Lifebound Alchemist Stones can no longer be disenchanted!

I was waking up, going to study when I see on the phone the news:

Alchemist's stone is no longer disenchantable

I talked about this as a possibility just yesterday, and here the hotfixes today.
ALTOs Gold"ish" Advice has also reported the news, and I suggest you go to his site to check the other hotfixes in his post Jan 18 Hotfixes and How They Affect You.
Also Zoxy wrote about this before me (well, I suppose that is a time zone thing... I was in deep sleep when Zoxy's post about the hotfixes was published).

Ok, now that I've made my duty regarding the blog, let's go back to the books... Remember to buy all the  [Maelstrom Crystal] you can if their price went down thanks to the alchemists doing this. I'll update my previous post later.

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Other posts about the PTR 4.0.6 patch notes:

• New metagems on the way!
• Sockets will be added on crafted epic gear
• New enchanting recipes (and nerf to [Enchant Off-Hand - Superior Intellect])
• Engineers won't need Volatile Air anymore (well, not as much as they need now, anyway)
• Alchemists and 4.0.6

Alchemists and 4.0.6

Well, it seems I'm truly committed to commenting the 4.0.6 PTR patch notes... Today, let's talk about Alchemy.
The patch notes are the following:

• Alchemist's Stones for Agility, Strength, and Intellect have been added.
• The number of herbs required to create flasks has been reduced, while the Volatile Life needed has been increased slightly.
• The drops from [Tiny Treasure Chest] have been improved slightly.

So let's comment them one by one:

New Alchemist's stones
These stones are obviously great trinkets for any Alchemist, now covering every role the character could take.
Lets look at them in more detail:

• [Quicksilver Alchemist Stone]

mats: 50x[Volatile Life], 24x[Cinderbloom], 12x[Heartblossom]

• [Volatile Alchemist Stone]

mats: 50x[Volatile Life], 12x[Cinderbloom], 24x[Heartblossom]

• [Vibrant Alchemist Stone]

mats: 50x[Volatile Life], 8x[Cinderbloom], 20x[Azshara's Veil], 8x[Heartblossom]

But there is also an hidden change regarding them...
Important Note: it seems these new Alchemist's Stones will not be disenchantable as it is now for the only one in game... And I can't see them leaving it disenchantable for long. This means that toons with Alchemy/Enchanting won't be able anymore to produce tons of [Maelstrom Crystal]. THIS IS NOT A SURE CHANGE! Actually, wowhead says the opposite: that those items are Disenchantable at 475 instead of 500. I'll update this post when I find something sure about it.

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Quick recap if you don't know how having Alchemy/Enchanting on the same character can give you as many cheap [Maelstrom Crystal] as you like:
Starting from 500 skill level in alchemy, you can create [Lifebound Alchemist Stone], for mats quite similar to those the new Alchemist's Stones will need... Summing them all, in most server you need ~800g or less to create one.
Starting from 500 skill level in enchanting, you can disenchant [Lifebound Alchemist Stone]. Since it's BoP you need to have the two professions on the same character, but any level 75+ alt is potentially able to do this.
Since [Maelstrom Crystal] can easily sell for ~2k, this is a great way to gain lots of gold.

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Lots of people have made tons of golds thanks to this trick, and they probably lowered the price of [Maelstrom Crystal] on your server... Soon this source of [Maelstrom Crystal] could (we don't know for sure) disappear. This could probably make their price grow once 4.0.6 goes live... so, if this doesn't reduce your liquidity too much, they can be a good investment right now: If you're an Alchemists/Enchanter try to make some [Maelstrom Crystal] for when you won't be able to produce them so easily... If you're a normal goblin with some gold to spend, see if you can buy some [Maelstrom Crystal] for "cheap" now.

