Stockpiling for MoP Part 5

Pandas, Monks, Panda Monks!  I can’t wait for my Panda Monk!  I will be rolling a Panda Monk as will so many other people, remember what it was like when DK’s were added to the game and you saw them EVERYWHERE?

Today’s posting is about another potential crafting choice that Pandas/Monks may make as they level up.  Jewelcrafting.  I put this on my list because there will be toons who want JC as a profession for either the crafting bonus for their raiding or because they know that JC is a huge gold maker.  It may even be their 2^nd or 3^rd JC profession.  Why you ask?  Because getting all of the recipes is a slow process that takes months of dailies to unlock.  So while one toon can net you a new recipe every 3-4 days, 2 toons can double this, 3 toons triple it etc.

I would not go crazy on this stuff but I would strongly consider it as a profit potential.  I did not include many of the items needed because they are slow movers or they are too JC dependant, meaning they really have minimal to no use for other professions.  I prefer items that are needed in multiple professions since that could drive demand and keep supply on the short side.

Here are my items for my shopping list to stockpile for MoP, items are based on the wow-professions guide for Jewelcrafting, which is an awesome resource.

100 Copper Bar

120 Bronze Bar = 60 Copper Bar, 60 Tin Bar

140 Mithril Bar

40 Adamantite Powder (200 Adamantite Ore)

10 Adamantite Bar

 70 from any of the following gems: Bloodstone, Chalcedony, Dark Jade, Huge Citrine, Shadow Crystal, Sun Crystal. Make sure to buy at least 5 Bloodstone, because you will need the Bloodstones when you reach 395.

46 Eternal Earth OR 23 Eternal Earth and 23 Eternal Shadow

5 Titanium Bar

 45 from any of the following gems: Carnelian, Alicite, Jasper, Zephyrite. I did not include Hessonite and Nightstone in the list, because you will use them later on.

16 Hessonite

40 Nightstone

30 Shadowspirit Diamonds and a lot more Uncommon Gems for the Fire Prism transmutes.

I will probably invest about 60k into these items overall, a little lighter than some of my other profession stockpiling that I am doing but enough to get me in the game and make some gold.  As always, consider your gold stockpile and how much you are willing to risk and be smart!

Stockpiling for MoP Part 4

Mists of Pandaria is right around the corner, and if you are like me then you want to stockpile some materials in hopes of making some big profits.  Today we look at enchanting materials.  The reason I am considering this a solid investment is similar to my post yesterday in regards to Leatherworking; Pandas!

We know that lots of people are going to roll a Panda and then pick either a Monk or another class to level up.  That also means they will need to pick professions.  Some will pick enchanting, either because they need an enchanter, they know it can be profitable or they want the profession bonuses for raiding.  So how can we profit?  Know what they need to level and have it ready to sell when they need it!

As usual, I went to wow-professions to get my shopping list.  There are a lot more items needed than what I have listed here, but these are what I am investing in because of the high quantities need to level the profession.  High quantities means high demand, tie that with a bunch of new enchanters who are trying to level their profession quickly means we could see prices that could triple or more.  In fact, most of these items are selling really cheap right now so you have the chance to stockpile at prices that could net you as much as 10x your investment.

The items I have listed are the quantities needed to level 1 enchanter:

134 x Strange Dust          

120 x Soul Dust 
155 x Vision Dust
230 x Dream Dust            
340 x Arcane Dust           
274 x Infinite Dust
550 x Hypnotic Dust
83 x Greater Celestial Essence
50 Volatile Earth
 
My strategy is to buy these items at low prices and hold them until the market is low in supply and then reap the rewards!  Invest what you are comfortable with and at the amounts you feel you can handle and remember that this is a strategic guess which means we may not see the returns we want or project, but if you buy at good prices you will at least double your gold over time.

Good luck!

Stockpiling for MoP Part 3

Today we will focus in on a potential market for us Auctioneers once MoP drops in a few weeks, leather!  I mean, who doesn’t like leather?  I buy it for my wife all the time, but that’s a different story!

