Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Garrison Part 1 Gold Making Analysis

So today Blizzard released Part 1 in a 4 Part series all about Garrisons. I'm not going to go through all the nuances of the Garrison they've added, but solely focus on the gold making aspect. Now, before I get too far in the analysis here, I want to point out the most important part to us gold makers:

"The Garrison also grants you other powerful benefits. It will play an integral role in your professions on Draenor, giving your character access to more than just the normal two primary professions (we’ll cover that in more depth in part 2 of this preview series)."

So it seems that our long awaited in depth post about the interplay between Garrisons and Professions is on the horizon. Given how Blizzard has been tending to release information as of late, I'd imagine we'll see this next week around this same time.

Gold Making Invitational Days 16-27

Days 1-5
Days 6-15

Today I'm going to post the rest of the days of the competition, with a wrap up to follow tomorrow. Wanted to include it in this post, but it's taking me longer than expected to write, so I figured I'd throw the last chunk of days out for y'all to read, and get to the

Day 16
Made 762g in the overnight, reposted auctions in the morning quick. I got Crafty Vermilion Onyx (Exp/Crit) for my daily cut, not too bad! I made a bunch of those, reset a few other cuts, as well as some enchants and shoulder enchants (got ~3k by the night). Doing quite well with that. There are ~2 weeks left so I'm going to attempt to start building up capital, ended the night with over 1k, but I still will not hesitate to spend if an opportunity presents itself.

Start: 1,144g
End: 1,312g
Auctions: 64,102g

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Gold Making Invitational Days 6-15

Previous: Days 1-5
Next: Days 16-25

So the contest wrapped up this past week, but I've been crazy busy. Drove cross country from NJ to Texas, starting a new job, and all that good stuff, so I haven't really been able to keep up with updating this properly, so here's days 6-15. Will probably put out 16-25 tomorrow or the next day, and then a nice wrap up post following that. Without further ado, here's Days 6-15:

Day 6
Had a decent overnight, ~900g in sales, it's time to reinvest it! Got a piece of 80-84 blue gear for 190g and reposted that, and invested the rest in my transmog list. Chain ran some UK dungeons, 2 Cobalt nodes per run is pretty nice gold. Ran till 72, then went out for the night, posted when I got home but did not play much, as it was late.

Start: 960g
Finished: 190g
Auctions: 53,372g

Day 7
A pretty dismal overnight put me to 223g, and increase of just over 30g. I spent most of that gold leveling up my Jewelcrafting mainly to hit 400 and start prospecting Saronite Ore. I have been getting a decent amount of Cobalt from UK, and being impatient as well as not wanting to buy from my competition who was flipping it, I was prospecting it for JC mats, even though it makes more sense to sell the cobalt raw and/or as bars. Now that I have no need for Cobalt, I will be doing just that. Hoping to hit 74 today. I will be away this upcoming weekend, and only be able to log on infrequently at best, hopefully to get a post scan off or two. I'm mildly regretting investing in transmog at this point. It may have been a little early and the posting fees take their toll with this low of a gold total. I've made some decent gold off the market, but not enough to sustain my posting habits, which are mostly a result of me having an unlimited amount of gold for menial things like posting, and I'm not in the habit of allocating some of my income for posting fees.

Hit 76 after chaining Gundrak for a few hours. Made a huge mistake and posted 10 stacks of frostweave for 6g/stack instead of 6g each. Was by the AH when I realized what was happening and was able to cancel some of the auctions before they were bought out. A pretty large set back considering I was -40g per stack for those stacks.

Start: 223g
Finished: 65g
Auctions: 60478g

Day 8
I posted quite a few items last night, which was a bit of a blunder as I did not realize that there was maintenance today, thus a waste of posting fees for the most part. Last night I was able to use TUJ and bids to secure some cheap materials though, most notably 50 x Exotic Leather for 5 silver a piece. Considering I'll probably sell it for ~2g50s per piece, a very lucrative investment. I also lost a few of my bids, and some did not expire during the maintenance period. I did a quick post scan after reset, another late at night, and leveled to 77 getting carried by a Cata geared 78. That was fun.

Start: 180g
Finished: 22g
Auctions: 56,273g

Day 9
Made a solid 1k in sales in the overnight. Reposted what I needed to, and ran a few dungeons putting me towards 78. I decided that 2 levels was mincemeat and it was time to really buck down and grind some Gundraks, farm some Obsidium Ore, ding 80 and knock of my first JC daily cut. As I type this CKS is prospecting my Obsidium in the background. I hit 80 and my /played is at 37 hours. Ouch. Probably would have been more efficient to not make gold leveling from 1-80 then go back and do it, but it is what it is.

