Friday, January 31, 2014

Preparing for Connected Realm Gold Making

So I recently found out that my home realm, Shattered Halls, will be connected to a already connected realm, Kalecgos/Executus. I must say I've been watching the blue posts about this like a hawk, and I did not see this added in. The other day I saw someone in trade advertising a guild on the new server I'm being connected to, and checked the blue posts and low and behold, it was true!

Scoping out the New Realm
The first thing I did once I confirmed it was actually happening, was go over to The Undermine Journal and scope out my new realm. I looked at my primary markets, most notably Jewelcrafting, and found things like this:

First of all the pricing is pretty all over the place, but note that 4 of the better selling cuts are all going for ~300g. This screenshot was from today, and when I originally checked days ago, this was also the case. Very strange that they can maintain it.

So after seeing this I decided to roll a level 1 and get my hands into the AH a bit, and see it first hand, and I must say thy have quite a bizarre economy going on over there. First of all let me note that according to realmpop, these 2 already-connected realms combined have the same population as my current realm. So right now we're about the same size. Looking through the AH though, there's no one name that you see repeated throughout gems or throughout almost any market. They seem devoid of big fish, which is a little disappointing to me. I was hoping for some new competition, but it just seems I'll have (mostly) a bigger audience. I know this is not likely the end of our connections, but I feel like I'll be competing with my same marketeers that I have been on my main realm all along, they may get more serious about it though with the increased gold making potential.

Going Overboard
So something I was just toying around with doing on this new realm, and I wasn't at first overly serious about it was rolling 11 DKs on each of the 2 servers I'm getting merged with, and parking them for rested XP. Well last night while listening to the live recording of Late Nite With Stede # 017, I took the plunge:


The theory is, once I build up enough of a bank of rested, in my spare time throughout the end of this expansion and into WoD, I can rotate through the characters from 1-22, leveling each through their rested, and by the time I return to 1 I'll have full rested XP. Now getting out of the starting zone alone will be roughly 22 hours of play time alone, so this is a really bad idea, and realistically I will probably never even bother to get this project off the ground. Leveling DKs is something that I enjoy (particularly through BC) so it'll be fun in my spare time.

About 18 of these 22 are goblins though, so they will have an easy time leveling up Alchemy. Okay I have a problem, I get it. Really really don't think I'll end up finishing this, but I've already rolled 4 DKs on other realms into the 80s for fun, so really that time would equate to 8 DKs here, so feasible. At the absolute least I will have a lot more posting toons which will be fun. Not intending to pour copious amounts of time into leveling them, just down time if/when I have it from crafting/raiding. Already have more than enough profession slots on my main server to keep my empire running for a long long time.

Alright that's it for this post, but you'll definitely be hearing about this after I get connected on Thursday, February 6th! Very much looking forward to some analysis after I've been on a while. Even before I'm connected though, I'm starting to realize (which is something I overlooked in the past) is that connections will all have unique components to them. There's no do x for maximum profit for all connections, it's just not going to work out that way when you combine two unique server groups.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Sunday, January 26, 2014

How I Made 40k Gold in 2 Weeks Starting at Level 1

So here it is, the official breakdown of our competition! In the past 2 weeks Selltacular and I were in a competition to see who could make the most gold on a single faction on a 1:1 Alliance to Horde ratio server, starting with only level 1s. I was representing the Horde and Selltacular the puny Alliance. You can read some of my previous posts about it for some more information if you're curious. Chronologically: Announcement Post, Review 1, Review 2. Also Selltacular joined GoblinRaset and me on our most recent episode of the Drunken Musings Podcast #8 for some competition roundup, be sure to check that out!


For the record, the Final Tally was Selltacular: 28,325g Phat: 39,650g. Lok'tar Ogar! All of the gold made has been donated to Wowprofitz's 1.4 Million+ Gold Stream Giveaway, read more about that here.

Humble Beginnings
Rolling Horde, and being limited to level 1's, I chose to roll a Blood Elf female, because they have the best character model IMO to test out transmog that I was interested in flipping. I rolled a Disc Priest, just because they're fun and mostly because DKs were not allowed.

