20 Days of Gold Making (Day 10) - My Farming Theory

This entry is part of a series of gold making posts answering the questions in the 20 Days of Gold Making Challenge started by Nev over at Auction House Addict.  If you also blog, then be sure to check out the gold blogging challenge for post topic ideas.

20 Days Of Gold Making - Day 10

Do You Farm Materials?  What, Where & Why?

Do I farm on my World of Warcraft characters?  Yes & No.  Do I spend time running around farming for raw materials alone?  Never.  Farming as a primary objective is almost never worth the time investment that is required.  I do however still collect raw materials while out and about in the World of Warcraft, but it's not farming in the true sense of the word.

Crafter / Gatherer Alt Combos

I still level each and every alternate character to unlock the ability to craft within every profession.  I do this in order to have greater diversity and flexibility within the auction house markets.  I still stick with the old-school way of thinking and have a gathering profession paired with each crafting profession.  Since none of my alternate characters are just "stand in town and do nothing but craft" type of characters, I don't have double crafting professions on any character except my Tailor / Enchanter.  Nowadays, Tailoring is also a gathering profession after the inclusion of the Northrend Scavenging bonus.
Since each of my characters are out in the world leveling up and doing dailies for reputation grinds to unlock recipes, I have a gathering profession on each and every one.  I don't go out of my way to farm materials, but I also hate running past materials that are right there free for the taking.  So each character of mine will be able to grab up the ore, herbs, or skins that present themselves within my already chosen path.  If I'm questing and leveling a character up, the nearby raw materials take hardly no extra time to grab and provide the leveling alt with experience as well.  So it's a win win in my book. 

How many materials have you flown over and ignored because you are a dual-crafter?  Wasted opportunities in my opinion.  This expansion it has been pretty easy to not even have to buy many raw materials off of the auction house for crafting because my army of leveling gatherers brings in a nice amount of ore and herbs.  And these are herbs and ores that are near what I'm already doing anyways!
Occasional Targeted Farming

Once in a blue moon, I may set time aside to go and farm something specific, but the desired item must meet specific criteria.

1. Is this item not available in sufficient supply on the auction house?
2. Is this item required in a crafted item that would make it worth my time to even farm to begin with?
3. Are these crafted items selling well on my server's auction house?
4. Must I farm extra resources just to keep up with the demand of the crafted item?

So on the rare occasion an item required in a recipe that I craft that is a nice profitable stable of my auction house business will run low or out of supply on the auction house.  In this rare instance, I may spend some time farming up that specific material in order to keep my crafted end products selling on the auction house.

The best example I can think of is during older expansions when I would commonly go out and spend 30 mins to an hour farming up my own Globes of Water (fishing them from pools in the old Azshara zone).  These are required as a crafting component of the Tranquil Mechanical Yeti companion pet and the auction house would often run dry.  This was during older expansions when the Engineering pet market was a very viable gold making market.  I wouldn't dare think of farming Globes of Water anymore because the market for damn near all pets is now shit, and the Yeti is no exception.



Recommended Guides: Secret Gold Guide | Journal of Marcus Ty | WoW Secrets

Found Daft Punk In WoW! - EDM Easter Egg!

I Found Daft Punk In Warcraft!

Daft Punk In WoW

Daft Punk

Daft Punk has always been one of my favorite electronic producers since the late 90s when I myself was first getting into electronic music.  Daft Punk produced French House, which was the same style that I chose when I was DJing at house parties.  I owned a ton of Daft Punk vinyl and all their CDs, so yeah I was a big fan.

In the Engineering / Auction House area inside the Shrine of Two Moons, which is the Horde capital city of Pandaria, you can find a pair of in game characters representing the Daft Punk DJs.  Obviously Daft Punk would be Engineers, since thtey get the best helmets!  You can see the Daft Punk duo, Guy-Manuel de Homen-Christo and Thomas Bangalter, represented by the Goblins, Guyo Crystalgear and Tivilix Bangalter.  Of course they are both sporting a pair of great full helmets just like their French House counterparts.

So that's pretty cool, I found a Daft Punk Easter Egg in WoW.  I know where I'm be dropping my D.I.S.C.O. Ball and partying in the World of Warcraft.



Check out some of my Squidoo lenses:  Alliance Vs Horde - Come Vote! | Diablo 3 Gifts For Gamers | Getting Started Podcasting 101 | Play Money by Julian Dibble | Auction House Junkies | Fluxx - My Fav Card Game

Recommended Guides: Secret Gold Guide | Journal of Marcus Ty | WoW Secrets

Engineering's Blingtron 4000 - Is It Worth It?



Blingtron 4000

Blingtron 4000 - Is It Worth It?

As I leveled my Engineer in WoW to max skill level 600 Engineering, I was excited to learn the recipe for the newest robot added in the Mists of Pandaria expansion, the Blingtron 4000.  I pushed my Alchemist into overdrive as she pumped out the Living Steel that is required to build this new gift giving robot.  This little guy is also an iced out Jeeves upgrade, or so I originally thought.  Boy was I wrong! 

So I was out leveling my Deathknight Engineer and had filled my bags with vendor trash I needed to unload.  I plopped my Blingtron 4000 down and went to select the option to sell him all of my vendor trash loot in order to free up more space in my bags.  "Where is the vendor option on Blingtron 4000?", I thought to myself until I realized, "WTF! This Piece of Shit isn't even a vendor or a bank!"  "Why did I waste these expensive materials on this hunk of robo-garbage?!?"  You see, I thought Blingtron was an updated Jeeves that also gave away gifts as a bonus.  Nope!  That's all this hunk of junk does.  Then I pondered to myself, "Is Blingtron 4000 even worth crafting at all?

Blingtron 4000 What Is He Good For?

