Making Gold with Battle Pets

This is for Day 17 of Nev's 20 Days of Goldmaking.  Interested in reading other's views on the topics?  Nev made a post with all the participants here.  Check it out, there's some really great posts!  Todays topic:

Pets - Did you used to do the Vendor pet sales? How have pet battles changed things for you?

Predictions
Going into MoP I had some big hopes for battle pets.  With the stats of rare battle pets being higher than regular battle pets, and only a small purchasable amount of them, I figured they'd be shoo-ins for gold making.  That did not turn out to be the case.  As far as making a profit with battle pets, there are some pets I could farm and make decent returns with constantly, but as many know I'm not the farming type.

Current Markets
Believe it or not, I'm still able to sell vendor pets for a decent markup.  Players just generally aren't using Wowhead to find out where they come from, and on my relatively small server, there isn't much competition. The one advantage with the rare battle pets that I'm starting to see that wasn't there previously, is the ability to move capital across servers.  If I have 20k gold on server X, and I want to move it to server Y, battle pets are a (sometimes slow selling) way to do it.  I have a level 25 pet on my team, so I can learn and recage level 25 pets, which is what I aim for when flipping pets.

Also if you're starting out on a new server, I have never had trouble selling Tiny Shale Spider on a new server within my first posting for 500g-1,000g (note that all my "new" servers are usually high pop).   They're a great way to gain some starting capital and easily farmable by any character that played through Deepholm in Cataclysm.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

What 5.1 Brings to (and takes away from) the Table

5.1 brought some changes as a patch, noted in the Patch Notes, but has also brought around some stealth changes that were not anticipated.  I'm going to go over some of the ones that I think are important to us as gold makers, feel free to chime in if you think I missed one or want to add!

SoH + Node Nerfs
In the official Patch Notes, they noted that 1 SoH will only get you 2 Golden Lotus now (as opposed to 3).  Also, you can now purchase SoH for 600 Conquest Points if you're a PvPer.  Now this significantly decreases the value of your SoH, consider growing some of the higher value plants on your farm instead of Motes!  Check out my previous post here for more info on determining what your SoH is worth.

Also, Blizzard announced that all nodes in Pandaria have gotten a 50% nerf.  This is pretty big, as they're trying to make the ore/herbs more valuable (see the post).  This is good for us as both crafters and farmers.  Assuming that we make the same percentage return regardless, having the mats cost more means that for each thing we craft we're getting more gold.  For farmers they're getting more for their work, for crafters they have to do less work to make the same profit.  It's a win win situation for all of us!

Pet Battle Changes
There are a few major pet battle changes that I think (sort of) impact the gold making community, one is that for completing the full chain (EK + Kalimdor, Outland, Northrend, and Pandaria) you are rewarded with 3k.  For me this is nice because I enjoyed the pet battles to begin with and it gives me an excuse to go finish the quest line!  Also, a reward from the bags for completing these quest now includes the Flawless Battle-Stone which can be sold on the AH.  This item will automatically upgrade your pet to rare, which is a helpful thing for players with pets that are only uncommon (learned from items), or for the ones in the wild they're too lazy to hunt for.

Mr. Bigglesworth (image from Wowhead)

It's also useful to note that a few pets have been added to the game, I'm not going to go too in depth into these, but a lot of raid pets have been added, the reward for getting them all being the much coveted companion, Mr. Bigglesworth, from Naxxramas!  If you want to read more about these pets check out Wowhead's article here  I think this will encourage some players to get into the new pets as this is one awesome vanity pet that's hard for anyone to pass up!  Another nice addition for Tailors is that they can now craft 2 new pets, the Imperial Silkworm and Imperial Moth, which can both be created by using your Imperial Silk Cooldown.  A potential extra profit/reason for tailors to burn their CDs every day!

Darkmoon Trinkets Upgradable
Another nice feature they added in 5.1 is the ability to upgrade epic items with valor points.  Previous to this Darkmoon Trinkets were BiS, and now they are upgradable as well, helping ensure their value for at least a few more DMFs!

