Cold's Gold Factory - World of Warcraft Auction House & Gold Tips

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Best Place To Farm Lovely Charms - WoW 2012

Best Place To Farm Lovely Charms - Slags In Halls of Lightning

Love Is In The Air - New Ways To Make Gold In WoW

The World of Warcraft annual Valentine's Day holiday event is now live on WoW's servers. This year the Love Is In The Air event has brought us a couple of great new ways to make gold in WoW. Mage's can make some easy gold selling portals to all of the players traveling to each of the major cities for the daily quest turn ins, but that is chump change compared to the other 2 ways to make gold in WoW.

Following suit after all of the other recent holiday changes, the Truesilver Shafted Arrow (awards Peddlefeet companion pet) is now BoE and tradable / sellable on the auction house. The Toxic Wasteling, which has a chance to drop from your heart shaped box that is awarded from the Apothecaries holiday boss, has not been changed to BoE. There has also been a new addition to the holiday vendors. They now sell a new BoE sellable mount, the Swift Lovebird. With a bit of a time investment you can purchase pets and mounts to sell on the auction house. The Peddlefeet pet costs 40 Love Tokens and the new mount costs 270 Love Tokens.

Lovely Charms & Lovely Charms Bracelets

The Love Tokens that are used as the holiday currency for purchasing the companion pets and mounts are awarded from completing the daily holiday quests. Each day you need to do the 5 daily quests. Each quest awards 5 Love Tokens. There is 1 random daily and once quest for each of the 4 capital cities leaders to turn in a Lovely Charm Bracelet. Each Bracelet requires 10 Lovely Charms. You can farm the Lovely Charms to create your own Bracelets or you can buy the completed Bracelets from other players. You can also exchange 1 Lovely Charm Bracelet for a single Love Token at the vendor, but this is a very inefficient use of your Lovely Charms.

Best Place to Farm Lovely Charms

When you ask most players "Where is the best place to farm for Lovely Charms?", the majority of players will reply that Icecrown is the best zone for farming the Lovely Charms. Sure, there are a lot of great areas with tightly packed creatures to kill for Lovely Charms, but there is a major drawback to farming charms in Icecrown. Icecrown is riddled with competition. Everyone else is there farming Lovely Charms too, which leads to inefficient farming. Let's look at a private better place to farm for Lovely Charms: the Halls of Lightning dungeon from Wrath of the Lich King.

Farming Lovely Charms 2012 - Slags In Halls Of Lightning

SLAGS - In Halls of Lightning - Normal Mode

The Slags, within the dungeon Halls of Lightning, make the ideal targets for farming for Lovely Charms. These guys are located just past the 1st boss, which is easily accessible to any level 85. On regular dungeon mode these Slags are only level 79, which is the lowest level a creature can be to appear as green and still award Lovely Charms to a level 85 character. These slags die super easy since they each have less than 16k health total, as they are non-elites. The slags respawn rate is super fast, fast enough that you can almost go non-stop killing them. The downside is that there is no loot on their corpses, but that's actually a benefit to me as I don't get slowed down by looting.

After clearing my way to the Slag pit I farmed the Slags for Lovely Charms non-stop for an entire hour. I collected 281 Lovely Charms in just 1 solid hour of farming! One tip I can share about farming these the Slags in HoL is that even though they may be spread out all over the room, the majority of them tend to spawn from specific spawns points that surround the center column in the room. They spawn in at these spawn points and then move to their patrol points. So if you have an AoE effect, make sure you are dropping it over top of these spawn points. That way you will pick up respawns as soon as they pop up, which increases your speed and efficiency at farming the Lovely Charms.

My current plan is to use my Deathknight main to farm the Slags in Halls of Lightning to get a ton of the Lovely Charms. Then I will send sets of Lovely Charm Bracelets to multiple alts to complete the holiday dailies each day. When I have enough Love Tokens, I will hopefully be able to purchase multiple mounts and pets for sale on the WoW auction house. I will hang on to the companion pets until Mists of Pandaria brings us the Battle Pet System when the companion pet market value will peak, and will wait to unload the holiday mounts until they are no longer attainable.

Anyone else already working on a similar plan?

Enjoy The Posts Here at Cold's Gold Factory? Check Out Cold's Mysterious Fortune Card Mastery Gold Making Guide. Also Check Out My New Favorite All Around WoW Gold Making Guide and J!inx - Clothing For Gamers And Geeks.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Guild Challenges & Random Invite Guild Reflections

Make More Gold With Guild Challenges

The Passive Income Random Invite Guild - Looking Back

The original plan for the all random invite guild was to be as hands off as possible. Outside of performing the random invites while already performing my auction house duties, I didn't no much at all to promote ways for the guild to make extra income. I was trying to see just how much passive gold I could make with a completely hands off approach. I didn't really promote any ways to have the guild earning me extra gold.

