrend herb gathering, plus a couple of weeks of herb dumping come the Cataclysm.  I am relying on this to produce Ink of the sea.  I have converted all of my existing Ink of the sea down.  I already had guild bank tabs of herbs, and I bought about 5000g of herbs last night. I will busily mill more inks tonight before shutdown (and I don't normally do milling).  I wont be able to mill everything before shutdown.

I already have a large stockpile of glyphs (most of which I have more than 30), I use KTQ and Gnomeworks, with /ktq queue 50 glyphs to give me an approximate weighting of what type of inks I should stock.  If that sounds complicated or you dont have those addons, use Breevok's ink weights to know what to buy.

As an inscriptionist, if you only have northrend herbs or northrend inks when Jessica stops trading, you will be at a significant disadvantage.  As a levelling alchemist or inscriptionist, you will similarly want to have your levelling pack put together.

If Jessica will play nicely for the next 2 weeks, I will have converted sooner than I needed to.  Either way I will need to restock on Ink of the Sea.  If Jessica gets upset by the shattering, I will be better off.

Welcome to our glyph market

On our server we have some hardened glyph sellers.  In total we have 65 pages of glyphs for sale:

• Moonvengence : 24 pages of glyphs
• Foobarfoo/fooglypha/fooglyphb : 7 pages of glyphs
• Fiorina : 6 pages of glyphs
• Neoriv : 4 pages of glyphs
• Epicbanker : 3 pages of glyphs  

Moonvengence is a new name.  Welcome.  I suggest you read up on our market:

• War, what is it good for?
• Glyph (This site), and
• Glyph Experiment - Coffee, Smokes & AH fees

We welcome any commentary you have, or a link to a website.  We play for keeps.

Making gold - with style

We all want bling and that enchanting smile, and we are prepared to pay for it.  This means that Jewelcrafting and Enchanting are solid money earners, with a slight preference for Jewelcrafting being the more 'complicated' of the two.

Use Lil Sparky's Workshop, Auctioneer and Ackis Recipee List (see the setup post in this "whatprof" series) to work out what will sell.

Advantages

• Everyone raider, every PVP'er feels they needs enchants (as opposed to most players choosing dungeon/reputation clothes)
• All level 85 toons will be replacing their entire Gem set and enchants.
• New raids are your friend
• Toons will be juggling stats for a while to come, meaning that lots of extra enchants and gems will be needed.
• Every raider feels they need JC gems (some PVP'ers use vendor stuff - I think)
• The AH is full of stuff to crush
• Daily quest to get best JC recipees - less competition
• Enchanters get to crush unwanted BOP gear

Disadvantages

• JC will most likely have a lot of new competition, as toons switch out of Inscription
• Not as good as other professions for those that don't like complications

Levelling Jewelcrafters will want to make as much as you can with stone.  Stone is cheap and plentiful.  Gems can be hard to find, so prospecting ore - both for your personal use and resale is generally worth it.  Lookup the value of ore vs likely value of gems (Auctioneer is great).

Max Level JC's will have a licence to print gold.  You should get the Illustrous but difficult to obtain recipees (Ackis Recipee List is good.)  In the Wrath, this mostly meant JC dailies (or later prospecting titanium ore).  Prospect for gems.  Hit gems (both primary and secondary colors) will sell well at the start of Cata, being replaced with other gems later in the expansion.

Enchanters need to know that the Auction House is your friend.

• It has scrap armor and weapons to be disenchanted.  Auctioneer will help you work out what is worth disenchanting.  Disenchant for both your own mats and for selling on the AH
• Enchanting Vellums are relativly cheap.  A mature AH should keep some in stock.  Failing that, make a business relationship with a inscriptionist or two.  You can apply your enchants to these vellums and sell them via the AH.
• Offer to crush surplus levelling items for other tradeskills - for a percentage of the mats gained.
• Sell a mix of enchants on Vellums on the AH.

Levelling Enchanters 

• Keep your enchanting up at least to the point of being able to disenchant BOP gear you wish to discard.
• Sell via the AH a mix of levelling enchants you can make on vellums, especially once the mats start to cost a few gold. Lil Sparky will let you know what enchants sell best, but if in doubt make a mix and sell them all.

Max Level Enchanters will also have a licence to print gold (probably a little less than JC), and again should seek Illustrous but difficult to obtain recpiees.  Twinks will be looking for the best enchants in their brackets (not always the highest levels), but some of these will take a while to farm or be very expensive on the AH. 

Pilgrims Bounty

Pilgrim's festival is a once a year opportunity to level your cooking on the cheap.  It is also the last regular festival before cata drops (ignoring pre-cata events).  Caveat Emptor : This is a speculative post based on the assumption that the event is largly similar to last year, with a lot more recently levelled alts running around.