The one last thing that may be of value is that we can now enter old raids by ourselves, and some solo friendly changes have been made to some bosses.  This could be useful if you farm raids, but was not essential, just makes your life (slightly) easier.  So, what is your favorite or least favorite part of the new patch?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

First Look: 5.1 PTR

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

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

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

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

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Aftermath - How I Fared in 5.0.4

So 5.0.4 dropped a week ago today, and I personally have made 110,780g since the patch dropped.

Glyphmas 1.5
Yes Inks were still tradeable, but I made out pretty well precrafting.  I ended up with 11 of each glyph I could make (I was aiming for 20) and was able to sell off a good amount of them.  Of my 110k I made this week, 73k (roughly 2/3rds) of it was from glyphs.  This was honestly as good as I could have expected even if inks were made untradeable.  One thing that I did notice, and I don't know if it was intentional or not: one of my main competitors stopped having glyphs to post, most likely because he did not attempt to actually trade his Blackfallow Ink, and does not know about the lack of change.  I'll take it!

AoE Looting
So with AoE looting coming out with the patch, and I had to put it to it's test!  I must say I am impressed with the system.  I didn't find the system to be buggy at all, in fact it worked a lot better than I had hoped for.  The radius for AoE looting is relatively large, much larger than I had expected.  I started my testing out on the grinding spot in Deepholm using Potion of Treasure Finding.

Deepholm

The loot in Deepholm is pretty great as we all know.  The thing was did it speed it up enough to make it "worthwhile"?

Below is a table of data for what I was able to farm in one hour (using a Potion of Treasure Finding that I payed 100g for).

Honestly I'm not too impressed with the results.  For results like this, I'd rather get on an under utilized crafting alt and not waste my time farming these adds, but if this looks like returns you'd like, by all means go get it!  Personally I'm going to reward my farming (since I have the cloth) by crafting all 26 slots for my transmog seller, it's a long time coming!

Below is a table with results from 1 hour of farming

Material	Mean Price Per  (via TUJ)	Total Gold from Item
39 Stacks Embersilk Cloth	70g	2,730g
16 Volatile Fire	5g 71s	91g 36s
22 Volatile Air	12g 71s	279g 62s
7 Volatile Earth	2g	14g
21 Volatile Life	3g 35s	70g 35s
13 Volatile Water	7g 57s	98g 41s
15 Pyrite Ore	3g 74c	56g 1s
14 Elementium Ore	2g 37s	33g 18s
Assorted Vendor Trash	251g	251g
GRAND TOTAL	---->	3,624g 2s per hour

One thing I did forget while farming in Deepholm is that I now have the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth on all my alts, providing a insta-vendor to whomever needs it.  Also, I vendored all the greens I got and added it to Assorted Vendor Trash instead of trying to sell them on the AH, because I'm lazy, so you can take that into account.

Mr Grubbs
I had mentioned in a previous post I had mentioned that I was going to wait to check out farming for Mr. Grubbs as a Rare Battle Pet via AoE looting.  While the spawn time of the adds is a bit long, I just thought I'd share the method I found to be most useful.  Go up to Zul'Mashar in Eastern Plaguelands, and kill all the zombie trolls that spawn in the graves.  Log another toon for a few minutes, switch back and repeat.  Took me about 24 bags and I usually got 3-4 per slaying*.
*Results are not typical.  Your results may vary.  Discuss your general health status with your doctor to ensure that you are healthy enough to use Phat Lewts' Farming Advice.  Side effects of taking this advice may include, but are not limited to: increased gold making, extra companion pets, boosted gold making ego, and/or, in extreme cases, death.   If gold making lasts more than 4 hours, consult your physician immediately.

I'm going to be trying AQ when I get around to it, but haven't had a lot of time to actually get out and play this week, hopefully more farming info to come.