Why leather? Theory: Once MoP drops we will see a new class, Monk.  They are leather armor specialists.  So the theory goes that a lot of these may in fact become Leatherworkers.  Some of these will also take up Skinning, but I am betting many will not want to bother with it because they want to level their toon fast and by taking up skinning it will slow them down. 

Does my theory hold water?  Time will tell but I am willing to take the gamble for 2 reasons.  First, if it is correct then we will see huge markups in leather as supply runs dry, something I love to see.  Second, if it does not happen I will stay make good gold from it by flipping it at the right times, it will just take longer to make my pile o’gold.

Timing is everything.  Right now on my server, I am seeing leather for cheap prices due to all the alts running around and people dumping inventory.  So when supply is high and demand is low what happens?  That’s right!  Prices drop and we gold goblins grab all of the supply we can afford!

So my list, ok, it is not “my list” but rather a list provided to us from a leatherworking guide over at: http://www.wow-professions.com/wowguides/wow-leatherworking-guide.html

Here are the items needed to quickly level Leatherworking from 1-525:

- 57 Ruined Leather Scraps

- 15 Medium Hide

- 260 Light Leather

- 160 Medium Leather

- 20 Heavy Hide

- 195 Heavy Leather

- 410 Thick Leather

- 410 Rugged Leather

- 100 Knothide Leather Scraps

- 307 Knothide Leather

- 28 Fel Scales

- 320 Borean Leather

- 50 Savage Leather Scraps

- 375 Savage Leather

- 168 Heavy Savage Leather (840 Savage Leather)

- 68 Volatile Fire

- 8 Volatile Air

- 28 Volatile Water

- 32 Volatile Earth

All of this is just for 1 person wanting to level Leatherworking.  Some of the items of note are; Medium Leather, Thick Leather, Rugged Leather, Knothide Leather, Borean Leather and Savage Leather.  Prices on these could easily triple during the first few months of the expansion. 

My strategy is simple; I am stockpiling the equivalent of enough leather to level 20 toons from 1-525.  So take all these item counts and multiply it by 20.  I figure that it is going to cost me about 6k gold per toon to level from 1-525 in just leather goods bought at the current cheap prices.  So that is about 120k gold investment, or roughly 7% of my gold stock.  If I am right about prices and timing then this could potentially bring me back 500k in leather alone!  If I am wrong then I will still make 120k profit but it will probably take me 6 months instead of 2, either way I win!

What is your plan?

Cross Realm Zones Impact on Your Gold (Part 3)

So far we have covered what Cross Realm Zones is and how it works as well as the impact to lower level zones on different servers.  Let’s move on to part 3 of the Cross Realm Zones Impact on your gold.

High Population Zones

When I first learned about the technology that Blizzard announced was coming in MoP, I really only focused on the High Population Zones impact to gold making.  No one knows for sure how big of an impact it will make until we see it in action, but we can certainly take some stabs at it!

My initial thought that has persisted even as I learned more about how this will work, is that the zones for levels 8-90 will be the most affected by the “splitting” of the zone due to the high number of players trying to quest.  For those that remember the last couple of expansions, the starting zones for the new levels were insane.  Too many people trying to get what they need and in a hurry to get it done.  Mix in with this, the toons that simply want to farm nodes to make gold (prices are always highest at start of expansion) along with the professional farmers (bots) and you had a rough time getting any substantial supply.

What we do not know is at what point do they separate or split the zone, is it 100 people in the zone?  200?  500?  I would be willing to be the number is high which means there will still be some serious competition but at some point the supply will double in availability because the zone will split into 2 zones.  That means we should see more supply hitting the market faster.

My guess is that this will not really impact pricing in the initial 2 weeks because demand will outstrip supply no matter what due to the number of people trying to level crafting professions and get ready for raiding.  What we will see are prices will fall sooner than they did in Cataclysm or WOTLK.  This will be truer for those on low pop servers than the high pop servers because of the demand levels.

In any case, beware of flipping at high prices for very long as the price may fluctuate a lot during the first months of the expansion.

