Phats' Weekly Lewt Review 12/28

Hey Everyone!

Hope you all are having a great and relaxing holiday!  Today as always I'm going to bring you my latest gold making escapades in the past week, in hope of helping you, and/or letting me vent a bit (you'll see below).

Tailoring
Tailoring has been really good for me the past few weeks.  I am still burning my daily CD, and selling both the crafted PvP sets and the Imperial Silk crafted (ilvl 476) gear.  Both at an amazing profit.  I actually can't keep the Imperial Silk crafted gear on the AH long enough to replenish it with my daily cooldown, which is nice!  I'm tending to craft only the gloves now, as both gloves and robes sell for about the same on my server, and gloves take 2 less cooldowns.  If I work up 6 cloths before I sell a pair of gloves though, I will make the robes.  As for the PvP gear, for some simple calculations I figure each PvP piece takes about one stack of Windwool (ie. 4 bolts) on average.  This means that for anywhere from 20-40g I can craft one piece of PvP gear.  That means Selling it from 150-350g is well worth my time!  I'm also crafting Netherweave Bags while AFK because the profit margins are strangely high on my server right now.

Alchemy/Farming
As I mentioned a few weeks ago when 5.1 dropped, I started planting Enigma Seeds.  I'm now using them to make flasks with the rest of the herbs that come up, since my 90 is an alchemist.  Just adds a little bit of value to my Lotus, but well worth it, as they both sell just as quickly for me.  Also, I've been using a spreadsheet to calculate my minimum Living Steel method (since TUJ doesn't account for procs from transmuting).  It's going well, but my profit margin is only about 100g on any given day, with procs taken into consideration.  With 4 alchemists, this means 400g/day so I can't complain for what little work I do to get it.

Burned at the BMAH
So recently I saw a Battered Hilt on the Black Market Auction House.  The starting bid was 15k and I know I can probably get anywhere from 25-30k on my server for such an item, and I figured if it didn't sell, I could use it myself, I've always wanted to do that quest line.  I won the bid at 15k and got the item, only to see that I had purchased the Alliance only version on my Horde character.  So I almost instantly opened up a ticket with a GM.  I got my response within 48 hrs, and I was not very pleased with it. They said 2 things: 1) They would not change the item to the Horde version and 2) They would not refund me the gold I payed for the item.  Bummer.  So I'm out 15k, it's my own fault but I figured they'd at least swap it for the Horde version, but what can you do.  Lesson learned, watch out for faction specific items on the BMAH.

That's about all for this week, it's been a lot of sales I figure because the college and high school kids have off this week through New Year's, and I've gotten a noticeable increase in sales, which is always welcome.  I will try to do another post some time before 2013, but I'm not sure that I will have the time.  In any case, I hope you all have a Happy New Year!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Main's MoP Xmog
(Click to Enlarge)

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







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

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


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Calculating the Value of Spirit of Harmony

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

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

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

Click to Enlarge

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

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

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

Click to Enlarge

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

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

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

Click to Enlarge

You will be able to see a chart like this:

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


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

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Top 5 Professions to Level ASAP!

Today I figured I'd do a post on what professions I personally will be leveling as soon as possible.  Mists releases at midnight on the west coast US, which is a relatively ungodly 3 AM for those of us on the east coast.  That being said I'm still considering setting my alarm and having a pot of coffee on hand, but right now it looks unlikely. Once I do eventually log, I am going to focus on leveling my professions before stepping into Pandaria.

Living Steel

My main focus though is the new "Truegold", Living Steel.  This new alchemy cooldown is used in 28 recipes, all but 10 of which will be craftable at launch, given the crafter has the correct (and in some cases absurdly high) amount of Spirit of Harmony in some cases.  This precious metal is used in many crafts.  16 total are required to craft the new JC Epic Mount (which will require Exalted rep to get all recipes for), 1 is required to craft the new Belt Buckle, as well as quite a few needed for the BS and Engineering Epics.  Let's just say there's going to be quite a demand for this item, especially from those elite raiding guilds on your server.

Primordial Ruby

A JC's Best Friend

My second focus will be leveling Jewelcrafting acquiring all of the Jewelcrafting Primordial Ruby base cuts (Delicate, Bold, Brilliant) ASAP.  These cuts will be learned through research or doing Golden Lotus Dailies at Revered.  **Here's the thing to consider with Jewelcrafting though**, they're scaling gem cuts this expansion.  This means they're scrapping the Cataclysm (and previous expansion) model of say 40 base stats total for all gems. Instead, the off color gems will have more base stats to compensate for the lack of Primary stats (Int, Str, Agi).  This doesn't concern me because I think during the first few weeks people will still be following their old gemming ways, and I'm not too worried about these not being HOT sellers.  I may however stop once I get the Brilliant cut, so I can diversify.  The more colors of rare gems I can cut the first few weeks the better.

