Don't Call it a Comeback

Okay. You can probably call it a comeback in this case. I've been gone a long time.

So if you follow my Twitter you'll know I recently logged back into WoW for the first time in ~3.5 years.

Thought it looked cute, might delete this later IDK pic.twitter.com/PLBBfM3XKU

— Phat Lewts (@PhatLewtsGold) June 19, 2020

   

Been taking things slow, leveling up my characters, trying to get my bearings with WoW, gold making, and TSM again. Leveling up my main & professions, probably for not much since we're in a pre-expansion lull currently. My main made it through legion to 110, but my next alts were all at 100 sitting in their WoD garrisons when I logged in to them. I played a bit of legion content, but did not do many of the raids and missed most of the storyline of Legion. Got my main up to 120 pretty quickly with the 100% XP bonus + rested. Now to relearn how to play a Disc Priest...ugh.

Although a lot has changed, a lot has stayed the same. Seems like the overall plot is still naive good meaning Warchief appoints new Warchief with questionable motives > seems alright but different at first > Horde leader becomes ultimate evil bad guy by ripping a hole in time and space. It's Midsummer Fire Festival and I see people complaining that the ilvl of the cloaks hasn't gone up since the first Fire Fest in the expansion. Blizzard is still planning on server merges, and people are still complaining about them. There's an overpriced vendor mount that everyone's scrambling to get. The TradeSkillMaster team is hard at work creating a new iteration for TSM, in the form of TSM 4.10. 

Luckily that last one I'm currently working with. Believe it or not, I never really used TSM 4, I kind of missed a whole generation there. I've been using 4.10, and so far I like it. All seems different, and getting used to it, but again a lot is the same. To learn more about TSM 4.10, check out this blog post by the TSM team to learn about the changes and sign up for the beta test. Unfortunately I don't think I'm the right person to comment on how the changes effect the user experience as I really don't have experience with the prior version. Coming from TSM 3 however, it seems like a great upgrade. 

Not sure how serious I'm going to be playing WoW moving forward. Enjoying it so far, but I feel like I don't have the same amount of time to dedicate to it anymore. When I first started this blog I was in college and had loads of free time to wax poetic about the auction house. Now, not so much, even with working from home during the quarantine. Anyway just wanted to make a post to say "I'm still alive". More to come on the blog front for sure, I'll at least be complaining a bit, no doubt, and might make a few videos if I find the energy. Still need to get back into the groove though, so yeah. Hope you are all well, looking forward to being back involved with this community again. 

Cheers,
Phat Lewts

What I Want From Legion Gold Making

So the new WoW expansion has been announced and the buzz has begun. This article is going to be an opinion piece of my impressions of WoD gold making and what needs to change in Legion.

WoD Goldmaking
WoD was supposed to be an ultimate revolution in gold making. From the beginning, early stages of the Alpha, we were promised a profession revamp, and there were many interactions between the developer Hwoo and the Consortium gold making community. You can go back and read some of the conversations if you'd like, but the basic gist from the gold making community at the time was we were being "heard" by the devs. We all had a sense of optimism heading into WoD that everything would be more interesting, and new challenges would arise from a "new profession system", and gold making had finally reached a golden age.

Unfortunately, that's not what we were delivered. What we got at launch felt like a half-baked product, and left a lot of professions high and dry. Gold making with professions really took a hit this expansion. Maybe it took all those mindless shufflers out of the equation and left the market to those seasoned vets, but it killed the profitability and interesting choices of many professions. Jewelcrafting is probably one of the last professions someone will suggest now, and it had been a king for a long time. Not to say that one profession should be that OP that it's the default suggestion for new gold makers to have always, but they basically took it out back behind the shed and shot it in the head. Enchanting still had some profits, but slots were reduced. The 3 big crafting professions (Tailoring/LW/BS) were reduced to daily CD making machines, with not many interesting choices from there. Sure it was easier gameplay to not have to enchant/get a belt buckle/get leg armor for every new piece you got in a raid, but it killed some nice routes for those 3 big guys. The gold making game has become dull.

Legion So Far...
So far we have not heard much about Legion and the Devs have seemed to realized that WoD as a whole was a disappointment to many players, and are focusing on not making promises they cannot keep. To me this is a good sign, hopefully transparency continues moving forward. What we do know about professions so far is this (via MMO-Champ):

• There will be a quest line for each profession.
• There will be some system changes to professions as a whole to improve the UI and add new functionality.
• The professions team for Legion is the largest that Blizzard has ever had for WoW and lots of new things are coming. The team heard the feedback about Warlords professions.