Short Answer:  GAMBLING

Blingtron 4000 is nothing more than a gift giving lottery machine.  He does absolutely nothing other than offer anyone level 80 or higher a daily quest that awards a Blingtron 4000 Gift Package.  This daily quest can only be completed once every day (resets with other dailies I believe) and can be completed by any Blingtron 4000.  It doesn't have to be your own Blingtron and other characters are free to speak with the robot to get their own Blingtron 4000 Gift Package as well.  This robot can be summoned once every 4 hours and lasts for a duration of 10 minutes per summoning.  That's 10 minutes of giving gifts to anyone level 80 or higher that accepts his daily quest.

So What's In The Blingtron 4000 Gift Packages?

Each Blingtron 4000 Gift Package will award a variety of potential items.  In my experience, you will usually find Potions, liquor, or vendor trash, but there are chances of finding much better items in your Gift Package.

Wowhead has some data results, but their data is nowhere near a complete loot table for the Blingtron 4000 yet, as we are early into the MoP expansion and Wowhead only confirms the loot from players that use their in-game add-on.  So far wowhead has tracked the Blingtron 4000 Gift Packages as containing:

• Master Healing Potions
• Master Mana Potions
• G91 Landshark (Grenades)
• Party G.R.E.N.A.D.E.s (from the WoW TCG Loot Codes)
• Thermal Anvils
• Rhinestone Sunglasses
• Mechanical Pandaren Dragonling Pet
• De-Weaponized Mechanical Companion Pet
• Various Vendor Trash ranging from 90 copper to 200 gold in value.
• Fire Spirit - A BOP item that awards you skill points in one of your primary Professions.

Other Wowhead commentors have also listed receiving items such as:

• High Society Top Hat
• Noble's Monocle
• Pet Bombling
• Personal World Destroyer Pet
• Mote of Harmony

Again this list in incomplete and the odds of receiving the various items are inconclusive at this time.

Reading the above excerpt from the WoW Battlenet Blog, there are 2 important points.

1. The Blingtron 4000 Gift Package is available oncer per day PER ACCOUNT.
2. The Blingtron 4000 Gift Package has a chance to drop an Engineering Mount.

No one using the Wowhead addon has found a mount yet and there have been tons of data collected already, so the odds of receiving a mount from a Blingtron 4000 are very very very low.  If this 1 per account restriction is still implemented, then that limits you from cycling through your alts in hopes of getting more chances at the good items.  I haven't tested this yet to see if it truly is still limited to one per account.  Has anyone tested this yet?  

EDIT:  Tested and confirmed, you can get a Blingtron 4000 Gift Package on multiple characters.

UPDATE:  As of Patch 5.1 Blingtron now only awards a quest once PER ACCOUNT.

So Is The Blingtron 4000 Worth It?

In the short term the robot is a very expensive crafted item, but over time it should pay for itself.  Even if you only ever get grey vendor trash to sell, eventually you will recoup your investment costs.  Just don't forget to keep doing the daily quest to get your Gift Package.  I mean come on!  That's all he's good for, so you better be using him every day!  Maybe you will get lucky and get a mount, pet or one of the nice vendor trash pieces that sell for 90 gold or 200 gold.  Even if it takes you 2 years to recoup your investment, you are going to be making a lot of other players happy along the way who just might win that mount out from under you from your own Blingtron 4000.

EDIT:  Since you can get gifts for multiple characters, trying to allow for dropping the robot in areas that are common logged spots for your alts.  I am trying to park my cooldown-only alts all in the same spot for multiple gifts.

As a lasting note, it has been stated in the Blizzard forums (by a Blue Poster) that "Blingtron may be getting some minor upgrades to their bling in an upcoming patch."

Good Luck and Happy Gift Package Grinding!


Check out some of my Squidoo lenses:  Alliance Vs Horde - Come Vote! | Diablo 3 Gifts For Gamers | Getting Started Podcasting 101 | Play Money by Julian Dibble | Auction House Junkies | Fluxx - My Fav Card Game

Recommended Guides: Secret Gold Guide | Journal of Marcus Ty | WoW Secrets

Spirit of Harmony Equivalent Crafting Values

Spirit of Harmony & Gauging Value

The Spirit of Harmony and Motes of Harmony are new additions with the Mists of Pandaria expansion.  The Spirit of Harmony creation process requires 10 Motes of Harmony to be turned into a single Spirit of Harmony.  These motes are available as potential drops from any of the mobs within the Mists of Pandaria content.  Early experiences have been pointing towards a better Mote of Harmony drop rate among the higher level mobs, but they still do drop off of the lower level mobs, as long as you are killing creatures from the MoP expansion. 

The completed Spirits of Harmony are used in a myriad of recipes across many of the WoW crafting professions.  Since they are acquired while killing mobs in Pandaria, their perceived value is often misaligned from their true value.  The requirement of farming them yourself on the character who needs them (since they are BoP) has lead to many players buying into the old fallacy of "I farmed it, so it's free".  Which in turn often leads to improper pricing of crafted items that require Spirits of Harmony as part of the recipe materials requirement. 

Let's look at an example. 

Kobolds Have Poor Math Skills

Mist-Piercing Goggles - These are the kickass Goggles that Alto has already mentioned in a post earlier in the week.  The are a must for any Miner or Herbalist because they add around 10% more herb and ore nodes to your mini-map, when in Pandaria zones.  These are nodes that other players without the Goggles can't even see!  So they are truly a must for any Herbalist or Miner and they only need to be in your bags because you don't even have to equip them for the benefit.

These great Mist-Piercing Goggles are crafted with the Engineering profession and only require 8 Ghost Iron Bolts and 2 Spirit of Harmony.  Yet, I constantly see players selling them for far below what they should be selling them for.  The Kobold movement is alive and well on many servers and this Goggles market is no exception.  And we all know Kobolds are horrible at basic math skills.

Using just a few market prices as examples, I've seen many auction house market snapshots that look like this:

Mist-Piercing Googles listed for 800 gold.
Golden Lotus selling for 250 gold.