Without Further Ado, my list:
Top 5 Professions to Level (IMO)

1. Alchemy
• As Stated above, Alchemy transmutes will be used in many recipes, so I will be focusing on leveling the Alchemy my 4 Transmute Masters as soon as possible, to get these xmutes on the AH before the price drops 1 copper!
2. Jewelcrafting
• Again as stated above I want to take good care to learn as many cuts as possible, as soon as possible, and you can start researching once you hit 550, so after that I'm going to stop and focus on other professions.  It's also useful to note I have 2 JCs for double the research possibilities.
3. Tailoring
• Tailoring also has a new daily cooldown that will be added, which again will be craftable at only 550, so getting my 2 Tailors up to burn their daily cooldowns is necessary as soon as possible again.
4. Inscription
• Once again, Inscription is another profession has a once daily cooldown (525), which is a necessary material for Darkmoon Cards(600).
• This makes the individual Darkmoon Cards way more valuable, and will focus trinket seekers on getting individual cards as opposed to full decks.
• Take into consideration that there is also 3 BoA Staves that require 20 of these first daily CDs to make.  Priorities!!! **Note that you can acquire 7 per week doing proffesion specific (level 600) weekly quests, so this is where maxing your Scribe comes in handy.
• I'm not sure if you need to be a certain level to access the area, if so you will need to obtain that level as well. 
5. Mining
• This may seem like a curveball to some, given my (and most gold makers) "Gathering isn't the best GPH" stance.  I still agree with this, and think my profession leveling order above will payout the most, but my go to craft, Living Steel Transmute requires 6 Trillium Bars EACH, each of which require 2 of each color of Trillium Ore (so needs 24 raw ore total, 12 of each color).

• This bar cannot be smelted by Miners until 600 Skill Level, which can only be obtained by farming nodes (no smelting skill ups), so you KNOW the bars are going to be in high demand, and are also going to be very expensive for the first few weeks. By having my own miner smelt the bars, I can cut my costs, and acquire some ore for the transmutes.  It's a win win (except I don't want to level my Tauren Druid, but oh well).

So this is it, my master plan.  If anyone is curious I will be leveling my Mage (Tailor/Alchemy) to 90 first after all this, and starting my farm ASAP, so my mage will be the first one to be able to benefit from the Tiller's Bonus Spirit of Harmony, which is nice because then I'll have the option to choose between the most profitable of the two daily CDs (Tailoring/Alch) that character can craft, based on established AH prices. 

So that's my plan (and suggestion) on which Professions to level first.  Which professions are you planning on leveling up first?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Your Guide to Spirit of Harmony

***If you're here looking for a guide on farming Motes of Harmony, check out this post!!***

Spirit of Harmony
(via Wowhead)

Remember all the way back in Cataclysm when crafted items were made with Volatile Air, Fire, Water, Life, and Earth? It seems like just yesterday that multiple elementals were the norm, but Blizzard decided to scrap this system for a simpler one.  Spirit of Harmony, which are essential to about every major crafting profession, are the only elementals in MoP (for now at least).  They can be created by combining 10 Motes of Harmony which are random world drops from 85-90.

The bad news for your low level crafters though is that they are BoP, so any alts not yet in Pandaria will not be able to benefit from them.  

Which Profession Benefits most from Spirit of Harmony?
This is an debatable question, but here's the breakdown (number 1 are the ones that cannot truly benefit, then the rest of the professions follow in alphabetic order).
*Right now on wowhead, the only way I can see to sort what can be crafted using this item by each profession is to go to this link and type in the profession name.

