Malygos Weekly: Flipping Surge Needle Rings

I’ve been really busy with life in the last few weeks. I haven’t been in game at all so I let the blog slide a bit… Sorry!
I did manage to get in for an hour or so last night for a quick VOA-25 and some AH cleanup. 

I asked in guild and was delighted to find out that Malygos is the weekly raid quest this week.  I have no intention of joining a Malygos PUG but that won’t stop me from making a few gold on those that do. 

Malygos is generally difficult to PUG and has the worst risk/reward ratio in Wrath.  In other words people simply don’t run it unless it’s the weekly raid quest. 

In other words on the weeks that Malygos is the weekly raid quest you are likely to see an abundance of underpriced Surge Needle Rings on the AH. 

Yesterday I picked up one for 460 and another for 480.  I reposted one at 700 and it sold while I was in VOA.  A quick 185 gold profit after you take into account the AH cut.

A few months ago we had back to back Malygos weeks and I picked up a half a dozen for 300 gold and flipped them over the last months for between 1,200 and 700 gold.

Cheers!
CK

Ups and Downs!

So I started writing the blog a couple of weeks ago.  Since then I made a few purchases and a few more bad investments.  On March 12^th I had 25,000 liquid and 2-5,000 in goods and by March 14^th I was down to around 10,000 liquid…

As of the 28^th I was back up to 20,000 liquid and 2-5000 in goods. 

As for professions I’m definitely a minimalist.  My main is a Shaman so naturally I selected Skinning and Leatherworking when I created the character.  I later dropped the Skinning in favor of Jewelcrafting to help me hit expertise cap early in the expansion.

My only other high level character is my Auctioneer/Deathknight.  He currently has Enchanting and Inscription. 
At some point in the next two weeks I plan to create around a thousand Vellums then dropping Inscription for something less labor intensive/ more fun. 

Currently I’m looking into both Tailoring and Alchemy. 

The thought of making bags sounds appealing but Alchemy has a much more flexible feel….

More on this tomorrow.

Cheers!
CK

Monday Rant: Paragon and their Welfare Epics

I hate the Welfare stigma in WoW!

Social welfare, welfare : governmental provision of economic assistance to persons in need

Here’s how the WoW community views the definition.
WoW welfare: Blizzard’s provision to dumb down the game for unskilled players

What a great sentiment!  … But didn’t you forget about the whole economic thing?

Here’s my definition of WoW welfare: Blizzard’s provision of economic assistance to persons in need within the player base.

How do you define a player within WoW that is in economic need?
Let’s pretend the entire game hasn’t been developed yet. 

Now take a look at all of the content that you plan on developing and put a dollar sign beside each piece.
In our next step we must separate all the content by accessibility.  For argument sake we now have 2 piles. 

1^st pile:  Content accessible to 100% of the player base.
2^nd pile: Content limited to top 10% of the player base.

If the 2^nd pile cost more than 10% of the overall budget of the game, clearly Blizzard has made a decision to spend “tax dollars” from the rest of the player base to pay for it.

Wouldn’t you call this welfare?

According to www.wowprogress.com only 1886 25 man raiding guilds or 4.07% have defeated the Lich King obtaining access to the Heroic ICC content.  If we assume each of those guilds have 50 active raiders that still doesn’t even come close to 1% of the total WoW population.

How much money did Blizzard spend to develop the normal version of ICC?
Did Blizzard develop the Heroic version for just 1% the cost of the normal version?
Doesn’t that mean that our Top Raiders can’t support themselves financially?
Who pays for the content? 

I would now like you to whisper every top raider on your server asking them if they love their welfare epics?

Cheers!
CK

A look at Inscription

TODAY’S DATE IS MARCH 25^TH 2010!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It doesn’t matter what Gelvon or Markco posted or said six months ago!  Did you check the numbers today?

That’s good a good rule to follow before taking any gold advice, it’s especially true for today’s topic; Inscription.

Inscription the simplest profession in WoW.  Everything in the profession requires one of two Inks.  These Inks are milled from Northrend herbs.

Let’s take a look at the herbs to find out which ones give us the most value in Inks.  There are only two groups of herbs that we need to concern ourselves with.  Group A which produces approximately 6 Ink of the Sea and 2 Snowfall Inks per stack, and Group B which produces approximately 5 Ink of the Sea and 2 Snowfall Inks per stack.

