Sorry guys, I'm not going to be updating my blog for a couple days. Trying to figure out why Google isn't putting ads on my webpage.
I know they disabled adsense for me for awhile for whatever reason (they didn't really say), and apparently it hasn't come back up.
I do also have a job interview tonight so I haven't been putting a lot of thought into the blog recently (in the past couple days). I'm fairly certain the interview is just a formality, as I know the people who are hiring and they know the work I've done so I doubt I"ll have trouble getting the job. It's just a part time thing anyway so no big deal if I don't get it when all's said and done.
Check back in a couple days, hopefully I'll be back up and running! It also helps when I have a good blogroll to go through to stave off some boredom.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
I'm back!
Sorry for the absence, I was building a new computer system and holy crap everything that could go wrong did!
As a quick aside, can anyone see the ads on my blog? For some reason I'm not seeing them, although it may just be Firefox. I have ads enabled and I can view great offers on other peoples' blogs, but for some reason it's not working on mine.
I got all the pieces together, except for the RAM, since I figured I'd just use the memory from my old computer in the new one. I put it all together, took apart my old computer, and realized I had DDR2 which is incompatible with the new motherboard, I needed DDR3! So, I went on Newegg and checked out their memory, and got a great deal on it. Only problem was, they shipped it DHL and holy crap that took forever for some reason. Literally 7 business days, whereas Newegg usually ships FedEx or UPS and that takes between 1 and 2 business days. So, finally got it all put together and lo and behold, my computer doesn't like the new hard drives. And, the 2nd monitor doesn't work!
Long story short, after about 16 hours total of screwing around with it, all I needed to do to fix the hard drive issue was to go into the hard drive manager and re-assign it a letter (like C:/ or F:/). Done, 30 seconds. To fix the monitor, I had to move my DVI to VGA adapter (I was too lazy to just hook up the VGA cable) from the bottom port to the top port. For whatever reason, the bottom port on the video card didn't like the adapter. Done, 5 minutes. I raged but what're you going to do.
Hanging out with an old friend soon, haven't seen him in ages, will report back later/tomorrow!
As a quick aside, can anyone see the ads on my blog? For some reason I'm not seeing them, although it may just be Firefox. I have ads enabled and I can view great offers on other peoples' blogs, but for some reason it's not working on mine.
I got all the pieces together, except for the RAM, since I figured I'd just use the memory from my old computer in the new one. I put it all together, took apart my old computer, and realized I had DDR2 which is incompatible with the new motherboard, I needed DDR3! So, I went on Newegg and checked out their memory, and got a great deal on it. Only problem was, they shipped it DHL and holy crap that took forever for some reason. Literally 7 business days, whereas Newegg usually ships FedEx or UPS and that takes between 1 and 2 business days. So, finally got it all put together and lo and behold, my computer doesn't like the new hard drives. And, the 2nd monitor doesn't work!
Long story short, after about 16 hours total of screwing around with it, all I needed to do to fix the hard drive issue was to go into the hard drive manager and re-assign it a letter (like C:/ or F:/). Done, 30 seconds. To fix the monitor, I had to move my DVI to VGA adapter (I was too lazy to just hook up the VGA cable) from the bottom port to the top port. For whatever reason, the bottom port on the video card didn't like the adapter. Done, 5 minutes. I raged but what're you going to do.
Hanging out with an old friend soon, haven't seen him in ages, will report back later/tomorrow!
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Got Up Early Today!
Finally, I'm starting to get my sleep cycle back on a more regular track. Unfortunately, whenever I'm out of work or have very little to do, I tend to stay up late and go to sleep late; I would previously be going to bed at around 3-5AM and waking up around 2PM. However, I got to bed at 2AM last night and woke up around 9AM. I'm working this weekend, which will be good, especially since I have a few papers I can do. On the weekends there's very little work to do anyway, but the laboratory still needs to be staffed.
I'm still waiting on the memory for my computer; I forget if I posted here, but I planned on using my RAM from the computer I have now. It's DDR2 and I need DDR3, so that didn't work. I ordered some last night but it didn't ship today, unfortunately, so I may not have it until next week. Oh well.
At any rate, I went to the gym with my brother yesterday. If you've never gone with a workout partner before, I highly recommend it. It took a little more time than usual, but it was a lot of fun, more fun than I usually have.
I'm still waiting on the memory for my computer; I forget if I posted here, but I planned on using my RAM from the computer I have now. It's DDR2 and I need DDR3, so that didn't work. I ordered some last night but it didn't ship today, unfortunately, so I may not have it until next week. Oh well.
At any rate, I went to the gym with my brother yesterday. If you've never gone with a workout partner before, I highly recommend it. It took a little more time than usual, but it was a lot of fun, more fun than I usually have.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Back from the wedding
I probably forgot to mention it, but I had gone away to my friend's wedding. It's really strange, we're the same age and I've known her since Kindergarten, so to see her up on the altar and in her wedding gown was a weird feeling. It must be really nice to be married, I know she found the perfect person, but I doubt I'm going to get married anytime soon!
I'm hitting up the gym with my brother later; he's in college now but home on Spring Break. Talk about feeling older, it seems like just yesterday he was going into High School. I guess that's the way it is with the flow of time.
Also, recently, I built a new computer:
Intel i7 970 Hex-core processor
AMD Nvidia 6950 2gb video card (Unlocked to 6970)
8GB DDR3 1600 RAM
64GB SSD (just for Windows and whatever else)
It's going to be a beast once I get it up and running, but there's been snafus along the way. The first video card I ordered was good, but it was specifically designed for 6 monitors. Sold it on ebay. Bought another video card, but they screwed up and sent me the 1gb version, so I had to return that one. Bought the 3rd video card, and it's the right one! BUT, I had planned to use the RAM from my old computer to save a little bit of money, no such luck. I could have sworn I had DDR3, but it's DDR2 and that's not compatible with the new motherboard. SO, I need to wait another week for the RAM to be delivered! Poor planning on my part, what're you going to do.
Yes, I know I'm currently unemployed, but I never spent a dime (aside from gas and food) while I was working, so I have a good amount of money saved up. The power of being frugal!
I'm hitting up the gym with my brother later; he's in college now but home on Spring Break. Talk about feeling older, it seems like just yesterday he was going into High School. I guess that's the way it is with the flow of time.
Also, recently, I built a new computer:
Intel i7 970 Hex-core processor
AMD Nvidia 6950 2gb video card (Unlocked to 6970)
8GB DDR3 1600 RAM
64GB SSD (just for Windows and whatever else)
It's going to be a beast once I get it up and running, but there's been snafus along the way. The first video card I ordered was good, but it was specifically designed for 6 monitors. Sold it on ebay. Bought another video card, but they screwed up and sent me the 1gb version, so I had to return that one. Bought the 3rd video card, and it's the right one! BUT, I had planned to use the RAM from my old computer to save a little bit of money, no such luck. I could have sworn I had DDR3, but it's DDR2 and that's not compatible with the new motherboard. SO, I need to wait another week for the RAM to be delivered! Poor planning on my part, what're you going to do.
Yes, I know I'm currently unemployed, but I never spent a dime (aside from gas and food) while I was working, so I have a good amount of money saved up. The power of being frugal!
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Harvest Moon, Gym, hanging out with an old buddy
Recently I've become re-addicted to Harvest Moon DS. I've been a huge fan of the series since HM64, and Back to Nature was definitely the best (for original PS). Pick up a ROM of it if you can, it's seriously amazing.
I don't know why, this game sounds boring. You plant crops, you raise animals; milk cows, feed chickens, etc. You interact with the townsfolk, and the only violence is accidentally hitting a cow with your hoe or ax or whatever. But. It's. So. God. Damn. Fun. I guess it's a love it or hate it style game, but I love it.
Anyway, I stopped playing because it was too easy to exploit, and I'm against the whole "grinding to get an objective" in a game. Yeah yeah I play WoW and I grind there, but that's only to prevent an unfair advantage that I could gain vs other players. In a game that you pay for and own (I prefer to think that Blizz is letting us use their servers and play in their virtual world, we really don't own anything), I think you should be able to experience the story at your own pace. You shouldn't have to spend a couple hours leveling up before you can move on to the next chapter.
Anyway, I digress. Gym time now, I got my deadlift and incline press day. I'm looking forward to deadlifting again, I think I have my form down. If my back is sore until next week, though, I'm definitely going to have to get some help. I already screwed up my knee, I don't want to screw up my back. Speaking of which, if anyone has a good suggestion for knee tendinitis, please leave it here.
I'm hanging out with an old friend tonight, haven't seen him in awhile. We'll probably do some Rock Band, which I'm terribad at, but it's still fun. I'm not sure if I'll update tomorrow, but at the very least I'll be back on Monday.
I don't know why, this game sounds boring. You plant crops, you raise animals; milk cows, feed chickens, etc. You interact with the townsfolk, and the only violence is accidentally hitting a cow with your hoe or ax or whatever. But. It's. So. God. Damn. Fun. I guess it's a love it or hate it style game, but I love it.
Anyway, I stopped playing because it was too easy to exploit, and I'm against the whole "grinding to get an objective" in a game. Yeah yeah I play WoW and I grind there, but that's only to prevent an unfair advantage that I could gain vs other players. In a game that you pay for and own (I prefer to think that Blizz is letting us use their servers and play in their virtual world, we really don't own anything), I think you should be able to experience the story at your own pace. You shouldn't have to spend a couple hours leveling up before you can move on to the next chapter.
Anyway, I digress. Gym time now, I got my deadlift and incline press day. I'm looking forward to deadlifting again, I think I have my form down. If my back is sore until next week, though, I'm definitely going to have to get some help. I already screwed up my knee, I don't want to screw up my back. Speaking of which, if anyone has a good suggestion for knee tendinitis, please leave it here.
I'm hanging out with an old friend tonight, haven't seen him in awhile. We'll probably do some Rock Band, which I'm terribad at, but it's still fun. I'm not sure if I'll update tomorrow, but at the very least I'll be back on Monday.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Almost done with school
It's really hit me hard lately that in 2 months, I'll be done with school. I've really known nothing else my entire life, and I'm excited to get out into the workforce, but it's just strange.
It's taken me longer than I expected to; one semester was my fault - bad planning led to no classes being available to take. Another semester was their fault - last semester, I only had 2 classes left and neither were offered by the school.
It's not like I've never worked; I've had a job pretty much constantly since I was 12 (worked for my mother's office for a year under the table), and now is pretty much the only time where I've been without. It's good and bad, but all this free time gets to your head, I start going to bed at the same time but getting up later, it's bad.
At any rate, anyone want to give me a job? =D (I don't think I'll have much trouble finding A job once I get out of school. May not be the one I want, but a man's gotta work).
It's taken me longer than I expected to; one semester was my fault - bad planning led to no classes being available to take. Another semester was their fault - last semester, I only had 2 classes left and neither were offered by the school.
It's not like I've never worked; I've had a job pretty much constantly since I was 12 (worked for my mother's office for a year under the table), and now is pretty much the only time where I've been without. It's good and bad, but all this free time gets to your head, I start going to bed at the same time but getting up later, it's bad.
At any rate, anyone want to give me a job? =D (I don't think I'll have much trouble finding A job once I get out of school. May not be the one I want, but a man's gotta work).
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Ton of Work Today
No time now for a legit update, may edit later though. I have:
1.) to hit the gym
2.) grocery shopping
3.) Presentation tomorrow night
4.) weekly paper due Thursday
5.) 2 Term papers to start work on
6.) I'm probably forgetting some things
I got a job prospect, I'm not sure if I mentioned it here, but I'd be teaching a SAT prep class for Kaplan Tutoring services. The guy called my gf, asking her if she was interested or if anyone she knew was. She directed him to me (currently laid off), and he said he'd like to start me as soon as possible.
That was 2 weeks ago, haven't heard from him despite 2 e-mails. Why are people so unprofessional? I know the guy personally, why wouldn't he just say, "Hey, about the job, you're not what we're looking for, sorry," instead of keeping my hopes up and blocking me from looking for other prospects for 2 weeks? Life lesson for the day: Be considerate of others.
1.) to hit the gym
2.) grocery shopping
3.) Presentation tomorrow night
4.) weekly paper due Thursday
5.) 2 Term papers to start work on
6.) I'm probably forgetting some things
I got a job prospect, I'm not sure if I mentioned it here, but I'd be teaching a SAT prep class for Kaplan Tutoring services. The guy called my gf, asking her if she was interested or if anyone she knew was. She directed him to me (currently laid off), and he said he'd like to start me as soon as possible.
That was 2 weeks ago, haven't heard from him despite 2 e-mails. Why are people so unprofessional? I know the guy personally, why wouldn't he just say, "Hey, about the job, you're not what we're looking for, sorry," instead of keeping my hopes up and blocking me from looking for other prospects for 2 weeks? Life lesson for the day: Be considerate of others.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Some TV Shows You Should Check Out
1.) Firefly
I really liked this show, it's just amazing. It's a Space Western Opera, if there even is such a genre. It's about a captain and his crew, and all the ridiculous adventures they get themselves into. It's very intense, especially the last half of the season, and definitely worth the watch.
It's too bad it got canceled after only one season, but there's a huge fanbase that says it may come back for at least a 2nd.
2.) Battlestar Galactica
When I heard about this show, I figured, "Great, another Star Trek" and passed it over because, well, I'm not a trekkie. I finally said I'd give it a shot, and I was blown away. I usually multi-task and play WoW on one monitor and watch TV shows or something on the other, but for the first time (I can't just sit and watch TV) in awhile, I had to stop playing WoW and just watch the show. It's that good.
3.) The IT Crowd
If you're at all similar to the stereotypical nerd, you'll find this show funny. Roy, Moss and Jen work in the IT department of Reynham Industries in London (yeah it's a British comedy), and they have to deal with all sorts of strange situations. They're on Season 4 but because it's government TV, they only run 6 episodes a season. Worth the watch at any rate.
I really liked this show, it's just amazing. It's a Space Western Opera, if there even is such a genre. It's about a captain and his crew, and all the ridiculous adventures they get themselves into. It's very intense, especially the last half of the season, and definitely worth the watch.
It's too bad it got canceled after only one season, but there's a huge fanbase that says it may come back for at least a 2nd.
2.) Battlestar Galactica
When I heard about this show, I figured, "Great, another Star Trek" and passed it over because, well, I'm not a trekkie. I finally said I'd give it a shot, and I was blown away. I usually multi-task and play WoW on one monitor and watch TV shows or something on the other, but for the first time (I can't just sit and watch TV) in awhile, I had to stop playing WoW and just watch the show. It's that good.
3.) The IT Crowd
If you're at all similar to the stereotypical nerd, you'll find this show funny. Roy, Moss and Jen work in the IT department of Reynham Industries in London (yeah it's a British comedy), and they have to deal with all sorts of strange situations. They're on Season 4 but because it's government TV, they only run 6 episodes a season. Worth the watch at any rate.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Just got back from a workout!
And only had to travel 10 feet! I lifted at home today!
Unfortunately, it was only the Press, Bis, Tris, and situps (weighted are on Mondays). My ultimate goal is to have a small home gym where I can do bench, squat, deadlift, and a few other things. Now there's not much time for it, but I have a dinky little weight set with around 130lbs that my aunt gave me a long time ago.
I was supposed to do deadlifts today, but I noticed my lower back was always sore after deadlifts. It wouldn't be a bad sore, but it would persist for awhile. This leads me to believe I'm doing them with poor form, and that's definitely a bad idea. I need to find out how to check my form and correct that, at least I stopped before I hurt myself.
At any rate, been working on my hunter in WoW, got him to 77 late last night and I'm hoping to hit 79 today. I have literally all day, haven't heard back from the new job prospect yet, and I just sent out a few resumes. Can only send out so many in a day.
Unfortunately, it was only the Press, Bis, Tris, and situps (weighted are on Mondays). My ultimate goal is to have a small home gym where I can do bench, squat, deadlift, and a few other things. Now there's not much time for it, but I have a dinky little weight set with around 130lbs that my aunt gave me a long time ago.
I was supposed to do deadlifts today, but I noticed my lower back was always sore after deadlifts. It wouldn't be a bad sore, but it would persist for awhile. This leads me to believe I'm doing them with poor form, and that's definitely a bad idea. I need to find out how to check my form and correct that, at least I stopped before I hurt myself.
At any rate, been working on my hunter in WoW, got him to 77 late last night and I'm hoping to hit 79 today. I have literally all day, haven't heard back from the new job prospect yet, and I just sent out a few resumes. Can only send out so many in a day.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Servers down!
Haha played some Borderlands earlier this morning, it was good times. I remember that game being really fun in multiplayer, but not so much in single player. Maybe I'll see if I can convince my friend to play it with me again. I'm starting to move away from WoW, leveling just isn't that fun anymore (duh) and my guild doesn't raid that often - we knock all the content out by Thursday and that's it for the week (and I can't make Wednesdays).
I'm working on a presentation for my Quality Assurance in the Laboratory class, I'm doing it on a paper on LEAN Laboratories. LEAN is the Toyota efficiency thing, and I'm really interested in efficiency and getting things done well ASAP.
