WoW Leveling Goods On The Upswing!

WoW Leveling Goods Selling Strong Again

Knowing when to adjust your sales tactics on the WoW auction house ahead of the curve is always a way to improve your gold making profitability.  Preparing and stocking up prior to a major patch or an expansion release is always a wise tactics, but preparing for an upcoming WoW auction market cycle is also a great strategy for short term profit increases.  For example:  Leveling goods have been selling quite well this last week, but why are they?  Before you move onto the next paragraph, can you think of a reason or two why leveling goods would be selling better this week?

Captain Obvious Says:  "New Players & Returning Players"


What Market Cycles Would Cause Leveling Goods To Be Selling Better Again?

While "new players and returning players" is a correct answer, let's dig deeper into why there are new players and players returning to World of Warcraft in late Novemeber. 

1. Thanksgiving School Break (in the US at least) - Thanksgiving week is the first time US colleges and universities shut down completely, which means this is the first time that college students have a full week off from classes.  For some, that means partying on the biggest drunken party night of the year (night before Thanksgiving) and recovering, but for many it means a full week of gaming.  Some college students actually only play WoW on college breaks and summer vacations.  So for some college age students, this past week was the first time they got to dig in to Mists of Pandaria.  High School kids also get an extended weekend for the Thanksgiving holiday, which means more play time for high schol kids too.
2. Black Friday Week Sales - There have been a ton of great sales during Black Friday / Cyber Monday Week at Amazon, mega in-store sales, and now Blizzard online sales have been added.  All of these great priced WoW boxed set and expansion sales are designed to bring in new players.  Getting caught up to MoP for just $35, is a great way to get new players joining the game and starting their first WoW characters.  They even have the MoP Collector's Edition on sale for $35, which will get you the LE mount and pet for $35.  It's also a great time to buy WoW Collector's Editions for flipping later for a bigger profit too! (Sales ends at midnight tonight - so act fast!)

Thanksgiving breaks from colleges and high schools, as well as the influx of new players brought in from the great Black Friday and Cyber Monday Warcraft sales, are both leading to increase player populations over the last week.  These population cycles happen every year and knowing ahead of time, allows you to prepare for selling those items that the new leveling characters will desire.  I've been able to make a nice dent in the remaining blue leveling gear that I had stockpiled for the Mists of Pandaria launch and of course Mysterious Fortune Card barking and population increases go hand in hand for easy sales.  As the brand new players continue to level up, there will continue to be more sales coming in for leveling characters, but some of these guys will be stalled out until their next break, the big Christmas Vacation.  So if you didn't plan ahead for this market cycle, then be sure to get ready for the influx of Christmas Noobs.

Anyone else seen an increase in sales this week on items that tends to sell better to leveling characters?

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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

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.

Don't miss the post on Just How Many Mounts Can I Buy For 2700 Lovely Charms? You may be shocked at the answer.

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.

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.

Population Cycles and Barking MFCs

MFCs Will Never Be Obsolete

Mysterious Fortune Cards Again! Really?

Oh Yes!  Oh Hell Yes!

The best benefit of the Mysterious Fortune Card market is that it will never become an obsolete market.  As a counter-point, the Fortune Cookie market will become obsolete.  The Mysterious Fortune Card gambling phenomenon will never be outdated when a new WoW expansion comes out.  Just like with any market, the MFC market will go through peaks and valleys mostly determined by 2 things.  1) How well you are barking.  2)  WoW in game population cycles.

Population Cycles?

Mysterious Fortune Cards are fun!  MFCs are exciting!  MFCs will give you a rush and draw you to buy more.  At least those are some of the principles that we know bring players back over and over for more shots at getting that Epic 5k Mysterious Fortune Card.  The truth is that eventually most players reach a point at which they do not buy any more fortune cards because they give up at winning.  They may still buy a few here and there, but eventually most players wise up after blowing too much gold chasing the 5k Fortune Card.