Group A: Icethorn, Lichbloom, and Adder’s Tongue.
Group B: Tiger Lily, Deadnettle, Goldclover, Talandra’s Rose, Fire Leaf, Fire Sead, and Constrictor Grass

Generally speaking if you look at any post dealing with Inscription written prior to January 1^st 2010 they all heavily overvalue Group A.  The value of Snowfall Ink has dropped significantly in the past months due to the limited number of recipes needing it.  Snowfall Ink is only used for Darkmoon Cards and Epic Off-Handers.  In contrast, Ink of the Sea is used for everything!

In other words if you are milling large volumes of herbs eventually you will amass a surplus of Ink of the Sea.

Personally I assign no value to Snowfall Ink when selecting herbs to mill.  Ink of the Sea and its byproducts are simply much more fluid and consistent on my server.

Here’s how to setup Auctioneer when you value only Ink of the Sea.

1)      Select a price you are willing to pay for Ink of the sea.
Currently on live I set this value to be 1 gold

2)      Assign all herbs in Group A a snatch value where 1 stack equals 6 Ink of the Sea
In this example the snatch value would be 30 silver.

3)      Assign all herbs in Group B a snatch value where 1 stack equals 5 Ink of the Sea
In this example the snatch value would be 25 silver.

Again based on these numbers I can create my Armor Vellum 3 for 95 silver and my Weapon Vellum 3 for 1.95 gold. Now just pick your margins and sell.  Any money you make from crafting/selling your Snowfall Ink will count towards your profits.

Obviously your numbers will differ from my example, that’s not the point.  I hope what you take away from this article is an understanding that it’s highly likely that the value of Ink of the Sea should be the deciding factor in which herbs you mill.

Check your server prices and don’t ever blindly follow gold advice even from the best blogs.

Cheers!
CK

Make ~3 Gold / Keystroke… The Lazy Way!

I have not had a proper session for a few days now.  The last three nights I couldn’t even bring myself to do kill a mob let alone run a random.  What’s the reason? My hands hurt!  My last week at work has been a little intense.  I need to keep my hands in good order… so WoW takes the back seat.

I still managed to make a profit of 2,000 gold in the last 3 days.  Sure that’s not a lot of gold but as I have stated before the gold isn’t the priority!  My priority is to make gold in the most efficient, click friendly way.

Did I mention I made the 2,000 gold while AFK?
Did I mention that I only needed to be at the computer about 7 minutes a day?

So what did I do?
I just crafted and vendored Crystal Citrine Necklaces, Sun Rock Rings, and Bloodstone Bands.  The margin isn’t very big, usually 1 gold per item, but I see AFK gold as free gold.

Did I mention I did this all in less than 680 clicks?
I’m counting movement, retrieving goods from my mailbox, stack splitting my Eternals, crafting and vendoring.  That’s assuming I’m only crafting 50 at a time.

One essential tool I used was the add-on named AutoVendor.  In the last 3 days alone this add-on saved me 2000 clicks!

Add-on Review: AutoVendor

The purpose of this add-on is to automatically vendor Grey items when you open trade with any vendor in the game.  One key feature is the ability to add any item to this list.

Simply type the following…
/junk Crystal Citrine Necklace
/junk Sun Rock Ring
/junk Bloodstone Bands

Now instead of clicking each item individually to vendor them you simply click on the vendor and they are sold automatically.  I definitely recommend this add-on for all Lazy Bankerz!

Cheers!
CK

Stack Splitting for Profit!!! /cough Iceblade Arrows

Today let’s talk about profiting from splitting stacks!

Before I begin I want to clarify that I’m totally 100% behind anyone who decides to make a profit from splitting stacks.

Recently there has been much discussion on this topic due to those nasty Iceblade Arrows.  For whatever reason people have decided that Iceblade Arrows are the last straw!

Example:
A full stack of Iceblade Arrows sell for 5.4 Gold on AH
I post stacks of 100 at 4 Gold
I post singles at 1 Gold

Am I scamming people?
Why?
What about those who do the same thing with Cloth, Food, Ore, Enchanting Mats…..?
Have you ever looked at all stackable goods on the AH?

To anyone who claims that Iceblade Arrow stack splitting is a scam I laugh and point to the hundreds of other items on the AH which they would gladly buy/sell using the same pricing strategy.

