Buying to disenchant - Guest post by Mark

"Greetings,

I call this no work at all.

Thought with all the good tips I found I could return one.
I play the AH all the time... no life and all that.

And I see tons of new armors, some weapons, that are being flogged
for cheap dump prices. Ever see a tailor make 5-10 of the same item?
They don't want to clutter up their bags with the same item.
These can be listed for 5g to 30+ to clear them.

I happily bid my minimum 5g, and bid on ALL of them up to say 10-12G
With Dust selling for 15-20g on my server, and essences doing similar math,
I can double my profit on each item easily. This tip will change as mat prices come down.
DE all of them

Buy lvl 79 + gear that is the new Cat ranged gear. pay the opening bid and enjoy the profit.
------------------
On a side note, buy any new gems, cut or otherwise, that sell for less than 9g... and the vendor
guarantees you a profit.

Its cheap and no work at all.

Mark"

This is really a nice advice, and you all should check the prices on your server to see from what items you can get the most profit. As I said in my post on what to do with uncommon gems, [Carnelian Spikes] and [Jasper Ring] are easy to make and can be disenchanted for profit, but you don't need to be a Jewelcrafter to gain from this! A lot of people is dumping those and other disenchantable items on the AH!

Just be sure to check wowhead to see how many mats these items will bring you. The average for Carnelian Spikes is 2x[Greater Celestial Essence], but in my server both the Carnelian Spikes and the Greater Celestial Essence cost ~70g, so you can usually double your investment by just buying and disenchanting them.
The same thing can happen for rare (blue) gear, which disenchants in Heavenly Shards: lots of people leveling up their crafting professions dump blue items on the AH at a loss, just to get at least part of their money back. In the meantime, Enchanters (or just people who wants some enchantment) buy the few Heavenly Shards that reach the AH.
Add to this the fact that most people buying green or low item-level gear to level up faster have now reached 85, so the price for these crafted items is really going down, and you'll want to check your AH again just to be sure!

Best of the month Blog Carnival

Hi ^^
Since this site was born, I've participated to every possible Carnival, sometimes getting a strange feeling... It seemed to me that the topic for said Carnival was surely cool, but that I had more interesting things to say about something else.
When Trading with Zoxy asked some time ago to all the bloggers an entry for the Best Blog posts of the Year  I thought: "why making this just once in a year?". Most people publish on a daily basis, so a month should already be full of wonderful posts!

Now, quoting Wikipedia:

A blog carnival is a type of blog event. It is similar to a magazine, in that it is dedicated to a particular topic, and is published on a regular schedule, often weekly or monthly.^[1] Each edition of a blog carnival is in the form of a blog article that contains permalinks to other blog articles on the particular topic.

So what I'm proposing now isn't exactly a Carnival (even if the topic of which we all speak, gold making, is already quite specific), but I won't try to find another name...

I'm proposing the following rules:

• You have to host your post entirely on your blog.
• You will have to put on your entry a link to this page on my site, which will host the list of the posts in the Carnival, stating clearly that the post is part of the Best of the month Blog Carnival, hosted by Not So Secret Society.
• Entry will be accepted for the first four days of the following month, and the list of posts will be published on the fifth day... i.e., if you wish to submit a post made in December, you have time until January the fourth, and the compilation of posts will be published on January the fifth.

The page in which I'll coordinate it all and that you should follow is this: Best of the month Blog Carnival

Making money in early Cataclysm

Hi! This post is my entry for this month  WoW Gold Blog Carnival.
Since I've already talked about lots of things related to how I'm doing golds now, this post will be full of links to precedent posts... I hope this doesn't bother you ^_^

Now that the days of gather-everything-you-can have mostly finished (I still gather sometimes in Vashj'ir as of this post, but it's more because I find it relaxing than out of need) I'm making profit mainly from Jewelcrafting, with some disenchanting... But I'll try to cover some more strategies in this post.

Jewelcrafting/Enchanting
First thing in the morning (when the prices of raw mats are lower) I go to the AH and buy huge amounts of Obsidium Ore and Elementium Ore (and sometimes Pyrite Ore, if it's at sensible prices... but this is not very common on my server) and start prospecting them. I then check which is the JC daily and go back to the AH. If the JC daily is one of the three requiring cutting gems (which can be Zephyrite, Jasper or Nightstone) I check if there are any left at low prices from the last day, in which case I buy them and re-list for an easy profit.
Then I proceed prospecting.
For common gems, you can check this post to have an idea of what to do, but the main things this day (on my server) is:

• [Carnelian]: make [Inferno Ruby] to sell both raw and cut if the prices please me, and [Carnelian Spikes] to disenchant to obtain [Greater Celestial Essence] to sell (on average it's 2x[Greater Celestial Essence] for every [Carnelian Spikes]).
• [Jasper]: sell on the AH if the JC daily requires them, otherwise craft [Jasper Ring] to disenchant (they sometimes proc [Jasper Ring], which could be an unlucky thing depending on your server's economy).
• [Hessonite]: sell on the AH (most of the time this sell well due to people leveling JC)
• [Nightstone], [Zephyrite]: sell if the price on the AH are high enough, otherwise keep them for the day thei're required for the daily.
• [Alicite]: This is really a pain... I sell them, but if the price for one is very low I try to craft [Alicite Pendant] to disenchant (which can proc [Alicite Pendant], in a similar manner to what happens with Jasper).

