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Insider Trader: Make a profit from Cataclysm blacksmithing
Insider Trader is a column about professions by Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, who also writes Gold Capped about how to make money using the auction house. Email Basil your questions. Blacksmithing is a very profitable profession at level 85 if you have the time to manage it. There are a few different markets that you have to choose from, so as soon as you have access to the Twilight Highlands metal trader, you will be able to start buying the patterns you'll need.
Gold Capped: The Undermine Journal may have to close down
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house, and Insider Trader, which is all about professions. For Gold Capped's inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in here every Thursday, and email Basil with your comments, questions or hate mail! The Undermine Journal is an invaluable site that a lot of auctioneers have been making great use of. I wrote about it when it was in alpha, as well as how to use its market alert to watch for cheap deals. Unfortunately, the days of having a convenient graph showing you the price history for your realm are numbered. There's a very real possibility that this service will be killed by Blizzard's new auction house interface, and we'd be back to each keeping our own spreadsheets.
Insider Trader: Tailoring in Cataclysm
Insider Trader is a column about professions by Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, who also writes Gold Capped about how to make money using the auction house. Email Basil your questions. The state of all the professions in Cataclysm is still in a bit of flux, but at least most of the recipes have been added to the beta now. Like most professions, tailoring post-Cataclysm is going to look very similar to the way it looks now. Sure, all the numbers are higher, but the structure of the profession is basically the same. One of the key differences, however, is that while tailoring has historically required mostly cloth and vendor trash for recipes, it is now a serious consumer of "volatile" elementals. Look through the recipes you start doing in Wrath of the Lich King and you'll see mostly bolts of Frostweave. You still need the new type of cloth (Bolt of Embersilk Cloth); however, virtually every single recipe you'll want to train on, as well as most of the actually useful (and valuable) recipes, are going to involve Volatile Water, Volatile Fire, Volatile Life, and Volatile Air. This is also true of the other gear-crafting professions, leatherworking and blacksmithing; however, tailoring had one thing going for it that other professions didn't: Unraveling.
Insider Trader: No more low-level crafting alts
Insider Trader is a column about professions by Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, who also writes Gold Capped about how to make money using the auction house. Email Basil your questions. It's been pointed out before that I happen to use the very laziest of profession and auction alts: a level 65 death knight. Death knights start at 55 and can be facerolled to 65 with the least investment of time of any class. In my reply to that comment on the original post, you'll see my method: I never level anything except the character I plan on playing in the endgame. I'm a busy man, and among all the activities that can be done in World of Warcraft, I prioritize leveling just under patching my client and just above reputation grinding. Well, it's a good thing that my poor, facerolling DK has been grinding the dungeons for the last week, because one of the trade skills I've maxed on him is undergoing a pretty serious change: All enchanting recipes that require a skill of over 510 are apparently not available from the normal trainers in major cities. That's not the end of it, either -- blacksmithing, leatherworking, and jewelcrafting are all capped out at 500 skill at the city trainers. Special thanks to my Hunting Party Podcast co-host Darkbrew for confirming these values for me in the beta, and thanks to Kaliope for writing a post that pointed me in the right direction.
Gold Capped: Sleazy auctioneers and giving away trade secrets
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house, and Insider Trader, which is all about professions. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in here every Thursday, and email Basil with your comments, questions or hate mail! I walk a strange line. There are two distinct extremes in the readers of this column: those who feel I shouldn't be telling people their "secrets" about how to make gold, and those who believe that anyone who uses the auction house to make gold is somehow bad (in skill or character -- I get both). While the majority of readers are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between these extremes, let's look at the arguments.
Gold Capped: The bag market is not going away with Cataclysm
Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! One of the most commonly profitable markets is 16-slot bags for leveling characters. They're a hassle to make and sell, but they have largish margin on most realms, and they sell day and night. Cataclysm will be bringing a new competitor to your business, however: an NPC. That's right; just about when your clients start buying bags from players, they'll be rewarded with a dirt-cheap one, courtesy of their home faction -- one for each city faction they're exalted with, actually. There are six bags for each faction, and as characters quest their way through 85, they'll eventually collect a fair few of them. Of course, a starting character won't be able to get them all immediately; however, anyone patient will eventually get them all. How this will affect the bag market is unknown, obviously, but I suspect that it will spell a reduction in demand for player-made bags.
