Hayden Hawke's Gold Tips Blog - Updated 5/5/14

[berryman13]

I decided to move this out of elite because it's garbage, and also it is just a perk of buying the guide; having access to "her" blog. Have at it, there is some good stuff in here if you don't already know about it.


Ghost iron Shuffle [December 26, 2013]

Last week we showed how Ghost Iron’s Price fluctuated over the last year and a half, rising after patches and dipping between them. We have one more patch coming before patch 6.0, but we have no idea what it will include. In the interim, I still recommend the Ghost Iron Shuffle. Last time we talked about the Ghost Iron Shuffle, almost 40% of players shuffled on a regular basis while about 2/3s of you had ever done it. It’s “easy gold” it is work son your realm, so you better investigate.


Shuffling
Little has changed in the shuffle, so here’s the rundown:

Ghost Iron Ore
The shuffle begins with mega cheap Ghost Iron Ore. There’s no reason to pay the going rate or to drive the prices up by buying on the auction house. Look for hardcore farmers selling Ghost Iron in trade and tell them you’ll take all their Ghost Iron via CoD for a low price. Offer them something lower than the lowest price on the auction house, but let them know that you’ll take all of it. These bulk deals will get you the best prices without doing any of the farming yourself.
To find these people check your auction house to see who the big sellers are. Look for people who sell 10-20 stacks at a time all at the same price. If they aren’t online, send them an in game message letting them know you’re interested.
If you don’t want to find a farmer, you can just buyout a few of the cheapest stacks every day and perform the shuffle once a week.

Prospecting
You could turn around and sell the Ghost Iron Ore on the auction house or even smelt it and sell them as bars, but we’re going to add value to it by shuffling it through our other professions. The first profession is Jewelcrafting. Prospect all of the Ghost Iron you should get, on average, 6 uncommon gems, 1 rare gem and piles of Sparkling Shards per stack of ore. Combine the Sparkling Shards into Serpent’s Eyes right away.
Here’s a helpful macro:

#showtooltip Ghost Iron Ore/use Prospecting
/use Ghost Iron Ore

Rare Jewelry
This first crafting step is optional, you should check the prices of rare jewelry or experiment crafting only some rare jewelry. It is the best way to use your Serpenet’s Eyes but it might not be the best way to use the rare and uncommon gems that are also required. If you decided to craft the rare jewelry it is all ilvl 450 and sells well on the auction house. Here’s a list of the available crafts, they all require 6 Serpent’s Eyes:
* notice that some of the crafts require 2 rare gems and others require 6 uncommon gems

• Band of Blood
• Golembreaker Amulet
• Heart of the Earth
• Lionsfall Ring
• Lord’s Signet
• Reflection of the Sea
• Roguestone Shadowband
• Skymage Circle
• Tiger Opan Pendant
• Widow Chain

Uncommon Gems
With the rest of your uncommon gems, craft Ornate Bands and Shadowfire Necklaces. Ornate bands cost blue, yellow and orange uncommon gems while the necklace costs red, purple and green uncommon gems. About 10% of the time you’ll receive a rare quality band/necklace, these can often be sold if the stats look good. Otherwise, all the uncommon quality jewelry you craft, along with any rare stuff that you don’t want to sell, should be sent to your enchanter for the next step.

Rare Gems
There are several options for your rare gems. Normally I would send them to my Jewelcrafter to be cut and sold on the auction house, but sometimes the auction house is saturated and the market can’t handle the massive volume of gems I send her way.
The Wild Jades (green), Vermillion Onyx (orange) and Imperial Amethyst (purple) get sent to my Alchemist to be transmuted into Primal Diamonds, returned to my Jewelcrafter, cut into a meta gem and finally sent to my auction character to be sold on the auction house.
Extra rare gems can be kept to craft rare jewelry as described above and some can be sold uncut on the auction house.
Disenchanting & Enchanting
Your Enchanter should eventually have a massive collection of uncommon band sand necklaces from the previous step. She should also have some rare pieces that you don’t want to sell on the auction house. These can be disenchanted into Spirit Dust and Ethereal Shards using the following macro:

/cast Disenchant
/use item:90904
/use item:90905
/use item:83793
/use item:83794

* keep in mind this will disenchant both the rare and uncommon quality jewelry. Warning! This could possibly disenchant gear you have equipped. It’s pretty ruthless, be careful!
You will have to take a look at your realm’s auction house to determine what the best way to liquidate the enchanting supplies is. It might be by enchanting scrolls and then selling those on the auction house or just by selling the raw enchanting materials outright.
If your realm supports it, and many still do, the Ghost Iron Shuffle is considered one of the most reliable ways to make a decent amount of gold.

Unbelievable - Pets are STILL profitable! [January 10, 2014]

Buying pets from vendors, sending them to bank alts, using TSM to post them, and making serious bank doing this has been a hallmark of gold making for going on 5 years now. This time tested, semi-automated, low risk and high profit venture is a great way for people to branch out into new markets or break into their first serious gold making market. All you need to implement this strategy is a flying mount, 500-1,000 gold, an hour to set it up and 5-10 minutes a day to run it (a max level character is recommended but not required).