Without even knowing the prices of Ghost Iron Ore or Ghost Iron Bars, I am 100% positive that the person selling the Goggles for 800 gold is a dumbass.  How so?  Because the wise goblin understands the Spirit of Harmony Equivalent Crafting Values, where a lowly Kobold obviously does not.  Kobolds are bad at math, remember?

1. 1 Spirit of Harmony can be traded to a vendor for 3 Golden Lotus, which can each be sold.
2. Mist Piercing Goggles require 2 Spirits of Harmony in the recipe.
3. Therefore, if you are using 2 Spirits of Harmony in a crafted item, that item needs to be selling for more than the price of what 6 Golden Lotus would sell for or YOU ARE COSTING YOURSELF PROFITS.

So in the above example, if the Kobold would have just cashed in the two Spirits of Harmony for 6 Golden Lotus, they would have (6 x 250) 1500 gold worth of Golden Lotuses to sell, instead of adding Ghost Iron Bars to sell a crafted item for only 800 gold!  Think smart like a Goblin, not silly like a Kobold who farms for free.


Proper Mist -Piercing Goggles Pricing

Spirit of Harmony Equivalent Crafting Values

The Golden Lotus is just one of the options for purchasing crafting items with a Spirit of Harmony.  Here is a master list of Equivalent Values of Spirit of Harmony for those who are better at math than the Kobolds.

One Spirit of Harmony Will Buy:

• 5 Black Trillium Ore
• 1 Ethereal Shard
• 20 Exotic Leather
• 20 Ghost Iron Ore
• 3 Golden Lotus
• 20 Kyparite
• 5 Mysterious Essence
• 20 Prismatic Scale
• 1 Serpent's Eye
• 20 Spirit Dust
• 1 Starlight Ink
• 5 White Trillium Ore
• 20 Windwool Cloth

While these aren't always the best ways to purchase materials for crafting, one must still be aware of the Spirit of Harmony possible vendor trade equivalents because they should be setting a floor price for the value of your SoHs in a crafted recipe.  If you can't craft with a value equivalent or better to what you can trade the SoH for, then maybe you should just trade it to the vendor and sell the raw materials for a better profit than wasting the SoHs in crafting recipes. 

And please, please, please don't think like this Kobold, I found on Wowhead with his fail strat for underselling Ghost Iron Dragonlings & Tinker's Gear.

Kobold Fallacies

Check out some of my Squidoo lenses:  Alliance Vs Horde - Come Vote! | Diablo 3 Gifts For Gamers | Getting Started Podcasting 101 | Play Money by Julian Dibble | Auction House Junkies | Fluxx - My Fav Card Game

Recommended Guides: Secret Gold Guide | Journal of Marcus Ty | WoW Secrets

Ghost Iron Dragonling & Tinker's Gear (New Cogwheels)

MoP Engineering -

Ghost Iron Dragonling and Tinker's Gear

The new Engineering crafted trinket, the Ghost Iron Dragonling, has plenty of potential to be a strong gold maker in the Mists of Pandaria World of Warcraft expansion.  Notice I said "has plenty of potential" for gold makers?  That's because of the polarizing differences amongst our various WoW auction houses across the multiple WoW servers.  It basically boils down to the newest war between Goblins and Kobolds that is so common on many WoW servers these days. 

Ghost Iron Dragonling

The Ghost Iron Dragonling is a new trinket that is crafted by Engineers and unlike previous Engineering trinkets, it can be equipped by all characters level 87 or higher.  With an item level of 450, the Ghost Iron Dragonling is a great gear piece to help boost a character's average item level, which will assist in meeting the average item level requirements for dungeons, heroics, and raids. 



Ghost Iron Dragonling Trinket

 The Ghost Iron Dragonling is a pretty damn good trinket too, which contains 3 Cogwheel sockets that can be customized with the appropriate Tinker's Gear gems based on your class specialization's secondary stats of choice.  In addition to the customizable cogwheel gem slots, the Ghost Iron Dragonling also has a chance to summon an actual Ghost Iron Dragonling to fight be your side for 20 seconds.  The Dragonling is a nice dps boost that shoots lighting and can hit multiple targets with his AoE lightning attack.

The Ghost Iron Dragonling Trinket requires the following materials to craft:  12 Windwool Cloth & 14 Ghost Iron Bars (28 Ghost Iron Ore)

Tinker's Gear Gems - The New MoP Cogwheels

The new cogwheels, which are now called Tinker's Gear Gems, are also useable by all characters instead of just Engineers like the previous versions.  A Tinker's Gear Gem exists for all of the secondary statistics, but they are unique-equipped, so you can only socket one of each type. 



Tinker's Gems For Sale

Tinker's Gear Gems in MoP:

• Flashing Tinker's Gear - 600 Parry
• Fractured Tinker's Gear - 600 Mastery
• Precise Tinker's Gear - 600 Expertise
• Quick Tinker's Gear - 600 Haste
• Rigid Tinker's Gear - 600 Hit
• Smooth Tinker's Gear - 600 Critical Strike
• Sparkling Tinker's Gear - 600 Spirit
• Subtle Tinker's Gear - 600 Dodge

Strike Smart, Strike Fast Young Goblin

The main problem with these markets is that although the value of the Trinkets and the Tinker's Gear Gems are high, the swarms of Kobolds leveling Engineering are crashing the prices down to stupid levels on the auction house.  Both the Ghost Iron Dragonling and the Tinker's Gems are good items to level the Engineering Profession with so many players will just toss the crafted items up for stupid prices regardless of what they could actually get based on the true value of the items.  On my server the Tinker's Gear Gems are holding at a nice profit level, where the Trinkets are all over the place.


Dumb Ass Kobolds!



