Phat's Weekly Lewt Review 1/22

If you didn't read it yet, also check out my latest post for Nev's 20 Day Goldmaking Challenge: Day 5: Alternating Alts.

This week I managed to bring in ~88k as I started ramping up my gold making in a way that I haven't for a few months.

(Tillers) Farming on Alts
Taking the ~3 minutes a day that it takes to tend to your non-90 alt's Tillers farm can be quite profitable, especially if you're going to be logging them for their profession CDs anyway.  This week I managed to find a way to optimize my farming: the ilevel 450 BoA Weapons.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with them, there are lootable items spread throughout Pandaria that will give you ilvl 450 weapons that are BoA, as well as one neck that's BoA.  They are usable by level 86+, and I recently decked out all my alts with them, because they are some of the highest damage output weapons available at lvl 86, which is great for my vermin killing alts that maintain a Tiller's farm.  They're also great for leveling as more dps means more XP/hour.  A great way to level quickly, or optimize your time spent on your alts!


Return of (Actually) Crafting
For at least the entire month of January, if not longer, I've been really lax on replenishing my crafting supplies, and have ran out of many profitable items, such as gems, enchanting scrolls, engineering pets, and the like.  This week I began restocking my supplies.  This started with Jewelcrafting.  I had run out of most of my MoP cuts, as well as all of my Wrath cuts (very popular for twinks).  So I had a lot of work to do!  I was able to get Saronite ore relatively cheap, and when my Living Steel Transmute wasn't profitable as I'd like I used my Wrath Epic Gem Transmute.  Right now I'm still not fully stocked up, but I'm getting there!  I still haven't touched my enchanter because I don't have a lot of the end game rep patterns because my Enchanter is sadly still 85.  Quite honestly I wouldn't even be grinding the rep if he was.

Glyphs Are Weird on My Server...
So I'd say on 90%+ of servers, glyphs are either not worth crafting, or hard to compete with undercutting, but I'm having no such bad luck on my Low Population server.  I do get undercut out the wahzoo, but it seems that for right now at least, I'm the sole poster of at least 30 different glyphs (the 2 major posters dropped out about a month ago on my server).  This means mucho gold for me because I have this market cornered, and can basically ask for any price that I want.  I know with this will come competition though, because when people start having to pay hundreds for glyphs for their alts, they'll try to get in on the money train themselves.

Actually Leveling
So I've been moving around my glyphs on my alts for easier posting (for more detail see this post), and I wanted some Inscription bags.  This of course was troublesome for me because there are only 2 professions I don't have maxed out on my server, Leatherworking and Skinning, and of course I'd need at least decently high Leatherworking to make some good bags.  So I've re-started leveling my hunter who was at 300 LW/Skinning (lvl 56) whom I'll need to get to 65 to get the 32 slot inscription bags.  The reason I'm actually leveling skinning is because people tend to gauge the prices on leather because I'm on a small server and they can control the market.  This of course is just a personal goal, I could just get the bags crafted by a LW, but I'd also like the "all 10 professions maxed" achievement some day.  We'll see if my hunter can keep me interested, but for now he is.

So, that was my week in WoW gold making, how did your week go, and what sold well for you?


Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!
You can also subscribe to my livestream channel on twitch.tv to see when I'm streaming!

Alternating Alts: Day 5

Today I return from my long weekend off with Day 5 of Nev's Goldmaking Challenge.  Nev recently released a post with everyone currently participating in the 20 Days on her blog.  Lots of interesting responses from around the gold making community, so be sure to check them out!

Today the prompt is Do you keep the same banker alt or do you change them up occasionally? Why?

Mainly Mains
My main posting toon is always the character I'm currently focused on in game, and right now it's my 90 mage.  I play end game on my mage, and 9 times out of 10 I would log this character even if I wasn't going to make gold that day (which never actually happens).  Once in a while (and I feel like it will be soon) I get the bug to either tank or heal, and I just have TSM Mailing forward my mail to that alt.  It's just easier for me to keep track of my auctions on a toon I spend time on.