Tools
The only tool you’ll need is TradeSkillMaster. You should already know how to setup a TSM Auction Group from reading the Secret Gold Guide.

Setup
Setting up this system takes about an hour and you will need to do this once every month or two to restock your supply. Decide how much you want to invest. If you buy 10 of each pet it will cost you 2,000g. If you buy 10 of each cheap pet and 3 of each expensive pet you will spend around 1,000g. If you skip all of the expensive pets it will only cost you 100g. Choose the option that works best for you. I sell a good blend of both cheap and expensive pets and personally restock with 16 of each pet.

Step 1 – Bank Alt:
Create a level 1 character dedicated to selling vendor pets, I will refer to him as your ‘bank alt’ from here on. Send him or her about 250g, which should be enough for Action House deposits and 4 Netherweave Bags. Park them near the Auction House in either Orgrimmar or Stormwind.

Step 2 – Collecting Pets:
Using your highest level character, collect as many of the below pets as you can. Ideally you should use a level 60+ who can get to Stormpike in Netherstorm and Dalaran in the Northrend. If not, you can skip these steps until you are high enough level. Clear out as much bag space as you can on this character before you leave and then follow the routes below:


Alliance
Starting in Ironforge, leave the south exit and head east where you will find Yarlyn Amberstill in Dun Morogh. She will sell Rabbit Crate (Snowshoe). Buy 10 of these. Head back to Ironforge and fly to Stormwind.
When you land in Stormwind head north of Goldshire to meet Donni Anthania. She sells 4 different pets. Buy 10 of each of these (40 total). Head to Goldshire and mail all of your pets to your bank alt. Don’t mix them up as you send them, try to organize them into 1 message per pet type.
Return to Stormwind and fly to Booty Bay where you’ll find Narkk. He will sell you 2 different Parrots, but 10 of each. Mail these to your bank alt.
Hearth to Dalaran and take the portal to Exodar where you’ll find Sixx. She will sell 3 different color Moth Eggs, buy 10 of each and mail them to your bank alt.
Take the boat to Darkshore and then to Darnassus. Here you will find Shylenai who sells two different Owls, buy 10 of each and send them to your bank alt.

Horde
Starting in Silvermoon City, head south to Fairbreeze Village and find Jilanne. She sells 3 different kinds of Dragonhawks. mail 10 of these to your bank alt. Don’t mix them up as you send them, try to organize them into 1 message per pet type.
Fly to Undercity, take the Zepplin to Orgrimmar and find Xan’tish, he has 3 types of snakes you can buy. Purchase 10 each of these and mail them to your bank alt.
Fly to Thunderbluff; find Halpa, who sells Prairie Dog Whistles. Grab 10 and mail them to your bank alt.
Finally, fly to Ratchet and take the boat to Booty Bay where you’ll find Narkk. He will sell you 2 different Parrots, buy 10 of each. Mail these to your bank alt.

Neutral
After you’ve followed your faction’s instructions hearth back to Dalaran and find Breanni, she sells 3 different pets for 40-50g each. You might not think these will sell on the Auction House, but in my experience they do (even on high pop realms). Buy up to 10 of these, depending on how much you want to invest. Mail these to your bank alt as soon as you buy them.
Take the portal to Shattrath and fly to Stormspire in Netherstorm to find Dealer Rashaad. He sells 7 different pets (Horde should already have the Crimson Snake). One of them is 40g, 3 are 10g and the rest are dirt cheap. Buy up to 10 of the ones you don’t have and send them to your bank alt.

Step 3 – Setting up TSM Groups
Now that all your pets are in your bank alt’s mailbox. Login, and if you’re using Postal disable ‘Open all mail from attachments.’ This is found under Open All → Non-AH related mail. There is more information in my Secret Gold Guide. Take 2-3 of each pet out of each message, leaving the rest in your mailbox. You won’t have enough storage to unload all 200+ pets into your inventory. Using your mailbox to store items like this is very effective, make sure you return the mail once every 25-30 days.
Using TSM, create the following groups with the listed pets in them:

Alliance Cheap Pets:
Cat Carrier Bombay, Cat Carrier Orange, Cat Carrier Cornish Rex, Cat Carrier Silver Tabby, Rabbit Crate (Snowshoe), Parrot Cage (Senegal), Parrot Cage (Cockatiel), Blue Moth Egg, White Moth Egg, Yellow Moth Egg, Hawk Owl, Great Horned Howl, Cat Carrier (Siamese), Cockroach, Crimson Snake

Horde Cheap Pets:
Black King Snake, Brown Snake, Crimson Snake, Red Dragon Hawk, Gold Dragon Hawk, Silver Dragon Hawk, Prairie Dog Whistle, Cockroach, Cockroach

You can set the threshold, fallback, undercut, and number to post to whatever you’d like. A threshold of 5g works for me with a fallback of 60g and an undercut of 1c. Once this group is setup, you can open up the Auction House, go to the Auctions tab and click ‘Post’ at the top. This will post all of the Cheap Pets that you can sell for more than 5g.
Repeat this process for Medium Pets and Expensive Pets.

Medium Pets:
Red Moth Egg, Brown Rabbit Crate, Blue Dragonhawk Hatchling
I use 20g threshold for medium pets and 299g fallback.

