Friday, May 31, 2013

Market Value Exponential Failure

As many of you have realized by now, I like to share my mishaps and failures in WoW gold making as much as I like to share my success.

Enchanting
This week I've learned a lesson that quite possibly only be learned from playing on a small server.  I don't think that this would remotely happen on a server such as Illidan - Horde, which is a good thing for those playing on larger servers.  This actually happened to many of my enchanting groups, but I'm going to highlight my group for Enchant Bracer - Critical Strike.  This particular enchant I crafted because TSM thought it was profitable to sell at 100g.  Great 100g, only 25g in mats, sure I'll craft it, why not!  Turns out though that I was the only one on my server crafting these, which is where the mishap came from.

Posting Setup
I was lazy when I set up my groups.  I put all my enchants in one group and set the Fallback as 175% of the market value, and the Threshold as 35% of the Market Value, then let TSM fix my groups into individual groups within a category.  Now this is a fine and dandy strategy if you are posting relevant items where you usually have competition, but for those items that you are the only one posting, it can become quite troublesome to someone (like me) who doesn't constantly pay attention at what prices he is posting at.

The Result
The end result was quite hilarious.  I didn't notice what was happening until about a month too late.  Since I was the only one posting this particular enchant, every time I posted it, the "Market Value" changed to whatever I posted at.  So each time I reposted this item, TSM increased the price by a multiplier of 1.75.  Now just to put this into perspective, if I reposted 15 times under these assumptions, the 15th time I'd be posting at a whopping 4421x the original price!  Below is the result of who knows how many days of not paying attention:


All for an enchant worth 100g!  So let a lesson be learned here boys and girls, TSM can do a LOT of thinking for you, but there's only so much it can do.  Beware using percents when dealing with rarely posted items, or an item worth 100g can end up being posted at 127k.  Hopefully everyone who reads this pays more attention when setting up groups than I did.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Friday, May 24, 2013

On the Recent WoW Duping

Just wanted to write up a post about the most recent "duping scandals" from the past few days, and what I've seen so far about it.  Whenever these dupes come out, I always think it's interesting to read about them, and learn how they work(ed).  They're found by people who have much more patience than me, who are passionate about a different aspect of the game.  Just like I enjoy making gold, they enjoy finding loopholes in WoW's code, and exploiting them.

Heard it Through the Grapevine

I first heard about all of this from this thread on The Consortium.  Many members were having massive amounts of TCG items bought up all at once, and were posting about it on this thread.  Unfortunately my own TCG mounts I bought to flip months ago are still rotting away on the Auction House, guess they didn't like small servers.  After reading UtesDad's comment on that thread I was curious about the actual method, and headed over to Ownedcore to see what I could learn.

Unlimited Moneys!

From what I can tell there are possibly 2 dupes, although the info on this first one is less documented than the later one I'll cover.  From what they're saying with this one you were able to log in to the game and Remote AH at the same time (you previously couldn't so I'm not sure how they got around it), and if you purchased an item from the AH, it wouldn't subtract from your gold total, but you'd get the item, basically generating unlimited gold.  This would of course explain the Remote Auction House being down, but I can't verify this one.  If it's true, the implications are going to be interesting.  Here is the thread from Ownedcore with more details (slightly NSFW).

Bags of Money

The second one is a little different.  If you've opened a http://www.wowhead.com/item=89125/sack-of-pet-supplieshttp://www.wowhead.com/item=94207http://www.wowhead.com/item=98546, or any similar bag since 5.3 dropped, you'd notice that there's a new looting mechanism for these bags, where using the bags doesn't have a normal loot interface, but pops up as if you won something in raid finder.  Blizzard changed the mechanisms for these bags in 5.3, apparently because they now include protection for bad luck streaks in their algorithms (from patch notes):

"Protection for bad luck streaks have been added to Battle-Stones from pet supplies bags and wild battles.  Each bag or battle that does not provide a stone has a progressively better chance to award a stone to the player."

So apparently Blizzard didn't have the foresight to put a cooldown on these bags, and if you macroed it to your scroll wheel you could trick WoW into thinking you opened 30-50 bags, or more.  Since these bags all contain gold, it basically gave you a license to print money.  If you want to read some more about logistics, here's the thread from Ownedcore.  A very interesting set of exploits, check out the threads to learn more, it will be very interesting to see how Blizzard deals with this in the days to come.  

