Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Phantom Blade

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You may know that when Cataclysm removed weapon/armorsmithing from the game, it also removed a lot of the patterns that went with each.  One of the coolest looking ones was the Phantom Blade, and as some may or may not know, if you don't have the pattern, it was added back to the game in the 4.3 patch.

WARNING: If you want to farm this pattern it's pretty easy to farm but BEWARE the pattern is BoP so you'll have to do it on your Blacksmith.

Alright the link to the pattern is here.  You may be looking at the drop rates thinking ".02% drop rate?  That's insane!"  This is very much not the case.  This item was added back to WoW in Patch 4.3, and this .02% drop rate is calcualted on all the drops from those adds (over 115,000) since vanilla WoW, which haven't dropped the pattern until now.  For a more accurate drop rate, the WoW site lists the drop rate as "Very Low", which is in the range of 1-3% (as compared to extremely low which is <1%).  For reference another item that has a drop rate of "Very Low" is  Ashes of Al'ar which Wowhead correctly calculates, and has listed at a 1.7% drop rate.  Luckily, unlike Ashes, the Plans for the Phantom Blade are farmable off of multiple creatures that can be reset.  

Farming the Phantom
To get this pattern you have to kill either Shrieking or Wailing Banshees in Stratholme's The Gauntlet, which the entrance to is located in Western Plaguelands here (don't do what I did at first and go to the regular entrance) 


Once inside, you can follow this path, and you just kill the banshees along the path (dotted line is no banshees, but necessary).  


Now there is one caveat to this method.  Anyone doing this method is subject to Blizzard's 5 instances per hour lockout.  At 85, you could probably do 12 of these per hour, but it WILL lock you out after 5.  I did this, and it ended up taking me 12 runs.  On average it should take less, but it is possible to take more than 12.  Again you may have to take a break, but luckily queuing for random dungeons/raid finder doesn't count towards this total so in your downtime you can do randoms.  

Crafting/Selling
Like the Icy Cloak Post I wrote a while ago, this has look alikes that are available from vendors.  Your main audience is those who will see this item and say "Hey I want that, and I'd be willing to pay that price for it".  You're not going to get someone who looks it up on Wowhead and says "lol look at all these lookalikes!  I'm not paying for that one!", unless they're deadset on the color, so price it accordingly!  I just really like having these cool looking craftables on my alts, make 3-5 of them, throw them in the bank, and if they sell, great!  If not, reduce the price after a few weeks, keep trying.  I had a lot of fun farming and crafting this, and I hope you do too!  If you do try doing this, leave a comment about your experience getting it, I'd love to hear from you! 

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Sunday, January 29, 2012

1,000,000 Gold on a Low/Med Population Server

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Finally made it to 1,000,000 gold this past Thursday!  On December 9th I hit half a million, so in 47 days I managed to make 500k, or about 10,500g per day profit on a server that is Low pop during the week and Medium on weekends.  For those who are curious I'm going to post some of my data taken from TSM for my favorite gold making strategies.


1) Jewelcrafting


Spent

ItemGold Spent
Elementium Ore320,156
Obsidium Ore37,051
Pyrite Ore33,301
Total Spent:390,508

Gold Earned on Cut Gems (Sums of Rare Cuts)
ItemGold Made
Inferno Ruby585,408
Ember Topaz93,296
Demonseye64,942
Amberjewel27,367
Ocean Sapphire17,046
Dream Emerald16,785
Total Earned:804,844

This alone puts my profit from JC over 400k gold, more than doubling my original investment in the ore.  Now, this data is only for the cut gems that I sold, not to mention the rings/necklaces I made with the common gems and Disenchanted for enchanting scrolls/raw enchanting mats.  JC is my favorite, can you tell? 

2) Cata Twink Gear


Armor TypeGold EarnedGold SpentProfit
Lvl 77 Cloth13,3754,4768,599
Lvl 77 Leather13,0527,3255,727
Lvl 77 Mail11,4955,6585,837
Lvl 77 Plate13,7036,7686,935
Lvl 77 Ring/Neck4,7961,8132,983
Lvl 77 Weapon15,5766,3428,984
Lvl 78 Assorted9,3227,6601,662
TOTALS81,31940,04241,277

The reason I've included this is because, like the initial cut gems, it has basically doubled my investment.  The only difference is that this method literally takes seconds per day, compared to the enormous amounts of time jewelcrafting takes to prospect and cut.  