Then there are the rare gems... I still don't have cuts covering all of them, since [Amberjewel] no my server sell very poorly even if cut. I make sure to have always 5 cut gem of any cut I can make posted on the AH (undercutting when I can).

If you only have disenchant, and not JC: look anyway for [Carnelian Spikes] on the AH. They're selling low in my server, so low you can still disenchant them for profit... Remember that they give you 2x[Greater Celestial Essence] on average.

Farming
As I said, Farming isn't profitable as it was in the first days, but you can still get a good amount of money from it if you're doing it properly.
I follow this blog you'll already know that I found my place to farm in Vashj'ir and I'm sticking to it because of it's awesomeness. I actually made two post about Vashj'ir, the first it's just an introduction, the second explain exactly were you should go for huge amount of profits.

Go diving - Gathering in Vashj'ir - Part 1
Go diving - Gathering in Vashj'ir - Part 2

Another great place for farming is Uldum. Even if your gatherer isn't at level 83, you can go there and farm ores in the mountains without getting aggroed... Farming [Whiptail] near the river avoiding the Crocodiles is nearly impossible, but they're easy to kill even at level 81-82 if you have some green Cataclysm gear.

Cooking
Although today there is a lot of people with high cooking skill, not many more of them (at least on my server) use them efficiently to make gold. Even if most guilds aren't raiding now, lots of player still want cooked food to boost them up in the heroics, since these are more difficult than we are used to.
I'm doing my cooking daily every day, and I now have almost all the high-end recipes (those that gives you 90 of some stat + 90 of stamina... I'm avoiding fortune cookies) and I'm constantly selling cooked food, even if just few stacks a day. In some weeks, with all the guilds raiding, you will sell a lot more of these, so start buying the recipes now.

Flipping items on the AH

If you don't have any profession of those I'm talking about you should start to consider leveling some alt (I can understand you don't wan't them in your main, but you should find some place for at least some of them).

Other than the usual snatching rare items and flipping vendor items, I found these two things to be very profitable:

• As I said talking about controlling markets, there are lot of "cut gem niche markets". I daily buy gems at 100-150 golds to flip them for 250-300 golds... Those who buy blue gems are willing to pay the price anyway, because they're usually gemming gear they're probably keeping for some time.
• If you have a way to check which the JC daily is, you should also buy the gems needed for that daily and relist them for higher prices. The JC daily can require 3x[Jasper], 3x[Zephyrite] or 3x[Nightstone].
  In my server we go from 20-30g for [Jasper] and [Zephyrite] on days in which they're not required for the daily to 100g when they're required.

While the first of these two methods could be quite risky, the second one it's sure to pay you back... So try to do at least that!
Talking about that, if you're a JC remember that the rise in the price of these uncut gems can make prospecting more profitable... So, if you're checking which uncut common gems to flip, consider also buying some ores to prospect.

Stockpiling for later

This isn't how I'm actually gaining money now, but it's what I think I'll need to make some good profits in the future. I'm stockpiling all the enchanting scrolls I see at less than 10 golds (and some at higher prices if I'm quite sure they'll sell well) and now I have a good number of them.

Other plans
I'm taking my miner/BS to lvl 84, mainly by leveling up Archaeology (it gives good amount of XP, maxing out Achaeology will take you from 80 to halfway 83 without any rested bonus), then I'll drop mining and level Alchemy. Right now, it's quite cheap to level Alchemy (compared to other professions) and I want the recipe for [Vial of the Sands]... It was hard deciding to max out Archaeology on an alt instead than on my main, but Archaeology/Alchemy it's the only way to obtain the [Vial of the Sands](I could still do it on my main in the future, I guess). On my server there is already a player selling these, so I'm not hoping to get any monopoly, but it's cool and could  make me money, so why not?
Even if I finish up just making it for guildies having the recipe it's nearly an achievement by itself.... And I could use some more Transmute's cooldowns.

Now, if you still want to read something about what people is doing to gain money in these days, check this month WoW Gold Blog Carnival* hosted by Just My Two Copper: you'll surely find lots of useful information to get rich or richer come Cataclysm!

Update: I'm now organizing a new Blogging Carnival of my own, the Best of the Month Blogging Carnival. If you want to participate you have time until January the 4th to choose your favorite post of December for your blog, add a link to the Carnival and send me an e-mail at kreaton05 (at) gmail.com

On January the 5th I'll publish the posts I've received for the month of December... Go to the Best of the Month Blogging Carnival page to check all the rules!

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*Available from January the 2th.