I'm headed to the gym now, I think this will be my first full week in about 2 months (blizzards, sicknesses, other schedule conflicts), looking forward to it. How's your day going so far?
I'm working on a presentation for my Quality Assurance in the Laboratory class, I'm doing it on a paper on LEAN Laboratories. LEAN is the Toyota efficiency thing, and I'm really interested in efficiency and getting things done well ASAP.
I'm headed to the gym now, I think this will be my first full week in about 2 months (blizzards, sicknesses, other schedule conflicts), looking forward to it. How's your day going so far?
Monday, February 28, 2011
Comment Please!
This is the first and last post where I'll ask for comments. I just weeded through my following blogroll, and I think I took out too many. I'd appreciate it if anyone who wants me to follow them could comment here, I'll read and support your blog if you do the same for mine!
A few things to mention
First of all, This is an awesome flash game to play. It's fun, addicting, and can take 10 mins or awhile to go through. It's great.
Anyway, sorry for the delayed response. I was thinking about getting out of blogging. I didn't really like the blogger interface, and I really didn't think I had anything interesting to contribute the past few days or however long it's been. I'm going to try to keep thinking about things and we'll see what happens.
I'm going to remove everyone from my following list, and start over. Going through I noticed that there were a lot of people on there who haven't updated more than once or twice, and when I'm trying to get to the good stuff I don't want to be trekking through all those blogs that people haven't maintained since day 1. I'm going to rebuild it from there with everyone's blog who has a lot of great info.
I've been watching a lot of Netflix recently, in my "laid off" period. Sliders became a new favorite show, and I'm liking Firefly. Dead like Me is also a good show if you're looking for a somewhat comedy, somewhat drama show. It only lasted 2 seasons and they had a movie which was okay, but I think it's worth the watch.
That's all for now, I'll be back tomorrow with something, I'm sure =D
Anyway, sorry for the delayed response. I was thinking about getting out of blogging. I didn't really like the blogger interface, and I really didn't think I had anything interesting to contribute the past few days or however long it's been. I'm going to try to keep thinking about things and we'll see what happens.
I'm going to remove everyone from my following list, and start over. Going through I noticed that there were a lot of people on there who haven't updated more than once or twice, and when I'm trying to get to the good stuff I don't want to be trekking through all those blogs that people haven't maintained since day 1. I'm going to rebuild it from there with everyone's blog who has a lot of great info.
I've been watching a lot of Netflix recently, in my "laid off" period. Sliders became a new favorite show, and I'm liking Firefly. Dead like Me is also a good show if you're looking for a somewhat comedy, somewhat drama show. It only lasted 2 seasons and they had a movie which was okay, but I think it's worth the watch.
That's all for now, I'll be back tomorrow with something, I'm sure =D
Monday, February 21, 2011
New game!
No, not Rift. I heard it was mediocre, like playing Dragon Age: Origins as an MMO. I'm talking about Hack Slash Crawl.
I've been stuck at work, even though I've been "laid off," for the past 2 days. If you're not a Med Tech, you may not know that there is staggeringly little work to do on weekends; I got literally 20 samples all day yesterday. I average about 100 on a regular weekday, with ease. SO, in lieu of entertainment (other than misc'ing, of course), I picked up this flash game called Hack Slash Crawl.
You can pick one of like 10 races and 10 classes (roughly, I didn't count). Each has its own specialization. For example, Demons have increased fire resistance and deal extra fire damage with each attack, and Necromancers get "Raise Skeletonx1" and "Raise Skeletonx3." Their functions are pretty much self explanatory. I was partial to the Draconic Necromancer.
You also acquire equipment which gives stats, and also gives spells. It's a nightmare for min/maxers like me, because even in this tiny flash game I'm thinking of ways to improve my character. My complaint? No "save" feature. If you die, that's it, game over, start from 0. The plus side to dying is that you gain titles which give bonuses. The more you kill and the more "money" (I say "money" because it's not really money, it's basically points) you gain, the better title you get. I'm sure there are other factors but I haven't figured them out yet.
It's pretty fun, I wasted an entire day playing it. High Tea, the feature game on http://onemorelevel.com/ yesterday, is good too.
Anyway, it's time to get to "work". I left early because a snowstorm was slated for my region, but it took me the normal commute time to get here. Result is: I get to leave early! Stay hungry friends, and can we pretend that the weight on the rack is just the bar? Because I could really use a rep right now...
I've been stuck at work, even though I've been "laid off," for the past 2 days. If you're not a Med Tech, you may not know that there is staggeringly little work to do on weekends; I got literally 20 samples all day yesterday. I average about 100 on a regular weekday, with ease. SO, in lieu of entertainment (other than misc'ing, of course), I picked up this flash game called Hack Slash Crawl.
You can pick one of like 10 races and 10 classes (roughly, I didn't count). Each has its own specialization. For example, Demons have increased fire resistance and deal extra fire damage with each attack, and Necromancers get "Raise Skeletonx1" and "Raise Skeletonx3." Their functions are pretty much self explanatory. I was partial to the Draconic Necromancer.
You also acquire equipment which gives stats, and also gives spells. It's a nightmare for min/maxers like me, because even in this tiny flash game I'm thinking of ways to improve my character. My complaint? No "save" feature. If you die, that's it, game over, start from 0. The plus side to dying is that you gain titles which give bonuses. The more you kill and the more "money" (I say "money" because it's not really money, it's basically points) you gain, the better title you get. I'm sure there are other factors but I haven't figured them out yet.
It's pretty fun, I wasted an entire day playing it. High Tea, the feature game on http://onemorelevel.com/ yesterday, is good too.
Anyway, it's time to get to "work". I left early because a snowstorm was slated for my region, but it took me the normal commute time to get here. Result is: I get to leave early! Stay hungry friends, and can we pretend that the weight on the rack is just the bar? Because I could really use a rep right now...
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Done with the Gold-Making Game
Title, kinda.
It's just not that interesting anymore; I log on, cut my gems, post them, and log onto my hunter. I'm not closing my blog, but we're going to shift gears a bit. It's just going to be about my general experiences, WoW and otherwise. I'm the Original WoW Banksta, so that's not going anywhere (c wut i did thar), but here we go.
I'm a Med Tech at Umass Memorial Hospital, for my day job. I'm per-diem now, with the agreed upon verbal contract that I'd be working 2-3 days per week as long as I was in school. However, they recently had a meeting saying they're about $11 million in the red, so guess who's the first to go! I'm not technically fired, but after this week I'm not on the schedule. Kinda wish I got laid off so I could collect the benefits package, but what're you going to do.
With my new "blessing" of time off, I'm going to go live with my 2nd account and do something only insane people do; get all 10 characters to level 85 (or however close I feel like getting). I'm going to RAF myself and get another 7 60's, here's how my roster looks now:
85 Shaman
62 Hunter
80 Warrior (whom I will be transferring over)
31 Rogue
20 Druid
So, my plan is after I get my Hunter to 70 or so (by Sunday evening, I'm going to start RAF next Monday morning), I'm going to level my first 2 characters to 59.75. I'm going to use the first "level gifts" on my Rogue to get him to 60, then I'm going to level a priest and paladin (both on my account) to 59.75 (59.75 because the RAF xp bonus ends when any character on either account reaches level 60). Once both of them are level 59.75, I'm going to use those level gifts to level another character to 60. The last one will gain enough level gifts to get my Druid to level 60.
This sounds so depressing. Haha I would take a trip, but I need to be in town for Mondays and Wednesdays for class. I may see if I can catch a cheap flight to NY or something for a weekend, and I'm definitely taking some time to visit my friend in RI. At any rate, that's my "project" for while I'm temporarily "laid off." I strongly doubt this will actually happen.
It's just not that interesting anymore; I log on, cut my gems, post them, and log onto my hunter. I'm not closing my blog, but we're going to shift gears a bit. It's just going to be about my general experiences, WoW and otherwise. I'm the Original WoW Banksta, so that's not going anywhere (c wut i did thar), but here we go.
I'm a Med Tech at Umass Memorial Hospital, for my day job. I'm per-diem now, with the agreed upon verbal contract that I'd be working 2-3 days per week as long as I was in school. However, they recently had a meeting saying they're about $11 million in the red, so guess who's the first to go! I'm not technically fired, but after this week I'm not on the schedule. Kinda wish I got laid off so I could collect the benefits package, but what're you going to do.
With my new "blessing" of time off, I'm going to go live with my 2nd account and do something only insane people do; get all 10 characters to level 85 (or however close I feel like getting). I'm going to RAF myself and get another 7 60's, here's how my roster looks now:
85 Shaman
62 Hunter
80 Warrior (whom I will be transferring over)
31 Rogue
20 Druid
So, my plan is after I get my Hunter to 70 or so (by Sunday evening, I'm going to start RAF next Monday morning), I'm going to level my first 2 characters to 59.75. I'm going to use the first "level gifts" on my Rogue to get him to 60, then I'm going to level a priest and paladin (both on my account) to 59.75 (59.75 because the RAF xp bonus ends when any character on either account reaches level 60). Once both of them are level 59.75, I'm going to use those level gifts to level another character to 60. The last one will gain enough level gifts to get my Druid to level 60.
This sounds so depressing. Haha I would take a trip, but I need to be in town for Mondays and Wednesdays for class. I may see if I can catch a cheap flight to NY or something for a weekend, and I'm definitely taking some time to visit my friend in RI. At any rate, that's my "project" for while I'm temporarily "laid off." I strongly doubt this will actually happen.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Decline of Material prices
Sorry I haven't been updating recently, I haven't been feeling well and most often I just forget about it. Anyway, a quick update:
New guild is going well, we've taken down everyone so far and we're working on heroic modes. We got Halfus last Tuesday, but I don't know what else they've killed.
Got my hunter to level 58, on to Outlands! It'll be nice to have a huge gear jump, and deal more damage. At any rate, the heirloom pieces are helping (the bonus XP ones), and the guild cloak is good too. I'm looking forward to getting the guild headpiece, but that won't be for awhile.
Let's look at material prices today. Before, I said that an easy way to make gold was to turn the uncommon quality gems to jewelry pieces, and disenchant them. Is that still profitable? Let's look at it.
A cut uncommon gem vendors for 9g. So, if you're looking at, say Alicite, you'd expect a return of at least 10g per dust (2 Alicites required for the piece, on top of a Jeweler's setting). Check the Auction House, and what do you find? Dusts are 8g. They're actually down to 6g on my realm; this is good and bad.
This is good because it means that making enchanting scrolls will finally be profitable. For some reason, people don't want to pay as much for the scroll as they would pay for the raw materials. If you could purchase the wood for a desk for $60, you wouldn't expect the already made desk to go for $50.
This is bad, also. This is bad because it cuts down on your revenue. It reduces the value of hypnotic dust to the point where it's more profitable to cut the gems and vendor them. This means less supply from the smart economist, but all those people who are looking for some quick gold still have the same supply. The "quick gold" people will undercut each other until the price bottoms out, which will continue to reduce the efficacy of disenchanting and selling over vendoring.
New guild is going well, we've taken down everyone so far and we're working on heroic modes. We got Halfus last Tuesday, but I don't know what else they've killed.
Got my hunter to level 58, on to Outlands! It'll be nice to have a huge gear jump, and deal more damage. At any rate, the heirloom pieces are helping (the bonus XP ones), and the guild cloak is good too. I'm looking forward to getting the guild headpiece, but that won't be for awhile.
Let's look at material prices today. Before, I said that an easy way to make gold was to turn the uncommon quality gems to jewelry pieces, and disenchant them. Is that still profitable? Let's look at it.
A cut uncommon gem vendors for 9g. So, if you're looking at, say Alicite, you'd expect a return of at least 10g per dust (2 Alicites required for the piece, on top of a Jeweler's setting). Check the Auction House, and what do you find? Dusts are 8g. They're actually down to 6g on my realm; this is good and bad.
This is good because it means that making enchanting scrolls will finally be profitable. For some reason, people don't want to pay as much for the scroll as they would pay for the raw materials. If you could purchase the wood for a desk for $60, you wouldn't expect the already made desk to go for $50.
This is bad, also. This is bad because it cuts down on your revenue. It reduces the value of hypnotic dust to the point where it's more profitable to cut the gems and vendor them. This means less supply from the smart economist, but all those people who are looking for some quick gold still have the same supply. The "quick gold" people will undercut each other until the price bottoms out, which will continue to reduce the efficacy of disenchanting and selling over vendoring.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Raised Gold Cap
As a quick aside before we begin, I was on facebook this morning. I saw that one of my friends from middle school had not only got married to a 35 year old guy (I'm 24), but she already has a kid and another on the way. Wierd!
Anyway, so the gold cap has been raised. 1c shy of 1mil gold. It's nice in a way, not having to spread your gold around to different characters, but it also has a drawback; I can't say I'm goldcapped anymore. My ego hurts a little bit.
I'm currently leveling a hunter, who's at level 43, and I took advantage of the WoW sale where you could buy an online copy of the game for $5, and BC and WotLK were also $5. I bought a copy of WoW and plan to RAF myself so I can get the bonus, and that account can be the throwaway one, or used to transfer the characters to my main account. Now that I'm done working 40 hours and I'm only working 16 plus 2 grad courses, it leaves more "free time" to level, so I'll make better use of it now, I think. It's hard making gold with just one character who can do things, although with my new characters I'm sure it'll be better.
Your professions should go like this:
1.) Jewelcrafting
2.) Inscription
3.) Enchanting (this will move up as mats become cheaper and more people are progressing to endgame and heroics)
4.) Tailoring (bags AND threads)
5.) Blacksmithing (Everyone needs belt buckles
6.) Leatherworking
And then all the gathering professions. I believe this is an accurate list of the most profitable professions, in order.
Anyway, so the gold cap has been raised. 1c shy of 1mil gold. It's nice in a way, not having to spread your gold around to different characters, but it also has a drawback; I can't say I'm goldcapped anymore. My ego hurts a little bit.
I'm currently leveling a hunter, who's at level 43, and I took advantage of the WoW sale where you could buy an online copy of the game for $5, and BC and WotLK were also $5. I bought a copy of WoW and plan to RAF myself so I can get the bonus, and that account can be the throwaway one, or used to transfer the characters to my main account. Now that I'm done working 40 hours and I'm only working 16 plus 2 grad courses, it leaves more "free time" to level, so I'll make better use of it now, I think. It's hard making gold with just one character who can do things, although with my new characters I'm sure it'll be better.
Your professions should go like this:
1.) Jewelcrafting
2.) Inscription
3.) Enchanting (this will move up as mats become cheaper and more people are progressing to endgame and heroics)
4.) Tailoring (bags AND threads)
5.) Blacksmithing (Everyone needs belt buckles
6.) Leatherworking
And then all the gathering professions. I believe this is an accurate list of the most profitable professions, in order.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Raid Experiences and Being Frugal
Most of us raid, and raiding is fun. End game content, seeing 9/24 other people coordinate to achieve the same goal, and finally taking down the boss and getting all the phat lewtz is a good time. I recently just joined the top raiding guild on my server, and it's a fun but intense experience; there's a lot of pressure to perform and a lot of pressure to put out good numbers. There's a few ways to do this: food, flasks, and pots. These are expensive, but let's talk about ways to keep the repair costs down.
First, you should be buying the mats and getting the items made/making them yourself. I guarantee that there is a flask-specc'd Alchemist in your raid if you're raiding 25 mans. If not, be sure to get someone to make them (preferably from your guild, that way you avoid the tip as well - this isn't rude, as I craft anything for guild-mates without a tip) beforehand. If you're making potions, be sure the person is a potion-specc'd Alchemist. For food, there's not much you can do.
I'd stay away from farming the material: if you're looking at it from a pure gold per hour standpoint, it's almost always "cheaper" to purchase from the Auction House. I know Deep Sea Sagefish (to make Severed Sagefish Heads) cost approximately half of the finished product. Pro Tip: You can also make these and sell for a decent amount of gold!
If you must buy pre-made flasks/pots, buy ONLY WHAT YOU NEED. Prices WILL come down soon, and you don't want to be the guy who invests 4,000g in flasks only to find out that the price dropped to half that in a month.
And of course, try not to die.
First, you should be buying the mats and getting the items made/making them yourself. I guarantee that there is a flask-specc'd Alchemist in your raid if you're raiding 25 mans. If not, be sure to get someone to make them (preferably from your guild, that way you avoid the tip as well - this isn't rude, as I craft anything for guild-mates without a tip) beforehand. If you're making potions, be sure the person is a potion-specc'd Alchemist. For food, there's not much you can do.
I'd stay away from farming the material: if you're looking at it from a pure gold per hour standpoint, it's almost always "cheaper" to purchase from the Auction House. I know Deep Sea Sagefish (to make Severed Sagefish Heads) cost approximately half of the finished product. Pro Tip: You can also make these and sell for a decent amount of gold!
If you must buy pre-made flasks/pots, buy ONLY WHAT YOU NEED. Prices WILL come down soon, and you don't want to be the guy who invests 4,000g in flasks only to find out that the price dropped to half that in a month.
