Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Warlords of Draenor Gem Changes

It is no secret that there are going to be big changes to gems come WoD. They announced reduced slots as well as armor that changes with your spec, leaving a lot of questions up in the air. In the past couple of days, one of WoW's Game Designers, @Celestalon has been tweeting up a storm on twitter about the gem changes. So here's what he had to say:



So there are no longer Primary stats on gems. Guess that answers the question of gear swapping, even for tanks. Something to do with the space-time continuum I suppose. A lot of WoW news outlets are covering this as a brand new development, but all of this was actually mentioned previously in this blog post by Crithto about a month ago. Honestly I had not seen that post either, and only noticed when the blues tweeted about it, and I did some research, and that's why I'm covering it now. So, for now at least, from the tweets and the blog post we only know the following stats will be on gems:

  1. Critical Strike
  2. Mastery
  3. Haste
  4. Spirit
  5. Bonus Armor
  6. ?PvP Power - this one is going to be a secondary stat on gear, but no specifications whether or not it'll be on gems.
That's it. There are other secondary stats that are being considered for WoD, but not as gems (supposedly to reduce confusion, but I don't think that's the case) they are: Readiness, Amplify, and Multi-strike. I'm sure that will make everything more "logical" to people and "clear up" the confusion of hit, parry, and dodge. I digress.

Monday, December 30, 2013

TradeSkillMaster Sniper Tutorial

If you haven't already, there are only 2 Days Left to participate in my Yearly Review Survey to provide feedback that will go towards improving the blog in 2014! 

Yesterday, the TSM team released a slew of updates for TradeSkillMaster, and among them was a new feature for the TradeSkillMaster_Shopping Module called Sniper. What the addon does is searches for recently posted items that meet a set of rules that you set up, and allow you to snag them before anyone else does. Before I release my video publicly, I'm posting the link on my blog for my readers as a sort of early release! Enjoy!






Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 12/26

I've received a lot of responses from my Yearly Review Survey, but there's still time to add your input to help develop my blog in 2014!!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas, whether you celebrate or not, and enjoy the holiday season through the New Year! One of the comments (among many) I've received doing the Yearly Review Survey so far was "make your weekly review actually weekly". Fair enough.

Investments and "Investments"
So in the last 10 days I've gone up about 24,000g, which may not sound like much, but I also bought an Onyxian Drake for 52,500g, and a Dragon Kite for 25,000g in that time period. My intentions for the Dragon kite are to flip it. 25,000 is a decent sum of gold for it, but I'm willing to take the bet that it'll sell for much more. Currently I'm aiming for 50k on my server, but I'm considering transferring (learning and recaging) it to one of the higher pop servers that I occasionally frequent and see if I can flip it there and turn it into even more battle pets to bring back that may sell faster on my server. Going to stick with it for a few weeks on my server first though.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Phat's Yearly Lewt Review 2013

Hey everyone! It's that time of year, every thing is winding down, and I hope the holidays and New Year find you well! Last year, for the first time, I took a survey from my readers on things I could do to improve the blog in the upcoming year. I've implemented many of those suggestions since, and I hope they've come across well. Again this year I'll be asking you all to fill out the survey to give me feedback and help me make improvements in the upcoming year. One of the things I changed was the layout, as well as writing posts on many of the suggested themes/ideas suggested in my free response section.

The free response is some of the best data I can get from you as far as qualitative assessment of the blog, so if you have any ideas, please pitch them! I'm also doing a sort of demographic survey this year as far as how much gold people have, so I can see what my audience's gold range is. I really appreciate everyone who took the time to provide me feedback last year, and I would really appreciate it if you will take just 5 minutes to complete this brief survey.

Phat's Yearly Lewt Review Survey 2013

I hope you all enjoy the holidays, it's been a great 2013, and I look forward to seeing you all in 2014, hopefully with lots of WoD!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

How to REALLY Make Gold During Winter Veil

A lot of people associate things that go along with Winter Veil to be "gold making" items. Now I won't say you cannot make gold with these items, that would simply be a lie. But the smart gold maker does not need to get involved with Winter Veil, and I'll tell you why.

Small Eggs
Like the Netherweave Bag, Small Eggs are somewhat of a gold making legend during Winter Veil. This is mainly because it is accessible. Other items that are commonly used during Winter Veil can be found at this post by Marcus Ty, which I personally would advocate nothing in. So why are Small Eggs things of legends in WoW? Well every year there's a huge demand spike for these things around Winter Veil as they're used in 2 recipes for the season. I actually took a look at the TUJ Page for Small Eggs, and was not disappointed by the Quantity Available graph:

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 12/17

I've really enjoyed doing these regularly again the past few weeks, and I'm keeping it up, so expect the Weekly Lewt Reviews to continue.  This week I'm down 993,997 g.

How'd You Do That?
Okay so not all of my purchases this week were in my best interest as far as accumulating as much gold as possible.  This past Wednesday was my birthday, and when I got back from celebrating, I posted from my main, and checked the BMAH as I always do, and I saw Ashes of Al'ar sitting there for 35k!  A nice birthday present for myself.  Hung out till it was to Short, and then the bidding war began.  I was bidding against an Alliance toon, who once the auction hit 42k, had to run back and forth to the Mailbox to get his gold.  I would hope that someone in his position on my faction might have given up once they saw that I wanted it but he kept running back, and I decided to gank him.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Ph.A.Q.: How does someone know how much gold I have?

Today marks the first of the Ph.A.Q.'s a series dedicated to answering users questions.  If you'd like to learn more about how your question can be featured, check out my page about it here, and get your question in ASAP!  

So here's this week's scenario, sent in by Curtis:

"I had something wired happen to me the other day, wondering if you have ever heard of it or know how they did it? I was on my alt bank/guild toon the other day when this guy started asking me for money cause he was from a different realm and didnt have any. I was friendly and all but refused to give him any. After a few minutes he asked again and I said I didn't have gold but lots of silver and copper. Seconds later he said no that I have 65,765 amount of gold, and that I was doing pretty good. The weird part is that he was off by like 5 golds and a few silvers of what I actually had ! I don't share account info with anyone but my son who was there beside me when it happened and I use a authenticator. Was this just a extremely lucky guess or is there a way he could have looked up how much I had?"'

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 12/10

It's been a pretty decent week gold making wise on my end, nothing super crazy to note.  I did end up making 10 decks for the DMF, and I sold one the night I turned it in, so off to a good start with sales.  Thinking it'll be my last round with those though, the expansion is dying, and I'm not sure how many more challenge mode gearers/alts are going to come up, and I've got quite the pile right now.