1. Mining, Herbalism, Skinning, Enchanting
• Relatively no benefit.  These professions can use the Spirits to trade for these raw mats, which is not terrible, but any profession could do this.  
2. Alchemy
• Using 3 Spirits of Harmony, an Alchemist can get an extra transmute CD for the day Riddle of Steel.  (this is the Truegold of Pandaria)
3. Blacksmithing
• Most notably requires 8 Spirits of Harmony to craft ilvl 476 epic gloves + chest (first level of craftable epics).
• To craft ilvl 496 items it requres 2-3 Spirits of Harmony as well as 8 Blood Spirit, an item gained from disenchanting raid armor (not available first week).
4. Engineering
• Staying true to Engineering's roots, it is used in recipes that create cool things (mounts, daily CD robot, etc) for the owner, as well as scopes, a gun, a pet, and a Pandarian Wormhole Generator!
5. Inscription
• The new Darkmoon Cards require 10 Spirits of Harmony or a weekly quest reward to craft more than one per day! This will lead to more scribes trading cards to get full decks rather than grinding a ton until they get a full deck.
• Cool Addition: Scribes can now craft any of 3 new staves that are Bind on Account, requiring 20 daily cooldowns.
• The 4 Inscription weeklies to get the CDs faster: avoiding the daily cooldown by doing weekly crafts, requiring 4-6 Spirits of Harmony per.
6. Jewelcrafting
• Not Needed for the cool new mounts!
• Two new vanity pets require 3 Spirits of Harmony each.
• If you didn't know already, JC now requires a daily CD to discover new cuts (you pick which color you want to discover).  You can do more the one per day using 3 Spirits of Harmony.
7. Leatherworking
• Similar to Blacksmithing.  Again click here and search Leatherworking to see all the recipes, again gloves and chest
8. Tailoring
• With 3 Spirits of Harmony, Tailors can avoid their Daily Cooldown, to craft epic items faster.
• The epics require 4-6 of the daily CDs to create, again more for the 'upgraded' ilvl gear.

Farm Your Motes!

Like I said above, the Spirit of Harmony are created by combining 10 Mote of Harmony. If you get to revered with a new faction in Pandaria, The Tillers, you will be able to get over 1 full Spirit worth a day by "cultivating a farm".  If you're interested in learning more about this, check out wowhead's Tillers Guide, it's a very comprehensive preview of what you can expect. Basically once you get revered you can obtain Songbell Seeds and cultivate them (only taking a few minutes every day) and not have to grind out Motes from random mobs in Pandaria.  This should certainly speed up the process for any of you looking to get your hand on Spirits of Harmony ASAP.  

Which profession are you leveling first, and which one do you think has the coolest use for Spirits of Harmony?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

1,000,000 Gold on a Low/Med Population Server

Follow me on twitter @PhatLewtsGold!

Finally made it to 1,000,000 gold this past Thursday!  On December 9th I hit half a million, so in 47 days I managed to make 500k, or about 10,500g per day profit on a server that is Low pop during the week and Medium on weekends.  For those who are curious I'm going to post some of my data taken from TSM for my favorite gold making strategies.


1) Jewelcrafting


Spent

Item	Gold Spent
Elementium Ore	320,156
Obsidium Ore	37,051
Pyrite Ore	33,301
Total Spent:	390,508

Gold Earned on Cut Gems (Sums of Rare Cuts)

Item	Gold Made
Inferno Ruby	585,408
Ember Topaz	93,296
Demonseye	64,942
Amberjewel	27,367
Ocean Sapphire	17,046
Dream Emerald	16,785
Total Earned:	804,844

This alone puts my profit from JC over 400k gold, more than doubling my original investment in the ore.  Now, this data is only for the cut gems that I sold, not to mention the rings/necklaces I made with the common gems and Disenchanted for enchanting scrolls/raw enchanting mats.  JC is my favorite, can you tell? 

2) Cata Twink Gear

Armor Type	Gold Earned	Gold Spent	Profit
Lvl 77 Cloth	13,375	4,476	8,599
Lvl 77 Leather	13,052	7,325	5,727
Lvl 77 Mail	11,495	5,658	5,837
Lvl 77 Plate	13,703	6,768	6,935
Lvl 77 Ring/Neck	4,796	1,813	2,983
Lvl 77 Weapon	15,576	6,342	8,984
Lvl 78 Assorted	9,322	7,660	1,662
TOTALS	81,319	40,042	41,277

The reason I've included this is because, like the initial cut gems, it has basically doubled my investment.  The only difference is that this method literally takes seconds per day, compared to the enormous amounts of time jewelcrafting takes to prospect and cut.  

NOTE: The "Gold Spent" column also reflects gold I have spent on items that haven't sold yet.  

3) Mogging

Love it or hate it, mogging has become a great source of quick income for many gold makers, and I'm no exception.  Unlike most moggers I prefer crafting and selling items on the AH, although when I have no work to do for JC you can find me at the AH looking through models.  Here is my data for crafted and resales.

