Enchant Scroll Speculation

In my For the Hoard! post, I warned against following WoW investment advice given by persons with longer time horizons than you. That warning is still in effect, but...

...this is getting a little ridiculous.

Chances are good that if you have an Enchanter, you already knew that your Enchanting peers were dumping scrolls on the market with complete abandon. You would probably even be (somewhat justifiably) upset with this situation, since it destroys any semblance of a market. Well, any semblance of a Seller's Market. After all, if you stumbled upon people flooding the AH with items not only below their (probable) market price, but also below their True Vendor Price (e.g. the cost of mats to craft them), you would buy them all and relist them all day, yes?

Well... maybe.

Elitest Jerks, and the People that Love Them

The website is http://elitistjerks.com/forums.php and if you are at all serious about the PvE aspect of World of Warcraft, you should already have it bookmarked. Why? Because this is where all the the mathematical modeling magic takes place. Why are you stacking Strength as a Retribution paladin? Why do you hear about Enhancement shaman running around with spellpower weapons?* Why is that Unholy Death Knight wielding two 1H weapons and dealing 2,000 DPS more than you?* Because Elitest Jerks (hereafter EJ) said so. Fire mage rotations, Resto druid stat weights, and more can be had for free from people who enjoy simulators and spreadsheet more than you. The format is not always conducive to to finding summaries of the information you care about, but when they do summarize, they do it better than anyone else.

Whether or not you have the site bookmarked, you have probably heard the EJ haters. Maybe you even indulged in it a bit yourself. "If you aren't getting the socket bonuses, you're doing it wrong." "No thanks, I'm going to spec the way I want to." Sure, no problem. I mean, unless you care about maximizing your character's potential, there is no wrong way to spec. If your intention in picking one talent or enchant or gem over another was to improve performance, then there are, in fact, ways of doing it wrong.

Why bring the EJ forums up at all? Simple: the site is a really, really good market indicator.

I alluded to the Defender's Demonseye in my Transitive Property Farming post, for example. The Wrath version of that gem was complete garbage because Parry as a stat suffered diminishing returns faster than Dodge, so you were almost always better off using anything else in red sockets. That was Wrath. In Cataclysm, Parry and Dodge suffer diminishing returns at the same rate so balancing the two stats (11%/11% is better than 12%/10%) becomes very important. I did not know about the Defender's Demonseye before I was looking for something to put into a red socket for Protection paladins, and it was the EJ forums which indicated that the gem was useful at all. So, I bought the pattern, socketed my gear, and decided to toss a few extra on the AH for 150g since Purified Demonseyes were being tanked down to 60g. There was no competition for Defender's Demonseye. I listed some more for 175g. They all sold, usually to the same tank. Raised to 250g each. Still sold. It has been more than 30 days since Cataclysm has shipped and the hardcore JCs will have had gotten 10 cuts by now... and yet I have the Defender's Demonseye market all to myself. The tanks have done their EJ research, but apparently the (other) JCs have not.

Sometimes the EJ advice is not particularly useful to Auctioneers. "Stack Strength gems." Yeah, okay, there are 40 Bold Inferno Rubies going for less than the uncut gem at the moment. But if you dig a little deeper, you may surprise yourself. In browsing weapon enchant scrolls on the AH, I noticed Berserking still up there at 600g. That seems a bit silly, I thought. I tossed a few up and they sold. It was not until I looked at the stat weights for Retribution paladins that I realized that Haste was worth 0.27 per point whereas AP was worth 0.69. In other words, Berserking provides more DPS than Hurricane for Ret paladins by about 150 DPS (based simply on 400 AP vs 450 haste, not uptime considerations). The upcoming patch 4.0.6 will probably shake things up, but until it does, I will continue buying Abyss Crystals at 15g apiece and pumping out Berserking scrolls at 400g margins to the people doing their homework.

Do you have to understand why something sells before you sell it? Nope. But understanding the why of things helps you get an idea of how deep a market might be and when you may want to hop off the train before it hops the rails.

*Not after 4.0.6, of course.

PTR Patch Notes, 1/11

Some things to eyeball if you have not gotten to eyeballing the PTR notes already:

• A socket has been added to all crafted epic armor pieces that did not already have one.
• The number of herbs required to create flasks has been reduced, while the Volatile Life needed has been increased slightly.
• The drops from Tiny Treasure Chests have been improved slightly.
• The Electrified Ether recipe now creates 2 to 3 Electrified Ether instead of 1.

The epic items gaining a socket is very good news as obviously it makes acquiring them more appealing. MMO-Champion is reporting that the flask change is pretty significant, going from 12 herbs down to 8 while the Volatile Life has been increased from 6 to 8. It is hard to overstate my jubilation over this change as it might, might make flasks worth the trouble of actually making now. In the meantime, stock up on Volatile Life. Unless Blizzard has a radically different definition of "improved slightly," I doubt the Potion of Treasure Finding change will amount to much - Heartblossom is a huge pain to farm since the node nerf of 2010, and Auchindoun's current market means these potions cost 84g to make just considering the Heartblossom.