Other sites (including wow.joystiq.com) will contain a breakdown of this event (this link is last years faq), but I have a few things to add.  Many alts are currently being levelled, many of which don't have cooking. (even some of mine).  For those toons that get the festiva'ls shortcut to 300, many will push on to 450.

• Tracker snacks allow you to track turkies for the turkinator.  People wont buy them unless you advertise it in trade/outside the relevant areas.  Once you advertise, others will enter the market.  So make a stack or two, post them (individually) then advertise them.
• Recipees to fill the gaps - essentially 300+ will be popular
• Raw mats to for the 300+ recipees will sell out -extra points for posting mats for the easily obtained recipees.  If you are planning on levelling skinning or fishing soon (or now), keep this in mind.
• Northern spices - obtained via the Dalaran cooking dailies will be in short supply.  If you do dailies and have cooking, add this daily to your list.
• For those that do get near 450,  noting that many (most?) festival participants won't, mats for Small Feast and Gigantic Feast will be in short supply.
• Mage portals will be very popular
• Enterprising warlocks who can co-ordinate a small raid might be able to hustle in on the portal business - with the added bonus of directly porting toons to the festival grounds.

Making gold - Dress with the best

By which I mean Tailor, Blacksmith, Leatherworker.  Thse are solid choices for the raider, and have a nice money making capacity, and can provide more gold per hour than gathering.

Use Lil Sparky's Workshop, Auctioneer and Ackis Recipee List (see the setup post in this "whatprof" series) to work out what will sell.

Advantages

• Potentially higher gold/hour than farming
• Nice clothes
• Different approaches to gold making - basic and advanced

Weaknesses

• High cost items can be difficult to sell.  These professions have some of the highest cost items.
• Gear Obsolescence even at maximum level.
• Competition often works for tips (which is better than being in competition with bots)

The levelling toon has difficulties making money, but it is still possible.  Make a mix of items and slowly feed them into the market.

There are types of items that can sell well, however they will be pointed out by Lil Sparky

• Quest Items(e.g. Hillman's cloak)
• Starter gear like level 20 hats, lv 40 chain/plate, or tanking gear because a player is looking to fill a specific slot.

Some gear will sell particularly badly:

• Items in a levelling guide.   Everyone else is makeing them and not enough toons buying.  These generally have the 'fewest mats'
• Chest and shoulders sell poorly because many many levelling toons have BOA gear for the XP bonus.

The max level part time crafter has easy gold making opportunities

• leg enchants (tailors and leatherworkers)
• belt buckles (blacksmiths)
• various bags (primarily tailors)
• Improved cloth - making bolts, imbued bolts, extra special bolts (mooncloth, spellweave etc).  Many players seeking cut price tailors (eg guildies) will buy the immediate previous step and will pay for the cloth.  
• Cloth cooldowns - the best cloths will have a cooldown to make.  This makes for scarcity, and will guarantee an income (at least untill the cooldown gets removed)
• Improved leather (think heavy borean leather)
• Armor kits (leatherworkers) (depending on your server)
• Enchanters rods (blacksmiths)
• Sheild spikes and weapon chains (blacksmiths)

 The full time crafter has even more opportunities, all of the above plus

• PVP gear.  Even at the end of Wrath, basic PVP gear still sold at a profit.  I have read that "last season's" PVP gear will be craftable.
• Starter tank gear (mostly blacksmiths) as historically starter tanks need more gear than any other class
• The latest pattern - Every raid seems to create new patterns to learn and make that many part time crafters won't make.

Comments are especially welcome

Making gold - With a Guarantee

There are low risk professions that will enable you to make gold. Skinning, Herbalism, Mining, Fishing.



Your risk comes from a few sources:

• You will be competing with bots.  Bots exist, and it is suspected that Blizzard doesn't ask, doesn't tell.  
• Gathering is traditionally low gold/hour compared to other skills.
• Skinning, Herbalism, Mining are not traditional raiding skills, as they do not provide the best bonuses.
• The may be an oversupply of fish to as guilds attempt to obtain the guild reward of  Seafood Magnifique Feast (10,000 pool fish caught). 