Type of Mogging	Profit	Number in Category
Resales:	13,784	28
Crafted	7,786	3
Total:	21,570	----

The three items that I am able to resell that I craft are below with their average profit per item.  The links are to posts about them by me, or in the case of the axe, Power Word: Gold:

• Icy Cloak: 2195g Profit per sale
• Big Voodoo Robe: 1402g Profit per sale
• Huge Thorium Axe : 688g Profit per sale

A lot of the responses I got from my Icy Cloak post was that there's another cloak that's purchasable from vendors in Shattrath for 300ish Justice Points.  I've sold 2 of these cloaks on a small server, and what I have to say to that is don't assume that all players have the same resources that you do, or know how to utilize them properly.  

4) Misc. Sales

Some other sales data that I think is worth noting:

Wrath Epic Gems

Gem and Cut	Number Sold	Gold Made	Average Gold/Sale
Brilliant Cardinal Ruby	110	22,288	202.6
Solid Majestic Zircon	61	12,870	211
Mystic King's Amber	96	21,535	224.3
Reckless Ametrine	23	4,563	198.4
Willful Ametrine	13	3,130	240.8
Purified Dreadstone	4	763	190.4
Total:	307	65,149g	212.2

Easily the most profitable use for Justice Points when the gear is too cheap, will also buy @100g raw to cut.

Transmutes

Volatile Life Avg Price Bought Per: 5.24g

Volatile Air Avg Sale Price: 17.59g

Profit per "Living Element" Transmute: 185.25g (procs not included)

Volatile Air Sold: 3,690

Total for Living Elements: 45,571g (Didn't include procs)

Avg Price of Volatile Air x10: 162.5g

Avg Price of Volatile Water x10: 118.8g

Avg Price of Volatile Fire x10: 47.99g

Avg Price of Pyrium Bar x3: 36.65g

Avg Cost to make Truegold: 365.94

Cost after factoring in x1.2 proc: 304.95

Avg Truegold Sale Price: 606.34

Avg Profit per Truegold: 301.39

Truegold crafted: 55

Total Truegold Profit: 16,576g 

The reason I tended to do Living Elements more even though Truegold was more profitable, there was a point in the expansion where someone who seemed to have been stockpiling Truegold decided to sell about 150 for under 400g each, which would have drastically reduced my profit margin.  

Alright that's it for now, thanks for reading until the end, not all my data, but the interesting bit of it.  Look out for more gold making posts as I ease down on game time after hitting my milestone.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Tailors: Icy Cloak Recipe!

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Disclaimer: This gold making method is NOT for the feint of heart.

UPDATE:  I've managed to sell this cloak Horde side for over 3k gold!

Requirements: Tailor and Alchemist (Only needs to be @ skill 200 which requires level 20)
Suggested: Tailor, Alchemist, and Herbalist

This is what the Cloak in question looks like:

 

For transmog, this cloak is not unique, in fact there are many other places to get it, but the one thing in your favor is that this is the only way that produces a BoE version of the cloak, AND this recipe is not available to the Alliance at all.  (Also, Priests love this cloak and it's cheap to make)

Step 1: Getting your Recipes

Pattern: Icy Cloak is sold by a vendor only friendly to Horde players, Ghok'kah.  This and the other recipe are Limited Supply so they may not be there right away, and may require some camping to obtain!

**If you are going to transfer this to the Alliance and you have an Alliance tailor/alchemist now would be the best time to transfer this recipe as the next one can be obtained by Alliance or Horde

The other recipe you will most likely need is Recipe: Frost Oil, as Frost Oil is a reagent required to craft the cloak.  This one is sold by Bro'kin, and again will require a decent bit of camping as it is Limited Supply.  

Step 2: Getting your Mats

The mats for Icy Cloak (other than the Frost Oil that you're going to make) are all pretty common and cheap to buy off your Auction House.  The Frost Oil may provide a bit of a problem and this is where having an herbalist will really help you.  The one annoying mat is Dragon's Teeth.  This does drop from a lot of low level instances (Maraudon mostly) so there may be a bit on your AH if the low lvls were smart enough to post it.  If not, the herb nodes are only located in the Badlands.  Get all your mats together and craft the cloak!  

Step 3: ?????

Step 4: Profit

List the cloak on the AH for a reasonable price (I'd suggest 500-1,000 g depending on the size of your server) and wait for it to sell!  

Observations/Comments

This pattern is not available to the Alliance so flipping the pattern on the Alli side (or getting it on an alt over there) may be even better than crafting the cloak.  There are very easy ways of obtaining a cloak that looks like this but hopefully people will see yours in the AH and say "Hey that looks good, and I'm willing to pay the price to not do research" and you'll be all set.  

Good luck camping vendors!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts  (@PhatLewtsGold)