Barely Avoiding Disaster
This week I logged on my Alliance Priest for the first time in a while, mostly on a whim, because I felt like I hadn't posted my Alli transmog in a while, and boy was I right!
Yowza! My mail had been sitting in my mailbox for 4 weeks and was about to expire!  Good thing I checked that day because had I not I would have lost literally all my inventory Alli side, which is worth quite a bit of potential coin:


Friday, December 6, 2013

Phat's Ultimate WoW Gold Making Macro Guide

This guide is going to be extensive so buckle up. Macros are a great way to make your gold making more efficient, and this is going to be a guide to both create your own basic macros, followed by a compendium of macros that I use myself for gold making.

Creating a Basic Button Clicking Macro
Playing WoW, particularly using TSM, one clicks a lot of buttons to be as productive as we are. I'm not going to cover every button, but I'm going to go over how to find and macro any clickable button. The first thing we're going to utilize is WoW's built in Frame Stack. This tells us all the frames our cursor is currently hovered over, and we can find Button names from the list to make macros for them. Here's an example.

Type /fstack and you will get a window that looks like this:




Right now I'm hovered over the TSMAuctioningPostButton, which I've just learned the name of! If I wanted to create a macro to click this button, I would just have to add a /click before the button name and voila: 

/click TSMAuctioningPostButton

You can do this with any button in game whether it be TradeSkillMaster, or quest hand in dialogues. This particular example is a bit unnecessary as TSM will bind this button to your scrollwheel.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Phat's "Weekly" Lewt Review 12/1

I haven't done one of these in a while, but I have a decent amount to touch on that I think you all might find useful, so here it is!

Darkmoon Faire
While I'm sure many of you have given up all together on the trinkets from the DMF I've had some decent success selling them to what I'm assuming is challenge mode or proving ground players, especially the healing trink.  I have a LOT of cards in my guild bank, and with the prices I'm getting herbs from from my suppliers, it can't hurt to try at least one more DMF.  I'm pushing it I think, and it's not advice I'd give to anyone, but I have the gold to give it a try, which means, of course, that I'm going to!

Monday, November 25, 2013

The Results are In!

Quick note: due to the Thanksgiving Holiday (MURICA!!), I'm not going to be around either here, or on The Consortium, or any of the various other places I normally chat about gold making for the next week or so.  

The Results of the 2013 World of Warcraft Gold Survey by The Golden Crusade are out! The data is very interesting, and I always love reading through Eric's analysis.  Check out the full report, it's excellent and very detailed, but I'm going to summarize and give my thoughts on my favorite part of the results below.

EU Servers
EU Servers' average gold totals were ~200,000 gold higher than US averages!  Now I may just be trying to defend the US servers' gold making ability here, but keep in mind that the number surveyed that identified from the EU is about 1/3rd that that identified as playing on the US.  Perhaps a couple high data points skewed their average, but to me it seems like a non-negligible difference.  Way to go EU!

Top Gold Boosting Resources
Being a Wind Trader at The Consortium myself, I was glad to see that the users of this website were the highest above average, having a whopping 138% more gold than the average survey taker, with roughly 1 in 5 participants having used the forums.  Surprisingly to me, the number 2 gold boosting resource was Gold Making Podcasts!  Now at 7% respondents listening, this may just show a correlation between being active in the community and making tons of gold, as perhaps does the third most useful resource which came in with 3% using in regards to gold making, Twitter.

Of course last but not least I have to point out that readers of gold blogs had a whopping 81% over the average total amount of gold, and about the same 1 out of 5 ratio as The Consortium!

/flex

Also I'd be remiss to not point out that not only did users of paid gold guides make 43% less gold than the average, but they also made less gold than people who used no resources at all!  Even though it was a small pool of respondents and may not be statistically significant, it still gave me a good chuckle!

There is a LOT more data out from Xsinthis/Eric, and if you want to see the full report check it out at The Golden Crusade!

Alright, I hope you all have a great holiday if you're celebrating, and if not have a great week regardless.  If you're looking for some reading material, be sure to check out my favorite reads here.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Has Phat Gone Soft?

If you haven't subscribed to my new Subreddit, you're missing out on two new great gold making posts, one from Sapu, lead developer of TSM and a great podcast episode by Stede, be sure to check them out!  

Have I Gone Soft?
I found myself asking this question about a month ago, when I decided to cut the price of my Malevelent gear by over one half.  I could have kept gouging prices, but it was time to experiment.

Monopoly
In the crafted malevolent gear I basically had a monopoly.  There were a few other players in the sellers market, but it was mostly me picking prices and being undercut maybe once in a 24 hour period.  I'm on a very small server!  When the patch first came out and I made my malevolent TSM groups I thought to myself: "Why not price these as high as I can and see what I can get away with.  That number for me turned out to be 1250g, and let me tell you, I did get away with it.  In my mailbox after AH fees, that turns out to be a very nice pretty number, 1234g5s, and I can't say sales were terrible, but honestly they were slow:

Click to enlarge

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Finding Gold Making Information

If you haven't already check out my recent post of the new programs I've started recently.

First of all I'm going to take an aside to point out that this is my 200th all time post.  I just want to thank everyone who regularly reads my blog, and has stopped by to comment, or has commented on/thanked me for the TSM videos.  I really enjoy this community, and you all are a great part of what makes it thrive.  As far as the blog/videos, there's much more to come!  I'm planning on making some video guides to using the TSM App, and I'll keep you posted on the blog as to when they're coming out!  We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Finding Gold Making Information

Very often I come across people looking for advice that's been given ad nauseam in the past.  Questions like:
  • What's the optimal profession distribution for making gold?
  • Where's the best spot to farm Item X?
  • I have 5-10k gold, what's the best thing I can do?
  • How can I make more gold with Profession X?
  • etc.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

It's Business Time!


This post is a little housekeeping I've been putting off, but will probably benefit you to read regardless.

Ph.A.Q.
Lately I've been getting a lot of emails with questions, either broad or specific that I honestly can't keep up with at this point, so if you've sent me a mail and I've ignored it, much apologies.  What I'm going to be doing weekly (or even more often if time allows), is answering email questions in blog post form, basically to have some reference points to others with similar questions.  It is my goal to index these, so they can provide context to others looking for similar answers, or at least add some insight.  To send in submissions, email them to me with the subject line "Ph.A.Q." Also please notify me whether or not you'd like your name used in the post, and if so, what you'd like to go by. You can always find this at the link I've added to the toolbar above, at the Ph.A.Q tab above, where I'll be indexing the posts.

I started a program like this a while ago, and I got very few responses, and now that I've stopped it, it seems I've been getting even more emails than ever. Funny how these things tend to work. Anyway, if you have a burning question, or maybe something you've always wondered about or think I should cover, feel free to send it in. Just because I don't get to your submission the week you sent it doesn't mean I won't get to it!