So in order to keep sales coming in on a steady basis, we need to be barking and informing new targets about the chances at winning from gambling in the auction house.  Some of the best and most efficient times for barking and making sales are during spikes in the population. Some examples when the population spikes are:

1. Peak Hours
2. Tuesdays
3. Weekends
4. Patches
5. Holidays

Cream Of The Christmas Crop

Christmas is one of the best IRL holidays for bringing new players into the World of Warcraft.  Many players just got the game for Christmas and are now a week or so into leveling their first character.  These newer players are prime targets for wasting their hard days earnings on a chance at a quick 5000 gold.  So dust off those Scribes, and get back to barking your Mysterious Fortune Cards.  The sales have seen a huge spike lately on many server as all of the new players are experimenting with the in game gambling phenomenon.  To these new players the rush of playing the MFC game is still fresh, new, and exciting.

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 or the PvP and Gold Making Combo.

Feast Of Winter Veil Gold Making Tips and Warnings

Greatfather Winter

Feast Of Winter Veil Gold Tactics

The World of Warcraft in-game holiday, The Feast of Winter Veil, starts tommorrow morning across the US WoW servers.  In the past, I was a big proponent of making gold during the early Winter Veil demand spikes.  Currently, I do not recommend trying to make gold with all of the strategies I have previously discussed.  If you are looking to get rich from small eggs, run from that market.  Run away!  Why?

The Feast of Winter Veil gold making scene has become very popular amongst players looking to cash in and make a lot of gold with not much effort.  The problem is that those days of making a ton of amazingly profitable sales of small eggs are long gone.  Last year, the Winter Veil start time was changed from 2 am server to 8 am server, which completely killed my normal high profit strategy.

When the start time was 2 am in the wee hours of the morning, I would post a ton of eggs for 5-7g each (7 gold singles, 5g per in the stacks) prior to logging off for the night.  Every year, I would wake up to a massive amount of sales and crazy profit levels as nearly all of my stock would sell out overnight on day 1 of the Winter Veil holiday.  I would sell most of my entire collection of small eggs, which mean I was selling hundreds and hundreds of small eggs.  By the end of the first day, everyone would catch on and the undercutting would begin.  Fast forward to last year (and this year as well) and the 8am start time and you have nothing but a complete undercutting bloodbath the entire holiday.  There is no sweet spot for posting overnight and snagging sales as the ill prepared are still asleep.  If you get stuck in the undercutting bloodbath and posting the eggs isn't worth your time, you are going to need an out for your collection of eggs.  Don't sell off your eggs for stupid cheap, because the price and demand will spike again during Children's Week next year.

Some players have also caught on to the tactic of selling the Deeprock Salt for crazy prices for the Winter Veil quest.  Even the opposing faction holiday outfits sales were down last year for me too.  As always, remember to have a plan for unloading your materials if the market isn't what you were hoping it would be.

Previous Winter Veil Strategies

• Eggciting Times Ahead - Small Egg Explosion
• 6 Materials To Sell At Christmas (Winter Veil) Time
• Winter Veil Clothing Set Selling
• Winter Veil Start Time Changed
• Deeprock Salt: Why You Should Save And Sell

These are some of the previous articles on the same topic of how to make gold during Winter Veil.  No need to discuss each of these again this year, but there is plenty of good information packed into those posts for anyone brave enough to step into the undercutting blood bath that is the current Winter Veil holiday.

One last concern of mine:  The holidays have been getting re-done lately.  There is always the chance that the quests will change on us and all of our stockpiling will be useless.  Don't overcommit when the odds of something changing are higher than previously.

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.

Mageroyal Market Control For Children's Week

Children's Week Is Coming

Once a year, the value of the herb Mageroyal spikes very high.  This regularly happens during the one week long in game holiday, Children's Week.  Why?  3 Mageroyal herbs are required to craft a Delicious Chocolate Cake, which is required as part of the Bad Example achievement.  The Delicious Chocolate Cake also requires 8 Small Eggs, so Children's Week is a great time to unload any extra Small Eggs you may have left over from the last Winter's Veil holiday.

Check out all of the goodies that I was selling for insane mark-ups last Children's Week.

Plan Ahead - Now

Small Eggs are easily farmed and if you don't get the jump on your competition selling early you can get quickly lost in the waves of undercutters.  Mageroyal on the other hand, will be much less available once Children's Week begins.  Stock up on Mageroyal now.  5+ weeks to go until the holiday begins, so start checking the auction house now for Mageroyal.  

