Changes and follow up
I haven't posted in about two weeks since life has been keeping me busy with a new job and new hours. I just started a new job where I am working third shift and seven days a week. It's a good thing as my family and I can really use the extra money with another baby on the way in January. It definitely has been a transition though getting used to the new flip flop of my days and nights.
As a follow up to my first post of the markets I am into and the challenges I have been facing I wanted to give a brief summary. My liquid gold keeps going down as I am stocking up for the patch but I keep making gold too. I have downloaded TSM 2.0 and am seriously in love. I am steady making gold on my jewelcrafter and have things set up quite nicely with the new TSM. I mostly post on Wednesdays and Thursdays as I don't have much competition at all on those days. I have been trying to sell off most of my stockpiled pvp gear and it is slowly disappearing. I have been crafting a few reborn weapons and those have been selling too.
The rest of the post will be some of my theorycrafting and speculations on things on the horizon in the days coming after 5.4. It has been officially announced the the patch will drop on September 10, 2013. This gives some of us (like me) some more time to stock up according to a great post by Nev New Crafting Materials for Patch 5.4.
Sha Crystals after the patch
It was recently announced in the 5.4 PTR patch notes that items that now cost valor, but after the patch will cost justice points, as well as new crafted pvp epics will now disenchant into sha crystal fragments. As far as I have found, three of these can be combined to form a regular sha crystal. Now one of the cheapest ways, besides grinding justice points, will mostly likely be through cloth pvp bracers and cloaks. These will cost 6 bolts of windwool cloth. Depending on your server and prices for the cloth and sha crystals it may be a good idea to wait and not stock up on too many crystals before the patch. You may be able to obtain them cheaper after the patch and these changes hit. This will be especially true if you have a tailor/enchanter.
Craftable Epic ilvl 553 Gear
I have also found through some research on wowhead PTR that the new craftable epic ilvl 553 pve belts and pants will be bind on equip. We will be able to profit off these not just make them for ourselves. Now these will be gated by the fact that you have to first learn them thought random discoveries on your daily cooldowns. I believe you learn the first epic pve pattern on your first discovery but we will have to see what happens when the patch goes live. Even after you learn how to make these items the pants take 28 daily cooldowns and the belts 21. The only way to get around this is the new spirit of war that will come from disenchanting epics in the Siege of Ogrimmar raid. These will let you bypass the daily cooldown and will make the crafting of these items slightly quicker. In the mean time, the ilvl 522 pve crafted epics will still be profitable and sell well after the patch. There should still be many players finishing up Throne of Thunder to keep the haunting spirits stock on the auction house for weeks to come after the patch. Many players will be trying to get that ilvl 496 to get into the new LFR and the 522 gear will still be a good way to do that. By the way that isn't just a random ilvl I came up with; @Warcraft on twitter mentioned that it will be the requirement for the raid in a comment just today.
Hope you enjoyed this post. Feel free to comment or contact me through twitter or email.
Good luck on your journey.
-Droth
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Saturday, August 10, 2013
What keeps me playing WoW?
I am very happy to participate in my first Gold Blogging Carnival hosted by Copper to Gold. I enjoyed reading all the posts last month about the definition of a good gold maker. I had plans in the mix back then to start this blog and was hoping I would have it up and running before the next carnival. I will be answering the question in two parts. This month's question is: What keeps driving you to make gold? What do you do to avoid getting burnt out?
What keeps driving you to make gold?
I have many driving factors that keep me logging in and making gold. To start off with I have not been really focusing on my gold making for that long. I have only been super focused on it for about three months. That being said I am only focused on a few markets. I am still working on refining the markets I am currently highly involved in. I still need to set floors and ceilings for my markets. I have made floors on many of my items but my fallback prices have just been slightly random high prices I had seen when making the groups. I am driven to seriously refine these settings as I have just downloaded TSM 2.0. This gives me a chance to start over fresh and use the great knowledge I have been receiving lately listening to Drunken Musings and Late Nite With Stede. The last real driving factor is my goal of 500k gold shortly after the 5.4 patch release and then next benchmark of 1 million after that. I am fairly certain it won't stop there as I am still fascinated with making more gold than I could have ever imagined.
What do you do to avoid getting burnt out?
Some of the things I will mention that keep me from burning out may overlap some of my driving forces. I avoid burn out by challenging myself with broad milestone goals. I have goals of getting into the inscription and engineering markets. Another market I want to investigate and pursue is old expansion crafting markets that are still profitable. I am very interested in learning new markets and refining them. Preparing and stockpiling materials for 5.4 has me busy. Since this is part of my milestone goal, I am scouring the AH every time I'm on for materials under my floor price on these items.
On the PVE side of things I am leveling a priest and druid to 90. I am doing LFR on each role now, when I can, and prepping at least 2 to be ready for flex raiding when it becomes available.