Other Gold Making Readings
One of the more common requests that I get is other sources that I use for gold making material, what I read and/or find helpful.  To that extent, I've set up a subreddit where I'm going to post relevant and interesting blog posts, announcements, and threads that I personally find interesting and useful.  I digest a lot of this content daily, and I know that not everything is everyone's cup of tea, but what I'm going to try to do is simplify it so that you could theoretically subscribe to it via an RSS feed reader and get all the latest and greatest that Gold Making has to offer.  Sort of like the front page of TUJ, but just for things that I find interesting instead of all content from specific sources.

But Phat aren't there already 95 different WoW gold making subreddits?  Yes.  As you may know I very often frequent /r/woweconomy and /r/wowgoldmaking, but what I'm aiming to do is to aggregate content, providing links to readings that are interesting and more "mid-level to advanced" gold making.  What I mostly mean by this is that this subreddit won't be cluttered with questions about optimal profession spreads 5 times a day, but instead will have content that may be insightful or thought provoking to those not so fresh into gold making.  If you don't like it, no one is forcing you to subscribe.  I've set up flair for all the different posting sources, if your site is not on there yet don't worry, still working it out, but as is, there's already a lot of great content, and you should check it out!

Guest Posting
Since we're getting into a lull in this expansion, and I've been generally trending towards less and less posts every month, I'd like to take this time to open up my blog to guest posters.  If you are interested, send me an email with a relevant subject line, and we can discuss how/when you'd like to post.  I do expect all posts to be at least somehow related to gold making, and to be well written.  You don't necessarily need to have the same opinions or style of writing as me, but I do have some standards (they're not that high as you've read on this blog).  Again if you are interested, whether you're just starting up a blog, already have a gold blog, or don't ever want to start a blog at all but have something you think people would find interesting, don't hesitate to send a line.  This offer is up for the viable future, so if inspiration strikes feel free to contact me.  If you're starting a new blog, or have already started, guest posting is a great way to get your name out there, and get some initial reads of your content by relevant/interested readers.


Anyway, thanks everyone for reading through all the PSAs! Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Friday, November 8, 2013

Garrisons: Warlords of Draenor Gold Making

In case you live under a rock in terms of Blizzard news, Blizzcon is going on and they announced the new expansion: Warlords of Draenor.  Here's the cinematic teaser, the Warlords of Draenor Official Website as well as some info if you need to catch up.  The first major thing that I see that will have a major impact on gold making is Garrisons, for which Blizzard has already released a Garrison Mini-Guide.


"the Garrison will play a major role in your character’s Professions in this expansion—similar to how your farm was key... only on a much more epic scale." -Blizzard


Saturday, November 2, 2013

The World of Warcraft Gold Survey

Yes it's that time of year again ladies and gentlemen.  For those of you who don't know, Xsinthis of The Golden Crusade has been running a WoW Gold Survey for the past 2 years, and the 3rd yearly survey is up now for you all to partake in.  It's a really interesting study of the WoW gold making landscape, and it would really help if you could take some time to fill it out.  It takes less than 5 minutes, and the results will be very interesting this year.

You can find the 2013 survey here.

2011 Report

2012 Report



Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

New Dynamics in Gold Making

Low population servers are going extinct Soon, once rollouts of Connected Realms are complete.  We don't know the final "size" goal of these connected realms, but low population realms are set to be a thing of the past.

Low Pop vs. High Pop
Right now the main talked about dynamic in WoW gold making is low population vs. high population.  It's inherently clear that high population servers have the possibility to make more gold than low population servers.  The downside is that the gold per hour put in is lower on high pop than it is on low pop, the turnover ratio just being that much higher on a high pop that it makes it a more valuable gold making environment.  There has been many a heated debate over which is better and how to compare the earnings potentials.  I've personally for example have 3.5 million liquid gold on a low pop server, what does that equate to on say Illidan - Horde?  Hard to say, hard to compare, but it's the main dividing factors of gold makers now.  But that's all about to change.

The Dark Below...
Low population servers are slowly getting phased out, and will be completely phased out by the next expansion.  One thing that crept up about connected realms that's going to be really interesting from a gold making stand point is that when Realm A is connected to Realm B, you can have 11 characters on each realm for a total of 22 (yes, even post connection), but you see, that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Account Cap on One Connected Realm
Confirmed by this blue post earlier today, in theory, if 5 servers were merged (and they have been already), you could create the account cap (50) of toons on that server.  Now I don't know about you, but leveling 50 toons to cap does not sound like fun to me, but if they don't allow 50 toons on all servers the comparison has gone from low pop vs. high pop to single-realm (1) vs quint-realm (5 connected).  Fifty potential toons means 100 potential TradeSkill slots, a theoretical army of Alch/Scribes that could destroy gold making empires.

And how about those gold makers who have 2 accounts for cross faction trading?  100 toons.  Better yet, if you're not using 2 accounts yet or want to start fresh, you can RAF yourself, and get that 300% XP to level up an enormous army of max level Death Knights. Now, if you haven't noticed the pattern, the level you need to max professions is going to be 85 for the next expansion (it's 80 currently), so having all these toons at 90 would theoretically set you up for two expansions worth of max alch/inscription CDs, although it could bump to 95 if there even is another expansion after this on, but don't worry that's like 2 years from now.  It's really a bit excessive.  Cooldown markets can now be controlled by brute force, and it's going to be very interesting to see how this all pans out on different servers.  In fact, there's already a quint-realm up on live US servers, but I doubt anyone has account cap on a single server yet (although multiboxers probably have previously).

The Future
It will be really interesting to see how all these things will pan out.  Maybe a big profession announcement at Blizzcon (doubt it) or a caustic environment for classic cooldown gold making in the future, only time will tell.  I don't think the average player will be rolling all 50 character slots to make gold, but don't underestimate people, it is bound to happen if it's still a possibility moving forward, and will be an interesting dynamic to watch.

I'm personally still really excited about connected realms, but as you may know if you follow me on twitter, the connected realm fairy has not yet come to little ol' Shattered Halls US.  You will know when it does, because it will be all I talk about (hopefully).


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Monday, October 28, 2013

Shuffling and You.

I'm a pretty active member in a few different WoW gold making communities, and a common thing I see throughout them is people telling noobies starting out to pick up shuffling. Shuffling is a great combination of professions, where I made a majority of my gold.  A true legend in WoW gold making, but I just wanted to go over a few things about the shuffle that I think people should know before diving into it.  I'm going to assume you already know how the shuffle works. If you don't, leave me a comment on how you actually made it to my blog, and check out this handy dandy flowchart summarizing the shuffle.

Ghost Iron Shuffle
This is your (my) guild bank on the shuffle (click image to enlarge).