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

5.3 Gold Making

Instead of doing a Weekly Review today, I figured I'd go over some of my observations thus far from the patch, gold making mostly, but otherwise as well.  Not having played on the PTR, I'm enjoying the learning experience, and figuring out the new content.

Questline

For those of you who haven't done it yet, the quest lines were pretty cool (mostly scenarios), but the most notable thing for a gold makers is that there are ilvl 502 boots as a reward, which may put a damper on many boot sales, PvP or otherwise, so keep that in mind.  

Battlefield: Barrens

There's a lot of things to cover in this, wowhead has their own guide, and I'm going to assume basic knowledge of this guide below.  Mobs in this new area drop epic items, such as Kor'kron Leggings that are BoE and can be turned into ilvl 489 pieces once weekly (Total Slots Covered: Belt, Boots, Chest, Gloves, Head, Legs, Shoulders).   For the most part this will be negatively impacting sales, but since it can only be done weekly, alts might fill in gaps with PvP gear still, and trinkets as well.  Another question that arises from these items is "Since they're BoE can I sell them for a good amount?"  The answer to that is a resounding "No".  The reason being that they are really easy to come across.  In doing the weekly that you need to do to upgrade the items to gear, I got 3 of these pieces in a half hour.  Unless Blizzard decides to nerf the drop rate a bit, there's not going to be much demand for these unless certain pieces are much rarer than others.  They are also available from the quartermasters for ~200 resources

If you read the guide you'll probably note that the one only other thing that you can profit off of from the vendor will be the pet from the weekly, this guy.  For optimizing (if you do the weekly) I'd suggest using a Potion of Luck (although the droprate for me was dismal, but I'd suggest trying it, they do work on these mobs), as well as a few Rainstick for emergency heals if you're not a healing class.  One last thing to note for this area is that a unique equiped 24 slot bag, http://www.wowhead.com/item=98059, drops from these mobs as well, which may be useful to your alts with smaller bags.

All in all, the drop rate for greens and SoH is pretty nice in this area, a lot of humanoids so lots of cloth. There's potential for profit, but I'm sure that in the long run there will be much gained gold wise from doing these dailies.  Best to stick to the AH!

Sales

Since the patch, for me, everything has been selling, but some of my major sellers are PvP gems, enchants, and leg/shoulder enchants, but basically everything.  Also keep in mind if you're someone that likes to do old content that 3 BC raids had pets added to boss drop loot tables, so you may want to take a step inside.  Again, here's a relevant wowhead link.  Hope you guys are enjoying 5.3, and if you have any gold making suggestions I missed feel free to leave them in the comments.  


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Monday, May 20, 2013

My 5.3 Preparations

Since 5.3 is dropping tomorrow I just figured that it's finally time to actually answer the question I've been putting off for weeks (not that I have a complex response, sorry), "What are you doing to prepare for 5.3?" as well as "What are you stockpiling for 5.3?"

Nothing.

Okay I'm not doing "Nothing" per say, but I'm not stockpiling, nor am I doing anything super secret or innovative in preparation for patch day tomorrow.  I'm crafting ahead of time, at least a full stack of each cut of gem, especially the PvP related ones, as well as 1 of every Crafted Dreadful piece, enchants, belt buckles, the usual, nothing out of the ordinary.  As with any other major patch, more players will be coming to the game, more people will be getting gear, and more people will be buying enhancements for their items.

The one thing I am doing that may be (but probably isn't) slightly innovative is crafting some epic WotLK PvP cuts.  Who knows how these upcoming PvP changes will effect the 70s bracket, but I know regardless the gems will sell, just hoping they sell at a faster rate after the patch drops.

That's really it.  Just prepping as if it were any other patch, doing the basics.  Will be very interesting to see how the economy changes, but I'm honestly mostly interested in playing through the new story line for the first time.  Hope you all have a great patch day, and if you're doing something special for the patch, feel free to leave it in the comments!


Cheers,

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

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Enigma Seed Herb Rates

Over the past few months I've been keeping track of the rates of herbs of Enigma Seeds I've been planting on my main.  Today I'm going to share that data with you, as I figured my readers might find it useful, but please take it with a grain of salt.  These aren't guaranteed rates, but just my personal data, that I'm using to approximate how much the 5 minutes of planting and tending to crops is worth to me.


