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.

Undercutting Jessica Sellers

Jessica Sellers

Free Thinking

One of the things I try to do here at Cold's Gold Factory is to show you ways to think outside the box.  I like to try and show ways of thinking that you may never have thought on your own.  Today's post is going to be just that.  Let's look at a few strategies I have talked about before and see if we can utilize these in a different way.  In this post we will revisit Barking, Undercutting, and Oppurtunity, but in a new light.  The best student is not one that simply copies and mimics, but one that grasps the knowledge and implements their own variation to improve upon the original concept.

Jessica Sellers

Most scribes know the Ink Trader Jessica Sellers by name.  She's the vendor in the Dalaran Inscription shop that will trade Blackfallow Inks for various other inks.  Jessica Sellers now has 2 similar ink trading vendors located in both Orgrimmar and Stormwind.  It is no longer required to head to Dalaran to exchange your inks as there new ink traders on the main continents have been added since Patch 4.0.6.

The Ink Traders Will Trade:

1 Blackfallow Ink for 1 of Celestial Ink, Ink of the Sea, Ethereal Ink, Ivory Ink, Lion's Ink, Midnight Ink, Jadefire Ink, Moonglow Ink, or Shimmering Ink.

10 Blackfallow Ink for 1 of Snowfall Ink or Inferno Ink

A scribe that is looking to make a bunch of Darkmoon Faire Cards or Decks may run low on Snowfall or Inferno Inks.  That scribe can come and trade in 10 Blackfallow Inks to get one of the rarer inks required for the Darkmoon Cards. 

Cost and Profit Analysis

I myself do not use this ink exchange option, mainly because I have a lot of Inferno Inks as a bi-product of my Mysterious Fortune Card business.  And even if I run out of Inferno Ink, it is more profitable to use those 10 Blackfallow Inks to craft and sell 10 Mysterious Fortune Cards than to trade away 10 Blackfallow Inks for the 1 Inferno Ink.  Why?  Because the price of Inferno Ink is not high enough to make ink trading the ideal use of the inks.  I can make 10 MFCs with those Blackfallow Inks and with the gold from the sales, buy an Inferno Ink off the auction house and still have gold left over.  In order to make the ink trader option viable, the cost of Inferno Inks needs to be 10x the cost of a Mysterious Fortune Card.  (If you need caught up on Mysterious Fortune Cards please read the MFC Compilation posts.)

Other scribes do use these ink traders to convert their Blackfallow Inks into Snowfall and Inferno Inks.

Undercutting Jessica Sellers

Since other Scribes are willing to trade in 10 Blackfallow for 1 Inferno Ink, we can get in on this ink trading business as well.  How?  Think about applying the trade chat barking tips to this new idea of undercutting Jessica Sellers.  Hell, she's overcharging anyways, so let's undercut her by 1 Blackfallow Ink.  If players are using the 10 to 1 Ink trade, then they should be fine with only trading 9 for 1.  So if you have extra Snowfall Inks or extra Inferno Inks this is a viable way to dump some of them to other scribes for a better profit ration, then just selling them on the auction house.

Set up a trade chat macro and tap it occasionally to look for some Scribes that are looking for Inferno Inks.  The week of the Darkmoon Faire may be the best time to give this a try.  And the fair has just rolled into Azeroth for the week.

Try a trade chat macro like this:

Are You Making Cards and Decks for the Darkmoon Faire?  Short on Inferno Inks?  Screw Jessica Sellers : I'll trade You An Inferno Ink for Only 9 Blackfallows!  Jess charges 10.

Is this profitable on your server?  It depends on the prices on your server.  You aren't stuck with Mysterious Fortune Cards as your only option though.  You could use those 9 Blackfallows to make 3 glyphs.  The question as to whether it is viable on your server or not is this.  Can you make more gold using 9 Blackfallow Inks or with 1 Inferno Ink?  If Inferno Ink prices are sky high on your server, you can look into the opposite.  You may be able to trade in 10 Blackfallow Inks to the ink trader for an Inferno Ink that has a much higher market price.  So hopefully this post has exercised your mind and been a guide to thinking of new and unique ways to profit in World of Warcraft.

Darkmoon Fair Gold Making Guides

 

The Darkmoon Faire

The week of the Darkmoon Faire is a great time to make gold.  Both fledgling and veteran players have some opportunities to make gold once the fair rolls into town.  The Darkmoon Faire is only available for one week out of each month.  The Darkmoon Faire location alternates between 3 sites:  Mulgore (outside Thunder Bluff), Goldshire, and Shattarath (In Terrokkar Forest). 

The Darkmoon Faire will be returning this Monday, so if you are bored or ar looking for something new to try, why not try to make some gold with the Darkmoon Faire?  There are many ways to profit from the Darkmoon Faire.

Guides To Gold Making At The Fair

Flipping Flik's Faire Frogs - This is a handy guide to making gold off of the little green goblin Flik.  Flik runs around the fair and sells 2 different kinds of fair frog companion pets.  Both of these fair frogs can sell for tons over what you pay for them, especially if you sell them while the fair is not around Azeroth.

Selling Jubling Pets - Profitting from Dark Iron Ale Mugs just takes a little bit of barking and teaching your customers how to obtain the Jubling companion pet from the Darkmoon Faire.  This may be more profitable after Patch 4.1 is released and we see the spike in demand for companion pets.

The Dense Stone Shuffle - Did you know you can shuffle Dense Stones into Dense Grinding Stones to use as Darkmoon Fair turn-ins for Tickets?  You can trade those tickets in for various Darkmoon Faire prizes in hopes of getting a rare blue item or a rare crafting profession recipe.  This is an easy market to enter as you're usually going to see a nice return on your investment.  Just don't pay too much for your Dense Stones (I like to pay 2g or less per stack of Dense Stone.)

Lhara - This great Darkmoon Faire vendor sells goods for dirt cheap.  Be prepared to see someone already camping her.

Darkmoon Faire Decks - Scribes can use their Inscription Profession to craft Darkmoon Fair Cards and turn them into Darkmoon Faire Decks to either sell or turn into the Darkmoon Faire to get the corrosponding trinkets.  During the fair is a great time to sell any materials required to craft these cards as the prices always spike during Faire week.

Wes and I talked about all of these strategies in detail on Episode #5 of Auction House Junkies, if you would like to learn even more about the Darkmoon Fair.

Anyone have any other gold making methods for the Darkmoon Faire?



March CGF Gold Blog Recap

Did You Enjoy April Fool's Day?

(I'm not quitting WoW)

My Gold Blog Recap

I started a new segment here at Cold's Gold Factory. During the first week of each month, I will posting a recap of the prior month. For each monthly recap I will list the Top 5 Most Popular Posts here based on visits and also the Top 5 Most Discussed Posts. This will be a big help for anyone who may have missed some of these great posts or discussions. This recap will also help to expose some of the better posts for new readers just joining us.  The discussion continues on many of these posts so feel free to contribute.

March Gold Posts Recap


Top 5 Most Popular Posts from March

• Glowcaps & Fertile Spores As Currency | Selling Clam Bar Recipes
• Passive Income | Guild Invite All Macro
• New Rugged Leather Farming Spots In Cataclysm
• Patch 4.1 Glyph Changes
• Auction House Espionage Guide

Top 5 Most Discussed Posts from March

• The Current State Of World of Warcraft
• Opportunity Cost Part 2
• Multiple Profession Coverage In World of Warcraft
• What I'm Currently Selling on The Auction House
• You Know You're A Greedy Goblin When...

March was a great month for quality content coming out of Cold's Gold Factory.  Use this post as a guide to get you caught up on some of the most popular posts from last month alone.  Feel free to continue the great discussions on the original posts.

Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival

Bloggers: The April Gold Blogging Carnival is coming soon. Get your posts in via email. You only have few days left to participate in the carnival and submit your post for this topic.

Daily Gold Tips Newsletter

Never miss a post from Cold.  Sign up for the Daily Gold Tips Newsletter and have all of my posts sent straight to your inbox.

Are there any other posts from March that you found particularly useful or thought provoking?

Rift or WoW? Goodbye Azeroth

Rift or World of Warcraft?

I'm unsure why I have not mentioned it earlier, but I have secretly been playing the big new MMO Rift.  Many other WoW bloggers have been giving Rift a try.  I constantly get Rift achievement updates from players I am following on Twitter.  Are those set up just to entice other players into the Rift game?  It looked like a new game that could rival the long standing World of Warcraft, especially as older players are getting board with the game.  I have even discussed the loss of players from within the World of Warcraft game on previous posts:  The Current State of WoW article was a great guide for discussion in the comments section. 

Yes I must admit, I am quitting WoW when my subscription runs out.  I am making the full switch over to Rift, which I believe is the game of the future.  Maybe Blizzard's new MMO will pull me away from Rift when it is released.  Will you make the switch?

Image from :www.riftgame.com

Pitch & Catch | A MLB Opening Day Tribute

Oswalt, Lee, Halladay, Blanton, Hamels

MLB Opening Day

It is finally here!  The Major League Baseball season begins today here in the United States.  Baseball is by far my favorite sport and my Phillies are looking to have the best starting pitching rotation in the history of the sport. I am expecting nothing but another World Series victory from the Phightin' Phils.  In honor of the start of the MLB Season, I present to you:

Pitch and Catch

There are a few items within the game that allow you to play catch with another character.  Some of these items are quite rare and can fetch a nice price on the auction house or by barking in the trade chat channel.  Let's go over these items together, where they are from, and then I'll add in a little bit of my own speculation.  So this is still a gold making post to guide you on this opening day of baseball season.

These are the items within World of Warcraft that you can use to play pitch and catch.