I seem to almost always run out during this great seller's holiday.  I sell mine 25g per stack of 3.  Yeah, crazy profits, but only if you plan ahead.  So go ahead and start looking for Mageroyal to buy up.

I'm usually one of the first to give the gold blog readers a heads up, but this year The Gold Queen broke the tip to start preparing for Children's Week before I did so I wanted to give some credit.  

Check out The Gold Queen's nice guide to Children's Week.

10 Top Secret Days For Making Gold

Real Life Events

Happenings in the real world do affect markets and competition within the World of Warcraft gaming universe.  Here is a list of 10 days to play the auction house for higher than normal profits.  Real life events  pull players away from the game.  These days will pull buyers, but also will pull competitors away as well.  There are tons more buyers for every auctioneer that posts items regularly.  Any missing competitors can greatly increase your sales and profit margins.

In addition to being better days to turn a profit, these days can also be beneficial for other tasks which benefit from less players, such as winning the fishing derbies or hunting rare spawns.  Real world holidays are actually a tougher day to make gold, since there are so many people off of work, you will most likely see increased competition.  Therefore there are none on this list.

10 Days To Play The Auction House And Make Extra Gold
(In no particular order)

1. Super Bowl Sunday - The most watched event every year (in the US).
2. Opening Sunday of the NFL Football Season - Servers are dead on this Sunday.
3. NFL Championship Sunday
4. NFL Wildcard Weekend (Sat and Sun)
5. The Grammy Awards - Made a killing during the ceremony this year with no competition at all on fortune cards and jacked the price up to 45 gold each.
6. The MLB World Series (4-7 Days!) - Sales are always great these nights!
7. The MTV Video Music Awards
8. The Academy Awards (The Oscars) - Most watched awards ceremony every year, but I bet the Grammy's pull more WoW players away from the game.
9. The NCAA Final 4 and Championship Games (March Madness)
10. The MLB All-Star Game - The most watched all star game.

Obviously this list is geared towards US servers.  Other countries have similar events, like when Manchester United plays, or The World Cup Finals, etc.

Can you think of any other days or events to add to this list?

Lovely Charm Farming Hotspots: Icecrown

Back To Icecrown

At level 85, most of the Icecrown areas for farming Lovely Charms the quickest can be found in the Northrend zone of Icecrown.  The top 5 areas are marked in blue on the Icecrown map above. 

The training grounds North of Jotunheim have a decently fast spawn rate, especially if there isn't much competition.  The Cathedral entrance at Onslaught Harbor is an excellent AoE killing area.  The mobs are close together and are quick to respawn.  The cultists just west of the Argent Tournament Grounds are one of the best spots that I have been using.  Mobs are plenty, even with competition, and respawn very fast.  You can get large groups to pull at once rather easily.  You also can farm the shades that are summoned by the Deathspeaker, just leave him alive and he will keep summoning.  The seigesmiths to the South are another great option. 

UPDATED:  Best Spot To Farm Lovely Charms - 2012

Farming Lovely Charm Bracelets and Charms

Today Is The Day

The Love Is In The Air Holiday event has started today.  So while everyone else is out trying to finish the Fool For Love achievement and farming apocetharies for the Big Love Rocket, some of us goblins will be focused on trying to find the best spots for collecting Lovely Charms. 

If you haven't already, first review the Lovely Charm Farming post from a few days ago.  This post is a continuation of that post.  This post today will serve as the main discussion grounds for new spots for farming Lovely Charms.

I will list a few of the places that I am going to try out, and I would like readers to submit other ideas of spots to try.  Then together as a team we can report back here on all places we came up with as ideas.  Simply come back to this page and list if the areas are dropping Lovely Charms or verify that these locations are not dropping the lovely charms.

So here are some of the areas that I am other readers have thought of so far.  Let's get to testing and reporting your results.

1. The Gunship Quests in Twilight Highlands that have you circling the Krazzworks and shooting tons of mobs from the turrets of the gunship.
2. The naga bombing quests in SW Vash'jir where you flying overhead and bomb tons of mobs.
3. The Cataclysm dungeon in Deepholme with 100+ initiates at the end.
4. The plauge catapult quest in Dragonblight.
5. The Shark Riding Naga Eating Quest in Vash'jir.