Time
Shuffling is a really great combination of professions, arguably the most lucrative combination of professions in game throughout expansions.  There of course is one caveat to shuffling though, that it's very time consuming.  Now there are ways that you can cut down on the amount of time you spend mashing buttons using tools from The Consortium, but you still need to have that time available to be in game and not doing something else in game.  If you don't have that kind of time, odds are that other professions might suit you better.  A lot of professions with daily CDs can really add a lot of value to items in little time.  Professions like Tailoring, Leatherworking, and Blacksmithing (etc.) might suit you better if you don't have a lot of in game time, and want to get the most bang for your buck.  In 5 minutes switching between multiple toons doing daily CDs, you could make as much as you could shuffling for say 30 minutes.  This of course is a ballpark estimate, but you get the point.



If you're someone who enjoys playing the game for raiding, PvP, or whatever it is you may enjoy that's not gold making, and just want to make some coin "part time", shuffling is most likely not for you.  It takes a lot of time investment, and not just in the actual processing of the mats.

Longevity
The shuffle can make you a ton of gold, and the more time you put into it, the more gold you'll make.  This is best summarized by a recent thread on the Consortium Forum, where a user asked "How much do you make on the shuffle daily?" to which Kathroman replied "As much as I want to." More in depth discussion occurred that you can check out, but that's the bottom line. The main point though is that there is always profit potential in this market, hindered only by the amount of time that you have to dedicate to it and number of times per day you can post.  Shuffling will nearly always make you gold, but quite like all other professions there's a breaking point where it'd be more efficient to just go out and farm, or you start hurting your own profits by over saturating the market.  Basically, know your limits here.  If this is not something you'll keep up with, getting into it may just be a waste of time for you.

Ceilings
The last thing I will say about Shuffling (in this post at least) is to keep an eye on your rare gem ceiling, the highest price you will possibly pay for 1 rare gem.  I calculate this by using GIO numbers: 1 rare gem, 6 uncommon gems, .5 Serpent's Eye per stack.  Ignoring Serpent's Eye's (although you could factor them in if you really wanted to), and assuming I go the route of guaranteed income with the 6 uncommon gems, making jewelry and vendoring it (again, not necessarily best route, but the minimum I can be guaranteed to make), the net profit on those is about 16g.  I pay 50g/stack for GIO, so the ceiling for my rare gems is:

50g - 16g = 34g/gem.

That's the theoretical most I will pay ever for a rare gem at that stack price.  Then I can look at my profits and make sure I'm making smart choices.  Some quick math can save you headaches in the long run.  Again this is the MAXIMUM price I'll ever pay for a gem at these stack prices.

Conclusion
Shuffling is by far one of the most profitable profession combos in game when utilized properly.  When I wrote my post for Nev's 20 Days of Goldmaking that had the prompt "Which Market has made you the most through the years?" I wrote my response on Jewelcrafting.  Obviously I (and many other serious gold makers) see this as a great method of making profits in WoW, but it's not right for everyone.  If you have the time though, the profitabilies are endless!


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Guild Scams

I really wanted to touch on this topic for a while, but this is something that really bothered me when it happened to me, and it's happening again on my server, and I think it's ridiculous that Blizzard does not do anything about it.

Disclaimer: I knew the risks of buying guilds, especially in sketchy situations, and took them anyway.  That part is 100% on me. This is mainly a critique of how Blizzard dealt/deals with it.

Guild Scams
Telling people you will sell them a guild, and taking their gold for nothing is apparently a legitimate method of making gold according to Blizzard, so this is indeed a gold making post in case anyone was wondering.

Story time!

So earlier this year in February, someone was selling a level 25 guild with 7 tabs on my server.  After getting an invite to the guild on an alt and using Sapu's Guild Bank Macro to evaluate the tabs, I found there were over 29,000 g worth of goods in the tabs, including lots of current mats/gems etc.  The guild also had a few hundred members who were active, so a fairly valuable guild, a rare find on my small server.

To recap: ~30,000g in goods, 19,350g worth of purchased tabs I'd be saving, and active members. I offered 40k, feeling I could sell what was in the Guild Bank and get a nice profit from the resale of the guild.  He wanted 50,000 and wasn't willing to budge.  Looking back now to that period on my previous gold totals graph, I had 1.45 million, 50,000 being ~3.5% of that.  This of course doesn't justify the stupidity that occurred next, but provides some context.

Friday, October 18, 2013

Crafting vs. Gathering

I often see people who are new to the art of making gold in WoW ask the age old question of  "Crafting or Gathering?"  In this post I'm going to attempt to clarify the thought process behind why crafting is a more efficient gold maker than gathering.

Gathering
Maybe the misconception that gathering is a legitimate source of high income comes from all those youtube videos or guides out there that quote "thousands of gold per hour with this awesome spot!" or something similar.  I'd like to believe that no one sees these guides as legitimate sources of information, but the sad truth is that they do.  Hell for all I know Hayden Hawk may actually be the richest player in WoW (he's not).  I think a majority of the misconceptions come from the fact that the average player just does not interact with this gold making sub-community.  We are a niche group of people, but if you have a conversation with any serious gold maker, most likely farming isn't in their vocabulary, unless they're suggesting an activity for you to gain a few thousand startup gold, or perhaps farming at their Sunsong Ranches at Halfhill.  Reason being in the long term, crafting is much more profitable per unit of time invested.

Gathering consists of 3 (maybe 4) professions: Skinning, Mining, Herbalism, and sometimes Fishing.  First of all, if you're really going to insist on having Herbalism and Mining, PLEASE have it be the same toon!!  I so often see people saying they have "Mining/JC" on one toon and "Herbalism/Alch" on another. Every time I see that, it I cringe.  I'm pretty sure a puppy dies when you spread gathering professions on separate characters like that.  You're wasting so much time and efficiency spacing them out like that! Why farm for 1 at a time when you can farm for both at once?  Convenient while leveling, maybe. Terrible at max level.  If you're going to bother having them (and by the end of this post, hopefully you won't) at least put them on the same toon!
You don't want hurt us do you?
Gathering derives it's profits from flying around in circles and collecting nodes (or farming mobs for their skin).  Is it a profitable endeavor?  Yes, surely.  You definitely can make gold using gathering professions, and have no vested risk. That last part is what makes gathering so appealing to players new to the gold making scene, and rightfully so. It gives you a guaranteed increase in gold, with no gold investment needed, sounds great right?  Then why do all serious gold makers utilize crafting professions and item flipping, and not gathering?  Just like in real life, these types of low risk/guaranteed return investments have much lower return rates than their higher "risk" counterparts. The reason I put risk in quotation marks here is because if you're doing it right, there should be no risk whatsoever when you craft. I'm not going to dive into opportunity cost too deeply in this post, but by farming instead of crafting you're essentially losing gold.  Selling yourself short as it were.

Crafting
Crafting consists of 8 core professions: Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Enchanting, Engineering, Inscription, Jewelcrafting, Leatherworking, and Tailoring.  All of these are profitable in their own right, but most have a daily CD that adds to the profitability of these professions, and that's where the benefits start.  A lot of players don't realize that if they just used their cooldowns for even 2 crafting professions daily that they could make all the gold they need for max flying, flasks, and other basic WoW expenses.  These items generally (usually more so during the beginning of a patch/expansion) have the best return rates per time invested.  Also, consider that with the average craft time which is about 3 seconds, and even if you make a measly 10g profit per craft, that amounts to...

 
Eat that crappy YouTube videos!

There is however a catch.  Crafting professions standing by themselves all have limited use.  For example there's some number of gems I can craft that just won't sell within a reasonable time frame.  There's an amount of cloth PvP armor that will sell, and beyond that crafting any more becomes unproductive.  If utilized correctly (crafting the most profitable things first), crafting should follow an exponential pattern in terms of "gold per hour".  "Gold per hour" is a fairly useless metric when thinking about trends in gold making.  I much prefer Profit per week, or Profit per day, but for modeling purposes I'm going to use Gold per Hour (GPH).  GPH for crafting in my examples will be net profit from your action of crafting, and gathering roughly the same.

As far as the crafting goes, you should craft the most lucrative things first, and work your way down.  For farming on the other hand, gold per hour is fairly static.  The only limiting factor is eventually you'll farm so much it becomes valueless, but let's pretend that you're not botting for this example and can make a steady GPH rate during your reasonable farming sessions.  This is what one gathering profession compared to one crafting profession's GPH looks like:


As you can see, having 1 crafting profession is better for a while, but soon you run out of things to produce, while a farmer can keep farming the same mats for the same price.  A staple of good gold makers is Diversity.  Having different markets and venues for profit.  What if we were to compare 2 or more crafting professions to 2 Farming professions?  For simplicity, I'm going to assume you picked the 2 most profitable gathering professions on your server, and can make a steady GPH using them.  Since you can only utilize 2 gathering professions at a time, while you can switch between the most optimal crafting profession during a set time once you've run out of things to craft, the graphs will look something like this:

As you can see, the more crafting professions you have, the higher "gold per hour" you can make by switching between professions and making your most profitable items.  Also keep in mind that although the GPH dips below gathering at a certain point, the average per hour for that whole time will still be way higher for the crafting professions, unless you gather for ridiculous amounts of time (see: Botting).

Summary
What have we learned today?  Gathering professions are a source of profit for sure.  100% profit?  No.  You are investing your time, which you could be putting to better use crafting for even better profit margins!  Using crafting professions you can make more gold in less time.  If you buy your materials properly, there should be no doubt of guaranteed profits, and you will be showered in gold and phat lewts.  If you enjoy flying around in circles and picking up nodes, more power to you, but there are more gold efficient ways you could be spending your time.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Sky Golem Madness

Sky Golem, as stolen from the Wowhead Model Viewer
I've seen some crazy speculation in the past few days, on the profit of the Sky Golem, which will be craftable for the first time Wednesday on US servers, and Thursday on EU.  The most ridiculous prediction I've seen came from the reddit gold making community, where someone said they thought they'd be able to sell their Sky golem for "at least 500k".  With a mentality like that, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.



Now this isn't to say the thing isn't going to be profitable. Oooooh it will be. But let's look at the numbers for a moment shall we?  
Costs
Here are the Market Price to make one across US servers.  

Ghost Iron Bar x 300: 2,616 g (8.72g per)
Living Steel x 30: 16,196 g (539.87g per)
Total: 18,812g

Well well well, not exactly a cheap investment, but no bank breaker either, at least for most of my audience.  This (or more accurately your own servers average) is what you should value your cost as.

You may say "but I'm a xmute alchemist" etc.  Yes you are, but you could have sold these Living Steel at market price, and made that part of the profit regardless of whether you put it into crafting the Sky Golem or not.  You want to look at the value that crafting the Sky Golem adds to these mats!!

Maximizing Profit
If you have other crafting CDs (Tailoring/BS/LW) and crafted belts, surely you were disappointed with the prices.  Don't expect Sky Golems to be any less cutthroat.  That being said there are 2 things that are worth considering with the Golem:

  1. It's much better advantage than a 553 belt (or even pants), it's an item that adds value to someone's account, not just 1 slot on 1 toon.
  2. They are strictly limited to every 30 days (given you don't think there's massive dupes inc). 
So what's the bottom line?  My thoughts are this, opinions may vary, servers as well.  First of all you have to consider that not everyone's going to be able to craft this thing on day 30.  I missed 2 days already myself, being the casual gold maker that I am.  

***Side Tangent: I did a flex raid a few days ago where one of the guys I was raiding with got a Jard's pattern for the first time and asked what it was for.  He was also that guy who had to switch to an alt to get gold for repairs later in the raid.  Point being, there's all sorts of people who play this game and not every Engineer is going to be making this, but as far as love for professions go, Engineers are undoubtedly the most dedicated and most of them will be ready to craft within a few days of Day 30.***

 Second, know that if you are ready on Day 30, you may be among a smaller crowd than Day 31 or Day 32.  Getting a deal in trade for 1-5k less than the AH may be a solid bet.  If you can't sell it within the first few days, don't drop your price by 20,000g or some ridiculous number just because the market is over saturated.  I expect these to at least have a small pricing trend like the Darkmoon Faire trinkets did early in the expansion.  Week of the Faire?  Everyone is turning in their decks and undercutting each other like crazy.  Two weeks after Faire?  Higher profits for those with a little patience.  Now this may vary on your server due to a lot of factors (size being the main one), but I'd expect to see a similar pricing trend for Sky Golems, so don't dump it for super cheap this week if prices take a dive! Hold on to it maybe 10-14 days, and see what the market does.  

I hoped this helped shed some light on the pricing for Sky Golems, and if you'd like to rampantly speculate on pricing in the comment section, feel free.  

Cheers,

Phat Lewts
If you enjoy my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!





WAIT WAIT WAIT...Phat you didn't give us a price!

Go for as much as you can when you can log on.  If you're the first to post it and want to try for a half a million gold, by all means go for it.  Who am I to say dreams don't come true?

The price is going to vary LARGELY by server. So, damn much. You should know how your server will react to these things better than I, just keep your bottom line in mind when selling and you can't lose.  Finally, I will let you all know that my goal is the 150-200k range.  I have NO idea what my market will do tomorrow, and I have to wait 2 days anyway, so I'll have a front row seat.  That being said do not expect the same on your server at all, manage your expectations people!

