That is over 110 stacks of Elementium Ore below 40g/stack, and 143 stacks at 64g. Heartblossom is below 60g, Heartblossom, and you get a complementary stack of Whiptail whenever leave the Mage Tower in Stormwind (even the Horde!). The Auchindoun AH is simply getting tanked and spanked hardcore by botting, with no real sense that it will be addressed anytime soon.
So why am I not all excited and buying all that cheap ore up to vendor the gems at a minimum? I simply do not have the mental bandwidth. Addons and AFK-time aside, I actually want to spend maybe an hour doing my AH thing and be done with it. Going down the road of prospecting 200+ stacks of ore will only lead to burnout for me - knowing your own limits is crucial to staying in the gold game, especially considering once you start hating your playtime, the relative value of your gold goes to zero.
To give you a better idea of how warped the botting has become, look at this:
Let me do the math for you.
In other words, 46 stacks of Pyrite Ore at an average price of ~59g a stack. I did happen to find the mental bandwidth for that, let me tell you.
That said, I honestly do not know how to approach the AH market anymore. The prices of all things related to these ultra-cheap raw materials are themselves being tanked down by all the sellers smelling blood in the water, making the vendor-option the only real (albeit slow) avenue to profitability. So outside of this Pyrite killing - which I intend to bank for a while as my Blacksmith is not level 84 yet - I have not been doing much of note, other than big-ticket items like Darkmoon cards and flipping BoE epics.
Is anyone else seeing this kind of bot madness?
Yup, it's getting worse than it was before. Just picked up ~75 stacks of Obsidium for 40g each. If my math is correct, that's over 1k profit just prospecting/cutting/vendoring. And unfortunately, that's quickly becoming the only viable option. Carnelians and Hessonites I can still xmute into rare gems for profit, but everything else is basically just going to be cut and vendored. Dust is so cheap it makes no sense to craft/DE, even with blue procs, and competition is absurdly fierce on the Dailies that deposit fees are actually becoming a huge factor. Used to be that I could throw 20-30 gems on the AH and know that only a handful would come back, but now I get undercut so fast and by so much that I've become doubtful that it's actually worth it.
ReplyDeleteOkay, whoever's selling cata ore stacks at 40g (or below) is just completely stupid. You could simply prospect the ore into gems, cut the greenies and vendor them and the blues, ranging your ore's effective value from 36g to 80g simply by VENDORING them.
ReplyDeleteYour prices are on par with my server (Ysondre). I picked up 100 stacks of Obsidium yesterday @ 40g a pop. I spent two hours prospecting, cutting, and vendoring the damn stuff! That was before my wife tossed another 50 stacks into our bank for me to chop up!
ReplyDeleteSure, it's nice profit, but because the shuffle takes time away from being able to enjoy the game (e.g. run around and PLAY a little bit of the time), I'm beginning to care less about making money this way.
You have to set limits. It's a problem because we've never seen this kind of glut in supply before, but simply setting a limit is all you need.
ReplyDeleteSome of us are also subconsciously used to being able to keep the market price high via buying all the cheap stuff - but don't let that trip you up.
Having the time to process it all is a big consideration, but it's a whole discussion in itself. I can't justify devoting the time in front of my computer to process all the stuff I buy, so I find ways to do it AFK.
While we may be able to make some profit at first from the lowered mat costs in the long run these botters will make us all lose money as prices for mats drive prices for crafted items down.
ReplyDeleteI've read about some success some members of the community (Faids) have had in getting botters banned. If you suspect that a AH seller is a botter I'd recommend reporting the player name with your reasons why.
We have to protect our long term profitability.
This is nothing new. If you cast your mind back to just before Cata, it was usually possible to buy saronite ore, smelt it and vendor the bars.
ReplyDeleteThe problem that you are having with crafting is not due to the cheap farmable mats, but due to competition with fellow crafters. Cheap mats + no other crafter = Lotsa gold.
Many other active crafters in your market = very little gold regardless of your mats costs.
Me I am making gold from that 'failed' profession - Inscription - by making glyphs. While competition is still fierce, it has a very large startup time (weeks of daily research to get random recipees, very low supply of books of glyph mastery).
Enchanting and JC's biggest problem is a lack of gear turnover. As soon as you see a new set of gear released (providing it has gem slots), or 'heroics' are nerfed, then JC will pick up.