Go ahead and start listing some new ideas and then come back and repost when you verify that they do or do not drop Lovely Charms.  I will be updating on Twitter as I find or rule out spots so be sure to follow me @SSmith0911.

Let's find some spots before they get nerfed and exploit them.  Something is bound to slip through, we just have to focus on finding it together.

UPDATED:  Best Spot To Farm Lovely Charms - 2012

J!NX :: Clothing for Gamers and Geeks

Also Check Out My Post On The Total Number Of Lovely Charms Needed For A Swift Lovebird.  (It's Not 2700!)

Tracker Snacks for Turkinator Achievement

Run Tom Turkey, Run!

Hunting Turkeys
So you wanna be a Turkinator?  The achievement Turkinator is not fun to try to complete.  You simply can't take the time to loot your turkeys or you won't get turkey triumph.  It is also hard to see the turkeys since they are so small and blend with the ground.  Tracker Snacks are an excellent item to use to track the turkeys on your mini-map and greatly increase your chances of gaining turkey triumph and completing the achievement.  Tracker Snacks are also an excellent item to create and sell on the World of Warcraft auction house.

Tracker Snacks
To be able to cook these tracker snacks, you must have a skill level of 400 in Cooking.  You can purchase this recipe from your cooking supplier in Dalaran or from the cooking supplier at the Argent Tournament grounds in Icecrown.  The cost to purchase the Recipe: Tracker Snacks is 3 Dalaran Cooking Award tokens from completing Dalaran cooking daily quests.  These Snacks require just 1 Shoveltusk Flank and 1 Northern Spices.  The shoveltusk flanks are very easy to farm in Howling Fjord where the shoveltusks roam in packs.  So gather up some shoveltusk flanks and dust off those extra northern spices sitting in your bank and covert them into some excellent cooked goods to sell during Pilgrim's Bounty.  As with any holiday demand spiked item, these will sell best the first few days of the Pilgrim's Bounty event.  Make sure to advertise these in trade chat also as some people may need reminded that these are a great help for becoming a turkinator.

Any other creative ideas for profiting off Pilgrim's Bounty?

Reader Submission: Small Eggs, Turkeys, & Holiday Sales

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You Won't Believe These Deals!  I Didn't!

Also want to clue everyone in to a huge Early Black Friday / Holiday Sale going over at Amazon.  Check out the insane sales and specials being offered at amazon.  As an example:  The Kaspersky Security Suite I bought for $80, was on sale all day yesterday for $34.95!  I know I will taking advantage of these awesome deals when I'm filling my Christmas purchases.  You can come back to Cold's Gold Factory anytime and follow the page tab up top to get back to the coupon links and special deals.

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Reader Submission:  Small Eggs And Turkeys

"Hello there, 

I want to start off by saying that i love your site.  the blogs are so helpful especially for a noob like me.  This is my first toon ever  and i have made a few mistakes but deft have learned from them.  Using your tips and others ive managed to turned my toon from a few silver to about 4k g . I am always looking for ways to make gold to save for cata annd eventually reach cap in the future.  I know its a far away goal, but i must crawl before walking. 

I know that the pilgrim event is coming up, 
i have been farming smalls eggs and looking for turkey to farm the meat as well.

i read that dduring that time, the cooking leveling will be the easiest due to those 5 recipes that become available that day, so here is my  question..

the eggs and turkey will sell
when should i start sellign them?  stack of how many?

thanks again for all that you do and thanks in advanced for your help

Bishops"

First things first - Small Eggs you are saving for Winter Veil - not Pilgrim's Bounty.  Turkeys aren't available to be looted until the Pilgrim's Bounty event starts.  If I remember correctly, you can't post them on the auction house, but you can sell them in trade chat and in the /1 chat for the area outside of your major city that requires them for the daily quests.  Some lazy people will easily pay 5g per turkey so that they can skip farming them.