Gathering skills advantages

• At the start of the expansion, there will be a huge demand for toons to get 525 skill needing large amounts of raw mats.
• Mining provides a Stamina boost.
• Skinning provides a Crit boost
• Herbalism not only provides a personal heal, but now also provides a haste boost.
• You and your party get XP when you gather a herb or mine a node (but not from skinning).  At low levels at least, it is about twice the XP from killing a mob when you have a rested bonus.
• All toons can take fishing.
• Fishermen will have an advantage to get into some guilds.
• The fishing daily traditionally has the most lucrative reward of all the dailies in the form of vendor trash.
• Guilds to trying to get the 'Master Crafter' achievement with the reward of a Cloak of Coordination continue to maintain demand.
• Can generally be combined with daily quests to provide additional income.
• No significant financial expenses (a few copper for a skinning knife or pick axe don't matter, or a bit more for ongoing training)

I recommend http://www.elsanglin.com/ for advice on fishing.
Skinning happens.  If you find yourself wanting a quick skill up, look for Hemet Nesingwary in Nagrand or Sholozar Basin, or Hemet Nesingwary Jnr in Stranglethorn vale.
Mining and Herbalism are worth looking at a guide for if you are struggling.

You will want a skill of about 5* your current level between toon levels 1-60, 375 at lvl 70, and 450 at level 80, and it maxes out at 525 at lvl 85.

This post is part of a series, where I talk about what professions you should take.

PS.  This post has been re-entered as it was meant to appear after the 'setup' post, and some readers will have missed it due to the joys of blogger.

Making gold - setup

The first thing you need is a Bank alt.  This is a low level toon that you create and run to your nearest capital city, near a bank and auction house.  Even if you are levelling your first toon you want one of these.  It's job is to post stuff on the auction house for you, and to hold bits and pieces you dont want to carry on your main toon.

It is possible to make gold with out any addons, but addons really do make it easier.  I generally use the curse client to download items.  Alternatively, you can download addons and manually install them in your Addons folder.  On my PC, the folder is C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns.

An addon to price stuff  : Auctioneer primary website or curse. This is also a good all round posting addon too.

Crafters need two other addons:

• Addon to tell you what you can learn (and where) : Ackis recipee list at WowAce or Curse.  Not only that, but you can open every recipee as a tradelink to see the components.
• Addon to tell you what should sell for a profit : LilSparky's Workshop at WoWAce or Curse.  It does this by using pricing data from another addon like Auctioneer to get buy and sell values.

I will continue to post in this series on how I have made gold from each of the skills.  At one time or another I have had all the skills at 450.  I had previously dropped the gathering skills, but am using the time between now and Cata to level toons I wanted to have anyway, but put gathering skills on them.

Embersilk alms for testers

Kaliope has been researching professions on Beta. It is a great cataclysm resource.

I use profession leveling guides to tell me what not to make, and as a rough guide to know how much I need. (I use more mats than the minimum with the expectation of selling the product for a profit.) That said, I wait on his her every word.

Kaliope needs embersilk to finish his guides. So, entirely selfishly, I want players on Beta (Alliance) "Lost Isle" Server to either post your embersilk on the AH, trade him her for cata herbs, obsidian or eternium ore, or if you just want the guide done and dont care about the profit, simply mail "Kalliope" (raw) embersilk.

Trying in ICC

Last night we had an interesting run.  As happens we were a few short.  Silly things like bucks nights and work and road trips. Many of those that were on were ... tired and/or grumpy.

So we pugged.  So far in my pugs I have generally had people with a clue.  Not always the best, but good enough.  Not last night.

Entry level bosses (on any raid) test that the tanks and healers can walk and chew gum.  Later bosses are harder.  Sindragosa (our current joy) tests more of the raid.  I really thought that this was a 'no shit sherlock' idea. 

I dont insist that players have the achievement.  I dont insist that players are overgeared.  I really do prefer that players have a basic set of gems and enchants, and a set of consumables.  I also prefer that players have a basic understanding of the fights. For the record I have no problem with failure. But I do prefer to fail better than last time.

Last night I got an overgeared moron DPS. Had not done Sindy (no problem). Good gear (better than mine), and gemmed solid red, to the point of an unactivated meta gem that required two yellow gems. Had exaclty 1 enchant. When I pointed out the lack of enchants I was told 'I was hoping to upgrade my gear before enchanting it'. For me this was Strike 1 - on the Foo grumpy meter - Do not lie. He forgot/didnt know/couldn't care about enchants.

We have vent. We explain strategies that we are going to use. Sometimes we will get these strategies wrong. We called the location of ice tombs. At every point our pug took extra damage - standing in the wrong position as a tomb. Standing next to an incoming tomb and getting frozen. Consistently getting hit by tail swipes and the frost waves. Strike 2 : Don't consistenly take more damage than the tank.

One person however good or bad does not cause consistent wiping or carry a raid. I knew that we were doing it wrong. So - A couple of us announced a brief AFK to look at strategies. Our pug announced AFK to do facebook. Strike 3 - at least look like you are making an effort. And yes he also came out with "It's only a game". I do not for a minute assume that the failed run was due to him alone, but it did not help.

WoW is a game. However a 10 man raid means that 9 others are depending on you to some degree or another. I am happy to provide training and work with most players, but last night I may have found my limit.