Thursday, June 30, 2011

Patch 4.2 Did indeed come and already having regrets



First night of the World of Warcraft Firelands patch and I'm already regretting I didn't really try to stock up.  I had a little bit of backlog of enchants and such that I pulled the night before the servers went back up, but I didn't have to much.



What stock I did have saved up sold pretty quickly though, I signed on posted what enchants I could and other things and maybe a hour or two later after I did all the new quests on my mage I had sold about 6k+ in enchants.  Was the first time ever that nearly every sing last one of the enchants that I tossed up sold in little time.

I spent a while last night farming ore and herbs on my druid to make some more enchants simply cause greater celestial essence and heavenly shards where in the 100+g range per, so where way over my buying point to restock.  I did manage to get some more maelstrom crystals though for under two-hundred and thirty gold which was nice.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Happy Patch Day or Not?

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Auction House Pricing

 I don't know if there are already post on this, but figured might as well post something myself anyways. There are some right and wrong ways to work the auction house to make gold.

Mining and/or Herbalism to make gold

The first thing to do is get GatherMate2, GatherMate2_Data, Routes, and you might as well grab Auctionator in the process. I will tell you why you want Auctionator later in this guide, but for now GatherMate2, its data module and Routes are the first ones you want to have installed and running. You can optionally use Gatherer instead of GatherMate2, but I found I like GatherMate2 better.

Whichever you choose to go with, GatherMate2 or Gatherer you want to make sure that the one your using has as up to date data on mining and herbing node locations as possible. I believe Gatherer has a wowhead database to download and import to it, where as GatherMate2 uses its only data archive that is updated rather frequently.

To import GatherMate2's data you just need to go into its configuration options and go to import and tell it to use its data module select which content you want to import, Cataclysm, Wrath of the Lich King, or Burning Crusade. Classic isn't listed but I believe the reason for that is simply that the Cataclysm data includes the old world content as the old world changed with Cataclysm.

Next with Routes you can go to taruowowguides and download his custom routes for cata zones or just manually set up your own routes.


So lets say we are going to start buy flying around and mining and herbing Twilight Highlands. Head out that way and once your there, open up /routes to bring up the Routes configuration tool. You want to look for where it says add on the left and click on that. Now make sure that GatherMate2 is checked off or whichever gathering add-on you are going to be using and go down and click what you want to be tracking, enter a name for Route, and hit the okay by the name, I would recommend checking Twilight Jasmine, Elementium and maybe Pyrite though I think Pyrite is just a rare spawn of Elementium, though you won't find those nodes in Deepholme. If you don't have herbalism or you don't have mining, then just select what you can gather Then you want to hit the create route button.

This creates a rather ugly route for now but we will be improving it in a moment. Go down to the zones list and look for Twilight Highlands and find the route you just created and select it. Now we want to look for where it says cluster, and usually I've been increasing the slide to max lately or might want to set it to something like 80 if you want to make sure that you dont' miss any nodes. Click on cluster. Depending on your computer this might cause a slight hang on your client but it shouldn't take more then a min, your route will now look a bit better then it did before but now we want to optimize it, by going down a bit further and clicking the background optimization button. You can choose the forground one if you want, but this will cause your client to hang and if it hangs to long you will disconnect, but if it works for you should give a slightly better route.

Now that the route is made, you will need to start the fun part, or not so fun part if you hate gathering as much as I do, but turn on some tunes, have something to drink and you don't have to spend that long at it, only do it for a half hour to a hour if you don't want to spend hours at it or maybe you have a half hour to kill before you need to head to raid, gather as much as you can remembering to CC mobs if you can before looting nodes so no one grabs your node if you already see someone at one your going for just keep going.

