[inscription] is card making profitable? [Guide]

[Hi on helium]

6):***WARNING, WALL OF TEXT ABOUT TO CRIT.***6):




Hey there MMOwned,

In this guide I show you how to determine weather or not making card, decks, and trinkets from the Inscription profession is profitable and if so, How much profit you can expect. But first off, a little background information on what you will need, and what I will be showing you.


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Color Code:
RED = Preview
WHITE = topics / link
BLUE = Important numbers/profit
PURPLE = Math
GREEN = Requirements
ORANGE = Example
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you will be using THIS spell to make random card which when combined with the other 7 cards of it's same deck, will form a deck(A total of 8 cards per deck). From these decks you will be able to exchange them in for a trinket which many consider BIS until ToC10 trinkets.

Requirements
*You will need to be(or have access to) a level 400/450 or higher "Scribe" (which is someone who has the "Inscription" profession)
*You will be using the spell: "Darkmoon Card of the North"
-Which(For each random card)requires you to have:
-Resilient Parchment x 1
-Snowfall Ink x 6
-Eternal Life x 3
-Ink of the Sea x 3


How does this spell work?
When you use this spell, it will create 1 of 32 random Darkmoon Cards which, when combined with the 7 other cads in the select deck(totaling 8 cards per deck, ace through it will create a complete deck. In the table below, I will show you what Deck goes to what trinket.(***NOTE*** the Darkmoon fair only comes once every 3 weeks. it appears in either Goldshire(town outside of Stormwind), Outside the elevators leading to Thunderbluff, or outside of Shatt(the neutral city in Outlands)

Deck ---> Trinket

Chaos Deck ---> Darkmoon Card: Berserk
Undeath Deck ---> Darkmoon Card: Death
Nobles Deck ---> (Pick one) Either Strength, Spirit, Agility, or Intellect
Prisms Deck ---> Darkmoon Card: Illusions

***MATH***
In this section I will show you how to find out if making cards is profitable on your realm, along with how to minimize the cost of your materials to ensure maximum profit.

Your realm and You
first check your realm and see how much each deck is going for, along with it's corresponding trinket. Once you've figured that out, add them all together and divide the sum by 32(to get the average amount of gold you will sell your each card for).

i.e.
Nobles deck = 4.5k
Undeath deck = 1.5k
Chaos deck = 0.5k
prisms deck = 1k
total = 7.5k
divide "total" by 32, (7.5k/32 = 234.375gold per card)

now figure out how much each card will cost to create. to do this, you will need to find out the cost of your eternal life, snowfall ink, and sink of the sea. Then add the appropriate amounts together to find out how much each card will cost to create.

i.e.
Eternal life(x3) = 20g x 3 = 60g
snowfall ink(x6) = 10g x 6 = 60g
ink of the sea(x3) = 3g x 3 = 9g
Resilient Parchment(VENDER) = 0.5g
Total per card = 129.5g

Now take the average price of your cards and subtract it from the material cost.

i.e.
[234.375g] - [129.5g] = 104.875g

yep, that's right:
____________
| 100g profit |
which is almost double profit!!!

Alternative to buying Ink of the Sea and Snowfall ink from the AH

(To make it easy, refer to the groups below to find out which herbs are in which group)
***
High Northern Herbs: Adder's Tongue, Icethorn, Lichbloom
Low Northern Herbs: goldclover, deadnettle, talandra's rose, tiger lily
***
note: High Northern Herbs, when milled and made into inks, make 6 Ink of the Sea and 1 snowfall ink. Low Northern Herbs, when milled and made into inks, make 5 ink of the sea and 0.5 snowfall ink. Also you can trade in 10 ink of the sea to Jessica Sellers for 1 snowfall ink.

High Northern Herbs
if you mill 4 stacks of High Northern Herbs, you will get 24 ink of the sea and 4 snowfall ink. you can then exchange your 20 ink of the sea(extra) for 2 snowfall ink, which will total you with 6 snowfall ink and 4 ink of the sea.

Low Northern Herbs
if you mill 7 stacks of Low Northern Herbs, you will get 35 ink of the sea and 3.5 snowfall ink. You can then exchange the 30(extra) ink of the sea for 3 snowfall ink, which will leave you with 6.5 snowfall ink and 5 ink of the sea.

You will need to check with your server to see which way is cheaper, to buy snowfall ink and ink of the sea off the AH, or to mill 4 High Northern Herbs stacks or 7 Low Northern Herb stacks. so....:

if [cost of snowfall ink] x 6 + [cost of ink of the sea] x 3 is greater than [High Northern Herb stack] x 7 or [Low Northern Herb stack] x 7, then buy the inks form the AH, if the herbs are cheaper, buy the herbs and mill them.

***Tips and Tricks***

crafting


*Craft your cards in bulk*
some believe that it's better to craft all your cards at one time than to do 2 here, 5there, 3 the next day... etc. They believe that it has something to do with the RNG(or the Random Number Generator within the game) which determines which random card you will make at any given instant. The idea is that you will create one of each 32 cards(or close to it) rather than getting 3 prisms in a row, stopping, then in an hour you might get the same RNG and create 2 more prisms cards. so you could try it.