Reduction of the herbs required to create flasks
This change is quite interesting... Before discussing it, let's see it in more detail:
For now, all flasks had their reagents requirements changed and now requires 8 Volatile Life (up from 6) and 8 of each Herb (down from 12)... As always these could not be what will go live, we're still in PTR. Here is what you get with this change:

[Flask of Titanic Strength]
mats: 8x[Volatile Life], 8x[Cinderbloom], 8x[Whiptail], Crystal Vial

[Flask of the Winds]
mats: 8x[Volatile Life], 8x[Azshara's Veil], 8x[Whiptail], Crystal Vial

[Flask of the Draconic Mind]
mats: 8x[Volatile Life], 8x[Azshara's Veil], 8x[Twilight Jasmine], Crystal Vial

[Flask of Flowing Water]
mats: 8x[Volatile Life], 8x[Stormvine], 8x[Heartblossom], Crystal Vial

[Flask of Steelskin]
mats: 8x[Volatile Life], 8x[Cinderbloom], 8x[Twilight Jasmine], Crystal Vial

Every time blizzard makes changes in the materials required for largely used recipes, you can obviously expect to see something happening in the AH... But what will change this time?
Most people would say that, since the demand for herbs will lower, their price will be the most affected by this change. But while it's true that prices are still going down and that the price of herbs could lower in the future, I don't think this change will really affect it.

Why?
Well, it could be different on your server, but in mine the demand for herbs mainly comes from scribes, and not from people making any sort of flask. This is even more evident during the Darkmoon fair, when some of the herbs nearly disappear from the market while scribes try their fortune hoping to get some really valuable card.

Until Darkmoon Fair's carts will be priced above 2-3k, you won't see the price in herbs drop.

Don't get me wrong: price in herbs will still drop a little, in time... People will start to buy less glyph, having everything they need for their mains and their alts, they'll get some epic trinket and stop buying the cards... demands will lower even for scribe-related goods... In time.

What will change when less herbs will be required to make flask, then? Well, the price of the flask!

So, you don't have any reason left not to sell your flasks while you can: raiding guild now raid and they need them. When this change goes live, prices on flasks will go abruptly down!
This won't hurt you if you're an alchemist... You will need less money to make them, so you can afford selling them more cheaply (actually, this could even be good for your business: people will be more eager to buy flasks and spam them if they're cheap enough), but you shouldn't make more potion than those you sell. Avoid having potion lefts when this change hits the live server (you still have some weeks, so don't stop production).

Drop rates from Tiny Treasure Chest
What is a [Tiny Treasure Chest]?
If you're wondering this, than you probably haven't read my post about Potion of Treasure Finding, which explains the way this [Tiny Treasure Chest] are found and why are they a great way to make money.
The increase in the drops from& [Tiny Treasure Chest] will make this potion even more valuable, so you should really start to think about it (if you're not a regular user already)

(now let me run to hear the news on the television... something amazing is happening here in Italy)

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Other posts about the PTR 4.0.6 patch notes:

• New metagems on the way!
• Sockets will be added on crafted epic gear
• New enchanting recipes (and nerf to [Enchant Off-Hand - Superior Intellect])
• Engineers won't need Volatile Air anymore (well, not as much as they need now, anyway)

Simple Great tips for young Goblins

This post is part of the Cold's Gold Blogging Carnival of this month. From February the 11th you can check this page to look for other posts about great tips to begin doing some real gold.


This are the advices I value the most, and you should really do your best to follow them.


Buy from the middle
When you're buying what you need for your usual crafts you buy the cheapest mats on the AH? Well, sir, you're probably doing the wrong thing! 
Buy buying everything under a certain threshold you're not allowing the prices to go down further. If you leave some cheap mats the odds are that some other gatherer will undercut blindly the AH, lowering the prices even more. As I said in my post about at which prices you can buy Obsidium Ore being sure you'll gain gold, it sometimes happens that farmers (bot or not) start undercutting each other wildly. Even when [Obsidium Ore] goes to 44g a stack, you should leave 5 stacks in the AH so that they can be undercut, even if it means buying stacks that are selling for 1-2g more.
This is true for any kind of mat... And you now the coolest think of this trick? The more people knows about it, the more you'll gain from it! Because there will ever be someone trying to sell raw mats undercutting his competitors, so higher number of crafters that follow this simple rule = higher odds that someone will undercut the last farmer before his last stack of mats sells.