Golden Lotus

I've been tracking Golden Lotus for longer than the complete set of herbs, so I've made it it's own separate table.  I started recording data in Patch 5.1, and have separated the data because I've found the disparity in averages to be notable, although it does not necessarily imply that the rate was actually changed from 5.1 to 5.2.  Also, all data today is based on planting 16 plots of Enigma Seeds per day.  


Patch Total Golden LotusDays RecordedAverage per Day
5.1 190424.524
5.2 181345.324
Total 371764.882

Remaining Herbs

I started recording the other herbs when I realized that the value of these herbs was not quite negligable, and I was curious as to what their drop rate was.  I've only been recording this set for 25 days, so again not the greatest sample size, but the variation per day is small enough that I thought it would be good to share.  I will probably update these at some point in the future, but here's what I've gotten as an average so far.

Herb Rain Poppy Green Tea Leaf Silkweed Snow Lily Fool's Cap
Per Day 6.56 4.8 5.88 6.92 7.84

Cheers,

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

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 5/15 - Guild Bank Purchasing Bonanza

My weekly review is a day late, but as of yesterday I was up 50k on the week, pushing my grand total above 2.5 million liquid gold!  It was a relatively boring week in gold making, but yesterday I purchased a guild bank which distracted me to the point of not getting my weekly review out, and I thought it would be pretty interesting to have as the main focus.

Guild Bank Shenanigans

Yes, shenanigans.  So yesterday while milling some herbs on my scribe I notice in trade chat that someone is selling a level 24 guild with 5 tabs, and the stuff in the tabs.  Whenever I see something like this, I log right off, and hop on my unguilded toon to check out their guild banks to see if I can get a good deal.  So I whispered the guy, and I was the first one to bite (also keep in mind that this all worked out a lot better than it normally does).  I got an invite to the guild and asked for full permission to see the tabs, and he obliged.  I then used Sapu's amazing macro from The Consortium forums to approximately value the guild bank.  11.3k, not too shabby.  I did a few things that I also read on this guild bank purchasing thread on The Consortium, such as finding out his motivation for selling it (he was transferring servers with friends, and it seemed legit as he was only one left in the once active guild), and finding out how much he wanted for it before making an offer.

He told me he wanted 15k.  Yes, 15k for a level 24 guild with roughly 11k of mats in it, but of course, I did not offer 15k.  I responded with "There's not much of value in the guild bank how does 10k sound?"  He said that's good.  I took one last piece of advice I learned from that thread, asking him if he would  be willing to do half before and half after he transfered GM to me.  Not that it was some huge sum of gold I would mind losing, but he also agreed to this, and traded me the guild.  After sorting out all the tabs, getting vendor trash vendored, 24 hours of auctions, and CoDing mats at the cost I'd pay for them to my relevant alts, I now have 6k liquid on the alt, and about 7k in auctions, half of which are useful, and the other half are things I'm hoping will sell in a few postings.

So I'm only down 4k liquid gold for the guild at the moment, and I'm going to flip it pretty soon, my main decision being whether or not to get it to 25 before selling it (it's half way already).  More to come on that as it unfolds.

Other Flipping

I actually flipped another item this week that's of note, just because I think that it's an interesting aside.  I got an in game mail from someone asking for a 476 piece I had on the AH for 5k (it was posted at 10k).  This actually sounded like a nice deal because I had it up for a while, and who knows how long they will even be in demand for with 5.3 inching it's way around the corner.  Being who I am though, I decided to test the waters.  I mailed him back saying "Really sorry, but I'm not willing to go any lower than 6,500" and attached them C.O.D. for 6500g.  What do you think happened?

Screenshots of the Week

Got a few screenshots this week of people being silly, or odd sales in WoW.

The first, a strange sale, 3x Enchanting Vellum, you won't believe the price.  It got accidentally thrown into a group I made when I used the word Enchant to move items into it, needless to say it's staying.  


The next one is an odd interaction I had with someone from my transmog toon this past week, the item in question is this.

Last but not least, someone demonstrates a great way to convince me not to sell him something.


That's all for this week, hope you enjoyed my off topic weekly review!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

It's Not Profitable on my Server

Today I'm going to write about one of the most common and equally most illogical arguments I see from people either new to gold making or new to a particular market - "It's not profitable on my server".

