Thinking Ahead

There’s not too much for me to focus on once I have my druid flying and with dual specs, so I am thinking that it might be worthwhile to slow down and do some serious stockpiling for Cataclysm. Stockpile what? Well, here are some initial thoughts :

• Netherweave bags – New Worgen and Goblin players entering the game will need bags and if you have a few hundred of them laying in a guild bank, you could make some real coin in the first week.

• Ore – Yes, I know, there will be new ore to farm in the xpac, but there will still be skill points to be gained from Northrend ore at the beginning. If you aren’t quick you may miss this boat, though.

• Runecloth – New factions, new races leveling the old factions, there should be money in runecloth if you farm it now or at least ahead of time.

• Belt Buckles – I may be wrong, but once people hit 85, they’re still going to want belt buckles. Having a good stockpile will allow you to sell faster than the folks that are having to go back to Northrend to farm mats.

• Cobalt, Goldclover, Borean Leather – If the change in profession leveling from BC to WOTLK is any indication, the higher end (read:metagem part of JC and titansteel part of BS) sections will be gone. People will level the early part then jump to the new areas and mats. The question is, will there be a huge rush in new people leveling professions? I”m guessing that there will be with the changes to some professions allowing more end game usefulness (Like buckles and sockets with BS in Wrath).

What won’t sell at all? Old gems. I doubt anyone who keeps up with this stuff will have any gems at all about a month out from the release. Cheap greens becoming better than blues and epics will destroy the prices.

This is all a year or more away, so there’s no reason to go into stockpile-overdrive just yet, but if you find a great deal on some stuff that could be useful down the road, it might be worth banking it now to sell for big profit later.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

So MMO-Champion, one of the most read WoW websites, posts a couple of gold-making strategy guides and there’s considerable concern from many in the AH community that are worried about the resulting crash of several markets. At least there should be some new players on the scene, right? I can only speak for my server, but I haven’t seen much change. Eternals have been a little high for about a week (7g for earth, 6g for water and shadow) but saronite still dips into a good sub-15g area often enough that I haven’t had any slowdown. Belt buckles still sell. So do epic gems. Granted, I’m not in the herb or glyph markets, so I can’t really speak to how those are looking at the moment, and yes, enchanting mats have dipped a little, but the world isn’t coming to an end or anything.

PvP rare gems apparently sell on my server. I’ve been wondering what to do with them, so I ran into Wintergrasp and bought up a few recipes, cut a small sample of gems and tossed em up. Not everything sold, but considering the stacks of blue gems I’ve been sitting on, it was nice to see some of them turned into cash.

856g yesterday with another 407g in overnight sales gave me my first 1000g day. How’d I celebrate? I bought eternal earth, water, and saronite ore and bars. Shadow is still high, but I have a ton of green gems to turn into jewelry and poof tonight and I’m still researching a few rare gem cuts. (There really just isn’t anything to do with forest emeralds, is there?) My total before my purchases was 5758g. I’m closing in on that last 4k I need to buy the druid epic flight and cold weather flying (he’s 71 now) to really make leveling him speed right up. The biggest test yet will be whether or not I can keep myself from breaking into the gold stash early to get him moving. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with it, I just lose a bit of my liquid assets and have to slow down a bit for a little while. But I really think I can rebuild faster the second time around and should be making good money again quickly, especially as quest money and drops roll in to supplement my AH work.  Also, what’s the point of making all the money if you don’t use it for something? I’m never going to hit 214k. I just want to be comfortable that I can buy what I need (not necessarily everything I want) and at the end of the day, I’m learning to enjoy the AH as a new part of the game.

Progress, a Complaint

I’m just shy of 5k right now, which puts my 2 week total at about 4300g, which is pretty good. I’ve said it before, I’m never going to be a 10k a day guy, but I’m making steady progress and the only time I have a down day is if I buy a ton of mats and don’t get everything reposted. I’m using belt buckles and JC/disenchanting for the vast majority of my income, although as I level the druid I’ve been selling off netherweave bags. I’ve built enough of a cushion now that if anyone severely undercuts my buckles I just buy them out and repost them for a small profit, but one that allows my inventory to keep moving. I don’t do it all the time, but if I’ll make 5-6g from the deal I’ll go ahead and buy them out. If it’s less than that, I just wait on the lower priced buckles to sell.

Which leads me to my complaint or criticism. So many people say, “I don’t have any money” or “I don’t know how to make money”. Well, as the druid is a skinner/leatherworker I can tell you that there are a shocking number of people out there that don’t loot the grays off of the mobs they kill. I mean, people, this is like leaving money there on the ground. Little piles of silver that apparently you can’t be bothered to carry. I don’t understand the thought process. Do people think that they need to conserve bag space in case they get something better to drop? Or do they think that selling off grays is too big a pain? While it would be nice for me to be able to skin all these mobs, I’m really not that worried about it. I’ll get my leather eventually. I’m mostly sad for people that pass up free money (you were killing the mob anyway, right?)

Big money

Last night was one of those strange nights where everything on the AH was overpriced (except Runed Cardinal Rubies…go figure). Infinite dust was actually selling for a while at 10g50s per and even when that fell through, I was selling them at 6g per. Eternal Water was sitting around 18 a piece (that was more a frustration than anything else), belt buckles sold solidly all night around 45g. It just so happened that I went through several stacks of green gems to start the night and therefore had my finest day so far. In the end I was at 900g profit after restocking. That brings my gold total to 2546 as of this morning.

I’m starting to rethink rare gems. They simply don’t sell fast enough to be a big deal. I’m doing better selling them uncut than cut .Maybe I’m using the wrong cuts, but the Smooth and Bold cuts have always been useful and you’d think they would move, but they don’t. I put up five and sell maybe one. I think I’ll switch to just putting up 1-2 at a time and restocking it when it sells.