The quest line could be the same as this expansion, and honestly I did not find the quests all too interesting, and it didn't really add any gating, so they didn't help gold makers much. Thus far though, it seems like they're at least making some corrective steps to change professions, with the UI and new functionality (whatever that may be). It's nice to hear that they've got the largest team ever for professions, but that could just mean 2 interns instead of 1. I jest, but I'm hoping they stay true to that last point, and introduce some new and interesting profession choices and make sure that "no profession is left behind". All professions (sans gathering) should have interesting choices, and I hope they can accomplish that.

What we were all expecting for WoD was a new professions system, not like Wrath -> Cata -> MoP where it was basically the same mold moved up an expansion, but a new system that would challenge what we knew about professions, and change how we thought about making gold. Creating new complex problems for us to solve and new and interesting choices to make. It really fell short of that expectation.

I personally would love for Legion gold making to make me think again. For a beginner, it may still do that now, but once you get that formula down, it's mindless. I'd like new interesting problems to come out of Legion gold making, and I hope the Dev team can deliver. I also hope that the garrison theme does not continue with these class halls. They claim that the professions team has heard the feedback about Warlords professions, but I honestly hope they can move forward and correct them in a meaningful way, but only time will tell! What do you want to see the most in Legion gold making?

Cheers,
Phat Lewts

Engineering: Becoming a Gold Making Profession

Including a "this is early alpha and mostly speculation" disclaimer here and now, but I just wanted to focus in on some of the cool changes to engineering I mentioned previously in my post about the items datamined off the Alpha as well as some changes that Blizzard employees Zarhym and Celestalon talked about during their Final Boss Podcast Appearance (link goes to relevant discussion).

Abstract
Engineering has never really been a true "gold making profession". Never in the history of World of Warcraft has someone said "I want to make gold in a productive fashion" and someone suggested "You should definitely get Engineering to rake in the gold". In fact if I made a list of all the crafting professions in order of gold making prowess/priority to get, Engineering would probably be on the bottom of the list. No, you don't get Engineering for gold making, you get it for the cool perks.  PvPers and PvEers alike swear by engineering for the awesome on demand burst damage and speed bursts, others enjoy being able to summon Jeeves or a mailbox at the drop of a hat, while others still prefer to use the quirky and entertaining vanity items that sometimes backfire, and the hilarity that ensues. It seems that Blizzard is trying to change that in Warlords of Draenor, by giving Engineers a stable source of possible income.

MoP Lookback
Engineering as a gold making profession in MoP has been pretty blasé to say the least. They got their Ghost Iron Dragonling trinkets and matching Gears to sell, which did fairly well. A couple expensive mounts to craft and sell, and end game Scopes and guns that required Spirit of Harmony to craft. Overall, not an impressive lot.

In Patch 5.1, during the 5.2 Beta, Engineers were promised new gold making avenues in the form of 2 pets and a mount, that went along with a new Blacksmithing Lightning Steel Cooldown. Very cool indeed, but it was not meant to be, and the pets and mounts were delayed to 5.4. Now I must say, for a few months the mounts and pets sold well, and there was quite a big profit to be made, but every crafting profession had the same to say during 5.4, if not better. A couple months down the road and these new mounts and pets are going for mat price on most servers. Not very impressive from a gold making standpoint.

WoD Changes
With both the Alpha Patch Notes we saw that Blizzard is focusing on a more "balanced" view in WoW, even more so than in Cata/MoP. They've changed racial buffs across the board, and have balanced classes and profession buffs as well. Engineering is not a safe harbor from these changes, in regards to items such as Nitro Boosts and EMP generators.

In a recent interview on Final Boss Podcast, Celestalon directly addressed Engineering saying "Let Engineers make them and sell them to everyone, and let everyone use those, but at a reduced effectiveness." On top of that, looking at the datamined profession changes, we saw that some items previously only usable by Engineers had been made Bind on Use such as:

• GUMM-E - MOLL-E usable by non-Engineers.
• Findle's Loot-a-rang - seems to be a non-Engineer version of the Loot-A-Rang
• Ultimate Gnomish Army Knife - A Gnomish Army Knife that does not require Engineering to use. Also, the rez can be cast in combat. 