Expensive Pets:
Mana Wyrmling, Calico Cat, Obsidian Hatchling, Albino Snake
I use 52g threshold for expensive pets and 349g fallback

Step 4- Selling
Log on once or twice a day and use the Post option of TradeSkillMaster (under the Auctions tab) to undercut new auctions. Take note of sales and resupply your inventory from your mailbox. Every 30 days you need to hit ‘Return’ on all of your mail and then send it back to your bank alt.
Adjust fallbacks and thresholds whenever you like. If you’re not selling a particular pet it might be because you’re the only person selling it and the fallback is too high. It might also be because too many people are selling it and your threshold is above their price.
Use Altoholic to monitor how many of each pet you have left. The tooltip will show you how many you have on the AH, you bags and in your mailbox.

Turning Cloth to Gold [January 20th, 2014]

I know I know, the mention of Windwool Cloth isn’t particularly exciting. BUT, as it turns out Windwool Cloth is quickly becoming an interesting trade good to profit from. Below, I’ll give you 5 ways to make gold off Windwool as well as some very popular Windwool farming areas.

The Datas
Windwool Cloth is a low cost high volume trade good selling between 1 and 3 gold, depending on your realm. That’s between 20 and 60 gold per stack. It can also be sold, in lower volume, as Bolts; but check your realm’s prices before combining any.

Farm it.
The first, and most obvious, way to make gold off this cloth is to brute force farm it. There are really three approaches to farming. Dedicated farming in the best location: Humanoid spawns in Kun Lai Summit (west of Westwind Rest, west of The Yaungol Advance and southwest of Eastwind Rest). Alternatively you could head to Dread Wastes and farm random humanoid spawns as you see them. You will get less cloth per hour but you will also gain reputation and find other valuables in this zone. The third way is to head to the south most island in Krasarang Wilds. It’s called Unga Village but it’s not on your map. Here you’ll be able to farm massive amounts of cloth with a very low chance of being bothered.

Hold it.
My second tip is to hold Windwool. First, Windwool is losing value since the September patch (https://theundermine....php?item=72988) so it’s probably safe to expect it to continue losing value unless Patch 5.5. is BIG… BUT, Embersilk Cloth JUMPED in price when Mists of Pandaria was released in September of 2012 (https://theundermine....php?item=53010) so its equally reasonable to expect its price to increase when WoD goes live this fall. The problem, of course, is that we only have so much storage space, so holding an item that is worth 40 gold today that will be worth 120 gold tomorrow is not as AWESOME as holding items that are worth 1000 gold today and 3000 gold tomorrow.
We’ll look at all our options as WoD approaches and try to maximize the amount of gold we make per slot of inventory space, but until then know that holding Windwool Cloth might seem like a mistake in the short run but it’s actually a solid investment in the long run.

Use TUJ to set a price alert.
I’ve written about this in detail before, so I’ll only touch on it briefly here. But TUJ has a feature where you can login and set a price alert for an item like Windwool Cloth. Check your realm’s prices and figure out at what price you want to buy at. Keep in mind the price is continually declining though. When the price alert goes off you can decide whether you want to buy or not. Now you can actually make gold while you’re not even playing.

Buy small stacks and resell as full stacks.
There are always lazy sellers who post 1 stack of 17, or 1 stack of 13 and these auctions almost never sell. You can buy these up everyday or everytime you’re on the auction house and combine them into stacks of 20. The profits aren’t as huge because the volume isn’t there, but this is a solid way to make you first 100 gold on a new character before you reach level 20. <– which I have done dozens of times.

Buy low hanging fruit and resell slightly higher.
This IS your cliche ‘buy low and sell high’ trick. It’s a lot easier in World of Warcraft because prices DO fluctuate rapidly and often. You can combine this tip with the price alert or just hop into the AH and buy all the “low hanging fruit” regardless. For example, if there are 5 stacks at 1g 50s, 10 stacks at 1g 60s, 5 stacks at 1g 80s and 100 stacks at 2g, you can easily buy the 20 stacks between 1 gold 50 silver and 1 gold 80 silver and post them at 1 gold 99 silver. This really works. Again this isn’t a massively profitable venture because you’re dealing in smaller volumes, but not everyone has multiple gold capped characters – so this might help. There are more details about this method in the Auction House section of the gold guide (closing spreads).

Destroying your Competition [January 28th, 2014]

At the end of the The Burning Crusade expansion, circa 2009, Inscription was introduced for the first time. Initially, VERY FEW people knew what was going on. I spent the weeks leading up to the patch buying up herbs of every type, taking calculated risks. When the expansion hit, I used a leveling guide I wrote to power to max level and start making and selling glyphs. I made 50,000 gold in one night, which was a pretty big deal back then. As the months and years went on, glyphing became its own thing. Blizzard gave us 300 some glyphs to make, post, sell, cancel and manage in our inventory. This was a challenge of its own and then it became about timing. When you cancel and repost became the most important element to your success. So when do you do it? It’s different for everyone and it depends on who else is on your realm.