After You spent enough time gathering its time to head to the nearest auction house to list your goods, and this is where Auctionator will come in handy. Once your at the auction house and have Auctionator installed, talk to the auctioneer and look for the selling tab at the bottom of the screen.
Take one of the herbs or ore from your bags into the little box and it will scan for the current auctions of that item. Now you could just undercut the lowest auction but if the lowest auctions are not stacks of 20, its usually going to be lost profit for you to do so. Why? Well because when people buy crafting mats they do so in one of two ways, but both ways are usually in bulk. If the person scaning is using TradeskillMaster's dealfinder they may have even stacks selected cause they want to prospect or mill and don't really want to buy stacks of 3, but instead want stacks of 5, 10, 15, or 20. Look for a fair number of auctions posted in stacks of 20, now you can either a) undercut them by a silver or just list at the same price and sell your stacks of 20. Your auctions might now sell right off this way, but they will sell and probably within a hour or so. You might concider buying out some of the lower smaller stacks as well and listing those with yours if you can make more stacks of 20 or at least even stacks got for a little more gold.

Hopefully this information was useful to you, please make sure to share this buy clicking one of the share buttons below or leave a comment letting me know what you think.

Thanks and have fun,

Friday, June 24, 2011

Recent Thoughts about my Auction House Experience

Recently I got to thinking that when I first started playing World of Warcraft, one of the first things I tried to do with blacksmithing is I went to Stormwind with a bunch of ore I had and made some things, and I wasn't even looking at the auction house at the time to see how much ore was going for etc, I just was offering the things I made in trade for a little more then the regents I just bought from the blacksmithing supplier to sell the item for, and was instantly returned with, people mocking me for doing so, though I think I did sell maybe one of the items.

Thinking back on it now I should have just stuck with it and kept trying, and of course included the going price of the bars on the auction house as well, but I didn't really try again. I did list the occasional item on the auction house but wasn't something I stayed constant at. Most my time playing World of Warcraft I rarely listed things on the auction house, aside from rare drops and such, but then having gold was never that much of a driving point. I wanted to raid and I was fine with at least having enough to cover my repair cost. That was the largest part of my grinding, just making sure I had enough to be able to repair my gear. I should have tried harder.

Its kinda funny in a way that now I have more then enough to cover repairs and maybe to buy something I really want off the auction house, like dark moon cards etc, but I'm not currently raiding, I'm not even running five mans much, I'm just playing the auction house.

If only I had desire to do then what I'm doing now and kept with it I would have allot more gold back then, and possibly even more now. Instead of looking at coming closer and closer to breaking my first one-hundred thousand gold, maybe I would be looking at breaking my first five-hundred thousand. At the very least I wouldn't have had to grind for repair bills, and now and then I would have been able to swipe up that item I really wanted off the auction house, instead of thinking man it would be nice to have that.

Right now there are a few items like that on the auction house that I would like to pick up like the dark moon cards and vial of sands mount etc, though I want to work on leveling up my archeology on my shaman so he can make the vial of sands himself, of course that still won't be much cheaper then buying it of the auction house I don't think, well probably a fair bit, and I'm working on leveling a inscription character so maybe I can start making my own dark moon cards. The only things really stopping me from getting much of anything off the auction house I want right now is greed, and not really needing it right now. Having best in slot gear isn't going to do me that much good when I'm not even raiding currently.

I'm not sure what my goal for this expansion is going to be now, my first goal was to hopefully not be behind in raiding..well I made the mistake of switching servers and leaving a guild that I probably could have been raiding with and now not raiding so..yeah that's a failure, I'm already well behind in that department as 4.2 is just around the corner and I haven't even started this tier of raiding, but oh well, much as I would like to be doing that I'm sorta just happily plugging away at learning to make gold.

I'm going to start making some post on how to make gold of my own, though probably most of it will just be information that I've learned from others in hopes that maybe I can least help some others out there.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

What has been selling this week

Light Waves from Daily Dose of Imagery


Not bad compared to last week, only up to nearly 70 thousand gold, I should have took time to note the amount I started the week with but oh well. TradeSkillMaster_Accounting still shows I made more then I spent, though I spent a considerable amount.


