Massive profit over inscription powerleveling bundles.

[Clueless_noob]

Have you powerleveled inscription letely? It's a pain in the ass when you need all those low level herbs that are scarce and very expensive since hardly anyone farms them. Well you're not alone out there since many late comers, raiders and pvpers are trying to level their profession.

This is a big opportunity for business savvy people, you can offer inscription powerleveling packs! (for an hefty profit off course)


The basics
How are you supposed to overcome the scarcity of low lvl herbs? Well you should know if you're a scribe but since not everyone has that profession I'll explain; there's an ink trader in Dalaran named Jessica Sellers she has pretty much every ink needed by players for crafting glyphs and you can buy them by trading Ink of the sea to her.
She's the resource that you as a maxed scribe (well you need 350 skill to mill northrend herbs) have access to while the people wanting to powerlevel do not, and we'll exploit her services in this guide by milling cheap Northrend herbs such as Icethorn, Adder's Tongue and Lich Bloom, then crafting Ink of the Sea and finally buying low level inks!


Material Breakdown
Wanting to know all the materials needed to powerlevel inscription by using jessica sellers, I tried looking for a guide, but everythingI've found was tailored for people who manually milled their herbs.. So I said "screw it
you'll write your own list!" and went straight to wowhead where they show the skill ranges (red/yellow/green) for each craft.
After some work that's my powerleving guide:

1-375 materials needed
35 ivory ink
57 moonglow ink
25 midnight ink
60 lion's ink
65 jadefire ink
65 celestial ink
50 shimmering ink
55 ethereal ink
20 ink of the sea


367 inks

124 light parchment 0,186g
155 common parchment 1,9375g
130 heavy parchment 16,25g
85 resilient parchment 42,5g

375-386 materials needed
28 ink of the sea
1 snowfall ink

30 resilient parchment 15g



- 1-35 Scroll of int/Spi/Stam 35 ivory ink 35 light parchment

- 35-60 scroll of recall 25 moonglow ink 25 light parchment

- 60-79 armor vellum 31 moonglow ink 62 light parchment

- 79-80 minor inscription research 1 moonglow ink 2 light parchment

- 80-105 any red glyph requiring midnight ink, train new glyphs every 5 skillups 25 midnight ink 25 common parchment

- 105-150 any red glyph requiring lion's ink, train new glyphs every 5 skillups 60 lion's ink 60 common parchment

- 150-200 any red glyph requiring jadefire ink, train new glyphs every 5 skillups 65 jadefire ink 65 common parchment

- 200-205 glyph of detterrence or glyph of rip 5 celestial ink 5 common parchment

- 205-250 any red glyph requiring celestial ink, train new glyphs every 5 skillups 60 celestial ink 60 heavy parchment

- 250-290 any red glyph requiring shimmering ink, train new glyphs every 5 skillups 40 shimmering ink 40 heavy parchment

- 290-300 scroll of stamina VI 10 shimmering ink 20 heavy parchment

- 300-310 any red glyph requiring ethereal ink, train new glyphs every 5 skillups 10 ethereal ink 10 heavy parchment

- 310-355 any red glyph requiring ethereal ink, train new glyphs every 5 skillups 45 ethereal ink 45 resilient parchment

- 355-360 armor vellum III 5 ink of the sea 10 resilient parchment

- 360-375 scroll of stats, train new scrolls every 5 skillups 15 ink of the sea 30 resilient parchment

- 375-385 any red glyph requiring ink of the sea 25 ink of the sea 25 resilient parchment

- 385-386 northrend inscription research 3 ink of the sea 1 snowfall ink 5 resilient parchment

My main goal is to make my customer always skillup on red recipes to have a predictable material consumption, but there are 3 ranges where raising 5 skill points on yellow recipes is unavoidable.
In those cases I've considered a very unlucky 75% chance of failing (instead of the effective 25% you have when skilling on yellow recipes) and added 4 inks and parchments for each skillup.
You may assure your customer that you'll send other inks in case he's really really unlucky.
I've decided to stop my powerleveling pack right when Northrend Inscription research begins because at that point your customer will be able to mill and do researches by himself.
But I guess you can include enough materials to make it to 400 for the shoulder enchants without big issues.