Pay attention to the bids!
Lots of people don't really consider the bid prices of items, since most of the time players are on a hurry and will buyout everything they need. But you should pay attention to two things about bids in the AH:

• Profit opportunity

This is quite obvious: you should always check if you can see things with very low bids compared to their usual price... And remember that during the downtime in the maintenance day (Tuesday in US-servers, Wednesday in the EU ones) auctions still expire. So it's a great idea to do this on Tuesday night, since people will have less time (or none at all) to bid higher.

• Risk of a loss

When undercutting you could tempted to check with more attention the buyout price than the minimum bid... This is a potential way to loose a lot of money if someone is doing what I just suggested to you and buys the item before you notice the error of your ways... So try to pay attention to everything.

Try Cross-Faction trading

This is great and very simple to do if you have two accounts, but a trusted friend is enough to make some big profits without much of an effort.

You should start just trading from one side to the other faction specific items (like the pets of the various races). While you're doing this, scan the AH of your opposing faction (and obviously your AH, but you should already be doing this) and go through it until you have a good amount of data and a clear idea of the differences between the two factions markets. Instead of using the neutral AH to transfer gold to your cross-faction alt, give him the pets specific of your faction.

You can sell this faction pets, each bought for just a few silvers, for several golds... 15g if you have a strong competition, but even 60g each if you're the only one posting them... So while your learning the opposite faction's AH, you'll make the gold you need to start buying from it selling these pets.

Engineers won't need Volatile Air anymore

Well, actually they will still need some [Volatile Air], but a lot less than now.
Look at this:

• The [Electrified Ether] recipe now creates 2 to 3 Electrified Ether instead of 1.

What is [Electrified Ether]?
Well, it actually is the way Engineers use [Volatile Air]: they transform their [Volatile Air] in[Electrified Ether] at an exchange ratio of 2:1 (for 2x[Volatile Air] they get 1x[Electrified Ether]) and than they use the [Electrified Ether] in their recipes... A lot of them.
Actually, most of their recipes need at least 2x[Electrified Ether]. Right now they need:

•  6x[Electrified Ether] for each epic-quality helm (but still, you make just one in your life, two if you want one specifically for your off-spec)
• 8x[Electrified Ether] for each of the new Engineering pets ([De-Weaponized Mechanical Companion] and [Personal World Destroyer])
• 8x[Electrified Ether] for the ilvl 333 trinket, [Elementium Dragonling]
• 8x[Electrified Ether] for the ilvl 346 gun [Overpowered Chicken Splitter]r
• 2x[Electrified Ether] for the ilvl 333 gun and crossbow ([Volatile Thunderstick], [Finely-Tuned Throat Needler])

Also the [Loot-A-Rang] and the [High-Powered Bolt Gun] need some [Electrified Ether] (5x and 4x respectively), but I don't know how many of these are being made.

Anyway, it seems to me that [Volatile Air] were needed for a lot of things, and now for the same things Engineers will need less than an half of them.
As this wasn't enough, the PTR notes also say:

• [Volatile Air] now has an increased chance of dropping from rich mining nodes and Pyrite.

Changes in prices
I'm not sure about how much this will affect the price of [Volatile Air], this depends heavily from how great will be the buff at their drop from rich mining nodes and nodes of Pyrite. Even with the changes made at Engineering there still are lots of untouched professions that will still need [Volatile Air]... Anyway, I'm quite sure we'll see a drop in price once 4.0.6 will hit the live servers.
What I can say for sure, though is that the prices for the Engineering pets, De-Weaponized Mechanical Companion and Personal World Destroyer, will go down by at least 320g, requiring 8-12 x Volatile Air less than now.

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Other engineering changes
It makes sense to quickly comment the other changes that will probably (remember: all of this is still just for the PTR) be made to Engineering:

• The [Heat-Treated Spinning Lure] buff duration has been increased to 20 minutes, up from 5. In addition, the recipe now creates 2 at a time.
• [Synapse Springs] now increase Agility, Strength, or Intellect (whichever is highest for the character).