Reasoning
I honestly wish that people would just stop and think about what they're saying for a moment before making such a daft claim.  This is the assumption you're making about the seller when you say a market is not profitable on your server: the guy selling it is spending his own time to craft this plethora of items, all solely for the joy of losing gold.  As the saying goes "There's a method in the madness."  Just because you don't know how the market is profitable on your server does not mean that it isn't.

Research
Zerohour touched on this  in his most recent post (which is well worth the read), one of the most important and useful aspects to gold making is digging your heels in and actually learning for yourself about how something works.  If prices are lower than your calculated thresholds for a certain profession or flipping market, take a moment and check out The Undermine Journal's page for the base item(s), or the profession page.  Check out the fluctuations in price, know when mats are cheapest, and better yet, set up market notifications!  Both TUJ and Wowuction have email alerts, and utilizing these properly can be key to maximizing your profit potential.

If you are new to a market don't just assume it's some easy to master beast and that you understand all the aspects of it.  Read about the topic, learn about how other's maximize their profits, and figure you what you're doing wrong.  Find the happy medium that is your own personal method, and master it.

Dominating Markets
Once you've figured out how to craft at a profitable price, only half the battle is won.  I misleadingly named this section, because your goal is not to dominate the market, your goal is to partake in the market, and make sales, but don't have it in your mind that you need to be the cheapest all the time.  People could spend their lives in so called "undercutting wars" and not be a penny richer (in fact would probably be quite a few gold poorer) for it.  Post heavily on days that mater, reset days (Tuesdays or Wednesdays for US/EU) and the weekend.  These days see the biggest influx of player purchasing, and should see the greatest influx of your own crafted goods if at all possible.  Don't worry about dominating the market on a Monday afternoon, it's just not worth it compared to high volume days.  Save your reposting for high sale days as opposed to a pissing contest between you and your main competition.

Conclusion
Again let me reiterate, just because you don't know how a market is profitable, doesn't mean that it is not.  Do the legwork specific to your server, and you'll find that you will be able to make much more gold in the long run.

This week I was able to catch up on some gold making podcasts, and I have some recommendations for anyone who is interested.  Eviscerated had two great guest spots in the past weeks with Zerohour and Wowprofitz, be sure to give them a listen if you have the time, they're great interviews.  Also, GoblinRaset came out with a 2nd episode of the Happy Hour Roundtable Podcast, which can be found here.  I enjoy listening to these guys weekly, and I hope you do too.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 5/8

Getting this one out a day late, but numbers reflect the week ending on 5/8.

Another week another...42k.  A mediocre showing, putting me just short of 2.5 million liquid, but considering the level of crafting I did this week and the weeks previous, I'd expect more, but I'll get into that.

Breakdown of Incomes
Below I'm going to do a rough breakdown to give you an idea of where I made the most gold this week.  The highest income comes from my main which is not only a function of how much they sell but how many times per day I am able to post auctions (usually post max of once/day from other alts).

Gems/Leg & Shoulder Enchants/Tailoring PvP gear- 37k
DMF Trinkets - 16k
Alliance Flipping - 8k
Horde Flipping - 8k
Enchants - 6.5k
Glyphs - 4k
BS PvP Gear - 3k
Engineering Products - 1.4k

Slumps and Ruts
Based on my numbers, and other's tales of current gold making, it feels as if we've all hit that "end of patch slump".  That time in the patch where less people are playing (approximately 14% less), less people are getting new gear, and sales dive a bit.  I think that it's majorly the reason why my sales numbers are low, but for me it's even worse because I get in a rut when I don't make sales.  For me low sales translate into low motive for posting, which translate into less postings and even lower sales.  It's a vicious cycle!  Regardless, I've still been posting from my main a lot to make up for the lack of reposting on my alts.  I'm hoping for 5.3 soon, and that it revitalizes the market.  Only time will tell.

Facepalm of the Week
Today's facepalm of the week is brought to you by Cataclysm Epic Gems.  For all your out of date gemming needs, pick Cataclysm Epic Gems!


That's all for this week, keeping it short and sweet.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Friday, May 3, 2013

Finding your Gold Making Niche

So during GoblinRaset's Roundtable Podcast that I recently participated in, we talked about our favorite "Niche Markets", and today I wanted to write about a similar topic, finding your own niche within the gold making World (of Warcraft).  