This week we will take a close look at how to knock out the competition in just about any market. Many strategies have been proposed on other websites, including posting “Glyph Walls” or other tricks sometimes based on undercutting competition until they give up. This week’s approach doesn’t cost anything except a little research.
If you’re competing in your realm’s glyph economy you will probably notice that just about everyone seems to be making at least a little money. You will probably even notice that you make most of your money 1-3 hours after you post your auction. This is because people are buying glyphs all day long and when they do they search for the lowest price glyph and buy it with little discrimination. If you’re 1 copper less than your competition, you will get the sale (and profit) and your competition will not.
Therefore, in order to maximize the amount of gold you make and minimize the gold your competition makes, you could theoretically rerun TradeSkillMaster’s post function every 30 minutes, and believe me, some people do this. This approach would maximize the time that you have the lowest auction and in the long run it could drive the competition to ruin. However, you can only do it when you are online, awake and not in an instance, dungeon or raid and it’s definitely not a sustainable way to make gold.
The makeup of each realm is slightly different, some having players who post all morning while others that have players who post all night. How can you maximize your auction’s exposure, whether they are glyphs, enchanting scrolls, trade goods or anything else regardless of your realm?


Knowing your Enemy
The first thing to do is to identify your competition. To find out who is undercutting you, start by paying close attention to the names who have undercut you between your postings. You can do this by searching for your most profitable items. Write these names down and you’ll quickly find the name of one or two people who are your biggest threat.


Visit The Undermine Journal, select your realm and then search for these player’s names. You can also go through the ‘Busy Sellers’ to see who is doing what, maybe you’ll find your competition in there. Once you find your competiton, visit their TUJ page and scroll down to their activity log. Here is what one looks like:




As you can see, this poster is pretty consistent. On the weekends they post in the early evening, between 4-6pm and on the weekdays they post at 10am. He seems to post 150-500 auctions (mostly glyphs) each time. This type of information gives us a huge advantage and tells us exactly when we can post to maximize our own profits.
The sellers heat map gives us exactly the same data, except it shows us the areas that they post, and the areas they don’t post.



As you can see, a 2pm posting would cripple this guy’s glyph auctions for a long time on a typical day.


Seller Notifications
As if knowing when your competition posts their auctions isn’t enough. You can also utilize the Seller’s Notifications options below the heatmap. Enable the notification to let you know when your competition is out posting and there’s practically no way a single person will be able to out post you.

Basic Item Flipping [February 4th, 2014]

This week’s gold tip comes straight from the VIP community via e-mail, from Dan, and covers a popular Mists of Pandaria flipping regime and was posted today on the MMO Champion forums. This trick takes advantage of rich buyers, rare items and your willingness to invest gold in items that will resale later.





First off, trading rare BoEs that are available to specific levels is covered in detail in the guide and we’ve discussed doing it with Classic>TBC and TBC>Wrath items. Today we’re going to look at items with iLvl 407 iLvl 409 that can be equipped by level 80 players as well as iLvl 450 items that can be equipped at level 85. The first group of items are the best items you can put on your new or newly played level 80 and the second group is the best ‘cheap’ items you can put on your recent level 450 90. These are luxury items that players with tons of gold will demand they have when they reach these two level milestones.
In the original article (linked above) you’ll see the general price thresholds are between 200-500 gold to buy and 4,000 – 10,000 gold to sell. I recommend you go crazy with asking prices and see what you can get. Use the default Auction House interface’s search to see what typical players see. See what your competition is and make sure that the item you’re buying and selling ranks high or highest in those listings.

Items
The items we’re looking at today are 407-450 iLvl BoE rares. These are often available in the hundreds when they will likely sell in the thousands. Check price history on your realm via The Undermine Journal but don’t be afraid to increase the prices significantly if your realm has suitably low volume (1-2 posted at a time). These items generally sell in a week or two, so you might end up sitting on items. I don’t expect that these items will lose value in Warlords of Draenor since there will always be players leveling through the 80s, more gold overall and less items available.

Today's Jewelcrafting [February 26th, 2014]

With the price of Ghost Iron Bars at a historic low (which I predicted), it’s less and less profitable to farm or resale the bars themselves.
The price low is a result of both botting and the time since the last patch.
People are gearing up not from items now but from content being made easier and easier by the age of the recent patch.
Given all that, prices of almost everything are dropping. Ghost Iron ORE is the lifeblood of Jewelcrafting via the Ghost Iron Shuffle, so what’s Jewelcrafting like today?




Ghost Iron Ore hasn’t been this cheap since the release of Mists of Pandaria when mining was ‘bugged’ and later fixed. The average price is right around 40g per stack now, allowing us to do the Ghost Iron Shuffle in mass. That’s not what I want to look at this week though, this week let’s take a look at the best gems to craft. Based on overall popularity, here are the top used/selling gems in order:

• Brilliant Primordial Ruby +160 Intellect
• Delicate Primordial Ruby +160 Agility
• Quick Sun’s Radiance +320 Haste
• Smooth Sun’s Radiance +320 Critical Strike
• Bold Primordial Ruby +160 Strength

So what’s it pay to cut gems? On some realms it doesn’t pay at all.
On other realms and on average there is a 20 gold markup cutting Primordial Rubies into Delicate, Brilliant & Bolds.
The average cost of the uncut Primordial is 62 gold while Delicates are dropping rapidly as volume increases but still sit at 83 gold. In the EU it’s a 30 gold markup.
This shows there is still potential in cutting the top 5 gems, but it’s going to depend on your realm, some aren’t profitable while others are incredibly profitable.
“But no one is buying gems” this is what I’ve heard as of late.