The first is more a buff to fishing than to Engineering, but surely a pleasant one for a lot of people. I don't know how will this sell, but since the amount created is doubled they could become a really cheap thing to craft you could be able to sell for some money.
The change to [Synapse Springs] makes them useful for everyone and not just for spellcasters. Will this lower the price on other gloves enchants? Well, I con't think you should be afraid of the lowering of the demand for gloves enchants: lots of people still don't have engineering on their main (I'm one of those, actually) and this isn't even something you can learn from a trainer! [Synapse Springs] works very similar to Alchemy discoveries: you can learn it randomly while crafting other Cataclysm Engineering items.
It's even possible that some of the less-informed engineers out there don't know about this and aren't trying to get it, since this isn't such a usual mechanic for engineering.

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Other posts about the PTR 4.0.6 patch notes:

• New metagems on the way!
• Sockets will be added on crafted epic gear
• New enchanting recipes (and nerf to [Enchant Off-Hand - Superior Intellect] )

New Enchanting Recipes

Today (well, actually two days ago, but I had some problems posting) I want to talk about the new Enchanting recipes that will be added to the game.


Here the news:

• Three new enchants are available. They increase Agility by 50, Strength by 50, or Intellect by 50 respectively. Item level 300 or higher required. These new recipes are rare world drops.
• Enchant Off-Handed - Superior Intellect now increases Intellect by 40

In this post I'll focus more on the first, but I thought it would be better to comment all the news regarding Enchanting in the same place.


The bracer enchants:
We can see the enchants with some more detail:

Enchant Bracer - Agility - Permanently enchant bracers to increase Agility by 50. Requires a level 300 or higher item.
Reagents: [Hypnotic Dust] x 12, [Maelstrom Crystal] x 2, [Volatile Air] x 15

Enchant Bracer - Major Strength - Permanently enchant bracers to increase Strength by 50. Requires a level 300 or higher item.
Reagents: [Hypnotic Dust] x 6, [Maelstrom Crystal] x 2, [Volatile Earth] x 25

Enchant Bracer - Mighty Intellect - Permanently enchant bracers to increase Intellect by 50. Requires a level 300 or higher item.
Reagents: [Hypnotic Dust] x 4, [Greater Celestial Essence] x 4, [Maelstrom Crystal] x 2, [Volatile Water] x 15

So they all are real high-level enchantment, with some really expensive mats. People will want to put this only on BiS items, which aren't easy to acquire. To this you should add that leatherworkes will want to enchant their bracer with their own Draconic Embossments, so you're loosing another bit of your audience just for that.
How are those worth for gold-making, then?
Well, we don't know yet the drop rates for these recipes, but the important thing is exactly the fact that these aren't learned from you trainer for some shard, but could actually be rare. I can see two scenarios:

• The "rare" recipes are actually rare

The demand for this enchants will still be limited, but also the supply.
If you get one you'll be able to make some good profits especially in the first days/weeks (depending on the rarity)... Having some good raiding guilds in your server could drive the demand high enough to give you some really good profits, while in a young server with few raiding guilds you could just score few lucky sells.
These profits will lower while new recipes drops, but if you're fast you will already have made a good deal of gold. After a good number of enchanters has the recipe, you'll end up in the following scenario, as if the recipes weren't really a rare drop.

• The "rare" recipes are common

If the recipes ends up dropping too well, you'll soon have too much competition than you want. Some guilds will even directly use their enchanters without any mats/gold going out of the guild (this will most likely happen in guilds that keeps the [Maelstrom Crystal] made during guild run). You won't be doing a lot of gold with this recipes right now, but you could still start doing some good profits when people start to gear from the second tier of raids: then [Maelstrom Crystal] will become cheaper, and most people will be able to buy the enchant.

Another thing to consider: high-end guild on your server
As you can see from the previous scenarios, having High-end guilds on your server could change things quite a bit. It's your duty to know what kind of player inhabits your server and which are its top guilds. If you're friend of some of the player of a big raiding guild you could check if they have an enchanter with these recipes, and in case they haven't one (and you are one), you can offer to work for them at a price. This could mean skipping the AH cut and the /2 barking.

The Off-Hand enchant:
It seems that instead of giving a new good enchant for caster staffs, blizzard decided to nerf the too-good Off-Hand enchant.
If you're stockpiling cheap Cataclysm scrolls, stop buying [Enchant Off-Hand - Superior Intellect],unless you want to risk in hope that blizzard changes its mind... but I don't thing this will happen... I strongly advice against that. If you have some of these scrolls, I think you should dump them.
In any case, you now have the informations you needed to make your choice.