I farmed ~20 stacks of Obsidium and just hit 500, which was perfect. Had 1100g on me and 6 stacks of GIO I purchased for cheap earlier. Bought what I could afford and went to town. It's killing me to waste these Tiger Opal's just to level JC, but what can I do? Got to 535 and decided to go for the gold and do Vermilion Onyx research since I'm on a limited timetable. Got Champions (Str/Dodge). Swing and a miss.

Now the question is do I level Alchemy, or hire out Transmute Alchemists? Now there are 2 major factors. Time is the first. To get 500 levels will take at least an hour between crafting and getting mats of the AH. On top of that I'd have to pay 4x Living Steel to spec Xmute Mastery, but I suppose that's a wash in the long run anyway. Tipping worked in my past competition, but trying a different route.

Start: 1,063g
End: 215g
Auctions: 54,396g

Day 10
Did not play a whole lot on the competition server today. Logged in twice to repost my auctions, but had a busy day, and did not do much gold making wise.

Start: 290g
End: 23g
Auctions: 56,934g

Day 11
Made a good 1,400g in sales in the overnight, my research yielded Polished (Agi/Dodge), which is not the greatest cut to start with. Although it hasn't payed off initially, I currently hold the only full stacks of Frostweave on the AH. I have 22 stacks @ 120g/stack, if they all sell I'm going to bite the bullet and level Alchemy 1-600. Having a Goblin and that ~2400g, I should be able to get Alch to 600 by the end of the weekend. Living Steel is 280g per right now, Trillium at 45g/bar. May Smelt a batch of GIO in preparation before I drop Mining. Decisions, decisions.

Start: 1452g
End: 183g
Auctions: 46,361g

Day 12
Only made ~250g in the overnight. Burned my Vermilion Onyx CD and got Wicked (Exp/Haste). Not a total loss, but nothing excellent. Tried to continue to level my Alchemy, but with major road blocks, and decided to wait until more mats are available and/or I had more gold.

Start: 489g
End: 28g
Auctions: 51,169g

Day 13
Wildly productive overnight in sales. Main sale being Alpheus Legguards for 1250g (1186 after tax). I reset some cheap gems (~55g/each, sell for 100g+) and decided to do research with Wild Jade, which yielded me my first excellent cut, Sensei's Wild Jade (Hit/Mastery). I'm going to try and reset some of the gem markets and see how that plays out for me. I use reset scans for these on my server to check for deep underpricings, and decided to use the same settings for this server.

Alchemy is still a major pain to level, and I'm not sure it's going to be worth it at this point. Bought a Hozen Peace Pipe for 400g, relisted at 1200g. Relisted gems throughout the day, reset about 6 cuts, invested in some transmog and got Alchemy to 300g before running out of money. Cancelled and reposted before heading off for the night.


Start: 1642g
End: 12s 32c
Auctions: 71,618g

Day 14
Logged in in the morning and reposted, learned a Primordial Ruby cut. Flashing. Sold a Ced's Crusher in the middle of the day that I had purchased for 2500g, and quite a few stacks of Silk Cloth to hit a high of 3,897g! I of course used my surplus gold to finish off leveling Alchemy to max. With JC/Alch fully maxed the only thing stopping me now is daily research for cuts.

This is a SS that happened later in the competition. Silk is good to flip on Small-Med servers.

Start: 772g
End: 102g
Auctions: 69,122g

Day 15
Did a Vermilion Onyx research, got a cut I could sell. I again Reset some gems, including mostly cuts I don't have, and made 2,800 during the day. Reinvested into GIO/Golden Lotus, and reset more gems. Getting a nice diverse set of gems, and manipulating prices. Starting to feel like I'm hitting my stride. Competition in gems is pretty fierce, and I don't have enough inventory so that I don't have to do cancel scans, which sucks for me, because cancel scans suck.

Start: 382g
End: 587g
Auctions: 71,146g

Previous: Days 1-5
Next: Days 16-25

Cheers,
Phat Lewts

@PhatLewtsGold
  PhatLewtsGold

Friday, May 23, 2014

WoW Alpha Build 18297 Brings Some WoD Profession Recipes

If you have gotten sick of following all the drab updates with the Alpha Client, you'll be glad to know that we actually got some (relatively) interesting information in this last one.

If you're interested in reading the Wowhead synopsis, you can check it out here. Also I'm keeping all of my WoD news indexed at the WoD Gold Making tab up top, so be sure to check it out to catch up to the latest and greatest gold making information from Warlords of Draenor.