Unfortunately, it’s partly true, most players get their gems from their guild, their jewelcrafter or from their friend.
The volume of cut gems on the auction house is increasing rapidly and for good reason. Less and less players are getting meaningful upgrades.
Most upgrades are earned in the weeks and months after a patch goes live; and we probably won’t see another big patch until 6.0 (Warlords of Draenor).
But it’s not entirely true, because the price of cut gems is still steadily above their material costs.
The problem is that there is so much volume and undercutting it can be hard to make a sale quickly enough.
The price is declining in most places, so if you post at 84 gold today, you might have to drop your price to 83.5 gold tomorrow. Rapid reposting has proven effective for liquidating cut gems.

While it’s still profitable to cut gems, especially the top 5 listed above, it won’t be for long. As the expansion gets closer and closer we’ll see even more players disregard gems.
The volume will continue to increase and price drop.
Unlike Ghost Iron Bars and Ghost Iron Ore, gems will NOT increase in value after the expansion, so this isn’t something you want to be holding onto at the end of Mists of Pandaria.

So while you can keep making a good amount of gold cutting these top 5 gems, you’ll want to setup TSM and do rapid reposting (5-6 times daily, at least) and you’ll want to make sure you reduce your on hand gems over time, since they will continue losing value as the clock ticks.

The Glyphopreneur [March 4th, 2014]

It seems like there is always a good reason to get into the glyph market, whether it’s because of an upcoming patch, expansion or another change to the game. Recently, I realized how amazing of an opportunity the glyph market will be when Warlords of Draenor goes live.

[img]http://www.haydenhawke.com/members/images/professions.jpg/img]

Warlords of Draenor and Glyphs
First off, most patches stimulate the glyph market. Players come back to play again and will often adjust their glyphs. This sends them to the auction house to buy glyphs.
That’s just one effect, players who have been bored of old content and selling glyphs generally take a break from selling glyphs and go explore the new content. This reduces ourcompetition and makes glyphing more profitable (if you don’t stop to explore content).

Expansions have a similar impact.
Old players come back, profiteers focus on new content, etc.
During Mists of Pandaria Pandas hit the scene and needed to be glyphed out, but that time it didn’t happen all at once.

In WoD, we won’t see any new cute & furry creators buying glyphs, but instead we’ll see a mass of new level 90s who have zero glyphs whatsoever (probably) and the vast majority of them are going to want to buy the glyphs they need.

I think this is going to be one of the biggest glyph stimulates since Inscription was added during TBC. Add to that the fact that it’s a flippin’ expansion and most profiteers are going to be away from the auctioneer exploring and all of a sudden it’s an incredible opportunity to make a lot of gold.

Being a glyphopreneur is addon intensive and requires a seasoned scribe. If you have a brand new scribe, it will take some time to accumulate the glyph recipes to cover the full market. I’m not going to cover all the details of glyphing right now, you can find them in the glyph section of Module 4. But now is the time to make sure you have a powerful glyph selling system in place before the expansion arrives.

Gold and Smelting [March 14th, 2014]

Once upon a time there was a miner and he farmed. He farmed and he farmed. He woke up the next morning and farmed a little more. He was exhausted from farming so he listed his ore on the auction house and took a nap. That next evening, he made himself a good 5,000 gold and was happy. His friend was also a miner. The night before his friend went out and partied, woke up late and bought 20,000 gold worth of ore. He spent an hour smelting and watching HBO and resold it for 25,000 gold. Both of these players made 5,000 gold with mining, one of them spent 1 hour and partied the night before while the other spent all night and morning farming and farming and farming.




It’s a big surprise to some players that they can make gold by smelting. They think that mining is for miners/farmers and smelting is just a technicality. But there is actually a big markup on items that are smelted because not a lot of players want to take the time to smet. It’s so easy I’ll just show you a picture:



Yes it’s that easy. Those numbers are for my realm, to get the numbers for your own realm visit theunderminejournal.com, select your faction/realm, go to the Gathered tab at the top and select Mining.
The number under ‘Mats’ is the auction house cost of the ore needed to craft the bar on the left. The number under ‘Price’ is the auction house sell value of the item on the left. These are calculated the same way except that the more mats you buy the higher the price goes and the more bars you sell the lower the price goes; so don’t get too crazy and buyout the whole auction house at once unless you know what you’re doing.
So if you have mining and you’re sick of farming, try smelting. It should work on your realm, it’s just a matter of setting up the right smelting macro, buying the ore and smelting in your downtime.

The Perfect Boost [March 24th, 2014]

We are in the final leg of Mists of Pandaria… and have been… for a long time. To coax players back Blizzard is offer free level 90 boosts with the purchase of Warlords of Draenor, but they aren’t making us wait for the game to go live before we sink our teeth into our new level 90. You can preorder at battle.net and receive a free level 90 at anytime between now and WoD’s release. So this week we’ll talk about how to use this boost to benefit your gold making systems and what to do and what not to do with your new character.