Other Notes
I was really sad Mogit wasn't available for the first few days of the patch, but it got a really nice facelift, make sure you download the most recent version and check it out!  Also, TSM performed as flawlessly as possible so a definite bump to Sapu and anyone on the TSM team helping that transition go over smoothly.  Also vendor sorting is a cool little addition that I hadn't been expecting but am so far enjoying with playing.  They have a "BoE" filter which I think can prove to be particularly useful.  That's all for me, what was your favorite part of 5.0.4?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Battle Pet Update

For today's post I just wanted to go over some news on battle pets that you may have missed in the past 2 weeks.  5.0.4 is just around the corner, and although the Theramore event is not going to be released Tuesday, I look forward to seeing what happens with glyphs!

As prerequisite knowledge for this post, the overall limit on amount of pets is 500, and 3x is the most you can have of a single pet (for some the limit is only 1, see below for more info).

Duplicate Pet Problem (Launch of MoP)
As you may remember from my previous post or elsewhere, pets were originally slated to be mailed back to you caged if you had any duplicates.  This has been changed.  Instead, for MoP launch, the limit of 500 pets total is going to be lifted as well as the 3x per pet limit.  So on pets that are not unique you will be able to have an 'unlimited' amount (although per account, 50) of each non-unique pet, granted you have one on each character.  This is a one shot deal kind of thing, other than at launch, you will be held to the limits for the rest of the expansion.

From my point of view this is good, my idea on camping Jadefang should work out, at least in a minimal setting, if not better (being able to learn the extras and sell).  Otherwise, this will be great for those sellable blues that we have tons of across alts (for a full list see my Rare Battle Pets link at the top of the page).

SO...Which Pets Are Unique?
As of now, there are 4 types of pets that are unique:

1. Achievement Pets
2. Blizzard Pet Store Pets
3. Promotional Pets
4. Guild Pets

So these pets, even at launch you will not be able to have more than one of.  Going into launch these pets, are currently slated to not be tradeable anyway.  Also of note, the TCG Pets will be cageable/tradeable on launch, according to this recent post.

**Edit: "Standard" Pets
After I released this post, Nev from Auction House Addict pointed out to me this blue post from today, that says "standard pets" will be merged upon 5.0.4 release with a cap of 3 each.  The examples of a standard pet that they gave are "Orange Tabby Cat, Brown Prairie Dog, Crimson Whelpling" which is a bit odd, considering the Crimson Whelpling is slated to be a "Rare Battle Pet".  That being said these changes are going live before MoP release, so we should have time to fully analyze the breadth of this change before Mists comes out.

Wrap it up!

In all, these changes seem beneficial to gold making with pets.  Also, although some in the gold making community are skeptical, I expect all the companion pets that are slated to turn into rare battle pets to be so at MoP launch, until Blizzard indicates otherwise, citing the "Beta is Beta" principle.  So, What aspect of Battle Pets do you most look forward to in Mists of Pandaria?  Also, how long do you expect servers to actually be down Tuesday?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

5.0.4 on the Horizon

Well it's official.  We are now currently downloading 5.0.4, the Pre-expansion Patch leading up to Pandamonioum.  If you're interested, the patch notes for the current 5.0.4 build on the PTR can be read here.  For those of you who don't like to read through patch notes to find what you need, I'll be highlighting the gold making implications here.  Also as a side note predictions and history don't put this patch until early September, so you still have time to prepare!

He's ready, are you?

Glyphs Overhauled
Blizzard is not waiting until Mists is released to completely overhaul the glyph and talent system, they're giving us a window to adjust.  For those of you whom are scribes you know the potential implications of this.  All glyphs are changing.  A few are being removed but MOST are being changed in some way.  Speculation is saying Glyphmas 2.0 may occur, especially if the inks are no longer tradeable as they were during the original Glyphmas.  Only time will tell on that one, although I know many of us have our fingers crossed.

How I'm Preparing

I'm not big into glyphs, but with all the hype I can't not have a hand in it.  I already have crafted 9 of each glyph my scribe can craft (and doing lots of research), and hope for 20 of each before 5.0.4 comes out.  I'm ignoring the info about the ones that are changing to nothing, mostly because of my laziness.  Last I checked there were only 3, and if we make out the way we're supposed to, 3 stacks of glyphs will be the least of my expenditures.