Taking the control of the Gems markets

We all know than usually trying to take control of a market without being 100% sure of how it works is a mad things to do, and it's still very dangerous if you're 100% sure... If you fail, you'll loose huge amounts of money, since it's a business that asks you to spend more the more bad are you getting at it.
There are lots of things that can go wrong: you may have underestimated the influx of the items you want to control on the market, or the stupidity of people just selling their things at the price they're used to, missing out the profit they would have had just by not opposing you.
That said, there are still some niche market that can be easily controlled.
In this days in which Cataclysm is still so new, this is true for most of the cut gems.
If you scan the AH you'll see that there are lots of cut gems which are crafted just by one or two players, and in very small amounts. Some of this players are very shy when it comes to ask for a good price, and their gems are quite cheap compared to other of the same color/utility.
So, this is my advice: look for gems at low prices (on my server this means 100-150g) and that aren't totally worthless (i.e. +40 Spirit), made by few people and in small quantity, buy them and re-list them for a hundred golds more... I never do this if there are more than 15-20 gems selling (and if they really are 15-20 I do it just when I know the auctioning behavior of their sellers) and I wouldn't advice you to do it with more than 5-10 gem of the same kind at a time.
If after some hours you've been undercut by a small amount of gold/silver/copper you can just undercut back as you would normally do, if they undercut you by a huge amount it's your choice between continuing to buy and re-list or get out of that market before you get hurt... You're the only one who can know what's better, since this depends both on your server, your gold and how much the other player can be adamant about its price of choice.
Anyway, since there are few players with that precise cut, most of the times won't be too difficult to impose your price, and you'll start to gain also from the cut you can't make.

By the way, on my server there are some strange people selling nearly everything for half its price (two days ago I found 10x[Shadowspirit Diamond] for 150g each, when they're going for 330g on my server's AH*).
I'm not sure why is this and if this could be happening also on your server, but you should try to write down names of people selling under-priced items and check for them.

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*And before you ask: it wasn't a stolen account he's still making things like this, if it was stolen Blizzard would have blocked him by now

Hark! Hear the Wails!

Merry Christmas!
And merry Winterveil :-)
I'm quite sure you've already heard this, but it's great so I'll post it here:



I'll put for you also the lyrics, even if they already appear at the end of the video (I prefer to have them while I'm listening than when I'm finished):


Hark!Hear the bells,Sad silver bells.
In Lordaeron but they are gone.
Arthas he came,Man of great fame
To the old throne,All made of stone
Ding-Dong-Ding-Dong,That is our song.
No more ringing,and so we sing.
Killed Father dear,Thus no more cheer.
Details are vague,But brought the plague.
Wish they would sound,Bells on the ground.
Through the city,Quite a pity.
Dead sleepping deap,And so we weep
No more ringing,and so we sing
There is no joy in the veil of Winter
There is no joy in the veil of Winter
On,on they send,to our end
Chimes from the past are fading fast
Hark hear the bells,Sad silver bells
All seem to say, Thou we betray
On,on they send , to our dark end
Chimes from the past our fading fast
Ding-Dong-Ding-Dong


Oxhorn has made a lot of other videos about WoW, and they're really funny... So, if you really didn't know this yet, go and check his youtube page.

You see? I can't make a post totally without content even at Christmas ^_^

Other informations about Vial of the Sands

Hi, some times ago I published a post about [Vial of the Sands] not being BoP anymore (From BoP to BoE: Vial of the Sands). Today, while I was reposting some gems, I saw a guy in trade that was selling [Vial of the Sands], and I thought it was a good opportunity to ask him about it.

I'll start saying something you can easily find between the last hotfixes (it wasn't worth a post of is own, but now that we're talking about this...): [Canopic Jar],which contains the recipe of [Vial of the Sands], has changed color and is now white, not grey [Canopic Jar]. That could help you not selling it between your junk, especially if you have some auto-selling addon.

Talking about the Canopic Jar, the guy who was selling the  [Vial of the Sands] clarified me two things:

• Not every  [Canopic Jar] contains the recipe. He found his [Recipe: Vial of the Sands] in the 4th jar.
• Once you max-level Archaeology you'll still won't be near your : the hard part begins then, because the Tol'vir digsites share their respawn with the whole Kalimdor. i.e., after you finish a digsite in Uldum, the next digsite could spawn in Ashenvale and give you Night Elves fragment and not Tol'vir ones... And you'll have to take those artifact (and/or those of the other sites spawned in the continent) to have a chance of a digsite respawning in Uldum.

So, be prepared to really long hours of farming. This alchemist told me he farmed 15 hours every day for 4 days to get it's recipe... Well, this could also mean that you'll be able to start a monopoly in your server, since I don't see lot of people having this recipe very soon.

Go to Blizzard Forums, help TUJ

I had decided not to do a post about TUJ, since everyone know already this wonderful instrument is closing, as you can see from the Undermine Journal's website: http://theunderminejournal.com/
My very first post in this blog was made using TUJ a lot, as the images in it show... But I thought that just repeating what everyone else was saying wasn't useful.
Then I read this post at Venture, LLT and followed the link to the Blizzard forums, and I became mad at some of the people posting there... Please, go and make a constructive post about TUJ, don't leave the TUJ's staff alone.

What to do with uncommon gems

So, now most people has already leveled JC, at least to the point of not needing Uncommon Gems anymore (after all, you need those only until 475... once you get there, if you're not in a hurry, you could use them just for the dailies). The prices for those gems are more or less lowering, but if you, as I do, prospect some Elementium Ore ore Pyrite Ore every day and there are still good profits to be made from everything you get from them... You just need to know how to sell the Uncommon Gems.
So, let's see gem by gem what can be done:

[Carnelian]: The disenchantable item made by Carnelians, [Carnelian Spikes], is rarely used while leveling, because with 460 skill points in JC you also learn [Nightstone Choker], which requires two gems instead of three and can proc a blue item ([Nightstone Choker], which can be disenchanted for a [Heavenly Shard] or even sold, since it has ilvl 325). If Carnelians, raw or cut, don't sell well in your server, you should probably check if the price of a [Inferno Ruby] is more than 3*[Carnelian]+3*[Heartblossom]. If that's the case, use [Transmute: Inferno Ruby] or look for an alchemy to do that for you. Please note that this Transmute doesn't have any CD.
Update: As said by Vince in his blog, you can do a good profit also from disenghanting [Carnelian Spikes], since these provide two [Greater Celestial Essence] on average. This wasn't so profitable on my server when I first wrote this post (Inferno Ruby were selling for crazy prices), but you should really consider this.

[Hessonite]: Most of the times, Hessonites still sell well. This is because of people trying to level JC creating [Hessonite Band] which can be disenchanted and that sometimes procs a blue item ([Hessonite Band]), in a similar manner of what's happening with the Nightstone. The problem is, there isn't a daily that requires Hessonite, so you have to accept the price at which it normally goes on your AH... I don't really have any advice for this one, but it should still sell well. If it's price is really low, consider making the Hessonite Band yourself to disenchant it, or to transmute the gem... I don't think you'll need to do either of the two for sometime, but it's very server-dependant

[Nightstone]: Nightstone can be used from Jewelcrafter to make [Nightstone Choker], which can be disenchanted and greys out at 515, so lots of JC/Enchanter will keep doing it because they can get back the price of the mats. If you see that despite this its price is too low wait for the daily requiring them, A Present for Lila.

[Zephyrite]: This can be quite hard to sell, except for the days in which it's needed for the JC daily. On my server (and I've read it's the same also for others), this can go from 30g when there isn't the quest to 100g the day of the quest, so you should keep them for that day. In the last days I'm always checking early in the morning if the daily involves [Zephyrite] and if that's the case I buy every [Zephyrite] at less than 100g and relist-them, one-by-one or in groups of three: and everything sells before evening.

[Jasper]: Since Jasper is used to level JC from 425 to 450 (it greys out at 485) and most JCs started the expansion having already 450 in their profession, there isn't really a demand for it... This makes him very difficult to sell raw, but also a really good way to make enchanting mats. To make a [Jasper Ring] (that can proc [Jasper Ring]... But depending on your server economy, this proc could be less caluable than the green item, since it disenchants in [Small Heavenly Shard]) you just need one Jasper, and most of the times you'll get 2 [Hypnotic Dust] or 2 [Lesser Celestial Essence]. You should notice that there is a JC daily requiring Jasper, so the strategy  used for Zephyrite should work also with Jasper. If enchanting mats don't sell well on your server you should keep your Jasper and sell it the day of the daily.

[Alicite]: Alicite is the most difficult gem to sell. Transmuting it won't work: the raw [Amberjewel] doesn't seem to sell well (check your AH just to be sure), and the [Alicite Pendant] (blue version: [Alicite Pendant]) requires two [Alicite] to make, so the value of the enchanting mats won't be a lot higher than that of the alicites you used to make them. Right now I'm dumping mine in the AH, avoiding doing so in too much high numbers (I don't want the prices to collapse even more) and I think you should do the same... Prices of all these green gems will keep going down for a while, so you don't want too much of this in you bank when they'll be selling for 10 golds each.

Now, to help you visualize what you can make with transmutes (the easy escape when the difference between uncommon and rare gems widens) and to see if I still know a bit of html, here is a table with the mats and what you get for each transmute:

3[Carnelian] + 3[Heartblossom]	=	[Inferno Ruby]
3 [Hessonite] + 3 [Cinderbloom].	=	[Ember Topaz]
3 [Nightstone] + 3 [Twilight Jasmine]	=	[Demonseye]
3 [Zephyrite] + 3 [Azshara's Veil]	=	[Ocean Sapphire]
3[Jasper] + 3 [Stormvine]	=	[Dream Emerald].
3[Alicite] + 3 [Whiptail]	=	[Amberjewel]

Go diving - Gathering in Vashj'ir - Part 2

This is a follow up of Go diving - Gathering in Vashj'ir - Part 1.

I've told you I found out Vashj'ir was a great place for farming, and challenged you to find your own good spots, thinking that since the map was so huge and with so many herbs and ore there was place for everyone. Then I found this great spot for farming, so great I'm not even going anymore in the rest of the map out of curiosity.
At first, I must admit, I didn't want to share it, but I've made this blog to share this kind of things, so I decided to put the blog before my interests... And, anyway, lots of people will be so scared by the water that this place will continue to be cool for a long time (and then I'll stop farming, I suppose... prices are already lowering).

Look at the map below:

the beautiful farmland (excuse the quest signs)

And the best thing is that if you do the right number of quest the portal in Stormwind (I suppose it's the dame in Orgrimmar) will teleport you exactly in the middle of that beautiful farm-land and near a mailbox.

This place is great for a lot of reasons:

• Being underwater, not many people want to farm there and it's not very crowded (this may change with this post ^_^''').
• You just have to move from east to west (and from east to west): you can track all the nodes just staying in the middle of the canyon.
• At level 82 the mobs in the zone are very easy to kill, and you won't aggro much of them anyway.
• You teleport directly in the middle of where you want to be (be careful not to complete too many quest after those that bring you there: I'm not sure, but I think the exit of the portal could change)
• You have an Inn and a Mailbox (so you can actually park your gathering toon there)

Comparation between Enchanting and Jewelcrafting profits on early Cataclysm

My situation
My main is a JC/Enchanter and for some reason, probably just because it was easier than leveling JC, I've taken Enchanting to 525 first. I knew that there wasn't a big profit to be made from that, but I usually try to max out everything I can. I didn't do the same with JC, which I've taken just to 475 to do the dailies and that it's now at 517 just from the dailies and cutting blue gems.

Enchanting
Now, there are two kinds of crafting professions: those in which everyone leveling knows the same (you usually will lose money while leveling those) and those in which people tend to level with different recipes (and you sometimes can also gain golds by leveling them up). It's a well known fact that Enchanting is of the first king, while JC is of the second one. What isn't so obvious is that today the only way to gain something from enchanting is to disenchant... This is because the high level (525) recipes of Enchanting all require the new Abyss Crystals, . The only enchant you can actually do for money is [Enchant 2H Weapon - Mighty Agility], which is a very good enchant and can't be used for leveling, since it grayes out before you can make the Enchanting Elementium Rod (Enchanting 515). So my suggestions, if you really want to start enchanring, are:

• For now, bring Enchanting just to 515
• Don't sell the scrolls you make until they're prices rise again

Tip for everyone: Buy the scrolls enchanters are dumping on the AH. In my realm, some are going for less than 10 golds... When this huge wave of levelers will be gone, prices are due to raise even if mats' prices go down.

Jewelcrafting
There are two ways to make a profit out of JC: Prospecting and Cutting gems.
The first one is very server-dependent: you need at least one between [Obsidium Ore], [Elementium Ore] and [Pyrite Ore] to be cheap compared to what you can obtain prospecting them. The best way I found to quickly evalutate this is comparing the price of Obsidium and Elementium to the price of green and blue gems and the price of Pyrite to that of Volatile Earth. Don't put the blue gems in the equation when evaluating the Obsidium, treat them just as a bonus.
The other way, gem cutting, will mainly focus on blue gems, unless you have a good meta gems recipe (i.e. one for which there isn't to much competition) and a good source of raw metagems.
On my server I'm making huge profits both from prospecting and from selling blue cutted gems.

Enchanting + Jewelcrafting
As it was in WotLK, crafting some jewels to disenchant them could be very profitable. We're only at the beginning of this, but prices for [Jasper] and [Alicite] are going down (except for the days in which Jasper is needed for the JC daily), while, at least on my server, the price for enchanring mats is still quite high. This can really be useful if you're making a lot of prospecting, since you won't need to try to sell those raw gems.
At the end of the day, the only common gem that gives me worries is the [Carnelian]: prices are going down quickly, but needing three Carnelians to make the Caenelian Spikes it isn't even worth disenchanting... Depending on your server economy you may want to transmute them in [Inferno Ruby].

Paying it forward

When I started this blog one of the things that really helped me going on where the kind words of two giants of gold making, that with just two lines made me known by the other AH addicts out there. Two of this lines were from The Gnomish Coin:

http://gnomishcoin.blogspot.com/2010/11/hello-fellow-bloggers.html

And the other wasn't even a blog, but just a tweet:

http://twitter.com/#search?q=foldberg1 

Now, since then I wanted to do the same for someone else. When Venture, LTT started my blog wasn't very old and I felt it would be weird to start to give advice on other young blogs. Today Not So Secret Society is only 5 weeks old, but I've already started to feel it as an "established" blog, with nearly daily posts.

So, I'll do now what I wanted to do 3 weeks ago, telling you how good Venture, LTT is. This is a quote from his first post:

"What makes me different from the typical WoW Gold Blogger, though?  The one thing that stands out most is that I started playing just under 5 months ago. "

Now this guy, starting Cataclysm with 2k gold, has reached 100k two days ago in just ten day from the beginning of the expansion, documenting the progress in an easy understandable way in many really well-written posts.
If you haven't done this yet, check this blog now!

And if you're a new blogger, feel free to post about your blog in the comments.

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Note: I slightly modified the images, without altering the text, to make them fit into the page.

Pyrite Ore now prospectable at 500 Jewelcrafting skill

Actually, it has been so for two days now: the change happened on December the 16th:

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/136974/cataclysm-hotfixes-updated-dec-16

Anyway, it's worth talking about it for those who didn't already know, since prospecting [Pyrite Ore] can grant you huge amounts of money, depending on your server's economy.
This is because every 5 ores you prospect you'll get 1-3 [Volatile Earth], which on most servers is enough to totally repay the Pyrite and even have some golds left. And this before selling the gems, raw or not!

Obviously, this is very server-dependent, so you should check carefully the AH to see if this is a good opportunity for you. Compare the price of a stack of [Pyrite Ore] to the price of 8 [Volatile Earth]. If they're similar, you can safely buy the Pyrite.