Honestly posting, crafting and so on with my professions is taking up so much of my time, but I was glad that I sold more this week and brought in more.  What suprised me this week, well I only tried to sell some maelstrom enchants late in the week and my second highest item was mighty intellect to bracers as well as selling 9 Embersilk Bags for a total of 2496g 78s 54 copper.  The bags I had a bit of bad luck with in the past, but it was nice to see they where selling this time.  Bag of Jewels didn't make the list, but I'm currently the only one selling it at the moment so I'm hoping to sell more of them.


Pyrite ore finally dropped below 5.5g briefly one day so I quickly snatched up some of those, and you can see I made a fair amount of gold just selling the volatile earth from prospecting those.  Rare Gems have become a bit of a thorn in my side as there are so many people the drive the price down way to much of the time and will be camping the AH.

I'm also still sorta surprised how much Zephyrite sells, It doesn't sell for much, but I usually have a fairly large number after prospecting and been listing them regularly in singles though thinking of trying a few things I've been reading lately like listing so many stacks of 3 for 48 hours for the jewel-crafting daily when it comes.  And the stacks of Volatile Earth I only sell in stacks of 10 and only undercut other stacks of 10.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Enchanting, Jewel Crafting, and How to price


I've been arguing with myself for awhile since I started the jewel crafting bit to feed my enchanting, if it was a good idea to be willing to post my enchants for less then the normal going price for the mats on the auction house.

I'm thinking in order to make the maximum gold I could from my enchants I need to go back to using the material cost instead of the cheaper cost of disenchanting jewel crafting rings and necks.  Not that I am going to stop doing that of course.

One of the reasons is, for one, I do not always get the amount of materials I would need to completely restock my enchants, and would require me to buy larger and larger amounts of ore just to keep enough materials, so rather then have to buy, and prospect one-hundred or more stacks of obsidian or elementium ore I could also still buy some of the materials if they where under market value of course.

Though I'm wondering if it is the fairest or best thing to do?

Any thoughts?


What has been selling this week

Tuna auction at the Tsukiji fish market in TokyoImage via Wikipedia

Borrowing something from Auction House Addict and posting whats been selling this week.


Since I've moved over my jewel crafted and gone from buying enchanting mats whole sale to buying ore to prospected and make things to disenchant and then selling the enchants along with some cut gems, the gold just seems to keep coming in.  Granted  I still have to work the auction house a fair bit to make the most out of my investment but I've been doing better at a couple things over the past few weeks.

What surprised me recently is that my number one source of gold this week was the two handed agility enchant, that previously, before using spreadsheets and prospecting had been one of my least profitable enchants.



The sales I've made by volume, most sold items had previously always been the enchant chest - mighty stats, but that has now been overtaking by gems, Brilliant(30) and Delicate(25), Inferno ruby's, and apparently zephyrite(42), though honestly I'm almost always wanting to just vendor the zephyrite as there isn't much to do with it, but guess I should just keep listing it even if it is more a drop in the bucket then anythings.

One thing that still bother's me is enchant shield - mastery is suppose to be one of the best if not the best warrior and pally tanking enchants but are constantly being pushed down to 3g?  I tried to up that at one point and and well it turned out to be a complete and utter waste of time.

Volatile earth from prospecting pyrite is a good amount of gold to when you can get the pyrite for a decent amount, I've been shooting for under 6g but lately its been 7-9g per for the last week or so.

Also since Heavenly Shards have been so damn expensive lately I've been using my blacksmith to Stormforged Shoulders to disenchant and that cost me about 36g per shard rather then 60ish they had been going for awhile.  They seem to have gone back down around in the 50's as I'm writing this, but I still wouldn't buy them for that.  I use to only be willing to pay 45g or less for them, preferably less.

I know there are some worries as to what 4.2 will bring to the jewel crafting market and what price people are going to be willing to spend per stack of ore, but since the vast majority of my jewel crafting goes into enchanting mats for my enchanting I don't think i'm that worried about it.

by the way it is a little bothersome that I've sold nearly as many auctions as Auction House Addict, but yet my total amount for those was nearly half...

