Server Transferring - Don't do it! ...yet.

This post will be featured in Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival, now hosted by Selltacular.  Check out the other great posts, which will be live at the time of me posting this, as I'm a day late! 

If you haven't heard yet (and it's pretty hard not to), the 5.4 PTR Patch Notes have been released, and they're causing quite a stir.  Today I'm going to be focusing in on the most prolific one, at least for those of us who currently play on low-pop realms:

• Virtual Realms are sets of realms that are fused together, and will behave exactly as if they were one cohesive realm. Players on the same Virtual Realm will be able to join guilds, access a single Auction House, join arena teams and raids, as well run dungeons or group up to complete quests.

Source

Cross Realm AH
First of all I believe some apologies are in order.  I can't find the post where I ranted about how the rampant speculation about this type of change was premature, and although I still think it was to some extent, it was not as far off as I thought it would be honestly.  I truly did not believe that Blizzard would try to integrate this before dropping a new expansion, but it seems I was dead wrong.

That being said, if you didn't transfer your toons last week during the half off sale (and wasn't that just so perfectly timed to end 2 days before this announcement), then I'd suggest waiting to learn about how they'll implement this before you decide to transfer servers at all, especially if the economy is why you'll be moving.   What it seems like (at least right now) is that they're going to group a few servers together and combine them into one meta-server ("Virtual Realms").  Honestly, we don't know much yet about how they'll combine servers, I'm hoping they'll join multiple small realms together, but we'll see as they release more info.  This is a game changer though.  What they're doing is basically combining realms, without having to change the "home realm" you're on, which I think they did so that people did not have to change overlapping guild and player names.

This change, no matter how they implement it, will be a great and welcome change for small realms with struggling economies, and I look forward to having more sales and increased competition.  There are very few bad repercussions that could come from this, but the one I think Blizzard will struggle with most is the "smooth transition" phase.  They're just not good at that part of things, usually struggling when changes go live.  However, this change will give you more ability to sell, and less reliance on being the lowest auction out there.  I honestly feel like a kid on Christmas hearing these changes, small realmers rejoice!

Patch 5.4 Goldmaking
I'll probably be posting more about the changes, because these sorts of things get me excited, but there are 2 really good discussion threads you should check out on The Consortium forums in the mean time: Scaling Item Enhancements and Fused Realms, there's already a lot of good discussion going on about these changes there, with no doubt more to come as more info is released.

EDIT: 
Additional information!!   Blizzard said they will be releasing a blog post Soon™ on these changes:

We're working on an article currently that will explain more about Virtual Realms in detail. We're hoping to have it out to you all soon and will do our best to answer as many questions as you have as possible.

Keep in mind, we've only released the PTR notes at this point and still have testing, refining, more testing, gathering constructive feedback, testing, and then... when we think it's actually ready, releasing this live. While we have an idea of when we think we are going to have the patch go live, it's no guarantee that everything will go as expected (*crosses her fingers*). This isn't something that's going to be out in a week or anything.
Source

I'll post the link to the article when it goes live, but it will most likely be on the front page of the WoW website.  It will be interesting to see how Blizzard is currently planning on implementing these changes.  Also don't get your hopes up too high because all I keep seeing Blizzard employees saying is "anything can change before live, this is just PTR".  Grain of salt.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Primordial Saronite

This is a post for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival, which will be live on the 11th of this month.  The topic is: "Name one of your historically profitable markets that is now defunct and what can we learn from that old market." Be sure to check his site on the 11th for other great entries!  

The Primordial Saronite market is one that I dealt exclusively in during my ICC days when I was selling gold.  Those days are past me but it taught me a valuable tool, of optimizing unneeded "badges" for surplus income.

Crafting Material
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Primordial Saronite, it was a crafting material used to craft high end epics during ICC, and was available for purchase for Emblem of Frost.  These are equivalent to your modern day Valor, and had a cap as to weekly limit, but I wasn't going to let that stop me!  I had 3 Max level characters whom I'd grind out maximum dungeon cap on Emblems daily to buy as many of these as possible.   I'd then turn and sell these on the AH (they were quite the hot commodity), and then do less virtuous things with the gold than Blizzard would have liked, but again you can read more about that in my earlier post.

What Can We Learn?
Waste not.  If you have those extra Justice laying around from hitting valor cap, put them to work!  I currently use them to buy WotLK epic gems in Dalaran, to cut and sell on the AH to 70 and 80 twinks.  For my server it's the best option, and I'd say that on most servers it's the way to go, but there are always other options you can factor in.  I of course went for all the leveling BoAs I needed first, as leveling alts is really the best investment for long term gold making.  Now that I have more or less all the BoAs I need, I buy the epic gems, and cut them for roughly 1g 36s per Justice Point, selling the cut gems at ~300g.   Of course YMMV. As with any other market, diversify your cuts, and you will make more sales.