Gold Capped: Making money in the time remaining before Cataclysm
Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! I got an email recently asking about something that's been on my mind lately: What ways of making gold are there when Cataclysm is just around the corner? Graham writes: I just recently had my first successful foray into the world of being an auctioneer. I am [now] sitting very happily with 28k gold earned [through selling crafted epics]. My goal is to purchase a Bane of the Fallen King title and ICC-10 full meta clear, which on Mal'ganis Horde sell for 50k and 75k respectively. At the time I am writing this, I have sold all of my inventory of epics and all of the materials that I was stockpiling to make more because my perception is the market has almost completely evaporated with the rumored release date of Nov. 2 for Cataclysm. What other methods of accumulating a sizeable sum of gold over the next six weeks are available that should continue to be profitable clear up until the expansion hits? I have access to max-level enchanting, blacksmithing, mining, alchemy and jewelcrafting. If the glyph market is your preferred answer, I could level a scribe. Unfortunately, my observation is that all crafted items (raid consumables, 264 epics, etc.) are selling at or below their material cost to create. I have looked into the Saronite shuffle and its various methods of earning income, and as near as I can determine, it's a zero-sum market as well (cost of ore = expected sale of any of the options).
Gold Capped: Quick Auctions Poster does the undercutting for you
Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! Quick Auctions Poster is here, and it's going to change your life. It was written by one of the auctioneers who inhabit the Just My Two Copper forums, and here's the description of what it does, straight from the download page: This addon is a plugin for Quick Auctions that adds a checkbox to the auction house posting frame with which you can toggle continuous scanning and posting of Quick Auctions. It saves you the effort of hitting the post button whenever a scan has finished. Sadly, because this Quick Auctions button doesn't have a name and its function is private, this action can't be macroed, but this addon manages to obtain the correct button and simulates a click on it. In essence, you can fill your bags up with stock, and instead of using QA3 to post a single batch, it will keep refreshing your scan for you while you wander off to do something else. It will keep automatically undercutting everyone until you run out of stock.
Gold Capped: How much can I automate?
Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! Today's inbox contained something that got me thinking about the definitions of botting and how weird the economy would be without the rules. Pat writes: I am looking at basic auction and mass-mail answering mods. I've just had a problem where I've found a good deal (Saronite Ore often drops below the vendor trash price once you forge it into bars), but it requires a titanic load of time to watch things. Time I could be using for other things, like sleeping at 4:00 a.m. when prices are super-low. Plus, it's a nuisance just to sit around and answer the mail to pick up the items. When you buy 500 stacks, even quick operations take a long time. Are there any tips or mods you could spotlight? I have tips and mods a-plenty, but I do not ever advocate making purchases while you sleep. The written rule is that this is Blizzard's world, and they can and will kick you out for "economic manipulation" without needing to provide any justification. The unwritten rule (discovered empirically through hundreds of auctioneer interactions with Blizzard CS reps, as well as letters sent to some mod authors who are on the line between just enough and too much automation) is that you can not have more than one batch run per hardware event.
Gold Capped: Ask an auctioneer -- auction house PvP
Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) is the column that will teach you how to brutalize your auction house competition and teach them the meaning of the term "opportunity cost." OK, last week I claimed that I'd eventually make it through my emails. I now realize that taunting you guys is probably a bad idea, because this week's inbox made it clear that I'll never dig myself out of the Sisyphean pile of emails I've accumulated. I assume that the winding down of this expansion has everyone trying to prepare themselves for the next expansion by hoarding gold, the only thing that will still be really valuable after the gear reset we have in store for us. Snowmane writes: I have around 1,100g, and though it fluctuates up to 2,000 at some points, recently, I'm at a low. I am a 450 alchemist and a 250 jewelcrafter, though that's on hold due to lack of funds to buy things to level with. I've looked at different ways of making money with my profession, but none seem to work. I just don't understand how people can make all this gold and easily equip themselves with things needed for raiding, when I can barely afford gemming and enchanting new piece of gear.
Gold Capped: How to calculate inscription costs and prices
Every week, Gold Capped brings you tips on how to make money on the auction house. This article from inscription specialist Steve Zamboni has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com. With its myriad of materials and finished items, inscription can be one of the more complicated professions for a crafter who's trying to track his expenses and profits (or even to know if he's made a profit at all). Herb prices have changed dramatically over the past several months, dropping to record lows as farming bots proliferate and climbing just as dramatically during the ban wave that followed. After months of being spoiled by a market overflowing with cheap herbs, many players stopped paying attention to what they were paying to make each item. Now that herb prices are climbing, it's left a number of sellers scrambling to reprice their items and to take a closer look at what they're paying for their supplies.
