Phat's Weekly Lewt Review: MoP Style 10/19

So I haven't done a weekly review in quite some time, but I think it would be helpful to give you an insight into what I'm doing right now in game for gold making purposes.

Dailies
Even though I care about other factions, I always make sure I do my Tillers dailies.  They are the only faction (other than the crafting recipe ones) that directly relate to gold making.  Ironpaw Tokens are even extraordinarily useful in this time of the game, and will be in the months coming.  Cooking is turning out to be quite a lucrative profession for me, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit.  Visiting my farm is one of the first things I do every day, as well as the Silk Fields just south of the farm for my Tailoring CD.  Very convenient.  My tailoring CD has to be one of my most favorite CDs of this expansion.  It takes raw mats and increases their value by at least tenfold.

Black Market Auction House
As a mage with ports to both Org and Vale I decided to set my main's hearth to the BMAH.  So far I've bought two heroic crafting patterns for their minimum 20k, and have flipped one for 30k.  I check this daily for great deals, and have already blown 80k on a mount.  Even though 80k was over my 50k threshold, I got a little caught up in a bidding war, which I shouldn't have.  I noticed the player bidding against me was running back and forth to the mailbox going up in 1k increments and decided to do 10k.  It got a bit out of hand.  Backfired you could say.  Oh well.

Transmogrification
I don't know how everyone else is doing with transmog gear, but so far it's been a great seller for me on my low pop server since MoP release.  I'd imagine larger servers are seeing too big of an influx of greens to be able to control the market, but I'm getting just enough greens in to hold my market down, and even though I'm not being good about reposting every 2 days, I've been making a lot using transmog strategies from last patch.

My Main's MoP Xmog
(Click to Enlarge)

On a related note I'm really loving the new look of the gear this expansion in every single way.  I love how when you quest all the questing gear matches, and that the gear is so intricate and not as generic as Cataclysm gear was.  It hasn't slowed down my transmog sales either, which is a bonus.  I think it is a step in the right direction from Blizzard, but I'll stop this rant right now before it turns into a monster.







Living Steel
I'm kind of disappointed with the way that Living Steel has gone this expansion, as Truegold had a much better presence throughout Cataclysm, especially in regards to profit margin.  I think it's mostly because all the crafted gear is raid finder level, so raiders can replace it pretty fast, and the non hardcore raiders don't bother buying it.  I've already dropped my 2nd JC for Inscription and I'm considering dropping at least 1 of my 4 Alchemists to pick up Inscription as well.  Mostly for the cards which will lose a lot of value after this upcoming DMF, but I think the trinkets will be in high demand through November DMF so the sooner the better IMO.

While this is by no means an exhaustive list, it's certainly what I've been focusing in on as far as gold making in the new expansion.  What are your opinions on the viability of Alchemy (or any profession for that matter) going forward in WoW?  What's your new favorite profession?


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

First Look: 5.1 PTR

World PvP
If you haven't read it already, check out the current 5.1 PTR Patch notes.  Blizzard is doing a lot of great things with 5.1, including heating up the Horde vs. Alliance conflict the way they have been saying they would.  For gold making I think this will be a great boost.  They're adding 2 outposts, one for each faction that reward rep and have objects to capture.  They are also awarding "commendations" for slaying the opposite faction on the shores.

This is really going to boost PvP in Pandaria, and I think it's going to be absolutely amazing for the crafted PvP gear market, because people who normally wouldn't care about PvP Resil/Power as stats will suddenly be very interested in it.  This will also provide a boost for the enchant/JC enhancements for PvP as well.

Battle Pets
There were also some changes to battle pets that tweaked my interest, the first being that there will now be tokens that drop from wild pet battles that can be used to upgrade pets from grey/common -> uncommon, or uncommon -> rare.  Better yet, they're not BoP, so they can be sold on the Auction House.  This is going to be a very interesting thing to see progress.  Basically it makes any uncommon pet you could sell into a rare, and will allow Pet Battlers to capture uncommon pets instead of hunting for rares, and upgrade them for a price.  This is interesting to me at least, because I've been dabbling in the pet battle system.  They're also adding a 3,000g reward for going through the entire quest chain and defeating the "Grand Master" NPC Pet Battler of Pandaria.  At the very least it will get more people interested in these things!

On my server, I've just seen the first level 25 battle pet posted in the auction house, a Winterspring Cub (of all things).  The seller is selling it for 15k with a 10k bid, which I think will be interesting to see if it pans out.  That's all from me for now, just wanted to get a quick post out about the gold making changes in 5.1, there are other cool features though, check out the Blizzard post I linked at the top! How do you think 5.1 will impact your gold making strategy?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Calculating the Value of Spirit of Harmony

Okay so you've been farming Motes of Harmony, both literally with the Tillers, and also by killing mobs and receiving drops.  Now you have a decent amount, but is it worthwhile to use it for a craft?  What's the price point for one of these things?  These are the questions I'm here to answer.