As with any holiday you want to post what you can the night before as all holidays go live at 3am server time.  By posting the night before, you beat the players that haven't planned ahead.  This way you have a ton of gold in the mailbox when you log in.  Most of your sales are going to beg on the first 1-3 days of any holiday.  How many is dependant on a number of things mainly your server population, competition, and number of buyers.  As this Winter Veil will take place after Cataclysm's release date, I would horde as many small eggs as you can.  There will be a ton of new players and characters that will need the eggs.  Any that you don't sell can always be saved and sold during Children's Week.  Small Eggs sell best when posted as singles and stacks of 5 since the Gingerbread Cookies quest requires 5 and the achievement requires crafting 1 each of the required items.  So most players need 6 eggs.  So sell em as 1 and 5 stacks.

Thanks for the submission.

Winter Veil Clothing Sets - Start Selling Now

Discounted Price For Early Buyers
Last month I gave the heads-up to start stockpiling the 6 Items to Get Rich During Winter Veil.  Hopefully you have already accumulated a hefty supply.  Winter Veil is around a month away.  There is no need to wait until the holiday starts to start selling your Winter Veil Clothing.  With just a couple weeks until December and the Winter Veil holiday in World of Warcraft, start unloading a few of the sets on the auction house and in trade chat.  Last year I used a macro in trade chat with my prices and the action statement "Get yours now before the prices go up next month!"  This had me selling a few sets a day for a couple weeks prior to the holiday.  Funny thing was the "early discounted price" ended up being more than I was able to sell them on the auction house last year once competition ensued.


Fashionable Winter Veil Garb
The Green Winter Clothes or  Red Winter Clothes and Winter Boots are needed to Complete the Winter Garb set for the Achievement.  The Red or Green Hat is also required, but cannot be farmed until the holiday event goes live.  By selling these items ahead of time, you are helping those players that are willing to spend cash to save time.  Obviously this only works for tailors that are over a year old and already have the patterns to craft these.  If you are a new tailor, you will have to wait until Winter Veil in December.


Bank Alts Buy Winter Clothing Too
Not only achievement seekers purchase the Winter Veil clothing.  A lot of players like to purchase these for their bank alts or for dancing half naked on the mail boxes.  Understand that these will sell now and for a nice price.  I recommend testing prices on your server, but a good price set to start at is:

1. Your Faction Color Clothes - 120-125g
2. Their Faction Color Clothes - 150-200g
3. Winter Boots - 25-35g

Dress shoes (25g)and green holiday shirts (10g) also sell during these times as well.  Again, you must be an older tailor to already have the pattern for the green holiday shirts.

Pilgrim's Bounty - Easy Cooking Skills & Sales

Cheap Cooking Skill Ups

Pilgrim's Bounty will run November 22nd to November 28th. This World of Warcraft holiday event is a great time to raise the cooking skills of any characters that haven't been levelling their cooking. Maybe you haven't even rasie your cooking skill on your main. This will be the time to raise you cooking skills. By using just the 5 recipes only sold during Pilgrim's Bounty, you can raise your cooking skill to around 350. The final recipe turns grey at 355. This method only uses materials bought during the holiday and is the most efficient way to level cooking.

Selling Cooking Recipes
Pilgrim's Bounty is also another great time to sell cooking recipes. Since many people will use this holiday to level cooking cheaply, they will also be looking to purchase other recipes to continue to raise their cooking skill higher. Since the easy skill-ups end around skill 340-350, focus on posting various recipes that start around this cooking level. It is also a great time to unload some meats and fish that you don't need. Prices will jump as people leveling cooking need raw materials to cook.

Why You Should Save Your Deeprock Salt

Preserved Holly Machine

Deeprock Salt & Winter Veil
Deeprock Salt spikes in demand one time every year.  This happens during the Feast of Winter Veil every December.  After completing the Metzen The Reindeer quest chain, a follow-up quest becomes available.  This quest, The Hero of the Day, requires 5 gold and 1 Deeprock Salt in order to award 5 Preserved Holly.  (Note:  Refined Deeprock Salt won't work, so any leather workers that have already ran their salt through a salt shaker have missed this opportunity.)  The preserved holly are just for flavor and are pretty worthless.  The real reason to complete this quest is because the reindeer chain quests and The Hero Of The Day quest all count towards the 3000 Quests Completed achievement.