I post my Dragonling Trinkets when there are no others posted and I charge what they are truely worth, which is 4k gold.  They still sell, despite the Koolds who sell them for a fraction of my sales price on other days.  Grabbing these poorly priced ones to save for a day when there are none available is a valid strategy and as more players get their skills leveled up the prices will hopefully rise as well as leveling Engineers leave the market.



Don't Settle For Kobold Prices

**********

Check out some of my Squidoo lenses:  Alliance Vs Horde - Come Vote! | Diablo 3 Gifts For Gamers | Getting Started Podcasting 101 | Play Money by Julian Dibble | Auction House Junkies | Fluxx - My Fav Card Game

Recommended Guides: Secret Gold Guide | Journal of Marcus Ty | WoW Secrets



Voice Amplification Modulator - Caster Twink Gear

Voice Amplification Modulator - Twink Gear

Twinking Neck Jewelry

Have you ever heard of this craftable piece of neck gear?  Well, I hadn't even thought of it as a twink item until I was corrected by a commenter in my last post on the JC created twink item: Malachite Pendant.  I incorrectly stated that the Malachite Pendant was the only available neck gear for twinks in the 14s bracket.  So I looked into it and the commentor was correct.  There are actually two options for neck gear in the 10-14 bracket, the Malachite Pendant and the Voice Amplification Modulator. 

The Malachite Pendant (+2 Agility) is Best-in-Slot for any non-caster class twink, but is only available at level 13 and beyond.

The Voice Amplification Modulator is Best-in-Slot for any caster twink and is also the only neckpiece for a level 10-12 WoW character.

The Voice Amplification Modulator (VAM)

The Voice Amplification Modulator is a great caster twink neck piece.  Although it doesn't possess any stat increases, it does something very helpful for battleground caster classes.  The VAM reduces the duration of any silence or interrupt effects by 10%.  That is definately a better option for caster classes over the +2 Agility neck piece.  It also is the only neck piece worth wearing on a level 1 twink as the VAM has no level requirement, even though it is a level 58 item.

The Voice Amplification Modulator is crafted by the Engineering profession and it comes from a Rare Drop Recipe.  The rare Engineering schematic can only be obtained from the Risen Inquisitors in the Stratholme dungeon and requires 290 skill in Engineering.  The kicker is the no level requirement and the ability to be used by non-Engineers.

Raw Materials Breakdown For Voice Amplification Modulator

• 2 Arcanite Bars (or 2 Thorium Bars + 2 Arcane Crystals)
• 2 Ironweb Spider Silk
• 3 Thorium Bars
• 1 Gold Bar
• 1 Runecloth
• 1 Large Opal

Most, if not all, of these materials can be found for cheap on the auction house.  When combined together into a Voice Amplification Modulator, you can create an item that can sell for an easy 300-500 gold to the right buyer.  A normal leveling character will see no point in spending so much on a piece of gear that would be replaced quickly, but a twink will not only know the true value of the item.  They may have been searching for one of these VAM neck pieces for weeks.  A twink will pay top WoW gold for a Best-in-Slot item like the Voice Amplification Modulator.

After learning of this item from the commentor, I logged into my Engineer, Colddrawn, and found that I already have the VAM recipe in my schematics list.  So I will be testing this market out myself as I love niche markets that are gated by rare recipes (like the Rich Purple Silk Shirt market that I am still the only supplier in).  If you have the recipe as well, odds are there aren't any Voice Amplification Modulators on your auction house either.  The schematic itself is also a good option to flip, if you can find one grossly underpriced on the WoW auction house.

If you find yourself in the same shape as me with an untapped market on your server, be sure to review my tips on creating your own market.

Anyone else had any success selling Voice Amplification Modulators?

Don't Forget to Plus One, Retweet, and Like for more chances to win the great swag from the Cold's Gold Factory Birthday Giveaway.

Enjoy The Posts Here at Cold's Gold Factory? Check Out Cold's Mysterious Fortune Card Mastery Gold Making Guide.  Or Check Out My New Favorite All Around WoW Gold Making Guide or the PvP and Gold making Combo.

Goblin Engineering Gold Runs

WoW Engineering Gold Runs

Engineering has long been my favorite profession in World of Warcraft. The convenience and utility of the Engineering profession is rivaled by no other WoW profession. What I really love is all of the great teleporting options that an engineer has at his disposable, second only to the mage class. Toss engineering onto a mage character and it really gets easy to transport yourself all around Azeroth in no time at all.

There are 2 specific specialization options to choose in Engineering - Goblin or Gnomish Specialization. Gnomish Engineering focuses more on trinkets and utility items, while the Goblin Engineers focus more on explosives and bombs. The Goblin and Gnomish Engineers both have distinct teleportation location options that are specific for each Engineering specialization. Today, I will be covering some gold making options for utilizing the teleportation system of the Goblin Engineers.

Engineering Teleports

The 2 teleportation devices that are unique to the Goblin Engineers are:

• Dimensional Ripper - Area-52
• Dimensional Ripper - Everlook

 The 2 teleportation devices that are unique to the Gnomish Engineers are:

• Ultrasafe Transporter - Toshley's Station
• Ultrasafe Transporter - Gadgetzan

Both Goblin and Gnomish Engineers have access to the:

• Wormhole Generator - Various Northrend Location Options

Goblin Engineering Teleportation Gold Run

Well, teleports are cool and all, but how do we make gold with them? Well, let me give you some ideas. Here is a sample Engineering Gold Run utilizing your various teleportation devices as a Goblin Engineer.