Actual Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 10/2

It's been a while since I've done a classic Phat's Weekly Lewt Review (I call it classic but I'm sure most of you forgot I even did them), but I'm considering getting back into doing these weekly, but only time will tell if I'll keep up with it.

So this week my grand total is up to 3,446,744 just 53,000 and change short of 3.5 million!  Over the past month and a half (it's been a while since I've updated my numbers) I've made on average ~6,200 per day.  I'll take it.  Recently I've been playing a little more of the actual game, and less of the gold making side (for me less is still probably 100x more than the average player).  I'm in a bit of a low power mode though

Low Power Mode
I'm currently operating in what your laptop would call low power mode, doing the minimum that I see fit to ensure I keep making gold.  I've got a lot going on IRL, and I've only had a limited time to make gold in game, as I've also been spending much of the limited time I have in game on actually playing the game for a change.  More on that below for those who care.

Anyway I thought I'd go over, with limited time, the priorities of things that I see as "most optimal" when I play the AH.


  1. Burn all crafting CDs
  2. Post Gems/Enchants
  3. Post Crafted PvP Gear
  4. Post Glyphs
  5. Keep up on crafting
  6. Post Transmog/Leveling Gear
Luckily I had enough of a surplus when I started that I've had to do minimal crafting phases.  

New Suppliers
In the past week or two I've had the fortune of coming across a few farmers.  These guys are probably not bots, because they deal in pretty small quantities.  I get about 20-24 stacks of Ghost Iron Ore or 10-12 stacks of Ghost Iron Bars from them each day, and when there's 2 of them, it works out quite well for me! One guy was selling in trade and I caught him, the other had posted GIO for a really nice price I'd be willing to pay daily, so I mailed him and told him we could cut out the middle man/AH fee, and he happily obliged.  I was getting a bit low on GIO, but now I'm in a good place with it, at least until one of them decides to stop playing.

Cooldowns
So in theory, both US and EU realms today have 21 (at least) of their CDs, and can start crafting ilvl 553 belts.  I was kind of playing back a bit looking to take a queue from my server on what the pricing should be, but as far as I've seen there's only been one piece posted on my (low pop) server since Monday, the first day they became craftable.  I'm only paying ~40g for my BS CD, ~90g for my Tailoring, and ~240g for my leatherworking CD (notice an imbalance here?).  This makes the belt, if I were to craft it and not wait for the pants have a cost of  840g for BS, 1,890g for Tailoring, and 5,040 for LW.  I'm just finding it hard to put my finger on a price I think is both good for me, and going to sell.  I guess that last part doesn't matter because I'll be the only one with these on the AH.  I'm thinking 30-40k.  Might start at 50 and work my way down.

What really sucks is that I haven't learned a single belt recipe for Tailoring.  I've decided to go with belts because I think that they will sell better than pants, mostly because (and this is my personal rational when I buy gear) I would wait until I got the 4 set before deciding whether or not to shell out the gold for pants.  That being said Paragons won't open on Flex/LFR for another 2ish weeks, so my theory may be complete garbage, but I think belts are definitely a safe bet.

Hope you all enjoyed.  I'm considering writing some more about TSM.  I keep seeing the same questions pop up.  Not sure if I'll actually end up doing something written or some more videos, but if you have anything you'd like to see, let me know below!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Thursday, September 26, 2013

TSM YouTube Additions

I realized that although I've been publishing more TSM 2 videos on YouTube since my initial Learn TSM 2 series, that I hadn't been keeping up with updating you all on my blog, so here's the most recent videos I've come out with, along with a short synopsis of each.

TradeSkillMaster Group Maker - This video covers how to use The Official TradeSkillMaster Group Maker to transform links from outside websites such as TUJ or Wowhead to lists that can be imported into TSM 2 groups in game.



The Gather Button (Gathering) - This video goes over how to properly use gathering with crafting to gather the materials necessary to craft what's in your queue.  Unfortunately this video does not cover AH buying, an oversight by me that I'm not going back to fix, you'll have to extrapolate!


Adding New Recipes to Profession Groups - Are those new Malevolent recipes you've been learning not being added to their profession groups?  Learn how to add them in this quick video.


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Connected Realms Update 9/25/2013

In my most recent post, I might have complained a bit about how my realm was relatively dead compared to past expansion ending return of players, but there's been quite a bit of news about connected realms since then, and I figured I'd take some time to update everyone on the current status.

Blizzard Testing the Waters
Now, it seems that Blizzard is finally taking the plunge.  Yesterday Blizzard updated their Connected Realm forum post with the following update from Nethaera:

In order to implement our first Connected Realms, Boulderfist and Bloodscalp will be taken down for an extended maintenance beginning Wednesday, September 25, at 3:00 a.m. PDT until approximately 11:00 a.m. PDT. During this time these realms will be unavailable for play. Additional realm connections are planned for the near future, and we’ll be posting a full list at WorldofWarcraft.com as soon as we’ve finalized the details.

So finally, Blizzard is testing out Connected realms on live servers!  While I'm skeptical about the near future part about the phrase "Additional realm connections are planned for the near future", I'm excited that they've actually taken the plunge to experiment with some live realms.  Of course, I'd like to analyze the two realms based on realmpop and AH size data, so let's have a look.

Boulderfist and Bloodscalp
First I want to note that these are both PvP realms. I'm just going to lead into this with some data, the populations are pulled from realmpop, and the Market Value of the Auction Houses are pulled from Wowuction:

RealmTotal PopAlliance PopHorde PopA/H RatioMV Alliance(Million)MV Horde(Million)
Boulderfist6572821573441550.4890.972.57
Bloodscalp4520213158320440.4110.642.37
TOTALS11093034731761990.4561.614.94

To me this is a pretty interesting move by Blizzard.  I want to start off this segment by saying this could just be something they're doing for testing purposes, and have no impact on how they're going to combine realms in the future, but for right now I'm going to assume it will.

Population Balances
You'll notice that in both these servers the Alliance to Horde ratio is under .5 Alliance for every Horde player, and the connected realm will be no different.  They combined two Horde heavy realms, almost unchanging the overall faction makeup of the realm, which is a bold move.  Now if they stick with this, it will be very interesting to see how people react.  To me, I'd want to play on a balanced server, but the server I play on is 1.015 A/H, and you can't get much closer to balanced than that.