The Math Behind
How much does it cost a single ink? Well since milling is an rng based skill I can't tell you exactly how many stacks of herbs you should mill, but I can give you a statisticallly accurate number;

quoting from greedy goblin

- Icethorn, Lichbloom, Adder's tongue: they give 2-4 azure and 50%*(1-3) Icy pigment. That's 1.5 Ink of the sea and 0.5 Snowfall ink.
- Deadnettle, Goldclover, Talandra Rose, Tiger lily: they give 2-3 azure and 25%*(1-3) Icy pigment. That's 1.25 Ink of the sea and 0.25 Snowfall ink

I'll consider only high level herbs since they usually yeld more snowfall inks that can be sold for a good profit.

Each stack of herbs will give on average 6 ink while costing on average on my server 15g per stack (this is an high price, sometimes you find botters posting for half of that.. yum big profits), so each Ink of the Sea will cost 2,5g

For this powerleveling pack you'll need to mill slightly more than 65 stacks of herbs assuming on average 6 inks from each stack (395/6=65,83).


That's a lot of herbs! How much will it cost to you?
Rounding at 66 stacks each costing 15g you'll spend 990 gold.
You could pretty much double that amount asking 2k gold just for the inks and people would still buy your bundle since it's basically cheaper than low lvl herbs, faster and simpler, but 1k gold for 1 hour of milling is not good enough!

We've left behind snowfall inks!
If you milled 66 stacks of high lvl herbs you'll get on average 132 inks (66stacks x 4 millings x 0,5 snowfall ink on each milling) that on average sell for 12g on my realm; that's 1584g right there just for a "side product".

FINAL PROFIT CALCULATION
In the end you milled for an roughly 40 mins, crafted inks for 20 mins and spent 990g what you'll get for all this boredom?

2000g for the powerleveling bundle+1584g from the snowfalls-990g=2595gold of net profit

That looks like good stuff to me if you consider that you don't need any gear or skill whatsoever and you can try to completely rip off people asking a bigger premium for your service!


Approaching the customer
- Publish my powerleveling guide on your website (blog platforms works for this), it'll serve as a good reference for your customers so they don't waste materials. Do not link this thread expecially in world of warcraft.. linking mmowned in game is never a smart move

- You'll get your customers from trade chat mainly during the weekends when casuals log in and people care about stuff like profession that they can't fix during the week; don't spam your advertising macro, just every now and then while you're doing your usual milling routine.

- Use the mailbox to trade the inks, it's just more convenient for you and for him (he won't fill his bags right at the start), make consistent shipments (only one type of ink and the respective parchments for each shipment)

- Agree for a payment method, try always to ask for instant cash right assuring that you're going to be banned if you scam him since you won't risk of dealing with a smartass that keeps your inks under hostage for 3 days without paying the cod.

- If you agree on cod spread the amount your customer has to pay evenly across shipments to avoid scams

- Ask your customer if he wants vellums too (no big deal, I's less than 70g for the entire bundle), it's a good opportunity for asking another premium

- This kind of deal takes time so don't start advertising if you can't spend some time helping your customer since he's probably going to screw up at some point


Why helping other people raising their inscription skill won't hurt you
- Most people are clueless, they just want inscription for the raiding bonus or just because they're completionists, they're literally cash cows waiting to be milked

- You can end up helping your biggest competitor, but it's quite unlikely since inscription has an high entry barrier (months of daily research and several books) so they won't compete seriously in at least 3-4 months

- If you help a fearsome and ruthless competitor which will mercilessy undercut you by 1copper several times a day it'ss totally unrelevant since he'll find a way to your market no matter what you do.. so better ripping him off now and eventually deal with him at due time with price wars

- It's late into the expansion, the current recipes are going to be outdated (or severely less useful) in few months, people will reroll professions and roll new toons, what you do is irrelevant in the bigger scheme of things, just take what you can now!


Tips and tricks
Milling is boring as shit, use this button mashing macro while you're watching tv

/cast Milling
/use Lichbloom
/use Adder's Tongue
/use Icethorn

Hope you'll find this guide useful and please report any error I could have made.

EDIT: Added the last parts and some links, colored text for added leetness.
EDIT #2: Why helping other people raising their inscription won't hurt you

[Taylor123123]

Wow. Nominated this post

[Clueless_noob]

Wow. Nominated this post

wow thanks!

[DrWho1988]

I wonder if you could use this to make all the inks and sell them to future scribes as a whole "Powerleveling Kit". You could just copy-pasta the instructions and mail them the inks COD via in game mail to your customers.

"WTS Inscription Powerleveling Kit 1600g".