Current Endeavors
Right now I am doing a bit of an experiment with my alts, and I'm liking it very much.  What I'm trying to do is spread out my glyphs, so that each of 3 alts can fit all the glyphs they are posting in their bags, so emptying the mail is something I can AFK through.  I was previously only posting glyphs from my glyph crafter himself, but this became laborious as I just hate sitting and running back and forth between the mailbox and bank.  It was made worse by the fact that I had to keep 3 classes worth of glyphs in a guild bank, and this method got old really fast.  I now have them across 2 alts, and just need some Inscription bags to get my 3rd alt running (this is the one time I really wish I had the only crafting profession I don't have maxed - Leatherworking).  Setting it up this way will just save me some time actually interacting with the game, as I can be here writing a post while emptying my glyph mail, not having to run to the banker and back every 5 seconds.  It will be a glorious day!

How about you, do you ever switch your posting alts around?  If so why?

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!
You can also subscribe to my livestream channel on twitch.tv to see when I'm streaming!

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!!

Milestone: Alliance Alt Hits 100k

So today I hit 2 very important milestones on my Alliance alt, level 70, and 100k gold!

Background
I've written about this alt before, but a quick summary for those who did not see those posts (they're few and far between).  On my main server I have 10 Horde characters and 1 Alliance character.  I originally made my Alliance Priest to see how I could do with the resale market on the Alliance side of my server.  For some quick (albeit expensive) start up capitol I bought an heirloom cape on the Horde side, and vendored it on the Alliance side (before cagable pets).  If you did the math I started with 300g, and now have 100k at level 70.  For a part time alt, it's not half bad!  I figure that sharing some info with you as to how I did it might help you with your repertoire, so here goes!

Flipping Out
This project has been a long time in the making, I started it in Cataclysm, and was working on it on and off.  Basically if I ever finished my gold making rotation Horde side, I'd play this toon.  If I were starting today, I would have just sold a caged pet for starting capitol if I were to do it today, and if you ever start on a new server with no high level alts, I'd suggest you do the same.  The first thing I did was join a level 25 guild.  Trying to do this without guild perks is just silly.  Looking back on my sales, some of the first flips that I made gold off of were in the 77-78 Twink market, which I still sell in now.  In the beginning I had a sale once every 2-3 days, then more often as my inventory increased.  Once I had a decent pile of gold I got into the transmog market, and that's when things really took off.  Below are 2 screenshots of some of my top sales.

Top Resales (Click to Enlarge)

Top Sales (Click to Enlarge)

Business is Booming!
As Cataclysm started coming to an end, I started leveling this toon.  As I leveled, I leveled the traditional Tailoring/Enchanting for my clothie.  Once I had high enough Tailoring, I got a friend to transfer the Icy Cloak pattern to me from the Horde side.  If you are a tailor and you haven't checked out this recipe yet, you should.  Read about it here.  For the TL;DR it's a horde only recipe, and a sweet transmog cloak.  I was able to sell two of these within the first week that I had the pattern for 5k each!!

I noticed something though on my alli priest transmog seller that I did not get on my level 1 transmog banker.  Lots of players whispering things like "why is all your @#$^ing gear so expensive on the AH!?".  Now I'm not going to accuse the scum of the Alliance of being less scrupulous of their Horde counterparts, but I had my fair share of "polite conversations" with some Allies during this experiment.  I chalk it up to actually being on the character for more than a few minutes every 2 days.  As an aside, generally if someone whispers me and doesn't use their first whisper to insult/attack me or my mother, I will be more than willing to cut them a deal.

Mountain of Gear
At this point I have something like 300 pieces of transmog and twink gear (my server is small!) that I cycle every 2 days.  On top of that I'm crafting Netherweave Bags as I just got through BC, and realized that there was about a 3-4x markup on the bags, and up to a 10x markup if I can get cloth cheap enough!  My next goal will be 80 and some maxed MoP professions.  As of now though, my priest only gets maybe 30 minutes of leveling on any given week, so that is going to be in the distant future.

