Returning Players = cheap recipes to buy

for other ideas on the glyph market please follow the link to the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

With many new and old players coming back ahead of Mists of Pandaria being released i am picking up lots of cheap recipes that i did not own for my enchanter and jewelcrafter from the Auction House - which have been dumped by these players as they power through content preparing their characters.

There is a very easy way to do this, only takes 20 seconds if you are at the Auction House.

Open the Auction House window:

· tick “Usable Items” on the top bar of the window

· click Recipes and then select the profession you are searching

· the press Search

A list of recipes that you don’t own will appear. (if a very long list appears then it is likely you have not ticked “Usable Items”

I always buy recipes that are priced under 100 gold - though these days i am taking any that look good price given this is a once in a while opportunity as these returning players are here.

the example below shows that my the Auction House has 5 recipes that my enchanter does not have though none are below my 100 gold price.

TradeskillMaster Tutorial - Posting fast using the mouse wheel

for other ideas on the glyph market and other general tips see the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

instead of me pressing the Post or Cancel button a hundred times every time i post glyphs from a character i have it set up that if i spin the mouse wheel up or down whilst pressing CTRL (the mouse pointer does not need to be over the Post or Cancel button) then the Post or Cancel button is pressed multiple times.  Speeds it up massively.

in this post  i will show you how i link the Post and Cancel buttons to my mouse wheel to speed things up.

1. Open TradeskillMaster and press the "Auctioning Groups / Options" button as shown below to bring up the Auctioning screen

 

this will open up the Auctioning window as shown below.

at the bottom part of the screen, in the section "Macro Help" tick the "Up", "Down" and "CTRL" boxes, and leave the "ALT" and "SHIFT" blank.

then press the "Create Macro and Bind ScrollWheel (with selected options)" button

 

 

 

i always seem to have to do it a few times to get it to work.

Now, when you come to post your auctions using TradeskillMaster - once the glyphs have been queued to be posted, you need only hold down the CTRL key and spin the wheel!  and likewise for cancelling.

 

 

 

 





Old players returning ahead of Mists of Pandaria

for other ideas on the glyph market and other general tips see the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

These former players are returning to complete old content, emptying bag space and completing quests to prepare themselves for the new content.

Hence, they will be putting surplus items onto the Auction House to make a quick sale without really knowing their true worth.

This is a great time to pick up those recipes you are missing, buy cheap raw materials or even cheap rare drops.



Picking up those recipes you are missing

I use Auctioneer and it only takes 20 seconds to do when you are at the Auction House.

1.  Open the Auction House window

2.  Click Recipes and then select the profession you are searching

3.  Tick “Usable Items” on the top bar of the window

4.  then press Search

A list of recipes that you don’t own will appear. (if a very long list appears then it is likely you have not ticked “Usable Items”

I always buy recipes that are priced under 100 gold.

the example above shows that my the Auction House has 7 recipes (4 different ones) that my Tailor does not have though none are below my 100 gold price.

Only takes 20 seconds to do.

Seeking out cheap raw materials

I use Auction Snatch for this.

Auction Snatch keeps a saved list of items i want to buy from the Auction House and will automatically scan the Auction House for those items.

It is linked to the Auction House and will either open when you open the Auction House or you can press the tab, as shown above.

the starting window will look like the image below. you can add new items you want searched over time - by typing them into the query box at the top and pressing "Add Item". It is very intuitive. I initially set it up to scan for Titanium Powder (for my Jewelcrafter), Volatile Life, Book of Glyph Mastery and all the inks, all the herbs. Over time i have added other items such as cloth.

Pressing "Search" will start the scan.

When the first item on the list is found in the Auction House a new window opens with pricing information on this time and various options allowing you to Buy for example - as shown below. If you dont want to Buy you can move to the next item on the list by pressing "Next in List". The information is also displayed on your Auction House window as if you had manually searched for the item.



Hence, in a very short period of time you can go through all the items you often buy to see if there are any cheap items on the Auction House.

I do this scan at least once a day and it is a great way to pick up those cheap raw materials to craft as well as find cheap items that are normally highly priced.

Buying rare drops

These returning players will be putting rare drop items on the Auction House without being fully aware of their value or they may be wanting to get gold quickly.  This gives us a great opportunity to buy them and resell them at a much higher price.

See my main flipping market post and a follow up post on this matter.

It is a great way to earn gold and does not need a profession - just some bag space and some starting gold.

Friday Shout Out – Syndication

for other ideas on the glyph market and other general tips see the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

For a long time The Undermine Journal has syndicated blogs (as well as provide a database of prices of all items across servers – see my post on the Flipping Market for a worked example of how to use this database).

Just recently Jim Younkin has restarted his PowerWord:Gold Chronicle up again which does much the same thing.

The Undermine Journal automatically syndicates from a list of blogs that it declares on its page.  The PowerWord:Gold Chronicle has editorial control from Jim.

If you are starting out in gold making and want a good cross section of blogs then bookmarking these two sites would be a good place to start.

Secondly, another source of gold making ideas is from my Blog Roll to the right and PowerWord:Gold's blog directory

If there are any gold bloggers out there that i have missed and would like to be on my blog roll then drop me a line.

Speeding up the emptying of mailboxes

for other ideas on the glyph market and other general tips see the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

Every gold maker in World of Warcraft will spend time at the mail box.  Indeed, players covering a mailbox with their mount and so making it hard to access the mailbox is almost considered an act of war!

Therefore, anything that can be done to speed up the unloading of mails is welcome.  To that end, there are two things that can be done:

Firstly, the mailbox will allow you to unload the first 50 mails.  To speed up this process press the “config” button on your mailbox page (assuming you have an addon such as Mail Opener)

When the Configuration window opens up - select the "Open All" as shown in the image above

And then set the opening interval times to the above - this is the fastest time to open 50 mails, assuming latency allows this.

Secondly, when you have more than 50 items to empty from the mailbox you need to wait a full minute before the mailbox loads the next 50 items to allow unloading to continue.

To skip this part you can put “/reload” in the chat box to reload your UI.  If you computer is fast enough then this only takes a few seconds (for me about 8) – which is a great saving on the 30 seconds i normally have to wait.

Something that every serious gold maker needs to be aware of.

Damaged necklace

for other ideas on the glyph market and other general tips see the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

I am seeing more of these on sale at low prices.  Doubtless picked up by players unsuspecting of their value and put on the Auction House.

These allow a Jewelcrafter, after a simple repair, to claim one Dalaran Jewelcrafter’s Token which goes towards buying Wraith of the Lich King Jewelcrafting recipes off the vendor.

There are two other ways to collect these tokens: one is to do a daily quest which is the norm - takes 5 minutes assuming you start of Dalaran (big ask); the other is to trade in 10 titanium dust which is hideously expensive.

On my server, Jewelcrafters are willing to pay up to 500 gold for these Damaged Necklace’s – so picking them up for less than 100 gold to flip is a sure fire winner.

They should be on everyones Snatch Lists.

Friday Shout Out - FriendsShare

for other ideas on the glyph market and other general tips see the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

Jim Younkin of Powerword:Gold on his great Livestreams about 1:26:00 in mentions this blog when he was looking for an addon called FriendsShare Resurrecton.

I use this addon as part of my glyph market process to keep an eye on my competitors - so, worth a recap on what it does.

FriendsShare Resurrection is an Addon that lets you keep the same friends list across your characters on a server.

If you add or remove a friend then that friend will be added or removed on your other characters the next time you log onto them.

Hence, it makes sure all your characters automatically have the same friends which is very useful, indeed required, if you want to determine if your competitors are online and gives you an idea where they are and what they do whilst they are online.

When some of your friends/competitors leave WoW you will get the notice “player not found” and in which case you enter /friendsshare rebuild only once and your list is rebuilt on all your characters when you log onto them.

Jim Younkin's livestreams can be found on YouTube or embedded on Powerword:Gold

The Flipping Market

for other ideas on the glyph market and other general tips see the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

The Flipping Market can develop into a business of its own.

It gives lumpy income but develop this broadly enough and the lumpiness starts to blend and provide a nice steady high level of earnings.

For me this is becoming one of my major income streams and is starting to challenge Enchanting as my number two earner.

Flipping, quite simply, is buying items off the Auction House and reposting them at a higher price.

My strategy here is to look for items that are priced way below the fair price, buy them and then repost at a good level below the fair price.

Therefore i am targeting 2 markets - those that want to use the item and those that want to flip again.

I am aim to buy for 5 gold and sell for 500 gold, or buy for 2000 gold and sell for 6000 gold, or buy for 4000 gold and sell for 10000 gold.  Not buy for 30 and sell for 100 or buy for 500 and sell for 800.  I want a few big winners not many small gains with this strategy.

The reason is that I will occasionally make a mistake and so will use up storage space for a while before I either make that sale or cut my losses and post at a very low price.

I don't have to buy every time i check the Auction House.  Indeed i don't even buy every day.



What is my method?

I use the Undermine Journal to scan for items that are priced substantially below their mean price.

Step 1:

I look at the Undermine Journal Deals Page – it scans the Auction House every 70 minutes.  It lists items under various categories showing the item, number available, lowest price on the Auction House, Mean Price and Standard Deviation.

What i am looking for are items that have a high mean price and are posted more than 2 standard deviations below the mean price.  These are the items that are likely posted on the Auction House too low and can be flipped.

Graphically, the Undermine Journal shows this with the gray horizontal like representing the mean price plus or minus two standard deviations with the black blob representing the current quoted price within this range.

Step 2:

When i find an item that looks interesting (=high mean price and current price more than two standard deviations below the mean price) then i investigate further my clicking on the item.

This opens a new Undermine Journal page that shows me the recent history and additional data on the item across other realms.

What i am checking for here is to make sure the item has not recently spiked in price (i.e. the price has not been manipulated higher to give a false high mean price) and that the mean price is also high in other realms (so further proof of the item’s value).

Step 3:

I also click on the item on this second Undermine Journal page to take a look at the WoWhead page.

What i am looking for here are to firstly make sure the item cannot be bought from a vendor and secondly to read the comments made to determine if this is a rare drop and not made out of date by a more recent item.

Step 4:

If i am satisfied by the prior steps then i buy the item and repost it at the stated mean less 1 standard deviation.  I post the item for 48 hours using Auctionator.

in this example the item sold within 24 hours:

So far, as a rule of thumb, the higher the mean price the quicker it sells. 

Setting up a Guild Bank

for other ideas on the glyph market please follow the link to the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

If you are entering a crafting market or markets in a serious fashion then storage space is a key resource.  The ability to store raw materials as you buy them at low prices on the Auction House is an absolute requirement.  The Bank and its bag slots are unlikely to prove sufficient and shuffling materials between alts will prove cumbersome.  To resolve this, owning a guild and being the sole member will give you an additional 588 storage slots.

In the Guild, each tab has 98 item slots and tabs are purchased much like bag slots in Banks.  The first tab costs 100 gold, the next 250 gold, then 500 gold and so on.  To buy all 6 tabs you would spend 9350 gold.

Technically, you can get 8 guild tabs but your guild needs to reach at least level 5 and, lets face it, a guild of one person used for crafting is not going to advance.

Setting up a Guild Bank.

The good news is that setting up a guild bank is very easy, quick and has a low cost (easily under 100 gold).

1) Talk to the Guild Master NPC in a major city to purchase the Charter for 10 silver (see below for the names and locations – but asking a City Guard will give you the location).
2) You need three other players to agree to be members of your guild to get it up and running. So, go to the starter area and ask players to sign the Charter in exchange for 10 gold.  All starter players, and even new alts, will be willing to do this.  Don’t be deceiving, explain that you only need their signatures and that they will be kicked from the guild when it is started.  So whisper the question first, if the answer is yes then present the charter to be signed.
3) Once you have the three signatures get back to the Guild Master NPC to register the guild and start it up
4) Kick the signatory players and there you have your Guild.

Be aware that the players that signed your Charter can delete their character or sign another Charter and so remove their signatures from your Charter.  So don’t hang around once you have your four signatures. Also, be aware that it is one signature per player – so a player’s alt cannot sign the charter.

The whole process should take less than half an hour.


The Downsides to having a Guild Bank.

1) That character can not belong to another guild –so say goodbye to raiding for that character.

2) It is hard to pass a guild bank to another alt –you will need a trusted friend online to allow you to pass the guild bank to them and then log on the alt to receive the guild bank.

Names and locations of the Guild Masters:
·         Guild master Lysheana at the Craftsmen's Terrace in Darnassus
·         Guild master Jondor Steelbrow at The Commons in Ironforge
·         Guild master Aldwin Laughin at the Trade District in Stormwind
·         Guild master Funaam at Trader's Tier in the Exodar
·         Guild master Andrew Matthews at Dalaran Visitor Center in Dalaran
·         Guild master Urtrun Clanbringer at the Valley of Strength in Orgrimmar
·         Guild master Krumn in Lower Rise in Thunder Bluff
·         Guild master Christopher Drakul at The Trade Quarter in Undercity
·         Guild master Tandrine at the Walk of the Elders in Silvermoon

The Holiday Battlers are back!

for other ideas on the glyph market please follow the link to the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

The Holiday Battlers are back on my server, and they are in a hurry.

These are the intrepid players that come back to World of Warcraft during the (school) holidays.  Their aim is to level up and gear up - and to that end they need the gold.  And their time is limited - they need to do this fast.  No doubt they can see Mists of Pandaria on the horizon and want to be prepared for that as well.

They run and dungeons, do the raids and hit the quests.  From all that exhausting efforts they have items to sell.

They know about the Auction House but they don't know the true value of what they post - especially rare drops where pricing data is limited.  They want to make a quick sell.

To that end, i am scanning the Auction House for good deals more often using the Undermine Journal quick deals page and my Snatch Lists.

I plan to write a post in my Flipping Business in the near future which is expanding fast - no doubt helped by these Holiday Battlers during this time.

Selling more of Rituals of the New Moon

for other ideas on the glyph market please follow the link to the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

This is another item i am selling more of recently.

A scribe can produce a random book called Rituals of the New Moon with 5 Ink of Sea + 3 Eternal Shadow + 10 Resilient Parchment.  On my server that costs about 120gold (it used to be 85gold but costs are rising as the supply of Eternal Shadows falls).  The book created is either red, white, black or grey.

The acquirer of the book is able to transform into a giant wolf for 2 minutes.  The colour of the wolf is determined by which book they buy: red; white; black; or grey.  When transformed the user is pacified and silenced though they are able to, still do things like using or creating items.

The Rituals of the New Moon can only be crafted by a Scribe.  It does not drop from a mob nor can it be bought from a vendor. Scribes therefore are the sole supplier.

Furthermore, few Scribes bother to post these - making the supply very low.

Clearly, it is an item that serves no purpose other than aesthetics and yet there is demand.  There is very little competition on my server reflecting the low demand – though i now sell one a day.

I used to differentiate between the books given grey is the most common but now i just sell them all for 500 gold.

Selling more of Certificate of Ownership

for other ideas on the glyph market please follow the link to the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

I am selling more of these recently.

Perhaps hunters are coming back before Mists of Pandaria to level up and at the same time choosing to change their pets name?

The Certificate of Ownership can only be crafted by a Scribe.  It is the only thing that a Hunter can use to change their pet's name - it does not drop from a mob nor can it be bought from a vendor.  Scribes therefore are the sole supplier.
Furthermore, few Scribes bother to post these - making the supply very low.

If a Hunter wants to change the name of their pet, they are unlikely to be put off by the price of this scroll.  Therefore, the sales price need have no relevance to the cost price.  The sales price merely need not be off putting.

To craft it costs 2 celestial inks plus 1 common parchment.  On my server that is c10 gold per certificate.  The 48 hour deposit fee at the Auction House is 15 silver.

I sell them for a maximum of 100 gold and a minimum of 20 gold.  So my profits per certificate sold is 10 to 90 gold.  I post 5 at a time in singles.

Farming Whiptail & the GatherMate2 Addon

for other ideas on the glyph market please follow the link to the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

With herbs in short supply and assuming i have a spare hour here and there then now may be the time to start gathering for myself.  In fact, i find it a useful way to spend time whilst listening to gold making podcasts.

My favourite farming spot is in Uldum.

It helps that my herbalist is a mage and so i can set my Hearthstone to Rumkahen in Uldum and then teleport to any of the main cities i need to.

As the graphic below shows, there are plenty of whiptail spawn spots nearby and using my mage i can gather 20 stacks of Whiptail per hour.  This is enough to make 40 glyphs (and c30 Inferno Inks).  The mobs are single Riverbed Crocolisks with c54k hp – and they guard about 30% of the spawn points, if that.

In all pleasurable way to pass an hour leaving enough mental ability to concentrate on the podcast going on in the background.  I sometimes find competition – but not much these days (hence the low supply of whiptail on the Auction House).

And my favourite addon is GatherMate2.  (i used to use Gatherer but GathererMate2 is lighter and updated).

As the graphic above shows it does two things.  Firstly, every time you gather a herb it marks its position on the main map.  Secondly, on the radar map it makes the spot where a herb will spawn with the green circle.  You need to gather the herb to allow the addon to record the details.

Just makes farming for herbs an ease and joy.

Quick update to the podcasts i listen to.

for other ideas on the glyph market please follow the link to the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

Updated as of 10^th June 2012.

As well as the blog roll on my blog marketsforgold.blogspot.com the gold making community in World of Warcraft is active in podcasting.  Times change and podcasts and blogs come and go.  And some are restarted.

Below are the podcasts i listen to as well as the non-gold making podcasts related to World of Warcraft that i also listen to.

As ever, it is not only the ideas the hosts discuss but the thinking behind the ideas that is of benefit to us all.  And they make for good listening.  Indeed, i tend to need to be doing something mundane like gathering whiptail or milling / crafting if i am listening to them.

They are in alphabetical order split between the pure gold making podcasts and the podcasts what are about the World of Warcraft in general.  For a complete list of Gold making Blogs and Podcasts see The PowerwordGold Blog Directory.


Pure gold making

Auction House Junkies - Hosted by Cold and Wes from Cold's Gold Factory and Capped by Cata, respectively

Call to Auction – hosted by Euripides and guest.

Powerword:Gold - Hosted by Fluxdada from Powerword:gold and a guest host.

The Mana Cooler - Hosted by George

Addicited to Azeroth – inactive as of October 2011


Mixture of gold making but mostly other World of Warcast

The Instance - Hosted by hosted by Scot Johnson, Dills and Turpster from Frogpants Studios, AIE Podcast and The Incredible Podcast of Amazing Awesomeness respectively

Warcraft Lounge - Hosted by Chris and Ryan, going since November 2010, range of topics and debate.

Preparing for Mists of Pandaria

for other ideas on the glyph market please follow the link to the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

Its a while off but something to keep in our minds.

I rarely go into new expansions or major content updates “all in”.  I take the view that if the market starts to run short of crafted items (glyphs for us Scribes) or raw materials (herbs for us) then those who did go “all in” will make gold in the short term but pretty quickly prices will adjust upwards as their supplies run out.

It is worth remembering that many market participants will have left the market (or WoW) during the pre-new content slow down anyway so any major increase in demand will benefit all the remaining market participants.  And then add in an increase in new entrants levelling the profession keeping the cost or raw materials up and so the cost of the crafted items up and hence profits up.

Having said that, i do make some increased investment.  As a rule of thumb i at least double my inventories of inks and as we get closer to the expansion or new content i increase my holdings of the key glyphs.

So, there are some things i am doing now – but at a slow rate over time so as not to disturb the market.

Stocking up on inks:  Currently i hold 2 weeks worth of inks.  I will be increasing this.  Not thought yet to what but in the medium term i am buying cheap herbs i see on the Auction House with the view to increasing it to 4 weeks.  The holiday players are here so occasionally i am picking up herbs at cheaper than normal.

Stock up on all the inks:  I suspect there will be a new converting ink (i hear called Ink of Dreams that can be converted into any of the other common inks, much like Ink of the Sea was pre-cataclysm and Blackfallow ink is today).  Hence, i will need to make sure i have each individual ink in plentiful supply.  Non cataclysm herbs are in short supply at the best of times on my server, especially the Northrend herbs.  So making sure i have plenty of all inks is important.  To do this i am still primarily crafting Blackfallow ink to convert into those inks.

Making sure my Scribe and Herbalist are ready to level:  My Scribe (which is also my herbalist) is level 85.  His gear is not heroic level.  I may run some heroic dungeons just to get his gear up to standard.  But mostly i am done here.

Also: I suspect i will increase my fall back price from 400gold to 600gold.  No harm in doing this.  If demand takes off and the Scribes are unable to meet demand then this is a good opportunity to take more profit in the short term and reset the fall back prices in the medium term.

Getting re-started: Scanning for Cheap Recipes

for other ideas on the glyph market please follow the link to the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

Don’t forget this old chestnut to pick up recipes you need that have been dumped on the Auction House at a low price.

Whenever you are in the Auction House and are on a character that has levelled a profession to 525, or indeed before, it is worth taking 20 seconds to see if there are any recipes posted at low prices.

This is easily done. Open the Auction House window:

· tick “Usable Items” on the top bar of the window

· click Recipes and then select the profession you are searching

· the press Search

A list of recipes that you don’t own will appear. (if a very long list appears then it is likely you have not ticked “Usable Items”

I always buy recipes that are priced under 100 gold.


the example below shows that my the Auction House has 5 recipes that my enchanter does not have though none are below my 100 gold price.

Getting re-started: Resetting Auction House Data

for other ideas on the glyph market please follow the link to the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

Another observation of taking time off is that i need to reset up Auction House data to make sure i am using the most up to date prices that reflect the different market conditions to that which i was experiencing 5 months ago.  I should do this once a quarter anyway to get rid of stale data.

For Auctioneer the command is: /auc cleardata ALL

For TradeSkillMaster the command is: /tsm adbreset

And of course remember to do a complete scan the Auction House daily. Every gold maker should. Takes 10 to 15 minutes and you can be doing some housework at the same time!

Scanning the Auction House for Bargains

for other ideas on the glyph market please follow the link to the free Croda's Inscription Gold Guide

Always keep a look out for potential bargains as you go about your Auction House duties.  During the summer holidays new players, or even existing players, will put items onto the Auction House which they are not fully aware of their significance.  I have the Book of Glyph Mastery on my Snatch List.

At the weekend during a routine scan on the Auction House for potential bargains i found 3 Book of Glyph Mastery for 15gold each.

As the chart from the Undermine Journal below shows - they have been selling for an average of 370gold over the last month with no sign of a downward trend.  I suspect i will be able to turn them around for this price yielding a nice profit for 20 seconds worth of scan time.

I have already sold one for 650gold.

As  a recap on Books of Glyph Mastery, from a prior blog post:

·         Currently certain glyphs can only be learned through these Books though Blizzard announced that in the future all glyphs can be learned through daily research.

·         It is a world drop from any mob on Northrend.  However most players now operate in the newer content (i.e. Cataclysm) and hence there are not many of these on the Auction House leading to a very low supply.

·         The current demand comes from those levelling the Inscription profession.

·         However, on occasion new content arrives where these books are in demand and the prices spike as Scribes rush to take advantage of the demand for the new glyph.

My primary aim here is to maintain a stack of four as insurance against new content placing more glyphs in the game to learn.

As a secondary aim, i scan for cheap books on the Auction House and flip them as a gold making opportunity.

On my server there are normally two to four for sale on the Auction House at any one time and they currently go for about 370 gold but have been known to occasionally drop to 100 gold.  When this happens i buy that book and then assuming my current stock is at least 5 books i will repost when the price spikes to 400 gold.

For sure, Blizzard may render these Books worthless or at least allow all glyphs to be learned through daily cool downs.  For the former the books will be worth nil for the latter there will still be demand from new scribes to accelerate their learning.  Either way, a stack of 4 books is a worthwhile form of insurance.