As can be seen I have many things to keep me busy in game. I also have a wife and kids, full time job, just started this blog, and am studying for my A+ certification this fall/winter. I am always setting goals for myself in and out of game and sometimes some of the WoW ones don't get realized. That is OK because the real life ones are always more important.
Hope you all enjoyed this post and this blogging carnival for this month. I look forward to reading all your posts in the final list.
-Droth
What keeps driving you to make gold?
I have many driving factors that keep me logging in and making gold. To start off with I have not been really focusing on my gold making for that long. I have only been super focused on it for about three months. That being said I am only focused on a few markets. I am still working on refining the markets I am currently highly involved in. I still need to set floors and ceilings for my markets. I have made floors on many of my items but my fallback prices have just been slightly random high prices I had seen when making the groups. I am driven to seriously refine these settings as I have just downloaded TSM 2.0. This gives me a chance to start over fresh and use the great knowledge I have been receiving lately listening to Drunken Musings and Late Nite With Stede. The last real driving factor is my goal of 500k gold shortly after the 5.4 patch release and then next benchmark of 1 million after that. I am fairly certain it won't stop there as I am still fascinated with making more gold than I could have ever imagined.
What do you do to avoid getting burnt out?
Some of the things I will mention that keep me from burning out may overlap some of my driving forces. I avoid burn out by challenging myself with broad milestone goals. I have goals of getting into the inscription and engineering markets. Another market I want to investigate and pursue is old expansion crafting markets that are still profitable. I am very interested in learning new markets and refining them. Preparing and stockpiling materials for 5.4 has me busy. Since this is part of my milestone goal, I am scouring the AH every time I'm on for materials under my floor price on these items.
On the PVE side of things I am leveling a priest and druid to 90. I am doing LFR on each role now, when I can, and prepping at least 2 to be ready for flex raiding when it becomes available.
As can be seen I have many things to keep me busy in game. I also have a wife and kids, full time job, just started this blog, and am studying for my A+ certification this fall/winter. I am always setting goals for myself in and out of game and sometimes some of the WoW ones don't get realized. That is OK because the real life ones are always more important.
Hope you all enjoyed this post and this blogging carnival for this month. I look forward to reading all your posts in the final list.
-Droth
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
20 Days of Gold Making - Day 1
It has been a little over a week since my fist blog post and I am very grateful for the the awesome response I have got. A big thank you again to Mithrildar and Jim from Power Word: Gold for linking and supporting my blog. As I mentioned in my first post I will be doing Nev's 20 Days of Gold Making to help get posts flowing and get me kick-started. I refuse to be another blogger that pops up then fades away. So, let's get this started.
When did I start gold making?
I started making gold in the middle of Wrath of the Lich King. At the time I had mining and jewelcrafting on my main fury warrior and was trying to get into an ICC raiding group. My protection warrior friend had proved to me that quite a good bit of gold could be made from just prospecting and cutting gems. Each day I would go out and mine a bunch of ore, prospect and cut gems, and do the daily jewelcrafting quest for tokens. Back then I didn't buy ore off the AH because, by all means I was a miner too, I was making way more mining it myself. I laugh now at that notion, because "time is money friend."
Somewhere around that time I was having an alt leveling spree, because I was in between jobs. I got this great idea that I wanted to be self sufficient and have useful professions for all of my alts and not have to bother anyone to craft me what I needed. With all that gold I was making from jewelcrafting and farming the mats myself on each appropriate toon I leveled my professions. My warlock became my tailor/enchanter, my druid my skinner/leatherworker, and my death knight a blacksmith/alchemist. I leveled a mining and herbalist paladin too at the same pace as the DK to feed his professions. Even with this set up I wasn't making a whole lot of gold. I was spending all my time as a raid and guild leader for a 10 man ICC group. I didn't really start to see substantial amounts of gold until my druid picked up the rep boot patterns Blessed Cenarion Boots and Footpads of Impending Death and crafting them for a nice profit. I entered Cataclysm with a decent amount of gold but wasn't utilizing all my profession for gold. This brings me to the answer to the second part of the question.
And what triggered it?
When I got into Cataclysm my main was my druid because he had all the gold. By the time I level capped and bought the Darkmoon Card: Tsunami for my restoration set I was broke again. It was then that it finally started to click that if I could make use of all my professions and level them to max again I could make gold and not be broke all the time after getting a few items. So I started searching. My searching brought me to many different gold guides and I even bought one. After going through it I found that over half of the information in it was already out there for free. I quickly canceled my subscription to the guide. What I did get from it was add-ons I never knew about before like Auctionator, Postal, TSM and Altoholic. I found Undermine Journal and followed the posts daily. So to sum it up, being broke and utilizing my cartel of professions are what finally triggered me to learn the art that is gold making in World of Warcraft. I am still very much a student and enjoy the ups and downs of learning new markets and overcoming challenges.
