Blacksmithing Guide to Lightning Steel Ingot

If you haven't realized already, Phase 4 has opened on the Isle of Thunder, and the mob that drops the pattern for the new Blacksmith daily cooldown Lightning Steel Ingot, Itoka, is now spawning.  This post will summarize all you need to know about it!

Daily Cooldown
Lightning Steel Ingot are made by a cooldown also named Lightning Steel Ingot, which requires 10x Ghost Iron Bar, and has a research aspect.  With the research you can learn a plethora of new patterns, such as the Crafted Dreadful sets and the 522 patterns that require Haunting Spirit from Throne of Thunder.

Crafting with Lightning Steel
Lightning Steel is actually only used in a grand total of 18 patterns.  The first 6 you get when first completing the chain from killing Itoka.  Each of these "Phase 1", ilvl 463 weapons are then used as a reagent in crafting "Phase 2" weapons, epics of ilvl 476.  From there, those Phase 2 items are used as reagents in crafting ilvl 502 (raid finder) weapons, that have item models of old no longer obtainable weapons for potential transmogging.

Phase 1
Phase 1 requires 5 Lightning Steel Ingot, 3 Spirit of Harmony, and  2-3 Living Steel.  All these patterns are learned initially when doing the quest from Itoka.  All phase weapons are BoE (see chart below for links), and are required as a reagent, and also unlock the patterns for the Phase 2 weapons.

Phase 2
You learn the recipe for all Phase 2 weapons by crafting their Phase 1 counterparts.  Mats are 10 Lightning Steel Ingot, 6 Spirit of Harmony, and  4 or 6 Living Steel.

Phase 3
You learn the recipe for all Phase 3 weapons by crafting their Phase 2 counterparts.  Mats are 15 Lightning Steel Ingot, 9 Spirit of Harmony, and  6 or 9 Living Steel.

As you can see the mats to craft an ilvl 502 weapon are astronomical, so there will probably be a limited market for these, at the price they'd go for.  The chart below summarizes the evolution models with Wowhead links.  Phase 3 is not on Wowhead yet, so they are battle.net links.

L.S. P1	Phase 1 Version (ilvl 463)	L.S. P2	Phase 2 Version (ilvl 476)	L.S. P3	Phase 3 Version (ilvl 502)
2	The Planar Edge, Reborn	4	Black Planar Edge, Reborn	6	Wicked Edge of the Planes, Reborn
2	Drakefist Hammer, Reborn	6	Dragonmaw, Reborn	6	Dragonstrike, Reborn
2	Fireguard, Reborn	4	Blazeguard, Reborn	6	Blazefury, Reborn
3	Thunder, Reborn	4	Deep Thunder, Reborn	9	Stormherald, Reborn
3	Lunar Crescent, Reborn	6	Mooncleaver, Reborn	9	Bloodmoon, Reborn
3	Lionheart Blade, Reborn	6	Lionheart Champion, Reborn	9	Lionheart Executioner, Reborn

Finally, for your viewing pleasure, the evolution of the models via their battle.net pictures (Click to enlarge).

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Looking Forward: Patch 5.2 Preview

About a week ago, Blizzard released a preview of Patch 5.2 in the 5.2 PTR Patch notes.  Now these changes as we know may not see it to live, but I always think it's good to look ahead, and in this case it's no different.

First Thoughts
As it is with every raid patch, demand for consumables (jewels, flasks, food, etc.) will increase when 5.2 first is released.  This patch however comes with a questing hub that will slowly unlock new things for each faction as they progress through it.  One of them will give a distinct (gold making) advantage to Blacksmiths:
"As the heroes conquer the Isle, they will unlock the powerful Lightning Forge, which will allow Blacksmiths to forge mighty raid-worthy items, as well as classic weapons from the past."
While this is still in it's infancy stages, this is an interesting concept.  It seems that Blacksmiths will have the ability to create raid and transmog weapons, but most likely will require your BS to be 90 to take advantage of this, if it is in the final release.  Other than this particular change, a lot of the gold making changes seem to be on the front of your Tiller's farm.