At the very least though I'm just shy of sixty thousand gold now, not bad for only just hitting the fifty thousand not that long ago.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Heal Like a Shaman

I've noticed through Blogger's Stats that so far more people are finding my blog do to a post I made on shaman healing.  So I'm trying to decide on what I should maybe post more about on that topic.  Does anyone have an question they want answered? What do you most want to know about Shaman Healing?

Send me a message tamed.lionheart@gmail.com and I'll try my best to answer them.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Spreadsheets, making gold, and I need to remember to make notes



Over the last few weeks I've finally got my Death Knight, Drict before now Dignus to Llane so he can start using his jewel crafting powers to make me even more money, in he has done just that, also of course monitoring my spending a bit more so that I don't say make 4k today and spent 5k the same day..is probably a good idea, but its quite tempting to spend as much as possible to hopefully get the biggest return. But then that assumes I could actually sell all my auctions at any giving time which, just doesn't happen.

So the last few days I've been working on making my own spreadsheet for figuring out how to use my jewel crafting best, and got the idea from another spreadsheet that is already out there and possible a bit better then mine, but mine is still a work in progress.  I mostly did it just to see if I could get one that works and works reasonably well.  You can view mine here on google docs and theirs over at the consortium.

One of the reasons I wanted to create my own spreadsheet was to try and see if I could figure out a good way to get the price of enchanting mats, most cost after buying stacks of ore, how much one Greater Celestial Essence for instance worked out to.  Maybe someone will read this and let me know if I'm doing it wrong, but basically have it set to figure out what each gem, rare or not from that stack of ore.

So lets say I bought 10 stacks of Obsidian Ore at about 25g a stack, they aren't really ever that low on my server right now, but just a silly number to work with and say I bought 10 stacks totaling 2,500 in gold.  According to what i have those 10 stacks would turn into roughly 63 raw gems.  2,500 divided by 63 comes out to roughly 3.97g per gem.

Now I've entered what the current prices for the raw gems and it figures out which ones I'm going to be disenchanting and what I'm gonna try and sell raw cause the raw price is > then the enchanting mat price I would get.

To get my enchanting mat price it figures out how many gems total are used to make the crafted neck and rings to disenchant and comes out to an estimate of something like 49 gems to make 21 greater celestial and 101 hypnotic dust.  Some of those greater celestial essense started out as lesser's but I have it auto convert them right now cause they generally go for more as greater's.

So the total cost of the 49 gems times 3.97g per gem comes out to 194.44g in gold spent on just those gems. I then divide that by the number of greater celestial essence's which comes to 11s per greater celestial and 52s per hypnotic dust doing the same with those.  Now I no idea how accurate that is, but I'm still making gold so I don't know.

I could just try to divide it by the total spent, but that puts the hypnotic dust over the market value usually and since i'm not using all the results from prospecting for enchanting mats and investing them in other ways why would I decide the price on the total I spent?

Am I doing this wrong?

I also had a few macro's I was gonna post and I'm gonna do my best to recreate them without being in game, so if I get them a bit wrong..I'm sorry

Prospecting Macro

#showtoolip
/cast Prospecting
/use Pyrite Ore
/use Elementium Ore
/use Obsidian Ore

Disenchant Rings and neck pieces; Note, the first item number you might want to leave out if your enchanter can equip fist weapons, its Carnelian Spikes, my mage can't but when I'm hitting this macro I notice it keep telling me I can't equip first weapons so I don't know you might end up equiping one or not, but might just cause some hassle.

#showtooltip
/cast Disenchant
/use item:52492
/use item:52316
/use item:52314
/use item:52308
/use item:52307
/use item:52309
/use item:52306

Think I got all of them.

Other things I need to do with the spreadsheet is factor in using my blacksmith to make shoulders to DE or maybe using some rare gems to make the first weapons to DE into heavenly shards as heavenly shards are becoming scarce and the market price is going up.

oh and speaking of things going up, I dumped nearly 20k not long ago, not on anything to grand part of it was setting up a guild bank and I'm now just about 10k over what I lost so yay me, I got just shy of 40k last I knew.