Final thoughts
My next post will likely be the Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival hosted by Selltacular - August topic. Rules and subject for this month can be found by following the link. Much thanks again to all the gold bloggers and podcasters I follow who inspire my thoughts about gold making and markets daily. Information to contact me by email or twitter is in the 'contact me' area. Till next time.
-Droth
When did I start gold making?
I started making gold in the middle of Wrath of the Lich King. At the time I had mining and jewelcrafting on my main fury warrior and was trying to get into an ICC raiding group. My protection warrior friend had proved to me that quite a good bit of gold could be made from just prospecting and cutting gems. Each day I would go out and mine a bunch of ore, prospect and cut gems, and do the daily jewelcrafting quest for tokens. Back then I didn't buy ore off the AH because, by all means I was a miner too, I was making way more mining it myself. I laugh now at that notion, because "time is money friend."
Somewhere around that time I was having an alt leveling spree, because I was in between jobs. I got this great idea that I wanted to be self sufficient and have useful professions for all of my alts and not have to bother anyone to craft me what I needed. With all that gold I was making from jewelcrafting and farming the mats myself on each appropriate toon I leveled my professions. My warlock became my tailor/enchanter, my druid my skinner/leatherworker, and my death knight a blacksmith/alchemist. I leveled a mining and herbalist paladin too at the same pace as the DK to feed his professions. Even with this set up I wasn't making a whole lot of gold. I was spending all my time as a raid and guild leader for a 10 man ICC group. I didn't really start to see substantial amounts of gold until my druid picked up the rep boot patterns Blessed Cenarion Boots and Footpads of Impending Death and crafting them for a nice profit. I entered Cataclysm with a decent amount of gold but wasn't utilizing all my profession for gold. This brings me to the answer to the second part of the question.
And what triggered it?
When I got into Cataclysm my main was my druid because he had all the gold. By the time I level capped and bought the Darkmoon Card: Tsunami for my restoration set I was broke again. It was then that it finally started to click that if I could make use of all my professions and level them to max again I could make gold and not be broke all the time after getting a few items. So I started searching. My searching brought me to many different gold guides and I even bought one. After going through it I found that over half of the information in it was already out there for free. I quickly canceled my subscription to the guide. What I did get from it was add-ons I never knew about before like Auctionator, Postal, TSM and Altoholic. I found Undermine Journal and followed the posts daily. So to sum it up, being broke and utilizing my cartel of professions are what finally triggered me to learn the art that is gold making in World of Warcraft. I am still very much a student and enjoy the ups and downs of learning new markets and overcoming challenges.
Final thoughts
My next post will likely be the Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival hosted by Selltacular - August topic. Rules and subject for this month can be found by following the link. Much thanks again to all the gold bloggers and podcasters I follow who inspire my thoughts about gold making and markets daily. Information to contact me by email or twitter is in the 'contact me' area. Till next time.
-Droth
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Lengthy Introduction
Markets I'm Into
In this first blog post I wanted to share what markets I'm into. I have a maxed profession level jewelcrafter, alchemist (transmute specialist), tailor, leatherworker, blacksmith, and enchanter. I have plans of leveling an inscription and engineering too soon. With these professions I am into all the pvp crafted armors of all types. Not so much with leatherworking though as I am saving up magnificent hides for patch 5.4. If can get a good deal on MoP ore I will buy up a bunch and do the shuffle. With my alchemist I will do my daily living steel, transmute gems, craft potions, and flasks. I have an exalted with tillers farm on two toons which help bring in herbs, especially golden lotus. With these markets I am always on the look out for good deals on MoP ore and golden lotus.
Struggles and Triumphs
Now that I have shared my markets I'm into, I wanted to share some of my struggles I have had and how I have been tackling them. First problem I have had recently is that I noticed I just wasn't making the profit I was used to in the jewelcrafting shuffle. So I went through my accounting tab on TSM and started analyzing my purchases and sales tabs. What I found is that I had been mindlessly cutting what I though were popular gems and just undercutting the competition without regard to my cost. I also checked Undermine Journal to find I had also been enchanting scrolls regularly at loss compared to mat cost. I am not selling any scrolls now at a loss and just stockpiling the rest of the mats. As I have learned from many of my favorite gold makers, generally, the price of one golden lotus equals the price of a 20 stack of ghost iron ore. The stack of ore on average will prospect to at least one rare quality gem. Many of my mindless cutting and posting of rare gems were far below that value. To curb this loss I have been buying rare gems when I can find them at below the cost of a stack of ore (many times for much less as all rares have a slightly different market value). Also my investigation has shown that golden lotus also has dropped below what stacks of ore are going for. This being said I have be transmuting many of my hybrid colored and red gems to lower my average rare gem cost even more. I have only been cutting gems that are making 30 gold or more than my average cost of that rare gem color. Most are going for 2 or 3 times what I paid for the uncut gem. I prospect much less now and have just been smelting most of ore and sending it to my blacksmith/ alchemist. Using this and another tactic in this market I have actually doubled my profits in the last week.