Buying the Farm
The first major change to the Tiller's farm is the option to purchase the farm from Farmer Yoon.  This will make the farm a place you can hearth to and treated like an inn.  Once you purchase it you will also start receiving "work orders" from factions in Pandaria and completing them will reward you rep.  While this will most likely not net you much gold in the long run, it can certainly help you unlock rep barred recipes on the enchanter you just got to 90 (for example).  The other changes to your Halfhill Farm focus on making your farm more efficient.

Farming Like a Boss
Patch 5.2 will be adding some long awaited changes for all you farmers out there!  The first will be AoE seeding, 4 plots at a time, using special Seed Bags.  Also, using the master plow and running over plots with vermin in them, will knock them out of their plot, stunned, with only 30% health!  Wild crops will also occur less often, once again speeding up the daily farming process.  Efficiency ho!  Some very nice simplifications to the farming system.   Last but not least, possibly the most important farm change:
The yield from special crops has been improved to make farming them competitive with gathering these items out in the world.
Aaah yes, increased yield on our favorite special crops.  I must say I look forward to these changes, as well as seeing how the whole Blacksmithing changes unfold.  It will be very interesting to see how they reintroduce some unobtainable transmog items (and which ones).  This patch also contains a LOT of class changes, so if you have gotten out of the glyph market, but still have a stockpile, the release of this patch may be a time to dabble once more, for a few weeks at least.

Hope you enjoyed this post, and I hope you all have a happy and safe new year!

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!!

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!!

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!!

Scroll of Resurection: Blizzard is Profiting, So Should You!

For more tips follow me on twitter @PhatLewtsGold! My contact email is PhatLewtsGold@Gmail.com.

So Scroll of Resurection has been reintroduced and people are given free level 80s and Cataclysm, and gold makers are trying to figure out the best way to maximize profit.  Simple.  These characters are going to get to 85 really fast.  What will they want?  They will want to see the latest content and get into Raid Finder ASAP.  OR they will want to PvP.  Either way there is a simple solution to this conundrum for any smart buyer.  Vicious Gear.  Yes this crafted, iLevel 377 gear not only gets you into heroics, but gets you resilience and stats needed for PvP.

Who?
Tailors, Blacksmiths, Leatherworkers, and Jewelcrafters all have Vicious items they can craft for a profit, and let me tell you I am selling these like hot cakes.  I've made 14k selling these items, in the past 24 hours with about 9k of that being profit.  I can't keep enough of them on the shelves to keep up with the demand!  (Especially the Amberjewel Ring/Neck) (HINT: The JC rings are not unique equipped so people tend to buy in 2's)

What Else?
Of course with a whole new pool of 85s we will also see an increased demand for cut gems as well as enchants, both middle of the line and end game level.  These items will have a much higher turnover rate than before.  Also if you have some of the 397 patterns, look into the price to craft vs the price they're going for on your auction house.  On some servers this may be another viable way to make gold with your crafting professions.  Don't forget those 365 weapons either, those of you who have done FL dailies (I haven't on my BS), as well as leg armors/spellthreads.  It's like Cataclysm has just been released except people have access to better gear, and want to get it ASAP.

Tank and Healer gear.  DPS can get by in the new heroics with the Vicious sets.  Underperforming? yes. Wiping the group? No.  New tanks and healers cannot rely as much on this gear so I see a rise in Valor gear as well as crafted tank/healer gear.  Check your AH for some 397 Valor tanking boots, and if there are none, get some up, you can probably turn a decent profit.  Also check the prices of Truegold on your server before considering your Alchemist's CD.