It would seem that on top of the other changes that Engineers will be able to sell some of their long staple profession items to the common folk.

Implications
Now I know that a lot of Engineers aren't going to be pleased with these changes. I'm not a huge fan of Engineering as I focus mainly on gold making, but some of these vanity items that are slated to be usable by non-Engineers is what makes Engineers fun to play.  I know that a lot of Engineers are most likely going to be upset with the changes to their profession, but as far as gold making goes, I think that it will do a lot to make Engineering a much more viable profession for making gold.

It is going to be interesting to see how they implement this, I would think selling these items such as something like a Thermal Anvil that has charges would be the best route, but as of the current moment it doesn't look like they're doing that. Maybe having the items usable by non-Engineers attached to a daily cooldown of sorts. To me that seems much more likely. I'd personally want a portable mailbox on literally all of my alts, so it's something I'd be willing to spend a great deal on, depending on the price, although I'll be crafting my own. It will be very interesting to see how these changes come out once they're implemented on the Alpha/Beta.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Chronicles of Noobia: Phat's Weekly Lewt Review

So as I mentioned yesterday I'm in a heated competition with Selltacular from Copper to Gold, and I thought my weekly review would be a good time to go over what I've been doing in game to make gold.

Humble Beginnings

I started off the competition with a Belf Disc Priest. The reasons are numerous, but the main being Belfs are good models for transmog using Mogit and Atonement healing is amazing/mindless/like having a 4th dps in the dungeon. Anyway I quickly got bored at level 6, and wanted out of Silvermoon, so I decided to head to org to scope out the Auction House. Here I am greeting some of the local denizens of the Undercity Zeppelin Tower (I just missed the Zeppelin because I went to the wrong tower).

Upon reaching Org and realizing I had almost no gold, I did a few more quests and got Mining/Herbalism, actually picked a few herbs before deciding that I hated myself and got to level 8. That's when it hit me! The DMF was in town! I quickly picked up fishing and took the portal out to DMF to fish up the Floating Debris pools. A great strategy for some startup capital as they have mats like Windwool Cloth, Trillium Ores, and many other MoP level mats. Also since I did not have a mount yet, I spent time in between pools killing the level 10 crabs that surround the island for some extra XP/vendor greys. Here I am jamming out with the Tauren Cheiftans and not being productive.

So I got a good amount of crates crates, as well as a DM Adventurer's Guide so I could collect DMF items from dungeons and I ended up getting a Mysterious Grimore and an Ornate weapon on the first day (was really grinding because the DMF was ending soon and I wanted to capitalize ASAP. I spent the following 3 days grabbing crates in my down time as well as well as leveling with Mining/Enchanting.

5.2 Gold Making Patch Notes

Hey guys!  Below I've copy and pasted all the patch notes for 5.2 that are even semi-relevant to gold making.  Enjoy!  Full patch notes here.