Auction House Implications
Now my realm which I complained about being small and lacking in sales has a market volume of ~1.5 million when I don't post transmog (~2.5 million when I do).  Because of this I think I'd be a bit unhappy if I was on the Alliance side of this connected realm.  On the other hand, they have about double the population as my faction. With the same AH volume as my current server, they have twice the audience.  I'd take it, but it'll be interesting to see how things shake out here, and hopefully we'll hear some results from this initial testing in a week or two, I'm sure there's bound to be posts on the Blizzard forums incoming in massive numbers once it's live at 2pm EDT, 11 am PDT today.

What are your thoughts on the direction they took with these connected realms?


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Phat's Patchly Lewt Review

I haven't done a weekly review in a while but I figured it'd be useful to do a 5.4 super awesome post.  (But Phat isn't every post you do super awesome!?).  You're too kind.

Timeless Isle
From a gold making standpoint, there are pretty lackluster things on the Isle.  From what I've seen personally, the 496 BoAs are kind of killing the crafted PvP market, although I think that gear WILL sell, just at lower price points than we're used to, which isn't the best news.  On top of that, all this 496 gear can be disenchanted, making Sha Crystals cheap, but keep in mind to turn the token to gear it has to be the appropriate type of armor for your class (ie only plate wearers can use a plate token).  I haven't actually done the math, because it's hard to determine drop rates of each of the tokens with so many sources, but one can assume, at most, that an enchanter can disenchant ~40% of these pieces of gear that they get.

Of course, because of this, Sha Crystals have tanked a bit on most servers, but in my opinion people will get sick of grinding the Island after a while, and although the prices may remain lower, I think they'll rebound a little.  There's also a great thread on the Consortium where we discuss this, check it out!  On the 5th page of that thread is also a collection of the treasure chests you need to check out if you're interested in getting coins/maximum armor tokens across alts.

Non-Gold Making
Honestly I've spent a lot of this patch doing non-gold making activities.  My character's gear was "okay", at an ilvl of 504 going into the patch, mostly from raid finder and the Shado-pan Assault 522s.  I took it upon myself to grind out some of the few slots I had 483s on, and I bought heroic bracers off the BMAH for a steal - 26k, and used valor to bump em up to 574s.  I even did the first wing of SoO in a pug, getting the Tier Chest on my first try.  That's more of the actual game than I've played in a long while.

Auction Housing
I was at the Auction House on and off, but when I was, I was disappointed at the level of sales.  That's not to say they didn't increase, they did quite a bit.  It honestly just didn't live up to the hopes I had, at least in the first week, as far as volume of players returning to the server.  My low pop is still low pop.  There's nothing like an end game patch to show you how dead your realm really is.  Even though people came back sales are at a snails pace.  Maybe double what they were a month ago, but still to me that is lower than I expected.

Selling Relics of Old
Oddly enough, and I did not expect this, I sold 2 relics the week of 5.4's release.  Both for 10k, one Relic of Xuen and one Relic of Niuzao.  That last one in particular struck me as a little odd.  To me there's no reason for a tank to buy these Relics at all.  First of all you can get a 496 trinket from the Timeless Isle, which is pretty good for tanks, and you could fill your second slot with the newly craftable http://www.wowhead.com/item=102483 which may not be BiS by a long slot, but the ilvl is where you'd want it to be.

Anyway, it sold, glad they did, and I'm honestly surprised they've done so well.  I wasn't expecting them to sell at a nice price (I was thinking sub 4k if at all), but this was a nice surprise.  I almost regret skipping making DMF cards this past DMF, but I think it was a good predictive decision (although it may have been wrong), and would make it again given the circumstances.

That's it for now, hope you enjoy the patch!  I'm looking forward to the 553 craftables, but there's still weeks to go for that.  I might get back into doing my Weekly Reviews, this was kinda testing it out.  I enjoyed writing it (and hopefully you enjoyed reading it), so odds are I will be starting them back up again.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Being Well Prepared for Patches

This post is for Selltacular's Gold Blogging Carnival, be sure to check it out for more great entries!  This month's topic question is:

How do you prepare for changes in the game?  How does it affect you at patch time?

Know the Changes
If you've been making gold a while, you know a major raid patch is going to spike consumables and item enhancements/gems right off the bat.  Those things go without saying.  Have them crafted ahead of time so you're ready for the rush.  After that, understanding the nuances of profession changes in a specific patch and how it'll effect you is essential.

Take this patch, 5.4 for example.  Tailoring is getting a new cooldown that cost 10 Bolts of Windwool, and it's all you need to craft raid gear.  Excellent!  No mats needed from DEing raiding gear is good for me, on my small server I've stayed out of these markets due to low availability and overpricing of these raid mats, so I'll actually be getting involved now.  Also, there's still the old CD which is required to make pant enchants, which does not share a CD with the new one.  So there's another 8 Bolts of Windwool a day.  So I'm going to need 18 Bolts per day, or 90 pieces (4.5 Stacks) of Windwool Cloth JUST for my cooldowns on one tailor each day.  Yikes!  On top of that, if you want to craft the new gear that's an extra 6-8 Bolts per piece. This is good to know pre-patch so I can stock up on this stuff in a big way!  After you fully understand what's going on, make a game plan!

Game Plan
I think that for this specific example, I'm going to go through my thought process, so I'm actually going to tell you what I am planning on doing when the patch hits.  First of all I'm assuming servers will be down for extended times, and I don't like the idea of posting on 48 hr auctions before the servers go down, although useful for some, it's not my thing.  So the first thing I'm going to do is log on and do a quick posting.

  1. Post auctions.
  2. Get new cooldowns - Tailoring/LW/BS/Engineering.
    • Unfortunately for me these are 4 different players.  Didn't think that one through!  
    • These patterns drop from MoP mobs, and I have a few sub-90s in this category, which is fine.  I'm most likely going to just grind some turtles on my 85s. 
  3. Enjoy patch
    • Subset of this is playing the Timeless Isle to get my undergeared Scribe some gear, so they can farm the new Techniques.
  4. After a while farm up the Inscription Techniques. 
It's not that thrilling of a game plan is it?  Oh well, it just kind of highlights the most important/most lucrative part of this patch, the new profession CDs.  5.4 is going to bring around the most interesting gold making content in quite some time, and I hope you all are able to capitalize on it!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Monday, September 2, 2013

Gold Making in 5.4

5.4 comes out in 1 week, and I put together some information on what's going to happen and where/how to get your new recipes as well as what's changing.  I spent quite a few hours this weekend on the PTR, so everything in this post should be current as of the latest PTR build.

Tailoring/Leatherworking/Blacksmithing
I decided to group these three together because they're all getting (relatively) the same change.