• Voodoo Skull - Comes from within the Zul'Aman raid.  This is thrown at a party member once you aggro the group of trolls playing with this Voodoo Skull.  I have sold a few of these on the auction house after I was done farming Zul'Aman for the Mojo pet and the Sealed Scroll Case.
• Haunted Memento - Can no longer be obtained.  This Haunted Memento was only available during the Scourge Invasion at the end of Vanilla WoW.  These sell for a heft price on the auction house as possessing one in your bags causes the Ethereal Black Haunting to follow you around.
• Heavy Leather Ball - Is crafted by low level leatherworkers.
• Rotund Relic - This fertility statue is obtainable only via the rogue pickpocket skill.  You can pickpocket these from Frostpaw Shamans in the Grizzly Hills.
• Happy Fun Rock - Is dropped from various humanoids within the Dire Maul Instance.
• Paper Zeppelin - Created from the Paper Zeppelin Kit sold by Jeppeto the toy maker in Dalaran.
• Paper Flying Machine - Created from the Paper Flying Machine Kit which is a TCG loot code item from the March of the Legion Set.
• Etheral Essence Sphere - An option for purchase from the Soul Trader companion which comes from the TCG Loot Code.

All of these items can be thrown to another play and if they have room in their bags, they will catch it.  The item will then appear in their bags and can be thrown back.

Tossing Around Some Thoughts

The Haunted Memento is a great item to snatch up if you find it for a few hundred gold or less.  Relisting it on the auction house can earn you a sale of 1000+ gold for this unobtainable item.  These become more and more rare as players quit the game.  

Just as the Haunted Memento is no longer available, the Voodoo Skull may see a similar fate.  The Zul'Aman Raid is being renovated into a 5 man dungeon in Patch 4.1.  Will there be more Voodoo Skulls inside the new dungeon re-vamp?  If it is removed from the game, then the value of the existing Voodoo Skulls will increase. 

So if you are farming for the Mojo pet or the Sealed Scroll Case before Zul'Aman is changed forever, hang onto any Voodoo Skulls you get and see if they will no longer be obtainable after Patch 4.1.

Play Ball!

Maelstrom Crystals | Lantern and Lamp Trading

Magic Lamp

Maelstrom Crystals

Patch 4.1 will bring ways to get Maelstrom Crystals much easier and cheaper.  The new ZG and ZA Heroics coming in Patch 4.1 will be dropping epic items, which will be able to be disenchanted into the Maelstrom Crystals.  The result will be an increase in the supply of the Maelstrom Crystals across all servers.  The prices of these Maelstrom Crystals will drop as they are much more readily available as the new supply enters the market.

Most players are excited about the opportunity to finally be able to start moving some of the higher end enchants that require the Maelstrom Crystals.  Right now the cost of the higher end enchants due to the requirement of the Maelstrom Crystals has the price very expensive and not worth trying to sell as the investment required is outrageous and probably unable to allow for much profit on most servers.  People just don't want to spend that much gold on an enchant, especially on an item that will be replaced soon.

Lantern And Lamp Trading

Two items that will also see a lowered production cost are the Enchanting crafted vanity pets.  The Enchanted Lantern and the Magic Lamp are companion pets crafted by Enchanters.

• The Enchanted Lantern is only craftable by Horde Enchanters.
• The Magic Lamp is only craftable by Alliance Enchanters.

Both of these companion pets require a single Maelstrom Crystal as a part of the crafting requirements.  Currently they are very expensive to craft due to the sheer cost of the Maelstrom Crystal required.  Once the cost of the Maelstrom Crystals drops after Patch 4.1, then these companion pets may be a great option to profit on the auction house.  As many players will be fiddling in the higher end enchant market, you may be able to find a niche within the vanity pet market selling these faction specific vanity pets.  And Patch 4.1 will be causing a demand spike for vanity pets since there are new achievements coming with the patch also.  

Cross Faction Trading 

You can make a ton more by getting involved in swapping these companion pets to sell to the faction that is unable to craft them at all.  On average, the value of the opposing faction's enchanting pet will be higher than the value of the pet everyone on your faction can create.  Both are viable income streams, but when both avenues are explored together the profit should be more than double the single revenue stream given the limiting nature of the faction specific crafting requirements.  The vanity pet / companion market is a great market to get you started with Arbitrage, or Cross Faction Trading.

Also if you are thinking about buying one of either the lantern or lamp pets, you should wait until after Patch 4.1, when the cost to craft should be significantly lower once the Maelstrom Crystals start to enter the market at a reliable pace.

Glyph Changes in Patch 4.1

Patch Changes

Patch 4.1 will be adding all new dungeons, pets, mounts, and all sorts of goodies, but there are a few changes within the Glyph system that a Scribe shouldn't overlook.  Some glyphs are being buffed, others are being changed, and yet again a new glyph is being added.  Be sure to stay ahead of the changes so you can save gold as well as profit off any of the new changes.  An informed scribe is a profitable scribe.  Many times its only the first day or two that you will have an opportunity to gouge the pricing on seemingly new glyphs that appear after a major patch.  Be sure to always read the patch notes so you won't end up with a list of glyphs you don't know yet, when you used to know them all.