1. Use your Dimensional Ripper - Area 52.
2. In Area 52 - Check for Khorium Power Core and Adamantite Frame on the vendor.
3. Fly to Stormspire.
4. Grab companion pets to flip from Exotic Pet Dealer.
5. Grab Secret Recipe to flip for major profit from Exotic Weapons Dealer.
6. Use Dimensional Ripper - Winterspring.
7. Grab Winterspring Cubs from the vendor inside the inn, Michelle De Rum.
8. Grab recipes from Qia, the Trade Supplies vendor, to flip.
9. Grab recipes to flip from Xixxer Fizzbolt, the Engineering Supplies vendor.
10. Use Wormhole Generator - Port to Scholazar Basin (Unless Underground Location appears as an option).
11. Fly to Oracles camp and buy Mysterious Egg for a chance at the pets to flip in three days.
12. Port (with Kirin Tor Ring) or Fly to Dalaran.
13. Grab Dalaran Pets and recipes from vendors to flip.

This is just one of the many options for porting around as a goblin engineer looking to make gold in WoW. You can also vary your portal choices from the Wormhole Generator, since the Mysterious Egg from the Oracles is on a 3 day cooldown. And you can always try for your chance at the "Underground" option and grab those Engineering recipes to flip.

Engineering is all about utility and mobility. Use this to your advantage in your travels around Azeroth.

Thanks to Twitchiegw of Twitchie Enterprises for helping clear up an issue where I thought these recipes for the teleportation devices had been removed from the game in this last Patch.  If you need to learn the recipes for the devices, talk to the engineers by the devices in the prospective towns.  Thanks Twitchie and Faid for the catch. 

Enjoy The Posts Here at Cold's Gold Factory? Check Out Cold's Mysterious Fortune Card Mastery Gold Making Guide. Also Check Out The Teenager's Gold Guide To Get Started With Learning The Auction House As A Younger Player Or Check Out My New Favorite All Around WoW Gold Making Guide or the PvP and Gold making Combo.

Are You Catering To Shoppers Or Purchasers?

Today's post here at Cold's Gold Factory is brought to you by BlackFriday.Info.  Here's a word from our first official site sponsor:

Are You Catering To Shoppers Or Purchasers?

Remember there are different types of buyers on the World of Warcraft auction house, both shoppers and purchasers, and they buy items off of the auction house in different ways.  In short, purchasers buy the finished crafted products from the auction house, while shoppers buy the materials and have the item crafted for a tip or fee.  You can profit off of both shoppers and purchasers.

Walnut Stock Sold Incoming Mail

An example would be shown in the above image.  Not only do I sell the Patch 4.2 crafted Engineering epic gun, Extreme Impact Hole-Puncher, but I also sell the Hair Trigger and Walnut Stock on the auction house.  Why?  Well, Purchasers will go to the auction house and buy the epic engineering gun.  A Shopper will look for the materials and have it crafted in person to save some gold.  Usually a pre-crafted item already has some profit figured into the purchase price of the item.  By providing the materials themselves, a shopper can often save some gold on the purchase even with the fee or tip figured into the new cost.

What I have found is that these vendor bought items do sell on the auction house.  They are mostly likely sold to someone who found the materials listed in someone's Engineering profession link that was just shopping for all the required items via the auction house.  This buyer was probably also unaware that the items were available from a vendor or were too time consumed to gather the items themselves.  Either way, there is gold in flipping vendor items for those shoppers that gather all the materials from the auction house.

What other vendor items that have a sole use as a crafting material have you sold for a profit on the auction house?  And the Twilight Highlands Inscription vendor items don't count.  Think harder!

*********************************

Enjoy The Posts Here at Cold's Gold Factory? Check Out Cold's Mysterious Fortune Card Mastery Gold Making Guide Or Check Out My New Favorite All Around WoW Gold Making Guide.

Zygor Guides Has Launched 3 New Products And Is Having A Great Sale!  

Check out the Zygor Guide Sale .

Screw Inferno Rubies, I'm Stockpiling Dream Emeralds

The Race Towards New 4.2 Recipes


While many of my alts are still stuck at the starting line, even though they were well prepared and ready to race alts, my main is towards the front of the racing pack.  As you may have heard Wes (of Cappedbycata.com) and I discussing on a past episode of The Auction House Junkies Gold Making Podcast, I chose to race for the new patterns with my main character.  Since Cold is an Engineer, that means I'm racing to be one of the first sellers of  the new Engineering items from Patch 4.2.  Cold has advanced past the first phase of Firelands Invasion Dailies and has picked Shadows Wardens over Druids of the Talon.  I am only 1 day off of the fastest speed possible and I continue to find just enough minimum playtime to get his daily quests from the Molten Front and the Regrowth completed each and every day.  I want to be one of the first sellers of the new gun, but my main focus is on hoping to bank heavily on the new scope, Flintlocke's Woodchucker.

Dream Emeralds

Dream Emeralds sell horribly on my server.  I think the majority of them have been sold to vendors prior to the price drops on gems.  When they appear raw and uncut on the auction house, the prices can be pretty low.  I have been scooping these cheaply prices Dream Emeralds up because the demand for them is about to explode.  Once the new scopes are craftable on your server, you can expect those Dream Emeralds to be much harder to find.  So stock up now, while the short-sighted players haven't been planning ahead.

Why I Am Stockpiling Dream Emeralds

• The new Flintlocke's Woodchucker scopes each require 2 Dream Emeralds to craft.
• Every single hunter out there will be buying a new scope or having one crafted.
• Tons of scopes will sell to mains and every alt hunter.
• This recipe does NOT require any BOP items to craft.
• The raw Dream Emerald price will rise as some players look to buy the materials and have the item crafted by an Engineer.  You did learn about supplying both purchasers and shoppers right?

The biggest benefit of racing with my Engineer first is that the biggest money maker (Flintlocke's Woodchucker) requires zero Living Embers and zero Chaos Orbs.  All of the other new weapon patterns do require Living Elements Chaos Orbs, which is going to be a major choking point for mass crafting of the new weapons.  Even worse is the dreamcloth chokepoint for the bags, since they are still BOP and take a full week to make.  Most people would probably pick Blacksmithing first, since there are so many options with the new recipes.  I think that as an Engineer, I will have much more profits before the Blacksmith is even able to create a handful of items to sell.  Plus Engineering is the least used profession, which helps limit the competition and opens up a better selling opportunity.  