• Taking Over The Farm
• Players that have grown attached to working the land at Sunsong Ranch can now acquire the farm from Farmer Yoon via a quest. The farmhouse becomes a rest point like an Inn, where the player can bind and instantly log out. Work orders will pour into the farm from factions across Pandaria, and completing a work order will earn a reputation boost with the issuing faction.
• The option to take over the farm is available to characters that are exalted with the Tillers and have unlocked all 16 farm plots.
• Pet Battles
• Many new Battle Pets and Battle Pet abilities have been added.
• A number of new pets can be found on the Isle of Lightning, including rare spawn drops, wild pets, and raid boss drops.
• Professions
• Archeology
• Mantid Archaeology has been added. Players will be able to uncover common and rare Mantid artifacts. Players can purchase a Mantid Artifact Sonic Locator to focus exclusively on Mantid digsites.
• The Lorewalker’s Map now randomizes all digsites in Pandaria, rather than just 1.
• Updates have been made to the “museum” at the Seat of Knowledge.
• Blacksmithing
• New raid and PvP blacksmithing recipes have been added, and can be acquired through daily research of Lightning Steel Ingots.
• Seasoned Blacksmiths will be able to find a way to create Lightning Steel Ingots once their realm has unlocked the Thunderforges on the Isle of Thunder. These ingots will allow blacksmiths to recreate powerful weapons from the past, updated for Mists of Pandaria. These power weapons will be bind-on-equip and making them will take a significant amount of dedication.
• For blacksmiths who have lapsed in their trade (i.e., haven’t practiced blacksmithing since the Burning Crusade), there is a (not necessarily cost efficient) way to catch-up. Blacksmiths at your faction’s shrines in the
• Vale of Eternal Blossoms will be able to teach you training plans for crafting common household items using Ghost Iron.
•  Fishing
• The chance to fish up Flying Tiger Gourami, Spinefish Alpha and Mimic Octopus has been increased.
• Reputation gains from bringing rare Pandarian fish for Nat Pagle to examine has been increased.
• Players with a high fishing skill have a chance to fish up new pets. The Pet Journal has clues on where these elusive pets could be found.
• Fish of the Day: On any given day, there is a location in Pandaria teeming with a type of Pandaren fishing pool. Ben of the Booming Voice, located near the Halfhill Market area will inform players what the “Fish of the Day” is and mark the location on their map.
• Jewelcrafting
• Jewelcrafters may find the designs for Serpent’s Heart and uncut Primal Diamonds during the course of their adventures (world drops).
• Serpent’s Heart is a daily cooldown that consumes several Serpent’s Eyes to create a random rare quality Pandaren gem. In addition, there is a small chance that a player will discover the design for the Sapphire Cub or Jade Owl.
• The design for uncut Primal Diamonds requires Spirits of Harmony and large quantities of uncommon gems.
• Leatherworking
• Patterns for Magnificence of Leather and Magnificence of Scales could be found via world drops. These patterns allow the leatherworker to create Magnificent Hides more economically and share a daily cooldown. In addition to producing a Magnificent Hide, the leatherworker will learn a new 5.2 raid or PvP pattern.
• A new 36 slot leather bag (Magnificent Hide Pack) can now be created through Leatherworking.

• Tailoring
• New raid and PvP recipes have been added, and tailors can acquire these new recipes via the daily Imperial Silk cooldown.
• Items
• Teebu’s Blazing Longsword once again appropriately illuminates its surroundings.
• Transmogrification rules have been broadened for several weapon types.
• Two-handed axes, maces, and swords can be Transmogrified to each other.
• One-handed axes, maces, and swords can be Transmogrified to each other.
• Staves and polearms can be transmogrified to each other.
• Skyshards are now Bind on Account.
• Sunsong Ranch
• Seed bags have been added that allow planting of crops 4 plots at a time.
• Yoon's Mailbox has been renamed to Sunsong Ranch Mailbox.
• The yield from special crops has been improved to make farming them competitive with gathering these items out in the world.
• Running the Master Plow across underground Virmen will cause them to pop out of the ground at 30% health and stunned.
• Wild Crops will now occur less often.

That's the roundup of the patch 5.2 relevant patch notes.  My favorite are the changes to the Sunsong Ranch, should make farming less of a chore!  What's your favorite part of the 5.2 gold making changes?

Cheers,

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

Blog Shout Outs

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

Lets spread some blog love - which are your 'must read' or 'go to' gold blogs or even other places you go for information & reading matter?

First of all a shout out to Nev from Auction House Addict for creating her own version of the 20 Days of WoW, and inspiring some great gold content, and providing it constantly herself.  This was one of the most enjoyable things I've done on the blog, so thanks to Nev for the great idea!

Gold Blogging Titans
I'm going to keep this section brief, because these are names we all know and love, and I want this post to focus on some up and coming bloggers.  The following two are my favorites to read (after Nev of course), but this list is by no means exhaustive.  Be sure to check out my Blogroll in my sidebar for the full list.

The Golden Crusade - Eric (aka Xsinthis) is probably one of my favorite gold making writers out there.  I see his approach very closely mirroring mine, we're both very mathematical and opinionated, and I really like his writing style.

Cold's Gold Factory - Cold has been writing about gold making for almost as long as I've been playing WoW.  He knows the ins and outs, co-hosts the Eviscerated Podcast  and I love his monthly gold blogging carnivals that I frequently participate in (when I remember to write the post!).

New Gold Making Bloggers
There are two new faces on the gold blogging scene that I wanted to give shout outs to, and I really hope you check out their blogs as they continue to grow!

WowProfitz - Profitz is new to the gold making scene, but he's already putting out some stellar content.  His blog and podcast can be found at WoWProfitz.com, and his livestream can be found at twitch.tv/wowprofitz.  I really like the way that Profitz writes, and his podcast has been a great listen thusfar (on his 3rd episode, check it out!).  He's a really great guy, and he is using his talents to deliver top notch content to his readers, a great new addition to the gold making community!