NOTE: The "Gold Spent" column also reflects gold I have spent on items that haven't sold yet.  

3) Mogging

Love it or hate it, mogging has become a great source of quick income for many gold makers, and I'm no exception.  Unlike most moggers I prefer crafting and selling items on the AH, although when I have no work to do for JC you can find me at the AH looking through models.  Here is my data for crafted and resales.



Type of MoggingProfitNumber in Category
Resales:13,78428
Crafted7,7863
Total:21,570----

The three items that I am able to resell that I craft are below with their average profit per item.  The links are to posts about them by me, or in the case of the axe, Power Word: Gold:
A lot of the responses I got from my Icy Cloak post was that there's another cloak that's purchasable from vendors in Shattrath for 300ish Justice Points.  I've sold 2 of these cloaks on a small server, and what I have to say to that is don't assume that all players have the same resources that you do, or know how to utilize them properly.  

4) Misc. Sales

Some other sales data that I think is worth noting:

Wrath Epic Gems
Gem and CutNumber SoldGold MadeAverage Gold/Sale
Brilliant Cardinal Ruby11022,288202.6
Solid Majestic Zircon6112,870211
Mystic King's Amber9621,535224.3
Reckless Ametrine234,563198.4
Willful Ametrine133,130240.8
Purified Dreadstone4763190.4
Total:30765,149g212.2

Easily the most profitable use for Justice Points when the gear is too cheap, will also buy @100g raw to cut.

Transmutes
Volatile Life Avg Price Bought Per: 5.24g
Volatile Air Avg Sale Price: 17.59g
Profit per "Living Element" Transmute: 185.25g (procs not included)
Volatile Air Sold: 3,690
Total for Living Elements: 45,571g (Didn't include procs)

Avg Price of Volatile Air x10: 162.5g
Avg Price of Volatile Water x10: 118.8g
Avg Price of Volatile Fire x10: 47.99g
Avg Price of Pyrium Bar x3: 36.65g
Avg Cost to make Truegold: 365.94
Cost after factoring in x1.2 proc: 304.95

Avg Truegold Sale Price: 606.34
Avg Profit per Truegold: 301.39
Truegold crafted: 55
Total Truegold Profit: 16,576g 

The reason I tended to do Living Elements more even though Truegold was more profitable, there was a point in the expansion where someone who seemed to have been stockpiling Truegold decided to sell about 150 for under 400g each, which would have drastically reduced my profit margin.  

Alright that's it for now, thanks for reading until the end, not all my data, but the interesting bit of it.  Look out for more gold making posts as I ease down on game time after hitting my milestone.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Friday, January 20, 2012

Great Blacksmith Transmog Craftable

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This one's for all the Blacksmiths out there! Check this model out:

The Thorium Armor chest piece.


















This chest piece, simply called Thorium Armor is a craftable piece by blacksmiths, learned at any trainer at 250 Blacksmithing.  It is a good seller among female character models, but looks pretty bland on male models.  The mats are only Thorium Bar x 16 and Blue Sapphire x 1.  For my personal server this costed under 40 g to craft, and is a very easy to make and post item.  Check your server and see if there are any on AH.  Depending on your server's transmog market this could easily fetch 150g+ for a great return on your investment.  Good luck!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Anonymity vs. Convenience

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I post my auctions from my level 85 mage, which I use as my current main.  I do weekly heroics as well as Raid Finder and BH on my mage, and I find it convenient to post while I'm waiting for my super long DPS queues.  Recently I've run into some problems with selling gear and items in WoW from this character.

Basically, recently I have become 'known' as a high end gold maker on my server.  Mostly for my selling of Transmog gear as well as level 77 twink gear, and people have been noticing me in trade and otherwise.