And of course, try not to die.
Friday, February 11, 2011
No WoW Post Today
No WoW Post today, sorry guys. I'm gearing up for the gym and heading to Boston for the weekend. Going to spend Valentine's Day Weekend with a special lady.
At any rate, heading for a bench PR today (been training inconsistently for about 2 months so it's only at 180 or so), and a squat PR (125 yes!). Everyone, Patellar Tendinitis sucks.
That's it, for now. Enjoy the weekend, I'll be back on Monday.
At any rate, heading for a bench PR today (been training inconsistently for about 2 months so it's only at 180 or so), and a squat PR (125 yes!). Everyone, Patellar Tendinitis sucks.
That's it, for now. Enjoy the weekend, I'll be back on Monday.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Leveling Alts...for Profit!
Sorry for the late post today, but here we go again.
Lately, I've been taking an interest in my alt, a level 34 hunter. I started him about a month ago, but I rarely play on this character. I have 3 heirloom pieces, the 10% guild bonus, and level extremely quickly, and I have 500g. 0 to 500g, no Auction House flipping, nothing other than doing quests. How?
1.) Don't buy items from the Auction House. Let's be honest; you'll be using that green belt for like, 5 levels max. Will you REALLY notice the improvement from an extra point of agility or intellect?
2.) Put EVERYTHING on the Auction House. Someone out there will buy it. Be smart when you're putting things up, though. The Auction House can easily be flooded by newbies selling [Easy Cooking Material 3] which higher leveled characters may be willing to pay 5g for, but the newbies will list it for 3s. I'll never forget it. I found Twisted Sabre on my warrior, my very first character. I said in Trade, "WTS [Twisted Sabre] PST!" Someone did, and I let it go for 2g. I found out about a week later that there were 3 in the Auction House for 50g.
3.) If it doesn't sell on the Auction House, be sure to check to see if it's worth it. A recent mistake I made was putting a pattern up on the Auction House, for 3s. The deposit was 1s. If I didn't sell it, there would be no point in re-listing it. If it sold the 2nd time, I'd break even. If it doesn't sell, then I start to lose money.
4.) Take 2 gathering professions. With the new tracking system, you'll be able to track both minerals and herbs at the same time. I took mining and skinning, because I play a Worgen; increased skinning skill and speed. If you take herbalism and mining, though, you'll be able to gain experience off of both; the downside of skinning is that you only get experience from the mob kill.
That's all for today, folks.
Lately, I've been taking an interest in my alt, a level 34 hunter. I started him about a month ago, but I rarely play on this character. I have 3 heirloom pieces, the 10% guild bonus, and level extremely quickly, and I have 500g. 0 to 500g, no Auction House flipping, nothing other than doing quests. How?
1.) Don't buy items from the Auction House. Let's be honest; you'll be using that green belt for like, 5 levels max. Will you REALLY notice the improvement from an extra point of agility or intellect?
2.) Put EVERYTHING on the Auction House. Someone out there will buy it. Be smart when you're putting things up, though. The Auction House can easily be flooded by newbies selling [Easy Cooking Material 3] which higher leveled characters may be willing to pay 5g for, but the newbies will list it for 3s. I'll never forget it. I found Twisted Sabre on my warrior, my very first character. I said in Trade, "WTS [Twisted Sabre] PST!" Someone did, and I let it go for 2g. I found out about a week later that there were 3 in the Auction House for 50g.
3.) If it doesn't sell on the Auction House, be sure to check to see if it's worth it. A recent mistake I made was putting a pattern up on the Auction House, for 3s. The deposit was 1s. If I didn't sell it, there would be no point in re-listing it. If it sold the 2nd time, I'd break even. If it doesn't sell, then I start to lose money.
4.) Take 2 gathering professions. With the new tracking system, you'll be able to track both minerals and herbs at the same time. I took mining and skinning, because I play a Worgen; increased skinning skill and speed. If you take herbalism and mining, though, you'll be able to gain experience off of both; the downside of skinning is that you only get experience from the mob kill.
That's all for today, folks.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
New JC Metas
Short post today, sorry, but I have a lot to do. Will do my blogroll later.
The new JC Meta gems are out on the market: Agile Shadowspirit, Reverberating Shadowspirit, and Burning Shadowspirit (Yes, still on WoWhead PTR). These are going to equal big gold for Jewelcrafters, or whomever gets them made.
The new gems are a big upgrade over the old 54 crit rating Chaotic Shadowspirit, judging by the fact that for my class/spec (elemental Shaman), Critical Strike Rating is about half as effective for me as straight up Intellect. I'm sure it's similar for others as well.
Don't bother trying to farm the recipes, though. They're BoE world drops, which means you just have to get "lucky." I'd recommend checking out the Auction House, although these patterns are very likely to go for upwards of 5,000g. It's like the new expansion all over again; a new item has just been introduced that is extremely helpful for raiders, and it is very rare. Supply and Demand, and all that.
Likewise, you could work out a deal with a Jewelcrafter; you supply the meta gems, and the JCer will cut the diamonds. You'll give him/her a set amount, and you sell the cut gems on the Auction House.
I've seen people offering to cut these gems for 1k. Yes, 1,000g JUST for them to click the button to make your gem. I'm all for tipping and charging for tradeskills, and I'm sure people are paying that 1,000g for the item to be made. Now is the time for profit!
The new JC Meta gems are out on the market: Agile Shadowspirit, Reverberating Shadowspirit, and Burning Shadowspirit (Yes, still on WoWhead PTR). These are going to equal big gold for Jewelcrafters, or whomever gets them made.
The new gems are a big upgrade over the old 54 crit rating Chaotic Shadowspirit, judging by the fact that for my class/spec (elemental Shaman), Critical Strike Rating is about half as effective for me as straight up Intellect. I'm sure it's similar for others as well.
Don't bother trying to farm the recipes, though. They're BoE world drops, which means you just have to get "lucky." I'd recommend checking out the Auction House, although these patterns are very likely to go for upwards of 5,000g. It's like the new expansion all over again; a new item has just been introduced that is extremely helpful for raiders, and it is very rare. Supply and Demand, and all that.
Likewise, you could work out a deal with a Jewelcrafter; you supply the meta gems, and the JCer will cut the diamonds. You'll give him/her a set amount, and you sell the cut gems on the Auction House.
I've seen people offering to cut these gems for 1k. Yes, 1,000g JUST for them to click the button to make your gem. I'm all for tipping and charging for tradeskills, and I'm sure people are paying that 1,000g for the item to be made. Now is the time for profit!
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Locking in your Bid, 4.0.6 Today
A great way to snag auctions at low prices is the little-used "bid" feature. 99.9% of the time, the bid price is lower than the buyout price. So, when should you use the "bid" instead of the "buyout," and when is it safe?
Right before maintenance! Auction timers continue even after the servers go down. So, what you do is scan the Auction House before a maintenance, and bid on anything you want that has less than 12 hours to go. The servers go down, your bid is in place, and there's nobody to oppose you!
Of course, there's still the chance that either 1.) someone will out-bid you before server maintenance happens, or 2.) the auction will still be there when the servers become live again, but your bid is essentially safe during the downtime.
MMO Champion has also confirmed that Patch 4.0.6 is today. Lots of exciting changes coming up.
The Chaotic and Relentless are requiring 3 red gems instead of more blue gems than red gems, which will lead to increased sales. I'm not sure why people are bothering, though, because the stats are going to be equivalent; remember reforging?
There are new Shadowspirit diamonds out, too, which will drive the price of raw materials up. Did you stock up on JC tokens?
Flask materials are down, which will drive the price down, and make them more affordable. This is good for us, too. You can craft more flasks for the same price, and more flasks crafted means more procs, and more procs is more profit!
That's all for today folks, enjoy 4.0.6 and hopefully rake in a few thousand extra gold this week.
Right before maintenance! Auction timers continue even after the servers go down. So, what you do is scan the Auction House before a maintenance, and bid on anything you want that has less than 12 hours to go. The servers go down, your bid is in place, and there's nobody to oppose you!
Of course, there's still the chance that either 1.) someone will out-bid you before server maintenance happens, or 2.) the auction will still be there when the servers become live again, but your bid is essentially safe during the downtime.
MMO Champion has also confirmed that Patch 4.0.6 is today. Lots of exciting changes coming up.
The Chaotic and Relentless are requiring 3 red gems instead of more blue gems than red gems, which will lead to increased sales. I'm not sure why people are bothering, though, because the stats are going to be equivalent; remember reforging?
There are new Shadowspirit diamonds out, too, which will drive the price of raw materials up. Did you stock up on JC tokens?
Flask materials are down, which will drive the price down, and make them more affordable. This is good for us, too. You can craft more flasks for the same price, and more flasks crafted means more procs, and more procs is more profit!
That's all for today folks, enjoy 4.0.6 and hopefully rake in a few thousand extra gold this week.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Jewelcrafting for Quick Gold after Prospecting
First off, sorry for not updating for a few days; I was out of town unexpectedly, but now I'm back in the saddle again!
Let's talk about a quick and easy topic for making gold today: Jewelcrafting. The new jewelry pieces are about the same as the old ones, if you did the saronite shuffle back in the day. You take a gem and a jeweler's setting (purchasable for 1.2g from the vendor at exalted), and turn it into a jewelry piece that vendors for 9g. Considering the cut gem vendors for 9g, you're not really making any headway here. The real trick is to disenchant said jewelry piece, and sell the dust on the Auction House.
Last I checked, Alicite goes for 8g on my Auction House. 16g for 2, plus the 1.2g for the setting, is 17.2g. Disenchanted, this gives us on average 2 Hypnotic Dusts, or 2 Lesser Celestial Essences. The dust is what we'll break even on, they sell for roughly 8.5g, or 17g for 2 on the Auction House. The Lesser Celestial Essences, however, go for about 14g each. Assuming 75% of the time we get dusts, and 25% of the time we get essences (lesser), this gives us 19g, or a profit of roughly 2g per craft, or 1g per Alicite, over what you would have sold it for on the Auction House raw. This is, of course, discounting the rare-quality jewelry piece which you could sell for 100g or more on the Auction House.
Don't forget that Carnelians are much more valuable, being able to be crafted into Carnelian Spikes and disenchanted for close to 100% profit. You could also take the disenchanting game one step further and use the dusts and essences to make scrolls, which generally sell for more on the Auction House than pure materials.
That's all for today, check in tomorrow and we'll talk about bid-locking during maintenance.
Let's talk about a quick and easy topic for making gold today: Jewelcrafting. The new jewelry pieces are about the same as the old ones, if you did the saronite shuffle back in the day. You take a gem and a jeweler's setting (purchasable for 1.2g from the vendor at exalted), and turn it into a jewelry piece that vendors for 9g. Considering the cut gem vendors for 9g, you're not really making any headway here. The real trick is to disenchant said jewelry piece, and sell the dust on the Auction House.
Last I checked, Alicite goes for 8g on my Auction House. 16g for 2, plus the 1.2g for the setting, is 17.2g. Disenchanted, this gives us on average 2 Hypnotic Dusts, or 2 Lesser Celestial Essences. The dust is what we'll break even on, they sell for roughly 8.5g, or 17g for 2 on the Auction House. The Lesser Celestial Essences, however, go for about 14g each. Assuming 75% of the time we get dusts, and 25% of the time we get essences (lesser), this gives us 19g, or a profit of roughly 2g per craft, or 1g per Alicite, over what you would have sold it for on the Auction House raw. This is, of course, discounting the rare-quality jewelry piece which you could sell for 100g or more on the Auction House.
Don't forget that Carnelians are much more valuable, being able to be crafted into Carnelian Spikes and disenchanted for close to 100% profit. You could also take the disenchanting game one step further and use the dusts and essences to make scrolls, which generally sell for more on the Auction House than pure materials.
That's all for today, check in tomorrow and we'll talk about bid-locking during maintenance.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
ZeroAuctions and You
Today, we're going to talk about one of my favorite addons, ZeroAuction. This auction is a followup to QuickAuction, an addon that was popular back in Wrath that mostly automated the actions of posting on the Auction House.
ZeroAuctions has a sharp learning curve, so I'm hoping this mini-guide will get you set up. First thing you need to do is get the addon, here on Curse.com. After installing it, type, "/za config" to bring up the menu screen. It'll look like this:
This is the general screen. I don't worry so much about this, I usually manually set the prices for things on the group screen, which we'll talk about later.
Here's an image of the "Item Groups" Screen. Here, you just make your group: type in a group name, and press the "Okay" button that will pop up next to the box. For now, let's name it "Blue Gems." I've already made my category, and a few others.
This is the main screen. You can see that I have a Blue Gems category, a "Blue Gems - Cheap" category (for gems that regularly only sell for 20-30g), a jewelry category for the rare items made by crafting the jewelry recipes, and a "Misc" section (yeah come at me bro) for miscellaneous items that I may need to list for a week straight to get a buyer. Sorry about the formatting there, but having it larger is necessary.
At any rate, let's talk about the sections here, because it looks ridiculous. The heading of each section has a sentence, and that sentence is describing what the addon will do in different situations. Since this is just a crash course, I'll go through the sections that really matter, and hopefully the rest will come as you pick it up (it's really not that complicated).
1.)Quantity - how many of an auction should be posted at a time. I enable my overrides, because I didn't set up my general tab and I like to put in individual quantities for each auction grouping. The same goes for other overrides. I have mine set at 3, with 1 per auction. This means that it will attempt to post 3 auctions of 1 item. Fairly straightforward.
2.) Price - How much it will be listed for.
Undercut: Make it a random, low number. I like 32s58c, it seems computer generated and will leave your competition thinking that you don't know what you're doing
Threshold: How low an auction can go before it won't list. I have my threshold at 40g, so if the cheapest auction is 35g, it won't list mine.
Price Gap: If there is a 1000% difference between the cheapest and 2nd cheapest, it will undercut the 2nd cheapest. This is to prevent people screwing with other people who only use Auctioneer, by listing 1 hypnotic dust for 30s and watching everyone else list theirs for 25s. If someone lists a gem for 1g when everyone else is listing theirs for 50g, ZA will undercut the 50g auction and leave the 1g auction alone.
3.)Fallbacks - What to set your auction for when there are none up
Override Auto Fallback: Again, I like to individually set the parameters of each group
Fallback: I have mine set at 200g. This is saying that if nobody has auctions up of Item X, then it will list Item X for 200g.
AutoFallback: If the price goes below my threshold, it will list at the fallback. This is usually bad, and I like to handle cases like this in a case-by-case manner. If 20 people are listing their gems at 39g, ZA will list mine at 200g, and I'll have wasted the deposit fee.
One last thing to talk about: the Add Items screen. This is straightforward: you click the item you want to add to the group. If you want to add all, say, glyphs, simply type "Glyph of" in the box and it'll add all the glyphs you have in your bag to the item group. To remove items click on the "Remove Items" tab (highlighted by my mouse) and it's the same interface, only you click the items you want to remove. You can only add or remove items in your inventory, not your bank or your alts. It will, however, save configurations across all your alts, so you don't need to set it up differently for each alt you have.
That's all for today, may your coffers be full and may your auctions never bounce back to your mailbox.
ZeroAuctions has a sharp learning curve, so I'm hoping this mini-guide will get you set up. First thing you need to do is get the addon, here on Curse.com. After installing it, type, "/za config" to bring up the menu screen. It'll look like this:
At any rate, let's talk about the sections here, because it looks ridiculous. The heading of each section has a sentence, and that sentence is describing what the addon will do in different situations. Since this is just a crash course, I'll go through the sections that really matter, and hopefully the rest will come as you pick it up (it's really not that complicated).
1.)Quantity - how many of an auction should be posted at a time. I enable my overrides, because I didn't set up my general tab and I like to put in individual quantities for each auction grouping. The same goes for other overrides. I have mine set at 3, with 1 per auction. This means that it will attempt to post 3 auctions of 1 item. Fairly straightforward.
2.) Price - How much it will be listed for.
Undercut: Make it a random, low number. I like 32s58c, it seems computer generated and will leave your competition thinking that you don't know what you're doing
Threshold: How low an auction can go before it won't list. I have my threshold at 40g, so if the cheapest auction is 35g, it won't list mine.
Price Gap: If there is a 1000% difference between the cheapest and 2nd cheapest, it will undercut the 2nd cheapest. This is to prevent people screwing with other people who only use Auctioneer, by listing 1 hypnotic dust for 30s and watching everyone else list theirs for 25s. If someone lists a gem for 1g when everyone else is listing theirs for 50g, ZA will undercut the 50g auction and leave the 1g auction alone.
3.)Fallbacks - What to set your auction for when there are none up
Override Auto Fallback: Again, I like to individually set the parameters of each group
Fallback: I have mine set at 200g. This is saying that if nobody has auctions up of Item X, then it will list Item X for 200g.
AutoFallback: If the price goes below my threshold, it will list at the fallback. This is usually bad, and I like to handle cases like this in a case-by-case manner. If 20 people are listing their gems at 39g, ZA will list mine at 200g, and I'll have wasted the deposit fee.
That's all for today, may your coffers be full and may your auctions never bounce back to your mailbox.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Whoo Day Off!
It's my day off! Actually, I just went back to grad school so I'm down to working 2 days a week. 2 more classes to go and I'll have my Master's!
On with the post. Buying from hacked people!
BUT WAIT ISN'T THAT HORRIBLE THEY GET HACKED AND LOSE EVERYTHING BLUHBLUHBLUH
Yeah it is bad that they got hacked, and yeah it is bad that they're losing their items, gear, etc. Where it's good is that we get good deals. Follow my logic here.
If you buy from a guy who is selling radios out of the back of his van, saying his "cousin's brother's nephew-in-law's warehouse didn't need them," chances are they're stolen, especially if he's selling them for $30 each when they're $100 new. You buy one, the police catch him, he turns you in, the police come to your house and take your radio. You're out $30 and a radio. This is real life. Do not attempt this at home (or on the city streets after 1AM).
If you buy from a guy who's hacked, selling gear because he's "quitting playing" for 30g when it's normally 100g, I BUY IT ALL. Every last item. Chances are, he's hacked, and the guy whom he is hacking is calling Blizzard to get his account back now. Time is of the essence, and they want a short quick sale. Blizzard is like the police in this case, too. Blizzard will get the account back, and put the guy in "jail" (I'm assuming they follow the gold trail and ban whomever gets the gold, but I don't know).
Where WoW differs from the real world (as opposed to, you know, EVERYTHING ELSE), is that Blizzard isn't just the police. Blizzard is also GOD. Blizzard looks at the character log, inventory, etc. from a day or two before the player got hacked, and puts everything back. Blizzard then sees that the person traded with you, and disregards it.
So you see, the player gets all their inventory back. The hacker gets banned (presumably), and you get a great deal on lots of items. It's a win/win! (okay, a win/win/lose)
On with the post. Buying from hacked people!
BUT WAIT ISN'T THAT HORRIBLE THEY GET HACKED AND LOSE EVERYTHING BLUHBLUHBLUH
Yeah it is bad that they got hacked, and yeah it is bad that they're losing their items, gear, etc. Where it's good is that we get good deals. Follow my logic here.
If you buy from a guy who is selling radios out of the back of his van, saying his "cousin's brother's nephew-in-law's warehouse didn't need them," chances are they're stolen, especially if he's selling them for $30 each when they're $100 new. You buy one, the police catch him, he turns you in, the police come to your house and take your radio. You're out $30 and a radio. This is real life. Do not attempt this at home (or on the city streets after 1AM).
If you buy from a guy who's hacked, selling gear because he's "quitting playing" for 30g when it's normally 100g, I BUY IT ALL. Every last item. Chances are, he's hacked, and the guy whom he is hacking is calling Blizzard to get his account back now. Time is of the essence, and they want a short quick sale. Blizzard is like the police in this case, too. Blizzard will get the account back, and put the guy in "jail" (I'm assuming they follow the gold trail and ban whomever gets the gold, but I don't know).
Where WoW differs from the real world (as opposed to, you know, EVERYTHING ELSE), is that Blizzard isn't just the police. Blizzard is also GOD. Blizzard looks at the character log, inventory, etc. from a day or two before the player got hacked, and puts everything back. Blizzard then sees that the person traded with you, and disregards it.
So you see, the player gets all their inventory back. The hacker gets banned (presumably), and you get a great deal on lots of items. It's a win/win! (okay, a win/win/lose)
Monday, January 31, 2011
Questing and Grinding for Gold
First, let me say I'm not an advocate for grinding, nor questing for gold. However, some people enjoy it. I like to optimize my time, whether I'm playing WoW, working or in the gym, and I just don't feel that it's a good use of time for me. To each their own, however, and I know people do it. Let's look at why:
1.) Instant gratification. You either get 13g/16g instantly plus a quest reward turning in quests, plus trash and silver drops.
2.) Materials and Uncommon items. Unless you're fighting mobs that don't drop loot, you'll more than likely come across massive amounts of cloth and Uncommon items to either Disenchant or sell as-is on the Auction House.
3.) Possibility to come across nodes. If you're a skinner, you may be able to skin the quest mobs/mobs you're grinding on. If you're a miner/herbalist, you could maybe find herbs or mineral nodes to harvest while you're questing or grinding. More profit.
This is all sounding good so far. Let's look at it a little deeper.
If you quested until 85, and did all the quests in all the zones (or at least most of them), without any instances or experience bonuses (heirloom pieces, guild perk, etc.), you probably hit 85 somewhere in the Twilight Highlands, assuming you started in Vashj'ir or Mount Hyjal (and didn't do the other starting zone). That's a lot of parentheses. Anyway, this leaves very little to do in the way of quests to make gold, however, you can do dailies! Hooray!
Wildhammer/Dragonmaw Clan has dailies in Twilight Highlands, Therazene has dailies in Deepholm, and Ramhaken has a couple quests. You won't get a ton of gold, but you'll get a little bit and faction rep (which is why people do these dailies anyway). So where's the money? Doing old quests.
WHAT but why would I do those, rewards are outdated and bluh bluh whatever. Let's be cereal for a minute here. Old quests (green quests) are easier to complete. Mobs have 13,000 hp as opposed to 70,000hp, and there's nobody there. So, what do? Go kill those guys. You'll be surprised to see that the silver drops aren't that much lower, but 1.) Nobody will be farming them, and 2.) You'll kill them a lot quicker. Not to mention, the rewards for each of the Ramhaken daily quests (aside from the reputation) is 10g. The reward from the Icecrown tournament dailies is 13g. Which wins? Yeah, I thought so.
In addition, there are 2 great spots in Icecrown to grind gold. See image:
The yellow part is where you should go for AoE farming: There are a lot of Converted Heroes here, for the daily and also for your grinding pleasure. Each one will drop roughly 20s, and they come in packs of 5-6. Mix that in with the grey items that vendor for around 1g each (on average), the cloth and greens, and you have yourself a nice little farming spot.
The red part is where you go for huge single-target damage. The Hidden Hollow, below Onslaught Harbor, houses elite level 80 mobs, who have in the vicinity of 20,000hp. Should be cake at level 85. They drop about a gold each, around 6 frostweave, and of course the usual assortment of Uncommon and vendor trash items. Onslaught Darkweaver is one, and I've forgotten the name of the melee mob that resides here as well. A half hour in the cave should net you at least 300g, if not more.
1.) Instant gratification. You either get 13g/16g instantly plus a quest reward turning in quests, plus trash and silver drops.
2.) Materials and Uncommon items. Unless you're fighting mobs that don't drop loot, you'll more than likely come across massive amounts of cloth and Uncommon items to either Disenchant or sell as-is on the Auction House.
3.) Possibility to come across nodes. If you're a skinner, you may be able to skin the quest mobs/mobs you're grinding on. If you're a miner/herbalist, you could maybe find herbs or mineral nodes to harvest while you're questing or grinding. More profit.
This is all sounding good so far. Let's look at it a little deeper.
If you quested until 85, and did all the quests in all the zones (or at least most of them), without any instances or experience bonuses (heirloom pieces, guild perk, etc.), you probably hit 85 somewhere in the Twilight Highlands, assuming you started in Vashj'ir or Mount Hyjal (and didn't do the other starting zone). That's a lot of parentheses. Anyway, this leaves very little to do in the way of quests to make gold, however, you can do dailies! Hooray!
Wildhammer/Dragonmaw Clan has dailies in Twilight Highlands, Therazene has dailies in Deepholm, and Ramhaken has a couple quests. You won't get a ton of gold, but you'll get a little bit and faction rep (which is why people do these dailies anyway). So where's the money? Doing old quests.
WHAT but why would I do those, rewards are outdated and bluh bluh whatever. Let's be cereal for a minute here. Old quests (green quests) are easier to complete. Mobs have 13,000 hp as opposed to 70,000hp, and there's nobody there. So, what do? Go kill those guys. You'll be surprised to see that the silver drops aren't that much lower, but 1.) Nobody will be farming them, and 2.) You'll kill them a lot quicker. Not to mention, the rewards for each of the Ramhaken daily quests (aside from the reputation) is 10g. The reward from the Icecrown tournament dailies is 13g. Which wins? Yeah, I thought so.
In addition, there are 2 great spots in Icecrown to grind gold. See image:
The yellow part is where you should go for AoE farming: There are a lot of Converted Heroes here, for the daily and also for your grinding pleasure. Each one will drop roughly 20s, and they come in packs of 5-6. Mix that in with the grey items that vendor for around 1g each (on average), the cloth and greens, and you have yourself a nice little farming spot.
The red part is where you go for huge single-target damage. The Hidden Hollow, below Onslaught Harbor, houses elite level 80 mobs, who have in the vicinity of 20,000hp. Should be cake at level 85. They drop about a gold each, around 6 frostweave, and of course the usual assortment of Uncommon and vendor trash items. Onslaught Darkweaver is one, and I've forgotten the name of the melee mob that resides here as well. A half hour in the cave should net you at least 300g, if not more.
Friday, January 28, 2011
How's Your Stock Going?
Again, I play on a low population server. This makes keeping my stock up somewhat hard sometimes. I just bought 5,000g worth of Elementium ore last night, about 60 stacks (between 80 and 90g each). I don't really use the Snatch feature of Auctioneer, although I should set one up. If you do use it, great! If not, you should really learn; it makes buying a ton easier.
This evens out, however, with my decreased output of gems and other materials. Having transferred to a new realm near the start of an expansion, it's been hard to get a lot of professions going on my new realm. I'm currently leveling a hunter who will be my tailor and either scribe or blacksmith and engineer; I know that Inscription outclasses Blacksmithing by a ton when we're talking efficacy of making gold, but I'm also toying with the idea of getting my warlock over to Suramar, who is both a scribe and a tailor, but I digress.
This being said, make sure that you search regularly for good deals, and don't neglect using your bank alt(s) and get a bank guild (or more than one). Altaholic is a great addon for this; it will show you what you have on each character and in each bank, so you won't have to log on and check it out.
Space is virtually limitless if you don't have a ton of characters you play (like on my new realm, there's 4 characters that I play somewhat regularly - my shaman, hunter, rogue and druid, this leaves 6 bank slot characters), so be sure to utilize it to snatch up any stock you can find. Prices are becoming somewhat more settled, so the deals you find today will most likely be good when you need the materials in a couple months. Don't be squeamish!
This evens out, however, with my decreased output of gems and other materials. Having transferred to a new realm near the start of an expansion, it's been hard to get a lot of professions going on my new realm. I'm currently leveling a hunter who will be my tailor and either scribe or blacksmith and engineer; I know that Inscription outclasses Blacksmithing by a ton when we're talking efficacy of making gold, but I'm also toying with the idea of getting my warlock over to Suramar, who is both a scribe and a tailor, but I digress.
This being said, make sure that you search regularly for good deals, and don't neglect using your bank alt(s) and get a bank guild (or more than one). Altaholic is a great addon for this; it will show you what you have on each character and in each bank, so you won't have to log on and check it out.
Space is virtually limitless if you don't have a ton of characters you play (like on my new realm, there's 4 characters that I play somewhat regularly - my shaman, hunter, rogue and druid, this leaves 6 bank slot characters), so be sure to utilize it to snatch up any stock you can find. Prices are becoming somewhat more settled, so the deals you find today will most likely be good when you need the materials in a couple months. Don't be squeamish!
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Selling Run-Throughs
I'm sure everyone's seen "WTB Run of XXX, 20g, PST!" Let's look at this.
You're running an instance which there's no doubt that you can destroy. There are benefits to this, and there are drawbacks.
First, the pros:
1.) It's easy to do. Each mob will hit you like a wet noodle, and you'll hit them like a freight truck. If you can't one-shot most of these mobs at level 85, there's something wrong with you.
2.) You have a loot-collector. Just set it on "Free For All," and set the loot threshold to Uncommon. This will allow you to pick up greens, and you'll also get the silver drops. 5s from each mob may not be much, but it'll add up.
3.) Chance at enchanting materials. If you're an enchanter (or can group with one), instead of rolling on those greens, use the disenchant option. You'll get materials which you can sell on the Auction House or use to make enchantments.
Now, for the cons:
1.) It's not much gold from the trash. I know this was included in the pros, but let's be honest; you'll probably make 5-10g from the trash, MAX, throughout the entire instance.
2.) You can only do it 5 times in one hour. I used to have my friend run me through Scarlet Monastery Cathedral. It took about 5 minutes, and after a half hour, I was locked out. This isn't something you can do over and over, unless it's Blackrock Depths or a similarly long instance where it would take you at least 15 mins each time to clear (and 15 minutes is a fairly long time when you move from trash mob to trash mob, one-shotting them.
3.) It's much easier for melee than it is for ranged/casters. Okay, so this isn't really a "Con" or "Pro" per se, but if you're a caster, it will be slightly harder for you.
So to sum it all up, we're left with a decent amount of pros and cons. I'd say run the person if s/he's friendly, and you're bored. There are much better ways of making gold out there, but keep in mind that Warcraft is not a job, it's a game (PLEASE keep this in mind). You have to do what's fun, and if you're not having fun canceling and re-posting on the Auction House, then find something that is fun.
You're running an instance which there's no doubt that you can destroy. There are benefits to this, and there are drawbacks.
First, the pros:
1.) It's easy to do. Each mob will hit you like a wet noodle, and you'll hit them like a freight truck. If you can't one-shot most of these mobs at level 85, there's something wrong with you.
2.) You have a loot-collector. Just set it on "Free For All," and set the loot threshold to Uncommon. This will allow you to pick up greens, and you'll also get the silver drops. 5s from each mob may not be much, but it'll add up.
3.) Chance at enchanting materials. If you're an enchanter (or can group with one), instead of rolling on those greens, use the disenchant option. You'll get materials which you can sell on the Auction House or use to make enchantments.
Now, for the cons:
1.) It's not much gold from the trash. I know this was included in the pros, but let's be honest; you'll probably make 5-10g from the trash, MAX, throughout the entire instance.
2.) You can only do it 5 times in one hour. I used to have my friend run me through Scarlet Monastery Cathedral. It took about 5 minutes, and after a half hour, I was locked out. This isn't something you can do over and over, unless it's Blackrock Depths or a similarly long instance where it would take you at least 15 mins each time to clear (and 15 minutes is a fairly long time when you move from trash mob to trash mob, one-shotting them.
3.) It's much easier for melee than it is for ranged/casters. Okay, so this isn't really a "Con" or "Pro" per se, but if you're a caster, it will be slightly harder for you.
So to sum it all up, we're left with a decent amount of pros and cons. I'd say run the person if s/he's friendly, and you're bored. There are much better ways of making gold out there, but keep in mind that Warcraft is not a job, it's a game (PLEASE keep this in mind). You have to do what's fun, and if you're not having fun canceling and re-posting on the Auction House, then find something that is fun.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Farming Old Content
Sorry for the late post, hectic day at work (again), and class afterwards. Anyway, ON WITH THE SHOW!
Old content: MC, BWL, etc. It's still there, it's super easy, and you can get it done quick. Why?
1.) BoE Epics. These won't sell for a lot, considering players are going to be constantly trying to level and get BETTER gear. However, they will drop a few hundred gold on them. Mostly look for DPS sets; BoE epics from level 60 content is usually more towards putting classes into neat little boxes - priests are healers, warriors are tanks, and so on. Rarely will you see a warrior try to dps in tank gear.
2.) Crafting mats. If you go to MC, some very popular items that will drop are:
Essence of Fire: One of the more common ones, and one of the major ingredients to Fiery Weapon, a non-level requirement enchant which is quite possibly the best one at that level.
Lava Core, which is used for reputation grinding for Thorium Brotherhood. If you're like me, you like having Exalted reputations, so there is a niche in this market, both on the buying and selling end (okay not technically a crafting material but whatever).
And of course all the regular mats, like the cloth. Uncommon items to sell on the Auction House or disenchant as well drop quite often.
3.) Cash drops. Magtheridon has a wealth of 500g. At level 85, you may need another person or two, but the whole instance should take less than 10 mins including travel time. That's 1002g per hour, approximately, discounting the epics that may very well vendor for upwards of 10-20g each.
There you have it. Now go nostalgia it up and clear some old content for fun and profit!
Old content: MC, BWL, etc. It's still there, it's super easy, and you can get it done quick. Why?
1.) BoE Epics. These won't sell for a lot, considering players are going to be constantly trying to level and get BETTER gear. However, they will drop a few hundred gold on them. Mostly look for DPS sets; BoE epics from level 60 content is usually more towards putting classes into neat little boxes - priests are healers, warriors are tanks, and so on. Rarely will you see a warrior try to dps in tank gear.
2.) Crafting mats. If you go to MC, some very popular items that will drop are:
Essence of Fire: One of the more common ones, and one of the major ingredients to Fiery Weapon, a non-level requirement enchant which is quite possibly the best one at that level.
Lava Core, which is used for reputation grinding for Thorium Brotherhood. If you're like me, you like having Exalted reputations, so there is a niche in this market, both on the buying and selling end (okay not technically a crafting material but whatever).