My Strategy

I see a huge potential right now in the lower level commodities, the ore, herbs and leather that are used for leveling from 1-525.  This stuff is cheap right now, insanely cheap in some cases, so buy it.  You filled up your Guild Bank and your bags?  Good, then go buy some more because the new technology combined with a new class/race is going to drive demand higher than people expect and not many people are stocking up on the low level supplies.  If they were buying it up then the AH would be seeing much higher prices.

Be patient on this strategy.  This is a midterm investment that I think can earn you back 500-1000% returns on your investment. 

I will post more about how to flip MoP commodities as we get closer to the release but for now, go develop a game plan for the lower level supplies and buy now before you miss the opportunity as I expect that once the prices start to climb in MoP, they will not drop as often or as much as we have seen in the past.

Cross Realm Zones Impact on Your Gold (Part 2)

What started this posting was a conversation with one of my guild mates who mentioned a frustrating experience for one of our guildies in a low level zone where she was trying to farm ore.  She was being beat to mining nodes and was seeing players everywhere she went in the zone and then realized these players were from a different realm.  A few days ago she was farming this same zone with no competition and only running into the occasional player.

That is when I had an “Aha” moment.  Cross Realm Zones has already impacted us, now the question is how and what to expect going forward.  Up until this moment, I was only thinking about how this change would impact leveling zones from levels 86-90 when MoP is released.  The reality is that there is now a major change throughout the entirety of the leveling experience which in turn will drive changes in the economies on each server. 

To better explain this I am going to give 2 different examples, lower populated zones versus higher populated zones.

Lower Populated Zone Impact

This is a rather interesting change because of the impact it will have on the supply in your Auction House.  This change will impact all lower level commodities like ore and herbs.  This really impacts the toons that want to level their professions more than anything else. 

Leveling requirements have changed so dramatically over the years that toons now level faster than ever and will sometimes skip entire zones because they out leveled the zone before getting to it.  If that toon was leveling a “farming” profession like mining, skinning or herbalism, they may go to that zone to level their skill and could so very quickly since no one was there.  Until now.

By implementing this new technology, the toon that had an entire zone to themselves to farm their nodes is now competing with many people who are from different realms.  Translate this to the impact on the Auction House and you will possibly have a lower supply, or at the very least, a slower supply into the Auction markets than previous.  What does this mean to prices?  Seems to me that when supply slows up but demand stays constant then prices go up and for someone like me this is going to be a great way to flip more goods at higher prices.

We may also see fewer people choosing farming professions because of the competition in the zones will make it slower to level the skills.  If this is the case it will only further suppress the supply side of the equation.

Larger realms will more than likely see prices slowly increase without much of an issue and will be absorbed into the game because there is a ton of gold floating around on higher population servers.  Small population servers may be hurt the most by this, as they may see higher spikes in prices that is not as easily absorbed.  Both markets will be prime space for people like me who make the majority of their gold flipping items for profit.

Cross Realm Zones Impact on Your Gold (Part 1)

I have been so focused on what will happen in MoP that I didn’t even notice the changes in our server economy until a guildy mentioned it to me last night.  You may not have noticed either, in fact, I was expecting the change to impact the economy upon the release of MoP that would effect MoP commodities and never thought about the how the change would be felt in all of the game.

The change?  Cross Realm Zones

Let me explain how this works before we discuss the impact to the economy.  Blizzard has initiated this new technology that allows servers to “merge” in zones that are under populated and "split" zones that are over populated.

Have you leveled a toon in the last year or two and felt like you were the only person in the entire zone?  You probably were!  One of the major differences in WoW since its launch is the number of players in a zone.  I can remember leveling my very first toon in Vanilla WoW and while running around questing in a zone I would pass by other players or run into a player working on the same quests.  It was very rare to be in a zone and not see some else for any length of time.  Fast forward to today, leveling a toon from 1-80 can be a lonely experience.  The only time I have seen another toon in a low level zone was because they were a level 85 farming commodities or working on their Loremaster Achievement.