Quite a few new profession spells were added in this iteration of the Alpha. I suggest you check them out, but take them with a grain of salt, as some of them feel a bit generic, and possibly just for testing. Keeping that in mind, below are the major changes, by profession:

Inscription
Inscription got a few new glyphs, but the main attraction here is the Darkmoon Card of Draenor. So it's pretty much confirmed Inscription will have it's ever so profitable during the beginning of the expansion Darkmoon Cards, but the reagents datamined are a bit interesting:
You'll notice it's not the classic tied to a daily cooldown recipe that we're used to, and there seems to be a rare ink, something that's unprecedented in Inscription. Now, I wouldn't go running for the hills quite yet and dropping all your scribes, but this is going to be a very interesting change to keep an eye on as far as Inscription goes. So far this recipe is the only one either of those two mats are used in, and their sources are not yet known, so a lot of mystery surrounding this, but there were also the classic 4 datamined decks, so at least that is familiar.

As far as the glyph recipes that were datamined, all of the recipes require 3 x Ink of Dreams to craft, and no I do not think this is a mistake. Keep in mind we will be getting 6.0 prior to the expansion release. I believe that they want people to have access to these new glyphs during that intermediate phase, so again, something to keep an eye on, and possibly start stockpiling inks for when we get closer to 6.0 (months off).

Alchemy 
In this latest patch, we've learned that Alchemist's Cauldron, which will be used to create Alchemy items Metamorphic Crystals and Alchemical Catalyst, will be one of Alchemy's daily cooldowns. It's quite a nice mechanic, as the recipes allow for use of 20x any WoD herb (or 5x Lotus) and 3x Blackrock Ore. The ore part is odd indeed, but it'll be a nice cooldown to check out, I assume you'll get random #'s of each item from a Cauldron, so it could be a nice boost to your crafting.

Alchemy also had some profession spells datamined, and of all the ones datamined, these seem the most "final version" out of all of them. Of course, I'm not guaranteeing that they will be, but they seem realistic. They use the materials mentioned above, so be sure to check out the new datamined Alchemy profession recipes for WoD here. Also, there is a new vanity item from Alchemy a la Transmorphic Tincture.


Blacksmithing
Intriguing changes to Blacksmithing in this one, here's the spell list for starters. Quickly let's review the 3 tiers of BS crafted gear. Basically there's 3 different ilvls of an item, using the Draenic Steel Sword as an example: 637 - Draenic Steel Sword, 650 - Hardened Draenic Steel Sword, and 666 - Peerless Draenic Steel Sword. These are now connected via recipes in the following manner (roughly the same for all armor slots as well):
  1. Draenic Steel Sword
  2. Hardened Draenic Steel Sword
  3. Peerless Draenic Steel Sword
As you can see, the higher you raise the ilvl, the more costly the item will be. There seem to be 2 mechanics to either circumvent or speed up this process. The first is Blackrock Crucible. The recipe is not yet on the Alpha, but it's a Blacksmithing craftable item that creates some of the materials mentioned above, I imagine it's tied to a daily cooldown somehow. The second are the reinforcement kits, which unlike the only one currently on the alpha will be across all craftable slots. This item is most likely tied to the new blacksmithing daily cooldown.

Engineering
Engineering had some recipes added to their arsenal, but to me they seem a little too generic to be final quite yet, as well as some of the ridiculous mats for 3 of the craftables. Feel free to poke around them if you're interested, but keep in mind it seems like these recipes will definitely not be close to what we'll see in live. One item I thought was particularly funny is Neural Silencer which makes you immune to Leap of Faith. We're on to you Priests!

Enchanting
Enchanting, quite like Engineering had some recipes added, but again, to me at least, these recipes seem pretty generic and not really fleshed out yet.

Skinning
I may be jumping the gun a bit on this one (really don't think I am), but from the new datamined information it seems as though Skinning will have a similar leveling mechanic to Mining/Herbalism. To be expected IMO.

Jewelcrafting
Last, and pretty much least, Jewelcrafting has finally gotten some love on the Alpha client, albeit not much at all. Two new items were found Prismatic Focusing Lens and Reflecting Prism. Two vanity items for a dull Jewelcrafting showing, once again.

So that's it! You should now be up to speed with all the profession changes, and speculation/gossip surrounding gold making in WoD!

Cheers,
Phat Lewts

@PhatLewtsGold
  PhatLewtsGold

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

5.4.8 Changes Bring JC Gold

If you've got a Jewelcrafter that you've been neglecting recently as part of your gold making lineup, you'll probably want to ramp things back up for a while. 5.4.8 which was just released on EU/US servers adds the ability to upgrade pieces 4 times as opposed to 2.