Who's With Me On This One?

WoW Patch 4.2 Firelands Recipes Are BoE

WoW Patch 4.2 - Rage of The Firelands

WoW Patch 4.2 Firelands Recipes

Now that World of Warcraft Patch 4.2 is live, we know the origins of all of the new recipes introduced in this new WoW content expansion.  The new weapon plans and scope schematics are available from Damek Bloombeard and the new profession bag patterns are available from Ayla Shadowstorm.  Both of these vendors are located within the Molten Front.  The vendors are locked behind quest phasing and you must complete the new daily quests to start unlocking the vendors and gain access to those recipes.  These are the recipes that we were preparing our main and alts for Patch 4.2 to start racing to be the first to unlock the vendors and get access to the patterns.

The patterns and plans for the armor pieces are all available from the mobs within the new Patch 4.2 Firelands raid instance.  Currently trash mobs and bosses can drop the new epic patterns for the new epic craftable gear.  Hopefully this is as Blizzard intended and it won't be hotfixed to only allow the recipes to drop from bosses.  All of the new Firelands raid patterns are listed below.

Should You Buy These BoE Patterns?

I myself wouldn't buy these patterns off of the auction house unless I was a major raider and could accumulate enough Living Embers to be able to start producing the gear as soon as the recipe was purchased.  I would wait for the prices to come down as right now paying 20-50k gold for a pattern is going to take a while to earn enough profit to pay off the recipe cost.  While you are working on collecting the Living Embers, the prices will continue to fall.

Since these patterns and plans can be acquired from trash mobs within the Firelands, doing trash runs could be very profitable if you are lucky enough to win a roll for one of the epic gear patterns.  I would sell while the content is fresh and new and the prices are sky high.  You can probably sell for a high amount now and repurchase the same pattern later for far cheaper.

Patch 4.2 BoE Firelands Recipes

Firelands Tailoring Recipe Drops
Pattern: Boots of the Black Flame
Pattern: Grips of Altered Reality
Pattern: Don Tayo's Inferno Mittens
Pattern: Endless Dream Walkers

Firelands Leatherworking Recipe Drops
Pattern: Ethereal Footfalls
Pattern: Footwraps of Quenched Fire
Pattern: Gloves of Unforgiving Flame
Pattern: Heavenly Gloves of the Moon
Pattern: Treads of the Craft
Pattern: Clutches of Evil
Pattern: Dragonfire Gloves
Pattern: Earthen Scale Sabatons

Firelands Blacksmithing Recipe Drops
Plans: Emberforged Elementium Boots
Plans: Eternal Elementium Handguards
Plans: Fists of Fury
Plans: Holy Flame Gauntlets
Plans: Mirrored Boots
Plans: Warboots of Mighty Lords

The MFC Mastery Holiday Sale Continues
 
USE CODE: firecracker
For a whopping $5 off the regular price of $11 for your own copy of the Mysterious Fortune Card Guide!  Learn all the secrets I've used to make hundreds of thousands of gold off of this one item!

BUY YOUR COPY NOW for only $6 for a very limited time.  This discounted price ends on July 5th, 2011.The price will never be this low again! Hurry and get your copy today!

Ideal Alts Series | The Herder AoE Farmer

Ideal Alts Series - The Herder

Ideal Alts Series

We've already discussed The Dungeon Farmer and The Collector, which are both excellent options for your factory of alts.  If I were a new player looking to make my first alt new character today, The Collector would be the type of character I would make.  It is an excellent choice for expanding into both the pet and recipe flipping markets as well as the Inscription market selling glyphs and Mysterious Fortune Cards.  Both can be excellent income sources for any gold making player.  Today's Ideal Alt is focusing on The Ideal AoE Farmer Alt - The Herder.

Ideal Alt - The Herder

This was once a very fun alt character for me.  It was a lot of fun during Burning Crusade when this type of character was my main, before I switched to my current Deathknight main character. 

Role:  The Herder - is a farming character, but is a farming specialist.  The Herder can round up large numbers of mobs and survive the onslaught while killing wave after wave of humanids, dragonkin, beasts and more with the AoE abilities and the healing skills that Herders possess.  The Herder is the farmer that doesn't kill things one at a time.  They kill things 5, 10, 20 at a time.  Herders looking for locations with mobs that are closely packed together or in groups.  This allows for maximum benefit for the AoE abilities they posses.

Class:  Paladin is in my opinion the best AoE farmer for an Ideal Alt.  Many players may choose a Mage as the best AoE farming alt, but I disagree.  You can overcome one of the major drawbacks of using the Paladin, it's short range, with one of the profession selections.  A Paladin has some excellent AoE abilities as well as some stacking-DoTs and has the survivability to endure the major damage received as a Herder Alt.  You will be Protection specced similar to a tank, but with talents focusing on mobility as well as AoE damage and survivability.  Something similar to a 0/31/10 Paladin Herder Build would be what you are aiming for.

Race:  Horde - Tauren  / Alliance - Dwarf 
The Tauren is the ideal choce for the extra 5% base health and the AoE stun Warstomp.  Dwarfs are another good option for Stoneform.

Professions:  Goblin Engineering and Skinning
By giving this Ideal AoE Farming Alt Goblin Engineering, we can both further increase the AoE damage and stunning options and also greatly increase the pulling distance with the Engineer Only Rockets.  The Engineer only extra shield belt attachment as well as the rocket speed boost are also excellent additions to the increased survivability and mobility that The Herder Ideal Alt is centered on. 

Skinning because you are a farming character and the sheer numbers of mobs you can kill in quick order make skinning a much better farming option then mining or herbalism.  Then again, you could choose Tailoring over Skinning if your main purpose was cloth farming off of humanoids.  As a Tailor you would get extra cloth from your Cloth Scavenging ability once you hit Northrend.