Patch 4.1 Affected Glyphs

Glyph of Frost Armor - This is a new glyph being introduced into World of Warcraft with Patch 4.1.  It will allow Frost Armor to also regenerate mana.  It is a Major Glyph and will most likely be learned from either Northrend Research or from a Book of Glyph Mastery.  If it is the latter, then it would be a great time to unload some of the Books of Glyph Mastery as the demand spikes.  EDIT:  It's officially learned from Northrend Inscription Research.

Glyph Of Raise Ally - This glyph is being changed into the Glyph of Death Gate.  Raise Ally is being changed to be a battle rez.  Within the first few days you should be able to sell a few of the new Glyph of Death Gate.  Might be worth snagging a few of the Raise Ally Glyphs if you can find them for cheap.

Glyph of Rake - The Glyph of Rake will be gone and will be changed into Glyph of Pounce.  I'm assuming that Pounce will be a better seller than Rake.

Glyph of Mend Pet - The happiness and pet loyalty system is being completely removed from the game.  The Glyph of Mend Pet was an awesome seller and a must have for most specs of hunters.  Expect to see a spike in sales of Minor Hunter Glyphs as players will be replacing this glyph as the Glyph of Greater Proportion it changes to is pretty useless.  It will slightly increase the size of the Hunter's pet.

Glyph of Divine Accuracy - Is getting a buff as it will also effect Holy Fire as well.  I doubt this change will lead to more sales.

Glyph of Spell Reflect - Is also getting a buff as it will now lower the cooldown by 5 seconds instead of the current 1 second.  Might lead to a slight increase in use.

What will be the next Glyph of Mage Armor?

Remember the Glyph of Mage Armor fiasco?  It may be a good idea to have a few of the glyphs that are getting changed pre-crafted and ready to sell.  It could turn out that something goes wrong in the Patch 4.1 and leaves us without a way to craft a specific glyph.  It has happened before and some players were able to make a killing selling the Glyph that was bugged and unable to be crafted at all.  Hope this guide to the new Patch 4.1 Glyph changes was of some help for getting you thinking of planning ahead.

Auction House Espionage Guide

Your Competition Is Watching You



Auction House Espionage

All of us auctioneers have a few players that we are battling in specific markets on the auction house gold making scene in World of Warcraft.  We get a slight feeling of enjoyment when we see that we can undercut this enemy and steal a few of his sales.  "This guy needs to drop out of my market and quit undercutting me!"  We've all been there.

The best time to undercut your enemy is just after they log off.  This way you can be the cheapest on the auction house until someone else comes along and undercuts you.  These undercutters tend to be the same people over and over with an occasional new player attempting to enter the market.  So how do we keep an eye out for these enemies?

Spying On Your Competition
The common ways of watching your enemy players activities include:

1. Friend's List - Add your competition to your in-game friends list.  This way you can easily moniter when that greasy little undercutter is online and when he logs off.  Set up a note with what markets he competes with you in.  Once you start adding enemies to your friends list you want to be able to keep track of them all.  This is especially important if you use any add-ons that allow your friends list to be shared between characters. 
2. Raid Marks - Fluxdada (of Power Word: Gold) gave us a guide to marking your auction house competition earlier this month, which is a good read.  You can see the raid marks from a very far distance and can visually track where your enemy is going.  You can see when he's at the mailbox, when he's in the auction house, and when he's just afk crafting.  The raid marks make it much easier to follow the enemy movements and monitor their actions.
3. The Undermine Journal - With The Undermine Journal and its wonderful features, you can track the posting times of your competition.  You can look for a pattern in there posting times that reveals what time slots they do not post on the auction house.  Using this data can help to determine if there is an opportunity for you to be the best price seller on the auction house over a longer period of time.  You can change your own posting schedule to a better timeslot where you will have beeter extended exposure.  An example would be finding out that your enemy only posts before 6 am and after 5 pm, probably from a full time job.  You could realize that if you posted at 6:30 am before your job, you would have the whole day with ideal pricing instead of battling with him every night at 6 pm.
4. Add-ons - Although I don't use any, there are add-ons that you can use to track your competition as well.  These tend to allow you to spy on them and always know what zone they are in and if they go afk.

Covert Tactics

We can assume that if we are watching them, then they are probably watching us too.  They are using tactics to keep an eye on what we are doing and when we are doing it.  What can we do to make it harder for them to know our every move.

1. Alternate Characters - Using your alternate characters to post is an option when using tactics against competitors.  In a market that players tend to swoop in for a piece of action when the price is higher, it is very beneficial to have multiple characters of your own displaying the same item.  Each of the characters undercutting each other can make the situation appear as if an undercutting war is already underway.  Or you can make the market appear saturated with sellers and scare away players searching for new markets to enter.
2. Re-Rolls - Some players go as far as to delete and re-roll a new bank toon every few weeks or so just to get a clean slate from all of the competitor tracking.  It is only a matter of time, before players target you as a major competitor.  Time for another re-roll!
3. Remote Auction House - The Remote Auction House additional fee per month service offered by Blizzard is a great way to combat a lot of the spying tactics used to watch your auction house activities.  When you are posting with the remote (mobile or web based) auction house you cannot be logged into the World of Warcraft servers. Thus many of the tracking options are unable to moniter posting from the remote auction house.  The Undermine Journal will still be able to track your posting times, but that is a retro-active data find once the items are already live on the auction house.
4. Vary Your Posting Times - You can try to fool up your competition instead of sticking to an obvious pattern or easily timed schedule.  Do different things at different timesto throw off the watch dogs.  You can do some auction posts on one character, log onto an alt and post, then log back to the original character.  Maybe you competition saw you log and posted their items and quit.  Did they take the bait?