In order to make gold in WoW you simply cannot just start at level 1 and materialize wealth out of thin air, you really need to level, at least a little bit. I started leveling, up to 8 or 9, and soon got bored of the grinding (one of the multitude of reasons I don't farm on my main server). Prior to even starting the competition I knew that the Darkmoon Faire was in town, so I decided to take a trip out to Darkmoon Island to fish the Wreckage pools around the island for the crates that contain MoP items. This worked okay considering I had to walk to each pool, but on the beach by the pools are level 10 crabs, which I was dotting as I ran from pool to pool for XP. I actually ended up getting roughly 2 levels doing this! I also picked up a Darkmoon Adventurers Guide so that when I hit 15 and hopped in dungeons, I could try to get DMF item drops from bosses. Here's a look at one of the returns from 14 Crates I fished up:

14 Crates
Results from the 14 Crates
Moving On
After fishing at the Faire for a while, without a mount, I decided my time would be better spent getting to 15 to get into dungeons, followed by 20 as fast as possible so I could get my slow ground mount for Darkmoon Island. I begrudgingly picked up Herbalism and Mining, and headed to the Barrens to get to 15. I grinded for an hour or two, picking some flowers along the way, stopping to say hi to Mankrik, and before ya knew it I was on my way to dungeon finder, selling some Copper Ore/Bars and Peacebloom/Silverleaf/Mageroyal. Once I hit 15 I dropped Herbalism like a bad habbit (because it is) and picked up Enchanting to make some quick gold from DEing items during my dungeon runs.

Awkward Teenage Stage
I queued up for my first dungeon, RFC, and started Atonement healing on my Disc Priest. There was one problem with this strategy, which is that (apparently) Disc Priests don't get Atonement healing until level 38! Needless to say our tank actually died because I didn't have any healing addons on, and did not realize he was going down! I am not used to not paying attention on a Disc Priest in dungeons, I more or less play them as mages that passively heal. Whoops. After that I healed by hand, and we got through pretty well before turning on a healing addon. I ran more dungeons through 20, and actually picked up a Mysterious Grimoire, which I sold overnight for 300g! My first big sale! Now it was time to start building up some inventory.

Friday, January 24, 2014

Level 90 Boost: Professions Too?

Analysis of my competition with Selltacular is currently being worked on, but until then, some interesting news today.

Blizzard's 5.4.7 PTR Patch has been datamined by Wowhead, and there are 2 interesting strings in there that could have an effect on our professions:

  • CHARACTER_UPGRADE_PROFESSION_BOOST:: |cff00ff00Veteran Bonus:|r |cffffffffLevel 60+ characters will also receive a skill level boost to their primary professions.|r
  • CHARACTER_UPGRADE_PROFESSION_BOOST_RESULT_FORMAT:: |cff00ff00Bonus: %s (600)|r

Now, from what I can see here, it seems as though the "current" system in place is that you will be able to get a skill level boost to primary professions only if you are at least level 60 on the toon you're boosting. Some interesting info, I'm sure we'll be seeing more as the PTR is tested, and I'd love to know how much the boost will actually be. Very interesting news today, it will be fun to see how this pans out!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Monday, January 20, 2014

Contest Update/Drunken Musings # 7

Scoreboard's up! As the time ticks down on our competition (just over 3 days left as I write this), me and selltacular decided to start a tracking system so you can all see where we are! The scoreboard is live on my blog and is updated as regularly as possible!

As you may or may not know, Selltacular of Copper to Gold and I are in a two week competition currently to see who can make the most gold on (Alliance/Horde) a single faction of a new server for the two of us. We will be donating it all to Wowprofitz's Amazing Superiour Awesome Mega Ultimate Supreme Holy Cow That's a Truckload of Gold and Prizes Twitch Follower Giveaway.

To read more about the competition itself, check out my official release post, Selltacular's post with official rules, and my weekly review post from this week and from last week to see what I've been doing!

Drunken Musings # 7
This past Saturday GoblinRaset and I recorded our most recent episode of the Drunken Musings Podcast with special guest Kyran. Trust me this was one of our best episodes yet and is well worth the listen! We covered a lot of WoD news/speculation and gave out some great TSM tips and shot the shit as always. You can check it out here!


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Competition Update: Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 1/18

Before I get to the actual post I want to mention that I will be recording episode # 7 of the Drunken Musings Podcast, tonight, January 18th at 9PM EST. We will have a special guest Kyran from The Azeroth Perspective Podcast. You can find us live at that time at this link. If you have any questions you'd like to ask us for our user question segment, you can either leave them as a comment to this post, tweet them to me @PhatLewtsGold, or email them to PhatLewtsGold@gmail.com. 

Continuing the Chronicles of Noobia
Same as last week, I will be focusing this week's weekly review on my competition server that I'm currently participating on with Selltacular. We rerolled on a new server with only lvl 1's and BoAs and are in a 2 week race to make the most gold. Check out the full details of the competition here!

Selling Yourself Short
I'm noticing a lot on this server, maybe just because I'm more actively participating in flipping whereas on my main server I tend to stick to (mostly) just the crafting aspect, but I've seen a LOT of underpriced goods on this server, to a ridiculous extent. I was able to purchase 11 Etched Imp Amethyst for rougly 19g/piece and sold 3 of them for about 80g/piece:
As you may have noticed I bought 11 gems and sold 3, and have already turned a profit. Madness. People on this server are really selling themselves short, a valid strategy for crafters would be to sell 30% at 4 times what they listed, and vendor the rest for ~70 extra gold. Silly stuff.