Converting Those Salts To Gold
If you haven't figured it out yet, I love to rape the auction house for massive profits by planning ahead each and every holiday season.  Must be the evil goblin coming out of me.  Start now by looking on your auction house for deeprock salt.  Anything super cheap or in big stacks at a good price go ahead and buy it out.  On my server, they are going for 4.2g per stack, which is dirt cheap compared to what I will mark them up to when the time is right.  If you want to farm some, click on the Deeprock salt link (First word in this article) and it will list all the mobs that can drop the deeprock salt.  Knot Thimblejack's cache in Dire Maul North is also a good source for these salts, which may result in a few nice priced stacks on the auction house as people are rushing to finish their insane title currently.  Store all your deeprock salts until the night before Winter Veil.

You should always post your highway robbery priced demand spiked holiday goods the night before the holiday and on a 48 hour sale.  This insures against problems getting to post in case their are server delays.  You want to be the first and only one to have these posted once the holiday goes live at 3am server time.  You do know that all holidays start at 3am right?  So posting the morning or afternoon of the holiday start date has already lost you a ton of sales.  When you buy these salts up now, then post the eve of the holiday while setting your own prices, you can easily bring in 25g per deeprock salt.  They will sell and they will sell well.  They always do, until some idiot comes along and throws his up for 5g each.  By that point though, you've already sold pages of them at your crazy prices.  You can then undercut him or buy him out to raise your prices back up, until too many copycats try to get in on the holiday sales.  It's fun to watch these late comers fight over undercutting each other down to 1-2g or less per salt, while you continue to laugh as you sold 80 of them for 25g each while everyone was still asleep.  This works particularly well if you are on a server with an aussie presense or a lot of overnight / late players.

Got any stories of Winter Veil price gouging?

Day of the Dead, Bread of the Dead, Marionette Pet

Catrina during Day of the Dead

Day of the Dead Walk Through
Day of the Dead is a 2 day holiday that runs on November 1st-2nd.   You can get an achievement and a temporary pet companion.  You also can make some profits off of lazy or clueless players.

Notes: The Marionette is only a temporary pet. It will disappear after the Day of the Dead event is over.

1. From a cooking supplier and any innkeeper, purchase Ice Cold Milk and Simple Flour.
2. Go to your race's major city's graveyard. Orcs to Orgrimmar, Humans to Goldshire, Night Elves to Darnassus, Blood Elves to Silvermoon, ect.
3. Target Catrina and /dance for your achievement, Dead Man's Party.
4. Purchase two Orange Marigolds from the Day of the Dead vendor.
5. Use one of the Marigolds to see the ghosts of the graveyard. Find the quest giver and accept the quest The Grateful Dead.
6. Acquire Bread of the Dead. You can purchase the recipe from the Day of the Dead vendor, Chapman, or just find someone hanging around with extra bread.
7. Use one of the Marigolds again to see the ghosts and turn in the quest to get your Macabre Marionette pet.

Making Gold
You would be amazed at the number of people who either are too lazy or too time crunched to cook their own bread of the dead.  You can craft and sell these for some easy money during the event and all they require to create is ice cold milk and flour.  You can sell milk and flower on the auction house, but unfortunately these breads cannot be sold on the auction house.  Barking in trade will get you some sales though.  As with any World of Warcraft holiday, setting up shop early will yield the most customers and potential profits.

Happy Halloween

The day is here when the little goblins will be out begging for treats and sweets as night time nears.  Happy Halloween boys and ghouls!

Hallow's End is in its final day.  Be sure to read my earlier post about profiteering and Hallow's End wand zaps from earlier this month.  Don't toss those wands.  They can be used all year long for the achievement seekers, are a suitable costume to sell to the nomal savory deviate delight buyers, and can be used for some super easy gold early into next years Hallow's End world holiday event.  As with any of the in game holiday events, planning is the key to profiting early in the events.  So save those wands for Day 1 of next year and start cracking down on stockpiling for Winter's Veil.  Be ahead of the crowd and plan for the next holidays now.