Be sure to check out the episode of The Drunken Mogul's Happy Hour Podcast Episode 1 here.

Finding Your Niche
If you've listened to the show, or when you do (*nudge nudge*), you'll notice that we don't all have the same methods to making gold.  Erogroth for example tends to focus almost exclusively on flipping markets, with a bit of professions mixed in.  Others tend to do a bit of everything, like Jim Younkin or myself.  Profitz on the other hand likes flipping greens while learning markets such as JC, Tailoring, and Engineering.  Finally, there are others like Thairus who excel in markets most of us avoid, like Engineering.

The point is that everyone in the above examples has a different spread of combos of professions and flipping that they use, but they all make gold efficiently.  Is there an optimal spread?  Yes I do believe that there technically is, but that it varies based on server, and more importantly the individual.  Everyone has different time constraints and interests within the game, and your job is to find your best fit in the gold making world, your own niche.

One Man's Trash
Just because your favorite blogger doesn't like selling glyphs, doesn't mean that glyphs aren't a great way to make gold if attacked from the correct direction, take this post for example.  Try out markets, and stick to the things you enjoy, and work well for you on your server.  Take everything with a grain of salt, and trust your own results first and foremost.  Blogs and websites have tons of useful information on making gold, in fact I'd imagine just about every legitimate method of making gold in World of Warcraft has been discussed at length somewhere already.  The value (in my eyes at least) from reading everyone's different perspectives, is that you can get a sense of what works and what doesn't, and evolve your own gold making method as a hybrid of those that work.  Take my enormous transmog list for example.  You don't need to use such an enormous list to have success flipping transmog, but it's what I do, and it works for me.  There are honestly items you could cut out of that list, and refine it to your own needs, or you could find another list, from someone who already has refined their method.

A Niche Market
Talking about finding your gold making niche, I can't not include a niche within a market, so let me refer you to my past post on Icy Cloak.  Since the initial post I've sold roughly 7 of them, making it well worth the time it took to camp the recipe and craft it.  Below is my priest modeling the cloak.  A similar model can be obtained with JP, but people just don't take the time to do their research!


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 5/1

This week's review is going to be relatively short, not a very eventful week.  I once again slacked on restocking my crafting professions, and I am only up 31k on the week, mostly because I've spent time gearing my newly 90 Disc Priest with my time in game, which I have enjoyed thus far.  I guess the healer queues make it a bit less painless, and I still feel like a dps with Atonement.  Below is the highlight reel of things I did this week in game related to gold making.

Investing in the Alliance
I spent a lot of gold on my Alliance toon this week.  The character is at 78 and I started getting the mats for leveling professions to 600 once I get 80 (more professions to neglect!).  I also bought that alt 280% flying, because the Outland speed is just a bit too slow for my taste, time is money, long term investment yadda yadda.  I also invested roughly 10k into blues in the twink market this week, which all should flip relatively quickly.  I'm down roughly 8k for the week on the Alliance side, but I'm sure to make that up within the next week.

Transmog Confusion of the Week
I post transmog on 2 different servers, controlling 3 factions worth of transmog markets, so I tend to get whispers, especially when I speak up in trade.  Well someone on my alt realm started barking Cardinal Ruby in trade for 1k gold each, I couldn't help but let people know that they're purchasable for 220 JP as well as in the AH for under 100g, and I got this as a response from a different toon in trade:
At the time I was reposting my transmog, and I didn't see the guy's name once, so I can't imagine he was remotely buying any decently selling items.  It astounds me how little research some people do before "diving" into these markets.

You Scratch My Back...
Last but not least I wanted to mention something that I did this week as a favor to one of my suppliers, which I think is great for what I'm going to call "supplier morale".  I look for suppliers from my bank toon, the one that deals in and is known for transmog and leveling gear.  One of my current suppliers of Ghost Iron asked me if I had a certain piece for transmog, and I did not, so I told him I'd keep an eye on it on both the Horde & Alliance sides of the AH, and I set up a wowuction.com email alert specifically for the item.  Two days after I set it up I got the email saying it was on the Alli side, and I snatched it up, and my supplier was ecstatic as he had been trying to farm the green for a while. He sent me a few stacks on the house (for a 35g investment on a piece of gear).  Happy suppliers = easy gold making.


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...