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Other posts about 4.0.6 PTR:

• New metagems on the way!
• Sockets will be added on crafted epic gear

Sockets will be added on crafted epic gear

From the 4.0.6 PTR patch notes:

• A socket has been added to all crafted epic armor pieces that did not already have one.

How does this affect you?
If you're crafting these epics, you should try to consider which impact may this have on your market.
Well this doesn't mean that prices on crafted epic armors will actually rise, but if you're having problems in selling this purples now, you should hope that this items will at least moving a little bit faster once the socket will make them more appealing.
After the first few weeks in which this items used to sell for huge amount of gold, the profit in crafting them has lowered. While an [Assassin's Chestplate] was a rarity at the end of the last year, I can see three of them up in the AH almost contantly on the AH of my server (and I fear it's always the same three)... and Leatherworkers and Blacksmith are constantly offering their service in trade, porviding orbs at ~1000g.
This patch won't change the supply, but could raise a little the demand. Items that are not moving now can start to move in the future, for the same prices, because with the ability to adapt more the items at the need of the buyer they will become closer to being BiS (excluding heroic raid gear (ilevel 379 beats 359 ;-P))...
Actually, some of those epics could become BiS, so try to follow closely the news related to those you can make!

How dumb people can both hurt your profits and enhance them - response to Capped by Cata

I was jumping from a blog to the other, when a post at Capped by Cata took all my attention. It was I think I play on the dumbest server in WoW, published just minutes ago.


The good side of having dumb people on your server.
Now, some of you may notice some similarity with a post I made some time ago, Magic price for Obsidium Ore. At the time the AH was flooded with [Obsidium Ore] at less than 44g a stack (5-6 pages of the AH where full of stacks below that price). I'm sure this was partially the work of a gold farmer, who filled 4 pages of stacks of [Obsidium Ore] at 44g a stack.... Then people panicked and started dumping their assets fearing the prices would get even lower. The craziness dured an entire day, every time I logged in prices were lower and lower, than it all suddenly finished.

The bad side of having dumb people on your server.
Ok, here it comes the real reason I'm writing this post. I needed to whine about a small group of players that are totally ruining my profits.
The one I see the most on the AH is named Naitmage, and he likes to put 10-15 cut gems at 100g less than their current value. This is true both the the rare gems and for the metagems.
Some times I made a profit buying his auctions and re-listing them for the right prices.
I've seen him selling [Shadowspirit Diamond] and [Ember Shadowspirit Diamonds] at 250g (the exact same price for the cut and uncut gem) when their prices were 330+.
He is a jewelcrafter, and he has 5-6 gems cuts (sadly, I share 3 of those cuts with him) that he continuously sell undercutting deeply the market. ([Brilliant Inferno Ruby] go for 210g? He puts them at 100g. [Steady Dream Emerald] go for 150g? He puts them at 50g. He does the same for Rigid, Inscribed, Veiled, Mystic, Reckless gems).
I sometime go and check his auction (I actually make a "void search" in the AH, order it by the name of the seller and manually search for him... I suppose there is a faster way, if it's so please tell -.-), check if he's online, buy everything that has not been undercut yet and re-list for the correct price.
Most of the time I actually sell everything or most of it, but this little victories are nothing compared to the drop of the prices my server has seen. I understand prices would have gone down sooner or later, but he started taking them down from the first week after Cataclysm hit.
[Shadowspirit Diamond] now go for less than 200g.
Here there is an image to show you how he works:

I cancelled the name of the other sellers (I'm none of them, if you were wondering). Please notice how Elu*** was posting the Steady Dream Emerald for 150g an then undercut himself. This is because he's setting his auction at 48h, while Naitmage puts his at 12h: Naitmage undercut him yesterday, Elu*** posted other Steady Dream Emeralds undercutting Naitmage and himself, then Naitmage's auctions run out and he posted them again undercutting those who were undercutting him.
The problem isn't just this Naitmage, but all the people just dumbly undercutting him.