The last note may not seem like a big deal, but I have been making a pretty penny out of Electrified Ether. Not just items made out of the Ethers (the new Cata pets for example), but the literal Ethers themselves. The material cost right now is two Volatile Airs for one, but I have gotten 150g+ for each Electrified Ether despite that being nearly double the cost of the Airs for an item that I can only assume is being bought by people who could make it themselves. You cannot quite make a living out of such sales, but you can very occasionally make a killing.

Transitive Property Farming

"Hey Azuriel, where is the best place to farm Volatile Fire?"

"The AH."

"No, really."

"Yeah, really."

It is one of the measurable milestones of any Auctioneer's life when they no longer have to worry about farming their own materials. When my friend was asking me the best farming spot for Volatile Fires, the AH was the first place I checked. At that time they were going for around 17.35g each at the cheapest, but there were probably 200+ Volatiles within a 17.35g-22g band. Is that a good price? Well, it depends on why you want some. If you were intending to put up some Scorched Leg Armors for 100g then, no, probably not. If instead you were hoping to replace an Etched-Fire Dagger that had just found a new 999g home, then yeah, those prices are not bad. My friend wanted to farm however, and so I sent him on his way to go fish up some Volatile Fire over in Hyjal.

Sometimes you are just in the mood to farm and that is 100%, perfectly fine. My recommendation though is farming via the transitive property. My friend wanted Volatile Fire and was willing to spend X minutes farming it. Since the AH has plenty at a subjectively reasonable price, if you really want to farm something, then farm something worth more - or easier to acquire - than Volatile Fire, sell it, and buy the Volatile Fire. Or more likely, buy the Fire now and sell what you farm later. "I'm not paying 18g for an item fished out of pools in Hyjal." Okay, cool... then why did you buy my Defender's Demoneye for 250g that I bought uncut off the AH for 45g? The Volatile Fire did not get any cheaper when you fished it out yourself - in fact, that personally-farmed Volatile Fire is probably more expensive considering you spent your otherwise valuable time doing it.

Farming via the transitive property is a fancy term for something most everyone knows instinctively on smaller scales. If you need Wool Cloth, for example, do you head down to Stockades and farm some? How about Copper Bars/Ores? Unless someone is being cheeky and listing Wool Cloth at 300g/stack, chances are you simply buy what you need with gold you got doing something else. There simply appears to be an invisible line after which a person's indignation (Khorium Ore at 60g a piece!) overrides their rational mind (Pyrite Ore is going for 60g per node) and they end up farming something out of spite... that doesn't affect the source of their ire at all, while harming themselves. Don't be that guy.

Low-Impact Inscription

A month ago, I hated Inscription. Hated it with a passion and intensity that led to a 2,000+ word rant against the profession that would have been eventually been posted here, had Blizzard not opened a timely release valve in the way of low-impact Inscription. What made me so angry? Glyphs. Top to bottom, the entire design of Glyphs and what it did to Inscription... but nevermind. You are going to make gold in less than 20 minutes a day, three times a week, and all without making a single glyph (other than the ones to level you up).

I am pretty late to the blogging party when it comes to commenting on the Mysterious Fortune Card (hereafter MFC*), but that is fine, because there is nothing to really talk about. It sells. It sells in defiance to all common sense. There is plenty of text devoted to barking MFCs, undercutting, "bait & switch," and so on. You won't even need to worry about that. People bark for you, the undercutters will get bought out, and you will sell most of your stock without even trying. Price it between 35g-50g apiece and watch them fly off the shelves.

Depending on the going rates of MFCs and its market saturation, you may actually lose money doing anything else with your Blackfallow Ink. Unless, of course, you desire to profit off Inscription without even having the profession.

The above happens - look for it. Blackfallow Ink should not be trading below 10% of Inferno Ink's going rate, at a minimum. I have been selling Inferno Ink at 190g for the instant sales it generates, and with that low-ball price buying the above 60 ink for 657g would bring back 483g profit, minus the AH cut, in about nine mouse clicks. The beauty of turning Blackfallow Ink into Inferno Ink sales is that you don't even need Inscription to do it. Just park an alt in Dalaran and you are seconds away from the AH, Jessica Sellers, and the AH again. Turning those 60 ink into MFCs at 35g each would bring in 1,000g more profit however, if you did have a scribe.

...so yeah. Inscription is going to be pretty boring to talk about for the next 1.5 years.