And of course all the regular mats, like the cloth. Uncommon items to sell on the Auction House or disenchant as well drop quite often.
3.) Cash drops. Magtheridon has a wealth of 500g. At level 85, you may need another person or two, but the whole instance should take less than 10 mins including travel time. That's 1002g per hour, approximately, discounting the epics that may very well vendor for upwards of 10-20g each.
There you have it. Now go nostalgia it up and clear some old content for fun and profit!
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Jewelcrafting Spreadsheet
Here is a spreadsheet made by "flyinfungi" of Elitist Jerks. It basically tells you if Obsidium, Elementium and Pyrite ores are worth purchasing at a given price. It's a little confusing at first look, so let's examine it.
First, you'll want to go to File --> Download As and then save it as whatever you want (most likely Excel or OpenOffice).
The first segment, "Profit per Proc," just tells us the projected gold we're going to earn from each Prospecting cast. 5% under and so forth indicate percentages of that number: 5% under tells us what the price is if we sold it for 95% of the "Profit per Proc," and so forth.
The next part, "Jems" [sic] is where you enter the market value of each gem. For the rare gems, you're going to want to enter the selling price of the CHEAPEST cut you have. Why? Because if you use the lowest common denominator, you'll only earn more than expected (which is good) as opposed to less than expected (which is bad).
Short tangent time: You purchase Widget A expecting to make Product B and C. B sells for $50, and C sells for $35. If you make your purchases based on the assumption you will sell only B, you will buy widgets for up to $40. Each B you sell, you make $10, but each C you sell, you lose $5. The more Cs you sell, the more money you lose.
Anyway, what you do is go to the Auction House and find the values for the gems. Then, input those values into the spreadsheet. You could do fancy stuff like calculating the cost if you turned the Carnelians into Carnelian Spikes (as referenced at the end of this post), and then disenchanted them, but let's stick to the basics.
After you input those values, the rest of the values will change. To make a long explanation short, the other part you need to worry about is the "Total per Stack." This value will tell you how much you're expected to earn per stack of whatever ore you purchase.
The rule of thumb when dealing with ores is as follows:
Obsidium - will always get 1 uncommon gem, sometimes 2. Rarely get a rare gem
Elementium - Always get 1 uncommon gem, sometimes 2. Often get a rare gem, sometimes 2.
Pyrite - Always get 1 uncommon gem, rarely 2. Often get a rare gem, sometimes 2. Always get a Volatile Earth, sometimes 2, rarely 3.
First, you'll want to go to File --> Download As and then save it as whatever you want (most likely Excel or OpenOffice).
The first segment, "Profit per Proc," just tells us the projected gold we're going to earn from each Prospecting cast. 5% under and so forth indicate percentages of that number: 5% under tells us what the price is if we sold it for 95% of the "Profit per Proc," and so forth.
The next part, "Jems" [sic] is where you enter the market value of each gem. For the rare gems, you're going to want to enter the selling price of the CHEAPEST cut you have. Why? Because if you use the lowest common denominator, you'll only earn more than expected (which is good) as opposed to less than expected (which is bad).
Short tangent time: You purchase Widget A expecting to make Product B and C. B sells for $50, and C sells for $35. If you make your purchases based on the assumption you will sell only B, you will buy widgets for up to $40. Each B you sell, you make $10, but each C you sell, you lose $5. The more Cs you sell, the more money you lose.
Anyway, what you do is go to the Auction House and find the values for the gems. Then, input those values into the spreadsheet. You could do fancy stuff like calculating the cost if you turned the Carnelians into Carnelian Spikes (as referenced at the end of this post), and then disenchanted them, but let's stick to the basics.
After you input those values, the rest of the values will change. To make a long explanation short, the other part you need to worry about is the "Total per Stack." This value will tell you how much you're expected to earn per stack of whatever ore you purchase.
The rule of thumb when dealing with ores is as follows:
Obsidium - will always get 1 uncommon gem, sometimes 2. Rarely get a rare gem
Elementium - Always get 1 uncommon gem, sometimes 2. Often get a rare gem, sometimes 2.
Pyrite - Always get 1 uncommon gem, rarely 2. Often get a rare gem, sometimes 2. Always get a Volatile Earth, sometimes 2, rarely 3.
Monday, January 24, 2011
It's Okay to have Bad Days Pt. 2
Part 1 is here.
So, let's say today you were all rested up from your "day off," and rearing to make fat stacks of gold. You do everything right, craft lots of things, buy things to flip on the Auction House, and your auctions just come back to the mailbox. Why is this?
Well, there are fast days, and there are slow days. Think of it as the regular economy; some days businesses earn money, some days they lose money. It's as simple as that. There are just some days where not a lot of players are playing, have the gold they need/want to buy an item, or just aren't getting gear to enchant/gem. What can you do to change this? Not a thing.
It's the unfortunate truth, but the best thing you can do is plan your schedule around the schedule of players. Look at where your server is located (No, not in Azeroth, in the real world). Mine is in California. which means that the majority of players on my server are from that area. This means a 3 hour time difference, where I'm 3 hours ahead of them. So when it's midnight on my end, it's 9 PM on their end. How can you use this to your advantage?
Well, auction timing is big. If you put up a 12 hour auction (which everyone should be using - any longer and you're sure to get undercut, so why waste the extra deposit fee for the extra 36 hours if you're just going to cancel and relist?), but you list it at 6 AM your time, it will expire at 6 PM your time, or it will be up from 3AM to 3PM on their end. This is bad. Why? Well, most people have school, which they need to attend. There is a higher concentration of players online after school/business hours, IE between 4PM and 11PM on any given day. Even on weekends, people don't wake up early to play a game - post your auctions around Noon.
What else can you do? Well, ask yourself, "Am I selling things people want to buy?" If you're selling crafted 12 slot mageweave bags, chances are you won't get many sold. If you're selling Imbued Netherweave bags (18 slots) for 80g, but the Frostweave 20 slot bags are going for 75g, chances are you won't sell anything either. If you bought all PvP gem cuts (Resilience and Stamina, Spell Penetration, etc.), you won't sell as many as if you bought PvE cuts (assuming you're not on a PvP heavy server). Knowing your market is key, but everyone always needs:
1.) Low to mid level crafting material
2.) Netherweave bags (Yes, Netherweave bags)
3.) The current ore
4.) PvE gems (higher turnover rate of gear, multiple sets, etc)
5.) Enchanting materials and scrolls
There you go, 5 items I guarantee will sell every time you list them.
So, let's say today you were all rested up from your "day off," and rearing to make fat stacks of gold. You do everything right, craft lots of things, buy things to flip on the Auction House, and your auctions just come back to the mailbox. Why is this?
Well, there are fast days, and there are slow days. Think of it as the regular economy; some days businesses earn money, some days they lose money. It's as simple as that. There are just some days where not a lot of players are playing, have the gold they need/want to buy an item, or just aren't getting gear to enchant/gem. What can you do to change this? Not a thing.
It's the unfortunate truth, but the best thing you can do is plan your schedule around the schedule of players. Look at where your server is located (No, not in Azeroth, in the real world). Mine is in California. which means that the majority of players on my server are from that area. This means a 3 hour time difference, where I'm 3 hours ahead of them. So when it's midnight on my end, it's 9 PM on their end. How can you use this to your advantage?
Well, auction timing is big. If you put up a 12 hour auction (which everyone should be using - any longer and you're sure to get undercut, so why waste the extra deposit fee for the extra 36 hours if you're just going to cancel and relist?), but you list it at 6 AM your time, it will expire at 6 PM your time, or it will be up from 3AM to 3PM on their end. This is bad. Why? Well, most people have school, which they need to attend. There is a higher concentration of players online after school/business hours, IE between 4PM and 11PM on any given day. Even on weekends, people don't wake up early to play a game - post your auctions around Noon.
What else can you do? Well, ask yourself, "Am I selling things people want to buy?" If you're selling crafted 12 slot mageweave bags, chances are you won't get many sold. If you're selling Imbued Netherweave bags (18 slots) for 80g, but the Frostweave 20 slot bags are going for 75g, chances are you won't sell anything either. If you bought all PvP gem cuts (Resilience and Stamina, Spell Penetration, etc.), you won't sell as many as if you bought PvE cuts (assuming you're not on a PvP heavy server). Knowing your market is key, but everyone always needs:
1.) Low to mid level crafting material
2.) Netherweave bags (Yes, Netherweave bags)
3.) The current ore
4.) PvE gems (higher turnover rate of gear, multiple sets, etc)
5.) Enchanting materials and scrolls
There you go, 5 items I guarantee will sell every time you list them.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
And now for Something Completely Different
I know that I usually post about WoW gold, and I also know that I don't usually post on weekends. BUT, I figured I should write about something that most of us who WoW suffer from: being overweight.
Yeah, it's not pretty, but there, I said it, it's out there. I lift M/W/F, I try to eat right, but most of us spend a lot of sedentary time in the chair. But it's cool, don't worry: losing weight is easy.
WHAT!?!?!? BUT ALL THE COMMERCIALS AND MOVIES AND TV SHOWS SAY IT'S HARD!!!
Yeah, of course they do. They want you to buy their product, and follow their diet plan, and lose weight. It's called marketing; the entire point of commercials. They want to make you think that you can't do it on your own, and that you need their help.
Well, where should we start? At the beginning is nice. Let's talk calories. To lose weight, calories in must be less than calories out. Yes, it's that simple. But how do you calculate calories?
My favorite formula is the Harris Benedict calculator. This one takes into factor your age, height, current weight, and activity level. It is as follows:
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) - ( 6.8 x age in year )
Women: BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) - ( 4.7 x age in years )
I took them from this site: BMR Formula. They also have the formula in kg and cm if you're looking for those units.
So, this calculates your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), or in other words, the calories you burn just doing nothing. Now, you need to multiply that by your activity rate:
(From the same website linked above):
If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2
If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375
If you are moderatetely active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55
If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.725
If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.9
You have to use your own judgment here. I fall in the moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days a week category, so I multiply by BMR by 1.55.
I'm 6', so that's 72". I weigh 200lbs, and I'm 24. SO, my formula looks like this:
66 + (6.23x200) + (12.7x72) - (6.8x24)
66 + 1246 + 914.4 - 163.2 = 2063.2
2063.2*1.55 = about 3200. This is the amount of calories I need to eat per day in order to maintain my weight. If you want to gain, eat more. If you want to lose weight, eat less.
Yes folks, it's that simple (for the most part). You could do cardio, but it's all about the foods you eat.
Yeah, it's not pretty, but there, I said it, it's out there. I lift M/W/F, I try to eat right, but most of us spend a lot of sedentary time in the chair. But it's cool, don't worry: losing weight is easy.
WHAT!?!?!? BUT ALL THE COMMERCIALS AND MOVIES AND TV SHOWS SAY IT'S HARD!!!
Yeah, of course they do. They want you to buy their product, and follow their diet plan, and lose weight. It's called marketing; the entire point of commercials. They want to make you think that you can't do it on your own, and that you need their help.
Well, where should we start? At the beginning is nice. Let's talk calories. To lose weight, calories in must be less than calories out. Yes, it's that simple. But how do you calculate calories?
My favorite formula is the Harris Benedict calculator. This one takes into factor your age, height, current weight, and activity level. It is as follows:
Men: BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) - ( 6.8 x age in year )
Women: BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) - ( 4.7 x age in years )
I took them from this site: BMR Formula. They also have the formula in kg and cm if you're looking for those units.
So, this calculates your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), or in other words, the calories you burn just doing nothing. Now, you need to multiply that by your activity rate:
(From the same website linked above):
If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2
If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375
If you are moderatetely active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55
If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.725
If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or 2x training) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.9
You have to use your own judgment here. I fall in the moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days a week category, so I multiply by BMR by 1.55.
I'm 6', so that's 72". I weigh 200lbs, and I'm 24. SO, my formula looks like this:
66 + (6.23x200) + (12.7x72) - (6.8x24)
66 + 1246 + 914.4 - 163.2 = 2063.2
2063.2*1.55 = about 3200. This is the amount of calories I need to eat per day in order to maintain my weight. If you want to gain, eat more. If you want to lose weight, eat less.
Yes folks, it's that simple (for the most part). You could do cardio, but it's all about the foods you eat.
Friday, January 21, 2011
It's Okay to have Bad Days
First, a big LOL at Google, saying that I don't have original and interesting content in my blog. I wasn't aware they were anti-WoW =D I received an e-mail saying my blog was suspended requiring further action. I couldn't understand why, but then I read the part where it said "Blogs must have original and interesting content." Either they're saying I'm a hack (which is entirely possible) or boring.
And now, on with the show!
Yesterday, I made 0 gold. Zip. Zero. Nada. Why? I just didn't feel like it. Every day we have days where we just want to do something different. I spent my WoW time yesterday PvP'ing, and I ran a few heroics. It was fun and interesting (unlike my blog according to Google, apparently), and it got me refreshed. It was kind of like a cheat meal; it restarted my metabolism to the point where I'm ready and rearing to go today.
This is the great thing about WoW; it's a game. If you were the owner of your local Subway (or however franchising works), you'd lose business and customers would be really disappointed if you just said, "You know, I really don't feel like going in today," and just didn't open the store. In WoW, you're the owner, but your customers will continue to buy from you even if you take a day, week, or even a month off.
The moral of the story is, you need to avoid burnout. 10k in a day, then 0 for the rest of the week is a lot worse than 3k per day.
There's my post, now it's time to gosteal boring ideas think up more original interesting content for tomorrow!
And now, on with the show!
Yesterday, I made 0 gold. Zip. Zero. Nada. Why? I just didn't feel like it. Every day we have days where we just want to do something different. I spent my WoW time yesterday PvP'ing, and I ran a few heroics. It was fun and interesting (unlike my blog according to Google, apparently), and it got me refreshed. It was kind of like a cheat meal; it restarted my metabolism to the point where I'm ready and rearing to go today.
This is the great thing about WoW; it's a game. If you were the owner of your local Subway (or however franchising works), you'd lose business and customers would be really disappointed if you just said, "You know, I really don't feel like going in today," and just didn't open the store. In WoW, you're the owner, but your customers will continue to buy from you even if you take a day, week, or even a month off.
The moral of the story is, you need to avoid burnout. 10k in a day, then 0 for the rest of the week is a lot worse than 3k per day.
There's my post, now it's time to go
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Maelstrom Crystal Generator hotfixed, Mysterious Fortune Cards
So, for awhile Alchemists/Enchanters have had a pretty easy racket going on with making Alchemist stones and DE'ing them for the Maelstrom crystal. However, Blizzard changed this so that the level 85 Alchemy stones are no longer disenchantable. Oh well, it was good while it lasted.
In any event, let's talk about the Mysterious Fortune cards. A little late for me to be bringing it up, but oh well.
First of all, this is the card in question. Made from Inscription profession, requiring 450 skill points. It's basically like the lottery: flip it over and you could get a card worth anywhere from 1s to 5,000g (when you sell to a vendor). Note that the materials are 1 Blackfallow Ink, and 1 Resilient Parchment. Take the price of a stack of Cataclysm herbs, divide by 4, and you have roughly the price of 1 MFC. Depending on your realm, that's anywhere from 5-10g, most likely. Let's now bring them to the Auction House, and list them for anywhere between 20g and 50g. Yeah, they'll sell. Not only is this a great way to make gold, it's also a great way to level your profession.
The reason is because people who play WoW a lot usually have an addictive personality. WoW is addictive. Gambling is addictive. Gambling in WoW? Yep. There's a chance to get a 5,000g vendor card, and people will go crazy for that. Of course, the chance is very low, but you might get "lucky"!
At any rate, the key to this market (as with any other RP/non-useful item) is advertising. I'm not talking about taking out a billboard ad in Stormwind or Undercity, just post in Trade chat,
"WTS [Mysterious Fortune Card]! Are you lucky enough to get the 5,000g Grand Prize? Now on the AH for XXg each!"
Another tactic I've found that works is limiting your supply at one price, and have the others posted from an alt for about 2-3g more. Maybe post 10 cards at 20g, for example, and then another 10 at 23g. The reasoning here is that people will buy your main's out quickly, and then realize that there's a few for just A TINY LITTLE BIT MORE. More often than not, they'll buy those too. I know I do when I'm buying ores or anything in bulk; if my cutoff is 80g/stack, I really mean 83g/stack because it's worth the extra 3g for me to be in production and have lower profits, rather than not be in production and have no profits.
As always if you have any comments, questions, hatemail or death threats, please leave a comment and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
In any event, let's talk about the Mysterious Fortune cards. A little late for me to be bringing it up, but oh well.
First of all, this is the card in question. Made from Inscription profession, requiring 450 skill points. It's basically like the lottery: flip it over and you could get a card worth anywhere from 1s to 5,000g (when you sell to a vendor). Note that the materials are 1 Blackfallow Ink, and 1 Resilient Parchment. Take the price of a stack of Cataclysm herbs, divide by 4, and you have roughly the price of 1 MFC. Depending on your realm, that's anywhere from 5-10g, most likely. Let's now bring them to the Auction House, and list them for anywhere between 20g and 50g. Yeah, they'll sell. Not only is this a great way to make gold, it's also a great way to level your profession.