Friday, January 17, 2014

Collinearity and Step Progression

The latest Late Nite With Stede (#015) was recorded last night, and I was honored to be in the audience on IRC during the recording to chat with some of the gold making gurus that listen to LNWS live. It's always a good time, and if you ever find yourself having free time Thursday at midnight EST you should swing by.

It was a great show with special guest Ben Redington who is starting up a blog called The Gold Blog Method. He mentions in the podcast that he is going for an overall feel akin to that of Wowprofitz, where he is starting out as a gold making as a novice, and going over methods that he's tried and the results he's had with them, what works, and what doesn't. Should be an interesting project to see come to fruition.

Anyway, back on topic, during the podcast Stede mentioned the following tweet, and we had a bit of debate about what he said following, and honestly I think that this tweet has been a very misinterpreted example, because Celestalon chose numbers that didn't properly illustrate his point, but here it is:

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Drunken Musings Podcast Episode 6


So last Thursday, as previously announced on my blog, GoblinRaset and I recorded our most recent Drunken Musings podcast, and it was a very fun show! We rambled on for quite some time, and had drunken misunderstandings, and even talked about gold making! If you are interested in listening to this most excellent of podcasts, you can check it out over at The Drunken Mogul, a blog that Raset says will soon become reactive besides posting our podcasts. It seems he has a project up his sleeves!


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Transmog Q & A - Getting into the Transmog Market

Over on the subreddit WoWEconomy there was a post where the poster was asking all sorts of questions about the transmog market. I thought there were a lot of great questions that people could benefit from, so I asked the poster if I could address them in my blog and he happily obliged. So here's a little Q & A snippet I think those of you who are considering the transmog market will find interesting!

Q: About a week or two ago I found the Undermine Journal, which led me to the idea that money could be made on my server by buying low and selling a little higher. Is the undermine journal a reputable system to find great deals on your auction house?

A: Yes and no, but mostly yes. A lot of times TUJ can be a great indicator of what an item will go for, but always take it with a grain of salt. With TSM you can import either Wowuction or TUJ data in game, to get a feel for what the region pricing looks like for an item. In the transmog market this is key. Is it selling for a markup on other servers as well? That's a good deal. Definitely use the TSM App to it's highest potential to get accurate data as well. 

There's actually an official TUJ addon that works well with TSM and can be used as a pricing source (/tsm sources). I would suggest this since you seem to prefer TUJ, and that can be found here, and is updated weekly through the Curse Client for accurate cross realm gold data for items! 

Q: What advice do you have about what items to watch? I've read through many blogs and they've stated plate and mail are the best sellers- does this mean I should stay away from cloth if I'm attempting to make a valid in game income in this market?

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Chronicles of Noobia: Phat's Weekly Lewt Review

So as I mentioned yesterday I'm in a heated competition with Selltacular from Copper to Gold, and I thought my weekly review would be a good time to go over what I've been doing in game to make gold.

Humble Beginnings
I started off the competition with a Belf Disc Priest. The reasons are numerous, but the main being Belfs are good models for transmog using Mogit and Atonement healing is amazing/mindless/like having a 4th dps in the dungeon. Anyway I quickly got bored at level 6, and wanted out of Silvermoon, so I decided to head to org to scope out the Auction House. Here I am greeting some of the local denizens of the Undercity Zeppelin Tower (I just missed the Zeppelin because I went to the wrong tower).


Upon reaching Org and realizing I had almost no gold, I did a few more quests and got Mining/Herbalism, actually picked a few herbs before deciding that I hated myself and got to level 8. That's when it hit me! The DMF was in town! I quickly picked up fishing and took the portal out to DMF to fish up the Floating Debris pools. A great strategy for some startup capital as they have mats like Windwool Cloth, Trillium Ores, and many other MoP level mats. Also since I did not have a mount yet, I spent time in between pools killing the level 10 crabs that surround the island for some extra XP/vendor greys. Here I am jamming out with the Tauren Cheiftans and not being productive.
So I got a good amount of crates crates, as well as a DM Adventurer's Guide so I could collect DMF items from dungeons and I ended up getting a Mysterious Grimore and an Ornate weapon on the first day (was really grinding because the DMF was ending soon and I wanted to capitalize ASAP. I spent the following 3 days grabbing crates in my down time as well as well as leveling with Mining/Enchanting.

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Alliance vs. Horde Goldmaking Contest/Bloodbath

So it all started out with a tweet surrounding Wowprofitz 1.2 Million+ Gold Giveaway, plus a little Horde/Alliance bias, but isn't that how all great WoW conflicts start?