My suggestion during your grinding is to do something else while crafting to occupy your time, and while you craft all the inks, feel free to browse the web, and perhaps catch up on your favorite TV series or read your favorite WoW Gold Blog.



Mogging Wands!
This is a market I have been looking at for a while, if you don't have my ultimate list of BoE transmog wands, check it out here!  Yes, casters will be able to use their wands as main hands in 5.0.4.  If you're not a caster and don't see why this is important, previously wands were never seen on a caster unless they took them out (rare) or if they decided to cast "shoot" with their wand (hopefully never).  In 5.0.4, wands will be used as main-hand weapons for casters, so they can (and probably will) be WAY more prevalent in transmog.  Buy low now to sell high soon!

AoE Looting
I'm excited about this one.  AoE looting will be live on servers come the pre-expansion patch, which will give us gold makers something to twiddle with in the weeks before MoP.  I mentioned in a previous post that I will be using this to my advantage to go after the pet Mr. Grubbs.  I have not tried it on the PTR because I hate putting the time in to test something and even if it works I'm not benefited by it in the "real game" (yes IRG I just got meta on you).  They have nerfed overall gold/silver drops of mobs, which is to be expected, but it will be interesting to see how other keen gold makers take advantage of this in the coming weeks.  Transitions are always a fun time in WoW.

Account Wide Pets/Mounts
This may have some gold making implications on the mount side (think Mechanohog), but there are not many gold makers who focus greatly on mounts.  This change may get you better selling prices (possibly more sales).  Buyers will be a lot more willing to shell out 20k for a Mechanohog on 10 players than only 1 player.  Same goes for pets. Since the battle system won't be instated until Mists, we won't see that huge surge in pet interest yet, but consider charging more for your pets/mounts.  Although a lot of alts will now have what you're selling, a lot of them will be more willing to pay higher prices for a companion across alts.

Cool, but Irrelevant to Gold Making
Yes 5.0.4 has other cool things but alas not all of them are going to increase our wealth.

• Pre-MoP quests: I'm interested to see how these pan out, not released yet on the PTR so I know something epic is going to happen on the poor Alliance isle of Theramore!  
• Battle Tags: If you've played D3 you know what they are, basically real ID without exchanging Email addresses.
• Overhaul of Abilities: Not only are glyphs being changed, but all talent trees are being completely revamped.  I'm not the one to get the info from about this though :).

All in all it's going to be an interesting time, with glyphs being my major focus (at least on the things changing level).  What is your favorite part of patch 5.0.4? 

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Rare Battle Pets Mean Lots of Gold!

It seems Cold beat me to posting a list, but I'm going to post the list I've been working on along with the gold making tips here, but definitely check out his list as well.

So we have come to that juncture in time.  What to do with rare pets?  Well luckily for you I'm just crazy enough to put together a list, organized by means of obtaining, of all the current pets that are going to be made into Rare Battle pets.  That list can be found here. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with this. It's important.

You may be thinking "Why put together a list of the BoP and BoE pets?  We gold makers only care about the BoEs!".  Well you should care about the BoP pets as well because even though  "All promotional, CE, Blizzard Pet Store, TCG and quest pets are currently not tradeable", rare spawns will be, as seen in my table (as well as Achievement and DMF pets). Also note that Catchable pets will be non-tradeable (this post more recent than quoted post, meaning the only way to obtain rares without going out and catching them is these pets.  (I told you this list is important!!!)).   But first, as any respectable post including BoE items goes, a list for finding the BoE pets on the AH:

The BoE Pets:
Auctionator List:


***Rare Battle Pets:
Azure Whelpling
Captured Firefly
Crimson Whelpling
Dark Whelpling
Emerald Whelpling
Gundrak Hatchling
Hyacinth Macaw
Razzashi Hatchling
Disguisting Oozeling
Guardian Cub
Elementium Geode


TSM List:
s1@8498,29960,20769,10822,48116,67282,72068,8499,8494,48126,34535$@


BoP Pets
So now the truly interesting part of the post.  The pets that I'm most focused on is these.  The rare spawns. The Darkmoon pets will be tradeable, but IMO they're too common/easy to obtain.  Also, the Profession and Achievement pets will possibly be tradeable.  I have a feeling the Achievement ones may be made non-tradeable so I'm not going to solely focus on them.