Were you one of the folks that bought the WOTLK or CATA expansion and were leveling your toon at the moment it was released?  Then you can remember, as I do, the absolute craziness of how many toons were trying to complete the same quests you were trying to complete.  There were times that you had to “stand in line” to kill a particular NPC or get a mob kill that you needed.  It was very frustrating, especially the higher population servers.  If you have not experienced this, then think of it this way; Take all of the toons you see on any given day right now in Stormwind AND Orgimmar, double it and then put them all in the first leveling Zone!  Good luck!

Blizzard sees both of these scenarios as issues that impact the experience of the game player and has introduced Cross Realm Zones to even out these imbalances.  According to Blizzard’s site “When you’re in a zone that is set as a ‘cross-realm zone’ you’ll notice that in addition to the players you’d ordinarily see from your realm, you’ll also see (and be able to play with) players from other realms.  This will happen seamlessly, and players will be able to group and quest as they normally would with players from their own realm.”

I love this from a leveling standpoint, it gives us a much richer experience and allows us to meet other players even if they are from different realms and establish friendships, recruit guild members and group up instances and deliver a more social leveling experience.

OK, that is how it works.  So how does it impact your gold making?  Stay tuned for Part 2 to get my take on this!

Make Gold for Your Guild!

My main interest in playing WoW has always been raiding; farming the Auction House has always been a fun secondary diversion that helps my main interest of raiding.  Having a lot of gold when you raid is a huge advantage; you can buy gear when it firsts hits the Auction House, buy recipes for gear, buy all the materials you need, etc.  It just makes raiding that much more enjoyable and easy.

But what else can you do with these Auction House skills?  You can help your raid team or your Guild Bank.  In my case, I am also a GM for a medium sized guild of about 500 toons and over 100 unique accounts that loves to do casual raiding.  We have been around for over 3 years and have cleared all non heroic content and dabbled a little in heroic content from time to time.  Before the guild changes were introduced in Cataclysm, I would spend part of my Auction House time making gold for the Guild Bank.  I had a separate toon that handled all the gold for the guild, bought and sold items, cleaned the Guild Bank tabs of the clutter and was mostly focused on bringing in about 20k gold a month for the guild to use which then purchased herbs, fish or whatever materials were needed for flasks and feasts.

Once Cataclysm hit though, my duties were needed less because of the guild perks and the guild challenges that were introduced.  But that doesn’t mean we cannot give to our guilds and our raid teams for a worthwhile reason, after all, we still need to raid and progress.  So I look for deals that help the raid team.  Everything from buying materials, gems, recipes and even enchants to help the team above and beyond what the guild pays for already. 

I don’t just give my gold, but instead I leverage (with Officers consent) the Guild Bank to achieve our gold goals by using my knowledge and experience. 

As an example: A few days ago, I was able to purchase a Rare Spectral Tiger Mount for about 200k gold.  This is a good price, too good to pass up.  This is also where you need to make a tough decision, buy it for me to resell and make gold for me, or buy it with the Guild Bank and resell it for the Guild. 

I bought it for the guild, an easy decision based on my personal gold stockpile and the need to help my guild prepare for MoP.  Within 2 days I sold the mount for 325k, still a great deal for the buyer but a nice, fast return of gold for the Guild Bank.

Another way that you can create great amounts of gold for the Guild Bank is through crafting in the early stages on raid releases.  Even with very high costs for materials from raiding and the cost of a recipe, you can easily craft raiding gear and charge accordingly.  Why do this?  Because the gold generated buys more materials, crafts more goods and then you can sell some while retaining some items for the raid members who now get geared for free. 

Not everyone is in a position like I am, as a GM of a raiding guild, to be able to use the Guild Bank to build more wealth for the guild.  But there are still many ways to do it on your own.  Making gold is fun, but it is even more fun to be able to share it in a way that helps everyone meet their goals.  For me, that is a better feeling of accomplishment than simply giving away gold to people or buying things for people just because you have stockpiled so much gold.  It has a purpose; to help the raid team progress though content without costing them a ton of gold.

There is so much gold that can be made in the game, and it is a ton of fun to have it and spend it on things you want in the game that separate you from the common player.  But don’t forget about your guild, your raid team and others you spend time with in the game.  Figure out what and how you could help and then set that as a goal for yourself.  Trust me, it is more fun giving back than just stockpiling more gold.