Deck ---> Trinket conversion


*exchange the decks for trinkets when you can*
It's really hard to sell your decks for 100% of the going price during the weeks between the darkmoon fair. You should ALWAYS trade your card decks for trinkets at every chance you get because someone will always need a trinket, whereas not everyone has the patience to wait 2-3weeks to trade their deck in for the trinket they want now.

*Nobles trinkets: trade for the strength and agility trinkets*
many melee DPS consider the strength and agility versions of the Nobles trinket to be BiS(Best in Slot) up until ToC10man, whereas many spell casters would rather have +spell power, +mp5, or + crit rather than +spirit or + intellect(especially when they're going for 4-5k)


selling


*Supply and Demand*
DON'T FLOOD THE MARKET WITH YOUR ITEMS. this is defiantly not one of the markets you want to flood. we're dealing with items that go for upwards of 4-6k! if you flood/play undercut wars with people, this market can easily be cut down to 1/2 the normal price and you will get BURNED. keep (at most) two of each card, deck, and trinket up, but no more than 2 of each.

*If selling your cards/decks/trinkets in bulk, diversify*
It's easier to sell one trinket, one deck, and 5 nobles cards in one day, than it is to sell 3 decks per day. So if you're trying to sell a lot of your supplies at once, spread out how you will sell them.


That's all for now, and if you read through this whole thing, thanks I put some time into it.

-Hi on Helium
:wave::wave::wave::wave:

/check combat log:
Hi on Helium hits <insert your username here> for 1,192 word damage(critical) (354 overkill):banghead:








P.S. Sorry, I got lazy 1/2 way through the post and stopped inserting links, but just go to wowhead.com and type in the item name if you have any questions about it. But most of the links can be found earlier on in the post

Edit1: color coded FTW!

[Captin_55]

Excelent guide. Just finished writing a guide just like this on my blog, however mine was much less extensive. Those of you who dont understand this might want to check out mine

[late1]

A really nice post! I'm currently in the process of crafting the low inscription decks to get my main exalted with darkmoon faire. I've also been buying the other random cards off the ah when they are cheapish to get as many decks as possible to speed up the process.

With this guide, I might just make my way to 400 inscription (currently +200something :S ) and make a little profit on the way to balance the gold loss..

+2 rep from me, congrats! You're a contributor now!

[Unholyshaman]

Good post this is the kind of quality posts we need.

+6 rep from me, keep it up.

[Hi on helium]

Thanks everyone, I've been wondering lately what I should do to contribute to MMOwned, Turns out all I needed to do was write a guide on what I'm best at doing, making lots of Gold legit xD

[Pthree]

I just recently started leveling inscription, and this will come in handy very nicely! Good job! +Repx4 from me

[egg1337lol]

Good guide but cards are too much random and too much gamble to gain gold, now when you can buy trinkets with emblems 'n shizzle also.

[Sprea]

Seems like you got a copy cat.

Master of Warcraft: Inscription: is card making profitable?

But your post seems to have been posted a day before.

+Rep

[Hi on helium]

Seems like you got a copy cat.

Master of Warcraft: Inscription: is card making profitable?

But your post seems to have been posted a day before.

+Rep

Thanks for linking that, that just made me really mad! I can't believe someone would just copy and paste the exact same thing(it's my first useful thing I've contributed) but as you pointed out my post was a day ahead of that post. I am the original writer of this guide.



About it being to random, yes I do agree it is a little scary because of the chance you could loose money, but it's almost 2x profit, so if you create a single card, you have a 75% chance to lose money, but the more cards you create, the greater your chance is to get to and stay at 2x profit. I would recommend creating cards in bulk because of this.

[madheinrichs]

This is very server dependant.
Greatness sell for ~4k on mine.
Prisms for 400g.
Chaos for 300g.
Undeath for 600-700g.
But hey, if you have 3 druids botting 24/7 like me you make a shit ton of money .

[Neer]

This Is actually a good way to earn money :] Your guide Is well written, nice, thx +rep.

[Hi on helium]

This is very server dependant.
Greatness sell for ~4k on mine.
Prisms for 400g.
Chaos for 300g.
Undeath for 600-700g.
But hey, if you have 3 druids botting 24/7 like me you make a shit ton of money .

yes, it is quite server Dependant, that's why I included how to see if it's profitable. [which by your prices to sell, would be about 5.3k/32 = 165.6g per card(when sold in decks an quite possibly more when sold as trinkets or individual cards)] when the cards cost(at maximum, like on my server >.<,) cost 130g each to make. That's still 35g per card, yes it is more risky and easier to lose money because it's only about 22% profit and the creation process is random so...yes it is server Dependant and you're at the will of the horrid R.N.G. =(

[torquxx]

It depends A LOT on realm, you could make a fortune if the realm economy is good

[Hi on helium]

It depends A LOT on realm, you could make a fortune if the realm economy is good

yes...this guide is server dependent. there aren't many gold making guides out there that aren't server Dependant(at least none that make decent gold)