Despite MFCs sucking all the oxygen out of the gold blog sphere vis-a-vis Inscription, I did want to offer some advice on making Darkmoon cards. The biggie? Darkmoon Card: Hurricane =! Darkmoon Card: Greatness. The latter was the Darkmoon lottery of Wrath precisely because the trinket was best in slot for most melee classes up until, and even including, Icecrown Citadel. Greatness survived four entire tiers of gear and was still amazing two years after its introduction. Hurricane, on the other hand, is likely to be outclassed as soon as 4.1 hits some months from now. It is already somewhat of a sidegrade to Crushing Weight that drops off the 4th boss in Bastion of Twilight, and people can purchase License to Slay from the JP vendor once T12 rolls around. The point is if you are thinking about jumping in, do so sooner rather than later.

I did sell a Strength Hurricane trinket for 26,000g which set the individual cards at 3250g, or the Inferno Inks at ~300g apiece once you discount the Volatile Life. If it at all looks like you can get a higher return selling the individual cards, I would do that - getting 5000g in the mail from a Three of Winds is always better than getting 400g for a Two of Stones by using Inferno Ink that would have sold five times that price. Inferno Ink that that makes each card worth at least 3500g in MFC sales at 35g apiece.

God, I hate MFCs.


*Not to be confused with that other MFC (Dane Cook, NSFW).

Mobile Armory and You

Chances are good that you already know about the Remote AH, and how you can pay $2.99/month to buy, list, cancel auctions and so on. What you may not know is that the $2.99 is there if you plan on actually moving any product. If you just want to check to see what is listed on, say, the Neutral AH, that is free. Just use your smartphone or iPod Touch to download the Mobile Armory app and go to town.

You may be confused, as I was at first. The Remote AH is a part of the Mobile Armory, and it's ability to see currently listed items on the AH is a part of its free service. If you are like me, you have toons parked in the goblin cities to periodically check for deals on the Neutral AH, or perhaps even cross-faction toons to keep an eye out for arbitrage opportunities. Well, save yourself several log-ins and potential travel time by using the Remote AH (again, for free) to check up on those without ever having to log off your main character.

As for the actual monthly service, I do not think it is quite there yet. While it is fairly easy to search for specific items, you obviously do not have access to the addons you have when playing the game proper, some of which have more powerful searching and filtering tools (to say nothing about their listing powers). The one feature that would send everything over the top though, would be the ability to buy something on the Horde AH, list it on the Neutral AH, and then purchase it yourself for sale on the Alliance AH. Such arbitrage requires you to have a second account on hand to do it solo, but $15 extra a month is a bit steep in my opinion just to make some extra gold. $3 on the other hand? Instant sale.

If you are using the Remote AH and have some feedback to share, please do so in the comments.

Low-Impact Leatherworking

If you have a character with a Leatherworking skill of 485 and a character at level 84-85 (it does not need to be the same character), it is quite possible for this scheme to make you thousands of gold in the time it takes you to take three portals. How? First look at the following picture:

Anything jump out at you? For the uninitiated, Savage Leather Scraps are Skinned from lower-level Cataclysm mobs and have no function in of themselves. You can, however, combine five of them at a time into one piece of perfectly good Savage Leather at 425 Leatherworking. In the above picture, we can see that the prices for Savage Leather Scraps are not, in fact, anywhere close to matching their proportionally-priced counterparts. In other words, you can buy five Savage Leather Scraps for ~9.75g, right click them, and sell the result for 35g. I did just that in the opening days of the expansion and ended up with something stupendously large like 14 stacks of Savage Leather without having skinned a single mob.

It would be easy to stop there and be satisfied with our haul, but we can click a few more buttons and increase the profit potential by, oh, let's say a thousand times. With all of your 28% priced Savage Leather, you can combine them via a 485 Leatherworker into Heavy Savage Leather which increases it's value quite a bit already (none was selling at 1000g apiece however). With your Heavy Savage Leather neatly stacked in increments of 10, it is time to take the final plunge: Pristine Hide.

Much like Arctic Fur of the Wrath days, Pristine Hide is something that can be Skinned very rarely from level-appropiate mobs... or very commonly purchased from Misty Merriweather (Alliance) or Threm Blackscalp (Horde) out in Twilight Highlands by anyone with 10 pieces of Heavy Savage Leather to rub together. This was actually one of my favorite activities in Wrath, as you could easily come across cheap Borean Leather on the AH and after some Leatherworking alchemy turn around and start selling Leg Armor kits with a 60% margin. In any case, I had neglected this market for quite some time until there was an auspicious bidding war in /Trade that was establishing Pristine Hide's value in the neighborhood of 1850g.

Yeah, my jaw did the same thing.

Prices have dropped quite a bit since I wrote this article a few days ago, but the underlying scheme still works:

If Scraps x5 < Savage, then Buy.
If Savage x5 < Heavy Savage, then Convert.
If Heavy Savage x10 < Pristine, then Trade.
???
Profit.