Closing Arguements
I don't expect this surge to last particularly long, maybe 3-4 noticeable weeks at most.  Try to get out there ASAP and turn a profit on your professions.  Check your AH before hand.  Those on larger servers are more likely to already have competition in these areas, and make sure you can craft these items at a profit before doing so.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Phantom Blade

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You may know that when Cataclysm removed weapon/armorsmithing from the game, it also removed a lot of the patterns that went with each.  One of the coolest looking ones was the Phantom Blade, and as some may or may not know, if you don't have the pattern, it was added back to the game in the 4.3 patch.

WARNING: If you want to farm this pattern it's pretty easy to farm but BEWARE the pattern is BoP so you'll have to do it on your Blacksmith.

Alright the link to the pattern is here.  You may be looking at the drop rates thinking ".02% drop rate?  That's insane!"  This is very much not the case.  This item was added back to WoW in Patch 4.3, and this .02% drop rate is calcualted on all the drops from those adds (over 115,000) since vanilla WoW, which haven't dropped the pattern until now.  For a more accurate drop rate, the WoW site lists the drop rate as "Very Low", which is in the range of 1-3% (as compared to extremely low which is <1%).  For reference another item that has a drop rate of "Very Low" is  Ashes of Al'ar which Wowhead correctly calculates, and has listed at a 1.7% drop rate.  Luckily, unlike Ashes, the Plans for the Phantom Blade are farmable off of multiple creatures that can be reset.  

Farming the Phantom

To get this pattern you have to kill either Shrieking or Wailing Banshees in Stratholme's The Gauntlet, which the entrance to is located in Western Plaguelands here (don't do what I did at first and go to the regular entrance) 

Once inside, you can follow this path, and you just kill the banshees along the path (dotted line is no banshees, but necessary).  

Now there is one caveat to this method.  Anyone doing this method is subject to Blizzard's 5 instances per hour lockout.  At 85, you could probably do 12 of these per hour, but it WILL lock you out after 5.  I did this, and it ended up taking me 12 runs.  On average it should take less, but it is possible to take more than 12.  Again you may have to take a break, but luckily queuing for random dungeons/raid finder doesn't count towards this total so in your downtime you can do randoms.  

Crafting/Selling

Like the Icy Cloak Post I wrote a while ago, this has look alikes that are available from vendors.  Your main audience is those who will see this item and say "Hey I want that, and I'd be willing to pay that price for it".  You're not going to get someone who looks it up on Wowhead and says "lol look at all these lookalikes!  I'm not paying for that one!", unless they're deadset on the color, so price it accordingly!  I just really like having these cool looking craftables on my alts, make 3-5 of them, throw them in the bank, and if they sell, great!  If not, reduce the price after a few weeks, keep trying.  I had a lot of fun farming and crafting this, and I hope you do too!  If you do try doing this, leave a comment about your experience getting it, I'd love to hear from you! 

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Give Your Competitors the Rod!!

Don't forget to follow me on twitter @PhatLewtsGold.

One of my favorite methods of making gold is reselling vendor items.  This post isn't about what vendor items you should sell, you probably have heard of all of these.  It's of a brand new way of acquiring these patterns in Cataclysm that most people haven't yet realized.

Captain Samir

Captain Samir has many patterns in his inventory that were once "Limited Supply" items pre-Cata.  He is found in Kelp'thar Forest, and is really easy to get to if you have done a bit of questing in Vashj'ir.  He has patterns that some completionists may be hunting for but the big scores are Plans: Adamantite Rod and Plans: Eternium Rod.  These are the only two blacksmithing rods that blacksmiths can't make without the plans, and they were previously bought in limited supply.  Now you can stock up and fill your bank with these for future postings!  I suggest posting 1-2 at a time, so people don't go googling them!  

These patterns are great because both rods are required by enchanters, and when leveling enchanters spam trade looking for a rod and a BS realizes he doesn't have the recipe, the first thing he'll do is check the AH.  Price appropriately and you'll have a nice flow of income from these things.  As an added bonus you can craft them on your BS and mark up the prices because they're hard to come by!  

Cheers,

Phat Lewts