Have you ever been to the grocery store and looked at prices?
Take a look at peanut butter.  I’m willing to bet that your local grocery store didn’t receive a letter calling them scum, thanks for your letter Naraadragon, after selling the small bottle of peanut butter for a dollar less than the big one, three times it’s size.

Bottom line, the market does not care about morality!
In game or in the real world the only thing that matters is what sells.
My arrows keep selling!

Cheers!
CK

Monday Rant! March 21st 2010

I hate the glyph market!

Forget the fact that the market is saturated.
Forget the ‘if done properly you can make x gold per day’ comments.

Making Glyphs is labor intensive and time intensive.  I’m not sure how many Glyphs there are in the game but I remember reading around 600. 
So someone in the glyph market can either craft all 600 Glyph or selectively craft the most profitable.  On the one hand you are crafting an enormous amount of glyphs and on the other you are forced to micromanage the crafting of your glyphs.

So crafting the glyphs isn’t difficult it’s just tedious and time consuming…  How about selling them?

Selling them is actually the least tedious of all tasks related to glyphs. 

Once you setup your add-ons to batch post to your specifications your pretty much push 1 button and your done. 

Now wait 12/24/48 hours and all your glyphs will be returned to your mailbox, save 1 or 2!

Bottom line the Glyph market is very labor intensive and it just takes 1 under-cutter or AH camper to destroy your business.  Thanks to the great Greedy Goblin there are generally 4-5 campers employing this strategy on my server. 

I stay away. 

As a side note I had a unique experience yesterday.  For the first time in about a year I had to pay more than 3 gold for a Glyph!  I felt like sending the poster of the glyph a congratulations letter but I was too lazy!

Cheers!

CK

Lazy Bankerz!

Yesterday I gave a high level overview of the “Gold per Action” concept.  Once again Gold per Action is just another indicator anyone can use to measure successes/failures in the Gold making experience. 

I also mentioned yesterday that valuing Gold per Action is very intuitive… It is!

So what do you call someone who values Gold per Action over traditional measurements like Gold per Hour? Lazy Bankerz!

That’s right folks! This blog is all about making it the lazy way!
I believe laziness is one of the most intuitive “skills” in all people!  Why not apply it to my Gold making business?

Long story short I love making gold in WOW!

My gold making methods are for lazy people! 
My gold making methods are for the weak at heart!
My gold making methods ignore all other values except laziness! 
My gold making methods… sorry I’m just too lazy to write anymore today… 

You get the picture!

Cheers!
CK

 

* Note: Bankerz is the name of my AH guild.  I am aware that it’s not proprly speeled but U tri’n get a propr speeled giuld name on an old surver… Anyways! I decided to stick with the name for my blog.

Two Goblins walk into the AH: Which one do you want to be? … Continued:)

Yesterday I asked which would you rather be?

Goblin A vs. Goblin B
Both make item X

Goblin A sells 1000 per week @ 1G profit per.
Goblin B sells 100 per week @ 2G profit per.

Before I answer I would like introduce the notion of “Gold per Action”.

Gold per Hour vs. Gold per Action
Gold per Hour measures the amount of Gold one can profit in an Hour of Play time.
Gold per Action is a measure of the amount of Gold one can profit per key stroke.

Since I value every keystroke more than most, I prefer to measure success by looking at Gold per Action.

Back to the example, we have two Goblins selling the same item.  I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that both Goblins take generally the same steps/actions to sell the items.
In this case Goblin A employed 10 times the actions of Goblin B to sell the goods but at the end of the week Goblin A made only 5 times more gold.

The winner depends on what you value more:

Overall Gold: Goblin A by 800 Gold!
Gold per Action: Goblin B made twice the gold per action

Tomorow I will write about the intuitive nature of Gold per Action.

Cheers!
CK

Two Goblins walk into the AH: Which one do you want to be?

To start things off I would like to look at an extreme hypothetical example.
We have two Goblins selling the same item.

Goblin A is all about volume.  Goblin A always has the lowest price on the auction house and his sales show it.  Goblin A sells 1000 of item X per week at an average profit per item of 1 Gold.
Goblin B ignores under-cutters and posts all auctions at what they believe to be fair market value.  Goblin B sells 100 of item x per week at an average profit per item of 2 Gold.

At the end of the week Goblin A made 1,000 gold, Goblin B only made 200.

Who would you rather be?
More on this tomorrow…

Cheers!
CK