I made a modest 17k gold from my random invite guild as it leveled to guild level 25. The 17k gold was a nice bonus, but the real motivation and main benefit was the accumulation of all the guild perks. These days there are some guild perks, like Bountiful Bags, that a serious gold maker needs to obtain to remain competitive with other sellers. My true goal was to level my own pre-existing guild to level 25 on the work of the random invitees. The passive income experiment, was just a bonus to see how much extra gold I could make at the same time. Now what if I wanted to try to get as much income out of the guild as possible while it leveled. What would I do different?

Getting More Gold Out Of Your Guild

One of the first things I would change to promote more earning of gold by guild members for the guild bank, would be to promote the guild challenges. The guild challenges were added in WoW Patch 4.1 and are awesome for your guild in both the gold and guild experience departments. In order to get gold from the guild challenges, your guild must be at least guild level 5 and the challenge participants must be at least honored reputation with the guild. Each completed guild challenge awards a nice chunk of gold and an amazing chunk of guild experience. So promoting guild challenges helps with earning gold into the guild bank as well as helping the guild to level up faster. Faster guild leveling means the unlocking of more guild perks earlier, which can lead to more savings and even more earnings.

The nice thing is you can complete 7 guild dungeon challenges, 1 raid guild challenge, and 3 battleground guild challenges per week. That gold and experience will add up quickly. The best part is that any level characters can participate as long as they are the relevant levels for the challenges. So a lowbie dungeon farming 3 man guild team can really rack up the gold and guild experience for you. All I did in my guild was put up a message of the day asking members to form a guild challenge dungeon run if they were bored. With some planning and promotion, this could have been a nice focus for making extra gold with the guild. As the guild hits maximum guild level, there is no need for extra guild experience, so the guild challenges provide more gold per completion (similar to how questing at max leveling awards extra gold). It's actually double the gold reward for guild challenges when your guild hits maximum guild level!

Guild Challenge Awards At Guild Levels 5 - 24

Dungeon Runs (7/wk) : 125 gold per & 300,000 guild xp
Raid Runs (1/wk) : 500 gold per & 3 million guild xp
Battleground Runs (3/wk) : 250 gold per & 1.5 million guild xp

Guild Challenge Gold Awards At Guild Level 25

Dungeon Runs (7/wk) : 250 gold per
Raid Runs (1/wk) : 1000 gold per
Battleground Runs (3/wk) : 500 gold per

Looking back at this idea, but also wanting to keep a hands off approach, I could have appointed a guild challenge promoter. There were many players within the random invite guild that were active on a weekly and often daily basis. The guild had some main characters within the members. I could have hired someone to actively promote and manage guild runs or to promote guild grouping for completing guild challenges. Since the guild challenges pay decent gold each, I could agree to hire a guild member that organizes the runs and then split the earned amount with that promoter. The active promoter should be able to increase the earnings from guild challenges each week by increasing the frequency at which they are completed. My guild did 17 guild challenges during the leveling process. An active guild challenge promoter should be able to increase that completion rate by much more, which would make the gold splitting a profitable venture.

So think about the options of hiring a guild challenge coordinator to ramp up you guild challenge completion and gold earning potential for your own guild.

Enjoy The Posts Here at Cold's Gold Factory? Check Out Cold's Mysterious Fortune Card Mastery Gold Making Guide. Also Check Out My New Favorite All Around WoW Gold Making Guide and J!inx - Clothing For Gamers And Geeks.

Monday, January 30, 2012

The Lunar Festival Cross Faction Pet Exchange

Lunar Festival Brings New BoE Pets

New Lunar Festival Pets

We have been seeing some fresh changes to the World of Warcraft in game holidays, which have included some nice additions. Currently, the Lunar Festival is underway throughout all of Azeroth. The most notable change to this year's Lunar Festival has been the addition of two new companion pets, the Lunar Lantern and the Festival Lantern.

Lunar Lantern - Costs 50 Coins of Ancestry - Alliance
Festival Lantern - Costs 50 Coins of Ancestry - Horde

Each of these new companion pets from the Lunar Festival require 50 Coins of Ancestry to purchase from the Lunar Festival vendors. Each character is only able to purchase one of the pets, as they are restricted by faction. The Lunar Lantern is only purchasable by Alliance players; the Festival Lantern is only sold to Horde characters. Both of these pets are Bind on Equip and can be traded, mailed, or sold on the auction house.

Lunar Festival Cross Faction Pet Exchange

Due to the limiting nature of vendors that only sell specific pets to each of WoW's player factions, these new companion pets make great targets for cross faction exchanges, much like the Enchanting crafted lamps & lanterns. Just because a Lunar Lantern is only sold to Alliance players, doesn't mean that your Horde character can't have one too. It is just going to be either harder or more expensive to obtain the Alliance Lantern on a Horde character. The required time commitment just to obtain the 50 Coins of Ancestry to purchase these pets is also another benefit in raising the value of these items. If you don't value your time much, you could earn the coins and then buy these pets on multiple characters just to have more to sell on the auction house. A wiser way to profit on these new pets is to transfer them across factions to sell for a nice profitable mark-up.

Using my own server's prices as an example, you can see the large potential profit margins from performing some cross faction arbitrage.

Festival Lantern (Horde) is selling for 8.3k Horde side, but 25k Alliance side.
Lunar Lantern (Alliance) is selling for 4k on the Alliance auction house, but 12k on the Horde side.