Pros
A friend in my guild raids on his main in my servers best raiding guild.  They were doing an alt pug of DS and I got an invite from him.  As soon as I got in the group one of the members asked "Hey why don't you stop selling those 77 greens for so much?"  I responded with "You stop buying 'em for that much, and I'll start selling em for less".  Got a chuckle from a few other raid members and we moved on.  It's nice to be recognized.

Tonight someone posted in trade "Obsidium and Elementium ore now on AH" I looked at the prices and they were at 200g a stack.  I responded in /2 with "lol".  He whispered me and asked me why, I said it was way overpriced and he said "yeah...aren't you the guy that sells all those cata greens, I bought those once, how do they sell?"  And we ended up getting into a discussion about how I make a majority of my gold through JC.  He had 490 JC/525 mining, and was farming, but not prospecting his ore.  We chatted about what cuts he should get and what to do with the extra gems, and I really enjoyed helping him out.  If everyone reacted in this way it'd be great.

Cons
Selling items that are in demand for prices higher than people are used to can get you some grief.  Recently I've been called out multiple times in trade when I was was on, and I'm not one to back down from things like that.  The negative press as well as my lack of PR skills is definitely taking it's toll, and I rarely whisper anyone trying to get into their BH every week without them noticing my name and asking questions, and at an extreme, one person wouldn't invite me to their BH because they didn't like how I ran my business.  Like I said I don't mind helping people out, but when it effects things like that, it's no good.

To Bank Alt or Not to Bank Alt?
In lieu of all this, recently I have considered making a posting toon.  Off the bat it will cut down on my profits because I won't be playing the toon nearly as much, and my expired auctions won't get reposted till maybe 3-4 hours later whereas now they'll be posted as soon as I get out of a dungeon (assuming I'm logged in).  After considering the options my conclusion is this: If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!  I enjoy posting from my main way too much to give it up, and if someone won't let me be in their BH, so be it.

I'm curious, what kind of experiences has everyone else had with this predicament?  Feel free to leave a comment below about your experiences or a link to a related article on your blog!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Gankfest

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Check out Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival for more responses to this question from the gold making community!

Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival for Jan 2012 asks "If you could add 1 item or feature to the Mists of Pandaria expansion, what would it be and why?"

Ganking Friendly Players
I personally would add the ability to gank players of your own faction.  To make this even semi-plausible I would suggest the following abilities that would be on a 7 day cooldown, instead of the 7 minute CD listed below (Curtesy of www.wowitemcreator.com):

"By light be Purged!"
"Shottie on Cairne!"



Personal Usage
Personally I'd like to use it to gank an AH camper or my main competition in a certain market.  Hell, maybe just a friend to mess with him!  The ability would be fun to use, and something to think about who to use it on for your once weekly CD.  I tried to create these abilities in Photoshop and failed miserably, thanks to wowitemcreator for an easy to use basic spell creator.  The quotes as captions are what I would add to the bottom of the abilities, which the site wouldn't let me do (as well as have cooldowns in days).

If YOU could add one item or feature to Mists, what would it be?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts


Thursday, January 5, 2012

Leatherworkers: Big Voodoo, Baby!

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Last week I posted about my favorite tailoring item to flip for transmog, it was a low level pattern that a toon of level 20 could make with the proper tailoring skill and sell for a decent chunk of gold.  Today's leatherworking pattern is no different.  Big Voodoo Robe requires only 215 leatherworking, and the mats are cheaper and easier to obtain than the mats for the cloak from my last post.  The catch on this one is that the pattern is a rare drop, so you are better off hunting on the auction house than farming it.

Big Voodoo Robe on my bank toon

Just keep Pattern: Big Voodoo Robe on your snatch list and once you have it, go to town!  Originally I didn't have the pattern and saw the robe on the AH and thought it looked cool and flipped it.  I bought it for 20g and sold it for 1500g within a week!  When I looked up the item on Wowhead I realized that it was a LW pattern so I instantly added it to my snatch list.  A good flip no matter how you price it, so long as you only post one at a time!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Don't Call it a Comeback

Okay. You can probably call it a comeback in this case. I've been gone a long time. So if you follow my Twitter you'll know I recent...