Completing Depleted Items For Profit

Blade's Edge Mountains

What Are They?
Depleted Items are non-equipable items that drop from any of the mobs on either of the plateaus in the Blade's Edge Mountains zone.  These are the 2 areas that house Ogri'la and Bash'irs Landing and both require a flying mount to reach.  All of the mobs and elites in both of these areas can drop Apexis Shards.  All of these items can be upgraded to their equipable forms once they are converted from their depleted state via the inclusion of the appropriate number of apexis shards.  While the shards are Bind-on-PickUp, the depleted items and their appropriate upgrades are all Bind-On-Equip.  Many of us have an excess storage of the shards in the bank from questing, raising rep, or working on Loremaster.  This strategy provides you with an option to utilizing those extra Apexis Shards to turn a profit.  If you check the auction house, you will often find these depleted items selling for a good low price as some people don't understand what they are selling.  Simply buying the depleted items, then adding the shards to upgrade it to sell can turn you a nice profit, if you purchase them at a nice low price.  Here is the complete list of the depleted items and what they upgrade to:

Depleted Two-Handed Axe  -> Apexis Cleaver 

Depleted Sword  -> Crystal Forged Sword 

Depleted Staff  -> Flaming Quartz Staff 

Depleted Ring  -> Dream Crystal Band 

Depleted Mace  -> Apexis Crystal Mace 

Depleted Dagger  -> Crystal-Infused Shiv 

Depleted Cloak  -> Crystal Weave Cape 

Depleted Badge  -> Badge of Tenacity 

Depleted Mail Gauntlets  -> Crystalhide Handwraps

Depleted Cloth Bracers -> Crystalweave Bracers 


All of these items take 50 Apexis Shards to upgrade.  Some of these get significant upgrades due to the addition of gem sockets to their completed counterpart.


Do you have unused Apexis Shards in your bank that could earn you some gold?

Deathwing Brood Cloak

Sexy, Ain't It?

Limited Accessability
In the upper reaches of The Blade's Edge Mountains are a couple of plateaus only reachable with a flying mount.  One plateau houses the Ogre faction at Ogri'la, while the other is an etheral hub at Bash'ir Landing to the Northeast.  Both of these areas are teeming with mobs that drop the Bind-on-PickUp item: Apexis Shard.  Daily quests from the Ogri'la also reward stacks of 15 of the shards along with Ogri'la and / or Skyguard reputation.  If you have worked on the Loremaster Achievement or reputation with either Ogri'la or Sha'tari Skyguard, then chances are you may have excess Apexis Shards stored in the bank.  This is an option for turning those Apexis Shards into profits.


Hunting Dragons
Whether you are farming the shards, gathering them from quests, or have a stashed surplus grab all you can get and head towards the Blade's Edge Mountain Plateau's.  What we are doing is hunting the 4 Dragons:
Insidion, Furywing, Obsidia, and Rivendark.  These level 72 elites are easily soloed by level 80 classes that can heal themselves or by any of the pet classes.  Each of these dragons are summoned by placing 35 Apexis Shards into their respective nests, which will hatch their babies egg, thus forcing them to land to defend their nest.  Here are the locations of the eggs. 


Rivendark: 27.00, 64.80
Obsidia: 33.80, 54.60
Insidion: 62.90, 7.00
Furywing: 66.90, 14.60


Making the Cloak
The Deathwing Brood Cloak is crafted by combining 1 of each of the dragon scales that drop from each of the elite dragons.  This is now Bind-on-Equip, thus allowing us to sell it.  The creation process requires once of each:


Insidion's Ebony Scale
Jet Scale of Furywing
Obsidia Scale
Onyx Scale of Rivendark



Once all 4 scales have been collected a simple right click on one will create the cloak.  No profession is required to create these cloaks.  This cloak has a random 3 stat enchantment when created, but they are the most useful combinations of stats.  Options for this cloak are...of the Bandit, Beast, Champion, Elder, Hierophant, Invoker, Knight, Physician, Prophet, Soldier, or Sorcerer.  The average value of this cloak is around 120g, but if you get lucky and get one of the better suffixes you can sell it for much more.


Other Benefits
All of these dragons will also drop a BOE green item or two along with a chance to drop rare BOE crafting patterns and depleted items, which also can be sold for profits.  (More on depleted items tomorrow).  In 1 cycle of the 4 dragons last night, I got 2 depleted items, including 1 epic depleted piece.  I also got 2 BoE Burning Crusade jewelcrafting recipes.  I am currently working on faction reputation, so I am killing these dragons while in the area working on raising my Ogri'la reputation.  Win-win!