Hallow's End: Hallowed Wand Costume Profiteering

Hallowed Wand Costumes For Sale
Everyone who is working on The Masquerade Achievement needs to get a zap from each of the various hallowed wands.  There is a hallowed wand for each costume:  Bat, Ghost, Wisp, Leper Gnome, Pirate, Skeleton, and Wisp.  You will often see impatient players looking to buy these costume zaps in trade chat.  I myself set up a macro to shout periodically that I am selling hallowed wand costume zaps.  I charge 25g each or 3 for 60g.  Funny thing is I haven't even looted a single wand yet this year and I have made hundreds of gold from zapping the people who just can't wait until the holiday is closer to being over.  Yeah, if you wait you may not even have to buy any specific zaps as you can trade zaps, or get zapped for free while in dungeon groups.  As greedy little goblins, we offer these impatient ones our services to line our coin purses with their gold.

Save Your Wands
I haven't even got a wand yet this year and I'm making a lot of gold selling zaps, in between runs to the auction house and mailbox.  How?  Planning ahead.  Do not give wand zaps for free.  Do not zap people for fun.  Only trade zaps if you yourself need one for the achievement and the holiday end is looming near.  Do not delete your wands or waste their charges once the holiday is over.  Why?  The achievement doesn't even require the zaps during Hallow's End.  Yes that's right, I actually store these and sell some zaps during the year to people looking for a variation from the Savory Deviate Delights.  I also had a complete set of wands ready to go day 1 of the holiday, which is how I have been making the hundreds of gold during regular routines.  Hell, I been advertising Mistletoe Spirit Buffs for sale as well.  Those are from last year too.  If you have any of the old Hallowed Wand: Random from previous years, save those for people looking for a costume (Savory Deviate Delight buyers).  The random costume wands have been removed, but the zaps don't count for The Masquerade achievement.

Anyone else making gold off the impatient ones?

Hallow's End, The Headless Horseman And Empty Loot-Filled Bags

Sinister Squashling

The New Holiday Loot Bag
Hallow's Eve is here and its time to farm for your mount from the Headless Horseman.  Just like Ahune and Coren Direbrew, the Headless Horseman is now accessible through the Looking-For-Dungeon queue.  And just as the other drops had changed, he now drops a Loot-Filled Pumpkin, which can contain your rare holiday drops.  This pumpkin can only be rewarded once per day per character for your sole chance per day at the rare items.  All of the same item level 200 epic rings still drop off of The Headless Horseman himself.  Within the pumpkin bag, you may find:

1. Sinister Squashling
2. Hallowed Helm
3. The Horseman's Horrific Helm
4. The Horseman's Baleful Blade
5. The Horseman's Reins
6. 1 of the Flying Brooms

You also can open your bag and find not a single thing in there and receive a message that reads, "There is no loot."  Nice - the Loot-Filled Bag contains no loot.  Great idea Blizzard.  Regardless, you get your 24 Justice Points (unless you are capped)  after you open the bag, so it does have something intangible within it.

Opening Chests
If you are running this daily, take advantage of the free port inside the SM Graveyard and make sure to check for any chests that have spawned inside the instance.  Often they are locked so bring along some seaforium or blacksmith keys, if you are not a rogue.  All the chests within any area of the Scarlet Monastary have a chance to drop some nice BOE twink gear, so they are worth a peek. 

Any luck getting your mount to drop?  I have mine from last year :)

6 Materials To Stockpile Now To Get Rich At Christmas Time

Last week I gave you plenty of notice on stocking up on Small Eggs for profiting off of their sale in the use of cookies and quests during the Winter Veil holiday.

Winter Veil Clothing
Winter Veil is also the time for leatherworkers and tailors to get rich, as well as those supplying the materials they will be using to make endless gold. The Green Winter Clothes, Red Winter Clothes, and Winter Boots are needed to Complete the Winter Garb set for the Achievement. Crafting the boots can easily earn you minimum 25g each and the clothes sell anywhere from 15g to 50g with the opposing factions color reaching 150-200g each. You must visit the opposing capital city and purchase the pattern, which can result in many deaths and corpse runs, but the money you will make will be worth it.

What To Start Stockpiling
The main items that should be snatched cheaply and saved until the holiday starts are:

Wool Cloth
Bolt of Wool
Runecloth
Bolt of Runecloth
Copper Bar
Rugged Leather

You will not be able to find these on the auction house during the first week of Winter Veil.