Also this morning, Grunty the Merloc Marine showed up in my email. He’ll get a chance to shoot some stuff in ToC at the raid tonight.

The Time Balance

Real life doesn’t allow me to play WoW like I used to play. (And honestly, I used to play way too much) I can’t usually get more than 15 minutes before work in the morning to set up the day’s auctions and then a good 2-3 hours most nights, although I take a few nights a week off. What I’m coming to realize is that the key is setting priorities and doing what I get the most out of with my time.

There are some things that just have to be done. I have to craft the stuff I’m selling. I have to make sure I have the consumables for my 3 raid nights. I have to show up for raids and tank. Raiding Sunday, Monday, and Thursday typically allows me Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday to futz around as I see fit. (Saturday is date night with the Mrs.)

My typical off night plays out like this: I log into the bank alt, collect money (hopefully), run a quick scan, then check the going prices on saronite ore, saronite bars, eternal earth, water, and shadow, eternal belt buckles, netherweave cloth and netherweave bags. I buy what needs restocking and post whatever needs posting. I run to the mailbox and toss crafting materials off to their respective crafters. Then I go back to the AH and check whatever I forgot to check the first time and look around for anything that’s surprisingly low, what’s in low supply that I might be able to turn a quick profit on, and I relog to my crafting toons. I make what I need to and ship it back to the bank alt, log back to that toon, and post all the new stuff. I try to knock all of this out before raid times kick in for most guilds to try and catch a few sales before those guys get into instances.

After that I do JC, fishing, and cooking dailies and then (if we’re being honest) check to see what’s sold already. If anything needs to be cancel/reposted, I do that, then I head off to the druid to do some leveling. I’m taking too much time with the druid, trying to keep him in rested xp for the most part (raid nights help with that). I’m thinking very seriously about switching him to my new main once he gets to 80 and gets geared, but I have to get there first. He’s LW/skinning, which I don’t intend to change at this point. I’m looking forward to some skinning sales once I get up to 80 and get LW done, I think there’s money to be made there as I gear the toon out.

Around 10:30-11:00, I usually log back to the AH alt and collect some more cash and run a full check again on all my materials to see what I can pick up cheap for tomorrow. I may jump back to a crafter if I see an opportunity here, but really I’m pretty much done for the night. I’ll log in in the morning before work, run a quick check to see any steals, collect money, cancel/repost, and then it’s off to work. Unfortunately, this schedule is only doable 3-4 days a week, so I’m never going to be a huge businessman I’m afraid, but I should be able to continually make money, get leveled and geared, and raid without too much trouble.

Eternal Earth-a-thon

For some reason, the planets realigned last night and Eternal Earth was extremely cheap (5g60s – 5g75s) while water was all gone and shadow was overpriced (8g). This morning there were plenty of waters if you were willing to spend 14g per. Ha! I used the opportunity to stock up, buying about 4 stacks worth of earth and waiting for the shadow and water markets come back down. Saronite ore was around 18g, so I wasn’t bothering with that either (got one stack for 14g). All in all, it was more of a stocking night than a posting night. I undercut some belt buckles, threw some blue gems up, and moved over to leveling the druid some more.

Reading the JMTC forums, I’ve come to realize that I just don’t deal in nearly the quantity that those guys do. I may get to that point, but more than likely, I’m going to ramp up a little bit from where I am now and remain content to move slower. I’m not sure if that means I’m going to get stuck somewhere down the road (I kinda figure it does) but with leveling, gearing, raiding, I just don’t have the time to spend on AH and production to work in the kinds of numbers they’re talking about. I feel good about having 5 stacks of Eternal Earth, some of those guys keep a stock of 50 stacks. The problem is, I don’t have any suppliers and am at the whim of the AH to keep myself stocked.

Tonight I’ll do a big run of green JC stuff and send that off for poofing, check the usual stuff on the AH, and make the netherweave bags that I bought the cloth for last night (3g a stack, but only 5 stacks up there). Then I will get the druid to 67 and hopefully 68. Here’s hoping the buckle market comes back from the current 33g or so back to closer to 40g.

A Weekend Wasted

As you may have heard, Atlanta is slowly turning into Atlantis and as a result my power has been going out a lot. This killed my ability to keep on top of my auctions this weekend and therefore stalled out the trickle of money I’ve been getting.

I’m up to 1900g as of last night, which puts my first week of work at about 1400g. I started out very slowly, made some goofy mistakes, and ended up riding the “belt buckle” wave all the way to 1400. I know that most good WoWeconomists do that in like a morning, but for me it was nice just to see that while yes, I am buying all my mats, I am in fact turning a profit on the goods and mats that I sell from them.

I’m DEing JC greens and selling the dust and cosmics, I’ve hooked up with an alchemist friend who transmutes Cardinal Rubies everyday which I cut and sell for 200-220. I kick him half the money and we’re both happy with the extra hundred. I’ve also started dabbling in cutting a few blue gems (few as in I cut 7 this week) and they’re selling, but very slowly. I’m still making bags when the cost of cloth is under 4 and making buckles pretty much all the time. I’m discovering that the hold up in belt buckle production is the price of Eternal Earth, which some nights is 6g and some nights is 8g.

All in all I’m happy with the progress and irritated that I didn’t get to do more this weekend. My druid is 66 now and has also stalled in his leveling, but my goal is to buy him epic flying and cold weather flying when I hit 10k, which would set me back to 4k and shouldn’t be all that tough to build back. After that I shouldn’t have any major expenses left and money coming in should be pure profit.