ZeroHour's Nameless Blog - Zerohour is a well known and established gold maker from the Consortium Forums who just recently decided to make an "Anti-Gold Blogging Blog".  I think it's a bit ironic that he gives out gold making tips on what he calls an "anti-gold blogging blog", but I digress.  He's a really intelligent guy, and he likes to write about the more in-depth topics and theories in World of Warcraft gold making.  I always love reading what he comes out with, and he really does bring a unique perspective to the gold blogging scene, which I think is excellent.

What I think is great about the community is all the different perspectives that you get from the different blogs out there.  Everyone has a different way of doing things, and molding your own methods around those of other well established players will make you just that more effective!  Any gold bloggers (or your own blog) you want to give a shout out to?  Leave a link in the comments section!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

New Goldmaker Advice

This is for Day 18 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:

What is the most important bit of advice you could give to a new gold maker? (not a game newbie though, just a newbie gold maker)

Control your Spending
This is probably the easiest concept in gold making, yet so few in WoW have really mastered it.  When players on my server realize how much gold I have, they always ask why I don't buy some cool looking mount or tons of TCG items etc.  I only buy things (generally) that will get me more gold, which is the best way to make gold.  It's just like real life, you invest into profitable things, make good returns, and you gain gold.  Don't waste a ton of gold gemming your LFR gear, when you only have a few thousand.  Focus on a few markets, get into them, and learn them.  The only true way you can master a method is by getting your hands dirty.  Even if you only spend 15 minutes of your play time each day doing this, you will learn the markets, and make gold.

Professions are the Key
If you want to unlock true gold making potential, don't just try to flip things or sell the cloth you get from doing dungeons, get maxed professions on all the characters that you can.  If you have characters that are 80-89, and won't be 90 any time soon, don't get them LW, BS, Enchanting, or Tailoring.  Those 3 need a lot of SoH or reputations to fully maximize, get them on a main instead.  The more professions you have, the more cooldowns you have, the more diversifying you can do, the more sales you will make, the more gold you will have.  People are often hesitant when they don't see instant profits from their work.  Don't expect a million gold by tomorrow if you're just starting out.  Set goals and hit them.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Bank Alt (Day 4)

On the 4th day of Nev's 20 Days Gold Making she asks:
"Do you use a banker alt/guild? When did you start doing that & why?"

Yes and Yes!
My answer is yes to both questions.  I didn't have one until 4.3 and transmog being released though.  Previously I just set up my posting toon to be whatever my main was at the time (normally switches between warlock, DK, priest, and mage).  This makes it easy to post between doing things, and logging different characters to post things that aren't too troublesome for your main to post is annoying, and less likely to happen.   I still employ this method for the most part (except for glyphs + xmog), but when 4.3 came I knew I needed to change how I did things.

Reason's Got Nothing to Do With It...
When I first started doing transmog it wasn't too bad, but as my supply grew, my low number of empty bag slots on my main became more of a nuisance, and I wanted a toon that could keep tons of bag slots open, and have a guild bank for extra storage.  On top of that, if you ever played a toon that you post transmog on, you'll know that you start getting whispers about cutting people deals, and how much of a piece of garbage you are for posting gear for so expensive etc, etc.  So that's when my bank toon was born.  Using TSM Mailing it was easy to send all my xmog gear over to him and set him up for buying and selling gear.  I crafted him 4 26-slot bags, so right now he has 120 slots to shuffle gear from the mailbox to the Auction house.  Ideally I'd like 150 total, but I don't think that Blizzard will be accommodating this sort of behavior any time in the near future for xmog sellers.  Of course I've pimped him out, I think I've posted his picture on my blog before, but here it is again!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

How to be a Great Transmog Salesman Part 2

This is a follow up to my previous 2 posts, How to be a Great Transmog Salesman Part 1, and it's recent Addendum, a shorter way to do it.  Now that we've gone through the various ways of purchasing these items, I'm going to go through some methods that I use to sell the items.

Handy Dandy Transmog Seller
I highly suggest for anyone who is going to get serious about transmog to make a level 1 bank mule solely for transmog.  This way your bags are free of any other potential clutter.  My character also has a guild bank for himself to store anything I have more than 3 of.  He has all 26 slot bags (28 aren't worth it yet).  With the backpack that's 120 slots.  150 would of course be preferable because mail comes in 50's, but not an option  right now.