Last year I took all my wool cloth and made bolts, then posted them for 7g per bolt. I could not keep them in stock. It takes only 3 wool cloth to make a bolt of wool cloth, so you can see how much money that alone made me. That was just using the wool I had left in my bank. This year I will be much better stocked and ready to sell them. The other tailors don't mind paying 7g for a bolt, when they are selling their Winter Clothing for over 100g! Just figure out what the boots and clothes are selling for, make some to post, then sell your mats for a huge profit too. The mailbox will continue to fill up with auction house earnings.

Eggciting Times Ahead

Planning Is Everything
The Feast of Winter Veil will be starting this year on December 15th.  Since proper planning can net you thousands of gold during the first few days of the holiday, I highly recommend starting to amass your stockpile of Small Eggs. 

Huh?  I'm lost.
The strategy of wheelin' and dealin' in the small egg market is once I have exploited for once of the best return-on-investments currently within the game.  This is a get-rich-quick strategy that works extremely well, if you plan it out properly and post your eggs priced correctly and early in the holiday.  You want to have all you eggs ready to go and posted the night before the holiday starts, so that once you awake in the morning on day #1 of the Winter Veil, you already have made thousands upon thousands of gold with eggs.  You can then ignore the crazy battle for market position that ensues once everyone else catches on.

Tell Me More!
If you haven't already read it, please catch up on the topic via an old post on Holidays and review the section regarding Winter Veil.  Right now is the time to horde as many small eggs as you can get.  If done right, you will not be able to keep enough in stock for the first few days of Winter Veil.  If you some reason you are late or poorly prepared and end up with excess eggs, you can always save them in the bank or guildbank to profit from during Children's Week.

Tips on Stockpiling
Here are some great ways to get started on gathering small eggs.

1. Add the Small Egg to your snatch list.  You can find good chunks of them on the auction house, probably from new blood elves and night elves questing and grinding in the 2 major hotspots.
2. Farm them yourself.  Darkfall at the Moonkin Caves & Dragonhawks just outside Silvermoon City are the 2 hotspots for mobs that drop the Small Eggs.  I prefer the moonkin/ owlkin as they drop coin as well.  Use a twink or a character waiting for the BG or RDF queue to pop so you are farming inbetween runs.
3. DO NOT SHOUT IN TRADE CHAT.  Big mistake to alert others to what you are doing.  They will steal the idea and become a major competitior.
4. Hire lowbies.  Instead of shouting that you are buying eggs, try this.  Make a macro that says "LF Low Level Players wanting to make easy gold.  Pst for details."  This is where you get someone with not much gold to work for you, hunting the mobs that drop the eggs and have them COD them to you for an agreed price.  I pay them up to 50s per egg and all they do is collect them and send them to me in full stacks.  That 10g a stack is a great money maker for them and is high enough that they will excited to make that kind of money.  Some people will send you a batch once, so they have enough for their first mount and riding skill.  Others will continue to send them in for the good source of income.  Just be sure to pay them ASAP on the CODs.

You Have Been Warned
So a lot of people missed out on the Delicious Cake Sales due to improper planning.  The ones that learned from my warning and stockpiled the eggs and mageroyal ahead of time, made huge profits, just like I did.  Don't be left out this holiday.  I have done this 4 years straight for huge profits.  It's the best part about Christmas in WoW.

The Season of Giving
But Christmas is supposed to be about giving, right?  Yes it is, but lets spin it a bit.  Any of your lowbie farmers that you get to work for you.  Try this out.  Tell them that if they send you a full mail posting (12 stacks) that in addition to their 10g per stack payment, they will get a "Bonus".  Anyone that sends the full 12 stacks of eggs, send them a "Bonus" gift.  Make it a vanity pet.  Many of these lowbies may not have a pet, and we all know that once you get one, you jsut have to start collecting more.  So the one free low cost pet, even better if it is a cheap one from their opposing faction, may spur them to start pet collecting, which will help to return the gold they earned from you back to one of your alts that is selling vendor pets on the auction house.  Win-Win-Win!  Triple Win!