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| Heavenly Shards - Oh My Heavens! |
The Heavenly Shard Shortage
Heavenly Shards are seeing a major shortage across many World of Warcraft servers right now. The price of a single Heavenly Shard has shot up to around 150 gold each on my server and many servers are seeing similar price increases. There are many factors that have contributed to the increase in prices of Heavenly Shards and other Cataclysm Enchanting materials, like Greater Celestial Essenses.
Why There Is A Heavenly Shard Shortage?
- Less Obsidium and Elementium Ores are available on the auction house.
- Those ores that are available are highly priced.
- Vendor prices of Cataclysm gems have been nerfed.
- All 3 of the above factors have led to less players shuffling Cataclysm Ores.
- Less shuffling of Ores means less enchanting materials being created.
- Patch 4.2 introduced a lot of new gear upgrades for many players, which caused a demand spike for many enchants and Enchanting materials.
- The high demand for enchants has dried up a lot of the previous stockpiles of Heavenly Shards.
- Less players running dungeons as they are busy with the Firelands Daily quests and new raid content.
Together these factors have led to both a shortage of Heavenly Shards as well as a price increase for the ones that are listed on the auction house. The shortage is the direct result of less Heavenly Shards coming into the market combined with the increased demand for Enchants.
The Enchanting Boom
The Enchanting market has exploded since the release of World of Warcraft Patch 4.2. Patch 4.2 brought us the Firelands Daily quests and the new Firelands vendors. Both the quest rewards and the vendor sold items are nice high item level gear rewards, which are not hard to obtain. This has lead to a great increase in the number of players buying Enchants off of the auction house. This increase in Enchanting sales will continue as players unlock the various phases of the Firelands vendors that provide nice enchantable gear, which will be upgrades to many of the casual players. So the nice wave of sales will continue for a while as the player base is still unlocking the various phases of the new Firelands vendors.
Many of the higher end enchants take Heavenly Shards to create. The high end enchants are the ones that have really seen an explosion of sales and with the increased price of Heavenly Shards, we are able to gouge the price of the Enchants as well. The new phased Firelands vendors that are starting to be unlocked offer not only the new recipes, but also offer some nice high item level epic gear for purchase as well. With so many of these new items being such a high item level and seeing immediate use, many players are opting to go with the high end enchants as it may be a while before this new epic gear is replaced. I myself am selling far more of the high end enchants than I originally expected and those great sales are continuing. I expect this increase of sales to continue for a while as it takes a long time to unlock all of the vendors and some players haven't even started unlocking the vendors and obtaining the easy gear upgrades. It's definately a good time to be an enchanter, especially if you have Enchating materials stockpiled from your earlier ore shuffling days.
Combating The Heavenly Shard Price Increase
With the increase prices of Heavenly Shards, comes increased Enchant Scroll crafting costs if you are purchasing your materials off of the auction house. Currently there are 4 main ways to obtain Heavenly Shards.
- Crafting items to disenchant for Heavenly Shards.
- Converting 3 Small Heavenly Shards into Heavenly Shards
- Buying items off the auction house to disenchant into Heavenly Shards.
- Running dungeons with an Enchanter and disenchanting gear that drops.
The best ways to obtain your own Heavenly Shards are through Disenchanting. The least expensive craftable item to create and disenchant into a guaranteed Heavenly Shard is the Stormforge Shoulders. Another profitable option is to purchase poorly priced items off of the auction house and Disenchant them yourselves. If you are in a guild with the Bountiful Bags guild perk, then you can make some serious cash Disenchanting items and either selling the Heavenly Shards raw or using them in enchants to sell for even more profit.
I like to search the auction house for gear that has a 100% guaranteed Heavenly Shard from Disenchanting. If you have an add-on that shows what the items will Disenchant into, then it is pretty easy. Just do an auction house search for blue weapons and armor level 80-85 and buy anything that is cheaper than the current Heavenly Shard prices on your WoW server. This is a great strategy for selling Heavenly Shards as the raw materials, if you are unable to make the high end Enchant Scrolls.
Anyone gouging Heavenly Shard prices on your server?
Are you seeing crazy profits from selling Enchant Scrolls too?
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