Do you have any other tips or tricks for watching your competition or hiding from them?

Never miss a post here at Cold's Gold Factory.  Sign up for the Daily Gold Tips Newsletter and get each and every post here delivered to your inbox.  Let my Daily Gold Tips Newsletter be your guide to success on the auction houses of World of Warcraft.

Auction House Competition | Rift Effect

Auction House Competition and Maturation

The Gold Queen had an interesting post recently titled Staying The Best, which discussed the maturation of the auction house markets and how should we combat the extra competition coming from all of the free gold making resources currently online.  It's a nice article and worth a read, but I must say that I disagree.

In my opinion, what we are seeing is much more of a great divide amongst the players.  There are far more buyers than sellers and with the changing times, there are less and less sellers.  A look onto my auction house shows much of my competition is gone.

The Changing WoW Player Base

Along the far end we have players that are well educated on gold making tactics and on the other end we have completely clueless players, but the majority of players still fall within the two extremes.  I believe that most players are stuck in the middle.  They are no longer a completely new player, but are not advanced to the gold making strategy.  And it is within this middle area that the absolute majority of players reside and will remain.  The new players are constantly replaced by other new players, where as more veterans are leaving.  And it is these veterans that are most likely the ones playing the auction house on all of our servers.  Are these veterans being replaced by new veterans?  It hasn't been the case on my server at all.
Have the players as a whole learned the proper ways to make gold on there own?

As a whole, I say No, but there have been more players that are educated and know how to process information on the auction house and our gold blogs, but those tend to be the players that have been around a while. These players may even have graduated to being free thinkers who can develop their own strategies.  The thing is a lot of these informed players are bored or quitting all together.  Games like Rift have stolen a few players away as I have discussed in my very popular post on The Current State of World of Warcraft.

On the other end are a slew of players that are still clueless, have no idea how to think freely, and need sites like MMO Champion to cover a topic, so that they can copy the tactic, not adapt it to their server’s market, follow the rest of the lemmings, and utterly fail because they have no clue how to process or relate the given tactics to their own market on their own server.  Remember the report on prospecting Thorium Ore and how that was a major market price crasher on Thorium Ore once people realized that every copycat was trying the same strategy?  I snatched up a ton of cheap thorium ore and processed it down various much more profitable gold making avenues. 

I believe it isn’t so much that the majority of players are making more gold by sound auctioneer strategies, but the ability to gain gold by doing normal activities is much easier. Just think of linear quest chains, reduced mount costs and early level requirements, the lack of as many wipes and repairs with the easing of the difficulties of many lower level dungeons, etc.

So its easier to get gold, there are fewer major gold sinks out there, and the old gold sinks are now much cheaper (mounts, etc.)

Goodbye Competition
In the last few weeks I now have a third of my competition across almost all markets. These competitors may have turned to auctioneering as a new way to play World of Warcraft, while currently they are bored with even that and have moved on to try other games.  The result is less sellers, less auctions, and less competition.  Let's see how long it takes for others to capitalize on the fact that there are less competitors on the Auction House lately.  These findings are the exact opposite of what the Gold Queen was reporting.  I understand that all servers are different, but as a whole some changes may appear on other servers in a little more time.  Maybe your server just hasn't caught up yet.

Wes of Capped By Cata and Auction House Junkies reported a similar finding in his article: The Rift Effect: It Will Make You Rich.  It is time to re-examine those old markets you vacated due to competition.

So all power to RIFT and any other games that come along.  They tend to steal our compeition away and leave more gold for us to make from the World of Warcraft auction house.

Anyone else finding less and less competition in one or more markets?

Zoxy on Auction House Junkies OUT NOW

Wes of CappedByCata.com and I, Cold of Cold's Gold Factory, have just release the recording of Episode #6 for the Auction House Junkies podcast. We have a special guest with us on this episode.

Zoxy of Trading With Zoxy joins Wes and I as we discuss our ramblings within the World of Warcraft.

This episode we talk about:

Children's Week

Epic Gems

Epic JC Patterns

The Current State of WoW

Is WoW Ready For A Corpse Run?

Deepstone Oil

How Do You Determine Value?

Zoxy's Getting Started Gold Guide (Only $10)

And lots of other great topics and ideas.

TCG Loot Code Contest



We have a lot of great stuff planned for the podcast and the community so stay tuned.

Passive Income | Guild Invite All Macro

Passive Income

Passive Income is possible from the Guild Perk Cash Flow, which is available at Guild Level 5.  Anaalius of Anaalius.com recently posted about the possibilities of Passive Gold Making and the Cash Flow Perk.  A couple of weeks into Cataclysm, I decided to give this a shot of my own. 