This is really a fun Ideal Alt to play as you can herd up massive numbers of creatures, zap ones that are far away with your rocket, speed boost for faster herdings of even larger herds of mobs, and tons of other fun tricks.  Creating massive trains of mobs that all stack around you is a lot of fun, especially once you start to take those massive numbers of attacks all at once.  Better burn em down quick!

As an Engineer you have plenty of ways to empty your bags without leaving your farming spot either.  Toss in a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth and you may never need to even go to town.  If you decide to go with this Herder Alt build, you can really do some amazing things with an item like a Demon-Forged Breastplate and a Skullflame Shield.  I would try to collect those 2 items for the alt before I started leveling it.  Trust me, you can do some amazing pulls with built in drains.  You have so many mobs pounding on you at once, that there are soo many RNG rolls for the proc that a lot of times you will visually see them procc multiple times each pull.  Once you get the correct level and reputation, upgrade your shield to the Petrified Lichen Guard with a Shield Spike and it gets even nastier.  Those poison DoTs stack up and inflict the many attackers that are already on your Consecration, while you Hammer them down.  This build is all about letting the mobs kill themselves in addition to the AoE damage.  It is possible to lose you connection and log back in to all dead mobs surrounding you.

Ideal Alt - The Herder AoE Farmer

• Tauren
• Protection Paladin (0/31/10)
• Engineer
• Skinner
• Survival Specialist
• AoE Specialist
• Ground and Mounted Mobility Specialist
• Massive Kills per Hour
• Independent - Engineering Services
• Engineering Portals to Northrend Farming Zones
• Loot-a-Rang - Ranged Looting and Engineering Utility
• Engineering Pet Seller
• Can Farm Anything Mob Related
• Also great option for Profitng From GlowCaps since you want the Sporeggar reputation shield anyways.

Be sure to check out the other entries in the Ideal Alts Series and catch Wes and I discussing them on The Auction House Junkies | WoW Gold Makers Podcast.

Who has a different option for an Ideal Alt that is a Herder AoE Farmer?

Ideal Alt - Tank AoE Herder

***************

Ideal Alts Series

• Ideal Alts Series Intro | Wes’s Building A Better Bank Alt
• The Dungeon Farmer – An Ideal Heroic Farming Alt
• The Collector – An Ideal Vendor Flipping and Pet Selling Alt
• The Herder – An Ideal AoE Farmer Alt
• The Low Level Dungeon Farmer – An Ideal Alt For Farming Low Level Instances
• The Solo Raider and World Boss Killer

Ideal Alts Series - The Collector

Ideal Alts Series Continues

Today we have another installment in the series on Ideal Alt World of Warcraft Characters.  This series is geared to give you some ideas on various types of alternate characters to add to your World of Warcraft gold making arsenal, or the Gold Factory as I call it.  Here we are taking a look at some of the roles that your alts may perform.  We are looking to maximize the benefits of each specific type of these Ideal Alts to get the most out of each individual character slot, since we are limited to 10 characters per server (per account).  Yesterday I discussed the Ideal Alt - The Dungeon Farmer and today we will be looking into another Ideal Alt - The Collector.

Ideal Alts - The Collector

Role:  The collector is an important alt character in many gold making line-ups.  The collector is an alt that has the sole duty of traveling around and collecting items to sell on the auction house.  This ideal alt is not a farmer.  The collector is strictly a buyer.  He is a buyer of vendor sold goods.  He collects items from npc vendors to flip on the auction house for a nice profitable mark-up.

Class:  This one is a no brainer.  Which class is the most portable (No pun intended)?  The Mage class is far superior to any other option.  Mages can port to the major cities in a few seconds, thus making them the absolute ideal class for your Collector Alt.

Race:  Horde:  Goblin - Alliance: Any would work fine, but I lean towards Worgen for their Darkflight racial ability, which would assist in running to and from various vendors.  Goblins are an easy choice as they get the Best Deals Anywhere (20% off all reputation linked items) and Pack Hobgoblin (1 minute of bank access every 30 minutes) racial bonuses.  Pack Hobgoblin is a great help when out purchasing large quantities of items in remote locations with no mailbox access.

Professions:  Engineering and Inscription.  Engineering is an awesome addition to a mage's portal library as being an Engineer is sorta like being a ghetto mage.  Mages can teleport to many cities, but an Engineer can port himself to a lot of wilderness locations in Northrend via the Dimensional Ripper.  Depending on your engineering specialization choice, you can also use an engineering transport to get to Toshley's Station and Gadgetzan (if Gnomish Engineer) or Area 52 and Everlook (if Goblin Engineer).  Since your main role is to travel around and grab items to flip and some of those items are in remote locations, having a Mage who is also an Engineer is by far the most mobile of all character options.  And while you are in those remote locations you can use your Zappthrottle Mote Extractor while in Outlands and Northrend for free primals and eternals.

Any of the other professions would work alongside Engineering, but I chose Inscription as the best 2nd profession for The Collector Ideal Alt.  Why?  Because your main job as The Collector is to gather items to flip for profit then post on the auction house.  This means you will be spending a great deal of time within cities, so barking is a great secondary income source.  You're going to be in a lot of cities, so you can bark Mysterious Fortune Cards and make a killing like I do. 

So we have came up with the best combination for a Collector type of Ideal Alt, whose main role is to travel around and collect items to buy from vendors and sell for a profit.  This character would be ideal for getting into recipe flipping, selling vanity pets (like Winterspring Cub), sporregar cooking recipes, and tons more!  The engineering choice is excellent as a goblin spec engineer can port to Area 52, look for Adamantite Frames and Khorium Power Cores on the engineer vendor, then can fly to Stormspire to pick up companion pets.  The Engineer also gets quick and easy access to the Scholazar Basin Oracles' Egg for hatching your way to easy gold.