I also find that attempting to be as anonymous as possible is the way to go with this as well.  If guildies find out you're the guy selling all the xmog gear they want, they're going to want you to cut them a deal.  All the time.  Trust me I've been down that road, and minus RealID (which you still can't appear invisible on), don't advertise yourself as being that lvl 1 transmog guy.

The 48-Hour Auction
For Transmog gear, I always set my TSM groups to be on 48 hours.  This way you only have to repost unsold items every 2 days.  You may get undercut, but with the amount of items you have on the AH, you won't particularly care.  I tend to scan at least once per day to find any good deals, but more than that on occasion.  If you're using the TSM Application, it has the option to notify you of Deals if you're using one of the dealfinding lists.  I don't want to go in length on that topic right now, but may in a future post.

My Tiers
Yesterday, in Part 1, I noted that I set up 4 tiers for my transmog sales, I'm going to simplify them by refering  to them as follows:

Low Level: 499g Threshold/749g Fallback
Mid Level: 749g Threshold/1249g Fallback
High Level: 4499g Threshold/4999g Fallback
Extremely Rare: 17999g Fallback

Now you could honestly buy everything below 50g, and put it all in the Low Level Group and make gold, but putting better looking pieces in pricier groups helps make you more profit!  I'd say a majority of my pieces actually do fall into the Low Level group, but there are a few sets (more than this but I'm going to give you some highlights) that I throw into the higher groups, as follows.  Mouse over the set name to look at the set!

Mid Level
My mid level items consist of gear from the following sets (among others):
Blood Knight, Bloodfist, Bloodscale, Captain's, Darkcrest, and Imbued Plate
Note that some of these Chest and Pants I will bump up to the 5k, as they really are the core pieces for the set.

High Level
Arachnidian Robes, Hibernal Robe, Venomshroud Silk Robes, Buccaneer's Set, Hyperion Set (Chest/Legs in Extremely Rare), Silver-Thread Robe, Soulkeeper, Speedsteel Rapier, and my favorite Anvilmar Hammer

Extremely Rare
Exalted Plate, Robes of Insight, Jade Plate

Of course different people have different lists, but these are roughly how I group mine together.  Get a feel for your own server.  My server is Low Pop so I usually have a monopoly on any of the High Level or higher sets, so I can price them how I want.  In a higher pop setting you may want to reduce your prices to remain profitable.  Try out different things, and see what works for you.

Barking
Rarely I will talk about my transmog gear on my main.  Just to get some free advertising.  Say something like (and link the item) "Anvilmar Hammer for 5,000g!?  What a rip off!".  Now you may be thinking Phat, why slander your beautiful self in such a way?  I'll tell you why.  This one is on the principle "any publicity is good publicity".  I can't tell you how many sales I've made off of posting unique items to trade in this way.  A lot of players don't know they exist, even if it doesn't sell that day, you've planted a seed!

That's all for now, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below!


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Dispelling the Enigma Surrounding Enigma Seeds

After 5.1 nerfing the exchange of Spirit of Harmony to Golden Lotus, many people were up in the air about what seed to plant at their Tiller's farm, and you may have recently read that Enigma Seeds (which produce herbs) got a stealth-buff, possibly the better alternative for providing Golden Lotus.

My Findings
I have been planting Enigma Seeds over the past 10 days or so, and every day so far I have gotten 4-6 Golden Lotus each day.   On top of that, the other plots that aren't Lotuses are other herbs that I send off to my Scribe to mill into pigments.  Below is a screenshot of my normal yield:

So not only do you get the 4-6 Golden Lotus, you get other herbs on top of that.  When you plant Songbell Seeds on the other hand, you get 1.6 Spirits which turns into 3.2 Golden Lotus.  So 4 Golden Lotus alone and you'd be better off.  Add to that the other herbs and you're much better planting other seeds.  On some servers vegetables may be the way to go, but the price per Golden Lotus (on average across servers) is currently: , which with the addition of the other herbs are worth more than vegetables (at 5-7 per plot).