I'm also playing around on another server, and making some decent progress just buying and reselling twink/transmog gear.  That character I only log maybe once or twice a week, but I've accrued about 75k, which I'm slowly investing in lvl 25 pets to move to my main server.  Kinda fun, no thinking involved.  So how about you?  Have you conducted any gold making experiments?  If so how did they turn out?

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!!

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

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

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


1) Jewelcrafting


Spent

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

Gold Earned on Cut Gems (Sums of Rare Cuts)

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

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

2) Cata Twink Gear

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

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

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

3) Mogging

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

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

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

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

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

4) Misc. Sales

Some other sales data that I think is worth noting:

Wrath Epic Gems

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

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

Transmutes

Volatile Life Avg Price Bought Per: 5.24g

Volatile Air Avg Sale Price: 17.59g

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

Volatile Air Sold: 3,690

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

Avg Price of Volatile Air x10: 162.5g

Avg Price of Volatile Water x10: 118.8g

Avg Price of Volatile Fire x10: 47.99g

Avg Price of Pyrium Bar x3: 36.65g

Avg Cost to make Truegold: 365.94

Cost after factoring in x1.2 proc: 304.95

Avg Truegold Sale Price: 606.34

Avg Profit per Truegold: 301.39

Truegold crafted: 55

Total Truegold Profit: 16,576g 

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

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

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

Half a Million (How to Level Alts)

FINALLY!  I finally hit half a million gold.  It wasn't because I couldn't have earned it before now, but I'm a chronic spender!  Every time one of my alts dinged 85 (and I now have 6) I had to get them the latest gear (even though I now regularly play 2).  Repair mounts?  "Had" to have them!  Dalaran Rings, etc.

Did I put a lot of gold into my alts?  Yes.  Did they end up paying for themselves?  ...mostly.  Either way, today I'm going to focus on my theory of leveling alts.

How to Make Gold Using Alts.
This is my key method to making tons of gold leveling alts.  Some may disagree, some may have suggestions to tweak or better use my general method, but this is what I do, and I will provide an argument for why, and how to better it.

Farm.  Yup I said it, Farm.  Get Herbalism and Mining on your alt from the first profession NPCs that you see, and get out there and farm (don't forget a Mining Pick).

Yes, I know, farming at max level isn't the most effective way of making gold, but due to these professions rewarding XP just for doing them, it's the best way of making gold while leveling!

**Note: If you are interested in having a max level mine/herbalist farmer Horde side, I suggest rolling a Tauren Druid.  Taurens have a passive racial Cultivation that allows them to gather herbs faster than other races, and Druid Flight Form at lvl 60+ is an instant cast and you don't have to leave it to Herbalize.  It's the most efficient Mining/Herbalism combo in the game, if you care.  (If you roll Alliance, a druid in general is still the fastest because of the reasons listed)

Why This Method Works:


This is the most cost effective way to level your toon.  If you're going to level an alt, why not have it work for you?  Mining and Herbalism are the 2 professions that will grant you XP solely for doing them.   My advice now is to sell the raw materials and start making gold for this toon.  You can farm sitting in a queue, and farming gets you around the same XP as grinding quests, but makes you A LOT more gold!

If you are interested in finding the best places to level your herb/mining or just professions in general I suggest using wow-professions.

The 75 Conundrum
Once you hit 75 you have the ability to max your professions, which leaves you two options.  Learn Illustrious Grand Master Mining/Herbalism OR use the gold your toon earned to max out serious gold making professions (with no farming) like Alchemy or JC.  My personal goal is to have a character that, through leveling, pays to max out their really good gold making professions.  The one argument I can think of for holding out to 85 to drop herbalism/mining is that you can continue to get XP using your professions if you stick to mining/herbalism.

If you choose to continue leveling past 75 using Herbalism/Mining you can start in Mount Hyjal.  You're going to have to grind a bit here, but there are a lot of nodes that don't have nearby NPC's.  Once you hit 500 Herbalism and 475 Mining, go to The Violet Citadel in Dalaran and take the portal to The Caverns of Time.  Once there, fly south one zone and start farming in Uldum.  A little dangerous in the 70's, but there are plenty of nodes not near NPC's and these nodes will reward TONS of XP.

Have fun leveling your toons!

Phat Lewts