What is your favorite now defunct market?  I really enjoyed Cold's post for his carnival, he wrote about a market that I very much enjoyed first starting out in WoW as a novice gold maker, I highly suggest checking it out!


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Phat Farm

This post is for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival on March 11th.  The topic is "What Are You Currently Doing With Your Sunsong Ranch(es)?"

Right now I have 2 characters at 90, and thus 2 farms I can truly optimize.

Farm 1: My Main

My main is a Tailor/Alchemist.  Since these two professions don't really benefit as much from Spirit of Harmony as others, I plant Enigma Seeds, mainly aiming for the Golden Lotus procs, of which I've gotten at a rate of 4.625 per day over the past 40 days.  If I was planting Songbell Seeds, I'd be getting 1.6 Motes a day, which means an extra CD every 2 days, or about 9 Golden Lotus, so really is it worth it?  On my server it was not, which is why I stuck with the Enigmas.  You could do a similar calculation on your farm to see what your best option is!

Farm 2: Rare Seeds ASAP
So I hit 90 on my Death Knight literally 2 days ago.  The day after hitting 90 I was already at Revered with the Tillers!  How did I do this you ask? First of all I had my main that got Revered with the Tillers, so I purchased a Grand Commendation of the Tillers.  Then I started all the Tillers quests before 90, and finished them, as well as having a plot of 4 ready to harvest (you only get Tillers rep for harvesting after dinging 90).  Doing all the intro quests with double rep along with the dailies and one time rep quests on the day I turned 90 and the next, I was able to get to revered (12 plots + special crops + sprinkler/mass pesticide) the day after I hit 90, and now on the 3rd day I'm almost half way to exalted!  With getting to exalted this easy with the Grand Commendation, I'm seriously considering leveling another character to 90 just for the additional Tillers farm once I hit Exalted with my DK.  With my DK I'm going with the Motes because it's the only viable way for me to productively get them (Blacksmith).  I'm getting a few doing the dailies as well which is a nice bonus!

So that's my current setup, I have a level 87 who I am considering leveling to get the 3rd farm going, but we'll see how that ends up!  What are you doing with your Tillers farm right now?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Remote AH: No Smartphone? No Problem!

This is a post written for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival for September 2012, check it out on the 11th for other great posts on this topic!

This month's topic is "The Remote Auction House - Tips, Tricks, Strategies, Love or Hate It?"

When the Remote AH first came out for free I balked at it because I didn't have a smartphone.  Now though, there are some great uses I've found for it on my web browser.

Why it's useful
Now you may be thinking "why would I want to use RMAH on my computer, since I have WoW on my computer?" and that's a great question to ask.  Maybe Phat has gone off the deep end, but perhaps not. My favorite use for this new tool is to buy and sell items on different realms, while playing on my main realm. Now I don't know if it's intended or not, but even if you're logged in to your account on realm X, you can log into the Remote Auction House on the same account, on realm Y. Great time passer if you're mass crafting in the background, especially if you have a side project as I do.  For reference if you aren't a regular reader, I have a DK on an alternate (high pop) server making gold to buy expensive mounts/pets for my main characters on a (low pop) server.  It also allows you to snatch great deals while you're not at a computer with WoW loaded on it, I'll outline how I use it with different AH monitoring sites below.

Using WoWuction to Find Deals
Since you have no addons using the remote AH, you have to utilize some of our favorite tools to find great deals.  One new thing that was recently added was the "Bargain Hunter".  I really enjoy using this tool, and I'll outline how to do it below.

1. Go to wowuction.com and choose your realm/faction.

2. Click Reports, then Bargain Hunter

Once you do, you'll get a list like this:

Click Image to Enlarge

Now search through this list and find a deal you most like.  Aaaah it seems Darkcrest Gauntlets (one of my favorite selling xmog sets) are only 25g!  Great!

3. Go to the Remote AH and find your item!  [Horde] [Alliance] (if you're logged in these links will take you directly there)

It's pretty straightforward.

4. Relist next time you're on WoW.

I don't like using this to relist the items (especially xmog) because it's SOOOooooo much faster to do it with TSM when logged it.  This will get you some great deals to relist next time you're on too.

Maybe You Prefer TUJ!
I prefer to use both!  As I already went over most of the relevant steps above, I'm going to shorten this section.

1. Go to theunderminejournal.com and find your server/faction

2. Click Great Deals, then go to Current Deals List

3. Check out all the great deals that result from this, my 2 favorite subsections are below:

The bids section can be EXTREMELY useful using the remote AH.  Sometimes bids on items are listed WAY lower than they should be, and since the Remote AH lets you both Bid or Buyout, and you're not going to be seeing the items until you log in anyway.  This is just my method, I'm sure if you have a phone you can add to the potency of all this.  What's your personal take on the Remote Auction House?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

My Favorite Cataclysmic Market

This post is for Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival which will go live on May 11th, but I know I'll forget until the 12th if I don't come out with it now so here goes :-P.  I'll try to keep reminders up on my site so you can read all the other great posts when they come out.