Choosing Your Class
Most players are going to pick a class they’ve tried to level, enjoyed but didn’t reach level 90 with or they will choose a class they think they will enjoy and just go with it. I do recommend you test out a class by leveling it a bit before you exhaust your only free character boost. You may also choose to pick a class based on their PvE DPS, check out some charts here but keep in mind a lot will change between now and the first WoD raid – and having high DPS now isn’t really important.
Otherwise, consider picking a Hunter for its stupid easy play style or a Druid for its ability to quickly change in and out of flight form. Both are very powerful farmers. Otherwise consider versatility, Death Knights, Warriors, Paladins, Druid and Monk can talk while Priests, Druids, Shamans, etc can heal and DPS. Paladins, Monks and Druid can do it all. If you’re purely looking for a versatile class the Druid likely takes the cake since it can do all three and farm like no one’s business.

Gear
Keep in mind that getting gear in MoP, at this point, should only be done for fun. Don’t feel like you need to gear up a boosted Hunter just for the sake of getting gear. All of it is going to be equalized/worthless when WoD hits. Leveling a profession is a better use of time since professions can be extremely profitable at the beginning of expansions. Setup a Jewelcrafter or Inscription character so that you’re ready to make gold come WoD.

Professions
Your profession choices are pretty straight forward, if you will farm during WoD and don’t have a farmer now make your new character a farmer. Otherwise pick a main crafter profession that you will enjoy working with: Tailoring, Leatherworking, Blacksmithing, Engineering, etc. Alchemy is good to double up on while Jewelcrafting and Inscription you only need one of.

Looking For Gold [April 2nd, 2014]

I had a member e-mail me asking me whether or not I recommend running Looking for Raid for profit. The LFR feature is about the easiest aspect of the game, at least at max level. Click a button to join the queue, play some Diablo 3 and listen for the *dundudun* sound – really, the hardest part is NOT missing the alert while you’re in the bathroom or listening to Digitally Imported. Once you join, /follow a caster and smash your face into the keyboard during the boss fight. If you die, go get a drink of water and come back a few minutes later. You need absolutely zero skill to complete LFR and slay Garrosh Hellscream. Hell, John Hunter does it without even being at his computer. You don’t even need to know how to gear your character, Blizzard only gives you gear that works for your class! Leaving all that aside, let’s take a look at whether we should ‘run LFR for profit’…



So first the pure gold value of running LFR: You’re bound to get anywhere between 3 and 6 drops, all iLvl 528. These will score you 25 gold each, earning you about 75-150 gold with a 2-3 hour time commitment. Fine, maybe you have all the gold you need and want some assurance that you’re not losing gold. Well, you might actually lose gold if your raid has too many face slammers in it and wipes on every boss (repair costs).
If you’re an enchanter you can disenchant these pieces and probably get 4-5 Sha Crystals total. These will score you about 650 gold on the auction house. This was more before Patch 5.4, but the price plummeted afterwards so if you hope to make gold with Sha Crystals you might be out of luck. So again, this probably isn’t your best bet if you want to become a WoW millionaire.

On the other hand; if your alternative is to farm and you hate farming then you’re likely to farm for about 10 minutes and give up – making far less gold than if you cleared LFR in the first place. If your alternative is to run heroics, yeah you’re probably going to make more in raids than in heroics. If you really enjoy clearing the same 12 raid bosses with a group of 24 strangers who don’t talk, pay attention or focus… then go for it. Otherwise, my recommendation is to stay away from LFR because the low quality game play within actually ruins the game.

The only other angle I can think of is that the iLvl 528 items would cost you quite a bit on the auction house if you had to buy them for your character. So if you need the gear, then running an LFR will save you a lot of gold compared to buying the equivalent gear off the auction house. Good luck!

Warlords of Draenor Preparation – Stocking Up [April 11th, 2014]

This will mark the first installation of my Warlords of Draenor Preparation series. It seems a little early but we’re actually right on track for a fall release of the game. First, Blizzard has promised to have the game out before 12/20/2014 – so I’m guessing they think they can have it ready in September or October and are giving themselves a little bit of extra time ‘just in case’. We’re also seeing information from the internal technical alpha, which tells us we’ll see a beta in the next month or two just as we expected.
The first thing I want to explain in terms of preparing for an expansion is stocking up. It surprises some people that you can actually make gold stocking up. Some folks think it’s wise to sell all of their current-expansion trade goods and hold gold as they head into the next expansion. But barring any unforeseen changes, the opposite is more profitable.
Buying and hold current-expansion trade goods (certain ones) can double, triple and often quadruple your initial gold investment. During the preparations for Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria I offered the same advice but you had to take my word for it. This time around, I can show you proof that this strategy works.
Let’s take a look at the most basic trade good: ore. It’s farmed in mass by bots and it’s consumed by jewelcrafters, engineers and blacksmiths. It moves in super high volume and commands a relatively consistent price. It is highly reactive to patches, expansions and hot-fixes that effect player activity. Obsidium Ore was the highest volume ore in Cataclsym, so what happened to its price when Mists of Pandaria was launched? It doubled. Proof. So did Obsidium Bars.
Pyrite Ore wasn’t as reliable. But the same pattern exists for most trade goods from Cataclsym into Mists of Pandaria. Historically the time when trade goods are most available and therefore least expensive is about a month before the expansion goes live. Look atGhost Iron’s current price. Will it get any cheaper? Probably a little bit.
This is not true for every time. Basic ore maintains value into the next expansion since it is needed for leveling professions and other misc things. How about rare quality items like Pristine Hides? Well, they halved in value. So buying into a few items doesn’t come without a risk.
We also have a limited number of bank slots, so if a stack of Ghost Iron Bars costs us 85 gold and we plan to sell them for 170 gold, that will make us 85 gold per slot. What’s the best investment per slot with the least risk? If you have any ideas paste them below. We’ll take a closer look as we approach WoD.