My second problem I have run into is that I have a competitor in the crafted pvp plate market that, no matter what, posts everything he must have stocked up for around 150g; helmets, chests, legs, everything. This is much less than I am used to getting for these items. To tackle this I have been just trying to reset the market back to around 450g and slowly many of the selling prices on individual items have been rising. I suspect this is due to this competition running out of his overstock he was just trying to off quickly. I will have more information on how this pans out in my future posts.
Thanks to my inspirations
In this final section I had originally planned on going over some of what I'm going to be stockpiling for the 5.4 patch. Rather than beating a very bruised horse, I decided to just link Mithrildar's excellent post What I'm Stockpiling for Patch 5.4. He covers everything I was thinking and more.
I would also like to thank all of the gold makers that have inspired me on my gold making journey. Rather than list you all off, know that if you are on my blogs and podcasts I follow section I am talking about you.
Finally I will mention that I will be doing my best to answer the 20 days of Gold Making questions, posted by Nev, as I come up with more content share about my gold making journey.
Thank you all for reading. Feel free to comment your thoughts or contact me by email or follow me on twitter.
Good luck on your journey.
-Droth
In this first blog post I wanted to share what markets I'm into. I have a maxed profession level jewelcrafter, alchemist (transmute specialist), tailor, leatherworker, blacksmith, and enchanter. I have plans of leveling an inscription and engineering too soon. With these professions I am into all the pvp crafted armors of all types. Not so much with leatherworking though as I am saving up magnificent hides for patch 5.4. If can get a good deal on MoP ore I will buy up a bunch and do the shuffle. With my alchemist I will do my daily living steel, transmute gems, craft potions, and flasks. I have an exalted with tillers farm on two toons which help bring in herbs, especially golden lotus. With these markets I am always on the look out for good deals on MoP ore and golden lotus.
Struggles and Triumphs
Now that I have shared my markets I'm into, I wanted to share some of my struggles I have had and how I have been tackling them. First problem I have had recently is that I noticed I just wasn't making the profit I was used to in the jewelcrafting shuffle. So I went through my accounting tab on TSM and started analyzing my purchases and sales tabs. What I found is that I had been mindlessly cutting what I though were popular gems and just undercutting the competition without regard to my cost. I also checked Undermine Journal to find I had also been enchanting scrolls regularly at loss compared to mat cost. I am not selling any scrolls now at a loss and just stockpiling the rest of the mats. As I have learned from many of my favorite gold makers, generally, the price of one golden lotus equals the price of a 20 stack of ghost iron ore. The stack of ore on average will prospect to at least one rare quality gem. Many of my mindless cutting and posting of rare gems were far below that value. To curb this loss I have been buying rare gems when I can find them at below the cost of a stack of ore (many times for much less as all rares have a slightly different market value). Also my investigation has shown that golden lotus also has dropped below what stacks of ore are going for. This being said I have be transmuting many of my hybrid colored and red gems to lower my average rare gem cost even more. I have only been cutting gems that are making 30 gold or more than my average cost of that rare gem color. Most are going for 2 or 3 times what I paid for the uncut gem. I prospect much less now and have just been smelting most of ore and sending it to my blacksmith/ alchemist. Using this and another tactic in this market I have actually doubled my profits in the last week.
My second problem I have run into is that I have a competitor in the crafted pvp plate market that, no matter what, posts everything he must have stocked up for around 150g; helmets, chests, legs, everything. This is much less than I am used to getting for these items. To tackle this I have been just trying to reset the market back to around 450g and slowly many of the selling prices on individual items have been rising. I suspect this is due to this competition running out of his overstock he was just trying to off quickly. I will have more information on how this pans out in my future posts.
Thanks to my inspirations
In this final section I had originally planned on going over some of what I'm going to be stockpiling for the 5.4 patch. Rather than beating a very bruised horse, I decided to just link Mithrildar's excellent post What I'm Stockpiling for Patch 5.4. He covers everything I was thinking and more.
I would also like to thank all of the gold makers that have inspired me on my gold making journey. Rather than list you all off, know that if you are on my blogs and podcasts I follow section I am talking about you.
Finally I will mention that I will be doing my best to answer the 20 days of Gold Making questions, posted by Nev, as I come up with more content share about my gold making journey.
Thank you all for reading. Feel free to comment your thoughts or contact me by email or follow me on twitter.
Good luck on your journey.
-Droth
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