Talking about raw gems, remember that the blue gems we have today are (just for now) the "equivalent" of the purple gems in the last expansion: they're the best available, and they're the ones we'll cut for profit for some other time... So, try not to dump them crazily, thinking they'll loose value: I suppose that there are even server in which their prices will raise as more people will sell cut gems to the top players... On my server that already happened, with prices rising from 30g to 60g for the raw gems (I made a nice profit from that, but I didn't talk about it until now because I wasn't sure of the outcome).
It may be worth noting that, even if now we only have blue gems, sooner or later we'll also get purple ones, and when that will happen, we will be prospecting  [Pyrite Ore] for them... So if something crazy happens on your server and Volatile Earth greatly drop in price while you still have some  [Pyrite Ore] to prospect, you may want to keep them in ore form waiting... Just don't start to stockpile now, because it will take a long time before we have those purples, and prices of  [Pyrite Ore] can still drop.

Go diving - Gathering in Vashj'ir - Part 1

This post is part of the Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival of January. From January the 11th you can check this page to look for other posts about gathering in Cataclysm.

While I was writing this post I discovered that Cold at Cold's Gold Factory was going to host a blog carnival exactly on the topic of my post!
Well, I suppose that since farming is still the best way to get gold in Cataclysm this is really something worth writing about.

The problem and the solution
Mt. Hyjal is getting more and more crowded and, at least on my server, you see more nodes being gathered than free nodes... And if your gathering with a not-maxed character in a PvP realm you'll get attacked a lot by players from the opposite faction, since most of those farmers are lvl. 85.
Yesterday I was questing with my gathering alt in Vashj'ir (as I suggested in my post about Cataclysm "leveling and time schedule" made for another blog carnival, this time hosted at JMTC). And suddently I started seeing more and more herbs and mining nodes, spawning too fast for me to gather them. Sadly they're in the middle of a lot of mobs, but this actually also help keeping other characters from gathering them.
Here there is the location, "The Clutch" in the Kelp'thar Forest:

The number of nodes doesn't seem so great, but I tested it again this morning (the image is from yesterday, after just 10 minutes of questing and gathering in the clutch, check on wowhead and you'll see there are more nodes than that) and I didn't have nearly any downtime between gathering two nodes.

Continuing the research
So, today I tried to wander through Vashj'ir looking for nodes (I usually look for my good spots, because even wowhead can't catch that "feeling" about the rarity of the nodes or the crowd of people gathering them). The results were amazing: I tried it just for half an hour, without knowing were to go and discovering new zones of the map in the process, and still manage to gather as many [Azshara's Veil] as the [Cinderbloom] that I would gather in Mt. Hyjal, just a little less [Obsidium Ore],  and more [Stormvine] too. And this was just wandering casually in the three Vashj'ir maps!
Even if I've shown you a spot from Kelp'thar Forest, both from wowhead and my personal experience it seems that Shimmering Expanse is the best map for nodes, but you should try both to see which work best for you. You could also take sometimes a break from gathering and do some quest, so your gatherer will be stronger against the few mobs that will aggro you... In this case you'll visit all the zones in some time, and you'll be able to make a better decision.
And know what? This maps are huge and solitary.
If you manage to orientate yourself in this three-dimensional world (for some it will be easy, for others difficult), you'll soon be able to discover your personal spot, away from the crowd of gatherers the other zones know.

Some other things to know:

• When you see a node on your mini-map, start looking for it on the ocean floor: if it's a mining node it will always be there, and the same will happen in most cases also for herbs. If you can't find the node, look above you: if there can be some kind of plane thing (a big oyster shell, a coralline reef, a rock) go higher until you find some other kind of "floor" it will be usually quite easy to locate the herb your looking for.
• If you're a druid, your swimming form will work as well as the seahorse (after the first quest in the map, the one who gives you underwater breathing), with a difference: you can shift form while in combat. (and, as always, you can gather maintaining your swimming form).

What about higher level maps?

With the nerf on the number of nodes in Deepholm and Twilight Highlands, the benefits of going to gather in higher level maps is really server dependent. In my server, [Obsidium Ore] sell higher than [Elementium Ore], and the prices for herbs doesn't vary too much (and [Azshara's Veil] are more valuable than [Cinderbloom], another reason to choose Vashj'ir over Mt. Hyjal for farming).
You should also notice that being in a zone that you outlevel (as you'll do sooner or later) will make your gathering easier and faster.

This may change in the future, especially when the mats where more required for actual crafts than for leveling. You just have to be smart about that and know your market, as always.

(Update*)Further reading about [Azshara's Veil]
Just days before this post, Mageshadow at The Gnomish Coin posted his favorite route for farming [Azshara's Veil] ... This beautiful farming spot is in Tol Barad, so you need to be level 85 to get there, but if you're interested just in the [Azshara's Veil] (and you don't like the 3D world of Vashj'ir), you should give it a try.
It's also worth checking while doing the Tol Barad dailies!

(Further Update) This post now has a follow up that you should check: Go diving - Gathering in Vashj'ir - Part 2 

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* I put this here from the comments so it's more easy to spot ^^

From BoP to BoE: [Vial of the Sands]

Update: there is a new post about this in this blog: Other informations about Vial of the Sands. If you're interested in this item you should check it.

[Vial of the Sands], the cool alchemist potion that has the imbiber transform in a drake, ready to transport another character on his back, is becoming BoE.
This is the new chopper, a flying one!
As the chopper, some of the mats can only be bought from a vendor, and they're really expensive:

1 [Pyrium-Laced Crystalline Vial], 5.000 gold
8 [Sands of Time], 3.000 gold each = 24.000 gold
= 21.000 gold in vendor-mats.