The reason is because people who play WoW a lot usually have an addictive personality. WoW is addictive. Gambling is addictive. Gambling in WoW? Yep. There's a chance to get a 5,000g vendor card, and people will go crazy for that. Of course, the chance is very low, but you might get "lucky"!
At any rate, the key to this market (as with any other RP/non-useful item) is advertising. I'm not talking about taking out a billboard ad in Stormwind or Undercity, just post in Trade chat,
"WTS [Mysterious Fortune Card]! Are you lucky enough to get the 5,000g Grand Prize? Now on the AH for XXg each!"
Another tactic I've found that works is limiting your supply at one price, and have the others posted from an alt for about 2-3g more. Maybe post 10 cards at 20g, for example, and then another 10 at 23g. The reasoning here is that people will buy your main's out quickly, and then realize that there's a few for just A TINY LITTLE BIT MORE. More often than not, they'll buy those too. I know I do when I'm buying ores or anything in bulk; if my cutoff is 80g/stack, I really mean 83g/stack because it's worth the extra 3g for me to be in production and have lower profits, rather than not be in production and have no profits.
As always if you have any comments, questions, hatemail or death threats, please leave a comment and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
When to be aggressive in a new market
This is another hypothesis post, so here goes. When should you be aggressive?
Let's look at the big consumable markets: Potions, Flasks, Gems and food. Everyone always needs these for raiding.
If I listed flasks a month ago, would they sell? Probably not. Why? People aren't raiding yet. If I listed rare quality gems a month ago, would they sell? Probably not! Why? Again, people aren't raiding, and aren't getting new gear.
Now is a great time for these markets; people are always getting new gear, wiping on raids, and downing bosses (although not necessarily in that order). Prime time to capitalize.
Say a raid goes to fight Magmaw, and spends 3 hours on that boss. They average 5 attempts per hour, which is 15 per night. They get it down on the last attempt. Let's break it down:
25 man - 15 attempts: 25 X 15 = 375 food pieces they require. 75 flasks, 375 potions (assuming everyone uses a potion every fight, like they should), and maybe 12 gems required.
375 food
375 potions
75 flasks
12 gems
Add it all up and you have major profits. Of course, not everyone will buy from you, but THIS is the EXACT reason why raid nights are so profitable. GO FORTH AND EXPLOIT.
Note: leg armors/spellthreads are consumables that get replaced often as well, but they're only on one piece of gear. Ergo, they get replaced about 1/10th as often as you regem something.
Let's look at the big consumable markets: Potions, Flasks, Gems and food. Everyone always needs these for raiding.
If I listed flasks a month ago, would they sell? Probably not. Why? People aren't raiding yet. If I listed rare quality gems a month ago, would they sell? Probably not! Why? Again, people aren't raiding, and aren't getting new gear.
Now is a great time for these markets; people are always getting new gear, wiping on raids, and downing bosses (although not necessarily in that order). Prime time to capitalize.
Say a raid goes to fight Magmaw, and spends 3 hours on that boss. They average 5 attempts per hour, which is 15 per night. They get it down on the last attempt. Let's break it down:
25 man - 15 attempts: 25 X 15 = 375 food pieces they require. 75 flasks, 375 potions (assuming everyone uses a potion every fight, like they should), and maybe 12 gems required.
375 food
375 potions
75 flasks
12 gems
Add it all up and you have major profits. Of course, not everyone will buy from you, but THIS is the EXACT reason why raid nights are so profitable. GO FORTH AND EXPLOIT.
Note: leg armors/spellthreads are consumables that get replaced often as well, but they're only on one piece of gear. Ergo, they get replaced about 1/10th as often as you regem something.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
First Foray into the Blogging Community
Seems to have gone well! Spread my blog around, and 41 followers within the first day. Found a lot of great blogs, subscribed to those too. I have a feeling this is going to be a good community.
The reason why I just started putting it out there is because I wanted to have a good amount of back information, before I said "Hey, here's a new blog, I know what I'm talking about I promise!" I wanted readers to check out some of my other ideas, and hopefully realize I'm not full of garbage and stick around for awhile.
On to today's post: risky investments.
We all know that if you buy items for less than the vendor value, you're guaranteed to make SOME sort of profit. It may only be a few silver, but you'll profit nonetheless. If you buy things that you can craft and sell the finished goods, you'll make a bit more profit, BUT there's always the chance that the item won't sell. Let's look at the riskiest of all markets: epic flipping.
Epic quality items sell for a lot: anywhere between 6,000g and 22,000g. Sure they're worth a lot, but the task is finding someone to purchase them. I've seen a lot of people buying cheap epic items, and trying to resell them (usually in trade, /WTS [Gloves of Epic PWN] 12,000g!). This is great and all, but this is a different type of investment; one with depreciation.
You want to hold on to the epic for as little time as possible: the epic item isn't like any other item at Wal-Mart, where it will stay fresh and won't expire. The epic items are more akin to cars; each year, they lose a little value. Why is this? New car models come out. Likewise, more players start raiding, and start getting the gear from raids. When more people are getting gear from raids, they're less likely to shell out the gold for an item which may be replaced in a week.
Put yourself in their situation: Would you rather spend 12,000g on an item that's 13iLvls higher than your current, or would you rather raid the instance, and have a chance at getting the item for free? Free is always better, and I'm willing to bet that a lot of players would opt for the latter option.
Here's a quick hypothesis (let's remember the scientific process for proving fact here - I have no data on the subject, nor do I intend to collect any), players purchase epics most on Wednesdays or Thursdays. Why? Here's my reasoning: the raid just ended on Tuesday or Wednesday night. The player is disappointed that s/he didn't get the item, and is now feeling bad that they have to wait a full week for another CHANCE at the item. Then, along comes someone in trade chat, looking to sell the very item the player wants. Later in the week, the player may think, "Well, it's just a couple more days until Tuesday maintenance and reset, I think I can wait," and in addition, most later days in the week are progression nights. Guilds will most likely want to progress, and better gear helps this happen.
Cliffs:
-Epic flipping is high risk/high reward
-Epics lose value quickly compared to other items in the game
-My hypothesis: Epics will sell best on Wednesdays or Thursdays.
The reason why I just started putting it out there is because I wanted to have a good amount of back information, before I said "Hey, here's a new blog, I know what I'm talking about I promise!" I wanted readers to check out some of my other ideas, and hopefully realize I'm not full of garbage and stick around for awhile.
On to today's post: risky investments.
We all know that if you buy items for less than the vendor value, you're guaranteed to make SOME sort of profit. It may only be a few silver, but you'll profit nonetheless. If you buy things that you can craft and sell the finished goods, you'll make a bit more profit, BUT there's always the chance that the item won't sell. Let's look at the riskiest of all markets: epic flipping.
Epic quality items sell for a lot: anywhere between 6,000g and 22,000g. Sure they're worth a lot, but the task is finding someone to purchase them. I've seen a lot of people buying cheap epic items, and trying to resell them (usually in trade, /WTS [Gloves of Epic PWN] 12,000g!). This is great and all, but this is a different type of investment; one with depreciation.
You want to hold on to the epic for as little time as possible: the epic item isn't like any other item at Wal-Mart, where it will stay fresh and won't expire. The epic items are more akin to cars; each year, they lose a little value. Why is this? New car models come out. Likewise, more players start raiding, and start getting the gear from raids. When more people are getting gear from raids, they're less likely to shell out the gold for an item which may be replaced in a week.
Put yourself in their situation: Would you rather spend 12,000g on an item that's 13iLvls higher than your current, or would you rather raid the instance, and have a chance at getting the item for free? Free is always better, and I'm willing to bet that a lot of players would opt for the latter option.
Here's a quick hypothesis (let's remember the scientific process for proving fact here - I have no data on the subject, nor do I intend to collect any), players purchase epics most on Wednesdays or Thursdays. Why? Here's my reasoning: the raid just ended on Tuesday or Wednesday night. The player is disappointed that s/he didn't get the item, and is now feeling bad that they have to wait a full week for another CHANCE at the item. Then, along comes someone in trade chat, looking to sell the very item the player wants. Later in the week, the player may think, "Well, it's just a couple more days until Tuesday maintenance and reset, I think I can wait," and in addition, most later days in the week are progression nights. Guilds will most likely want to progress, and better gear helps this happen.
Cliffs:
-Epic flipping is high risk/high reward
-Epics lose value quickly compared to other items in the game
-My hypothesis: Epics will sell best on Wednesdays or Thursdays.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Are you gold capped yet? If not, why not?
Okay, so everyone likes to buy gear, mounts, pets, etc. Let's look at this as revenue out.
We all like to make gold, too (why you're here, reading this blog). Let's look at this as revenue in.
So, if revenue in is greater than revenue out, we have profit. Profit is good. If revenue out is more than revenue in, this is called a loss. Loss is bad. I know this is a "duh" thing, but raiders still stand in the fire, PvPers still fight on the roads (as opposed to on the flag, I'm sure we've all seen/been that armchair General who announces it), and we still have WoWBankers who are less than gold-capped.
I'm not saying that you need to have a static 214k on you at all times, I'm saying that just because you know how to MAKE gold, doesn't mean you know how to be WoW wealthy. How do the rich stay rich? By not going out every night and blowing $5,000 on booze and drugs. Or buying a new $4,000 TV every day, whatever.
A good add-on program I used was Gold_FuBar. I'm usually not an add-on guy (anymore, at least), but this was one of my favorites. It showed me gold coming in, gold going out, and helped me find out if my investments were profitable. It could show me all the gold I have to my name, on all my characters, and it would even track what I spend and make.
Another helpful add-on to keep track of what you have is the Beancounter tab on Auctioneer. To be honest, I'm not as huge into min/maxing my gold output as I could be. When cutting rare gems, I put them on the AH for the lowest price (they're 100% profit for me, usually, after I sell the uncommon quality gems). When they inevitably come back to my mailbox, I re-list. If I see them coming back 10-12 days in a row, I know it's not a good gem to continue cutting; I'll usually reduce my # cut to 1, and then eliminate if it's still not selling (and I'm not being undercut). But I digress; you can use the Beancounter tab to see what you've sold, what you've bought, and what you've put on the Auction House that hasn't sold. You can use this data to analyze what is selling and what you're spending too much on listing fees for.
Let's say you bought 10 stacks of elementium ore for 90g, but then 5 days later you say, "Hmm, I wonder what I bought those for." Just open up your handy-dandy Beancounter tab, and you can find out immediately. You can also find what you sold by looking at the raw materials, and then either do the math to see if you made a profit, or just mouse-over the Fu_Gold tab to see if your net gain was positive. Handy!
Cliffs:
-Making gold doesn't mean you're rich
-Fu_Gold and Beancounter can help track how much you've made and spent.
We all like to make gold, too (why you're here, reading this blog). Let's look at this as revenue in.
So, if revenue in is greater than revenue out, we have profit. Profit is good. If revenue out is more than revenue in, this is called a loss. Loss is bad. I know this is a "duh" thing, but raiders still stand in the fire, PvPers still fight on the roads (as opposed to on the flag, I'm sure we've all seen/been that armchair General who announces it), and we still have WoWBankers who are less than gold-capped.
I'm not saying that you need to have a static 214k on you at all times, I'm saying that just because you know how to MAKE gold, doesn't mean you know how to be WoW wealthy. How do the rich stay rich? By not going out every night and blowing $5,000 on booze and drugs. Or buying a new $4,000 TV every day, whatever.
A good add-on program I used was Gold_FuBar. I'm usually not an add-on guy (anymore, at least), but this was one of my favorites. It showed me gold coming in, gold going out, and helped me find out if my investments were profitable. It could show me all the gold I have to my name, on all my characters, and it would even track what I spend and make.
Another helpful add-on to keep track of what you have is the Beancounter tab on Auctioneer. To be honest, I'm not as huge into min/maxing my gold output as I could be. When cutting rare gems, I put them on the AH for the lowest price (they're 100% profit for me, usually, after I sell the uncommon quality gems). When they inevitably come back to my mailbox, I re-list. If I see them coming back 10-12 days in a row, I know it's not a good gem to continue cutting; I'll usually reduce my # cut to 1, and then eliminate if it's still not selling (and I'm not being undercut). But I digress; you can use the Beancounter tab to see what you've sold, what you've bought, and what you've put on the Auction House that hasn't sold. You can use this data to analyze what is selling and what you're spending too much on listing fees for.
Let's say you bought 10 stacks of elementium ore for 90g, but then 5 days later you say, "Hmm, I wonder what I bought those for." Just open up your handy-dandy Beancounter tab, and you can find out immediately. You can also find what you sold by looking at the raw materials, and then either do the math to see if you made a profit, or just mouse-over the Fu_Gold tab to see if your net gain was positive. Handy!
Cliffs:
-Making gold doesn't mean you're rich
-Fu_Gold and Beancounter can help track how much you've made and spent.
Friday, January 14, 2011
How to Thrive on a Low Population Server
First, I apologize for the tardiness of today’s update: unforeseen circumstances have led to the delay in the posting. At any rate, here we go: How to thrive on a low population server.
I originated from Detheroc, a medium population, pvp-heavy server. I then migrated to Thorium Brotherhood, a low population, RP server. From there, I made the move to Suramar, also a low population server.
When you have lots of customers, making gold is easy. You can sell most anything, relist a lot, and generally the more customers you have, the more you’ll sell at any given time. Selling on a low population server is more tricky.
First, you need to identify your market, and your major players. Here’s how: start a character on any realm, and run to the Auction House. Search “Glyph of” (or whatever your desired market is), and sort by “Name” under the Auction pane. This will list all of the glyphs, sorted by name (it will also get rid of items like “Glyphed Helm of Terribad,” etc. If you see 2 glyphs posted by one person, then chances are that person isn’t a major player. If you see 5 pages of glyphs posted by “Undercutter,” or “WoWbankzorz,” then the chances are that this person is a major force in the market: using a bank alt to mask his/her real identity, and having a major presence filling lots of needs (not just selling rogue glyphs, or prime glyphs for example). There’s a good side and bad side to this on a Low pop server: first, you’ll have one or two (if any) competitor(s), but there’s less business to go around. Second, you will get to know these people, but the downside here is that relations can take a turn for the worse.
To start, add this person to your friends list. You don’t need to contact them, just know when they’re online. A great time to post is immediately after they sign off. A bad time to post is right when they sign on; chances are that if they have a character whose sole purpose is to scan the AH and undercut you, that’s what they’ll be doing minutes after they log on (I usually check my mail, survey my bank/guild bank, look over the Auction House, and THEN post depending on what materials I have).
So we’ve covered competition, what else can you do? Well, advertise in the Trade channel. It’s there for a reason, although that reason has been migrating towards more Chuck Norris and other “jokes”. When it’s the JC daily to cut gems, I usually post, “/2 WTS [gem]x3 for the JC daily, XXXg! Right by the questgiver.” People are lazy, and I usually sell between 9 and 15 gems this way. I make the price slightly less than the Auction House value, which also entices them (though it’s gold I’d lose on the Auction House cut anyway).
How about getting materials? The fewer people there are, the fewer people farming, and the fewer people undercutting to get their gold. This leads to higher prices all around. So where do you go?
Ever hear of Chinese Farmers? While the term is slightly racist, the majority of the people who do this are Chinese (which is where it originates from). This terms stands for anybody whose job it is to play World of Warcraft and earn gold to sell online. These people have a quota to reach, be it per day or per week, but in order to keep their jobs, they must reach a certain amount of gold earned. More often than not, they’ll sell things at a fraction of a price. Find one, add them to your friends list, and use basic English. Most have a basic grasp of the language, and if you say, “Hi, I’ll buy XXX” then they’ll understand. They sell a lot at a time, for a low price - Elementium Ore frequently reaches 90g on the Auction House, but I purchase mine from a “Chinese Farmer” for around 60g. S/he knows that I’m always buying, and if you buy EVERYTHING even if it’s not a great deal, they’ll remember you, and whisper you first. Another alternative is to find a regular farmer, and say “I’ll always buy XXX from you, just CoD it to me if I’m not online, let’s work out a price.” Most people would rather take the guaranteed gold, than chance getting a lower price (if even selling it) on the Auction House.
As far as selling materials and crafted goods goes, well, you can’t force people to buy. You can offer discounts for bulk, sell for less, etc. but you can’t make them give you gold. You just have to be vigilant to have the lowest prices that you can still make a profit on (remember, opportunity cost, those herbs you farmed weren’t free!), and I guarantee you’ll come out on top.
Cliffs:
-Find the major players in a market, keep track of them
-Try selling in trade, and/or making it convenient for the players
-Find a “Chinese Farmer,” or a regular farmer to augment your materials supply.
-Offer the best prices, and you’ll get the sale, not the other guy
I originated from Detheroc, a medium population, pvp-heavy server. I then migrated to Thorium Brotherhood, a low population, RP server. From there, I made the move to Suramar, also a low population server.