I already am the guildmaster of many guild banks.  On my main character I invited a bunch of random level characters to my guild in an experiment to see if I could get others to level my main guild up without actually running it like a guild.  I want guild perks, but I don't want to be tied to a real guild with any type of duties or expectations.  I created the guild for using other players to advance my guild level, while also taking advatnage of the various guild perks that come with leveling a guild.

The Guild Mantra

The guild is nothing but a place for leveling and alternate characters to benefit from guild perks while leveling.  There are no guild officers.  No one is allowed to even see what's in the guild bank, much less withdraw from it.  Everyone is free to invite.  Everyone is free to leave the guild at will.  We do nothing together as a guild.  We are a bunch of solo-ers that are leveling the guild for perks.  I invite people at random and use a Guild Invite All Macro to speed the process.

How I Do Guild Invites:

I do random searches with the /who search within World of Warcraft.  Using generic searches like these:

• /who (pick a player race)
• /who (pick a class)
• /who (pick a dungeon)
• /who (pick a combo of letters)

I do these random searches while in flight.  Once the /who list results are generated I just tap the Guild Invite All Macro button, which invites all of the unguilded results to the guild.

Guild Invite All Macro

Here is the exact code that I use for my Single Tap Invite All on My /who List Macro:

This code is for Horde characters.  Alliance players need to change ORGISH to COMMON in the macro code. 

This code makes forming your guild of random people (who are going to be raising your guild level, earning you guild perks, and depositing a percentage of all their looted coin into your guild bank) rather painless.  Patch 4.1 notes have even been updated to state that the guild % coin looted report will be removed from the display.  Soon people won't even know that they are helping fund the guild bank.

As long as you are up front and honest about what you are doing, you shouldn't get many complainers.  If you do get some whiners, a guild kick is an easy solution.

Cash Flow Rank 2 is available at Guild Level 16.  That's  going to be a long ways away seeing as we have barely cleared Guild Level 5.  Regardless, Rank 1 is providing free easy gold within my coffers.

Do You Have A Guild Working For You Or Are You Just Working For Someone Else?

Runecloth Surplus Solution

Are You Overloaded On Runecloth?

Some of us stocked up a bunch of Runecloth prior to The Shattering in hopes of selling the stacks of Runecloth for reputation turn ins to new goblins and worgens.  Then Blizzard throws us a curveball and creates championing tabards for all of the player races.  Now we are stuck with a bunch of runecloth in our banks.  This was something that Wes had talked about on the Auction House Junkies podcast as well.  Maybe you are in the same boat as we are?

How To Move Your Runecloth

The market for selling unbolted stacks of Runecloth hasn't been favorable to flip these for a profit.  You may have success selling off your Runecloth as Bolts of Runecloth, but I would take a different approach.

The most profitable way to utilize runecloth on most servers would be to follow these easy steps.

1. Have your tailor bolt it up into Bolts of Runecloth.
2. Buy up a bunch of Runethread.
3. Craft Runecloth Headbands.
4. Send them to your Enchanter. (Bonus if you are an Enchanter / Tailor)
5. Disenchant all of the Runecloth Headbands.
6. Either sell your raw enchanting materials
7. or Use them in BoA and Twink Enchanting scrolls for sale on the Auction House.

Why is this the most profitable alternative?  Because most servers are seeing a spike in demand due to a low volume of Vanilla enchanting materials (as I previously revealed), especially Illusion Dust, Greater Eternal Essences, and Large Brilliant Shards.  Runecloth Headbands will only disenchant into these 3 great materials to sell on the auction house.

6 Bolts of Runecloth and 2 Runethread combine to create 1 Runecloth Headband.

Runecloth Headband Disenchant Table

1. 1-2 Illusion Dust - 74%
2. 1-2 Greater Eternal Essence - 23%
3. 1 Large Brilliant Shard - 3%

Depending on the price of stacks of Runecloth on your server and the going rate for these Vanilla enchanting materials, this may be a viable profit option to invest in.  Like the obsidium shuffle, this is a bit labor intensive, but can be eased if you are an Enchanter / Tailor.

You Know You're A Greedy Goblin When...

You Know You're A Greedy Goblin When...

1. The Shattering destroys Azeroth as we once knew it, but you haven't even noticed.
2. You delete your Hearthstone because it is taking up important bag space.
3. You spend your IRL lunch hour scouring over gold blogs.
4. You have so many guild banks you keep losing track of what items are stored where.
5. You have enough back stock to put the entire goblin trading cartel out of business.
6. You have 4 year old items in your bank waiting for the value to return.
7. You lie and tell others you have far less gold than you actually have.
8. Even though you have hundreds of thousands of gold, you tell the 1 gold beggar to "Go the f*ck away and earn your gold like everyone else".
9. Your in game friend list is full of nothing but competitors.
10. You delete and re-roll a new banking character every few weeks.
11. All of your characters have special letter characters in their name.
12. You get hate mail on a daily basis.
13. You're broke IRL, but you're rich in WoW!
14. Cataclysm has been out for over 3 months, but you still haven't ran a heroic dungeon.
15. Your banking toon's gear is worth more than the character its on.
16. You don't even know where Tol Barad is on the world map.
17. You're still waiting for more nerfs before starting your dungeoning career.
18. You can make 35k in 5 hours selling nothing but Mysterious Fortune Cards.  :)

Feel Free To Add More In The Comments

Ravenwood Fair | WoW Easter Egg



Ravenwood Fair vs The Horde

Ravenwood Fair



While playing the Facebook game, Ravenwood Fair, I got the above letter as completion to a quest for the princess of Ravenwood.  Made me chuckle.  Thought I would pass it on.