And then you'll need:
12 [Truegold] (it's the "new Titansteel"), 8x [Flask of the Winds], 8x [Flask of Titanic Strength], 8x [Deepstone Oil] (I linked the recipes so you can mouse over the names and see the reagents... I'm not putting everything there, since you can easily find all you need on this comment page on wowhead).

Now is a bit early to try and get any profit from this (but if you can afford it, there could be some player full of gold that is willing to pay anything for this... good luck), but I wanted to share this good news with all the alchemists out there.
Go and check how Engineers sold their chopper! Now it's your turn.

• (Updated) Where to find it: 

Now, the thing that makes Vial of the Sands even more valuable is the rarity of the recipe. It's so hard to get that very few, if any, alchemists of a server will have it.

Has far as it's known now, the recipe only drops from [Canopic Jar], which are found trough Archaeology discoveries, using Tol'vir artifacts... So you'll need 450 points in Archaeology to have a chance to find the recipe (it seems that  [Canopic Jar] don't have 100% chance to drop the recipe).

Note: although the [Vial of the Sands] itself is BoE, the recipe to make it ([Recipe: Vial of the Sands]) is BoP. So be sure you're raising Archaeology on your Alchemist (if you don't have a good reason to raise it on another character... But most of the items are BoA, so it shouldn't be the case)

I already made a post about Archaeology. This profession can be more valuable for certain classes than others, and the [Vial of the Sands] could remain the only way to make a profit out of it... But if you were already planning on raising Archaeology (for the BoA vanity items or for the BoA weapons) consider doing it on your alchemist.

Update: there is a new post about this in this blog: Other informations about Vial of the Sands. If you're interested in this item you should check it.

Reading advice

Hi, everyone ^^
Lacking good advices on gold- making (markets are too crazy right now... I'm gaining huge amounts of golds both by farming and by crafting, but you already know about the first and the latter is too server-dependent to make for a good post), I want to tell you about a great book that you can even read for free, since it goes under a Creative Commons' licence: FTW by Cory Doctorhow.





For The Win is centered around MMORPGs and takes place a few years from now (nearly in the middle of the book they say: "The last time Ira played a game, it had been World of Warcraft, in the dawn of time"). Most characters are gold farmers (yes, like the ones in China, just without using any bot, since the game has get too smart for bots) and the correct use of gaming slang in a real book is something amazing.
The book is also full of accurate economical notions, presented in a way that really anyone can understand and those notions are also applied to the gaming world (there is nearly a whole a chapter about the value of vanity items in game).
If you're really a gamer, hardcore or casual, you should read this.

You can read the book from here: http://craphound.com/ftw/Cory_Doctorow_-_For_the_Win.htm

Surviving the Cataclysm

After a long break due to Cataclysm (I was playing every free moment I had), I'm finally back.

I've seen lot of people complaining because they weren't able to sell the goods they stockpiled from Cataclysm... Big mistake, you shouldn't be trying to sell them NOW, but in some months. Obviously you should still check the AH (on my server WotLK enchanting mats have actually risen in price), but the real gain will be in the future, not now.

For today, just some quick tips:

• Continue to check for [Saronite Ore] on the AH... Yes, you read me well. There is still people dumping it for incredible low prices. In this minute (yes, at the same time I'm writing this) I managed to buy 4 stacks of [Saronite Ore] at less than 8 gold each stack. These apply for all the other WotLK things you've been buying in the past weeks: lots of people decided they didn't wanted WotLK mats only after Cataclysm, and they've panicked out 
• Check [Pristine Hide] on the AH... There is still not so much people buying them, since they're needed for high-level recipes, so for this first weeks supply is very higher than demand, so it can be very cheaper now than the next month (depending on your server economy... use your head). 
• If you're leveling Enchanting (the same can apply to other professions), don't sell your scrolls unless you can make a good profit from them. The market is now flooded, keep them for some time. It will take some months before they reach their full price again... It's better to wait than waste money.

Have you found some other craziness in the AH lately?
Some items that you're sure will be more valuable in a month or so, and that now sell for very low prices?

Cool free pet contest hosted by Cold's Factory

Hi, just a brief post waiting for Cataclysm: there is a cool contest hosted at the Cold's Factory, a great blog you should already know.
To celebrate the first anniversary of the blog, Cold is giving away free pets in the  Cold's Gold Factory Win a Pet Code Contest... At the beginning there was an entry cost, which Cold would have used to pay the pets... But yesterday Cold changed the requirements and decided to pay himself for the prizes!
So, head on now to this beautiful blog and try to get your own Pet Code! But don't stop with that: continue reading the very cool tips Cold's Factory has.
Happy Birthday, Cold's Factory!

Cataclysm leveling and Time Schedule

This post is my entry for the WoW Gold Blog Carnival.
This is the gold strategy I will apply in the first weeks... After some time, when more people reach max level, things will change... But we have time for that.
I've already talked about the importance of taking more than one alt to 80 before Cataclysm here... Now it may be a little late to start leveling something new, but if you don't have anything else to do it surely won't hurt.