When you have lots of customers, making gold is easy. You can sell most anything, relist a lot, and generally the more customers you have, the more you’ll sell at any given time. Selling on a low population server is more tricky.
First, you need to identify your market, and your major players. Here’s how: start a character on any realm, and run to the Auction House. Search “Glyph of” (or whatever your desired market is), and sort by “Name” under the Auction pane. This will list all of the glyphs, sorted by name (it will also get rid of items like “Glyphed Helm of Terribad,” etc. If you see 2 glyphs posted by one person, then chances are that person isn’t a major player. If you see 5 pages of glyphs posted by “Undercutter,” or “WoWbankzorz,” then the chances are that this person is a major force in the market: using a bank alt to mask his/her real identity, and having a major presence filling lots of needs (not just selling rogue glyphs, or prime glyphs for example). There’s a good side and bad side to this on a Low pop server: first, you’ll have one or two (if any) competitor(s), but there’s less business to go around. Second, you will get to know these people, but the downside here is that relations can take a turn for the worse.
To start, add this person to your friends list. You don’t need to contact them, just know when they’re online. A great time to post is immediately after they sign off. A bad time to post is right when they sign on; chances are that if they have a character whose sole purpose is to scan the AH and undercut you, that’s what they’ll be doing minutes after they log on (I usually check my mail, survey my bank/guild bank, look over the Auction House, and THEN post depending on what materials I have).
So we’ve covered competition, what else can you do? Well, advertise in the Trade channel. It’s there for a reason, although that reason has been migrating towards more Chuck Norris and other “jokes”. When it’s the JC daily to cut gems, I usually post, “/2 WTS [gem]x3 for the JC daily, XXXg! Right by the questgiver.” People are lazy, and I usually sell between 9 and 15 gems this way. I make the price slightly less than the Auction House value, which also entices them (though it’s gold I’d lose on the Auction House cut anyway).
How about getting materials? The fewer people there are, the fewer people farming, and the fewer people undercutting to get their gold. This leads to higher prices all around. So where do you go?
Ever hear of Chinese Farmers? While the term is slightly racist, the majority of the people who do this are Chinese (which is where it originates from). This terms stands for anybody whose job it is to play World of Warcraft and earn gold to sell online. These people have a quota to reach, be it per day or per week, but in order to keep their jobs, they must reach a certain amount of gold earned. More often than not, they’ll sell things at a fraction of a price. Find one, add them to your friends list, and use basic English. Most have a basic grasp of the language, and if you say, “Hi, I’ll buy XXX” then they’ll understand. They sell a lot at a time, for a low price - Elementium Ore frequently reaches 90g on the Auction House, but I purchase mine from a “Chinese Farmer” for around 60g. S/he knows that I’m always buying, and if you buy EVERYTHING even if it’s not a great deal, they’ll remember you, and whisper you first. Another alternative is to find a regular farmer, and say “I’ll always buy XXX from you, just CoD it to me if I’m not online, let’s work out a price.” Most people would rather take the guaranteed gold, than chance getting a lower price (if even selling it) on the Auction House.
As far as selling materials and crafted goods goes, well, you can’t force people to buy. You can offer discounts for bulk, sell for less, etc. but you can’t make them give you gold. You just have to be vigilant to have the lowest prices that you can still make a profit on (remember, opportunity cost, those herbs you farmed weren’t free!), and I guarantee you’ll come out on top.
Cliffs:
-Find the major players in a market, keep track of them
-Try selling in trade, and/or making it convenient for the players
-Find a “Chinese Farmer,” or a regular farmer to augment your materials supply.
-Offer the best prices, and you’ll get the sale, not the other guy
Thursday, January 13, 2011
What to do With All Your Hard-Earned Gold
I've just recently brought another one of my characters to gold-capped status, which leaves me the question: What to do now?
Well, I legitimately enjoy making gold in WoW, so of course I'm going to keep it up (although probably at a slower pace), but what's the point of having the gold if you're not going to spend it?
Gearing up your alts and mains is a good way to start. Most BoEs from the new raids, and crafted epics, are available for around 10-15k (with the belts being less, around 6k). Gems, enchants, and leg padding/spellthreads are another good source to improve your character. Pets, mounts, novelty items, whatever you can imagine can be purchased with your seemingly-infinite wealth.
I'm a mount collector myself, although I haven't been doing much collecting as of late. I'm at 93 mounts, currently, and unfortunately I don't have access to the Goblin Trikes as I'm Alliance side. So, in lieu of the non-existent Gilneas mounts, I'm purchasing a Vial of the Sands, for both myself and the crafter (as a sort of "tip").
I gear up my friends, give gold away for epic flying, and hold contests! I post in trade "First person to successfully guess my middle name, starting with a 'J,' wins 1,000g!" How do you spend your excess?
Well, I legitimately enjoy making gold in WoW, so of course I'm going to keep it up (although probably at a slower pace), but what's the point of having the gold if you're not going to spend it?
Gearing up your alts and mains is a good way to start. Most BoEs from the new raids, and crafted epics, are available for around 10-15k (with the belts being less, around 6k). Gems, enchants, and leg padding/spellthreads are another good source to improve your character. Pets, mounts, novelty items, whatever you can imagine can be purchased with your seemingly-infinite wealth.
I'm a mount collector myself, although I haven't been doing much collecting as of late. I'm at 93 mounts, currently, and unfortunately I don't have access to the Goblin Trikes as I'm Alliance side. So, in lieu of the non-existent Gilneas mounts, I'm purchasing a Vial of the Sands, for both myself and the crafter (as a sort of "tip").
I gear up my friends, give gold away for epic flying, and hold contests! I post in trade "First person to successfully guess my middle name, starting with a 'J,' wins 1,000g!" How do you spend your excess?
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Taking Advantage of Raiders Becoming Raid Ready
So, "taking advantage" is putting it a little harshly, but we all know where gold comes from. People don't want to do things themselves, and would rather purchase ready-made goods. Let's take a quick glance at how we can capitalize on this.
Flasks:
There are now 5 flasks:
Flask of Flowing Water - Healers (Although they'll most likely go for the Flask of Draconic Mind)
Flask of Steelskin - Tanks
Flask of Titanic Strength - Plate DPS
Flask of the Winds - Other DPS
Flask of the Draconic Mind - Caster DPS
Each of these has a fairly tall materials list, at a total of 24 Cataclysm herbs and 6 Volatile Lifes (Lives?) but I guarantee that you can sell these flasks by the truckload on Tuesday night. Don't forget to get your friendly neighborhood Flask Master to make them, chances are you'll get a proc, and any proc is 100% profit.
Another great way to make some gold is through cooking recipes. Being a secondary skill, it doesn't get as much attention as some others, but it can be just as profitable (although slightly less now that Blizzard did away with a Cataclysm equivalent of Northern Spices).
Each recipe requires only one ingredient, which is good for us, the seller, and also good for the buyer: ever wonder why Wal-Mart is so huge? They offer a big variety of inexpensive goods. How can they sell their goods for cheap? They get them cheap.
At any rate, here is the link to WoWhead's Cooking database - you're going to want anything that gives 90 stam as well as 90 of a PRIMARY stat. 90 stam/90 crit may not sell as well as 90 stam/90 agility, for example. It never hurts to diversify, but put more money into the recipes you KNOW people want, rather than just that huntard (if you'll excuse the rhetoric) who's not really sure how to play his/her class. Remember the rules of thumb when dealing with stats - Strength is for Warrior, DK and Paladin dps, Agility is for Hunters, Enhancement Shamans, and Rogues, and Intellect is for magic DPS and healers (most of the time).
Cliffs:
-Flasks and cooked food can net you a tidy sum
-Be sure to know the market, but also to diversify to cover all the bases (or as many as you can)
Flasks:
There are now 5 flasks:
Flask of Flowing Water - Healers (Although they'll most likely go for the Flask of Draconic Mind)
Flask of Steelskin - Tanks
Flask of Titanic Strength - Plate DPS
Flask of the Winds - Other DPS
Flask of the Draconic Mind - Caster DPS
Each of these has a fairly tall materials list, at a total of 24 Cataclysm herbs and 6 Volatile Lifes (Lives?) but I guarantee that you can sell these flasks by the truckload on Tuesday night. Don't forget to get your friendly neighborhood Flask Master to make them, chances are you'll get a proc, and any proc is 100% profit.
Another great way to make some gold is through cooking recipes. Being a secondary skill, it doesn't get as much attention as some others, but it can be just as profitable (although slightly less now that Blizzard did away with a Cataclysm equivalent of Northern Spices).
Each recipe requires only one ingredient, which is good for us, the seller, and also good for the buyer: ever wonder why Wal-Mart is so huge? They offer a big variety of inexpensive goods. How can they sell their goods for cheap? They get them cheap.
At any rate, here is the link to WoWhead's Cooking database - you're going to want anything that gives 90 stam as well as 90 of a PRIMARY stat. 90 stam/90 crit may not sell as well as 90 stam/90 agility, for example. It never hurts to diversify, but put more money into the recipes you KNOW people want, rather than just that huntard (if you'll excuse the rhetoric) who's not really sure how to play his/her class. Remember the rules of thumb when dealing with stats - Strength is for Warrior, DK and Paladin dps, Agility is for Hunters, Enhancement Shamans, and Rogues, and Intellect is for magic DPS and healers (most of the time).
Cliffs:
-Flasks and cooked food can net you a tidy sum
-Be sure to know the market, but also to diversify to cover all the bases (or as many as you can)
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
The Finished Product Isn't Always Cheaper
So, as a frugal person, I quickly realized that the cost of the materials is usually less than the cost of the finished product. Case in point, Stormleather Sash.
I purchased this belt about 3 weeks ago, 2 weeks after Cataclysm had come out. The pristine hides were 900g each, the Blackened Dragonscales were fairly cheap at 10g each. The 25 volatile water was around 10g each, but the 25 volatile air was 25g each.
Let's do the math: 900*3 + 10*10 + 25*10 + 25*25
This comes out to 3675g, and I "bought" the two Chaos Orbs for 1,500g each. Now, 3 weeks later, it's currently on the Auction House for 12,000g. This is despite the fact that the cost of the materials keeps dropping.
Let's look at Enchanting, though. Say you want a mid-level enchant for that mid-level blue piece you just picked up. Maybe you don't have the gold for the highest tier enchant, or maybe you don't want to spend 3,000g on the high tier enchant for a heroic blue item. I can't say I blame you.
Say, instead of "Enchant Cloak - Greater Intellect" (9 Hypnotic Dust and 4 Greater Celestial essences - a materials list of approximately 335g), you choose "Enchant Cloak - Intellect" (6 Hypnotic Dust - around 90g). Great, so you buy the dust off the Auction House, and post in Trade that you're looking for an enchanter.
Not so fast.
Did you check to see if there was a Vellum on the Auction House first? No? Well, I just did, and there are vellums up there for 5g. -5g-.
This is because everyone is leveling their professions, and they are willing to move the enchants at such a low price to just make some gold back, not even looking at the economic side of things.
This is also a great opportunity to make gold: some of the Best in Slot enchants are going for half, if not less, of the cost of materials. Buy those up, and a few months down the road they're sure to rise in price as the demand increases due to people raiding, and the supply decreases due to people being done leveling their professions. Of course, we have to be aware that the cost of materials may (and most likely will) decrease over time.
Cliffs:
-Always check the Auction House for the finished product
-Possible to buy pieces for less than the cost of the materials, and resell for more later on.
I purchased this belt about 3 weeks ago, 2 weeks after Cataclysm had come out. The pristine hides were 900g each, the Blackened Dragonscales were fairly cheap at 10g each. The 25 volatile water was around 10g each, but the 25 volatile air was 25g each.
Let's do the math: 900*3 + 10*10 + 25*10 + 25*25
This comes out to 3675g, and I "bought" the two Chaos Orbs for 1,500g each. Now, 3 weeks later, it's currently on the Auction House for 12,000g. This is despite the fact that the cost of the materials keeps dropping.
Let's look at Enchanting, though. Say you want a mid-level enchant for that mid-level blue piece you just picked up. Maybe you don't have the gold for the highest tier enchant, or maybe you don't want to spend 3,000g on the high tier enchant for a heroic blue item. I can't say I blame you.
Say, instead of "Enchant Cloak - Greater Intellect" (9 Hypnotic Dust and 4 Greater Celestial essences - a materials list of approximately 335g), you choose "Enchant Cloak - Intellect" (6 Hypnotic Dust - around 90g). Great, so you buy the dust off the Auction House, and post in Trade that you're looking for an enchanter.
Not so fast.
Did you check to see if there was a Vellum on the Auction House first? No? Well, I just did, and there are vellums up there for 5g. -5g-.
This is because everyone is leveling their professions, and they are willing to move the enchants at such a low price to just make some gold back, not even looking at the economic side of things.
This is also a great opportunity to make gold: some of the Best in Slot enchants are going for half, if not less, of the cost of materials. Buy those up, and a few months down the road they're sure to rise in price as the demand increases due to people raiding, and the supply decreases due to people being done leveling their professions. Of course, we have to be aware that the cost of materials may (and most likely will) decrease over time.
Cliffs:
-Always check the Auction House for the finished product
-Possible to buy pieces for less than the cost of the materials, and resell for more later on.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Farming - What it is, and Why I Stay Away
I'm a man of efficiency, especially when my time is limited. I like to log on, do my dailies, do my heroic, and then make gold - in that order. I have found that instead of running laps around Stormwind while waiting for my heroic queue to pop, I log on, hop in queue, do my dailies, and by the time I'm done with those, the queue pops up.
Farming is what a lot of people do to make gold, but for the life of me I can't fathom why. You farm for an hour, basically running around in circles, to obtain, let's say, Elementium Ore.
The ore is currently going for roughly 90g per stack on my realm. How much ore can you gather in an hour? 6 stacks (120 ores)? 6*90 = 540g per hour. That's a little low by Cataclysm standards.
Don't get me wrong, farming has its place, and I'm glad that people do farm. Playing on a low population server means that I won't usually have huge sale days, so I could compound that with farming. BUT, if you had 2 hours to play the game, what would you rather do? Farm for 2 hours, making 1080g, or do some dailies, get some reputation up, run a heroic, and STILL make 2,000g on the Auction House?
To each their own, but I don't think I'll be picking up my stereotypical pitchfork and put on my jean overalls anytime soon.
Farming is what a lot of people do to make gold, but for the life of me I can't fathom why. You farm for an hour, basically running around in circles, to obtain, let's say, Elementium Ore.
The ore is currently going for roughly 90g per stack on my realm. How much ore can you gather in an hour? 6 stacks (120 ores)? 6*90 = 540g per hour. That's a little low by Cataclysm standards.
Don't get me wrong, farming has its place, and I'm glad that people do farm. Playing on a low population server means that I won't usually have huge sale days, so I could compound that with farming. BUT, if you had 2 hours to play the game, what would you rather do? Farm for 2 hours, making 1080g, or do some dailies, get some reputation up, run a heroic, and STILL make 2,000g on the Auction House?
To each their own, but I don't think I'll be picking up my stereotypical pitchfork and put on my jean overalls anytime soon.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Buying Jewelcrafting Cuts vs Buying Chimera Eyes, and Fire Prisms
Here's kind of a no brainer that'll make you go "ohhhh....damn," after you read it.
Every day, you can get 1 Jewelcrafting token. This is good for 1 Chimera's Eye, or 1/3rd of a Jewelcrafting Cut.
If you take the Chimera's Eye, you'll get an instant bonus of 350g, every day (until prices start to drop, but just bear with me).
If you save for three days, the opportunity cost would be 1050g: the gold you would have earned from selling the Chimera's Eyes. I'm not sure about your realm, but on mine the cut rare gems go for around 100g, whereas the uncut go for around 50g. Some sell for more, and some sell for less, but on average it's about a 50g profit per gem.
Say you sell popular cuts, like the Bold or Brilliant Inferno Ruby, Timeless Demonseye, Jagged Dream Emerald, etc. and can sell 2 a day on a lower population server. After purchasing a recipe, it'll take the sale and profit of 21 gems, or 10.5 days, to make the same amount of gold that you would be making by purchasing a Chimera's Eye. This is a fairly long time.
Of course, YOU GET TO KEEP THE RECIPE AFTER THE 21 GEMS SOLD, so every gem sold after that is even more profit than if you would have bought the Chimera's Eye. /discussion.
Let's talk a bit about the Fire Prisms, as well. I've made a few, and they're not bad. HOWEVER, we're looking at the opportunity cost here. For a quick refresher, let's say that you mill x amount of ores. The cost of making the Fire Prism is whatever you paid for the orbs, we'll say 100g, after the excess uncommon gems are sold, and the rare gems are cut and sold (again, we're just using pretend numbers). The cost of the Fire Prism, therefore, is 100g. The OPPORTUNITY cost, however is 100g PLUS whatever you could have sold those 3 uncommon gems for. Again, your mileage may vary, but on my realm Nightstones go for 30g. That's 90g for the Nightstones, around 30g for the Zephyrite, 70g for Jasper, 45g for Carnelians, and we've covered 4 of the 6 gem types. 90 + 30 + 70 + 45 = 240g, it adds up quick. Hessonite goes for around 40g each on a good day, and Alicite is a bit cheaper at around 20g each. 120 + 60 + 240 = 420g.