Make 100k Gold by Warlords of Draenor [April 21st, 2014]

I’m rich, no doubt I’m close to being able to send the top members 100k gold just for fun but I have to keep things in perspective. A lot of readers are still struggling to make their first 100,000 or even 10,000 gold. So this week is for the players who are still struggling and want to get their act together before Warlords of Draenor goes live.This will be sort of a new year’s resolution, eat less and exercise more, right? But instead of exercising and dieting, all you have to do is make 5,000 gold / week which amounts to about 30-45 minutes/day. We won’t get complicated either, no tools or addons. Let’s just look at what it takes to make 100,000 gold before WoD comes out by using our gathering professions, disenchanting and farming.
Warlords of Draenor Release Date
Very briefly, WoD will be out between September and November. I realize that’s a large range, but I’d probably put my gold on October or early November. This is based on a analysis of development progress, compared with 10 years of release cycles, and some basic observations about when Blizzard releases new expansions. This gives us at least 20 weeks, so we’ll shoot for 5,000 gold a week or 750 gold a day. Granted, you’ll have to resist spending it, but what is there to spend it on between now and WoD anyways?

Enchanting (Tank or Healer works best) - Run old raids every week, disenchant everything and use all your bonus roles. This should net you at least half the 5,000 gold / week. It’s also a good idea to have a tank or healer for fast queues in a new expansion, so gearing one up now with old LFRs is a great idea.

Mining - Farm ~18 stacks of Ghost Iron Ore, combine into bars and sell for about 750 gold every day. The best places to do this are in the Valley of Four Winds and Jade Forest. Nine stacks should take less than an hour, easy.

Herbalism – Farm about 35 stacks of any junk Mists of Pandaria Herbs. You will also find Golden Lotus which will help you hit your goal. Fool’s Cap can be found in the southern areas of Dread Wastes, Silkweed can be found in the Valley of Four Winds and Rain Poppy+Green Leaf Tea can be found in Jade Forest. Head in whatever direction you feel drawn towards, you should be able to make 750 gold in much less than an hour.
Windwool Cloth - Yeah, no one talks about farming Windwool Cloth because it’s much more boring than farming ore/herbs. But for about 35 stacks of Windwool you’ll bank your 750 gold for the day. The best places are the humanoid camps in southern Kun-Lai.

Leather - Head to the western beach on the Timeless Isles to slaughter and skin turtles. ~18 stacks should get you to your 750 gold goal.

Zul’Farrak Run Throughs - Head to Tanaris and into ZF, each run will net you 200 gold just on Mageweave, then you can sell greens for extra bank. Chances are you can clear your 750 gold goal in 3 runs (7-8 minutes each, MAX – 25 minutes total).

Mix and match these easy techniques and try to do them at least 7 times a week. In that 30 minutes you could be sitting in raid queue, waiting for friends to come online or just chatting it up with friends. If you don’t have an enchanter, herbalist, miner, leatherworker, tank or healer, you might want to think about getting one in preparation for Warlords of Draenor anyways.

The Ethereal Shatter [April 29, 2014]

This week I’ve got a quick gold tip for Enchanters who want to play around with making a little bit (or a lot?) of easy gold with little to no risk. Unfortunately, you’ll need an enchanter for this one; but if you don’t have one at this point maybe you should focus on leveling up an enchanter for Warlords of Draenor.


In the past we have approach enchanting materials in several ways: 1) farming it, 2) crafting stuff and disenchanting it and 3) combining it. In the past, we’ve been able to combine enchanting materials and make a small profit. Today, we’re able to shatter enchanting materials for a similar profit.

Here is how Mists of Pandaria enchanting materials work:
5 Spirit Dust -> 1 Mysterious Essence
5 Mysterious Essence -> 1 Ethereal Shard
5 Ethereal Shard -> 1 Sha Crystal

Which is the same as:
125 Spirit Dust -> 25 Mysterious Essence -> 5 Eterheal Shards -> 1 Sha Crystal

Now, a Spirit Dust is worth 1.5-2 gold on most realms while a Sha Crystal is worth 100-110 gold. Obviously this isn’t profitable. But, let’s take a look at shattering/diffusion:
1 Sha Crystal -> 2 Ethereal Shards
1 Ethereal Shard -> 3 Mysterious Essence
1 Mysterious Essence -> 3 Spirit Dust

Which is the same as:
1 Sha Crystal -> 2 Ethereal Shard -> 6 Mysterious Essence -> 18 Spirit Dust

When held up to the first combination formula your instinct might be to throw out the idea of shattering. But what if I told you that the average price of an Ethereal Shard was 26 gold while the average price of a Mysterious Essence was 14 gold? Do you see it? Twenty six gold can be turned into 3 14 gold items. Twenty six gold can be turned into 42 gold. Now it’s not that perfect on every realm and you’re likely to run into volume issues. But give it a try and comment with your results.