Ideal Alts - The Collector

• Goblin
• Mage
• Engineer
• Scribe
• Mage Portals and Engineering Portals - Most mobile of all characters
• Forged Documents Daily
• Mysterious Fortune Card Barker
• Pet Seller
• Recipe Flipper
• Glowcap Investor
• Zapthrottle's Mote Extrator for free primals and eternals while traveling
• Dimensional Portal chance for access to the rare undergound vendor in Dalaran
• Glyph Seller
• Engineering Pet Crafter
• Fast Access to a Neutral AH (to buy and sell cross faction pets)
• 20% off reputation linked vendors
• Goblin banking every 30 minutes
• Engineering access to mailbox, vendors, and bank access in the wild
• Plenty of ways to profit with The Collector Ideal Alt

Anyone have a better combination?

***************

Ideal Alts Series

• Ideal Alts Series Intro | Wes’s Building A Better Bank Alt
• The Dungeon Farmer – An Ideal Heroic Farming Alt
• The Collector – An Ideal Vendor Flipping and Pet Selling Alt
• The Herder – An Ideal AoE Farmer Alt
• The Low Level Dungeon Farmer – An Ideal Alt For Farming Low Level Instances
• The Solo Raider and World Boss Killer

Patch 4.2 Engineering Love

Datamined Info For Engineers

As many of you already know Engineering is my most favorite profession within World of Warcraft.  Colddrawn, my main, is a miner engineer, which allows me to benefit from the Electrostatic Condensor bonus for Volatile Airs from mining nodes.  Overall, being an engineer hasn't seen a great many ways to profit in Cataclysm outside of companion pets (yet again).

Currently we Engineers have very limited uses for Chaos Orbs.  A couple mediocre ranged weapons and our nice Engineering only Killshades are the only recipes for Engineers that require the Chaos Orbs.  Even with the limited uses, I have continued to roll "Need" in heroic dungeons as I was hoping that Chaos Orbs would a) be required for future added Engineering recipes or b) become un-soulbound and be able to be sold or transfered to my other crafters.  Well my looking ahead, or sheer greediness whichever you want to call it, is going to pay off in Patch 4.2.

New Engineer Crafted Weapons and Scopes

In Patch 4.2, Engineers will have another item to craft with the Chaos Orbs that we have been stockpiling.  The following items have been datamined from the PTR data.  We will be getting a new gun recipe and a couple of new scopes.

New Gun
Extreme-Impact Hole Puncher BoE Engineering crafted ilvl 365 Gun - Recipe binds on pick-up.  this gun takes 5 Chaos Orbs to craft.  Where the recipe will come from is still being speculated on as there is no concrete evidence yet of it's origin.

Extreme-Impact Hole Puncher

New Scopes
Flintlocke's Woodchucker Recipe binds on pick-up.
Squirrel Sights - item data-mined, but not implemented yet.

Flintlocke's Woodchucker Scope

WarcraftEcon has an excellent write up covering a lot more of the new craftable weapons and gear coming in Patch 4.2.  Check out the post on Patch 4.2 Firelands Preparation.  Keep your eyes peeled at the Warcraft Econ Hall of Fame as my entry should be going live sometime soon.  It's already included in the list of coming soon Hall of Fame posts for 500k.  So keep your eye out for when it goes live.

Gnomish X-Ray Scope

Gnomish X-Ray Scope

The Engineering crafted Gnomish X-Ray Scope has been making me a killing since the release of Patch 4.1.  In case you don't know the Gnomish X-Ray Scope has been changed.  It used to just give a flat crit bonus, but now it is much more of a preferred high end scope as it currently is a Proc based buff.  A Proc now gives you +800 Ranged Attack Power for 10 seconds.

Since Patch 4.1 I have been selling these very quickly and for twice my investment.  They only take 2 Hardened Elementium Bars and 2 Dream Emeralds to craft and I have been able to sell them on my server for 465g each.  So be sure to look into this market on your server, as it may be easy to grab some and flip them for a profit even if you can't craft them yourself.  I've sold 4 of these scopes in 3 days at this price.  These are scopes that I had left over from leveling Engineering and since the change to the scope, I'm so glad I didn't dump them for cheap.  Check out the option on your server.

Swapping Engineering Specializations For Profit

Photo courtesy of Faid of Nerf Faids

Engineering Specialization

There are 2 choices when it comes to picking your Engineering Specialization, Goblin or Gnomish Engineering.  Goblin Engineering focuses on bombs and rockets, while Gnomish Engineering focus on crafting trinkets and devices.  Which one you choose is up to personal preference and there isn't much to gain from choosing one specialty over the other.  Each profession does have some specialization specific recipes, most notably the ability to craft 1 of the 2 new Engineering Profession crafted companion pets.

Engineering Crafted Companion Pets

Each type of engineer has a new Cataclysm recipe for crafting a companion pet.

Goblin Engineers can craft the Personal World Destroyer companion pet.
Gnomish Engineers can craft the De-Weaponized Mechanical Companion pet.

Why limit yourself to profiting on crafting only one of these vanity pets?  You can actually learn both recipes and craft both the goblin and the gnomish companion pets.

Swapping Engineering Specs

In Bootlegger Outpost in Northern Tanaris resides an npc named Narain Soothfancy.  Inside her hut is a book titled "Soothsaying For Dummies".  Is is this book that you open to be able to swap to the other engineering specialty for a fee of 150g.  Once we changed your Engineering specialization, you can go to a goblin or gnomish Engineering trainer and learn the recipes of the other specialization.  Visit Narain's hut again to swap back to the original specialization if you like, but it will cost you another 150g.  To most of us 150g is petty change and is well worth the ability to craft and produce both of the great selling companion pets available to only us Engineers.  Remember you need to be the correct spec in order to use the spec-required items like the transporters.