If you haven't yet began grinding Tillers rep, now is certainly still a good time.  The rep is a decent grind, and as far as gold making is concerned, is by far your best rep (minus the profession specific grinds).  Cooking is also doing (semi) well for me currently, don't forget the Ironpaw Exchange!!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

The Return of Realistic Returns

Many times, as gold makers, we get dismayed if we can't make some major returns on our investments.  I know I always try to focus on the highest return activities, well letting others fall by the wayside.   Flipping things for twice what they cost is almost ingrained in our brains.  While this of course is the easiest and fastest way of getting gold, there's no point missing out on other opportunities available.  Diversify!

Investments
Quite like real life, the more you invest in profitable things, the more money you're going to have in the long run.  Say (hypothetically) you are able to make a 10% return per day by using some profession, selling everything you post daily and using the new amount as investment capitol.  By the end of the week, you would have (roughly) doubled the money you initially invested.  Now there are of course better investments than this to be made in WoW, but know that  every investment counts, small investments that sell constantly are just as good as long term investments that make tons of gold from 1 sale (such as transmog/leveling green market).

Prioritize
That being said you can't do everything all the time.  Some days you don't play, some days you don't have time to play the AH, or only a limited time.  Do what makes the most gold for you.  This is hopefully something everyone already does out of instinct alone.  Daily cooldowns to me alone across a few characters are more than enough for the average player to have a mass of gold, and be able to pay for what they want (within reason) in game.  But just because uncut gems are 50g and the cut are 70g, doesn't mean that this 20g isn't worth your time.  When I post a spread gems on my server, I sell at least a handful each day.  At 20g profit per, even with selling costs factored in, it's not a negligible gain in gold each day.

That doesn't mean I'm going to focus in on JC first, by all means I'm not.  I prefer to focus in on things like Inscription CDs as well as Alchemy and Tailoring before I get into any sort of mass processing of ore.   Diversification is key though, and it's important to do the things that may not net you as much overall gold, but good and fast returns.

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

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

Brawling Time - BMAH

I want to start out this post by appologizing a bit for the lack of content in the past few weeks.  I was busy for a while IRL and when Sandy came (I live in NJ)  things got hectic for a while, but now things have settled down and I finally have some time to write and play WoW.

First Rule of Brawler's Guild
Well I'm breaking the first rule by writing this post, but when reading an article on Wowhead about Brawler's Guild on the PTR, I was surprised to see that you can access this content by invite only.  And where does one obtain such an invite?  The Black Market Auction House, or as Cold pointed out to me, through member invite.  Invites take Rank 7 in the guild which this post (read it for more info) says currently requires ~75k dps on the PTR.  Needless to say these non-BMAH invites won't be spreading around for a while.

BMAH on the PTR courtesy Wowhead.com

Now, the number of invites  you see in this picture will most likely be more than that on the live servers when 5.1 comes out (maybe not though), but these are going to be a pricey commodity when 5.1 first comes out and the weeks to follow.

What does this mean?
Well, you have two options.  Maybe you're one of the elite gold makers on your server and you want to try out this Brawler's Guild before everyone else, perhaps because you're after the Realm First Achievement associated with it.  If your pockets are deep and you can outbid your competitors, and babysit the auctions, you can be the first to try this, and possibly get the Realm First.  On the other hand you can just wait.  If you're not interested in the Realm First I HIGHLY suggest this route.  Sure go back and check daily what they're going for, or check trade for people selling cheap invites, but wait it out at least 1-2 weeks.  Maybe even get an invite from a friend if they have one.  Prices will drop exponentially by then and you can get your invitation for a great deal.

General BMAH Tactics
In general when using the BMAH you have to take 2 things into consideration.  What you're willing to pay, and where you're going to be when the auction expires.  If you're not going to be on when the auction expires you may very well lose the item to someone who is willing to just pay 1k more than you at the last second.  You may have to pay a premium if you really want an item on the BMAH but just can't be in game when the auction expires.

Always set a price threshold.  If there's an item you're interested in, decide what the maximum price you'd be willing to pay BEFORE you start a bidding war.  This way you don't get caught up in a silly bidding war and end up in a situation like this:

Click to Enlarge.  Image courtesy reddit user jlwg.

Finally, if you're able to be in game near when the auction is expiring, don't start bidding until then.  This one is pretty simple, if you start bidding before then you're only raising the price for yourself, and why do that?  If you're going to start a bidding war, do it as late as possible.

So, if the system goes as planned, when are you going to try to get your invite to the Brawler's Guild after 5.1 is released?

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!!