Of course this sparked up a debate between Selltacular and I, and he challenged me to a "duel", in terms of who could make more gold (on their faction) in a set amount of time on a server with a roughly 1-1 A:H ratio. We got into Skype and hammered out the details, and the summary is: we're rolling lvl 1s on each respective faction, using no means of transferring gold from other servers (BoAs okay but just for leveling) and a 2 week time frame starting from the 9th (so today's actually the 3rd day), and we've rolled on an RP server because we will be donating the gold to Profitz's prize pool, and we figured we could make the most gold on that type of server when comparing all the 1-1 ratioish servers out there. Official explanation can be found on Selltacular's post here. I'm going to write up my weekly review tomorrow, and the focus will be on this alt server for the review, so that will be interesting I think, seeing how I fared on a new server starting with nothing!



Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

WoDcast & Live Recording Drunken Musings Thursday, Jan 9th @ 9pm EST

Hey everyone! I know I just announced that we released (our long awaited) Episode 5 of the Drunken Musings Podcast, but I have 2 more podcasting related announcements!

WoDcast
Earlier today I recorded an episode of WoDcast with someone you may be familiar with as Marthius from The Consortium Forums:
For Reference!
Anyway, he recently started a blog over at 8bitbrucegaming.blogspot.com called Every Last Copper, as well as a podcast called WoDcast, and I was happy to be one of his first interviews for the show! He plans on doing a midweek segment interviewing gold makers from all walks of the gold making community, and it seems like it's going to be a really great podcast you all will enjoy.


Drunken Musings Episode # 5

Long time readers will probably know about my podcast, but for ~5 episodes last year me and GoblinRaset from The Drunken Mogul would get on skype and discuss gold making topics while getting drunk. It is formally called The Drunken Musings of Insane Goldmakers, Drunken Musings for short. This past September we recorded our most recent (yikes) episode and had an all star lineup of guests, Stede from Late Nite With Stede, Profitz from WowProfitz, and Erogroth former cohost of the PW:G Podcast and writer of Get Rich WoW.

Anyway, the point is, GoblinRaset stopped playing WoW shortly thereafter and never edited/posted this podcast, but now he's back around, and finally got his act together and posted it on his website. It's about 3 months out of date, but it's kind of interesting to see how the game has changed since 5.4 dropped, and some of the people on the podcast's attitudes about WoW shift dramatically (looks at Stede/Profitz).

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Thinking Like a Gold Maker (Part 1)

In this multiple part series, I'm going to go over my thought processes and how I think about concepts in gold making in World of Warcraft, and why I do things the way I do. Today I'm going to spotlight the Buying aspect, because in my opinion, it's the hardest part of gold making for new gold makers to nail down, as well as the most important.



The Logic Behind Buying Crafting Mats
Although it may not seem so from the outsiders perspective, there is indeed a certain logic behind purchasing items in WoW, and it's a key to making massive piles of gold. Whether it's raw mats or an item to flip, I always focus on one question when buying: "How much am I earning by making this purchase?" This may seem counter intuitive to some, but purchasing is actually when you make your gold. Just think about it. Yes, you may have to do intermediate steps such as prospecting and cutting gems, but your profit is going to be determined by how much you paid for the item to begin with, and how much you sold it for, because what it boils down to is: Profit = Psold - Pbought, where P = Price. Are you buying at a reasonable price? Could you get it cheaper? Could you get someone to farm this for you? Minimizing cost is more important than maximizing selling price. How much you buy raw materials for is something that you can have MUCH more control over than how much you sell an item for.

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 1/4

So for me this week has been an all posting, no crafting kind of week. I honestly haven't been in game much other than to post a few times a day. I may or may not have bought the Bioshock trilogy during the Steam sale and I may or may not be devoting godless amounts of time to playing through it. Anyway, here's the breakdown by the numbers:


In the last 7 days I spent 15,009g which turns out to be ~2k a day. This mostly CODs of ore and herbs from my suppliers for the most part this week. Might have splurged on some leather while crafting my LW CDs, but honestly no day this past week did I spend more than 2 hours in WoW. I'm doing a Cooldowns -> Post -> Logout cycle.

The way I craft is such that I can repost the same things (usually enhancements/gems/PvP gear what have you) without having to have a crating stage, so a lot of times I don't even visit the mailbox, just withdraw post cap from the bank with TSM, which is really great for times like now when I don't craft. I am honestly starting to feel a bit of drag in the game. There's no new anything on the horizon and there's nothing new and challenging in game at this point (that interests me at least). Basically just crafting and profiting from the same items that are go-tos. Thinking about getting a bit more creative in the near future, but only time will tell if that pans out.

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...