Gold Capped Ask an Auctioneer: My first mailbag
Every week, Gold Capped (from Basil "Euripides" Berntsen) aims to educate players about how to make money on the auction house. For the inside line on crafting for disenchanting, transmutation, cross-faction arbitrage and more, check in every Wednesday. Also, feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! I've gotten quite the mail bag of questions emailed to me. I'm going to select a few and answer them approximately whenever I feel like it. Remember when writing your question that if you want to remain anonymous, all you need to do is ask! The first question comes to us from Mahgo, from Dath'Remar (US): I am emailing your for some advice regarding making gold on the auction house. I have most professions at max level. I currently use Auctioneer to undercut when I am selling what I make. Do you have any advice or could you please point me for some help regarding niche markets, or how to tackle the whole market?
Gold Capped: The Undermine Journal
So you want to make gold in WoW? Basil "Euripides" Berntsen is here to help! Auction house PvP is the only true PvP: There are no relevant racials, all classes are equally balanced, and the only differentiators are knowledge and guts. Gold Capped can help with the first one, and if you can make it through a whole article's worth of my typos, bad puns and feral druid jokes every Wednesday, you're guaranteed to have the second one. There's a new tool in my kit. The Undermine Journal, whose alpha was just recently launched, is a site that lets you see data from your auction house live from the internet. My realm was recently added, and when I searched for Eternal Belt Buckles, it showed me a convenient Google Finance-style graph of the price and availability, as well as the mats needed for it, and a list of my competition! Words fail me, so hop past the break for a screengrab.
Gold Capped: Where have all the farmers gone?
Want to get Gold Capped? Every week, Basil "Euripides" Berntsen takes a short break from building a raiding guild on Drenden (US-A) (we're recruiting!) to write up a guide that will help you make gold. Check out the Call to Auction podcast, and feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail. Basil is also soliciting questions for an upcoming Gold Capped series, "Ask an auctioneer" via email. This post is best read while imagining me singing the title to the tune of "Where have all the cowboys gone" by Paula Cole. There -- good luck getting that out of your head! Auctioneers rely on farmers for raw materials for various businesses. In fact, we rely very heavily on them, and there are quite a few markets that are only more profitable than farming in terms of gold per hour if we can do them on a very large scale ... much more than any one person can farm. I've been flying circles around Sholazar Basin and boy, are my arms tired! The interesting thing about the markets we work on is that it's almost no more actual work to make, for example, 150 Titansteel Bars than it is to make 20. The only difference is in how annoying it is to find mats, and the number of Dr. Who episodes you get to watch while AFK crafting. The difficulty of finding lots of cheap mats is really the only barrier we worry about. And any experienced auctioneer will tell you that, historically in Wrath of the Lich King, it's been no trouble at all. For some reason, the majority of mornings I'd log in to do my buying, I'd see absolutely dumbfounding amounts of raw mats available for ridiculous prices. Cobalt Ore for under 20g a stack, Saronite Ore for as low as 7g a stack, Adder's Tongue for under 5g a stack and Eternal Shadow for as low as 15g a stack. I have access to unlimited storage and basically unlimited money, so I did what any opportunist with a basement full of toilet paper would do: I bought every last scrap every single time, reasoning that I'd eventually find time to use it.
Gold Capped: Meta gem deep dive
Want to get Gold Capped? Every week, Basil "Euripides" Berntsen takes a short break from building a raiding guild on Drenden (US-A) to write up a guide that will help you make gold. Check out the Call to Auction podcast, and feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! I've talked before about meta gems, however I feel they deserve more than a paragraph buried in the middle of a jewelcrafting post. Like many of the best businesses, metas are purchased by all end game players and many leveling players. They provide a hefty bonus to PvE and PvP, come in a variety of flavors and (most importantly) get purchased every time someone upgrades their helm.
Gold Capped: The basics of selling glyphs
Want to get Gold Capped? Every week, Basil "Euripides" Berntsen takes a short break from building a raiding guild on Drenden (US-A) to write up a guide that will help you make gold. Check out the Call to Auction podcast, and feel free to email Basil any comments, questions or hate mail! Selling glyphs can be very profitable. It requires a lot of addons to work, and the market reacts to competition differently than other markets. However, a lot of auctioneers got their start with it. I know I did! Glyph toolbox To successfully sell glyphs, you need to be able to manage 345 different products, each with their own mix of supply and demand. They also don't share the same mats for creation, and there's no really efficient way to pare down that list without costing yourself money. A lot of people will stick to the "core" glyphs (the proper ones for PvE and PvP for each class), hoping that the increased demand will yield higher profitability, however because there are people who do this, the supply for this subset of all the glyphs in the game is also higher. Long story short, the default UI is not made for managing auctions in this volume. You absolutely need addons. Let's break this down by task, and look at what the addons do for us.