The reason we want to get these is because "If you have multiple versions of the same pet on multiple characters on your account, they will be merged into one. We will place any extras in your bags or mail them to you if you are out of space."  This is important.  If you get say 10 of a rare BoP pet, one on each of your alts, you will recieve 9 in the mail that are (as of right now) sellable.  DISCLAIMER: I'm not guaranteeing that this will be how it is when MoP ships, but for now it's all we have to go on, and I'm digging it.

First is my favorite from the bunch:
Phoenix Hatchling

Image courtesy of Wowhead.com

This little guy is just cool looking!  Who wouldn't want a phoenix as a battle pet?  This guy is an ~9% drop from the last boss of Magisters' Terrace.  This can be completed on Normal or heroic, and soloed easily by an 85.  I personally would suggest you do a heroic run on each of the alts you want to try for this pet on rather than a bunch of normal runs on one alt.  Why?  Account wide mounts and this boss on heroic drops Swift White Hawkstrider.  Of course after you obtain it, feel free to farm the pet on regulars, or ignore the mount altogether, it's your call!



Mr. Grubbs

Image courtesy of wowhead.com

This guy intrigues me.  He may not be the most pretty pet, but comments on wowhead say this guy is not too hard to farm, because adds respawn in certain areas quite quickly.  When 5.0.4 comes out (the Pre-expansion patch) AoE looting will be added to the game.  Mr. Grubbs is going to be my first personal test of AoE looting.  If the adds spawn as fast as some claim they do, this 1% drop should be easily farmable (need to complete certain quests first).  Again I personally will not even attempt this guy until 5.0.4 drops, because hey why not wait for AoE looting?  The one drawback may be that when they make the pets account bound in 5.0.4 you may not be able to get the multiples.  Only time will tell (and hopefully some more blue posts before then!).  If nothing else I will cage the one that I get and sell it :-P.

Pebble and Jadefang

Image Courtesy wowhead.com

Tiny Shale Spider, obtained today.

There are two pets in Deepholm that I have my eye on for Battle Pets.  Pebble, the reward from doing 10 Dailies: Rock Lover, and Tiny Shale Spider, obtained from killing the rare spawn Jadefang.  If you have the dailies unlocked in Uldum you can try for both of these.  I had never gone after Jadefang before so I tried to see how difficult it was.  Jadefang was there when I went, and I got my first Tiny Shale Spider.  This comment on Wowhead explains how to get there perfectly.  For both of these you will need to have the dailies in Deepholm unlocked.  Like I said originally I am skeptical as to whether or not Achievment pets (in this case Pebble) will be tradeable, but I am confident that the Rare Spawns will be (ie Tiny Shale Spider).

*WARNING: Since Jadefang is (or was before Molten Front) a sought after pet, odds are Jadefang will be cached on your NPC Scan, don't let NPC Scan fool you, check for yourself.  You will be able to target Jadefang, if there, from the green rock (see the comment on wowhead).*


Crosolisks in the City

"Toothy"

The last pets I'm going to try to get multiples of are the Crocolisk pets from the Shattrath Fishing Daily: Crocolisks in the City.  These cute little guys are too good to pass up, even if "quest pets" are non-tradeable at the moment.  The reason I'm thinking that these guys could possibly be tradeable is because they're not directly obtainable from the quest, they are drops from the bags, and I think if they do become tradeable, they'll be great sellers.




That's all for me on the gold making front of these pets.  Which one of the Rare Battle Pets are you most excited about?



Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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