Deepstone Oil For Vial of Sands Mount

Deepstone Oil and Albino Cavefish

I have been making ridiculous profits off of crafting Deepstone Oil and selling in stacks of 8.  Deepstone Oil is crafted by Alchemists and is a nice choice for using my Common Commodity Crafting technique when leveling your alchemy profession.  Crafting Deepstone Oils can get you an easy 15 skill points in Alchemy and earn you a profit as well.

I am currently selling stacks of 8 Deepstone Oil for 345 gold and they always sell.

What?!?!  Yes, you read correct.

Vial of Sands Crafting

Deepstone Oil is crafted by an alchemist and oil requires 1 Albino Cavefish per craft.  Each Albino Cavefish will yield 1-2 Deepstone Oil.  I sell in stacks of 8 because the Vial of Sands mount recipe requires 8 Deepstone Oil.

I found that this market is untapped on my server and have been playing with the pricing.  I am just as shocked as you that I can inflate this price so high and have the Deepstone Oils still sell.  The only reasoning I can come up with is that since anyone collecting the materials to have a Vial of Sands crafted has already spent tens of thousands of gold, they probably don't mind a bit extra for these Deepstone Oils?  I'm sure players are just happy to finally see the Deepstone Oil available and buy them at an inflated price just to finally be finished collecting materials for their Vial of Sands mount.  Or maybe they don't know how easy they are to craft.  There are rarely any albino cavefish posted on the Auction House, but when there are, I snatch them up with a quickness.  Hell, at this rate I may just have to go fish some Albino Cavefish up myself.

Check out what Wes of Capped By Cata posted on Where to Farm Albino Cavefish.

Have you identified any niche markets like this that you can exploit for higher profits on your server?

Fertile Spores & Glowcaps As Currency

Glowcaps Can Help You Goldcap

Glowcaps Will Make You Gold

It appears that a lot of players have forgotten about some of the older ways to make a nice profit in World of Warcraft.  Glowcaps can be used to make you a small fortune or get you some seed money to start playing the auction house.  I logged into The Undermine Journal and it appears that this is an untapped market that I had forgot about as well.  No one is posting the Sporeggar goodies on the Auction House and I will start listing some of my own for some easy gold.

How Does It Work?

In Sporeggar, Zangarmarsh there is a Sporeggar Quartermaster named Mycah.  Mycah will exchange the Recipe: Clam Bar for 1 Glowcap once you are neutral with the Sporeggar faction and will exchange the Recipe: Sporeling Snack for 2 Glowcaps once you are friendly.  Getting to neutral with the Sporeggar is rather easy as you can use Bog Lord Tendrils as turn ins to get you easily to neutral as long as you are at least level 61 to start the quest. 

I have had a ton of success selling both of these recipes for 25-35 gold each since these recipes do not require Sporregar reputation to learn.  The Sporeling Snack recipe has been nerfed and no longer provides a buff for your pet.  Even when it was pet food, I had a much harder time selling the Sporeling Snack recipe and I'm assuming sales will be even less since the nerf as only a player going for the Chef title would likely purchase it.  Both of these recipes are great options for grinding cooking skill up quickly, so they sell to leveling cooks as well as potential Chefs.

How To Get Glowcaps

The Glowcaps that are required as currency to purchase both of these great recipes are very easily obtained.

1. Glowcaps can be picked up by any character.  They are spread all over the Zangarmarsh zone and appear as a red mushroom on the ground.  Glowcaps stack in quantities of 200, which is a great bonus.  Herbalists cannot see Glowcaps on their mini-map, so using your herbalist is not an advantage. 
2. Glowcaps can be traded and sold on the auction house or mailed from other alts to your buyer.
3. A Glowcap is awarded from the repeatable quest More Fertile Spores in Sporeggar that requires 6 Fertile Spores per turn in.  These fertile spores can also be purchased from the Auction House or collected from your alts.
4. You can always bark in trade chat to find some sellers.  Many players have a few Glowcaps tucked away in their bank and may be happy to part with them cheaply.

When looking for glowcaps and fertile spores and comparing their price with the value of the recipes, remember:

• 6 Fertile Spores = 1 Glowcap
• 1 Glowcap = 1 Recipe: Clam Bar
• Therefore 6 Fertile Spores = 1 Recipe Clam Bar

I like to get a large batch of Glowcap currency and buy a ton of these on my engineer, then mail them to my recipe posting bank alt.  I use my engineer so I can mail them off instantly with the Moll-E mailbox tinker toy. 