Let's now talk about leveling and professions in Cataclysm.
There are three widely known things you should take into account:

• Gathering profession will make you a HUGE profit in the first week of the expansion
• To max out some professions (Tailoring, Leatherworking, Blacksmithing) you'll need to be level 85
• Jewelcrafting will have new daily quests, Alchemy will have new researches

Now, lots of people will try to max out their crafting professions first, mainly because is what they have on their main and because farming mats isn't considered a good way to make money... The second one is usually true, but not in the beginning of a new expansion.

All these people will need mats to do this. A huge amount of them. And they'll usually be eager to pay any price it takes... 

Will they make a lot of money maxing a crafting profession so fast?

The answer is No.

Even if you are the first one to max out a crafting profession, having so total control over a market, you won't have people to sell things for a few days: everything is still leveling, both their characters and their professions. 

If you're an enchanter selling scrolls, they first want to have some blue or purple gear before buying anything. 

If you're a jewelcrafter, people will still need to put their hands on some equip with sockets before buying you gems.

If you craft equip pieces you need to find a wealthy player to sell them... But you'll spend a lot on mats (which prices are still high) and there won't be so many wealthy players with a maxed out character of the right class for what you're selling.

Add to this that most of the things you'll craft to reach this point will be crafted by anyone else trying to max out the same profession, thus flooding the market.

Some words about gathering

As I already suggested in my guide about leveling, your gatherer alt should have mining and herbalism (since you can track both kinds of nodes). 

If your alt is an hunter, your pet will take care of anything that attack you while you're gathering.

If your alt is a druid you'll be able to collect herbs without getting out of your swift flight form (so you'll be able to flee if anything attacks you)... If you're a druid AND a Tauren, you'll also gather herbs more quickly.

If you're a paladin Crusader Aura will let you move faster travelling from a node to another.

You could want to do one of these two things:

• If you really want to level your main first, and it has no gathering profession:

This could easily happen if you don't thing just about gold but you also care about PvE... Maybe you just want to start doing heroics with your guild as soon as you can. There are still some things you could do to improve your gains:

1. Sell every kind of white item mobs will drop (meat, cloth), as soon as you can. This is some kind of "gathering" after all... And lots of people will be trying to level cooking and tailoring, so the prices will be high.
2. If your main is an enchanter, DE everything you're not equipping and sell the dusts and essences. Otherwise, keep the BoE items and find as fast as you can someone to DE them for you (some of the items you'll find in the first levels will still be disenchantable by alts with 450 of enchanting... So check it if you have one).
3. If your main is a Jewelcrafter, level JC to 475 the sooner you can and start doing the jewelcrafting dailies!
4. When you finished leveling your main, start gathering things with a gathering alt every time you can... You can still do your heroics, and you should slowly start to level your professions, but when you're not doing these things (or the JC dailies), you should be gathering... At least for the first two weeks.

• If you want to just get the most gold you can:

Spend at least the first 2-3 days gathering in Mount Hyjal, disregarding the quests.

Mount Hyjal is an heavily phased zone, and you'll want to level your gatherer (when the time will come) in Vashj'ir, since the "first phase" of Mount Hyjal has more gathering nodes than those you get after some of the quests (you could also check which quests changes the phasing). 

You should also check this two guides made by Kaliope

Leveling mining 450-525 (Beta)

Leveling herbalism 450-525 (Beta)

Depending on your server economy, the prices of the gathering mats could stay high for a while or drop down as everyone starts farming: you're the only one that can see when stop the "just gathering phase". After that you have two options:

1. Continue leveling your gatherer (good if you don't think you're main professions won't be lucrative at the beginning of the expansion): you'll be able to collect more easily mats from high level zones (and you'll actually gain access to those zone that have a level requirement), while you'll still be able to gather along the way.
2. Start leveling your main (follow the advices given before, but also start to level its professions when you can).

Time Schedule

There will be great differences between prices in the first days, prices in the first weeks and prices in the following months. These is what I expect to happen:

First days

Everything from Cataclysm (both mats and crafted items) will be posted at high prices in the first days... The difference between mats and crafted items is that the second ones will have a very small profit margin (since they're done with overpriced mats) or maybe even at a loss.

First week

Slowly, mats prices will start to go down, becoming affordable by most players, but still quite high. Volatile air/earth/fire/water will remain very high.

Crafted items will appear more often in the AH, and those which will bring more profit will be the ones crafted by Tailoring/Leatherworking/Blacksmithins, since people will be try to acquire gear before enchantments and gems. The recipes which requires [Chaos Orb] will be the more profitable, since there will be very few crafter with these... They could value double what they'll be worth in some weeks.

Second and Third week

These will be the best time to sell Gems (if you have chosen wisely your recipes) and Enchantments.
In some servers Enchantments could take a little longer, as players leveling up Enchanting will be offering their service for free.
After that
Is difficult to make such long-therm guesses, but we'll probably see the profit margin in Enchanting Scrolls go up (prices may go down, but so will do the mats), while most of the other professions will start to have lesser profit margins than in the first weeks (but still huge).
"Volatile" mats will go down in price and stabilize, some at high prices, other quite cheap... The same goes with herbs, while probably anything that is "mined" will still be quite valuable for a while.

As a last advice... Check this month WoW Gold Blog Carnival hosted by Just My Two Copper: you'll surely find lots of useful information to get rich or richer come Cataclysm!