So simply buying the lanterns on one faction and moving them over to sell on the other faction's auction house should result in some nice profits. Try to find the pets as the auction house is slightly flooded and the prices are dropping. The lower you can snatch the pets up for, the more wiggle room you have when setting your prices up for profitting. The prices of the pets should come down as the holiday nears its end in a week or so, but should rise once the holiday is over and the pets won't be available again until next year's Lunar Festival. Then the Mists of Pandarian expansion will add the battle pets system and the demand for all pets will explode. BoE holiday pets like the Sinister Squashling, Lunar & Festival Lanterns, and Winter's Veil pets should all be great items for hedging against the impending new expansion inflation as well.

So make sure you are selling your pets on the auction house that will give you the most profits per sale. Don't just settle for selling your pets on the same faction that can already buy them anyway. Move them to the other half of your server for more efficient golden profits.

Enjoy The Posts Here at Cold's Gold Factory? Check Out Cold's Mysterious Fortune Card Mastery Gold Making Guide. Also Check Out My New Favorite All Around WoW Gold Making Guide and J!inx - Clothing For Gamers And Geeks.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Random Invite Guild Hits Level 25

WoW Guild Level 25

DING! - Random Guild Level 25

The All Random Invite Guild Experiment

The random invite guild has just achieved the goal I set out to attain within the World of Warcraft Cataclysm experiment. I didn't get my guild of all random invites rolling until a month or two into the Cataclysm expansion. The premise for this experiment was simple. Could I level a guild to the maximum Guild Level 25 from only random invites and just how viable would it be to have a guild earning a passive income? The notion of earning a passive income with a guild was a new possibility with the addition of the Cataclysm introduced guild leveling and guild perks systems. So I started on my quest to build a guild full of random invitees and see just how successful it would become.

Taking time to be direct within the guild information was one of the main objectives that helped me fulfill my goal without misleading any of the guild members. The guild charter showed that the guild was never intended to be an end game guild. The basic understanding was that the guild was there as a symbiotic relationship. The guild provides the great guild perks for it's members while they level and in return, the guild earns a small commission through the passive income guild perks. I also would receive the benefit of having others level the guild for me without performing any real guild master duties. The guild was pitched as a home to park your alts or to use just for free guild perks. It was also pitched as the perfect guild for non-social players and soloers who wanted guild perks, but wanted to avoid the drama associated with most guilds.

The Controversy

The experiment did not come without it's own share of controversy. I was questioned for this type of experiment, notably all from other bloggers, commentors, and forum dwellers. Not a single complaint from a single member in the random invite guild. Sure some players would gripe about getting a random invite, but once in they were cool. We are now Guild Level 25 and I still have yet to hear a complaint about my guild system from anyone who was or is in the guild itself. NOT A SINGLE COMPLAINT IN A YEAR. I have actually been thanked by many players for offering a guild up for solo-ers and non-socials to have a place to get guild perks too without the drama. Yet, the ignorant outsiders looking in have called me:

an amoral bastard
rude
a blood sucking leech
a dirty rat
dodgy
desperate

Questions arose over keeping the guild perk earned gold, but most attacks came from me offering up the 7th guild tab as an exchange tab for member use. This allowed me to not only collect the Cash Flow perk earned gold, but to also find needed materials on occasion hiding within that 7th guild tab. Sometimes I would hunt an item on the auction house only to find it bare. On occasion I would be lucky enough to find the item deposited into the designated guild exchange tab. In this area, guild members could deposit unwanted items or take items for their own use. The downside to this exchange tab was the constant maintenance to clear out the garbage just to make space for new items. It was the earlier guild members that had requested that a guild bank tab be unlocked for guild exchange use. I would keep it clear of garbage items by doing occasional maintenance on the tabs contents.

The Results

Let's take a look at the final numbers.

Total Liquid Gold In Guild Bank: 11,765 gold.
Total Guild Gold Spent On Self Repairs: 5,223 gold.
(only I have access for repairs)
Total Gold Earned From Guild: 16,988 gold.

Current Guild Roster: 960 Members
Level 85s: 88
Total Guild Challenges Completed: 17

So I made almost 17k from the passive income guild perks and members forming their own guild dungeon groups for guild challenges. I haven't paid out of pocket for repairs since the random invite guild hit guild level 5. The random invite guild has been a rather easy undertaking and would have been even easier had I started earlier in the expansion or prior to Cataclysm's launch. An interesting finding has been the number of max level players that stick with the guild once hitting level 85. I guess they don't want to lose their guild perks and start grinding guild reputation over again. I am going to keep the members in the guild and continue to let them earn gold for me, as opposed to kicking them all now that the guild is maxed. Why not let them earn for me into the Mists of Pandaria expansion. This is a symbiotic relationship worth keeping.

Enjoy The Posts Here at Cold's Gold Factory? Check Out Cold's Mysterious Fortune Card Mastery Gold Making Guide. Also Check Out My New Favorite All Around WoW Gold Making Guide and J!inx - Clothing For Gamers And Geeks.

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