When posting these on the auction house, I also like to post a few stacks of the required item for cooking.  The Strange Spores and Jaggal Clam Meats both sell much better when the recipes that require them are also for sale on the auction house.   This makes it easy for someone looking to power level cooking to buy both your recipes and the cooking materials required to create these items.

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Have You Forgot About Glowcaps?

Hiring Low Level Farming Mules

Hiring Farmers

Have an item you need for crafting, but can't find the time to go farm it yourself?  Try hiring a lower level character to farm it for you. 

We all were noobies in World of Warcraft at some point.  Some of you haven't been playing very long.  Others, like myself, have been around since Vanilla WoW.  While swimming in hundreds of thousands of gold, we easily forget where we came from.  Remember the first time you had to save for your very first mount and how hard it was to make gold back then as a low level character?

Well you can help someone out by contracting them to farm for you.  You can get your materials delivered to you while spreading some gold to the low level character you hire.  Often times these low level players will turn into longer term farmers for you.  They know you have plenty of gold to pay them and some will continue to farm for you well into their leveling process.

Tips For Finding and Keeping Lowbie Farmers

These low level characters willing to farm for gold won't just come knocking at your door.  You have to seek them out.  Once you find them, you have to nurture your relationship.  You need to be supportive, helpful, and you need to be prompt when paying.  Keep your farmers happy and you will be more productive and more profitable with your auction house crafting business.

1. Bark In Trade Chat "Looking For Level XX Player Who Needs Help Making Gold." - Pick a level around the same level as the mobs you need them to farm.  Ex:  If you need Spider's Silk, find a character around the same level as the spider's that drop the Spider's Silk.  Why?  Characters that are getting XP while earning gold for you tend to farm for longer.
2. Offer A Fair Wage - Don't try to underpay your lowbie farmers.  Although they may not understand the true value of the items they are farming for you, make sure your pay is fair, above the average sale price, if you can fit it into your profit scheme. 
3. Send An In Game Email Follow Up - Make sure you follow up your verbal agreement with a written contract through the in-game email system.  Why?  This helps them remember who you are and where to send the items when finished.  Teach them how to send items COD to you, if the don't understand the process.  If they are mailing the items to a different character, be sure to include that information in this follo-up email.
4. Make a Friend | Don't Hire A Slave - Treat your new farmer as a friend or business partner.  Don't boss him around like he's your slave.  Remember your farmer is free to leave at any time.  If you treat him poorly, he may be working for your competition next week!
5. If You Choose To Re-List, Do It On An Alt - So you have extra materials left over or the price has spiked and you want to unload a few for quick profits.  Don't relist them on your same character!  Change to an alternate character before relisting your farmers items.  You don't want him selling you Spider's Silks for 3g each and then have him see you selling them for 10 gold each on the Auction House.
6. Show You Care - To keep your farmers extra happy to be working with you, send them some gifts occasionally.  All lowbies can use some nice enchants, gear upgrades, or vanity pets.  Remember a lot of these players are close to broke and will appreciate any assistance or freebies you can reward them with.  Setting up an incentive plan for bonuses at certain levels.  I like to give a bonus if they send me a full 12 stack email.  Let them know the incentive plan and they will work harder for you so they can reach these free bonuses.

I have employed lowbie farmers at certain times when the supply of certain materials isn't keeping up with the demand for my crafted products.  I have used lowbie farmers to assist me with various resources such as:

• Small Eggs
• Spider's Silk
• Large Fangs
• Pearls
• Arcane Crystals
• Heavy Hides
• Glowcaps
• Rugged Leather

So if you just can't find what you are looking for on the auction house, next time consider hiring a lowbie to farm it for you.

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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.

Auction House Junkies Episode 5 Is Out!

Auction House Junkies Episode #5
The Auction House Junkies | Gold Making Podcast Episode #5 is now Live.  As always you can access it through the Auction House Junkies homepage imbedded player (complete with all 5 episodes), the Podbean Host Feed site, or on iTunes. 

There were a lot of problems with the editing and corruption of files, so this episode is late and is being released in its raw / uncut / uneditted form.  This was done to get this show out without any further waiting.  Wes of Capped By Cata and I will be recording Episode #6 this weekend and we hope to have it released in a timely manner as before.

This episode we discuss:

• Hearthcast Podcast
• A Bunch of Listener Questions
• TCG Loot Code Contest
• The Darkmoon Faire
• High End Pets
• Hiring Lowbie Mules
• Inter-Market Gambles and Risk
• Much More Goodies and Tips

Had a blast recording this one and it turned out to be jammed with tips from start to finish.  A lot of good easy entry markets for aspiring goblins are discussed.  If you are brand new into making gold on the auction house be sure to check out a previous blogging carnival topic here at Cold's Gold Factory.

Top 3 Tips For New Auctioneers 11 Gold Bloggers Speak on the Topic for New Auctioneers