On average, you'll get 2 rare gems from the Fire Prism. Cut, we'll say those are worth about 150g. So, 300g down off of the opportunity cost, and we're left with 120g. The chance of getting a Chimera's Eye, according to the WoWhead drop rate, is 9%, so we'll round up to 10% and subtract another 35g (10% of 350g), and we're left with 85g. So, we can see that if you sell each individual gem, you'll make on average 85g MORE than if you made the fire prism. Of course, if you're a lucky person and got a Chimera's Eye every 3 days instead of once every 10 days, then it'd be worth it (350g* 1/3 = 115g), but most of us will have to adhere to the 9% average drop rate.
Cliffs:
-Purchase gem cut patterns over Chimera's Eyes - it will eventually be more profitable
-Unless you can find the uncommon gems very cheap, do not make Fire Prisms
Every day, you can get 1 Jewelcrafting token. This is good for 1 Chimera's Eye, or 1/3rd of a Jewelcrafting Cut.
If you take the Chimera's Eye, you'll get an instant bonus of 350g, every day (until prices start to drop, but just bear with me).
If you save for three days, the opportunity cost would be 1050g: the gold you would have earned from selling the Chimera's Eyes. I'm not sure about your realm, but on mine the cut rare gems go for around 100g, whereas the uncut go for around 50g. Some sell for more, and some sell for less, but on average it's about a 50g profit per gem.
Say you sell popular cuts, like the Bold or Brilliant Inferno Ruby, Timeless Demonseye, Jagged Dream Emerald, etc. and can sell 2 a day on a lower population server. After purchasing a recipe, it'll take the sale and profit of 21 gems, or 10.5 days, to make the same amount of gold that you would be making by purchasing a Chimera's Eye. This is a fairly long time.
Of course, YOU GET TO KEEP THE RECIPE AFTER THE 21 GEMS SOLD, so every gem sold after that is even more profit than if you would have bought the Chimera's Eye. /discussion.
Let's talk a bit about the Fire Prisms, as well. I've made a few, and they're not bad. HOWEVER, we're looking at the opportunity cost here. For a quick refresher, let's say that you mill x amount of ores. The cost of making the Fire Prism is whatever you paid for the orbs, we'll say 100g, after the excess uncommon gems are sold, and the rare gems are cut and sold (again, we're just using pretend numbers). The cost of the Fire Prism, therefore, is 100g. The OPPORTUNITY cost, however is 100g PLUS whatever you could have sold those 3 uncommon gems for. Again, your mileage may vary, but on my realm Nightstones go for 30g. That's 90g for the Nightstones, around 30g for the Zephyrite, 70g for Jasper, 45g for Carnelians, and we've covered 4 of the 6 gem types. 90 + 30 + 70 + 45 = 240g, it adds up quick. Hessonite goes for around 40g each on a good day, and Alicite is a bit cheaper at around 20g each. 120 + 60 + 240 = 420g.
On average, you'll get 2 rare gems from the Fire Prism. Cut, we'll say those are worth about 150g. So, 300g down off of the opportunity cost, and we're left with 120g. The chance of getting a Chimera's Eye, according to the WoWhead drop rate, is 9%, so we'll round up to 10% and subtract another 35g (10% of 350g), and we're left with 85g. So, we can see that if you sell each individual gem, you'll make on average 85g MORE than if you made the fire prism. Of course, if you're a lucky person and got a Chimera's Eye every 3 days instead of once every 10 days, then it'd be worth it (350g* 1/3 = 115g), but most of us will have to adhere to the 9% average drop rate.
Cliffs:
-Purchase gem cut patterns over Chimera's Eyes - it will eventually be more profitable
-Unless you can find the uncommon gems very cheap, do not make Fire Prisms
Thursday, January 6, 2011
The Fall of Carnelian Spikes
As previously stated, Carnelian Spikes would usually Disenchant to Greater Celestial Essence x2, sometimes x3, and rarely Hypnotic Dust x4. This was a great investment, considering Carnelians go for around 20g each. 60g + 3.60g for the Jeweler Settings at Exalted yields a total of 63.60g, and Greater Celestial Essences sell for somewhere around 60g. Instant 100% profit.
It's not hard to see why the Disenchanting rates were nerfed, if you will, but it's unfortunate that Jewelcrafters and Enchanters no longer have this cash-cow. Upon disenchanting 14 of them last night, I received 9 Greater Celestial Essences, and 30 Hypnotic Dust. This still made the crafting and disenchanting profitable, but worth my time? It's borderline, but I don't think I'll be buying any more.
On a side note, Reputation grinding is terrible.
Cliffs aren't really necessary here, but:
-Carnelian Spike Disenchanting has been nerfed
-Usually get 4-5 Hypnotic Dust per Disenchant
It's not hard to see why the Disenchanting rates were nerfed, if you will, but it's unfortunate that Jewelcrafters and Enchanters no longer have this cash-cow. Upon disenchanting 14 of them last night, I received 9 Greater Celestial Essences, and 30 Hypnotic Dust. This still made the crafting and disenchanting profitable, but worth my time? It's borderline, but I don't think I'll be buying any more.
On a side note, Reputation grinding is terrible.
Cliffs aren't really necessary here, but:
-Carnelian Spike Disenchanting has been nerfed
-Usually get 4-5 Hypnotic Dust per Disenchant
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
How to Make Good Gold with Alchemy and Enchanting
Alchemy and Enchanting are two professions that don't normally go together, but if you like to make potions and you like to enchant things, you're in luck!
The object in question is the Lifebound Alchemist Stone. This is an epic quality item, which (depending on your realm), costs about 700g-1,000g to make. This can be disenchanted to a Maelstrom Crystal, which are selling for around 2,000g each. Fairly simple process, although you may move one or two a day; most people aren't willing to put BiS enchantments on heroic blue items.
HOWEVER we could take this one step further with the Enchanting pattern: Magic Lamp. This is a non-combat pet which can only be made by Enchanters, and it requires one (1) Maelstrom Crystal. See where I'm going with this?
You could make 2 Lifebound Alchemist Stones, disenchant them, sell one crystal, and use the other to make the Magic Lamp. Other materials may run you 200-400g to make the Lamp, but I've seen them on the Auction House for upwards of 3,000g.
Cliffs (short entry but I promised cliffs where applicable):
-Alchemy: Make Lifebound Alchemist Stone
-Enchanting: Disenchant said Alchemist Stone, either sell the crystal or make a Magic Lamp
-Sell the Magic Lamp for more gold
The object in question is the Lifebound Alchemist Stone. This is an epic quality item, which (depending on your realm), costs about 700g-1,000g to make. This can be disenchanted to a Maelstrom Crystal, which are selling for around 2,000g each. Fairly simple process, although you may move one or two a day; most people aren't willing to put BiS enchantments on heroic blue items.
HOWEVER we could take this one step further with the Enchanting pattern: Magic Lamp. This is a non-combat pet which can only be made by Enchanters, and it requires one (1) Maelstrom Crystal. See where I'm going with this?
You could make 2 Lifebound Alchemist Stones, disenchant them, sell one crystal, and use the other to make the Magic Lamp. Other materials may run you 200-400g to make the Lamp, but I've seen them on the Auction House for upwards of 3,000g.
Cliffs (short entry but I promised cliffs where applicable):
-Alchemy: Make Lifebound Alchemist Stone
-Enchanting: Disenchant said Alchemist Stone, either sell the crystal or make a Magic Lamp
-Sell the Magic Lamp for more gold
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Disenchanting for Fun and Profit... Okay Just Profit.
Today let's look at disenchanting. Sure, we all knew that the huge spike in enchanting mats wouldn't last when the expansion just came out; I remember selling dusts for upwards of 800g per stack. Now, they're roughly 350g where I am. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't disenchant items.
First, you have to look at the cost of selling the item on the auction house, and disenchanting it. If you have a level 84 green item that gives crit, agility and hit rating, chances are some hunter or rogue will want it. If you have a level 84 green item that has only spirit, chances are it won't be in as big a demand. Now that we're done discussing common sense, you have to ask yourself, do you want to wait for 100g profit, or would you rather 50g profit now?
Greens may come back to your mailbox a few times before they're sold, and with them take a pretty substantial deposit (upwards of 1g per 12 hour post). You may sell that green for 100g, but after listing it 3 times that's 97g. It's important to not discount the cost of the deposit when listing items, although it may seem trivial. Usually, the deposit is small enough to not be noticed, but if you're listing an item 10+ times, it starts to cut into your profit. Personally, I just disenchant all my green items because it's easier for me to group them together and sell. If you're into micromanaging, you could list them all individually for a slightly higher profit.
So, how do we get greens? Well, let's look at the 3 options:
1.) Finding them
2.) Buying them
3.) Making them
1.) Finding them - You could grind, or run instances. I find maybe 1-2 per day doing my daily quests, but this isn't going to get you rich. Higher level enemies drop higher level greens.
2.) If you purchase a level 82-84 green off the Auction House, you'll more often than not get at least 2 Hypnotic Dust, if not 3. Thus, the rule of thumb here is to purchase any green item, level 82-84, that can be bought for twice the price of one dust.
Ex. 2 Hypnotic Dusts on my realm go for 30g. I buy any green item, level 82-84, for 29g. I disenchant them, and most of the time I'll make my gold back, but when I get 3 dust it's like 15g in my pocket.
3.) Making them. Every profession has a cheap green item to make, although it may not always be worth it. Again, be sure that the item you're making isn't worth more in raw materials (unless you need a skill-up), or worth more as the item itself than the dusts. Jewelcrafting is great for this: recently, prices of Jasper have dropped to roughly 9g. Add in the cost of 1 Jeweler's Setting, and you have 10.20g (at exalted with whatever vendor faction). Disenchanting this yields 1-2 Hypnotic Dust. So, if I get 1 dust, that's around 4g profit. If I get 2, that's roughly 20g profit. Solution here is to buy all the Jasper on the Auction House, disenchant it to dust that moves very quickly, pick up the gold from the inbox, and /dance. I still sell Hessonite and other gems because they are worth more as the gems than they are as the dusts.
Cliffs:
-Disenchanting can be a very valuable way to make gold
-Buy level 82-84 greens selling for twice the price of Hypnotic Dust
-Make any greens that would be worth more as dusts than they would as items or raw materials
First, you have to look at the cost of selling the item on the auction house, and disenchanting it. If you have a level 84 green item that gives crit, agility and hit rating, chances are some hunter or rogue will want it. If you have a level 84 green item that has only spirit, chances are it won't be in as big a demand. Now that we're done discussing common sense, you have to ask yourself, do you want to wait for 100g profit, or would you rather 50g profit now?
Greens may come back to your mailbox a few times before they're sold, and with them take a pretty substantial deposit (upwards of 1g per 12 hour post). You may sell that green for 100g, but after listing it 3 times that's 97g. It's important to not discount the cost of the deposit when listing items, although it may seem trivial. Usually, the deposit is small enough to not be noticed, but if you're listing an item 10+ times, it starts to cut into your profit. Personally, I just disenchant all my green items because it's easier for me to group them together and sell. If you're into micromanaging, you could list them all individually for a slightly higher profit.
So, how do we get greens? Well, let's look at the 3 options:
1.) Finding them
2.) Buying them
3.) Making them
1.) Finding them - You could grind, or run instances. I find maybe 1-2 per day doing my daily quests, but this isn't going to get you rich. Higher level enemies drop higher level greens.
2.) If you purchase a level 82-84 green off the Auction House, you'll more often than not get at least 2 Hypnotic Dust, if not 3. Thus, the rule of thumb here is to purchase any green item, level 82-84, that can be bought for twice the price of one dust.
Ex. 2 Hypnotic Dusts on my realm go for 30g. I buy any green item, level 82-84, for 29g. I disenchant them, and most of the time I'll make my gold back, but when I get 3 dust it's like 15g in my pocket.
3.) Making them. Every profession has a cheap green item to make, although it may not always be worth it. Again, be sure that the item you're making isn't worth more in raw materials (unless you need a skill-up), or worth more as the item itself than the dusts. Jewelcrafting is great for this: recently, prices of Jasper have dropped to roughly 9g. Add in the cost of 1 Jeweler's Setting, and you have 10.20g (at exalted with whatever vendor faction). Disenchanting this yields 1-2 Hypnotic Dust. So, if I get 1 dust, that's around 4g profit. If I get 2, that's roughly 20g profit. Solution here is to buy all the Jasper on the Auction House, disenchant it to dust that moves very quickly, pick up the gold from the inbox, and /dance. I still sell Hessonite and other gems because they are worth more as the gems than they are as the dusts.
Cliffs:
-Disenchanting can be a very valuable way to make gold
-Buy level 82-84 greens selling for twice the price of Hypnotic Dust
-Make any greens that would be worth more as dusts than they would as items or raw materials
Monday, January 3, 2011
Selling Yourself In-Game
So, we all know that prostitution is illegal in real life, but it's a little different in WoW. Hear me out.
On my realm, queues for a heroic instance can reach 45 mins to an hour very easily. Players who are just starting out are going to want to chain-run heroics to get gear/justice points very quickly, in addition to any heroic drops that may happen.
So where does this leave you, oh class that can tank or heal? Well, on the flipside, heroic queues for healers or tanks are much shorter, if not instantaneous. You lucky few are able to carry your friends to victory and shorter queue times. But what if you don't limit your shorter queue privileges to just your friends?
Post in Trade Chat, "WTS Tank/Healer for Heroic Random, 3-5 min queue! 100g!" I guarantee you'll get a reply. When it comes down to the very basis of the economy (especially WoW), you pay for convenience. Sure, you could plant the seeds, water them every day, and eventually harvest the fruit. Or, you could go to the grocery store and buy the fruit from someone who has already grown them.
In short, never run a heroic by yourself. You'll always be able to profit from someone else who wants a short queue, and you'll get the same rewards as if you ran it yourself.
Let's look at this from the other side, though. Let's say you're a DPS class who can't tank or heal (rogue, hunter, mage or warlock), or maybe you don't want to. Don't fret, you won't lose much cash by buying that tank. Completing a random heroic instance will net you a tidy sum of just over 80g. Just for killing the last boss! Never mind the regular loot that drops, the shards, money drops, grey drops, etc. Assuming no deaths in a heroic instance, you'll easily, EASILY make back the 100g you spent on a tank. There's an opportunity cost here of 100g, but the actual cost is just about 0g, if not negative. Think about it this way: If you were driving to the store to buy oranges, and you bought the oranges, you'd be out $4. If you were driving to the store and a man stopped you on the way, said "here, buy me a bag of oranges too" and handed you $10, you would still buy your oranges and make out with $2 in the end.
Cliffs:
-If you're a tank or healer, never run a random without selling another slot
-If you're a pure dps or don't want to heal, you could buy the tank anyway and the only downside is you wouldn't MAKE gold, but not "spend" any in the long run.
On my realm, queues for a heroic instance can reach 45 mins to an hour very easily. Players who are just starting out are going to want to chain-run heroics to get gear/justice points very quickly, in addition to any heroic drops that may happen.
So where does this leave you, oh class that can tank or heal? Well, on the flipside, heroic queues for healers or tanks are much shorter, if not instantaneous. You lucky few are able to carry your friends to victory and shorter queue times. But what if you don't limit your shorter queue privileges to just your friends?
Post in Trade Chat, "WTS Tank/Healer for Heroic Random, 3-5 min queue! 100g!" I guarantee you'll get a reply. When it comes down to the very basis of the economy (especially WoW), you pay for convenience. Sure, you could plant the seeds, water them every day, and eventually harvest the fruit. Or, you could go to the grocery store and buy the fruit from someone who has already grown them.
In short, never run a heroic by yourself. You'll always be able to profit from someone else who wants a short queue, and you'll get the same rewards as if you ran it yourself.
Let's look at this from the other side, though. Let's say you're a DPS class who can't tank or heal (rogue, hunter, mage or warlock), or maybe you don't want to. Don't fret, you won't lose much cash by buying that tank. Completing a random heroic instance will net you a tidy sum of just over 80g. Just for killing the last boss! Never mind the regular loot that drops, the shards, money drops, grey drops, etc. Assuming no deaths in a heroic instance, you'll easily, EASILY make back the 100g you spent on a tank. There's an opportunity cost here of 100g, but the actual cost is just about 0g, if not negative. Think about it this way: If you were driving to the store to buy oranges, and you bought the oranges, you'd be out $4. If you were driving to the store and a man stopped you on the way, said "here, buy me a bag of oranges too" and handed you $10, you would still buy your oranges and make out with $2 in the end.
Cliffs:
-If you're a tank or healer, never run a random without selling another slot
-If you're a pure dps or don't want to heal, you could buy the tank anyway and the only downside is you wouldn't MAKE gold, but not "spend" any in the long run.
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