Gold Capped: The pinch
Want to get Gold Capped? Every week, Basil "Euripides" Berntsen takes a short break from trying to build a raiding guild on Drenden (US-A) to write up a guide that will help you achieve the goal of acquiring 214,748 gold, 36 silver and 48 copper. Well, technically that's just a symbolic milestone. The goal is making gold, no matter how much you have or how much you want. Got feedback, questions or hate mail? Email Basil! I've spent the last few months describing different ways to make money. I've also touched on auction house "PvP" a bit but haven't talked about it in depth. The reality is that when you post something for sale, every sale you make is a sale your competitors don't make. The reason I got involved with the AH and in-game economy at the beginning was that I needed money and hated farming. The reason I stayed? My competition. You know that feeling you get when you are in a battleground and everything just lines up, and you win? That feeling is what I get when I empty my mailboxes every morning. Playing the AH would be much less rewarding if there were no competition.
Gold Capped: Using the new armory auction house
Want to get Gold Capped? Every week, Basil Berntsen takes a short break from trying to build a raiding guild on US Drenden-A to write up a guide that will help you achieve the goal of acquiring 214,748 gold, 36 silver and 48 copper. Well, technically that's just a symbolic milestone. The goal is making gold, no matter how much you have or how much you want. Got feedback, questions or hate mail? Email Basil! This game is constantly changing. Every new patch, Blizzard delivers new content, new rules and new interfaces. We've seen some major quality of life improvements in the auction house of late, and these are continuing. The latest one (which is still in beta) is that the mobile armory now lets you trade on the AH from anywhere using either an app on an iPhone/iPod touch or your browser. Right now, for testing purposes, we're limited to 25 actions a day (purchases, bids, auctions), but we can clear out our mail! To be honest, that's the killer feature for me. I spend an inordinate amount of time clearing out my mail. The majority of my profits in, say, vellums will come from sales of singles. I list stacks of all sizes, but the singles are what sell best. On my mid-range population server, I can easily sell 200 of these a day, and that adds up to a lot of time watching my mailbox empty.
Insider Trader: How to profit with tailoring
Tradeskills are the best tools for making in game gold. Every single profession can be made profitable. Insider Trader, when Basil writes it, is where you can turn to find tips and tricks to using professions in a profitable manner. That or rants about arrows. Really, mostly rants. Honestly, I'm still trying to figure out where the blurry line between Insider Trader and Gold Capped is, let alone what direction it runs. Have something to say to Basil? Feel free to email him! He strongly encourages all mail. Even the angry letters! He'll read those out loud dramatically to amuse his friends. Tailoring is not the profession most people think of when they think of gold making. Most people will find inscription, enchanting and jewelcrafting are the big money-makers, but what do you do if that's not the path you've chosen? When you select your profession, there are a lot of reasons to choose one over another. Tailoring has a cool mount and some awesome end game bonuses. If you've taken it for these, rest assured that you can still find a niche in the marketplace if you want to make money with it.
Gold Capped: Engineering isn't so useless after all
Gold doesn't matter, right? It's just gold, and you get more than enough for your needs through dailies and the occasional mining spree. Why even bother getting Gold Capped? It's not like you'll ever be able to spend it all! Wait a sec, how does that bank alt have a single Ulduar clear and have Mimiron's head? Every week, check in with Basil "Euripides" Berntsen, also of outdps.com, the Hunting Party podcast and the Call to Auction podcast, as he attempts to mold all the random information jostling for cerebral space into a coherent, readable post about how to make gold in the World of Warcraft. In real life, engineers are brilliant and dedicated individuals who work together with tradespeople to accomplish some of the technological marvels of the modern world. Historically, these are the people who built the pyramids, the boats that brought Europeans to the new world, and the spaceships that took mankind to the moon and back. In World of Warcraft, engineers are a bunch of goofy characters who speak in childishly high voices and have a tendency to blow themselves up by accident in humorous ways. Anyone else sense that whoever did the concept art at Blizzard for gnomish and goblin engineers flunked out of engineering? Anyways, while engineering is an amazing profession for certain parts of the game, it's dead last when it comes to making money. There are only really a few things engineers can do to make cash. Wryxian In general, we want Engineering to remain a tradeskill mainly focused on creating fun or useful gadgets for the engineer, but we are exploring options for items that can be sold to other players for profit. source This quote was from the Cataclysm profession preview we posted about earlier. Engineering is currently barely ahead of farming in terms of income potential, and it's nice to see that Blizzard acknowledges this and might fix it. Not all hope is lost, though. A savvy player can eak out a living if they focus on the right markets. First off, the elephant in the room: selling epic ammo.