Point for Comparison
Since we have a vendor that will trade Spirit of Harmony for various goods, we can calculate the "Opportunity Cost" of using a Spirit of Harmony in a craft.  9 times out of 10 on any given server the conversion from 1 Spirit of Harmony -> 3 Golden Lotus will be the most profitable, BUT if you would like to compare the other options as well, The Undermine Journal has a neat tool for doing so for you.

Once on your server page, simply hover over Consumables, then select Elementals.

Click to Enlarge

After doing so you should see a page similar to this one, which will multiply by the number you can buy from the vendor by the current going rate for each item.

What this table shows us is that for every Spirit of Harmony you have, you can trade it for about 880 gold.  So if a recipe you're crafting has say 6 Spirit of harmony, and the raw mats + 880*6 = raw mats + 5280 is less than the price that you could get for that item, don't craft it! Now not everything is as black and white as say the LW or BS that NEED this in their Epic crafts, some professions have CDs that you can ignore by using SoH, and others have recipes you can buy with them. So the question for those professions is "Is having this extra CD/recipe worth the gold that these SoH are worth?" or "Is this PvP recipe worth 880g?" For example, on most servers an additional Living Steel CD for your Alchemist is NEVER worth the price of the 9 Golden Lotus I could get instead.  So it's just something to keep in mind.

Additional Valuation
So, you thought that was it huh?  Unfortunately for you it's not!   We have another problem because if you're Revered or greater with the Tillers, you have the opportunity to grow these from the ground!  Is it worth it?
Okay so make sure you've done the above step, which way is worth more?  What's a SoH worth to you? Let's say like the above example your server had the SoH worth 880g to trade in for Golden Lotus, but your LW craft for example takes raw mats that sell for 720g and 8 SoH, but you can sell it for 34k.  TUJ even does THIS math for you!

Click to Enlarge

Since it's worth crafting we can calculate the value of your SoH to be (Selling Price) - (Other Mats) = 34k-720g = 33.3k divided among 8 SoH = 4,162g per SoH!!  So it's definitely worth it for you to craft this item instead of trade it to the vendor.  On the other hand, if you determine the opposite, such as an Alchemist, that it's not worth it with your 90's professions, it's only worth 880g.

Now here comes the interesting (and slightly annoying) part.  Each plot in your farm grows 1 Mote of Harmony (1/10th of a Spirit).  To the LW each plot is worth 416.2g (very nice!), but to the Alchemist, it's only worth 88g.  Not that great...could you get more planting something else?

Currently the other Revered seeds won't (on most servers) get you something worth more than 88g, as they are the most basic of Raw Mats for professions.  BUT, right now there is a very high demand for vegetables!  So back to TUJ to check: Consumables -> Cooking

Click to Enlarge

You will be able to see a chart like this:

Note the price and that each plot will grow not one but five of these each day.  *Note: Ginseng is sold by a Tillers vendor. Basically multiply any of these numbers by 5 and you'll get more than that 88g.  Juicycrunch Carrot would be my go to because Intellect lovers are always my best buyers, but also note that Jogu the Drunk, for a fee, will tell you which one of these to grow each day to harvest 8 the next day.  So one of these will get a x8 multiplier instead of x5.


Now that I've thoroughly bored you to death, get out there and start getting THE MOST out of your Spirit of Harmony!! If you remember to reply after checking, leave a comment with your 2 primary professions and how much your Spirit of Harmony are worth!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

Alchemy or Inscription?

This post is for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival, which is on Oct 11th!

This month, the topic is:
Pick A Market Or A Strategy That You Planned To Focus On For The MoP Launch.  What Were Your Results?

Maxing My Alchemists
My goal was to level all my Alchemists ASAP and start doing my Living Steel cooldown, and honestly the first week it worked great.  Since you really only need Green Tea Leaves (the most abundant herb in Pandaria) to get the Living Steel Recipe, it was easy and cheap to get all my alchemists the Living Steel Recipe (learned at 550) by the first day.  It cost me around 7,500g to level all 4 to get Living Steel the first day, and I made 70k selling Living Steel that week.  Needless to say, I'm pleased with these results.  For the long run though I'm not so sure that it is the most viable gold making strategy to have 4 Alchemists, as my Living Steel  sales have started to drop off quite a bit, and they're starting to back pile.



Multiple Scribes
So now I'm considering dropping one of my Alchemists for a second scribe. By considering I mean I will do it if Blizzard ever gets their act together and changes the Inscription vendor!!  I would use my second scribe (maybe even a third) for crafting DMF cards, as well as probably a BoA Scribe Staff (after November's DMF).  So far I've been really good at putting off my personal wants (like obtaining a DMF trink ASAP) for more gold making.  I plan on getting a trinket, but I don't raid in a group that really pushes progression, so I have no need for an overpriced trinket right now, especially when there's gold to be made!  I think that the DMF trinks will sell well through the end of the November Faire, after that I'll be focusing in on my own cards/incription needs.  I only wish that I had multiple scribes sooner!

Do you have multiple Scribes, and if not, do you plan on making a second scribe?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!