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!

15 comments:

  1. Shuffling is great but its only really viable on larger servers where supply is always there. On a medium pop server there just isn't the supply of GI at reasonable prices to sustain this method beyond a very small level. I just think this post is somewhat misleading because if your trying to get into gold making on a lower pop server this will result in a huge time sink and very little gold.

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    Replies
    1. I find it hilarious when people say things like this on my blog, because I play on a low pop server, as classified by Blizzard, seen here.

      Please tell me how hard it is to make gold on a low pop server.

      Delete
    2. Granted I'm on a medium pop server (officially), but I've hit the gold cap and still make 6-10k a day. I shuffle and I use Golden Lotus from the AH to supplement the rare gem proc rate.

      The shuffle should take care of itself. If ore is rare, gems are rare, prices go up. You need to take some responsibility for the market and drive prices, not be driven by other people.

      If the gem market is too low - buy the gems and relist them. If ore is hard to come by, people will struggle to undercut you. If your competitors are still listing cheaper gems, then they either farm like mad to feed their own needs, or they've already got the main ore suppliers sending stuff to them directly and bypassing the AH.

      The only real challenge to making gold on a low pop server is if the competition is good at it and puts in more effort than you.

      Bones

      Delete
    3. Personally, I think the shuffle is worse on full servers. I'd rather shuffle for an hour or two for a week or two supply of product that will profit me 10k or more than shuffle for 2 days to get the same 10k.

      Delete
    4. I reply to my original comment. I didn't say you cant make gold on a low pop server, but I appreciate the great conclusion you were able to draw. I merely was saying the "shuffle" which you state is almost unlimited gold means you have to have a unlimited supply. At "best" you can buy 20 stacks of GI at a reasonable price on my server unless you maybe camped ah 24/7 waiting for it to show up. This means either you have to go out and farm it yourself or you simply can't do it. FYI i have multiple capped toons and spend 100k on raid items. But it doesnt change the fact you can only shuffle on some servers

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    5. I'm the real batman!

      Delete
    6. @ anonymous. I play on a small server. I use the shuffle. As mentioned there is a magic point where you hit a breaking point and farming your own (and or just selling the ore) becomes more profitable. You can't shuffle "a few stacks" and expect massive returns. You also can't overlook the very first thing linked.. HOW TO SHUFFLE - and make sure you're using all end points. Gold making is still imo an art. You cannot sit there and expect everything to fall into place nicely. If your ore is so high priced vs gems (imbalanced) then you could reset the gem market. You need to tweak all those pieces - find farmers, farm your own, reset markets,,, this isn't a game... It's goblineering!
      Admittedly if you just use Mop ores you might find your market glutted by the amount you can possibly get.
      (I recently did this to starlight ink based products. @ <166g per shoulder enchant I'm now reaping 300-1k+ returns on each - selling between 3-10 of each daily. But it means I have to buy ANY herbs going cheaply.)

      Delete
  2. I play on a medium pop server, but on the 'wrong'(low player count) faction side. I turn anywhere from 5-20k a day with the shuffle. I and two friends set the rare gem markets starting at 350g, and we keep them there most of the time, buying and resetting markets when undercutters inevitably decide to cut 50-100g off the markets. Our gem market is more or less controlled by the three of us!

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  3. I have been doing this on a high pop server as I have time, and it works like a charm! I have been in love with the shuffle since WotLK! Helps fund my raiding repair bills!

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  4. I have done this on a low pop, and a medium pop server works well, u just need to explore all avenues

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  5. Im the original commenter. In response to Joshua exploring all the avenues isn't part of the shuffle. The shuffle is a pretty set thing and without a GI supply it is impossible. Maybe its just the few servers I've played on and everywhere else is plentiful

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  6. It's not whether or not the shuffle is profitable on the smaller servers, it's how much time can you dedicate to it. If the AH does not have a plentiful supply of GI, then you need to spend time farming it. I know a lot of folks scoff at the idea of farming materials, but on my server there are times that it's much more lucrative to get on my druid and get busy flying around the Valley.

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  7. Its not even low population server, its how good the raiding scene is on the server. How many people are getting upgrades?

    My server is just plain bad. and that makes the shuffle really not profitable at all :/

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  8. Nobody really shuffles anymore. They have it reduced to just using the jc component.

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