Spring cleaning [May 9th, 2014]

Not only is it spring, but we’re also at the long boring end of an expansion. Other than WoD there isn’t anything exciting to look forward to; and WoD is barely being tested right now so we know it won’t be out until after summer. So what do I purpose? Spring Cleaining with TSM!


A lot of new members just want to make some gold, FAST. The good news is that their bags are usually full of valuable stuff that they can sell, BUT… that’s complicated, takes a long time and they don’t want to feel like they are getting ripped off. The goods news is that there are addons that make this a trivial exercise. Not only are there addon(s), there is one addon that you should learn to use anyways, and what better way to learn to use a new addon than to load it up and make a few thousand gold selling the trade goods on your alt?


Install TSM Addons
If you haven’t done this already… what’s wrong with you? Install all of the TradeSkillMaster_ addons and enable them:


Load up an character and visit the auction house
Do that, then, you’ll see this something like this:


Click Quick Posting at the top (#1), click the item you want to post on the right (#2), wait for the search… click Post on the bottom (#3), click either ‘max’ on the left or ‘max’ on the right (#4) and then click Post (#5). There is no easier way to post items “manually” in World of Warcraft.


Go through your entire bag, sell everything, prices will only go down between now and WoD; and any stocking up we do will happen later.

Timeless Coins, Valor and Gulp Frogs [May 19th, 2014]

Currently, farming Valor Points is possibly one of the more boring things in World of Warcraft. LFR, LFD and daily quests have gotten old. Do I have a better way to farm them? Not really, but just like farming anything else; anytime there is a new way to farm it it’s worth taking a look at.




GULP FROGS!

Presenting… Gulp Frogs. These nasty looking little toads apply a debuff to you that will instantly kill you if you get 10 stacks, otherwise they are super easy to kill and drop 30-50 Timeless Coins each. Wait, Timeless Coins? I thought we were talking about Valor Points. Well, we are, in Patch 5.4.8 (coming very soon). We’ll be able to trade 3,000 Timeless Coins for 100 Valor Points.


If each Gulp Frog drops 30 coins, that’s the equivalent of a single Valor Point. Need 1,000 Valor Points quick? Kill 1,000 Gulp Frogs. Okay, so that’s not very efficient, but considering you’ve 1) got a bunch of Timeless Coins in your bag already, 2) will earn Timeless Coins from doing other things on Timeless Island while you’re there, you likely can gear up a new champion really fast by using the Timeless Isle. Check it out.


There are, of course, other ways to earn Timeless Coins. Grouping up for elite kills will speed things up a lot, or just running around killing rares solo. Either way, mix in some Gulp frogs and quests to build up Timeless Coins before Patch 5.4.8 goes live and you’ll be able to get some easier Valor Points.

Draenor Garrisons [May 29th, 2014]

One of the big features coming in Warlords of Draenor is the ability to build, expand and manage your “Garrison”. What is this and why do we need to know about it? Here’s an early preview…



First Garrisons are a new minigame within World of Warcraft that really has nothing to do with the original concept of World of Warcraft. Instead of mastering your combat mechanics, leveling up, earning difficult to acquire gear or working with a small group of friends to overcome some challenging content (which longer exists in WoW), you’ll be logging in, picking between an Alchemy Lab and Inn, going on a “mission” (which promises to be trivial at best) and earning ore and other trade goods while you’re offline.

Now I haven’t played WoD so for all I know this could be an incredibly engaging, challenging and rewarding experience, but if Blizzard’s contributions to WoW over the last 5 years are any hint at what’s to come, it will be a trivial and monotonous sidestep that feels like a chore and “levels the playing field” in terms of a player’s value-earning potential in the game.

What’s this have to do with gold? It appears to be shaping up into a way to earn trade goods / raw materials without playing. Which I’ve compared to botting in the past. All you’ll need to do is setup your Garrison and login to complete a few trivial “missions” each day to keep it running. Consider it the Farmville of World of Warcraft.

The specifics? There are not a lot of specifics yet, but I will be watching them closely, since I foresee Garrisons to be a great way for new players to make a little bit of gold without doing much work. Here are some resources to help you get a grip on them:

• Warlords of Draenor: Take Charge of your Garrison – Blizzard, followers, missions and building overview
• Garrison Calculator – W0W Head’s Garrison simulator (shows buildings and plots)
• Building List – WoW Head’s data-mined building list
• All of the data-mined specifics are very likely to change in the months to come.

[ritika1124]

Great to share berryman13. I am from India.. and worh with KheloMcx.com and get & share knowledge about gold trading with you, thanks.

[asdfx123]

Thank you for reminding me on this +rep

[berryman13]

Thank you for reminding me on this +rep

You're so very welcome! Glad you enjoy it.

Checking if there are any updates.

[berryman13]

Updated with like 4 or 5 new posts guys..