New Daily Cooldowns (CDs)
  • The three new corresponding CDs for these professions are Celestial ClothHardened Magnificent Hide, and Balanced Trillium Ingot.  The recipes for these can be found off all mobs in MoP.
    • The CDs work like the previous ones, each day you will learn a new random ilvl 476 PvP recipe or 553 PvE recipe. 
      • The 553 PvE pieces require 21 CDs for a belt, and 28 for pants.  
  • The daily cooldown can be bypassed using Spirit of War, which is a bit of a change from last tier. Instead of the new PvE gear REQUIRING it as a reagent, it helps you make it faster. Like the previous raid tier, these are found my DEing raid quality items from the Siege of Orgrimmar raid.
    • The CDs still require the same amount of base mats PLUS the Spirit of War to bypass the cooldown.
Enchanting
The only major change coming to Enchanting is scaling enchantments.  You can now use any enchant on any ilevel item, and the enchantment will scale to a level appropriate enchantment.  This potentially kills some profit on BoA enchants, as people can just use MoP enchants, enchant once, and be done with it, while more hardcore twinks might use them as they optimize DPS in certain level ranges.  This will be an interesting change to keep track of in regard to old as well as current enchant sales.

5.4 will also introduce Sha Crystal Shards, which 3 of will make into a Sha Crystal.  Currently only older tier gear will DE into this stuff, so it's honestly not too exciting unless they decided to make the crafted PvP gear DE to these again before 5.4 drops.  

Engineering
Engineering is getting 5 new recipes, one of which, Jard's Peculiar Energy Source, is the new daily cooldown, found off any MoP mob, and a necessary mat (along with the equivalent amount of Living Steel).  Below are the new items that you can craft with this cooldown:
  • 5 CDs/LS: Advanced Refrigeration Unit: New 36 slot cooking bag
  • 15 CDs/LS: Pierre and Rascal-Bot: 2 New pets, one can be used as a campfire, the other a tribute to Bad Robot Productions. 
  • 30 CDs/LS: Sky Golem: New badass epic mount.  Most likely the best investment out of all of the CDs, especially during the first few months.  
Inscription
Inscription is getting about 40 new glyphs, mostly cosmetic minor glyphs, but they will be in demand as a lot of them are more interesting than current minor glyphs.  Some techniques can be found in MoP, while others can only be found on the Timeless Isle.  

From what I've seen on the PTR, there are 2 types of techniques, BoE which drop only on the Timeless Isle, and BoP which drop off any MoP mob.  This means you don't need to be 90 to get all the patterns, but you'll be relying on others for the Timeless Isle ones.

Scribes will also be getting a recipe for a PvP trinket: Crafted Malevolent Gladiator's Medallion of Tenacity (Thanks to ShaddamV for pointing this out).

Alchemy/JC
Alchemy and JC aren't getting much love this patch, but gems and living steel will continue to sell well.  The usual.

Cooking
I'm not going to cover cooking in depth, but there will be new 300 stat recipes added as well as noodle carts. Compared to these other things, they're looking like small fish right now, but I'm still going to grind it out on my Cook who has Master of the Ways, expecting these other professions to have a much higher return.

Virtual Realms: Not Live on the 10th!
Just in case you missed it, Virtual Realms will not come with the 5.4 patch, they will come some time after release.  We'll most likely see some more info before then, and I'll keep you up to date.

That's my summary for 5.4.  If you have any questions, or comments, feel free to leave them below! 

Cheers,

Phat Lewts
If you enjoy my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!

Friday, August 23, 2013

Drunken Musings Ep 4



I've been on vacation for most of this week, so I haven't been able to mention this, but about a week ago me and GoblinRaset recorded episode number 4 of our Drunken Musings of Insane Gold Makers podcast, and if you're interested you can give it a listen here.

Since I just got back, don't expect a gold making post today, but there will be one this weekend!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Dying Poor in 5.4

Blue tweets have come out that say:
U.S. has two weeks from yesterday
Until 5.4 drops and rocks your World
of Warcraft, Hellscream's wrath's unfurled.

Wise gold makers know patch time is near,
The time to switch to TSM 2 is here!
For 5.4 will break TSM 1 it's said
And leave your competitors left for dead.

But not you, because you made the switch,
Even though setting up your groups was a bitch!
Now you're better off, no worse for wear,
And you won't end up pulling out all your hair.


For serious though guys.  TSM 1 will most likely break with the patch, as it will not be updated any longer (the current version of TSM is 2.0.x, by Patch day we may be on to 2.1).  Start learning TSM 2 if you haven't already.  I know there are a lot of people out there who are really "hating" the addon, but I have not talked to anyone who's been using it for over a week, and set everything up that would EVER want to switch back.  Unless you want to be stuck posting auctions by hand in 5.4 I highly suggest upgrading ASAP!


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

TSM 2 Transmog Importing

I finally got around to updating my Xmog list.  I've added a few items, taken a few out, and I've created a ton of subgroups for my own use that I'm playing around with, expect a post on that in the future once I've worked the kinks out (or watch me work out the kinks live when I stream).

Importing:
Step 1
Have TSM 2.0 and all it's modules installed, as well the addon Mogit (Mogit is the best addon for xmog).

Step 2
/tsm -> Groups -> New Group -> Type Group Name -> Enter




Friday, August 9, 2013

Phat Podcasts

This past week I've recorded and guested on 2 podcasts, be sure to check them out for your daily dosage of Phat Lewts!


Drunken Musings of Insane Gold Makers #3
Earlier this week I got drunk with GoblinRaset and we recorded our third Drunken Musings Podcast.  This is by far the most drunk either of us have gotten during this particular podcast, so give it a listen to hear all the secret guarded gold tips we gave out!

You can find the episode here.

You can find all past present and future episodes here.


Late Nite With Stede Episode 004
Stede has been one of my favorite critical thinkers in the gold making community for quite some time.  A Wind Trader on The Consortium Forums, Stede frequently masterminds some really intelligent spreadsheets and thoughtful posts.  Recently he started a gold making blog, Late Nite With Stede, which can now be found at his new web address www.lnws.net.

I was proud to be a guest on his podcast last night, episode 004, we had a great time recording it, and if you haven't listened to his podcast yet, this episode is a great place to start, and I'd highly suggest going back and listening to the first 3 episodes as well.  If nothing else, for Stede's dreamy radio announcer voice.

Last night's episode can be found here.

The previous episodes can be found on his blog, iTunes, or YouTube.

TSM 2.0 Video Guides
I just wanted to include an update about my TSM video guides.  I've been getting a lot of positive feedback about the videos (link's on the left sidebar), and I wanted to kind of get a feel for what people would like to see in other TSM 2.0 videos.

These videos cover the basics, but I'd like to cover some more advanced topics, preferably that people would be interested in watching/learning about.  Let me know what you'd like to see, and I'll take it into consideration for my upcoming new videos!

Cheers,
Phat Lewts

If you enjoy my blog follow me on twitter, @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...