At face value it may not mean a lot, but people will soon be upgrading pieces with hit or other stats, and their gems they used to gain hit/expertise/haste/whatever caps will now be superfluous and they'll need to optimize their stats. Unfortunately for Enchanters, a lot of Enchants are best in slot for a certain spec once they hit a certain ilvl, and when they can switch around gems rather than drop those enchants, they'll usually do so. On top of that, the gear bonus is basically a nerf to SoO, and people will be running more SoO's and downing more bosses. People will definitely buy more enchants, but in my opinion the change in sales in Enchanting won't be comparable to the changes that Jewelcrafters should see. All item enhancements should at least see a few extra sales, but I think the bulk will be in JC.

Friday, May 16, 2014

Competition Log: Days 1-5

Throughout this competition I've been keeping a daily "Captain's Log" style record of my transactions. Some are shorter than others, but they go over my methodology throughout. Since the competition still has a week left I'm going to be releasing these slowly, but I figure what can what I did on days 1-5 hurt me on day 25? I'll probably release up to day 10, maybe day 15 before the competition comes to a close, at which point I'll release the rest, with conclusions.

Day 1
On the first day most of my time was spent getting my DK out of the starting zone. I chose to roll a Goblin DK for the insta 55 as well as the Alchemy profession bonus. Once I got out of the starting zone I continued to level for a bit (up to 59). Wanted to run a Hellfire Penninsula before I went to bed, but queued for random dungeons by mistake and got LBRS. Ouch. Got a random drop of Ebonhold Leggings from that run before I dropped it, so all was not lost! Posted all my cloth and the Ebonhold Leggings (leggings at 2200g).

Start: 0g
Finished: 7g
Auctions: 2423g

Day 2
One thing I had done yesterday is visit a few vendors for some things to sell, by this morning the only thing from the vendors that had sold was some Strange Dust. Since they were going for over 4g each, I decided to pick up Tailoring/Enchanting and do a few RFC runs. Ran a Hellfire Citadel, got Bloodscale Gauntlets. I also used a method I had tried in my previous competition and I bought some cloth to flip. The cloth payed off purchasing for 1g/each and selling for 6g/each. Unfortunately I could only afford 3 stacks at the time, but regardless I made 300g.

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

30 Day Gold Making Twitter Contest

So as you may know if you read my previous post, I recently started a 30 day gold making challenge on Mannoroth - Horde US. There are 7-8 participants, and 2 winners. One with the most gold per hour, and another for the most gold overall. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of competing going on, minus a select few of the 8 entrants, so to sweeten the pot, I'm having a mini-contest within this contest. Meta contestery! Whoever can guess the closest to my final gold total at the end of 30 days, will win a Cinder Kitten pet (read details below for how to enter)!


Background Information to Help you Guess
  • We had to roll just one toon on a new server, no BoAs or transferring of wealth from other servers (all rules at official contest post here).
  • Contest is 30 days long (ends May 23rd).
  • I'm going for most gold overall, not GPH (although hopefully I'll get both).
  • My strategy is to flip, and get a DK to 80 and get maxed JC/Alchemy ASAP. 
  • I plan on a final /played anywhere from 60-72 hours.
That's all you're getting! This is just a fun contest, and may the best guess win!

CONTEST RULES:

1) Guesses must be whole number gold values. Any guesses with silver/copper or decimals will be rounded. My final total will be rounded to the nearest gold as well for this competition.

2) Contest End Date: Guesses will be accepted through May 14th at 11:59pm Pacific, after which I will begin releasing posts about my strategy through the contest.

3) The winner will be announced on May 23rd following the conclusion of the underlying contest.

4) Entering: To enter the contest you must follow me on Twitter and add your guess to THIS TWEET, replacing GUESSHERE with your guess.

5) Winner will be the guesser who was the closest to the final total (above or below). You must be following me through the end of the contest, as I will be DMing you the code for the pet.

6) In the event of a tie, see tiebreaker procedures below.

Tiebreaker Procedures
1) In the event of a tie, Price is Right rules will be followed. That is, whomever was closest without going over will win.

2) If there is still a tie, the winner will be determined by a roll.

As you can see, it probably behooves you to not guess nice round numbers like 20,000 or 1,000,000. I hope you all enjoy this mini contest, and may you finally defeat the RNG Gods!

Cheers,
Phat Lewts

@PhatLewtsGold
  PhatLewtsGold

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...