[Clueless_noob]

I wonder if you could use this to make all the inks and sell them to future scribes as a whole "Powerleveling Kit". You could just copy and paste the instructions and sent it to them via in game mail to your customers and mail them the inks COD.

"WTS Inscription Powerlevling Kit 1600g".

Well that's the main point, but you could also use this to powerlevel inscription cheaply (that's what I made 4 months ago) bys asking a friend or hiring a scribe.

[DrWho1988]

Well that's the main point, but you could also use this to powerlevel inscription cheaply (that's what I made 4 months ago) bys asking a friend or hiring a scribe.

Yeah I see. I kinda figured that was the purpose of this. Good guide, time to try this out on my Shammy +Rep

[zealot505]

Uber epic post!! Rep from me fosho!

[Unholyshaman]

Yea this is a very nice method to use when you have a fair bit of gold or time to invest. You can actually do this with nearly all possible professions, though it helps if you have a couple of thousand to invest first because sometimes you can buy all the materials needed and then the prices change before you manage to sell your bundles etc.

It definitely does work though, and like I said it's not only limited to Inscription. I am going to be doing this with the new professions arriving in Cataclysm, spend the first few days collecting the materials required and selling them.

[Multitask]

Yea this is a very nice method to use when you have a fair bit of gold or time to invest. You can actually do this with nearly all possible professions, though it helps if you have a couple of thousand to invest first because sometimes you can buy all the materials needed and then the prices change before you manage to sell your bundles etc.

It definitely does work though, and like I said it's not only limited to Inscription. I am going to be doing this with the new professions arriving in Cataclysm, spend the first few days collecting the materials required and selling them.

it is only limited to inscription. adders, icethorn, and lichbloom are prob the cheapest herbs on most servers because of the demand. Inscription is the that allows you to trade in high level end game materials for lower level ones that will assist you in leveling.

[Thidan]

I'm DEFINATELY going to make my GF mill for me now O.o

[aamlord]

The real question is: would it still be worth it? Scribes on my server keeps flooding AH with cheap stuff. The only thing that sells over 10g each are the unpopular and useless stuff that don't sell well and almost no one would make it.

I'd say check the server AH price and watch trade channel for scribe LFW to get an idea if you could make profit or if you'd end up losing money not getting anything to sell.

+rep for this one a good guide for anyone who wants to PL scribes.

[Clueless_noob]

Thanks for the various +rep you gave me guys, I'm going to post my answer point by point:

- yes this method works for almost any profession, you just have to make your math and prepare a well crafted package, I've got the original idea from this forum a year ago, there was a guy who was selling cooking packs.. I just applied the same concept to another profession, wrote a guide and made some math

- inscription is by far the easiest profession to "sell" since it's unique in the sense that other professions don't have an npc selling everything you need to level up and also because the base materials (icethorns, lichblooms, etc) have become one of the cheapest and most abundant commodities in wow history.. botters farm them in huge amounts while you'll have an hard time finding big amounts (for cheap) of for example thorium ore. In my case 2k gold is still a very affordable price to ask to the average Joe doing only dailies as the only gold income, while it might get rough selling a 4k worth jewelcrafting pack and adding on top of that 1k of profit

- you still can do it pretty decent gold by selling glyphs, 1k gold of profit per hour of work every day is not hard to achieve on bigger realms but it needs a very very optimized framework to mill the herbs and managing your supply with the least effort possible. The competition is pretty brutal these days and you have to find by yourself the best posting strategy to minimize the impact of your competitors. Since I've been asked through a pm, I'm going to expand my other guide so if you want to know more about my crafting routine check that thread in few days, I have some ideas for it but it'll take some time to have something finished.

[zealot505]

A Tip, I sell the kit in 6 parts, so it's risk free as you only sell by the part so, you can cod the entire package in one mail

Also, try adding little things like Netherweave bags, or the inscription inking kit:P those little things are worth 50g maximum, but get more peopel to buy your kits :P

[Clueless_noob]

A Tip, I sell the kit in 6 parts, so it's risk free as you only sell by the part so, you can cod the entire package in one mail

Also, try adding little things like Netherweave bags, or the inscription inking kit:P those little things are worth 50g maximum, but get more peopel to buy your kits :P

hmm you've got a point, most people won't be at 0 skill but most likely they'll be stuck at 100+ when you need more expensive and less farmed herbs than peaceblooms.

[pewpewlazerz]

I've been powerleveling professions for a while now. I made a thread on how I do it basically.

http://www.mmowned.com/forums/wow-gu...ofessions.html