This month's carnival asks: "What Was A Niche Market That You Were Suprised To Find Or That You Did Better Than Expected In During Cataclysm?"

Two markets that I really loved that were introduced in Cataclysm were Transmogrification and Mysterious Fortune Cards.  They are very interesting markets and fun to play with.  By far though, my favorite new market was the "Cataclysm Twink Market" brought on by overly powerful  level 77+ gear being introduced to low level cataclysm zones (80-81).

Why it's a Great Market
The reason why it's a great market to focus on is two-fold.  First and foremost, everyone wants the best gear for their character.  If you've done PvP in 75-79 bracket you'll know that without it, you're going to have a bad time.  The stats are more than double that available on even the best LK gear in the area, and gives a big boost to any character using it (even in PvE).


Second, the gear is not obtainable AT level 77.  Period.  You can't quest in Hyjal until 80, and you can't ENTER Cata dungeons until 78, and even at 78 you'd need to be carried because you cannot queue for randoms yet.  At 77 characters have no way of getting these greens other than randomly grinding mobs on an alt and hoping that their armor and stat type drop.  Not very fun or productive.  That's where I step in.

Methodology
Many people like the broader spectrum of this level range of gear, mostly 77-80 or 77-81.  I prefer 77 and 78.  My reasoning is again twofold.  People will want the twinked out gear as soon as they can get it, ie at level 77.  Second, even a level 78 or 79 can benefit from the 77 greens, if there is not the armor type/stats they want on the AH.  On the other hand a 77 can't use a piece of 79 gear because there's not what they need on the AH.  Also, at level 78 you can attain some blue pieces of gear, only 5 that are BoE, but they're deadly.  Agility daggers, an agility staff, and strength pants are my best sellers.

I use Auctionator to do searches, mainly:
Armor/77/77/i272
Weapon/77/77/i272
Weapon/78/78/i308
Armor/78/78/i308

From there I buy any armor or weapons that would be remotely useful to players.  One thing to avoid like the plague is agility plate.  For a full list of things to avoid check out PW:G's post, about items to avoid when flipping twink gear.  In general for the 77 gear I'll buy anything 250g or under, and I sell for 499g99s99c.  For the 78 rare gear I buy anything under 500g and sell for 999g99s99c.  Over the long run I've had the same return as Jewelcrafting, as seen in my 1,000,000 gold post.

There is already on the beta sets for a similar market being added (83-84) and I hope it does just as well come Mists of Pandaria.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Re: Start Gold Making

Follow me on twitter @PhatLewtsGold! Also I can be reached via email at PhatLewtsGold@gmail.com.

Today I'm going to be posting in response to Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival, being held on the 11th of this and every month.  Check out the other posts when it goes live!

Using your knowledge that you have gained from auction house experience:  If you were starting over as a gold maker, what is one thing you would do differently than the first time, and why?

Get it?  Re: Start?  I'm sorry.

Humble Beginnings

The first time I got into gold making in World of Warcraft was when I had only one character who was but a wee Orc Warlock of level maybe 34.  I was in a leveling guild.  Not a guild of max level GMs and levelers, but a true run by levelers, 300 active members, with maybe 1-2 max level players in the guild at all kind of guild.  During this time I was an active part of the guild community.  I enjoyed the social aspect of the game as much as the actual leveling.  The guild bank was interested in providing repairs to players, but was not receiving enough donations (no free guild money back then) from our user base.  I decided then to make a guild lottery.  I approached the GM's and asked if I could run it, giving half the money to the guild, half to the winner of the lottery, and they said yes.  So I ran the lottery like a noob.  Had people mail a lotto toon with the 20g entrance fee and assigned them a number.  If 17 people entered I'd /roll 1-17 to determine the winner by some deadline.  I did that for a while, and ended up becoming a "Co-GM" of the leveling guild.  It was a fun time, but in retrospect making 170g for the guild doing all the work I did to maintain the lottery and keep people playing was just pointless, could have been using my professions to make more per hour!  

Retrospective Look

I enjoyed doing it, but if I was starting off again from a gold making standpoint I'd have leveled my warlock as fast as possible and start panhandling netherweave bags like it was my J-O-B.  When I got them I'd start making all viable profession-level tailoring/enchanting things that sell well.  I'd still be an enchanter/tailor, because I like that my lock is now an enchanter/tailor in my arsenal of gold making toons, and it provides him with the best class buffs.  Just had a whole market of twink enchants and bags and crafted gear that I did not touch, and would have gotten more involved in that, had I known.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts