Gold Opportunity With Glyphs & Inscription

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Apr 152009
 

Update, June 2011: In the even that you’re reading this ancient post you might be interested in knowing that I’ve written a more up to date inscription guide and there’s a new widget, the Tycoon gold addon, which can help you make more money from that skill.

The orginal post:

Ok, so the 3.1 patch went up and I was finally able to log on about 6pm or so.

By 1 am I had made almost 10,000 gold, all in glyphs. Sold about 350 of the things (math test: the average price per glyph is…?)  I’ll be hitting the gold cap in a day or two and will be dumping some on various alts. Maybe then I’ll power level something like Blacksmithing.

There’s a hint there, if you want it. Zuggy is a good one for market timing and the introduction of the dual spec in the 3.1 patch was a perfect example. Those of us who had large numbers of glyphs stocked up are cashing in. All of a sudden a lot of players need glyphs to fill out their second spec. And they have the money to buy your glyphs.

How do I know they have the money? Besides the obvious? Because it costs 1,000 gold to get the 2 spec capability (from your class trainer.) After that, what’s 30 gold for a glyph?

Prices are rather high on some pre-3.1 glyphs and I expect they’ll be really high for the new 3.1 glyphs.

By the way, for you Herbalists out there, what do you think the increased glyph demand is going to do to herb prices?Herbs being a necessary component for the Inscription inks.

If you need a quick and dirty guide to either profession, go to:

It’s going to take some time for this demand to cool down, so if you’re a scribe and/or herbalist, get to work!

Buying and Selling and Making WoW Gold

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Nov 292008
 

Wrath of the Gold Gathering

Wrath of the Lich King and Northrend are bringing some interesting changes to the WoW economy. Quests pay at least 4 gold each and there are hundreds of them. Alchemists and Scribes are buying up tons of herbs and crafters are getting their tools into new leathers and ores. Not to mention the new gear, food items, and so on.

So there’s a pretty fair quantity of new items for the gold grind and a pretty fair amount of new cash coming into the game. Prices, of course, will vary from server to server and Horde side to Ally.

Do you like to farm for your gold?

Northrend herbs start at 30-40 gold a stack and go up from there. More and more farming will tend to push prices down some, but Glyphs, that require inks made from those herbs, will help to keep herb prices up. If you want to take up herbalism I have a quickie guide to leveling herbalism from scratch.

Cobalt and Saronite ore look like they’re running 40-50 gold a stack and Titanium is just grim right now. Mining is always a good money maker and all the ores sell well.

Borean leather is somewhere around 20g a stack and you’re going to be killing lots of critters, so the shear quantity of skins should keep those prices relatively low. Rarer skins, though… Artic Fur is looking pretty grim, too.

Hungry? Chunk o’ Mammoth is going for 10g per piece right now. Just avoid the D.E.H.T.A. druids when you’re covered in Mammoth pieces.

Auction House Pricing

When you puts your loots up for sale on the AH check the existing prices first. I use Auctioneer (advanced,) but it’s not essential for price checking. Some people seem to skip this step. For example, let’s say prices for an ore are going at 45g a stack. BobBank comes buy and throws his up there for 200g a stack. Lol wut? Why? I think sometimes its to screw the Auctioneer data, other times people just aren’t looking. It’s a waste of effort since it’ll never sell.

Next comes NotAfarmer, who posts a pile of stacks at 5g each (when the market is 45.) Sigh… what do you do with these people? First, he’s hurting himself since he could get a lot more for each stack, next he’s hurting the market. Actually this is great for buyers, but we greedy types would like to see things a bit higher, which makes it worth our while to farm or make the item. What some of us will then do is buy out all of NotAfarmer’s stuff and resell it at market price.

Then there’s ZogMuffin, who puts up 20 stacks of something at market price or lower. The issue here isn’t necessarily the pricing, but that Zog is locking up 20 stacks of his inventory, which won’t sell, because BobBank gets a clue and undercuts him. So the first few items the buyer sees are Bob’s and Zog gets all his items back in the mail when his auctions expire.

Unless you have a monopoly on an item I don’t suggest putting up a lot of that item. Store the surplus in your bank if it’s selling and prices seem reasonably stable. Post one item at a time if it’s a slow seller, just a few if it sells faster. You’ll sell just as much and you’ll have fewer returns to deal with.

It’s funny sometimes… You see a game where one person posts his items and then he and three or four others will alternately undercut each other by pennies. Then NotAfarmer comes along and dumps a pile of that item, undercutting everyone by 60%. So one of two things happens: his stuff gets bought out by another seller (for resale) or the price creep game starts again at the new, lower, price.

Need More Bank Space?

Make a private guild, just for your banker/mule. Start it up like any other guild, then kick everyone out when its ready to go. It’s probably a good idea if you let them know your plans ahead of time. Bribery (2-5 gold per signature) will get sign-ups a lot faster.

Once done you have access to that nice, large, guild bank. All to yourself. Every once in a great while someone sells their guild and that’s the one I have. Didn’t have to bother with the signup fuss and only paid 70 gold. Then I bought another pair of tabs and now bank space is no longer an issue.

Storing stuff in the mailbox is a good idea for smaller quantities, but doesn’t work so well for larger quantities due to bugs in the system. You won’t lose stuff (as long as you don’t store it for more than 30 days,) but you might not  see it either, until the mailbox is emptied.

Summing Up

Mining and Herbalism for the (gathering) Gold.

Dedicated bankers are a good idea, for all of your buying and selling, and private guilds allow lots of storage space.

Watch the current prices so you can make a good choice about pricing your stuff and try to avoid posting a ton of stuff at one time.

Gathering the Gold in Wrath of the Lich King

 Get the Gold  2 Responses »
Nov 152008
 

Wrath of the Lich king has landed and the World of Warcraft has changed. There are new talents, new builds, new gear, new areas to explore, and so on, but one of the areas that hasn’t changed much is in the gold making techniques.

Gathering is unchanged, except for discovering the new things to gather. Demand for green drops from mobs will probably be strong for awhile since much of it is better than the epic stuff people had at level 70. Certain crafted items (especially glyphs) will sell very well and the materials to make the popular enchants and crafted items will sell very well. The only real difference here will be in exactly which crafts and enchants are popular.

So here are my guesses for gold earning in Wrath. Keep in mind that prices will drop as more and more people start farming Northrend.

Skinning – As always, skin everything you can. Sell the scraps, too. Keep an eye on the Auction House for which skins sell best and which hot crafting recipes require those skins. Find areas where people are just grinding away for XP and skin everything they kill.

Mining – Cobalt and Titanium await you. Engineering, Blacksmithing, and Jewelcrafting will create a demand for these ores and that demand should stay strong for a long time. Cobalt look like it’s going for almost 50g for a 5 stack at the moment, on Bloodscalp. Mining should be interesting on the PvP servers…

Herbalism – Now that Wrath of the Lich King is here people will get back to raiding, which will require the usual collection of potions, created from the various herbs that you will be picking. Plus there’s Inscription, which has driven the price of herbs way up, since the inscription ink come from herbs.

Right now the prices for Northred herbs are truly grim, 20-40 gold per herb. With much of the playerbase arriving in Northrend, gathering away, I don’t think Northrend herbs will stay at that price for long, which is great for scribes, but less great for herbalists. With herbs at 20 gold a stack it costs about 4 or 8 gold to make one glyph. With herbs at 300 gold a stack…

Outland herbs, which have been cheap for some time now, might go up as the gatherers head to Northrend. If Northrend herbs are selling at 100 gold a stack, right now, how many stacks can you farm? As always, check prices on the Auction House first.

Fishing and cooking – Some fish will likely be needed for Alchemy, as well as for cooking, and some might turn out to do interesting things (such as Savory Deviate Delight.) Of course, certain foods are in demand for the buffs they provide and those foods should sell well.

Looting – As usual, keep a close eye on any white or better items you loot in your day to day monster mashing. Some of these items will be valuable. Send them to your banker to sell, don’t vendor them.

Limited items – I have no doubt that there will be a number of new “limited items” appearing on various vendors. Keep an eye on these as several might sell for a very nice profit on the Auction House. Make your own list of “limited item” vendors as you travel the new lands.

Speaking of the Auction House… This really is the area where people can make some serious gold. There are two basic ideas here, both of which require a good understanding of the market on your server.

  1. buy low and sell high is a tried and true one. Herbs for example. If an herb (or ore, or…) normally goes for 30gold a stack and you see that someone has dumped a bunch of stacks for 5 gold, buy them up and resell them (or send them to your favorite scribe.) If prices are starting to look depressed then just hold those items for a few days and keep a close eye on the AH. Post them at a higher price when the market allows.
  2. Find holes in the market and fill them. If a certain glyph is rare and selling for a high price then see if you can make a few of that glyph and sell them for that high price. Same with herbs. If the market needs a few more of a certain herb, because prices are so high, go out and farm a few.

Your banker: Lastly, consider using a low level alt to do all of your buying and selling. It’s less distracting than if you use your main character, plus you’ll be able to focus on making gold and not spending it on better stuff.

Just make a level 1 character to be your “Banker” and run to the nearest big city and park in the Auction House. Next have your main character mail your banker some starting money (for auction fees.) Then as your other characters collect sellable loot and limited items they mail all of those items to the banker for resale.

There are a lot of ways to make gold in the World of Warcraft and the above suggestions are only a few of them. To learn many more gold making techniques you should consider taking the advice of someone who has made enough WoW gold to hit the gold cap (over 230,000 gold) on each of four separate characters. He’s the Warcraft Millionaire and, as you can see, he knows what he’s talking about.

WoW Gold Tip for Rogues

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Oct 162008
 

Got a 70 Rogue with decent gear? Try the Mana Tombs in Terrokar Forest (The Mana-Tombs are a wing of the Auchindoun instance. It is accessed due north from the Ring of Observance.)

Zuggy, of Zug Gaming, has a video showing you just how to do this. He says that a Rogue can generate from 100 to 400 gold per hour, depending on your server, the economy at the moment, and your skills at clearing the mobs.

Your targets are the two chest that spawn at random places in the instance. It also helps if you have a combat build, but that might not be necessary.

Check out his page for the video. Mana Tomb Stealth Farming

And check out Zuggy’s Gold Mastery Guide for more killer gold making tips.

Class Talent Changes for the 3.0 (Pe-WotLK) Patch

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Oct 142008
 

The Patch has landed.

1.2 gigs of data, wow. Not so bad if you’ve been playing regularly, the background downloaded already has it. If you’ve taken a break for awhile, well… 🙂

From the new splash screen when you log in to the modified talents and trees to the new Inscription skill, there are a lot of changes here. Check out the Latest Patch Notes for details. Also keep in mind that the patch has probably broken at least some of your addons. I referred to that previously and linked to an addon update list.

So what I’ve put together here is a collection of posts regarding the new talents and builds. I did this previously (Level 80 WoW Talents And Builds) and this new post links to new and, hopefully, updated info.

Dual Talent Builds and What’s Not in This Patch:

Dual Talent Specs – At last — “…And my personal favorite: Dual Talent Specs. This new feature should be added to the game in one of the content patches following the release of Wotlk. Hopefully in Patch 3.1.” What does that mean? It means you’ll be able to save 2 different Talent Specs for your characters, and that you’ll be able to switch between the two as much as you want, any time you want, besides while in combat or in arenas.

Breaking News: Patch 3.0.2 will not contain all major class changes – There were spells and abilities missing, talents not enumerated, and generally the notes looked as if they were lifted from a version of the game done a few weeks ago. Apparently this was intentional. Ghostcrawler made a post moments …

Class Talent Discussions:

Hunters: BigRedKitty: 3.0.2 Hunter talent trees – The major purpose of this column is to give you, the WoW Insider reader, a point of reference. You know our writing, you know our play-style. You should know our limitations and the areas at which we’re not too shabby. …

Warlocks: Patch 3.0.2 primer for Warlocks – In fact, out of all the 11-point talents, Soul Link is the only one that should give us any pause for thought. Considering that for about a month, we can only allocate up to 10 points in another tree if we choose to get a 51-point …

Mages: Mage WotLK Talents & Developer Q & A – She has done a great job already working with many of classes and now she’s finally making it to the mage class, particularly the information regarding the new spell frostfire bolt. Initially I really didn’t understand the purpose of …

Priests: Spiritual Guidance: Patch 3.0.2 – Holy and Disc Priest talent review – This post will cover all of the new Holy and Discipline talents that will be accessible when the patch becomes live. Not only that, I’ve offered up some suggestions on different builds to remain raid viable (at least to the rare few …

Shaman: Going Resto in Three-point-Oh – New Talent: Cleanse Spirit (Requires 5 points in purification and 30 points in Restoration) – 1 point – Cleanse the spirit of a friendly target, removing 1 poison effect, 1 disease effect, and 1 curse effect. Shaman get an all-in-one …

Warriors: The Care and Feeding of Warriors: The Door Swings Open Pt 1 – Honestly, the difficulty here is not in finding good protection talents you can spec into, it’s in picking which ones to talk to you about now. Some of these talents (like Gag Order) only get really good once you have abilities you …

Ferals: 3.0.2 for Feral Druids – In a few hours, when the servers come back up, patch 3.0.2 is going to hit, and WoW will change drastically. Every tree is get revamped to a greater or lesser extent, and extended up to 51-point talents. The Feral tree changes, …

Rogues: Four Seasons of TBC, Rogue 3.0 Specs – However, without prep which mutilate doesn’t get until WOTLK, the spec is severely lacking in outs and terrible at catching mages, one of the most dominant classes in 3.0. For offensive comps, perhaps a prep spec is still worth …

Paladin: Prot Paladin Talent Build – Block hurts them afterall. We’ll see. Lastly no Holy, nothing in the Ret tree beyond the above, and as the levels tick toward 80, they’ll all get spent in the Prot tree. Tagged: build, Paladin, pally, prot, talent.

Tankadin Preparing Your Tankadin for Patch 3.0: Part 3: Changed Tools – 10/8 – Part 3: Changes to Existing Talents and Spells 10/9 – Part 4: New Talents, and suggested Trees 10/10 – Part 5: The New Threat Rotation or 96969 10/11 – Part 6: Threat Stats for Protection Paladins and Tank Gear Reitemization …

That should be enough to chew on for now. Feel free to comment or, if you like the post, use the share buttons below.

PS: Wrath is bringing a lot of changes and Northrend is a pretty good sized place with a lot going on. Take a good look at the Killer Guides’ Wrath of the Lich King guide – It will make your trek to 80 much easier and much more lucrative.

Gold Gathering Thoughts

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Oct 132008
 

Where Have the Herbs Gone?

I spent some time today on a couple of servers looking for herb bargains, to use for Inscription or to resell. As you might already know, many of the herbs needed for Inscription are being snapped up as soon as they appear.

So you’ll log into the AH, search for (herb) and see… nothing. Or you’ll see something, at about 10 times the price you were paying not so long ago. Peacebloom at 20+ gold a stack? Wow.

Herbalism For the Win!

Herbalism is the new mining, but better. Start a new toon and gather stacks of the basic herbs and you’ll be able to sell them for far more than you’ll sell copper ore or light leather.

Given the way Inscription research works there will be an ongoing increased demand for the low level herbs which means more gold in your pocket.

Prices will stabilize as more people start farming all the necessary herbs, but I think prices are going to be permanently somewhat higher and much higher in the short term. So if you have an Herb Gatherer, now’s your time.

Mining and Skinning Are Still Good

I also think ores and skins will see some degree of price rise. Why? People will drop one or the other skill (I dropped mining and I’ll drop skinning tomorrow) to get Herbalism and/or Inscription. More herb gatherers means fewer ore and skin gatherers, leading to a somewhat lower supply of those items with little decrease in demand. Hence, higher prices.

I’m sure that the Chinese (and other) farmers will also see this opportunity, which will dampen prices somewhat. Still, it’s a good time to be a gatherer.

Getting Your Skills Up Fast

If you want to level your Herbalism skills to take advantage of these prices then take a quick look at my quick and dirty herbalism leveling guide.

If you’re interested in a deeper guide to leveling your Herbalism and/or Inscription skills, then take a look at my review of Penn’s Profession’s Guide.

Zug’s Gold Mastery Guide, Reviewed

 Reviews  1 Response »
Sep 302008
 

Note 6/6/11: Zug’s guide is now “Dominate WoW Gold” and that’s where the links below will take you. I have not seen that product, the review below is regarding a copy of the original Zug’s guide, which was pretty good. I expect the new product is, as well. Currently I’m using the Tycoon addon and finding that it fills my gold acquisition needs.

Zug’s Gold Mastery Guide

Zug, at ZugGaming.com, was kind enough to send me a copy of his World of Warcraft Gold Mastery Guide for review and I’ve been reading it over for the last few days.

I’m even using his “Tuesday Techniques” which I think will turn a tidy profit.

All in all I’m quite pleased with the guide and have no problems recommending it. I would like to see videos of some of the Auction House stuff, but it’s easy to read, well laid out, well written, and full of good tips and useful info.

You can snag your copy here, or read on to see more detail on what’s included in Zug’s guide.

Zuggy’s Gold Mastery Guide is actually six guides in one. You get guides for grinding, cashing in on professions, limited items, daily quests, auction house mastery, and a tools and tips guide.

The Grinding Guide – Grinding is the most common way to make WoW gold and Zug included plently of recommendations here, including maps marked to show specific locations. Also included are a number of tips for more efficient grinding, including beverage recommendations (Mountain Dew, of course.)

While grinding is a tad on the dull side (Ok, a LOT on the dull side) it’s a proven method for making gold and is the method of choice for a lot of players.

The Limited Items – If you’ve read any of my previous gold posts you’ll know that I’m a fan of limited items. Buy ’em cheap and sell ’em high. Zuggy’s Limited Items Guide is a pretty complete listing of vendors, their general location, and which item(s) you want to look for. While it’s easy enough to look up locations on Thottbot, exact locations would have been a nice addition to the guide.

Still, this list makes it easy to get on your epic mount and make the rounds of the vendors, then mail all your goodies to your banker for resale at large markups.

This works because many people aren’t interested in wasting time looking for vendors and checking to see if they maybe have that item in stock, this time. So you provide the convenience of easy availability and they pay you more than retail for the favor.

The Professions Guide – Yes, they can be used for making gold, some of them anyway, rather than burnng through your existing cash stash. Enchanting, blacksmithing, leatherworking, and others (in addition to the gathering professions) are covered here. Note – this isn’t a profession leveling guide. You’ll have a chance to grab one of those when you grab his guide.

The Dailies Guide – All 70s know to do their dailies for easy gold, rep, and loots. Which ones are the best though? (yeah, I know. Quel’Danas.) Zuggy lists all the dailies by area, notes which ones are worth doing and how much you earn from each. He also includes links to WoWhead for each quest if you need info on who, what, and where. Very nice.

The Auction House System – This is where the real gold is made in WoW, through mastering the Auction House. Zug covers which addons you need (Auctioneer, Gatherer, and others.) as well as how to install and use them to best effect.

He does a great job of covering how to use Auctioneer and uses screenshots to good effect. Videos would have been a nice addition here and I asked him about that. He agrees that it’s a good idea so I think current buyers of Zuggy’s guide will see some nice updates and stuff coming up, rather than having a forgotten product.

Tips, Tools, and Tricks – this one’s a catch-all for stuff not mentioned elsewhere, including the right way to make a bank alt, as well as leveling and more profession notes.

So why not just BUY gold? Ever read that Terms of Service agreement that you automatically click “agree” to when WoW is updated? Buying gold, items, accounts, etc is prohibited, so Bliz will ban your booty if they find you’re buying stuff you shouldn’t. Still, it’s your account…

With a guide you’ll end up making far more gold for far less money than a seller will charge you. Grab a copy of Zug’s guide here, follow the tips, and you’ll forget about ever wanting to buy gold again. Your account will breathe a sigh of relief and you’ll enjoy flying around on that epic flying mount (or riding that 15k, 3 person mount when Wrath comes out.)

Low Levels CAN Make Lots of Gold in WoW

 Get the Gold  3 Responses »
Sep 232008
 

I got the idea for this from a gold blog, MakeWoWgold – Myth #5 – Low levels can’t make gold – and thought I’d add my 2 cents worth. Especially since I make 95+% of my gold with low levels.

Low levels characters can make a lot of gold and some will even argue that they should make pretty much ALL of your gold. The tips below are covered in vastly greater detail in the Massive Gold Blueprint, but what I’m putting down here will get you started.

What they’re not doing, of course, is grinding motes on the Elemental Plateau or hunting up adamantine ore or Fel Lotus in the Outlands. Heck, even newbs can do this stuff and make gold.

The method is to buy low and sell higher and this can be done with your level 1s. You’ll need some seed money which you can get from your high level or by grinding ore for a bit. Then you look for the deals.

Find vendors selling limited items. These are the items that are only available in small quantities from any given vendor, generally 1 to 3 at a time. Once bought they’re gone until the vendor gets new stock (a few minutes to a few hours.)

All of the big cities have these vendors and many of the small towns do, as well. The two item vendors at the DarkMoon Faire have quite a variety of limited items, which is why you’ll see people camping them.

Many, not all, of these items will sell for more, sometimes a lot more, on the Auction house than what you pay for them. For example, you can buy Fel Lotus (every once in awhile) from the Faire for 4 gold a piece, then sell it for 15-30 gold, depending on all the usual factors.

Clothing items also sell. The White Wedding Dress, in Stormwind, sells to you for about 1 gold and sells on the AH for 8-12.

When you find items make a note of their prices and check the Auction House prices. Make it a habit to do that and you will start finding items that are very much worth your while to buy and resell. The items prices will vary wildly from server to server, so you should really make youir own list. The Auctioneer addon is a big help here, but even if you don’t have it or want it you can still do this stuff.

Certain basic items needed by crafters also sell nicely. Some crafters look to powerlevel their skill and just buy everything off the AH. They’re not interested in deals or best prices, they just gather it all up and gain 200 points to their skill in a couple of hours. So on some servers you can buy the Copper Rod, needed by Enchanters, for pennies and resell it for several gold.

Park a level 1 alt in each of the majors cities, send them some gold to get started (when you have enough) and then you won’t have to spend time flying all over the place. With these alts in place you can log into Alt #1, buy stuff, and then send it to your banker. Repeat with Alt #2 and Alt #3.

Every now and then you will see a killer deal on the Auction House. Buy it and resell it. This is one of the methods used by some to make lots of gold.They just by a lot of stuff at a time and resell it.

One of the nice things about this is that you don’t have to use your high levels for grinding/farming. Use the low levels to get the gold, use your higher levels for the fun stuff.

Now go make a stash.

For the PUG Raider

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Aug 202008
 

The mighty Nyhm brings forth his wisdom regarding Pick Up Groups (PUGs) and raiding, specifically Karazhan. All of us who’ve been in big PUGs, raiding or not, will nod our heads in agreement.

edit: links to a guide have been deleted.

Gold Farming – A Good Thing or the Ultimate Evil?

 Get the Gold  1 Response »
Aug 192008
 

So where do you stand on gold farming? Good? Bad? Evil? Gold’s not at all hard to make in WoW, but still.. there is a certain appeal to getting 1k gold or more in 10 minutes. And then there’s that desire in the eyes of certain other people to just execute the buyers and the farmers.

See that little BlogRush widget on the right side of this blog? (yes, this is relevant) It’s kinda cool. It’s a traffic swap type thing and pulls in posts from, ahem, blogs in similar categories. (It’s free, get yours here)

The reason that I bring it up is that one of the headlines, which may still be there, was this: The bright side of gold farming?

Following that lead me to the Looter’s Lounge (an MMO blog) and their The bright side of gold farming post.

What that post is referring to is a research paper, (yep, a full blown research paper) on the economics of gold farming from the point of view of the farmers as well as that of the players.

It’s a serious report and not light reading, but it’s not a theoretical physics paper, either, so we mere mortals shold be able to get through it. If you’re interested in the economics of gold farming in the real world then you should give it a look. It’s pretty interesting.

edit – edited for spelling. Sigh…

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